Cruel Enchantment

by Janine Ashbless

  She walked uneasily back to the stolid comfort of the great house.

  After a cool bath she felt a great deal better and spent the rest of the day as she had planned, directing the servants in moving furniture into and out of the Blue Room. There was only one incident that gave her any cause for dismay, and that was when late in the afternoon she glanced out of one of the windows. The Blue Room was high up in the East Wing of the Hall, overlooking the park behind the building, though from a different angle to that of the Breakfast Room. When Cecilia looked down idly from that vantage point she thought she caught a movement by the ha-ha, and was sure she could see the dark shape of someone loitering in the shadows under the yew tree. She sent one of the housemaids down to look out of the scullery door, but the girl toiled back upstairs to report that there was no one outside at all. In the time the maid had been away, Cecilia had kept an eye on the yew tree; the shadow had not moved, but she had grown less certain that it was the figure of a man. With the negative reconnaissance she turned away from the window and tried to dismiss the strange feeling that had settled in her stomach.

  She ate alone at supper in the big, draughty dining room and did not look out of any of the windows. After her meal she read magazines by the fire until it was time to retire to bed. Her own room was in the West Wing on the ground floor, one door down the corridor from her husband’s. She went into his chamber briefly, sat before his mirror and sniffed at the bottle of hair-oil, hoping to find the familiar smell comforting. It was not that she felt nervous or unhappy, but it was an odd, dislocated hiatus, as if she were slightly drunk or somehow detached from herself. She felt as if she were expecting something to happen. The humid weather had continued into the evening, pregnant with the threat of thunder, and it made her head feel thick, her blood pound slowly in her veins. The house creaked as floorboards swelled and settled. The servants had been gloomy and irritable all day.

  Unwilling to wait up longer for Rupert, who might despite all promises be out until nearly dawn, Cecilia at last retreated to her own room. This chamber had large French windows that opened out on to the veranda. It looked south and east across the parkland, a lovely room in the morning and filled now with all her own ornaments and pictures so that she felt quite at home here even after so few weeks. Cecilia changed into a long white cotton nightdress and crossed to the windows. It was so warm that it was tempting to leave them open while she slept, but she knew night air was supposed to be unhealthy, so after gazing out into the park for a little while she pulled them to. The moon was rising, the park a grey sweep in which the black blotches of trees were indistinct landmarks. She thought she could just make out the pale brush-stroke of the mausoleum on the moonlit canvas, but it was difficult to be sure. A tawny owl hooted in the distance. Drawing the curtains, Cecilia slid into bed and sank into a heavy sleep.

  She awoke from the middle of a dream; a cloying, unfocused erotic embrace in which Rupert was in her, his hips grinding upon her own, his tongue in her mouth and also, impossibly, suckling savagely at both her breasts. She moaned as she came awake, angry that she had not reached the climax she was so desperate for and snatching in frustration as the fading shreds of the dream. But she knew at once that she would not be able to retrieve it. She stared at the unseen ceiling, letting her breath slow. The fur between her legs was a swamp of hot moisture. The sheet was rucked down around her hips, knotted around her legs. Cecilia wondered why she had woken. The room was in absolute darkness. The only sounds were her own movements and the only glimmer of light the paler square of the curtains over the moonlit window. They were stirring in the warm air. Cecilia turned her head towards the drapes and thought, The window is open. But I closed it before I went to bed.

  With that thought came the conviction that there was someone in the room with her.

  She held her breath. There was no sound, not the slightest whisper. Nevertheless the conviction did not weaken.

  ‘Rupert?’ she said.

  There was no reply.

  When she could not bear the silence any longer, Cecilia kneeled up in the bed, freed her legs from the sheet and groped on the bedside table for the matches she knew were there. Familiarity allowed her to find the ornate brass oil-lamp quickly and she pressed the trembling flame to the wick. Only when it had caught and she had adjusted the glass did she allow herself to look around.

  Lord Montague stood near the foot of her bed. Cecilia forgot to breathe.

