When Margaret, Countess of Artois, rose from the dinner table in the palace in Barcelona, she motioned for her young bard, Guarin, to attend her and her ladies in waiting. Prince James of Aragon, her new husband, however, motioned Guarin to remain. The young man, small of stature, but perfectly formed, golden blond, fairer of face than a man should be, and with a honey toned voice, had risen at his mistress's bidding from where he'd been playing the lute and singing, and, with a grateful sigh was ready to leave the room with her. His face betrayed a slight fright, though, when the prince had growled that he remain.
In a more reasonable voice, James said, "I find him amusing and we have no other entertainment for ourselves tonight. You have your ladies, Margaret. Can you not let Guarin remain to give me a few more songs? And perhaps you don't have the need for Guarin's attentions for any length of time this evening, because in a short time, I'll be with you to give you my attention."
The countess simpered at the obvious suggestion that the handsome prince would bed her that night. This was the countess's third marriage, all arranged to help keep the disparate parts of the Spanish Hapsburg empire laced together in these early years of the sixteenth century and under the controlling influence of Castile. Castile is where Margaret had been born, a cousin of the current Spanish queen, Isabelle of Castile. Margaret was a dozen years older than her new husband, the prince of Aragon, nephew of Ferdinand of Spain, a former prince of Aragon himself. And he was far more handsome than she was pretty, so he'd been quite a catch for her.
She was still of child-bearing age, but not by much. James was vigorous and virile, though—said to have bastard children peppering the land, or so the rumors had been sown. He was, however, more interested in another direction. But he was duty bound and determined to have a male heir or two on Margaret. She wasn't exactly ugly, but the bard she'd brought from Artois with her was beautiful—and the prince's inclination was more toward young men than older women.
Guarin's distress with being alone with James if his mistress withdrew without him was founded on the fact that James had already had him three times in the month since James's marriage to Margaret and had expressed full intention to have him again—and again. The prince was a forceful, cruel, and possessive lover.
The young bard looked on with concern as Margaret, smiling now at the thought of James coming to her that night, as indeed, he had done frequently since they'd been wed, bowed her head to her lord and swept out of the dining room with her three attendants in her wake. James was much the best lover and more heavenly endowed of the three husbands—and countless lovers—she had, and at her time of life she reveled in having such a handsome and vigorous man working so hard to fuck a male heir into her. She suspected he already had, but she would say nothing until she started showing, as she didn't want the man's ardor, feigned or otherwise, to decrease.
Guarin wasn't, in fact, alone with the prince in the hall. The prince's confessor, Tomás de Mendoza, was there, and Guarin's lover, the captain of the guard, Miguel de Morillo, was standing over by the door. Guarin was the kind of young man who would not go long wherever he traveled without having a master to lie under, and Morillo, a strapping and well-hung warrior, had scented him out and covered—and then claimed—him within days of the arrival of Margaret's entourage at the court of Barcelona.
The young bard took the presence of these men—especially that of a priest—as some means of protection, but it was a hollow hope. He knew the Miguel could do nothing. He had, in fact, had to stand by as a guard against interruption a week earlier when the prince had fucked Guarin in a summer pavilion in the garden. And the priest would hold counsel on whatever his prince did. Miguel was able to protect Guarin from the randy palace guardsmen, all having been selected by Prince James to assist and sometimes join in the prince's preference for men. But Miguel couldn't protect Guarin from the prince or the men near him.
Indeed, Miguel was being quite circumspect at this time, as he didn't want his family's past delved into too closely. It wasn't long ago that an ancestor of his had converted to the church from Judaism, during an earlier era of Jewish suppression in Spain. Having such a past was a real danger now, in the early sixteenth century, as the work of the Tribunal del Santo de la Inquisition—the Spanish Inquisition—was at its height. Diego de Valera, the archdeacon of Barcelona and a frequent guest and comrade in debauchery of Prince James's, was a particularly diligent agent of the Inquisition.
Although Miguel was more than happy to fuck the sweet young bard whenever he got the chance, there was little prospect of him standing in the way of Prince James and his friends if they wanted to do that too. In fact, although he thought he might be falling in love with Guarin, he wasn't so smitten at this point that he failed to enjoy what now transpired in the room, savoring it to think upon when he next had a crack at the young bard himself and surreptitiously seeing to his own needs to harden and release while the prince lay on top of the small musician and moved his hips as Guarin sighed and moaned under him.
"Please, settle yourself again and play and sing me a sweet love song," the prince said when the ladies were gone. His voice was a rich, honeyed baritone—seductive when he wanted it to be. Of course, seduction wasn't required of him. Aragon was his principality. He could and would take here what he wanted. He liked to think of himself as a champion seducer, though, and those he seduced helped him to think that—for their own good. If they were going to be pinned to the bed with his cock anyway, they might as well curry favor by letting the prince think that it had been accomplished by his charm rather than his authority.
