The Shepherd's Queen
By Blodeuedd
For K., and all that has been left unsaid.
"I do not want to see him again." She says it aloud so she can better believe it, says it to the sheep and the sky and the eternal fields.
She speaks these words and then seats herself among the bowing grasses, arraying her homespun skirts about her as if they are the finest silk. The expanse of blue sky above is marred by clouds, massive as the sailing vessels of the gods, but the sun is yet free to smile and press its warm light to her cheek.
Warm, safe, surrounded by the bleats of her flock. She could live here forever, empress in a land of bending fields, a land without a glimpse of the Sea that has pulled apart her family, bewitching her father, embittering her mother.
A land without suitors. She tugs ruefully at the roughly-hemmed edge of her frock, shaking free of the ensnaring idea of those following men. They had come to her with riches to lay at her feet, songs on their lips, pure intentions in their hearts. It was the last that made her cringe most.
Her experience with the opposite sex had become far more than it once had been, when she'd been a bright-eyed girl ogling the son of Ulbar not out of infatuation but outright bewilderment. Men had struck her then as bizarre creatures, loud and impulsive, not formed for tenderness or calm.
As she'd grown and come to Armenelos as her father's Heir, she had seen the other aspect of men. A dark-haired, sullen-mouthed servant's son of twenty had been her first, and it had been a memory which brought first a blush and then a hunger to her heart. She'd sought men out then, going forth into the city under the cover of night and careful disguise. The guards were all besotted with her and let her pass without protest. Every time she'd left the gates of the palace, she'd thought of her mother's words and laughed to herself. Do not bend? To men? It was she who broke them.
Had she not been Heir, had folk known of her nocturnal forays, she would have been branded a whore. She'd done things that would make her mother berate her until her tongue fell out and even wizened Zamîn, who seemed to know everything, look at her askance with those yellowed crow's eyes of hers. She desired pleasure, satiation from nameless arms and mouths, and had not allowed convention or morality to bar her way.
But those of her lovers who had spoken of marriage had been her first warning. She had possessed them with her beauty, had been made their equal in the act of love, but the thought of a wedding meant the end of her freedom and autonomy. Whenever the topic had arisen, in the panting hours of recovery wound in the sheets, she had balked immediately and fled the room. She would not—could not—face subjugation.
When the suitors, good, honest suitors, had begun to throw themselves at her doorstep, she had taken flight, with Zamîn as her accomplice. She had come here, to a land of hiding and safety. A life as a shepherdess suits nearly all of her needs: isolation, vexation of both parents, and a quiet evaporation from the swirling intrigues and antiquated ceremonies of court. Here, she is alone. Or almost.
"Good forenoon to you, Emerwen! The sight of a friend is welcome in these desolate hills."
She opens her eyes to see a familiar shadow eclipsing the sunlight. The momentary, angelic illusion fades as he collapses in the long grass beside her, grinning, tanned, the soft curls of his hair sticking to his young brow.
The something in her which had prompted her to voice her wish never to see him again rises in indignation and confusion, but the greater part of her wants to linger for a time. "Good forenoon, Mámandil."
He squints into the early light, pausing before he speaks. "Yesterday I noticed you brought no food with you out to the fields; so today I've brought enough for us both."
"Thank you," she replies, genuinely appreciative. Zamîn has been particularly miserly with the food of late, claiming that her young charge has too sharp a tongue for food to be wasted upon.
As her gaze trails outwards to the field below her knoll, she sees that her sheep are beginning to investigate the arrival of his; she clucks softly and ineffectively at them, trying to chasten them in vain.
"Don't mind it," Mámandil says, seeing her poised to pick up her crook and tend to her flock, "I know my herd well enough to tell them from yours. Here, see what I've brought you."
She turns to watch him as he reaches in his satchel, covertly studying the firm lines of his hands, the gleam of a softened steel in his eye.
"Some bread, a waterskin, berries and grapes, a bit of cheese, dried meat—"
"How does a shepherd come by such lavish fare?" She asks, voice playful.
"How does a shepherdess come by such remarkable beauty?" He counters; there is no mockery in his voice.
She has no answer, fearing that any word will unravel her masquerade, dissolve her hiding-place.
"You have a noblewoman's face and form," he presses, movements slow and careful as he lays out the foods.
"I'm lucky, I suppose." She laughs too loudly. "Now tell me about these berries—how do you find them so ripe and red? Wherever I look, they seem to be sour, tart little things, not fit for even my sheep to eat."
She can tell he sees through her diversion, but for some reason he entertains it. "They grow best on a sunny ridge a small ways south of here. I shall have to show you sometime."
"South; near the hall of Hallatan, lord of these lands? How do you trespass on his estate without being caught?"
"I am good friends with Hallatan's son—he allows me to go there from time to time. Have you ever met the lord Hallatan, Emerwen?"
She smiles, thinking of the countless times she'd met the lord at royal functions with her father. "No, she replies demurely, "What would I have to do with a lord?"
"I don't know. What would you?"
