Alison's Wonderland (27 page)

Sobbing, Sarah groped for her dress, for her coat, for her combat boots; she had never dressed so fast, and was gone long before the sheriff’s cars got there.

On the longest week of her life, Sarah blew a Latin mid-term, got a C on a Greek test and pleaded illness to put off having to write her poetry paper. She cried almost constantly and checked AltFet six, eight, ten, twenty times a day. She told her concerned roommate, Annie, that she’d just had an online relationship that went bad. “He broke up with me, I guess,” she said, shrugging. “No big deal.” She tried hard not to burst into tears.

“You should come out with me tonight,” said Annie on Friday. “Come over to B dorm. Things are going to get pretty wild. I guarantee that you can find a new boyfriend, a
real
boyfriend.”

“IRL,” said Sarah vaguely.

“Huh?”

“Nothing,” said Sarah. “I think I’ll sit this one out.”

The second Annie was gone, Sarah signed in to AltFet, the elaborate blindfold-gag-collar combination piled close to her left hand. She stared blankly at the screen.

VENUS: Hello, Psyche.

Christ, another one of those stupid FemDom bitches. Sarah had absolutely no interest in that shit, and she was not in the mood. It was only the minimum standards of politeness that made her type:

PSYCHE: Hello.

VENUS: I think you’ve failed greatly and need to be punished—isn’t that right, Psyche?

Sarah gritted her teeth and almost hit the Ignore button.

She paused at the last instant. She felt as if she had basically blown it on heterosexuality, and was probably schizophrenic to boot. She may as well try girls; it was worth a shot, wasn’t it?

Besides, she was too depressed to care. Decently creative online sex with a woman would be a lot better than another night freaking out and wondering what she really saw in that motel on Highway 35.

PSYCHE: Yes, ma’am. I fucked up. At your motel, actually. LOL.

VENUS: Don’t say “LOL.”

Sarah caught her breath.

PSYCHE: Yes, ma’am.

VENUS: Don’t demote me. It’s “Goddess.”

PSYCHE: Srsly?

VENUS: You tell me.

Sarah could still feel the sting where her unseen lover had spanked her. She shifted on her chair, reached back to touch the soft dark yellowing bruises, took a deep breath and typed:

PSYCHE: Do you know him?

There was a long pause, during which Sarah held her breath.

VENUS: Say his name.

PSYCHE: I can’t. It hurts.

VENUS: Not as much as it’s going to. Shall we begin your expiation?

Sarah felt hot, her nipples hard, her pussy going wet. She’d never gotten turned on like this chatting with a woman—but then, she’d never had a woman promise her “expiation.”

PSYCHE: I like that word. Expiation.

VENUS: Shall we begin it? There is hope for you and Cupid…if you suffer beautifully. I make all things possible, Psyche. Do you believe that?

Sarah took a deep breath, ran her hand through her hair, and remembered the sting of Cupid pulling it.

PSYCHE: Yes, Goddess.

VENUS: Shall we begin, then?

PSYCHE: Yes, pls.

VENUS: :-)

Sarah spread her legs.

London, 1483

Madchen Sprynger slid her hands into her hair and pressed them against the hard warmth of her scalp. This helped with the cold and shaking in her hands, but did little for the breathless ache in her chest. Outside her meagerly appointed chamber, the raucous street life of London had been under way for hours, the continual clamor so familiar it was like breathing.

What had he been thinking?

However agonizing the question, Madchen knew she did not have far to look for the answer. Her father was an ambitious man, canny in business, but a poor drinker. Spirits brought out his worst qualities and trebled them. He must have been deep in his cups to have made the bet he made last night: that she could spin nine pounds of roving into yarn over the course of three nights. Her stomach lurched painfully.

Three pounds a night.

She was an excellent spinner, her yarns strong, even and lustrous. And she was quick. Where it normally took five
spinners to keep one weaver occupied, with Madchen it took only three others because she did the work of two in the time of one. In seven or eight hours, she could easily spin two pounds of roving into a one-ply yarn. But after eight hours, no matter who you were, you were tired.

Pushing away from the desk, Madchen stood and began to pace the small room, as if by doing so she could escape the ugly knowledge lodged under her breastbone: the task her father had set for her was impossible, and drunk or not he must have known it. A member of the Mercer’s Company, he lacked the funds and position to rise in the guild, which led her to one solitary conclusion. Her father had sold her virginity to Anthony Wydeville, Earl Rivers, for silver.

Madchen went to her wheel and began, picking up the draft in her left hand, letting it out with her right, guiding it to one of three spindles. When one was full, she began with the other, the age-old motions easing her agitation. The long-staple wool was her favorite, Border Leicester, a creamy moonlight-gray of which she never tired. She skipped dinner, not wanting to face her father. As long as she worked, she could avoid thinking, but she went in for tea late in the afternoon because she was tired and thirsty. Blessedly, he was out, but he appeared not too long a while later, bounding into the room with a fanatic light in his eyes and a joyous step. Madchen’s heart sank. He was a stolid man, her father. The only thing that pleased him was achieving his own pecuniary ends, which in this case was bound to bear ill tidings for her.

