Mistress to the Crown by Isolde Martyn

sensuously.
    And now Prince Paris, blessed by moonless sky ,
    Like a night thief hides among the shadows
    To see this beauteous lady—
    ‘Now!’ Talwood shoved me forth and there were whoops and cheers as I curtsied .
    Hill, the tabor player, began a sensual beat and the beguiling notes of the small pipes softly slid into the rhythm.
    Snared in the circle of light, I lifted my invisible hand mirror at arm’s length and danced with my reflection. Hidden behind my mask, Elizabeth Lambard was unshackled, free to become Helen of Troy, a princess who knew she could make men kill to possess her. As I stilled, sensing Paris’ presence, like a doe hearing her hunter, it was no longer Hastings’ face in my make-believe mirror but a lover I’d always dreamed of.
    When the music ended and the applause took over, my practical self dashed out from her temporary prison beneath my heart, trying to seize back control and dampen down her twin’s sinful exuberance. I held her back a few moments longer, acknowledging the huzzahs like I imagined a real princess might with a gracious lowering of the head. Oh, this was heady, wonderful. I should not sleep tonight.
    Paris grew impatient. He strode over and embraced me from behind, his prick hard beneath his kilt. Bastard! While the narrator tediously droned out the story for anyone thick as a London piecrust, this cursed Trojan was rubbing his groin against me. Sloppy kisses gushed up my arm from wrist to neck. Worse, he turned me in his embrace and went for my mouth. I resisted; his breath stank of wine but the fellow kept firm hold of my thighs.
    ‘Don’t overdo the virtue,’ he muttered against my lips. ‘Be craaaazed with love.’ He held me tight against his belly. When he adventured his hand down my throat to my breast, I was doing the stiffening.
    ‘Lovely,’ he murmured, leering down the gap. ‘Fancy a bit of ravishing afterwards?’
    ‘Squeeze either an’ you’ll be a coun’er tenor by tonight,’ I hissed back sweetly.
    The verses ended. Paris neatly scooped me up with an arm beneath my knees. I pretended to look up at him lovingly. It was a shame he could not have kept my draperies secure. I think the whistles were for a side view of my thigh.
    There was no time to chide. While the Greek princes were whining that Helen had been snatched by a Trojan and resolving to go to war to fetch her home, Talwood hauled me through the side door and we raced through passageways until we reached the mock barbican of Troy, where it stood outside the far end of the great hall. An icing of players already clung to its battlements.
    Talwood pointed to the ladder. ‘Up! Be quick!’
    Before I could get both feet on the plank that served as rampart, the ardent assistants whipped the ladder away. Queen Hecuba’s brawny arm saved me.
    ‘A squeeze, ain’t it?’ He evidently liked garlic in his stew.
    ‘God’s Blood,’ I muttered in an alley voice. ‘I feel like one of them jars too broad for a pantry shelf.’
    ‘An’ I’m a barrel. Move, you lardcakes! ‘Elen should be in the middle.’
    The ‘lardcakes’ obeyed. Cassandra, a youth in a long black wig, deftly swung around Hecuba, and we performed an intricate, perilous reversal so that I ended up midway next to Prince Hector’s wife and son.
    ‘Have to get it right, dearie,’ Hecuba whispered. ‘You bein’ the last to leave.’ He straightened his false bosom and then nudged me: ‘Did Paris feel you up?’
    ‘Aye, ‘e did.’
    The others laughed. ‘Oooh, lucky you.’
    ‘Tell me,’ I whispered. ‘‘Ow’s the player who was to be ‘elen? Is ‘is ankle mending?’
    ‘He ain’t done nothing to his ankle, luv. His lordship didn’t want ‘im to do it no more.’
    Aha, I was beginning to suspect as much.
    ‘So wot’s your name, precious?’ asked Hector’s wife, but before I could answer, the edifice shook as the attendants grabbed hold.
    ‘‘Ere we go, ladies,’ chortled Hecuba, as the doors opened.