The Way Women Tell It

The girl found her way into Madame de Pompadour’s private suite at Versailles. Reinette recognized her at once from the Doctor’s memories: Rose Tyler.

“Madame de Pompadour, please don’t scream.”

Rose stared at the French aristocrat in her elaborate clothes. She had the presence of a movie star and the authority of a Prime Minister. Rose, in her off-the-peg clothes as casual and common as a pair of flowery flip-flops, felt like a grubby fourteen year old. Worse, she abruptly realized that she had always been unthinkingly vain of her own good looks right at the moment when she was looking at one of the most beautiful women she’d ever seen in her life.

“Rose Tyler. You are almost as beautiful in person as you are in the Doctor’s memories.”

The Doctor’s mind had been a world far too vast and strange for Reinette to understand much of what she saw. She had been drawn to his strongest emotions, for here was where he was like a human in his sorrows and in his loves. Rose Tyler was writ large here: Reinette had seen her as an angel sent down from heaven bearing the grace of God. The words that accompanied the image in his mind had been different, but this was the burden of them in Reinette’s comprehension. She had saved the Doctor and he had died for her, and here the silly child stood looking at Reinette like a wounded doe. The Frenchwoman had seen this expression on the face of rivals before and had been glad.

Not this time. She held out her hands to Rose.

Rose gaped at Reinette’s words. Not knowing what to think, she came forward and surrendered her hands into Reinette’s grasp. “You saw ‘is memories?”

“He looked into me to find the cause of my persecution, and in fairness, allowed me to gaze into him. He is a madman, you know. A jester, a hero, a lover, a martyr, and yet a man under all that weight of time. How could he not be mad?” Reinette gently stroked a strand of hair back from Rose’s face. “He denies his desires, and he denies yours.”

Rose looked into those wise blue eyes and found herself breathless. She knew she was being seduced; what surprised her was that the seduction was working. She had a mission to accomplish, but warning a woman that there was going to be an attempt on her life five years from now did not seem all that urgent.

“He likes you,” Rose said honestly. “I can’t help but see why. You’re so beautiful, like you stepped out of a fairy-tale.”

“You are the fairy-tale princess, Rose. You left an ordinary life and walked into legend. The Doctor is an amazing man, unforgettable, unmatchable. He desires your admiration of him, but it suits him to see you as a young girl, untouchable by him for your youth and innocence. For you are that, Rose…” Tears came to Reinette’s eyes. “I know. I was that innocent once; such a flower does not bloom long at court.”

She had been groomed for ambition. The French court disdained love; it was not sophisticated. She loved the King like she loved the Doctor: for the chance that let her alone see the private man behind the power. Reinette knew well how a woman could be strong where a man was weak.

“I’m not innocent,” Rose protested, disgusted at the weakness of her voice. She took Reinette’s handkerchief from her hand and dried the tears from that porcelain face.

Reinette laid her hand lightly on Rose’s shoulder and fingered the strange fabric of the ill-fitting garment. The child was dressed like a gypsy and had their fierce, untameable sensuality. She was experienced in evaluating the charms of other women, and Rose was not found lacking. It all came together with a flash of knowledge gleaned from the Doctor’s mind and Reinette found herself breathless. “You, you beautiful, impossible child… you don’t answer to a man for anything. No one rules you, not even the Doctor. The world is turned upside down in your day. You need please no one but yourself. Oh, but I envy you.”

“I still answer to my mum,” Rose started to laugh, but Reinette abruptly sagged at the knees and Rose helped her to sit on the little bench at the end of the great bed. “Reinette?”

“My stays… oh, help me loosen them,” she gasped. Together, they freed Reinette from the most restrictive of her garments.

The beautifully made clothes fascinated Rose. This was real satin, not polyester. Her fingertips would never forget the difference. And surely, these were real diamonds and pearls sewn on Reinette’s clothes as profusely as plastic sequins on a party dress sold at the Top Shop. The woman was a work of art. “Beautiful,” she said reverently.

In her profound surprise her body had demanded breath the corset did not permit. Reinette leaned back against Rose’s shoulder. She cupped the girl’s cheek and their eyes met. “As are you,” Reinette told those soft brown eyes, “You are more beautiful than you know.” He loves you. The words shaped Reinette’s lips and patterned her breath, but the sound was lost in the pressure of the kiss. More beautiful, and more innocent. A man who knew how to kiss, as the Doctor knew how to kiss, had never kissed this woman-child. What a pity! Reinette knew all about kissing, and she taught the art to Rose. Subtle pressure, the sharing of breath, the meeting of the eyes like hands clasped in a dance: to these Rose took like a swan to water. Her natural talent for lovemaking had been criminally uncultivated.

