"Marvelous!" Keith said. "I'll give her points for size, at any rate. Bit low-slung, though."
"Not a bit of it," Mayhew said, kneeling on the floor and looking straight up at them in awe. "Easier to get to whilst doing the blanket horn-pipe! Like… hie… swivel guns!"
"Alan, trot your piece out next, she looks promising!" Shirke crowed. "Nice swellings, there under her bodice."
Alan turned to her, and she shook her head in the negative, rather forcefully; the first sign of any strong reaction she had shown all night. Fresh tears streaked her lovely face.
"If you'd rather not," Alan said, putting an arm around her.
"Thank you." She almost shuddered. "I'd really… the mistress said it would be a nice supper, and… I'd really like to go, if I may, please? This is so…"
"Alan, come on!"
"Try Hespera," he said over his shoulder. "She looks like better pickings." He led her to the dark end of the room and sat her down on a chair. "You've not been long at this trade, have you, Dolly? Tell me true. I've heard enough whore's lies before to know."
She turned away from him and began to sob as quietly as she could, and he knelt down to put an arm around her once more.
"D… don't call me a whore," she wept.
"Well, what would you call it when you show up at a private party for four men and four women?" Alan asked.
"I don't know," she muttered in a little girl's timbre. "I was happy to… submit to my husband's desires, as a… p… proper… wife. I thought it would be no in… more unpleasant than that!"
"But this is low and common." Alan softened, pulling her head over to rest on his shoulder, and she submitted easily, though one of her hands took hold of his coat lapel and wrenched it into a knot from the strength of her humiliation as she trembled and wept on his coat.
"Huzzah for Hespera!" Shirke hooted. "I'll name my next ship for you, if you'll pose for the wood-carver, m'dear! Marvelous young poonts you have! Alan, you must come and see. They're like two in one. Round little darlin's, with little pink domes atop 'em for dugs. And another little mound of nipple atop that, would you believe? Mm, tasty, too!"
"Areolae, Shirke," Ashburn informed him at the other end of the room. "Mm, you're right, most delectable in form and succulence. From the Latin, you know. Juvenal loved 'em, as do I, better'n oysters!"
"'Ere, wot 'bout mine, then?" Electra complained, slinging her garments to the four winds. "Thort yew wuz sweet h'on me, me chuck!"
"Hell with it," Mayhew shouted. "All's… strip fer a boardin' action!"
"Let's get you out of here," Alan said. Damned if he was going to board any woman in public for someone else's amusement. And damned if he was going to get anything from Dolly under these circumstances.
"Oh, thank you, thank you!" she uttered brokenly as he lifted her to her feet. He led her toward the door, stopping to pick up his hanger and clip it to his belt frog on his left hip.
"Ought to have some music with this," Shirke said. He went to the door clad only in a loose shirt and shouted down the stairs at the top of his voice, a quarterdeck voice that could carry forward in at least half a gale of wind, "Any fiddlers down there? Hoy, we want music up here, can't strum without it! Shake a leg, shake a leg, wakey wakey, lash up and stow! Stir up your dead arses, you farmers!"
The girls were shrieking with laughter as they were pursued in mock chase about the room, all of them now totally nude, and the males shedding what little they had left upon their persons as they ran and made the floor shudder.
Then, there was another wooden sort of thunder; the sound of many heavy feet pounding their way up the stairs.
"Shirke, your musicians are here," Alan said, grabbing Dolly's hand and running for the only other door to the room.
"Bloody good!" Shirke said, breaking off and opening the door to face an obese (and very outraged) magistrate, his bailiff, and a pack of old gammers from the watch. "The Charlies!" Shirke screamed and slammed the door in their faces. "All hands, prepare to repel boarders!"
Alan wasn't prepared to stay and take the consequences. He led Dolly into a small bed-chamber, from which there seemed to be no other mode of escape, unless they wanted to consider shinnying down a drain-pipe from the narrow window to the courtyard below.
