Of Women and Men

Scotland: 1557

Rain was falling as Lise slipped quietly into the grounds of the monastery where her mistress Margarete awaited her. She was cold, wet, exhausted and saddle sore, but she was grateful for the rain. It would increase her chances of remaining unseen.

Three days remained until the marriage of Margarete to the Lord Colin MacLean, and the bridal procession was one days travel from his estates.

Exhausted though she was, Lise couldn't help feeling pleased with herself over the success of her enterprise. Drawing on the resourcefulness and resilience of her youth as an itinerant performer and sometime lady of the evening, she had maneuvered herself into the bed of her mistress's betrothed. By doing so, she had acquired not merely silver and some genuine pleasure. She had also gained information that might be of great value to her young mistress.

Leaving her horse in the snug stable, she crept silently into Margarete's bed chamber. As a servant, her movements were of little interest to anyone, but if anyone had seen her, being the Lady's favored attendant, it would be natural for her to be in Margarete's room.

Being anxious for Lise's return, Margarete was sleeping fitfully, and sat up as Lise entered.

"It is I my Lady," Lise said softly.

Margarete leapt up, fumbling to light a candle.

"Are you well? Did you see him? Did you...?" Her hurried questions broke off as she approached Lise and perceived the water dripping off of the older woman's cloak. "You are sopping wet, and you shiver so!"

"It's certainly no night for travel," Lise said, removing her outer garments and laying them aside, "Unless of course your errand is secret," she added. "Be at ease my Lady. I was not discovered, and I was able to find out much that might help you."

Margarete's forthcoming marriage had been arranged by her father. He hoped to draw on Lord MacLean's wealth to settle some urgent debts. Her family's finances had recently taken an even more alarming turn, and requests for aid would be coming from France more quickly than anyone had anticipated.

Margarete knew this, but Lord Colin did not. So, Lise had ventured ahead to slide herself into Lord Colin's bed, and discover how Margarete should go about enchanting him. Convent raised, she was frightened by her ignorance of such matters, not only on her own account, but because her failure to please her husband might lead to penury for her family.

"And you?" Margarete asked with compunction, "You are well?"

"Well enough." Lise answered wearily. "Tired, cold, hungry, sore in more than a few places, but I've known worse."

Margarete was impatient to hear Lise's account of her adventure, but Lise was much more than a servant to her, so she asked no more questions as she poured watered wine into a cup.

"There are remnants of my supper here, eat," she commanded gently.

Lise did so, watching the younger woman's anxious face with amusement. When she had finished, Margarete drew her to her feet.

"Come," she said, "You'll not warm up in those wet clothes."

Together, they removed Lise's damp clothing and, in the growing dawn light coming in the window, Margarete was shocked to see bruises on various parts of Lise's active body.

Till now, Margarete's solicitude had been simply good manners forcing down her own impatience. Now, she cried out in dismay.

"How did you come by these?" She asked in alarm.

Lise examined the various souvenirs of her adventure.

"These," she said, touching raw skin on her inner thigh, "Are the price paid by one no longer accustomed to long riding: and these," she grazed bruises on breast and buttock, "are expressions of enthusiasm."

Margarete's face was utterly blank for a moment, then lit with understanding and shock.

Lise saw this and laughed. "Do not be concerned," she said, washing at the basin of cold water. "I felt them little at the time, and they will heal." She was too tired and chilled to try and explain the mysteries of men's passion to her virgin lady, so she finished her washing and slid naked into Margarete's bed.

"I'm chilled through!" she exclaimed.

Margarete stood utterly still trying to digest Lise's off-hand explanation. At these last words, she shook off her paralysis of shock and got hurriedly into bed also.

"Oh Lise!" she gasped, pulling the other woman's shivering body against her warm one, "You are bruised, chilled, warn out! You risked all this for me! You rode alone, you put yourself into the power of strange men for my sake!"

