A fortnight later, Gregory found me gathering firewood near the pond...which I was doing very deliberately, in hopes he would show...but this time he brought Doric to swallow my erection and bring me to ejaculation as he whispered his own dick between my legs. When Reyndahl joined him, the next time, I understood they were taking turns. I did not care. On each occasion, the moments after I finished were as blissful as the first time. Knowing they saw me as little more than their toy made no difference. I found it far more fun to accept...almost like a ritual they were practicing, with me as both sacrifice and altar.
Which may have bordered on sacrilege.
All spring this continued. Then I became one of their group and was allowed to play with all of them at one time through summer into autumn. Even after the cold of winter arrived and both pond and stream froze and snow fell. We simply did not enter the water.
It did not matter; they kept me very warm.
My father did not return when he said he would. He was kept at court because the King decided to send a few of his knights out to search for Gabrielle. He explained why in his letter. He does this in honor of my service to him, so I must remain until word is returned.
My mother was not pleased, because some of our neighbors took this as a sign they could foment disruptions in the peace of our village, and I had no true power to stop them.
Which is odd, because one of the surprising side-effects of being with my six monks was that my focus became sharper and my control better. Especially in carpentry. Which everyone recognized and many soon decided they would be better off on my good side if they wanted a well-made cart, table or bed.
My strength also grew, as did my body, and through the summer Gregory saw to it I was taught how to swim. Albeit by Reyndahl, who was the strongest in the water. On the warmest days, all of them would join with me, in the pond, and toy with me and play with me and laugh at me until I was almost as capable as my teacher.
Never had I been so happy.
When I look back, now, the one aspect of this glorious time that still causes me wonder is how not once did any of them attempt to enter me as a man does with a woman. As I saw them do with each other. Nor did they even consider allowing me to learn their art of servicing another man with my mouth.
"Your lips are to be kissed, Léon," Gregory had murmured at the end of another playtime. "Nothing more. You are ours to protect, not abuse."
I found the comment odd so asked, "Protect? From what?"
"I cannot honestly say. I...we just feel the need. After all, you are still a virgin."
"Are you planning to sacrifice me?" I'd asked, only half-joking.
Loronce was next to him, so it was he who answered, "No. We like you as you are. There is something pure and innocent in you, and that should be preserved."
"You make me sound like a maiden."
Gregory shifted to behind me and circled his arms around my chest, saying, "If we showed you all of our tricks, then you would become one of us, and that would end our pleasure."
I leaned back against him as Loronce ran his fingers up and down my body, and I said, "But I feel, at times, the pleasure is all mine."
Then Reyndahl had swum up to hold my face in his hands, his ice-like eyes almost tender, and said, "It is not. Believe me."
Doric, Tellis and Stephane had agreed, then each had kissed me...and all of them were gone.
I did not question their way of suddenly appearing and vanishing. It had to be a conjurer's trick they enjoyed playing on me.
So I continued to grow strong, and found that I liked being clean to a much greater degree than the rest of the village. And despite my reputation for stupidity, I was seen more and more as someone who could become my father's replacement once he passed into the next world simply because I got things done, and done well.
He finally returned from court, in the midst of winter. Not the best time to travel, for his back was not as straight and his news was weighing heavily.
"Gabrielle and Catherine had one of their disagreements over a trivial matter," he said. "The matron overseeing the project had asked Catherine to pull out a section of Gabrielle's work and redo it, to show her how it should be done. An argument ensued and Gabrielle ran off, that night. Almost seven years have passed and no one has seen her."
"Seven years?!" burst from my mother.
My father nodded. "The matron said nothing to the Bishop. She claims there were so many ladies working on the tapestry, she did not notice her absence."
"But seven years without a word?" My mother was horrified. "And nothing about this from Catherine in her letters?"
"She told me she thought Gabrielle was in a different part of the keep and avoiding her. She became used to not seeing her. And to my mind, I think she preferred it, that way."
My mother sat quietly at our table, shaken. "If she has not returned to us, by now, we will never see her, again."
Now I have to admit that none of this surprised me. Even as a child I had watched my sisters bicker over...well, over everything. Clothing. Boys. Which cat was whose. And while Gabrielle was always one to call attention to herself and her abilities, which were not minimal, Catherine was simply better at everything than she. Mainly because she took whatever she did seriously, making it the best she possibly could, be it a dress or bread for the evening meal or flowers in her section of the garden. Gabrielle saw things like cooking and tending to the hens and sewing a new shift as jobs to be praised for doing, but that was all. Of course, she was quite good at whatever she put her mind to, but Catherine would always be better. If that makes sense.
I finally began to understand this difference between their outlooks, thanks to my monks. Their praise of my appearance and true enjoyment at how quickly I learned to swim let me grow to believe my abilities might be greater than I thought. That there could be aspects of myself that I might take pride in. I could see that my carpentry had become much better in the space of but a year because I now saw it as my own form of artwork, for want of a better word, worthy of greater care in the making. It may not make much sense, but that is how I felt.
At the same time, I saw how my father had a surprising amount of difficulty bringing a couple of the townsfolk back in line, so it wasn't just my inability to deal with them that was a problem. They complained mightily about my work and attitudes, with one of them actually claiming I did my job much better than was necessary and they were being charged for quality they did not want. But father could find no fault in what they brought him to show him and my mother backed me up. Their complaints were finally lowered to grumbling about playing favoritism for his idiot son, which we all ignored.
Then as the next winter approached, we heard from Ollyn that he had seen Gabrielle at court on the arm of a Duke. But when he had approached her, she had looked at him coldly and said, "I am Gabrielle Bayeux. Please do not speak to me." Then walked away.
