Marie came with the brandy and poured a glass for Rebekah—then one for Ian, at Rebekah’s gesture, and when Jamie made a small polite noise in his throat, half-filled his cup, pouring in more tea on top of it. The taste was peculiar, but he didn’t really mind. The pain had gone off to the far side of the room; he could see it sitting over there, a wee glowering sort of purple thing with a bad-tempered expression on its face. He laughed at it, and Ian frowned at him.
“What are ye giggling at?”
Jamie couldn’t think how to describe the pain beastie, so he just shook his head, which proved a mistake—the pain looked suddenly gleeful and shot back into his head with a noise like tearing cloth. The room spun and he clutched the table with both hands.
“Diego!” Chairs scraped and there was a good bit of clishmaclaver that he paid no attention to. Next thing he knew, he was lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling beams. One of them seemed to be twining slowly, like a vine growing.
“…and he told the captain that there was someone among the Jews who kent about…” Ian’s voice was soothing, earnest and slow so Rebekah would understand him—though Jamie thought she maybe understood more than she said. The twining beam was slowly sprouting small green leaves, and he had the faint thought that this was unusual, but a great sense of tranquillity had come over him and he didn’t mind it a bit.
Rebekah was saying something now, her voice soft and worried, and with some effort he turned his head to look. She was leaning over the table toward Ian, and he had both big hands wrapped round hers, reassuring her that he and Jamie would let no harm come to her.
A different face came suddenly into his view: the maid, Marie, frowning down at him. She rudely pulled back his eyelid and peered into his eye, so close he could smell the garlic on her breath. He blinked hard, and she let go with a small “hmph!” then turned to say something to Rebekah, who replied in quick Ladino. The maid shook her head dubiously but left the room.
Her face didn’t leave with her, though. He could still see it, frowning down at him from above. It had become attached to the leafy beam, and he now realized that there was a snake up there, a serpent with a woman’s head, and an apple in its mouth—that couldn’t be right, surely it should be a pig?—and it came slithering down the wall and right over his chest, pressing the apple close to his face. It smelled wonderful, and he wanted to bite it, but before he could, he felt the weight of the snake change, going soft and heavy, and he arched his back a little, feeling the distinct imprint of big round breasts squashing against him. The snake’s tail—she was mostly a woman now, but her back end seemed still to be snake-ish—was delicately stroking the inside of his thigh.
He made a very high-pitched noise, and Ian came hurriedly to the bed.
“Are ye all right, man?”
“I—oh. Oh! Oh, Jesus, do that again.”
“Do what—” Ian was beginning, when Rebekah appeared, putting a hand on Ian’s arm.
“Don’t worry,” she said, looking intently at Jamie. “He’s all right. The medicine—it gives men strange dreams.”
“He doesna look like he’s asleep,” Ian said dubiously.
In fact, Jamie was squirming—or thought he was squirming—on the bed, trying to persuade the lower half of the snake woman to change, too. He was panting; he could hear himself.
“It’s a waking dream,” Rebekah said reassuringly. “Come, leave him. He’ll fall quite asleep in a bit, you’ll see.”
Jamie didn’t think he’d fallen asleep, but it was evidently some time later that he emerged from a remarkable tryst with the snake demon—he didn’t know how he knew she was a demon, but clearly she was—who had not changed her lower half but had a very womanly mouth about her. The tryst also included a number of her friends, these being small female demons who licked his ears—and other things—with great enthusiasm.
He turned his head on the pillow to allow one of these better access and saw, with no sense of surprise, Ian kissing Rebekah. The brandy bottle had fallen over, empty, and Jamie seemed to see the wraith of its perfume rise swirling through the air like smoke, wrapping the two of them in a mist shot with rainbows.
He closed his eyes again, the better to attend to the snake lady, who now had a number of new and interesting acquaintances. When he opened his eyes some time later, Ian and Rebekah were gone.
At one point he heard Ian give a sort of strangled cry and wondered dimly what had happened, but it didn’t seem important, and the thought drifted away. He slept.
—
He woke feeling limp as a frostbitten cabbage leaf, but the pain in his head was gone. He just lay there for a bit, enjoying the feeling. It was dark in the room, and it was some time before he realized from the smell of brandy that Ian was lying beside him.
Memory came back to him. It took a little while to disentangle the real memories from the memory of dreams, but he was quite sure he’d seen Ian embracing Rebekah—and her, him. What the devil had happened then?
Ian wasn’t asleep; he could tell. His friend lay rigid as one of the tomb figures in the crypt at Saint Denis, and his breathing was rapid and shaky, as though he’d just run a mile uphill. Jamie cleared his throat, and Ian jerked as though stabbed with a brooch pin.
“Aye, so?” he whispered, and Ian’s breathing stopped abruptly. He swallowed audibly.
“If ye breathe a word of this to your sister,” he said in an impassioned whisper, “I’ll stab ye in your sleep, cut off your heid, and kick it to Arles and back.”
Jamie didn’t want to think about his sister, and he did want to hear about Rebekah, so he merely repeated, “Aye. So?”
Ian made a small grunting noise, indicative of thinking how best to begin, and turned over in his plaid, facing Jamie.
“Aye, well. Ye raved a bit about the naked she-devils ye were havin’ it away with, and I didna think the lass should have to be hearing that manner o’ thing, so I said we should go into the other room, and—”
“Was this before or after ye started kissing her?” Jamie asked.
Ian inhaled strongly through his nose. “After,” he said tersely. “And she was kissin’ me back, aye?”
“Aye, I noticed that. So then…？” He could feel Ian squirming slowly, like a worm on a hook, but Jamie waited. It often took Ian a moment to find words, but it was usually worth waiting for. Certainly in this instance.
He was a little shocked—and frankly envious—and he did wonder what might happen when the lass’s affianced discovered she wasn’t a virgin, but he supposed the man might not find out; she seemed a clever lass. It might be wise to leave D’Eglise’s troop, though, and head south, just in case…
“D’ye think it hurts a lot to be circumcised?” Ian asked suddenly.
“I do. How could it not?” His hand sought out his own member, protectively rubbing a thumb over the bit in question. True, it wasn’t a very big bit, but…
“Well, they do it to wee bairns,” Ian pointed out. “Canna be that bad, can it?”
“Mmphm,” Jamie said, unconvinced, though fairness made him add, “Aye, well, and they did it to Christ, too.”