Chapter 7

York, England. April 1067

News of the heroic victory at Outpost Zulu reached York just four hours after the regiment relieved the outpost and church bells rang to celebrate. When Luke got the news, he grabbed his horse and headed back to York. Once again, Luke was thankful for the telegraph system the army had installed throughout Britain. He wanted to give the news to Marion personally and alert Alice to expect some badly wounded soldiers.

When Luke walked into Alice’s office, he found her with her head down, sobbing.

“Alice, what’s wrong?”

“What have I done, Luke?”

“I don’t know. What happened?” Alice finally picked her head up off her desk, and Luke could see her eyes were as red as her hair. Luke’s first thought was something had happened to her or the baby. “Alice,” Luke said in a firmer voice, “what happened?”

Alice took a deep breath and held it before letting it out in a rush.

“She was so innocent, Luke. Why did I have to kill her?”

“Wait, WHAT? Can you start at the beginning?”

“This morning, a little girl was brought in by her parents. A horse stepped on her leg, breaking it. I examined her and determined that it was a clean break, so the only thing needed was to set the bone and put a cast on it. Right?” Alice started sobbing again, and it took Luke running his hand across her back to calm her down enough for her to continue. “I set the leg, but after I did, the girl started complaining that it felt like her leg was burning, and it wasn’t long after that, that severe bruising started occurring. About the time the bruises started showing, she started losing consciousness. Her parents were crying and praying. The kid never woke up. After she expired, I did a quick examination of the leg to see what went wrong. I found that when I set the bone, I cut one of the major arteries causing her to bleed to death. She would still be alive if I had just been more careful and taken a little more time. Her parents can’t have more children, so I killed their only child. I’m going to resign from the medical profession and enlist in the army. If I’m going to kill people, I might as well get paid for it.”

“Alice, could you have known? Do you have a CAT scan machine around here that I don’t know about? Without CT scans, you couldn’t have known about the bone having pinched the blood vessel. You could have cut the leg open to take a look before you set the leg, but you would have introduced more risk. All you can do is learn and move on.”

“LUKE!! I MURDERED THAT GIRL!”

“Alice, stop; just shut up. You don’t have the equipment to look inside the body, so you couldn’t have known. It’s not like what happened is common; you wouldn’t have considered a pinched blood vessel a risk. Listen, sweetheart, you are the best doctor in the world, but you’re still human. That means you will screw up and feel bad about it, but all you can do is learn from it and move on.”

“DAMN IT, LUKE! YOU NEVER MURDERED ANYONE!! YOU CAN’T KNOW HOW I FEEL!”

Luke took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He knew precisely how Alice felt, and it was time to revisit another part of his past that he had hoped would be buried in the past.

“Alice, sweetheart, I know exactly how you feel,” Luke stated as he sat down. “I know how it feels to murder someone. When I was in Iraq, one of the insurgents’ favorite tactics was to send children up to us, knowing we would let our guard down. Many of us weren’t much older than those damn kids. The insurgents would strap explosives to the children before sending them in. Once they were close to a group of us, the explosives would be detonated remotely, turning those innocent children into bombs that sent shrapnel everywhere. Let me tell you something, sweetheart; there’s nothing worse for a soldier than to look at a part of their body with a piece of a child sticking out. Many children would be tricked into wearing the explosives while others were forced.

Worse yet were the young “mothers.” The insurgents would wrap a bomb in cloth and have a young woman carry it toward us. From a distance, it looked like the woman had a baby in her arms. Even up close, it looked like a mother carrying a baby. Once she was close, either she would detonate the bomb, or one of the insurgents would detonate it for her.

We were the target of a bunch of these attacks one week and were getting jumpy. Our CO reminded us that it was against the Geneva Convention to shoot civilians. Many soldiers reached the point where they wanted to shoot any civilian near us. I was a corporal at the time and still on my first tour of duty. A young woman approached us at a crossroad notorious for ambushes. Actually, a young teenager would have been a better description; the poor girl couldn’t have been older than fourteen. She had a worried look on her face and carried a large bundle. I ordered her not to come any closer, but she kept coming. One of the other soldiers tried to warn her off in Arabic, but she kept coming.

I don’t even remember deciding, but I had blown her away with my M4 rifle before I thought about it. Then we went up to her to investigate after activating cell phone jammers. You can still get a lot of information from a dead person. When we got to her, we found that she did have an infant in her arms. The infant had been sick, and the mother probably hoped to get her child medical attention. SHE HAD AN INFANT IN HER ARMS, AND I MURDERED BOTH OF THEM!

My squad covered up the murder because they were also about ready to shoot. When we returned to base, my captain came by my bunk and gave me a bottle of whiskey he had smuggled in. I worked on that bottle and downed almost the whole thing before bed. If I couldn’t forget, I wanted to die. Well, neither happened, but at least I got some sleep because those kids would haunt my dreams for almost a year before I could put their ghost to rest.”

Now, Alice had tears streaming down her face that matched Luke’s.

“I’m so sorry, Luke. Sometimes I forget that you don’t come from this time but from one that was, in some ways, far worse.”

