Indigo - The Swordswoman's Tale - Chapter 2

Chapter 2

What's Past is Prologue - Two Ways to Climb a Hill

When first I met Molly, it was almost twenty years ago; I was but seventeen, and fleeing (again) the agents of Madame Dugal, and she, she was easily as young as Lucy, though not nearly so confident, nor so cruel. She had been working at her uncle’s inn for maybe five days when I arrived there, had traveled one hundred and six leagues by stage from her father’s home near Malchurch, which was then suffering quite thoroughly from the perennial potato blight which has yet to convince them something in Harrowdale hates tubers. She was sent off to her uncle so her parents would have one less mouth to feed, and it was understood this favor was great enough at the time that food and board would stand in lieu of wages, even the meager five crowns six specified as “pin money” for hospitality domestics in the Imperial records of that year. (In fact, when she took leave of her uncle some two years later - Mortimer, I believe his name was - he attempted to bill her for the “education and training in the trade” he had provided.) She left home wearing a worn brown skirt of her mother’s, an undershirt whose patches had patches, her father’s third-best sweater, far too big, mismatched woolen socks, her wooden shoes, and a pair of scratchy grey knickers that bunched and lumped and chafed her thighs and buttocks as she sat on one hard and splintery coach seat after another. In Adenpool, in the mountains, her third day on the road, she found an old and battered carpet bag in the refuse heap behind the inn, and she took it, her heart in her throat, terrified that she would be caught out, accused of stealing, clamped in the pillory in the town square for nicking a ratty, moldy, threadbare old carpet bag thrown out by some traveling entrepreneur because a brass clasp had broken, and she cleaned it that night, washing it with stale water from the pitcher in the common room and darning it by candlelight in the garderobe, all so that she would not have to endure the shame of traveling empty-handed. She carried that carpet bag with her across two hundred Imperial miles of rough road and then through the three - or is it four? inns (and one brothel) in which she has worked. She has it still, I know, I am certain, for all that I never saw it this last time we met. Molly was never one to throw things away. Except those knickers. When she arrived at Mortimer’s, her pretty bottom rubbed raw, the skirt with a new rip along one seam, she was shown to the bathhouse behind the inn, given a starchy black dress and white apron and freshly laundered mob cap, and told to make herself presentable. And when she had stripped off her clothing, and scrubbed herself free of road dust, and rinsed out her hair and squeezed it dry, she turned to put those rough grey knickers back on - and couldn’t. She slipped the black dress over her head, tied on the apron, settled the cap on her head, bundled her old clothes into a tight ball, and dropped the knickers on the rag heap on her way back inside.

Now, she was to room with the other domestic, a girl named Ginger, who would show her her duties, and the routines of the inn, and what would be expected of her. They were to share a tiny room hived off the attic, far away from the main rooms, at the end of a rickety flight of stairs and across a long and dusty hall steeply rooved and lit only by cracks in the shingles above. Imagine her surprise, when she opened the door to her new home, dressed in an uncomfortable dress too short by far, and loose on her skinny frame (already she dreaded having to bend over, or sit down, or climb steps before some of the pretenders to the name of “gentleman” who frequent such establishments as her uncle’s; already she regretted the rash action of throwing her knickers on the rag heap), carrying a dingy carpet bag with the only other things she owned in the world - imagine her there, in the doorway, confronted by a girl not much older than herself, kneeling on the bed, wearing only a loosely laced grey corset of shiny, worn satin and a pair of lacy drawers like a palm’s width of cobwebs held in place by a bit of silk string, counting out silver coins between her pale golden knees. Ginger made her money, and more besides for Mortimer, by liaising regularly with a number of men who frequently traveled the stagecoach route; all by appointment only, and no unexpected surprises, quite humane, really. She made more money by posing (and more besides, for herself) for Petula, the same famous sculptor of the Queen’s bust. And all of these clients, the woman and the men, gifted her with fine scraps of lingerie, filmy stockings, gauzy chemises, all manner of clothing never meant to be worn without the boudoir, all of which she wore as a matter of course: a lacy, silken surprise beneath her plain black servant’s dress, too short and small as Molly’s was.

