The characters in this story would have all spoken either Norman French or Old English, and a bit of Latin. But I don't speak any of those, and be honest: you don't either.
So? I'm having them speak colloquially. You'll just need to imagine something a little more guttural. A lot of the folks mentioned here were real, historical people living through a rough time in real, historical places. And yes, St Valentine really is the patron saint of beekeepers. At this time, and in this place, he wasn't yet associated with love.
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I came down from my climax, panting, slowly aware that the birds were chirping outside.
Seeking mates
, I giggled to myself. Birds always find love in February.
Steam rose off my legs. It was easy to forget, here in the hen coop, sweating like a pig under Thurgis' enthusiastically thrusting body, that it was still the cold, hard dead-end of January. It wasn't cold enough today for the ice to form, but the wind made it feel that way. And inside the coop, with the chickens all outside squawking, my overheated body smoked like Godmer's forge when the smith came by. "Wow!" I sighed, my pussy still a-flutter, "that was exactly what I needed."
"That makes two of us." Thurgis hadn't even bothered to take his shoes off, meaning his leggings were still down around his ankles. He'd already been hard when he'd arrived and made eye contact with me, nodding toward the coop. "I've been horny all week." He went to help at his uncle's mill in Biggleswade every Thursday, and I was normally happy to entertain him on the way. It made a long two days for him, in addition to his other work, but his uncle paid him a quarter of a silver penny each time.
I contemplated what he'd left on my stomach, a large splatter of thick white cum frosting my bush and extending all the way up to where we'd pushed my shift up under my chin. Shit. The shift would be smelling like dried seed until laundry day, I reflected with a frown. It had been worth it, though; Thurgis knew just what to do with my tits, but he needed to get at them first. They floated on my chest now, taut and pale, my dark nipples almost painfully hard with the cold and my arousal.
I'd need to wait a bit before I put myself back together. Hard nipples don't feel all that well against my linen. He sat up on the old, shit-speckled straw, looking down between his legs at where his cock still wavered half-hard, covered with my juices. "I could almost go again, Little Bird," he sighed at me.
Little Bird.
As always, I bristled at that, even if my scorn was tempered a bit by the joy his plunging cock had given me this morning. He was a hopeless romantic, with emphasis on hopeless; he thought he and I were in love, but this was no time to be talking about love. Marriage. Certainly not babies, I chuckled to myself, running an idle finger through the cum I'd made him leave on my belly instead of inside my cunt.
Three kings we'd had in just the past year, since he'd turned eighteen. Three!
No time to be talking about love, indeed, in a world so uncertain. We needed to take our pleasures where we could find them. I stirred, lifting my finger to my mouth, licking his thick spunk off it. He tasted good, better than Edmer had. But then Edmer was married; I wondered whether that made a difference. I set to work with a handful of straw, sloughing it off me, wondering whether the hens would notice the damp patch as they pecked around in here.
Yep. I'd found my pleasure, all right. I still tingled along the edges of my pussy, where he'd so vigorously driven into me. It made me smile.
We'd become less furtive about our fucking lately, which was only to be expected. By now, I reflected, the entire manor probably knew what we were up to. But apparently we no longer had a thegn, nor even a priest, so what was the point in worrying about getting caught?
A new thegn would arrive eventually, a Norman. Maybe he'd kill us all, probably not, but who could say? To be sure, Thegn Godmer hadn't been all that great. But at least he'd grown up here and spoken our language. Over in Dunton, where one of the new men had already arrived, they were saying these people spoke some weird tongue from over the seas. They had odd names, too: the man who'd taken Dunton was called Walter, and what the fuck kind of name was that? They said the same man was the new thegn of Stratton now, too.
Dunton was not happy. They'd had no thegn there at all under King Edward, and none under King Harold either. They reckoned they'd done just fine, and could keep on doing just fine under the new king, this man they called the Bastard. But apparently, the Bastard had other ideas. Not having a master, it seemed, was not an option in the new England.
Nothing was certain, right enough. I wasn't Thurgis' little bird, nor his big one. I knew I could be, though. He walked two miles out of his way just to fuck me. I knew I could have him whenever I wanted him, and I didn't.
He wasn't getting the message, though. His lips were a warm tickle at the hollow of my neck. "I'm just saying, Mer, it's February now. That's when we should choose a mate, surely." He kissed me again. "Like the birds."
"And I'm your mate," I mocked him. It occurred to me I might hurt his feelings by refusing, but it couldn't be helped. He lived in Morden. I wasn't about to move there. My parents would kill me. I shivered, the breeze finding its way through the coop's flimsy door. "Are you not freezing?" I demanded, cross.
"What?" He was squatting, his glistening penis flexing as he stared absently at my bush, and instinctively I pulled my shift down. He blinked.
"Nothing." I swatted at my hair, knowing there was straw in there and wanting to beat most of it out. I sighed, smoothing my shift over my chest: yep. The nipples chafed already. "Listen, I need a favor."
"Name it," he came back immediately, as well he should; I'd just relieved him of about a week's worth of his seed. It never occurred to him to take care of himself between his visits to me, with his hand, and I wasn't about to suggest it... even though he'd just left himself smeared on my belly. Leaving it on his own? That would have been different, and a grievous sin. God had killed Onan for that, after all, or so Father Felix had said.
Though I reckoned God hadn't killed him for cumming on Tamar's thigh. He'd killed him for not pleasuring her before he did that. So I decided Thurgis and I were fine. Besides, God had not killed Thurgis yet. So.
He lay back in the straw, the only way he could get his legs straight enough to pull his leggings up in the low space. I let myself admire his prick once more before he began lacing up. "Well. Father Felix has disappeared." He and Thegn Godmer had vanished a few days ago, and nobody had realized it until we all went wassailing there and found his house empty. A quick look inside had shown his chest left unlocked, all his charters missing. "I hope he'll be back by the ides, but it sure looked like he wasn't returning."
"Father who?"
"Felix." It was an unusual name, obviously, but then he was an unusual man. He came from Somewhere Else, maybe even Rome itself, and claimed to have once met a Pope! "Godmer's priest?"
"Oh." Thurgis shrugged; he had little use for God, like most boys his age. Eighteen years he had, and I remembered my older brother at that age. He'd never gone to church either, not until that memorable day when, shamefaced, he'd confessed that he'd cum in a woman's mouth instead of her vagina. My parents had rolled their eyes, but Felix had assured him everything was fine as long as he paid an indulgence; he accepted a pair of eggs, one for each of Osgar's ballocks, and everyone laughed.
