The cardinal’s residence was, ironically, in the same wealthy part of the city as the brothel Aleksey had taken me to in the early days of our acquaintance. We could laugh at this incident, now that we knew where we stood with each other. He, especially, found this amusing, as he recalled my expression on being manhandled by the young lady of ill repute. As we rode, he assured me that the whores he’d left with had only fondled him as well, and that upon completion by hand he’d left. It suited me to believe this slightly unlikely claim, and so this episode joined a fairly long list of things we enjoyed discussing, which had once given us such pain.
One thing we always found hard to do was to switch from being Aleksey and Nikolai to being King Christian and his chief minister when required. Riding together, our thighs brushing, laughing at the brothel incident, we arrived at the residence and had to become formal and correct. How I had not slipped yet and called him one of the various derogatory names I used to keep him in his place, I do not know. How he had not slipped yet and hit me or kissed me or thrown himself impulsively upon me—all things he did when we were alone—I do not know either. I think entering the palace of a cardinal sobered us both, and it was as well it did.
I had met Harold, of course, many times by now, but always very formally at court. Bluntly, I did not like him, and he loathed me. I know this for he told me so once, and that is not something a man forgets. This was not for my relationship with Aleksey. I believed he did not know about that. He loathed me as a man of science and a heathen, although I had stopped being one and did not really think of myself as the other. I was not a Christian, but I certainly had a very strong faith: I believed in Aleksey. I felt myself far more fortunate than the cardinal, because I had a living god whom I could love in person, whereas he had only a book and a set of rules through which love could be denied. My sympathy for the man, however, did not stop me disliking him intensely.
We were shown into the large room he used to greet supplicants. If it had contained a piano and some whores, Aleksey would have been right at home. He did not find this funny when I murmured it to him as we waited for his eminence’s presence.
When Harold entered, Aleksey went to one knee and kissed his ring again. This was always expected. I turned away and went to look out of the window. He could kiss my ring, and not the one on my finger, if he thought I was going to kneel to him. Aleksey was always good like that: knowing when to play his part and how to make people like him. He lived for the moment with no thought for the future. He thought our little bubble, our perfect world, would last forever. So did I.
Perhaps if I had kissed the ring it would have.
Harold was not happy about the witches. He wasn’t crazy about the sodomites either, but he started with the witches. A witch had to die; God commanded it. He quoted his book of rules, and although Aleksey tried to argue his case, he could not sway the cardinal. The king had to agree that if a witch did not repent her sin, then she must be put to death. The predator had now smelled blood, and he went sniffing for further weakness. He went for the sodomites. His book had a lot to say about us, apparently. I had never read the bible much, so I had to take his word for it. Eventually, Aleksey had to concede that if a man refused to admit that his sodomy was a perversion and an affront to God, then he must also be put to death.
When we were riding away, Aleksey said sadly that there probably would be no one who wouldnotrecant, faced with burning or impalement, and that at least they had thechanceto survive now, whereas before they had not. I felt so sad for Aleksey that I did not ask himwho is king in this country? as I wanted to. I was his first minister, but this role paled into insignificance compared to being his lover, and I would not upset Aleksey more by highlighting his impotence in this regard.
So the law was amended once more. We had now stirred the hornets’ nest; the buzzing should have alerted us to run.
OVERALL,THISwas a superb time for both Aleksey and me. We were completely in love with being together. I did not dare risk thinking the obvious—that we were in love with each other. We were, but neither of us was able to actually come out and say it. My previous experience of love had scarred me too deeply to allow me to form these words and let them escape my lips, although I did think them many times, saying in my headI love you, I love you, I love you. I should have told him so. He often looked as if he were on the point of saying it, especially at certain times, but he was still very young, even at twenty-four, and what young man says those words easily, even to a woman? What we weredoingwas uncommon enough. To add declarations of love to the mix would have been very problematic for us both. So we kept our own counsel, waiting for the other to speak first.
This did not affect the fact that physically we could not have been more in love. I was utterly entranced by his body and craved it like a drug. There would have been no government in Hesse-Davia at all if I had had my way, for their king would not have been on his throne but spread-eagled in our bed, accommodating me. Of course, we had progressed some way in those months since the fateful voyage from Saxefalia. Aleksey had still not been able to persuade me to allow him inside my body, but he’d had some fun trying.
