In the Garden of Sin

by Louisa Burton

  “Did they actually agree to that?”

  “They loved the idea. Their cocks were rock hard before they even started fighting. They went after each other like animals, punching, kicking, spitting, biting… They ended up wrestling in the dirt, each of them thrusting against the other and gritting his teeth, trying to force the other one to come without coming himself. Finally, Harry slams Jack onto his back with his arms pinned down and their legs locked together. He starts rubbing against Jack real hard and fast, their cocks all slick. Jack’s thrashing and grunting, trying to throw him off, but it’s no use. He starts moaning, ‘Oh fuck, oh fuck…’ And then his eyes roll up, and this roar fills the stable. His whole body bucks, and come starts spraying out from between them.”

  I was rendered speechless.

  “So then,” Lucy continued, “while Jack’s lying there covered with sweat and dirt and blood and his own milt, Harry kneels over him and says, ‘Open your mouth.’ He gives his cock a couple of hard pulls and fetches onto Jack’s face, but mostly in his mouth, and Jack swallows it and says he’s sorry and he was wrong. And Harry says, nay, he was wrong, and the two of them lie there crying in each other’s arms till they both get hard again. And then I stripped down and Jack fucked me in a pile of straw while Harry fucked him. ’Twas the best tumble of my life.”

  “I… had no idea there were men who did this sort of thing,” I said. “I never imagined anything like this.”

  “That’s why you’re here, sweeting,” Lucy said as she patted my arm. “To learn.”

  After the dancing lesson, Elle reappeared for the first time since the previous afternoon and escorted us into the courtyard for a lesson in graceful deportment—specifically, how to walk in the absurdly tall shoes called chopines that were part of the uniform of a Venetian lady of fashion. Sibylla, flushed and slightly unkempt after her training with our professeurs d’amour, rejoined us for this lesson, but Bianca, who hailed from Venice and had been walking in such shoes for years, was exempted. Instead, Sibylla relayed a message from Don Domenico summoning her to the Training Room. She walked away smiling.

  Following our midday dinner, we were measured for extravagant new wardrobes by our personal dressmakers and their teams of seamstresses, and then Don Domenico himself delivered a discourse on poetry, literature, and drama in the castle’s library. The library was enormous, with carved oak wainscoting, Persian carpets, and five comfortably furnished, book-lined bays. Elle was present for this lesson, during which we practiced reading aloud from classical Greek and Latin verse. At one point, she took a book of Vitturi’s poetry off a shelf and suggested we read from it, but this he curtly refused. I was disappointed—and suddenly intrigued as to what type of verse might flow from the pen of this enigmatic man.

  That night after supper, everyone gathered in the withdrawing room for an evening of cards and table games. Don Domenico wanted his novices to be able to play and wager on primero, taroccho, chess, and tables. These were the games most popular in the ridotti, private clubs frequented by Venice’s patricians, poets, and scholars—as well as by the cortigianas who provided them with female companionship in social settings while their wives remained secluded in their homes.

  Most of the gentlemen participated with enthusiasm in our evening instruction, with the unfortunate exception of the Duke of Buckingham. Having come back empty-handed from his early-morning hunting foray along a nearby river gorge, the duke had launched a second outing to a marsh where the boars reputedly liked to feed at dusk. He and his party, which included Jonas Knowles and Sir Humphrey Quade, had yet to return when we sat down for our gaming lesson, although night had already fallen. About half an hour later, there came triumphant whoops from outside. Looking out the windows into the torchlit courtyard, we saw Buckingham’s men hauling a reeking, cloudy-eyed boar on a pole toward the kitchen behind the great hall. Knowles and Sir Humphrey were with them, basking in the congratulations of the other gentlemen.

  “’Twas His Grace who made the kill,” said the steely-haired, sinewy Sir Humphrey. The duke, however, was nowhere to be seen.

  As the decks of tarot cards were replaced with chessboards at the conclusion of our lesson in tarrocho that evening, I excused myself to nurse a fictitious headache, explaining that I was already adept at both chess and tables.

