washday

This is the song Kathyn sings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VBUYtAyD1E

 

 

 

Come the week's end Willym still hadn't unpacked his sea chest, so finally Kathyn decided to do it for him.

The sturdy construction of the chest—made of thick dark wood, sides slanting inward towards the overhanging lid and bound by huge iron clasps, with cordage handles at either end—belied the chaos of its interior. Most of the space was occupied by a jumble of clothes and bedding, which were the bulk of any sailor's possessions.

On one side there was a small till box just below the chest's lid—when he tapped it there were only two lonely rattles. On the other side were a set of small drawers built into the chest and above these an open compartment that held a jumble of oddly-shaped tools that looked sort of like Kathyn's sewing-things, only of much less delicate make. Scattered among them were seashells, stones and little crystals of various shapes, sizes and colours, dried leaves and flowers, nuts, beads and other assorted small trinkets, souvenirs of Willym's voyages.

As he bent over this array of oddments he was struck by a strong chemical odour. He moved aside some of the tools, taking care not to cut himself on the sharp ends, and saw that the bottom was covered in tar paper, a lick of it curling up in the corner. He pushed the bottom with a finger and it tilted downward.

He opened the drawer immediately below and judged there were some few inches of space between the top of the drawer and the apparent bottom of the compartment. The true bottom must be below that.

It was a secret compartment, papered over to conceal it. It had been done recently—the glue was still fresh.

Kathyn's first reaction to this discovery was a feeling of profound betrayal.

Then immediately he rebuked himself. Even brothers—even lovers—had a right to privacy, surely. But the thought that there was something Willym would want to hide from him—it was inconceivable.

Maybe it was just something he did to keep whatever was inside safe from his crewmates? But then why do it when the trunk was safe at home?

The only thing he could imagine Willye keeping a secret from him was some sort of present he was saving as a surprise for him. That had to be it, he decided, so he left it, though there was still a pang of curiosity.

In the middle of the chest, carefully interleaved among blankets, were the pictures. There were salt prints—of himself, what else—and an eidotype in a silverbacked case, behind a plate of glass streaked with dried flecks of—well, Kathyn knew what it was. He laved them off with his tongue, then scrubbed it dry on his apron. It left a kind of metallic tang in his mouth, which worried him slightly. Then again, didn't the Emperor of Chin eat with silver chopsticks that would tarnish if they encountered poison?

Unlike with the prints, the ido didn't sit on the silver plate, but formed a sort of projection in the air just in front of it. It had depth to it, more like an illusionist's mirage than a flat portrait. He tilted the frame and the Kathyn in the picture pursed his lips, smoothed his hair, and smiled, then flickered back into the position he was in at first and did it again, over and over and over. He tilted it another way and he was singing, and whether it was just his imagination or some magic of the technology, he almost fancied he could hear the faintest of sounds. He tilted it again and he was eating an ice-lolly, running his tongue over the dripping cream in a quite unnecessary way. Then a bananer (which had cost almost as much as the sitting) sliding the pale ribbed flesh between his lips, until the tip was poking out the side of his cheek. He angled it further that way and he was sucking on his fingers—four of them, cheeks and eyes bright with embarrassment, and the stupidity of the thing. But Willym had been very specific about the poses and props he wanted.

Watching himself like this made his skin crawl. He wanted to smash the wretched silly simpering thing. But Willym had written endless ecstatic letters about how hard, and how much and how often he came all over the ido, and how jealous all the other men were of his sweetheart. He'd tried to persuade him to do one nude, performing even more erotic actions, but Kathyn successfully rebuffed these requests by asking Willym whether he really wanted Kathyn undressing and posing seductively for the man who would be taking the pictures.

There were also pictures of Willym, no doubt meant for Kathyn. And these were, in Kathyn's eyes, no less erotic. There was one of him leaning against a ship's rail, grinning with squinted eyes against a tropical sun, wearing his cap cocked to one side, a striped singlet that revealed more of his chest and abdomen than it concealed, and absolutely nothing below the waist. There was another of him in a hammock, this time completely naked, and very erect. He had his arms behind his head and his cap over his eyes, and had somehow contrived a jaunty little paper cap for his stand-on. There were several joking pictures of him with other sailors, dressed (or undressed) in various comic attire, staging comic scenes or striking comic poses. Pretending to throw each other overboard, tying each other to the masts or firing each other from cannons... in one they were in some sort of galley, and all had their cocks out on the table (and even with the angle it was easy to see Willym's was the biggest) and one in an apron on the other side of the table was brandishing a meat cleaver. In another they had formed a human pyramid of impressive height—though not as impressive as the erections which were proudly displayed by each man. There were plenty of them hilting their hard white meat inside women of varying hues and stages of undress, though Willym, Kathyn noted with pride and relief, was not to be found in any of these.

