The Book of the Beast by Tanith Lee

in the house assembled here, in this show-place, with their house dogs lying at their feet, and the tame monkey of the lord’s brother eating candied cucumber or running about the length of its leash.
    If he should be there, Heros was seated beside Helise. But sometimes he had gone hawking, beyond Paradys, or to some library, or cloister, or to another house. Sometimes father, uncle, and son were all of them absent, at the Duke’s table.
    She seldom saw her lord during the day in any case. As, by then, she saw him seldom at night.
    The first month he did spend with her, prostrate every night at her side. She would lie sleepless most of the hours, tortured by nervous cramps, afraid to be restless. Hearing the level breathing of his sleep, the dim bells of Matines and Laude, sometimes the reborn bell of Prima Hora. If she ever fell asleep it would be towards the dawn, and waking when the sky was light, she would see he had already left her.
    She had stained the sheet as he had told her to, that initial morning, with the blood of her finger. She had had to force herself to prick her skin with the point, for she was, that way, a coward. She did it to content Heros, ignorant as to why. Were they then supposed to have acted out together some rite of viciousness and tearing, to cause blood. Was she fortunate to have been spared?
    After one month, he did not come to sleep by her often, maybe every eight or ten days. Foolishly, when he entered the room, and when his gentleman unclothed him behind the screen, Helise hoped—but did not know for what. For a kiss, an embrace?
    He gave her nothing, no more than in the beginning. Usually he would bid her goodnight, as he would greet her when he met her at dinner. They exchanged few other words, and at night none at all.
    In the third month of her life at d’Uscaret, an elderly woman of the house came to Helise in the small square chamber allocated her sitting-room, that lay off the blank bed-chamber.
    The woman was bustling and beady-eyed. She seemed respected in the house, and sat at dinner with the family. Her position Helise had never been certain of, but had once or twice heard her referred to.
    “Consult Ysanne if you still have your cough.” Or, “Hush, that’s a matter for old Ysanne.”
    Now the old woman, who was fat, and wrapped her head in an Eastern turban of silk, sat across the fireless hearth and watched Helise, until the young girl turned hot and cold together.
    “Have you noticed anything?” said old Ysanne at length, in a gossipy tone.
    Helise could only look.
    “Come, come,” said Ysanne. “Speak out. Do you vomit in the morning, or at certain foods? Have your courses stopped or grown erratic?”
    Helise suddenly became aware that sickness and the stoppage of blood implied a gift of pregnancy.
    She shook her head. Here was another failing. And yet (she had randomly grasped enough) she suspected the fault was not all her own. There was something which occurred between the husband and the wife, in bed, some sorcerous communion or vow, which invoked children.
    Ysanne now got up again, and said, “You know you must give your husband an heir?” Helise did not reply. What could she say? “Timid,” said Ysanne. “The young wife must overcome her blushes and cherish her lord. You mustn’t shrink from anything he wishes.”
    Helise felt faint. It was terrified lust, although she did not know it.
    After a litter of more meaningless admonishments, old Ysanne went flat-footedly out.
    Helise, as she had not done before, broke into sobs and tears. She even prayed, although she had long accepted God did not listen. Who else was there to talk to?
    Then, in her abject wretchedness, when she could think of no shelter and no friend whose counsel she might seek, piercing her like the awl, her inner heart told her what she should do. She must run to him , to the one who never spoke to her, who never or rarely lay beside her, to he who was the cause of all her hurt, for he