Free Needle in the Blood by Sarah Bower

men’s seed with its dryness. She does not try to incite them to ejaculate into orifices forbidden by the Church, unless, of course, that is their preference and they are prepared to pay for the indulgence. She is uncomplicated, and that is what the men like in these days full of rumour and rebellion. They find her indifference irresistible, a challenge they rise to again and again, but never surmount.
    Even the kind ones are brutes, writhing and panting on top of her, crushing the air out of her lungs, with their little cries of triumph as they squirt their seed into her useless womb. She will never look at their faces, flushed, contorted, self absorbed, or the tight little smiles with which they rearrange their clothing, hand over their gifts of money, or a joint of meat, some yards of cloth, a modest jewel their wives will not miss, and scuttle away. If she allows herself to indulge the contempt she feels rising in her like bile, she fears it may dilute the hatred she cherishes for William Bastard’s rapacious brother.
    ***
     
    Sister Jean-Baptiste arrives at the end of a busy day. Hot summer afternoons are good for business. It is the sort of weather that sets the fleas jumping and brings customers to the baths, and what man of affairs, languorous from the steam, skin tingling from the ministrations of the attendants with their brushes and wash cloths, wants to return too quickly to his stuffy counting house or gloomy hall, or the constraints of a nagging wife in her bower? Gytha is lying stretched out on her bed, alone for the time being, the lacing at the front of her dress loosened, her arms crossed behind her head, remembering a story her mother used to tell her, about the Emperor of Rome and his dream of a maiden. In her half waking, half sleeping state she can hear her mother’s voice perfectly clearly inside her head, its Welsh song rising and falling as though she were sitting at Gytha’s side and not dead in childbirth for twelve years.
    And when he awoke neither life nor being nor existence was left him, for the maiden he had seen in his sleep. Not one bone-joint of his was there, not the middle of a single nail, to say nothing of a part that might be greater than that, but was filled with love of the maiden.
    She cannot keep the regret out of her voice when she hears the footsteps hesitate on the far side of the curtain covering the open side of her cubicle. Such vivid memories come only rarely.
    “I’m alone. You can come in.” She sits up, pulling her laces tighter as she does so, pushing up her breasts which are still full and firm but not set as high as the new fashion dictates, though she is bound to admit, grudgingly, that the close fitting Norman style of dress suits her better than the loose Saxon tunic. “It’s a penny up front, and I shall weigh it, mind. No clipped coins.”
    “I am glad you place a proper value on your services. We are all precious in the sight of God.”
    Gytha looks up in astonishment to see the nun standing at the foot of her bed, immaculate in black habit and white veil, the plain wooden crucifix lying flat against her chest. She is smiling, which unnerves Gytha further, the powdery, ageless skin around her eyes folded into little, sharp pleats. There is something familiar about the smile, with its ironic, downward turn. Gytha finishes lacing her dress, trying discreetly to pull the neck a little higher, wishing she had roused herself to wash after the last man left. The nun meanwhile appraises her with the candour of a dealer assessing the soundness of a horse, registering, Gytha feels, a great deal more than outward appearances. She then shifts her gaze to take in their surroundings, the narrow space between the rough planks partitioning Gytha’s cubicle from the ones on either side of it, the plaster flaking from the damp rear wall, furnished with nothing but the bed and a stool that doubles as a nightstand.
    “Functional,” she comments, “not unlike my own