Indigo - The Swordswoman's Tale - Chapter 5

Chapter 5

A Resolution Broken - How Not to Begin - The Perils of Eating in Bed - The Bawdy House of Memory - The Tower, and what Came of if - First Glimpse of a Strange Country - Maids in the Garden, and a Bawdy Aire

I was born in the first year of the reign of the Child Queen, the Glory Queen, the only viable offspring of the loins of old Charles III, when all the world.

I was born somewhere in the alleys of Cydonia, the Great City, shining on the hill, the Jewel in the Crown of our Empire, the Foul and Choking Smoke, the Open Sewer, Cesspit-on-the-Slough, City of Jacks and Gulls, in a time of great.

The woman who calls herself my mother has always maintained.

I was born.

I.

I have no idea where to begin.

This is the third attempt I have made at starting this account of the story of my shadow life. The first lies in shreds beneath the bed, there, where I ripped it with great, satisfying jerks. The second--

The second I began quite floridly. The last days of King Charles. The Limehouse Butcher, terrorizing Sloughness and Limehouse and that charming neighborhood known as My Lady’s Hole. Rumors that Charles had sired a by-blow somewhere in that squalid Hole; that the Butcher was, in his own brutal way, working on behalf of the Royal Chamberlain to remove from this sorry Earth said by-blow, and all who knew of her existence. Yes, “her”; for I then wove in all manner of hints and innuendo that the Butcher failed in his task. For that by-blow was, indeed, myself.

Royal birth, no matter how squalid. (Better to be a bastard, than have no father at all, eh?) A place in history, no matter how secret, affecting events in the world, shaking the halls of the mighty, even before I had been born - baptised in blood and thunder. Best of all, I’m not spinning this tale from whole cloth. I first heard it from the lips of Julien Haywirth, of, yes, the Harrowdale Haywirths; that courtier we most uncharitably called “Donkey Boy” for his unbecoming habit of unconsciously curling his upper lip beneath his nose, sniffling up the last little crumbs of snuff invariably caught in his thin and ill-advised mustache. It is, apparently, a popular speculation as to my origins; Tenemus himself could do no better, I am certain. It is, the load of it, poppycock; balderdash; a cheapshow with which to gull the gullible. But it made for a most wonderful beginning - blood and thunder, as I said, and what better way to make the gallery sit up and take notice? But then Clarissa awoke with a sudden jerk, her legs kicking beneath the coverlet, upsetting my writing-desk and tipping my inkpot over, spilling ink across parchment, coverlet and maid.

(She stands at the foot of the bed, naked, her breasts swinging with the effort of scrubbing the ink from her shoulder and back - a little more heavy than I like, to tell the truth. Her legs are too short, as well, with what one might call “powerful” ankles, were one feeling charitable - and I am, this morning. Her mousey hair is mussed from her restless sleep, from our - enthusiastic - lovemaking last night. My Clarissa is a lusty girl. I never would have imagined her powerful thighs clamped tightly about my ears, her fingers almost shoving their way inside me, in her frantic need to slake my sudden, powerful desire. She is such a meek and quiet thing, in her maid’s uniform and cap. Then, she is of peasant stock: coarse, earthy; unabashed, really, when it comes right down to it, and I should therefore perhaps not be quite so surprised by the relish with which she attacked my fundament, fingers and tongue - hammer and tongs? But I am digressing, procrastinating, as you might well have noticed; no matter how pleasingly sore my bottom may be this morning (and it is pleasant, but it is sore), it has no real bearing on the story of my life. Not, at any rate, the point of my life I’m trying to illuminate this bright and sunny morning.

(She’s just asked... “What are you doing?”

(“Writing,” I said.

(“What are you writing?” she asked.

(“You,” I answered.

(She grins. She blushes. “Naw,” she says. “Really. What?”)

Here I sit, then, in ratty old silk pants which cost more to purchase and bring with me from Maliq than it would have taken to keep me in a year of coneys and a Solstice goose, when first I scampered about the Hole in a whore’s cast-off chemise. My writing-desk is teak wood, from the Outermost Isles. The pillows I rest upon are of watered silk, in what Mrs. Woolf assures me is the latest pattern; doubtless she would be appalled at the tobacco burns, the crumbs of cheesed crackers, the wine stain, there, the smear of rouge (Clarissa’s - again, the word is “enthusiastic” - joy upon discovering my old, unused palette of cosmetics) - and now the puddle of ink, black, by my leg. There was a point to all of that, I am certain.