This seemed to be Willym's particular group of friends, and there were a lot of pictures of them: most neither sexy nor silly, just of them in their hammocks, or on the deck, arms slung round each other's shoulders in comradely embrace. One of them must have been something of a photographer. Kathyn was comfortable enough in his monogamy he could admit they were pretty well all comely lads—but he was sure it was not just his partiality that marked out Willym as the bonniest of the bunch. It was as if he was the centre no matter where he was in the picture. The eye was drawn to him as...

...as the eye of the servant is unto the hand of his master... and the sparks fly upwards...

He laid the pictures aside and turned his attention to the clothes. Now he went through them, he saw that all but the suit Willym had arrived in were ripped or stained in sundry places. Particularly about the crotch. And of course, there were the buttons on the new suit—that was Kathyn's fault. He didn't mind mending them, just as he didn't mind having Willym's things in the house. Yes, they smelt of the sea, but they smelt of Willym more.

Right then, however, they smelt a bit too strongly of Willym. He was overdue a visit to the washery anyhow. Apart from Willym's clothes, they'd run right through all the clean sheets in the linen cupboard, some of which hadn't been used in years. Fridays were washdays for Kathyn, since most other households did theirs on Monday. This meant there was less of a crowd at the laundry. Normally he bundled clothes and dishcloths and so on up in sheets, but in this instance the sheets were the dirtiest of the lot. In the end he put the lot in Willym's (remarkably capacious, as it turned out) canvas bag. Suppose I'll be doing this every day while he's home.

When he came down into the hallway Willym was sitting there, his back to the wall and his legs stretched across the narrow passage. When Kathyn stepped over him with his armload of washing, he put a hand up his dress and circled it round his thigh. `Still sillin?'

`Let up mostly, I think.'

He pushed Kathyn's skirts up over his arse and nosed between his cheeks to kiss his hole. Kathyn shivered.

`Dinna go out in that, Kath. Catch yer death.'

`I'll be right, just so long as I keep well under the arcade.'

He stepped out the front door of the house, which was in the northernmost corner of the hollow square that formed the court and, holding the bundle of linen over his head both to shield himself from the rain and to see where he was putting his feet on the wet steps, came down a short stair with a bentwood gate at the bottom, which opened discreetly onto the arcade. It was Kathyn's own private entrance, the only way into the house and quite invisible to someone strolling along the outer walk under the pillars.

When he got outside it was raining steadily, but the wind had eased off almost all the way, meaning the rain actually went down the way it was supposed to, rather than blowing sideways into the arcade. It was one of the lulls in the storm, and it would be best to take advantage of it.

There were stormwater drains to keep the pavements clear, but the square of grassy common in the middle of the court was below them, and the water ran down into it. By now it was a lake, in which the tall oaks stood like mangrove-mountains and scattered between them the crook-spindle damson trees which gave the place its name were up to their waists in water. There was already a small horde of boys splashing about in it, without their clothes but with self-propelled model warships almost as big as they were. They seemed to be re-enacting some sort of naval battle, while girls, well wrapped-up, watched them primly from under their parasols.

The washery which served all the residents of Damson Court was on the far side of the square from Kathyn's house. Very few of the shops he passed appeared to be open. That was normal, in this weather. He went through a kind of lane between two shops, through an arch, down a stair, past white-haired Miss Munday in the vestibule booth, who smiled him through, knowing him by sight. He was glad it was her, and not her rascally young nephew. When he was on duty he always badgered Kathyn for a kiss, which Kathyn was sure he didn't the other wives and maids.

He started sweating almost as soon as he walked into the wash-room. It was like smacking into a wall of steam.

