Island In The Barley Ch 03

"Gentlefolk, our lives return. 'Twixt shadow and night, in'st crack between naught and fire we breathe again. Enjoy — whilst ye may."

The ancient man spoke in a manner so old that Sasha could catch the meaning only with difficulty; the accent strange. He lifted her hand and there was another huzzah.

What followed was an orgy, the like of which Sasha had neither dreamt of or expected to see; there was an air of lust in the room, a palpable air, a feeling that what needed to be was to rut and not to stop; all around her men and women were coming together; bodies joining with the need to fuck, on and on.

Awaking the next morning she had, at first, thought she was at home and it had all, tritely, been just a dream. The hardness of the floor, the strangeness of the covering, the herbal vegetal scent and the sounds of an awakening household soon disabused her of that notion; she was not even alone under the blanket and it was neither Nat nor even a man she was with.

From virgin to what? A day ago no man had ventured between her legs, no man had pushed his erection between her nether lips: but now? How many men had taken opportunity of her, had eased his hard phallus into her, not to come—well not many—but just to enter her? Was it all the men—not Nat though—he had not been permitted; the women had seen to that. How many of them had he in turn entered? What a pleasure for him; sweet coloured bodies for the asking; a touch and the girl would open or bend—but all Sasha had wanted to do was be with him, hold him, yes fuck him: had he felt the same?

She was not in a bedroom, not alone in a chamber but instead on the floor of a hall together with most of the revellers of the night before. In the middle of the hall still burnt, though low, a fire with its smoke curling upwards to be lost in the tie beams and rafters high above her; there was no chimney but the primitiveness of the hall was relieved by there being glass, albeit small diamond or rectangular panes, in the mullioned windows. Sasha frowned; it all seemed more than odd, was she a 'Traveller in Time;' had she slipped back with Nat to some mediaeval period? Where was she; what was happening to her; why was it difficult to think quite straight? The brightness of the sunlight streaming through the windows did not help; how much had she drunk the night before; how much had been pressed upon her; certainly more than she was used to; her head was sore and so was her much used sex—her much pressed sex; what was happening to her?

Through the small opening of a casement she could see more smoke rising from a thatched outbuilding and drifting towards her came the smell of cooking—appetising, delicious, sensual. Around her people were moving and looking, like Sasha knew she too must appear, much the worse for wear from the night before.

Sasha stepped outside and stood blinking in the sunlight bemused to find, instead of the copse, a yard, garden and many outhouses stretching away; order instead of nature; the familiar landscape of the barley field in the middle distance gone, the little houses here and there away across the fields missing and in its place, towards her, a patchwork of long cultivated strips and different houses, indeed even clusters where none stood to her remembrance; there were woods where woods should not be; indeed the only thing that seemed in the right place was the track she had left to walk through the field of barley to the copse where she had so wonderfully met Nat—was it only yesterday?

Though she could see beyond the environs of the house there seemed to be a sort of haze creeping over the further landscape as if it was only partially there.

Washed, breakfasted and somewhat refreshed Sasha was taken to walk in the garden. There seemed nothing for her to say about her predicament. How could she ask what had become of her world? She tried asking about how she came to be there but was met by smiles: not explanation. Sasha had seen Nat but everyone seemed, gently but effectively, to be keeping them apart and it had not been possible to talk.

The garden was enclosed by walls and hedges. Sasha was surprised at how well it was tended; already men were at work digging, weeding and watering both lead edged beds and the many pots containing gillyflowers (she was told). Up trellises of latticework attached to the walls grew many climbing plants particularly, she could see, roses and grapes. Usefully positioned were turved seats for sitting in the sunshine and arches and pergolas for decoration. Topiary was to found here and there, cunningly cut from the simple rosemary or made from dry twigs bound together with climbing plants cleverly forming the living shapes; there were centaurs and serving maids with wicker baskets containing real growing French lilies; some representations, rather naughtily wrought, of centaurs erect or topiary couples intertwined; yet again was topiary cut as enormous sexual organs. There seemed to be a remarkable degree of playfulness about the whole garden.

Other parts of the garden were full of scent revealing herbaria containing, Sasha was again told, food plants, medicinal plants as well as those for strewing on floors, making hand waters, quelling insects and other household purposes.

Sasha brushed hyssop, thyme, and lavender and the scent rose into the warming day.

At the centre of the garden was a particularly formal garden with bricked paths, low box hedging and a circular paved area surrounding a fountain with a lead figure of Neptune; a steady stream of water ran from his upstanding penis into the bowl below.

It was very pleasant to walk in the garden under the brilliant blue sky, a little surprising to do so unclothed but that seemed to be the way of the people. The people were so friendly, so clearly delighted with her presence, so happy to talk and explain about the garden but quick to check her with some suggestion for a different walk should she try and find her way across to Nat and unwilling to offer any explanation of quite why she was there or even when.

