The Sevenfold Spell (2 page)

After an instant of shock he grabbed me, ground his lips against mine and thrust his tongue in my mouth. At first he almost made me gag, but unexpectedly, we fell into a rhythm, our tongues swirling together, and our arms twining around each other like fibers caught by the spindle. Each twist wound something within me until a pang bloomed deep in my vitals. Our breathing grew ragged and we broke away, staring at each other.

The look in his eye, I will never forget. It was as if he saw me anew.

“Have you ever touched a girl’s breast before?” I asked.

He stared at me as if I had changed into another person. I had taken on the role of the seductress, a role I never in my life expected to play. I found it intoxicating.

I unbuttoned the top of my bodice and pulled out a young, firm breast. When he reached out a tentative hand and touched the end of my nipple, I felt it clear to my soul. He traced his fingers around it and then bent over to give it a lick.

It must have been delicious, because he pressed even closer to draw it into his mouth. I leaned back on the couch. He reached for the other breast, as if to taste it too.

My mother’s footfalls on the cellar stairs sent us springing apart. I pulled my bodice closed.

“Come back tonight,” I whispered. “Late.”

He was going out the door as my mother entered the room. She stopped at the sight of me. “Did that boy have his hands upon you?”

“He’s leaving,” I said while buttoning my bodice. “His father is sending him to become a monk.”

She sniffed. “I should have known he’d drop you.” Then she glared at me. “Don’t get his baby in you. The last thing we need is another mouth to feed.”

With her words, his baby was the only thing I wanted in all the world.

The rest of the day couldn’t have passed any slower if I had watched each tick of the clock. Mama and I did the usual things—fumble with the loom, produce substandard results and squabble. She nagged at me relentlessly and I thought only of Willard’s visit.

After a silent dinner I tidied up and prepared for bed. When I performed my nightly washing in the kitchen, I did a much more thorough job than usual. I washed my chest and underarms, as well as my face and hands. I also scrubbed between my legs. I wished I could use the tub, but it wasn’t Sunday and I dared not as it would surely arouse Mama’s suspicions.

I made a pretense of retiring but, soon afterward, crept to Mama’s door. When I heard her snoring, I went back to the front room to wait. I had no doubt he would come.

Soon after the church bells chimed ten o’clock, I heard Willard’s timid tapping on the door. I let him in and, without a word, pulled him into the cellar, closing and barring the trapdoor behind us. My cot was in the corner. I placed a candle on the table and sat on the cot. His eyes shifted around, uncertain, but he finally sat beside me. He smelled like tallow soap.

I leaned toward him and, again, our lips met. His hand slipped into the loose neck of my nightdress and his mouth soon followed. His hand wandered other places, and I made no objection when it slid up my nightdress. When I parted my legs, he plunged his hand between them and explored none too gently. I couldn’t stop my gasp of discomfort.

He lurched to his feet. He stood with his back toward me, his shoulders heaving with every breath.

“Talia, are you a maiden?” he asked.

I almost loved him for asking. “Yes,” I said.

“Then we should stop.”

“Why? You are going off to a life of celibacy and I’ll be celibate without you, because you’re the only boy who ever wanted me.”

He didn’t reply. I arose and stood in front of him. I felt the front of his trousers. There was a hardness there. I wrapped my hand around it, and his breath stopped.

“Lie with me, Willard,” I said.

“What if I get you with child?”

I then uttered the words that every boy in such situations wants to hear.

“Don’t worry about it.”

He stared at me. I pulled one arm out of my nightdress, then the other, and then I let it fall. It pooled around my feet on the floor. Underneath, I was nude. I lay on the bed and looked at him.

“You don’t want to go off to the monastery without ever having known a girl, do you?” The saucy lilt was back. I parted my thighs invitingly.

He continued to gawk at me for a moment. Then, he scrambled onto the bed between my legs and fumbled with the drawstring of his trousers. He yanked them down to his hips. I could feel a hard hotness against me, pushing inexpertly. Finally, he found the right place.

I bit my lip and managed not to yelp. It was over in two painful shoves.

He groaned and buried his face in my neck.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Why?”

“I hurt you.”

“Yes, but we won’t have to worry about that again.” I pulled up his shirt and traced my fingers around his back and sides. He froze. I kissed him. After a moment, I could feel him swelling within me again. When he started moving once more, I held still and concentrated on the strange new feelings. It was not truly pleasant, nor was it unpleasant. I shifted and he finished with another groan.

