Josquin held her gaze, and some understanding bridged the gap between them. This time there would be no conscientious hesitations, no head-butting or springing of traps. This time was the time, was now, nobody careening unstuck through the past.
“I gently remind you that your patron Saint, Rebecca, left her basket under the bed,” said Josquin, checking the temperature gauge. He opened the tap while she fetched it, and when she’d picked her poison (so to speak), he drew Tess to him and wrapped his arms around her middle.
“Thank you,” she whispered, and kissed him.
Tess began unbuttoning his second-best doublet while Josquin undid the one she was wearing. There were so many buttons, so many fidgeting fingers. She felt herself released from confinement, felt the shiver-soft touch of Josquin’s competent hands upon her long-suppressed breasts. She was reminded of the infant Dozerius, his mouth fluttering soft as moth wings against her skin, and for a moment she worried that she was still too full of pain, that her body held too much history to be present in the present. But Josquin kissed her again and she was there, alive to every singing nerve ending, to his touch like gentle rain upon the neglected, drought-racked earth.
We build history every day, anew.
The rest of her cold, damp clothing fell away. The tub filled, and Josquin let her climb in first while he finished undressing, giving her a few minutes to enjoy the hottest water alone.
She worried that she’d fall apart, as she’d done under Dulsia’s hands.
But as she entered the water, she found to her surprise that her parts had taken on new meanings. These were the shoulders that had carried Griss to Mother Philomela; these, the arms that had broken clods and turned hay. The hand that had held Frai Moldi’s. The callused feet that had carried her across the border into a new set of stories.
She was Tess of the Road, bathing in rivers, relishing the water’s rush between her thighs.
Warmth entered her heart, which had been as alone as the Most Alone beneath the earth.
She still held sorrows, but she was not made of them. Her life was not a tragedy.
It was history, and it was hers.
When she had thawed, Josquin joined her, swinging his legs together over the side and lowering himself slowly. She caught him in her arms and kissed him again, and together they were broken/unbroken. All/nothing. And any chasms left between were swiftly bridged.
* * *
The Academy was behind her now, done and gone, and she felt like she’d been freed of a terrible burden. Now she could be nowhere but here, no-when but now, no one but Tess. The sun came out and glittered upon the surface of the freshly fallen snow, and Tess felt every bit as clean and new.
She embroidered with joy. She accompanied Josquin to market, and to his Brotherhood of Heralds meetings; she helped him cook and fetched wood and water. She kept Gaida company in the evenings. And at night, even though she insisted upon maintaining the charade of going to bed in her own room, she would creep downstairs and sleep in Josquin’s arms.
She asked Josquin about all of his girlfriends, in part because she was curious, in part because she was building up the courage to talk about Will. She wanted to talk about him; he’d never seemed so distant, as if Josquin’s presence had exorcised him at last, or given her something to take Will’s place. Maybe the past could be past. It gave her hope.
She asked Josquin about his first time, and got a hilarious story about an inn in the Pinabra where a mother and daughter had competed for his affections. The mother had won. Tess found this shocking, which elicited a gentle laugh. “It was for the best. I knew nothing, and neither did her daughter. We don’t always know what we want the first time out; we certainly don’t know what to expect.”
“Exactly!” cried Tess, spotting her opening. “I barely knew where anything went, and I was surprised to find myself in the middle of it before I understood what had happened.”
“You—I’m sorry, what?” said Josquin, apparently befuddled. “Start at the beginning. You slept with…Will, was it? By accident?”
“I know it sounds absurd,” said Tess confidentially, keeping her tone light. This could be a funny story, maybe, if she told it right.
“I’d slept with him—just slept, in his arms—a few times, and nothing had happened,” she said merrily. So far so good. “I was staying out so late that sometimes it was easier to nap in his room and go home just at sunrise.”
“But then one night something did happen,” said Josquin, not smiling.
Tess tried to be reassuring: “I didn’t intend it to. I was mostly asleep, having had a good deal of ale, and he was behind me, cuddling and kissing my ear, and it was pleasant, but really I wanted to sleep. And then—I’ve never quite known how—all of a sudden I realized something was different, my chemise had worked its way up and he’d slipped in, as it were.”
It was getting harder to keep her tone jolly. “I didn’t know what I was feeling at first, or where I was feeling it; he’d gone off the map, and anyway it was supposed to hurt the first time. The maidenhead, you know. It’s supposed to break and bleed. Mama told us hers was so thick and strong that Papa couldn’t consummate their marriage until a midwife came and perforated it with a knife. She was sure her daughters would be the same; I’m embarrassed to admit I was counting on it. The pain was supposed to warn me that we’d come too close.
“Anyway, he was in, like magic. I hardly felt it. Once I realized, I thought, He couldn’t have done it on purpose, we agreed we wouldn’t, he must not realize. I tried to tell him, politely, that he’d gone too far, but his weight was on me then, and my face was squashed into the pillow. I couldn’t get his attention. I swatted at him, but he was behind me and I had no leverage.”
This was not a funny story. Tess was feeling it now, as if she were there; she couldn’t bend the tale back toward merry farce, and she couldn’t seem to stop telling it, either. “Maybe I could have given him a bloody nose with the back of my head. Maybe I could have struggled harder and wiggled free somehow.”
“But you didn’t,” Josquin said quietly.
Tess shrugged. An old familiar despair, like a leaden blanket, was descending upon her. “There was no point. I was already ruined, and it was my own fault. I’d lost my virginity in the stupidest way imaginable. Making him stop wouldn’t bring it back. I only hoped he’d meant it when he said he wanted to marry me. He surely wouldn’t marry me if I broke his nose.”
“Tess,” said Josquin, but she wouldn’t meet his eye.
“I wasn’t mad at him—isn’t that ridiculous? He was just doing what my mother had warned me men do. If anything, I was mad at her, and at my maidenhead. I thought I’d have some warning, that there’d be time to stop him. I didn’t know anything.”
“Tess,” said Josquin, more urgently. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“You’re wrong,” snapped Tess. “I was in his bed, in my chemise. I knew better.” I earned it, she wanted to add, but her voice stopped working momentarily. “Anyway, it’s not completely true that I didn’t want it. Some part of me wanted it, just not right then. And not like that.”
“If you’d told him not to,” said Josquin darkly, “then it was—”
“Please don’t say it,” Tess interrupted. “Please. That’s a terrible word, and even if it’s true, then what? You’ll weep for me, or get angry, and I’ll feel like I have to comfort you, do you see? I can’t even comfort myself.”
Josquin shook his head, fuming, but held her in silence, and that was truly enough.