"There is music and feasting within MiLord," his chamberlain bows and laughs nervously as he darts up to greet them and bows again: "Milady, I bid you welcome."
Confusion smiles at the courtly greeting. She recognises fear in the nervous laughter and knows this feast is unauthorised. Neither she nor the count need feasting, but they will not break up this impromptu gathering. Let the fires burn and let the courtiers and peasants join them treading out the measure of this musical fantasy. Bread and circuses have a long tradition, after all, right back to the time of the old Emperor. They give back calm and peace, albeit with such a rough edge that there is no real time to observe the proper rituals of courtly love. There is less time now to live and, thus, to love.
Is this the reason why his eyes wax smoky with desire as soon as he touches the palm of her hand? He thrusts his own roughly and suddenly against her impregnability. The first hurdle is gained as he clutches at the long nailed fingers, sharp as a raptor's claws. He advances in step with her in a stately pavanne. She dances demurely, beautifully sinuous in a crimson velvet gown. The thorns of a wild cream rose lacerate her breasts like a livid white scar. It breaks up the continuity of her velvet suppleness. It creates a disonance even though it is only a decoration. He sighs at the firmness and the glossy flow of red hair down her neck. It sets off the whiteness of the white rose and the smooth pallor of her skin. Twinkling eyes seem as irrepressible as the controlled eroticism and the contradictory impression of reserve emanates from her. And those freckles: never forget the corruption of a red head's freckles. Yes, it is corruption that engages MiLord and the many others gathered in the room.
"See their hands touch lightly in the turn of the dance."
"The tips of her fingers must be cool to the touch."
"Cool to his surly touch and heating with his dark moods?"
"Dark hair, dark garb, dark thoughts."
"Dark hands.......dark gloves."
Raucous laughter ensues.
"Perhaps they will serve to stop her slipping from his grasp?"
"Perhaps they will slip down her silhouette....."
"While he shadows her sullenly?"
And, despite - or is it because - of the word games, he does. Milord's green eyes are as cool and dark as the depths of the moat. He gazes at her over his shoulder as the movement of the dance separates them and carries her away from him. Natural vivacity is kept in check, bubbling just below the surface by her gestures. These are graceful. The mouth is cruelly sensuous and curving - like her beckoning fingers. They are drawn up in a subtle calling and matched by a subtle skin tone. Torque jewellery shines in the torch light that flickers around the walls. Her lips shine with moisture from the tongue that slips nervously from the red folds. The outline of her abdomen and her curving creamy breastbone rises past an exquisite avian neck to the red halo of hair around her face. She too has a hungry look. It augurs well.
She touches her lips to a clutch of purple grapes. They cool the burning red of her mouth, but she does not bite. The flicker of her tongue carresses the pulpy flesh as she lets the bunch hang there, irresolute. She toys with the soft fat ovals, dangling from the clipped vine. She could be imagined toying with other seed filled sacks. Suckling the skin, she stretches her mouth over the pendulous heaviness of the fruit. Is this some mimickery of the lascivious gestrues she might adopt to gather more rewarding fruit? Might she indulge in such sport, given time and opportunity? Irritated by the unstinting gaze of her host, she soon tires of this game play. She bites and she sucks and she closes her eyelids to entertain the murmur of voices around her.
" A hand might reach out to push that hair behind her left ear. It would be so much more fashionable."
"Whose hand would it be, though?"
"A dark and Lordly one certainly."
More laughter at her expense. Discourteous courtiers. Is she his chattel? Is she their plaything as well as a conversation piece?
"Can you blame me for wanting this all to myself?" MiLord thinks resentfully.
"Perhaps he should secure her..."
"...secure her to the dance floor...," the familiar voices of courtiers laugh and gossip. They know he has a selection of implements.
"The Count should chastise her," another opines, seeing the way MiLord absorbs her, devouring her hungrily - rejecting all other provender.
"...To keep her in order?" an acolytes titters. A coy jibe.
"The sound of those implements at work on her flesh will be the music to encourage her?" a third overt fantasy erupts.
"Surely, that will make her dance like a nestling," the first guffaws.
"He must have her though," they conclude.
Words are cheap. And there is something indefinable here. A burning need that the gossips cannot understand. Can MiLord comprehend it either? It rages around her. Yet, the heat is contained, confined by a still fragility.There is a purity at the centre of the storm that her presence arouses. Something inviolable and unassailable lies in the encouragement that her emerald eyes seem to offer him. The white wine runs down his chin and trickles down his neck like a rivulet of viscous excitement - excitement in his mind - torpor in his heart.
