Wild Wood by Posie Graeme-evans

with one hand, pressing me deep into the mattress with the other. She was just a shape in the half dark, her head higher than my own, but as she unlaced the points of my breeches and her fingers grew busy between our bellies, I forgot to think her old. When, at last, she teased me no longer and, with a quick shift of her hips, had me between her legs, it was all I could do to hold the tide for even a little while. Then I stopped trying.

    The little death is a pleasant thing after the itch is sated, and this was often the time when Rosa and I dallied the day away talking. Today, lying on the bed with no covering but Rosa’s body, I half woke as the air struck cold.
    The girl was not asleep, though she pretended to be; havingknown her so long, I could tell. If I was not to meet another of her clients—arriving as I had, unexpected—I must dress and leave.
    Rolling the girl off my chest, I yawned and sat up. The creak of the ropes under the palliasse was familiar. The bed was old, and too well used.
    Rosa murmured, “So soon, my love. Would you not stay with me a little while?”
    I felt her arms around my belly and put a hand over hers. “If I do not return soon, they will look for me.” It was the truth. I did not want another argument with Godefroi.
    She murmured, “But the night is a long time away.” For a pause I said nothing. Rosa, a sensible girl, wriggled off the bed. She turned away slightly, but I watched her skirts drop to the floor and cover her legs. These were sturdy with round calves. I had been surprised the first time I saw them since her upper body was delicate, yet the contrast was erotic. I had come to appreciate those legs and Rosa’s wide hips, for both seemed made to bear a man’s weight as he worked up a sweat.
    Rosa knew I was looking at her as she went to the settle. Returning with my clothes, she swayed her hips, thinking to provoke me. When I did not respond, she stood back with a swallowed sigh and watched as I dressed. “You are too thin, Bayard.”
    I did not say the same to her, though I thought it. Perhaps she saw it in my eyes, and did not look at me as her finger traced the scar on my chest. “Is it true you died, and she brought you back?”
    I had the shirt half over my head, and Rosa did not think I saw her sign the evil eye. “I was not dead. Just”—what had I been?—“just close. There is nothing strange in a man recovering from his wounds. I was well nursed.” I hurried to tie off the points of my breeches. This was not a conversation I wanted to have.
    “Well nursed?” Rosa swatted my hands away and continued what I had begun. “Some say your nurse is a sorceress. That when she flies from the keep on nights without a moon, she curses thechildren so they die in their cradles. There have been many deaths in the village.”
    Outside, rising wind rattled the latch, and Rosa quickly turned. Wide-eyed, she stared at the door as if expecting Flore herself. “They say too that she does not eat and neither does she drink. Can that be true?”
    I took the girl’s chin in my hand. “And are ‘they’ the other men who lie in your bed?” She dropped her eyes and would not look at me. “The woman is pregnant. Food turns her stomach. It is common enough.”
    “And how do you know? You a chaste, unmarried knight.” The glimmer of a naughty grin. And then a frown. “Bayard, be careful. Promise me. I mean it.” Her voice was earnest. “She has enchanted the Lord Godefroi and all the bad things in this year have been . . .” She did not finish the thought. Perhaps she remembered whose brother I was and where my loyalty must lie.
    “Who says such things? The men who come here?” I was dressed again. A man who, only moments since, had thought himself the equal of gods and angels. That is what a woman does with what lies between her legs.
    She sniffed. “Not the women. They do not talk to us. But I know what I know.”
    “This is foolish. The Lady Flore—”
    Rosa