Face flushed, he spoke quickly, the words tumbling over one another in a rush to be spoken. “The king’s got wind of it, Maddie!” He was exultant. “The contest is to be held at the Tower, with Queen Elizabeth and all the court in attendance! At the
Tower,
Maddie, imagine it!”

He’s truly thrilled,
she thought. The ramifications of all this
to her seemed to impinge in no way upon his good spirits. Madchen felt the first surreptitious twinges of anger. She waited until he was at the door. “Father?” She spoke softly. “What do I receive if I win?”

He turned, his eyes wide. “Why, Maddie-girl, didn’t I tell you? You become the bride of the earl’s son. Lord Scales is his name, I believe.”

It was true, then. He had sold her. No one in their right mind would risk marrying the heir of an earl, who was brother to the queen of England, to a penniless wool spinner from Saint Laurence Lane. The real thing, the awful coldness of what he had done, circled around her in the cooling air of the room. But finally, Madchen drank the last, bitter dregs of it standing there, a thoughtful look on her face. She was the best spinner in England. There was nothing to do but try.

At two o’clock the next day, the Tower green was emerald in the clear March light. There had been a banquet, to which she and her father were not invited. This had not bothered Madchen in the least, but it had put her father grimly out of sorts and he had complained the entire way from Saint Laurence Lane to the Tower. They had come on foot through the noisy, fulsome streets of the City. Everyone else either lived at court or had come by private barge on the river, being let out at Traitor’s Gate, which led through the old portcullis directly onto the green.

Madchen watched the richest, most privileged people England had to offer. They tumbled onto the green like gems tipped out of a casket, and moved to and fro to little apparent purpose. Madchen thought of her wheel. There was a reason they called it the walking wheel. You walked to and fro, back and forth, always with the purpose of spinning out the draft and winding the yarn onto the spindles. The ladies and gentlemen of Edward’s court fluttered and wafted. She thought
about the kind of yarn their movements would produce and afforded herself a smile. They would think her poor and plain and worth less than the expensive leather on the soles of their shoes. So she did what she always did. She made it not matter. She thought briefly of Judas and his thirty pieces of silver, and went out among them.

From a distance, she looked like sand. Hair, skin, eyes, lips; everything just beige. Lord Scales watched the girl, not because he was unduly interested in her, but because it was unique in his experience to be betrothed, however disingenuously, to two women at the same time. Also because, though it pricked his pride to admit it, neither woman seemed interested in the outcome. Eleanor appeared to think the whole affair beneath her notice, and the little spinster had hardly spared a glance in his direction, though she must know who he was. She moved among them, a brown moth amongst butterflies. She was acting, he thought only like herself (though he did not know or pretend to care who that was) and it was a sight he was beholding for the first time in his life. At the court of Edward the Fourth and Queen Elizabeth Wydeville, the price of acting simply as oneself was always too high to pay. Following like hounds on a hare was the perturbing thought, presented in whole cloth, as if God had sent down a note borne on a silver platter and left it hovering in midair at elbow height, was that she saw herself as somehow among equals. Equals of a different proficiency, perhaps, but equals nonetheless. There was no reverse snobbery in it that he could detect, which meant it did not exist. He was the nephew of Elizabeth Wydeville, the commoner queen, and had come across enough snobbery, even in the exalted circles in which he moved, to know when he was in its presence.

That was when he began to be intrigued.

Madchen tinkered with the wheel, checking the tension, making sure the maidens were in alignment, ensuring that the leather parts were oiled and flexible. The room was warm. A fire burned in the grate and a brazier of coals was set near the wheel. Her hands would not bother her for hours. The roving had been delivered, prepared exactly as she had specified. Heaped in nine balls, each the size of a ram’s head, it was an intimidating sight. Madchen moved the pyramid out of sight behind her and kept one ball next to her. Picking out the first draft, she began to spin, the gray Leicester moving through her hands with its wavy, familiar crimp.

Spinning did not require thought, or even sight. Madchen took in her surroundings; grander than those at home, of course, but not by a lot. They did not care enough to try to impress her. There was one tapestry, thin and faded, no doubt moved here to unravel in solitude. She gazed at it with a critical eye; a hunting scene with hounds and roebuck and archers with longbows.

Her thoughts wandered. The fire burned down, the coals elapsed to a bed of red embers, the light made strange shadows on the walls and ceiling. She went on spinning. She found herself thinking about Lord Scales, though she didn’t care to. Someone had pointed him out that afternoon, eager to be part of the drama and, looking, Madchen had felt a trickle of disappointment. She would have at least liked for him to look like the prince of her girlhood dreams: slim and golden and sweetly tempered. This man, Piers they called him, was taller than she by two feet or more, black-haired and green-eyed, physically substantial to the point of burliness, with lips of such a sensual bent that she felt embarrassed on his behalf. He seemed in no way affectionate or friendly, acknowledging one or two people, but in the main keeping to himself. Of his father, Earl Rivers, she refused to think at all.

