The King's Men

It was Blanche who gave me the courage and confidence to do what I did. It is true that I gained the necessity to do something because I watched her going under the control of the Duke of Gano’s cock and, having seen what he could do and was willing to do, I despaired of the whole kingdom coming under his sway.

Until now, although Blanche’s schemes had served her, they also had served the House of Lusane.

I had no idea that I might be trusted and brought into one of Blanche’s schemes as the clever and resourceful Kobus had been. But that she trusted a task as sensitive and significant to me as she did opened my eyes to my own possibilities.

After several months of moving almost in one continuous line between the king’s bed and the duke’s bed, Blanche’s womb had not quickened and there was no sign of a child baking inside her. She knew this couldn’t go on; she had promised a son by summer and it already was early spring. And although she didn’t take the blame on herself, the blame was not what was needed—especially if anyone suggested that it might lie with the king. What was needed was a male child.

She called me forth to her writing desk one sunny morning in early April and smiled at me and said, “Before Christmas time I will give King Claude a son.”

“Oh, my lady,” I muttered, my eyes opening wide, feeling a heavy cloud lifting off us all.

“And you are going to provide the baby,” she went on, looking at me levelly.

I felt a hand squeezing around my heart and my cock and balls shriveling. Was this some kind of joke? She knew what I was. If the king and the randy duke together couldn’t impregnate her, how was she expecting me to do it?

“It was Agnes. My handmaiden, Agnes, who gave me the idea. She was quickened back while we were under Simon Limona’s care. I’m surprised not more of the maidens were.”

“But my lady, I don’t understand. Surely you aren’t suggesting . . . a child of some Limonean soldier?”

“No, no. We have taken care of her inconvenience. But it gave me an idea—and then a plan.”

“A plan, my lady?”

“Yes, a plan. And you are key to the plan. You can be out and about as no one else in my retinue but Kobus can. But Kobus is almost chained to Guy’s bed now.” I could hear the bitterness and female jealousy in her voice over that, even though she had been the one to set the plot in motion that put Kobus there. She continued, however, “He has no ability to do what I need done.”

“And what is that, my queen?”

“I need to have a baby—no two—growing. They need to be of noble Kibrit lineage, of course. That goes without saying. But they need to be an inconvenience to the noble family they are budding inside.”

“I don’t know how I can—”

“Shush. I will tell you how you can. First you will go into the court and listen to the gossip. I know you do that anyway. I’ve seen you. You think you move about invisibly. And you may do so with most at court. But not with me. I know that you know far more than any one person at court does about what is going on inside our little village here. And I know that all gossip at some point passes to you. I am equally sure that it stops with you. And that is why I am giving you this task. This is perhaps the most important task I have given anyone.”

Suddenly I felt important. I almost felt like I was a person.

“I want you to identify two maidens in need of a quiet disappearance of a baby. I know this is usually handled by ending the child’s life before birth or finding a second- or third-ranked family with the need for another set of hands in the field or in service. But I need two on contract. Two because it must be a son, and this strengthens the possibility of that. And then this is what I want to be arranged—that I want you to arrange, and in total secrecy.”

She went on, me attempting hard to tune to her but all aflutter inside because of the euphoria she had infused me with on the mere trust in assigning the task.

But I did well—at least in what Blanche commanded me to do. One of the maidens of a noble family I made secret arrangements with did, indeed, bear a son. The other child was stillborn, which solved the issue of having two sons available. But the family with the new fatherless son was delighted to know that their lineage would be sitting on the throne of Kibrit, even though they presently couldn’t gain from that knowledge and must keep it a secret.

What Blanche did not know, however, was that I took longer than I need have, there being much boredom and therefore much dalliance in the court of Kibrit after the island had been consolidated under one rule. And the reason I took longer was that I went to great pains to assure myself that the chosen baby was not a by-blow of Guy de Gano. That proved to be a much harder undertaking than I had supposed it would be.

As fall moved into winter, Blanche started to show and to glow. She was a magnificent actress. All were duped—well, not all. Three of us beside Blanche and a few select of her handmaidens knew she was not with child and that the deception was being promoted by subtle uses of clothing and padding and cosmetics.