It was a vast space with fat pipes cording the damp stone walls like ore veins and dripping down from the vaulted ceiling like stalactites, melding into the tall banks of washing machines that looked like giant brass bottles. These were a fairly new invention, and were one of the other benefits of living in Damson Court. You put your washing in one of the metal baskets like coalscuttles that clanked about overhead on the chain-pulley system. It was carried up to the attendants on the gangways above the machines, who dropped it in through the neck of one of the thrumming bottles with a dose of detergent. Then you just had to wait for an hour or so until it was done.

He exchanged slightly awkward pleasantries with the women there—housemaids for the most part. Most families who could afford to live in Damson Court could afford to keep at least one servant. Kathyn supposed he probably could as well, but what would be the point? It wasn't as though he was over-inundated with work, with just himself to take care of. It was awkward because on the one hand they were servants and he wasn't, but on the other hand some of them waited on rather fine ladies, and everyone knew what he was and where he'd come from. With neither side sure who should be snubbing who, they contented themselves with snubbing each other.

He loaded the bulk of the dirty linen into a waiting steel basket and sent it clanging up and away with the twitch of a lever, but he kept some of the very worst-stained things back. These he'd have to do by hand in one of the big copper tubs which the older women still preferred to use.

As wonderful as it was to have such a lusty little brother, so much passionate love-making had a rather unsexy side-effect in the form of soiled underclothes (he was lucky not to have ruined his dresses) and bedsheets speckled with come-stains like polka dots. He picked at the white ovals, watching the flakes flutter to the slick tiles.

When they lived dockside the whole process had to be done by hand. At least there hadn't been much to wash—that was one of poverty's few consolations.

Scrubbing out Willym's come didn't take that long, however and after he'd hung them on a drying rack, which came out of the wall on rollers like a book-case with poles instead of shelves, and pushed it back into the hot wind tunnel, there was nothing to do but wait on the benches that lined the wall opposite the machines.

He would have brought a book to keep him company, but he didn't want to risk baring the pages to the sopping air. He twiddled his thumbs, wiped at his dripping brow, tried to recall the psalm he still hadn't got by heart and wondered what Willym was doing.

He didn't have to wonder long, for after a bit Willym came in and sat down beside him. He was wearing his boots and jacket and cap, with his blue scarf tied around his neck. But no shirt and no trousers, only the single pair of wool underpants Kathyn had left him for modesty.

`What you doing here?' Kathyn said.

`Got lonely', Willym answered quietly. He put an arm round Kathyn's belly, and Kathyn laid his head on Willym's breast. The girls looked on with interest, and some jealousy. Kathyn preened only on the inside. Though really, he did think Willym might have waited till he had something to put on.

He glanced down and inhaled sharply. In this position his eyeline went direct to Willym's cock. He could see the hard bronze shape of it through the thin material. So much for modesty.

Willym flexed it and it jumped up till it was standing straight, then fell down to its resting 10 o'clock angle. He did it again and again, the white wool lifting and stretching like a tent, the tip almost hitting Kathyn's face.

Kathyn sighed in frustration and lifted his head. `Willye, what are you doing? Why are you coming bothering me when you should be—'

`Yarking it up yer?'

`At home, making yourself useful.'

Willym laughed. `You know how much use I am at home.' Then the dancing light in his eyes deepened to a dark smoulder. `But I know how thou can make thyself useful, lass.'

He put a hand up Kathyn's skirt, under his arse, feeling for his hole. Kathyn made a sound of disgust and disbelief, and tried to shift away, but Willym moved his arm up to his shoulder to hold him in place, and with his other brought Kathyn's hand over to his prick, inside his pants, curling the fingers round his length, which was hard as his inescapable grip.

With a quick, embarrassed glance at the girls chattering on the nearby benches, Kathyn started to stroke Willym slowly inside his undies, not looking at him while he did it, trying to act as though nothing untoward was happening. Fortunately, the girls seemed engrossed in their gossip and he hoped the attendants on the gangway would be too busy and too far away to see what they were doing.

Willym was not satisfied with this for long, however. After a few minutes he shifted them round so they were sitting face to face, Kathyn in his lap, Willym's ruddy prowspike standing free of his trousers, thrusting it against Kathyn's front even as Kathyn worked it with both hands. All hope of discretion was gone now, and Kathyn focussed on getting Willye off, and his ordeal over with, as quickly as possible.

It came quicker than expected. Or, rather, Willym did. A small, barely-audible grunt and Willym was fountaining buckets, pushing out thick, milky spume less in ropes than in near-continuous gouts that curtained down his prick like icing on a cake.

