Black Body

by H C Turk

  Entering while my skin was yet exposed to the air, Elsie misjudged my last splash.

  “Ah, and no more preparing, lass,” she gently chided, “for too great a heap of even the finest perfumes are making you seem tawdry.”

  Elsie with a drying cloth hurriedly wiped my abdomen—to no great success, since I had begun to reclothe myself, our arms becoming entangled, Elsie and I a skin spider in a fabric web.

  “Oh, my, I do stink the terrible wench, do I not?” I submitted, my nose suffering from rising fumes. “But we can’t be letting the lad wait while we tarry needlessly, would you say, miss?”

  She would, though did not, flustered Elsie lacing me tightly, rearranging garment and coif one final time for my beau. Then I was guided downstairs not by my servant, but my friend.

  Elsie released me to the auspices of our mistress, who awaited outside the library. I refrained from smirking at her, though Rathel’s smile was greater than any seen before. Understandable, of course, for here was the prideful mother stuffed with pleasure from a significant beau come courting her daughter.

  “Master Eric Denton has come to visit us, Alba,” she told me as I approached.

  Her tone conveyed that the boy was near enough to hear. And, yes, with my final step toward Rathel, I saw him inside the library, seated neatly and looking toward us. Being a lady and necessarily haughty, I whirled around to show my back to the boy, speaking only for my, er, mother.

  “Let us slaughter the victim at once, Amanda, while we have such a fine opportunity. I shall hold the creature down with my bulk while you let his blood with your teeth.”

  As I moved enough to expose Rathel’s face to the boy, she continued smiling, though tightly. When she spoke, the lady leaned forward so that only I would hear.

  “None of your speaking will change his desire, so be foolish at the peril of your own self-esteem. Neither will that excessive smell about you change the flesh beneath the odor. If in fact you have such pride in being a witch, then be on with your legacy and allow your influence to increase. You are the one to make great assertions of being natural. So be on with projecting your true nature, and sit with the boy.”

  Rude I was to step away while Rathel’s last phrase lay in the air, for I had turned to confront the male. But the lady had no difficulty in following me and my changed disposition.

  “How pleasant to see you, Master Eric,” I offered as I entered the library to approach my (my?) guest. “Especially felicitous, I must say, in that our previous meeting was naught but introduction. Now, however, in the comfortable and private security of Mistress Amanda’s parlor, without murder or other extreme function of English society likely to confront us, might we become better acquainted and learn of potential diversions to share, such as shortened lives?”

  Being not only the expert in witches but a proper hostess, Rathel seated the two youths on separate divans without so much as groaning at the demon’s opening commentary. Cordially she offered the visitor tea, which he accepted, Elsie in the doorway told to bring the victuals; and I sensed this servant’s interior. Containing her joyful satisfaction, Elsie smelled nearly of motherhood. Here was my doom. How could Elsie aid me in avoiding Eric when she felt it best we be together?

  Since Eric had not replied to my initial speech beyond a simple thanks and pleased-to-be-here, Rathel proceeded to converse with the boy in a manner fit a gracious host, but her speaking was common and of no interest to me. Though the boy smiled pleasantly, I wondered how burdened he was with being the gent as I was the lady, for he smelled less than enraptured with the Rathel’s discourse. His odor was of apprehension, but—praise God—not hinting of that sub-belly man stink. Rathel smelled of unique pleasure, her glee approaching Elsie’s, as though the occasion actually were of family bonding instead of breaking. Rathel then encouraged Eric and me to chat, mentioning that surely Alba would have some wonderful things to say. And, yes, I had thoughts of explicitly warning the boy that death was his designed future, but I made no mention of murder. I had nothing to say. My silence was no version of ladylike coyness, however: my state was mainly melancholy. This average sinning youth meant nothing to me beyond a life with no cause to be taken, yet he was to be my responsibility. And though I hated the Rathel, I also pitied the foolishness that was her disease. But what could I do in that moment to change her? What could I do but chat?

  The Rathel departed, ostensibly to modify her order for refreshments, but a noseless plant could tell she intended to leave the wild youths to their natural instincts; that is, sex and death. I remained silent, sitting pertly as is the lady’s tribulation, only glimpsing the boy while waiting for tea, hoping that Elsie would bring me a guava if any remained, if greedy Theodosia had not stolen the last, for she….

  “I wonder of your schooling, Miss Alba,” someone said. “I am pleased to attend a most excellent private school, and would ask of your own education.”

  The boy began conversing even as important thoughts were coming to me. I could form no immediate reply. His speaking directly was so odd that I had to allow a natural, sexless, deathless response to evolve.

  “The, uh, year’s term has ended for the summer with my own schooling,” he mentioned. “Yours, perchance, might yet be underway?”

  “Yes,” I said, the boy certainly praising God for my long-awaited reply. The desirability of my further response remained questionable. “No school with human pupils would have me because of my dangerous mouth, which might jeopardize their education or sanity. Nevertheless, I am made to undergo a form of torture called ‘tutoring,’ though for what useful purpose I have yet to ascertain.”