King Claude was no problem. He was told that the queen could not accommodate him during the lying-in time for fear of the safety of the child. He took the news well enough, visibly with relief, actually, concentrating on the excellent news that Blanche at last had conceived. He then gladly contented himself with hunting and warrior training with Rene, Guy, and a group of his younger officers. That Claude found this more stimulating than trying to impregnate his wife did not occur to Claude as a function of his greater interest in the shape of a man’s body than a woman’s—but that would come in time.

Guy was a problem. First, he did not buy the delicacy of the baby-in-the-womb argument for one moment. He had fucked women into their eighth month at least and knew the positions that made that both possible and enjoyable. Well, enjoyable for him, at least, which was all that mattered to him. And, perhaps more important, because he had no paucity of cunts or asses to dip his cock in, he knew his hold over Blanche was sexual—that given too much time off from his cocking, she was likely to separate from him and become the strong political force she had been before he subdued and dominated her.

Although she declared that she was in her fourth month already and therefore would only attend the court occasionally and would withdraw to the mountain castle at St. Jerome for her health and that of her child, Guy rode to her there in the dark of night, stormed into her chamber, swept both her guards and her handmaidens aside, and rode her as hard as he’d ridden his horse to get to her.

Blanche took him lustfully, being a complete slave to his staff and all the more impassioned because he had stormed the castle and breached her defenses to get to her and had taken her hard and rough like a conquest of battle. But when he felt for the mounding he knew should be there at this point—and that rather increased than stemmed his ardor for a woman when he knew he had fucked that child into her womb—he found none. And having found none, he had to be told the truth of it and the reason for it.

Both Kobus and I were in the room, standing invisible to the couple in the bed, of course. So, of men knowing the truth of it, there was Kobus and me . . . and Guy.

I knew that Guy would use the knowledge and would do so in ways that would split the tranquillity of Kibrit asunder.

Blanche had entrusted me to see to the creation of a king. Even though she was so besotted with Guy that I could not discuss the matter with her, I knew that she could trust me to ensure the rule of that king. I knew that once she was freed of the domination of Guy’s cock, she would thank me for what I then did—for the good of the kingdom.

* * * *

“Should there not be a great ball at court to celebrate the coming of this child, my queen?”

“What?” she responded to me as we sat in the belvedere of St. Jerome and I peeled a pomegranate for her. “A ball?”

“Yes, I’m sure the king would have thought of it if he was not occupied with the sighting of unknown war ships off Papheas. But there is no reason why you could not command it?”

“And for what purpose?”

“Is not the coming of an heir purpose enough—and the court seeing you dressed and showing for the part?”

“Yes, yes, perhaps it is,” she answered.

And thus began the unfolding of my second-to-most bold plot.

Fortuitously, Kobus, as understeward and confidant to the queen, was the keeper of her potions—and everyone at court knew that, because that was the natural function of an understeward. And equally fortuitously I was able to gain access to these potions without the knowledge of either Kobus or the queen and, in those moments of being just another salamander on the wall, I had followed their making of potions and learned what each one of them was for.

This knowledge—all of it—was important to me because it was not just Guy, Duke of Gano, I was targeting, for the good of the kingdom, but it was also Kobus, for my own purposes. He had murdered the man I loved, Guido, even while he was working his magic inside me. This had continued to fester in my breast. I needed vengeance against Kobus to stem my grief and satiate my, by necessity, barely contained anger.

I started with my plan in the queen’s antechamber, among her handmaidens. I separately went to the most empty-headed and loose tongued of them and casually slipped into otherwise innocuous conversations the question of whether the queen’s relationship with the duke could possibly be a source of jealousy for Kobus, who the queen herself had placed in the duke’s bedchamber.

And then I sat back and waited. Six days before the great celebration banquet of the queen’s pregnancy, I began to hear the rumors come back at me—deepened and coarsened—in the gossip chain. I was very, very pleased with myself.

