Elisabeth and the Infanta

Authors Note: The Queen Consort named in this story is Elisabeth of Austria, married to Charles IX, who ruled France during a period of protestant uprisings, and lives in infamy for his vicious reprisals. His wife, though sharing his strong Catholic faith, was known for her piety, naivety and beauty. It is this innocence that makes her so attractive a figure for historical eroticism. The princess is the Infanta (Princess) Isabella Clara of Spain, Archduchess of Austria. Although it is not known that she visited the French court, the women's shared Austrian bonds and similar age makes it entirely likely. Her personal history is confusing and shrouded in mystery, and although she eventually married, it is rumoured that this unhappy marriage was never consummated. What follows is my preferred back-story.

The thick velvet curtains tinged the faint light a wine-dark red as the few candles still burning dimly penetrated the Queen Consort's most private sanctum. The pervading, cloying perfume of incense from the Privy Chapel hung below the lace canopy.

All was still. The court, with the King and his mighty Lords a-warring on foreign soil, was a small and pious one. The guards dozed beyond a thick oak door, periodically kicked to wakefulness by the patrolling captain of watch. Low oaths crept below the jam, but the Queen was not disturbed. No more was her lady in waiting, Clara, who lay curled beside the Queen, her breath whistling softly. She would not have believed that she could sleep, so excited was she to be chosen to wait on the Queen through a night, a few short weeks after she arrived, wide-eyed and awed, a maiden whose father wished her to gain favour for Spain through the service of Charles IX, and his Queen.

Clara, on meeting the Queen was stunned by her beauty, by the elegance of her clothing and her effortlessly regal bearing. The King, inflated by his power and the glory of his court, preened beside her like a peacock, but seemed to shrink beside the Queen's pale, perfect features. Clara herself appeared the very opposite of the Queen. She was every inch a Spanish maiden, dark where the Queen was pale, short and buxom beside the willowy Queen, with flashing, smiling black eyes and a ready laugh, beside a Queen who was serene and quiet. She was the shining star of a contented court.

Tonight, though, was the first time she had sat alongside the Queen at dinner in the great hall. She had poured wine and small ale for her royal cousin, and been fed small delicacies in return, roasted widgeon, spiced quail, and the other trappings of the summer hunts. Clara had shone with pleasure and pride at her position, and the Queen seemed happy to gossip, to giggle, and to whisper with her new friend. Indeed, her reputation for innocence seemed ill founded; she was comfortable with her friend, and the wine bought colour to her cheek and words flooding from her tongue. There had been a festive air in the skeleton court; news had arrived of a great victory for France, and soon, it was rumoured, the King would return to his beloved wife, and there would be a court progress, to the palaces of Fontainebleau and Amiens, and on to the houses of the favoured gentry in Normandie.

The excitement, and the novelty of mead, had left Clara drowsy and she leant on the Queen's arm as they made their way to the Privy Chambers. She was giggling at the delicious intimacy of the Queen's gossip, "Of course, only the most handsome men in Europe will be good enough for my Spanish infanta. We must marry you now, Clara; eighteen is by far the best age. I fancy there is a Saxon prince who would be quite suitable, and most wonderfully strong. A hunter, and a real man." At her drunken emphasis, and graphic gesticulations, the two of them were paralysed by further giggles, and stumbled past the guards and into the inner chamber. Their dresses were quickly removed, their hair freed from its tresses, and their dress-servants were dismissed.

Clara was dozing when she heard the rustling of the Queen's undergarments against the thick English blankets. She half-turned, wondering if all was well. She became aware of the heat of another body close beside her, and she felt, rather than saw, the Queen's willowy body stretched alongside her. Clara caught her breath, reassured herself that the Queen was simply moving in her sleep, subconsciously seeking companionship. She closed her eyes, and her mind again began to wander, when she felt a wetness on the back of her neck, the tip of her ear. She smelt the honeyed, meady breath of the Queen close, too close, behind her. Again, she half-turned, to face her bedmate, and she felt their bodies touch. Clara, still curled like a question mark, was ensconced by the taller woman, could feel another body along every inch of hers. In spite of her fear, her confusion, Clara's heart began to beat a little faster.