Kathyn tried to move back, but Willym clutched him close, breathing hard against his forehead, continuing to rut up against him as he soaked Kathyn's bodice until he could feel it sticking to his skin, absolutely drenched in come.

`Ohhhh, Willye. My dress!'

`Oh well, just bung it in with the others.'

`What? Willym, no—' But Willym was already lifting his arms over his head.

`Come on—off she come, in she go.'

Kathyn tried to struggle free, but Willym didn't let him, grappling him with his long, strong arms, pinning him between his muscled thighs and poking him incessantly with his prick. When his dress finally came off Kathyn gave a cry of dismay and tried to cover himself with his hands as best he could. Willym tossed it up into a bucket that was rattling overhead and turned back to Kathyn with a lustful gleam in his eyes that Kathyn would have called wicked if it hadn't somehow seemed so perfectly innocent.

`Oh, don't be so stoddy. Nothin these lasses en't seen aplenty, tisn't it, loves?' He winked at the women, who were looking on in bright-eyed astonishment (and appreciation for the proud member which he hadn't bothered to put away again). `Now, you just put those lovely legs up on that bench, and we'll see to this wee grummet of yours. Tsk. As I thought—absolutely fuckin filthy. Needs a good, hard scrubbin...'

And that was how Kathyn found himself being fucked naked on a bench in a steaming washroom, in front of an audience of gaping, giggling maids.

Kathyn did not like it. Kathyn, who had spent most of his life trying not to stand out, not to be noticed, not to draw attention to himself, did not like it.

But.

There was a part of him that also liked that he didn't like it, but Willym did and so they were doing it anyway. That Willym wanted Kathyn so much he couldn't control himself—and that he could control Kathyn, in every way and all the time.

The sound of skin slapping against skin was incredibly loud in the vaulted space—there couldn't be a body in the whole blimmin building who didn't know exactly what they were doing.

Willym fucked him frantically, a burst of shallow rapid-fire thrusts followed by a series of deep-driving cunt-punches, Willym yanking back on his hips and his hair and stabbing in with full-body force, so that Kathyn was only saved from falling off the slippery bench by Willym's hold. He kept one hand firmly anchored on Kathyn's hip, but the other switched between tugging cruelly on his hair, pinching the soft flesh of his chest and smacking his puddingy buttocks in time with his thrusts.

There was a whistle and a volley of harsh male laughter—two of the washery attendants were leaning over the railing of the nearest gangplank, cocks hanging out of their white overalls as they watched. One of them was Miss Munday's nephew and he winked when he caught Kathyn's eye, picking up his dick and starting to wank. One of the maids started to sing an old swiving song, meant to aid the bedding on a couple's nuptial night, in an earthy dockland lilt.

 

`O-ho, he drubs her, rubs her, scrubs her, tubs her, randy diddle-aye-dandy o.

Oh, he dicks her, pricks her, fricks her, sticks her, riddle-in-aye tin-himey o.'

 

Kathyn looked down, staring at the floor, trying to pretend he couldn't hear what he heard, couldn't feel what he felt. He was flushed and sweating from the humid air and the ecstasy of the humiliation that ached like love as Willym vigorously scrubbed out his cunt. His copper dick pounded up Kathyn's soaking tub so slickly, so wetly he felt just as dirty as Willym said he was.

He closed his eyes and the girls and the men and the washery, and the clinging air fell away and they were running before the wind, soaring over the world, Willym driving him through the veils of time and space with the unrelenting rhythm of his cock.

He wandered for unknown aeons in the farthest reaches of thought, tethered to himself only by the heat and the throb of emptiness and fullness and emptiness again.

He was brought back by the sensation of Willym coming on his thighs. He started to squirm away and Willym fell laughing on top of him, front to front and prick to prick, mauling his mouth in between chuckles as he spunked all over him, streaking him white from neck to crotch.

When he was finally spent Kathyn sat up, head spinning. He felt like he'd been bathing in sperm, and smelt like it too.

`Oh, Willye, look, I'm filthy!'

His brother appeared confoundingly unperturbed. He'd taken his pipe out of his jacket pocket and was attempting to light it. His dratted thing was still waving about, too.

`Shall we throw thee in for a spin, too? Or did I just give thee enough of one?' He clapped Kathyn's arse, and Kathyn winced at the sound that echoed like thunder through the cavernous room.

