In the Garden of Sin (10 page)

Most of our tutelage focused on those skills in which a first-rate courtesan was expected to be proficient when mingling in public with the gentlemen of Venice. During our dancing class that morning in the great hall, Lucy, Bianca, and I were taught the branle, courante, and galliard. Sibylla already being an accomplished dancer, Vitturi directed her instead, via a message delivered by a footman, to meet Elic and Inigo in
la Chambre des Voiles et des Miroirs
.

The Chamber of Veils and Mirrors, more commonly referred to as the Training Room, was where much, but not all, of our sexual instruction was to take place. Located in the southeast tower, it featured, I had been told, an “observation area” from which Vitturi and others could view the novices’ erotic tutelage without being seen. It was a prospect that appalled me but didn’t seem to bother my three fellow novices in the least.

“Just Sibylla?” I asked Lucy as we aped the movements of Monsieur Fluet, our fussy, temperamental little dancing master. “What can two men do with just one woman?”

“Could be a bit of fore and aft, but I hope not—not if they plan to do it to all of us.”

“What is that—fore and aft?”

“One in the quim and one in the bum.”

“Nay
. Is that even possible?”

“Aye. Some women claim to love it. As for me, I can’t stand the feel of a cock in my arse, so I’ve never even done it Greek
style—not for more than a second or two—let alone Greek and regular at the same time. I
have
been with two men, though, two footmen in my cousin’s house.”

“Verily?” I couldn’t resist the urge to question her about it. “What was it like? What did you do with them?”

“The first time,” she said, “I took one in the mouth whilst the other fucked me from behind. The one I was sucking, Jack—bright red hair, lovely eyes—he shot off real quick, filled my mouth with spunk. But the other one, Harry—tall, black-haired brute—he didn’t come at all, not in me, anyway. After Jack fetches in my mouth, Harry pulls out of me, throws Jack facedown over a sack of flour—we were in the pantry—and buggers him senseless.”

“Buggers?”

“Fucks him in the arse,” Lucy said. “Surely you know about sodomites. Men who fancy other men?”

“Well, aye. I just didn’t know what they… did with each other.”

“’Tisn’t just arse-fucking,” she said. “They use their mouths, their hands…After that first time in the pantry, Jack and Harry would let me watch them when I had the itch. Nothing gets me wet like two big, strapping bucks fucking and sucking and working each other off. Jack fancied quim as well as cock, and there were times he’d fuck me after Harry gave it to him in the arse—or I’d lick his spigot while Harry was doing him.”

“My word.”

“Once,” Lucy said, “they got into a tiff over something, and they didn’t touch or even talk to each other for days, each of them waiting for the other one to admit he was in the wrong. Well, I was having none of that. I was bored, living in hiding, and constantly fearful that my beastly husband would find me and drag me back home. Playing with Jack and Harry was my only real diversion, and I wanted it back. I told them only a
duel could settle it—dueling cocks. I had them meet me in the stable that night and made them strip down but for their boots and gloves. I told them to fight it out right there, and the first one to spend would have to tell the other he’d been wrong and he was sorry. The only rule was they had to keep their hands off each other’s privy parts.”

“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 ill-fated 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.”