Rose was shocked to the core, pushed past any knowledge she had of what a kiss could be. This was not Jimmy Stones, hard and demanding, or the clumsy gentleness of Mickey, or the silly playfulness of Shareen on a night of sleepovers and beer. This kiss made her body tremble like the bass notes of a stereo shaking a dance floor. Rose Tyler lay back on a real satin duvet that was probably worth as much as the contents of her mother’s apartment while the mistress of the King of France made her body feel more hot and needy than she’d known was possible.

Absolute, heartbreaking innocence. Reinette wasn’t sure who she pitied more, the Doctor or Rose. He had labeled her off-limits, and Rose was left with all this desire slumbering in her body. And if Reinette taught her this, what would happen?

Ah, yes. Pity the Doctor, more.

“Rose, let me give this to you. Let me awaken Sleeping Beauty. Do they still tell her story?” Reinette did not ask with words alone. She knew where to touch female flesh and how to woo it to a fever pitch of desire. “Do you know it? Tell me how it goes.”

Rose drew in a deep, shaky breath. Madame was wearing only a silken under robe, and she had divested Rose of top, trainers, and bra without Rose realizing it until a hand cupped her breast. Manicured to an aristocratic extreme of white skin and shapely nails, that wicked hand played with the resilient mound until Rose was sighing and squirming and her nipple stood up proudly taut. As much as Mickey loved her breasts he had simply not known what he was doing, that was all there was to it. “The evil fairy made her prick her finger, and she was s’posed to die, but the good fairy turned it into a hundred years of sleep.”

“It was all women’s business at first, wasn’t it?” Reinette laughed and kissed her again. This time Rose kissed back, boldly putting her teacher’s lessons to use. They finished stripping each other in between kisses.

“Until Prince Charming showed up, cut his way through the thorns, climbed the tallest tower and woke the Princess up with true love’s kiss.”

“Lies.”

“What? Oh… OH.” Reinette nails grazed along the inside of Rose’s thigh and she spread her legs, moaning. Reinette slipped into the space and leaned over Rose.

“Lies, Princess Rose. They changed the story when men starting telling it. The women told it differently, back when it was theirs.” She tongued Rose’s breasts like she had a hundred years to climb from base to peak. Rose climaxed from that alone, and Reinette held the younger woman tenderly all through it and called her the sweet names that sounded so well in French and so harsh in English.

“Reinette?”

“Yes, ma belle?”

“How did women tell the story?” They lay on their sides; entwined legs and arms. Rose stroked Reinette’s skin, astonished at the unblemished whiteness as if the sun had never the chance to brand it with freckles. Such skin was the effort, she dimly understood, of hours of labor by maids; endless baths of milk and ointments of lemon or vinegar.

“The Prince climbed to the top of the tower, and found the Princess fast asleep. He kissed her, but she did not wake.” Some words were just as hard in French as in English. “He fucked her, and still she did not wake. He left her there, and left her pregnant, and she woke at last when her babes were born.” Reinette watched some of the innocence leave those lovely doe brown eyes.

“He raped her?” Rose asked for confirmation.

“That is the old form of the story. When the men tell it, the Sleeping Beauty awakens for the sake of a man. When the women tell it, she awakens for the sake of her children.”

“Doesn’t seem fair.”

A child still, to think that the world should be fair. “But you are the lucky one, ma beaute. You ran off with the sorcerer. Not fair at all, Rose, not fair; be glad of it.”

The brown eyes sharpened. Rose’s intelligence lacked direction, but she possessed it. “How many children do you have, Reinette?”

“One. My son died as a baby, but I have a little girl, Alexandrine. I love her and I hardly ever see her. The King is not interested in the family life of his mistress.”

Rose chewed on that luscious full lower lip and her brown eyes threatened tears. Reinette leaned into kiss her then whispered against her mouth, “What did he do?”

“He always says he doesn’t do domestic. He once threatened to leave me behind rather than have tea with my mum.”

