“A converted Benedictine monastery. Really, Magda?” He sounded equal parts amused and disgusted as he unbuttoned his shirt cuffs and rolled up his sleeves. She appreciated a sadist who whipped first, asked questions later.
“I tried to buy an old decommissioned Jesuit house but they wouldn’t sell to me. I like this place better, though. More rooms. Older. The stone walls keep the sounds of the screams in better. I was so tired of getting arrested in Rome. The countryside suits me much better.”
The door to her dungeon was solid oak, carved, 500-years-old at least. He pushed it open and little Delphina, who’d been poking the young royal in the ribs with the business end of a 14-inch dildo, gasped in surprise, dropped the phallus, and scampered out of the room.
“Can’t follow instructions to save her life,” Magdalena said with a sigh. She went to stand in front of her princeling, who kept his eyes trained on the floor as she’d taught him. “I brought a friend, puppy. He’s going to whip you while I supervise. Weep if you understand.”
He understood.
She waved toward the whip wall. Marcus picked up two or three, hefted and tested them before settling on a black bull-hide whip.
“At your pleasure,” she said, standing with her arms crossed over her ample chest and watching from a safe distance as Marcus lashed the princeling across his lovely young back.
“You aren’t even going to ask why I’m here?” He lashed the boy again.
“You aren’t here to wish me a happy Christmas?”
He looked at her. “Happy Christmas,” he said, then lashed the boy again.
“It was a very happy Christmas. My lover James bought me a new yacht. You’ll have to come out to the Riviera this summer with us. Did you have a good Christmas?”
“I did. In fact, it was the best I’ve ever had.”
Another lash.
“Someone got a good present. Let me guess. Did my Bambi get a new motorcycle?”
“One Ducati is more than enough for me.”
Her princeling was close to coming now. Poor soul was so addicted to pain he could hardly orgasm without being beaten into a pulp first. Sweet boy. Very handsome. Good body. Only twenty-four. She might make him her own personal pet.
If he survived.
“New shamefully-underage girl to use and abuse?” she asked.
Marcus gave the boy another vicious lash.
“Eleanor is thirty-five,” he said.
“New obsidian scalpel set?”
He struck the little prince again, turned to her and met her eyes.
“It seems I have a son.”
Three
Hospitality & Hostility
Unfortunately, Magdalena didn’t have a chance to ask her Bambi what in heaven and hell’s name he was talking about. Her princeling chose that inopportune moment to come. He came hard, came loudly, and then passed out, as was his wont to do. She sent for Delphina to show their guest to his room, while she cleaned up the princeling and put him to bed with a little kiss on his forehead and a “Good puppy.”
She strode the stone halls to the guest wing, which once housed novice monks and now would be the temporary home of a veteran priest. Without knocking, she opened the door to the room and found Marcus sitting in the blue velvet armchair in front of the fireplace. It came as no surprise to find a cat perched on his lap.
“Who’s this one?” he asked, glancing up as she came into the room and stood by the fire. One downside of owning a converted monastery was that monks wore heavy wool robes for a reason—drafty hallways. She burned up in the rooms and froze in the hallways.
“Lucrezia,” she said, nodding toward the sleek black and orange cat on his thigh. “I’m convinced all cats are descended from the Borgias, this one especially. I’ve never had a better mouser. Funny, she usually avoids our male guests, but I can’t say I’m surprised she’s taking a liking to you. You do attract dangerous females, don’t you?”
“Why is that, do you think?”
“Dangerous ladies like dangerous men. They can talk shop.”
He smiled, stroking Lucrezia under her chin. The cat twisted her head this way and that to give him better access to every inch of her head.
“I apologize for turning up unannounced,” he said. “Thank you for the room.”
Politeness. Very suspicious.
Magdalena decided to play along.
“You’re welcome,” she said. “Although the Benedictines are long gone, I try to keep up their practice of hospitality.”
“Yes, well, Delphina offered to let me give her a pelvic exam if I so desired.”
“We have our own definition of hospitality here.”
“I’ve noticed.” He smiled contentedly, still stroking the cat.
“Why are you here, Bambi?”
He glanced at her, returned his attention to Lucrezia’s chin. “Would you believe me if I said I wasn’t sure why?”
“Yes,” she said. “But you must have a theory or two. When you were in seminary, you practically lived here. But once you moved to the States, you only ever come to see me when things are falling apart. What was it the last time? Oh yes, your Little One ran off and left you after you proposed marriage, you beautiful fool.”
“Seven years ago.”
“That was the worst I’ve ever seen you, and I’ve seen you at your worst.”
He nodded. “Only fair,” he said, “that you see me at my best every now and then.”
“You’re happy.”
“An understatement. The understatement of the century.” He dropped his hand to the arm of the chair. The cat lightly leapt off his thigh and sauntered to the rug in front of the fireplace, turned two circles and laid down into a ball.
“If he’s hers because you talked her into it, I may put a sword through your guts. Then again, if he’s not hers, I may do it anyway.”
“He’s not Eleanor’s. I wouldn’t do that to her.”