Is it any wonder that Molly grew intensely jealous of the girl? When Ginger, who was (and for all I know still is) a perfectly lovely girl, learned of the state of Molly’s wardrobe, she freely offered some of her own stash for Molly to wear, and was more than understanding when Molly proved ignorant of the intricacies of some of the garments. Is it any wonder that Molly began to loathe the girl, through no fault of her own? Ginger made her feel ugly, and awkward, and intensely out of place; publicly, Molly made a show of disdaining Ginger’s offer, and pretended to be appalled at the stockings and corsets and sheer underthings, never meant to be worn under anything at all but bedclothes. Rebuffed by Molly’s protestations, Ginger withdrew her offer, and perhaps a little of her warmth, and things were, perhaps, a bit chilly between the two. But in private, when she was alone (which was often enough, Ginger being away on her assignations), Molly would pull on a pair of stockings, or sheer, lacy drawers, would slowly, carefully, slip her threadbare black dress off her shoulders (listening all the while for a footstep in the attic hall) and down her breasts, to hold up a corset and model it in the watery metal mirror Petula had given to Ginger some months before.

...Which was how I found her, running as quietly as I could through her uncle’s inn. I’d spent a day clinging to the roof of the stage, knowing all the while that Madame Dugal’s men were not far behind (how long would it take them to discover the theft? how fast was a man on horseback? how fast a stage?), and when we pulled into the innyard, I knew I might have but minutes to get out of sight. True, they would be looking for a girl, and I had changed my dress and stockings for trousers and a shirt and vest, and chopped off my hair with a knife and tucked the rest under a cap, but I wanted to take no chances. She might have sent Nickel Rick, or Steamer Johnson, or the Dauphin, any one of whom would spot me in a minute - and, if I lost my cap at any moment, well, my hair was still white as milk. So. No chances. Good thing, too. I hurried as nonchalantly as possible through the common room, keeping to its edges, and made my way to the staircase. As I climbed it, I happened to look out in the innyard, where I saw the Dauphin sweeping in on a big black horse, followed by a big burly man in a patchy fur coat, on a lathered bay, a shorter man clinging to his backside with one hand and a top-hat with the other, both for dear life. The Dauphin was yelling and jerking his hand at the stage.

I wasted no time. Unfortunately, her uncle’s inn was a very small affair. The flight of stairs led only to the second floor, the second floor had only four doors to private rooms, all of them locked (and downstairs I heard the Dauphin’s theatrical roar, “Where is the young girl who came, unaccompanied, on the noontide stage?”). I was eyeing the window at the end of the hallway, which opened out on the roof of the stable (but wouldn’t he have left the little one out there to stand watch? or the big bruiser in the coat?) when the hatch to the attic caught my eye. I leaped up and caught it on my first try, and pulled it open, and a rope ladder down with it. I climbed (and heard, on the stairs beneath, “We’ll just see about that. Hold him, Bo-bo,” and wondered if Bo-bo were the big man or the small), rolled away from the hatch, and scuttled along the floor of the attic, looking for something, anything, to hide behind. Nothing presented itself but a door. I threw it open.

Sunlight poured through a high, narrow window. A big wooden bed piled high with white pillows stood beneath it, and scattered across its counterpane were several gauzy underthings the color of a rainy day. Molly, all of fifteen years of age, knelt at the foot of it, wearing garments that Ginger had not offered to lend her: black woolen stockings that came up to the middle of her thigh, held up by knotted red ribbons, the very same grey corset she’d seen Ginger wearing, a gift from Petula, and the same silken drawers, like a scrap of cobweb laid over the small brown thicket of her sex. A shard of mirror lay between her knees, and she stared at herself in it, and ran her hands over her thighs. I must have gasped in wonderment, or maybe she heard the Dauphin roaring behind and below, “Well? Is she there?” for Molly looked up, her face flushed, her mouth opening to speak. I raised my finger to my lips, hardly daring to hope she would not scream. She did not, though she took a deep breath, so that her breasts swelled like a wave beneath the taut corset, and I felt a thrill run through my blood even as I heard someone, the little one, I thought, fumble his way up the attic ladder. Kicking the door shut behind me, I walked across the grey dusted warped wood floor to the bed where she knelt, all in black and grey, her hand on her thighs, her hair tied loosely behind.

“I,” I said.

“Who are ye?” she said. “And what’re ye doin in my room?”

“Please,” I said. “You must help me. Stand up.” For a scheme had entered my brain. I fumbled with the buttons of my stolen trousers.

