Winter Song (11 page)

Torches were lit before the dancing ended to supplement the waning
light of the short winter day. As the sun set, lamps were lit also, and a warm,
golden glow suffused the hall. Except for a few, whom wine made quarrelsome and
who were quietly suppressed by their more sober friends, voices had softened
and movements grew more languid. There were no calls for another measure when
the minstrels put up their instruments and the trumpeters came forth for the
last time.

Enthusiasm for the fourth course was minimal, but the cooks
had been prepared for that. Dainty dishes predominated, tiny roast birds, lark
and snipe, little birds’ eggs hard-boiled and set in a spicy jelly, small
fritters and fancy sweetmeats and pastries. The subtlety recognized the mellow
mood of the ending day and portrayed
Autumn Fulfillment
, man, wife, and cradled
child beside a cheerful fire near a table laden with the fruits of autumn.

When that masterpiece of varicolored pastry had gone the round
and been admired, all the others were brought forth. The cooks were summoned,
and Raymond gave each a gold coin. Then the high table descended and began
breaking apart the subtleties. The king seized the images of the
archbishop-elect and the attendant bishops, saying that it was the only time he
was likely to have the Church in his hand. William took the golden-haired bride
and Elizabeth the heavily pregnant figure, for she ardently desired to give her
second husband the son he needed as heir to his lands. When the high lords had
chosen, the guests at large rushed upon the pastries and tore them apart.
During and after this mêlée, servants hastily cleared the tables and removed
them. The guests mixed more freely, talking, dancing, and playing games.
Eventually torches began to gutter and the lamps to bum low. Someone, Alys
could never remember who, called the party to order. The men gathered around
Raymond, the women about Alys. Everyone capable of doing so began to cheer and
laugh. The bedding ceremony was about to begin.

Chapter Six

Alys knew what was to happen, of course, and she was
certainly not ashamed of her lovely body. She was also well aware of the
purpose of exposing her naked to all. It was proof that she had no hidden
defect for which her husband could repudiate her. Still, she was young and,
until a few months before, had been a person of little account in the world.
Had she married the son of a neighboring knight, or even someone a little
higher on the social scale, there would have been fewer guests, and she would
have known most of them. Now it seemed that a host of strangers surrounded her,
jesting, laughing, and making pointed remarks as her clothing was removed.

There were so many witnesses that they could not fit into the
bedchamber, so the disrobing was carried out in the hall. It was cold, despite
the best efforts of the roaring fires. Alys had begun to shiver, and Elizabeth,
noting the strain on her face, had faded from her side and suggested to Richard
that he keep William away. The bond of father and daughter was unusually close
and sympathetic. Whereas most fathers would have been amused by the fear and
embarrassment of their daughters, William would be greatly distressed. He might
even interfere in some way to protect Alys, which would be unfortunate all
around.

Richard was quick to take the hint and draw William away.
Elizabeth, Sancia, and the queen were the ladies actively engaged in disrobing
Alys. The result for Alys was that there was hardly a familiar face in the
crowd around her. She was too proud and too courageous to weep aloud and hang
her head like a craven, but tears stung in her eyes and the milk of her skin
was deep-dyed with blushes. Thus, when the cries, “Look on your husband!” and
“Look on your wife!” rang out as the naked couple was brought face to face,
Alys shrank away from the unfamiliar, staring eyes into the shelter of
Raymond’s arms. This produced more laughter, cheers, and jests, but Alys cared
little for that. She had been received in a willing, protective embrace. She
now felt comforted and sustained. Although she still blushed furiously and hid
her face in Raymond’s shoulder, her trembling ceased.

It was this pretty picture that William saw when he was
attracted by the ceremonial cries that capped the ritual and pushed his way
through the crowd. Relief and gladness filled him. The trust his daughter felt
in her husband and the eager yet gentle way Raymond held her augured well for
Alys’s future happiness. William was soothed. He could not take pleasure in the
forthcoming separation, but he did not need to fear for his daughter, either.
He joined his wife, the king and queen, the Earl and Countess of Cornwall, and
several other great magnates in accompanying the bridal pair into the bedchamber,
and assisted Alys into the bed with a fond pat and a low-voiced, “Be a good
girl.”

