Raptor (56 page)

In fact, just like the men and their Ganymedes, both of the women participants in every such coupling were wriggling and gasping and squealing with joy. I could, albeit with some difficulty, suppose that the woman underneath might experience
some
pleasant feeling even from an artificial fascinum. But it was beyond my comprehension that the woman wielding the olisbós could feel anything whatever, unless it was purely in her head: some kind of perverse relish in playing a man and a stuprator and a conqueror and a violator.

Anyway, after a while I saw the women exchanging places, exchanging partners, even handing the now glistening-wet olisboí from one to another. So they were all getting their turn at playing violator and victim, or pleasure-giver and pleasure-taker, or whatever they conceived themselves to be. For that matter, some of the females got to play both kinds of partner simultaneously, because one of them produced a very long and double-ended olisbós that required no strapping on. With that, any two women could crouch on hands and knees, rump to rump, and insert the thing into both of themselves, then simply rock back and forth to attain their enjoyment.

True, some women were not participating at all, merely looking on. But they—I suppose as their manifestation of the hysterikà zêlos—were meanwhile making slobbery noises as they tickled, rubbed, manipulated what was between their thighs. And some other women lounging on couches near me, being temporarily without partners, smiled and beckoned to me. But I was nowise inclined to join in the counterfeit copulation. I had frolicked with many a female by now—once upon a time as a female myself and often since as a male—but in every case I had used my own flesh to excite and enjoy
her
own flesh. These women’s mode of satisfying each other was not only cold, distant and brutal, it was also ridiculous; they resembled so many cows, utilizing the elongated, pendent dugs of their udders to penetrate each other.

Neither had I any wish to join the male Bacchantes in their Neronian method of mock copulation, though they at least were employing each other’s own bodies, not paltry substitutes. I had already learned, from experience, the glorious gratification of lying with a male
as a female,
and I refused to believe that the concacatus practice of these men could be in any way comparable.

All this while, the five musicians had been playing a slow, sweet, almost cloying Phrygian music—to induce in the Bacchantes amorous emotions, no doubt. Now they again ceased playing, so that the oldest priest—not at the moment being reamed by any of the male votaries—could make a proclamation. In much the bombastic manner of a praeco announcing an amphitheater’s games, he shouted, first in Greek, then in Latin and in Gothic:

“Pray, holy silence, all! For now we are about to witness and partake in a truly significant event that will embellish even further this holiest and most festive of Bacchic nights!”

Most of the crowd went silent, but a number were still copulating, in one way or another, and grunting or squealing or giggling while they did it. The old Venerable shouted louder:

“I am proud to announce that two new, young, male novitiates are this night to be dedicated to the god and initiated in his worship! The Bacchante Dengla honors us tonight by presenting to Bacchus her own two sons!”

The twins, now sitting on either side of me, gave piteous whimpers and each clutched one of my arms. The musicians were setting aside their lighter instruments and taking up heavier ones: drums and cymbals.

“The mother herself will conduct the ceremony of initiation,” the old man went on,
“and
in the traditional fashion first introduced by that ancient Campanian Bacchante whose long-ago dedication of
her
sons we still remember and revere! Give heed now, on this momentous occasion!”

All the Bacchantes not otherwise occupied instantly began to applaud and stamp their bare feet and shriek their “Euoi Bacche! Io Bacche!” I wondered if I ought to seize the twins and run away with them. I honestly feared that the Bacchantes were preparing to rend and eat Filippus and Robein as they had done with those other young animals. However, before I could decide whether or not to interfere in the proceedings, Dengla and Melbai were looming over us.

Their hair was matted and snarled, and there was a crazed look in their eyes. Their thighs and shaven groins and the nether lips that flaccidly protruded there were all mucously slimy. Their breath was foul with wine, but my femininely acute sense of smell found even more revolting their bodies’ rancid fish odor of overripe sexual surfeit. Their mouths were crusted with dried blood, and there were flecks of blood on their pendulous breasts. Melbai seized each boy by a wrist, while Dengla fumbled in the cloak she had left on the couch. She took from its folds an olisbós, but of a kind that I had not yet seen. This one was a
cluster
of olisboí, like a mushroom of several stems and caps: imitation male organs of graduated sizes, from young-boy small to grown man’s fully erect.

