The Ing's Men

I try not to speak ill of anyone, especially of my own countrymen, but the world would have been much better if Queen Blanche's understeward, Kobus, had gone down in one of the other ships in the storm. He was only with us because his parents were close friends of Blanche's father and they had a son who embarrassed them with his brazenness and the mischief he got in and who they wanted to see doing well—but doing it a world away from them.

I do believe that Kobus created mischief just for mischief's sake. And I don't believe he wanted the duke any more than he had wanted Sir Rene before him. But the moment Guido and Kobus laid eyes on each other, they were mortal enemies. And Guy was the object that they both unconsciously selected as the trophy. When the time came for Blanche to want a spy in Guy's bed, Kobus was all for the challenge.

I did not object to Kobus's very being because of this. In my mind, the duke wasn't worth fighting over and either one of the lads were welcome to him. But not all that Kobus did went for harm; it was Kobus who subsequently, as I will, in time, set down in ink here, awakened Rene to what one man could do to another. And after Kobus had left him and Rene realized that his true focus of desire was the king himself, this, perhaps, was the one catalyst that offset Guy's own desires to control the king and that set the kingdom in balance. For as the king, although he was a sexual dunce and self-denier enough not apparently to realize it until almost too late, had sensual feelings for both the dark, aggressive duke and the fair, in both aspect and attitude, Rene, the king had capacities to fall under the sway of Guy's darkness or Rene's gentle passion. Until Duke Guy saw Rene as competition for a long campaign to entrap and fuck—yes, fuck—fuck and control the king, however, the duke's schemes did not become murderous within the court of Lefkosea.

All appeared right with the world when I had been given passage from the castle St. Jerome and chamber service to Duke Guy and deeper service to his lieutenant, Guido, whose attentions I gloried in. If Guido had asked me to do anything for him in those three weeks I spent in the castle mountaintop as the duke oversaw the siege of the stronghold at Cantria and consolidation of the repopulation of the northern Kibrit coast with Lefkosea loyalists, I very well would have done it. I certainly forgot for his sake what I had seen in his flash of jealousy and clutching at the duke's favor. I had seen murder against the duke's express wishes, and I had not told the duke of it. If I myself were discovered in that, my life would have been forfeited.

When I arrived at the court in Lefkosea, though, my time and energy were immediately taken up in preparing for the arrival of Blanche and her retinue. The king had paid an emperor's ransom for her release and issued the apology for her intrusion on the shores of Limonea that Simon had demanded—along with giving written and attested assurance that Claude would recognize and mark the kingship of Simon over Limonea for all eternity.

As soon as Blanche and her people were safely on the road to Limonea, however, and well beyond any reach of Simon, the forces of Rene deRogair descended on the open gates of Limonea city. Rene did not permit rape and pillage, but the slaughter was near total.

Simon himself was spared, however. Rene brought him back, in chains, in an open ox cart to Lefkosea, where he was hung from the window of the highest tower of Claude's city castle for all to see. His crown was nailed to his head as he was lowered, crying for mercy on unhearing ears, out of the window. And his skeleton was still hanging there, marking, as Claude promised, that he reigned as the King of Limonea, one hundred and twenty years later when the Ottoman Turks overran and subjugated the island to another hundred years of their rule.

Blanche reached Lefkosea two weeks before Rene completed his subjugation of the Limoneans, and she was well established in the queen's chambers before his return.

I attended her in her chambers. I know that the king visited her and that she lifted her night skirts and opened her thighs to him willingly and that he pumped her cunt with youth and vigor. I heard cry of his release of seed inside her—again and again. He was a young and virile man. She was a beautiful woman who, as I well knew, was not unknown to a man's cock before the king's member visited her and who had the guile to make him enjoy his lying with her. She had wiles and potions and determination. She was no less determined to bear him a son before the heat of the coming summer than he was in doing his duty in producing a son.

The fact that he did not linger with her, did not play with her, or find any position of fucking her other than the one, unimaginative, belly to belly one was, I am sure, more a result of the little experience he had with such things. I had certainly seen Blanche being more inventive. If it was more than that—if it was an unrealized knowledge deep inside him that he wanted more, something different, or that someone else aroused him and moved him more than any woman could, I am quite sure he did not recognize it at the time.