The night wound down, and near dawn she stopped to rest by the fire, warming her hands and rubbing her neck. She had spun more than two pounds of roving and every part of her ached. By seven, the official time they would come to fetch her to the hall for breakfast, she would not have completed the last three-quarter pounds of wool. One part of her mind insisted she could make it up on the two successive nights, while the other part chided her for foolishness and demanded she come up with a better way to avoid being a midnight morsel for the earl. She climbed to her feet, every muscle protesting. As she did, a latch snicked deep in the stone, a section of the wall slid open and a small, unkempt man stepped forth into the room, bringing with him a cloud of dust and a great many cobwebs trailing from his clothing and beard. “Bertram Rumpolzey,” he said, bowing, as if it were entirely normal to spring from nowhere. It was impossible to guess his age. Behind the beard he might be thirty or three hundred, but the beard was almost full gray and his eyes had creases around and under them, so she judged him to be older. Having never met one, it took Madchen a fraught moment to perceive the truth. He was, in fact, a dwarf. The night, indeed the whole preceding two days, began to take on a surreal, dreamlike quality which was not entirely unpleasant. Not sure of the best way to proceed, Madchen fell back on good manners.

“Can I help you?” she asked politely. The dwarf had gone immediately to her wheel and was examining it and the skeins of completed yarn in a basket on the floor.

He straightened at her question. “I would like a child.”

“Oh,” Madchen said agreeably. “I would, as well. But I’m afraid I haven’t got any here at the moment.”

“Of course not,” he said, as if she were a little daft. “I mean later, after you’re married.”

“Am I to be married?” Madchen asked.

“Of course you are. To the earl’s son.”

Madchen laughed. It was very amusing, the way he spoke to her, but gradually Madchen came to understand that the strange little man wanted
her
child, the union of her marriage to Piers Wydeville, Lord Scales. This was less amusing, but as he had been in no way rude in his request, Madchen explained the situation.

“But you will win the bet,” he countered. “I have your yarn. In there.” And he gestured to the cobwebby passage behind her.

Madchen shook her head to clear it. “Are you telling me,” she began. “Are you suggesting that I
trick
them, that I cheat to win the bet and that in return I’m to give you my firstborn son?”

“Exactly,” he said, satisfied that at last she understood the parameters of the problem.

There were a lot of things Madchen could have said at that point, but in the end she chose the simplest. “Why?”

“Any child of my body runs the risk of being as I am. I want a man-child that will grow to full height and have full weight in the affairs of men.”

Madchen weighed her options. If she was honest, she would lose, and the rewards (herself among them) would go to those who were unscrupulous. That didn’t seem fair. If she lied, that wasn’t right, either, but she would have escaped the snare. She didn’t believe for a moment that Piers Wydeville was going to marry her. He was engaged to the Duke of Somerset’s daughter, Eleanor, a girl so in love with herself and so secure of her position in the world, that she needed little other regard. As for the future child…Madchen stood, brushing dust off her skirts. She felt bad for lying, but if she didn’t marry Lord Scales, there would be no child for the dwarf to claim. It would be a moot point. She held out one hand. “I
accept your terms,” she said, and they shook hands firmly, his hand small and strong in hers.

Bertram spent several unpardoned minutes jumping up and down with an unholy glee before retreating into the passage. He returned presently, handing the wool out to her in several wicker baskets. The Border Leicester was the most beautiful worsted Madchen had ever seen, more accomplished even than her own, and this gave her a deep twinge of alarm. There was no work more accomplished than hers, so where had this come from? “What have you done?” she said aloud, not sure if she was asking the dwarf or herself. But when she looked up he was gone, the secret door moving so quietly she had not even heard it close.

The little spinster looked appropriately tired, Piers noted the next morning at breakfast in the great hall. But his idle interest turned to suspicion after the announcement, accompanied by a smattering of applause, that she had successfully completed the first night’s task. He ignored it. They had no earthly idea what they were celebrating, but Piers knew the difference between a pound of roving and a pipe of wine and what she had done shouldn’t have been possible, even for a very accomplished spinner. He chewed his bacon and kept one eye on Edward and his father, practically arm in arm at the high table. The fact that Tony Wydeville was the queen’s elder brother did not mean she condoned the constant amusements with which they entertained themselves. They had whored and drunk themselves into equal states of dissolution and corpulence. Downing the last of his ale, Piers wondered if she was the sole reason the spinning contest had been held at the Tower, which functioned both as a prison and royal residence. Not so easy to do in youthful, robust form, Edward was less of a challenge to keep under her thumb now. Wiping his mouth, Piers rose from the table. The girl had been es
corted to another chamber to rest, and he thought he might take the opportunity to examine the spinning room more closely.

At the feast, Piers kept one eye on the girl, one eye on his father and a third eye—the invisible one in the back of his head—on her father. If the man was any more toadying, he would begin to croak before the day was out. When the meal was at long last complete, and Edward and his cronies had reeled off to the next amusement, Piers followed her outside. She went in the opposite direction from the crowd, and he closed with her where she had come to a stop by the fountain and the air was redolent of the rosemary and lavender neatly contained in the herbaceous borders.