At the same time, I started working on Kobus, telling him that I had seen Rene, now free of Kobus’s ministration, fucking the king and connecting it with the king’s announcement raising Rene to the status of duke over the former city state of Limonea and the lands surrounding it in the south of Kibrit. The ascension was no more than his due, of course, but I had seen the effect of this on Guy, Duke of Gano—and now of the former region of Turionia as well. The king had announced both new rankings simultaneously and his actual action was well balanced, of course, but with a little help of the gossip chain, which I supplied, and my more direct talk of a new bedroom arrangement between Rene and the king to Kobus, Guy was quite prepared to see everything as balanced against him, and the portent of serious storm clouds on the horizon.

Kobus had no idea how to help Guy in this matter. By happenstance I did. In this instance, I didn’t even have to mix the poisonous potion. Kobus quite willingly did it with his own hands.

All I had to do was, at the most strategic moment, switch who got the cup of poison at the high table during the great celebration. What was once Rene’s to drink became Guy’s to gag and die from.

In the aftermath, more than one courtier was quite happy to say that they had seen Kobus poison Guy’s cup—and nearly the whole court could put a name to the reason why.

I didn’t mix that potion, but I did mix the one that Kobus took in prison and begged me for because of the gruesomeness of the punishment that had been ascribed for the crime of killing a duke.

* * * *

Although I could have left it at that, I was heady from my new-found power over the world of the nobility, and I could not get out of my mind the tragedy of the king and Rene so obviously loving and wanting each other and neither being about to step over the boundary of duty and propriety—especially when all of those around them at court, including the queen, showed no knowledge whatsoever of the existence of such a boundary. I wasn’t the only one to have observed the king and Rene pining ineffectually for each other, and increasingly I heard the whispers of folks both noting the brazenness of the foreign queen Blanche and hinting that they wished that the king and Rene just got on with it. Blanche was not loved at court. And now that she was fulfilling her duty to provide a son, those at court were more dismissive of her needs and increasingly concerned for the happiness of their king. Those of Kibrit truly were on the margin of civilization. To them, a hole was a hole, and satisfaction, no matter how derived, was the goal.

Since I had saved his life—and since he had a body that made me want to withdraw into a corner and pleasure myself—I started to serve Rene as often as I could. I found myself in his presence after a hard hour or two of practice on the sword field with the king and the other young king’s men—which, in all honesty, I enjoyed watching anyway, because, when they were working with wooden swords, they practiced in just breechcloths and the movement of their lithe, well-muscled bodies was very pleasing to me. It was less nerve-racking for me to watch the practices now than before, when Guy also was on the practice field and exuded power and sensuality and foreboding.

The men engaged in bouts of wrestling too in these practice sessions to keep their reflexes quick and their bodies supple for close-in combat. It had been when I watched the king wrestling with either Guy or Rene that I realized that he was overripe for the plucking by either one and that it would only be a matter of time before one or the other speared him with their shaft, with then the inevitable unbalancing of the weight of influence the two very different counselors had on the king. I assessed the king as a true romantic, who would be constant to one lover and could as easily be dominated by that lover as complemented. As strong a field commander and temporal king as he was, I could see that, as with me, the king wanted to be commanded and dominated in bed.

Guy was definitely the dominator. He was aggressive and powerful, and the atmosphere of a wrestling bout between him and the king was one of a battle for control to the death, if necessary. When the king was wrestling with Rene, it was a beautiful dance of strategy and positions and holds in which each remained equal and in balance, with Rene slightly on the ascendance. The latter was more pleasant to watch, but I feared the implications of the former. As far as I could tell, the king had no preference between the two as long as he was being controlled.

