The Burning (19 page)

Or he could take himself in hand and do what they would not. He didn’t care how raw he was. He would go insane if he did not do something. He paced the room like a tiger, distracted by the throbbing in his cock. He sat abruptly on his bench, head bent, his eyes clenched shut so he could not see his erect and needing member. They had told him straight out not to do it. He wanted to obey them. He did. He wanted what they had to give him. Salvation. But would they know? If his performance tonight wasn’t quite what they could wish, he would plead exhaustion
.

He stood, looking around wildly. The fire was almost out. He strode around the bench, and threw some logs onto the grate, then tried to still himself as he watched a flame lick out at the oak from the coals
.

Steady. Just steady yourself,
he thought. The fire caught. The logs went up in conflagration. It echoed the burning inside him. His eyes filled. He fell to his knees. His cock throbbed insistently, hateful thing that it was. He grabbed it and jerked at it
.

It didn’t take long. His semen sizzled in the flames as he spurted. The orgasm shook him like a terrier shakes a rat to kill it. When it was done, he collapsed against the hearth
.

He did not know how long it was before he roused himself. It was still light outside. He could feel that. But darkness was approaching. He got to his hands and knees
.

He could smell his semen. The hearth had several dark, wet stains on it
.

God above! They would be able to smell it, too. Panic took him as he looked around for something to clean it up with. They gave him no blankets. There! Under the sideboard, a napkin had been left behind when the monks cleared the wine and tidbits away last night. He scrambled over and snatched it up. Wetting it at his basin, he scrubbed at the stains on the hearth
.

Calm yourself.
The room must always smell of sex, though he couldn’t smell it himself anymore. They would not be able to distinguish this smell from the other, more general one. He needn’t panic. He threw the napkin on the fire and watched it burn to ash
.

The monks with the water for his bath and his dinner were early. Brother Flavio threw open the door and looked around. He had never repeated his recognition or his confidences with Stephan. Indeed he rarely spoke. But today was different. “We’re missing a napkin,” he accused
.

Stephan made a show of peering around the room. “Have you tried the corridor?” What could they care for a silly napkin? Still, anxiety ramped up inside him
.

Flavio sniffed the air and searched the room again. His eyes rested on the hearth. Stephan saw that the place where he had scrubbed at the stone had not quite dried. Flavio turned back to Stephan. His face went closed. He motioned the monks in. They changed out the bathwater and left a tray of mutton and cabbage with a sour cream sauce. Flavio frowned and then strode out through the door. The bolt thudded into place
.

Stephan dove for the bath and scrubbed himself with soap until his skin was raw. He couldn’t eat his dinner, so he left it on the sideboard. He sat on his bench and waited. He could smell nothing. Their senses could not be that much more sensitive than his. Could they?

When next the door burst open, the Daughters entered, already suspicious
.

“Flavio says a napkin is missing,” Deirdre charged. They sniffed the air. Deirdre smiled. “So. You have disobeyed us.”

Stephan fell from where he sat on the bench to his knees on the carpet before them
.

“He lasted longer than we thought he would.” Freya’s voice was reasonable
.

“
And
you didn’t eat,” Estancia added. It seemed a nail in his coffin. Stephan’s fear ramped up. He swallowed. He only hoped his offense was not enough to warrant banishment from Mirso. How could he have succumbed?

“Inevitable, but you must still be punished.” Deirdre put her hands on her hips
.

Freya looked sad. She turned away and went to pour herself some wine
.

“Not until dawn,” Estancia pouted. “We have time for our pleasure and he must be drained, after all.”

“We will not use him tonight, Stancie. Since he is so eager to spill his seed himself, we shall indulge him.” Deirdre motioned to Freya. Freya brought a bowl and put it down in front of him. They stood close around him. He could feel their power humming in the air. “Grasp yourself and spill your seed in the bowl,” Deirdre ordered
.

He wanted to shake his head, but there was no refusing them. He took hold of his cock
.

“More roughly.”

He obeyed
.

Time after time, they brought his erection up and bid him handle himself until he came into the bowl. The final time, there was no fluid left and the orgasm was painful. When at last they released him he collapsed onto the carpet feeling stripped and raw inside and out
.

“Stancie, call for the workmen,” Deirdre ordered. Estancia slid out the door
.

Freya knelt beside him. She picked damp strands of hair from his forehead and smoothed them back from his temple. “Let him rest, Dee, until dawn. He will need his strength.”

Stephan’s spirit was exhausted as well as his body. What had happened tonight, what had been happening for months now, could not be advancing to his goal. But he had no choice. He was trapped in an endless process. These women could make him do whatever they wanted
.

Two monks came in carrying heavy manacles. He watched dully as they fastened them to rings at each corner of the underside of the bench. They coiled on the carpet like strange metal beasts. What were they for? They couldn’t hold him
.

Deirdre answered his silent question. “Of course you could break them. You could use your power to translocate and escape. But you will not. These chains will act as a reminder to you of the restraint you must learn. Lie on the stone, on your back,” she ordered. Stephan heaved himself onto the bench where Freya locked the manacles on wrists and ankles
.

