Mistress of Night and Dawn (24 page)

Prudence was the path of the rational man and Thomas had always been rational, and so he learned to hide. He bound his breasts and combed his hair just so and applied small touches of theatre make-up so that he passed muster as a very pretty boy, just.

Of course this meant that he often suffered the advances of male classmates and tutors. The university was teeming with homosexuals. He assiduously ignored their attempts to bed him and played out his heterosexuality by visiting the brothels. There the prostitutes who pretended straightness were only too happy to open their legs for his large wooden bird with its beak carved into the shape of a phallus that he had purchased from an old crone at a market along with a harness that held the device firmly against his hips so that he could fuck as well as any other man. Better, he thought, for the eager prostitutes seemed to love his silky skin and soft lips and his cock that never grew soft.

But the pleasure he took with them was fleeting. He wanted more, longed for the companionship of like-minded and like-bodied people, but outside the context of minority rights or scientific research or sexual liberalism. Thomas wanted to be ordinary in the company of extraordinary people instead of extraordinary in the company of the ordinary. He wanted to celebrate his manhood and welcome his strangeness and dance on the grave of a world that was only comfortable with binaries. He insisted upon developing an encyclopaedic knowledge of anyone who came in a shade of grey instead of black or white.

He was complaining, one inebriated night in a tavern, to Wolfgang, one of his younger tutors, as to how unfulfilled he felt with women when his companion, in a drunken stupor, had whispered in his ear that maybe he should visit the Ball, where the women were not only in a class above, but all manner of excesses were allowed that even the law would frown upon.

Thomas had dismissed this as an alcohol-generated boast rather than an indiscretion, but his curiosity had been piqued. However, when he queried Wolfie the following morning in the cold light of day, his tutor had shiftily pretended never to have said a word about the remarkable Ball.

Over the course of the succeeding months, Thomas had begun to enquire about the fabled event and, stray bits of information at a time, began to form an alluring whole. Images of young men in chains, restrained by strings of gold, noble women who offered themselves freely to one and all, persons who defied any clear definition but clothed themselves like nymphs or satyrs and fucked like animals, nude dancers and sexual rituals that couldn’t help but excite his mind and senses predominated. There was even rumour that the Ball had taken place in one of Mad King Ludwig’s castles in Bavaria barely a year ago. Soon, Thomas became a believer.

Sensing the approach of tides of war throughout the continent, his father penned him a note out of the blue and in vague tones that were no doubt designed to confuse any spying eyes, encouraged him to move to America for a few years. Thomas obliged, fully aware that the life of a soldier would be impossible for him, and was further spurred on by snippets of information obtained from a ship’s chandler in Hamburg that the Ball had since moved to the New World.

By the time he reached Baton Rouge in Louisiana, most of his money had run out. There were no trains going south he could hitch a further ride on, so he arrived in New Orleans on foot.

He hadn’t combed his hair for days, his clothes were dusty from the road and it was a day before the Spring Equinox. Along the way, he had ascertained that the Ball always occurred on an Equinox. Now all he had to do was to pin it down.

From early morning, when the sun rose above the horizon of the wide Mississippi, the air was full of heady, lingering smells. The scent of magnolia and bougainvillea twisted in the air like invisible plaits; spices surged across the narrow streets of Storyville from crawfish stewing in pots or vats of bubbling water in which immense prawns floated like survivors of a shipwreck, caught in an aromatic whirlpool that invariably set off pangs of hunger in Thomas’s stomach as he walked by.

By midday the heat was oppressive and he had to hunt for shade beneath the trees of Jackson Square, with the Mississippi river unfurling lazily across his horizon just two hundred yards away.

Back in New York after his initial arrival in America, Thomas had encountered a sailor who claimed to have once worked for the Ball as both an acrobat and a builder. He had let slip that this year’s event might be taking place on a river, but had clammed up when questioned further. Thomas hoped he had chosen the right one.

The jingle-jangle sound of a tune played on a calliope floated towards his ears, wafting in from the river bank, like a siren call. Thomas left the shelter of the branches and headed for the shore.

