The Kingdom of Little Wounds by Susann Cokal Page A

— though there are a few who hint that these deaths were no surprise to him.
    “You have nothing?” he barks.
    “I have planted seeds,” I say humbly. “But it is difficult in my new position. The needlewomen are no longer my friends, and the nursemaids haven’t accepted me yet.”
    “Excuses.”
    “Yes, my lord, but —”
    “But nothing. Come back here. I will show you what use a woman is if she can’t accomplish a subtle task.”
    Dutifully I reach out my hand, thinking I am sure of what he wants now.
    But I am wrong. He puts his fingers inside my cap and wraps them in my braids; he pulls my head into his lap and orders me to untie his breeches again. He wants my mouth.
    He tells me what to do; it is humiliating. Which may be why he finds it exciting — my mouth on him, my tongue swirling around each jeweled boss as he tells me how to do it. I think even a prostitute would be reluctant. And he is harsh: not content with my hesitant movements, he begins to thrust himself at me, toward my throat, where he might choke me.
    I am hot with the shame of corruption. I sweat, and I taste salt on him as well. Breath comes difficult.
    Jacob Lille, Jacob Lille. Who smelled so sweetly of piney amber. For whom my heart still pines, the only man I ever kissed because I chose to, not because it was forced on me.
    It is as if Lord Nicolas reads my thoughts and revels in them. He holds my hair tighter, thrusts himself deeper, faster. And then he grunts. He pulls himself out and spends over my fingers, ropes of seed that could sew up my future if he decided to loop them between my legs and give me a baby. At last I understand that he’s avoiding any chance I would manage this; once again, he gives me his handkerchief to wipe with, then throws it behind him to be burned. He won’t risk a bastard, not by me.
    My whole body trembles; all of me would weep if I wasn’t sure it would get me further punishment.
    “Good,” he says, adjusting himself so all fits as it should. “Now you know. Next time you will have information for me.” To prove he hasn’t forgotten my real purpose. And that he’ll use me this way again if I need bringing into line.
    My knees crack as I struggle to my feet. “I promise.”
    “Good girl,” he says, “or at least, going to be good.”

M ARRIAGE
    C HRISTIAN V has established himself as a dutiful husband, yes. He has always treated conversation with his wife as the grave and vital matter that it is — but relations with Isabel cannot always be foremost in Christian’s mind (no more than the idea of relations with Nicolas, which creep into his thoughts unbidden).
    Affairs of state are particularly thick just now: peace so recently achieved but an alliance broken with Sophia’s death, negotiations for a new whaling treaty with Scotland (now dominated by Calvinists, of whom Isabel disapproves), and a poisoner still to identify . . . if there even was a poisoner; Sir Georg has been vague on the matter, saying that the usual forms of questioning have yielded dubious results.
    Privately, mulling it over in bed and at prayer and most of all upon his close-stool — where he relieves those crippling gastric pains while attended by the State Secretary, Sir Georg — Christian has come to the conviction that his daughter died of mere
Morbus.
In the wake of her death, all the children are suffering even more intensely than before. But he will not set the prisoners free, not yet, for it is good for the people to see the gestures of justice. All of his advisers agree.
    And so on to think of other things kingly. More pleasant. The new observatorium, for example, which will offer an exciting prospect on the moon and stars . . . Abed, Christian lies in the darkness and imagines the sky. He imagines it so much and so hard that he almost drives away the unbidden picture of Nicolas’s face, his fingers, the pomander and the handkerchief and the feather and the ring . . . Nicolas, with white teeth shining —