“Come now, my sons,” said Dengla. “And come without protest or complaint. It is this—or the thyrsos.”

Melbai hauled the boys to a couch near where the musicians sat, and Dengla followed, not taking the horrid new olisbós for any Venerable to use, but strapping it onto herself. From where I was, and in the dim light, I could no longer discern which twin was which, but Melbai and a sister priestess bent one of them forward over the couch’s edge. All the other Bacchantes stood about the room at respectful distances, so that all should have a good view, and all continued chanting, “Io Bacche! Euoi Bacche!”

Dengla stood behind the bent-over boy and looked all around as if to make sure that she was indeed the center of attention. She caught the eye of the skinny old-man Venerable, and he solemnly nodded. Immediately, the crowd’s chant rose to a roar, and all the musicians started pounding drums and clashing cymbals, to drown the sound of the boy’s scream when he was impaled with the first, the smallest of the multiple olisboí. No one heard him scream, but I know he did, because his body contorted, his head jerked back and his mouth flew incredibly wide open. Almost as wide were the eyes of his watching twin.

The thunderous uproar continued, as Dengla wiggled her hips for some moments, then withdrew and stood back. The boy sagged onto the couch, twitching, but he had only a brief respite. He convulsed again, and soundlessly screamed again, when the next olisbós was rammed into him, and the next, and the next. The final one, the largest, was worked back and forth in him for some time, and Melbai and all the watching other Bacchantes smiled, as the boy seemed to have accommodated to the violation, to be now relaxed and enduring it, perhaps even enjoying it.

Dengla at last stepped away from him, unstrapped and dropped her multiple olisbós, and turned the boy around to face the room. We could all see that his little organ, as if it had been somehow stimulated from the inside, had magically grown into a respectable little fascinum. To make sure it stayed that way, Dengla made a fist and worked it up and down, while she leant close to talk to her son. Her wheedling and caressing made the expression on his face gradually change from woeful to wondering and then to a beatific smile.

Melbai had been watching for that. Now she snatched the other twin onto the couch and forced him face down. The Bacchantes resumed their bellowing and the musicians again began drumming and crashing, as Dengla pushed the first boy up against his brother’s buttocks, and with the one hand guided his fascinum to the proper place, and with the other hand gave him a sharp push in the small of his back. The prone twin convulsed as the first had done, and silently screamed, and writhed. His brother might have withdrawn, but Dengla held him there, and herself moved his hips in a rocking motion. In a few moments he was doing it himself. Without any further urging, he took tight hold of his twin, and bucked most energetically, until finally, suddenly, he shuddered all over and threw his head back, his face wreathed with a joyous grin.

“Euoi! Io! Euoi Bacche!” the crowd screeched triumphantly.

“The initiation is successfully concluded!” shouted the old-man Venerable, prancing to the fore again.
“And
in the time-honored manner of the Campanian mother and her sons!
Io
Mater Dengla!
Euoi
Méter Dengla! Now… let us sing welcome to the new Bacchantes Filippus and Robein!”

At which, the musicians, playing their more melodious instruments, launched into a recognizable carmen, and all the male and eunuch Bacchantes sang the extremely obscene verses, a poem in praise of the practice of men loving men.

“Now,” the old eunuch bawled again, “who would wish to be
second
to enjoy the favors of either of the boys?”

There was a chorus of “I!” and “I claim!” from the non-eunuch men present. But Dengla raised her hands for silence.

“No! The honor of first choice should go to our eldest and most notable and most highly respected Bacchante.” She turned her gangrene smile on Maecius, who simpered back at her. Then he waddled forward, in all his flesh, and embraced one of the boys and led him to a couch.

Dengla was not only a lupa, I decided; she was also a lena, which is the Latin word for the lowest, filthiest sort of procuress—and she was a lena dealing in her own children. I could hardly be surprised at her having so magnanimously handed them over first to the praefectus, since she was already in his pay, so to speak. And no doubt this—what he was now doing to that boy on that couch—would enable her to extort even more money from him.