It was such with the nobility. They didn't think deeply on these matters. They did not examine themselves or observe or question why and how every shallow whim was fulfilled for them by others without any of their own planning or effort, and this became enough in their lives—giving them lives of shallow surface whims.

I, of course, could see immediately that no matter how often the king appeared in Blanche's chambers and she lifted her skirts to him and spread her legs for him, that it was all shallow in performance even if deeper in the intent of them both.

But I'm being unfair, Blanche could see it as well. She was of the nobility. But she was also a world-wise woman. She knew when a man was just dallying with her, wanting to get his cock inside her just to be able to say he'd fucked one—or, in some cases all four—of the princesses of the House of Holland. And she knew when, like with her father, something more serious and moving was transpiring. Blanche and her elder sister were from one queen and the two younger princesses from another queen. Blanche's father's match with his first queen was one that developed into a deep love; the second one didn't go farther than the good of the state. The first queen died in childbirth—producing the king's fifth son. The Dutch king pined for years—even after he had taken a second wife. And then Blanche grew into the perfect likeness of her mother.

Blanche understood what that meant to her father and how her mere presence in the palace affected him. So, she had arranged the tryst that put him over the edge of propriety, even in the hedonist court at Vollendam, and fucked him willingly and lovingly and often—being her mother for him. And their parting when she boarded ship for the Mediterranean, already another king's wife, was a bittersweet farewell for both of them.

I, of course, was there for it all—in the chamber when she laid down under a succession of men, including her father—and more than one woman as well. I was there, in attendance to any shallow whim she might express while a cock or tongue was churning inside her—unseen, unregarded. Just a piece of the furniture.

The one thing that Blanche's lying under her father had taught her was that this new, young, virile king was not in love with her, or, she had to admit, in lust with her body either. Perhaps in time, though.

So, while determined to do her queenly duty, and with regret that the king's beautiful body was not matched with the ardor she had come to expect in a man, within weeks of her establishment at the Lefkosea court, Blanche was on the hunt.

And, as coincidence, when the dashing Sir Rene deRogair returned from Limonea in victory at the head of a small force that had assured the consolidation of the House of Lusane on the island of Kibrit, the pride and joy overflowed from him, making him even more stately and handsome than ever before.

I watched my queen, Blanche's, eyes go to Rene and assess him, at first, as worthy of riding, but then, upon seeing him look at his king, I saw her assessment change, seeing him more as a rival. Then I saw her eyes narrow and a slight little smile flit onto her face as she saw Simon, in rags, torn from once-regal attire that Blanche well remembered, cowed and quivering in his ox cart.

She had declared vengeance upon him, and now I saw that she would revel in what was to be done with him—knowing that he would take to the afterworld his knowledge of what he had done to her—or had thought he had done.

* * * *

It is perhaps time to delve into those brief weeks where the Queen of Kibrit, princess of the Holland Court, was the "guest" of Simon Limona.

Simon was a grizzled, wily old bird, having survived many an attempt to seize the small, but rich, piece of real estate he fancied to be—and somehow managed to sustain as—an independent city state. Tall and gaunt and sinewy, Simon had lived beyond his fiftieth year through guile and his readiness to work with his hands and his wit alongside his serfs in the terraced fields running up from his harbor town. His surroundings were niggardly, yet starkly beautiful, but he, himself, was a dandy when he was entertaining, dressing like a king and wanting all of his servants and serfs to see the vast difference between him and them. No wife having been able to survive him, he mostly lived sparingly and needed but little in the comforts of castle—as Blanche and her retinue quite quickly could attest to.

I truly believe he never intended to let Blanche or any of the rest of us live—that he planned to dally with us and then dispatch us, claiming no knowledge of a wreck upon his coast or a missing queen. Otherwise he would not have done what he did—and Blanche would not have had to do what she did.