  Instead of returning to my chamber, however, I went directly to the library, where I located the book Elle had pulled off the shelf that afternoon. Handsomely bound in black, gilt-adorned calfskin, La Poesie di Domenico Vitturi was a recent compilation of poems written by the Venetian over a twelve-year period. I lit an oil lamp, set it on a little writing desk next to a Roman couch in the middle bay, and settled in to read.

  The earliest of the poems, which were set forth in chronological order, had to do with military heroics and love affairs in roughly equal proportions. I skipped over most of the former, but found the latter unexpectedly passionate and stirring, considering who the author was. Of course, these pieces were written before the sea battle that changed his outlook on relations with the fairer sex. Those composed afterward were still beautifully written, but there was a darkness to them that hadn’t been there before, and most of the emotion that had infused the earlier poems was replaced with a detached, academic tone. Of these later works, the only ones I found truly moving were three epic poems that retold in evocative language the myths of Europa and the Bull, Andromeda and the Sea Monster, and Leda and the Swan.

  I heard a hiss of silken skirts, and then Elle appeared in the entrance to my little alcove, ethereally beautiful in silvery satin with a pearl-adorned stomacher—a striking contrast to my own demure black gown. She had a silver bowl cupped in each hand; I smelled cloves, ginger, and cinnamon.

  Pinning me with a look of mock severity, she said, “A headache, eh?”

  “Wherefore should I subject myself to lessons in games I already play perfectly well?”

  “When you could be striving instead to decipher the puzzle that is Domenico Vitturi?” Elle’s voice was ever so slightly thick, and there was a hint of bleariness in her gaze. It was the first time I’d ever seen her in her cups.

  She handed me one of the bowls as she seated herself next to me on the couch. The spiced wine was warmly fragrant. I took a sip and set it on the writing desk.

  “These later poems,” I said, thumbing through them, “the three long ones, all seem to explore the same theme.”

  Elle nodded as she drank her wine. “The beauty and the monster.”

  “Aye, but the monster… he’s not a monster, not really. ’Tis the same in each of the three poems. He has a monstrous visage, the outward form of an uglisome beast, but inside, he… he…”

  “He has the soul of a man,” Elle said. “He has a man’s desires, a man’s needs, a man’s loneliness. When he ravishes or abducts the unattainable beauty, ’tisn’t so much an act of brutality as one of desperation. He knows she’d never willingly give herself to the likes of him.”

  I closed the book and studied it in silence for a moment. “Loneliness,” I murmured. “’Tis odd to think of a beast being lonely.”

  “Every being in existence gets lonely,” Elle said quietly. “We all crave affection, love, a companion of the soul. If we can’t have that, we at least want to be touched, to… to feel the warmth of another body next to ours, to make love with our bodies, if not with our hearts. Lust is a sort of refuge for those of us who will always be alone.” She lifted her bowl and took a long swallow.

  She’d been speaking not only of Domenico Vitturi, I realized, but of herself. “I don’t understand,” I said. “Why must you be alone? You’re beautiful, witty, exciting. Surely there have been men who’ve wanted to marry you, or at least take you as a mistress.”

  Studying the bowl with an unfocused, somewhat forlorn gaze, she said, “I can never marry, nor take a lover, not a real lover. I…I’m not like you, Hannah. My kind needs—”

  “Your kind?” I said.

  She sighed, closed
her eyes for a moment. Setting her near-empty bowl aside with a groggy chuckle, she said, “Too much wine and too little supper. I really should be more careful.”

  “What did you mean by ‘your kind’?” I asked.

  “I suppose I meant…” Elle looked away, frowning. “Elic and I. Inigo, too. We’re different from people… other people. Our blood is more readily stirred, our passions more easily roused. The lust that drives us is more profound than you can imagine, Hannah, and much more relentless. It surpasses all other needs.”

  “Are you saying you’re incapable of love?” I asked.

  “If only I were,” Elle said bitterly. “I can love, but I mustn’t allow myself to form that kind of attachment with a—with anyone. ’Twould only bring pain, both to me and to the person I’d fallen in love with. My need for carnal sustenance is too overwhelming. No one woman could ever satisfy—”

  “Woman?”