Someone walked up to them. It was one of the maids, the one who had been singing, a stout, sonsy redhead of about twenty. She held out a lacy white apron with a knowing glint in her dark eyes. `Ere y'go, darlin. This do you in the meanwhile?'

`If he doesn't', she added, with a bold glance at Willym, who was slouched against the back of the bench, smoking.

Kathyn took the apron silently, face burning, eyes lowered. He was more ashamed than he'd been at any time in his life. He was just praying for an earthquake or spontaneous combustion or something to put him out of his misery.

But Willym wasn't going to let him off so lightly. `Now then, love,' he said in a mock-reproachful tone, `what do you say to the nice lass?'

He wanted to tell her to stuff her apron up her skirt and carry it to Halifax, but instead he mumbled a reluctant `thank you.'

The maid let out a brassy peal of laughter and walked away. Kathyn decided that, if he weren't a Christian, he would have hated her.

But he put on the apron, which covered all of his front at least, apart from his arms and shoulders, and Willym covered the rest. Kathyn sat in his brother's warm lap, staring at his hands while Willym sucked on his neck, and slowly rocked his hard-on through the crevice of his arse.

After the rest of the washing came back down in one of the flying trolleys, Kathyn took them to the rotary ventilators to be quick-dried. These you had to turn by hand and Kathyn made Willym do it as punishment (though, angry as he was, it was also partly for the pleasure of watching Willym's shapely back and shoulders ripple as he cranked the handle).

By the time they emerged from the laundry, the rain had dwindled to the merest drizzle, and the impromptu swimming pool was crowded with boys of all ages, including older youths who'd stripped off to join the fun, while grown-ups were watching from under the arcade.

Willym threw his jacket over Kathyn's head and dove headlong into the water. The swimmers' and spectators' cries of mirth mingled with shrieks of horror when Willym stood up, flinging water off him like a dog, long dick wagging between his legs like a tail. He made a jeering noise and grabbed his prick and shook it at them.

The men guffawed, the little girls stared and their nannies gasped in horror, while the little boys howled with glee, some of them immediately imitating Willym by grabbing their pricklets and shaking them vigorously at the nearest girl or matron.

Kathyn wished vehemently he had something to hit Willym with that would hurt more than a bag of linen. `Come on, Willym. Get out of there!'

He came, splashing onto the pavement like an ungainly sea-monster and almost falling in again when Kathyn buffeted him about the head with the canvas bag. He raised his arms with a squawk and started to say something, but was cut off when Kathyn threw one of the clean sheets over his head. `Not a word out of you! Not one blimmin word. Wrap that around yourself so you don't scandalise any more folk than you already have. Lord have mercy on us!"

He continued to berate his brother as he hurried him back to the house, the sight, to the onlookers, not unlike a hogget herding a sheepdog. 'You'll have me evicted, you carry on like that. What on earth has got into you? What in Heaven's name were you thinking, Willye? This isn't all some big game. I swear, you're worse now than when you were five!'

Willym said nothing, his flight of high spirits seeming to have passed, replaced with an air of abashed defiance Kathyn knew all too well.

`Just can't let you out of the house, can I? Have to put you on a ruddy leash!'

When they got to the door Willym made to follow him inside, but Kathyn stopped him with a whack on the chest. `No, you stay there. I'm not having you dripping all over my floor. Just wait till I get a towel.'

By the time Kathyn returned with the said article, Willym was hanging his head and looking very contrite. Still like a dog, one who knew he'd behaved badly by rolling in the mud or chasing the cat, and, though it was worth it at the time, was ready to accept his master's punishment.

Lord help him, but just looking at him took the edge of Kathyn's ire. He wasn't going to let him off that easily, though. He wasn't.

He towelled Willym off roughly, stamping down the urge to take the plump bouncing length of his cock into his mouth. He made him get dressed, there on the doorstep, and told him to take himself off somewhere out of the way while he did the ironing and starching, which would take several hours. He would have to bring out the box iron, which he hated because of how heavy it was, how hard it was to use and how easy to burn yourself with. He threw himself into the work, trying to ignore the throbbing of his well-fucked sex.

Willym returned from his exile about lunchtime. He halted on the doormat, looking uncertain of his reception.

`Put the wood in the hole, Willye', Kathyn said, using an old expression of their Grandam's, meaning `shut the door'.