Around the whole garden was a sort of ditch or moat; perhaps the very depression she had stepped down and up from the day before -- or was it centuries hence?

The afternoon seemed a more indolent time; there was less activity, perhaps because of the heat of high summer; there was more sitting on the turved benches or resting in the shade of trees or the house. Musical instruments were brought: recorders, flutes, viols, psalteries and rebecs. There was even a Hurdy Gurdy. Sasha had heard of that:

'Thrown like a star in my vast sleep

I open my eyes to take a peep

To find that I was by the sea

Gazing with tranquillity.

'Twas then when the Hurdy Gurdy Man

Came singing songs of love.'

Sasha was offered instrument after instrument by the musicians but she, at first, declined. It was not that Sasha was unmusical—she played the guitar and sang quite well—but the music of the house was different to what she knew and she had not played the strange instruments before; instruments similar but different to what she was used to; older instruments made well before her time. There were, though, willing and ready teachers; and many an afternoon she sat in a window seat with a Citole practising and playing; sometimes alone, sometimes accompanied and her proficiency grew.

Not only did the household turn to music but to other games. The obsession with the sexual a permanent undercurrent: public copulation acceptable, an invitation to fellatio seemingly commonplace, finding two fine gentlemen walking and conversing with a lady whilst impressively erect; not an unusual occurrence.

Sasha had always been fond of dancing; and music in the house led to dancing and she soon found herself learning both the dances for couples and complex figured dances from, she had to accept, the mediaeval world she found herself in: Gavotte, Almain, La Volta, Galliard, and Pavan. But there were others she practised that she doubted were known at all in the wider mediaeval world; dances permitted by the lack of clothing, dances where hands were placed elsewhere than on shoulders, backs and waists; elaborate dances involving the couples moving whilst intimately attached, dances where the men and women moved from partner to partner and penis was briefly inserted into vagina before the rhythm of the dance moved the people on; dances where the only contact between the sexes was the holding of sexual organs. Dances like La Quequette and La Branlette. Sasha knew she would never forget the sight of the great hall full of naked people dancing to the naked musicians; so much lovely music, so many happy people shining with their exertion and so many erections sported by handsome men, so much musical intercourse.

Of course Nat was also there, dancing too, but somehow, however much she hoped, she did not seem to be paired with him and even with the formal dances where partners were frequently exchanged, somehow it was never him who pushed his penis into her; never did it transpire that it was his turn to dance with her. It was not that the other men were un-comely, that she did not enjoy the sex with them—or even, to her surprise, the women on occasion—it was, after all, easier to enjoy than become cross, sulky and morose and she was a young women to whom sexual desire and fantasy alone in her own bed, in her world, had been anything but a stranger: but she wanted Nat, wanted him, wanted his lovely curving penis inside her.

The pace of the sexuality in the household was certainly a surprise, if not a wonder, to Sasha. It was if there was an urgency, a need to copulate as much as they could, as if they only had so much time and needed to make the best they could of time. It was not that she counted but she was sure the men and probably the woman, came, that is orgasmed, many times in a day; not something she thought normal but perhaps it was practice; in the same way that regular running trained the muscles to let you run further and faster, in the way practice made you a better juggler so, perhaps, regular use of the penis, permitted more frequent and potent erections or regular exercising of the female parts ensured a ready wetness about them. Certainly there was never a suggestion of saving themselves for the evening or later about the men. If Sasha was to take the initiative by grasping a penis, bending to suck or presenting herself in a way suggestive that she desired intercourse she did not think that refusal was likely or perhaps even acceptable in the Great House.

Not that she was allowed, it seemed, to present herself to the man she most wanted, not even to hold Nat's penis in her hand and stroke it so it covered her hand with its warm semen—indeed she barely had the opportunity to exchange two words with him at one moment and even then, likely as not, some pretty girl would be in possession of his penis, whether in her hand or more.

His penis was so clearly not for her. Sasha might have wondered if his feelings for her had disappeared with the competing attraction of the other women, girls so obviously available and keen to please, were it not for his eyes so obviously seeking her out and the occasional word.

They were words she treasured.

In the garden the people played other games as well, games with cards and dice: Shovelboard, Tables (or, as Sasha thought of it, Backgammon), Chesse-play, Merrils, draughts and what came to be Sasha's favourites Fox and Geese or Fox and Hounds. The former where one player is the fox and tries to capture, or eat, the geese; the latter, reversing the roles, has one player as the fox who tries to evade the hounds. Sometimes they played this rather more for real as a chasing or hide and seek game around the grounds with the hounds not so much eating the fox as fucking her or the fox fucking all the geese in turn. Laughter and squeals as the girl or girls were caught.

