Marriage Tails

By Serafina Conti

Four young married women taking refuge together from the coronavirus pandemic decide to pass the time telling each other stories about marriage. The stories all turn out to be about cheating wives, raising questions about the health of their relationships. And by the way, what is going on in the house every evening after the storytelling is done?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Serafina Conti
• Release date: Mar 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463656938

Serafina Conti

Serafina Conti has been writing and publishing for most of her life, and she’s been writing fiction for more than two years. Her specialties are dark romance, raw humor, horror, and adaptations of ancient stories. She lives in the Northeastern United States with her husband Daniel and a tank of tropical fish.

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Marriage Tails

Erotica for the Socially Distanced

by Serafina Conti

Copyright © 2020 by Serafina Conti

Smashwords Edition

Prologue: Stuck Together

It’s more than your life is worth to get on a plane right now, I said. You absolutely don’t want to do it.

We’ve been here five days, Maddie, said Hazel. We’ve worn out our welcome.

Look, Hazel, I said. The four of us lived together in a tiny apartment for three years. We shared a single bathroom. We tiptoed around each other when we were screwing. We’ve been tripping over each other for ten years. This is a big house. We’ll be fine.

Anne said, We can’t just uproot—

None of us have kids, I said. We’re all on leave from our jobs except Maeve, and she’s telecommuting. None of us have pets. We all hate houseplants. There’s no reason in the world not to stay here, unless you’re actually feeling you need a little more coronavirus in your life.

We’ve got husbands, said Maeve.

Right, I said. Mine is stuck in Peru. Heaven knows when he’ll able to get home. And you know what? Our marriage will survive it. Don’t you think your husbands will be okay without you for another week or two?

Anne said, "I kind of miss my husband."

I said, Enough to risk your life to get home to him?

Maeve said, Dave is living on TV dinners and Bud Light. If I don’t get home and start cooking for him, he’s going to blow up like a hot-air balloon.

Hazel said, Sooner or later, we’ve got to go home. This plague could last another year—we can’t stay that long. Sooner or later we’ve got to go home.

I get it, I said. You’ve got a homing instinct. Everybody does. But a lot of things that usually make sense don’t make sense right now, and the need to get home is one of them.

Now the first thing you need to know about my three friends, Hazel, Anne, and Maeve, is that they are very stubborn. On the other hand, the first thing you need to know about me is that I’m more stubborn than any of them. That’s how I won this argument: I wore them down, and they finally called up their husbands, and then the airlines to switch their tickets to two weeks later.

The second thing you need to know about the four of us is that we’re best friends. The kind you’re in touch with daily, via Facebook or Twitter or phone or Skype or whatever media you’re on. The kind whose news you’re always interested in, no matter how trivial. The kind you always extend a trip to another city for, so you can spend a few days. The kind you never get tired of.

That night we watched a movie on Prime, had a nightcap, and went to bed in our separate rooms. The next day we had a breakfast of toast and eggs, walked around the neighborhood, being careful to keep six feet between us and anyone we met, played a half dozen rounds of Crazy Eights, had lunch, watched a movie, took another walk, had drinks, had a Thai feast delivered, had more drinks, watched yet another movie, played poker, and went to bed.

The next morning we had a breakfast of eggs and toast and took a walk, at the end of which I said, If today is exactly like yesterday I’m going to go mad.

It won’t be exactly like yesterday, said Maeve. There are millions of books you can download to your phone, thousands of movies, hundreds of games to play, hundreds more restaurants to order from, dozens of ways to walk.

That’s not the point, I said. The point is, the walls are closing in, and when that happens it makes all those things seem like the same old thing.

It isn’t the walls that close in, said Anne, but the people. It’s like thirty-six hours since we extended our visit, and we’re already starting to get tired of each other.

That’s why I mentioned downloading books, said Maeve. We can get off by ourselves and read when we have to, and the time we spend together will be better.

I don’t think that’ll work, I said. I think what we need is a bigger game and a different kind of togetherness.

I don’t understand, said Maeve.

Let me lead you through it, I said. The whole phenomenon that is us: where did it begin?

The three of them chorused, Professor Warren’s fiction-writing class!

That’s right, I said. We were all four in that class, sophomore year, and we bonded because we were the only ones in the class that could write worth a fuck.

