Swan's Neck Ch. 07: Before the Storm

The Coronation changed our lives, utterly.

My Lord Harold, now King Harold II, was a man hemmed in on two sides. To become King, he had made sure that he had the support of the Mercians, Edwin and Morcar, by marrying their sister Edith, putting aside my Lady Ealdgyth, who had been his hand-fast wife for twenty years. We had hoped, in despite of that, to have a presence at Court, but it was not to be. Harold also needed the support of the Church, and Archbishop Stigand, already in trouble with Rome, could not countenance open adultery, even had the Mercian wife been complaisant; and it was clear that she was not prepared to play that game.

So we found ourselves exiled to one of Ealdgyth's manors. She preferred one of her ancestral ones to the grander ones of the Godwinsons. Godwin, the eldest son, stayed with his father, but Edmund and Magnus went off to Dublin to see whether their contacts there might lead to active support for their father. Gunnhild, stayed at Wilton in the Convent where she was being educated. But dear, darling Gytha came with us to the Manor, and she was our joy.

Gunnhild was a serious girl, and the Convent suited her. She had it in her to be an Abbess, one of the few vocations where a woman could rule her own little kingdom. The ruling spirit of the Godwins would, I was sure, find its way to flourish there. But sweet, blonde, beautiful Gytha was truly her mother's daughter.

She had not only her mother's beauty, in nascent form, but also her generous character. She loved collecting meadow flowers in the summer, and strewing them on the floor, or offering them in small, exquisite bunches to her mother and me.

'I like having two mothers,' she lisped at us soon after we arrived in our new home, 'it makes up for daddy being so far away. Is Edith also my mother?'

Ealdgyth grimaced, leaving me to answer.

'No, darling, she is the Queen, and as your daddy is the King, he has to have a queen, you know like King Edward had your aunt Emma?'

'I see, yes, a King needs a Queen. One day I shall be a queen.' she grandly announced, placing a wreath of flowers on her head. Ealdgyth and I curtseyed suitably low, and she graciously waved us to our feet. She would, I told my love later, make a grand queen; and so she did when the time came.

She was a light in the dark times.

Westminster was the hub of power and information, and we had none of the first and precious little of the latter. Rumours reached us, but we had no means of verifying, or falsifying them for that matter. Tostig, Harold's spoilt younger brother who had been thrown out of Mercia to make way for Edwin, was said to be in Scandinavia, trying to raise Cnut's grandson, Harald Hardrada, to claim the English throne. William, it was said, was waiting only for a fair wind to invade the south. The Fyrd, the armed force that the earls owed the King, was summoned, and a watch kept both North and South. If ever we wondered at the reasons for own exile, the rumours reminded us.

The priest tells us that the Kingdom of Heaven is a state of eternal felicity, a restored Eden. For me that is that magical spring following our exile, as love flourished with the apple blossom.

The Latins seem obsessed with sex, in a bad way. Do not do this, that, and especially the other. They are even, I am told, insisting that priests should be celibate, which they never have been in England. They ignore their own Scripture, where even that odd man Paul says it is permitted to marry if you can't keep it to yourself. I never met a man who could, so it seems a very silly idea to suppose every priest can; it will lead to trouble, mark my words.

But for we Danes, love is love. Away from Westminster, on the Manor, lords of all we surveyed, Ealdgyth and I lived as wife and wife, with no gloomy clergyman casting sideways glances or condemning us to Hell. With no King or male Lord to worry about us, we lived openly as what we had been for years. Ealdgyth managed the Estate with the stewards, and they had never known such skill and care. I managed the household affairs, with the preciseness I brought to everything. Our little feasts were appreciated by the villagers, and we were lords of plenty, sharing our bounty with them. Oh it was love, and under the apple blossom, Eden restored; two Eves and no Adam. Bliss.

And of an evening, as the weather grew warmer and the evenings longer, I would come to her in our bedchamber. She liked me draped in a fine linen shift, and I loved to see her eyes as she lay there, naked on our couch, her small but full breasts displayed for me. My eyes would, inevitably, go to her silken mound, with its soft blonde hair, in which I liked to rub my face.

