Bound in Moonlight

by Louisa Burton

  “He's Atlantian!” she shot back, looking down on him from the landing with arms akimbo and chin thrust high. “And I didn't consort with him. I fucked him. I fucked him, Archie.And I loved it!”

  “Whore!” he spat out as he came to loom over her, face purple,eyes wild with rage. “Strumpet!”

  “Because I have desires that I'm not afraid to satisfy? What's good for the gander is good for the goose, I say.”

  “You've made a fool out of me,” Archie growled as he wrapped his hands around Emmeline's throat and squeezed.

  “You'll pay for that, you little trull. I'm Archibald Dickings, Baron of Hardwyck and the future Earl of Upswinge. Who are you? You're nobody. Nobody, I tell you!”

  On the verge of unconsciousness, as she feebly clawed at Archie's hands, Emmeline heard Tobias calling from below,“Emmeline? Darling, is that you?”

  “The gypsy.” Archie, his face twisted in fury, turned toward his rival's voice, loosening his grip just enough for Emmeline to push him away. He stumbled backward, tumbling down the winding stone stairwell amid a battery of sickening crunches and screams as Tobias flattened himself against the wall.

  Looking down toward where Archie had landed with a heavy splat, Tobias winced. “Don't look, my dear,” he said, holding up a hand to halt Emmeline as she started down the stairs. “Not till they get it all scraped up and mopped.”

  “Is he . . . ?”

  Still gazing down at what remained of Archie, Tobias nodded and said with a sigh, “Why does everyone always think I'm a gypsy?”

  February 14, 1922

  Steamboat Springs, Colorado

  My beloved Rèmy,

  Happy Valentine's Day, mon lapin, or should I say Happy Belated Valentine's Day, because you won't be reading this for a few days.

  Well, it's a happy day for me, that's for damn sure.Guess what? Dr. Horney cut the casts off ! I know it's a terrible cliché, but I feel as if I'm walking on air.

  This will be a shorter than usual letter, because Kitty and I are spending the day packing, with the help of Nils. He finally worked up the stones to ask out that girl from church, by the way. I credit his newly acquired guts with his newly chucked virginity. Tomorrow we'll set off for the trip by rail to New York. First stop: Cunard. As soon as I've booked passage, I'll cable and let you know what ship I'll be on and when it's due to arrive. But remember, don't meet me if you don't want to be charged with committing whoopee in public, because I meant what I said about jumping you the moment I see you again. Ride 'em, cowgirl!

  There's so much to respond to in your last letter. First, about the fellatio in the landau scene. Clever you, asking me why, if it was so “perplexing” and “pedestrian” of you to object to a male-male cocksucking scene, I went and turned it into a male-female scene in the book.The reason had to do with all those bawdy novels I'd read at Grotte Cachée, and the fact that although there were loads of scenes featuring two women, there were very few with two men. Since my aim was to get Emmeline's Emancipation published, I didn't want to put anything in there that would repulse male readers. So, you're right in saying that I knew perfectly well why you responded as you did to that scene, and that I was being disingenuous by challenging you. I can be a real pill sometimes, and I apologize.

  Apology number two: so sorry to have committed the grievous sin of “rolling the credits” at the end of my little château narrative without “wrapping up the final act.” (Spoken like a true filmmaker.)

  I suppose the true dénouement was, as you say, my decision to write Emmeline's Emancipation. The idea actually came to me after Aunt Pembridge and I had set sail for New York. As you've already figured out, Inigo gave me the Renoir parrot tulip painting as a parting gift when we said good-bye, which was actually harder than I'd thought it would be—for him, too, I think.

  (In answer to your question, no, I never returned to Grotte Cachée, and no, I don't believe that it was an enchanted place populated by sexual demons—but I don't exactly not believe it, either. What happened to me there was like one of those strange and lovely dreams from which you awaken feeling as if the world has become a better, clearer, more perfect place than it had been the night before. You can't relive a dream like that. All you can do is tuck it away in a special place in your memory, and move on.)