The Queen's eyes were half-shut; she appeared to be still. Clara almost thought her asleep, when she felt a hand on her waist, pushing her into the soft straw below. The silhouette of the Queen's beautiful face was above her. Clara was being tickled by strands of golden hair. She smiled, still nervous, her mind a whirl of conflicting emotions. "Elisabeth... Your Grace, please.... Whatever are you doing?" "Hush, my infanta, me querida, be still." The Queen's hand left Clara's hip, and began tracing the line of golden embroidery along her shift, the back of her hand rubbed softly against the underside of the Princess' breast. Despite herself, Clara felt her nipple stiffen. This was not a totally alien sensation, but it was one she had been trained by nurses and Cardinals alike to resist. It was harder than she knew. She fought to think chaste thoughts, and to resist the advances; she had a position within the court to maintain. Yet the heady perfumes of mead, incense, and the pomander rub the queen wore between her breasts were intoxicating. Clara felt younger than her years, and began to weaken.

Almost as though they were not her own, Clara's hands moved upwards, to encircle the Queen, running her hands over her stomach, linking her fingers behind the older woman's back, and wantonly pulling France's Queen towards her. The Queen pushed upwards against the blankets, away from Clara's embrace, and Clara released her, feeling a juddering surge of panic. Was this a mistake? Did the Queen not desire her? But Elisabeth was moving only to allow room to straddle the infanta. As she sank back beneath the blankets, Clara saw the flash of a triumphant, breathless smile as Elisabeth took Clara's hands in her own and placed them once more on the small of her back, which the Spaniard began to gently massage. She could feel each gentle bump in the older woman's spine beneath her soft, yielding flesh. As she continued to shyly explore the tiniest areas of the Queen's body, she slowly and inadvertently exposed a slither of skin between the vest and petticoats of her beautiful host. Unexpectedly, her finger found this bare skin. The intimacy of the touch, and the heat of the body she touched, increased Clara's passion enormously. She was overwhelmed by her own emotions, aware of her own arousal, and aware, too, of a more complex feeling. Not love, but a desire to please this woman, and a desire to intensify this bond of intimacy, affection and lust that had grown up between them.

Elisabeth, too, was increasingly aroused. Yet for her it was a more familiar feeling. She had been raised from birth to accept the rule of men, despite knowing that she was brighter, stronger, and more politically astute than they, and she aggressively sought positions of power. As a scholar, and a politician, she was content to play the demure, innocent wife, her brilliance and apparent piety mitigating the hatred felt towards the weakling King. For Elisabeth, the pleasure was in the influence she held over him, her power to change policy through her private conversations. Yet sexually she remained a passive being, bound to a man for whom she felt no affection, and certainly no attraction. She had learnt from a very young age to use her power, and the unusual privacy of her chambers at night, to seduce servants and ladies-in-waiting, to become the sexual aggressor, and to experience pleasures of the flesh denied by taboo to women of her station. Tonight, straddling a lithe, nubile Spaniard of royal blood, she was entranced by herself, by her own beauty and seductiveness, as much as by the dark prettiness of the young girl who lay beneath her. Clara's dark eyes were flashing with desire, she sub-consciously arched her back towards her pale seducer's touch, as the Queen ran a finger slowly down her lover's collarbone, gently scratching with a finely manicured fingernail.

Surveying the young woman below her, cherry-dark lips parting as her breathing increased, a calculating part of the Queen's brain, divorced from her own desire, judged the moment right to intensify her advances. She slipped a probing finger below the top of Clara's shift, taking in the contrast between the scratchiness of the lace and the softness of her bust. Her finger continued to trace a line around the top of the heaving, olive-tanned orb, and journeyed slowly, almost playfully, across the infanta's armpit, causing her to writhe in the tickled confusion between pleasure and discomfort. Elisabeth gathered the thin sleeve of her submissive partner's shift, pausing to caress the strong shoulder beneath, the taut skin reflecting the reddish glow in dancing patterns. Without warning, she ripped the cloth, hard. The tear exposed the right side of Clara's young body, her navel just visible in a pile of tattered clothing, her breast fully exposed, the stiffness of arousal accentuated by the sudden cold. Clara's shock at the suddenness of the exposure, of the invasion, overcame all other emotions, and, wide-eyed, she lay without fear or embarrassment. As Elisabeth, her eyes accustomed to the dim light, gazed hungrily and at length at this perfect form, the Princess' arousal rose too. She realised with a quickly passing feeling of shame that she was pleased to be an object of desire, pleased that her body aroused this Queen, who had so suddenly grown from a humble and pliant young lady of power to a great woman, who seemed at once to tower over her, and yet to be as close, as intimate, as to already be lain flat atop her.