"Damn!" he hissed in the darkness. He felt along the wall with his free hand until he came upon a small door set into the wall facing the hallway, about three feet square. It was the closet for the chamber-pots, so that servants could pick them up from the hallway and empty them without disturbing the lodgers. It had not been used, so it was empty. Alan took the two tin pots to the door to the dining room and slung them onto the table.
"You'll need these, I think," he said, slamming the door again. "Through there, quickly, Dolly."
"Oh, God!" she quailed weakly.
"Oh, for God's sake, follow me, then."
He crawled through, saw that the coast was for the moment clear, and stepped out into the hall, almost dragging the young woman in his wake. They straightened their clothing in the small mirror of a hall table at the bend of the corridor, and he then quickly led her away from the noise.
"Damn!" he hissed again. There was no outside entrance from this hallway. They would have to go back the other way, which meant running into the disturbance, which by now was beginning to sound like a full-sized melee. "Look, wipe your tears, Dolly, and look serene, or we're taken for fair."
"I'll try," she promised, taking a deep, steadying breath and groping in her small bag for a handkerchief. "There, do I look calm enough?"
"You look lovely," Alan told her, knowing it would buck up her spirits, and it did. And damme if she don't, he thought.
They advanced on the mob in the hall. Old men with cudgels from the watch, a huge bailiff the size of a plow-horse, the magistrate, several tavern servants, and many patrons, who were yelling for either peace and quiet, or more drinks. Shouts could be heard in favor of lynching the riotous heathens in the dining room, or the magistrate and his churls, or both.
"Excuse us, excuse us, if you please," Alan said with a fixed smile as he led Dolly through the press, leaning back as the door was finally booted open and the party responded with a shower of crockery, glassware, a chamber-pot, and several gobbets of raisin duff. "Will you let a lady pass, please, there's a good fellow."
The Charlies from the watch were not having it all their own way. They could not use their cudgels, and were knotted in the door like a beer bung, even with the bailiff's huge shoulder applied to shove them in by force. Alan put his own shoulder to the back of one old man and pushed, and the Charlies finally gained the bulwarks, but it was a bad mistake, for drunken whores and revelers could fight when cornered, better than the poorly paid dodderers.
Once on the first-floor level, Alan fetched his own hat and led Dolly into the street.
"'Oy, ain't you one o' them?" a servant cried out as they began to walk away. "Yes, you is! Hoy, the watch! 'Er'es another o' the bastards!"
"My dear fellow, I don't know what you're talking about," Alan countered. "But, here's a guinea on my reckoning, and please inform your cook that it was a splendid supper, thankee very much."
The servant bent over to pick up the guinea from the mud, and Alan booted him in the face, which sent him sprawling, out cold.
"Can't be too careful, you know," he said smiling at Dolly. "Now, let's walk in that direction, as quick as damnit."
"But what about your friends back there?" she asked, showing her first signs of amusement all night. "What will happen to them?"
"With friends like that, who needs enemies?" Alan shrugged. "To the devil with 'em. Hurry!"
Her lodgings were in English Harbor, so they took a coach over the ridge, and Alan paid the driver to carry a note to his own inn to his man Cony, telling him not to wait up, but to come fetch him at first light.
Dolly's room was in a ratty, cheap inn halfway up the hill overlooking the harbor. There was one small window, a set of sprung cha
irs and a small round table under it, a wardrobe which contained only a pair of dresses and a morning bedgown, two large chests, one of which she used for a table for her toilet with a tiny mirror propped up on it, and a high, narrow, curtained bed-stead and nightstand.
"I must apologize for this," she said modestly as she lit the one foul candle on the table below the window. "When Captain Fenton was still alive, we had a set of rooms, in a better lodging house. I tried to keep them for a while, but they were simply too dear. This is all I can afford for now, though Mistress Olivett tells me I may stay in her establishment for very little."
"That's the Mother Abbess you started working for?" Alan asked removing his coat.
"Yes. she is." Dolh replied, calm enough about it.
"And how long have you been working for her?"
"Only a fortnight," Dolly sighed. "It hasn't been so bad, not until tonight, at least. I go with the others to call upon gentlemen who wish companionship. Oh, God. I suppose I shan't get my money for tonight, after all. A whole crown I've lost, and I've nothing left."
