The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure

by Adam Williams

  … Into the strong arms of Henry who caught her and supported her to the ground. ‘You’re over the saddle. Don’t worry,’ he yelled in her ear. ‘You’re safe. And there’s a cave. Come on. Lao Zhao will bring the horses.’

  A deep cleft in the rock face opened into a cavern. Within the cave Helen Frances once more sensed empty space around her. Henry left her shivering in the blackness while he and Lao Zhao busied themselves with securing the horses and exploring their new shelter. She could hear them moving in the dark. She felt cold, and tired, her teeth were chattering, her wet clothes were freezing on her body—but she did not care: the thunder was muffled now and there was no rain. That was enough. She did not care if she died here, if this cold rock hall were to become her tomb, as long as there was no more rain and lightning.

  ‘Helen Frances, are you all right?’ she heard Henry call, his voice echoing from further inside the chamber. She could not place the direction he was calling from.

  She made an effort. ‘I’m having a wonderful time,’ she managed, her own voice echoing more faintly. ‘You certainly know how to look after a girl.’

  His laugh smacked from rock to rock like the sound of a racquet ball in a court. ‘That’s the spirit,’ he called. ‘Listen, it’s not all bad news. Seems others have used this cave before us. There’s a pile of wood here, Lao Zhao’s getting a fire going now—and, yes, I can feel … there’s a flue in the rock and a slight draught. It’s a chimney of some kind so we shouldn’t get smoked out.’

  ‘How convenient,’ she called. Her feet and hands were already numb, she was shaking in spasms and her teeth were chattering. She pressed the back of her wrist against her mouth to try to stop the shivering. Her face, where she touched it, was cold and smooth as marble.

  ‘What was that? I can’t really hear you,’ he called. ‘Never mind. Look, it’s not so bad. There’s even a covering of pine needles on the floor. It’s dry. Probably somebody’s bedding. Keep those spirits up, girl, we’re going to be all right.’

  She forced herself to call again, through clenched teeth: ‘Sounds luxurious. Pine-needle sheets. Is there a four-poster bed as well?’

  ‘What was that? Did you say four-poster bed?’ Again the ricocheting laugh. ‘That’s right. The Savoy has nothing on this. It’s a royal suite at the very least. You’re going to be very comfortable.’

  Helen Frances closed her eyes, then her shoulders began to shake; she could not tell whether it was humour or hysteria, or just the sheer pain of being cold. In the darkness the cold was like a succubus, caressing her, hugging her, breathing down her throat in cold gusts that stabbed her lungs. She was very tired. She wanted to lie down. The easiest thing would be to give in to the embrace, escaping into the make-believe warmth of unconsciousness. ‘He’s done it,’ she heard Henry shout, from a long distance off. ‘There’s a flame.’

  Then red shadows were flickering on the cave walls and she heard the crackle of burning wood. A part of her comprehended that the cave was in fact a narrow, curving tunnel. Henry and Lao Zhao had lit a fire some way inside and out of her view. She took a faltering step in the direction of the glow, then Henry was with her and lifting her into his arms, carrying her to the back of the cave.

  ‘Welcome to the Savoy of the Black Hills,’ she heard him saying, ‘and here is our very own fire. Lao Zhao will light his own nearer the cave mouth.’

  ‘Can’t he share ours?’ she said stupidly. It was an effort to talk and control her shivering at the same time.

  ‘Better that he doesn’t,’ said Henry. ‘For a start you’ve got to take all your wet clothes off or you’ll die of pneumonia. Here, stand by the fire while I help you.’

  She noticed Lao Zhao smiling as he edged past her, holding a burning brand in his hand. Then she was aware of nothing but the heat from the crackling fire, a funnel of red flame hissing up through a high pile of logs, and warmth, painful, sensual warmth, tanning her cheeks, creeping back into her dead limbs, bringing agonising feeling back to her useless fingers and toes.

