Yearn (7 page)

The three stood now a little dazed on the damp grass, waiting for some direction from D'Arcy.

“I have some robes for us, if you would all like to change into them while I arrange the ground cloth upon which we are to execute the ritual.” He tried to sound authoritarian and somber. Prudence glanced dubiously over at the piglet.

“What about the pig? You ain't said nothing 'bout the pig.”

“That's right, sir,” Amelia chimed in. “I don't do animals.” She looked anxiously over at Harry, whose bemused gaze slid back to D'Arcy.

“Fear not, the pig is to be sacrificed to the goddess,” D'Arcy retorted brusquely.

“Sacrificed?” Prudence squealed in unison with the pig, which seemed to have understood. With a grin, Harry ran his finger across his throat to illustrate, a gesture that sent the girls into a cascade of shrill shrieks, more of delight than fear, D'Arcy noted.

Walking over to the small glade open to the sky, he threw down the ground cloth, then used a small compass to arrange it so that the symbols faced in the correct directions beneath the stars. He pulled out the large clock he had brought and consulted it. It was three-thirty a.m.; according to the Royal Astronomical Society dawn was to be at four-fifty that morning—they had just over an hour.

“Time to get acquainted,” he announced to the other three. The four of them knelt, one on each corner of the ground cloth, their foreheads daubed with pig's blood. The unfortunate animal lay over the symbol D'Arcy had calculated to represent the dawn goddess. It hadn't been easy killing it—in the end Harry had to slit its throat—but it had died swiftly enough with one last lingering glance of reproach at D'Arcy. The yam, also a food sacrifice to the dawn goddess, lay next to the slaughtered pig, and the traveling clock (brought solely for D'Arcy to time the event exactly) was well within sight—a strangely contemporary artifact in a tableau that had already started to draw all of them into a more immemorial ambience.

It was undeniable; D'Arcy felt the mysticism of the ritual rush through his blood like an opiate. An air of eerie reverence had fallen over the others; even Prudence, the most earthy and cynical of creatures, now dressed in the thin white silk robe he had given each of them to wear, seemed spellbound, almost hypnotized as D'Arcy lifted his hands to the sky, one hand clad in Tuttle's white glove. “Oh Atanua, great goddess of dawn and of all things fertile, we have given the spirit of this animal to you and we will give more—our very life-spirit in union. I seek the body-sight of my enemy—in your name, great Atanua, I seek to see through the windows of his soul. I beg, Atanua, in the name of all the valleys, rivers, and oceans you have given birth to, grant me this wish. . . .”

Nearby, in a small grove of trees, D'Arcy could hear the coachman give a polite cough followed by the sound of his footsteps as he walked farther away. Relieved, D'Arcy dropped his hands. To his surprise there was no embarrassment, no shame to his actions. It was as if now, here, psychologically prepared and dressed in the robe, he was the priest, the Tupia, described in Banks's journal; it was as if he had undergone this very ritual before, so powerful was its influence on him.

D'Arcy pulled off the white glove and placed it ceremoniously in the center of the ground cloth, then looked across at Harry, the young sweep—his erection evident under his thin robe.

D'Arcy nodded. “And now we will begin.” He moved over to Prudence and lifted her robe. The thick curls of her pubic hair sat neatly between her thighs; the small pert breasts with the large nipples stood high on her chest. Roughly he thrust his hand between her legs. To his surprise she was already damp, her labia sticky against his wrist. Her long blond hair, now loose, hung down to her waist, and cascaded down to the ground as he lowered her onto her back. She gazed up at him with a look that was half submission, half wonder, and he could tell that the ritualized atmosphere of the orgy had transported even Prudence, a practiced professional.

Cupping her two small breasts in his large hands, he sucked each of her nipples in turn, nipping them gently between his teeth, then ran his tongue down the center of her small body to the apex of her sex, pert and ready for him. As if on cue Amelia slid behind Prudence and, lifting Prudence's knees, parted the older woman's legs as if offering her to D'Arcy. Prudence groaned in excitement. D'Arcy parted her with his fingers and began to suck and lick the small hard bud of her sex, his fingers slipping into both entrances. It was as if Prudence's spread-eagled figure was the center of the formation, the beginning of the dance they had to perform, the first position of a movement that had to culminate in a certain configuration, one that had been sketched in Banks's secret journal. It was an image that D'Arcy felt, hung suspended over his burning lips, his pulsating member, the roar of sheer pleasure pounding through him.