The most extravagant riverboat he’d ever seen sat in the muddy waters, towering above him, all wheels, narrow chimneys and turrets. On its flank, carved out in gold, was its name:
Natchez IX
. Thomas had read about the river’s fabulous riverboats, but this sight exceeded all expectations. His breath was taken away.

Still wide-eyed with admiration, he noticed a steady file of sailors and workers moving up and down a set of wide narrow planks connecting the boat with the dock. Boxes, contraptions, barrels, large suitcases and all sorts of unknown cargo were being loaded onto the vessel.

Joining them was easy. Thomas was a master of disguise and knew all too well how most folk interpreted the outside world purely according to the internal restraints of their own expectations. Even when he made no attempt at all to hide some of his more feminine features, people presumed that he was a man simply because he was wearing trousers. He strode down to the dock, mimicking the hunched-over posture and downward stare of the workers, picked up a crate and simply walked straight onto the vessel.

Once aboard, finding a hiding place was simple. He put his crate down, shuffled towards the door again as if filing behind the rest of the crew to collect another load and then, at an opportune moment, slid sideways behind a large stack of crates in a dark corner and simply remained there. Time passed slowly but, nonetheless, it passed as time always does. Soon the shadows that the crates cast grew longer and the room grew darker as night fell and at last he heard the unmistakable purr of the paddle engine and felt the boat pull away from the dock.

A new batch of workers replaced the heavy lifters who had been in charge of bringing the cargo onboard. Thomas carefully shifted his position so that he could encourage the blood to flow through his cramped limbs and investigate the change in crew. Something was different about this bunch. They did not walk with the usual downbeat gait that affected most manual labourers. Their uniforms were not dusty, drab or worn, but quite the opposite. They were all clad in crimson trousers and jackets with bright brass buttons and jaunty peaked caps and looked more like porters in a luxury hotel than sailors or ship’s lackeys. They were engaged in deep and furious conversation regarding the placement of various items of cargo and the decoration of the ship.

For the Ball, Thomas realised. His heart beat furiously in his chest. The rumours were true. The guests were now aboard and preparing in their cabins. The red-uniformed crew would be busily engaged for the next few hours finalising preparations, and the celebrations would begin at midnight and end at dawn in a mysterious ceremony that was discussed in hushed tones of reverence.

The workers laboured nearby for several more hours and Thomas was certain that his hiding place would be given away. When finally it became obvious that the crates that he had been hiding behind were about to be unpacked he had, at the last moment, scrambled behind a curtain. His eyes widened when he saw the contents of the final crate before it was carried away. The box was brimming with phalluses of every description. Wood, ivory, even one that looked as though it was made of gold. They were carved into the strangest shapes that Thomas had seen. Some took the form of monsters with ridges running down the sides of their bodies; others were shaped like beasts of the air and sea. One was carved into the shape of a human arm and fist and was just as large.

He was filled with the desire to use one of these implements on a willing body. He closed his eyes and surrendered to the pulse of arousal that throbbed through him, that made him feel so alive. He imagined a woman lying in front of him with her legs spread wide apart and perhaps tied to the sides of the bed, wet with anticipation, begging to be jammed full of whatever he wanted to thrust inside her.

Thomas loved to dominate women, to hear their cries of arousal as they abandoned themselves to pleasure. Because he was physically a woman but behaved as a man, they were more honest with him. Women confided in him their desires to be spread wide and fucked hard and savagely in a way that their husbands or other clients were unwilling or unable to do.

From the few snippets that he had picked up throughout his research, Thomas had a vague idea of how the party-goers would be dressed, but it had all sounded too incredible to be true and now that the moment had arrived his nerve began to fail him. He had packed with him only the most basic accessories. A clean, bright-yellow cravat. A brass pin in the shape of a peacock that he had found in a student’s drawer and stolen. But he could not sneak in wearing his travel-weary, dusty trousers and shirt. He would be identified as an outsider in a moment.

There was nothing else for it. When all the workers had departed, he sorted through the boxes that had been left behind in storage until he found a supply of clean red uniforms and one that fitted him near enough. That would have done the job, but Thomas was tired of hanging around the edges of life and he did not wish to spend the night as a servant.