  Gently, he lifted off her sodden travelling cape and unbuttoned her equally wet jacket and blouse. He loosened her skirt, which slipped to the floor. She stood, half smiling, unresisting, passively allowing him to lift her arms above her head to ease up the dripping chemise, raising each leg to allow him to pull off her wet stockings. Soon she was naked.

  Henry paused, a bundle of her wet clothes in his arms, and admired her. Shadows from the fire flickered over her narrow white body. Her wet tousled hair had fallen in waves over her shoulders, brilliant red in the firelight, enveloping one breast. The round swell of the other peeped out invitingly like a pear hidden in a basket of maple leaves. A slight trembling of her stomach rippled the honey sheen of her skin and the soft down on her belly and thighs, the tones shifting imperceptibly like candlelight on a satin dress. Some goose bumps mingled with her freckles, but her breathing was controlled now and the shivering had almost stopped. She stood artlessly—coltlike, virginal—resting her weight on one leg, one hand hanging loosely in front of her pubis; her eyes contemplating him calmly.

  ‘How exquisite you are,’ he murmured. ‘Quite the Venus. Botticelli’s, I think. You need a shell and some tritons behind you. “And in her walk it showed, in truth she was a goddess.” You’re lovely,’ he told her.

  ‘Are you going to seduce me now?’ she asked him, in a sleepy voice. ‘As you did Lady Caroline.’

  ‘I didn’t seduce Caroline. She seduced me,’ he said.

  ‘Whatever,’ she said.

  ‘No, I’m going to get you warm,’ he said. ‘Wrap yourself in this blanket—it’s lucky I had a spare one with my oilskins, it’s damp but it’s not soaking—and move as close to the fire as you can. Sit down. The pine needles are quite soft. Here, let me put on another log. In a bit, you and the blanket will be dry again. It’s important to get you warm and dry.’

  ‘But you will seduce me later?’ she asked.

  ‘We’ll see how it goes,’ he said.

  ‘Will you take off all your clothes?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ll have to if I’m to get warm and dry too,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll enjoy that,’ she said. ‘You’re beautiful too.’

  She must have nodded momentarily to sleep, because she felt a prickle of a pine needle on her cheek, and a second’s disorientation. Henry was standing where he had been a moment ago, hanging her wet clothes on a line he had rigged up by the fire, his crinkled blue eyes smiling down at her. Nothing had changed—except that she was no longer in any doubt. She knew what she wanted. Henry was a rogue, and deep down she knew she could never trust him, but he was so, so beautiful. And all she had to do was to reach out and touch him.

  ‘If you are going to seduce me now’s a good time for it.’ She yawned. ‘A good place too. After all,’ she said, ‘with all those quotations from Virgil, you must have had something like this in mind. Aeneas seduced Dido in a cave after a storm, didn’t he? Is that what gave you the idea? It’s very romantic of you. Wonderful theatre.’ She rested her head on one elbow; the blanket fell away revealing one pink nipple. ‘I bet that’s what you were planning this morning when you were reading your book. I’m very impressed and flattered.’

  Henry had been taking off his own wet clothes as she was talking. Smiling, he knelt down beside her. Cupping her breast, he softly kissed her lips, then moving his mouth down the line of her neck, kneaded her nipple with his tongue; his hand dropped below the blanket, fingers rounding her thigh.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘I conjured up the storm, just for you … But since we do have to share the one blanket … and while we are waiting for the clothes to dry…’

  ‘You’re like Aeneas, aren’t you? A wanderer, an exile.’ She spoke dreamily. ‘The only pity is that his Dido came to such a tragic end.’

  ‘Hush now,’ he whispered. ‘There’s no need to be nervous.’

  Her body arched and shuddered, not with cold, as his tongue traced a snail’s trail down h
er belly, lingering on her Mount of Venus, firing the warm wetness below. ‘Oh.’ She groaned, clenching her fingers in his hair. ‘Kiss me again, Henry. Kiss me again, before either of us regrets this.’

