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In the last three months, she had overheard her father’s discontent about the lopsided way England was being run. After drafting a fifteen-member Privy Council to rule the land, the King had begun to favor the input of his royal members instead of those of his countryside Barons, which his father King John had.
Her father, one of the seven leading Barons of England, had just forced King Henry the Third to surrender more power to their council. And for good reason. These were men who did not live in lofty castles or wear rich embroidered robes. They were men who hunted, fished, and weathered the cold winters with the people they stood for. The King, even as pious as he was known to be, did not.
“Miss Crompton,” a voice said from behind her. “‘It is not good for you to be seeing that… debauchery.” Mrs. Croft, her nurse from birth and now her maid, said in decided disgust.
She was right, though. Men were stumbling around with tankards in their hands. Some were sitting and drinking, and others were cursing loudly, and some had drunken women on their laps, skirts hiked up and bodices ripped, with their breasts spilling out. It was a short step before the men would be using the grass and dirt as a replacement for a bed.
A withered hand reached out and tugged the drapes, cutting off Magdalene’s view. She turned. “I’m not ignorant of what happens between men and women, Mrs. Croft.”
“But you are not experienced in it, either,” the woman’s lips pursed. Clad in a dark gown, white bib, and black veil, the tiny woman could have easily been mistaken for a nun. Mrs. Croft and Lady Keswick, Magdalene’s mother, prayed three times a day and fasted as often, pressing the importance of piety, humility, and self-sacrifice over pride and self-indulgence.
Retreating to her inner rooms from the window, Magdalene fingered the ends of the long blonde braid draped over her shoulder. The sounds were getting progressively dim as the thick stone walls of their citadel muffled the sounds, but she was still tempted to look back out.
“You need to preserve your innocence for your husband, Miss Magdalene,” the matron said. “I was a young woman once and I know the temptations and even when I was married for six-and-fifty years, never had I allowed myself to slip into a carnal mind.”
“I don’t have a carnal mind, Mrs. Croft,” Magdalene said, resisting the urge to roll her eyes.
“Looking on those men you might,” the woman argued. “Sin is not stationary, my child, it moves, seeking who to sink its claws in and devour.”
The words sinking claws and devouring created a picture of a massive beast with red scales and fangs, snarling
and ready to swallow her up.
That must be what she thinks the Devil is, Magdalene reasoned.
“It’s time for bed and your nightly prayers, Miss Magdalene,” Mrs. Croft said, while reaching for her nightgown.
Magdalene undressed to her underclothes, a thin cotton shift that was clinging to her slender body. She then donned the thicker nightgown over it and added thick hose to stop the cold stone floor from freezing her tender feet. It was still spring but the chill always seemed to creep in at the dead of night.
She then sank to the side of her bed, resting her knees on the padded pillow there. While the old woman sat on the edge of the bed Mrs. Croft rested her hand on Magdalene’s head. “Repeat after me.”
The Lord's prayer, memorized from childhood days, was repeated without a hitch before saying a prayer to forgive her of her sins and a plea for God’s mercies. Only then did Mrs. Croft lift her hand from her head and say, “Goodnight, child.”
Though she was twenty years old, Mrs. Croft still called her child. It was starting to annoy her. Would the lady still do so, even when Magdalene was married off? That dour thought never left her mind while she waited patiently for Mrs. Croft to go to bed, one room down the hall. After waiting for a spate of time, in which she knew the woman had gone to sleep, she slithered out of bed and went back to the window.
The scene below had gotten worse and it was debauchery, indeed. Men had women bookended, some were on their backs, some were on hands and knees, and others were between the men’s legs. Knowing in theory what men and women did was one thing, but seeing it with her own eyes was another. Her eyes latched on to a man who was yanking a woman off his— Magdalene immediately scampered back to her bed with her heart pounding in her ears. Never had she seen a man’s phallus before but the moment before had ripped that veil off her mind.
She slid under her sheet with the burn of embarrassment on her cheeks and a strange, unfamiliar heat in her stomach. Closing her eyes, she tried to banish the provocative images away, but stubbornly they stayed painted behind her eyelids.
Is that how it's done…do women pleasure men with their mouths? More importantly… would my husband require that of me?
Her husband. Even thinking it felt terrifying and intriguing. Her father had not forced her to marry early as other men had forced their daughters to do. Moreover, she did not know of any prospective suitor at all. Perhaps her father had turned them away as she had a sneaking suspicion that she was going to marry one of her father’s top soldiers or even another Baron. But again, would that man, whoever he was, ask her to please him that way?
Her worry took her into hours of uneasy sleep and she woke up still perturbed. Awake, but not moving from her place on the bed, she let her eyes trace the curve of the canopy bed over her and the parted drapes tied off at the four posts.
As the daughter of a wealthy baron she was afforded any luxury she wanted, but Magdalene had to be pressed to ask for anything. She could have asked for jewels from the East, exotic foods and clothes made of silk, but Magdalene found that none of those pleased her. She was uncommonly content with soft wool clothes and simple jewelry.
She rubbed her eyes as the weak morning sun came flittering in through the window drapes. Sitting, she eyed a robe hanging on a hook just a few feet away and left the bed to don it before going back to the same window from the night before and looking out.
The courtyard was chaos, defined with discarded tankards littered everywhere, broken and upturned chairs, torchwood scattered around, and the dark embers of the bonfire’s wood was now a blackened mountain in the middle of the bare ground. A few men, clutching tankards, were asleep in their dark clothes and others in their leather armor. The women were gone, though, and she watched as a few other men, cleanly dressed, came around to rouse the drunken laggards.
She turned away, wondering if her father was awake. Most likely. Father does not celebrate the way his men do. He would have had a private celebration with his men. I wonder if Uncle John came to celebrate the victory with him.
Uncle John, two years younger than her father, was easygoing and was more of an academic than a warrior. With a smile, she remembered the times she would visit him in Winchester and he would give her his precious books and scrolls to read instead of taking her out into the countryside to play.
She loved Uncle John, seeing him as a contrast to her controlling and sometimes intimidating father. Going to a bowl resting on her table, she poured out washing water from a pewter jug, washed her face and rinsed her mouth, before using a comb to set her hair in order. Deftly braiding the light golden strands into a thick braid, she donned a deep green cotton gown and her kidskin shoes. She wanted to speak to her father.
Her home was a sprawling stone building with six rooms for her family of three and another seven for the in-house servants they had. The upper rooms, family rooms, were large and had the best furniture, woven rush mats, silken tapestries on the walls, and thick blankets on the beds. On the ground floor were the dining room, ballroom, and her father’s meeting room, and all three of them were lavishly furnished. The servants' rooms, however, were bare.
