The Copper Sign Read Free

and gave it a tug here and there to tease him. Then she began to run her hands up and down his back as if she didn’t want to overlook an inch of his body. Breathing faster and louder, she grabbed his buttocks with both hands and rubbed her intimate parts against his leg.
    Ellen felt a dull pounding in her belly. She was seized with an odd feeling of both repugnance and bliss that terrified her, and for a moment she thought of returning to Simon. Until now she had been sure—this physical union was a torment for all women and could only be pleasurable to men. But—was she mistaken? As if under a spell she stood there looking through the crack in the wall. Sir Miles thrust his rough hand between the woman’s gleaming white thighs and rubbed her until she began to make soft, groaning sounds. Then he went over to a pile of hay, lay down, and motioned to her. The woman straddled him, settling down eagerly over his stiff phallus.
    Ellen started to breathe faster.
    The woman moved up and down on top of him as if riding a horse. Suddenly her murmurs grew louder; she seemed to shudder with ecstasy and threw back her head. Ellen saw a torrent of blond hair the color of wheat fall over the woman’s slender, bony back, and then she could see the face transfigured with desire. And now Ellen could see who she was. It shot through her like a bolt of lightning—Leofrun! A hot flash and a strange, hitherto unknown feeling of revulsion came over her, and she burst into tears.
    “You whore!” she shrieked, turning away from the crack in the wall and sobbing.
    Simon turned around in astonishment and ran toward her. “Have you lost your mind? What do you care who he’s messing around with in there?” He didn’t even seem to be surprised that Sir Miles had used the cottage as a trysting place. “Do you have any idea how dangerous that is for us?” he snapped at her and began pulling her away.
    Ellen was as pale as a ghost.
    “What are you making such a fuss about? Grown men and women do things like that,” he said, trying to calm her down.
    Ellen pounded his shoulder with her fist and pushed him away, furious. “But that woman in there is my mother!”
    Simon’s face turned red with shame. “Ah…I didn’t know.”
    Suddenly, the door to the cottage swung open.
    “Let’s get out of here! God help us if he catches us!” Simon said, grabbing Ellen by the arm and pulling her along with him.
    Sir Miles appeared half naked in front of the cabin and raised his fist. “I’ll get you, just wait, you little brat,” he called after them. “I’ll rip your prying eyes out and cut off your saucy tongue!” Ellen was running as fast as she could.
    Simon turned around a few times. “He’s not following us, at least not yet,” he gasped, and kept on running.
    They ran without stopping all the way to the tannery. Tanners needed lots of water for their work, and for this reason Simon’s family had settled on the banks of the Ore many generations ago. Simon lived there with his parents, grandmother, and four younger brothers in a little cottage of wattle and clay with a straw-thatched roof. Strong fumes from the tanning pit rose in a heavy haze that hung in the air and made their eyes sting. Completely out of breath, Ellen sat down on a tree stump far from the tanning pit and scraped her feet nervously in the dust.
    “Goblins! Don’t make me laugh! She just wanted us to stay away from the cottage.” Ellen’s eyes flashed angrily.
    “Well, if I had caught my mother like that…then I would have…” Simon couldn’t finish his sentence. “What a bitch!” he said with contempt, and spat on the ground.
    “It was so…ugly,” Ellen mumbled, staring at a line of busy ants dragging a bee along the ground. “The Lord will punish them for that, both of them,” she growled defiantly.
    “In any case, though, you can’t go home now just as if nothing happened. If she’d whip you till you’re black and blue for nothing, who’s