been at the back of my mind. Although Thangbrand’s ferocity had terrified me, as time went by, my curiosity about the contents of that metal box buried in the floor was growing. What was in there apart from that great jewel? I decided to find out.
My chance came soon enough. Winter was knocking on the door at Thangbrand’s and with it Slaughter Day. On this day, all the farm pigs — there were about half a dozen — which had been fattened in the wood all autumn would be killed, cut up and preserved in salt for the winter. We did not have enough feed to keep them through the cold months and so if left alive they would lose weight until they were skin and bone, or even dead, by spring. So we killed them.
Slaughter Day was something of a celebration at Thangbrand’s: there was a lot of work to be done, penning, killing, scalding the flesh to remove the bristles; dismembering the carcasses and packing the meat in casks of salts. But it was also a feast because a lot of the meat could not be salted and so it was eaten in a variety of forms. Sausages were made from thoroughly cleaned intestines; the heads were boiled in great vats to make brawn; the air was filled with the delicious scent of roasting pork as the off-cuts, and odds and ends of pork, not worth salting, were cooked and eaten hot. More or less everyone was involved in the work, which was supervised by Freya and Thangbrand. But I slipped away at the height of the blood-letting, muttering that I had an errand to run for Bernard, who, of course, was not the slightest bit interested in gorging on pig meat with the rest of us, not when he had his own private barrel of wine and his beloved vielle at home. Bernard claimed that the squealing of the swine hurt his sensitive musical ears.
With everyone either at the pig-pens, the slaughter yard or in the kitchen, a separate building because of the risk of fire, I slipped unnoticed into the hall and crept into Thangbrand and Freya’s chamber. My heart was fluttering like a trapped bird, though I knew the chance of someone catching me was slim, and my mouth was dry. It was a sensation I knew well from my days as a thief in Nottingham; I liked it. And I had an excuse ready: Bernard had lent Freya a comb, I would say, and I had been asked by him to retrieve it.
The door to the chamber creaked appallingly as I pushed it open. I called out to Freya to say that it was only me, knowing well that she was elbow-deep in pig’s blood at the slaughter yard, and went inside. Although it was full daylight outside, I could barely see in the gloom of their bedchamber. It had no window and the only illumination came from spears of light that bored through tiny holes in the wattle-and-daub wall and from under the eaves. There was little furniture in the room: a big curtained double bed, a chest for clothes, a table and two chairs. I went straight to the corner where I’d seen Freya on her knees a few weeks before and put my hand to the earth floor where I thought the box had been hidden. I found nothing under my groping fingers, just smooth earth. I brushed my fingertips back and forwards, in wider and wider sweeps: nothing. I couldn’t understand it; had they moved the hiding place? It was likely, Thangbrand knowing that I had seen it. And then I heard someone coming, footsteps outside and the door creaking. . and in a blind panic, forgetting my comb story, I scuttled under the bed and curled in a tight ball at the far side by the wall. Visions of Ralph, the rapist who had been beaten and castrated, flooded into my mind. And the informer whose tongue had been sliced off outside the church. And Sir John Peveril. If I was caught stealing. . it didn’t bear thinking about.
From under the bed I could see the boots of two men. The door creaked shut. Then a man was kneeling by the foot of the bed. I couldn’t breathe. I thought my lungs would explode with terror. It was Hugh; I could just make out his long, thin shape and, O merciful God, he was facing away from me tugging at something in the floor. Through my naked, shivering fear, I had a cold clear thought: they
I let out my breath in a long shuddering gasp but lay curled under the bed for a few moments longer, pondering what I had heard. Hugh had been paying one of his spies: that was plain. These shadowy men drifted into Thangbrand’s at all hours of the day and night; they would talk only to Hugh; eat, rest for a few hours and disappear again. But there was something about the exchange that struck me as a little odd. Who was the spy’s master if not Hugh? I could not think and, as I brought my beating heart back under control, I dismissed it from my mind. Then I was out from under the bed and on my knees by the patch of earthen floor where Hugh had found his bag of silver. In the gloom of the bedchamber, it was hard to see anything that looked like a hiding place. My panic started to rise and I wanted desperately to be gone from that room. Frantically sweeping my fingertips over the surface of the floor, I could feel nothing but the hard earth, and then, to my soaring joy, my fingers brushed against a cold, hard circular shape buried in the ground. It was a metal ring, embedded in the earth, and I levered it vertical with my fingernails and pulled.