Until she had seen the bruises on Lise's familiar body, Margarete had not fully appreciated what her servant/companion had done for her. She was young, and preoccupied with her own anxieties. Now, she was awed and taken out of herself by what the other woman had done.

"Oh Lise!" she said rubbing the woman's body to warm her, "Who else would have risked so much for me? No mere servant would have done this."

She began to kiss Lise with the ardor of anxiety and gratitude. Lise lay still, no longer shivering, feeling the unaccustomed sensation of Margarete soothing her. When they were together like this, it was always Lise leading the younger woman. Lise accepted this as natural. Margarete was inexperienced and of noble birth, neither of which description fit Lise. Now, Lise was weary, and glad to be passive.

Margarete cradled Lise in her arms, kissing first her face and hair, then her lips. Their mouths pressed together, gently pulling but barely moving. The intensity of the kiss stirred Lise and she raised her arms to embrace and caress Margarete but the younger woman pressed her back.

"Always it is you taking care of me," she said. "You tend me as any servant would, but you care for me as no one else. You have risked yourself to allay my fears, and even now you would give pleasure to me as you are accustomed to do. I owe you so much more than a servant's wages, and before I hear your tale, I wish to begin to repay you."

Their lips were close together. Margarete's voice was low and intimate, and her long golden hair hung like a soft curtain around them.

She began kissing Lise again, first on her lips, then in slow, lingering progress down to her throat and breast.

Lise lay still, her weariness combining with the nearness of Margarete's lithesome body pressed against hers to create a feeling of sensuous languor. Frolicking in Lord Colin's bed chamber had been pleasurable, but it had not been a time for heedlessness. Now, her languor increased as the younger woman's kisses covered her breasts, and lingered gently on the bruises left by urgent male hands.

Margarete's kisses were slow, but her breathing quickened in response to a rising intensity. She ran her hands over Lise's belly, her hips, her strong legs.

"You have a graceful woman's body," she said, marveling, "Yet you are strong too, and brave like a man."

"Not like a man," Lise smiled, reaching up to touch Margarete's flushed cheek. "You too are brave and strong my little flower, you just haven't discovered it yet."

Margarete rose up and straddled the other woman so that their bodies pressed full length against one another. Their lips clung more hungrily as their hips began to rotate, grinding together. Margarete slid a hand between them and began pressing her palm against Lise's vulva and moving it in slow circles, as Lise had so often done to her.

Lise began to moan and move her hips in more powerful circles. Maintaining the rhythm, Margarete sat back on her heals. She felt a new and unaccustomed sense of power rising in her. She had often witnessed Lise's arousal, but she had never taken an active role in provoking it.

Now, her passion was combined with gratitude and something deeper. She wanted to please the other woman fully, to give to her, to take care of her, bring her to the ecstatic state to which Lise had so often lead Margarete.

Lise laid still, the tension and weariness draining from her like water. The fingers of Margarete's hand began pressing gently on her clitoris. She reached up and took Margarete's breasts in her hands, brushing fingertips across the small, hard nipples, lightly squeezing the rounded flesh, running her hands down the narrow waist to caress the delicate skin of her inner thighs.

"I have not yet tended to all your bruises," Margarete said, and swung one leg over so that she could move further down the bed.

She found the marks on Lise's bottom, and kissed them slowly, with a gentle sucking. Then, she found the roughened skin from Lise's long hours in the saddle. With the tip of her tongue, Margarete bathed the flesh of Lise's inner thigh with delicate caresses.

She began moving upward, licking towards the centre of Lise's pleasure. Margarete had never done this before, and Lise lay reveling in her own surprise and pleasure.

Margarete nuzzled against the hair covered mound, feeling the heat and moisture emanating from it. She ran an experimental tongue in the tiny furrow of flesh visible, and felt the other woman's body shudder as Lise gasped.

Margarete felt a surge of wonder and excitement. She repeated the action, and Lise spread her legs wider apart, exposing more moist skin, opening before Margarete like a lily to the sun.

Is this why she calls me "little flower"?" she wondered giddily.

