In the Master's Bed

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Jane saw both fright and anger in her stance.

The anger won. ‘You all sound like toads to me.’

‘Hey!’ Geoffrey said, stumbling towards her. ‘Don’t insult my friends.’

‘Kiss her, Geoffrey!’ Henry said, pushing him at the girl. ‘Your betrothed won’t know.’

‘That’s enough.’ Duncan said. ‘If we rouse the Proctor, I’ll have to explain this all to the Chancellor.’

But Henry was beyond persuasion. ‘Don’t worry. She’s got enough kisses for all of us.’

Gittern in one hand, Duncan reached for Henry, but Geoffrey lurched towards the girl, stumbling into her, holding her against the wall.

Jane’s throat ached to scream no. What had turned her happy comrades into monsters who thought a woman would welcome their drunken kisses? ‘Don’t! Stop!’

‘Don’t worry, Little John.’ Henry tumbled to his knees, still laughing, nearly bringing Duncan down. The gittern strings jangled. ‘You’ll get your turn.’

The thought churned her belly. All the ale that had lain peacefully a few moments before rose up in protest. She doubled over and spewed the contents of her stomach on to the dusty street.

A hand, Duncan’s, rubbed her back, the motion steadying.

Still sitting in the dirt, Henry laughed. ‘That’s a good time for the lad.’

She squeezed her eyes, but that made her dizzy. Barely able to stand, she swayed closer to Duncan, but she wanted to flail them all. How could these men, scholars, treat a woman so? Even Geoffrey, near married and the gentlest of them, had joined in. Only Duncan had made a protest. Was that for fear of the watch or for care of the girl?

‘Come on, you oafs.’ Duncan’s voice rumbled in her ear. ‘I’ve trouble enough keeping us in the Chancellor’s good graces without an affray in the street. Leave her.’

When she opened her eyes, the girl was gone. Henry, barely noticing he’d been deprived of his kiss, staggered to his feet, and resumed his song. She took one shaky step and Geoffrey came to her other side.

Duncan held him back. ‘I’ve got him. He’s too kalied to walk.’

And she felt herself lifted into his arms.

Cradled against him, she cherished the rise and fall of his chest against her cheek and caught the scent of his skin, a warm, steadying whiff of juniper.

Geoffrey’s voice came from close beside her. ‘I’ll take him for a while if you like.’

‘He weighs no more than a grown ewe,’ Duncan answered, in his northern lilt. ‘I’d toss him over me shoulder, but he’s likely to bowk down me back.’

She stiffened, unable to relax in his arms. What if she had been discovered on the street when she’d been searching for a bed?

What if she were discovered now?

The thought made her stomach rebel again, but she pursed her lips to quell the rumble.

Henry had quieted by the time they returned to the hall. He and Geoffrey helped each other up the stairs.

She wiggled against Duncan. ‘Put me down.’

‘Are you sure?’

She nodded and he swung her on to the first step. She lifted her foot and tripped.

He sighed. ‘Come on, then. I’ll put you to bed.’

He reached to scoop her up again and she put up her hands. ‘I can do it myself.’ Even to her ears, she sounded like a petulant child.

‘I’m sure you can,’ he answered, his voice patient and soft, ‘but it will be easier if I help.’

She slapped his hand away, stumbling backwards to land hard on the step. ‘No!’ Would he ignore her protest, as they had ignored that girl’s?

He leaned against the wall, weary. ‘I’m too tired for your foolishness. Now let me put you to bed, Little John, and we can all get some sleep. I’ve got to open St Michael’s door for prime mass tomorrow and I’ve no patience for this.’

He reached for her, but she kicked and slapped, not knowing where her blows landed. Fear blurred her vision. What would he do if he uncovered the woman under Little John’s clothes? Would he hold her against a wall and demand a kiss?

Or something worse?

Her heel connected with his ribs and her elbow with his ear. ‘No!’ she shrieked. Loud enough to wake the house.

‘Enough!’ He held up his hands. ‘Take yourself to bed then. And don’t whine to me tomorrow about how you bowked your guts out all night.’

She clambered to her feet, then abruptly sat again as her stomach started spinning. ‘Don’t need your help.’ A man could do things by himself. ‘I’ll be better by the morning.’

He shook his head as she walked herself up the stairs on her bottom. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I expect you’ll be worse.’