I no longer have the stomach for floridity, I find. I cannot begin again that spew of lies and rumors and half-truths; I am glad Clarissa spoilt it with her sudden, precipitous shift in bed, no matter what Mrs. Woolf will have to say on the subject. But it does leave me with a dilemma: Where do I begin? My blood all leached away, my thunder stolen... I do not know the exact date of my birth, where I was born; my father a mystery to my mother - and I do not even know for certain whether the woman who claims that office is telling the truth about her place in my life; Lady knows she’s lied enough about everything else. Why not that?

I am left with the simple statement: I was born. Which is self-evident: how else could I be writing this, here and now?

How to begin.

...Well. It seems the answer to that is to look up after scratching that sentence, see Clarissa standing before the full-length silvered mirror that leans precariously against my armoire, smoothing her chemise as she turns one ankle, then the other, half-curtseying her reflection coquettishly with wide eyes and a small smile; to then set aside this - thing, this book, this mass of paper and ink masquerading as a memoir, toss it all to the floor, parchment, pen, writing-desk, pillows and all (though careful of the inkpot, to be sure, setting that aside on the night-table first); to bound to the edge of the bed, laughing, as she spins, alarmed; to sweep her into my arms, pressing kisses to her face, her neck, as she ducked away, giggling, her arms raised up, pressed to her breasts, her fists by her cheeks, murmuring “No, oh ma’am, please, what” as I kiss her again and again, and again, my momentum carrying us both against the wall with a thump hard enough to knock the Maliqan temple painting which dominates my bedroom from its hook, to bounce to the floor and lie flat (hard enough, even, to shiver the mirror) - but no time to worry! She cannot move her arms, but she turns her head up, meeting my lips for a quick kiss, but I am already dropping to my knees, spreading her thighs, I know what I want and I am not to be denied. Clarissa has a tangle of dark hair enfolding her cunny, thick enough to grip with my fingers, which I do, pulling her hips forward as I find her lips and spread them with my tongue. My other hand squeezes her full buttocks; they quiver at my touch, even as her chemise falls to tickle my forehead, my eyelids. I don’t care. She is excited, is Clarissa; her tang is thick, her smell overwhelms me, her heat is palpable, enflaming my tongue, my mouth; I kiss, I suck, I gulp, I lick up the loose skin of her lips, her nub, take them in my mouth and suck, flicking quick and light until I feel her quiver, then back off, lick long and hard from bottom to top and back again. She moans and cries, her hips buck, pounding against the wall, smashing my hand against the padded cloth, nearly shaking me loose, and I grab her hard and hold her still and feast upon her until she shrieks and orgasms and cries my name.

So that is an answer to “How to begin,” it seems. Find yourself a willing girl and make her cry your name. I cannot wholly recommend it, for, once done, once my blood was enflamed, there was nothing to do but rip her chemise from her shoulders and drag it down her body until she was once more naked, as her hands reached shaking for the ties to my pants, undoing them and letting them fall. She came into my arms then, and we kissed, pressing our naked bodies against each other, and her mouth opened under mine, her breath hot on my lips. And though she is short, and (speaking charitably) powerful; though her hair is mousey and thin and not at all the golden splendor of my girls, my Eliza, my Lucy; though she is too heavy in my hands, her mouth too eager, her tongue thrusts into my mouth too quickly and too hard, there is no teasing, no skill, no artistry (just enthusiasm, and that in plenty). Despite all this, she is alive, and warm, and here, an armful and more of girl to kiss and lick. A girl’s mouth to suck at my breast, both of them, hard, fast, insistent, fingers to demand that my pussy open up for them, rough and quick, a girl’s thumb to squeeze my nub, spearing my belly with pleasure and pain.

