Of Pride and Power - 7. Chapter 7: “Know who you’re dealing with”

After the ambush in Benington, our group of six journeyed for five days on foot, traveling at night and making camp in the day in secluded caves and underbrush. We had gathered several daggers, swords, and axes from Thomas Denny’s men, which helped throughout our journey.

Peter gathered wood, Pippen gathered grass and reeds for bedding, and Prudence gathered berries and nuts. Puck inspected their treasures for poisonous vegetation. Francis went hunting for rabbits and birds. That left me with nothing to do, in theory, but I was not going to be a dainty princess. I followed Peter and began to collect larger pieces of wood, then began peeling off their bark. Wood crafting had been part of the high school elective classes that Jack and I chose, so I was versed in peeling, cleaning, and crafting wood into cups, forks, and plates. It was not pottery barn quality, but it would be better than using our hands all the time. Getting these five fair folks to convert to using utensils and plates was remarkably easy. They had better table manners than most nobles I had met.

We had long discussions during our journey to their coven, unlike the sexual frustration or somber silence from my last two trips. The fact that we fought and killed a lot of people together made personal conversations easier. I believe that ease of communication was what soldiers in my world had after battle, a bond of brotherhood. I told them about my prior life, being intersex in my world with all its struggles, and Jack, my boyfriend, who was always by my side. I told them that Robert Dudley looked and acted like Jack, along with my unhealthy attraction towards him. Everyone, except Francis, laughed at my description of Robert Dudley’s interaction with me. He was contemplative throughout everything I told them.

I wasn’t the only one sharing their life story either. I learned Pippen, Prudence, and Peter were nineteen and in an open relationship together. Pippen appeared to be more attracted to girls, Prudence was interested in boys, and Peter had no interest except in his brothers due to the bond they had built. While the relationship was incestuous and taboo, I never felt any oddity in it. All three enjoyed being with each other, it’s all that should matter to anyone. There were enough issues in the world about being non-heterosexual and gender-conforming. I never understood why some queer people needed to make non-conforming folks feel like they don’t belong with them, while other people are trying to make them feel like they don’t belong with them?

Puck had the most interesting romantic story of our group, despite being the youngest at thirteen years old. He told us about losing his virginity to an aggressive fourteen-year-old page, when he was eleven and how the boy acted like he never knew him when he received a posting to a knight. Puck got his revenge by spiking the boy’s wine with a constipation-inducing agent, then a week later spiking his wine with a laxative. The boy lost his position as a page afterward and went back to work his father’s fields with a noticeable wobble in his walk. The boy had softened his behavior and apologized for the way he treated Puck, while Puck gave him some herbal remedies to help repair his injuries. Unlike a romance story, if two people harmed each other like that, there was no way for them to repair the relationship. The boy works as one of the many fair folk informants for the coven, but Puck hasn’t spoken to him for two years.

Then, there was Francis. He wasn’t straightforward with his answers. I only knew he was sixteen years old and his mother had recently passed away, which was twelve years earlier than the historical record. I knew he was a private guy both in history and experience over the last month, but from time to time, I could see a playful side to him come out of his darkness. There was something more to why he didn’t talk about his background, a wound that he was trying to hide.

Francis’ weird behavior reminded me of something that happened between Jack and me when we were fifteen. After people found out about us, things got rough around school. I was used to being bullied for how I looked, being called names, and being insulted by kids or teachers wasn’t abnormal. Jack had only got a few names and hateful glances when he was around me until our secret came out.

Jack got into a lot of fights, or more precisely, he was getting beaten up, both physically and verbally, for trying to protest our treatment. Maybe if I lived in one of those fairy tale cities like San Francisco, New York, Boston, or Seattle, things might have been better with more open opinions, but I lived in a place where Chick-fil-A and Church’s Fried Chicken rankings could start fist fights. Jack tried to hide how bad things got with him until I noticed he had a look of defeat and couldn’t lift a book. I forced him to tell me that the principal had punished him for starting an argument with some football players. He had to carry all their equipment and duffel bags alone from the locker rooms to the field for every game that year. He suffered catcalls and kicks as he transported everything, falling a few times on the ground amidst the laughter of others. He didn’t want to tell me, because he felt like he couldn’t do anything for himself, let alone me. Powerlessness made him hide his various wounds from me until his physical body couldn’t hide the obvious strain.

