The Kingdom of Little Wounds by Susann Cokal Read Free Book Online Page B

in all things. He is also limp within all that stiff cloth — like a bird fallen from its nest into a patch of brambles, lost and in need of solace; or a dead herring on a bed of dried eel weed, waiting for salt.
    I curl my fingers against it, then around.
    Thus I commit a sin. A worse sin, the priests would say, than the ordinary conversation between man and woman, because the goal of this act is pleasure only, not procreation, and it wastes the seed. But in this age of Italian Fire, the nobility is known for substituting new actions for the eternal one. And I know the apron class prefers this, as it does not lead to a baby that will mean a life in the streets and, most likely, a speedy death.
    I can’t help it, I am disgusted. Where once I thrilled to touch linens that would touch royal flesh, or reached out surreptitiously to brush a passing noble, now I want to scrub myself rather than continue what I’m doing. A gesture that echoes my night with Jacob — and that is why it upsets me. It is a betrayal of love. It is a duty of court. It is the act of a whore.
    I try to imagine myself caught up in a fairy spell, with this another trial before a grand reward. I describe Lord Nicolas’s little bird to myself:
yeasty, sticky, soft,
like nothing else on this night of spun-sugar treats. I try to make it harmless.
    As if responding to my unspoken words, the little bird flutters. It grows firmer.
    And then I stop. I wrench my wrist from his clothes and pull vehemently away, though this might mean a blow across the face for me. I am much more afraid of what I’ve already felt.
    I felt the softness of skin, yes. The sponginess of flesh not yet fully erect. And some lumps wiggling beneath that skin, like eggs, or insects burrowed deep.
    My palms scrub at my skirt, trying to wipe all trace of him onto my clothes.
    Lord Nicolas grabs both of my hands.
    “Don’t be a goose,” he says. “There’s nothing for you to fear
there.
” When I shudder, he unlaces his codpiece, pushes himself into the light, and makes me watch while he counts off: “Emerald,” flicking one of those lumps. “Turquoise. Ruby.” Flick, flick. “Pearl, and another turquoise, and another . . .” Under his own fingers, naming jewels, he grows harder than my touch managed to make him.
    Am I to believe that Lord Nicolas uses his manhood as a purse? The nobility are always doing mysterious things, but this defies any kind of sense. “Sir — why?”
    He takes his hands away, gazes down as if he can see jewels on the outside, as if they adorn a gorgeous golden scepter. He thinks himself very fine, indeed. “A courtier should carry wealth on his person as a sign of his position. And in case called upon to, say, ransom a captured king or save a fair lady from ravishment.”
    He sounds so pleased that I think he might be telling the truth, that this is his logic and these are the contents of his manhood. Why not believe?
    I put my fingers there again. I am a practical girl, after all, and a curious one; my father is a scholar in his way. I feel what I think must be the scars of stitches, tiny darts in skin that had to stretch to accommodate these foreign lumps. I bend close and think I see them, these scars.
    It’s dizzying to contemplate. A king’s ransom in jewels, hidden in the same organ with which he piddles out an evening’s worth of water and wine. And I am holding all that wealth in my hand.
    Nicolas nudges himself into my fist. I have a task to complete, and I begin again.
    As I give Lord Nicolas this dutiful caress, I think of my impossible task, to coax a transformation out of this reluctant little bird stuffed with precious eggs, to give the best pleasure if I am to save myself. Even if these lumps were the buboes of disease, I would have to do what I am doing now. And I’d have to do it better — Lord Nicolas grunts to signal that I’ve caused him pain.
    Pleasure,
I think, trying to inspire myself (and him) by mulling the