by Molly Tanzer
Henry mopped his brow with a handkerchief and stuffed it back into a pocket of the coat Robert had—rather grudgingly, Henry thought—given him the use of for the night. With a sigh he dug his fingers in among the bricks and managed to scramble up after his friend. He heard a rending sound and, panicking, risked reaching around to feel his behind; it wasn’t his trousers that had split, thank God. Just a rip in the coat where a button had torn free from its moorings. Too bad for Robert.
“Come down!” cried Rochester, when Henry crested the wall. “Hurry!”
With another grunt, Henry jumped, nearly twisting his ankle as he landed on the hard earth of the street. He readjusted the hideous cap he’d also borrowed, checked his pocket to make sure his mask was still there, and nodded. “All right, I’m ready. Dunno how we’ll get back in, though.”
“They always have a plan,” said Rochester, trotting down the street away from the college. “St John has a manservant, too, and he usually stays behind to prepare some sort of discreet ingress after-hours. Now, come on, we must go quickly. They’ll have been there some time already.”
Henry was very nervous. He had trouble catching his breath as he took off after Rochester; the urge to urinate came upon him strong every few seconds. He’d never snuck out of the college, and after Mr. Berry’s lecture that afternoon, he knew that should he be caught he might very well be thrown out, having no academic record to balance the scales against this indiscretion.
But to hell with all of that—he was going to a party!
The Horse and Hat was not particularly far from Wadham; given that the tavern’s politics were as flexible as the college’s, Henry knew the professors with Royalist sympathies, oblique or otherwise, went there to drink and get a bite to eat on Saturday nights. Henry, however, had never been there, and was glad Rochester knew the way, for he was lost within five minutes, Oxford after dark being much, well, darker and more confusing than he had anticipated.
Down alleyways they tramped, and scampered across thoroughfares, until, perhaps a quarter of an hour later, a sign-board, swinging in the light spring breeze, came into sight: A rearing stallion and, behind it, a plumed hat. Lights blazed inside, and through the windows Henry saw many figures moving about within. He mopped his forehead again, and hoped against hope he wasn’t sweating too badly, like he usually did when he was anxious.
“Here we go,” said Rochester. “Put your mask on, and someone at the Horse will direct us accordingly. They have an understanding with the management.”
“Who’s they?”
“The Blithe Company, nodgecombe!”
“Oh,” said Henry, and tied the black mask over his eyes, knotting it behind his head. “Let me do yours—you won’t be able to manage with that awful wig.”
“I like this wig.” Rochester was pouting.
“Pick up that lip or you’re liable to trip over it,” said Henry, clapping his friend on the back. “Come—I have dreamed of this for so very long. Let us have some fun!”
“You may be surprised,” said Rochester, but he pushed open the door of the inn and bowed Henry inside.
It was very crowded, and smelled strongly of middling beer and body odor. Men and women of all sorts bumped shoulders as they tried to make it to the bar and back again; the three sweaty-faced barmaids could not serve the throng quickly enough. A sign of the changing times, a bearded fellow in a weathered leather jacket was singing “When the King Enjoys His Own Again” from atop a table to much general raising of tankards and exclamations of “Long live the King!”
Henry thought it a splendid scene, and drank it all in eagerly. Now this was what he’d been missing! He was all smiles until a yeoman lurched into him and then swore at him for the outrage; Henry panicked and began to blather apologies—but the man moved on without further aggression, and he relaxed.
He was concerned, however, that he could see no one else wearing masks—or for that matter, anything remotely fine. Desperate, he looked around for Rochester, but it seemed he had been pushed or pulled away from Henry by one of the currents in that ocean of humanity. Seeing a flash of the dark purple of the boy’s coat in the rear left corner, Henry tried his best to wind his way quickly over.
Rochester had his ear pressed to a wooden door.
“What’s the rumpus?” Henry asked. “What are we to do?”
“They’re in the private room behind this door. It’s begun already. I’m waiting for them to finish whatever they’re doing so we don’t interrupt.”