Chapter Five

She was worse the next morning.

Not just in her stomach and her head, but in her heart. She felt a kinship with that unknown girl last night, one she’d never felt for a woman before. And the male camaraderie she had embraced now left her feeling alone on the other side of a high wall.

She spent the day in silence, not knowing what to say to such creatures as her men had become.

Duncan called her into the Common Room late in the afternoon. ‘Let’s see what kind of Latin you have, lad. Portare.’

She stumbled through the conjugation, simple and perfect, active and passive, not raising her eyes to meet his, no longer sure she knew him. Or wanted to.

‘What’s the matter, boy? Is last night’s ale still talking to you?’

She glared, wanting to hit him with words for disappointing her. ‘Don’t you wonder what she thought?’

‘Who?’

‘That girl last night.’ So callous he did not even remember. ‘When you, when we…’ We. She had been there, too.

‘Is that still bothering you?’

She met his eyes then. ‘Yes.’

His expression shifted, hard to capture as smoke. Then he looked at the unlit hearth. ‘It was not a night to make us proud.’

Henry and Geoffrey entered, still showing ill effects. Duncan’s shoulders relaxed and they laughed, ruefully, about their aching heads and roiling bellies.

Geoffrey spared Jane a glance. ‘A rough night, eh, lad?’

She nodded.

‘Little John’s disturbed about the common woman,’ Duncan said.

Her brows darted together. It was not a subject for a crowd.

‘But women are not like us, John,’ Henry said, serious as a stone.

She was just beginning to appreciate the truth of those words.

‘You’ll understand when you are older and have more experience with them,’ Geoffrey added, with the gravitas of one soon to be wed.

Henry punched his friend’s shoulder. ‘No, he won’t. No one understands women.’

She looked to Duncan, but he remained silent, the whisper of a frown on his brow.

‘What’s so hard about understanding women?’ she asked. Even when she most despised her sex, she found them incredibly transparent.

‘Everything!’ Henry said.

Duncan shook his head. ‘Not to a wise man.’

‘But Henry tried to kiss that girl, even when she objected.’

Yet she looked to Duncan, expecting him to answer for all their sins.

But Henry spoke instead. ‘If I had kissed her, she would have enjoyed it!’ Henry vowed, drawing her eyes again.

And under her steady gaze, Henry’s ears turned red. ‘It didn’t mean anything.’

‘Not to you.’ She knew enough of women to recognise that one had wanted to either box his ears or burst into tears.

Or both.

Geoffrey took up the defence in a calm, scholarly tone. ‘But she’s a common woman. She’s been with lots of men.’

Common woman. They had called her mother that. And worse. ‘But she said no.’

‘Sometimes a woman says no when she just wants some persuasion,’ Henry answered.

‘How did you know what she was thinking?’ Jane knew. That woman on the street had wanted nothing like persuasion.

‘John, when you read the masters, you will understand what Henry’s telling you,’ Duncan began, in his pedagogical voice. A women is weak and deficient, but that’s as nature intended. Man must rule over her because he is a rational thinker. Women don’t think, you see. They feel.’

‘And no one knows how a woman feels!’ Henry said, setting off a round of laughing.

Jane did not laugh. Heartsick and confused, she felt too much like the woman she had never wanted to be.

She had admired men, wanted to be like them, but she was discovering their knowledge had gaps she had never imagined when she lived in the same house with her sister’s husband.

Safely beyond a woman’s gaze, men were totally different creatures. What happened after marriage, when the man and the woman were finally trapped in the same life together? It must be quite a revelation. The strong knight who belched at breakfast. The beautiful maiden who had a short temper during her time of the month. What a different world it would be if men and women truly knew each other.

‘You’ll see when you’re older, Little John,’ Henry said. ‘Women are lustier than men.’

‘Is that what you think?’ She prodded Duncan when he didn’t speak.

‘It’s not a matter of opinion,’ he began as if ready for a formal disputation. ‘Aquinas, Hippocrates and many other masters have written it. Women were created to be protected by men. They are a lesser creature and do not have the mind to understand intellectual things.’

She chomped on the inside of her cheek and raised her eyebrows, as if considering his words instead of choking on them. Yet the Church, the University, they all said the same, things that were not true for her. She could not truly be a woman if she was so different from all the others of her sex.