Birth: A Novella Read online

  ECLIPSIS

  BIRTH

  Book Four of Lady Amalie’s memoirs

  by Amalie, Lady Aranyi

  edited and with an introduction by Ann Herendeen

  Copyright © 2011 by Ann Herendeen

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author or publisher.

  Cover image by Danielle Jacobs with T.T. Thomas

  Smashwords Edition: October 2011

  Table of Contents

  Also by Ann Herendeen

  About the Author/Editor

  Dedication

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  Preview: CAPTIVITY

  ALSO BY ANN HERENDEEN

  Harper Paperbacks (Kindle and Nook versions also available):

  Phyllida and the Brotherhood of Philander (2008)

  Pride/Prejudice (2010)

  Lambda Literary Award finalist, Bisexual Fiction category

  E-Books

  ECLIPSIS: Lady Amalie’s Memoirs

  Book One: Recognition

  Book Two: Choices

  Book Three: Wedding

  Book Four: Birth (October 2011)

  Books Five and Six: Captivity (November and December 2011)

  Short Story

  A Charming Ménage

  In Gay City Volume 4: “At Second Glance”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR/EDITOR

  Ann Herendeen is the author of two novels (Harper Paperback): Phyllida and the Brotherhood of Philander (2008); and Pride/Prejudice (2010), a Lambda Literary Award finalist for Bisexual Fiction; and a short story, “A Charming Ménage,” published in Gay City vol. 4: “At Second Glance.” She lives in Brooklyn. www.annherendeen.com

  To T.T. Thomas, with thanks for putting up with me.

  CHAPTER 1: A Peace Offering

  If only we could have stayed home. It’s the city that did it, I tell myself, a ridiculous lie from a city girl. But things went wrong from the start in Eclipsia City—and earlier, as soon as we decided to go. The communion that had seemed stronger than the two of us combined weakened with each new conflict, until it unraveled like a cut rope, shaking us off into miserable freedom, even Stefan. Now, five months into our marriage, and back at Aranyi, Dominic and I must work to reestablish the connection. What had once flourished on its own, without any attention from us, now requires care. And so I have given Dominic a gift, arranged an opportunity for him, to show him that I have kept faith as his wife, that I know his mind.

  ***

  Dominic and Lord Roger Zichmni ride through the deep snow. The horses walk carefully, putting each hoof down only after testing the frozen crust. The men ride single-file, Dominic’s hunter leading the way over familiar turf. They reach the hay barn in the time it would take to ride leisurely to the edge of the forest and back in summer.

  “Perhaps we should rest the horses,” Dominic says.

  “Perhaps,” Roger says, guessing Dominic’s thoughts. “I could use a rest myself.” He dismounts and pushes through the drifts into the deserted barn, Dominic following.

  ***

  We had traveled from Eclipsia City to Aranyi through snow almost as deep, Dominic and I, a short month ago. Entering my ninth month of pregnancy, and unskilled at riding, I had been crazy to attempt so arduous a journey at this time of year. Dominic would have dissuaded me, but I had known—we had both known—that if our marriage was to be saved it would be at Aranyi. Our child should be born at home, I insisted, not in a suite of rooms in ‘Graven Fortress.

  ***

  The barn is enormous, packed with fragrant hay that seems to retain some of the warmth of summer and harvest time. The men lead the horses in, humans and animals eager to be out of the cold, and shut the doors against the wind. Every square inch of space is filled with bales, only a few narrow walkways for loading and unloading threading in convoluted paths.

  “Here,” Dominic says, finding a shorter stack. “We can sit here.” He sits first, leaning back on his elbows, long legs extended, crossed at the ankles. His eyes shine silver, third eyelids lowered, offering friendly communion with a gifted comrade, his mouth curving in the hint of a smile, all innocence, letting Roger come to him. There’s nowhere else to sit, unless Roger wants to stand, like a supplicant in front of the enthroned god.

