Disturbed by Her Song

by Lee, Tanith

  Ruth said she would.

  She had been galvanized by the addictive evil tea. (How many knew that the famous tea-totallers had been of two sects – one which would drink tea and never alcohol, one that had determined to destroy the impact of tea leaves, or at least stop incorrigible females from supping the devilish brew.) She sped out with Vera, laughing. They too went arm in arm, like comrades going on some jaunt, or to a glorious just war, of which they had no fear.

  I’m in love with her.

  Ruth, no. Don’t be.

  Don’t.

  Too late.

  How apposite, Vera’s choice, also: the hothouses. (There were three – it was like an embryonic Kew Gardens.) Ribbed glass roofs provided accommodation for twenty-foot palm trees, pineapple vines, primeval ferns, and succulent stems the color of magenta sugar. They were hot and steamy, with the occasional gardener bowing like a reed before Vera’s progress. Appetizing in the extreme.

  Oh drag me wildly into the arboretum or the olifernery and smother me with your hands and mouth—

  Ruth giggled at her ideas.

  Vera chuckled, smacked her hand lightly (mind-reading?), and picked for her a crimson orange. “Eat this. We will come to other things presently.”

  The Garden of Eden. A non-present God, whose disposition was sane and not unkind. Adama and Eva. Innocent, lustful. Who would have cared about Knowledgeable Apples? Who wanted them, if you could have – this?

  But shades of evening drew on across the gardens, smoking the conservatory glass, and in the house on the rise, lights were igniting. Dinner must occur, like a dreadful unpreventable accident. Emerald the Serpent would waft to the table and coil about them.

  “Vera, truly – I can’t—” for the first, Ruth heard the forlorn desperation in her tone.

  “Hush. I’ve seen you can.”

  Night falls on Paradise. The angel with the flaming sword has cruelly lit all the lamps.

  Dinner. The accident had certainly occurred. A cow, a sheep, a fish and several potatoes, lettuces and eggs, had been involved.

  Ruth watched Emerald surreptitiously. Yes, there was a change. A faint pastel – excitement? – radiated from her.

  And though she kept up the mannerisms, charming or infuriating depending on who beheld them, of decorous frailty, you began to notice a spine of steel holding all the fluttering together.

  A snake.

  Ruth had a headache. The wine made it worse.

  She knew what had caused it. It was desire unfulfilled. Vera, for heavens sake. And after all, to be used like this. It was unfair and in bad taste. And, thought Ruth, belligerently at her most mercenary, would she receive her sexual wages at the end of this palaver? Probably not. Vera was an empress who employed her, that was all. There would be some humiliating debacle with the girl, and from Vera a kiss and a pat, and maybe, if Ruth had really tried to seduce – had even succeeded – with Emerald perhaps screaming with affront and dashing out howling into the house to alert all the servants – a payment of some sort, some trinket, or even money. I shall spurn it. Angrily Ruth amended, No, I’ll take it. I’m not so rich I can afford to be honorable too. Damnation.

  Emerald murmured, “Does your head ache?”

  Ruth realized she had been smoothing her own forehead absently. “Yes.” Too brisk. “I’m afraid it does,” she docilely appended.

  “It’s the candles. Mother has so many lit. And her wretched cigars. I can even smell them up in my room sometimes.”

  “I don’t dislike—”

  “No, if a man smokes, it’s quite all right,” said Emerald.

  They spoke sotto voce. Emerald had drawn her chair somewhat nearer to Ruth’s, Ruth indifferently noted.

  Vera meanwhile had grown more distant, in a complementary mode. Ruth, her temples pounding, saw Vera as if from the wrong end of a telescope.

  The dessert was being served. Ruth felt queasy.

  She stood up. “Lady Vera, please excuse me. I’m afraid I have a very bad headache and must lie down.”

  Vera smiled. Having been told of the ploy of feminine weakness, now she took truth for lie.

  “Of course, my dear. Please ring for one of the maids if you find you can’t sleep it off. They keep busy until midnight, and Emily has some excellent drops. You won’t mind that, will you, Emily?”

