A Woman of Seville by Sallie Muirden

and scoops up my skirt to denounce me.
    ‘Look at that pitiful, undeveloped calf muscle,’ she almost spits.
    Just as expected, exposed as a fraud. Well I’ve certainly got bigger calf muscles than I used to have. I didn’t think they were really that pathetic.
    ‘You’re an imposter,’ she proclaims, and then I wonder if jealousy isn’t at the core of all relationships between women.
    I run back to my ladder-man sobbing and tell him I’m ready to go home. But I don’t want a protracted climb over the roofs of Seville to Triana. I tell my ladder-man I’ll just slip downstairs and find my own way out a door onto the street. I’ll walk home alone if he doesn’t mind; I know my way out of this Casa.
    But my ladder-man has other plans for me tonight. He may be mute but he’s very directive in his own way. Besides, we’re not allowed to exit through the lower quarters of the palace. We have to go back the way we’ve come in, up and over. I follow him as he climbs from the gallery onto the mansion roof, and together we make our way slowly across the stables and farm buildings to where the Duque de Alcalá’s ample orchard begins. Our ladders help us cross from an acorn tree to an almond tree and then we swinginto the embrace of a plum tree that has a wooden tree-house nesting among its foliage. An unlocked wooden door hangs on a broken hinge. Once I’m inside the house the ladder-man shifts the door back into its frame.
    ‘You’ve stayed here before?’ I ask.
    I imagine him nodding.
    ‘Insects,’ I say, looking at the rug on the floor warily.
    He throws his handsome doublet (also belonging to Harmen Weddesteeg, I think) across the rug.
    ‘I’m hot,’ I say, while I’m really thinking, ‘Take my dress off.’
    Instinctively, he does. Unwinds my laces. Hook after hook after hook. The swamp of my dress stretches out across the dank rug.
    I lie down on my back and he pulls his shirt off and lies down on top of me and puts his hands on my breasts and kisses me, his lips soft but compressed. I kiss him back and try to stick my tongue in his mouth but he keeps his lips firmly closed. Then he moves his mouth away from mine and kisses my neck and pulls my chemise down so he can kiss my breasts. I can feel the heat coming out of his body; he smells of yeast and sugar egg. God loves me, I think, as I open my legs and press my crotch hard up against his groin, wanting to feel his arousal and relieved when I do. He isn’t missing anything in that regard.
    When I thrust against him, taking such liberties, he presses himself harder too, and then reaches down and pulls my underclothing and stockings away from my body so that I’m completely naked down there.
    He doesn’t touch me between the legs. Not yet. With one hand he caresses my breasts. The other he runs up and down my legs, then along the inside of my thighs. He’s done this to women before, I can tell. He’s not as chaste as I imagined. It hardly matters. Maybe it’s better he knows a thing or two about women’s bodies. He strokes my belly, reaching down to the place where my pubic hair encroaches. His fingers are in my pubic hair now, delving lower and lower.
    He doesn’t touch my crotch, not yet. Maybe he doesn’t intend to either. I’m half expecting he’s going to get up and dash outside for the security of his ladder, and then maybe even jerk himself off (privately and pantingly) against one of my lady-ladder’s smooth stakes.
    But he loosens his breeches (those on loan from Harmen Weddesteeg have never been put to better use) and in the dark I can see his erection pointing up at me. He’s a man for sure. It always comes as a surprise to see such bold expressiveness, the pointing penis. This one is vulnerable, not predatory. I can tell the difference. For once I can. He’s trembling and his sex is giving off a newborn-baby, wheatensmell; I know I will have no trouble putting this man’s penis in my mouth. Not now though. Later. Maybe even