  Roger sits at the other end of the bale, broad shoulders hunched, his tall frame folded over on itself, back turned. His red hair glimmers with streaks of white. So young to be going gray, Dominic thinks, but the Zichmnis tend to age early and live forever. The hay prickles through the leather riding breeches, or perhaps it’s the excitement, the beginning of an erection that can’t be stopped or prevented when the other is this close, body heat and pulsing heartbeats shimmering on waves of hay-scent between them…

  ***

  Our first month of marriage had been bliss. Just the three of us, Dominic and Stefan and me, a perfect trio, in an enchanted world, no demands of autumn, of city and work, only pleasure stretching before us each long day and night. Making love with Dominic in the Margrave’s bedroom, or alone in my room, sharing in communion the love between my husband and his companion, sleeping when I was sated. In the mornings Dominic and Stefan would practice with swords and daggers, or go riding. “Hunting,” they called it, although mostly what they seemed to catch was each other. I would go over the books with Berend the Master Steward; it was the beginning of harvest season, his busiest time, and he was grateful for the help.

  After dinner and the siesta I would read the history books from Dominic’s library, or walk to the dairy house for some cheese. Many days the three of us would sit around talking. “We shall all die of sloth before winter,” Dominic would say. But he wouldn’t move, just refill his glass from the decanter and ask me my opinion of the book I was halfway through. I would tell him and Stefan some Terran history by way of comparison, both of them surprised that a woman knew of wars and battles, curious despite their contempt for all things Terran.

  “How come the Terrans didn’t all kill each other off, with no Armaments Convention like ours?” Stefan, at sixteen, could ask without embarrassment where Dominic, commanding officer and past forty, dare not lose face by confessing ignorance. “What does that mean, ‘civil war?’ ” Eclipsis has no concept of nation-states, or that “regular” wars are fought across borders. Then with a covert glance and smile towards Dominic, “Was there really an army made up all of lovers?” I would try to answer from memory, stumped so often without a way to look things up, while Dominic scoffed at the wretched Terran education system in which nothing was memorized, vowing to get me books if there was no other way to jog my neurons.

  It was heaven. Sheer, absolute paradise. If I could come back as a young woman, have it all to do over again, I could not improve on my month of honeymoon with Dominic and his companion.

  ***

  Dominic reaches for Roger’s hand, but Roger pulls away. Like a virgin schoolboy, he thinks, annoyed with himself, reddening with embarrassment, laughing to hide it.

  “I wanted to thank you,” Dominic says, “for supporting my marriage in ‘Graven Assembly.”

  After what he has seen of us in Eclipsia City, Roger is unsure if Dominic is serious or being his usual ironic self. Roger laughs again, striving for the light reply that will answer either way. “How could I not? I’m in favor of marriage—these days.” His own b
etrothal was announced in the last assembly session before the holiday recess.

  There is a pause while Roger lets his hand be captured. Dominic’s long fingers stroke the palm; communion builds between them, expanding like the heated air around the closely packed hay, like their own bodies in the tight breeches.

  Years have passed since Roger was a resentful first-year cadet, grandson to the Viceroy, born to rule, following his planned future under duress. Dominic had offered genuine sympathy for a situation he had endured in his own youth, but the promising friendship was poisoned by Dominic’s misdirected lust, first at Roger, then as abuse of Tariq Sureddin, who became Roger’s companion. With Dominic’s adoption of Tariq as his son and heir, and with Roger’s maturity, the enmity has slowly healed, until friendship has again become possible.

  Dominic must adjust to the new relationship, the equality between them—more, that Roger, now the acting Viceroy, is his overlord in fact, not merely in name. For Roger, it is another rite of passage, that this man who had wanted him with a fierce, predatory passion, then had befriended him, is now offering a combination of casual sex and comradeship, natural in the adult male world of vir society.

  I sit in the easy chair in my room, the book Dominic has given me, his own peace offering, lying untouched on the table. My hand rests on my distended belly, sliding over the wool of my dress that prickles like the hay. Hoping for Dominic’s success, a sign of our reconciliation.

