84. Alric

On the morning of the fifth day of my husband’s absence, I woke to the rumbling brown tabby curled along my side and a wedding ring on my left ring finger.

It was plain, thin and made of silver.

I sat up, disturbing the poor cat, who gave a cry, but only moved a little and in the bit of light coming through the sides of the animal skins, I saw my husband’s boots caked with clay and mud leaning against his wooden chest.

A clean, second pair had been there before.

Over the cat, I reached to his side of our bed, trying to feel for warmth.

He had to be back.

He had not stayed long in our rooms and must have only returned after nightfall.

“Thank you,”

I gushed.

“Thank you for protecting him.”

My goddess did not reply.

But we had a deal, she and I.

I had just under three moons to have him before my bones rotted in Nyossa, encroached in moss.

I checked the drawer in the desk for the key to Gareth Pope’s bath, but it was still there.

I bathed myself with intention in the baths, washing my hair, running lavender oil through it and braiding it into a crown around my head.

I rubbed the oil all over me, sitting on the edge of the baths on a folded linen.

I kept holding my left hand out, admiring my ring.

The ring Thrush had given me was encrusted with rubies, but this was much more valuable to me.

I entered the dining hall, eyes peeled for him, but the Procurers’ table did not include him or Thatcher.

I showed Helena my left hand and explained my theory that Alric and Thatcher must have returned to the keep in the middle of the night.

“They live,”

she breathed.

“I know you explained we had naught to worry about, but…”

“I know,”

I said.

“I am relieved.”

My day at the earth temple was tedious.

Cian had given me the drudgery of taking the accounts of a marl marker and a dissatisfied farmer who had said the marl he bought had done nothing for his crop, no fertilization or different yield.

I asked the marl maker what kind of clay, lime or seaweed he used and wrote that all down.

Then, the farmer, a barley and lentil man, gave me his account, accusing the marl marker of substituting seaweed with land grasses.

This took me all morning and my head ached from bending over a ledger and my right hand cramped, my reed pen nib leaving a dent on my right forefinger.

Both men were rude and accusatory and when luncheon was nigh, I told them to leave.

I delivered the accounts to Cian’s office, my greeting brief, avoiding his question of how I fared.

His offer of petitioning for my divorce and my lack of response hung between us.

I walked with the rest of the staff to the dining hall, aware of Cian’s eyes on me.

I sat with Hazel, again looking towards the Procurers’ table.

I did not see my husband or his sergeant there, but I did see Thatcher sitting at our regular table, eating dried peach slices with Helena, kissing her between bites, while she pretended to be scandalized.

“Where is my husband?”

I sighed aloud without thinking.

“Ah, it is a love match,”

said Hazel.

“You once told me the correct rumor was the one where you tricked him but now you hanker for him openly.”

“And I did not lie, my friend.”

I was looking down at my plate.

She poked my arm.

“You did not mean to lie, but lie you did.

I love to see lovebirds.”

A jaded part of me wanted to protest that Alric did not love me the way that I loved him, but my bargain came to my mind.

Time was short and I would love him no matter.

“This makes you think of you and your Gordon?”

I teased, masking my inner strife.

In the afternoon, I took another tedious account of another farmer who had had three oxen die on him.

I was grateful that he was at least more civil than the men I had dealt with during the first half of the day.

I assured him that Cian or Hazel or some other earth priest would visit his property to see if the oxen were diseased or cursed.

At dinner, I did not eat the fragrant roasted eels which were served in an herbal buttery sauce.

I could not bear to concentrate enough to eat such heartiness.

I picked at fig preserves on toast and had a cup of pear cider.

I was massaging my sore right hand with my left when I felt his eyes on me.

I looked up to see Alric sitting with the Procurers, his mouth full of bread, chewing methodically.

He jerked his head towards the entrance to the corridor closest to our stairwell.

I smiled fully at him.

I pointed at my plate, as if I had any interest in the bread or nuts there.

He swallowed his bread and mouthed what I thought was ‘quickly’ at me.

I put a nut in my mouth and chewed slowly, watching the minuscule twitch of annoyance in his face.

I did not know what game we played, but I was the winner.

I held up my left hand and twirled the wedding ring on my ring finger with my thumb.

“Thank you,”

I mouthed.

He held up his own left hand.

Though he was many tables away, I saw the glint of his own ring.

And I did not want to play this game anymore.

I wanted to play another.

I took one last sip and stood, bidding my companions a good night.

I had complained earlier about my day at the temple and they thought me retiring to rest.

Without looking in his direction, I walked at a brisk pace towards our stairwell.

I heard footsteps behind me and I knew them to be his.

I wanted to look over my shoulder, but that felt like I would lose the game.

I quickened my steps and I heard him do the same.

