Worlds That Weren't

A slow smile spread on her face. His belly turned over to see it. He knew, instantly, that she had heard the nickname being bandied about the camp. That she was about to say Walk with you, Stinker? The idea’s a joke.

“I don’t mind,” she said. “Sure. Let’s do it.”

There was no privacy in the tents, and none in the cells of the fort; none, either, down among the packed cargo-cog stores-far too well guarded-and the desert itself would be chilly, snake-ridden, and dangerous.

The woman said, “I know somewhere we could go.”

Guillaume tried to read her expression by starlight. She seemed calm. He was shaking. He tried to conceal this, rubbing his fingers together. “Where?”

“Down this way.”

He followed her back past the keep, stumbling and swearing, and quietening only when she threatened to leave him and go back to the tents. She led him to the back of the fort, and a familiar scent, and he was about to turn and go when she grabbed his arm and pulled him down, and they tumbled on top of each other through a low doorway.

“A pig shed?” Guillaume swatted twigs out of his hair-no, not twigs. A familiar scent of his boyhood came back to him. Bracken. Dried bracken.

“It’s been cleaned out.” Too innocent, the woman’s voice, and there was humor in her face when his eyes adjusted to the dimness. “The occupant doesn’t need it yet. It’s not going to be in use tonight.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that…” Steeling himself to courage- I have known women to back out at this stage — Guillaume reached out his arm for her.

“Now you just wait.”

“What?”

“No, wait. We should sort something out first. What are we going to do, here?”

Despairing, he spluttered. “What are we going to do? What do you think we’re going to do, you dumb woman!”

He intended it as an insult, but it came out comic, fuelled by his frustration. He was not surprised to hear her snort with laughter. Guillaume groped around in the dark until a white glimmer of starlight on skin allowed him to grab her hand. Her flesh was warm, almost hot.

He pushed her hand into his crotch.

“That’s what you’re doing to me! And you ask me what we’re going to do?”

His voice squeaked with the incredulity that flooded him. She laughed again, although it was soundless. He only knew about it by the vibration of her hand.

“That isn’t helping…”

“No.” Fondness sounded in her voice, and amusement, and something breathless. Her face was invisible. Her voice came out of the dark. “I find it helps to sort out these things in advance.”

Guillaume almost made a catastrophic error. You mean you’re arranging a price? He bit his tongue at the last minute. She used to be a whore-but this isn’t whoring.

His understanding of how much hurt the question could inflict on her drained his impatience of its violence.

“Am I going to suck this,” her voice continued, out of the darkness, “and then you lick me? And that would be it? I’m past the age of having a child, but you never know. Or are we going to fuck?”

Guillaume heaved in a harsh breath, dizzy. Her fingers were kneading his crotch, and he could not speak for a moment. He clamped his hand down on top of hers. The throbbing of his penis was all-encompassing, as far as his mind went. His fingers and hers around his cod: oh dear Lord, he prayed, completely unself-consciously, don’t let me spill my seed before I have her!

“I want you,” he said.

He felt his other hand taken, and pressed, and after a second realized that it was pushed up between linen shirt and hot flesh, cupping the swell of a heavy breast. His fingers touched a rock-hard nipple.

“I want you,” Yolande said, out of the dark. “But is it that easy?”

The sounds of the monastery were muffled: the bells for Compline from the Green Chapel, the groaning chorus of hungry pigs, the rattle of boots outside as men went past to the refectory.

“You can have sex whenever you want,” she said, long-eroded anger in her voice. “And it doesn’t change anything. If I have sex, it changes everything. If I ‘belong’ to a man. Or to many. Whether I’m safe to rape. Whether I’m going to be trusted when we’re fighting…”

All true, but… Guillaume grunted in frustration. In comic despair, he muttered, “And on the good side?”

A chuckle came out of the darkness.

She likes me. She actually likes me.

He felt her rest her arm down in the warm, dry bracken, close to his arm. A sudden shine of silver-moonrise-let him distinguish her face as his eyes adjusted.

“On the good side…” she finished, “you’re not in my lance. You’re not another archer. And you maybe won’t commit the cardinal sin if we get into combat…”

Guillaume kept himself still with an effort. “Which is?”

“Trying to protect me.”

He stopped with one hand on her shoulder, the other still inside her shirt. Actually stopped. After a second, he nodded. “Yeah. I get it. You’re right. I won’t.”

Some expression went across her face, so close now to his, that he couldn’t properly make it out. Amusement? Lust? Liking? Respect?