Among the other fratres stupri, there was some quarreling going on, as to which should get the other boy, and the old priest was trying to quell them:

“Patience, brothers, patience. There is still time for all of you to partake before dawn and disbandment. And remember, these new Bacchantes belong now to Bacchus and the temple. They will be participating in the rites every Friday night from now on. Remember also, they may be privately visited, by appointment and on payment of a trifling donation to the society’s coffers, on any other occasion you find convenient or”—he cackled salaciously—“of urgent necessity.”

Well, I said to myself, Filippus and Robein would probably be happier dwelling here in the temple than they had been with their mother. They might even, given their dullard intellects, learn eventually to
like
living out their lives as mere meat for hire. To be honest, I felt sorrier for the slain little goats, which might have grown up to be handsome and intelligent, as well as more useful in the world.

Anyway, I wished to see nothing further of the Bacchanalia, and I was not going to stay here until “dawn and disbandment.” I wanted to get away from this nest of vipers, and I would claw my way past any that tried to stop me. But no one did. Practically everybody else in the temple was occupied in one nasty way or another—or was helplessly raddled with wine—so the few who noticed my getting dressed again gave me only mildly disapproving looks. And, though the temple door had been prudently barred, the bar was on the inside, so I easily and ever so gladly let myself out.

I hurried through the dark, empty, predawn streets, back to the widow’s house, to get in and out of it again before Dengla or Melbai should return. There I cleaned my face and changed into the few necessary Thornareikhs garments that I had kept secreted among my Veleda wardrobe. Then I baled together everything else belonging to me, and made my last departure from the place.

I half thought of setting fire to the house as I went. I half thought also of somehow sending word to the twins, to suggest that they wreak vengeance on their odious lupa-lena mother. However, I did nothing to further it. Although that loathsome woman indubitably deserved a return of evil for evil, it was not my place to provide it. She would surely sometime be judged by a tribunal even more merciless than myself. Abyssus abyssum invocat, as the saying goes—hell calls to hell.

Dawn was just breaking when I arrived at the deversorium of Amalric the Dumpling-Plump, but some of the domestics were already up and about. So, in my old Thornareikhs-imperious manner, I called for food and drink with which to break my fast. I took my belongings to my chambers, and a table was set for me by the time I came downstairs again. While I sipped a Cephalene wine, and ate of Sassinan cheese and preserved Caunian figs and a manchet of fine white bread, I reflected on what new things I had lately been learning about the world and men and women and gods. For one thing, if anybody should ever inquire of me about the nature of an orgy, I could truthfully say that it was not deliciously wicked, but disgustingly so.

Of the several gods to whom I had been introduced, Bacchus was certainly the most repellent. The soldiers’ favorite, Mithras, held no attraction for me either, because Mithraism excluded women, and I
was
one. The only human being I had yet met who seemed to get even the least usefulness out of any of the pagan gods had been that old wise-saver Winguric of King Ediulf’s tribe—but Winguric had communicated with his deity through the preposterous medium of sneezes. The single admirable deity I had so far encountered, in all my life, was the god of the Arian Christians, who did not seem to
care
whether a person worshipped him or some rival god, so long as that person lived his life not ignobly.

I was still meditating on such things, and, being now full of a good meal, was feeling drowsy after my night without sleep. But then Amalric entered the room, and I roused myself.

“Come, join me, Amalric,” I said. “Help me quaff this good Cephalene wine of yours.”

“Thags izvis, Your Worship, I will.” He stretched out on a couch adjoining mine, and beckoned for a servant to bring him a goblet. “It has been some while since we conversed.”

“I have been… occupied,” I said, and thought it would do no harm to add another increment to my continuing imposture. “I have been exploring all parts of your fair city. Seeking ventures in which I might care to make investment.”

He poured some wine for himself, and said, “Forgive my presumption, Your Worship, but, considering the newly and suddenly unsettled condition of the empire, you might be wise to keep your money hidden under your pallet for the time being.”