  She could see that he had once been more than handsome; he wore the rags of his beauty as he wore the torn trousers and the loose, yellowed linen shirt. His hair was dark and fell to his shoulders like a gleaming shadow; his cheekbones were high, his shoulders broad over a lithe body and narrow hips. But his burial clothes did little to hide the terrible wiry thinness of his limbs, or the discoloured skin stretched tight as parchment over jutting collarbones, or the long narrow hands with their yellowed nails. And – he had no eyes. Blackened pits gaped at her, turning his face into a mask.

  For a moment that could not be measured – for both breath and heartbeat seemed to have deserted Cecilia – they faced each other down the length of the bed, both perfectly motionless. Then she opened her mouth and gave a terrible choking gasp. But at that moment he began to walk towards her, and the cry she might have uttered died in her throat. A clutch of cold like a straitjacket gripped her entire body and she could not stir from where she kneeled. The action of walking transformed the figure of Lord Montague from a simple corpse, an object of disgust, to something much worse. The horror of it hit her like glory; he was beyond mere revulsion.

  He did not move like a living man – he was too stiff, unused to the motion. His bare feet clicked on the polished wooden floor. Cecilia shut her eyes briefly, but opened them when he stopped before her. Her next shuddering breath brought the sweet carrion stink of him to her nostrils. She noted without thought that beneath the stained cravat knotted about his throat the bruises could still be glimpsed, torn and livid. He inclined his head towards her.

  Slowly she reached out with one hand and touched his chest, just where skin and cloth met at the deep neckline of his shirt. He was cold and his skin slightly damp to the touch, like old leather left out in the rain. There was no rise and fall to his ribs. Cecilia whimpered deep in her throat and very gently Lord Montague raised one hand to brush and then cup her cheek. She shut her eyes against the chill, rough texture of his brittle fingers. Her own hand slid down the front of his shirt, felt the tightness of the abdominal skin and the suggestion of writhing movement beneath. A dark wave of dizziness threatened to drown her. Rising above it like a woman fighting a rough sea, she opened her eyes wide, raised her head and did not flinch even when his face descended upon hers and their lips met.

  He stank of death. He tasted of death. Breathing deeply, she could not support herself any longer; all the strength seemed to have soaked from her. She sank helplessly down from her kneeling position, back against the pillows, and watched dreamily as his hands, slow but deft, traced the outline of her breasts. One by one he undid the little white bows down the front of her nightdress and then exposed her plump breasts. His hands were so cold; her nipples leaped at once under their icy caress and became hard as pebbles, her breasts heaving under his touch. He cupped her in his skeletal grasp and bent to tug one stiff pink nipple lightly in his teeth. She moaned and writhed under the horror and the pleasure. Her hips moved in blind circles. She brushed his dark hair with one hand, felt something wriggle away from her palm and did not care. His touch was torment.

  ‘Oh, God!’ she gasped as he pulled and rolled her screaming flesh between the leathery bones of his fingers. The coldness within her was giving way to a terrible burning, melting heat; her groin was all liquid fire and desperate need. When he released her, she began to sob dryly.

  His hands went to her nightdress and the fabric tore like wet paper under them. He bared her down the entire length of her body, seemed to contemplate the sight, and then traced that line
across her soft skin with his fingertips, nails scoring pink lines on her. His touch reached her pubic mound, the rough hair of her secret flesh. Cecilia swallowed her last gasp, froze, and then opened her thighs to him. His fingers slipped into wetness. Her eyes pleaded.

  Lord Montague hesitated there for only a second or two. His head turned back and forth as if he were looking at her, though his empty sockets mocked that thought. Then he stooped forwards, slipped his thin arms under her shoulders and thighs, and lifted her. No grunt of exertion escaped him, and his thin limbs were stronger than iron. Cecilia’s rounded, pale body dangled effortlessly in his desiccated grasp. She did not struggle, but let her head loll against the sharp angles of his shoulder. He turned and strode out through the glass doors into the darkness.