Pale with desire, he speaks those same words in her ear. She sighs again. Observe the lust as she begs her leave and retires for the night. He searches her face for some fantasy image that, he querulously believes, might flash across the secret chambers of her mind - stripped of her crimson velvet, baring her freckled flesh to him. A stirring of desire. It is not so much the image of her chastised, even though that is not without its own inimicable fascination. Be thrilled by the power of these written words. There is an erotic bewitchment at work in his head. See this. Say nothing. The heart that pounds and churns out his overwhelming need, echoing the assumptions of his followers: "I want her."
"Yes, MiLord ," they murmur responsively.
"And so you shall," they agree obsequiously.
"I must."
"You must, MiLord?" she would have queried politely had she still been there - had she not been brushing her long red hair before the mirror in her room. Others lean towards him and distract him. Conspiring arms wrap around the Count's shoulders, replenishing his glass to take away all interrogation marks. Their protestations fire his ardour. She may have retired early, but her breasts jut delicately into his imagination beneath that velvet gown. They would jut so much more perfectly freed of such fine materials.
He is still aware that she bent away from him as he snatched at her marvellous fingers in the dance. Was this teasing? Or was it encouragement? The whispered remembrance of her rustling promise confounds him. Others turn, twisting their hands in obeissance, reinforcing his expectations. She might have left him grabbing at air. They would leave him importuning the saucy flight of giggles that gathered round her as she vacated the dance floor. She had mesmerised all of them with her musical laugh. She had left all of them in a haze of indecision with her red heat. He aches to nestle in that very same red heat.
Later. Much later. He sits staring into the shadows in the great hall. The banquet is ended. The acolytes have departed to the wine cellars to pursue their rumour mongering away from Lordly ears. He sits listlessly watching the platters being cleared. The tables are practically bare. Bare as she should be. He touches lips to the goblet from which she supped. He pushes a serving wench to the floor, vexed by her proximity. He strips the rough hessian cloth from her shoulders and takes the blonde serving girl roughly, urgently. She squeals as he presses her head to the cold stone floor. She cries as he penetrates her unceremoniously from behind. Animals drawn together in their shared loss among the spilled pools of wine. In this graveyard of discarded bones, it should have been her.
The girl would have taken the precious goblet from him. His guest has taken herself from his presence. Would they both dare to deprive him? They should be dealt with severely - chastised for trying to deprive him. Beaten together within an inch of his excitement. But who are they and who should chastise them? He presses his palm against the wench's shoulder blades and wraps his arms around her panting, shivering torso. There is a stark contrast between the heat of her sexual arousal and the chill of the girl's pale, etiolated flesh.
She has hidden from the sun's glare too long. The contrast parallels the cold metal plate that Confusion's warm lips nibbled from earlier. Plump grapes satisfied her appetites. Plump flesh will satisfy his. If only. He inhales deeply. His eyes are hard and hot and very, very green. A voice echoes in his mind. It is his own.
"I must have her. I need her promises."
He discards the serving wench, leaving her to finish herself off amongst the detritus. Buckling his breeches troculently, he marches with a new resolve towards the turret stair, turning his head to see the girl, still on her hands and knees, touching herself frantically and looking at him, wide eyed and malignant, a resentment born of denial. With each step, as climbs the twisting stair to her turret room, the girl's malice recedes. He can still hear her moaning curses at his disobliging abandonment. She needed his seed and he had denied her invidiously. The Lordling's bastard will have a less frequented womb.
The heavy knock on the budded rose decoration of her door, conceals the pounding . He taps at the floor with his black boots. He lurks on the threshold, listening for light footfalls as she responds to the urgent knocking. She is there awaiting his call even before he looms up before her like a shadow in the smoky light. Dark eyes brood and darker thoughts fester as he awaits the elegant beauty's response.
"I promised......," his voice shakes, breaking the silence first.
"You promised.....MiLord?" and he listens to the sleepy, quizzical voice..
"I need your promises," he corrects himself, flinging his arms wide, candidly, displaying his muscular torso.
"You need to know me too well, Count," she thinks, draped in thin red silk, smelling the sex dripping from his loins. There are no ruffled feathers in his hirsute plummage. One braid of her flame red hair hangs loose. She brushes it back with tired hand. Her momentarily lack of self assurance causes her to nod rather than look up. Confusion's pretty head to stirs. Right now, she wants what is wanted of her, above all else. And he is in the room - lips seeking, mouths meeting. The door shuts. A nestling is caged.
The cage is a long low oval room, hung with tapestries. Hunting scenes through verdant silvan countryside. Autumn fruitfulness. The ceiling of the room is painted with crisp leaves and harvested grains, piled high in rustic bowls. A primitive scene for a primitive lust. The floor of the room is strewn with rushes and red silks. His rushes and her sombre silks. The air is thick with imaginings. The room is lit by candles scattered around alcoves. The chambers are sparsely furnished. In fact, the only furniture is a large bed, half masked by coverlets of silken damask. The entertainment that ensues will delight the captor. Will it also amuse the captive?