"You're getting only a crown out of the guinea we were charged for your services?" Alan gaped. "What a gyp!"
"A guinea?" she gasped. "And I thought you were japing me when you said that earlier! Oh, how cruel she is, when she knows my need!"
"I'll give you a guinea, and it's all yours, Dolly," Alan promised her. "The night's still young." He pulled out his watch and took a peek at the face-barely gone nine. "Let's get into bed."
An expression of disagreement appeared on her features for a moment, then she sighed and acquiesced, and turned away to undo her gown. Alan shucked his clothing quickly and flung himself onto the lumpy mattress. She came to him after carefully hanging up her gown in the wardrobe. She turned her back and he unlaced her stays for her, then she sat on the edge of the bed and undid the silk ribands that held her knee-length silk stockings up and she folded them as though they were precious gems. He watched her slim back while she worked, and admired the Venus dimples of her lower back. She reached up and took the pins from her hair, letting it fall thick and lustrous down her back almost to her waist.
"Could we lay under the sheet, please, Alan?" she asked in her meek little voice again. "I know it's a rather warm night, but…"
"If you wish, dear," he said gently, finding himself in thrall at the sight of a woman undressing for him, and feeling unwilling sympathy for her. She was too… nice… a woman to be forced to prostitute herself, far above the regular girls who entered the trade, and he felt for her.
She slid under the sheet with him and lay stiff as a board by his side as he slid over to her. He put an arm behind her head and drew her to him so that they lay facing each other, and he ran his free hand up and down her ribs and her hip. Reluctantly, she put an arm over him as well.
"This is what I liked best with the Captain," she whispered, and the catch in her voice told him she was about to cry again. "The being close in the night, when he had… that part was sometimes almost enjoyable, but… I'm sorry."
She almost sprang from the bed, but he restrained her and took her in both arms to let her weep on his bare chest, thinking himself such a bloody fool.
"What was he like?" Alan asked minutes later after she had quieted.
"He was much older, in his forties," she sighed. "Such a kind, good man! So patient with my frailties and my ignorance. I'm afraid I wasn't much of a catch for him. No dowry, no lands or rents. His family called him a fool to his face, a foolish colt's-tooth to take a younger wife with no prospects."
"And your own family?"
"They passed over. I was earning my way as a housekeeper in Woolwich when the dear Captain came to visit my people. Not a month later, we were married and at sea on the way here to Antigua. And six months after that, he died of the fever. Ah well, at least we had almost a year of peaceful existence together before…"
He kissed her cheek and felt the cool dampness of smudged tears. He kissed her neck, and it was a nice neck, long and graceful with so many interesting hollows to explore, as were her shoulders and collarbones. Firm, yet yielding, apulse with young life.
"Say my name, Alan," she whispered.
"Dolly," he obeyed. "Dearest Dolly. Poor, lovely little Dolly."
Her arms went about him, then, and she allowed herself to be rolled over on her back. Their lips met, and no longer merely acquiescent, she returned his kiss, warming to him and beginning to breathe heavier, to stir her arms, her hands, and her body against his.
He explored her from brow to knees with his fingertips, with his lips and tongue, and she began to writhe and moan, to whimper and chuckle as he tickled or en-fired her by turns. All through it, he praised her, praised her beauty, talked to her gently as one would approach a wary puppy or colt, and she responded with stronger moans and delighted sighs of impending bliss.
He kissed his way from her knees, up both smooth, firm young thighs and over her muff, teasing and nipping until she was panting and grasping for him, and she opened her thighs wider as he slid up to nuzzle her breasts. Such fine young breasts with large, oval aureoles and taut young nipples that cried out for suckling.
A moment's dispassionate reach for the sheepgut condom on the nightstand, and then he was pressing against her netherlips, and she arched her back and lifted her hips to press back, and he was sliding down that endless tunnel that led to the seat of heaven itself, and she cried out like a virgin on her wedding night, though she writhed and clung to him like a limpet, matching his every movement.