  As his hot lips descended on hers she felt his hands exploring her body, running over her thighs, her arms, brushing over her breasts. Their tongues touched briefly, then his mouth was over her breast again. She felt the touch of his teeth and a languorous warmth suffused her limbs. His fingers fluttered over her stomach, pausing in the groove between her loin and thigh, darting to the other thigh, alighting like a firefly, tingling where it touched, and moving again. She felt as if she was being wound in filaments of soft silk. His fingers lightly brushed the fine hairs above her mound, then his hand cupped her below and she experienced a sensation she had never felt before, not in her imaginings, as the sensitive fingers entered her most private places, pausing, exploring, tantalising, at every touch plucking a new note of pleasure in an unbearable symphony which she wanted, at the same time, to end because it was overwhelming her and to go on for ever because she could not bear it to stop.

  Her own hands brushed over his chest, his shoulders. She pressed her cheek against his, and heard his deep breathing as if from inside herself. Her hand felt the hard muscle behind the soft, soft flesh of his shoulders. Hardly daring to breathe she reached below and enclosed him, gasping as she felt the hard, heavy weight in her hands. ‘Yes,’ he whispered, ‘my darling,’ brushing with his lips her forehead, her nose, her eyes. ‘Oh, my love.’ She felt the touch of his breath in her ears.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ she murmured. ‘Oh, yes, my darling. Please. Please.’

  She felt the weight of his body shift. She opened her legs, guiding him with her hand towards the fires that had been lighted by his fingers. It seemed the most natural thing to be doing in the world. She felt a pressure, then a bursting pain, which made her scream; she heard the echoes round the stone walls, but very quickly the tone of the screams changed as the pain gave way to ecstasy, and with her legs and her arms she tried to wrap this man to her and keep him inside her for ever.

  * * *

  Lao Zhao, squatting naked by his smaller fire at the other end of the cave, drying his quilt jacket on the end of a stick, heard the sounds and smiled.

  The sharp cry of pain. For his money that was the hymen. So she had been a virgin. He was usually right about these things. Then the rhythmical movements, the grunts and the sighs; there, she was moaning again, good; screaming with pleasure, excellent. His master must have a very good technique. It was not often that a woman achieved the clouds and rain so satisfactorily on her first attempt. A fortunate coupling.

  He stretched to his feet and walked naked out of the cave, squatting on his heels at the edge of the precipice, admiring the scenery. The storm was over, and he could make out traces of blue sky. There was a reddening in the west as the sun began its decline, crimsoning strands of cirrus that were sharing the sky with the few black rainclouds which were all that remained of the tempest. Now the weather was clear again, he could make out exactly where they were and how they had become lost in the storm; he even believed that he could identify the tent site far below. It would not take them long to get down again. Because of the storm the others might consider sending a search party up here—the rat-eating doctor was a fussy man—so he would remain out on guard to give the couple plenty of warning of anyone’s approach.

  They had more than an hour to spare. That would give them at least one more chance to achieve the clouds and rain, maybe two.

  She was an ugly woman, he thought; skinny, with odd colouring. He had observed her closely when she had worn that transparent dress by the river. Funny how the hair below was crimson-coloured like the hair above. Not for him. Barbarians were only made for other barbarians, he thought philosophically; give him a human being for choice, a big smooth-skinned northern girl for preference—but the thought of the coupling going on in the cave nevertheless made him feel lecherous. Not much he could do about it here in this cold, he decided, eyeing his shrivelled frog, even if it wasn’t undignified to use his hand at his age—although, that said, he grinned at the thought, fountaining off the edge of the cliff and showering those turtles’ eggs in the valley with his fragrant essence appealed. But no, he would probably stop over in the room behind Ren Ren’s dumpling shop tomorrow evening on their return to Shishan. He assumed that his master would be going to the Palace of Heavenly Pleasure, as he did most evenings. He doubted whether having had his way at last with the foreign girl would change the habits of a man like Ma Na Si. He could understand why a barbarian might want to keep his hand in with a barbarian girl from time to time (one never lost one’s taste for home cooking), but having been fortunate enough this last month or so to have tried a human girl—especially one of those high-class ones at the Palace of Heavenly Pleasure—Ma Na Si must even now be thinking back to more delicate meats. Then again, one never knew with ocean devils, even half-human ones like Ma Na Si. It made working for them such an intriguing pastime. One just never knew what they were going to do next.