She is not bored as she lies back on the bed, undressed and ready for release. A captured bird inevitably craves release. She wants to spread her limbs, but not in flight. She offers him a welcoming embrace, which he declines. Patience is a virtue when it yields another's pleasure. Staring at the ceiling, she is quite certain now that she is the most essential ingredient. Why then is she treated as if she were no more than the perfect accessory, an untried shadow in a murky room.
MiLord's thighs are uncovered. Huge and hard, a fleshy fortress is revealed in the smoky candlelit chambers above the mysteries of her untried country. She is outspread before him. Outspread hands will reach up to that upright rampart. Her hands are long. Her fingers are wise. She runs them up and down the fascinating promontory. She looks up at him briefly - slyly - and finds that his face is a picture of wonderment. Her kiss will be planted and he will quiver as she inches forward. Her now unbraided hair whips against his thighs, as she rubs her forehead against his pubic bone. Her flesh is damp with perspiration. His groin is musky with sweat. She licks with eager lips. She kisses him ... there. Tasting the clinging servant girl's secretions, she frowns. Despite her reserve she resolves to enjoy his reaction and disregards the residue of his recent tryst.
Looking down at her longingly, he knows she cannot be compared. Touching her cheek with his hand, he nods. She takes him into her kittenish mouth. The muscles work well. Nibble, nibble, little red. Gobble for more and more. The greedy mouth takes over. She delights in the manner in which he leaps under the angler's bait of her wet, wet tongue. Sucking and sucking, while creamy fingers touch and caress. The stroking is insistent. The playing is tender. There is a helpless urge to chase round and round to the indelicate root of his desire. He kneels above her. Dark and hairy against the smooth white flesh, the red hair and the silken damask of the bed. Poised, coiled and so contrasting. Her thighs pressed tight to feel his thrust as he forces her down and falls upon her. Leaning down to touch her sex, the perfumed folds take him into her embrace. Primal anxieties are relieved by the spread wings of this elusive nestling.
There may be a slow tying of wrists and ankles to bedposts later, he promises. The bonds will be just tight enough to restrain, but not so as to render any real discomfort. Her breathing accelerates at the thought. A flush spreads over the pallor of her cheeks and the slow caressing begins. Her chest rises with each inhalation of air. Her heartbeat flutters rapidly. Breasts quiver under straying fingers: jutting. He envisions a strange continuance of this scenario that can only be perceived by him, but who is she? She is both a single dissipated entity and part of an evolving synergy. She notes the way, tome by tome, a unique history is written across her body as her psyche is gently probed.
She wriggles on the bed, twisting onto her belly to offer him new freedoms. He can hardly resist the whispered urge to punish her elevated flesh now. She may dissuade him as she rolls and tosses, panting on the black damask. Her lips twist in a grimace of ecstasy, crying out his hot wish to need her to be whipped. Harder. Harder still. Hardest. Insatiable. He will chastise her bare behind thoroughly. She might love it. She may need it. She certainly deserves it. Her body will glow, inflamed by the pink kiss of his pouting discipline. He has a tumultuous need to inflict pain on her recumbent form. The need is satisfied in other ways as he thrusts into red haired Confusion - up and down. Shoulders, back, derriere - all will be marked with his kiss.
"MiLord...", she begins, gasping as a thing possessed. The rhythm to his steady advance locks them together exquisitely. She takes his thrust into the receptive groove of her womanhood. A candle flames as he takes her. Conscious that she is accepting this sleek penetration, she shuts her eyes and tries to constrain the first tear that squeezes from her tightly closed eyelids. The first tear of pleasure turns so quickly to recrimination. Burying her head in the pillow, her fleshy thighs are upthrust over a pile of cushions, giving him better access to the forbidden. She stares into the orange flame of the candle. It burns for her and she flames for him. Her face is a blush of greedy delight at what she desires him to do to her. The sheet grazes her belly as he comes to her, in her. The candle burns low too quickly. He has done and he withdraws. One sided promises seem to be forgotten in the aftermath of lust. She says nothing.
"Promise me more, always more," he demands underwhelmed by this silence. His eyes close, ignoring the answer that never came. The waxy residue of his pleasure sticks between her wet thighs. She rubs the cheeks of her behind against the waning member as he drifts towards post coital rest. For a brief while, Confusion seeks to engage his renewed interest in vain. The deep rumblings of his luxuriant rest steal the escape that sleep might offer. She lies there quiet and thoughtful. He takes her rest. He has stolen her path to pleasure. She will take his road to a tranquil aftermath. She reproaches his somnolent form. Your fortress will be a castle of mocking ghosts, MiLord Count. Yes, gaunt phantoms, MiLord Minstrel. The first crack of dawn chinks through the high arched window and the cage door is already ajar. Wretched tears are released to nestle on her face....
