Orchard and Wardrobe

It was a young summer and the pear trees bloomed in riot above our heads, arching branches a gate we held hands beneath. It was the third year since Emperor Ignacio passed and his wife acceeded to the Carnelian Throne as Empress.

Ours was an isolated life - idle nobility with neither power nor responsibility, not since Eleanor VI and Ignacio the Defender had given the rule of the nation to The Assembly. Our taxes uplifted the lower classes and left us to our idle pursuits. On this warm evening, I myself and the woman who had stolen my heart were engaged in one of them.

With a sigh too world-weary for her twenty-three year-old soul, Opal, Duchess of Kennick, let go of my hands and stepped barefoot across the grass to the warm pink granite stone of the palace wall. The bell of her skirts bobbed as she spun in place, putting her back to the wall and her gaze to the soil, her head in seeming penance. For what she might be penitent, I could not say, but just seeing the dejection upon her features put a most unseasonal chill into my soul. Rejection, I knew, would follow.

"It cuts me to the quick to say, as we have been friends since our childhood days..." she began (which I felt gave short shrift to the litany of our shared joys, our first kiss, and other games of teenage folly) but nevertheless continued, "...but I cannot accept your troth, Jakob. I have always loved you, but we cannot marry. I dare not say why." Without a further word, she turned and fled, and through my own confusion and sorrow, I could not bring myself to follow. My face wet with tears, I leant against the nearest tree and tried to compose myself. Wiping my face on a cuff, I looked down and saw that in her hurry to depart, Opal had left her slippers behind, the silken shoes set neatly down atop the root of the tree where we had paused to speak and where I had...well.

I sighed, planning on leaving the shoes behind for her to recover later, but the evening was swiftly descending, and I felt at least the obligation to my friend that I would return her property forthwith.

Steeling my nerve and summoning all my reserves, I knocked upon her door. There was no answer. I know not why this was somehow the final straw upon the broken back of my dignity, but upon this, I returned to my own chambers and wept bitterly, face-down upon the divan, her shoes sitting atop my writing desk.

In reflection, I cannot say that I composed myself manfully over the following few days. It is one thing to cry out in sorrow, to weep and gnash one's teeth; this is good and healthful, allowing one's humours to balance. To borrow from the more common language...I moped. A poet might declare that a melancholy lay upon them. My depression was artless. Petulant, even.

It was the third night after whereupon the Duchess appeared at my chambers, her mood much recovered, and in fact seeming to glow with new resolve. She was her usual self: witty, earthy, inordinately clever, which hurt all the more. I was still comporting myself in a fairly pathetic manner, sprawled half-on, half-off the aforementioned divan.

She glanced over her shoulder at me, playing in jest, just as we might have in any season prior. "So, Jakob, what have you done with my shoes the past few nights?"

As I tried to stammer out a reply that they had not moved from my desk, she breezed over and picked them up, continuing, "Did you try them on? I doubt they would fit you...perhaps you pleasured yourself with them? I would not blame you if you had. They are certainly soft..."

My face probably shifted through three or four colors of apoplexy while I gasped like a landed fish, seeking the breath and the words to deny this ridiculous charge. The smile fell from her face as she rolled her eyes. "Jakob, I would not ever suggest we not be friends. Why are you acting like the world has ended?"

I frowned. "Why are you, in turn, acting as if nothing has happened?"

She didn't reply to the question, providing instead her own excuse, "I merely have...obligations. Obligations I cannot discuss."

By this time, I was in no mood for further japery. I rose, perhaps not cutting the finest figure in disheveled shirtsleeves, breeches and hose, but nevertheless, my choler rose and I faced her angrily. "Obligation?!" I snapped. "Whose? Some lout from the House of Gliese, or perhaps one of the Curians? I thought that we had built something. Something that would last."

She shook her head. "No, nothing of that sort. My obligation is to no man. If anything...it is to myself."

This bore no succor to my confused state, and I told her as such. "...but please, dearest Opal," I continued, "Enlighten me, so that I may at least understand, that...perhaps we would remain the friends we have been."

She chewed on her lower lip, a habit her nursemaids and tutors had tried for years to drive from her with no success. I still found it utterly adorable. Taking a deep breath, she visibly gathered her courage. "I felt it would come to this. Therefore, I must know before I say more: Jakob. Duke Jakob of House Arondyn. I must have your oath upon this matter. What I reveal to you, you must never breathe a word of to man, beast or Goddess. Not one. Ever."