  “No, Mama,” said Emerald, lowering her eyes like half-sheathed green daggers.

  Ruth forgot to say good night to Emerald, or Vera. She felt now quite ill and went out slowly. Unlike the Serpent, Ruth hated to be at any physical low ebb. It made her self-conscious and vulnerable, and neither feeling appealed.

  She went upstairs also slowly, and once paused, to rest her shrieking head on the cool of the gazelle-littered brass banister. Raising it again she saw, through the blur of lights. Emerald had come out, and looked up at her, with the most delicate unkindness of a look the affronted Ruth had ever seen. But Ruth was past caring. She floundered to her room in bad-tempered physical misery, flung off her clothes and lay down on the bed, nursing some oil of lavender, with every candle blown out.

  Four

  I had slept about four hours. Somewhere an eerie clock was chiming. I counted the strokes through the swansdown of confusion – one, two, and then, after a slight delay, three.

  So it was three in the morning.

  I tested my headache, which had gone, leaving only a muddy emptiness. But I was outraged, depressed.

  Everything smelled of lavender, that lovely light mauve aroma, comparable only to the intensest marzipan.

  Only about an hour to dawn. I turned my head on the pillow to sleep a little longer, and exactly then heard a noise against my bedroom door.

  This was always the problem with servants. (I had none.)

  What could they possibly want?

  “What do you want?” My voice sounded feeble. Anyone with any strength of character would totally ignore it, and stamp straight in.

  Sure enough, the door opened.

  And in my mind, another voice spoke: At last.

  At last? My God – had Vera decided to give me – something on account?

  In the dark, nothing was at all visible. And then there came the hottest gleam. A struck match.

  I couldn’t see. But in the blinding light, felt someone bend over me.

  A scent of melon (the hothouse?) and of – not cigars – cigarettes. Tailored cloth, cologne, tobacco—

  I forced my eyes to open. And flung myself upright on the bed.

  The match had lit both a cigarette and a single candle. A young man stood there.

  “Get out!” I exclaimed. Sounding, to myself, like some imbecile. “How dare you—”

  “Oh, I dare,” said he. It was a light, blond voice. And then he gave a boyish laugh. “Do you know me, little girl?”

  I lay back on the pillows, astounded, clad – as I was well aware – in only a light summer nightgown, my hair loose, and nothing defensive to hand save a bottle of lavender oil.

  And then.

  “But you are—” I faltered.

  “Who do you think I am?”

  I knew. It wasn’t Vera. This was her daughter, dressed up in an elegant grey jacket and trousers, in a lawn shirt – in a man’s daytime clothes. Her long hair was tied back. She gave the impression of a thin, beautiful young fellow, about sixteen, decadent, and full of juice.

  My wits were reassembling and I said, carefully, “I don’t know who you are. Who are you?”

  “Of course you know. Do you think I look like him?”

  Who? Oh. Who else. Yet how could I tell, I’d never knowingly even seen a photograph of her father.

  “Yes...” I breathed.

  “Yes,” she agreed. “And only I have this privilege, for I am the only woman able to copy him, I am half of him. And I am very like him. Aren’t I? St John Blaze. Say it, Ruth. Say St John.”

  Something caught me. I crooned, very low, “I can’t. I cannot be so familiar.”

  Again that boyish
laugh. She said, “Well, you’re a find, ain’t you? What then?”

  “Sir St John,” I muttered, well conscious of the unwieldy phrase.

  “All right,” she said, “you may call me simply Sinny. Quantities of my girls do that. Say it then. Sinny.”

  I gritted my teeth. “Sinny,” I said.

  The thought ran about in the back of my brain, while the foremost part of my mind only struggled with her appearance and her sudden arrival. The thought of how she had devised this overly reduced quaint title. Had she heard as much, through the wall when, as a child, she listened? Call me simply Sinny.

  It was marvelous really. She did look male, although perhaps too beautiful for that – save in some masculine circles, such beauty might have been more than acceptable.

  I lay there, staring.

  She said, “You’re much too audacious, my naughty Ruth. You said you worshipped him,” (had I? Never.) “and so, if I’m his avatar, you must worship me.”