  Cecilia hardly felt the night air upon her naked skin. Her head reeled with her own desire, with the cloying smell of decay, with shock and confusion. She was not fully aware of their progress across the lawn and down into the park, the hiss of his feet on the grass, the shriek of a startled night-bird; she only became more conscious when her bearer passed under the lintel of his mausoleum. There should have been inky blackness within those four walls, but a pale phosphorescence lit the scene; enough to show her the great marble slab cast on to the floor and the box of the sarcophagus gaping. Lord Montague stepped easily over the small wall into his tomb, held her there briefly in his arms, then bent and laid her gently upon the rotted fabric that lined the stone casing. Something scuttled near her head but she paid it no attention. She lifted her arms to her ancient lover.

  He stooped to her. The rotted cloth of his trousers ripped under her nails. She felt the cold, hard length of his embrace along her entire body, his thighs parting hers, the icy length of his slippery member pushing up between her hot inner lips. She opened to him eagerly, tasted his tongue and moaned under the exquisite pleasure of his entrance into her living flesh. His cock was of extraordinary thickness and the initial pain made her gasp, but it only heightened her subsequent ecstasy as he bore down into her. She wrapped her legs around his thrusting hips and, as the rhythm built, groaned aloud with pleasure, clawing at his back. His flesh disintegrated under her nails and she felt the bare bones of his spine against her fingertips, but it did not slow him or give him pause in his terrible struggle. The appetite that had driven him back from the grave overmastered everything. Not death, not damnation, not the collapse of his earthly flesh could stop him, could hold him back from a final possession of her sweet, wild, heaving body. And she rose to match that appetite and each thrust, the darkest desires of her maddened heart finding their apotheosis in her inflamed clitoris and convulsing quim. Slippery with sweat and vaginal juices and the liquescence of his dissolution they rutted to their unnatural climax. Lord Montague stiffened at last and, spasming, poured his black essence into the cup of her yawning cunt, just as Cecilia tore her throat raw shrieking her orgasm into the echoing chamber of the tomb.

  Black waves of unconsciousness claimed her at once. She did not hear the sound of men stumbling through the open door, nor see the glow of lamplight upon the plaster. She did not see Rupert lean over the lip of the tomb and freeze, staring down with unbelieving horror at the sight of his wife, naked and unmoving, her legs splayed and pussy agape, clasping in her embrace the rotted and blackened remains of a crumbled skeleton.

  Bodyguard

  AT THE END of the ninth day they came over a rocky hillock just like any other, stubbled with grey stunted thorn trees, and suddenly the Harran Valley was below them: the white scar of the South Road, the hesitant green of the long grasses that flanked the small river – and the sand-coloured blocks of the Inn at Harran squatting between the boulders in the entrance to a minor ravine. Jhearl gave a sigh of relief and turned smiling to her companion, saying, ‘Oh, Ambele – there it is! We’re here. Thank the gods.’

  The other woman, her visage set in sombre planes under the ritual cicatrices that defined the lines of her face, did not smile. She watched the dust-clouds blow up the road below them and moved her spear thoughtfully from one hand to the other. It was a long spear, taller even than she was, with a broad bronze head honed to a wicked sharpness. Her dark hands gripped the shaft lightly, with easy familiarity.

  ‘And thanks to you,’ Jhearl added swiftly. ‘I would have died out there if it hadn’t been for you. I’ll see that you are well paid.’

  The mercenary nodded, stony-faced, before indicating a possible path down the valley wall and setting off again. Jhearl watched her with a mixture of bemusement and relief as she followed. Ambele was unlike anyone else she had ever met. In the days since they had been thrown together, she felt that she had come to comprehend the Kledish woman very little better; quiet, patient, always watchful, the grief of her recent loss bottled up and only audible in the keening songs she moaned to the moon each night, rocking on her heels as she squatted with her back to their meagre camp-fire. Jhearl wished that she understood better, that they had been able to talk as they walked through the desert fringe, but though they shared enough of the same language Ambele had clung to silence, breaking it only for practical instruction and warning. Probably it was enough, Jhearl thought, that they had walked together at all.

