World Without End Page 0,181

a little faster, his mouth open, his lips moist behind his beard.

She dropped her dress to the floor and walked to the bed.

"Kneel on the mattress," Ralph said. "No, facing away from me."

She did as he said.

"Better view from this side," he said, and Alan laughed loudly. Gwenda wondered if Alan was going to stay to watch, but then Ralph said: "Leave us alone." A moment later the door slammed.

Ralph knelt on the bed behind Gwenda. She closed her eyes and prayed for forgiveness. She felt his thick fingers exploring her. She heard him spit, then he rubbed a wet hand on her. A moment later he entered her. She groaned with shame.

Ralph misinterpreted the sound and said: "You like that, eh?"

She wondered how long this would take. He began to move rhythmically. To ease the discomfort she moved with him, and he laughed triumphantly, thinking he had excited her lust. Her greatest rear was that this would sour her entire experience of lovemaking. In future, when she lay with Wulfric, would she think of this moment?

And then, to her horror, a warm flush of pleasure began to spread through her loins. She felt her face redden in shame. Despite her profound repugnance, her body betrayed her, and moisture flooded inside her, easing the friction of his thrusts. He sensed the change and moved faster. Disgusted with herself, she ceased to match his rhythm; but he grabbed her hips, pushing and pulling alternately, and she was helpless to resist. She remembered with dismay that her body had undermined her in the same way with Alwyn in the forest. Then as now, she had wanted her body to be a wooden statue, numb and impassive; both times, it had responded against her will.

She had killed Alwyn with his own knife.

She could not do the same to Ralph, even if she had wanted to, because he was behind her. She could not see him, and she had little control over her body. She was in his hands. She was glad when she sensed that he was approaching the climax. Soon it would be over. She felt an answering pressure in her own loins. She tried to make her body limp and her mind blank: it would be too humiliating if she, too, reached a climax. She felt Ralph ejaculate inside her, and she shuddered, not with pleasure but with loathing.

He sighed with satisfaction, withdrew from her and lay flat on the bed.

She got up and quickly pulled on her dress.

"That was better than I expected," Ralph said, as if he were paying her some kind of polite compliment.

She went out and slammed the door behind her.

On the following Sunday, before church, Nathan Reeve came to Wulfric's house.

Gwenda and Wulfric were sitting in the kitchen. They had had breakfast and swept the room, and now Wulfric was sewing a pair of leather trousers while Gwenda wove a belt from cords. They sat close to the window, for better light - it was raining again.

Gwenda was pretending to live in the barn, so that Father Gaspard would not be offended, but she spent every night with Wulfric. He had not mentioned marriage, which disappointed her. However, they were living more or less as man and wife, in the way that people often did when they intended to marry as soon as they got around to the formalities. The nobility and the gentry were permitted no such laxity, but it was routinely overlooked among the peasantry.

As she had feared, she felt strange making love to him. The more she tried to put Ralph out of her mind, the more he intruded. Fortunately, Wulfric never noticed her mood. He made love to her with such enthusiasm and joy that it almost swamped her guilty conscience - but not quite.

And she had the consolation of knowing that he would inherit his family's lands after all. That made up for everything. She could not tell him this, of course, for then she would have needed to explain what had changed Ralph's mind. She had told him about her conversations with Philemon, Caris and Merthin, and had given him a partial version of her encounter with Ralph, saying only that he had promised to reconsider. So Wulfric was hopeful, rather than triumphant.

"Come to the manor house, right away, both of you," Nathan said, putting his wet head around the door.

Gwenda said: "What does the Lord Ralph want?"

"Will you refuse to go if the proposed topic