In both cases, I watched the king carefully and am surprised that no one else saw what I did—that he was receptive to and aroused by either of his lieutenant’s approaches to the grappling, to the struggle of ascendance. Not only could I see the tenting of his breechcloth and the hooding of his eyes, and the response of his nipples to what could equate to the groping of Guy or the fondling of Rene, but I could also see that he melted to the controlling embrace of either and that, as he slowly—more from mental choice than physical necessity—let himself be controlled and subdued—something he permitted of no others than Guy and Rene. In his wrestling matches with these two, as he slowly let himself be overmatched, I could see him positioning himself for mounting, wanting it at least subconsciously if not in his surface cognizance. And I think that, at those times, if they had not been in the public field, among his soldiers, he himself would have taken the initiative at that point, perhaps not knowing he had but not drawing away once he had.

And knowing both Guy and Rene, I knew that at that point Guy would have fucked the king mercilessly and Rene would have fucked the king lovingly—and that the king would have enjoyed either fully and would have been lost to either then as a lover.

Perhaps I was able to see this as no others could because I was the same with the king in what I wanted and how the effect of being in the presence of Rene—and, yes, Guy too—made me ever ready to position myself for mounting as well.

I am certain Guy never had the king, but I do know of a time that it became a close thing. One afternoon, as the court was in full preparation for the queen’s ball, he had appeared at the queen’s chamber door in high heat. I, unfortunately, had to inform him that the queen was then with a messenger departing in a short time for Holland and that she was writing messages to her family that would have to be sent off almost before she could complete them. Guy was in high flush and his eyes were wild in that way of men with cum built up that must be spilled. I could sense his mind grinding away, and I knew almost as soon as he did that the visage of the queen in his mind was being replaced by that of the king. They had wrestled the previous day, and I saw then that Guy fully understood what I knew—that if they had not been on the public field, that all Guy would have had to do was pull away his breechcloth and thrust inside the king and he would have had the king in thrall to him not only in the bedchamber but in the council chamber as well.

I knew Guy had been ruminating on this and that this is why he was in such high heat. And I knew it was a mistake—although completely unavoidable—to tell him the queen’s jewel box was not presently free and open to him. I knew as surely as he did that the king was now prepared to give him in private what he could not give him in public the previous day—not just a fuck but also the keys to the kingdom.

In terror, I followed along behind him as he wheeled around and made straight for the king’s private chambers. It must have been the gods who had intervened, because, in transit, Guy went by an archway looking out onto the king’s garden. There, posed prettily on a balcony wall, was a young, comely Italian page, stripped down to his breechcloth and arching his back to take in the sun. If I had been a man who cocked men, I couldn’t have resisted the delectable confection myself. In Guy’s explosive state, he couldn’t either. He had the lad leaning precariously out over the abyss, his legs slapped aside, Guy’s hands clutching his waist, and his cock forcing its way home in a trice. The obviously virginal young page yowled shock, violation, and pain, all of which only exploded Guy’s arousal and need for instant gratification. The youth kept on yowling, not knowing that this only egged one such as the cruel duke on, and Guy kept on thrusting with his hips with all his considerable might until all of his pent-up sexual tension and fury and a flood of cum had been spent inside a moaning page on a balcony in the king’s garden.

I tended to the babbling heap the page had become when Guy finished with him and strode back toward his own rooms. I was sympathetic to the lad, but I had to bite my lip not to inform him that he very likely had saved an empire.

Four days later the duke was dead. It was obvious that he had to go.

After that, it was only Rene on the practice field who was wrestling with the king and having the melting effect on the king that only I seemed to be able to see. There was still tension now, but it was not one I thought of as a danger to the kingdom; it was one of “when will this stop; when will they ever get on with it?” I thought that Rene was as much the problem as the king, and I resolved, after a practice where I could see both were panting for it and neither making the strategic move, to give Rene the little push he needed. When he came away from practice, I was there to help him bathe and then, after I told him I was trained in massage, I was permitted to become more intimate with his body with my hands.

After weeks of slowly getting more intimate with my hands working the muscles of his body, Rene felt moved and comfortable enough with going to full erection when he was turned on his back. And then, he became comfortable with having me in the chamber alone with him when I massaged him. And having my mouth massaging his cock.

He never fucked me where I longed to have his cock working, but it was not long before he was sending for me to give him a massage rather than me following him around and asking him if he wanted one.