  “She’s very gifted, your lady,” Roger says.

  Does Roger know it, I wonder, that I’m there in mind, with my husband?

  Yes, Amalie, Dominic says. He knows. Dominic holds me in the communion as I start to withdraw. It’s always better when my lady wife shares it with me. His arm is around Roger’s shoulders, his mouth swoops for the kiss, and I gasp with the unexpected pleasure as Roger, also taken off guard, responds to the man who has fascinated and frightened him for so long.

  Three hearts beat in rapid, thumping arousal. Tariq! Roger thinks of his own lover in one panicked moment, before Dominic’s hand is unbuttoning Roger’s breeches, his tongue is in Roger’s mouth, and thinking is no longer possible.

  This is no betrayal, Dominic assures him in their communion. This is only Midwinter delayed. To himself he thinks, Years delayed, sighing as he releases Roger’s swollen cock from its imprisonment.

  ***

  We were well into harvest season when Dominic woke one morning, cursing in his thoughts. Dawn, with a steady rain and Dominic’s angry words drumming into my brain. “I’m going to miss the opening of ‘Graven Assembly, that’s what,” he said, when I asked him what was the matter. “And the Military Academy. Darkness and damnation! They’ve probably given up on me, appointed someone else.”

  He was up and bathed, shaved and dressed, while I tried to figure out what day it was. Oh, gods. What month? Eclipsis’s calendar isn’t Terra’s. Ordinarily I didn’t think about it, just followed everybody else. There are no weekends, the weeks are eight days long, summer and winter are more similar in climate than on Terra—I gave up. Dominic came back into the bedroom. “Shit, Amalie!” He had never spoken so harshly. “Still in bed? We must leave in half an hour.”

  “Half an hour?” I said. “It’ll take me that long in the bath. And what about packing, breakfast?”

  “We can eat on the trail. The servants will pack our things, send what we need after us.” He pulled my hand. “Now get up.”

  I slapped his arm with my right hand. No effect. “Let go! I’m not going anywhere in half an hour.”

  “Twenty minutes by now!” Dominic said in his officer’s roar of command.

  “In twenty minutes,” I said, “if you shut up, I should be back asleep.” I turned on my side, away from his angry face, and pulled the furs up over my shoulder. “I’ll follow you to Eclipsia City if you like,” I mumbled into the pillow. “Tomorrow, after a decent bath and a sit-down breakfast.”

  ***

  Roger is torn between lingering guilt and immediate pleasure. Dominic’s lovemaking is both forceful and sensuous; he overcomes reluctance by pushing on then drawing back, so that at the moment of surrender it is the other who pleads, “Don’t stop.” Roger knows only that he enjoys being the one pursued for a change, instead of the hunter, that he likes being fondled to hardness, handled and mastered by this man who has had hundreds of lovers, who knows what pleases another man—and what secretly excites and scares him. Roger can’t resist the allure of passivity, the luxury of lying back and letting this virile, dangerous man do what he likes, of not knowing exactly what will happen. Afterward will be time enough to think. Now it is important only not to miss this great chance.

  Dominic’s mouth encircles the tip of Roger’s shaft; he draws it deep into his throat, his fingertips tickling the base and the balls. Roger groans in ecstasy. His hips pump reflexively as he struggles to hold back, not to spill too soon. Dominic is steps ahead, his own breeches open, his erection leaping in his hand.

  I feel the contractions in my vagina, the physical effects of mental union that Dominic and I have always shared. Strong, almost painful spasms, as if I am experiencing Roger’s reluctant orgasm, not my husband’s as yet unrealized expectations. My love, I say, go slow.

  I hear Dominic’s laugh, low and purring, in my mind. This is a man I am with, Amalie. I can’t go as slow as with a woman. He swallows Roger’s seed, thinking, This is my overlord, to whom I have sworn allegiance. A shift in their relationship, a new hierarchy, one to command, the other to submit.