I gave as good as I got. I rolled her over on her back, grunting, hissing as I drove my own fingers into her, one, two, then three, slapping her thighs, her buttocks in my drive to saw faster, faster. My free hand pinned her free hand above her head; our eyes locked, our mouths set in sneers, grimaces; I used my weight to pin her, drive myself further into her, even as she thrust herself up, digging her heels into the rug to lever her hips in the air to meet mine. It was rough and hard and frustrating, we moved too quickly, too harshly, we were trying to overpower each other, to wrestle, not to fuck. I bruised my thigh, burned my knee with rubbing it against the rug, knocked an ankle against a bedpost, strained my wrist. She cried out under me as I slammed into her again and again, and she struggled against the strength of my grip, and tossed her head from side to side. But her hips still rose to meet mine; her fingers slowed within me, but did not still, and as her gentler ministrations began to take effect, I let the langour climb inside me, until without noticing it we had begun to move in concert, our thrusts meeting each other, our fingers churning less frantically, but with a will, a rhythm, all their own. We stopped fighting it. It was out of our control. Grunting; groaning; slapping together, our bruises forgotten, moving together, our antagonism - however joking - completely forgotten, without our even noticing its passing. I orgasmed first, hard and fast, overwhelming, shuddering above her, falling to catch my weight on my elbow, gasping for breath, sweat dripping down my nose, my temple. She moaned. She whined. “Ma’am. Please. Please...” I barely heard her over the ringing in my head. I fell to my side, my fingers yet within her, but stilled; I could barely think, much less move. Greedy, she humped against me, flopping almost obscenely in her desperate need to follow me down. “Please...” My fingers slipped out of her, chilled by the relatively cooler air of the room; cooler than she, at least. She rolled over then, suddenly, laying me out on my back, looking up at the ceiling with a giddy grin on my face; her own hand jammed into herself, she ground her hips against me, my thigh having ended up somehow between hers. Grunting; groaning; slapping against me, the tip of her tongue protruding from her lips, eyes closed with the effort. I lay on my back, out of breath, too overwhelmed to do much of anything but watch. Greedy. Grunting. Obscene. Flopping. Desperate. She orgasmed, and fell over me, her breasts flattening against mine like soft pillows. Her breath was hot and sticky on my skin. She breathed like a bellows, but to no effect; my fire was out, and hers, I knew, was dying, slaked; banked, for now. I pushed her off me, climbed to my feet, steadying myself on the foot of the bed. Shaky.

I can’t recommend it, then, as it tends to distract one from the actual task of scratching words on parchment - the ostensible goal, of course. Nonetheless, there is a point to all of this. As she dressed herself, pulling on her chemise (ripped only a little, and she was embarrassed by my half-hearted show of concern), her dress, her breast board and apron - no knickers of any sort for our Clarissa, it seems; rough woolen knee-socks would have to do—I loosely belted a dressing-gown, lit a cigarette, then asked, out of the blue - the question popped as if from the æther through my lips almost before my brain had time to register it. “How did you get started in all this, Clarissa?”

“Ma’am?” she asked, tugging her fingers through her hair.

“When did you begin?”

“In service, ma’am? When I was twelve. After my brother turned me out of his home. His wife expecting, and all.”

“That’s not entirely what I meant, girl.”

“Oh?” she said, her brow furrowing. Then unfurrowing, her eyes going wide... “Ooohh,” she said.

“Well?” I said.

“It was,” she said, ducking her eyes away, “a girl I met in my first house. We shared a room. It had only one bed.”

“Yes...” I said, drawing the word out.

“She told me... It was a way to keep warm, nights. Have a little fun.”

Speaking about this is obviously uncomfortable for her, somehow. She wouldn’t meet my eyes, and looked down, or away to the corner, or out the window. “Do you enjoy it?” I asked.

She blushed, and prettily, too. “Oh, yes,” she said. “Ever so much. It’s, it’s--”

“Wonderful,” I said.

“Yes,” she said.

“How did you talk about it?” I asked. “What did she tell you?”

She shrugged, still looking down. “I don’t know. That it was fun.”

“But how did she tell you? What did she say? How did you talk about it with her?” But she stammered, and clutched at her breast board, and wouldn’t look at me, and that was when Mrs. Woolf knocked at the door, looking for Clarissa, wondering what service had been keeping her so long in my rooms. Her eyes took in Clarissa’s dishabille, my bare legs beneath my dressing gown, and her mouth pinched more than is its wont.

“Ma’am,” she said.

