"No it's not. It's warm in here. Are you sure you're all right?"
"Yes, fine. My leg just goes strange from time to time, if I sit the wrong way. It sort of stiffens up."
"Does it hurt much?"
"Not usually."
"Now?"
"No, not now. It's just numb."
"Can you walk on it?"
"I will in a minute, when the feeling comes back into it."
"That's happened to me a couple of times. It's a strange feeling. Like being pricked all over with needles."
She was standing close, watching my face with a peculiar expression, her arms folded beneath her breasts so that they swelled up visibly in the scoop of her neckline.
I looked away. "There, " I said. "That's better." I bent my knee and flexed it and then stepped away from the wall and fell sideways. She caught me in her strong arms, my face against her breasts, and hauled me upright again, leaning me back against the wall, where I remained, feeling weak and foolish and remarkably sober all at once.
"It's not better at all, is it?"
"No." I shook my head, smiling foolishly. "Not yet." But then it started to get 'better' and the sudden, brutal, unexpected ferocity of it made me suck in my breath with a hiss as the torn muscles in my thigh knotted and cramped and I felt myself falling again. She took my whole weight in her arms and half carried, half dragged me to the only chair in the room, into which she dumped me unceremoniously. I was beside myself with pain far worse than any I had felt before. My entire leg, from the buttock down, was a howling, twisted knot of agony. Through the fog of it I heard, her voice, urgent and demanding, hissing in my ear.
"Stop writhing, or I can't help you! Lift up! Up! Stay still, damn you!" And then, eventually and gradually, over the space of what seemed like uncountable aeons of time, the awful, dementing pain began to recede, displaced by a firm, rhythmic, soothing motion and the kneading of strong fingers that worked on the muscles of my leg, relaxing them, easing the tightness out of them and gentling their spastic tremors until they disappeared altogether. I opened my eyes, conscious of sweat drying on my skin.
I was lying on the floor of the smithy, beside the overturned chair Phoebe had thrown me into. I had no remembrance of falling. Phoebe knelt above me, straddling my bad leg, her hair hanging down over her face as she concentrated on the action of her hands on my thigh muscles. I could feel a sensation that was unusual, pleasant, somehow familiar, yet unplaceable. And then I recognized it. It was the cushioned warmth of naked thighs around my bare foot. I froze with shock. She felt me stiffen and knelt back on her haunches to look at me, pulling the hair back out of her eyes with one hand. The movement brought the astounding heat of her centre down on my toes, but she seemed unaware of it.
"Bad," she said. "That was bad. Does that happen often?" I shook my head, mute, my thoughts fastened on what my foot was feeling, wondering how this had happened. She kept her eyes on mine, her face full of concern.
"Does it feel better now? Still hurt?"
I shook my head again and swallowed, clearing my throat. "No, " I whispered. "Thank you."
"I'm glad I could help. I had to do something. I thought for a while there you were going to die."
"Was I that bad? I don't remember."
"Be grateful, then. You were out of your head with pain. Look, where you gripped me." She showed me her right arm, ringed with the inflamed marks of my fingers. "You're a strong man, even for a smith."
"Did I do that? Really?" My throat was parched and sore. "I'm sorry. I don't remember."
"I know. I told you, you were out of your head for a while. I had to hit you over the head. Does it hurt?"
"No. Where?"
"There. " She touched the side of my head and suddenly, where she touched, there was pain. It hurt, but nowhere near as badly as the cramps in my leg had hurt. This pain was no more than a mild annoyance. I touched the spot, cautiously, and felt a huge lump.
"What did you hit me with?"
"A piece of wood."
She dropped her head and I felt her fingers begin to knead again. She leaned forward to get more purchase, tightening her knee grip on my leg and lifting her body clear of my foot, so that I felt relatively cold air on my toes. Her thumbs dug deep and I flinched.
"Ow! Where did you learn to do that?"
She looked up at me again, her fingers and thumbs still busy. "I'm a masseuse, or used to be before I got married. I worked in the women's bath house, by the main barracks. Officers' wives, mainly."
"You speak very well." I realized what I had said, the arrogance of it. "I mean..."
"I know what you mean, but thank you. Yes, I speak well. I had a tutor. Paid for him myself, out of my earnings at the bath house. I decided there was no use remaining illiterate."
"Illiterate?"
"Yes. I can read and write, too. Why not? It hasn't done me any harm. Any good either, for that matter."
"I see." I was longing to bend my leg, to bring my foot against the heat of her again. She dropped her head back to her work, and I realized that her face, which I had always thought plain and uninteresting, was anything but. I searched for a question to make her look up again.
"Does Cuno read and write, too?"
That did the trick. "My husband? Cunobelin? The descendant of kings? Hah! He can hardly even talk. Prefers to drink, and beat me."
"Then why do you stay with him? Leave him."
"Leave him?" Her voice had scorn in it. "That's easy to say." She dropped her head again, her fingers working swiftly, with agitation, moving up my thigh, so that she had to move forward on her knees, gripping my thigh tightly between her own knees to hold it steady. "Run from the brute. Where would I run? And to do what? Where?"
I gasped again as she found a knot. "Do what you're trained to do. Anywhere. There are other towns. Go to Londinium. You're a masseuse. You'll find a use for your skills there. He wouldn't follow you. You have no children, have you?"
Her fingers stopped kneading. "No. I have no children." She settled back again, bringing the fire of her centre onto my leg once more, but differently this time, so that my bent knee fitted wholly into the softness she had there. I saw the startled widening of her eyes as she realized the immodesty of the physical contact. Her withdrawal was instinctive and would have been total had I not stopped her with an involuntary "Don't!"
She froze. "Don't what?"
"Don't stop. Not yet. There's still some soreness there."
"Where?"
"There, in my thigh. A tightness. Lower down, just above the knee." Even in the dimness of the single lamp's light, I saw a flush steal up over her neck. She had been in the act of jumping up, and one of her legs was no longer touching mine. Slowly, kneeling still, she moved backwards, the sides of her knees sliding down my leg, and I felt her skirts tugging at my toes and then the gathering of her front hem as she pulled it down along my leg. Her fingertips clasped me lightly, probing above my knee.
"Where is this tightness?"
There was a different quality to her voice, now. A huskiness — almost a whisper. I raised myself up on my elbows and saw that my legs were bare, my tunic pulled down decently to cover my sex. Her skirts were rucked, baring her white, round knees on either side of mine.
"There, " I said. "Where your thumbs are."
She dug deep, and I gasped.
"Lie back. Here." She reached for my discarded breeches and wadded them into a ball. "Put this below your head."
I did as she told me, my thoughts in confusion. I wanted this to go on, far more than I wanted it to stop, and yet I was afraid. I should have been aroused, rampant, with what was going through my head and the tension in my guts, but my manhood lay still and flaccid. Her fingers probed again, deep into the muscles above my knee. There was no tightness there, but the sensation was pleasurable and I was, after all the pain, still a little drunk.