To my knowledge he had never replaced Kobus in his bed, when Kobus displaced Guido in Guy’s bed. But I made known to myself that there was no physical reason why he could not easily reach an erection or produce a prodigious amount of cum out of a very nice, long, and plump cock.

“Why is it, sire, that you never have had a lover since Kobus?” I boldly asked one day when I had sucked him dry during a massage and then found that he wanted me again before I had finished working his muscles.

“I don’t do it lightly, Lambert,” he said. “And I will not do it for you, if that is why you are asking.”

“No, sire, it is not. I know that one such as I could not aspire to one such as you. You have a cock suitable for a king.”

He stiffened then, and I heard his ragged intake of breath.

“The king, sire,” I pressed further. “Why is it that you never have lain with the king?”

“You presume, servant,” he said angrily.

“I feel how you stiffen at the mention of his name,” I persisted. “I see how you look at him, how you watch him, your gaze going lovingly over the curves of his body, lost in the deep, soft blue of his eyes. Your cock stiffens at the sight of him on the practice field, the hardness of his muscles, the fullness of his lips, the way the world lights up when he smiles at you, the blondness of his curls. The way that line of hair runs down under the hem of his breechcloth. The blondness of his bush. I know as we have both been there when he bathed. The plump roundness of his nether cheeks, the curve of his cock up from his belly. The blush of his bulb, its slit ripe for a tongue or a probing finger. And I feel the engorging of your cock at my lips even as I say these things.”

“Oh, God, enough,” he cried out, and he stopped my speech with his cock plunging up between my waiting lips and pumping, pumping, pumping in a frenzy until he ejaculated, his muscles relaxed, and he collapsed on the divan.

“I ask again, sire. Why have you never lain with the king? You want to.”

“Because he doesn’t want me.” It came out as a strangled cry. “If he did, he would command.”

“There you are wrong, sire. I see how he looks at you, how his eyes follow you on the practice field and even in the supper hall. He very much wants you. But he needs what you need.”

There was no immediate response from Rene, and in exasperation, I blurted out, “The king commands in the field and in temporal matters—and he does it superbly. But the king is such a man as to want another man to command him in the bed. I’ve watched him. His eyes are on you to command him in the bedchamber. His channel aches for your cocking. He wants what you gave Kobus.” Glory be, I thought, that I didn’t have to tell him that the king would have taken Duke Gano’s command in the bedchamber as easily as Rene’s and that it was only by my plotting and hand that Rene’s reluctance and naiveté were not to be his undoing.

“You said he needs what I need. What did you mean by that?” the question was an anguished whisper.

“He needs a first time.”

“I have waited for years,” Rene sobbed. “There are no first times with this king for a man laying with a man. He is a king.”

“He is first and uppermost a man. You do him no service by holding him beyond reach when he obviously aches for you so. There was a first time with you and Kobus,” I whispered. “And that only happened because Kobus, the queen, and I made it so.”

“What are you saying?”

“Did you regret having Kobus as a lover?”

“No. No, of course not.”

“Neither would the king regret having you as a lover. I know this is so. And I know it is right. And not just for the two of you, but for the kingdom.”

“Explain yourself. About Kobus and me that first time.”

“Do you not remember being in a haze?” I asked. I was slowly stroking his cock with my hand now, bringing him back to arousal in body to bring him back to arousal in mind as well.

“Yes. But I was tired and it was the drink.”

“Not those entirely, no. Not those to an extent where it counted. There was a potion. An otherwise harmless potion.”

“A potion? A . . . yes, yes, Lambert. That, with your hand. I could . . . all day. Oh, god yes.”

“And you could be doing it with the king,” I whispered. “Yes, a potion. Do you remember how you felt? Was Kobus desirable to you? Was his touch electric? Did you feel all of the power and strength of you flowing to your hard cock? Did your inhibitions against doing what your body clearly wanted lessen?”

“Yes, and yes,” Rene answered.

“It was the potion. I have the potion.”

“The massage. It was so arousing. Not unlike your massages.”