“I should go,” Willard said as I cleaned up.

“Do you want to go?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

“Then don’t.” I lay down and looked at him.

We did it twice more. It hurt less each time.

“Pa will belt me if he catches me out,” he said.

“Surely one more time won’t take too long,” I said as I pulled him back to me.

During that fifth time, I could feel the beginning of something…something I had never felt before. It was a sweet pain deep within me that lingered long after he left.

I longed to feel it again.

***

The next morning, Mama never suspected. I was even able to smuggle the stained sheets into the wash without her being the wiser. She had gotten through eighteen years of raising me without my giving her any trouble. She certainly didn’t expect any now.

I couldn’t stop thinking about my night with Willard. I wanted nothing more than to be with him again.

That night, I repeated my ablutions before I retired. And he repeated his visit. As he did the next night, and the next. Thus far, I’d felt little pleasure in his arms, but welcomed him just the same.

On the fifth night, he didn’t appear. I paced my room and slept ill. Well after midnight I got dressed, sneaked out of the house and walked all the way to his father’s farm outside the city. I waited for him inside the barn, sleeping on some hay bales until the cock crowed in the dark hour before dawn. I awoke, sat on a hay bale and waited nervously. What had I been thinking? What if Willard’s father found me in the barn? He would surely belt me, and drag me back to Mama in disgrace. And then Mama would belt me again.

But still, I stayed.

When the barn door opened, Willard stepped in with his two younger brothers. He stopped and gaped at me.

“Talia—what are you doing here?”

“I’m sorry. I had to—” I glanced at his younger brothers, and then back to him, “—had to see you again.”

The boys began to gig each other in the ribs and snort with laughter.

“Gord, Mort—get out of here.”

They objected, but he shoved them out of the barn and barred the door. He turned to me.

“You should have found some way to warn me that you were here.” He looked embarrassed, yet pleased.

It seemed Willard needed convincing. I thought back to certain churchyard conversations with other girls my age. Once they had married, they had all grown insufferably smug—even the girls who were otherwise kind. They loved to discuss bedroom matters when the older matrons were absent, as if they were children playing a naughty new game. Their whispers hadn’t made much sense to me at the time, but I understood them perfectly now.

I walked up to him, put my arms around his neck and slipped a leg between his. “Don’t you want me?” I asked as I pushed my breasts against his chest.

“Yes, but my brothers are right outside.”

“I’m not afraid of your brothers.”

He started to say something, but I silenced him with a kiss while I pressed up against his hips with mine. He groaned.

“We’d better hurry,” he said.

“Those hay bales might work.”

“It’ll be awfully scratchy for you.”

I bit his earlobe. “Then make it worth my while.”

I drew him to the hay bales, lay back and hitched up my skirts. He hesitated for a moment, then yanked down his trousers, lifted my legs in the crook of his arms and pushed himself into me. After all the time I had spent waiting, I was more than ready for him. It was scratchy, but the angles were new and different, and he held my legs in a way we had not tried before. As he moved within me, a deep pleasure shot through me.

A moan escaped my lips before I could stop it.

I heard a giggle. Willard froze.

“Don’t stop!” I gasped.

“My brothers—”

“Let them listen,” I whispered. “Let them all be jealous of you.”

The idea obviously appealed to his vanity. He began to thrust anew. Even though my pleasure had faded with that intrusive giggle, I continued to moan. As he went faster, I began to gasp and groan and squeal so much that a cow began to low. Outside, all fell silent. As Willard finished, I gave a theatrical wail.

“Why did you do that?” he whispered after a few moments.

I smiled. “Let them talk about you. Word will spread. Soon, all the girls will regret they didn’t snap you up.”

“But what about your reputation?”

“I don’t care about my reputation. Your opinion is the only one that matters.”

It was true. My time with him was short, after which the dreams that I had finally dared to dream would unravel. I could not bear to think of anything but
now
. The only bright spot I could envision in this dreary new future was the child that would certainly follow. And Willard was the only one who was willing to provide that child. At this point, I would do anything for him.

But even I had to admit that there was more to it than that. Willard had turned out to be much more considerate than I expected. Unlike the grunting husbands described to me by my peers, he seemed to care that I enjoy myself as he did. There was a closeness in our intimacy that I hadn’t expected. And while I could get it, I wanted more.