Even after she crushed my heart, she still had such power over me that I immediately dropped to my knees and made obeisance. This was clearly not the response she wanted, as she hauled me to my feet by great fistfuls of my shirt. "You utter saddlegoose, get up and be an adult for once in your life," she mumbled.

I composed myself and she continued. "Tomorrow, come luncheon, you will not attend. I will make your excuses for you---not that any would be disbelieved, given your state these last few days. What you will do is to go to the Empress's chambers. They will be unguarded."

Opal passed me a heavy, ornate key. I pocketed it, scarcely believing what I was hearing.

"You will lock yourself into the room and secret yourself in her largest wardrobe, the one on the wall across from the bed. Make not a sound, no matter what occurs, and the rest will be made plain to you," she concluded.

I had at this point recovered some of my aplomb---she had used this same brusque manner in outlining a number of our teenage japes, plots and exploits, and the resemblance to our younger days heartened me. "By this time tomorrow..." I mused.

She nodded. "We should be in accord. Or, at the least, you will know, if not understand."

Those words would come to haunt me as I enacted Opal's plan the following afternoon. I stepped quietly into the Imperial bedchamber and reset the lock, musing to myself, "What might I be shown here that might be beyond my ken?"

The room was richly appointed, as was the majority of the estate---brocaded walls with gilt moldings, a fresco across the ceiling of the constellations in their orbit, and grand windows along the western wall. A number of cabinets and vanities and a writing desk took up residency of the rest of the room, along with the doors into their private sitting room and the late Emperor's personal library; in that latter room, I'd been lucky enough to take tea with him a time or two, before his decline.

The clack and click of my shoes on the marble sounded as pistol shots to my harried mind as I crossed the room. Concerned I might be discovered, I made haste for the largest wardrobe, mirrored on its double doors, easily tall enough for an adult to stand in. I would not say it was comfortable inside, standing amongst the Empress's ballgowns and other portions of her ensemble, but I could breathe, certainly, and the sachets of potpourri hidden amongst the garments gave the space a certain airiness.

What I could also do was see. The glass on the front of the wardrobe, cunningly arranged, was mirrored from without but clear from within, and it seemed as if I stood within the room itself, for the ease of my view. Then, the only remaining task was to wait, while mechanisms---possibly beyond my ken---enmeshed to deliver me truths that Opal could not tell me herself.

By the grace of providence, I did not have long to wait.

The outer door opened again, and Eleanor herself entered, dismissing the guards that had accompanied her to her chambers with a word and a wave. A stout, tall woman whose regal height was enhanced by the heels of her shoes and the fiery coif (turning snowy with age) atop her head, she nevertheless had a look of childlike glee upon her face. She, as I had mere minutes earlier, locked the doors and crossed the floor, with a glance in each direction as if to see that she was not followed.

I frowned. Why would the Empress of the Known World prowl furtively through her own bedchamber?

Lifting her skirts to avoid them dragging, she stepped out of her shoes and, to my utter horror, padded across the floor directly to my hiding place. My breath caught in my throat as Eleanor looked into the reflective glass for a long moment, then smiled and turned away. But this was only the first of several shocks that awaited me. Next, as the Empress began to disrobe, letting her gown fall to the floor, I fancied I heard a distant tapping, slowly growing in volume.

My body knew not how to respond to the push and pull of the situation. As Eleanor spread herself atop the imperial bedspread, clad in nothing more than a corset and silken stockings, my manhood responded potently, seeming to make the formerly-cozy wardrobe a mote less comfortable, as I certainly could not free my erection here---could I? All the while, the tapping grew louder, sounding more and more like a slow, measured gait, but from where? My heart pounded in my chest and sang in my ears. I had come to find answers, but instead was given over to terror.

The answer to the source of the sound was then made apparent, as the footsteps---for footsteps they were---stopped and, with a creak of hinge, the back of the wardrobe opened, a hidden door not three feet from my back.

If my heart was near to exploding before, what I saw next nearly made me cry out in terror, as I could only imagine the figure I saw over my shoulder, who opened the way into the wardrobe, was a spectre of some kind. They had a roundish, dim full-moon of a face, devoid of any features but the two large, black eyes. In other respects, they could have been any young man of the court, wearing a suit of clothes in scarlet, with a powdered wig atop their head, as was the fashion earlier in the decade.