Then, because the majority of the keep was eating and no one was around to witness it, I began to run, laughing as I did at my own frivolity.

I heard him begin to run too, though I guessed he was not running as fast as he could.

When I hit the stairs, I was sprinting.

By now, he was nearly at my heels, but I continued to elude his superficial pursuit.

In a burst of speed, I made it to the room before he had exited the stairwell and I ran inside and closed the door shut, hand on my stomach trying to catch my breath.

Thinking how they could hamper us, I undid my belt, apron and sagaris, letting them sacrilegiously clatter to the floor.

Behind me, I heard the door swing open and be closed shut.

He stepped to just behind me, not quite touching but only a breath separated us.

His right hand cupped the back of my head.

“Take it down,”

he said, removing his hand.

Catching my breath, I reached up to undo my braid crown, first removing a handful of pins and then unbraiding it, the hair still somewhat damp from my bathing, the smell of lavender blossoming around us as it hung down my back.

The hairpins fell to the floor with tiny pings.

He leaned in, his nose close to the back of my head.

“That scent,”

he whispered.

And then he touched me.

He placed his hands on my waist and worked them up and down my sides slowly, the fingers spreading over my round hips and coming back to together as they reached my waist.

“This figure.”

My unsteady hands had gathered my hair, pulling it to the right side, twisting it.

With pressure he pulled me back to him, his prick hard.

“Do you know what I have done without you, wife?”

His nose was still in my hair and his breath on my scalp made my nerves sing.

His fingertips roamed to my stomach, dancing just over the place where a woman’s belly gives way to her cunt.

“No, husband, what—”

My breath caught as he pushed himself against my rear.

“What did you do?”

His next words were as much confessional as they were carnal.

“I fucked my hand in a forest of saltwater oak and envisioned it was your sex.”

I had never heard him swear and that word in his ever appropriate mouth said with his ever monotone voice made me half delirious with need.

I held onto my hair, afraid to set my hands free and show him how much he lay waste to me, how covetous I was of my own backside, that I wanted to feel his prick with my hands.

He breathed out into my hair, his exhale faltering and shallow.

His left hand reached up, flattening, pressing over my bosom to lay against my breastbone and he pulled me entirely to his body.

His right hand was fisted in the skirts over my sex.

Our faces were nearly aligned, I leaned so far back and he bent his head to kiss my throat, his mouth heated and open, his teeth scraping, his tongue lingering on the edge of the hagstone that had slid to my right side.

He kissed the same spot a second time, but with his mouth closed, with care.

“Edith,”

he said against my racing pulse.

“I am not myself with you and yet, I am entirely myself.

I do not know how to explain that any better.”

My hands had released my hair and I placed them over his left hand on my chest.

“Let us kiss again,”

I said.

“I have so wanted more of your kisses.”

His hands and arms relaxed and his hands moved to my upper arms and helped turn me to him.

At last, we faced.

He was less than a handspan taller than me, the end of his nose touching my forehead.

We were made to kiss each other.

I put my hands around his neck and brought my lips to his.

Our first kiss that night was tender.

But he used his teeth shortly thereafter and soon our mouths were open, our hands possessive.

It happened quickly.

He backed me into the bed and we fell onto it, lips still engaged.

Holding himself up with his left forearm, he pulled up a portion of my skirts with his right hand, letting out a breath of relief when he found my wet sex.

“I knew,”

he panted into my mouth.

“I knew it would feel like the most divine thing my hand has ever touched.

I knew this would be as close to a god as I could get in this life.

I knew it would undo me.

You broke me with your kiss, wife.

What will sharing your bed do to me?”

I came fast, faster than I had thought I could after so minor an act as his touches.

But I had shared his bed for nine moons now and I was ready to be his.

“Edith,”

he whispered, watching my face.

I had never looked a man in the eye while I came, but for the first time, without the intention, I did that night, my pleasure doubling at his adoration.

My hands slipped out of our embrace and my head fell back on our bed.

He had sunk me and I went under willingly.

He held himself up with his left arm and with his swift right hand, undid his laces.

He returned to me and pushed himself into me.

Because I was languorous, having had my lust slaked, he fit inside, as if we had done this before, in another lifetime, as if my sex was long intimate with his prick’s thrusts.

He swived into me, his face in my neck and took his pleasure in haste.

Once he had slowed and was catching his breath, I wrapped my naked legs around him, my winter boots resting against the back of his leather breeches.

“Now, I am truly your wife.”

I kissed his cheek.

He pulled out of me and stood abruptly, causing my legs to fall clumsily.

Tucking himself inside his breeches and lacing them, he went to his wooden chest and opened it, pulling out a small linen cloth.

He then went to the tin pitcher of water we kept on the desk and dipped his hand in, holding the cloth inside.

He wrung it of excess water and returned to me, eyes downcast, hand extended with the cloth.