  She’d become her father, but I didn’t know what to do. But I had nothing to do. My speechless amazement was apparently enough.

  She leaned over me, and I caught again the scent of her, between female and male. Were these clothes his? Surely she was too slight of build to wear his apparel – she must have had them made – but she had used his colognes and unguents.

  And the cigarette, probably, was one of his best.

  “Do you love me?” she said.

  “You are my god,” I said. (Thank you Sabella, mother mine, for the prompt.)

  But there was that about Emerald now, it was quite easy to fawn on her. Want her. Did I?

  It was not the manly pose, God forbid. It was the power she had derived from it.

  I knew she must have done this several times before. She was practiced.

  I knew too both I – and Vera – had been preempted and overruled.

  “If you think I’m your god, then you must let me use you,” she expounded on her theme.

  “Yes,” I said, “Sinny.”

  “Or,” she said, “I may change my mind.”

  What melodrama.

  I’d have liked to push her out of the room.

  But instead I let her mouth come down on mine.

  Without doubt, as I said, she had done this many, many times before. In fact I had the sense she had done it since the time of Lilith – since the very Eden I had witlessly visualized for myself and Vera.

  Her tongue fondled my teeth and gums, slid backward to the roof of my mouth, seeming to enter my nose, my eyes – a snake’s tongue – blinding, tickling, bewildering me—

  Arousal came in an intense leap.

  Before I could stop myself I took hold of her.

  “You’re bad,” she said, lifting her mouth. “A bad woman.” (Had she heard this through that wall? Obviously he had had women then, by day, he must have done, or how else did she know?)

  “I love you,” I lied. Feeble. I should loathe myself tomorrow. But that wasn’t yet.

  The lie was sweet. I knew she would, as Vera hadn’t, reward me.

  Emerald lowered herself and knelt over my body. She folded up my nightgown, then bending her head, put that warm honey mouth first onto my right, then my left breast.

  All the lust I’d felt before, unappeased, flamed into renewal.

  A voice in my head warned me, If you cry out, remember she’s – she’s – Sin—

  But a wiser voice said, Now protest, deny.

  “Don’t,” I moaned, “please spare me.”

  “Bitch,” she said. Her fingers slipped inside me, as her tongue played my breasts. Her thumb twitched nimbly on the piquant clitoral nub.

  Before I could know what my body was at, I spasmed an intense brilliant flicker, like strong summer lightning. At my gasps, she thrust her velvet tongue again into my mouth and nearly into my throat, throttling me.

  I lay dead beneath her. Vanquished.

  I thought, Pretend to be sorry. So I sniveled.

  “No,” she said, Emerald Sinny. “Now you must turn onto your belly.”

  And that was when panic stirred far down, in my core that craved only the briefest rest, to be followed by more of her attentions. And Panic said, Now she’ll treat you as he does his girls. The Palette.

  Do you want paint mixed on you behind your back?

  When Vera came into the breakfast room the following day, I was sitting upright as a poker, and ready for battle.

  I knew there must be one. I didn’t look forward to it, caught between a need to offend her and another need to placate. I thought too she wouldn’t believe me, for she’d closed her eyes to it all anyway. I could hardly think a woman of her intelligence and caliber could remain in such total ignorance, except through the process of self-deception.

  Emerald had not come down. I seized the moment as Vera stood there, levelly eyeing alternately myself and the cuts of bacon on the sideboard.

  “I must talk to you as soon as possible.”

  “Yes?” she asked, with that idle teasing grace of hers. “Then of course.”

  I tried to bite back rioting words, but heard myself declare, “You won’t like a word of what I have to say.”

  “Dear me. Should I tremble?”

  “You should prepare yourself.”

  “My dear Ruth, you begin to sound like a heroine from one of the novels by the Misses Brontë.”

  The door was opened by the slovenly footman.

  Both Vera and I braced ourselves visibly – she certainly did, and I am sure I must have done – for the advent of Emerald. But it was the Anubis dog who entered and padded quietly across the room to lie down by the terrace doors.