***

Mama didn’t suspect anything until that Sunday at church. Willard’s brothers had indeed spoken of his prowess. The entire parish buzzed of it. The priest spoke at great length on the perils of youthful sin. Willard and his family sat a few rows ahead of us. Several times, he turned around and our eyes met.

After the service, Mama went to gossip with the other parish matriarchs. Willard stood with a gang of young men. Several of them clapped him on the back, and I could see his sheepish grin.

Someone stopped in front of me. I looked up to see my childhood nemesis, Hilda Miller, now Hilda Cooper. “Talia Spinster. I hear you’ve made yourself a whore,” she said.

“What did you hear?” I asked, curious.

Her eyes narrowed. “The way I heard it said, you yipped and wailed under Willard Farmer like a bitch in heat.”

I regarded her for a moment. “Yes,” I said, “I suppose I did.” I let my eyes glaze over and fixed my gaze upon him over her shoulder. “How could I do anything else while he plowed me as if I were a ripe field?” I squirmed and wiggled my hips. “He had me helpless with bliss. I defy you to lie beneath a man like him and not wail and gnash your teeth.”

She gaped at me with incredulity. I was gratified at having rendered her speechless.

“If I
am
a whore,” I added, “I’m Willard’s whore, and his alone. I cannot be his wife, so I’ll be his whore.”

“How can you say such things?” Her shock was genuine. She had never heard a respectable young woman talk as I did.

“Because it’s the truth. He’s a bull in bed. Any woman who passed him over should regret it.” I said this because I knew Hilda had sneered at him before she married the cooper’s son.

She continued to stare at me, speechless. Then her gaze shifted over my shoulder, and she smirked.

I turned and met my mother’s eyes.

Back at the shop, our argument was long and bitter.

“How could you speak that way?” Mama demanded. “How could you call yourself Willard’s whore?”

“Because I
am
his whore.”

I was not trying to provoke her. Had there never been a curse, we never would have lost our livelihood and I would have become Willard’s wife. Everything had changed. And during that bleak time, I could not see anything ever improving.

She interrupted my reverie with a slap.

“How am I to hold my head up now?” she shouted as I reeled.

“If you feel you cannot hold your head up, you must throw me off.”

“I ought to throw you off. The whole parish would support me if I did.”

“I suppose if you did I would have to become a whore to any man, rather than only to Willard.”

She slapped me again. “I’ll never marry you off, now that your maidenhead’s gone.”

“Willard is the only one who wanted it,” I said. “I figured I may as well let him have it.”

I endured ten more slaps before I got angry enough to slap her back. She burst into tears. We didn’t speak for the rest of the day.

That evening, I left, walked to Willard’s farm and waited around until he used the outhouse one final time that night. As he went back toward the house, I stepped out in front of him. He stopped.

“You were right,” he said. “What you did the other day…word has gotten around.”

“I’m glad of it.” I stepped up to him, wrapped my arms around his neck and gave him a lingering kiss. He soon pulled away.

“How can you be glad of it? They say such terrible things about you.”

“I’m glad because you care.”

I kissed him again. He went into the house and, at length, sneaked back out. We spent the night in the hayloft. I didn’t feign pleasure as I had for the benefit of his brothers, but true gratification still eluded me. Toward dawn, while I was dressing, he spoke again.

“I know you never feel any pleasure, no matter how much you act like it for my brothers. Why do you keep doing this?”

I decided not to tell him of my wish for his child. “It wasn’t all acting. Before your brothers giggled…that was real.” I shrugged. “We just need practice.”

“What we need is a more comfortable place,” he said.

“That would probably help.”

I really didn’t expect it to lead anywhere. We continued to meet nightly. My mother would no longer have him in the house, so we usually stayed in the barn, where the cows were by now used to our noises. His father started making him sleep with his brothers, so he met me later and later every night.

***

On our two-week anniversary, he was pulling out of the farm in his wagon as I arrived. I looked up at him as he drew the mule to a stop beside me.

“How on earth did you sneak the wagon out?” I asked him.

“I didn’t,” he replied. He reached his hand for mine. After he helped me in, he tsked the mule into motion again, headed toward town. I sat beside him on the driver’s bench.

“So your father knows you’re out?”

“Yes.”

“How did you get him to agree to let you go?”

“He didn’t.”