“Mrs. Woolf,” I said. She knows my proclivities - even were they not famous throughout the land, it would be foolish to expect to keep such secrets from the staff of one’s own house (though I have known many who thought they could, to their detriment, and my benefit). But she does not approve of them. Nor, I think, does she approve that I have meddled in what she rightly sees as her world, allowed my passions to interfere with the closely ordered realm over which she presides. These days, it seems, I am breaking all manner of tabus—a life many would have said had already broken all that could be reached. It is, perhaps, a good thing I am not so enamored of Clarissa; pursuing her with any ardor might well end up disrupting my well-ordered house, and though my door may well be smashed in by deVere at any moment, I would still have the Devil’s own time replacing a housekeeper as fine as Mrs. Woolf. But I cannot resist teasing her. Before she could make up her mind whether she wished to say anything rash, I gave her a more permissible target: I pointed out the ink stain on the coverlet, which yielded a sharp though mercifully brief tongue-lashing on the perils of staining watered silk, and on why only a thoughtless cretin, unmindful of the hours of unceasing labor which made her leisure possible, even comfortable, would do something so rash as to write in bed. Much less to eat in that same bed. I endured it with as straight a face as possible, and managed to resist all opportunities for double entendre. A small price to pay; at the end of it, she had taken her leave, soiled bedclothes in hand, Clarissa in tow, and I am now left alone to continue this work.

“How did you get started?” The very question I have been asking myself - how to begin? - but I did not have the meaning right, the proper interpretation, until I asked Clarissa. This is to be my other journal, my shadow history, an account of all those many things I’ve done and said in bed, and to get to that bed, those things so many of us do and say but never speak about, or write down. Clarissa so obviously takes great pleasure in what we did this morning, what she did with my girls yesterday; she has been schooled in numerous arts, widely if roughly, and takes them up with great pleasure when she knows they will be well-received. But she cannot speak about them; she can barely put their existence into words. I doubt she even knows the names of the things she does, the desires she feels. What she is, when she strips off her clothing and climbs into bed with her mistress, her fellow maid, my girls, when the world is nothing but skin and sweat and mouths and the sharp, sweet tang of sex, thighs and bellies and breasts, hair and eyes and kisses in the dark, and whispered names. Another world; quite literally, it seems. How did I get started? When did I first get a glimpse of this strange country we all visit, but so rarely write home from?

...It did not, I am certain, occur in the manner you might think.

The first home I can remember? A bawdy house. This house no longer stands - destroyed, doubtless, in the Great Fire almost twenty years ago, though no records of these things are kept - and I doubt the one in my memory ever really existed at all: a vast, sprawling thing, filled with billowing colored scarves and tumbling, half-dressed whores and gulls, staircases climbing every which way and too many enormous painted doors. What is built in my mind is made of three or four such houses, I am sure, as I moved from one to the other, in the care of whomever was looking after me at the time, a whore’s accident, an occupational hazard, cute enough, it seems, to tug the heartstrings, and be spared the usual fate of kittens, puppies and whores’ babies (a burlap sack, a moonless night, deep waters). No single such house, so fantastic, so large, so full, could ever have really existed. A weird and wondrous backdrop for the giants who loomed through my days, doing and saying such mysterious things. There were three women, I think, who were most in charge of keeping me, and none of them my mother: Cindy, whom I remember most as a smile and a warm hug smelling of pale powder and cheap perfume, though she got so angry whenever I meddled with her paints; and Jack’s Jess, who was as casual about a whore’s business as anyone can be, I suppose. Once, I was told, I tottered into her room as she was about her business beneath a gull, and I was complaining most bitterly about, I suppose, the condition of my diaper; the legend has it she waved me over, yanked the thing off, cleaned me up and bundled me into a fresh cloth, as all the while her gull pounded away at her, oblivious. But this occurred, if it ever really happened, before my memory was strong enough to retain any impressions of my experiences. The third was a woman whose name I do not recall, and Jack’s Jess was never able to help me remember; there were, she claims, any number of whores looking out for me then, any of whom could have been this third, whom I remember for her cloud of dark hair, her eyes, and the song I am certain she sang to me, cosseted away in the drawer of some battered armoire stuffed with filmy garments of silk and satin and lace. (Years later, years ago, I came across words that fit the tune that I remember. I do not know if this is what my third motherly whore sang to me, then, but I shiver every time I hear them; I offer them up, now, as an echo of what might have been:

When that I was and a little tiny boy,
With a hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
A foolish thing was but a toy,
For the rain it raineth every day...

There was a man, dressed all in black. I know now he must have been one of Codlatan’s ravens, got up all in black and come to My Lady’s Hole to preach to the bawdy houses, to try and bring us, whores and gulls and all, back to My Lady and Her Lord, back to the realm where relations between men and women are sacred, used only to bring new life to this world; a duty carried out, not a pleasure to be indulged. Much less paid for. (And as for relations between women and women, or men and men, these, of course, are not enough acknowledged even to be condemned.) All I knew at the time, though, was this man, dressed in black from collar to floor, to his fingertips, with a great long mane of black hair unhidden by hat or wig, and black flashing eyes that made any room he entered suddenly silent, that made the very colors in the air sputter and fade and die in his presence. I was scared of this man, and Cindy or Jack’s Jess or my dark angel would sweep me up into her arms and carry me off whenever he came to frown and harangue and drive off business for an hour or so.