As Clara's shame flickered and died, she began to move her hands at last. She lowered them slowly over the twin mounds of Elisabeth's buttocks, the flesh tautened as the Queen half-knelt, half-lay above her. Slowly Clara explored, for the first time, another body. Her forefinger traced the cleft between the Austrian's cheeks, and she heard a soft cry from the velvety darkness above her. The cry, though quiet, punctuated the drowsy stillness of the night, and was the opening of a door of intimacy and of arousal for the Princess, who suddenly knew, as though by instinct, what she sought. She pulled the older woman towards her, hands kneading hard, almost as if trying to transmit lust through her fingertips.

The Queen responded, her own thoughts and actions quickened by Clara's unexpectedly confident explorations. Elisabeth bent her head to the Spaniards chest, laid her head softly on one breast, cupping the other, exposed, in both hands. Her touch was delicate, but betrayed its urgency as she stroked every point on the olive-oil skin of the infanta's young chest. Slowly, as though seeking not to startle a wild creature, she reached her mouth towards the Princess' body, and grazed her tongue slowly towards the stiffened nipple that quivered as Clara took sudden, shuddering breaths. She began to lick in tiny circles, tracing the outline of the nipple with each one. Seconds turned to minutes as the women lay like this, clinched mouth to nipple, hands to backside. Elisabeth began to trace criss-cross lines with her tongue across the younger woman's nipples, causing a waterfall of gasps and cries to rise into the velveted canopy above the bed. She reached a hand onto the infanta's ribcage and slowly, slowly stroked her stomach, each finger dipping into the navel, knowingly betraying her thoughts, her intent.

Clara forgot all about her own hands, which stilled on Elisabeth's smooth round buttocks. Once more she was submissive, this time transfixed through arousal and anticipation. The Queen's skilful fingers worked underneath the torn shift, manipulating it aside as she caressed Clara's abdomen. She felt downy hairs below her palm as she moved her hand ever lower, the heat of Clara's arousal apparent before she ever touched her. Clara lay almost still, bucking slightly towards the hand that sought her, then relaxing as she was touched at last. And now neither woman had the capacity to delay any longer. Both had tried to prolong this moment, to savour it, but the desire, the arousal, the unfulfilled yearning of their stifling lives, made it impossible.

The Queen reached into the slick warmth between Clara's lips, gently pinched the bud of her clitoris between finger and thumb, softly rubbing, gently probing. Clara, almost blinded by passion, pulled the Queen's head from her breast and began to bite her earlobe, harder than she realised. She breathed hard, and gasped deep into Elisabeth's ear, which aroused the Queen yet further. The Queen now placed her longest finger atop Clara's clitoris, supported by a probing finger to either side, deep within her lips, and began to press, to rub, her wrist rigid, her hand moving with practiced speed. The Princess' hips bucked ever quicker, her breath, so hard, now seemed to slow and to quiver as she pushed her heels and her shoulders into the bed, forcing herself into Elisabeth's attack on her most delicate self. With a cry that seemed to come from outside of her, Clara felt herself begin to orgasm. After eighteen years, six marked by curiosity and frustration, she knew at last the power of her own body, and felt pressure building from every part of her, saw the world swim, and begin to go black. She came with a tremendous movement of every shaking muscle in her body, she forced her wetness upon the hand of the Queen. She lay back, exhausted by the suddenness of her own arousal and her impassioned reaction to the Queen's touch.

Yet Elisabeth was not satisfied. Clara heard a rustle above her, and opened her eyes to see the Queen pushing up her skirts. She took Clara's hands, interlinking their fingers, and without pausing, pushed two of Clara's fingers deep inside herself, arranging the other hand over her clitoris just as she had touched Clara. She took the Spaniard's wrists, and began to move both hands of her willing puppet, as she straddled her fingers pumping inside of her, caressing her clit. Intensely aroused by the younger woman's touch, and by the power she had wielded so recently, she too came with speed and power, almost crushing the young woman's fingers inside her as she came with a single, low moan, almost like a man, as she knelt hunched above this young, beautiful Princess.

They slept until late, curled together like kittens. In the morning, a dress-slave would be whipped for ripping the fine Belgian embroidery of the honoured Spanish guest. But that is a story for another day.