I… tolerated this. I allowed him to play and explore and amuse himself at my expense, but when he got too eager, I slapped him down. Naturally, he didn’t take to this too well. He very quickly lost patience with my continual excuse that I had not enjoyed it then and I would not enjoy it now. He would enjoy it, and that, he informed me, should make me overcome my reluctance. He was a young man and not one who would naturally take the woman’s role in these things. Had I been more accommodating, he would have thrust into me as often and as enjoyably as his contemporaries were no doubt doing with young women everywhere. He was unfortunate with me in that respect. I pointed this out to him and told him he could probably find other men who would accommodate him more willingly. I offered to take him into the capital one night so that we could seek them out together. I’m not sure he ever quite got my sense of humor, and he did not find this funny at all. Once or twice, his frustration nearly won me over. I wanted to allow him. I wanted it for his sake, as how could I deny that it was the best sensation in the world, when I indulged my passion for it whenever he would allow?
The night he achieved his goal, therefore, was memorable for us both, given all the preceding disagreement, despite how easily it was finally achieved. I was feeling particularly mellow that night, for he had been using the sweet almond oil on me, pummeling it into my skin, pressing on aching muscles and turning me into something that more resembled a creature without bone than a man. I was entirely at his mercy when he began teasing my most sensitive areas. I was too far gone to care all that much. I do not remember drifting to sleep, but I do remember waking, hollowed out with hunger to be filled.
Aleksey was hot against my back, breathing evenly in sleep, with his cock rigid and pressing against me. It suddenly seemed foolish affectation on my part to deny this longer. Perhaps I’d been denying him for other reasons. Was it not the fundamental difference between a man and a woman that in all coupling a man took the active role and a woman the passive? She got entered; he did not. Did I not love to look at this beautiful man and know that I had been inside him, that I owned him in a way he did not me? If it were true, I was done with it. I wanted to be owned. I wanted Aleksey to own me.
I swore softly for being such a fool for so long, put my arm back, and pulled him into me. It was clearly one of his better wake-up calls. He processed what was happening very quickly and took full advantage of the moment. Without any words needed, I found myself on my belly and Aleksey flexing his very powerful muscles upon me, thrusting hard.
In all my nightmares, in all my reliving the awful events upon the whaler that had brought me to my new life, I had never dreamed that penetration there could be so pleasurable. Where was the pain? Where was the sense of unmanning that had assailed me upon the ship? I was Aleksey’s master, and Irequiredhim inside my body. I demanded, commanded, controlled, and I was filled as I had never been before. Love changes everything. I lay as a woman with a man’s cock inside my body, and everything in my life that was wrong realigned in perfect harmony.
My epiphany did not last very long. Aleksey, awed by the experience, flooded me before either of us was truly awake or processing what was occurring. He gasped, shuddered, hung still for a while, and then collapsed upon my back. It was very pleasant, having him there, for he had not yet pulled out, and of course… I was ready for more. He’d only scratched the surface of the deep need I suddenly discovered for his cock inside me. I’d felt something sublime, but then he had completed. I could see that we had a very long and pleasant road ahead of us, exploring all the byways of this new adventure.
We began as soon as he’d recovered, which, as he was only twenty-four, was very soon. This time, relieved once, he was able to explore the new experience fully and for a very long time. I was not too worried howhewas experiencing it, for I was fully occupied by my own feelings. Had I known that this delight awaited me, I would have pulled him into me a great deal earlier than I did. It was incredibly good to lie there and be pleasured, to be brought to completion so uniquely. I never found it demeaning, but rather the opposite: it gave me even more power in our relationship. I still dictated how and where and when, only now I dictated on my belly with Aleksey deep inside me.
He could never thrust too hard for my liking, and my body was always ready to take him in. For many days, this was the only way we made love, for it was so novel, and we wanted to explore all its many positions and intricacies. I knew them all with Aleksey, of course, and he wanted to explore the same with me. Unfortunately, we were not free to indulge ourselves all day. All this in our personal life was squeezed between his royal duties, which were endlessly tedious.
THEONLYbright moments of the week, other than our far more personal ones, were the times we managed to get together with our little reforming group and plan our new and improved Hesse-Davia.