But once I came upon him, lying out on Jack’s Jess’s bed. I was seeking her, for what I cannot remember: some childhood want or need or fear that she and she alone could assuage. I don’t know where she’d gone; professional enough to have the tools of her trade at hand, I doubt she’d suddenly needed to fetch a Stiléan letter, or a bit of cloth. Perhaps Nature called, and this dark man did not fancy the sound of a whore making water. Perhaps she did not even know he was waiting for her, in her bed; I do not even now know what arrangement they might have had, if there in fact had ever been something so formal as an arrangement. I walked into Jack’s Jess’s room, and there, on her bed, the dark man, on his back, one hand over his eyes, and rising from his middle, from the black robes rucked and wrinkled oddly at his waist, was an improbable little tower of pale pinkness, leaning at a precarious angle. Such an odd sight, something I’d never, at that point, seen, or seen with enough time and force to press itself into the hard young wax of my mind. I thought it was something he was balancing there, something not of himself, a game he was playing, as unfathomable as anything else these ghostly giants did: whatever did not involve my food, or my comfort, or my fears.

He lifted his hand from his eyes suddenly, and those dark eyes burned straight through me. He rolled onto one side, and I gasped, certain that his little tower would fall, that his game was spoilt - but it stayed, wobbling only a little, pointing straight at me with its red cap, a dark little eye piercing its center. He sat up on one elbow, those eyes still burning, and he beckoned me closer with one hand. Did he speak? “Come closer, girl,” he might have said. Perhaps. Maybe his lips moved; maybe words came out. Maybe I stepped closer on the strength of his gesture alone - that, and his eyes.

He rolled again over onto his back, and again that tower did not move or fall; again, it wobbled a little, still leaning back towards his head at that impossible angle, its red cap now pointing to the wall above him, rather than at me. I stood beside the bed, and his eyes turned away from me, gazed down at that thing that fixed us both. Did he speak? He must have. He did not touch himself, and I must have gotten the idea from somewhere; it would never have occurred to me on my own, unbidden. His voice, rough, hesitant, so unlike his sermons: “Go on, then. Touch it. It won’t bite.”

It wasn’t till I laid hand on it that I realized this thing was a part of him, like a finger, or a toe - this tower grew up from his skin. His robes were open, unbuttoned to his waist, though tucked between his legs, so nothing but this strange protuberance was bared. And it was warm, almost hot, and it pulsed under my fingers. “Grip it,” he said, “hold it tight, like your mother’s hand,” and I did. His eyes did not look at me, and so I could look him in the face, his narrow nose, his thin-lipped mouth, his mane of hair looking haggard in the dim light, his eyes hooded, looking away. He shifted, lifting his hips suddenly; surprised, I might have let go. “No,” he might have rasped, his eyes flashing onto me, but dimmed, banked, his force, his essence elsewhere. Nonetheless I was moved by a mixture of fear and curiosity to do as he wished, and I gripped this odd member again, round and fat in my little fingers. What was happening? What would happen next? And besides, when I gripped him, let him move and shift beneath me, his eyes looked elsewhere. I found myself torn, between this chance to look upon his face, unnoticed by his blazing eyes, and the chance to examine the mechanism of this strange thing I held in my hand. What I’d thought was an eye was a hole, but it wasn’t a hole that pierced the red cap; it was more as if the cap itself were folded in half, forming two small, fat lobes, and the eye, the hole, was at the very crease of that fold. There was a lip of skin came up and around that cap, skin that moved and slid in a most alarming fashion—I watched it, full of fear that it would slide down and down and that red cap would be released with a fleshy pop! to fall, red, wet, into his black-clothed lap. It didn’t, of course. The skin pulled down to reveal the cap was of a piece with the little tower, and he groaned, and pulled his hips down, and the skin of it rolled back up over the cap as if it were a turtle’s head, pulled back into its shell. The skin of it was smooth, and soft, yet netted with blue veins, like the underside of Jack’s Jess’s wrists; it was a darker and duskier skin than that of his hands, one of which was spread flat against the wall before me, pale and distant, and I could see peeping out from the cloth opened about his hips a sudden sharp thicket of black hair, and I was frightened a little, perhaps, of what creature might be hiding within it.