Of course, father immediately went to court, himself, to verify it was her, but she refused to see him. The Duke was quite powerful, so the king refused to force the issue. On top of this, Gabrielle was rarely seen outside her chambers so father could not connect with her by happenstance. After five days of trying, he surrendered and returned home.
That is when my mother made him take her to the castle. She was cousin to one of the ladies in waiting and used that connection to force an interview with Gabrielle. I do not know what was said, but my parents returned home, quickly, and all my mother would tell me was, "That was not your sister. She had the general look of her, but none of the warmth or fire. Everything about her was cold. My daughter could never be so cold to her own mother."
I thought that would be the end of it, but not long after, Ollyn was asked to leave court by the next feast day.
At Gabrielle Bayeux's request.
I wasn't supposed to know this, because it was quite the shock. Also, there had been much discussion about father deteriorating, in health, and me taking on more of his duties. But if Ollyn returned home, as the elder son that would fall to him instead of me. Now people were concerned about my reaction.
Not to my face, of course.
In fact, I was not really supposed to know any of this. I only found out because no one knew that another effect of my trysts with Gregory was he had instilled in me a need to learn to read. He had assumed I knew how, thanks to who my father was, and after our second time together he had brought me a small book of tales, hand-written and bound in beautiful leather with a couple of rubies worked into the spine.
"It is the epic of Gilgamesh," he told me. "An ancient king who loved a man named Enqehduh, and who did not want to die."
"Will you read it to me?" I had asked.
"If you like, but the greater pleasure is from reading it, yourself, in the evenings when all is peaceful and quiet. Then the words gain meaning unto you, alone."
"I...I cannot read."
He was shocked. "With your father's importance in the village? And your brother and sisters...they can read and write in Latin, Norman and Saxon..."
It did not occur to me to wonder at how he knew this. He had already shown me in so many ways he knew more about my family and myself than I had ever thought possible.
All I could think was to ask, "Does that lessen me, in your eyes?"
Gregory had drawn me close, his eyes sharp against mine as he said, "No, of course not. But would you like to learn?"
I could only nod, I was so overwhelmed by the sense of peace and protection he had enveloped me in.
He had hidden the book in a purse near the pond, in the bowels of a tree, and said, "Then you will learn. Only a fool does not think reading is important."
Thus it had been, since, before any of the others arrived. He would read from my book and show me how to recognize words and letters and ways to pronounce them. In Latin, of course. When I mentioned it did not sound like Norman, he had merely said, "Learn to speak what you read. The letters are the same. When a book is written in your preferred tongue, you will be able to say it aloud and understand it."
Of course, this also led to learning about numbers, but I kept my new knowledge quiet. There were some in the village who felt too much intelligence coming to an idiot, like me, could be a sign of witchcraft. While I did not believe in that nonsense, enough did to make it a reason to be careful.
Meaning, when the letter came from Ollyn telling us he would soon be home, my father did not read it aloud. He just left it out because he did not think I would understand it and got into a deep discussion with my mother. I snuck the letter away and found it was written in Norman. By this time, however, I had learned how to pronounce the letters as arranged...not well but well-enough to work out their meaning.
However, just to be careful, I innocently asked about Ollyn as a way to keep my parents from knowing I could read, and I was told he was merely coming home for a visit.
This startled me. Shook me, greatly.
They lied. My father and mother lied.
To me!
I felt more than a little betrayed.
When I mentioned it to Gregory, he said, "They don't want you to know your father's position will go to your brother, not you. Not before it is done and cannot be changed."
"They think me stupid and childish."
It was the first warm day and we were in the pool, him standing with the water up to his chest, me idly drifting around him on my back.
He caressed my face as he asked, "Why haven't you told them you can read and even write, as well as summations?"
"The people who fear witchcraft..."
"Nonsense. You could have said you were preparing to follow in your father's footsteps, and this was necessary. You could have found a way to build them up to the idea, slowly. You are not stupid, Léon. So please, never lie to me. You may to anyone else, but not to me."
I huffed and finally said, "People gossip enough, as it is. Some say things like I am too much a fool to be married while others say I'm too old not to have a wife. They argue over whether an idiot should be allowed to follow in my father's footsteps, and I...I just don't want to give them more excuses to pay attention to me."
He tickled the hair about my dick, smiling. "How old are you, now? Twenty-two years?"
"Twenty-three. My feast day was three weeks ago. Saint Barnabas. How old are you?"
He chuckled and pinched a nipple. "Older than you."
"You don't look to be. We seem the same."
"I was once twenty-three. It's a good age." Then he looked across the pond to see his compatriots appear and start to remove their robes.
I glanced at them and felt myself begin to tingle. "They certainly took their time."
"Prior Pious has been difficult, lately. He thinks we're keeping something from him. Don't know why." Then he pulled me close and held me from behind, his dick ripe and ready.
I leaned into his embrace, feeling that sense of peace he'd always brought me descend through the whole of my being. "How have you kept me a secret?"
"We don't try to," he whispered as he nibbled at my ear. I could hear the others jumping in the pond and splashing over to us. "We just...we don't mention you've joined our pool party. Now then, what are you going to do about your brother?"
"I don't know. I'll decide when he returns."
"Probably very wise. You never know how things will turn out."
That is when Stephane reached us and growled, "Gregory, it's my turn with him."
And like a sack of rags I was handed over, and they got underway. And I enjoyed myself, as usual. As did they.
But for the first time there was a hint of sadness to it all. Of longing for something more. Which struck me as odd. For they didn't seem as exuberant as they had...and I wondered if they were beginning to tire of me being the perpetual virgin.
Not a month later, I learned there was far more to it than that.
