Mistress of Night and Dawn (8 page)

Oriole was shocked and briefly panicked, wanting to shield her breasts and sex from his view, but she knew that the regulations prohibited her from concealing any part of her nudity. She felt her face redden and a knot in her stomach clench.

Her uncle now stood next to the Matron, both of them watching her intently, silently, an ambiguous smile spreading across his thin lips. He wore his best wig and his military uniform, with the medals from the Spanish campaign.

The servants proceeded to dry her and she stood frozen under the steady, impersonal examination. Satisfied by her appearance, both her current guardians suddenly walked out, leaving her in the care of the busy maids who now proceeded to powder her body from neck to bottom, until she stood like a porcelain statue, her feet still loosely gripped by the now lukewarm water at the bottom of the copper tub.

A nudge to her shoulder indicated she should exit the bath and return to the bedroom where she was instructed to sit on a damask-print chair, still bare-bottomed, and another set of servants, their faces partly obscured by black domino masks, proceeded to brush her hair upwards until it looked like an almighty explosion of blond curls standing like a throne above her delicate features, puffed up with the help of lotions and cream into a bee’s nest of regal splendour, not unlike how the Queen, Marie-Antoinette, had appeared on that one occasion her parents had taken her to court a few years ago and she had set eyes on the monarch from half a room away.

The maids seemed to work in shifts, fine-tuning her appearance throughout the morning, layering her naked body with further white, fragrant powders until the fierce coats of snow felt like another skin, an evanescent form of clothing. She was fed rosewater syrup, but no actual food, and then they proceeded to rouge the tips of her breasts, and, after plucking her eyebrows into a perfect accent, the women then moved down to her sex and carefully shaped and trimmed the hair there.

Oriole abandoned herself to their ministrations, her mind wandering idly as she tried to distract herself, not thinking of the night that lay ahead, banishing the occasional stab of pain seizing her with every successive pluck in that delicate area of her intimacy.

She was handed a cup of aromatic tea and ordered to drink it.

‘This will help you sleep,’ she was told. Something she now craved for after the hours of cleansing and preparations, her whole body now painted, shaped, every single nerve attuned, expectant, vibrating somehow.

The beverage had a curious taste, Oriole realised, as she was gently carried to the bed and quickly fell into a deep sleep.

At the back of her mind, she knew that as night fell she had been lifted from her slumber, wrapped with warm and soft cloth and transported in a carriage across a short distance. All as if in a distant dream in which she was both herself and another.

She wiped the drowsiness from her eyes.

The stone hall was immense, illuminated by a concentric ring of torches burning bright all across its perimeter, shedding a flickering light on the spectacle unfolding below. She was sprawled across a velvet-covered divan placed on one of the balconies that overlooked the vast well. As sleep methodically ebbed away, Oriole felt a sharp, tight pressure stabbing both her nipples and, a moment later, her sex. She quickly parted the diaphanous silk robe wrapped around her body and, with a jolt of shock, noticed that she had been adorned in all her sensitive parts with small dark-orange stones. Amber, she realised. At first, she feared they had been forcibly pierced into her flesh but rapidly observed with a sigh of relief that they were actually attached by sharp clips that bit painfully into the skin where it was at its most delicate. They had never warned her about this.

As her senses gradually returned – how long had she slept? – Oriole concentrated on the pain as she had been taught and it slowly morphed into an alien form of pleasure, a deep sigh of satisfaction coursing from the tip of her breasts and sex, opening all the way down through the pit of her stomach and up to her chest, then her lips, and finally her mind, sharpening each nerve end in her body. She shuddered. Then she realised, with the garment wide open, that she was fully exposed. But no one below was looking at her and she was alone on the balcony. She pulled the material together. It was almost transparent anyway, and she knew this was no occasion for modesty. She was aware that her total nudity, later, was unavoidable. The weeks of training had readied her.

Music floated upwards from the well of the stone hall.