  “Well, I assume the goal of any schooling is to have the pupil fit best within our society of England,” Eric vigorously returned. “With you, being female, there of course is the additional purpose of teaching those special things known only to ladies.”

  “But already I’ve gained a gent,” I professed. “What purpose has a lady in London but to secure a gentleman, formulate a family, and thereafter be on with conniving its members and society as a whole?”

  “Well…,” Eric replied with all the wit he could muster. “You are certainly capable of a tremendous speaking, Miss Alba. I hope that one day I might learn to speak so well. My poetry mentor tells what wonderful words tools are for displaying ourselves and our ideas. Might I guess that you’ve been tutored closely as to increasing your talents with words?”

  “I speak well because my mother did. Of course, she is dead now, and scarcely opens her mouth.”

  The Rathel returned with tea and cake and Elsie. The latter was such a humming, smiling thing that I gave her a terrible grimace as she bent to me with the tray. She responded by smiling even more brilliantly. And when I made to trip her as she moved away, I missed. Having interrupted the conversation even as I was becoming charming, Rathel began chatting again in her own unexalted style.

  “Since you were speaking of schooling and society,” the mistress remarked to Eric, proving that she had been eavesdropping, proving she entered in order to quash my charm, “I would ask of your own place there in becoming a gentleman.”

  “Well, I see a greater cause in this learning,” Eric remarked thoughtfully, boringly. “A man must learn society in order to advance society. He must learn of England and her place in the world in order to better that place. Men are those in society meant to achieve wonderful things such as architecture, which is my father’s work.”

  “Oh, yes, your father makes churches,” I mused. “Does he also make prisons?”

  “Well…no, miss,” slow Eric replied, “though his colleagues do design such buildings. My father’s structures are not the type to house unworthy folk—those who hate their surroundings—but persons who love God and England and all their laws.”

  “But how could criminals sensibly hate their citified surroundings when the city is their source?” I pondered aloud. “Criminals are made by society, for no thieves exist in the wilds. The forest has no need for
prisons. Might you in your future as a man make England’s place in the world better by achieving the wonderful thing of creating more criminals in England to thereby aid in the work that is society’s advance?”

  Weak Eric looked to Rathel for guidance. The false lady smiled as though her false daughter had created incredible comedy. Guidance enough for the boy, it seemed, Eric’s gaze returning to me, and he was able to continue.

  “I must leave,” he said. Brief salutations later, the boy was gone.

  After the door closed, Rathel and I lingered in the foyer to discuss our success. Sensibly, I would have returned at once to my place in the house if only to dream of being in a better site. But I was so spiritually weak as a witch that I could not resist my own misplaced joy.

  “Praise God I’ve driven the brat away with my eloquence,” I told the pseudo-lady. “Despite your grand smile drooling pleasure like dog spittle, the boy would not remain.”

  Smelling of both success and relief, the lady returned, “The boy will return, and one day you shall go with him.” Rathel then left me, returning to other parts of her home, if only to dream of being in Hell; for what site could be superior for so successful a fiend?

  • • •

  “By your pardon, Lady Amanda,” Mrs. Natwich replied to her employer, “I have been secured to educate but the single child.”

  “You shall be recompensed for any additional effort needed to accommodate the boy,” Rathel stated.

  How crude these social folk were to speak of my personal education in my personal presence. At least Rathel had left the new pupil in the great room while discussing him with the tutor in the library. There I sat, map on my lap, geography lesson interrupted by a certain sinner first come two days before now returned as though another of Rathel’s hirelings with no purpose in life but to fulfill her desires, which unfortunately for this agent was his death.

  “Additionally,” Mrs. Natwich continued, “multiple pupils inhibit mutual learning, for they substitute child’s play for mature effort.”

  Then the Rathel instructed, “Since the pupils we discuss approach adulthood and both have fine minds, we might attempt this tactic: you will proceed with Alba’s learning, and if the young man is about, integrate him into the process to the best of your very high ability.”

  “But the lessons of a young lady are not for young gentlemen, in that the latter—as future managers of society and household—are often the subject.”

  “When such topics arise in your teaching, we shall reschedule them for a time when Eric is not present, and pay the tutor well for her additional effort and thoughtful cooperation.”

  “Allow me to explain, Lady Amanda—”

  “Allow me to interrupt, felicitous missus,” I interjected, “to mention that your dedicated disregard for the lady’s vast finances is appreciated by me, since my background is of poverty. But my additional background of experience with the mistress suggests that in order to defeat the lady in her own home, you must arm yourself with weapons beyond mere principle. Might I suggest something sharp with a long handle?”

  “You might make no additional suggestions in your rudeness, young miss, and continue studying the map of which you are so constantly fond,” my tutor scolded.

  “Thank you, missus,” I muttered as I humbly looked down. “I am so flipping sorry, missus.”

  “Alba! if you do not cease that groveling, I shall have you recite Latin with pebbles in your mouth!”

  “I’ll rip your heart out with my bare hands first, demon,” I mouthed, but not a sound left my lips. And no further arguments came from Natwich, for the Rathel had defeated her. Then I recognized how foolish I had been to inadvertently aid Rathel only due to growing weary of her social discourse. From that day on, through my own failure, the Denton boy was a persistent guest in my (my!) home.