  And new for me, too. Dominic knows I don’t enjoy this part, but he’s keeping me in the communion. Always better, he said, when I share it with him. Is it? Does he want me as a support in his surrender, or is it another unwelcome development in our marriage, that he would take pleasure in my discomfort? I swallow convulsively, fighting nausea, hand on my belly, feeling movement inside, the child’s strong kicks.

  ***

  Dominic had not gone in twenty minutes, or that day. He had raged at me, shouting that I knew damn well when I married him I could not travel without him.

  “What about the guards?” I asked, forced to sit up, fully awake, sleep banished by the mental shaking.

  “They’re for an emergency,” Dominic said, “not because a man’s wife is too lazy to—”

  “Lazy? Lazy? Now the truth comes out. You wanted a laborer, not a wife. You only married me for my brawn.” I stood up, naked from last night’s lovemaking—how long ago that seemed—made a fist and flexed my biceps. “Where should I start? In the fields or the pasture? You can save the use of two horses. I can pull the hay wain, or turn the thresher—”

  Dominic had laughed then, finally, at my slight muscles barely visible under fat and skin, the protruding pregnancy and swelling breasts, and the irate words. And he apologized, although I wouldn’t listen at first. His anxiety was still in the front of his mind, that he had forgotten, truly forgotten, real life, lolling around with his bride and his companion as if there were nobody else, nothing to do in the world. Only when he cried, said he was going as mad as his father, did I take pity on him, kissing his tears away, guiding his hand between my legs. Oh, it felt good, his love instead of his anger. He was with me much longer than the twenty minutes he had decreed. Half the morning went in apology.

  But we started out at dawn next day, and I was ready. It never occurred to either of us to follow the tradition, the wife staying behind to manage her lord’s realm while the husband conducts men’s business in the city.

  Magali the housekeeper bade me a cold goodbye, too proud to show her hurt feelings, that I would leave Aranyi for the whole winter and not tell her until the last minute. “You’ll be back,” she said, hating to part on bad terms, softening a little as I tried to embrace her. “For the birth.” Prescient, as always.

  Katrina packed a few items for us both, just what would fit in our saddlebags. She had cried on hearing we were to spend all winter away from home. “I’m pregnant, I think,” she sai
d, looking to me for confirmation.

  “If you are, I can’t tell.”

  “I’m three days late.”

  Oh gods, spare me young married couples. Three days. It would take a sibyl to know, assuming she cared about such trifling stuff, or a witch. Katrina cheered up when she saw her first paved road leading into Eclipsia City. “Marcin won’t believe me when I tell him,” she said.

  ***

  There is a jar of harness grease, for horse tackle and leather, left casually in a corner, although no one needs such a thing in a barn. Dominic has taken it from the smithy, put it here days ago, waiting his chance. He is a planner and a schemer, my Dominic, for all his recklessness. He has the jar open, is slathering it on his own bulging cock at the same time that his lips pull the last drops of seed from Roger’s.

  Dominic straightens from his crouch, leans over Roger’s recumbent body and turns him on his stomach, tenderly, like putting an infant to bed. Roger sighs with repletion after his pleasuring from Dominic’s mouth. Dominic straddles him, kneeling in the hay. The penetration is slow, easy, slick with the grease. Barebacking, they call it, the Terran meaning forgotten in a world free of serious sexual diseases, where condoms are an insult between lovers. With harness grease. Most appropriate.

  It hurts me, though, a pain deep inside. Never have I felt this with Stefan, and yet Dominic is being even gentler now. Perhaps I’m still sensing Roger’s guilt, or perhaps I’ve never known a young man’s first time. Anyway, I haven’t enjoyed physical sex for weeks. Once I reached my eighth month it was difficult for me with Dominic, or would have been, I assume. We had given up trying by then. Our fights in Eclipsia City were always real, unlike our shouting matches at Aranyi, which were more often the prelude to love.