Part Seven - The Young Prince
"Artur, now I am your queen, will I be different?" Miryamme sat in front of a small table, combing her golden mane of hair, her face reflected in a polished bronze mirror; combing her hair, combing her hair. Her doll sat nearby, its straw hair teased and pulled by Miryamme's nervous fingers, her restless hands.
"What do you mean, Miryamme?" Artur asked. His queen's hands were constantly moving, and she only settled when she slept, curled against his body. His raw strength calmed Miryamme's anxious mind, stopped her worry, stilled her restlessness.
"Will you still anoint my skin with your seed, and make my breasts so soft, so soft? Will the skin of my breasts stay soft?"
Artur looked at his new bride, puzzled at her question.
"Of course, if that is what you want, you can take my spill upon your breasts and your belly, and rub it all in."
"Will I stay your pure queen, ever so pure, never to be sullied or broken?" Miryamme asked her question as if it was the most natural thing in the world for a queen to remain a virgin queen, and never to fuck.
Artur looked upon Miryamme for a very long while, nothing showing on his face, nothing revealed in his eyes. "Miryamme," he said, slowly, "you do know that for babes to be made, you cannot remain a virgin, untouched between your legs?"
"But Artur," she replied, as she picked up her doll and began to caress its straw hair, "you already have two children. You don't need any more." Miryamme went on, and her voice was quite calm as she spoke, "Your sister gave you her womb and you filled it. You don't need mine, it's all mine."
She looked at him with her pretty smile. "But you can look between my legs, if you like it. Just as you looked up at your sister climbing down from the rock on your coronation day."
As she spoke, Miryamme slowly pulled back the hem of her skirt. She turned to face him, her thighs spreading apart, and bared the base of her belly. Miryamme's fingers were already restless, teasing her lips apart.
"See, I'm not like Gayne, I'm not thick and dark like her." She played with herself. "I'm all pretty and light, not dark like your sister."
Despite himself, and the fixing firm realisation that Miryamme was quietly mad and he had driven her so, Artur's eyes remained on the core of her, seeing her fluttering fingers, and seeing the swell of her sex. It wasn't fecund and red rich like his sister's, but covered by fine blonde hair, a fair triangle at the base of her belly, which she revealed to him, her skirts pulled up to her waist.
"Look at me, Artur. Am I not your queen?"
Artur made an instant vow to her, and a vow to himself. He would love his queen for what she was, and keep the core of her innocence pure. Miryamme did not make the things she'd seen, she was blameless before his own corruption, and she could not fight his sister.
"Yes, Miryamme, you are my queen, my virginal queen. Show me. I'll look." Artur leaned back in his own chair, and spread his legs apart to ease his thickening prick.
"Will you always want me, Artur, your queen you cannot have?" Miryamme glanced up at him with the little smile on her face, as she spread apart her lips and played. As she did so she looked across at her doll and whispered, "Sshhh, you have no eyes, you cannot see."
"Yes, I'll always want you, Miryamme, the queen I never can have." Artur spread apart the cloth from around his own thighs, took his cock in his hand, and watched his queen as she played.
Miryamme whimpered as the pleasure climbed within her, and as her power over him grew. "You're mine now, you're always mine. She can't have you, not any more, not any more." Her fingers dipped and flicked all over her sex. "Just like you can't have me." Miryamme arched back against the chair, the cloth of her dress all bunched around her waist. She spread her lips wide, and fingered deep into herself. She came, her heel drumming on the floor, and as she came, Miryamme cried out like a distant animal in the night, "Ohhh."
Artur stood, and dropped all the clothes from his body. He walked to his queen, his rod high and hard; and Miryamme looked up at him from behind her drowsy eyes. She reached for Artur's long cock, her fingers still twitching from her pleasure, and took his shaft between the palms of her hands.
With her hands around his cock like a prayer, Miryamme took the head of him into her mouth and began to suck, her eyes rolling back in a dreaming trance, her lips and tongue slow and wet.
Artur reached between Miryamme's legs with one hand, and cupped her hot sex in the press of his palm. He held the heat of her body in the palm of his hand, and she calmed herself onto his hold. The endless twitch of her fingers ended and stopped, and Miryamme began a long, slow stroke, matching her hands to her slowing breath and her gentle suck on his cock.