“But you would betray her with another woman.”
“It wasn’t a betrayal. Eleanor would tell you that herself. She sent Grace to me.”
“Grace. That’s her name?”
“Yes. She was instrumental in saving my life and Eleanor’s during a very difficult ordeal.”
“A feat that is usually rewarded with flowers, or perhaps a medal of valor, not a child.”
He leaned back and gave her the most arrogant smile she’d ever seen a man wear.
“She didn’t want a medal.”
Magdalena raised her hand, shook her finger at him. “I forget you’re a man sometimes. Then you remind me.”
“That didn’t sound like a compliment.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Do you even want to know his name?”
“No.”
“Fionn,” he said. “After Fionn Mac Cumhaill.”
“The Irish mythical hero.”
“The blond Irish mythical hero. Grace is half-Irish.”
“Do you have a picture?”
“Of Grace or Fionn?”
“Fionn.”
“Not yet. I only found out about him two days ago. Although, I confess…I had hoped. Not hoped…that’s too strong of a word. Wished. Wished and didn’t let myself believe it would come true.”
“Yet it did.”
“It did. You don’t seem happy for me.”
“I’m not.”
He surprised her by looking momentarily wounded. She wasn’t used to seeing such a human expression on his face. She wasn’t moved by it, not a bit.
“You are still a priest, are you not?”
“I am.”
“Your son will either grow up as a scandal or without a father, and I’m supposed to congratulate you?”
“He is a child, not a scandal. And he has a father. Grace is happily married.”
“Better and better. Now it’s adultery.”
“I didn’t realize you’d gotten so moralistic in your old age.”
“One of us has to be, you smug bastard.”
He glared at her.
She gave her best nonchalant wave of her hand. “You had a rough day and you fucked a married woman to make yourself feel better. She got pregnant, had the baby, and now you want me to pat you on your head and call you a good boy? If you insist.”
She walked over to him, held out her hand as if to pat him on the head. Before she could, he grasped her by the wrist and held it, firmly. Not firmly enough to hurt her, but firmly enough.
“Good boy,” she said.
“I truly don’t know why I come to you for anything,” he said. “Except that you’re so incredibly sadistic you make me feel almost vanilla in comparison.”
She laughed softly. He released her wrist. Now free to do what she wanted with her hand, she brought it to his face and stroked his cheek. He still had the smooth skin of a much younger man, but his eyes were ancient. They’d always been ancient, as if he’d lived a thousand lives before and carried what he’d seen in all those lives into every incarnation. He wouldn’t have liked that theory of hers. Catholics didn’t believe in reincarnation.
“It’s not fair. How do you stay so handsome? Must be a deal with the devil. It certainly isn’t, as they say, clean living and a clear conscience.”
“Are you finished insulting me yet?”
“No.” She sighed wistfully. “Why didn’t I seduce you when I had the chance?”
“Because you never had the chance.” He smiled. Too cruel. It was times like this she really wished she had taken him to bed. Ah, perhaps in their next lives.
“It’s good to know I still despise you,” she said. “I thought I was getting soft in my old age.”
“Shall I go?” he asked.
“Not until you tell me why you’ve come.”
“I told you, I don’t know. I thought, perhaps, I wanted to tell you my good news. There aren’t many people I can tell. But I should have known better than to think you’d care.”
“Yes, you should have. Which is why I don’t think that’s why you came.”
“Then you tell me, Magda. Why did I come here?”
“The same reason you always come to me. Pain. Either to give it or because you’re in it. And you’ve already given it and you’re still here…so what’s left?”
“I’m not in pain. I’ve never felt better in my life.”
“Then why, pray tell,” she said, tapping him under the chin, “do you look so scared?”
His eyes widened and he glanced away once at the fire—she saw the reflection of it dancing in his eyes—then back up at her.
“Because I’m terrified.”
Good. Good, she thought. Now they were getting somewhere.
“Come with me. I want to show you something.”
Four
Terror & Joy
She led him down one flight of stone steps and through two echoing corridors, one short, one long, until they arrived at a set of heavy double doors, carved wood and iron. She pushed one open and revealed to him…
“Beautiful chapel,” he said.
She didn’t disagree. The chapel was original to the monastery—16th century and still looked it, though it had been through restorations and repairs many times. The walls were stone and the ceiling vaulted with small arched Norman windows. A humble chapel, small and ancient, but made lovely by the candles burning on the altar and at the windows.
“I could have turned it into a fabulous dungeon. I thought about it, even spoke to our architect about it…but I didn’t. I wanted to keep it this way.” She turned and looked at him. “For you.”
He glanced at her, his eyes wide at first, then narrowed in suspicion.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she said. “You know I love you. And you always—”
“Hurt the one you love. Yes, yes, I know this.”
She pulled on the heavy door behind her, but Marcus waved her off and shut it for her. Ah, to be young again. She would kill to be that age again—specifically, she would kill him.
They went to the front pew, nearest the bank of burning candles, and sat side by side. She had made one change to the chapel, adding cushions to the pews. Very lush ones. Her ancient backside needed it.