“Interrupt them at what? A party? I thought—”
“Shut up, will you? Ah—here’s our moment,” said Rochester. He knocked in a pattern Henry didn’t fully catch, then ducked inside. Henry followed after.
There were perhaps nine masked gentlemen and a handful of “ladies”—also disguised—in the private chamber, but it seemed far more crowded than it was, being a small space and better-furnished than the common room. All present were bedecked in the kind of finery that might get one arrested for anti-Puritan sympathies in mixed company. Mother-of pearl buttons gleamed on coats of hunter green, slate grey, wine red, and deep purple. Long wigs trailed everywhere; ladies’ wide skirts endangered cups of claret.
Now this was the party Henry had been expecting!
“Stop gawping,” hissed Rochester, bringing Henry back to himself. “Try to look natural. I’d suggest sitting, and keep in mind if you speak to anyone they’ll know you don’t belong.”
That the little weasel should lecture him about looking natural—why, Rochester looked about as comfortable as a Roundhead at an Anglican mass. But Henry took his point, and, pouring himself a glass of wine, sat on a crimson-velvet upholstered chaise not too near the stage he’d spied at the back of the room. All seats and benches pointed toward it, and after Rochester’s remark about “interrupting” he assumed some entertainment would happen upon it presently.
He was correct. Just as he was growing weary of crowd-watching—enough so to get up and attempt to mingle, as Rochester had been doing—the very person he had been trying to catch a glimpse of all night appeared on the stage.
Henry had been able to recognize most of his masked colleagues as they milled about, eating things and chatting. There was Nicholas Jay, kissing the left breast of a similarly masked woman, and beside him, Anthony Neville, who said something that made everyone giggle. There was Edwin Harris, and Rowan Zwarteslang, and Richard Smith, placing wagers on something. Some of the other lads resisted identification—but there was no mistaking St John Clement.
His appearance caused the din to momentarily rise and then recede, like a wave crashing upon the seashore and quickly withdrawing. He was, to Henry’s eyes, magnificent: dressed in a coat of pearlescent sea-foam green embroidered with silver thread, he stood out among the darker raiment of his comrades, and his wig was white, rather than black. He was wearing white stockings, too, and his slender calves seemed to shine against the red curtain that obscured the makeshift backstage.
“What do you think will be the final act tonight?”
Some masked young man plunked down beside Henry on the chaise, smelling of wine and some sort of perfume. It was Aldous Clark, he thought—they had several classes together, so Henry shrugged, not trusting himself to speak. He didn’t want to be recognized. Not yet.
“Last time was rather entertaining, if—not to sound unappreciative—a little more outré than usual, don’t you think? Never watched a fellow go at it with a blower before.” Clark giggled. “Interesting, that. Can’t say I didn’t learn a few things, that St John can really give it to the ladies. But here we go anyhow, no need to wonder further.”
Henry was glad his companion hadn’t noticed anything strange, and was now wholly occupied by what was happening on stage. St John had summoned two beautiful youths to stand beside him, red-haired and freckle-faced, one female, one male, and they were so very alike they must be siblings, Henry decided, if not twins. The girl wore only her shift; the boy, his shirt, which was s
lightly too big for him, and hung down well past his knees. Even in the candlelight, Henry saw them both blushing to be so bare in front of all the fine gentlemen and ladies.
St John bowed to the settling crowd. The curls of his white wig fell forward over his shoulders, and when he stood, he swept them back dramatically.
“Good evening, colleagues!” he said, not raising his voice but extending his arms in a gesture of welcome. When the room went completely still, he dropped his hands, placing one on each of the heads of the siblings. They flinched slightly at his touch. Applause followed this; after it subsided, St John cleared his throat and began anew.
“Thank you all for coming tonight,” he said. “I trust the earlier entertainments were to your liking?”
Mutterings of assent from everyone. St John looked pleased—but then waggled a finger at the gathering like a nurse scolding a disobedient child.