After the compromise with the death penalty law, we’d had some notable success with our plan for the army. Each town now had a small garrison, and the officer in charge, usually a major, administered the law. Of course, each major had an experienced garrison sergeant major to assist him. Priests were constrained to taking confession and mass and other church duties. HisWorshipfulthe Cardinal—I never did bother too much with these people’s titles—could hardly complain about this, for Aleksey assured me the rule book did not say that Christian priests got to decide the law. In fact, he told me with some amusement that, as far ashewas aware, therewereno Christian priests in the bible at all, something that clearly told me he hadn’t actually read it. After all, how could there not be? So, for the first time in Hesse-Davia, ordinary men and women could present themselves to an authority with a complaint and hope to receive justice. I do not pretend that all our officers were wise, grizzled old war veterans with hearts of gold, out to right the wrongs of injustice. Clearly they were a mixed bunch, like all men. But they were a damn sight better than the priests they replaced, that I do know. And of course, most importantly, they all answered to Johan and ultimately to Aleksey, which the priests had not.
Effectively, we diverted the torrent of power. It had flowed from its source, the Pope, through Harold and then to the priests. Now it flowed from Aleksey through Johan and down through the army to the people. I actually saw this as a visual thing in my mind: previously foul water being diverted, clean and fresh and wholesome. Of course, I was something of a specialist in the relief of poison.
I had just created my biggest sweat lodge.
CHAPTER 29
ITWASa miracle, really, that Aleksey and I got to spend as much time together as we did, for even in our new villa, we had to have servants and guards, and Aleksey had to constantly travel the short distance to the castle to carry on the business of the state. We’d tried to reduce the number of servants who had direct access to us, but this was often inconvenient. Neither of us was at all domesticated, and I doubt any king in the whole of Europe sat on his throne in hastily donned breeches from a night of debauchery. My clothes even seemed to go missing, and I would have accused him of taking and wearing them had we not been different sizes.
So we had to have servants, and I knew they suspected what was happening. Why did the first minister come out of the king’s apartments clutching his shirt in his hand? Why did the king have finger-shaped bruises upon his derrière quite so often? What they made of his sheets in the mornings, I have no idea. I was only glad I did not volunteer, as I had once intimated that I would, to be the master of the royal bedchamber. I was very content being the one messing up the king and not the one who had to consequently tidy him.
I ignored the inner voice that told me we were living in a fool’s paradise and that it was all about to collapse around us. I was high on a ridgeline in the sunshine, Aleksey by my side, with an excitement for the charge, the plunge through still, cold air with my lance erect, thatnothingcould curtail. I knew I should see the fog and chaos of life, the turning to mud and the disillusionment. Iknewthis, but still I allowed myself those moments of pure, unadulterated lust for life, for brotherhood, for love.
ALEKSEYDIDnot return to the summer villa for a second night. The first night I had been told by a courtier that his majesty was attending a state dinner for a visiting official from France and that he would, therefore, spend the night in his old rooms. Initially this surprised me. I had not been informed of the visit. As chief minister I assumed such things would form part of my duties. Then it occurred to me that Aleksey had deliberately not told me to spare me what I would inevitably termboring nonsense. Or perhaps he wanted to spare himself having to coax and cajole me into a good mood after I had suffered tedious greeting ceremonies and a meal where I could not sit alongside him and pass him wine in novel ways. I was not alarmed, therefore. Iwasput out, though, for I had rather got used to Aleksey in my bed and in my body, so I was in a very bad mood and did not sleep well that night—on myown. So when a second courtier arrived the following evening to announce that the king was in conference and likely to be absent once more, I determined to ride to the castle and see what was happening. I thought Aleksey was probably being bullied by his uncle into signing things he did not want to sign, and to avoid having to confess this to me, he was avoiding the palace.
I was arrested as soon as I dismounted from Xavier.
They had been waiting for me, castle guards I did not recognize and in force of numbers I could not resist. I was taken straight to a dungeon, which is enough to quail the heart of any man, however brave he thought himself. As the door clanged shut behind me, I had a very vivid image of it never opening again. Who knew I was here? Who would come for me? My second and better thought was for Aleksey. What was happening to Aleksey? I wasn’t so worried at this stage that I thought he was in a dungeon too. He was the king. Even in Hesse-Davia, kings were not thrown unilaterally into dungeons. Were they? The first minister just had been.