She flushed. “Sir, I... if ye do not leave, I shall--”

I grabbed her arm with my free hand. “Please, I beg of you, just for a moment. We shall pretend--” I heard shouting out in the attic proper. She looked past me, at the closed door; I pulled her to her feet. Gently, gently.

“What is--” she started to say. I spun us around, like a dance, save that she ended up facing the door and I ended up behind her. “What do they want of ye?”

“Please,” I said. “Pretend with me.” I pulled her close against me, pressed myself against her, wrapped my arms about her. I leaned forward to kiss her shoulder. Gently, I thought to myself. Though if she fights, the illusion might still work. But better if she doesn’t. She was tense, uncertain, pulling away.

“What are you--” she said. She felt my breasts, small as they are, pressing into her back. “You’re a girl,” she said, even as my hand slipped between her thighs.

“Shh,” I said. Something fell over with a crash outside. She jumped, and I clutched her close, kissing her throat. I ran my fingers along her drawers, and found the silk hot and damp to the touch. “You were dressing up,” I whispered, trying my clumsy best to think of something seductive to say. Madame Dugal’s girls had never been reluctant, of course. This girl was trembling in my arms, ready to run, ready to holler at the drop of a hat. I thought if I could just caress her, touch her the way that Madame Dugal’s girls liked to be touched... I slipped my fingers deftly through the side of her drawers, and found her wet and open. She jumped like a scalded cat.

“Stop!” she cried, struggling. “Hold still!” I yelled. She kicked one leg up as I clamped my other arm about her shoulders and chest, holding her down. She kicked again, wrenching her hips, knocking my shin with her stockinged heel. Something shredded in my fingers; as she kicked once more, my hand came away, clutching the ruins of her cloudy grey drawers.

“No!” she cried.

The door burst open.

Bo-bo, presumably, stood there, the big man in the fur coat, like the pelt of some sick wolf. Molly, luckily, fell still and silent at the sight of him: his eyes had the cast of the Eastern barbarians; his cheeks, bulging up in a snaggle-toothed smile like shiny brown apples. His bald head was covered in a tight, brightly embroidered skull-cap, like a fanciful doily. He chuckled at the scene before him - a young man, pants at his knees, clutching a half-naked whore to him. I was, perhaps, silent a moment or two too long. I, too, was rather intimidated by his girth, and only half believing this mad scheme would work. Remembering my part - my coitus most certainly interruptus - I bellowed in the lowest, most aggrieved tones I could manage, “Do you mind?”

The chuckle died in his throat; the smile melted, those teeth mercifully hiding behind his thick, wind-chapped lips. “Most terribly sorry, guvnor,” he said, in a thick but cultured accent. He bowed slightly, backed sheepishly out the door, and closed it.

Molly and I stood there a moment, then two, unmoving, though her breast still heaved from her struggles. I heard voices out in the innyard, and let her go; she staggered towards the bed, clutching at it for support, as I ran to the low gable window. Outside, the Dauphin was mounting his horse in a swirl of black cloak. The little man was holding the bay (and, still, his top-hat) as Bo-bo came bounding out of the inn, mounting the horse in a single leap over its rump, then, wheeling it around, bodily lifting the smaller man by one arm. “She must have dropped off earlier on the route! Back-track, boys! She can’t have gone far!” And out they rode, with dust and the thunder of hooves.

I was still congratulating myself on this luckiest of breaks when a low growl of anger and frustration reminded me I wasn’t out of the woods yet. I turned to face the bed as Molly launched herself at me, her fists screwed up, punching at my shoulders and chest and face as she bowled me over. “You! You!” she gasped, crying. I grabbed at one wrist, then the other, and rolled us over on our sides, pinning her with my leg - slight though I was, I still out-weighed her. “You,” she gasped again, and it occurred to me she had no idea what horrible names to call me. I cooed to her, and held her close, gentle but firm, trying, clumsily, to comfort her. “Ye ripped em!” she cried, at last. Ah. Her undergarments.

Gradually, haltingly, the story came out: Ginger, and her uncle; the inn; what Ginger did; the potato blight; her poor parents; the horrible, shameful grey knickers. And I apologized, and held her close, and promised her I would replace them, and kissed her tears away, and told her a little - very little - of who I was, and why they were chasing me. “Oh, and ye’re from the Smoke?” she asked, and I smiled, and kissed her mouth. And a little later, she asked me, “What is that ye’re doin to me?”

“You like this?” I asked.