  In any event, I hung the painting in my stateroom, where it was a constant reminder of Grotte Cachée and everything that had happened there. I thought about writing down my experiences, and then I thought, Why not turn them into a novel? There was really only one kind of novel it could be, of course, and I would have to publish it anonymously, but why not? I couldn't be any worse at writing pornography than “Walter.” I also thought it might be fun to write a book like that from a woman's point of view. As you know, I'd been having trouble getting a novel started, but once I turned to smut, it really freed up the old muse. The book was half-finished by the time I disembarked in New York.

  Now, last but not least, about this whole disclosure business: Whereas I appreciate knowing that you haven't slept with anyone else (and thank you for telling me that), I want you to know that I'm not as easily manipulated as you seem to think. When you say you'll probably start sleeping with other women now that you realize how serious I am about free love, and that “monogamy really is pretty meaningless outside of matrimony,” all you're doing is trying to scare me into marrying you. Not that I'm frightened by the prospect of you sleeping with other women, as you seem to think. What frightens me is getting locked into a marriage that limits my freedom and stifles my soul. I know you're not Hickley. You don't have to tell me that again. But you can understand how a man like that could turn a woman off to the entire institution of marriage, can't you?

  At this point, chéri, we really need to discuss this face-to-face. I'll be home in less than two weeks. In the meantime, why don't you hold off on this new resolve of yours to sleep around until we can come to some sort of meeting of the minds? Not that I'm trying to tell you what you can and can't do, I just think it would make for a more productive conversation if we kept things as they are until then. And after all, what's the hurry? You've remained faithful to me this long. I hate that word—“faithful”—in this context, with its implication that monogamy is somehow theologically correct, but you know what I mean. Why rush into something that will only hur complicate things at this stage of the game?

  Must run. Nils is getting ready to go into town, and I need him to mail this letter for me.

  Until we see each other again (Yee-haw!),

  Je t'aime,

  Em

  From the New York Times:

  EMILY TOWNSEND BINET

  KILLED IN INDO-CHINA

  * * *

  Famed Author-Reporter Dies

  in Rebel Attack on Dienbienphu

  * * *

  By The Associated Press

  HANOI, Vietnam, March 15, 1954—Pulitzer prize–winning novelist and war correspondent Emily Townsend Binet was struck by artillery fire at the French outpost of Dienbienphu yesterday and killed instantly.

  She was 76 years old.

  Mrs. Binet was on assignment from Le Monde, CBS News, and this newspaper to report on the progress of the Communist-led Vietminh toward Laos. It was to curtail that progress that the French established the air-supplied outpost of Dienbienphu last November.

  Late yesterday afternoon, after two days of sporadic harassment by artillery and mortar fire, the Vietminh escalated the attack, pounding the outpost with fire from 105-mm and 75-mm guns hidden in the surrounding wooded hills. It was during this barrage that Mrs. Binet was killed.

  Colonel Christian de Castries, who commands Dienbienphu's force of foreign legionnaires, Moroccans, and French and Vietnamese paratroopers, describes Mrs. Binet, who wore fatigues in the field, as “brilliant and charming,” with “an outré sense of humor that endeared her to the men.”

  An expatriate American individualist who had made her home in Paris for over half a century, Mrs. Binet was best
known for her novels, which have been praised for their psychological sophistication and subtle skewering of the manners and mores of the upper classes. The most famous of these is A Rarefied Air, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1949.

  It was her second Pulitzer, the first having been awarded to her a decade earlier for her reports on the Spanish Civil War, during which she drove an ambulance with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Her first wartime reports were published during World War I, while she nursed wounded men in a frontline French hospital. She reported on World War II also, while aiding the French resistance. Between wars, she published, in addition to her novels, myriad accounts of her adventures and exploits all over the world.

  Mrs. Binet is survived by her beloved husband of 32 years, French film director Rèmy Binet, her stepchildren, Jules Binet and Inès Langelier, both of Paris, five step-grandchildren, and her niece, Kitty Cavanaugh of Boston, Massachusetts, and Arlington, Virginia.