Now, she was eager to explore the exciting new notion that she could cause Lise to gasp and writhe as she herself had so often been made to do.

Trying to recall how it felt, she placed her lips so that all the exposed flesh was engulfed, pulling petals in gently, then sucking lightly, releasing, sucking again. She held her lips so for a time, then began to move her tongue against Lise's skin.

"Lise cried out softly, and Margarete drank in the sound with amazement and delight.

"Yes!" Lise gasped, "Like that!"

Margarete sighed with happiness as she put her arms around and under the other woman, pulling her hips tighter against her mouth, maintaining the rhythmic sucking, flicking her tongue slowly, excited by Lise's rapid breathing and startled throaty cries.

Margarete could feel Lise building toward the ecstatic moment, and she tried hard to maintain and slightly quicken the movements of her mouth. Her jaws and tongue were becoming uncomfortably tired, but she wanted desperately not to lose the moment. Her own arousal was growing and, partly to express it, and partly to distract herself from the fatigue, she began to moan, echoing Lise.

Finally, Lise put her hands on Margarete's head and began grabbing handfuls of her long, fair hair. She was afraid that, in her inexperience, the younger woman might stop at just the wrong time so she gasped out "Now! Now!"

Margarete moaned in genuine delight, pulling just a little harder with her lips, finding a last reservoir of stamina in Lise's cries.

Lise felt pleasure rushing out from her middle to flood her whole body with an overflowing liquid light. All of existence had shrunk to their warm women's flesh, and Margarete's sweet mouth giving her a precious gift.

When her body had ceased shuddering, Margarete's lips relaxed, and she covered Lise's mound with light affectionate kisses. Lise reached down and pulled the younger woman to lie close to her.

Lise could feel Margarete's arousal in the heat that emanated from her skin, her shallow breath, and the way her body wriggled, taught and eager. Now was as good a time as any, and perhaps better than most, Lise reflected.

"Since you have been so generous my little flower," she said, "I will tell you now of my adventure. You asked about my slight bruises, I will show you how they were acquired. Rise up onto your knees, yes, now lean forward onto your elbows."

Margarete obeyed silently, feeling apprehension mingling with a strange rising excitement.

"This is the favorite position of your soon-to-be husband. Time and again I saw him repeat it with several women, and with me." Lise's lips twitched in a smile that Margarete failed to notice.

"For several such moments, I was being held thus." She moved behind Margarete's proffered bottom and placed strong hands on the soft flesh. She dug her fingers in briefly to show how her own flesh had been marked.

For one disorienting moment, Lise felt what she supposed it must feel like to be a man, the desire to plunge rigid but sensitive flesh into the delicate waiting virgin hole before her.

"Then what?" Came Margarete's timid question, breaking into her reverie.

"Then? Then his organ entered here." She slid a fingertip into the tight opening. Careful not to push hard, she began moving the fingertip in and out, simulating intercourse.

"This posture is very... very compelling for a woman; for a man too I think. I doubt that he will command it of you your first time, though he might. Bring your shoulders right down to rest on the bed."

Margarete did so, pushing her sex more prominently upwards, spreading the tender lips wider apart.

"That is a sign to a man that you have surrendered utterly to him, and perhaps that you feel pleasure also. Men welcome surrender, but pleasure they seldom expect. You can bind him to you more easily if you show your enjoyment, even if it be more acting than truth."

Lise could see moisture on the exposed lips and caressed them with her fingertip.

"You found pleasure so?" Margarete asked faintly.

"Yes, but I am a woman of experience, and I understand that rough treatment," she pinched Margarete again lightly, "Is not mere brutality as it may seem to you. I cannot explain it to you, but I think you will understand. If he chooses this way for your first time, it will be painful but I promise you it will not always be so. Lie on your back little flower."

Margarete turned and lay flat. Lise straddled her, on knee on either side of the younger woman's hips.

"This is how I acquired these." Lise guided Margarete's fingers to the discolored skin on her own breasts. Lise was finding this instruction more enthralling than she'd anticipated.