  • • •

  “How is it you are here?”

  We were alone. Toward the end of a difficult day’s learning in which Eric proved himself well-educated and I thoughtless and lazy, Natwich quit the library. Though her alleged goal was to speak with Lady Amanda, I discerned via her odor that the tutor’s true need was to be draining the urine from her innards, a natural process not to be mentioned in unnatural society; and whose pot would she use? The Rathel’s, I hoped, the mistress not likely to notice an unfamiliar scent, whereas the semi-social witch would be offended to smell strange pee in her crockery. But only such desperate needs could separate the tutor from us, in that children were not to be left to themselves. This exact situation, however, was the Rathel’s fond desire, in that I might kill the boy with my bosom or other gender portion as he innocently nibbled crumpets. I, however, had a more certain torture for him, attacking the lad with verbosity.

  “How is it, I say, that you are able to journey here?”

  “In that I fail to glean your meaning, miss, I must beg your pardon.”

  “Of course you must, but enough of this begging. My inquiry is to your presence considering that your parents hate my skin and bones, and certainly have allowed you no permission to attend my library.”

  “Well…in fact, they did not refuse me permission to visit here.”

  “In that you did not ask.”

  “Well…no, miss, I did not.”

  “Therefore, you sneak about London like a cockroach in the dark.”

  “Well….”

  “Sir, if you reply to me again by invoking vertical water sources, I shall swoon and need to be hoisted from the carpet.”

  Having to reset his entire existence in order to avoid using that term, Eric paused a moment before responding.

  “As for my parents, miss, my father during day is at his employ, in his office or about his construction locales. My mother, busy with household or church affairs, allows me generous liberty with my time.”

  “Which means you lie to her and say that you are out with the boys.”

  “We—,” he began, interrupting himself to note if any swooning had begun. Discerning my continuing consciousness, he proceeded. “I make no mention of coming here, only that I journey to a friend’s house.”

  “And when the parents ask of your day playing with the little friends, you respond in what dishonest manner?”

  “We—. I mention the utter boredom of my life.”

  “Thereafter, they make no further inquiries to avoid the terrible whining of English youths and their curse of tedium,” I concluded.

  “Yes, miss,” he replied.

  “Is there not a thing called ‘apprenticing’ that a young man enters with his father to pursue the latter’s profession? Will that activity soon keep you away from our street?”

  “Being a professional and not a craftsman, miss, my father will accept me under his employ only when I am sufficiently educated to suit the guild of architects. This will require my tenure at a university.”

  “Is this university so proximate that you might connive the educators into believing that each day you are away attending local colleges when in fact you ramble toward me?”

  “No, miss, I’ll not be so conniving, in that the university chosen by my father is not within this country.”

  “Is the locale a wild land of valleys and forests without coffee houses and hard streets?”

  “Not exactly, miss, being Italy.”

  Before I could delve further into ridding myself of this male, our (our?) tutor returned with the smell of powder about her groin as though a young witch attempting to conceal her true identity from lusty lads. Thereafter ensued a lesson of proper public interchange between ladies and gentlemen; that is, between sinners of different sexes.

  “A premise to promote society wherein womenfolk have less influence than men is that ladies are most honest persons,” Natwich told her students. Studious Eric was the pupil to reply.

  “Since the Bible tells us that all persons sin and come short of God’s glory, one might respond that ladies, though more honest than even gentlemen, are nevertheless imperfe
ctly so.”

  “Sir, I surmise offense in your impugning a lady’s honesty,” I returned with apparent distress. “I would have thought that a true gentleman would support ladies by ignoring their imperfections instead of implying that they lie.”

  Utterly still, Eric looked toward me with a startled visage as he deliberated the consequences of his speaking. The consequences were deep embarrassment, for Eric was at the age when lady peers were most important to him. According to his favorite lady, however, Eric had attacked our entire feminine race. The young man rapidly stood, looking between the two women present, his complexion darkened with rushing blood. I could smell the heat of his embarrassment, and was thankful that unlike our first meeting, never in those days of schooling together had I smelled the heat of his crotch.

  “I do so apologize, Mrs. Natwich, Miss Alba,” he implored, Eric facing each lady in turn, his speaking affected. Then he bowed, his spine stiff, and quit the room, the household.

  Though I expected a scolding from the tutor, Mrs. Natwich seemed less angered than disappointed.

  “Perhaps, Alba, you can be made to learn that shaming a gentleman is no measure of a lady’s sophistication. I have noticed how well you accept the pridefulness a lady of your station should display, but too intense an application of pride makes one haughty and unpleasant in the eyes of English society. Never forget, Alba, that although no lady, Jesus was not burdened with pride.”

  That last unique interpretation I would not likely recall, but the previous ideas I agreed with, though not due to having failed Natwich’s social order. From the morality of persons, not cities, I felt shame for having harmed the emotions of a person who meant no harm, no shame. This lesson was taught me long before by my own family. But the young witch, in her bigotry, had not learned the lesson enough to apply it to sinners, those other humans.

  • • •

  “And it’s the Sabbath, girl, so of course you’ve no tutoring today.”