“If he were any other man, I’d say call his bluff. Him… you could never pin down a man who travels in time. Most unfair.” Reinette drew Rose’s hand between her thighs, then started to caress the girl’s mount of Venus. Her own body had been regularly plucked free of hair since her adolescence, and she giggled at the surprise on Rose’s face when she felt the smooth skin. “You should try it. The skin is so very soft once it is bare.”

Rose’s lashes veiled her eyes and her tongue played with her teeth. It was pure, unstudied sex, and though Reinette was not truly a lover of women, the sight of Rose’s talent in action fueled her lust. “Isn’t it more sensitive?” Rose asked, her fingertips exploring the moist, swollen folds.

“Yessss,” Reinette moaned, closing her eyes.

“Maybe I’ll try it then, if you like it all so much,” Rose mused casually just before her mouth began to graze over Reinette’s breasts. “Tell me what you like, Reinette. I’m so clumsy and you’re wonderful… I guess you were right about me.”

“I am right: that you are beautiful and passionate and brave and wild, and yes, innocent. I hope you always keep some of that, Rose. It is to be cherished, not lost. Don’t make the masculine error of confusing innocence with virginity.” Her hands urged Rose lower; she wanted urgently to see what that playful tongue could do.

Given confidence amid the delight of shattering taboos, Rose put aside any lingering shyness. Her joyful earthiness in lovemaking reminded Reinette of her own discovery of sex. More than innocent, Rose had no shame, which is not the same thing as being shameless. She believed that sex was to be enjoyed the same way Reinette had been raised to believe that the highest good was to be a virtuous married woman or nun. She had rejected both roles, and her third way was to be the most notorious woman at Court, saved from public shame because her lover was the King. That there could be sex without guilt was a revelation and the woman of the eighteenth century moaned and writhed like Lilith under the mouth of a girl from the twenty-first.

Reinette wriggled around on the bed until she could reach with mouth and hands the sweet wet cleft between Rose’s thighs. Rose couldn’t think any more. She kissed the satiny folds with more fervor than she’d ever devoted to a blow job; dived in with her tongue and licked the slick salty juices all around Reinette’s swollen clit. She blindly followed Reinette’s lead, learning by having it done to her how to nibble and suck and breathe streams of air across so sensitive flesh. Or had she done it first? There weren’t thoughts, only the carnal inspirations of the body.

Later, Reinette helped her wash up in the awkward hipbath. They had stolen Time and spent it recklessly. They put their clothes back on as if assuming the burden of history.

“You never told me—what was the Doctor’s message? Why could he not deliver it himself?” Rose looked half in a dream, and Reinette was finding it difficult, in the post-sex tristesse, not to envy the Princess.

Rose finished dressing. Reinette saw her reflected in the glass case of the clock. “I’ve come to warn you. They’ll be here in five years.”

Tick, tock, it never stops, the sand runs down in the hourglass. Five years to go, and she wanted to see him now, didn’t want to know that there would be a last time for her Fireplace Man. She could still feel Rose Tyler’s tongue between her thighs and the girl was nineteen and HE was nine hundred and Jeanne-Antoinette called Reinette felt ancient. When Mickey came to find Rose, she brushed the child-man aside, stepped into the future and found it dreadful. One more step, if the door remained closed too long behind her, could be a hundred years and Alexandrine would be dust. If she had understood Rose’s explanation, should she look back to Earth from where she was NOW even her own tomb would be dust.

Then she heard the voice, her own, calling for help from the future and Madame de Pompadour felt the lion’s mouth of history close its jaws around her.

She could not bear it. The tapestry fell back into place behind her and she wept in relief to find she was still in the same day. Five years to go.

The Doctor rode Arthur through the mirror and all the portals crashed shut. Rose and Mickey were left floating in the dark and she could not bring words to her tongue to say that the Doctor would find a way back to them. She could still taste Reinette and feel that knowing mouth on her breasts and she did not want to talk to Mickey about anything.

Five and a half hours later, the Doctor came back, and left again almost right away. His air of barely restrained excitement made Rose afraid for him.

She was not surprised when he came back without Reinette. The women’s story didn’t leave out the children, and the Doctor did not do families. Even if she had not died, she would not have come. The Doctor shut out her offer of comfort and left her no words to ask for her own. She took her tears to her own room and wept a long time for Reinette, satin, and fairy tales that come to an end.


fin

A/N I later discovered that Reinette's children were probably both dead by this time, but I still feel she had ties that would have kept her from leaving.