She let Margarete's hands drop to her sides and raised herself slightly.

"While a man is inside you thus," and she began grinding her pelvis against Margarete's, mimicking the actions of penetration, "He will often clutch you like this." Her hands moved to the young breasts, pinching with unaccustomed force.

Margarete's eyes widened but she said nothing and did not move. Lise's fingers hurt, but they also seemed to be pulling something up from deep inside her, some powerful tide, like catching one's self in a strong and dangerous current.

Lise continued her movements longer than demonstration required. Margarete's dilated pupils and utter acceptance of Lise's rough treatment were irresistibly exciting.

"During sex," Lise said huskily, "Men may become transformed. If you speak they may not hear, and if they bruise you in their enthusiasm they may not know it."

"And does this happen to women also?" Margarete asked unexpectedly, looking into Lise's eyes.

Lise smiled. "Indeed it can," she answered, "If you are lucky."

She bent and kissed Margarete deeply, forcing her tongue between the girl's parted lips. She took one of Margarete's hands and placed it between their vulvas, then, continuing to push her tongue into the mouth of the woman beneath her, she rocked her pelvis backward and forward, feeling Margarete's fingers move under her, urging her toward another climax. She pressed her weight down on top of Margarete, grinding her clitoris powerfully against the other woman's until the paroxysms overtook her, then passed.

She lay beside the younger woman who still had not moved. She caressed her soft breast.

"You feel unfinished don't you?" She asked kindly. "Like your desires have not been satisfied?" She laid a quick finger over Margarete's lips to silence her.

"This is a sensation to which you may need to become accustomed. Men, including husbands, are always in a hurry, they reach fulfillment far quicker than we, and they seldom take the trouble to ensure that we also are fulfilled. Perhaps with husbands it is different. As a Lady of Convenience, I have mostly had to find my own pleasure. But I am not a man, and would not leave you unsatisfied."

She put her hand between Margarete's thighs.

"Spread your legs as wide apart as you can." She instructed, enjoying Margarete's dazed compliance, imagining seeing her in a man's fierce embrace.

Her fingers began to dance over Margarete's tender, exposed wetness, knowing, from long experience how to bring release. When it came, Margarete let out a series of high, breathy cries which Lise found as beautiful as music, or bird song. The two women lay in one another's arms and Lise talked on.

"He knows you are young and convent educated. He expects that you will be pious, subdued, cold, remote and tiresome. I think you will disarm him best by decorum in public, and spiritedness in private. Of course he will not expect a whore's tricks from you, and you must be careful, for you are far more awakened than he expects you to be.

Remember that a man is always flattered and soothed if the size and potency of his organ are complimented. Remember also that too much modesty in the bed chamber is disliked. Do not flaunt yourself, but try to show your body as if by accident. You may allow your gown to slip so that he almost sees your breast, or, if you should chance to drop something on the floor, it would be appealing to him to bend such that your pretty bottom becomes visible to him. Such seeming guilelessness will win his devotion I'm sure. Be lively and inventive, but not course. Anyway, you are so beautiful that he will surely be powerless to resist you."

Smiling, she kissed the tip of Margarete's nose.

"He will doubtless be hurried and graceless at first, but you must just be patient. I think it will be well, and I will be with you in the morning if it is not."

They heard a growing noise and bustle outside the door, servants preparing for their last day of travel, wondering why their mistress tarried so long.

Lise sat up with a groan.

"This is one day I wish I could sleep through. Do not look so distraught. We will have much time to talk while we travel: and oh, you must remember to pretend a fondness for his disreputable dog! The brute follows him everywhere and his fawned over like a child."

Lise was not partial to animals, but Margarete routinely struck up friendships and alliances with domesticated animals, and thought that this at least would be easy.

As she rose and was prepared for travel, she tried to digest all she had heard and felt. As they left her chamber, though her thoughts were troubled, her face was composed and serene. Seeing this, Lise smiled to herself with approval.