Raptor (11 page)

She said in a shy voice, but with eagerness in her eyes, “Do you think…?”

“It might. It cannot hurt to try.”

“And you would not mind… doing such a thing?”

“Not at all,” I said, and truthfully. What had been repulsive when Brother Peter forced me to it seemed not at all so, now, with the beautiful Deidamia. As I bent my head down there, I said, “This may even give you a new kind of pleasure.”

Well, I knew it would, and it did, on the instant. As soon as I put my mouth there, Deidamia’s whole body jolted as if I had touched that sensitive little nub with a piece of briskly rubbed amber.

“Akh, my
dear!”
she gasped. “Akh, meins
Guth!”
It was a pleasure to me, too, to give her so much joy. She threshed and twisted so wildly that, after a while, I had to clasp my arms about her hips to keep my mouth where it belonged. At last, after a long, long time, she gasped weakly, breathlessly, “Ganohs… enough. Ganohs, leitils svistar…” I raised up, to lie supine beside her again, and she went on panting for a while. Then, when she had got her breath, she said, “But how selfish I have been! All that for me and nothing for you.”

“Ne, ne, I quite enjoyed—”

“Hush. You must be totally fatigued.”

“Well, not totally,” I said, and grinned.

“Akh, ja, I see,” she said, smiling. “Now, do you not move, Sister Thorn. Lie there just as you are, and let me roll atop you… so. Now let this warm and grateful inside place of mine envelope
your
precious, patient thing… so… and softly give it Holy Communion… so…”

On perhaps the third or fourth occasion of my paying my particular attention to Deidamia’s undeveloped little nub, she stopped me before she had become too excited. She tugged gently at my hair to lift my head away from there, and said, “Sister Thorn, would you… turn your body… so… while you do that?”

I asked, “It would make it better for you? If I am, so to speak, upside down?”

“Akh, it
could
not be better for me, dear girl!” Then she blushed as she said, “I think you deserve to experience the same pleasure you have been giving to me.”

And when we
both
bent our mouths to that mutual enterprise, we
both
instantly convulsed in a paroxysm that made Deidamia’s previous spasms seem like mere palsy by comparison. When at last we wafted slowly down from the heights, I could do no more than pant and perspire, but Deidamia was swallowing, then licking her lips, then swallowing again, over and over. I must have made some sort of noise of inquiry, for she smiled at me, a little shakily, and her voice was a trifle hoarse when she said, “Now… I truly have… taken and eaten…”

I said humbly, “I am sorry… if it was unpleasant…”

“Ne, ne. It tasted rather like… let me think… like the thick milk of crushed hazelnuts. Warm, and with salt in it.
Ever so
much nicer than stale Eucharist bread.”

“I am glad.”

“And I am glad that it was yours. Do you know—if a woman ever did that with a
man
—do you know that she would be guilty of anthropophagy? According to the venerable theologian Tertullian, the juice of a man—what he ejaculates inside a woman to make a baby—is
already
in fact a baby at the moment the juice spurts from him. Therefore, should a woman ever do with a man what I have just done with you, Sister Thorn, she would be guilty of the hideous sin of eating a human child.”

On another occasion, Deidamia said to me, “If licking and sucking can work to the benefit of other organs, little sister, let me apply that same encouragement to your nipples.”

“Whatever for?” I asked.

“To sororiare your breasts, of course. The earlier one begins to play with them, the earlier they will begin to blossom, and the handsomer they will be when you are full-grown.”

“But why should I want them to be so?”

“Sister Thorn,” she said patiently, “the breasts, along with a pretty face and a luxuriance of hair, constitute a woman’s most attractive features. Regard my own breasts. Are they not beautiful, niu?”

“They are indeed, big sister. But, aside from their being enjoyable playthings, what purpose do they serve?”

“Well, none really—for a nun. But in other women they have the same function as a cow’s udder. The breasts are where a woman makes milk for her suckling infants.”

“I have tasted your nipples often, Sister Deidamia, and I have never tasted any milk.”

“Oh vái! Do not be sacrilegious! I am a virgin. And, of all the virgins who ever have lived, only the blessed Mary was able to exude real milk from her breasts.”

“Ah, so that is why they say that Mary spilled the milk that put the via lactea across the night sky. I did not realize they meant milk from her
breasts.”

