Jo Graham - [Numinous World 05]

by The Emperor's Agent (epub)

  "I won't," he breathed, his face against the brocade, his arms straining but still holding tight.

  "You will," I said. Another stroke, this one on the inside of his right thigh, and he jumped under it, the muscles in his thighs working. "You will service me and anyone I tell you to. If I have to have you tied and mate you to my girls by hand, then I shall." The picture that made was enough to nearly make me lose my place, wanting to grind against something, imagining Michel tied in bonds, imagining my hands on him, my hands on a woman's slick cunny, mating her to him, feeling him slide into her against his will….

  "No." He jerked as the crop came down again.

  "You will. You won't be able to help it. You don't have self control enough." Unexpected movement, reaching for his right wrist at the same moment that I shoved his right thigh with my booted leg, pushing him off the ottoman and flipping him onto the hearthrug on his back. It was only a foot or so, as the ottoman wasn't tall, but intense, the more so for all exposed. Knees apart, his cock rose hard and full from a nest of red curls, straining and ready. I took it in one hand roughly, the crop still in the other. "Do you suppose that would hurt?"

  "Oh my God," he said, and closed his eyes, arms splayed out to the sides as though held by invisible hands.

  I caressed it instead, running my hands up to his belly, seizing him by the root. "I wouldn't want to damage your breeding potential. But I really don't think you have the self-discipline to resist."

  His mouth opened but no sound came out, eyes closed, chin lifted like some ancient statue of a dying Gaul, noble and suffering and incandescent with desire.

  I got my buttons open with the hand holding the crop, half tearing one loose in my haste. "I will have you if I want," I said. "Anytime I want. As often as I want. For whomever I want. Is that clear?" My privates were throbbing with the sudden rush of blood, my own pulse beating against the seam of my pants.

  "Yes," he whispered, and his face tensed as the crop came down again across his lower belly, marking him with a red streak just above the thatch of hair.

  "Mine," I said, tearing the placket loose and lowering myself onto him, the angle a bit awkward with the tangle of cloth. It took a moment to straighten that out. "Mine."

  "No," he whispered.

  "Mine," I said again, feeling him fill me, heavy and desperate, beginning to move on him. "You will do as I say. You are here for my pleasure. You are nothing but what I want you to be."

  His breath caught, trying to thrust but instead ground down beneath me. I would set the pace and he must follow, his arms still stretched as if pinned, straining against the wool carpet.

  I touched the leather tip of the crop to his lips. "Say it."

  He shook his head, and I ground down again. So good, so tight, so utterly mine…. It was hard to remember what to say, not to become lost in it, not to lose control.

  "No self-control," I said, "You have no self-control. You can't stop yourself no matter how hard you try. You will no matter how much you resist."

  And he was resisting. He was trying to hold back, his whole face flushed, every muscle straining as though he were indeed that unlucky soldier taken by amazons.

  "You can't help it," I said breathlessly. My climax was building, spurred by this power, this heady and unutterable wrongness, to own him, to take whatever I wanted like a man. Would he shake like this if it were my organ in him, if I could take him in truth? Red hair spread around him, white thighs straining….

  The wave caught me early, lifting and spinning, quick contractions as I bit down on my lip to keep from screaming.

  He did cry out, some wordless sound as I tightened around him, still holding on, still resisting while I rode out my pleasure on him.

  And yet he was mine. "Say it," I whispered. "Surrender."

  His mouth shaped the word no, but his hips snapped, surging against me as it took him at last, as though dragged out of him from the bottom of his being, a tear sliding beneath his closed eyelids. It seemed to go on and on, longer and deeper, and when I felt him soften I slid off and lay beside him on the hearthrug. I put my head against his shoulder and my arm about his chest, feeling his heart still pounding. Outside the rain was hammering against the window.

  "Did I hurt you?" I said quietly. "Michel, not for anything would I." He would hold on out of pride, I thought belatedly. He would push beyond where he wanted, even unbound, even with nothing to constrain him but his pride.

