Spank: The Improbable Adventures of George Aloysius Brown (24 page)

But back to business with a bit more urgency this time. George learned, for example, that the year 1577 (the year of the royal spanking, as he referred to it) had special significance because on Nov. 24 in front of 78 of the richest and most powerful nobles in the land Catherine de Medici had inaugurated a magnificent new gallery at Chateau Chennonceau constructed in honor of her son King Henry 111. Built on a bridge over the river leading to the castle, it was sixty
meters
long and was hung with the finest Flemish tapestries and portraits in oil of the nobles of the House of Valois.

Here, culminating in a sumptuous banquet, Catherine staged one of the spectacular court festivals for which she was famous throughout
Europe
. These epic events known as
'
magnificences
'
sometimes lasted two or three days involving jousting and other martial skills, but most importantly they were a platform fit for the Queen to demonstrate her patronage of the arts. There would be ballet, opera, orchestral music, the reciting of poetry and the performance of elaborately costumed mythological pageants set to the music of contemporary composers. And for the closing banquet Catherine had choreographed performance art that
"
would delight and astonish
"
all who saw it. Here there was footnote referencing a book published in Paris in 1886 entitled
Princ
es
and
Peccadillos
:
A
History
of
Ribaldry
in
Mediaeval
Europe
and rifling through its yellowed pages and translating as he went using admittedly rudimentary schoolboy French, George paraphrased what he read as follows:
On the night of Nov. 24, 1577, the Queen issued a royal challenge to the ladies of the court and to the serving wenches who waited on the tables as to who among them in her judgment could display the
'
most comely bottom
'
. The winner
'
s reward was lifetime court tenure, a purse of five gold sovereigns, and, in front of all the nobles and dignitaries of
France
, she would have her asset spanked by the Queen.

Now that, George said to himself later, as he went through his notes over a pint of bitter, must have been one hell of banquet. What he wouldn
'
t have given to be a fly on the wall at that one. And then it struck him, a moment of genuine literary inspiration. He jotted a few notes on the back of a beer mat and as soon as he got home he put the kettle on and booted up his computer. An exclusive report from the banquet hall, he thought. Well why not. This was a job for Doctor Whom.
He began to write.

By Our Special Correspondent

CHATEAU CHENNONCEAU,
France
, Nov. 24, 1577 –
I am a fly on the wall.

I see everything
.

I am
musca
domestica,
a common housefly, reporting to you upside down from a roof joist in the Great Gallery of this magnificent castle, which tonight will be inaugurated by Catherine de Medici in honor of her son the King.

Far below me the rich and powerful, bishops and cardinals, the knights and their fair ladies are assembling for what promises to be an astonishing climax to the most magnificent 'magnificence' of the century.

And the buzzzz (no pun intended) is that evening will conclude with a special performance the like of which has never before been witnessed in all the glory of
France
.

Only Doctor Whom, Lord of Time, now metamorphosed into Doctor Fly, will not be shocked as events unfold. In fact I intend to have some fun with it, as you will see.

But before festivities get under way, I had better log a little flying time. I must have complete confidence in my aeronautical specifications if I am going to survive the night. I do a couple of circuits of the Great Gallery well above the heads of the assembled guests. At my top speed of five miles per hour this takes several minutes, which if you are chasing me with a rolled up copy of the Treaty of Amiens would be hazardous to my health, but I zig and I zag at warp speed. My kind are the most accomplished flying machines on earth.

Our wings beat 200 times a second which gets us airborne in 100 milliseconds, three times faster than it takes your brain to tell your hand to swat me. Sticky pads on my feet allow me to walk on walls and ceilings. On final approach I kick my forelegs over my head making contact with my gummy front pads, then with an acrobatic somersault that would do credit to Cirque de SoleiI, I flip over and touch down with my rear feet. Is that brilliant, or what? And I am blessed with extraordinary sight.

Each of my eyes has two thousand lenses giving me multi-angle vision in all directions. Without having to move I can count the hairs on the nose of the Duke of Orleans, while sixty
meters
away at the far end of the gallery I watch the Bishop of Boulogne, who thinks no-one can see him, slip a fat ringed finger up the skirt of the Dowager Bergerac, recently widowed.

Go ahead, try to swat me. Make my day.

For practice, and with a nod to his holiness, I plunge into the cleavage of the Duchess of Agincourt whom I had observed during my peregrinations has the most magnificently succulent breasts. I take a leisurely stroll around her nipples before she shrieks and clutches at her bosom by which time I am airborne and back to the safety of the rafters.

As I consider how next to test my wings, I hear from the direction of the castle's north wing a fanfare of trumpet, fife and drum. This tells me dinner is about to be served.

And what a feast it is.

There is wild boar, freshly killed in the hunt, spit roasted and stuffed with turnips, carrots and parsnips. Whole lambs there are and sides of beef, roast suckling pigs spiced with basil, rosemary and nutmeg. There are pheasants dressed with their own feathers, peacocks, swans, herons, and other birds dished up in ragouts and pottages and baked into pies. There are herrings from
Calais
, salted and smoked, and bread rolls baked from the finest flour, spread with fresh butter churned in the castle kitchen. Instinct tells me I should also get stuck in, planting my sticky feet in a succulent side dish of truffles, but I put aside the temptation.

What a fly!

To aid with digestion there are on every table flagons of wine and casks of foaming ale of which the assembled liberally partake. With each course, the nobles become drunker and more raucous and when the serving wenches begin baring their bottoms – to win grace and favor of Catherine de Medici, not to mention five gold pieces – their enthusiasm reaches a crescendo.

As each wench bows and hoists her skirt the cheers ring to the rafters drowning out the accompaniment of harps and flutes.

I see and hear it all.