Right! said Hazel, banging the arm of the sofa with the flat of her hand. But I still don’t know what you’re getting at.

"Let’s write! I exclaimed. We’ve all got computers with us; we’ve all got brains. Let’s each write a story and read them to each other!"

I haven’t written any fiction since that class, said Anne, looking doubtful.

"But you could, I said. You never wrote any before, but you were a superstar. Look, here’s how I see it working. We’ll roll a die, like deciding who goes first in Monopoly. Whoever goes first has till tomorrow night to write a story, and then they’ll read it aloud to us. Number two will go night after tomorrow, and so on. At the end we’ll decide what to do next."

Fine with me, said Hazel.

I’m game, said Maeve, in a tone that suggested she was saying this more because she could see how the wind was blowing than because she really wanted to write a story.

Well, okay . . . I guess, said Anne.

I clapped my hands. It’s set, then! All we need is to roll our die to set an order, and get to work.

I think we need a theme, said Maeve.

A theme? I said. Why?

And I think, Maeve went on, the theme should be marriage. After all, we all got married close together, five years ago. It’s only right that we should celebrate by writing marriage tales.

I didn’t want to write about marriage, but the others seemed to think it a good idea, so I agreed, though I worried a little that I was losing control of the game.

Finally I hunted up a die and we set an order: Anne ("Oh no!" she cried), Hazel, Maeve, and me.

I’d better get started! Anne said. I’m going to hide in my room. No one disturb me.

She disappeared towards the back of the house, and for the next day and a half emerged only for meals, while the rest of us went on with our walking, movie-watching, and so on.

We gathered in the living room at nine the next evening, equipped with four glasses and a bottle of wine, plus Anne’s computer.

She opened the computer and said, "I’m sure you all remember that I always loved the old stories best. What I’ve done is produce an old story of my own. It’s set in twelfth-century France, and I call it

Rosette

Rosette daughter of Galon was rounding the last corner between the village well and the cottage she shared with her mother and father, when two of the Duke’s soldiers, magnificent in scarlet and gold cloaks over gleaming chain-mail, galloped into the street and pulled up between her and the cottage door.

Rosette was a pretty girl—a good deal more than pretty, to tell the truth—with flaxen hair done in a braid that reached past her waist, a fine, slender figure, straight nose with a fetching bit of upturn just at the end, and arched brows above lively eyes that hinted at something more than the usual measure of wit.

The soldiers sat easily on their horses, facing the cottage, and the more senior of them called out: Galon son of Raimbaut! Come and exchange words with us!

The sight of the soldiers stopped there in front of her cottage filled Rosette with dread, for the Duke’s men did not, as a rule, make social calls on village folk, but rather came always on unpleasant sorts of business such as the collection of back taxes and the doling out of punishments. She set down her two buckets in case it became necessary to run.

Galon appeared in the doorway, looking much older than his thirty-five years. Everyone in the village aged quickly; it was a hard life they led. But Rosette thought her father looked older than he had that very same morning, and tireder, and resigned, as if the men had come to lead him to the headsman’s block.

I wish my lords good health, Galon said, his tone perhaps barely hinting at the possibility that it would be no matter to him if they fell down dead on the spot.

The soldier who had spoken first tossed him a big package wrapped in brown cloth.

Tomorrow morning, he said, Rosette daughter of Galon will put on this clothing. She will wear none of her own filthy rags, and she will carry nothing of her own—not so much as a needle. We will come for her one hour after dawn.

Without another word the two soldiers turned and galloped out of the village. From the corner where she had paused, Rosette stared, open-mouthed, into her father’s hopeless eyes.

Of course they both understood what this meant. Everyone in the village knew about the Duke. Since his youth—and now he was seventy winters and more—he had been known as a cocksman. It was said that he had bedded every chambermaid, scullery maid, and serving wench in his castle. If a shepherdess or milkmaid anywhere in his dominions happened to catch his eye, she could count on receiving a visit from him within two nights. And a pretty girl of the village might at any moment find herself summoned to the castle, kept there for days, weeks, or months, and sent back, sometimes pregnant, sometimes not, but always with her bride-price much reduced. Being unmarried, the Duke had no legitimate heirs, but it was said, with less exaggeration than you might think, that his bastards and their descendants accounted for the fifth part of the population of his dukedom.

