A Pretty Mouth (18 page)

Henry was glad his companion hadn’t noticed anything strange, and was now wholly occupied by what was happening on stage. St John had summoned two beautiful youths to stand beside him, red-haired and freckle-faced, one female, one male, and they were so very alike they must be siblings, Henry decided, if not twins. The girl wore only her shift; the boy, his shirt, which was slightly too big for him, and hung down well past his knees. Even in the candlelight, Henry saw them both blushing to be so bare in front of all the fine gentlemen and ladies.

St John bowed to the settling crowd. The curls of his white wig fell forward over his shoulders, and when he stood, he swept them back dramatically.

“Good evening, colleagues!” he said, not raising his voice but extending his arms in a gesture of welcome. When the room went completely still, he dropped his hands, placing one on each of the heads of the siblings. They flinched slightly at his touch. Applause followed this; after it subsided, St John cleared his throat and began anew.

“Thank you all for coming tonight,” he said. “I trust the earlier entertainments were to your liking?”

Mutterings of assent from everyone. St John looked pleased—but then waggled a finger at the gathering like a nurse scolding a disobedient child.

“Such a host of naughty boys—and girls—to sneak away so late just to see a parade of performing dogs, bawdy songs sung by those of small talent, and the—
ahem
—unusual abilities of Mistress Lavinia! We must have some intellectual purpose to our gathering, methinks. To that end, I propose to conclude this evening not with another common production, but with a
philosophical experiment
.”

Henry leaned forward a little, as did the rest of the company. This was, judging by their reactions, a rather unusual announcement.

“Tonight, my two companions—Irish twins, orphans I paid ten shillings to appear before you—will help resolve a theological conundrum. Fear not, we will not be debating how many angels may sit on the head of a pin! I think, rather, that all of you will be quite riveted by our question … as well as our method of inquiry.”

“I say, this
is
a strange sort of party,” whispered Henry to Rochester, who’d taken a seat on a stool next to him.

“
Shh!
” hissed Rochester, for Henry thought maybe the hundredth time that night. Prig.

“I propose,” continued St John, “that tonight, we, the Blithe Company, determine whether the act of love,” here St John, to Henry’s surprise, dismay—and excitement—waggled his hips in a lewd manner, “is a
spiritual
thing, or a
physical
one. We are told it is spiritual—God joins us together, and let no man put that asunder,
et cetera
—but may man join together what God wills asunder? If such is possible, we can, I think, conclude that intercourse is a
physical
act—and thus may, with clean consciences, indulge in it without fear of anything worse than the pox.”

General laughter; more applause. Henry joined in half-heartedly, looking at the twins. The lad was crying a little, his nose was dripping and he kept wiping it on the back of his hand, where the slimy slug-trails of snot sparkled in the candlelight. Surely …
surely nothing
, Henry told himself—and for good measure, he also told himself to suck it up and be the man he wanted to be. This is what he’d desired to be a party to, after all. He couldn’t back out now.

“My hypothesis,” St John said when the applause died down, “is that Christ—God—the Holy Ghost—all of the angles—they have nothing to do with it. With fucking, I mean. Though I claim to have been
divinely
inspired
during pursuit,” here he moved away from the twins and drew a young woman out of the audience, kissing her deeply on the mouth only to push her away once her very visible bosom began to heave, “and, truth be told,
consummation
,” he took a young man by the hand this time, and kissed him on the mouth whilst fondling what he found just below where the stripling’s coat split and fanned out, “I have heard time again in church and in the classroom that to do what I like best is an offense—a spiritual crime, if you will, against myself, against my future wife, and against God. Well, if intercourse is a spiritual act, then it could not, to my mind, be performed by those without spiritual
desire
. Take, for example, these twins.”

Henry felt queasy, but kept his seat. He couldn’t have left the company if he wanted to. St John’s overtures toward the audience members had excited him too much for him to rise without humiliation.

“Brothers and sisters do not look at one another with the eyes of lust. Such a thing is impossible. It is wrong—it is an
abomination
. And these twins are not abominations—are you?”

Neither of the siblings replied, so St John knocked the boy on the head as if rapping his knuckles on a door.

“Are you an abomination, sir?”

“No,” he managed.

“And you, Madam?”

“No m’lord,” she whispered, not looking up.

“So neither of you have ever desired the other in a sexual fashion?”

They looked up at St John with identical wild, wide eyes filled with terror. He smiled down at them beatifically.

“Let a couch be placed upon the stage!” he said. “Some of you must stand, a pity, but it cannot be helped. A couch!”

The only couch appropriate for what Henry feared was about to ensue was under his own bottom, so he stood quickly and slunk into the corner behind it, trying his best to melt into the shadows. St John caught his eye—and smiled slightly. Henry’s heart began to pound when St John bid two of the bigger members of the Company to move the chaise to the front of the room. He then sat in the center of it, and then patted the thigh of his leg as though encouraging a kitten to jump up there.

“Sit, Madam,” he said to the girl. She did, reluctantly. “And you, sir—sit here,” he said, thumping the cushion beside him.

Henry crouched beside Rochester. “Is he really going to make them …”

“You said you wanted to come, so wait and watch,” hissed Rochester.

“Your brother is very handsome,” said St John, to the girl. “Have you ever thought about that?”

“Nay, sir,” said the girl.

“You’re very pretty—do you think your brother has ever looked at you and thought so?”

“He brought me a flower once, sir, after our aunt had cuffed me bad on the ear for breaking one of the eggs I gathered from the coop.”