“More than that,” said Deidamia, lowering her voice in a confiding way. “Mary’s milk is also the reason for Nonna Aetherea’s having been appointed abbess of St. Pelagia’s.”

“Eh?”

“Thanks to the abbess, our convent is the proud possessor of a genuine, recognized
relic.”

“Well? What abbey is not? At St. Damian’s there is a toe bone of that martyr Damian. And also a splinter of the true cross, found in the Holy Land by the sainted Helena.”

“Akh, there are splinters and nails of the true cross all over Christendom. But Nonna Aetherea brought to St. Pelagia’s something much more rare. She owns a crystal phial in which there reposes one drop—just one drop—of the Virgin Mary’s breast milk.”

“Indeed? Where is it? I have never seen it. And how did she come by it?”

“I know not how she got it. Perhaps from some pilgrim, or during a pilgrimage of her own. But she keeps it on a thong about her neck, nestled safely within her own bosom. And she shows it only to us older novices—we who have breasts—and only at the Christmas season, when she catechizes us on the story of the Nativity.”

In exchange for Deidamia’s sharing so many confidences with me, I shared one of mine with her. I introduced her to my juika-bloth and showed her how I was secretly training the bird.

“The name you gave it means ‘I fight for blood,’ ” said Deidamia. “But you are teaching it to attack an egg?”

“Well, the juika-bloth’s natural prey is snakes, and those it
does,
swoop down upon most fiercely. But it also likes to eat the eggs of reptiles. And those, of course, it does not have to attack with force, because they just lie on the ground and cannot flee or fight back.”

“But that is not a reptile’s egg,” she said, of the one I was holding. “That is an ordinary chicken’s egg. Much larger and quite different in appearance.”

“Dear Deidamia, I do not have leisure and opportunity to go seeking real snake eggs. I must make do with what is at hand. But I will now smear this one with cooking grease, so it looks as shiny and gelatinous as the genuine thing. And I will set it in this seeming nest that I made of red moss.”

“The egg is still far too large.”

“So much the better target for my juika-bloth. As I say, I am training it to attack the egg, plunging down upon it from high aloft, and tearing at it with beak and talons. Ordinarily, the bird would merely hop to where an egg lies on the ground, and only casually peck it open.”

“Interesting,” said Deidamia, though she did not sound greatly interested. “So you trick a bird into behavior contrary to its nature.”

“Or I am hoping to. Let us see how well it is learning.”

I slipped the hood from its head and tossed the juika-bloth into the air, where it began spiraling to climb high above us. Then I laid my wad of red moss on the ground and set upon it the slimily glistening egg. I pointed to it and called to the bird, “Sláit!” It stayed hovering only long enough to fix its gaze and aim on the target, then folded its wings and came down like a thrown spear. With beak and talons all close together it struck so hard that the egg quite disintegrated, spattering bits of shell and drops of yolk and glair all about. I let the bird go on tearing at the mess on the ground, and gobbling it up, then I called, “Juika-bloth!” and it promptly returned to my shoulder.

“Impressive,” said Deidamia, though she did not sound greatly impressed. “But this is a most
boyish
pastime. Do you think it fitting for a maiden novice to play at such games?”

“I do not see why boys and men should have the exciting games all to themselves, and we only the dainty ones.”

“Because we
are
dainty. I prefer to leave to the males anything that requires strenuous exertion.” She affected an exaggerated yawn, then smiled elfishly. “But you play as you please, little sister. I have had no fault to find with any of your games.”

But of course the grim Domina Aetherea (and the skulking, tattling Sister Elissa) did have fault to find, and I have already told how they one day caught me and Deidamia in flagrante delicto.

The infuriated abbess did not, as Dom Clement had done, put me to any compassionate questioning, or grant me any least absolution, or even wait until the next morning to haul me from St. Pelagia’s back to St. Damian’s. I was rather grateful for my being expelled that very same day, for I was sure that, if Domina Aetherea had taken time to consider my crime, it would have occurred to her that this was one occasion on which she would well uncoil her dreaded flagrum, and a beating with that might well have killed me. However, I was also sad at being rushed away. Sister Deidamia had been carried to her cell still in a swoon, so I had no chance to see her one last time, to plead for her forgiveness and to say a farewell.

