Harry Turtledove - Justinian

A couple of lamps burning butter lighted the inside of the tent, which was piled thick with carpets. In the center, though, lay a square of white cloth about a cubit on a side. All nations except the utterly depraved cherish the proof of a bride's maidenhead.

Pointing to the lamps, I mimed blowing them out and asked, "Yes? No?" in her language. With my scarred forehead and flat, repaired nose, I knew I was no longer handsome. The whores at Kherson had let me couple with them in the light after Auriabedas cut on me, but Theodora might well have had taste more refined than theirs.

But she said, "No," in Greek and then something in the Khazar tongue I did not understand. She tried to turn that into Greek, but could not; her face twisted in frustration. Then she started to laugh. So did I. We would, I was sure, face the struggle often in times to come.

There are, though, ways of gaining understanding that require no words. I set my hand on her shoulder. She came to me. I held her. She felt like a woman in my arms. Her eyes closed when she kissed me. I thought- I made myself think- nothing of that, it being common among women.

Running over her body, my hands were pleased with what they found. And, when I took from her the long coat and tunic she wore, my eyes discovered my hands had not been mistaken. She was slim, with small breasts and nipples surprisingly dark for those of a woman who had not borne a child. I would have been more surprised- and more suspicious of her virginity- had the Khazar girls with whom I had amused myself not been similarly made. Like them, too, she had only a small, thin tuft of dark hair at the joining of her legs.

Having undressed her, I undressed myself as well. I was ready for her. Her narrow eyes widened to see how ready for her I was. I waved for her to lie down on the square of white cloth. Still nervously watching me, she did so. I knelt beside her, caressing her bare body as I had done while it was clothed.

Patience came easier than it had on my first wedding night, not least because I did not burn so hot as I had in my youth. I took my time, trying to excite Theodora or at least to make her less afraid both of me and of what we were about to do. After a while, clumsily and in unpracticed fashion, her hands began to imitate what mine were doing.

My mouth eventually went where my hand had gone. She sighed. Women encountering that caress for the first time, I have found, are astonished at how sweet it can be. I thought at first to give her full pleasure that way before taking her maidenhead, but then had a different notion. Bringing her nearly to the brink, I kept her there for some little time before entering her.

She was well and truly ready; I slid in with ease until the membrane stopped me. I thrust hard then. Beneath me, her face twisted in pain, but not for long: breaking through, I fleshed myself to the root. As I drew back and then thrust home once more, her face twisted again, this time in a way with which I had long been intimately familiar. She gasped and quivered; her inner muscles squeezed me.

Her eyes, which had been closed, opened. She looked up at me. I was intent on my own pleasure then, having given her hers, but not so intent that I failed to worry whether the sight of my face would curdle her joy. Perhaps my rhythm faltered. She smiled at me, and I stopped worrying.

Having completed the act, I got up off her and looked at the square of cloth. Sure enough, she had been a virgin; she had not bled much, but enough to confirm that. She burrowed under furs while I put my tunic back on and went out into the night to display the proof of what we had done.

Loud, drunken cheers greeted me. "How many rounds tonight?" Barisbakourios whooped, ready to translate my answer for the nomads without Greek.

"The Khazar language doesn't have numbers so big," I boasted. He translated that. The khagan and the other Khazars standing there laughed loud and long. That kind of bragging on that kind of night amused them rather than insulting them, as it might have done under different circumstances at another time.

I went back into the tent, as I had gone back into the palace bedchamber with Eudokia. Then I had gone several rounds before bothering to come outside and display the bloody trophy of conquest. Now, while confident of a second round, I was anything but for the third and beyond. Thus time robs us of our powers, my brash words to the men waiting outside the tent notwithstanding.

When I returned to her and let the tent flap fall behind me, Theodora flipped off the furs under which she had hidden. I took her willingness to show herself to me naked as a good sign; she might easily have retained a larger portion of virginal modesty- or, indeed, she might have been repelled by what we had just done and wanted no part of it thereafter, or as little part of it as she could manage.

That proving not to be the case, I wasted no time in divesting myself of the tunic once more. I caressed her with hands and mouth, as I had done before. Proving slower to rise than I had then (ah, the years!), I taught her what a woman could do with her mouth. That was a time when I wished we had more words in common, although, after some initial hesitation, she grasped the principle with pleasing- very pleasing- speed.

When I went into her, I stroked her tender little button with my finger while thrusting in and out. After a very short time, she gave a mewling cry so loud, I feared the torn edges of her maidenhead pained her. It was not pain, though, but pleasure. I spent myself a moment later, groaning half with delight, half with exhaustion.

We lay side by side afterwards. Her skin was slick with sweat, as was mine. I fell asleep for a while. When I woke, the lamps were guttering. Theodora's motion had disturbed me. She was pouring wine into two cups. I think she would have wakened me once it was poured, had I not stirred sooner. Seeing my eyes open, she smiled and handed me one of the cups.

We managed a third round then, with her proving she had not forgotten the lesson I had given her not long before. I managed thanks to that, coupling with her in the laziest fashion possible, her on her side and me taking her from behind. I gasped, sighed, pulled out of her, and fell back to sleep. She may have tried to waken me again that night. If she did, she failed.

We have done well together, Theodora and I, from our wedding night onward. She took to lovemaking as if, having gone so many years without (for I do not think she was far from thirty when we married), she intended making up the lost time as quickly as she could. With that at bedrock, we found we got on well in other ways, too.

Out of need, we soon learned to speak to each other. She picked up Greek fast, and I learned such Khazar words as I could. I still found the nomads' speech ugly, but now I also found it useful, which made a great difference.

"Now I will give you everything I can," Ibouzeros Gliabanos promised when I spoke to him a couple of weeks after having wed his sister.

"Good," I said. "Now tell me exactly what that will be."

Hearing that, he grew evasive. Had I been khagan of the Khazars, I should have grown evasive then, too. Had he led an army down toward Constantinople, he would have had to fight his way through the country of the Bulgars and then through Roman territory before reaching the imperial city. Alternatively, he might have gone through the Caucasus and into Anatolia, but that would have weakened the Roman Empire against the followers of the false prophet and still would have left him on the wrong side of the Bosporos to take Constantinople, as the Persians were during the reign of my great-great-grandfather.

I should have thought this through more thoroughly before bearding him to make good on his promise. I should, for that matter, have thought it through more thoroughly before fleeing to his court in the first place. But what choice had I? I could not stay in Kherson, nor in Doros, either. Ibouzeros Gliabanos, at least, was not actively persecuting me.