“Such a host of naughty boys—and girls—to sneak away so late just to see a parade of performing dogs, bawdy songs sung by those of small talent, and the—ahem—unusual abilities of Mistress Lavinia! We must have some intellectual purpose to our gathering, methinks. To that end, I propose to conclude this evening not with another common production, but with a philosophical experiment.”
Henry leaned forward a little, as did the rest of the company. This was, judging by their reactions, a rather unusual announcement.
“Tonight, my two companions—Irish twins, orphans I paid ten shillings to appear before you—will help resolve a theological conundrum. Fear not, we will not be debating how many angels may sit on the head of a pin! I think, rather, that all of you will be quite riveted by our question … as well as our method of inquiry.”
“I say, this is a strange sort of party,” whispered Henry to Rochester, who’d taken a seat on a stool next to him.
“Shh!” hissed Rochester, for Henry thought maybe the hundredth time that night. Prig.
“I propose,” continued St John, “that tonight, we, the Blithe Company, determine whether the act of love,” here St John, to Henry’s surprise, dismay—and excitement—waggled his hips in a lewd manner, “is a spiritual thing, or a physical one. We are told it is spiritual—God joins us together, and let no man put that asunder, et cetera—but may man join together what God wills asunder? If such is possible, we can, I think, conclude that intercourse is a physical act—and thus may, with clean consciences, indulge in it without fear of anything worse than the pox.”
General laughter; more applause. Henry joined in half-heartedly, looking at the twins. The lad was crying a little, his nose was dripping and he kept wiping it on the back of his hand, where the slimy slug-trails of snot sparkled in the candlelight. Surely … surely nothing, Henry told himself—and for good measure, he also told himself to suck it up and be the man he wanted to be. This is what he’d desired to be a party to, after all. He couldn’t back out now.
“My hypothesis,” St John said when the applause died down, “is that Christ—God—the Holy Ghost—all of the angles—they have nothing to do with it. With fucking, I mean. Though I claim to have been divinely inspired during pursuit,” here he moved away from the twins and drew a young woman out of the audience, kissing her deeply on the mouth only to push her away once her very visible bosom began to heave, “and, truth be told, consummation,” he took a young man by the hand this time, and kissed him on the mouth whilst fondling what he found just below where the stripling’s coat split and fanned out, “I have heard time again in church and in the classroom that to do what I like best is an offense—a spiritual crime, if you will, against myself, against my future wife, and against God. Well, if intercourse is a spiritual act, then it could not, to my mind, be performed by those without spiritual desire. Take, for example, these twins.”
Henry felt queasy, but kept his seat. He couldn’t have left the company if he wanted to. St John’s overtures toward the audience members had excited him too much for him to rise without humiliation.
“Brothers and sisters do not look at one another with the eyes of lust. Such a thing is impossible. It is wrong—it is an abomination. And these twins are not abominations—are you?”
Neither of the siblings replied, so St John knocked the boy on the head as if rapping his knuckles on a door.
“Are you an abomination, sir?”
“No,” he managed.
“And you, Madam?”
“No m’lord,” she whispered, not looking up.
“So neither of you have ever desired the other in a sexual fashion?”
They looked up at St John with identical wild, wide eyes filled with terror. He smiled down at them beatifically.
“Let a couch be placed upon the stage!” he said. “Some of you must stand, a pity, but it cannot be helped. A couch!”
The only couch appropriate for what Henry feared was about to ensue was under his own bottom, so he stood quickly and slunk into the corner behind it, trying his best to melt into the shadows. St John caught his eye—and smiled slightly. Henry’s heart began to pound when St John bid two of the bigger members of the Company to move the chaise to the front of the room. He then sat in the center of it, and then patted the thigh of his leg as though encouraging a kitten to jump up there.
“Sit, Madam,” he said to the girl. She did, reluctantly. “And you, sir—sit here,” he said, thumping the cushion beside him.