She raised herself, sat upright and looked down as the sound of musical instruments being tuned reached her ears.

In a far corner of the hall, a stage had been set up and a string quartet sat. To Oriole’s surprise, each of the musicians was quite naked. She noticed that they all wore oriental-like flat slippers to shield their feet from the cold stone floor and then realised she was wearing the same. Her attention was inevitably drawn, at a distance, to the members of the two male musicians, darker than the rest of their bodies, dangling provocatively between their thighs, but too far from her to see clearly. Oriole stretched her upper body and leaned over to see better and watched as the tuning ceased and the musicians froze into position, the female cellist with luxuriant red hair clutching her heavy instrument between her thighs.

The sounds of the music began, the melody, foreign and initially unfamiliar, slow, soothing her senses and cushioning the atmosphere with a cloak of seduction. It was nothing like the music that would normally be played at court, or in the parlours her parents frequented and sometimes took her to. It sounded slightly Oriental.

There was the muffled sound of dragging feet below and she rose from the divan and peered below the balcony. A dozen couples were shuffling their way across the floor, dancing, the women in extravagant pink skirts layered from the waist down like ruffled pyramids, the men in matching-coloured tight leggings. All wore nothing from the waist upwards aside from thin straps of material holding their garments up. Oriole drew her breath as she followed their hieratic movements, as they drew intricate patterns across the stone floor, a carefully designed geometry of courtship and ritual. One moment the couples were whirling wildly, hands, fingers making fleeting contact, and then the next they were separating and circling each other, like predators surveying their prey, almost mouth to mouth, breath to breath, before parting again. The sound of the music rose and the dance quickened.

Just then, the fog of sleep finally parted fully in Oriole’s mind and she remembered what was to happen first and what her part would be.

Out of nowhere, a masked servant appeared at her side, handing her a crystal glass full of wine. She brought it to her lips. It was heavy, earthy and, as it ran down her throat, sharp and heady. Once the liquid reached her stomach, the warmth inside became like a fire brewing slightly and the background pain of the bejewelled clamps began to morph into pleasure. The servant floated away and, once again, Oriole’s attention was drawn to the floor of the grand hall below.

The dancers moved languidly, but with every new phase appeared to be retreating towards the circle of the walls, leaving the centre of the hall empty.

A new woman broke through the line of the dancers and, step by step, moved to the centre of the circle they had gradually vacated. She was uncommonly tall compared to all the other dancers Oriole had been following with her gaze, covered from head to feet in a black, perilously thin silk loose gown that swam like moving water around her body, its waves shimmering with every movement she made. Once in her assigned position, she stood, her legs firmly apart, at the geometrical heart of the hall and raised her arms. Her face was lined but still incomparably beautiful, full of serenity and wisdom.

The musicians came to a halt, but stayed in place, now just spectators.

A door opened at the opposite end of the hall, which Oriole hadn’t previously noticed, the darkness of the wood blending effortlessly with the texture of the stone wall. Six domino-masked servants trooped out onto the floor, escorting the imposing silhouette of a man. Even from her distant vantage point, Oriole could recognise the richness of his clothes. The gold threads, expensive materials and the sheer delicacy of the tailoring were equalled by the nobility of his bearing. He wore a crown on his veiled head, over his powdered wig. Surely this was heresy, Oriole briefly thought, only the King was allowed a crown. Then she noted the narrow crown was not made of gold or precious metal, but of wood, diminutive white flowers and leaves, like a pagan headdress, all its elements delicately woven together.

The man radiated power and strength, even though his face was concealed from view. He took position at the centre of the hall, facing the tall woman clad in black.

As he did so, Oriole saw a series of smaller doors opening, dotted across the circumference of the stone hall, and a multitude of folk streaming into the room, arranging themselves around the circle of the wall. Again, their clothes were exquisite and elaborate. She thought for a second she recognised her father and mother amongst them, but her attention was soon captured by the woman in black’s movements.