...Wretched and yet released, Confusion rides away from commitment. She slipped into her riding gear and crept out to the mare at dawn. Stealing through the stables, smiling thin lipped at the blonde servant girl who assists her to mount, smiling at her waspishly. Both of them spurned and denied in their way. Both of them eager to taste the rankling and bitter fruit of revenge. Spurring her horse in a clatter of hooves across the still moat, she disowns ownership. MiLord awoke to the sparking fury of her fiery departure. He is hot foot after her, enraged at the potent unmet need his lust for her has engendered. Crashing under the portcullis, the black pursues the chestnut.
The Count has called his hounds. MiLord cries out Confusion under the pale daybreak sky. The hunt chases dawn's breath, through the autumn mists. Not together though. The hunter pursues his foxy prey, past damp piles of logs, through half mown fields, towards the woods and into the forest. Winding paths will not serve in this frantic chase. The hooves beat. The hounds bay. He will come to her. Yes, he will come again for her fiery red elusiveness. His passion was sated, but still he follows her promise. He had ridden through this brushwood many times before, round and round the gnarled root of his desire, but his pursuit is ever more unsure.
At last, she reins in and brings her mount to a stumbling halt. Taking in her surroundings, she looks around the clearing up and down along the banks of the stream. She has come full circle, back to the place they first met at dusk the previous day. Red haired woman and chestnut mare both pant fiercely after the exertion. Listen to the heavy snorting breath of the mare. The red hair is an unwieldy, disordered cluster. It rivals the pink clouds that gather round the waning translucent moon. She lingers there. Does she really await his arrival? After all, she has already seen his coming and the loneliness of the aftermath of Milord's lust.
There are no disparate paths in this pursuit, even if he really knew which path would lead him back to her. He used to understand which thirst to slake. Numberless encounters, month by month, from farmstead outbuilding to seedy inn, have jaded his palate. Though he could disregard her silent refutation of his requirements, he must not recant the intimate history between them. A rewrite of his new creation would certainly be more splendid than the events themselves. He won't indulge in this, however, for he is uncertain whether these events ever actually happened now. Looking away from the forests, his eye catches the bright glint of reflected glass from the east. The fortress lies over his shoulder, the sun reflecting pinkly on the extensive lead tiles of the main hall roof. Last night's banquet and the passion after cockshut linger there.
She should linger too over the pummel of his saddle. She too could please him, glowing as pinkly as the blushing glass, reflecting the sunlight. He glows at the thought of bringing her back. She will be caught like fresh game, taken over his saddle, his hand resting on her pert behind. Fresh game should be hung and where better to hang than from Milord's whipping posts. She is red and ripe and the taste of the lash will tenderise her wilfulness. The blonde's creamier flesh will make a nice contrast. They are two sides of the same coin. Who will cry the loudest? Mistress or servant? Seeded or denied? Is such vainglory premature?
His would-be prey - his special prize - thinks it is.
Ignoring the yapping hounds, he takes in the tallest trees - the yews and the larches - that sway in a breath of wind. The sway is reminiscent of her feminine wiles. The sway is redolent of his indecision. His mount trips and nearly throws him. It limps and forces him to slow the gallop to a canter and then to a claudicating trot. Head down and despondent beneath a hanging branch, he leads the injured beast into a clearing. By happy chance, his instinct and his perceived injuries has led him, where neither his head nor his heart could map. This is the very same clearing, where she has waited patiently for him before, beneath the forked tree, within faint hearing of the crashing waves on the rocks. Red haired woman and chestnut mare. Right in the centre of the clearing. Right in the middle of the stream.
She trembled last night in a stream of impossible desire. She won't shiver today now that these desires have been shown to be so implausible and so incompatible. She shakes in a need to begone, back to the freedom of that natural buttress and the foaming spume of the sea below her russet belly. He offered her the bitter, cloying sweetness of ephemeral flowers. She wanted something enduring. A rock in the water would have sufficed. Rough edges to cling to in the shifting sands of time, in the conspicuous self absorbtion, at the nub of her pleasure. The passion has flown away too soon. So must she.
Gazing at her reflection, she observes the rippling mirror of the flowing water. Decision time. Her feelings are swooping away with the cool forest air stream. Her face will follow, but not before she murmurs her thanks and discounts his promises without interest. She flies from him into the shadows. Thoughts dart with her. He bends and clutches at a confusion of fleeting forms. His clasp is firm. His rage is powerful. He only catches the confusion of a few residual feathers, downy as the plummage of the red tailed hawk flying away overhead. Listen again for the downward slurring 'keee-arrrrrrr', MiLord. Watch for the uniformly reddish coloured tail, with the narrow dark band and the light hued tip. Soft as a baby's skin - the translucent skin of the heir that our Lordling will always be denied. The empty cradle and the empty souvenir of a nestling.
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