Pip Vaughan-Hughes - Relics

Take these to your mistress,' she said, 'and say that we desire to speak to her.'

We sat back and sipped our wine. The fire was warm and its light danced over the bare flesh of the women. Anna and I slipped into a conversation that had nothing to do with anything, a comfortable chewing-over of some minor event back on the Cormaran. We would break off now and again to admire our hosts, and I found the sensation of Anna watching me watching the whores oddly arousing. I thought of Burchard, and how one of his strictures governed masturbation with the aid of a pierced wooden board. Twenty days on bread and water for that. It struck me with crystal certainty that Burchard must have had leanings, of a lewd nature, towards wood. To him a carpenter's shop had been a brothel. I burst out laughing, a lovely warm laugh that started deep within and seemed to swell my soul until it burst free of all the dark, dismal threads stitched into it by Burchard and all his grim, cheerless crew. I threw back my head and hooted at the ceiling.

What's the matter, my love?' Anna asked, a flicker of worry in her face. 'Nothing. Nothing in the world, my love.'

When the madam arrived, a large, fully clothed personage with the apple cheeks of a farmer's wife and the gimlet eyes of a usurer, Anna came straight to business.

'My friend and I are here under false pretences, my good woman,' she said. 'I told your doorman we were after some sport. Indeed we are, but we play the Game, and fair as your girls undoubtedly are, we have other plans.'

'The Game, eh?' said the madam, crossing her arms and regarding us with pursed lips. Then understanding dawned. 'A couple of ganymedes! Boys, boys, what are you doing here? There are plenty of bath-houses near the cathedral. You are wasting your money, and my time.'

'Not at all,' said Anna, leaning forward. We have money to waste. And this city is alive with men of war who might think it a great laugh to hunt a pair of ganymedes like us. You can provide a bed and a door that locks, and we will pay you over the odds for it. And who knows? Maybe we will feel the urge to convert, and you can send a brace of your fairest wenches up to us.' The madam pondered. Then she smiled, almost warmly.

'Oh, well… and why not? I've always had a soft spot for your kind, after all. There's a couple of girls upstairs already. If you go up now, no one will bat an eyelash.'

She reached deep into her bodice and thrust a warm key into my hand. 'Fourth room off the second landing,' she whispered loudly, and winked. You naughty young things – and so handsome! What a waste, eh? I'll bring up some wine myself, shall I? Well, get along with you!'

We grabbed up our goblets and the flagon and picked our way through the whores to the stairs. Anna went up first. I lifted her tunic as she climbed. Her bottom swayed before me, wrapped tight in white breeches and framed by the dark hose. She reached up and undid her hair and it fell about her shoulders like a storm cloud.

The hallway was dim. Regular grunts and squeals came from behind the first door. A woman sang in the second room, a low, soft song, the words unclear. Silence behind the third door, and then our room. In a frenzy I grappled with the handle. A single candle burned inside. I kicked the door shut with my heel. The crash brought me to my senses: here we were at last. Here I was, after weeks of longing and a lifetime of confused and guilty lust. I stood, feeling like a lump of stone, as Anna skipped to the big, crudely carved bed, unbuckling her belt as she went. The sword clattered on the floor.

'Come to me, my love,' she said hoarsely, fingers nimble at the ties of her tunic. Then in one great swoop of her arms she threw it off and it collapsed slowly on the dusty floor. There she sat, her skin very white between the darkness of her hair and the green of her hose. Still whiter was the band of linen that wrapped her chest. She dropped her head to her shoulder and regarded me. All at once her face seemed not her own, suffused by a heat and a hunger that set my own face burning. I took a step back towards the door. What is it, Petroc?' she asked, her voice tight.

My stomach was clenched. My skin crawled and burned and I blushed so hard I felt heat crackle from my hair. Desire, it seemed, felt like plain terror. All at once I felt my hands rise and touch, palm to palm, a reflex forgotten all these long months. In confusion I pushed them against me and felt my heart beating itself against its cage. 'I do not know what to do,' I said at long last.

My eyes met hers and we stood, locked, my heart counting out the eternity of my shame. Then Anna's face softened and she began to smile. She reached out her hands to me. 'All you need do is come here to me, my lovely man.'

And so I did, almost tripping in the folds of Anna's tunic, and sat beside her on the bed. I was shivering as if with an ague, and she pulled me to her, holding me tight and tighter until the fit had passed. Then without words she unbuckled my belt and, as if undressing a child, pulled my tunic over my head.

'Now,' she murmured, taking my hands and guiding them back to where the linen was knotted behind her. I tugged and an end came free. Anna raised her arms and slowly I unwound the long band until it fell away and we embraced, warm skin against warm skin at last. Then I was myself again, and the dance of our hands, as we untied laces and garters and found the places hidden beneath, did not seem strange any more. We fell back on the raddled old bed and I let my world become Anna: her hair, her scent, freckles that came and went in the candlelight, flesh that rose and puckered to my wondering touch. And so we drifted until we found where the heat of our two bodies and souls could safely burn, the refiner's fire of life and love.

Some time later, Anna stirred, her face still deep in a pillow. 'How much was that worth, penance-wise, Brother Petroc?' 'Three years, my child. At the very least.'

The candle had burned down until the wick floated in a pool of tallow, guttering. Anna and I lay and watched the mothy shadows flitter about the rafters. We had taken the trouble to strip, eventually, and now a scratchy, smelly coverlet kept the chill from our skin.

'If my uncle could see us now…' said Anna, wriggling against me. 'The Emperor? What would he do?' I replied, lazily.

'He would make you stare at a white-hot iron until you were blind. Then he would have you castrated. Then he would lock you away somewhere, blind and ball-less, and let you think about matters. Then he would have you strangled.' 'Oh.' 'He would do the same to me, minus the castration of course. If that makes you feel any better.' 'I can't say that it does.'

'Don't trouble yourself, my precious love. I am not going to tell him. Are you?'

'Just as long as it doesn't come up at my next audience with him.' She cackled. 'He thinks I'm dead, of course.'

I stared at the struggling candlelight playing along a beam. Someone had tried to paint a lewd scene on it, but had given up half-way. I could make out the odd breast here and there in the scrawl of flaking pink paint, and a man's face, the eyes bulging in a ludicrous portrayal of ecstasy. I hoped I hadn't been making that face earlier.

Earlier, as I made love to the niece of the Emperor of Byzantium. And as she made love to me. The immensity of it hit me like a stone from a sling. I, Petroc of Auneford, renegade monk, outlaw and accused murderer, sheep-farmer's son from the peaty wastes of Dartmoor. How had this come to pass? The Emperor's niece! Somehow I had put that fact from my mind. The thin, hollow-eyed creature whom the crew knew as the boy Mikal had simply become my dearest friend.

And now we were sated, lying warm against each other. I turned and brushed my hand down her breast to her belly, feeling goose bumps start at my touch. I ran my fingers along the edge of the springy curls below her navel, which now I knew smelled of gillyflowers, Anna's true scent, but more powerful here. I pushed my nose into the softer hair on the pillow, and closed my eyes. Her lips found mine and we kissed, soft and quiet. I felt the heat of her skin seep into mine and found I cared nothing for Anna the Emperor's niece. It was this Anna, the girl of flesh and hot, wild blood, who lived inside me now, and she would never leave so long as I still drew breath. Your nose is cold,' I said. She rose up on one elbow and looked down on me. A breast fell free of the coverlet, the nipple almost black in the shadows. Well, my ganymede, are you ready to kill Mikal?' she said.