The Steps to the Empty Throne

Here is advance…!”

“Aye, your body, girl. But your love, also. Your love, your heart…”

“Ah, but love is a different matter.” She turned to face him again, but held her head well back, almost pushing from him, as though she would search his face there in the darkness.

“Love is not just hot desire. Such as I can feel in you. As I have felt in other men. The heart is more than the body…”

“Do I not know it! My heart has beat for you, and only you, for long grievous years. My body longed for yours, yes. But the body that holds your heart, my love. I want, desire, need both.

My love for you has been eating me up. These many, many months. When I despaired ever to see you again. Yet still loved and hoped. And now—to have you, hold you, here I It is more than flesh and blood can stand … “Ah, Robert—so it is love! Then, my dear, I yield. Sweet God, I yield me!” Suddenly, fiercely, she was pressing forward, against him.

“And, save us—I conceive your flesh and blood to be standing very well, my heart…!” she got out, before his mouth closed on hers, and their lips and tongues found greater eloquence than in forming foolish words.

The man’s hands were almost as busy as his mouth—nor were the girl’s totally inactive, either. He shrugged his own cloak to the floor, and hers quickly followed it. Then he was tugging at her gown, while still he all but devoured her with his kissing.

Her defter touch came to aid him, and the taffeta fell away from her shoulders. The pale glimmer of her white body was all that he could see, but his urgent fingers groped and stroked and kneaded the smooth, warm, rounded flesh of her, serving him almost better than his eyes, her nobly full, firm breasts filling the ecstatic cups of his hands to overflowing, as they overflowed the cup of his delight.

Suddenly he was down, kneeling, his lips leaving hers to seek those proud, thrusting breasts, the exultant nipples reacting with their own life and vigour. She bent over him, crooning into his hair, her strong arms clasping him to her, rocking.

But their need was a living, growing thing, a progression, and quickly even this bliss was insufficient. He drew her down to him, pulling at the gown’s folds which a golden girdle held around her waist; and willingly she came, loosening it. The spread cloaks on the floor received them, and with swift, sure cooperation she disposed herself, guiding his clamant manhood and receiving him into her vital generosity.

The man fought with himself to control the hot tide of his passion, to give her time. Blessedly she required but little, and together their rapturous ardour mounted and soared to the high, unbearable apex of fulfilment. With blinding, blazing release, and a woman’s cry of sheer triumph, they yielded themselves in simultaneous surrender into the basic, elemental oneness, a profundity of satisfaction hitherto unknown to either.

So they lay there in the darkness, in blessed quiet and joyful exhaustion.

Presently Elizabeth spoke, murmurously, stroking the man’s sweat-damp hair.

“To think … that I… was cold!”

“Cold? You!” His speech was a little slurred.

“My adored and adorable. My heart and soul. My joy. My, my woman!”

“Your woman, yes. And my man. Mine, Robert Bruce!”

“Aye. Yours. It had to be. From the first. Elizabeth.” He turned her name over from slack lips, savouring it.

“Elizabeth, my Elizabeth. You gave yourself as you do all else, my Elizabeth.

With all your heart. And person. No laggard, sluggard lover!”

“You think me bold? Shameless? Unwomanly?”

“Bold, yes. Shameless, yes. For where is cause for shame? And were

you not bold, brave, strong, a woman of your own mind, you would not be

Elizabeth de Burgh of Ulster. But unwomanly . I’ faith, my dear,

could there be anything more womanly than this, in all creation? I

swear not.” And he ran strong, possessive, enquiring hands over all

her rich voluptuousness, lingering, pressing, probing.

“Woman!” he sighed, burying his face between her breasts.

“This body, yes. Oh, yes—that is woman. But I at times wonder whether I am sufficiently woman in my spirit. My father declares me more man than my brother! Perhaps I think too like a man.”

“Have a man’s passions…”

He chuckled.

“As you have just shown me?”

“Even so, it may be. In that I joyed in it, so! Is that not the man’s part? Is not the woman said to be the giver? The man the taker? I… I take, I fear. As much as I give!”

“Aye, you took me into yourself with a right goodwill, lass, I’ll not dispute!” He grinned, kissing and fondling, “As woman.

All woman. Taking me, and giving yourself, in most female fashion, by all the powers!”

“There is a difference. Between taking and giving. In this. I cannot take without giving. But—I cannot give without taking.

Some women can, must. I cannot. I am taking you, my heart, my man.

Mine I I warn you—mine! Elizabeth de Burgh shares with none.”

“Jealous, is it? A jealous woman?”

“Aye. Jealous. In some things, I fear. In this. In you.”

“So! I must not look at another woman? I am bound hereafter by these fair chains?” He twisted a coil of her yellow hair round his fingers.

“Since you are a man, you will look, yes. Well I know it. You may look. Touch. Play with. Who knows, even lie with. This I could bear. Even laugh at, I think. But-should you ever give your heart to another. Take it from me. Then I would not forgive. Or accept. I would leave you. I might … I might kill you! So beware, Robert de Bruce! Think well.”

“How can I dunk well, woman? With your nakedness filling my arms! Think any way? You bludgeon my poor wits. These-how may a man think with such as these stirring, pushing, be labouring him?”

“Shall I cover them, then? It grows cold, perhaps. It must be cold, though I feel it not…”

“No. Of a mercy-no covering I Not yet. Not yet a long while.

The night is young. And we have waited long. So long. At least, I have. You—can it be that you have loved me also? Wished for me? These years?”

“Witless one, indeed I Think you I would be here now, otherwise? Think you I write such letters to any man in need? Why think you I resisted all the King’s schemes to marry me to others?

Worked on my father to oppose him in this …?”

“And I did not know it I I believed that you might think a little kindly of me, yes. When you wrote so. And when last we met, and parted. But never this …”

“You would not have had me to declare my love, sirrah? Before you did? Bold I maybe, but scarce so brazen. Though, mercy on us, few might agree! If they could see me lying bare as the day I was born, in a man’s arms. On this island. Waiting. Waiting for …”

“Aye, waiting. For the man to become a man again! As he will, my love-I promise you I You aiding him! You know men, I think? How it is with men. That is clear …”

“You mean that I am no shy virgin? Does it trouble you?”

“No. Not so …”

“Few girls grow to womanhood in warrent Ireland and remain virgin. Even de Burgh’s daughter. In especial, de Burgh’s daughter, it may be I For I was not of the shrinking sort, I fear.

And I have managed my father’s household since I was fifteen, played the countess since my mother died. But, if I am less than chaste, Robert, I am no harlot. Many men would have me. But I have known none since I saw you that day on the road to Berwick.

When you unseated me. Overturned me, in more than my litter …!”

“My dear—you shame me. For I have been less-, less constant.

Lacking you. Scarce believing that I should ever have you. I am not so enamoured of virginity. In woman or man. Any mouse, any craven, can be a virgin. You, I would not expect to be. Nor wish. Although, see you, once you are my wife …!”