She would pull me to her, our breasts pushing together; that moment of pleasure as my pebble-hard nipples rubbed against her dark pink, swollen ones; and I would melt into her. The smell of her skin after the toil of the day. The softness of her. Our kisses, as we came together, the lingering caresses before we meshed, her lips working hard on mine before her tongue entered my mouth, where she was received with the usual rapturous pleasure. Then, when I was hers, utterly hers, she would turn us over, with her on top. And she would have her way with me.

Oh, how many ways she had with me! And what joy, what rapture. To have those memories, and her, still, well I will not say, and cannot, that it wipes away what came next, but we had our Eden, and echoes of it still; so not all was lost in the wreck of England.

At times she would mount my face, pushing her wet cunt into it. I loved to be enclosed in that space. My tongue would play with her lips, and she would rise enough to let me nibble along them, her hairs tickling my nose when I got close to her bud. I loved that. Then, when my tongue was like a tube for her, she would sink herself onto it, moving until my nose could butt her bud, and then I would fuck her. My busy tongue would dart to and fro, tasting her sweet, yet salty juices, which would moisten my cheeks. My hands would grip her arse, and sometimes, when the passion took me, I would signal with my hands that I wanted to please her there too.

I loved, as I still do, the sight of that pale, full arse. Parted, as she straddled me, it was, and is, so inviting. I love, and loved, to lean forward slightly and lick around her arsehole, where her responses are always to gasp and groan. My fingers, lubricated from her sopping wet cunt, rim her dark hole, until the gasps she emits tell me that the time has come to go further.

That magical late spring night we did it first time lingers in my idle thoughts, always making me damp between my thighs.

She had pulled herself forward, the better to push against my nose, but inspired by lust, I rose a little and gripped her cheeks, causing her to fall forward, which allowed me to wriggle out and begin to lick her arsehole. My fingers went, naturally, into her cunt, her velvet walls closing around my fingers, as I began to rub, rather than to nose, her bud. But then, by instinct, I lubricated her arsehole.

I had occasionally touched it as we made love, and had noted, as an attentive lover should, that she would gasp louder; so I thought I would see whether I could, by that route, give her more pleasure.

My sticky fingers rimmed her, making her easier of access in that dry place, but it also caused her to moan loudly. So, emboldened, I did it. I pushed my finger in, easing it, gingerly moving it round and round, adding some spit to aid penetration. She groaned, loudly, and her cunt flowed more strongly. I felt her ring resist, and then, as my tongue applied more saliva from above, it yielded. I pushed through.

'It burns,' was all she said, and even that was lost in the moaning.

In for a penny, I applied my tongue, slowly removing my finger so I could fuck her arse with it. My thumb was still rubbing her bud. Suddenly she jerked back, pushing so hard my face almost disappeared between her cheeks. Gripping her cheeks. I fucked her with my tongue, going as deep as I could, her musky smell and taste overwhelming me. And when she came, oh my, she came. Like the waves hitting the shore in an autumnal storm. Bucking back into my face, her arsehole clenching on my tongue, she exploded, gushing forth her love juices, which, after the tide ebbed, I cleaned most carefully.

Ealdgyth rolled to her side, crying.

'My love, my love,' I whispered, as I rolled there too, fearing I had upset her.

'Oh Danegyth, my little wonderful one, here, now!'

And I threw myself into her arms, knowing her tears were one of joy.

Ah that night!

It is good to recall we had such moments, for the tears that were to come were the bad ones, such ones that try a woman's soul. But we are strong, we Danish women, and we bear, as I have myself, the pains of childbirth, and we carry on. But it is good to recollect that magic spring of 1066, and our other Eden, as Eve delved and Eve span, who then needed a gentleman?

I turn now, as the candle flickers, and I see my love, my Ealdgyth, her hair white, strewn on the pillow like a sleepy snow storm, and I smile. That I have her still, and she has me, after what that autumn brought, and that terrible black winter, is a miracle. But oh, that apple blossom spring and fruitful summer before the darkness came and England went down to ruin.