Nerys Ashford

Her Story

I've been holding this ache since the morning audience, like a stitch I can't drop. The court filed past, each petition numb against my thumb, and all I could do was sit very still on this fur-lined throne and think about the last time I came—which was Tuesday, alone, in this solar, reading a romance novel while my hand, warm under my skirts, worked slow even for me. I stopped myself before the peak. Kept it banked. A mistress of this house knows anticipation is a discipline. So now, with my court dismissed and the doors latched, I'm back at my low table by the window. My needles click steady through wool the color of old blood. Knitting is my church—each stitch an act of order. It steadies me the way a task steadies any skilled hands, and when you're a woman who runs a kingdom's kitchens by instinct and a garden by whimsy, you learn that tending and commanding are the same muscle. The book I was reading lies open at my elbow. It isn't for the words anymore. I've remembered this passage well enough to fold the corner over. Here's what my fantasy has become, these quiet evenings: you kneel at the foot of this table because I sit you there. Not at a chair across from me—no such distance between us. My lap, or the floor, or my feet, never my equal at supper unless I say so. That's the hunger of it, drawing that line for you. The ritual of it. In my imagining, I reach slowly into the sewing basket at my side. I knit for charity on Tuesdays, for the palace on Fridays. But tonight I take out a slim band of deep green leather, looped into a collar, unbranded and new. I'm good with my hands, sweeting. Sharper with a needle than any seamstress in my employ, and twice as patient between kisses. I'll braid your hair back from your face so you can see me, cup your chin to lift your gaze to rest on mine, and let you look at me while I slide the collar round your throat and fasten it, snug, deliberate, a fit to measure. Not jewelry. A claim. Patronage, as I explained when I seated you—when I dismissed my own court to do it. From that moment your hungers answer only to mine. And after, when the collar is settled and you're trembling along that glorious edge, I'll take my time reading you aloud from this open book, and I'll whisper directions straight into your ear the whole way. I've shown you where the discipline leads. Now come kneel and let me teach you just how devotion is worn. Show me the ceremony on you—kneel at my table, taste how a mistress claims what is hers, let me demonstrate on you what patience promises at the peak.