“It’s ok, sweetheart. Sometimes we all need a reality check, which that girl gave you. Learn from it and move on because you will either become an alcoholic or commit suicide if you don’t. Let me take you home so we can curl up in bed. Maybe you can talk the parents into adopting a couple of homeless children from the orphanage.”

Alice sighed sadly, looking into Luke’s tired blue eyes and seeing nothing but his love for her.

“Ok, Luke. Let’s go.”

Alice and Luke left the hospital after Alice locked her office. Luke lifted Alice onto his horse while he walked alongside. He had been sitting on his ass all day and left like he needed to walk some. When they got to the castle, Luke remembered he needed to tell Marion the news of their victory before taking Alice to bed.

Once back at the castle, Luke and Alice went to find Marion. It wasn’t hard since she was where she always was during the day, in her office. Walking in, they found Marion and Gabby naked, doing 69 on her desk. Luke’s cock instantly stood up while Alice’s nipples hardened, and her pussy started leaking as she licked her lips. Alice had come to appreciate the female body as much as she did the male one. If Luke wasn’t away so much, she doubted she would have started liking girls, but when being with other girls was the only way she was going to get laid...

“Can we join in, or is this a private party?” Luke asked.

Marion looked up with Gabby’s juices all over her face:

“I don’t care, but it’s Gabby’s call. Gabriella?”

“I would rather be with just you, darling. Sorry.”

Marion looked back at Luke:

“Sorry. Was there something you needed to tell me?”

Luke told her about the costly victory at Outpost Zulu and what he had learned about the regiment commander’s plans. Luke had already ordered a cavalry regiment near Edinburgh to head to Outpost Zulu with all possible speed. When he finished telling Marion the military news, he filled her in on his conversation with Alice at the hospital. By the time he was done, Marion and Gabriella had tears streaming down their faces, and they got off the desk to hug Alice and Luke. When Marion looked into Luke and Alice’s eyes, she saw how tired they both were and sent them to bed.

“What do you think, darling?” asked Gabriella.

“About what?”

“The battle up north and Alice’s meltdown.”

“I think it’s about time to force Malcolm III to accept my terms. The Scottish clans are on their last leg, and assuming the colonel does what Luke expects, we’ll have crushed the last organized resistance among the Scots. As for Alice’s meltdown, she needs some time off, or I’m afraid Luke’s right, and she’ll end up hurting herself. I wonder how much more of his past Luke is hiding, but I don’t want to know if what he’s hiding is as bad as what he just told us. Now, about us? Shall we continue?”

Gabby smiled and locked Marion in an embrace before kissing her deeply. They had moved over to lie on a rug and continued tonguing each other. Gabby was getting to where she preferred women over men, with Luke being the exception. She could be ready for Marion or Alice anytime but had to be in the mood to get together with Luke. So far, she hadn’t been alone with him since before she gave birth, but this didn’t bother Luke. He had always figured that Gabby was a lesbian, and as long as he had access to his wife, he wouldn’t be upset about it. If Gabby ever moved to try and steal Marion from him, he would be pissed and would probably kill Gabriella.

When Alice and Luke returned to the chambers they shared with Marion, Gabby, and the kids, they stripped and got a relaxing shower with plenty of fondling. After drying off, Luke and Alice spent half an hour lying on the bed, holding and kissing each other. Neither one wanted things to end, so they took it slowly. Eventually, Alice pushed Luke’s shoulder, and he lay on his back as she threw her leg over him. She guided his cock into her while Luke was pinching a nipple and rubbing her hard clit. It wasn’t but a couple of minutes later that Alice exploded in an orgasm that flooded Luke’s lap with her juices.

After that, Luke brought his hands down to her hips to guide her as she bounced on his cock. This guidance gave her one gentle orgasm after another. Alice continued to take it slow; she needed the loving more than the orgasms. After the sixth orgasm, she was drained, so Luke rolled them over and began working toward his orgasm. When Alice recovered, she began to flex her vaginal muscles and groaned when she felt Little Luke swell. Feeling Luke’s juices spill inside her gave her one last orgasm.

They quickly curled up together, Luke on his side spooning Alice. One hand found a boob while the other came to rest on Alice’s hip. If he had any thoughts of moving the hand on her tit, they were ended when Alice put her hand over Luke’s to keep it in place.

“You ok, Alice?”

“Ya. I’m still bummed about that little girl, but I’ll get over it.”

“Alice, please remember that you have three other people here who love you. There’s no need to keep things all bottled up.”

“Thank you, Luke. How about you; how many more demons from your past do you have locked away?”

“Enough, and with any luck, they’ll stay locked up, but I will gladly unlock one of them if it means helping you, Marion, or Gabby. You three plus the kids mean more to me than anything else.”

Alice purred contently and drifted off to sleep. Luke gently rubbed her breast for a couple of minutes before joining her in dreamland. When Marion and Gabby came in, they found Luke and Alice hadn’t moved, and they didn’t have the heart to wake them up to move them. So, Marion and Gabby undressed and joined Luke and Alice. With Marion starting to show, she slept on the outside with Gabby between her and Luke’s back.