  "Yes," he said. He opened his eyes, naked to mine. "But I wanted you to."

  I nodded. That I understood far too well.

  He turned on his side stiffly, gathering me against him, and I came to him like a ship to port, linen shirt and breeches still tangled about my boot tops. "My dear," I whispered.

  "We're mad," he said.

  "I expect so." I put my hand to his face, tasted the one tear with my fingertips. "That was too much."

  "No, it wasn't," he said. He ducked his head against my hair. "That's what I want. One thing I want. I need that. I need the pain."

  "You need to surrender," I said. "As well as conquer." I ran my hand through his wet, tangled hair, suddenly filled with unaccountable tenderness. "I can do that. I can be that for you."

  "Forever," he said, and closed his eyes against me like a tired child.

  Afterward, we slept untroubled and woke stiff, side by side in the light from the window. Outside, the vegetable sellers were starting their day, hawking tomatoes and celery from their bins two floors down. I stretched against him and kissed him, mouthing his sleepy lips, the stubble on his chin, and felt him smile into me.

  "Sunshine," he whispered. "Radiance and light. Fire made flesh."

  "You're a poet," I said, my cheek against his shoulder. There was a spreading white scar there, like the impact of a stone on glass, where a musket ball had pierced it and been dug out. How long ago? Two years? Five? The ball had been nearly spent, he said, and hadn't broken the bone, just lodged deep in his flesh. I kissed it, and he tried not to flinch.

  Ghosts of the Past

  The next morning was the last day of our peace. A messenger came, the paid kind, not an Army courier. Paid messengers were expensive. Michel tore the letter open the moment the man was had his money, as though he already feared what it would say.

  He looked at me and his voice was steady but his eyes were not. "It's from my sister Margarethe. She says our father is very ill. And that I should come quickly, if I want to see him." Michel looked away from me, out the window at the bright sun. "He's been sick a fortnight. It seemed like a summer cold at first, but it's gone into his lungs. She can hear him rasping with every breath, and all the plasters and camphor don't seem to do any good. This letter...." He broke off and took a breath before he went on. "This letter is four days old. I don't know...."

  "You must go at once, of course, Michel," I said, going to him and putting my hand on his sleeve. "I'll put some clothes in your saddlebags, and some fruit and bread for the road. That will keep you to the first posting inn."

  I had no warning when my father died. I couldn't actually remember it, oddly enough, though I remembered the funeral.

  "Elza, I have to go." He was still looking at the letter, as though there were more of it to read. Or perhaps he didn't trust himself to look up.

  "Of course you do," I said. "Let me run and tell the boy to go across to the livery stable and saddle Eleazar. It's not noon yet. You can get miles today."

  Michel nodded. "I should take some nice clothes. In case."

  "I'll pack your dress uniform," I said. "Though you'll have to do with one hat. There's not room for a hatcase on horseback." I packed his things swiftly. I had learned how to do that on campaign. By the time Eleazar was brought around, he was ready.

  Michel stopped at the top of the stairs. The letter was still in his hand. He looked at me, and for a moment he looked so young, younger than he had facing endless death in the field, younger than facing his own death, or mine. "Elza...."

 
"Go," I said, and kissed him. "Go. I'll write you."

  He handed me the letter. "The address is there. So you know where to send it. La Petite Malgrange."

  "I will," I said.

  "I can't...." he began and stopped.

  "I know," I said. "Whatever it is, I know."

  He nodded and gave me a sideways, rueful smile. "Goodbye, then." He took his hat out of my hands and I heard him bounding down the stairs, his boot heels harsh on the polished wood.

  I shut the door and bolted it. I walked around the apartment, picking up things and putting them away. I went in and lay down on our disordered bed. It smelled like last night's sex and suddenly I missed him with an intensity that brought tears to my eyes.