The Duke’s soldiers had delivered a crushing blow to the family’s prospects. Rosette had come of age just days before, and all the young men had their eyes on her. Soon they would come calling. Or they would have come, but for this calamity. Girls whom the Duke used and cast off didn’t become unmarriageable, exactly, but they slid way down every young man’s list of prospective wives. Rosette had had every reason to expect that she would marry someone well-to-do, like, say, Durand, the brown and strapping son of a nearby farmer whom she had often imagined holding her in his strong arms. Now it was much more likely that the farmer’s servants’ sons would be paying her visits.

One had, however, to make the best of necessity, and everyone in the village understood that the best any girl could make of this particular necessity was to please the Duke when she came to his bed, and by so doing make herself his favorite for long enough that, when he grew weary of her, as he inevitably would, he might be moved to settle a pension on her that would in some degree make up for her reduced value.

And so, after the sun had set and Galon had drifted off into an uneasy sleep, Rosette’s mother rose from her place beside him, slipped over to her frightened daughter’s bed, and held her, and comforted her, and long into the night whispered into her ear many things that she believed she ought to know about how to please a man. You could not grow up in a rural village without acquiring a basic working knowledge of sex, but there were many fine points that one could not pick up by observing dogs and horses and cattle. Rosette listened, a little amazed, a little alarmed, and a little excited.

* * *

In the morning mother and daughter opened the brown package. Inside was a linen chemise and an impossibly fine gown of a vivid azure cloth like liquid to the touch, with gold threads running through it and scarlet and gold embroidery around the edges. They looked at it with wonder. The Duke had sent outfits to the village girls he had summoned, everyone had seen them, but this was nothing like those. Why such expense on this occasion? It seemed equally wonderful that everything fit Rosette perfectly. Even the jeweled fillet slipped down to exactly the right spot on her forehead. There was no other headdress, and it felt odd and almost indecent to her to wear the fillet without a wimple and with her hair combed out and hanging loose down her back, as her mother insisted it must. There were small shoes of fine soft leather, which also fit perfectly, but of course they were quite invisible under the gown.

Rosette’s mother gazed at her daughter in her finery and wept, seeing her so suddenly transformed from village girl to lady. Galon glanced at his daughter once, then cleared his throat and left the room.

The Duke’s soldiers came back at the promised time, leading with them a pretty palfrey with a sidesaddle and gay bells on a harness with gold fittings. They dismounted and waited for Rosette’s parents to lead her out of the house. Galon said nothing and did not look at his daughter. Rosette’s mother embraced her and whispered, Remember what I taught you. One of the men helped her mount the palfrey—she was not used to a sidesaddle and felt awkward—and then they mounted their own horses and led her away. When she looked back, her parents were nowhere in sight.

* * *

They led Rosette into the Duke’s presence. He was a magnificent figure, dressed in a good deal more scarlet and gold than his vassals, and he wore a thin gold crown. The great hall was full of ladies and gentlemen, splendidly dressed in colorful gowns and tunics and high headdresses. The two soldiers led her to stand directly in front of the Duke, then withdrew to join the other nobles.

She did not know how to behave in front of a Duke, and so she stood where she had been placed and, being afraid, bowed her head.

His voice was like a corpse dragged over a dry gravel path.

Look at me, girl.

She raised her head. The skin of his face was deeply lined, his beard wispy and gray, his features narrow and cruel, his thin lips curled into a sneer. She tried to imagine kissing him and could not.

The reports I have heard do you justice, he said.

She bowed her head in embarrassment, then remembered to look up again.

I have never had the smallest desire to marry, the Duke said, and I have no wish to do so now. But my counselors (he nodded in the direction of the watchful crowd of nobles) "believe, and have labored to persuade me with complex and tedious arguments, that the realm will come to ruin if I do not beget an heir. At length, to put an end to their complaints, I ordered them to find me a wife. Do you follow me, girl?"

Yes, my lord. She wondered what all this had to do with her. Was she to be the new duchess’s maid? Why her? She was a farm girl, not a servant.

The Duke continued, "All the wealthiest families of this realm and the noblest families of the surrounding realms, even the