Hurt, I took the cloth and swiped it over my sex and inner thighs.

I sat up on the bed, my skirts bunching around my knees, calves in their winter boots dangling.

I moved closer to the edge of the bed to sit upright, twisting the cloth in my hands.

Had I been too daring to look him in the eye? The things he said implied he had been taken with me and how I felt.

Why did he now face our wall of hooks, armor and weapons with his hands on his hips?

“What is it?”

I asked, quelling the defensive anger that rose in me, because, no, I had not done anything wrong.

He could not be upset at my passions.

We were as two people who lusted in tandem, consummating that lust.

It was not that.

“Forgive me,”

he said.

He remained where he stood.

“It should not have gone thus.”

“Look at me.”

He did not turn.

“I was overcome and I did not take my time with you.”

“You can take your time with me a second time.

We did not come together as most men and wives come together.

What makes you think any of this needs to be a certain way?”

He said nothing and brought his hands up and laced them over the top of his head.

I admired the clean line of his shoulders tapering to his waist.

There was not a bit of excess on him, every knotted muscle hard won and yet, I could easily see the specter of the boy who had been scrawny, thinner than all his brothers, too small to lift a hammer in a forge.

The love he had unknowingly planted in me bloomed wilder than anything I had ever known.

I ached with it.

“Alric,”

I said softly.

“I have failed you in so many ways.

I regret that this is yet another misstep.”

“You have yet to ask your wife for her opinion.”

“Do not be kind to me, Edith,”

he said, continuing to show me his back, his head now hanging under his hands.

“I have watched you be kind and gracious and amiable with everyone.

I beg you not to treat me like everyone.

I entreat you to be true with me.

Do not spare me because of your good nature.

Your charm is what made me think I could never have a hope of you.”

“I do not understand what you—”

He spoke over me in a rush.

“Why would I infer that I stood a chance due to your kindnesses? You are kind to everyone.

You are patient with everyone.”

I covered my mouth that now smiled.

I did not want him to think I laughed at his earnest expense.

And so I said, “Why would I assume I stood a chance due to your honor? You are dutiful and upright with all you encounter.

Husband, come back—”

Almost to himself, he said, “Must I blunder in every way of measuring?”

He hesitated and then continued, still in his measured manner, but his words were bitter.

“I have yet to behold your breasts, the idea of them having tormented me since Nyossa and the moment I, at last, have you in my bed, I rutted into you without undressing you and looking at you and touching you.

I can only guess at the softness of your belly, for I did not kiss it first.

I do not know the exact shape of your hips, only how they felt against mine.

I have never fully seen your tattoo without some part of your dress covering the handiwork.

Even in that paler green you wore in summer that I did not permit myself to look at wholly or for very long.

The strap of it covers the lily that runs up onto your shoulder.

I have longed to see you and I did not take the time to look.

You are my wife and I treated you like paid for company.”

As he spoke, lost in his own indictment, I undressed.

I let the wet cloth fall from my hand.

I undid the laces on my boots, removing them and my socks.

I loosened the ties on my dress and stays, lifting them over my head.

I stood in my shift and peeled it off as well.

Where they fell, I did not see.

He did not hear me.

I approached him, bare and shivering and wrapped my arms around him from behind as he spoke his last words.

“Sweetheart,”

I said into the top of his spine, “I would rather be rutted by you than made love to by the most skilled of seducers.

For it is not seduction I seek.

I seek you.

Do you not see that?”

He was as stone in my arms.

But I had stone magic.

“Turn around,” I said.

His hands slid down to the back of his neck and then fell loosely to his sides, unresponsive to my touch, but he did heed me and turned in my arms, eyes closed.

“Open,”

I whispered, bringing my hands down to hold his.

He swallowed and he did.

In the retiring sun’s light that streamed in from the side of the skins, he took me in, eyes unable to stop on one part of me, continuing to search.

He looked upon my full breasts, something my mother and ultimately, my first husband had despised, but every lover after had praised.

He saw the subtle curve of my belly, the fat starting to gather under my navel with age.

He took in the plump flare of my hips and the thatch of hair between my thighs.

My legs had always been, not quite sturdy, but strong and stronger yet from walking everywhere in Eccleston.

I had once wished my feet were smaller, but now I was grateful only to have feet that took me places, that allowed me to stand here with him.

He inspected the intricacies of my tattoos from shoulder to fingers.

And he caught his breath.

His voice was husky when he spoke.

“Why would I ever call you ‘beautiful’ when I can call you Edith? Your name is interchangeable to that word’s meaning.

In it, the scope of everything I wish to look at in this world is outlined.”

I felt my eyes sting with tears, but I did not let them fall.

Instead, I said, “Come to bed, husband.

Come take your time with me, as you say.”