Alice felt much better the following day, even though she woke up much earlier than usual. As usual, Luke woke up before sunrise, and Alice joined him on the balcony with a bowl of thin broth once she woke up. They drank their broth as they watched the sunrise and listened to the city wake up. As soon as Alice was done with her broth, she planted herself on Luke’s lap and moved his cock, so it slid into its proper place. Together they slowly worked toward their mutual orgasm, hitting it just as Marion walked through the door.

“Seriously, you two. The room already smells like a whore house from yesterday.”

“And how would you know what a whore house smells like, Marion?” asked Alice with a raised eyebrow and a sly smile.

“I might be the queen, but I have visited whore houses. They’re still a business like any other, and I have no problems with them as long as they operate legally.” And in a very royal fashion, Marion stuck her tongue out at Alice, and Luke laughed. It was nice to see that even though Marion was queen, she could still let her hair down and have fun. “Now, wench, get off my man so I can have a ride.”

As Alice’s vagina cleared Luke’s cock, Marion slid down his pole and sighed, feeling her tunnel stretch to accommodate her husband. In the position they were in, Marion could still face Luke. Bottoming out, Marion’s lips moved forward and locked onto Luke’s. Kissing, they moaned into each other’s mouths as their tongues dueled, and Marion got even hotter when Luke’s thumbs wrapped around her nipples. Marion began to roll her hips, but her swollen belly rubbing on Luke was the most erotic thing she had ever experienced. It didn’t take long for Marion to be hit by an orgasm. While cumming, Marion dropped down, crushing her clit against Luke’s pubic bone, making her orgasm hit much higher heights, and causing her to scream at the top of her lungs in pleasure, thus triggering Luke’s second orgasm of the morning.

Gabby came out, attracted by Marion’s scream. She knew what the cry meant but still wanted to be sure. Marion had her head on Luke’s shoulder and was panting as she tried to catch her breath. For Marion, this was one of the better things about being pregnant; her orgasms were always more fulfilling. As Marion began to recover, Gabriella helped her up so she could get dressed. Luke had to get going so he could join the troops in their morning calisthenics. He did this so she could stay in shape since he sat behind a desk all day. Marion would join him some days, but with her pregnancy becoming more advanced, she slowed down some.

After dressing, Marion had to meet with various ambassadors from the continent. First on the list was the French ambassador, Benedict Martin, and Marion wasn’t excited. She hated the guy because he was crude, had inflated self-worth, and smelled to high heaven to make things worse. Marion had almost sent him away to bathe several times in the past but didn’t because she was concerned about how it would look. Marion might have been a young woman, but she was already an accomplished diplomat when her temper didn’t get the better of her.

“Ah, Marion, it is good to speak with you again.”

“That’s Queen Marion or your majesty to you, Benedict.”

“Yes, Queen Marion,” the diplomat responded sarcastically. “We need to discuss the activities of your merchants. They are undercutting the prices of other merchants and causing problems.”

“And how is it my fault or the fault of British merchants that French merchants are lazy and greedy?”

“Surely you do not mean to insult fellow poor Christian merchants.”

“Yes, I do. Just in case I didn’t get my point across the first time, let me be more direct: I will not interfere with the legal activity of British merchants, and if you take action against them, then I will take similar action against your merchants in Britain.”

“You have no power in Scotland, Wales, or Ireland.”

“Here, I thought you were an intelligent man, but like every other Frog I have ever met, you can’t keep up with current events or accept reality. I control Scotland, whether you like it or not, and I suspect I will also control Wales and Ireland within a few years. If that’s not enough for you, the British Navy will blockade your ports, and you will have no choice but to stop trade.”

“I must protest your treatment of me here today. I am the direct representative of His Royal Majesty King Philip, and as such, I deserve respect!”

“And I am Queen of Great Britain. So, we can either restart, and you treat me with the respect that comes with my rank, or you can get out and return to France.”

The French diplomat was red-faced when he left the room while Gabriella smiled at him. They had all heard how insulting the diplomat had been and were surprised that he was able to walk out at all. Marion saw someone stand next to her out of the corner of her eye.

“Kind of jumping the gun with the Queen of Great Britain, aren’t you, sweetie?” Gabriella asked

“Yes, but not by much. We are already the strongest force on these islands, and Scotland has almost been conquered. Wales is a minor annoyance; they are too small to threaten us seriously, and Ireland isn’t united. I think the biggest threat to us comes from across the channel.”

“Unless Brittany sends troops to Wales, we could have serious problems if that happens.”

“Ya, I know, but the longer before that happens, the better it is for us. The calendar is our friend, not theirs, and your spies tell us they don’t have the funds to seriously threaten us. What worries me is they have bought firearms from Norway, which might level the playing field a bit.”

“Don’t forget about their artillery.”

“I’m not, but they seem to be making muzzleloading cannons that are no match for our breech loaders. Their firearms are also muzzleloaders from what the spy reports are saying.”

“Yes, thank God that Luke designed breech loaders for us and the special powder to fire them.”