Henry crouched beside Rochester. “Is he really going to make them …”
“You said you wanted to come, so wait and watch,” hissed Rochester.
“Your brother is very handsome,” said St John, to the girl. “Have you ever thought about that?”
“Nay, sir,” said the girl.
“You’re very pretty—do you think your brother has ever looked at you and thought so?”
“He brought me a flower once, sir, after our aunt had cuffed me bad on the ear for breaking one of the eggs I gathered from the coop.”
“You didn’t do that out of lust for your sister, though,” enquired St John, turning to the lad. He blushed crimson, and shook his head.
“Well! I think we have established these twins are neither perverts nor sinners—quite normal, yes?” The audience nodded its approval. St John smiled, and lifted the girl by her narrow waist, then plunked her down beside her brother. “Finally,” he said to the company, “I say to you that we must agree, for this experiment to go forward, that ten shillings is not a spiritual matter. Does the Bible, or Aquinas, or anyone ever say that ten shillings is spiritual, rather than physical, in nature?”
“Get on with it!” cried someone.
“Patience, patience,” admonished St John, but he seemed to sense he was losing his audience. “All right you two—boy, I want you to kiss your sister. On the lips, like a man kisses a woman.”
He refused; St John slapped him. Weeping, the lad acquiesced to the Lord Calipash’s demand. Henry’s legs felt shaky, wobbly—he saw colored blackness flashing behind his eyes. Never had he thought—dear God, the lad was a quick study, and had commenced fondling his sister’s breast!
The chit seemed shyer than her brother, and when his assault on her chastity became increasingly one-sided, St John apparently felt it was time to intervene. He snuck up behind her, pantomiming for the giggling crowd, and then with firm but gentle pressure, pushed her head down to the part of her brother that was beginning to show signs of excitement: His shirt was tenting over his groin, and there was a small wet stain obvious against the white linen.
“Unleash the beast,” encouraged St John. “So far it seems as though my hypothesis has been confirmed, but if you, Madam, are not sufficiently moved by the flesh alone, then I fear we may have to declare a draw rather than draw a conclusion!”
When the girl uncovered her brother’s cockstand, Henry felt as though it were a toss-up if he would vomit or ejaculate in his breeches; when she pushed the lad back onto the couch and took his affair into herself with a catlike yowl of pain and then rode him with short jerk
ing motions of her hips until both shouted their climax to the company, Henry was sure he would never again think about touching another person in lust.
A triumphant St John was smoothing their sweaty hair away from their foreheads, kissing their exhausted brows, and claiming loudly that his experiment was a success—but Henry could not help but disagree. He had felt aroused watching the display, to be sure, but he also felt sick at heart.
“You look like you need a drink,” Rochester was saying in his ear. Henry started and stared at him, uncomprehending. “I’ve seen peacocks less green than you.”
“He made them—”
“You wanted to come. Are you happy now?” Rochester’s voice was as bitter as horehound. Henry looked up in surprise.
“I …”
“Come on, then. Now you know, and we may safely be friends without this between us, I think.” Rochester, nearly three years his junior, was leading him by the hand to a flagon of wine. Though already tipsy, Henry took the goblet and drank it with great gulps. He felt positively parched.
Snippets of conversation hit him as the rest of the party mingled and took some refreshment. “Strange,” “different,” “interesting,” were words that stood out to him. Henry was taken aback—while the reaction from the Company seemed more thoughtful than enthusiastic, it shocked him that no one thought to protest such an outrage …
“And what did you think, sir?”
Henry turned—St John was there, smiling at him. His eyes sparkled behind his mask.
“I—”
“Did you find my methods convincing? And what of my conclusion?”
“I …”
“Were you entertained by the show?”
Henry considered this. He had been disgusted, appalled—but some part of him had enjoyed the spectacle. He couldn’t lie to St John …
“I think so, my lord—”
St John took a step back. “My Lord? Who do you think I am?” He looked really annoyed. “Dare you presume anything among this company? We are all anonymous, sir!”