  Mrs. Binet resided with her husband in a town house in the beautiful and historic Marais district of Paris. Last night, as news of her death reached the adopted city she loved so much, the Parisians who loved her back began to leave flowers, notes, and candles on her doorstep.

  This morning there appeared, in addition to these tokens of affection, a veritable mountain of multicolored parrot tulips tied with a wide red grosgrain ribbon, but there was no card to identify who they came from.

  Take me to you, imprison me, for I, except you enthrall me,

  shall never be free, nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

  John Donne

  “The Wandering Outlaw”

  For he through Sin's long labyrinth had run,

  Nor made atonement when he did amiss,

  Had sigh'd to many though he loved but one,

  And that loved one, alas! could n'er be his.

  From Canto I of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

  by Lord Byron, 1812

  One

  London

  June 19, 1817

  HAVE YOU ANY objection to being raped?” inquired the silver-haired, nattily attired Sir Charles Upcott as he dipped his quill in a cut-glass inkwell.

  Caroline Keating stared at Sir Charles, barrister and baronet, across the marble and ormolu desk that was the focal point of his imposing Regent Street office. Taken aback by the query—indeed, deeply dismayed by it—she said, “Is it not in the nature of . . . such an act for the lady to object?”

  Sir Charles glanced at her over the top of his spectacles and wrote something on a sheet of foolscap. “Should you be chosen to go on the block, the gentleman who purchases you—your master—may subject you to any number of secret proclivities that he would be loath to reveal to his wife or mistress. He may have wondered, for example, how it would feel to force himself on an unwilling female—something no civilized man would do in the normal course of events, even to a lady of limited virtue. But even civilized men have their dark fancies. As I explained at the outset, Miss Keating, your master may enjoy you in any manner he sees fit during the seven days in which you are his property, short of causing injury so severe as to require the attention of a physician—although there will, of course, be a physician on hand at all times.”

  “But if I am, indeed, forbidden to resist my . . . the man who . . . buys me, how could he force himself on me? He would have no cause to do so—indeed, no opportunity—were I to submit willingly every time . . . he requires it.”

  Without looking up from his note-taking, Sir Charles said, “He may order you to resist. Or he may employ such brutishness in the act, or encourage it on the part of others, that you will naturally resist.”

  “Others?” Caroline asked in a thin voice.

  “He will be at liberty to lend you out, as it were, to another gentleman at the château, or to several at once if the fancy strikes him. A slave must be prepared for any contingency.”

  “But did not you say that I would be forbidden to . . . give myself to any man but my master during the week of my servitude?”

  Looking up with a sigh, Sir Charles said,“Unless it is at the behest of your master. Should he command it, you must do it, unquestioningly and without reluctance. It is really a very elegantly simple arrangement.”

  “But why would he encourage someone else to . . . ?”

  “Usually it is so that he can watch.”

  Watch? Caroline blinked at the barrister. And violent ravishment . . . by more than one man! Good Lord, what else did she not know about the “secret proclivities” of ostensibly civilized gentlemen?

  Sir Charles removed his spectacles and sat back in his chair with a squeak of leather, studying her with quiet speculation. No doubt he was pondering the wisdom of selecting such a naïve creature as she to go under the hammer two weeks hence at some mysterious, isolated château in France.

  “Miss Keating,” he said,“I am required by the party I represent in this matter to ask you these questions in order to ensure your aptitude for sexual enslavement. I must warn you, however, that if you offer even one negative response, you will not be chosen—and as I'm sure Lord Rexton explained when he recruited you last night, there is a great deal of money at stake, thousands of pounds.”

  Caroline turned to gaze through a window curtained in sun-hazed silk billowing on a warm breeze. This time yesterday morning, she'd been standing in a crush of onlookers on the north bank of the Thames watching the opening ceremony of Waterloo Bridge and reflecting that she didn't even have the halfpenny they were charging for a toll.

  Sir Charles allowed her a few moments to contemplate the magnitude of her plight, then put his spectacles back on. “As to the question of rape?”

  “All right,” she said on a sigh, recalling the deal she'd struck yesterday afternoon with Bram Hugget, the street sweeper who'd been begging for a kiss for weeks.

