The Demon of Darkling Reach (The Black Prince Book 1) (28 page)

Next to her, Rowena ignored her existence. She’d apologized for hitting Isla, but grudgingly and probably only then because
The Chivalrous Heart
told her she had to. In between glances at Rudolph, Rowena sat with her hands folded in her lap and attempted to look prim. She caught Isla’s eye, once, and Isla saw that Rowena’s anger had cooled off into embarrassment. Blushing, she turned away. Even Rowena had to admit that her behavior had been childish at best. And Rowena, having reached all of sixteen winters, took herself extremely seriously. She always had, since she was little more than a baby. She was a lady, she reminded Isla constantly, destined for great things.

Isla genuinely hoped that her sister would be happy with Rudolph. He’d give her a good life, if she let him. And, Cariad’s suspicions aside, Isla
did
believe that her sister loved the minor baron’s son. Rowena was just confused, and overwhelmed; it was one thing to wish for something, in the abstract, and another to be confronted with it as a real possibility. As an
inevitability
, rather than some vague dream. Isla didn’t know what Cariad’s past had been—supposed she never would know now, she thought with a sigh—but she should understand that a betrothal was a difficult time in any girl’s life no matter how well she knew the groom. Or liked him. Isla had seen enough of her acquaintances go through the same.

Most had married total strangers, or the next best thing to. A few, like Rowena, had been given permission from their liege lords to marry for love. Or at least their liege lord had decided that love was no impediment to his political ambitions. One girl that Rowena had grown up with had, indeed, married the liege lord; Earl Strathearn wasn’t an old man by any means, and though he’d held his title for some decades now he’d come to it at an early age. Isla guessed him to have forty-something winters. Nevertheless, he had two grown children from his first marriage and his bride, the lovely Arabella, was less than half his age. But he’d met her while visiting her father and they had, bizarrely enough, fallen in love. She’d married him happily, not caring in the least that he was, in fact, not merely old enough to be her father but older than her actual father.

Having secured both the continuation of his line and an enormous land inheritance by marrying his first wife, Earl Strathearn was now free to marry for love. Arabella was a lucky girl. Her stepchildren, one of whom was her elder by several years, accepted her and Isla had heard recently that Arabella was pregnant with her second child. Her first, a strapping little thing named Todd, wasn’t two winters and already had the ladies of the province wrapped around his chubby little finger. He had the blond hair and blue eyes so common in the wild Highlands and his mother, just now reaching her twenty-first winter, adored him. As she continued to adore her husband.

Isla bit back a sigh. Father Justin loved the sound of his own voice, and a service that under normal circumstances should have taken less than an hour had already taken over two—and with Father Justin showing no signs of slowing. Eventually, she consoled herself, he’d have to leave the altar to make water—he’d certainly drunk enough wine, in the course of his speech-making. Of course, knowing him, he’d probably come back and start talking again! But at least she could slip out in the meantime.

Father Justin, his catamite sitting proudly in the front row, continued on his theme of lust and how engaging in the sex act for any reason other than procreation damned one straight to Hell. Which was rich, coming from him. She wondered, did he and his
page
read each other poetry? Recite psalms, perhaps, in the privacy of their bedroom?

She thought, again, about
sex magic
. The phrase must have run through her head a thousand times since dawn. She’d been raised to believe that lust was the gravest sin there was—a statement she’d never believed. How could wanting something, or wanting
someone
, be wrong? If the Gods existed, and had made mankind as the church claimed, then surely they’d made mankind’s emotions as well?

Hart was fond of pointing out that the church’s obsession with sex was almost as painful as sex itself could be with a frigid woman. Which was, according to Isla’s calculation, framing the problem in the mildest possible terms. The church’s obsession wasn’t unpleasant, it was pathological. Fully half of church doctrine, if not more, revolved around the conviction that sex was to be avoided like the plague—except for the bare minimum necessary to keep the race in existence. Even then, sex was framed not as a beautiful union of souls but as a regrettable necessity. Those who could abstain, such as those unburdened by the need for an heir, should. Younger brothers, men with no land or wealth to speak of, should all strive for celibacy. Even married people should strive for celibacy, especially once the required heir and a spare had been produced. Then there was no more need for sex!

For those incapable of performing such a heroic feat of self-sacrifice as giving up sex altogether, assistance was provided in the form of making sex as unpleasant and as downright difficult to actually
have
as possible. The sex act itself wasn’t what damned one but, rather, deriving any enjoyment from it.
Some
procreative efforts were, after all, necessary if there were to be more kings and soldiers and serfs. And clergy.

Some brilliant mind had designed a special nightshirt for the man to wear, which reached the floor and which sleeves ended well below the fingertips. There was a high collar, as well, which could be cinched quite tightly shut. To allow performance of the deed, there was a more or less suitably placed hole. Thus, the man could impregnate his wife without actually having to touch her—and a suitably awful time was assured for all.

Isla’s mother, Amanda, had insisted on such garments being worn by both her and the earl. Considering which fact, it was nothing short of a miracle that any child had been born—let alone two! Isla knew this, because Amanda used to lecture her daughters regularly on the evils of pleasure and many other topics. Producing both nightshirts for the girls one afternoon, when they were still quite young, she’d demonstrated their use with a cucumber. Isla had never entirely recovered from the shock.

“Not only is the pleasure of the sexual act sinful,” Father Justin thundered, “but also the sensation of desire! Even when unconsummated, the love of a man for a woman is a sin against the Gods.” Well he
would
think that, Isla concluded. He certainly didn’t like women. “Therefore, it follows that, as the great theologian writes,
omnis ardentior amator propriae uxoris adulter est!
For a man to love his wife ardently is a sin far worse than that of adultery!