“I dare say you can massage the king as well as Kobus or I ever did you. But hush, now, and think further on this at your leisure. I can help you. But for now, I feel you tightening up. I feel it in your orbs. For now my hands and lips have other work to do here. For this information, I only ask for the honor to drink of you.”

* * * *

I was there, in the chamber, unseen and unmarked, as always, although in full view for anyone who wanted to see me, who needed my assistance, when the king and the king’s man first fucked.

It was in the evening, their suppers on tables beside their chairs, the chairs turned three quarters to each other to ease conversation—and, because I had set them—to enhance the view of each other. They had been out hunting, the king and all the king’s men, his lieutenant, Rene, at his side the entire time.

They had ridden back exhausted, but happy. This peacetime interlude in their lives was more taxing on a warrior than battles were. It was harder to keep their bodies hard and supple. Neither the king nor Rene need worry about that for some time to come, though.

They had been cleaned—I had helped with both, my hands working efficiently, making sure the king felt my touch on his cock and shuddered at the seemingly innocent arousal it provided. The two of them talking to each other of the crusade the king had pledged to join. Both happy, both seeing an end coming to this dull peacetime.

They were sitting in the chairs, talking and supping and drinking, only in their loosely laced breechcloths. Comfortable with each other. Long-time friends. Total trust between them.

They were both cleaning and sharpening their swords. No servant was ever allowed to do this for a knight. None could be trusted to do this to the knight’s level of trust.

The king was complaining about the discomfort of his new boots. They hadn’t been crafted just right. He rose and walked over and sat on the end of his enormous, high-poster bed and began to take his boots off.

He had been weaving a bit as he walked, and Rene looked hard at me, perhaps fully seeing me there for the first time.

Yes, I am the one who prepared his drink, I signaled with the expression of my face and hands. And then I nodded and leaned my head toward the king, sitting on the end of his bed.

Rene cleared his throat. “You look tired and tense, my king,” he said.

“I am. I should not have foregone the hunt earlier in the week. My muscles complain of it from today’s outing. This lack of the demands of battle vex me; I must exercise more.”

If I have my way, you will exercise vigorously at night, I thought as I drifted into the shadows.

“May I send for a man to give you a massage?” I could have slapped Rene then for this clumsy approach in this question—volunteering to bring a substitute into the chamber—but the king did not fall in that direction.

“No bother. It is minor. They all will be at their supper now and will do a begrudging job, even though I be king.”

“Then perhaps . . . I”

“You?”

“Yes. Perhaps just the shoulders if you feel that might suffice.”

“Well . . .”

Rene was kneeling on the bed behind the king, close to him, his hands working the king’s shoulders. Claude was rotating his head on his neck and Rene moved his hands to where the skull and neck joined, dug in his fingers gently, and the king let out a long, satisfied sigh.

Rene worked the bicep muscles and then returned to the shoulders briefly. I could see the king relaxing. And I could see something else as well. The crotch of his breechcloth was tented and I could see the bulb of his cock at a slit in the cloth. He could feel the need of Rene in the small of his back. I could tell that for sure. His eyes were hooded and he was panting in short, shallow breaths. I could see the muscles of the king’s flat belly knotting. Rene’s hands came down onto the king’s chest and he was massaging the king’s chest muscles, running his fingers over and over the king’s now-taut nipples.

It was Claude who made the first, decisive move. I applauded him for that, and I was grateful. Rene was the perfect subject, awaiting the command, to the end in that first coupling. I was despairing of him making an irrevocable declaration openly acknowledging the need, the want, the repressed intention of both.

Rene was looking down the line of Claude’s torso, seeing for the first time that the breechcloth had fallen away and that Claude was in full, upward curved erection, arising from his golden bush. At that moment, before Rene could decide what, if anything to do next, Claude raised his face to Rene’s and captured Rene’s lips with his. The kiss was tentative at first, but then they both hungrily opened to each other, as of a beaver’s pilings being swept away by a torrential rain.