Looking up he saw that Amelia had moved her hands and mouth to Prudence's breasts and that Harry had pulled his robe off. His muscular body, oiled, glistened in the moonlight. He was erect, with a member that jutted out, disproportionately large, from his slender torso. The young sweep reached across and ripped the thin silk of Amelia's robe. Her full buttocks and heavy breasts immediately came into view, a sight that excited D'Arcy even further. Amelia, seemingly paying no attention whatsoever, continued to suck each of Prudence's nipples in turn, her fingers pinching and squeezing. The sweep, as if angry, pushed Amelia's back down so that she was forced to kneel on all fours. He then parted her buttocks, pushing them as far apart as he could. For a moment D'Arcy watched as the sweep paused, almost as if he were examining the young girl's nether parts, then his face disappeared as he buried his mouth and tongue between her buttocks. Moments later Amelia began emitting short screams of excitement, her pleasure exciting Prudence, D'Arcy noticed, as her sex began to clench around his tongue and fingers.

D'Arcy paused for a moment. He had to time all their climaxes to the exact same moment. This he had explained patiently to the other three during the coach trip, emphasizing, despite their evident amusement at the difficulty of such a feat, that it was absolutely vital the timing was perfect.

Above him Harry shifted and, after lifting his face up, inserted himself into Amelia. For a moment the young girl gasped, no doubt surprised by his size, D'Arcy couldn't help observing a little ruefully. Then her pained expression changed into one of pleasure. Grabbing at her heavy breasts, the sweep began thrusting into her: slowly at first, then faster and faster. He caught D'Arcy's gaze—again the young biographer was worried that they might climax too early. Catching the meaning of D'Arcy's expression, the sweep smiled back at him, confident and cocky, as if to say he was still in control, but there was something else in that smile, a magnetism that kept the two men locked in that gaze as they both made love to others as if they were making love to each other.

D'Arcy tilted his face so that he could see the clock—they had another twenty minutes before dawn, before the moment of climax. Following his gaze, Harry pulled out of Amelia.

Moments later D'Arcy, still kneeling with his face and lips on Prudence's sex, suddenly felt his own robe being pulled up; large hands parted his own buttocks, and with a startled moan (muffled by the thick bush of the prostitute's sex) he felt the touch of a hot tongue penetrating him while large rough fingers encircled his swollen yard. D'Arcy had never felt anything quite like it, and it took all his concentration not to come. Two thick fingers probed him, easing him open. D'Arcy felt pinned, yielding in a way he'd never yielded in his life, yet it did not repulse him but excited him, and the thick blunt tip of the sweep's cock pushed into him. D'Arcy almost screamed in a pain that was so close to pleasure that the two became interchangeable as the sweep increased his tempo. In reaction his own fingers thrust in and out of the now soaking orifices of Prudence, faster and faster—two fingers, three fingers; deeper and deeper as her muscles contracted and rippled under his touch.

Above him he could hear the groans of all of them resounding in the glade. Somewhere an owl hooted, almost in response. He was too close to coming. He pulled himself away from Harry and stopped, sitting up. Harry leaned across and nuzzled the back of his neck, the alien roughness of a man's skin arousing him further. Standing up, D'Arcy moved around to Amelia, who now slid her face down to Prudence's wet sex. It was an arousing sight, the young girl's fingers spreading open the older woman, her tongue and lips eagerly playing the clitoris. Watching, D'Arcy took hold of Amelia's large buttocks and maneuvered them so that she now crouched over Prudence's face. The prostitute needed no encouragement: her hands slipped around and parted the buttocks as if offering the young girl up to D'Arcy, while beneath she eagerly began sucking on the young girl's clitoris. Harry, watching him, lifted Prudence's legs so that they slipped over his thighs, his engorged member waiting to enter the prostitute from underneath while Amelia still pleasured her from above.