The men, and sometimes the women, enjoyed the physical sports: running, boxing, fencing and wrestling. The wrestling was not like Sasha had seen before; the object being to throw the other player rather than wrestle on the floor seeking to immobilise the opponent; a wary circling and then grappling and pushing, each seeking to throw down the other or cast him onto the ground. The ladies seemed to particularly enjoy watching the sport; perhaps it was the sight of fine young men and their bodies engaged in physical exertion, the sweat shining, showing their musculature or perhaps it was the unexpected erections as they wrestled that caught their eyes.

To Sasha the days seemed nothing more than a dreamlike pointlessness of indulgence and hedonism. The feeling was always dreamlike, as if she was almost, but not quite, there; as if she and Nat were being kept from a full consciousness; as if they were being prevented, or rather not permitted to fully understand what was happening to them.

It was all strange, all wonderful, all so very different. Sasha was not sure why she was there, if she was there at all, or quite where she was. It was real and unreal and she was unsure in her acceptance of it but there was little else she could do. There she was.

The days wore on, days of high summer, days of licentiousness, one seeming to drift into another. Sasha lost count of time. She had not kept a tally of the days, had not scratched 'five bar gates' on a wall as if in prison; and if she was in a prison then it was a strange one; she could perhaps see herself as a much used or misused prisoner but she could not say she had not enjoyed the sex, not found herself un-responding to the play, not been a somewhat willing participant in the promiscuity.

How could she not when two fine young men would sit beside her on a turf bench of an afternoon, engage her in conversation, play music with her before their rising erections revealed another interest in her and how could she resist the touch of many hands, stroking, teasing and exciting her. How pleasant to feel the simultaneous light touch of lips upon both her nipples, to relax in the hot sunshine as her nipples were suckled to hard little peas and the dampness crept out between her legs to moisten the tickling grasses of the turf bench below. To open her legs a little and feel the hot rays of the sun catch her 'there' and know it was an invitation for hands to rest on her inner thighs and fingers to walk upwards, one hand to each soft inner thigh, creeping closer and closer to her sex—ready, wet and waiting. Her hands, in turn, reaching to grasp and feel the strength of their penises, to slide her fingers, formed into two circles, up and down simulating the motion of intercourse. And how might they take her?

She remembered once being served by two of the young men whilst she leant over a low wall, her forearms resting on the warm brickwork of the coping, as the young men took it in turns to enter her from the rear, somewhat in the style of the hounds. It was, no doubt, a pleasing exchange for the young men, a companionable activity, and one which prolonged the intercourse to the pleasure of Sasha; a good feeling for her to feel the steady and enthusiastic stimulation whilst enjoying the feel of the hot sun on her shoulders; lovely to feel what she had only before thought about in intimate moments alone in her bed, thoughts about penetration, the actual feel of a cock lodged within her, filling and sliding, and what the slap of swinging balls against her thighs would be like. Thoughts that had made her wet fingers move faster, thoughts that had bunched her fingers to push inside herself, thoughts that had aided her fingers in stroking the softness of her inner thighs, thoughts that had made her cry out in a personal but lonely orgasm, time and time again in her own bed.

Across the garden, the other side from her, had been Nat in the very self same act—well not quite the same as it was he who was doing the penetrating rather than being the penetrate. Across a similar wall two girls were leaning and it was Nat who was behind them, moving from one to the other—not that Sasha could see the actual connection as it was hidden by the wall but what he was doing was obvious; their eyes met and they smiled at each other, a warm intimate smile as their eyes lingered and their orgasms came: orgasms that were both simultaneous and mutual. Mutual because they came more from looking at each other with desire and hope than the physical stimulation of the bodies they were actual joined to and copulating with.

But even when spent it seemed they were not permitted to go to each other; Nat was coaxed away whilst Sasha's partners completed what they had begun with Sasha still lent against her wall watching Nat being led away by the women. She hardly noticed first the one and then the other of her companions releasing himself within her as her eyes followed Nat disappearing from the garden and away from her.

The household did not hold back on any of the senses; sexual activity was not its only delight and feasting and drinking came high in its pleasures—intermingled and cumulating in an orgy of copulation, of course. Sasha was swept along—not that she minded a good dinner or a few drinks though this went far beyond what she would have desired. And entertainment featured highly, entertainment made by the people, entertainment in music, song, dance and play-acts.

All this culminated in the day of the masque.

It was to be a grand feast, a masque even, or so the women said to Sasha, with excitement, and the preparations took up several days. Days when the weather seemed to take a hotter, more sultry turn as if the endless blue skies were drawing to a close, as if the rain was about, at last, to come and break the spell of endless summer but there was not a cloud in the sky to even hint that there could be such a thing as the patter of raindrops upon the parched ground and the scent of wetted dust rising into the hot air.