It might have been that fear, or it might just have been that his movements were rough - so rough that I lost hold of him - his tower wobbling like a branch in a wind. His hand crashed down suddenly upon my shoulders. Again, he must have spoken: “Keep hold, you careless little thing!” or some such. I started, but I did not begin to bawl. For though his hand was huge and heavy on my shoulder, and his eyes were fixed on me, black and fierce, there was something in them that I could see. Could read, though I knew even less of letters then than I did of the giants around me. A need that I could see, sparked deep within him, a need as strong as my own for milk, or food, or a caress, for someplace safe from Cindy’s rages when I ripped her silks, or made a mess with her paints, a need somehow tied to me, to my little hands, to that odd, weird tower he’d built of himself. I stood there, letting his words wash past me, his hand try to bear me down, until he was quiet, breathing heavily, and there was nothing between us but the look in his eyes. Then I took both my hands, and I wrapped them about his little tower, and I rocked the skin up and down, up and down, for all the world as if I were pumping up fresh water from the well out back. So I was not so surprised as I might have been when he groaned, and shivered, and liquid leaped up and out from that eye, a single spout from a well long dry. Pearly white, and shining in the dim room, like wet teeth in a smile, and it stained his black robes where it landed.

“Damn you,” he muttered, sitting up slowly. This I do remember, clearly. He fumbled about the table by the bed for a rag and came up with some scrap or other, with which he daubed at himself. “Careless little bitch. Whore’s get. Don’t you know what that’s for? Hasn’t your mother been keeping up with your schooling?” But for all gruff harshness in his voice, it was low, not at all like his thundering sermons, and his eyes did not peer at me, through me; they looked down, at his hands, at the stains he was blotting up. The stuff looked gluey, I was surprised to see; not like water or milk at all, it clung to the cloth, pulling free only reluctantly, in shining, wet strings.

He paused a moment, his hands trembling above his lap, his tower wilting, nestling its red, weeping cap in the black folds of his robes. Then he looked at me, but his eyes were gentle, and quiet - though there was something in them I did not like. A ghost of a smile, and not a nice one, at that.

“I was your first, then, was I, girl.” I said nothing, but I looked him straight in the eyes, and did not look away. Somehow, I knew - doing to him what I had done, what he had made me do, seeing him in that state - I had earned the right. He beckoned me close, and I took one slow, dragging step. “There’s more than this,” he said. “Much more. And you’re damned to learn it all, aren’t you?” His fingers rustled in his lap, drawing my eyes to look down. He had unfolded the rag, finding the puddle of spew he’d daubed up, and the middle finger of his right hand, long and thin and pale, he dipped into it, coming out with a pearl of the stuff clinging to its tip, trembling as he trembled. I looked back to his face, his eyes, still gentle, though that smile, not nice at all, was crinkling up the corners. “You’ve earned the taste, then, haven’t you?” he said. “Haven’t you?”

I took another step. How could I know what was coming? How could I possibly have had any idea what to expect?

His free hand, the one that did not have a queer, half-living jewel clinging to a fingertip, reached out, caressed my soft hair, curly then, and dark. A soft and gentle touch, but with something hidden in it I didn’t like. His fingers tightened about my head - his hand so large, he could almost cup it all. I opened my mouth to say something, perhaps to call out for Jack’s Jess, and quick as a snake he struck, that finger flashing towards me, stabbing my mouth, my cheek, the pearl mashed warm and wet against my lips. His hand let me go and I stumbled back. The stuff stuck to my mouth and chin, warm, clinging; I raised a hand to wipe it away, licking my lips unknowingly.

The fire was lighting in his eyes, then; the gentleness gone from his face. “Well? Whorespawn?” he rasped. “You lick your lips as if it were candy. And is that to your liking?” It wasn’t, and I shook my head, slowly. I’d expected something sweet, like cream. It tasted like nothing at all. It reminded me of the taste in the back of my throat when I was sick with fever and sniffles.

He did not seem to like the fact that it disagreed with me. “Little bitch!” he roared, climbing to his feet, swelling up from the bed to the enormous black-clad height I knew and feared so well. But summoned, perhaps, by his cries, or perhaps it was just her errand was accomplished, Jack’s Jess swung into the room, grabbing my by one arm and yanking me, stumbling, behind her skirts, even as she slapped his face with an open palm. He fell back onto the bed, tangled in his half-opened robes, bellowing something incoherent, as Jack’s Jess swung me up into her arms and bustled out of the room, through a corridor lined with half-naked whores and gulls, even as his words followed us: “Bitch! Cunt! Whore and whorespawn! All the plagues and curses of Her Lord upon your heads! I swear it!”