Rene cupped the king’s chin in one hand, keeping their kiss going. The other hand slid down the king’s torso along the line of blond, curly hair, down his belly and through his golden bush and captured the king’s cock. Almost as if this bold action jolted him, though, Rene started to take his hand away. Claude covered it with one of his own hands, though, and one or the other of them started the slow masturbation of the royal shaft.

The kiss broke and the king whispered something to Rene and Rene whispered back, and then I saw the king stand from the bed and bend completely and grab his ankles. Rene went into a sitting position behind him, and his lips went into the fold of the royal rump. I moved around the room to make sure, and then satisfied myself that one of Rene’s hands had moved between Claude’s thighs and had resumed the milking of the royal cock.

It was the king who made the move of rising and then sitting in Rene’s lap, half skewering his channel on Rene’s cock. The king didn’t come all of the way down, though. He crouched over Rene’s lap and fucked himself slowly on Rene’s staff using the traction of the balls of his feet on the floor. It was still the king’s choice.

Rene was palming the king’s belly with both hands and moaning deeply. In truth they were both moaning.

I walked to them then and sank between their spread knees and took the king’s cock in my mouth. He didn’t even seem to realize I was there, but he didn’t command me away, and his enjoyment of the experience seemed to increase, if the intensity of groans and sighs from both was any measure.

When the royal seed hit the back of my throat, I took it as my due, my reward. As none of this would have happened without my boldness or persistence. In years hence they would both assume they just found each other, I am sure. This is how histories are written. But I knew that it had taken far more than that.

I felt the moment when Claude’s body shuddered and Rene’s first flow inside the king bathed the royal channel.

I pulled back into the shadows as Rene drew the king up on the bed. They lay there for some time, bodies stretched against each other, hands roaming, whispering to each other.

And then, at a whisper from Claude, Rene was turning the king on his belly and mounting his hips. And riding to paradise.

They did this through the night, finding and loving new positions, solidifying their new life as lovers, and making Rene the true king’s man. There still, at the back of my mind, though, was some reservation over what was transpiring.

Toward dawn they settled down in each other’s arms and I curled up in the shadows of a corner and slept as well.

I awoke to the sounds of groaning. Rene was sitting on the foot of the bed. The king was crouched between his legs, his mouth covering as much of Rene’s cock as possible. Rene’s hips were rolling in a slow rhythm that had his cock pushing as far into Claude’s mouth as he could take it. The king was gagging, but he would not give up the cock.

I saw Rene bending over the king’s bare back, reaching for and achieving a grip on the king’s buttocks cheeks with his large, battle-callused hands. He squeezed the orbs and then, with a laugh, he slapped each in succession. He squeezed them again and spread them wide, and I saw the tips of the middle finger of each hand push into and spread apart the opening to the king’s channel, the rim of which was rosy red from the previous night’s cocking. Claude wiggled his rump but continued sucking Rene’s cock.

Suddenly, Rene was aroused beyond control, and he stood and held the king away from him with hands on the king’s arms. He turned the king’s body and slammed it down on the surface of the bed. Claude arched his back and his head and I heard him laugh with a deep, joyful laugh, as Rene laced his arms under the king’s thighs, spread and raising the monarch’s legs, and knotted his hands on the king’s belly. The bulb of his cock was positioned at Claude’s entrance. He pushed the bulb a few inches inside and rotated it, while Claude gasped and groaned. Then he slid fast and deep inside as Claude cried out his passion. The king was panting and groaning and babbling of the master taking when I silently left the room. Rene’s cock was giving him no quarter, strongly and cruelly slamming inside the royal hole again and again and again.

I was satisfied. This was what I had been waiting to see—the two taking their natural roles in the bedchamber. Rene taking dominating command as the king wanted him to.

Weeks later, King Claude and Duke Rene left on a crusade to Jerusalem. Claude did not take Blanche with him, leaving her on Kibrit as regent of the kingdom.

Blanche was content in raising the crown prince. As the prince grew older, I realized that I had failed terribly in one aspect of my scheming. The prince was growing up looking the spitting image of Guy, Duke of Gano. Blanche no doubt was happy with this. I had my serious doubts.

