"Thank you, Young Master." She pressed the key to her chest, over her heart, in a gesture so theatrical it bordered on comedy. "I will guard it with my life."
"I know you will," I said, and meant it in a way she would never understand.
A silence settled between us. I let it sit, then broke it with a casualness that I had spent the walk back carefully rehearsing.
"By the way, Martha — would you help me take a bath?"
Her internal monologue stumbled. The gears of her greed, which had been spinning so smoothly, hitched on the unexpected request.
'A bath? He has never asked me that. He usually bathes alone, the prudish little lord. Why now? Is he ill? Has something happened?'
"I… of course, Young Master." She recovered quickly, her smile returning, wider this time, edged with something I recognized as indulgence. 'Fine. Fine. If this fool wants me to draw his bath after handing me the keys to his entire fortune, I will humor him. It is the least I can do before I vanish with everything he owns.'
She bustled off toward the bathing chamber with the energy of a woman who had just won a lottery and found the winner's enthusiasm useful for maintaining her cover. I watched her go — the heavy sway of her hips, the straining fabric across her broad backside, the way her thick thighs pressed together with each step — and let my own smile settle into something less performative.
"You are too kind, Martha," I murmured to the empty room, and went to prepare myself.
The bathing chamber was a modest room off the main corridor, its stone walls damp with permanent condensation, a copper tub large enough for two sitting at its center. Martha had filled it efficiently — steam rising from the water, a cake of rough soap on the rim, a folded cloth beside it. The room smelled of minerals and old pipe water.
I entered and closed the door behind me. Martha stood near the tub, her hands clasped before her, the iron treasury key conspicuously absent — already hidden, no doubt, in some pocket or fold of her uniform. Her expression was patient, maternal, the look of a woman humoring a child's whim.
I began to undress.
The coat first — I shrugged it off and draped it over a chair. Then the shirt, pulled over my head. My reflection in the water showed a body that was leaner than my old one, more defined, the kind of frame that suggested someone who had ridden horses and swung practice swords even if he had never been particularly good at either. I unlaced my trousers and let them fall, stepping out of them.
Then the smallclothes.
I pulled them down and my cock sprang free, and I — the man who had worn this body for less than a full day — stopped and stared.
It was enormous. Not simply large. Not impressively proportioned. 'Enormous', in the way that defied the reasonable engineering of human anatomy. Ten inches in length, perhaps more if measured honestly, and thick — thick as a bottle gourd, thick enough that my own hand could not fully encircle it, the shaft rising from a base buried in a thatch of ash-grey hair in a gentle upward curve that seemed designed by some malevolent god to hit every sensitive point inside a woman simultaneously. The head was a fat, plump, crimson dome, almost angry in its coloration, flared wider than the shaft beneath it, glistening faintly at the tip even in its resting state. The balls hung heavy beneath it, full and weighted, the skin of the sac dark and tight.
It looked like something drawn in a dirty book. The kind of exaggerated, absurd proportion that existed only in fiction — which, I supposed, was technically appropriate, given that I was now living inside one.
Even I was taken aback. The original Caelum's memories offered no commentary on his own endowment — the man had apparently been too busy failing at life to appreciate what he was carrying between his legs. But I appreciated it now, with the detached wonder of a man who has opened a crate expecting dust and found a weapon.
Martha made a sound.
It was small, involuntary — a sharp intake of breath through the nose, a soft gasp that she tried to swallow and failed. Her eyes had dropped from my face to my groin with the speed and inevitability of a stone falling, and they remained there, wide, her mouth slightly open, her internal monologue stuttering to a halt like a clock whose spring had snapped.
'Why does this — why does this guy have such a — that cannot be real. That cannot be a real — will it even fit inside a woman? That would tear someone in half. It is like a — gods, it is bigger than my forearm. Bigger than—'
I looked at her. "What happened?"
She shook her head quickly, snapping her eyes upward with a force that was almost physical. "N-nothing, Young Master. Nothing at all. I merely — the steam. It caught my breath." She fanned her face with one hand, the gesture unconvincing.
'Get ahold of yourself, Martha. It is just a cock. You have seen cocks before. You were married, for gods' sake. Though Gerrat was — Gerrat was a normal man. This boy is — this is not normal. This is—'
I stepped into the tub, lowering myself into the hot water with a hiss of comfort. The heat enveloped me, loosening muscles I had not realized were tense. I leaned back against the copper rim, arms draped over the edges, and looked up at her with mild, trusting eyes.
"Martha, would you wash my back? The soap, if you would."
She nodded — too quickly, grateful for the normalcy of the request — and took the cloth and soap from the rim. Moving behind the tub, she began to scrub my shoulders with the brisk efficiency of a woman performing a familiar task. Her hands were work-roughened but warm, and she pressed them into the muscle along my spine with more care than she probably intended.
'Just wash him. Wash him and leave. You have the key. Tonight, after he sleeps, you take the candlesticks, the coins, whatever jewelry is in the strongbox, and you are gone before dawn. Do not think about his — do not think about it. It does not concern you. You are a professional.'
"Lower, please," I said, and she moved the cloth down my back, across my ribs, along my sides. I let her work for a while in silence, letting the sound of water and the scratch of cloth fill the room, letting her breathing settle back into its normal rhythm. Then I shifted, turning slightly in the tub, and caught her wrist.
"Martha."
"Young Master?"
"Would you wash… the front as well?"