Christie Dickason - The Lady Tree

He coiled and slid under again. He turned among the fragments of floating leaf and weed, opened his eyes to look up through the faint cold green light to the silver underside of the water, his eyelashes heavy with bubbles. He knifed deeper. Let himself drift upwards through the layers of warm and cold water until he burst through the silver into the air.

The air flowed freely into the crevices around his heart. He took a deep breath and felt his weight lighten. He pulled himself back below the surface and swam until the water threw him up again.

One foot touched ground. He stood and scooped the water in cupped hands over his head. When the last drop curved behind his left ear and fell from his lobe, he scooped again. Then again. His skin quivered under each delicate, chilly blow. He shook his head, opened his eyes and saw the woman standing on the far bank.

Cat. His former weeding woman, now married to the cooper. Who had deserted his garden and bed for a lean-to attached to the cooperage in the village. The gnat swarm sideslipped between them. Her shape quivered.

‘Good day, Cat.’

‘John.’ She moved from the bushes that hid the mouth of the path onto the ledge beside his heap of clothes. ‘I had forgotten how long and lean you look. Sleek as an otter with your curls plastered back. I thought I’d always remember, but it goes so fast.’

‘And there’s another to remember now instead.’

She smiled. Neither of them moved. John stood naked in the green-brown water up to his chest. The woman, in a dirty brown wool work skirt, unlaced bodice and linen shirt, looked down as she rerolled one sleeve to her elbow. Finally she nodded equably. ‘That’s so.’

‘Is all well?’ He hadn’t seen her since the wedding. He didn’t know whether he had avoided her, or she him.

‘More than well.’ She made no move to leave.

John began to feel foolish. He was too fragile, just now, for games. He looked at his clothes. Cat followed the direction of his glance.

‘No need to feel modest with me,’ she said, but her eyes grew suddenly uncertain.

A shiver of possibility rippled over John’s skin. He swam two slow strokes back across the pond towards Cat and his clothes. Then he stopped and looked at her again.

‘Oh, John,’ she said. ‘I followed you here. A married woman. Isn’t that wicked?’

‘Only if you leave me now.’

Cat stepped back off the ledge. ‘This way,’ she said, ‘along here.’ She picked her way around the pond edge, over kingcups and mud to a thicket of yellow-green willows. She parted their curtain with her hands and vanished like a player from a stage.

John waded from the pond, shedding water like a ship in a storm and slipped after her into the green haze. A sudden lustful hope nearly blinded him. Cat stood by the leaning trunk of a mature tree, thick-trunked herself but still graceful. He had seen her dark blond hair, now caught back in a cap from her square-cornered face, drifting as loose as the willow fronds on the water. His gut lurched and his member stiffened.

‘You say things are more than well with your cooper,’ he said thickly.

‘And I mean them to stay that way.’ She looked him in the eye. ‘We’re a good solid match. But I’ve thought of you…and how sudden I married. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.’

‘Did you follow me just to apologize?’ Lust teetered towards humiliated rage. She had flushed him into the open only to leave him there.

‘No. I thought you’d not object to one last time.’

He couldn’t speak. His mouth dried. His pulse drummed in his ears. In his strange ill state, he had misjudged her. He had forgotten her inability to toy with what she saw as the truth. At times her solid directness had weighed him down when he had wanted apostrophes, trills and flourishes in their passion. Now she held him in place.

She offered her mouth for him to kiss, then leaned back in his arms. He sank his face into the warm curve of her neck. She smelled strong but sweet, like his herbs.

‘I wanted to see,’ she said dreamily, ‘how it is, just once, when we don’t fear making a little bastard. I mean one last time, don’t mistake me.’

‘No,’ he promised, with his muzzle in the cup above her collarbone.

They had seldom mistaken each other, which was why he had liked as well as desired her even when he hankered for something more.

Cat broke back out of his embrace and lifted the hem of her skirt. ‘Here, let me dry you a little.’

‘Come back!’ He slid his wet arms under the petticoats, feeling for her warm skin. ‘Oh, sweet Heaven, you’re so warm, and I’m so cold!’

‘Not for long.’ She rubbed his bare chest and then his thighs. ‘You are a fool to swim so early.’

He grinned suddenly. The wolf eyes gleamed. ‘But look what it brought me!’ He felt suddenly easy with her again, as he had for two and a half steady years before she married the village cooper, when he had watched her crouched near him in the gardens intent on slaughtering infant weeds and only half-aware of his eyes. He slid his hand into her bush. ‘No fool, Cat. Not at all.’

She hissed between her teeth, blinked, then smiled into his eyes. She pulled her low-cut bodice from her shoulders and eased her brown nipples up into the reach of his mouth and fingers. He pressed her back and down. She twisted away.

‘Not on the ground. I can’t carry all those witnesses on my back and sleeves and hair. Here. Come over here.’

She leaned forward with her hands on a willow trunk, her skirts and petticoats bunched across her back. He thrust himself home between her magnificent haunches.

A familiar place he thought he had lost. Warm, friendly, familiar.

‘Oh, God!’ she said, muffling her voice. ‘Oh yes.’ She pressed her forehead against the tree’s bark. ‘Oh yes!’

Never to leave, never to leave. Warm, deep, dark, and infinitely friendly. He was all right again. Solid. There.

Need pushed him too fast. Sooner than he wanted, than he meant, he muffled a shout, sighed from his toe-tips and laid his head between her shoulder-blades. Their ribs heaved in unison. Pond water dripped from the ends of his hair onto her bare brown skin.

‘I would have liked a longer farewell feast,’ he finally said. ‘A Roman banquet of courses.’ He leaned his hands on the tree, with an arm on either side of her.

She turned to face him, her back now against the tree. ‘Don’t be a fool. You’ve never been one before.’ With her thumb, she wiped water from his black brows. ‘A good hearty tup, my love. More than enough, and right for now.’

She was a good-natured woman, even though she would not have said no if John had offered more, back when she had not had an offer from the cooper, a kind man of her own estate in life, with a skill which would always be needed by civilized man.

She stretched her handsome face up and kissed him. ‘’Twill do me nicely. We’re neither of us love-sick idiots.’

At that moment John was not so sure. His spasm had eased his fear, but not the yearning in his bones. The woman in his arms was generous. Her generosity moved him towards words he knew he might regret.

She held out the front of her dress and tucked her teats back into their nest. Then she ran her hands along his arms. ‘You’re bumpy as a plucked hen. I’d hate to be the death of you from ague. You’d best go get dry and clothed.’ One finger stroked his cold, limp member. ‘And find some other way of keeping that warm.’

‘None better than you,’ he said.

‘Words to warm me to my grave.’ She ducked under his arm and began to shake down her layers of linen and wool.

He plucked a grey-green willow-leaf dagger from the front of her thick, wavy hair.