Before Claude and Rene returned from their crusade, I had had enough of scheming and plotting among the nobility and had requested and been granted by Blanche—no doubt now seeing me as a loose end that had seen entirely too much—permission to withdraw to the house of the brothers near Papheas to live out my years in contemplation.

* * * *

My first reaction was to laugh when I’d reread what I’d written. Remembering it now, my “secret” potion for Rene in loosening up the king to his maddeningly tentative advances was a combination of very good brandy, honey, and sugar water. I had no idea what Kobus and Blanche had put into the potion they’d given Rene—or even if it was any more “magical” than what I had given the king for Rene. It had been a gamble, but my own view had turned out a winner. The king only needed to be started in giving himself to Rene—and then Rene only needed a little push once beyond the vale himself in sensing his true role in their couplings. The only potion he had needed was confidence, bravery, and brashness—traits that Guy de Gano had had in full, I’m afraid. It would have been best for all if it had been the other way around. Guy might even have kept his life then.

The laugh, though, caused me to cough and for a pain to run through my chest like a fist had gripped my heart. And it made me think upon what I had written with greater introspection. I had always believed that we servants of the nobility were invisible and of no consequence. After letting all of this story pour out on parchment, the complete truth of it as I had witnessed and lived, I could still believe in the invisibility. But I couldn’t believe in the lack of consequence in the presence of servants.

In consolidation of the House of Lusane on the island of Kibrit and its first crucial months of life, the nobles had schemed and intrigued, yes, but many of the momentous events—and some of the most spectacular ones—had been initiated and carried through by the unseen servants.

I have no regrets about the acts that my own hands performed in events save not having kept Guido out of harm’s way and not being careful enough to find a princeling who had not been sired by Guy—which would have required a miracle.

But also now that I reread this, I realize that it is too volatile to ever be seen. I can’t save and hide this someplace. If this fell into the wrong hands, into the hands of Blanche’s enemies at court, to be specific—and there are many—the House of Lusane might be undone. Of course, it could as easily be strengthened as to unravel and fall into dust.

But I came to Kibrit as Blanche’s servant and she has let me live and enjoy life here among the monks—some of whom, I am happy to say, have nice cocks and aren’t too picky—when it might have been more in her interest to have me dispatched while she was regent. She ruled for Claude for five years while he and Rene were on their crusade. And she ruled rather heavy-handedly, more as a foreign occupier than a Kibrit queen. For this she was resented deeply at court, and a great sigh of relief was sounded when King Claude and Duke Rene rode back into the castle forecourt at Lefkosea. Not a word of reproach was gossiped about when the two men moved directly into the same bedchamber, as grateful were the people of the island that they had returned. I’m sure that his subjects assumed that at least Claude was dominant in that chamber, and I’ve never heard a hint to the contrary. This most likely means that the king’s and king’s man’s chamber servants are far more discrete than I was able to be.

Blanche quickly retired to the bastion at St. Jerome to enjoy the company of an assortment of men who visited her there. Although she reappeared at court for high celebrations and relations between her and the king were quite proper, neither objected to or sought to change the choices each had made for their lives.

Blanche took the crown prince with her—and the entire court breathed a sigh of relief. I would not dare write of the crown prince if I had not now already decided what must be done with this true, bald, and unvarnished history I’ve written. But the boy was a brat, demanding and mischievous, and promised, in visage, to grow handsome and troublesome and completely self-centered and self-possessed and to scheme deaths and break hearts and create an army of by-blows—every inch his true father. And if this history reached the wrong hands, I can clearly see that it would be my mistress’s undoing. Already I’ve heard talk in the land of Claude naming Rene his successor—even of adopting him formally.

So, I know what I must do with this parchment, burning its unmentionable truths in the palms of my hands as I hold it before me—in a moment when my heart stops beating so wildly. Perhaps I am getting too old to seek out stable boys’ and monks’ cocks. I cannot remember needing so long to catch my breath and have my heart return to its regular rhythm.

Just a brief rest and I will stir up the fire and take this parchment and . . .

-FINI-