To which, to his delight, his daughter responded pertly, “It
is too late for that.”

Alys’s balance had been restored by Raymond’s ready, smiling
reception. Protected, she had been able to recognize the friendliness in the
voices and eyes of the crowd. No matter that they were strangers, they all
wished her well. The final assurance that everything was just as it should be
was her father’s all-too-familiar admonition and the calm on his face and in
his hazel eyes.

A spate of final admonitions, none as innocent as William’s
followed, but at last the bed curtains were drawn closed and the witnesses
withdrew, leaving the couple to themselves. Raymond uttered a loud sigh and turned
toward his wife. Alys’s retreat into his arms had had a powerful effect on him.
Her fear and shame and the trust in him she had unconsciously demonstrated
roused the deepest and strongest protective instinct in Raymond.

Yet there was nothing he could do to protect her. A maiden
must be broached to be a wife, and that was never easy. William’s words came
back to him, also. They were true, Alys was very small. He could barely see her
in the dim light that filtered through the openings in the bed curtains, only a
soft paleness, which was her body, and a golden gleam here and there on her
cascade of hair—but even sitting he needed to look down on her.

“Alys,” he said softly, “do you know what comes now?”

“You will make me your wife,” she replied. “Is that what you
mean?”

“Yes. To breed children, we must couple, but I fear I must
hurt you, my love.”

He could feel her nod. “Elizabeth warned me it might be so.”
Her voice was low, but calm. She paused, as if to consider, and then said
briskly, “Very well. I am ready.”

Raymond uttered a shaken laugh; he was rather shocked. “But
I am not, beloved. I fear your pain more than you do, it seems. To cause you
hurt…the thought unmans me.”

She turned more fully toward him and put her arms around his
neck. “I have seen the beasts couple,” she remarked, “but they are always ready
in season. Is there something I can do to help? In this I am very ignorant.”

“And so you should be,” Raymond exclaimed.

Of course, he did not desire a shrieking, struggling,
terrified bride, but there were moments when Alys could be too calm and
practical. Still, her body was warm and pliant against him, and although he
could not see her expression, her face was raised trustfully to his. He lowered
his head a few inches to bring their lips together, and Alys sighed and
tightened her arms around his neck as he slipped his hands under her hair and
stroked her silken skin. Raymond leaned forward, and she fell back, but his
arms were around her, and he eased her down gently without breaking their
embrace.

Extricating his hands and tipping himself sideways, Raymond
began to touch a firm but well-developed breast, and then the soft curves of
her belly, hip, and thigh. Now that his weight held them together, Alys slid
one hand from his neck over his shoulder and down his back. She could feel his
shaft, hard and full, pressing against her. Ignorant of elaborate technique
though Alys might be, she was not so ignorant as to be unaware of what that
meant. Raymond was now ready.

Knowledgeable only in the ways of beasts, Alys expected him
to turn her around and mount her. She was not at all frightened. A warmth
seemed to be spreading over her from the places Raymond touched with his hands
and from their joined mouths. Her skin was all tingly, almost ticklish, but it
generated no desire in her to laugh or flinch away. Raymond lifted his lips
from hers, but before Alys could murmur a complaint, she used her breath to
gasp with pleasure. His warm lips were running down her throat, pausing a
moment in the hollow where her pulse beat fast and hard, moving again until
they fastened on a nipple.

Involuntarily, Alys cried out softly and clutched Raymond
tighter. Every sensation she had felt before was greatly heightened and,
inexplicably, the sucking at her breast waked a pulsing heat between her legs.
Instinct instructed ignorance. Without explanation Alys knew that she had been
wrong when she first said she was ready. She was not actually thinking, of
course. The growing intensity of her physical sensations blocked coherent thought,
but some interior process recognized that Raymond had known she was wrong, and
gratitude added to her joy and confidence.

Alys was, however, crediting her husband with rather more
than he deserved. It was his own pleasure rather than his knowledge of Alys’s
lack of readiness that was making him prolong his foreplay. Nonetheless, his
pleasure did come from an awareness of Alys as a special person and thus both a
recipient and giver of special pleasure.