But Willym, perverse as ever, decided to take it another way. `Right-o', he said, and ripped open his broadfall.

`Oh no', Kathyn said grimly. `You put that thing away. You're not coming near me with that fiddlestick of yours fer a month, if I'm a Meadowbrooke.'

Willym tutted dismissively. `Aw now, you silly bint. Dinna make promises you canna keep. Cock-hungry cunt like yours couldna stand it fer a week, fuck a bleedin month.'

Kathyn made a disbelieving noise and turned on his heel, but Willym came after him. `Ah, come on, love. What, you still crumpsy over this morning? Eh? Still got yer twat in a twist? I'll soon fuck that out of thee—c'mere.'

`No, you won't—ooh!' Something—the blasted rat—ran under Kathyn's feet and he squeaked and jumped into Willym's arms without thinking. Willym, never one to pass up an opportunity, shovelled up his petticoats and shoved in.

Kathyn submitted to it with his arms crossed and head turned away, but did not join in. If Willym thought he could just screw his way back into Kathyn's good books, he had another thing coming besides his prick.

Yet, try as he might, Kathyn couldn't keep his body from tensing with the most grudging orgasm he'd ever had. He still refused to look at Willym, keeping his arms resolutely folded across his chest even as his tizzle spat onto the rug.

He let Willym clean him up (with his mouth, for a change) and at the end only gave him a look that said, you may lick wherever you like, you're not in the clear yet, boyo.

 

 

The anniversary clock was chiming half one. Kathyn sat in the window bay of his bedroom with plenty of cushions under his bottom. He leafed through his samplebook, stroking the rich, multicoloured swatches of fabric, feeling his body glow with the breeding he'd just had. His other hand was playing with his tape measure, pulling the red silk ribbon out of its silver ball which looked like a Christmas ornament (not that they celebrated Christmas), winding it around his fingers, then letting it whisk back in with a satisfying snick.

He paused, lifting his head as a sound floated up from below. It was a song, the words indistinct, but the voice strong and clear. He put the book aside and pattered down the stairs into the parlour. Willym was sitting by the fire, facing away from Kathyn, chanting the end of a seaman's air in an oaky baritone.

 

And whether in my true love's arms

Or on the deep I lie,

The enemy of England sleepeth not,

So nor must I

 

Kathyn perched on the arm of the chair and carded his fingers through Willym's russet curls. On the back of his neck, tucked just out of sight under a tassel of hair, was a large brown mole. Superstition was for heathens, but Kathyn was glad it was there. Once a very old woman had told him that no man so marked would ever be drowned.

And once, their Mam, giving Willye his rough monthly once-over with the kitchen shears, had sliced it by accident, and little four-year-old Willye had wailed fit to wake a leviathan. After that he only ever let Kathyn cut his hair, which he'd done gladly, taking care to avoid the special mole and kissing it at the end, as if to seal in the luck. Willym had sat so patient and still for him, just as he'd sat outside the Commodore Sparrow Inn, waiting each night for the end of Kathyn's shift.

Kathyn's heart grew soft, as it did whenever he thought of that trusting little boy, so full of life and warmth despite the harshness of his surroundings. So sweetly devoted to his big brother, even when he was making mischief.

As the song finished he rubbed Willym's shoulder and Willym knew he was forgiven. He took Kathyn's hand and kissed it. `Will you sing one for me, Kath?'

Kathyn didn't have a voice like his brother's—his was small and high and fragile, like a glass thread spooling out of his throat to brittle and dissolve in the air. But he didn't mind, for Willym. Only for Willym.

 

She sat doon alow a thorn

Fine flowers in the valley

And there she kissed her babe new-born

And the green leaves they grow rarely

 

From her breast she took a knife

Fine flowers in the valley

And twined the sweet babe o' its life

And the green leaves they grow rarely

 

She's haukit a grave by the light o' the moon

Fine flowers in the valley

And there she's buried her sweet babe in

And the green leaves they grow rarely

 

When Kathyn paused to draw breath at the end of the verse, Willym shivered and kissed him to stop him singing any more. He pulled back—but not too far back, still close enough Kathyn could feel the puff of his breath with each word. The twin seas of his eyes were troubled. `Why did ye sing that, Kath?'

`Because you asked me too.'

`You know that's not what I meant.'

