He went numbly out to the spring

He went numbly out to the spring with the cheese and the cider, not daring to think. When he came back into the house she was in the process of removing her gown. Best peel the wet things off,' she said, and got calmly into bed in her shift.

He removed the damp trousers and tunic and spread them on one side of the round hearth. Naked, he hastened to the bed and lay down next to her between the pelts, shivering. 'Cold'

She turned to him.'You've been colder. When I took your place in Barber's bed.'

'And I was sent to sleep on the floor, on a bitter night. Yes, that was cold.'

She turned to him. “Poor motherless child,” I kept thinking. I so wished to let you into the bed.'

'You reached down and touched my head.'

She touched his head now, smoothing his hair and pressing his face into her softness.'I have held my own sons in this bed.'She closed her eyes. Presently she eased the loose top of her shift and gave him a pendulous breast.

The living flesh in his mouth made him seem to remember a long forgotten infant warmth. He felt a prickling behind his eyelids.

Her hand took his on exploration. 'This is what you must do,'She kept her eyes closed.

A stick snapped in the hearth but went unheard. The damp fire was smoking badly.

Lightly and with patience. In circles as you¡re doing,'she said dreamily.

He threw back the cover and her shift, despite the cold.

He saw with surprise that she had thick legs. His eyes studied what his fingers had learned; her femaleness was like his dream, but now the firelight allowed him the details.

'Faster,'She would have said more but he found her lips. It was not a mother's mouth, and he noted she did something interesting with her hungry tongue.

A series of whispers guided him over her and between heavy thighs. There was no need for further instruction; instinctively he buckled and thrust.

God was a qualified carpenter, he realized, for she was a warm and slippery moving mortice and he was a fitted tenon.

Her eyes snapped open and looked straight at him. Her lips curled back from her teeth, in a strange grin and she uttered a harsh rattling from the back of her throat that would have made him think she lay dying if he hadn't heard such sounds before.

For years he had watched and heard other people making love – his father and his mother in their small and crowed house, and Barber with a long parade of doxies. He had become convinced that there had to be magic with a cunt for men to want it so. In the dark mystery of her bed, sneezing like a horse from the imperfect fire, he felt all anguish and heaviness pumping from him. Transported by the most frightening kind of joy, he discovered the vast difference between observation and participation.

From the book “The physician” by Noah Gordon.