D'Arcy looked over at the sweep; they were nearly in position for the final act, the final movement—a formation he had planned with the sweep beforehand and the final position described in the ritual. He nodded at the sweep and then in unison both men entered Amelia, D'Arcy from behind and Harry from above, at the same time Harry buried his mouth into Prudence's sex as she stood over him. D'Arcy glanced over at the clock; there were five minutes to go. The dawn, a thin red streak across the horizon, was beginning to break.

D'Arcy began to thrust eagerly into Amelia, her tight youth grasping him like a silk glove, while Harry mimicked his every thrust. It was as if the four of them had dissolved into one organism. As white-hot pleasure soared through his blood, the groans and screams melded together so that D'Arcy could not tell his pleasure from Harry's nor Amelia's nor Prudence's. Now the red lip of the sun was breaking over the trees. Reaching down, D'Arcy picked up the wooden bowl of water and held it out to Harry. Together they lifted it over the writhing women to catch the first rays of sun in its waters and all four of them simultaneously reached a shuddering, howling orgasm. Moments later D'Arcy lost consciousness and suddenly found himself staring through the eyes of Horace Tuttle.

 • • • 

The next morning D'Arcy awoke and found he was safely tucked into his bed and wearing his usual summer nightgown. He lay there contemplating the sunlight dancing upon the ornate plaster ceiling—specters of light that appeared to be fornicating and writhing with the same sensual pleasure still echoing through his body. The ritual had worked. It had worked! The startling intelligence of this realization jolted him into a sitting position—but at what cost! The horror of what he had witnessed through Horace Tuttle flooded back. It was impossible to either ignore or dismiss, and D'Arcy knew that any last trace of morality or belief in Man's better nature had left him forever. The whole experience had aged him, knocking the last remnants of naïveté and idealism out of him. From now on it was dog-eat-dog—that was the true character of Mankind (biographers were no exception), and he had better get used to it.

Strengthened by his resolve, he swung his legs out of the bed and immediately went over to the framed photograph he had on the dresser. It was of Clementine, his fiancée, an elegant portrait of her carefully posed in flounced summer dress, lace-trimmed bonnet, and parasol under a painted bower of flowers. She'd given it to him in the early days of their courtship, when she was forced to depart for Europe for a trip with her mother, Horace Tuttle's sister, to Florence, a trip meant to deter the young heiress from marrying. Such feigned innocence, he thought, looking down at the picture, such a deceptively angelic face.

Now D'Arcy was even more determined to both destroy and supersede Horace Tuttle—any lingering residue of respect for the older writer had evaporated. A sudden violence swept through him. Picking up the photograph, he threw it against the bedroom wall. It shattered, showering the floor beneath in glass fragments and splintered wood. Leaving the debris there, D'Arcy hurried down to his writing room.

 • • • 

The mad scratching of the quill against the paper was the only sound in the study. The room had started to darken and with it came that timeless tranquility that sometimes falls upon even the noisiest of cities. Henries, the butler, stood with the dinner tray at the open door. The absorbed young biographer, still in his dressing gown, did not look up from his desk. D'Arcy had been writing for hours with a fury Henries hadn't witnessed before. It was as if another, older man possessed the young writer—a new anger had hollowed out his cheeks, and his limbs seemed infused with a frenetic energy that someone else might have recognized as rage. The butler wondered whether he shouldn't inform Lord Hammer of his son's condition but, at a loss as to how to actually define the condition, he decided it might be wiser to wait and see what kind of creature emerged at the end. Sighing and filled with a dismay he couldn't quite fathom, the elderly servant quietly placed the dinner tray on a side table, switched on the gas lamps, which each burst into a warm glow, then picked up the luncheon tray; the food on it was untouched.

Four hours later, D'Arcy put down his pen. Closing his eyes, he breathed in deeply, then exhaled. The whistle of his breath rustled the pages, scattering them wildly across his desk, shuffling them like the cards of an ominous tarot deck. D'Arcy opened his eyes and tentatively picked up the chapter he'd just spent twelve hours composing—Joseph Banks's experience of the ritual, transcribed and meticulously interlineated with footnotes. As he scanned down the lines a great surge of excitement began to thump against the walls of his chest. His mouth went dry. “Genius,” he said out loud.