Bravely, she takes up a few of the berries, raising them to her lips. "I'd tell him to share some of that fine grazing land with his common shepherd neighbors, instead of leaving us these shrubs and dust to pick a living from."
Mámandil laughs as she eats the sweet berries. "I'm sure he would give so fair and fierce a shepherdess his ear."
"He ought," she answers solidly once she has swallowed, staring undauntedly into the sun.
"Spoken like a queen," he says teasingly, making her look hard at him for a moment.
The two eat quietly, watching but not truly seeing the slow drift of their flocks and the clots of clouds and the hours passing. He packs what food is left over, leaving bare sod between them.
"Mámandil," she asks, voice heavy with an unusually naked longing, "Will you sing today?"
He raises his eyebrows in a feigned nonchalance. "Oh…I don't know, really. The wind isn't quite right."
"Please."
He notices the plea almost as much as she does, but without her instantaneous humiliation. "I suppose."
Though he is reclining back on his elbows, the very picture of provincial ease, the voice that rises from him is clear and sweet, low and vibrant. It is an old love song, as always, but she hardly hears the words. His voice is the music such as she'd never heard until she came to Armenelos, the music denied her during her childhood under her mother's thumb. She sits enchanted, eyes half-closed in quiet ecstasy. Oh, that she could make him her slave, and have him sing for her each day and night. But for now, she allows herself to be captive, not captor, imprisoned willingly by the magic in his song.
The sun rises higher, to the full of noon, and the ballad draws to a keening close. Dazed and full of craving, she watches him form the last notes. Every one of her heartbeats seems slow and lazy, with loitering hours between.
She realizes she wants him with little surprise or shame. Musicians and singers had always drawn her in Armenelos—they were that which had been forbidden in Emerië. And it has been so long… A voice in her cries for recollection of her senses, which are straying as freely as her flock, and for the preservation of this rare companion's friendship and respect, but she dismisses it with contempt. No men are her friends. Besides, she has long been able to read desire in men—it is clear he feels some degree of lust for her.
And so in the tremulous minute between fading of song and return of reality, she leans forward, heart thudding languidly, to brush his lips with hers. He yields almost instantly—she can taste in his mouth the passion she'd predicted. His hand falls on her slender shoulder, gripping her almost painfully, nearly pulling her atop him. She deepens the kiss in response, drugged with his pleasure.
She is so lost in the feel of him that she almost lets her disguise slip, almost becomes the princess-whore she once was. But no, she reminds herself, she is but an ungainly commoner here, queen only of the shepherd who is pressing her to him now.
Their lips part for a gasping instant, as he brushes his mouth lower, kissing her bare throat, her collarbone, venturing to the hollow between her breasts. She can only pant in ache and victory—he is hers, a caged songbird, captured here with the sky and grasses as witness.
He pauses and she seizes the advantage, deftly unfastening his woolen shirt and pressing hot kisses to the bare, muscled expanse of chest beneath.
He lets her for a time, but when she lingers too long he takes her hands and pulls her still nearer to his side, mouth at her eyelids, her earlobes, her jawline, as if claiming her in entirety. A soft moan escapes her as his hands leave hers to drift lower, to the hem of her skirts, rising to run along her trembling calves and thighs, the brink of knowing.
It has been so long since she has had a man that is almost as if she is discovering them anew. Sensations once so familiar are alien and doubled with intensity. She is quivering like a virgin when his hands reach the crests of her thighs and halt, hovering. He pulls away from a feverish kiss, eyes asking.
She nods sleepily, drawing him over her. His face becomes a shadow against the blue heavens once more, as it was when she first saw him today. There is only the brush of eyelashes against her cheeks and the warm pressure of mouth to suggest that he is at all real. She catches her breath, sensing his eagerness, all of her in knots of buzzing anticipation, ready for him.
But there he stops, lips drawing away from hers, hands falling away from the summit of her thighs, weight easing off of her. She sits up, confused, as he pulls away and draws back, the thwarted ardor she feels reflected in his stormy gray eyes.
She tugs frenziedly at her disheveled clothes and hair. If he will not have her, her tousled appearance only shames her.
"What—" She stammers, lost in a torrent of uncertainty and agony.
"No," he mumbles back in equal perplexion, "I cannot—not you, like some peasant's daughter—not now—"
"What do you mean?" She demands, frustrated now, "Mámandil—"
"I will see you tomorrow, Emerwen," he blurts, saying her name like an afterthought, voice hurried, desperate. "But for now—farewell—"
"Wait!" She cries, but he is gone, assembling his sheep and striding back across the sloping hills from whence he came, leaving her alone once more.
Once he has disappeared, a snarl of raw fury escapes her lips, so fierce that her flock pauses to stare at her in bewilderment.
No man has ever refused her. How dare he think of her honor when she has none! He is no better than her bland suitors, with their damnable chivalry and empty devotion. She tells herself this, even as she knows he is different from them, different from anyone she has ever known.
Her anger becomes a pining curiosity, until the sun lowers and it is time to leave. Then, as she summons her herd and leads them home, she knows, without having to speak it aloud, that she does want to see him again.
The End