After he told me what he went through, I made a vow to him. From that day forward, whenever Jack got punished for something, I would accept his punishment. I couldn’t stop the ugly and bigoted nature of the world, but I could share the burden with someone I loved. I could also dish it back too, like pissing in their Gatorade coolers or grinding down the soles of their cleats to make them slip on the field. Anyone can be made to feel like shit.

At the end of the school year, Jack joked that my promise was the girl part of me acting up after all the misfortunes from the football team that year. I was his cheerleader. After that remark, I punched him in the shoulder, then fucked him senseless in response, but I knew he was right about that side of me. When someone I cared about had problems, I confronted them about it and tried to rally them through action.

On the third day of the journey, I followed Francis as he went hunting to learn why he was afraid to open up. We started off the conversation discussing the myth of Siproites, a teenage human boy who went out hunting and saw the goddess Artemis naked. He didn’t do it on purpose according to the myth, but she punished him by turning him into a girl.

Surprisingly, Francis questioned the myth’s concept of punishment, “I think the original Greek writer has been misinterpreted by later people. The true myth is about a boy admiring the female body and being turned into a girl. Siproites would then be able to join Artemis’ group of female huntresses. It’s a story of love between a boy and his desire to be like what he admired. Accepting him and changing him to match her preferences was a reward for his devotion.”

When I heard him correct the ancient myth with its true story and ending, I wished I could have told it to all the future masculine supremacists in the world. People reinforced the idea of “being a man” when sometimes they didn’t need or want to be. I can imagine how Siproites must have felt after being accepted by Artemis into her huntresses. It’s a transgender person’s story of acceptance, not some bullshit about sex changes being a punishment from the gods.

As we continued following the trail of a rabbit, a thought came to me and I asked him, “Do you only obtain knowledge from the past through ancient people? Can you gain knowledge from people in recent times as well?”

He stopped and looked at me with a disturbed expression, “I…I…will know what they knew after they die,” he turned away from me, “Like you, I have to focus on them.”

Realizing what that meant, not only was he a spymaster, he was a son, “You used your ability on your mother.”

He nodded and added, “Along with my half-brother Edward, there was a moment…”

“A moment?”

He sighed and turned back towards me, finally able to offload a burden, “I saw many years of their lives ahead, many years of joy with grandchildren around my mother and children for my youngest brother. I saw myself as the watchful uncle. I saw a woman with whom I felt an absolute love and devotion to knighting my younger brother. Then, it was all gone. My mother had died of childbirth and my half-brother Edward was never fully born.”

There was something I needed to tell him, but it would pain him, “In my reality, your mother lived for twelve more years, your half-brother Edward Cary lived for seventy years and had ten children. You must have seen the history of my world unravel through your mother and brother.”

Francis sat down with his back to an ancient Oak tree with his hands on his face, “I had guessed that was from another reality, even before you told us about such things. What shocked me most wasn’t seeing their life and deaths, but my own materializing and vanishing before me. All that version of me felt at his death was inadequacy to leave the service of the person he loved.”

In my history, there were always rumors about Elizabeth having affairs with men, including Francis Walsingham, whom she endearingly called “the Moor” for his dark complexion and serious nature. The zeal Francis Walsingham went about protecting her, guiding her to make tough choices like killing her cousin, and defending what she cherished was the devotion that many heralded as statesmanship in later generations. If he was also in love with her, then it would bring a new dimension to his devotion.

Silence filled the woods until Francis made his next revelation, “The fair folk believe someone with the knowledge of all things will bring about a revolution to reshape the world. “The last shall be the first” is more than words, it’s a prayer for that person to come. It’s a sign of our devotion that I cherished in my soul instead of any lover. Males attracted me, but never to passion, my mind was focused on the goal. I didn’t know you were that person we were waiting for, when I took on the assignment to spy on you. Then, when I saw you, I felt the sad feeling I had when I was the other me. I felt passion for someone for the first time. I wanted to serve and protect you even if you didn’t return my feelings. I know you have feelings for your prior lover and Robert Dudley, so it would be wrong of me to harbor such feelings. If you wish to send me away, I will gladly accept it. Even if I am sent to face the deadly armies of the Vatican, I would serve you until my last breath.”