“The great Saint Gerund de Paul, whose psalm we sang earlier, tolerated marriage only because it provided the world with more virgins! Virgins, as we know, are brides of the Mediator! Hence it follows”—and here he studied the younger men in the room with a gimlet eye—“that he who seduces a virgin is not merely committing fornication but is in fact committing
adultery
with her against the Mediator! Is cuckolding the son of the Gods!”

Which, Isla thought, was a bit extreme—despite it being common church dogma and an idea she’d heard discussed a thousand times before. Virginity was a better state than marriage, marriage was for the weak, and if one had to, for whatever reason, submit to that vile and bestial institution then a sexless marriage was best. The next best thing to remaining a virgin forever was denying oneself to one’s husband as much as possible. As Amanda had done. Which, given the environment in which she’d been raised, was really no surprise. Isla imagined that her mother must have regarded the sex act with something very much akin to horror. Certainly, having been raised with such crushing guilt and fear couldn’t have been good for the libido.

“I never want to have sex,” Rowena whispered in her ear. “It hurts.”

Isla, too, had heard the horror stories about painful initiations into the supposed
mysteries of love
. But she wondered, a bit jadedly, if the misery might have something to do with a lack of expertise on the part of the man. He was generally the more active partner, especially given that the church allowed for sex in only one position. Having the woman on top was a
perversion of the natural order
, as was entering the woman from behind or clasping her while upright. Or kissing her while performing the act, or in any way acknowledging her presence in the room.

Isla decided not to explain to her younger sister that sex was a fairly unavoidable part of married life—and that sooner or later, she’d have to let Rudolph take his breeches off while in the bedchamber. That they’d
share
a bedchamber, and indeed a bed. None of these things seemed to have occurred to Rowena, whose favorite books had taught her only that love consisted of sighs and longing glances.

Even so, as both Rudolph and Rowena were fairly religious, any opportunities for a liaison would be rare. The church prohibited sex on Dies Scrol, because it was the first day of the week and the Sabbath, Diu Iath, the fourth day of the week, because it was in the middle, and Diu Triach, because sundown on Diu Triach began the weekend. Which meant, if one calculated it out, that fully five months out of each year were ideally to be kept celibate. Furthermore, sex was forbidden on the high holidays, the weeks before the high holidays, and for three days before one attended any service. Which meant that the truly penitent couple could have sex on the first or second day of the week only.

“In some penitentials,” Father Justin continued, “and with good cause, fornication is declared a worse sin than murder! The great Theodore Bede recommends a penance of one year’s flagellation and fasting, but
increases
this mild chastisement according to the frequency of the act and the discretion of the parties.”

Mild chastisement?

“But nor is it the intention alone that makes the crime! Some men—and women, too—are guilty of”—he held his breath—“nocturnal pollutions. However involuntary they might be, they are a sin! They are how the Dark One enters the body!” Which must, Isla mused, be why he needed to sleep with a catamite. “The offender must rise at once and, immediately upon learning of his transgression, sing seven penitential psalms followed by an additional thirty before he prepares to leave his bedchamber for the day. And if the sin occurs while he’s fallen asleep in church”—during such a riveting sermon as this—“he must sing the whole Psalter.”

Isla, at that point, did the unthinkable: she burst out laughing.

W
hen Father Justin cornered Isla after the service finally ended, their interchange was everything she’d been dreading since his eyes first fastened on her. She’d known, immediately after her outburst, that she was in for a verbal thrashing. Even under the kinder tutelage of their regular parish priest, such a blatant lack of respect was nigh on unforgivable.

So Isla waited through the rest of the service, contrite but at the same time fully aware that there was a certain need to observe the formalities. She certainly wished she hadn’t laughed, however funny she found Father Justin’s comment. But she’d frown and nod in all the right places and plead forgiveness and do her penance. Father Justin, she was sure, was as bored by the whole exercise as she.

Which meant that, regrettably for her, she’d taken the situation no more seriously than if Father Justin had been her regular priest. She hadn’t, indeed, sensed so much as the possibility of danger. If she had, if she’d perhaps thought back to the vehemence of Father Justin’s outburst against King Piers—and his brother—at the dinner table a few nights previous, she might have acted differently.

And her future might have, therefore, turned out very differently.

But instead she’d walked in blind, thinking, as any girl in her position probably would have, that she had nothing to fear from a few minutes’ interchange with a choleric priest and in her own home at that.

She smiled briefly at Rowena, who looked worried. She, like most of the women Isla knew, was in awe of the priest and, indeed, all male authority figures. That someone was male or female, however, mattered to Isla not at all.
She
was a great deal brighter than most of the men she knew, and put no special stock in the idea that a man was her natural superior simply by virtue of being a man. If that were the case, her father would have been running the estate instead.

“I’ll meet you upstairs, in the gallery,” she told her sister, “and you can tell me all about your most recent tryst with Rudolph.”

“Don’t say
tryst
in a chapel!” Rowena hissed.

Isla winked and, turning on her heel, walked down the aisle to join Father Justin in the chapel’s vestibule. A tiny space, it was unadorned and austere. It smelled vaguely of mold, from the lichen that had formed in thin lines between the cracks of the stone. Somewhere overhead, something dripped.

Father Justin, who had been staring out the main door into the hall, turned.

His expression was surprisingly pleasant. “Hello, child. I thought that, given…your little outburst, it would be appropriate for us to have a talk.”