“I thought he was dead set against us getting together.”

He spat something. “He is.”

Eventually, I pried the story out of him. His father had been making him sleep with his brothers, but tonight, Willard had refused. Instead, he went to hitch up the mule while his father started waling on him.

Or, his father had tried.

“I learned something tonight, Talia. I’m stronger than my pa.”

I just looked over at him.

“I just kept on hitching the mule to the wagon and pushing him out of the way. Eventually, he realized he couldn’t stop me.”

“You fought your father for me?”

“I never struck a blow,” he said.

“But your father struck you.”

“I guess.”

I felt a rush of gratitude. This was the bravest thing he had ever done for me. I kissed him. “Thank you,” I said.

“His old-man punches don’t hurt, anyway.”

I kissed him again. “Then why do I taste blood?”

“Maybe he got a lucky hit in.”

I sat on his lap and kissed him some more. He dropped the reins and let the mule find its own way as he reached up my skirt. I never wore any of my usual underclothes when going to meet him, and his fingers were no longer as clumsy as they once were. Soon, he had me gasping and writhing. After a few moments, I hitched up my skirts and straddled him, and I rode him all the way to town. The mule plodded on, unconcerned. The wagon bounced and shuddered so much that I hardly dared move, and I have never enjoyed a bumpy wagon ride so much in my life.

“Where are we going?” I breathed against his lips.

“It’s a surprise,” he whispered back.

By the time we arrived in town, I was sitting demurely beside him, wondering what he had planned. He took me to an inn.

It was well out of Tallow’s End, in a part of town where travelers stayed. He left the mule and wagon with a stable boy, and we entered the inn and went up a flight of stairs. He opened a door with a key.

“It’s ours for the week,” he said. “The innkeeper thinks we are newly wed.”

That night, for the first time, we had time, comfort and privacy. He undressed me and lowered me to the bed. I opened my legs, but he didn’t thrust into me straightaway. Instead, he kissed me and traced his fingers down my breasts, and back again, down my stomach, and back again, dipping lower and making me gasp each time.

“You’ve learned something,” I breathed against his lips.

“I’ve been getting lots of advice,” he said.

I remembered his crude explorations our first night together, and hardly thought this the same person. His advice had been very good indeed.

Of all our time together, that was the sweetest night. He treated me like a bride. For the first time, I wondered if he loved me, after all.

And that night, I finally knew pleasure as a woman.

I only had six more nights and was determined to make the best of them. I came home later and later every morning.

“You stupid girl,” my mother said, when I returned one morning. “You’ll end up pregnant.”

“I hope I do,” I said.

She gaped at me. “Have you lost all reason?” she asked. “Do you want to bring up a fatherless child? You, of all people, should know what that is like.”

Her words cut me, for I had never considered the consequences my child would face for my actions. My father had sailed away when I was young and never returned, leaving me alone with an embittered mother. My child would face an added burden—she would be ostracized as a bastard. However, I was too selfish to heed my mother, and surely I was already pregnant, anyway.

It grieves me now that I was so cruel.

During the last three days, we never left the inn at all. We stayed in each other’s arms as much as possible and even spent some time talking.

“Why did you want to marry me, Willard?” I asked. “I have warts, and I once heard Widow Harla say that I have a face as long as a horse.”

“Widow Harla is the one with the horse face.”

“But why?” I asked. “As a son of a farmer—even a younger son—you were respectable enough to go after any girl.”

He was silent for a moment. Then he shrugged. “Because you listened, I suppose.”

“I listened?”

“Aye. I’d go on and on, talking about cows and pigs and the produce yield, and you listened.”

I thought on it for a moment. “But I was interested. That sort of farm life—I know little of it in the city.”

“Believe me, most girls find it boring.”

I swallowed past a lump in my throat. I’d never felt so valued before.

***

When he left I wept, surprised by the intensity of my grief. I comforted myself by counting down the few days left until my menses was due. After all, the timing had been perfect—we had started our affair just after my last menses, and we had certainly hit my peak fertile period many times over those weeks. The child would be a girl, and I decided to name her Aurora, after the princess.

When I saw the blood, I mourned as if I had lost a child. I had been so sure, so certain, he had planted his seed. Now, my chance was gone. My mother took great satisfaction with the arrival of my menses, and she had no pity on my tears. Life went back to its dreary normalcy.

With one exception. I was now a pariah.