The Limoneans, under Simon's direct supervision, were ruthless from the first moment Blanche's flagship was seen to be breaking up in the surf off the Limonea beach. As stragglers were struggling ashore, Simon was there, assessing each one as to position and usefulness. The Spanish sailors, as they reached the sand, gasping for breath, had their throats cut where they crouched. Even Blanche's priest confessor was run down as he waddled along the beach, habit bunched up around his waist, and quickly sent to heaven.

Blanche and her handmaidens and her close servants, which included me and her understeward, Kobus, were singled out, huddled together, and herded up to the ominous castle glowering over the city's harbor. There, in a cold, stone-clad chamber, we were left to shiver and husband and expand our fears for three nights.

On the fourth evening, Blanche and her servants were called out to supper with Simon. The handmaidens were left in the prison chamber to contemplate their fate.

A lavish banquet had been set out upon the table and seated at the head—in the only chair at the table—was Simon Limona. He was dressed in regal splendor. His steel-gray hair had been trimmed to perfection and his goatee and mustache had been dressed with shining oil.

"Do not be shy, come forward my beautiful, Queen Blanche. I wish to honor you and your noble husband. I wish to feast."

"But there is no chair," Blanche responded haughtily. "A queen does not stand and sup as her lessers sit."

"Oh, I don't mean for you to stand, dear Blanche. Come. Oh, you are reluctant. Here, my men will help you."

Kobus and I watched, hoping this would be a time when we were invisible in the great hall although we soon felt hands of menace on our arms and backs too, as two men pulled Blanche forward to between the table and where Simon was sitting in his throne and pushed her down into the plates and serving dishes on the table, holding her down and in place with each holding a milky-white arm flat against the table top.

Leisurely, Simon pulled up her skirts one by one and when he got to her undergarments, he just ripped them away. He slapped her bare buttocks and laughed little appreciative laughs until her tender skin blushed. And then he stood, unlaced his cod piece, presented to her, and slowly pushed his way into . . . her ass channel.

At first, even though writhing under the insulting assault, Blanche said not a word. But at length, and to Simon's great surprise, she began to wiggle her hips more sensually and to moan of the power and size of him. She began to play on his vanity, speaking of the great pleasure he was giving her, declaring that, as a virgin, she had yet a greater gift to him, if he only but let her free to voluntarily give him the ultimate pleasure—taking a maiden properly for the first time.

He was smitten, and at her suggestion, pulled out of her and sat back on his throne and bid his men to unhand her. Free, Blanche turned, put her hands to her bodice and freed her breasts. Then she lifted up and came down into Simon's lap, positioning his cock herself with her own hands, and lowering her royal cunt on his staff—so that now it was he who was groaning and moaning and being controlled. None but I, I'm sure, saw her stealthily issue forth the vial of lamb's blood I knew she kept in her bodice for any eventuality. And when he felt the blood run down his cock and heard her gasp and cry as she settled on him, who would call him a fool for believing he was deflowering a maiden who could not get enough of him and who valued his cocking so highly she was willing to give up a maidenhead that was worth gold and land?

I only had that fleeting glance, though, because as soon as Blanche was put in that first compromising position and her ass was being skewered, so was mine—and Kobus' as well. Other men in the hall were doing the same with us upon the table top that Simon was doing with Blanche.

To a large degree, though, the irony of this carefully orchestrated insult to the House of Lusane was that it was a joke on Simon and his lot. Blanche was in her element and doing what she needed to do to survive. And both Kobus and I reveled in cocking by men. Beyond the sour smell and rough handling of the men poking us and nagging worry of what was to be done with us afterward, we both were enjoying the dominating fuck we were receiving. I often dreamed of lying with a nobleman, but nothing invigorated more than a soldier off the battlefield, celebrating that he still has a cock and lusting to punish, or a horse-hung peasant just in from the fields and in high rut.

Thanks to Blanche's guile, we all survived—although an inspection of our prison room when we returned to it, revealed that none of the handmaidens had escaped defilement in our absence either—multiple times. Through words of praise and endearment, Blanche convinced Simon that they would be so much more comfortable and aroused in his bed than here, and she convinced him to believe that such was his prowess Blanche did not want to leave his bed.