  Of course he hadn't taken me with him. It would have taken time. Time, and explanations that had no place at a sickbed or a funeral. His father's house was no place for his mistress. His mistress should not meet his virginal younger sister. They didn't do things like that in Saar Louis. To my credit, I knew that. I knew which parts of his life I didn't belong in. To my credit, I knew how to say goodbye.

  27 Thermidor of the Year IX

  Dearest Elza,

  I am in time. My father is very ill, and he hardly knows me, but he's alive. His breathing is very labored, and the doctor says that there is fluid in his lungs. There is nothing to be done for this, he says, except for warm plasters to the chest and a great deal of camphor that gives him some ease. He may yet recover, but the doctor is not reassuring.

  It is strange to be here in the midst of crisis, needed and yet almost a stranger. At least, I feel strange. My sisters are very close to one another, both Margarethe my younger, and Sophie my older sister who has come to help with neither her husband nor children. Sophie is nearing forty, and she looks as I remember my mother, not as I remember her. And Margarethe is grown up. More than grown up. It seems to me that she should be a girl on the verge of womanhood as she was when I ran away to the army. Of course I have seen her many times since then, but that is the way she sticks in my mind. She's 27. And unmarried. Life is passing her by while she lives in Saar Louis with my father. I hardly know what to say to either of them.

  I don't think they know what to say to me either. I'm a man. And I live in a different world.

  It's so hot here, unusually hot. We sit beside the front window, watching the thunderclouds coming over the river and the branches beginning to move in a wind we don't feel yet, and the distant thunder seems to me the opening guns of some vast battle I can't see. We all hold our breath.

  I miss you more than I can possibly say.

  With all my love,

  Michel

  7 Fructidor of the Year IX

  Dearest Elza,

  You have no idea how glad I was to get your letter today! It was like a breath of home, and that's saying something I suppose.

  My father seems a little improved. He can sit up in bed. He knows me now. I can still hear the rattle when he breathes, and he is terribly weak, but it is some improvement. He is surprised that I know anything about nursing him, which he should not be. We do not have our sisters in the field, and I do no more for him than I've done for friends in the past. He should know this. He was a soldier in the Seven Years War, for a while. But he hated it and the sins weigh heavily on his soul still.

  Perhaps I am very wicked that every sin is not so heavy. But there are thousands of lives on my conscience, not a few, and if I thought about that every moment I should not be able to move, only press my chest to the floor and beg for mercy.

  I am talking like this I suppose because I see things he has done that he will not name weighing so much on his mind. There is no priest to be had in Saar Louis since the monastery was ransacked in the Terror, though there are in the German states. Sophie thinks she can get one to come over the border. Maybe that will help if he can talk to one and be shriven.

  Since my father has been ill, no one has done the haying, so I am doing it now. It's been a long time since I did it as a boy, but I still have the knack of it, though I made the mistake of working without my shirt yesterday because it was so hot and now I am sunburned and unhappy. I was going to put lard on it but Margarethe says that's an old wives tale and that lard makes it worse. She says the only thing that really helps is cool water from a well, though the cold makes you peel more.

  I ache for you, my heart.

  Michel

  His letter was six days old when I got it. He did not have military couriers at his disposal in Saar Louis.

  It came the same day as a letter from my cousin Louisa. I realized with a shock that I hadn't heard from her in more than a year, since last spring when I set out for Italy with Isabella. I had been on two campaigns since then, and had moved three times. If she had written to me, it was no surprise that I hadn't received it.

  I held the letter in my hands, hardly daring to open it. When I did the first sentence made me catch my breath.

  ...I hate to put death in a letter, but I can hardly find you and I've written to everyone, including General Moreau, trying to guess where you might be now. I hope that this will get to you somehow.