At the head table, the pompous Grand Duke of Boesse is becoming increasingly obnoxious. During the first course the smelly oaf monopolized the conversation with a boring and self-serving account of some long-forgotten crusade to the
Holy Land
in which he had played a peripheral role. By the second course, as the serving wenches move among the tables he gropes at them with bloated and hairy-backed fingers until I can tolerate his buffoonery and bad manners no longer.

I drop from the ceiling and land squarely on his red bulbous nose. Angrily, he brushes me away. I go to one ear, then to the other, provoking more futile batting and flapping then I settle in the crevice of one of his many sweaty chins. He swears at me, a terrible profanity. In response I fly into his mouth and shit on his tongue and fly out again before he can so much as gnash his teeth. Finally, I alight next to a flagon of wine directly before him and sit there motionless, apparently spent. The other nobles laugh uproariously to see such sport and the Grand Duke's face is purple with rage. The fool aims a clumsy blow at the spot where I used to be. But instead of splatting me as was his intent he knocks over the flagon which crashes into the next one and this one into its
neighbo
r
until
France
's finest claret flows off the table in a torrent, pooling in the gowns of their ladyships and staining the doublets of the noble lords.

This provokes a fist fight with an old enemy the Duke of Aubergine and Boesse gets a bloody nose for his trouble. But at the head of the table, seated on satin cushions upon a gilded throne, Catherine de Medici is not amused. These elaborate entertainments have a political and pragmatic purpose supposedly to preoccupy her feuding nobles and distract them from fighting each other. The intent is to divert and delight not to provoke the outbreak of unseemly brawls.

And apparently, it's all my fault.

"
Send for the Royal Flycatcher,
"
she commands.

This silences the room at least momentarily and satisfied I have caused enough damage for the nonce, I retreat unseen to the back of her throne hiding myself on a decorative frieze in the crook of a bishop's miter. From here I can look over the magisterial shoulder and watch for the entrance of the fly slayer.

Ha ha ha. She must be kidding. If flies could laugh and slap their knees I would now be laughing and slapping.

The title of Royal Flycatcher is a patronage appointment in the court of Catherine de Medici and the ancient retainer who occupies the post has been on the royal payroll since Joan of Arc was a girl. On his elaborately costumed back are two wings shaped as my own, made of taffeta, and on his head is a fool's cap with twin peaks each in the form of the eye of a fly. He is equipped with a large net on the end of a pole that he carries on his shoulder like a pikestaff.

I lead him a merry dance.

Flying three inches ahead of his outstretched net at approximately the height of his nose we pirouette among the tables as the revelers cheer him on with shouts of tally ho. I drop back to two inches and then to one. Odds bodkins, he almost has me. But with final lunge of his net he over-reaches, loses his balance and down he goes clutching at a table cloth which sends everything flying before he pitches nose first in an untidy heap onto a platter of greasy pheasant bones.

The crowd loves it. The palace is in an uproar.

The Queen, more than before, is even less amused.

"
Away with you fool,
"
says she.
"
On with the show.
"

Now the evening's entertainment proceeds to its historic conclusion.

From among the serving wenches one is chosen by popular acclaim and indeed, through the perspective of four thousand lenses all of which have been evaluating the contenders, I can report without fear of contradiction that not a prettier bottom exists in all of
France
. Its cheeks are pale and flawless, exquisitely firm and round and from the base of her spine to the great divide is a thin line of golden down like the fuzz on a peach. But of all the wenches, clever girl, she has hitherto revealed the least of herself, offering only brief, tantalizing glimpses to the assembled who are lusting and panting to see more. Only I, the fly, can take a closer look, which I now do in the interests of full and complete disclosure. I make a darting foray beneath her skirts, although unlike the oaf Boesse, now sleeping it off in the castle dungeon, I look but don't touch, at least that's my story, and keep a respectful distance from her maidenhood.

Now is the turn of the noble women to bare their bottoms for royal approval and from among these Catherine de Medici will choose her champion to go against the wench. To the music of madrigals the ladies of the court assemble on stage holding hands as they circle the Queen in a slow and courtly dance. They are masked to hide their identity but otherwise are naked except for silk scarves around their necks that hang just low enough to protect their modesty. As they move the silks drift and sway and the audience, now in raptures, drifts and sways in synchronized voyeurism. Finally, with a great roll of drums, Her Majesty makes her choice and bids her champion remove her mask. There are gasps of astonishment. It is the lovely Ang
è
le, youngest daughter of the Duke of Avignon, newly arrived in court.

Now the throng is on its feet. Should the grand winner be the aristocratic Lady of Avignon or should it be the people's choice, the maid Marianne of Armentieres. There is a great clamor in the house and loud debate.

And here, regrettably, I must draw a veil of my own for to identify the winner would be indelicate at best and at worst would attract the retrospection of historians. But I, Doctor Fly, am not quite done yet. As a final act – as my time here is almost up – I will play a choreographer's role. When the winner has received her five gold pieces and in gratitude has assumed a position over the Queen's knee to receive a royal spanking, I make my move. Unseen by the mob which is now jostling for position like revolutionaries at the palace gates, I land on one of her beautiful buttocks and sit there as still as a freckle.

Alas, there is no time to enjoy the moment as I have soon to take evasive action. The Queen's hand falls swiftly and without warning, but whether she's swatting the fly or spanking the bottom it's not clear. By the time her hand lands on one cheek I have jumped to other. Back and forth I go, forth and back, until the buttocks beneath my feet redden and squirm and the recipient of the Queen's largesse utters little mewling cries of pleasure. And then with a nod to the Bishop of Boulogne who I now observe is groping the buttocks of the Dowager Bergerac, I seek refuge in the nether regions.