  Then a maid bustled in. It seemed Emerald begged to be excused the breakfast. She was enervated and had elected to stay in bed.

  Vera raised her brows. Her lips turned down.

  When the maid had gone again and shut the door, Vera said to me, “Something has happened.” I said nothing. Vera said, “I assume not what we hoped—” (we hoped—) “would happen? Or have you succeeded?” She looked, contrary to her words, grim enough.

  “In a way,” I said. “She came to my room.”

  “She came – to your room – you mean you invited her there?”

  “No. I woke up and found her there, lighting a cigarette.”

  “A – what can you mean? She doesn’t smoke. She can’t abide it when I do. Even her beloved father’s cigarettes make her dizzy.”

  “Vera,” I said, “she isn’t what you think. Or what she thinks, possibly, half the time. Your daughter is a deceiver, Vera. To others and to herself. She is a sort of fiend, and worse than a fiend—” I felt my face grow hot with anger to match the rage I saw bloom in Vera’s. This wasn’t how I had planned to tell her. I said, “Forgive me. Let me recount everything in the proper order. Will you listen, and agree only to attack me when I’ve finished?”

  Her eyes were like broken suns, splinters of burning threat; her voice was icy. “Go on,” she said.

  Five

  The girl who had become a young man stood over Ruth, playful and menacing, and Ruth thought the best, thing would be to get up at once and thrust the intruder out of the door.

  Lust had sunk to a dry tingling; curiosity had grown more insistent.

  Deciding, Ruth turned her now-naked body over on the bed. She lay in waiting. Ruth was strong. If she had to, she could escape Emerald, and almost certainly subdue her. Ruth kept her right arm ready, folded across under her breasts, all prepared to lever herself upward and away.

  “You have a nice back,” said Emerald, in a professional tone. “Broad here and here – slender here. The corset marks have almost faded. What ugly things you women wear, don’t you, to please us?”

  Something silken stroked along Ruth’s spine. Was Emerald preparing to lash her with some scarf? But no, it was only the tied-back coil of Emerald’s long hair pouring forward. Then Emerald’s hand and mouth began to work on Ruth’s back.

  What heavenly pleasure.
The hands moving with a firm sliding, the tongue following, describing each muscle and vertebra.

  There was no fulsome wetness, no paint involved – was there? Ruth, though she could not see, thought there was not. The warm wet tongue, the silky hair, were the only brushes, and the stroking hands the only palette knives.

  But had it, for those women he mixed his colors on, felt at all like this? Perhaps...

  “They all like the procedure,” said Emerald in a drowsy amused voice. “Even the ones who thought they wouldn’t, and protested. And nothing bad came of it. Save just three times.”

  Ruth felt Emerald climb up on to her buttocks. The girl weighed very little, and sitting astride Ruth, Emerald began to ride. Sensually alerting as this was, Ruth was now well aware that such a bow-legged stance would be insupportable for an eighteen-year-old woman who had never done it in the past. This girl who had refused to learn to ride a horse had, nevertheless, loosened the joints of her thighs on other gallops.

  Emerald began to make sounds, little rough mmms, and next short rasping grunts. She clutched Ruth’s hips, rubbing her centre against Ruth’s body so now Ruth felt on her the tinselly moist scratch of pubic hair. The trousers were undone then, and (obviously) no male equipment had spilled out. But she is still, isn’t she, mixing her colors on my back?

  Ruth had supposed from the prelude Emerald might be noisy in climax. But in fact at the peak, all sounds ended, apart from a high thin whining note, like a whistle blown miles off.

  Emerald dismounted, and lay down. Ruth turned her head on the pillow with an undeniably amorous interest, and saw the pale face full of the flame of recent orgasm, the eyes shut and lips taking drafts of air.

  Emerald said, “Yes, look at me if you like. But you didn’t see me when it happened. Did you?”

  “No. I should have liked to...“

  “Well, that isn’t the bargain, my dear,” said Emerald, her female loins gleaming dull gold in the candle-flicker, her masculine persona adroit and present. “I’ll only take you in the dark, or from behind, or both. You’ll never see.”