"Of course it does." I shifted position slightly, moving my buttocks in search of more comfort, strangely unfazed now, by this turn of talk. "Mostly in the dead of night, thank God."
"Erotic dreams?"
"Extremely."
"How often?"
"Frequently. Weekly."
"Weekly? After all this time?"
I sniffed. "Perhaps because of all this time. I don't know, and I try not to dwell on it. May we talk about something else?"
She was still gazing at my lap, her expression one of musing. Now she looked me in the eye, straightforwardly.
"Who do you dream about?"
I sighed, shaking my head. "I don't know, most of the time."
Her eyebrows rose in disbelief. "You must know! If a woman is attractive enough to draw your seed without even being there, you must know who she is."
Now I smiled at her incredulity. "It's not a woman, Shelagh, it's a dream, a spectral female form conjured by my body's needs and thy sleeping mind's instructions. I don't know how the conjuration works, simply that it does, and at some unsought, indeterminate time, by some unconscious means, I avail myself of this spectral presence, an incorporeal vessel into which I spill my seed without volition. Most of the time I am completely unaware of having done so. I only remember afterwards by the evidence in the morning."
She was frowning. "Donuil never has such dreams."
"By the Christus, I should hope not! Nor would I, could I reach out to you at night—" I caught myself, choking the words off, but she was barely listening, her brow furrowed in thought.
"You Said 'most of the time.' You don't know most of the time. That means you sometimes do. Who?"
"You, Shelagh. You, my dear. You gave me leave to dream of you, once, to lust after you in my mind. Don't you recall? And so I do, sometimes."
I had surprised her.
"How? I've given you no reason ... "
"No, nor encouragement, for several years, so be at peace. Nor have I lusted after you—not consciously, at least—in recent times. It is not a voluntary thing, on either of our parts."
"I know that. But how? I mean, oh, Dia! I sound stupid."
"Not at all." I picked up the wine skin and took a deep swallow. "You are a woman. Your body does not feel men's lusts, which seem to be more urgent, and more transitory, than women's are. Seem, I say, seem to be. I have no way of knowing if that's true, nor do you."
"It's true enough, I think. Women are slower to arousal than men are, I know that much. Men are sudden and frequent, unpredictable, except for the predictability of their frequency and unpredictability. They recognize no time as being better, more conducive, than another." She paused. "Look, I know you want to talk of other things, but you've told me something here I know nothing about, and I'm dying of curiosity. May I ask you something else?"
I shook my head again, smiling ruefully at her tenacity. "Of course. What is it?"
She sat silent for several moments, hesitating at the boldness of her words, then blurted out her question.
"When you ... when you dream of me like that ... what do you recall?"
We were staring at each other, our faces close, each of us tight with the fluttery tension of discovery, yet lacking, somehow, any sense of sexual urgency or imperative. When I answered her, my voice was husky and my words slow and deliberate.
"Everything about you, from the feel of your breasts to the clinging depth of you."
"But you've never touched me."
I moved slightly away from her. "I am aware of that, my dear, believe it or not, and looking at your legs and thighs today, I saw more of you than I have ever seen."
"No. I was practically naked that day when Julia died. You saw me then, wearing only that ridiculous flimsy mantle."
"Damnation! So I did. D'you know, I've never even thought of that since then? I had completely forgotten!"
She started to smile, but then her face grew somber. "That would have been an awful thing, Merlyn, to have found physical attraction in that place and at that time."
"Aye, it would. I suppose that's why I was unaware of it."*
"Hmm." Her face cleared slowly, the troubled frown giving way to a look of concentration. "So, when you ... lie with me, in dreams, the dreams seem real? I find that really difficult to comprehend."
"No more than I do, Shelagh, but I thank God, from time to time, that they seem as real as they do, because they bring no guilt, and no disloyalty to Donuil, or to you."
'To me? How could they bring disloyalty to me?"
"Because of how you truly are, a faithful wife. But they could not—they are merely dreams. Purely involuntary. Even Luke says so."
. Her eyebrows shot up on her forehead. "You've told Lucanus?"
I laughed aloud. "No, not about you! What do you think of me? We've talked of celibacy, that's all, and nocturnal emissions, as he calls them."
"'Nocturnal emissions ... ' That sounds very grand."
"They can be grand, sometimes, but they don't approximate the real thing."
"Why not? They sound like it, to me."
"Yes, my dear, except for the absence of one important, crucial element: the actual woman, with her delicious, lubricated friction."
We had been speaking in Latin, which she had picked up with wondrous speed, but now she raised one hand to her lips like a little girl, her eyes dancing, and suddenly her Erse speech was more pronounced. "Crucial? You mean spread out like a cross? 'Loo-oobricated friction ... ' Latin's a wondrous language. You couldn't say things like that in Erse. 'Delicious, lubricated friction ... Oh, listen to me! The gods would scream, could they hear us! I never even talk like this with Donuil. Can you imagine the face of him, sitting over there, listening to us?" She fell silent, thinking, then laughed in a girlish way. "So you're sound asleep when this happens? Dead to the world, with no idea at all of what's going on?"
"None at all, consciously. Of course, there's much going on inside your head."
"Aye, and other parts of you."
"Hmm."
She made another tiny sound of mirthful excitement, hitching herself more upright and lapsing back into her native tongue. "Wouldn't I love to see that, though? Wouldn't that be something to behold, the bright seed just springing from it like a ribbon, with no warning at all?"
"Aye," I said, more of a grunt than a word, and began to rise to my feet. "And if we don't leave now, it's going to happen here, in the brightness of the afternoon. Come on, let's go."
I held out my hand to help her rise, but she remained where she was, her eyes fixed on the erection that thrust beneath my clothing at the level of her eyes, which had turned suddenly solemn.
"Merlyn, forgive me. I didn't think. That was stupid of me and unforgivable to taunt you like that."
"Come on, get up. Here, take my hand. It wasn't unforgivable at all. I enjoyed it thoroughly. It simply means I'll do it twice this week." I pulled her to her feet then stepped away, literally turning my back on the temptation to gather her into my arms and kiss her. She would have come to me, I knew. I stood there, staring at the closest tree until her voice came from behind me, small and tentative.
"Merlyn? Is that the truth? You're not angry?"
I turned back to her, smiling. "No, Shelagh, I'm not angry. I swear it."
She was silent for a spell, and then, "Twice this week?" She was smiling again. "Does that mean—"
"Aye, four nights ago, aboard the galley, and it wasn't you."
"The faceless, wanton spectre ... Will it be me tonight?"
"Aye, it will, and for several nights to come, I think. But don't expect me to thank you for stirring me up this way."
"I won't, but ... "
"But what?"
She smiled. "I want you to know, though I shouldn't say it. But I'm just as stirred up now as you are ... It was you saying 'twice this week' that did it."