She nodded, biting her lip.

“And you’ve never done this for yourself?”

She shook her head, and the little lost look in her eyes filled me more than all of Madame Dugal’s painted pretty girls ever had. But I am getting ahead of my story, or behind it, rather, in the complex shape this narrative of my life has chosen for itself. I was writing of what had happened less than a week ago, in another inn, when I met Molly for the last and not the first time, and met the girls, my girls, and embarked upon this latest and what is most certainly the last mad scheme of a life that has been nothing but one mad, half-baked scheme after the next. I have spent so much of it improvising that it comes as no surprise when I sit down to write it out, that I do so without forethought, spilling memories across the page willy-nill.

...To return, then, to that other inn, that night. My bath was drawn as I came into my room, and it steamed in the candlelight. Molly greeted me with a long, lingering kiss. Sweat from the heat of the night and the steaming bath beaded on her forehead, her shoulders, the slopes of her breasts, coiled the tendrils of her hair and plastered them to her cheek. She’d hiked up her skirts to show her long fine legs and undone the throat of her dress to show her small fine breasts. I reached out to undo the stays of her corset but she slapped my hand away. “Not yet, you,” she said. “You’re the one wants relaxing, not me.” She reached out to undo the row of hooks-and-eyes on my jacket, but I caught her hands in mine.

“There’s something that needs tending, first,” I said. “Monsieur Orphé?”

He can be quite still and silent, when he wants; I have seen him coax songbirds onto his shoulders in the woods with his utter immobility. So it is no wonder that Molly did not see him, and I smiled a little as she jumped, when he stood up out of the shadows.

He is one of the sylvan folk, the savages who haunt the forests of the New World; he is tall, and quite thin, and he moves with a certain inevitability that lends him an air of grace and strength that seems utterly alien to the trousers, the weskit, the jacket I’d had made for him. He owes me his life, and so, by his code of honor, he must give his life to me, in any way I ask. I have had many a sour smile since, realizing that out of all the world the one man I can depend upon is this supposedly faithless savage.

“There is a door.” I told him its location. “Behind that door lie two girls. Nothing is to disturb them until I come for them, a few hours hence.”

“As you like.” He nodded once, and left.

“I do not care for him much,” said Molly.

“He’s a good man,” I said. “Better than most.”

She pushed at my chest. “And I do not like this game you play, with the Baronet.”

“And that is none of your concern.” I smiled. “Though I’m afraid you won’t be getting your drawers back.”

“It’s not as if I’ll be needing ’em tonight,” she said, tartly enough, though I heard some uncertainty in her wryness. But her hands did not hesitate as they quickly undid my hooks-and-eyes, and drew my jacket off; untied my lace ruff (stained with a spill of wine) and pulled it from my throat. She threw them in a corner.

“That’s my good jacket!” I cried.

“Yes, and look how ye’ve been treating it,” she said. Her hands busied themselves with the buttons of my threadbare weskit. “Don’t ye see a tailor ever?” she tsked. The old Harrow cant of her voice had been softened and smoothed by years of service in the inns and taverns around the Smoke; odd, perhaps, to think of the urban patois as softer than anything, but take my word for it, if you’ve never heard the rough music of a full Harrowdale voice. The burr of it did come back to her now and again, especially when she scolded me, and I cherished it - my old Molly, come back to me from those first few days.

“I’ve been busy,” I said. “Of late.” I unlaced my shirt, and, once she removed the weskit, pulled it off over my head. She reached out to untie the cloth binding my breasts, which I wear more out of habit than of any real need for concealment, but I shooed her hands away, annoyed - and then stopped, struck by how business-like this presumed seduction was, especially compared with that first time. “Molly,” I said, and I reached out and took her hand, pulled her back close to me, looking down into her eyes, which had, perhaps, a few more lines about them than twenty years ago. I was about to say something about that day in her uncle’s attic when she laid a finger against my lips.

“I know you,” she said, “only too well, and I know what ye want to say, but ye’ve been drinkin, and ye’re going to get all maudlin and weepy and spoil our night together.” I opened my mouth to protest, to agree, to say something, but she had at that point undone my belt, she’d unfastened my trousers and begun tugging them over my hips. “Shh,” she said. “Don’t say it. Or consider it said.” She kissed me then, even as her hand cupped the white curls at the juncture of my thighs, and one finger ran along the wet lips of my pussy, returning the favor I’d delighted her with in the hall. “Definitely,” she murmured against my mouth, “consider it said.”