As she calmed herself, Miryamme roused him with her slow stroke and the hot, wet heat of her mouth. Miryamme slowed edged Artur to his peak. He stood over her, his hands slowly stroking her hair, her long golden hair. She sensed as she always did how close he was, and lifted her head. She smiled up at Artur with her sweetest smile, and her lips were berry red. Miryamme caught the catch in his breath and she changed her stroke just a little, just a tiny little bit.
"Do you want me, Artur, your queen, your beautiful queen?" Miryamme was peaceful now, calm and content, her man in her hands, stroking him, stroking him. "Do you want me, or do you want to fuck your sister?" She said it plain, and knew him so well.
And as he always did when Miryamme invoked his sister, Artur surged a long stream of white cream all upon her breasts, pumping and pumping, threading long streams of his come on her breasts. Miryamme urged up his desperate seed and rubbed it all in, all creamy and hot; she rubbed it in to the flesh of her breasts so she smelt of him.
"All mine, Artur. I call out her name and you answer, but your sacrament is all for me, all mine."
Miryamme smiled her little smile, and took Artur by the hand to their bed, where she lay on her side and pressed herself back against his chest. She took his hands in hers and pressed them against her breasts.
"Am I your queen, Artur, am I your queen?"
" Yes, you're my queen, Miryamme, my lovely queen."
"Hold me then, Artur, that I peacefully sleep. No dreams, I don't want dreams."
Artur held her, and Miryamme slept without dreams.
* * * *
I was there.
When Lancilet the king's cousin became an invisible prince, and Artur the king turned a blind eye, I was there.
And so the Court was made, Miryamme the young queen safe in her madness and her purity, for who would dare risk the wrath of the king by speaking of these things? Her madness became plain, but she was a gentle girl; and those who knew her heart warmed to it, and loved her too. Folk would sing with her, and Miryamme would dance and make chains of flowers in the meadows down by the river.
I put about that Miryamme was slow to breed child because of a wrongness in her womb; and only Artur and I, Emmelyne and the maid Elayne knew the truth of it, that the wrongness was in Miryamme's head, not between her legs. And the skin of her body was the softest soft, and she plaited the hair on her little doll's head, and remained all virgin pure.
Artur would ride off on occasion to the vale south of Camlann, where the woods would one day be there, and not be there the next; and his sister the Red Morgayne be there too, then not.
And so the court was made, and for a ten of years the land was peaceful, and Artur ruled fair and well. A kingdom came, and it was his. South in Tyntangel, children grew, and the first child on in years was Lancilet, the son of Artur's sister, Claryyne.
The young cousin came up to Camlann and Artur's court in his nineteenth year, blessed by his mother and Ygraine his grandmother. He was a tall and slender boy, dressed all in black and hiding behind his hair like a rock hides behind a water falling, his hair all black and silken. He was slim and graceful, and I watched the village girls watch him, and I saw him watch the stable boys too.
Miryamme saw him, and because Lancilet was the king's cousin, his nephew true, but she called him 'cousin', the queen made him welcome. And soonest, and it was all very quick, Miryamme brushed the hair of her doll, then brushed the hair of the boy.
"Look, Lancilet, I've woven some of your hair with mine, on my doll."
I, of course, know something of rope and tie and weave, and Morgayne's hair around my neck and around my prick told me the bind the queen made was true. 'Twas made by a woman after all, even if a woman delicate mad and that's no lie, but a bind from a woman is a permanent thing.
I know it, and I still can't get the knots undone, no matter how hard I try. I suppose I could try harder, but why? One of them would still come along in the night, smile at me and say, "Ohh Maerlyn, heart... Ahh, Maerlyn, my love...."
They tease, the witches, the bitches, yet I love them still; and I think they might love me, in their way. Or perhaps they just pat me on the head. "There, there, Maerlyn... soon, Maerlyn." One for my left ear, one for my right, and me stuck in the middle with both. The wind has dropped, is that my heart I hear, beating soft below the sound of my blood?
I spied also the following eyes the boy Lancilet gave the king, and I saw the soft steadiness there. I knew about lust, so thought it best to keep that little knowledge to myself.
I really must make a chest with secret drawers, to keep my secrets in. My head gets so crowded and I fear I'll open my mouth one day and they'll all fall out. I knotted knots into cloth to remember them all, because I'd run out of fingers to count.
"Is that a new fashion, Maer, your cloak with all its knotted beads?"
The king looked at me, and I looked at my boots. He shook his head and moved on, knowing his secrets were safe. He didn't know what they were, and I'd forgotten, so between us his secrets kept easy.
When I said I kept that knowledge to myself, I meant Emmelyne too.