  M. Ringeling, Jan's father, was growing concerned about the rumors of unrest in Curaçao among the slaves at the estates that were your dowry there. You know that since the unrest in Haiti and Santo Domingo with Toussaint L'Ouverture and all this there have been rumors of slave uprisings everywhere. In any event, the properties are very lucrative and produce a large part of the income that goes to Jan and your mother, so Jan resolved to go and see what was happening.

  Well, he had hardly been in port in Paramaribo for a day when he was felled with malaria. He lingered only a few days and died on the 2nd of December last....

  I put the letter down on the windowsill and looked out. Below, the vegetable sellers were still bargaining for tomatoes.

  Jan was dead. He had died of malaria in a tropical port on the other side of the world while we were engaged at Hohenlinden, while I fought with sword in the snow.

  Jan was dead.

  I was a widow in fact.

  I picked up the letter again.

  ...needless to say, there are legal things to do. I don't know if you knew that Jan got a judgment against you in 1796 -- a divorce for adultery based on your desertion of him and the children. However, you were in France at the time, and never signed anything nor appeared in court. So the question is, are you a widow inheriting property? Or is the divorce previous to that valid, in which case everything should be immediately settled jointly on Claas and Francis, who are to be the wards of their paternal grandparents given their maternal grandmother's incapacity? That is the thing that no one knows. As for the property that remains your mother's but which Jan had been administering because of her incapacity, they are willing to make a cash settlement on you if you will agree to relinquish all claims to the house in Amsterdam and the sugar plantations in Curaçao in favor of your children when your mother dies.

  Your mother seems amenable to this when she is lucid, and says that she never wants to see you again. She has become wondrously pious lately and faints of shame when your name is mentioned. But she is no longer convinced that Charles is alive, which is something.

  In any event, whether you want to agree or contest this, you must sign things. If you get this please write to me immediately! I do not have any right to act in your behalf and I don't know what you want to do....

  I had no idea what I wanted. The idea of my freedom from Jan was overwhelming enough.

  Wild ideas ran through my head. I could go and get my children, sneak them over the border to France, live here in Paris with Michel in absolute bliss, or take the children and go live in the Saar, married and respectable, talking about apple harvests and haying.

  For ten wild minutes I thought this.

  Rationality intervened. Francis had no memory of me, and he was seven years old. For him, it would amount to being abducted by a stranger. Claas might have some vague recollections of a m
other he had believed dead, but he was eleven now, not a cuddly child, a boy on the edge of youth who presumably had friends, went to school, had opinions of his own. He would not want to give up all that for an apartment in Paris, for a farm in the Saar where he didn't even speak the language and knew no one, a strange stepfather and a mother who dressed up like a man.

  There would be no more campaigns for me. There would be no more of this life I was building. Who was to say Michel would want anything of the kind? I would be hopeless on a farm in the Saar, hopeless at any kind of life except that of adventuress. I did not want to live respectably in the country. The greatest happiness I had known was in the life of the road, in Italy and Bavaria, following the army. I wanted to stay with Michel in Paris, to go with him on his next posting wherever that might be, to know the world and everything in it with Michel, whose longings burned as hot as mine.

  If I were pregnant, if there were a child that was ours from the beginning it would be different, but Claas would consider it a cruelty for me to rip him away from his life, and Francis -- I could well imagine a child of seven taken in the darkness out of the country, away from anyone he loved. Francis would hate me.

  I took a deep breath.

  The children should stay with their grandparents then. I would not abduct them, would not try to fight in court the judgment of insanity that would surely be proffered against me, the taint of immoral living. No court outside of France would give them to me.

  And the courts inside France wouldn't necessarily rule in my favor either, I thought with a shiver. Moreau had a great deal of influence, and Michel very little. An immoral woman who wanted to take two respectably-raised boys and bring them into a house where she lived as a kept mistress.... No, Republican virtue would not grant me my sons.

  As for my mother, I hardly knew what to think. If she would not see me, then I would not try to see her. Whatever love there was had been broken so long that I didn't know what to do with the shards.