And then somehow my boots were gone, and my trousers, my belt and rapier tossed in the corner on my poor abused jacket, and she was unwinding the grubby cloth from my chest, as I slid her blouse over her shoulders, kissing them, her throat, her chest, her breasts. “Stop that!” she laughed. “Ye need a bath, to relax.”

“If I were any more relaxed,” I said, pulling her close, reaching for her corset, “I couldn’t stand up.”

“I was bein polite,” she said, and she shoved me backwards into the tub. Water splashed everywhere, dousing the lamp on the table, soaking Molly. She shrieked with laughter and scrambled over to the bedside table, to grab the candle, even as I snatched at her wrist. I missed. She lit another lamp with the candle, and stood there a moment, in the flickering light. The wet dress clung to her skin, hiding nothing; her round breasts above her corset, her nipples dark and shadowed, her soft full mound below. She smiled, and I said none of the things I wanted to say. Silently, I beckoned her to me.

Molly knelt beside the tub, taking up a cake of Stiléan soap and rubbing it to a fine lather, which she spread along my shoulders and my arms, my breasts (ah, so good it felt, free of that binding, as her fingers slipped and slithered across and around them, bringing them back to life). I lifted one leg out of the water and balanced it on the rim of the tub. She reached across to rub my foot, my calf; her hand darted beneath the water to stroke my thigh; I murmured something, she shushed me, and her fingers found the slick lips of my pussy. I leaned back against her, cradling my head against her shoulder, as a finger slipped inside me; we kissed with open mouths, and a second finger joined the first, in and out, slowly, and then more quickly, her other hand tracing lines of fire from our lips to my breasts and back. Slowly and then more quickly, as the tension in me pooled deep within my thighs and within my belly, gathering like a wave there, far out at sea, but coming inexorably to the shore. I groaned, and she shushed me, and we kissed some more; I lifted my body up then to meet her hand until I was half out of the water, my back arched like a bow, my head falling back away from her mouth, and she looked on smiling, the candles flickering in her dark dark eyes. It came over me all at once, that wave; the arrow was loosed, and I fell back into the tub, and more water washed over its side.

Ah, Molly, direct as ever. But this was just a start. There are two sorts of climaxes in general, I have found - Only two, you cry? Ah, like any generalization, it is as much false as it is true. There are two sorts of climaxes, and this had been one of the second: hard, and fast, and gone almost before I’d had a chance to register it, and it left me drained, but not sated, with a desire to climb that hill again, by the winding, less direct route, one we might climb together, Molly and I, hand in hand. But just as one can say there are two sorts of women: those who kiss with their eyes open, for instance, and those who keep them closed tight - well, that does not prevent every woman one beds from being uniquely herself.

“Fetch some wine,” I said, when I could. She nodded and stood, splashing water upon me as she drew her hand from the water. After a moment, I followed, levering myself out of the tub and padding after her, dripping on the floor.

“You’re wet,” she said, as I pressed myself against her back and nuzzled the base of her throat with my lips. We both chuckled at the inadvertent entendre.

“Do you not think the innkeeper will mind?” I asked, toying with the stays of her corset. “All this water on the floor?” I loosened them, pulled them from their grommets, unhooked the thing. She lifted her arms. “Soaking the bed?” I unwrapped the corset it from her and dropped it, stiff and damp, to the floor.

“Oh, she’s a bitch, all right,” she said. Her white dress, still soaked, clung to her body, more erotic by far than if she were naked. More erotic to the fancy, perhaps, and I took a moment to drink in the sight of her, her head turned lightly to the side, her hair in a delightful disarray; but it was an impediment to my fingers and my hands, and my mouth, and so I knelt and grasped the hem and slowly, slowly, peeled it up, from her calves, her thighs. “She’ll have words for ye in the mornin, I’m sure. Nasty, hurtful words, about the mess ye’ve made.” I lifted the dress from her buttocks, catching and bunching the material in my hands.

“As long,” I said, “as she waits till morning.” I shifted my hands forward, to catch the spill of the front of her skirts, and lifted, peeling it from where it clung to the curve of her belly.