Although Raymond had initially been transfixed by Alys’s
beauty and was astonished anew by it each time he saw her after an absence,
quite truly his desire to spend his life with Alys did not rest on her
appearance alone. And, although strength, honesty, and good sense are not what
a man thinks about in bed, there still remained a sense of something different
and special about her which lent an added fillip to the way she sighed and
cried out and kept Raymond playing with her. He abandoned one breast for the
other, running his fingers playfully up and down her body, through the curls on
her mount of Venus, and down between her thighs.

Part of Raymond’s pleasure in Alys’s response was that she
showed so much surprise as her passion increased. It was very apparent that no
man had handled her before, nor had she ever experienced the sensations his
hands and lips were awakening in her body. Deliciously, she did not seem to
know what to do, clutching distractedly now at his head or his hands or his
body, moving instinctively in response to his fingering and kissing, and
uttering little moans and cries.

Since this evidence of his success in stimulating his
bride’s desire was equally stimulating to Raymond, it was not very long before
he mounted her. She sighed with pleasure at first when he positioned himself,
the preliminary touches soothing an urgent need, but his first hard thrust
brought a cry of pain, and Alys’s body stiffened. The abrupt change startled
Raymond into a clear awareness of the realities. Moreover, he was conditioned
by the situation in his family to regard noblewomen as fragile and to treat
them with gentleness and consideration.

He paused and murmured, “I am sorry, dearling, sorry, but
there is no other way.”

As he spoke, the tension went out of Alys’s body. She had
been surprised by the sudden pang, for she had forgotten everything while
Raymond caressed her. This was the pain she had been warned of, she remembered.
“Yes, my lord,” she whispered, “but kiss me again.”

Enthralled by her innocence, Raymond complied and also
inserted a hand between their bodies to play with her breast, all the while
pressing himself into her. There was an obstruction, which yielded but did not
give way under the steady pressure. Raymond withdrew slowly, still caressing
her. Alys’s hands, which had been gripping his back, began again to stroke his
sides up and down. Nibbling her lips, her throat, and again her lips, Raymond
thrust hard again.

He gained some depth and this time Alys did not cry out,
although she grew tense. Then her hands slid down his back and pressed him
harder against her. He tried, but the pressure alone did not succeed. Raymond
had a sudden horrid memory of a jest which had gone round the court of Navarre
concerning a man who could not broach his bride.

He lifted his head and shoulders to give himself leverage,
drew, and thrust with all the force he could muster. Alys gasped and Raymond
himself uttered a pained oath, but when he came to rest he was sheathed to the
hilt.

“I am seated now,” he whispered to Alys, letting himself
down on her gently. “The worst is over, love.”

She had been breathing quick and hard, just short of
sobbing, but she quieted at once. Her faith in him was touching, and despite
his urge to plunge up and down in the warm ooze that now surrounded his shaft,
Raymond contained himself, concentrating on caressing her and moving minimally.
Alys’s grip, which had become lax, tightened. She hugged him close with one arm
and stroked his back or played with his hair. Finally, to Raymond’s surprise,
her body began to move with his.

Alys had little awareness of what she was doing, rapt as she
was in her own sensations. There had never been much fear in her of coupling,
and what little tension had been generated by her physical pain had been
removed by Raymond’s tender explanations. He had said the worst was over, and
it was. The remaining soreness and stretching were soothed by the extra
lubrication of her own blood, and seemed only to intensify the thrilling
sensation in her loins. All the tingling that had sensitized her skin centered
there now, and every touch of Raymond’s hands or lips seemed to increase it.

When he drew out, Alys sought to follow the source of her
pleasure. Also the easing of Raymond’s weight gave her a little freedom to
position herself, thus, instinctively, she served her own purposes and
increased her husband’s excitement. He moved more freely. Alys responded,
adding a little wriggle of the hips that drew a gasp from Raymond and a little
mutter of satisfaction from her. Suddenly she gripped his buttocks hard,
holding him still against her while she writhed, gasping louder and louder
until the deep breaths broke into sobs.