In this way, she saw to an improvement of the lot of all of us. And her quick wit also found a way to save us. Simon could use a secret supporter at the court of King Claude, could he not? Who better than someone who was a willing sex slave to him—and was the queen of the Kibrit court to boot? She would see to it that none of her retinue spoke of what really had happened in their captivity and, in turn, she would work for the survival of Limonea from within the Kibrit court.

How could Simon refuse, "knowing" how she melted to him as she did? And she had reminded him, in a cooing voice, that Kibrit was not that large of an island. That once the courts of Claude and Simon were in some sort of civil balance, there should be many an opportunity for Claude's queen to converse in private with Limonea's king. And while he thought on that, she sank before him and unlaced his codpiece and convinced him that no other cock pleased her as his did.

It had saved us, but at that moment in the Lefkosea castle courtyard and seeing the look Blanche was giving the vanquished king in his ox cart, I was wondrously thankful I was not Simon.

* * * *

In a formal ceremonial gesture, King Claude came down off the throne on the dais that had been set in the courtyard facing the gate arch under which, first, Rene and his officers, and then Simon's kingdom, his ox cart, and then rank on rank of the victorious soldiers, had entered. Then the king walked to a dismounting Rene, arms wide in welcome and hugged his young general and kissed him on each cheek. And at the very moment, after glancing at Rene's face and then quickly looking back into the face of my queen, Blanche, I saw that she saw what I saw.

This was still nothing to fault King Claude on concerning proper deportment or even acknowledged body urges. But it was not quite the same for Rene. Rene's eyes revealed his love for King Claude—and, more dangerously, even the nature of that love.

But here I think I part ways with Blanche. I had seen Rene before and had had time to think upon the sort of man he was—and to talk to soldiers about all three of them: Claude, Guy, and Rene.

I could understand the nature and extent of Rene's love and pining for Claude. I melted to both of them myself. But I believed I knew Rene as Blanche did not. I believe I knew that Rene, left unmolested, unchallenged, would have forever held to the high morality and a loyalty to his king that would not give Blanche challenge unless the king himself came to Rene. Likewise with Claude I did not see that happening. In contrast to Blanche, though, of course, I saw the circumstances that prevented Claude and Rene from coupling as a tragedy rather than a noble necessity.

In Guy, though, I could see a vaulting ambition and lust—and capability—that could take and control a king and queen simultaneously. And in this I was proved at least partially right.

In any event, Blanche set the whole thundering rattling of the world of Kibrit into motion by seeing a threat in Rene.

I was there, in the chamber, when she called her understeward, Kobus, to her. I was there when they discussed potions and means and effects. And I was there when she sent off the messenger, inviting Rene to celebrate his victory at Limonea and to thank him for her successful deliverance from captivity and the danger to the chastity of her and her handmaidens by visiting her chambers for a special meal on the morrow.

Rene could hardly refuse the invitation.

Blanche made the setting as innocently seductive as possible—and I was enlisted to aid in much of that. But the seduction was not for her personal use. She had far different plans for Rene.

The food served Rene was rich and the wine was heavy and full of flavor—full enough of flavor to hide any taste of the potion that was dropped into it.

Blanche served Rene herself. But she had help from Kobus in doing so. And as the meal moved on, Blanche was less in proximity to Rene and Kobus rather more.

The potion did not render Rene unconscious. It was quite an unusual and strong potion—it had been brought home from the crusades by her father. And Blanche believed in the power and effect of the potion, because, a castle crone having helped her, she had first used it on her father to erase all inhibitions of feeling first his tremulous fingers and then his tongue and then his cock delicately separating her nether lips and sliding inside her.

Rene did become a little woozy as the dinner progressed, but he also became more comfortable and more affable—and he smiled more and laughed more easily at the joking of Blanche and Kobus. At some point he was aware that Blanche declared that the king had sent for her to attend him in his chamber but that he should stay and finish the meal—that the seductively smiling understeward would see to his every need. But then she was gone and Rene thought of her no more.