`I don't know.' Kathyn turned his face to the fire, but his mind was far away, full of leaf-shadowed bowers and the watching eyes of trees, of the crooked backs of women and tall black church spires and silver knives gleaming in the ghost-light of the moon.

 

After supper Kathyn was sitting in his room, at his dainty writing desk of pale driftwood, going over the letters Timyth had brought the day before.

The window above the desk was in the exterior wall of the court, and looked away from the city and the sea, to the north and the interior. It was wide and full of the sky, which was clearer than it had been since before the storm began. A cleft had formed in the cloud wall, like an upside-down valley, and a red, wounded sun bled through. He saw in the glass a shadow move into the doorway.

Willym padded across the room to look over his shoulder. `These letters—what they all in aid of, anyhow?'

Kathyn winced. `Ahh—about the rent, mostly. It's nothing to be...to be worried about...'

When Willym gave him a questioning look he sighed, and said, `You know that I hadn't had a letter or a packet from you for, well, over six months it'd be by now. I'd saved up some—I don't want you to think I was unthrifty with your money, Willye, but... Well, things had been getting tight, just lately. Matter of fact, I'd just about come to the end.'

Willym took the letters without asking and sifted through them distractedly, looking upset. `Nobody could get messages either in or out when we were cross the wind-bar. We were engaging the Blight Sea Turks an we were that pressed, I hadn't thought about the pay—they didn't hassle you, did they, Kath? Who is it?' He looked up and issued this last demand as if he were ready to march off and bash in the skull of every landlord in Highmouth if Kathyn didn't give him a name quick.

`It's all right, Willye. Mister Danshaw was very understanding.'

`Understandin?' Willym said sharply. `No special favours, like?'

Kathyn groaned. `Ohhh—no, you duffer. Just because you always want to pump me doesn't mean every man alive wants to!'

`I dinna know', Willym said in his obstinate voice, shrugging his shoulders. `How can I? I en't never ere to keep an eye on thee, am I? You don't know how many tars come home—find their wives fucked off with some other bloke—and is house empty but for a load o' brats that en't is. Or worse, t'other bastard in is house, boots at is door, avin is wife in is bed, and ee has to sleep in the gutter where's she's throwed is bairns!'

`I wouldn't—I couldn't do that, Willye, and you know it.'

`No, but you couldna stop one if he wanted to, could ye? Thou knows what I mean, Kath. If any man—some sailor, some robber, some scum off the streets—wanted to come in here and have his way with thee, there's aw fuck that thou could do about it. Just walk right in that door and throw ye down and...' His face suffered a sea-change, convulsing with unnameable anguish, his hands clutching and wringing the letters so that he tore them without noticing. His breath came in rags and the muscles of his neck stood out as if straining under a great load.

Kathyn's heart was a burning brand within his chest. He was bewildered and scared, wondering what had happened to his brother, how the boy he would once have called the coolest-headed on earth now seemed but three winds south of open sky. `Oh, Willye, why do you upset yourself with these—'

`I canna help it, Kath—time's it's all I can think about, all I can see. It just does me in. I've had nightmares, I—' His voice choked off into a desperate wounded-animal sound, and Kathyn rushed to him, wrapped him in his arms, soothed and gentled him as best he could, though all the time panic was pounding at his ears.

Now all the suspicion and anger had gone out of Willym, and he seemed lost as the little boy he had surely been only five minutes ago. He swayed into Kathyn's embrace, threatening to topple the smaller man to the floor. He groped at Kathyn's clothes, his hair, his neck, his waist; his shoulders were shaking.

`You're so beautiful, Kath. You're so lovely—and I'm so rough and horrible and unworthy of thee, I know it. Why shouldn't thou marry some fine rich man, some scholar who can read all them books, some gentleman who'll be gentle with thee, and who'll be with thee?'

`Hushhush, Willye. Just bide and be still. You know that as long as I've lived I've loved none but thee. That I want nothing but thy love; that I pray for nothing but thy presence. That if thou left me I should die.'

`I can't stand it, knowing thou'rt so far away. Knowing I cannot protect thee.'

Kathyn had no answers—none that would appease Willym, whose constancy was such that it could never resign that which it adored to another's care, not even God's. So he held him, and kissed him, and loved him with all the meagreness he had, and in the stormy sunset's light the rain fell down like blood.

 

 

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