“Leave him, Freya. We will come for him at dawn.”

The door thudded closed, the bar slid into place. Still, he heard them talking. “He is becoming even more highly sexed,” Freya noted. “His progress is rapid.”

“I agree. That means we must be even more careful to go slowly,” Deirdre said
.

“But Father wants him ready as soon as possible.” This from Estancia, petulant
.

“We can’t afford another failure.” Deirdre’s voice was always so implacable. How could anyone disobey her?

A door in the corridor clunked shut faintly. This was progress? And what did they mean, another failure?What punishment was in store for him? He should be afraid. But that was more than he could muster. They would do what they would do. Eventually, he dozed on the warm slab. The feeling of being stripped and vulnerable slid into his dreams and created nightmares
.

That was why he was easily roused. Nearly two years, in the end, before he had ridden out of Mirso Monastery as the man he was now.
Still ill-prepared,
a voice inside him whispered.
But it didn’t matter. He did what was necessary. He did what he could. He was steadfast.

The girl’s room around him suddenly seemed too small. There wasn’t enough air in here. He couldn’t sit here all night and remember Dee and Freya. Stancie, God forbid! He staggered to his feet and looked around wildly. He should leave, right now, before these memories raked his bloody soul for another instant. But leaving might not banish them. Where would he go? The cool woods so like and yet not like the forests around Mirso? The tavern with its bawdy wenches entertaining their coarse beaux? Not likely to calm his arousal.

The nursery came in to focus as he spun around. Books! There were bookshelves everywhere. That’s what he needed, to lose himself in a book as he never could at Mirso. He strode toward the shelves, scanned them frantically. There was a surprising variety. And not just a nursery’s schoolbooks. History, the Greeks, French and Italian languages, Marcus Aurelius, Cicero, Hegel’s
Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences,
Karamzin’s
History of the Russian Empire,
Savigny, Dugald Stewart, Schopenhauer, Bell’s
New Idea of Anatomy of the Brain,
Davy’s
Elements of Chemical Philosophy,
and the modern poets—Keats’s
Endymion,
Shelley’s
Prometheus Unbound,
Wordsworth’s
The White Doe of Rylstone,
and most of Scott’s novels of course, including his latest,
Ivanhoe
. . . Who would have thought a young girl would have read so widely? They must be hers. He picked up a volume, any volume. It happened to be a book of poetry.
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
by George Gordon, Lord Byron. He let it fall open and read a stanza. Not bad. The poetry was energetic, lyrical, and sometimes a little more. He read a section of Canto IV:

Oh Time! The beautifier of the dead,
Adorner of the ruin, comforter
And only healer when the heart hath bled:
Time! The corrector where our judgments err,
The test of truth, love—sole philosopher,
For all beside are sophists—from thy thrift,
Which never loses though it does defer—
Time, the avenger! Unto thee I lift
My hands, and eyes and heart . . .

A painful smile curved his lips and he wondered how old the poet was. He guessed very young. This Byron was quite wrong about time. It neither healed nor avenged. It slowly sapped the life from you with small transgressions and large, yours and others against you, that never healed but only festered. He scanned several other passages. Forgiveness. The hero of the piece cursed those who had transgressed against him with forgiveness. Did the author mean to make a tortured hero? Stephan shook his head. The puppy didn’t know what tortured was. Tortured was when you were the one who required forgiveness and no one could forgive you, even yourself. Then there was only atonement . . .

The threat of dawn crept through the window of the nursery. Stephan was exhausted with memory. He should go now. He wondered if he could bear another night sitting by the still figure who nonetheless roused him so he had to practice constant control. He tossed the Byron to the floor. Apparently books could not command his thoughts, either.

He glanced at the girl. Her lips were dry again. He wet the cloth and mopped her brow, rubbed her lips with the contents of a small jar that smelled like medicinal ointment. How long could one go without food and water? She might just waste away, never again seeing the daylight that was her birthright. That brought a sere of pain. His fault. He folded the cloth neatly, and touched her jaw once more. He shouldn’t want her to recover. She might know what he was. If she did, would he have the courage to do what must be done? If she
recovered, she could be the next of his failures, and another lapse would keep him out of Mirso Monastery forever. If he disposed of her, he knew the guilt would stain him even further. He closed his eyes, once.

There was another possibility. Perhaps she would remember nothing when she woke. He resolved to brave the doctor with some questions before he decided what to do. With a grim set to his lips, he called the blackness.

Ten

The townspeople of Cheddar Gorge could not stop talking about the murders. Their obsessive discussion kept him awake. He sat in a chair when tossing on his bed became oppressive. With relish or with fear, with wrath or rampant speculation, the tavern seethed all day with the subject. They suspected him, of course. He expected that.

“What is ’e doing here?” a woman hissed. “I don’t believe for a minute that he’s looking for a ’ouse to let.”