It was midnight. The guests would have long ago left their rooms and headed for the top floor where the Ball was being held. He donned the uniform and then picked up a pile of clean bedding and took a set of stairs up to the next level where he presumed that the guests’ quarters would be and from there he carefully jimmied a few doors until he had collected half a dozen items from different rooms. A pair of ankle-length grey trousers with a thick cuff. A double-breasted jacket with a wide collar and unflattened lapels. Unbelievably, a pair of canary-yellow socks that matched his cravat perfectly. It was a risk, of course, stealing so openly, but people who were this rich would be unlikely to notice and the chances of anyone accusing him to his face were slim. It was impossible to imagine that anyone would break into a room and wear another guest’s own clothes to the same party, and therefore it was possible.

The rooms themselves were more richly decorated than anything that Thomas had ever seen. He stroked a hand over the wallpaper. Silk! And the chandeliers were like waterfalls of crystal cascading down from the ceilings. But he knew that by lingering here he was delaying the inevitable. He could hear the merry rhythm of a ragtime tune being played on a piano and the corresponding thud of dancing feet reverberating on the wooden floorboards above him.

He carefully parted his hair into its regulation style and slicked it back so that his long, wavy fringe swooped coquettishly over one eye. Then he topped it with a wide-brimmed straw hand angled rakishly to one side and decorated with the peacock pin, and then followed the sound of the dancing feet to the highest deck.

Two red-uniformed attendants stood on either side of a thick red velvet curtain, presiding over entry into the Ball.

‘Good evening, sir,’ said one of the attendants, without so much as a questioning glance at his stolen attire.

‘Good evening,’ he replied.

‘We must warn you,’ the attendant continued, ‘do not be alarmed. All is as it should be.’

The attendant rose to his feet and pulled the curtain aside theatrically.

A wall of heat blasted towards them. Flames licked up the walls of the boat’s interior and surrounded all of the riverboat’s inhabitants in a savage, fiery glow.

Thomas gasped.

And then he stepped inside.

He caught the briefest glimpse of naked bodies, alone or in pairs, who appeared to be writhing in flames as if they had been set alight and then his eyes were covered and his hands were grasped and he was led forward. He stumbled and nearly fell, but other hands grasped him and pulled him up and along until he was lowered onto a soft divan. The jacket and trousers that he had gone to such pains to collect were swept from his shoulders and shimmied down to his ankles and removed before he could utter a single word of protest.

Had his ruse been discovered? Was he about to be thrown from the riverboat, or arrested? But the hands that attended to him were not rough in the slightest.

A pair of warm lips met his own and his mouth was prised apart gently by a tongue so soft and skilful that he thought it must belong to a woman. Fiery liquid dripped down his throat. He nearly choked, and his head was expertly pulled back and another mouthful of the liquid spat into his mouth. It was like nothing Thomas had ever tasted. Fruity and spicy and full of flavours that evoked exotic faraway lands and filled his body with a sudden surge of energy, as if he had eaten well and just awoken from a full night’s sleep.

Finally the multiple hands that attended to him withdrew and he was able to open his eyes. He looked down. He was almost entirely naked. Even the plain cotton bandage that he used daily to bind his breasts had been removed and replaced by another binding made from the finest silk. His pubic hair had been decorated with a film of some kind of fine orange paint so that his crotch resembled a flame.

‘Where am I?’ he croaked. ‘Who are you?’

‘We have been waiting for you,’ replied one of the women who attended to him. ‘You are the Bull.’

‘What?’ Thomas asked.

The woman knelt down in front of him and opened the lid of a heavy wooden chest that had been placed at his feet. The interior was lined with sumptuous blue velvet and resting upon it was a harness made from the finest leather. Attached to it was a dildo carved from ivory. The device was lifted and placed into his hands. The dildo itself was easily as long and almost as thick as his forearm and it had been carved into the likeness of a horned bull’s head, both beautiful and terrifying, and decorated with two ridged horns that Thomas knew had been designed to stimulate the inside of a woman, perhaps even to the point of pain. It was surprisingly easy to wield and the straps fastened around his thighs and waist as if the device had been fitted to him long in advance.