“Ohh,” she said, shivering, “I’m sure it’s the furthest thing from her mind, tonight.” Carefully, carefully, pressing my body against her chilled, damp back, warming her, feeling her buttocks press deliciously against the bottom of my mons (and I spread my legs slightly, to heighten this, and paused a moment, shivering myself), I peeled the dress from her breasts. “Ah,” she said. And she half turned, in my embrace, clinging to me, as I caught the dress and kept it lifted high, ducking my head to taste her skin, to flick her nipple with my tongue. It swelled and strained at the touch. “Oh, oh Indigo,” she said.

I caught her behind her knees and lifted her, with a little strain (damn the weight of the years, and my back). She pressed a dozen kisses to my throat, my cheek, my mouth, little nipping things gone as soon as they had landed. I laid her on the bed, pausing a moment as she struggled free of her dress, and climbed up myself and covered her. Naked, we embraced, and I began to tell her with my fingers and the palms of my hands, with my tongue and lips, with my thighs and my sex, my breasts, my nipples, with my eyes, everything I’d meant to say with words, and could not. And Molly - Molly had more than enough to say, herself.

I have lain with the Queen of the World, in her bed at the center of her labyrinthine castle, and I have bedded three of the wives of the Sultan of Maliq at once, in their silk-pillowed harem; I have stolen a kiss, and more besides, from the lips of the Bielli Dama of the Zharopnijayusch, in the cold and frozen North. I have fucked more whores than I could possibly recall, even if I make it to the halls of my Lady the Liuitin Lorgai Nochta when I die, and She asks me their names; and I have been fucked by at least three men worthy to be called such. I have done something I hesitate to call sex, with a warrior-mystic in the wastes of Ktkskis, and to this day I feel a chill (of revulsion? of desire?) at the thought of his - its? - rough, grey, keloid skin. I even dallied with one of Doctor Twelge’s fabulous Automata, and told him what I thought. I have pledged my love and my life not once, but twice, to the same person; and I have broken both those pledges, and my heart. I have committed crimes I cannot set down (not yet, not now) - though, in the end, I should have nothing to hide from these pages. And I have stolen my girls, and taken them away with me, hidden them in my last refuge, and I have begun teaching them all I know of this, this art, this instinct, this urge that, more than wine, or the sword, revenge, or (forgive me) the love I should bear for my Lady, has led my life down the roads it has taken. But I do not know if I can teach them this (I do not know if we, if they, will have the time): that this night, with Molly, only Molly, soaking wet and sticking to the dirty sheets of an ancient, creaking wooden bed in a hot and stuffy inn, two women unschooled but yet enthusiastic - this night was as rich, as sublime as any night spent on silks and velvets with a perfumed, lacy courtesan; as fiercely desperate as any hurried clench in a rainy, midnight alley.

We kissed and rolled together upon that bed. She tested my strength, laughing, trying to push me over on my back, and I held her down, and pinned her arms helpless above her head, presenting her breasts to my cruel and teasing mouth. Her legs fell open and I felt the heat of her on my chilled thigh. She chuckled, and hissed, at the two bright points of pleasure on her body, my lips on her nipple, her lips against my leg, and she arched her back, pushing against my hand that pinioned hers, and with my free hand I grasped her buttocks, lifting and rolling, spreading my legs, gasping at the thrill that ran through me as my sex opened against her hip. She nearly bruised me as she wrenched again against my hands, my legs, “Oh, oh Lady,” she grunted, the strain of the lust in her voice mixing most deliciously with the sacred wonder of her words. I shifted my weight, sitting upright, pulling her to me, so that we sat, facing each other, our legs entwined over and around each other so that our sexes, open now, could press each against the other, and kiss like dumb, frustrated mouths.

The harem girls of the Maliq, where it is a crime for a woman to touch another, or to show more of herself than her eyes, have names for every lustful and lascivious thing women can do together, when they are hidden from their men in those soft and perfumed walls. They call this eq khali a’ taq, “the crushing of the roses” - and I wonder about the people who fear this thing so much that men kill and burn whenever they find it, but women name it with such flowery poetry, and seek it ardently, by night, with downcast eyes and stifled moans. Molly and I crushed our roses together slowly at first, sitting upright in each other’s arms, embracing tightly, our breasts crushed together, our mouths crushed together in kiss after kiss, our hands tangling in each other’s hair, on each other’s shoulders, caressing each other’s breasts, flanks, bellies, thighs, tangling together, fingers grasping fingers. This urge, half primal, to press together, to become one. But it is a frustrated urge, ultimately, and it is not the best angle from which to crush roses; and at some point that other urge, wholly primal, the one that will not be denied, welled up between our entwined legs, levered into being by our arms and mouths and hands that were now incidental, tangential.