Guarin knew that and, with a sigh, settled back onto the pillowed stool he had been perched on and searched out a song that he knew would please the prince. Perhaps the prince would become so lost in the song that he wouldn't . . .
But, of course he did. He came over and stood very close to Guarin. "Play me a song of a young bard and the prince—of how the bard pines for the prince and begs the prince to cover him and be as one with him."
Dutifully, the young singer sang of the meeting of a prince and his lover in a garden bower. Guarin was resigned enough to refer to the lover as male rather than female. And it wasn't long until the prince, standing very close to Guarin, had the fingers of one hand entwined in Guarin's golden curls and had unlaced his codpiece with his other hand and had his cock out, rubbing it against Guarin's cheek.
"Enough of the strumming and singing," he said in a low voice. "I will hum for both of us." He turned Guarin's head toward his crotch, the young bard dutifully took the cock in his mouth—this would be the fourth time the prince had laid him in a month, so what was expected of and inevitable for him was understood and accepted—and the prince took over the humming of the tune while Guarin sucked his cock to an erection. The prince ran the hand of the arm he was encasing Guarin in down the young man's chest, unlaced the bard's doublet, and gave attention to Guarin's nicely turned out chest and nipples.
James fucked Guarin on the heavy oak dining table, with the priest watching from the end of the table and Miguel from by the door. Guarin, naked, was on his back on the table, with his right ankle hooked on James's shoulder and James holding his left ankle out and up, his crotch pressed into Guarin's ass, and taking the young man cruelly—vigorously, thickly, and deep. He himself was fully clothed except for his dropped codpiece and his doublet flared open to show a muscular chest and hard, flat belly.
Guarin arched his back, panted heavily, and gripped the rim of the table to try to hold himself in place while the prince pounded him hard, his face hovering over Guarin's to take in every nuance of the young man's facial expression in the taking.
The prince laughed when he discerned the transition between pain-pleasure and pleasure-pain in Guarin's face and sensed when the musician no longer was struggling with him, but was going with the fuck—arching his back, counterthrusting with his pelvis, matching the rhythm of the fuck, and moaning deeply, which his tongue hanging out.
"Shall I stop?" the prince asked, with amusement.
"No, please. Don't stop. Seed me. Give me your seed," Guarin murmured breathlessly. It was a two-pronged response. He was telling the prince what he knew the prince wanted to hear. Guarin hadn't risen to playing for the nobility of Europe by not knowing what to praise and when. And beyond that, Guarin worshipped the cock—not just Prince James's cock; any well-turned hard cock. He wanted to be fucked regularly. The only caveats to the prince fucking him were that the prince could be rough and cruel and if the countess learned that James was fucking her minstrel, Guarin most definitely would be tossed out on the paving stones and scrabbling once again for a patron.
But here, now, the action had reached the point that Guarin cared nothing other than that there was a thick cock inside him, setting his channel wall muscles shimmering, and finding every sensitive and tender spot inside him.
"I believe I'll stop," the prince said.
"No, please don't stop," Guarin pleaded. "Make me release."
The prince laughed and fisting Guarin's cock, brought him to a climax. Then, with Guarin nearly sobbing, the prince turned him on to his belly, revolving him on a deeply planted cock, and tested the small man's flexibility. He forced Guarin's legs into the splits along the edge of the table, Guarin grabbed for the opposite table edge with his spread arms, and James pounded him to his own ejaculation.
He made Guarin kneel before him and clean his cock with his mouth. Then Guarin laced up the prince's codpiece and his doublet, stumbling when he tried to stand. The prince laughed at having made Guarin at least temporarily off balance and bowlegged and instructed the priest, Tomás de Mendoza, to help Guarin back to his room. Then he left to attend to the countess when he felt himself recovered enough to plow her. He left Guarin with a compliment.
"You are a sweet lay, Bard. I know you know not to mention this to the countess, but let it be known that all the time I'm moving inside her I'll be thinking of being inside you. And I will be inside you again ere the moon sets and reappears. Compose me a bawdy song you can sing while I am on top of you and plowing you. A new song for each lay until I tire of you."
"Until I tire of you" was ringing in Guarin's mind as Father Mendoza helped him back to his cell. With a shudder, Guarin realized that that was the edge of his existence here at court—dancing between the prince not tiring of him and the countess not knowing that the prince was laying him.
So lost in thought was he when they reached the door of his cell that Mendoza had to repeat what he'd whispered to him.
"What did you say?" Guarin asked.