"Alan, say my name, please, Alan, say my name!" she panted with her mouth against his neck. "Ah, yes, ah! I never knew…"
"Dolly, yes, it's good, so good, you're such a good girl, such a YES!"
He could feel nothing but belly and breasts, perhaps her fingers digging into his shoulders, and their groins; hear nothing but her cries of pleasure and the quick wash-deck pumping noise of lovemaking until she shouted and kept on shouting in an utter transport of joy, not long after his own forge-hot release.
"Dolly, yes, lovely Dolly," he muttered soft against her neck as he lay spent on elbows and weak knees over her.
"Alan, my Alan dearest," she giggled back, trembling still, and showering him with smile-widened kisses.
"If lovemaking could always be this way," she said much later after their third bout, after they had sent down for some wine to cool them.
"My dear girl, it's supposed to be," Alan snickered, pleased as punch with himself. "Leastways, I've always found it so."
"If it could be, I could almost bear the shame of being… a whore. Until I hear from Roger's relatives, of course, and get the money to go home." She sighed.
"Think they like you that much?" Alan asked, not meaning to tease her.
"No," she replied, sitting up to hug her knees with the soggy sheet falling to her waist. "Oh, Alan, I've written and written, and there's never a word back from them. Nothing on the packet ships for me. I almost despair sometimes that I'll be bound to this life for all time!" She lay her head on her knees, hiding her face in her hair.
"Wait a minute," Alan said, propping himself up in the bed on a pile of thick pillows. "He only died three months ago, you say? Hell, it's three months by ship back home. Say, here to Bermuda to pick up a favorable slant from the highs. Then on to New York from there. And for reply, the packet would sail down to Portugal and then run west to Dominica first. They wouldn't even have gotten a word about your poor Roger's demise yet. And it'll most like be another three or four months before you can even expect any kind of answer."
"And I must endure more of this cruelty?" she gasped. "Oh, I cannot bear it! I shall have to enter that woman's dreadful house, after all. It's the only place that will take me."
"There's housekeeping, still," Alan suggested. "Quite a few households here on Antigua would hire a young widow who's experienced at caring for children, or such like. It's not as if you had debts."
She fell back to lay her head on his stomac
h and hug him.
"Do you think I have not tried, Alan? They have slaves here, not hired servants. And if hired, paid less than a dog's dinner."
Here comes the sly little hand on my purse-strings, Alan said to himself. Yet she stayed silent, hugging him like a child in her parent's lap. Alright, I'll say it for her and get it over with. Damn fool.
"I could loan you a little to tide you over, Dolly."
"I'll not hear of it, Alan Lewrie," she replied, looking up at his face in the gloom. "If I needs must, I can deal with the humiliation of this shameful trade for a short space, and there are still things to sell of my possessions. Thank you, but the answer is no. I must own that I am only a weak, stupid woman, but I can guess what you may think of me if you do loan me money. I'd like you to think better of me than that."
"You're serious!" He gaped in astonishment.
"That I am," she agreed. "After this delightful experience with you, I would not do anything to cheapen our memories of each other. I'd rather starve first. Oh, how masterful you were. and how kind to me, to take me out of that place rather than shame me by making me behave as those others. I've been such a fool to think that taking money for men to pleasure themselves is possible, even for a little time. You have opened my eyes to how low and base I would have become had you not saved me. I shall treasure you forever for that. And for this." She teased with a shy smile, and reached down under the sheet to touch his belly and lion's mane.
"Another man may wish you to be his and his alone. Have you heard of mistresses, Dolly?" Alan asked, sounding her out to see if she still rang true, that it was not a whore's lie yet.
"It would be gentler, and safer, would it not?" she asked. "But, I can think of only one gentleman that I'd care to keep house for."
Another light brush of her fingers over his groin.
"What about your husband's things, then. Have you sold any of that yet?"
"I have his chest here. But Alan, I could not bear to part with all that I have left of that gentle, wonderful man," she objected sadly. "To auction him off to the highest bidder, all that represents what's left of him, it's too horrid to contemplate."
The King`s Commission l-3 Page 12