  Seven

  Mother wept when we left. The wind bites through my coat;

  Little Brother’s feet bleed, yet we have only gone 10 li.

  They arrived back at camp shortly after sunset. There had been no undue concern over their absence, despite the violent thunderstorm. The story that they had found refuge from the rains in a Taoist temple was accepted without comment. In fact, the doctor, his children and Sister Elena were far more interested in relating their own adventures in the storm. Bubbling with laughter they described their helter-skelter scramble down the mountain in a tumble of Hong Kong baskets, tables and chairs, and how Charlie, railing against the heavens for spoiling his long-planned picnic, had missed his step, rolled alarmingly off the path and ended up unhurt but shaken in the branches of a pine tree. The party had spent a sodden afternoon working out ways to bring him down from his perch. ‘Can you imagine a more forlorn sight,’ chortled the doctor, ‘than a wailing Chinaman, in all his colourful regalia, squawking like a drenched parrot on top of a tree? It gave a new meaning to the term Celestial! I shouldn’t laugh. It will be some time before poor Charlie recovers his sense of dignity. We’ve sent him to his tent where he’s consoling himself with a bottle of claret and a Gruyère cheese!’

  Helen Frances smiled politely, a little stunned that back in the world she had left a few hours before (or was it several aeons ago?), everything appeared still to be so normal, as if nothing had happened. She was amazed that nobody could perceive any change in her. How could they fail to notice that she was not the same person any more? That she was transformed? A woman now. Her body tingled; her breasts and her loins ached. How could they not be aware of the glow of happiness that was shining from the pores of her skin and radiating from her eyes? It took all her willpower not to clutch and kiss Henry’s hand in full view of them, in fact to smother his whole face and body with kisses—she didn’t care, she wanted to shout out her joy to the world—but he stood relaxed beside her, laughing quite naturally at the doctor’s story, and winked at her as he lit a cheroot.

  Only Nellie had listened to their story carefully, observing how fortunate it was that they had been able to find a small temple in the middle of nowhere that could not only give them shelter but also apparently provide a laundry service to dry their clothes.

  ‘Yes, weren’t we lucky?’ said Henry calmly. ‘Helen Frances was led off by the nuns to sit on a warm kang in their living quarters, while Lao Zhao and I had to make do huddling by a stove in the porter’s lodge. But they were very kind. Very kind. And it was all a bit of an adventure, wasn’t it, Helen Frances?’

  Seeing Henry’s eyes twinkling at her conspiratorially, Helen Frances experienced a rush of total abandonment. ‘Yes, Mrs Airton,’ she cried. ‘It was a wonderful adventure. And educational too,’ she added, smiling sweetly. Henry turned his head away to disguise a grin.

  ‘Indeed?’ said Nel
lie, raising her eyebrows.

  The evening passed in an eternity of frustration. All Helen Frances wanted was to be with Henry, but the children pulled her arm to play with them, and when she was finally free again after Nellie had gathered them off to bed, she found that Dr Airton and Herr Fischer had already ensnared Henry in the men’s talk over brandy and cigars which she knew would go on into the night. She sat on her campstool half listening to Sister Elena chattering beside her, and gazed through the fire at the flickering figure of her lover. Her lover. She relished the word. Occasionally he would turn his face towards her and smile, and she would feel the blood rush to her face. When it was time to sleep, she followed Elena reluctantly to their shared tent, feeling Henry’s burning eyes boring into her back.