We leaned back, away from each other, though we kept our sexes pressed tightly together, and they opened more for each other, blooming. I could feel her, wet and soft, yielding, yet hard, uncertain, slippery, the occasional pricks of pubic hair, the chafing burn of skin sticking to skin where it should slide. But we were connected by one cord that ran from the bases of our skulls down our spines and through that point, there, those roses, those cunts, those “gaping, gashed wounds,” as Jonson has written it, those lovely, dumb, mysterious mouths, as I would counter - and when, our hands locked together for leverage, pressing, pulling, thus! I felt the cord tighten, and I knew it tightened in her, too, and this thrilled me, thrilled her. For a moment, some dim part of me wished for a dildoe, that we each might penetrate the other, to satisfy deeper itches, but that part of me, the part that worried; that mourned; that wondered what would become of me, on the morrow, or the day after that - how many would I have left to me, when the news got out? That part was banished, and all that was left was the terrible wonderful urge, the mechanical animal mindless beast that knew what it wanted, and had it within its grasp, and would not be denied, not now, not by anyone, not even death. We cried out so loudly, surprised at the size of it as it overwhelmed us, that there was a pounding on the wall next door. Our muscles, slowly, unlocked; our hands let go; we lay back on the bed, head to toe, gasping with laughter and the exertion of our labors, sweat cooling in the flickering air, hands stroking skin.

“Oh,” I said, “we’ve gone and done it now. The mistress of the house will be, will be most cross on the morrow.”

“Ah,” she said, “I think she’ll be too tired for anythin of the sort.” We laughed, quietly, stroking. “Now,” she said, after a full and silent moment, “ye were wantin some wine?”

I crawled up the bed to her, laughing at her jest, and answered her with kisses, held her weak and trembling body as I kissed her mouth, her throat, her breasts; drew a line with my tongue from her nipple to her navel, which I suckled for a time; spread her cooling thighs with my hands, and drank there the only wine I wanted, from the warm and lovely cup she held between them. And when she had come again, we lay in each other’s arms, murmuring meaningless words in the still, hot air. I blew out the candle, dimmed the lamp. She rested her head on my shoulder and fell slowly, reluctantly, muttering into my breast, “Oh, Indigo, and what will I do without ye?” she fell into sleep.

I lay there, thinking of her, and of my Queen, and of all that I had seen and done. I could leave it here, I thought. I could take the honorable way out, and allow the Baronet to run me through; as rare a creature as I am, I do not have any more license to live beyond my days than any other. And I could take solace in the fact that there would be many a story told about me, the white-haired monster, Indigo, the Queen’s Champion, the Woman who would be a Man. Feh. I could also have disappeared less noisily; could have taken Molly away with me in the morning, and she and I retired to my country house. The world would never hear from me again, and if there were any justice, it would not come looking for me, and there we could spend the rest of our days. I could have; all I needed to do was ask. But Molly had a life here, one she had made for herself; though she may have gone willingly enough with me, I would have to ask - and I could not ask her to give it up. I should have; but I did not know. I could not.

And I thought then, of the girls; of the look that Lucy had given me, and her sister Eliza, as I had seen them there, half-naked. The cool mystery, the promised delights. Selfish, perhaps. Yes, it is selfish. But I thought also of the damnable pride of that Baronet, their father; the same suffocating, insufferable pride as swells in the dark men of the Maliq, the pride that is so fearful of its precarious perch it must destroy whatever it perceives as a threat - even something so innocuous as this feeling, this wonder, that Molly and I had shared. I would have satisfaction, and I would have my girls. I saw in them a damosel in distress, two damosels, endangered by a dragon they could not see. And my one great weakness is that I have always seen myself as a knight.

And that, too, is selfish.

I disengaged myself from Molly, carefully, and dressed in the dark. The cloth that had bound my breasts was too grubby to put back on; I wrinkled my nose at it, and threw it away. Buckling on my rapier, I looked over to Molly, lying asprawl on her stomach, naked, her legs tangled in the sheets. Something equally akin to love and grief filled me. Silently, I crossed to her, and kissed the small of her back, once, for luck. Then I left the room, and went to collect my girls.

Continued in Chapter 3

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