  She placed her own feet in the prints left by Ambele’s bare soles down the sandy, treacherous slope, though she had to stretch her stride to do so. Her feet hurt badly, the remnants of her white silk slippers held together now only by strips of cloth torn from her skirt. Nevertheless she smiled as they scrambled down the slope and the words fell bright and easy from her as they had not done in a hundred miles; ‘Food, and new clothes, and clean water to bathe in,’ she promised. ‘Fresh melon, and kid stewed in milk, and a skin of wine. And I will be able to comb out my hair at last. Ah – the dust!’ Ambele said nothing.

  It seemed to Jhearl that they could hardly have offered a greater contrast, as two women, unless by some miracle they had been washed of the dust that coated them and Jhearl had been restored to her previous station upon a white mule with scarlet harness. Ambele was dark and glossy as a chestnut bud, as supple and lean and dangerous as a hunting bow, her black hair captured in a thousand knotted strands like the cords of a whip, her long torso encased in a padded leather breast-plate, her hips swathed in the pelt of a leopard that Jhearl did not doubt she had killed herself. She herself on the other hand was, beneath the dust and her ragged yellow dress, pale and prettily rounded, rather short of stature even for a woman of Celephais, with soft limbs that had never known a need for harder muscle. She almost had to trot to keep up with her companion’s tireless stride and the pain of their journey had marked her badly, she feared. But now at its end, grazed knees and blistered feet and cracked lips forgotten, she held her head up and moved with a sunny confidence that Ambele was unused to, and she sensed the mercenary’s curious sidelong glances at her.

  They reached the road as the last brilliant light of the afternoon left it and began to retreat up the far side of the valley. There were no other travellers in sight, but as they approached the Inn at Harran they noticed the hoofprints and dung on the road, the smell of wood-smoke and the sound of a cockerel calling. Here in this narrow valley on the fringe of the barren hills there was life, for here there was water and commerce both.

  As they drew up to the outer wall of the inn a dog rushed out and began barking at them, a grey creature as ragged as they. Ambele dropped her spear-point and levelled it at the dog’s head and it backed off, hackles raised. Jhearl remembered the night she had woken to see her protector standing taut above her, while silently in the moonlight the shadowy forms of four hyaenas stalked around them, eyes glinting in the faint glow of the camp-fire embers. Ambele had held her post all night, facing off any beast that dared close in too far – she had bloodied one of them that was insufficiently cautious – until dawn had caused the disappointed animals to break off and depart. Jhearl smiled at the cowed dog.

  There were large wooden doors to the gateway of the Inn at H
arran, but they stood open and beyond the wall was the courtyard, in which stood the buildings of the inn proper – store-rooms, a stable, the goat-byre, and the two-storied bulk of the inn itself. Tales of this place had not exaggerated its prosperity and it looked both well kept and welcoming. There were people in the courtyard; the first the two women had seen since the terrible night that had thrown them together. An old woman squatted stripping beans from their pods into a copper bowl, a boy clad in a dirty striped robe swung his legs from his perch on a mounting block, and two stout men, both merchants by the look of their attire and their shrewd, appraising expressions, sat on a carpet in the shade of one wall and talked over the bubbling pipe between them. All the inhabitants raised their heads to stare at the two newcomers. Jhearl tilted her chin in the air and strode airily through the courtyard towards the building right at the back, stifling her limp. Her hips even swayed. Ambele, less relaxed and glancing about her, stalked at the smaller woman’s heels.

  At the door a short man stepped out to meet them, wiping his hands on his jellaba. The dog ran up to stand at his side and the two, man and cur, eyed the women warily.

  ‘You are the innkeeper?’ Jhearl asked.

  He admitted as much with a curt nod.

  ‘I require a room,’ she said; ‘the best you have in this place.’

  He raised his bushy eyebrows. ‘That would cost you three pieces of silver.’

  Jhearl smiled, fixing him steadily with her eyes and said, ‘That’s no problem to me, innkeeper; I have money. The caravan I was travelling with was set upon by a pack of ghouls, but I escaped with more than my life.’