  “Just one,” she'd said, “but it will cost you a halfpenny.”

  He'd scratched his stubbly boulder of a jaw. “Only if I get to feel them diddies, too.”

  She'd clenched her teeth against the urge to weep and scream. “Over my clothes, not under. You've a minute to be done with it.”

  “Miss Keating?”

  She looked toward Sir Charles, regarding her expectantly, his quill poised over the inkwell.

  “Fellatio?” he said.

  She frowned in bewilderment.

  “Oral copulation. Are you willing to perform it?”

  “Oral? Do you mean kissing?”

  Sir Charles withdrew from a drawer a leather folio, which he untied and opened, revealing a stack of pictures. He sorted through them, chose one, and handed it across the desk to Caroline.

  It was a tinted engraving executed in loose, jaunty pen-strokes of a man, fully clothed, and two plump, naked women. The man lay on a bed with his feet on the floor and his breeches wide open, kneading the breasts of a woman who was squatting on his face. The other woman knelt between his outspread legs, sucking on his erect organ as she fondled both him and herself.

  Caroline stared in unblinking shock.

  “Lord Rexton gave me to believe that you were a lady of some experience in these matters,” said Sir Charles. “When he recruited you yesterday, did you not tell him that you'd been ruined through a liaison with a soldier?”

  Finding her voice, she said, “It was a very brief liaison.”

  “How brief ?”

  “One night.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Somewhat over two years.”

  Frowning, he dipped his quill and noted this information.

  Thousands of pounds.

  “My . . . my experience is limited,” she said, sitting forward, “but I assure you, Sir Charles, that I will not balk at—”

  “Yes or no to performing fellatio,Miss Keating?”

  She swallowed hard as she returned the picture to the barrister. “Yes.”

  “Are you willing to have relations in the Greek manner?”

  “I'm sorry, sir. I do not k
now what that is.”

  With an expression of weary forbearance, Sir Charles chose another engraving from the stack and handed it to her.

  A man and a woman, both naked, were coupling on an elaborately draped bed, she with her bottom raised high, he taking her from behind. Caroline had to study the picture for a moment before she realized that he was penetrating her in an aperture other than that intended by nature.

  “Oh,” she said quietly.

  Sir Charles regarded her expectantly over his spectacles.

  “Is it painful?” she asked.

  “That depends largely on whether the gentleman wishes it to be so. Yes or no?”

  She handed the picture back, nodding listlessly.

  “Are you willing to suffer such physical punishments as spanking, birching, and caning?”

  She hesitated, wondering with a surge of dread what punishment had to do with copulation. “Why . . . why would a man want to do such things?”

  “Because it arouses him. There are some—many, in fact—who find carnal pleasure in inflicting such punishments.” He produced another engraving, this one depicting a terrified-looking young woman lying facedown astride a narrow bench, her petticoats canted up to reveal a bare posterior ribboned with welts. To the side of her stood a dapper, maliciously grinning gentleman stroking his exposed erection with one hand as he raised a length of bamboo with the other.

  Caroline's stomach clenched as she fought the urge to bolt up out of the chair and flee the room.

  “Well?” prompted Sir Charles.

  She thrust the picture back at him, bombarded by the memory of all those beatings her father had dealt to her and her brothers, hundreds of them over the years, for infractions as trivial as forgetting a line of a psalm or erring in a mathematical calculation. Hanging in the little schoolroom on the third floor of the castle-like rectory in which she'd been reared were a broad leather strap, a bamboo cane, and a perforated wooden paddle, all well worn. She couldn't remember a time when she wasn't mottled with bruises from his sudden, impulsive batterings, mostly on her back, sometimes her chest or legs—but never on the face or arms, where they might have been visible to the Reverend Mr. Keating's parishioners. He was cruel and pitiless and probably half-mad—from the French disease, her brothers whispered, acquired during his reckless youth—but he was far from stupid. Caroline had promised herself, when Aubrey rescued her from the dismal gaol that was her family home, that no man would ever strike her again.