I have already told, also, how Dom Clement—before he evicted me that day from the Balsan Hrinkhen altogether—informed me as to what kind of perverse and paradoxical creature I really was. But I have told of that disconcerting disclosure only in brief summary. The fact is that, before Dom Clement called me to his quarters for our final conversation, he had spent a good deal of time in the chartularium, delving deep into the abbey’s archives.

“Thorn, my child,” he said, looking as glum as I must have looked, too. “As you know, the abbot and the infirmarian who first examined you, when you were left on this abbey’s doorsill, both were deceased by the time I arrived here. And neither I nor that infirmarian’s successor, our Brother Hormisdas, ever had reason to examine you again. But I have succeeded in finding a report of what that earlier brother—he was called Chrysogonus—discovered when he unswaddled your infant self. I only wish I had thought to search for this before now, but any report on a new oblate is seldom worth writing down, and even more rarely is preserved in an abbey’s archive. Of course, this one was made and kept only because you yourself proved to be such a rarity. And Brother Chrysogonus’s report not only describes you as you were, but also records what that good brother did to you in his capacity of medicus.”

“Did to me?!” I demanded, almost angrily. “Are you saying this Chrysogonus
made
me what I am, niu?”

“Ne, ne, Thorn. A mannamavi—an androgynus—you were from birth. But, as well as I can gather from these pages, that brother kindly performed some minor syrurgery upon you. That is to say, he made a few small adjustments of, er, your private parts. And those, I judge, saved you from enduring a lifetime of discomfort or pain or even a crippling deformity.”

“I do not understand, Nonnus.”

“Nor do I, not entirely. That long-ago Brother Chrysogonus was either a Grecian by birth or he chose to be discreet in this matter, for he wrote his report in Greek. I can read the words—‘chord,’ for example—but their exact meaning in a medical sense eludes me.”

“Could you not ask Brother Hormisdas to explain them?”

The abbot looked a little uncomfortable. “I had rather not. Hormisdas is, after all, a dedicated medicus. He might well wish to keep you here. For study… for experimentation… even for exhibit. Other monasteries have been known to increase their fame and fortune by attracting pilgrims with the promise of a… a seemingly miraculous sight.”

“You mean a freakish specimen,” I said bluntly.

“In any case, I prefer to spare you such an indignity, my child. We shall not ask Brother Hormisdas to interpret this report. Let my own attempt at explanation suffice. Brother Chrysogonus wrote that he made ‘a slight incision’ which enabled him to remove ‘the tethering bands’ that had forced your, er, your principal organ into an abnormal curvature. As I say, Thorn, you should be thankful to that good man.”

“Is that all he wrote about me?”

“Not quite. He went on to remark that, although you have the… external equipment of both male and female, he was certain that you would be forever incapable of having children. Either of siring them or of bearing them.”

I muttered, “I rejoice to hear it. I would not risk bringing another like myself into this world.”

“But that will impose on you another constraint, Thorn, and a heavy one. Just as persons eat so that they may go on living, so do they mate solely for the purpose of perpetuating the human race. And that is the only excuse for sexual intercourse that our Mother Church condones. Since you cannot ever have children, it would be a mortal sin for you ever to have carnal knowledge of another person. Of… ahem… either sex. Your former innocent ignorance absolves you of those delinquencies you have committed to date. But from now on, now that you are aware of the true state of affairs, you must be steadfastly celibate.”

I said, very nearly pleading like a woman, “But God must have had some reason for making me a mannamavi, Nonnus Clement. What could the Lord have intended for me? What am I to do with my life?”

“Well… I am told that the Mishnah of the Jews lays down rules for the social and religious behavior of a mannamavi. Unfortunately, our own Scriptures neglect to treat of that subject. However… let me suggest something. Your work as my exceptor showed great promise, Thorn, back when all of us believed you to be a male. Needless to say, such a thing as a female exceptor or scribe would be unnatural and unthinkable. But I daresay, if you were to introduce yourself
as a male
to some other abbot or a bishop, in some place well distant from here—and if you were forever celibate, forever careful not to reveal any of your, um, aspects of femininity, forever careful not to expose yourself even in the rere-dorter—you might find satisfying employment as that high churchman’s exceptor.”