  She looked at me for a second, then, realizing her mistake, said, “I meant ‘man.’ ’Tis the wine muddling my mind. Pray, forgive my maudlin blathering.”

  “So, then, you and Don Domenico aren’t lovers—real lovers.”

  “We enjoy each other, we like each other, but we aren’t in love, not remotely. He is as wary of that sort of thing as I am— for different reasons, of course. Nay, we aren’t lovers in the sense you mean. I fear he shall be alone forever. My heart aches for him, but when I try to talk to him about these things, he tells me he has no desire to be ‘shackled in holy matrimony,’ as he puts it, and that he’s perfectly content with his courtesans.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  Elle took her time answering. “I believe that he believes it. I believe that he has made the best of an illfated situation.”

  “The wounds to his face? They’re… well, they’re unsightly, of course, but not monstrously so.”

  “Ah, but when he was freshly wounded, and cruelly scorned by the selfsame women who had found him irresistible before, he began to think of himself as monstrous.”

  “Perception became reality,” I said.

  “I understand he approached a famous courtesan who had him beaten almost to death.”

  I nodded, remembering Bianca’s description of the notorious Galiana Solsa. “She’s reputed to be something called a striga, which is a—”

  “A striga?” Elle sat forward. “Really?”

  “Surely you don’t believe in such things—bloodsuckers, demons, incubi who can change their sex…”

  “Dusii?” Elle smiled slowly. “There are many mysteries in the world, Hannah. Humans like to think they know all there is to know about the world and the beings who populate it, but they don’t, nor do they really want to, most of them.”

  Before I could ask her to elaborate on that, she said, “Domenico came to the conclusion that he would always be repulsive to women. He knew there might be some who would sleep with him out of pity, but he found that prospect appalling. He was still a man, though, and he had the needs and desires of any man. He was willing to pay to have those needs appeased, but not by poxy street whores. He had always enjoyed the company of witty, beautiful, accomplished women, which in Venice means the cortigiana onesta.”

  “And so he became a Pygmalion to high-level courtesans who would owe him their sexual favors in return for his patronage.”

  “Aye, although I understand he frequently sends them gifts after he beds them, even though ’tis they who are in his debt, and not the other way round.”

  “Why does he do it, then?” I asked.

  Elle smiled as she pondered that question. “To make them happy, I suppose. Domenico adores women, but he never allows himself to forget that his protégées are servicing him out of obligation, not affection. He keeps his feelings reined in tight.”

  “Does he kiss you?” I asked, recalling what Sibylla had told me. “When…when you and he are intimate?”

  Elle shook her head. “That would be too intimate. It would imply a connection of the heart rather than merely of the body.”

  “No one should feel that he can never love, or be loved,” I said. “I feel sorry for him.”

  “Well, don’t,” Elle said with uncharacteristic sternness. “Domenico detests pity. He is no victim in some Greek tragedy, Hannah. He has a full life, the respect of everyone who knows him, and his lovers are the most beautiful and desirable women in Venice.”

  “Aye, but they’re not true lovers, are they? They’re just women who owe him the use of their bodies.”

  “Do you think they don’t enjoy it as much as he does?” Elle asked.

  He’s that best of all lovers, a gentleman, but also a bit of a savage. “I think they enjoy it on base level,” I said.

  “You really do think of sexual desire as sordid, don’t you?”

  “In the absence of love, lust is naught but an animal instinct—and in the final analysis, the most exalted cortigiana onesta is naught but an expensive whore.”

  “Aye, but there is, after all, much of the animal in man, and it must find release somehow. Even St. Augustine knew that. He said, ‘Suppress prostitution and capricious lusts will overthrow society.’”

  “Thank God I’m a woman,” I said, “and not at the mercy of such base drives.”

  “You never feel erotic desires?” Elle asked dubiously.

  “Well, I suppose I do,” I admitted, “but I’m hardly in their thrall.”