As I struggled to keep calm, the figure lifted a chamberstick and their candle threw more light on their features, which I discovered was no monstrous face but merely a porcelain mask. The figure pushed an enormous ballgown to the side and lifted a finger to where their mouth would be, indicating the need for my continued silence. They snuffed their candle, placing it in the passage behind them, tugged on their jacket and brushed past me to step out into the bedroom, leaving me hidden behind the wardrobe's double doors. I was, some distant part of my mind considered, thankful that this personage saw fit not to make note of my obviously-aroused state.

Our masked man made no sound, but stepped fully into the bedchamber and bowed gallantly before the Empress, who slowly worked their fingers through the lush salt-and-paprika thatch atop her mound, staring hungrily at her visitor. The spectre (for I still could not think of another name by which to consider him, flesh and blood though he clearly was) stepped from his shoes and mounted the bed, coming forth on hands and knees to Eleanor. She sat up for a moment, tracing a kiss along her man's ear, before laying back down and offering herself to him.

By this time, I ached bodily, the Empress's soft curves and her wanton, needy manner inflaming my own need, which I surreptitiously adjusted within my breeches so that, if it could not be released, it could at least point its way northwards---a task it set to with a will, throbbing fitfully against my belly. Meanwhile, on the other side of the glass, the spectre had lifted his partner's leg and slipped her toes under the edge of the mask, into his mouth, then kissed his way up the silk and skin, pushing the mask back on his forehead just enough to reveal a pale, shaven, pointed chin as he dove down betwixt her thighs to taste the font of womanhood.

Eleanor grasped at her fulsome breasts, tugging with manicured fingers at her nipples as her spectre pleased her, the pair of them gasping and panting in the silence of the bedchamber. I did my best to stifle the weight of my breath and the tremor of my body, but I could not contain myself further. With my trembling hands moving as if of their own accord, I found myself unlacing my clothes, my breeches slumping down to my knees to free my imprisoned salience, standing proud and hot before me. As I glanced back up, the man in the mask appeared to be doing the same, only instead of gripping prideful flesh, he reached into his coat pocket and retrieved a pale phallic simulacrum, probably of wood or ivory, which he appended to himself with a definite click. It had not been in place for more than a moment before the Empress rolled over and lay on her front to sweep it up in a tide of licks and kisses, duly servicing the man and his implement, her feet girlishly kicking behind her.

I bit my lip, trying not to cry out while I pleasured myself to the tableau presented me, my hips thrusting in time with the spectre's as he mounted our sovereign's gorgeous fundament and fully made love to her. He remained silent throughout his exertion, but it was clear by the cant of his shoulders and the vigor of his motion that he enjoyed himself greatly, even with his substitute flesh. As the Empress's lustful cries crescendoed with her partner's most manful thrusts, so too did my own organ, which I quickly swaddled in my cravat in the hope I might contain my seed and preserve the secrecy of my presence. I looked up again, still stroking myself into the silk in my hand, and the spectre, still riding out Eleanor's climax, glanced back at me over their shoulder, tipping their mask up for just a moment.

The mystery man was Opal.

I came with an immediacy that shocked me, my body shaking with the release, my cravat a riot of pearly seed. Suddenly adrift in the aftermath of my self-gratification, I felt incredibly awkward, even intrusive, even as the rational portions of my mind told me I'd clearly been invited; where else would Opal have gotten the key I'd used to enter the room?

I fled down the hidden passageway, leaving the lovers to the remainder of their afternoon tryst. Thankfully, it was easier to locate the exit from within than without, and I carefully made my way back to my apartments.

Opal returned to my chamber that night, once again in feminine dress, though now I could see where the line of the shoulder, the confidence in the stride, the upright bearing, were all one and the same with the man I encountered that afternoon. She---or should I say he?---took the key from atop the writing desk without comment while I slouched again upon the divan, internally bemoaning my fate. Suddenly a thought crossed my mind, which I seized upon greedily.

"Opal," I started, but my words were already faltering. She showed infinite patience for the several seconds it took me to gather what I next meant to say. "I think I see what you mean by your obligation. It's not just about keeping Eleanor happy, is it?"

Opal nodded. "It is not."

I sighed, pushing my forehead into my palm. Well, in for a sester, in for a dinar, as they say. "Well, if my chances are nil with the Duchess...do you think you'd let me make my introductions to the Duke?"

He smiled. "I think that could be arranged. In fact, I thought you might never ask."