It was a trapdoor to a tiny cavern of riches. Inside the hiding place was a metal box. I pulled it out of its grave and into an area which was slightly better illuminated by a chink on the thatch. And my mouth fell open. It containing such things as I had never seen before: fat bags of coin, tiny jewelled pins, fine worked silver cups, golden crucifixes encrusted with precious stones, a string of great luminescent pearls and many, many precious stones from emeralds the size of a pea, to that glorious ruby that I had seen Freya holding, a gout of crystallised hearts-blood the size of a sparrow’s egg. My jaw hung slack. It was more wealth than I had known existed in the world, enough wealth to buy an earldom. And, I couldn’t help myself, I slipped the ruby into my pouch, along with a handful of silver pennies that were loose in the bottom of the box. It was madness, pure suicidal madness. I had seen how Freya had gloated over that ruby — there was no way that she would not immediately miss it. The moment she found out, we would all be searched, the ruby would be found and I would be brutally punished, maybe even killed.
I pulled the ruby back out of my pouch and held it in my hand. In the half-dark room it was no more than a cold hard lump in my hand. And then I held it up to one of the tiny beams of light that criss-crossed the darkness, and it leapt into life: its crimson heart ignited, and the stone began to glow with a malevolent beauty. I swear that the jewel began to feel hot in my hands as if one of the thin beams of light had given it life. I knew I could not put it back into Freya’s box. But something stirred in my mind, the germ of a thought, the beginning of a plan, and I shoved the jewel back into my pouch, replaced the box’s top, put the box in its hiding place, lowered the lid, brushed earth over it and crept out back into the harsh winter sunlight and the squealing of doomed swine.
I gave Cat my virginity that afternoon in one of the corn stores, along with a silver penny, of course. It wasn’t what I had expected at all. Cat knelt before me and lifted my tunic and undid the woollen strings which tied my hose to my under-belt. She untied the string on my baggy linen drawers, too, and my undergarments fell to a crumpled heap around my ankles. My prick was as hard as steel, a pearl of dew glistening on the end, and she grasped the shaft and began gently to lick my swinging ball sack, and up and down the taut, engorged flesh of my most private part. I could feel an expanding bubble of heat in my loins, just above my arse, and I knew I would explode soon if I did not get her somehow to stop her delicious ministrations. But, oh Sweet Jesus, it was a heavenly feeling. Ripples of pleasure were running up and down my cock. I could feel muscles deep inside tensing like drawn bowstrings and begged, in broken tones, for pity’s sake, for her to stop. She looked up at me, with a knowing, lust-drenched smile, fully conscious of her power over me, and she then lifted off her chemise and showed me her naked body underneath. She was superb: creamy white skin, startlingly pale in contrast to her brown face, neck and hands; her breasts bobbing like ripe pink fruit, with tantalising, wide rose-coloured nipples, slightly hardened at the tip in the cold air. He waist was narrow, so small I could have enclosed it with my two hands, but her body flared out again to round, curving luscious hips and a little triangular badge of fluff in the centre. She lay back on the straw and opened her legs. I tumbled forward on all fours, hardly able to breathe, and crawled over her, my stiff prick twitching like a dog’s nose when it scents quarry. After a few moments of glorious, slippery fumbling, with her help, I managed to slide my manhood inside her tight hole. . and almost immediately, in a matter of three heartbeats, I was pulsing out hot jets of my man’s essence. It was glorious, for a moment, but only for a moment. Cat was furious. ‘Not inside me, you fool,’ she said, pushing me roughly off her naked body. The few moments of mindless pleasure I had experienced were wiped away, like a wet sponge cleaning a slate. I felt ashamed of my ineptitude, at the speed of my ejaculation. Cat was cursing me for a stupid boy as she fumbled herself into her chemise and wrapped a cloak over that. ‘If I start growing a baby, and I have to go and see Brigid to get rid of it, you’ll be the one paying the fee,’ she spat at me. I nodded dumbly, just wanting her to be gone. I felt empty, foolish, a boy who had been trying to play the man and who had been caught out; and then there was