Up a flight of steps, and down another, through doors and curtains, strings of beads lashing against me, and finally stopping in a dark, soft room, smelling of spices and dead candles. Jack’s Jess running her fingers over my head, my hands, my arms, throwing up the skirt of my chemise and feeling my legs, my belly, my little slit, my bum, and all the while her voice half-weeping telling me what a little fool I was, and worse, and what had that horrible man done to me? The question puzzled me. I did not know what I know now - that there was far worse he could have done. That his tower, his prick, his yard, his thing could have been stabbed deep into my belly through my slit or my bum, which seemed so small; could have been forced between my lips to make me drink the whole mess of it down, and not just the bit I’d tasted. That was what she was feeling for, some sign of these things I didn’t even know were possible. Finding nothing, she pulled me to her, sobbing a little in fear and relief, but I was silent, and still. “Don’t ever speak of this,” said Jack’s Jess suddenly, holding me at arms length, shaking me to drive the words home. “Never tell anyone what he did, you hear me? You will never see him again. You hear me? You will never have to worry about him doing that to you again.” I felt a vague disappointment in that. I knew that I had done something to him, as much as he had done to me; I knew that for all his rage and bluster and hate, there was something deep inside him that he couldn’t deny. A need. Something he needed others for. Me.

For the first time, I felt like I had some grasp on the world of the giants around me. I felt some power, beyond the petulant demands I might make for food or entertainment. It was heady and frightening. It made the air sharp in my nose, and it made my heart beat more quickly. I had no idea how it worked, how I might summon it forth, bend it to my will. But I was going to learn.

That night, curled up in my silk-lined drawer (that I was rapidly outgrowing, to be sure), for the first time I pulled off my nightgown and lay naked under the blanket. Ducking my head under it, I spread my legs, peering at my slit. Would a tower grow from there? The folds of skin to either side, hairless and smooth, looked somewhat like the lobes of red flesh at the cap of his tower, but they lay flat, and were pale. I touched them, cautiously, wondering what he had felt when I touched him. How had he made his tower grow? What would I have to do to make mine leap up?

...And now it is late afternoon. I have eaten a late lunch, rung for Clarissa, who brought it, cold meats and cheeses, warm wine, and she simpered and smiled and pressed against me, her breasts nigh to tumbling out of her bodice, her fingers trailing against my arm, my shoulder. Last night I had snatched at her hand suddenly, pulled her to me, pressed kisses to her cheeks and throat and to her delighted mouth, but today I am cool and firm and distant to her, and she pouted as she left, unhappy, and she shut the door heavily. Monsieur Orphé has returned from the Ladysmith, and I took his report as I ate.

I was sipping the last of the wine as the two of us spoke idly of one possibility or another, hatches that ought perhaps be battened in the event of a sudden storm, when we heard the peals of laughter from outside. Girls’ laughter. Though Orphé’s face did not so much as twitch, I could read in his blankness, in his cool, dead eyes a rebuke. Here is a weakness, those eyes said. This is a way they can strike at us. But he would say nothing; we both know his place. Still. Perhaps I wanted to make something clear; perhaps I wanted to reinforce that he served me, though there was no real need. Perhaps a morning spent scribbling away about my first memories of that strange country, perhaps not responding at all to Clarissa’s advances, had set lust loose in my blood, and I wanted to see my girls enjoying themselves in the sun. I stood, smiling, and walked to the window, where I could hear someone singing.

Lucy was there, wearing one of Clarissa’s simple dresses, sitting in the small swing I have, near the fountain, a stone’s throw from my windows. But behind her, holding her close, was Clarissa, kneeling on the grass, her arms around Lucy’s waist, her chin on Lucy’s shoulder, singing a terribly bawdy song. Clarissa, not Eliza. Lucy’s skirts were hiked all the way up to her hips, and her legs bare the long pale golden length of them, down to her little toes curled up in the grass. Her thighs were closed tight upon Clarissa’s hands that were busy between them, their lewd motion setting Lucy to swinging slowly, one way, then another, and Lucy’s eyes were closed, and even from my window I could read the tiny smile on her lips. Clarissa sang, her voice flat, but strong nonetheless:

There is not in this wide world a valley so sweet,
As that vale where the thighs of a pretty girl meet:
Oh, the last ray of feeling and life must depart,
’Fore the bloom of that valley shall fade from my heart.