Her raised arms alighted on the man’s shoulders, as if blessing him, or greeting him.

On this signal, the six servants surrounded him like a shield of bodies and slowly began attending to him.

First, one of the girls stood on tiptoe and reverently picked up his crown and held it in place while another servant relieved him of the powdery white wig, and then the improvised crown was returned to his head. Throughout the operation, the veil obscuring his face was left untouched.

Yet another servant approached him and began undoing his collar and then his shirt and was succeeded by a servant who pulled it away from his body, uncovering a wool vest. A hush fell over the audience.

One of the serving women moved to face him, placing herself between the woman in black and the man and got down on her knees and applied herself to untying his breeches and ceremonially pulled them down, his immense cock springing to attention. Oriole’s heart stopped and she thought she heard muffled gasps from the spectators below.

The man now stood motionless as he allowed one of the servants to pull the wool vest above his head, leaving him naked, apart from his knee-high boots polished to within an inch of shining glass in the light of the flickering torches of the hall.

Oriole swallowed. There was something both regal and animal, feral even, about the Master of Ceremonies. Her heartbeat was quickening by the minute.

The woman in black, the Mistress of the Ball, clapped her hands and the servants crept away.

She approached the man and Oriole perceived the sharp intake of the crowd’s breath.

The red-haired cello player’s bow initiated a languorous caress of the instrument’s strings and a deep, melancholy tone filled the air.

The Mistress took the Master’s cock into her hands and it hardened instantly, growing to an even more daunting size between her fingers.

Oriole could not draw her eyes away.

Then the woman in black moved closer and took the man into her mouth.

Oriole gasped.

There was a tap on her shoulder and she turned round, although her whole soul was captivated by the spectacle below and she felt she couldn’t afford to miss a single moment of the ritual.

It was the Marquis. She recognised him from the small portraits adoring the title pages of some of the books he had written, some whilst imprisoned, and which the Matron had recently instructed her to read, to complete her sexual education. They had left her both disgusted and fascinated, and overall profoundly disturbed.

He was dressed like an Italian Polichinelle, in bright colours, his outfit much too tight for his rotundity.

‘Now,’ he whispered. ‘The time has come.’

Oriole rose. She blushed as she watched his eyes travel across her barely concealed nudity below the transparent gown.

He offered his hand to guide her, but she declined and opted to follow him.

Past the door to the balcony parapet where she had been installed, down a long, winding circular stone staircase, torches flickering like night fires along their passage, and finally reaching an oval antechamber where the Marquis left her.

‘Wait here.’

Oriole stood in silence, shivered. Her ears strained for the sound of the cello, but it had faded away behind the thickness of the stone wall that now separated her from the main hall.

Finally, the door facing her opened slowly and the crowds parted and allowed her a vision of the woman in black kneeling at the feet of the man and pleasuring him with ardour and assiduity.

There was a pat on her back and Oriole advanced.

As she crossed the threshold of the room, the diaphanous silk robe she had been wearing was pulled from her and she stepped ahead, naked but for the soft slippers and the jewellery provocatively decorating her private parts.

As much as she wanted, she was unable to look anywhere but ahead, remembering all the lessons of the past months, the instructions, the reasons for the ritual, how her destiny had been revealed to her, leaving her both expectant and apprehensive.

‘Now,’ someone whispered behind her and the word was carried along a hundred or so lips, like a twisted choir, ‘
Now
.’

She had reached the couple and the Mistress stepped back, exposing the man’s cock. Up close it was beautiful and fierce, dark, strong, dangerous, inviting.

Four of the male dancers she had witnessed earlier in full ceremonial movement approached her from behind as the Mistress retreated from her frame of vision, leaving only the Master, in all his splendour.

Each dancer took hold of her at the same moment, two at the shoulders and another two seizing her calves and Oriole was lifted in the air. Her legs were parted and, her face blushing like it had never done before, she realised how wet she was.

The Master moved into position and the dancers lowered her onto him.