“I love to come sit in here at night,” she said. “I don’t pray. But it comforts me to think I own my very own Catholic chapel. The Church didn’t want me but when the time came, they wanted my money.”
“I would have thought you’d taken a sledgehammer to it, after what the Church did to you.”
“Ah, I’m above petty revenge.”
“No, you aren’t.”
“True. But I’m too old for hefting sledgehammers. And I wanted you to see it.”
He rose from the pew. She watched him walk around the altar, run his hands over it. She saw his fear but couldn’t say for certain what the source of it was. They were so much alike, she and him, both sadists, both damaged, and yet both had their own strict, strange moral codes they lived by. If she had to guess, take a stab in the dark, she would say he was afraid he would be forced to leave the priesthood because of his son.
Or, since he was a sadist and the son of a sadist, perhaps he was terrified his son would take too much after him in that regard.
“I have to wonder how many masses have been celebrated here over the centuries by how many priests. Who were they? What did they hope for, dream of?” His voice was far away, as if speaking to himself.
“Fear?”
He met her eyes over the altar, over the candles. “Yes.”
“Are you afraid they’ll make you leave the priesthood?”
“No. They might if they find out, but I’m not afraid of that.”
“Are you afraid you’ll never have a relationship with your son?”
“I don’t know if I should, honestly. I haven’t even decided yet if I want to. It feels almost enough to know he exists. He has a mother. He has a father. He doesn’t need me. My part is done.”
She rose and walked to the altar, stood on the opposite side of it, a dozen dripping white candles burning between them. “Then what is it, Bambi? Tell me.”
He lifted his hand and ran it over the flames of the candles, letting the fire lick his palm.
“You knew Eleanor and I would be together,” he said, “years before I met her. And after she left me and I came here, you told me she would come back to me, eventually, and she did.”
He’d always scoffed at her claims she could divine the future from reading palms and tea leaves. How terrified must he be to admit that he might possibly believe, even a little, that she did have the ability to see what was coming?
He ran his palm over the candle flames again, then turned it, held it out, offered it to her. “Can you answer this question—is she going to leave me again?”
Five
An Unexpected Question
The candle flames danced from the force of her sigh.
“You do everything in your power to make me think you’re as cold on the inside as you are on the outside,” she said, “and then you say something like that, and I find myself not wanting to gut you in your sleep with my claymore after all, just to see if there’s anything warm and alive in you.”
“I’ll keep my door locked tonight anyway.”
She returned to the pew, sat down heavily. He came and sat at her side again.
“I remember,” she said, hating those two words. So much of her life was behind her now, so little of it ahead. “When Caterina found out her grandmother was dying, back in Lisbon.”
“Stop,” he said, but she didn’t stop.
“I always kept the girls scared to death of me. Only way to run a house like mine and keep order. She was too afraid to ask me for the money to go and see her grandmother. She asked you instead, a baby Jesuit under a vow a poverty. It’s the way you speak, you know. English, Italian, Spanish, it doesn’t matter. No matter the language, you speak with the accents of the rich and powerful. That’s how she knew you came from money. I’ll never forget overhearing you
on my telephone, begging your father to wire the money to you. ‘Yes, sir,’ you said a thousand times if you said it once. ‘Yes, sir, I know, sir. I am worthless, sir. Yes, sir, I know I don’t deserve anything from you.’ Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir… Over and over he made you dance for him, made you tell him everything he wanted to hear.”
“He thought I’d gotten her pregnant and needed money to pay her off or get her an abortion,” he said. “He wanted to believe that. I was happy to let him.”
“You’d think I would have enjoyed it, hearing you debase yourself to another man for money, but I couldn’t bear it. It was like…like watching Michelangelo licking shit off the pope’s feet for a few coins to buy drawing paper. It offended me, the way you were letting him treat you. And nothing offends me.” She’d gone to Marcus and put her finger on the receiver, ending the call. Then she’d slapped him. The only time she’d ever slapped him, though the temptation, on many occasions, had been mighty. He’d looked at her, confused, hurt, embarrassed. How rarely—was that the only time?—she’d ever seen him embarrassed.
I’ll give her the money, Magdalena had said to him. I’ll give her every coin I have, but don’t you dare ask that evil man for anything ever again. Then she’d grabbed him, holding him like a mother whose child was nearly struck by a car. She held him, then let him go with the instruction We’ll never speak of this again. And they hadn’t. Until now.
“She said her grandmother was the only person in her life who loved her,” he said. “Her grandmother kept a room just for her so she knew she could always come home. My mother did the same for me.”
“And I did the same for you,” she said and raised her hand, indicating the chapel, the room she could have turned into the most magnificent dungeon in all the land, but had kept as a chapel for him, for her Bambi.
“When my mother died, Eleanor was the first person I called. Even though she’d left me. I called her and she came right to me. She even went with me to Denmark, to my mother’s home, to the funeral.”
Winter Tales: An Original Sinners Christmas Anthology Page 29
