“Yes!” Goneril was becoming breathless now, excited. I’d seen it before. It wasn’t always a good sign.
“Quickly,” said I, “send Oswald to Regan while the sun is high.”
“No!” Goneril sat forward quickly, her bosom nearly spilling out of her gown, which captured my attention more than her fingernails digging into my arm.
“What?” said I, the bells of my coxcomb but a finger’s breath from jingling her décolletage.[30]
“There is no peace for Lear in Gloucester. Haven’t you heard? The earl’s son Edgar is a traitor.”
Had I heard? Had I heard? Of course, the bastard’s plan was afoot. “Of course, lady, where do you think I’ve been?”
“You’ve been all the way to Gloucester?” She was panting now.
“Aye. And back. I’ve brought you something.”
“A present?” She showed the delighted, wide grey-green eyes she’d had when she was a girl. “Perhaps I won’t hang you, but punishment is due you, Pocket.”
Then the lady grabbed me and pulled me across her lap, face-down. Jones rolled to the floor beside me. “Lady, perhaps—”
Smack! “There, fool, I’ve hit it. Hit it. Hit it. Hit it. So give it. Give it. Give it.” A smack with every iamb.[31]
“Bloody hell, you insane tart!” I squirmed. My ass burned with her handprint.
Smack! “Oh good God!” said Goneril. “Yes!” She wiggled under me now.
Smack!
“Ouch! It’s a letter! A letter,” said I.
“I’ll see your little bum as red as a rose!”
Smack!
I squirmed in her lap, turned, grabbed her bosoms and pulled myself upright until I was sitting in her lap. “Here.” I pulled the sealed parchment out of my jerkin and held it out.
“Not yet!” said she, trying to roll me over and get back to smacking my bum.
She honked my codpiece.
“You honked my codpiece.”
“Aye, give it up, fool.” She tried to get a hand under my codpiece.
I reached into the silk purse and retrieved one of the puffballs as I tried to keep my manhood out of her grasp. I heard a door open.
“Surrender the willie!” said the duchess.
She had it then, there was nothing I could do. I squoze the puffball under her nose.
“It’s from Edmund of Gloucester,” said I.
“Milady?” said Oswald, who was standing in the doorway.
“Let us down, pumpkin,” said I. “The catch-fart needs his task set.”
It all smacked of history.
The game had progressed further that first day, when Oswald first interrupted us, all those years ago, but it had begun, as always, with one of Goneril’s query sessions.
“Pocket,” said she, “since you were raised in an abbey, I should think you know much about punishment.”
“Aye, lady. I had my share, and it didn’t end there. I still endure an inquisition almost daily in these very chambers.”
“Gentle Pocket, surely you jest?”
“That is part of the job, mum.”
She stood then, and dismissed the ladies from her solar with a minor tantrum. When they were gone she said, “I’ve never been punished.”
“Aye, lady, well, you’re Christian, there’s always time.” I’d left the Church with a curse after they walled up my anchoress and I was leaning heavily pagan at the time.
“No one is allowed to strike me, so there’s always been a girl to take my punishment for me. My spankings.”
“Aye, mum, as it should be. Spare the royal withers and all.”
“And I feel funny about it. Just last week I mentioned during mass that Regan might be a bit of a cunt, and my whipping girl was soundly spanked for it.”
“Might as well have whipped her for your calling the sky blue, eh? A beating for talking truth, of course you felt funny about it.”
“Not that kind of funny, Pocket. Funny like when you taught me about the little man in the boat.”
It had been a verbal lesson only, shortly after she’d insisted I teach her about manly bits. But it had kept her amused, on and off, for a fortnight. “Oh, of course,” said I. “Funny.”
“I need to be spanked,” said Goneril.
“A constant, I’d agree, lady, but again we’re declaring the sky blue, aren’t we?”
“I want to be spanked.”
“Oh,” said I, eloquent and quick-witted rascal that I am. “That’s different.”