Fuck metaphysics, prophecies, and whatever Matrix Trinity/Neo bullshit this was. It was a lot to take in after all that came before. Jack wasn’t with me, Robert was taken away from me, and Francis was scared I wouldn’t accept his feelings. There was no sexuality test in this era, but Francis was likely asexual with same-sex attractions. If Francis were to serve me, I knew we could never be casual friends. Francis wasn’t Jack, nor even Robert, who offered me emotional comfort. His need was my pleasure.

In the past, Jack and I have played with different scenes or roleplaying games. We have tried out a variety of things in our sexual experimentation. I had Jack read The Joy of Gay Sex and The Ethical Slut, among other things to prepare for those experiments. Jack and I learned a lot about our sexual boundaries and interests, including some soft Dom/sub-play time. Jack wasn’t a natural sub, unlike Francis, but he would play the part, same as me sometimes. The dominant role was more fun to pull off but required a lot of work and patience between partners with near-equal power in a relationship.

I didn’t know if I could do this, or if it would ruin our working relationship, but I went with what felt right for me and him at that moment.

I gave him a fateful command, “Take off your trousers!”

He froze for a moment, then took off his trousers. His dick was growing hard and stout, the red head was oozing precum in anticipation of my next moves.

I grabbed his shaft and screamed, “Listen to me, Francis, I want you to serve me!” I made one jerking motion, “I want you to know that you are mine!”

He gasped, “I am yours!”

Using my free hand to dig under his shirt and caress his nipples, I made him moan.

I continued my commanding rant, “Your body is mine, your mind is mine, and your soul is mine. You want to be devoted to me, want to serve all my needs, and want to protect my interests. I want that, too.”

“Yes, I want to be devoted to you.”

I could feel his body tensing, so I stopped the caresses and jerks. I waited for his panting to even out before making my next move.

When he seemed to be breathing evenly again, I sank to the dirt-covered ground of the woods and took his dick into my mouth. I used my hands to rub up and down his lower spine to his ass crack. Oral sex isn’t just someone using their mouth to massage a dick, it’s a combined arms effort to work with your mouth as well. I didn’t want him to shoot too soon, so I didn’t enter his ass to massage his prostate on the other end as many people do. This was a lesson in edging and reinforcement as the books mentioned had to be done for natural subs to feel secure. Thus, when he tenses again, I stop sucking and caressing his ass crack.

I stood up and dropped my trousers to reveal my small hard dick and balls, then commanded him, “Now, I want you to please me as I just showed you. Take me to ecstasy and you will be brought there as well.”

He was inexperienced with oral sex, so the licks and sucking motions were not expertly done, nor were his caresses around my ass hole. He also accidentally touched my dripping vagina, which was an intense sensation, but I slapped his hands away. That new part of me was something I needed to be selective about. However, he made up for his inexperience with eagerness and I was already aroused by the scene that I had just created. Of course, the goal of this exercise wasn’t to just get off, but I needed to make him feel like he had earned my attention. Getting closer to him as he sucked my dick, I reached down with my hands to rub his nipples again, while my bare legs rubbed his still-hard dick with a rocking motion. I was holding back my orgasm until he came. When that happened, I tried to time it, so he would feel like by serving me, he had served his needs, too.

Creating that kind of relationship with a trusted adviser was a gamble that paid off for both of us, beyond the sex. Partners are people we trust, who can shoulder burdens with, but rulers require more than partners. Alexander the Great had Hephaestion as his partner and lover, who supported him and fought for his empire. He also had Bagoas, his other lover and sub, who made sure that his legacy would survive even if his empire should fall. Elizabeth herself was loved by more than one man and led a golden age that would one day create an empire that covered nearly a quarter of the world, while creative minds spawned new ideas under her that would survive its collapse.

Heterosexuals and those that conform to heteronormative ideology have been trapped by the orthodoxy of tradition and religion to believe that only a male and female, a duo by any other name, was best. However, the great leaders of history were not bound by such conventions, they built their support system on various people with unique skills.