  I realized even as the words left my mouth that this claim was no longer entirely true. In fact, my blood had been so stirred after our “lesson” in the bathhouse and Vitturi’s visit to my room that I hadn’t been able to get to sleep. I stroked my sex as I had at the inn, this time lying on my back with my night rail pulled up, my fingertips playing lightly on the hot, slippery petals while I imagined a man—Domenico Vitturi— pleasuring me with his mouth as I had pleasured Inigo. Resisting the urge to stroke myself faster and more firmly, or to directly touch the sensitive little pearl, as I had come to think of it, I kept my touch soft as a breath of air, slick as a wet tongue. I came with jolting force, then lay there gasping and shaking until my heart stopped thudding and sleep drifted over me like a veil.

  “You should accept your desires, as I do,” Elle said. “Stoke them. Revel in them. Embrace the animal beneath your skin. You’re being groomed to be a courtesan, for heaven’s sake. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to get comfortable with all of this. Ideally, you should learn to love it.”

  “I know, I just…” I shook my head helplessly. “This is all so new to me. I’ve never even imagined most of the things the other novices have told me about. No man has ever touched me. I’ve never even been kissed.”

  A male voice said, “That won’t do.”

  I turned in my chair to find Domenico Vitturi stepping out from behind the wall of bookshelves behind me.

  “Domenico! Shame on you,” Elle scolded. “How long have you been lurking there?”

  Ignoring the question, he told me, “Kissing is as much of an art as making love, and one that even a virgin courtesan should be expected to master.”

  Elle said, “Perhaps Elic or Inigo could be prevailed upon to teach her the finer points.”

  “You can do it right now,” he told her as he folded his arms and leaned his shoulder against the bookcase. “A female perspective might be useful.”

  “You have a point.” Turning toward me on the couch, Elle put her hands on my shoulders, and said, “Face me and close your eyes, Hannah. You want your mouth to be—”

  “Nay,” I said, shrinking away from her. “I can’t kiss you.”

  Raising his gaze to the ceiling, Vitturi said, “Mistress Leeds, your aversion to even the tamest aspects of your instruction is becoming—”

  “He’s right, Hannah,” Elle said quietly. “Just close your eyes and pretend I’m a man. Pretend I’m Elic.”

  I considered this for a moment—no doubt I appeared to be sulking—and then, reminding myself what was at stake, I faced Elle squarely an
d shut my eyes tight.

  “Soften your mouth,” she said.

  I felt her hand on my chin, tilting it up, and tensed.

  “Relax, Hannah. Give yourself up to it.” Elle’s breath was warm and redolent of mulling spices.

  Her lips touched mine.

  A giggle erupted from me, and I broke the contact, my hand over my mouth. “I’m sorry, I… I just feel so silly kissing another woman.”

  Elle said, “Hannah, you do realize you may be called upon at some point to do more with another woman than just kiss her. There are many men who find it exciting to watch two females pleasuring each other. If one of your benefactors is of that ilk, he may bring another woman to your bed and ask you to use your mouth, or a dildo, to—”

  “Nay!” I said. “You cannot be serious.”

  Vitturi pushed off the bookcase, growling something in Italian under his breath. “This is pointless. Come, let us rejoin the others. Give that to me.” He took his book of poetry from my hand as I rose to my feet, but instead of returning it to its shelf, he tucked it into a pocket in his breeches.

  The library was in the south section of the castle, the great hall’s withdrawing room in the north. As we came to the tower door at the junction of the west and north ranges, Elle, pleading fatigue, excused herself to retire to her suite of rooms in the tower’s top two floors.

  Worried now that I’d just given Domenico Vitturi one more reason to send me packing, I started babbling, as we walked down the corridor toward the withdrawing room, about how I didn’t really need instruction in kissing, how people kissed all the time without having received lessons in it, that it was natural and not something one could really do wrong.

  Looking straight ahead, he said, “One certainly can do it wrong, especially if one is as inexperienced and apprehensive as yourself. You are very much mistaken, Mistress Leeds, if you suppose that I’m going to introduce you to Venetian society as one of my courtesans without some assurance that you know how to properly kiss a man. Given your reaction to Elle’s attempt to demonstrate for you—”