Chapter 23 #3
Olly gave her a half-smile. ‘Nothing so bold,’ he said.
‘This was given to me on the road. We targeted a town whilst we were posing as minstrels. I decided the brewery would be an easy goal.’ He pressed his fingers to the old wound.
‘I was stopped. This terrifying woman came out of the shadows with a sword and caught me on the arm.’
Agnes winced. ‘Is that the one that turned?’
‘The very same.’
‘But you survived. And kept the arm.’
‘I did, but it was luck more than anything else that saved me. And Pepper.’
Agnes mulled it over. ‘It sounds awful. You were lucky, extremely so.’
‘It was my own damn fault. I earned this wound through my sins. Had I not been trying to rob that family I would have been unharmed.’
‘Or you would have been harmed by some other misfortune,’ Agnes countered. ‘How long were you living like that?’
‘Like a thief? I cannot say. From the moment I set foot on English soil I became an outlaw. It was the only way I could survive.’
For a moment, it all passed again: the journey, the hopelessness, the loss. Those endless, grey days after the injury in that god-cursed brewery where he lay, unsure if he hoped to recover or simply pass in peace. He tried to force it away. He was safe, now. He had to believe that.
‘It is done, now. All of it, if Ash really does intend to keep me here. Although I have no notion what he intends to do with me.’
‘You could be a minstrel,’ Agnes said, eyebrows raised. ‘Or a fool. A resident jester: I am sure we can find you a cap.’
‘Only if you promise to fit it with bells,’ Olly said. ‘Although you have not heard me play; I may be dreadful.’
‘Even better,’ Agnes said, swirling her wine. ‘A good singer is only good for singing. A bad singer is good for entertainment.’
Olly laughed. ‘Very well. Pass me that—’
Olly gestured to his lute. Agnes did as he asked – with a little grumbling, as she slipped from the warmth of the bed – and handed the instrument over. It was a fine thing: not as well made as some he had seen – as some he had stolen – but sturdy, and it produced a pretty, mellow sound.
He ran his hand down the neck, feeling out the strings, the vibration within them, and the music within those vibrations.
He shut his eyes, enjoying the feeling. He had always loved this: no matter the instrument, if he had been able to get his hands upon it he would pick it up and play it.
His father had always been disinterested in his musical talents, preferring instead to dote on his brothers’ more military prowess, but his mother had encouraged him from the time he was old enough to pluck a string.
His first impulse was to play something slow and melodic, something beautiful yet sad. But he was done with sadness. He was done with death and living in fear.
He fiddled with the strings, then launched into the bawdiest song he knew.
It was a simple tune detailing the adventures of a nun upon freedom from her convent, and the various men she had those adventures with.
Agnes burst into laughter as soon as she realised what he was playing, the dogs looking up in startled confusion.
It was a merry tune, with a chorus written to be easy enough for a crowd of drunkards to repeat, and it only took a little cajoling to convince Agnes to join in, faltering over the words she was unfamiliar with.
When he was done, finishing with a passionate if less-than-artful flourish on the strings, there were tears shining in Agnes’s eyes as she struggled to regain her breath from laughter.
Buoyed by her joy, and flushed from the wine, Olly felt the familiar urge in his chest to impress.
To show her his real talents – not just his ability to keep a note and remember the obscene lyrics to a song about a nun fucking her way across Normandy.
He tried to think of the best songs, the ones that Agnes would most favour.
The answer came quickly. The song he had written for Pepper about the exploits of Yde: the woman who became a man.
He strummed the first few chords, trying to remember them. Songs, he found, were harder to lose: names and dates and those little maps that everyone else seemed to carry about in their heads were as ephemeral as smoke, but songs tended to stick.
‘Many men have proved themselves
With deeds which made them whole,
But I bring you the noble knight,
Whose body changed to match his soul …’
It was an odd song, somewhere between bawdy and ballad.
It delighted in Yde’s exploits as a knight and the beauty of Yde’s wife, while taking great pains to describe the disconnect of his body.
It touched on the glory of the transformation in words Olly had carefully chosen to feel right and holy and good …
but he had also allowed himself several stanzas to describe Yde’s new body as a man, with great detail on the size of his cock.
When he was done, ending on the birth of Yde’s son, he finally looked at Agnes. She was watching him with awe, her eyes red. He wondered if she had rubbed tears away when he had not been looking.
‘That was … that was lovely, Oliver.’
Olly lowered the lute to his lap. His cheeks were hot. ‘Thank you.’
He’d often been complimented on his music: it was how he’d made them profitable as a travelling minstrel group. But something about Agnes’s words felt different. Here they were, together, in the bed of the man they shared, hiding from the storm.
It felt dangerous, somehow. A sliver of Olly’s heart was clamouring at him, and he couldn’t understand it. He didn’t want to listen to it, either, lest it prove something he didn’t want to know.
Agnes seemed to sense his hesitance. She pulled her legs up beneath the covers, knocking their shoulders together.
‘Has Ash told you of how he and I met?’
Olly grabbed at the lifeline. ‘He has not.’
Agnes’s eyes lit up. ‘Then I must. Perhaps you can put it in a song.’