“You didn’t do that out of
lust
for your sister, though,” enquired St John, turning to the lad. He blushed crimson, and shook his head.

“Well! I think we have established these twins are neither perverts nor sinners—quite normal, yes?” The audience nodded its approval. St John smiled, and lifted the girl by her narrow waist, then plunked her down beside her brother. “Finally,” he said to the company, “I say to you that we must agree, for this experiment to go forward, that ten shillings is not a spiritual matter. Does the Bible, or Aquinas, or anyone ever say that ten shillings is spiritual, rather than physical, in nature?”

“Get on with it!” cried someone.

“Patience, patience,” admonished St John, but he seemed to sense he was losing his audience. “All right you two—boy, I want you to kiss your sister. On the lips, like a man kisses a woman.”

He refused; St John slapped him. Weeping, the lad acquiesced to the Lord Calipash’s demand. Henry’s legs felt shaky, wobbly—he saw colored blackness flashing behind his eyes. Never had he thought—dear God, the lad was a quick study, and had commenced fondling his sister’s breast!

The chit seemed shyer than her brother, and when his assault on her chastity became increasingly one-sided, St John apparently felt it was time to intervene. He snuck up behind her, pantomiming for the giggling crowd, and then with firm but gentle pressure, pushed her head down to the part of her brother that was beginning to show signs of excitement: His shirt was tenting over his groin, and there was a small wet stain obvious against the white linen.

“Unleash the beast,” encouraged St John. “So far it seems as though my hypothesis has been confirmed, but if you, Madam, are not sufficiently moved by the flesh alone, then I fear we may have to declare a draw rather than draw a conclusion!”

When the girl uncovered her brother’s cockstand, Henry felt as though it were a toss-up if he would vomit or ejaculate in his breeches; when she pushed the lad back onto the couch and took his affair into herself with a catlike yowl of pain and then rode him with short jerking motions of her hips until both shouted their climax to the company, Henry was sure he would never again think about touching another person in lust.

A triumphant St John was smoothing their sweaty hair away from their foreheads, kissing their exhausted brows, and claiming loudly that his experiment was a success—but Henry could not help but disagree. He had felt aroused watching the display, to be sure, but he also felt sick at heart.

“You look like you need a drink,” Rochester was saying in his ear. Henry started and stared at him, uncomprehending. “I’ve seen peacocks less green than you.”

“He made them—”

“You wanted to come. Are you happy now?” Rochester’s voice was as bitter as horehound. Henry looked up in surprise.

“I …”

“Come on, then. Now you know, and we may safely be friends without this between us, I think.” Rochester, nearly three years his junior, was leading him by the hand to a flagon of wine. Though already tipsy, Henry took the goblet and drank it with great gulps. He felt positively parched.

Snippets of conversation hit him as the rest of the party mingled and took some refreshment. “Strange,” “different,” “interesting,” were words that stood out to him. Henry was taken aback—while the reaction from the Company seemed more thoughtful than enthusiastic, it shocked him that no one thought to protest such an outrage …

“And what did
you
think, sir?”

Henry turned—St John was there, smiling at him. His eyes sparkled behind his mask.

“I—”

“Did you find my methods convincing? And what of my conclusion?”

“I …”

“Were you entertained by the show?”

Henry considered this. He had been disgusted, appalled—but some part of him
had
enjoyed the spectacle. He couldn’t lie to St John …

“I think so, my lord—”

St John took a step back. “My Lord? Who do you think I am?” He looked really annoyed. “Dare you presume anything among this company? We are all anonymous, sir!”

“Oh, yes sir, I am sorry sir, it’s my first time, and—”

“First time?” St John frowned. “Boys! This one says its his first time—did we invite anyone new?”

Henry’s heart sank, and he began to sweat into the borrowed coat. He caught Rochester’s eye; the boy shook his head and shrugged, doing nothing to aid him. Henry began to sweat as cries of “no!” and “not me!” filled the room.

Busted. Big-time.

“I don’t know who you are, or what you’re doing here, but you are most unwelcome,” said St John in a low, violent tone that alarmed Henry more than anything he’d seen that night. “If you tell anyone of this, I will personally see to it that you are flogged for leaving school, destroyed socially, beaten within an inch of—”

“I wouldn’t, I swear it,” Henry protested. Masked faces framed by luxurious wigs were closing in all around them. “My lord, it is I, Henry Milliner. After your kindness to me today in Master Fulkerson’s class, I wanted to come, to thank you for showing such mercy. I—it’s that I admire you so very much, you see,” Henry risked putting a hand out to touch St John’s wrist, “and my advisor told me to find a Greek tutor, so—”

“He says he came for tutoring!” said St John, pulling away from Henry. “Let’s give him a lesson, shall we?”

Henry would never forget the conclusion of that night, how hands fell upon him and hoisted him aloft above the mob; how they complained loudly of his weight as they paraded him through the tavern; how they tossed him by the coat into the street, where he landed face-first in a pile of turds that had decomposed to the point that he could not tell if they’d been left there by pig, horse, dog, or man.

“And stay out!” shouted someone after him.

Henry felt the words a kick to the kidneys. How could he? Why would he? What had changed since that afternoon? Tears started in Henry’s eyes, hot, stinging, angry tears. He could not help his common heritage; he hadn’t chosen it any more than St John had chosen to be born a fine lord. It was fate—luck of the draw!

So St John was just like the rest of them, the rotten aristocratic shitwigs. Even Rochester! Talking to him like that at the party, leaving him to be tossed out into the street like a drunken cottar. The indignity of it all!

A few moments later, he felt a hand on him—a gentle hand.