I felt something hot welling up in me, but not the lust that had been sleepily bubbling in my veins—something angry, something petulant. Had Clarissa the gumption to feel spurned, by me? To think she might avail herself of my girls when I had turned her down? And how had she suddenly become so eloquent, this serving girl who could not this morning tell me much beyond the fact that “It was fun”? I fumed as she kissed Lucy’s neck and began the next verse:

Yet ’tis not that Nature’s spread over the scene,
The purest of red, the most delicate skin,
It’s not the sweet smell of the genial hill;
Ah, no! it is something more exquisite still.

Monsieur Orphé, stealing up behind me, silently, touched my arm. I looked up, my eyes flashing. He nodded down, to one side. I looked, even as Clarissa giggled that “Ah, no!” and Lucy sighed, and a shudder passed through me. There, in the kitchen gardens, peering over the screen of basil growing from the waist-high trough, stood Mrs. Woolf, secretly observing the girls on the swing. One hand pressed to her bosom, the other raised, lightly touching her lips.

'Tis because the last favors of woman are there,
Which make every part of her body more dear.

As Clarissa stumbled into the last verse, laughing with delight, as Lucy doubled over suddenly, kicking her feet as she orgasmed, “Oh,” she cried, “oh!” Mrs. Woolf took in a short, sharp breath that sucked in her chest and lifted her shoulders, and she bit, lightly, at her fingertips, and I felt that rage, that jealousy bubble away. Mrs. Woolf. Never before could I have imagined passion seeping its way through the cracked and wrinkled armor of her skin, to look out with even the most tepid warmth through those narrowed eyes. I would have sworn her cunny sealed shut from years of disuse; that her thighs would creak in protest if spread beyond the span required to climb a stair. And yet it was suddenly clear to me that she was not only aware of my proclivities, but shared them, and felt some tremulous echo deep within of the great gong which crashes within me, shivers my belly and sends me to my knees, my lips parted, my thighs damp, my breath shallow and desperate; that she had perhaps felt something like that this morning, in my rooms, when she fetched Clarissa; that she longed to feel it again. Clarissa freed her hands as Lucy hung, panting, from the ropes which held up the swing. Clarissa began to untie her breast board, finishing her song with a smile:

We feel how the charms of Nature improve,
When we bathe in the spendings of her whom we love.

And she raised her fingers to her lips and licked them.

...Monsieur Orphé took his leave. Such things do not interest him, not anymore. Mrs. Woolf stayed, watching as I watched, as Clarissa shucked herself of her clothing and stood as naked as she’d been this morning at the foot of my bed, and then knelt on the grass between Lucy’s knees to press kisses to my girl’s cheeks and lips. I returned to this memoir as they tumbled together, the swing dangling empty above them, as Lucy’s clothing began to peel away from her limbs, her hair tumbling about them, and I set down these words while the sight was still fresh in my memory - though looking it over, now, I see I have not got it right; the song was not nearly so smooth as I have it, interrupted by laughter, by murmurs I couldn’t catch from my height, and I don’t think Clarissa knew all the words (I do, myself); I’ve left out the gleam at Mrs. Woolf’s lips, and the way her fingers shook. Enough of these pale paper ghosts. I can still hear them below me. Their cries pealed up entwined to my window a moment ago, like bells, like doves; now they murmur, quietly, and one or the other laughs. What are they speaking of? What are they saying? “Well?” says one of them. I think. Well?

I shall join them, raise up their appetites to raging fires and then quench them, ask them “Well?” and “Well?” and “Well?” again; find Eliza and fling the three of them naked into the fountain, and I do not care if Mrs. Woolf watches, or spends in a sudden frenzy at the sight of it, weeping a dozen years’ worth of love unrequited into the loam of the garden to launch a sudden wildfire of late summer flowers, her heart breaking with the effort. Would that not be a magnificent way to die?

And besides, though it would be hard, and painful, and though she is now more dear to me than I had supposed - one can always find a new housekeeper. But where, oh where, would I ever again find girls such as these?

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Lyrics from Twelfth Night, by William Shakespeare, and “The Meeting of the Waters, a parody on Moore’s Melody,” an anonymous air from the pages of The Pearl.

Continued in Chapter 6

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