The Autobiography of a Flea, Book 3

CHAPTER ELEVEN

When finally the coach halted and I heard the scurrying of footboys and the hoarse shouts of the coachman himself, I knew that we had arrived at the inn at Somerset. I recalled also Father Lawrence's mouthwatering description of the Lucullan feast that was in store for his three tender wards and himself, and my jaws ground enviously at the notion of feeding. Still, I was not really famished yet, so I could await with relative imperturbability the moment of deliverance, when I promised myself a goodly feast on diverse anatomies.

That Father Lawrence had not been a braggart concerning his familiarity with the landlord of the inn at Somerset was demonstrated a few moments after our arrival, when a jovial, booming voice bade him welcome, “Zounds, good Father, step you down on terra firma and be welcome after your long journey. I have missed you greatly, and would, if your spiritual obligations do not take priority, sup with you this night, you to be my guest, and exchange confidences.”

“I should like nothing better, my brave Thomas,” said the English ecclesiastic, “but on the morrow we leave at once for St. Thaddeus, where I am now to be quartered in my priestly endeavors.”

“Not that seminary which boasts that ugly rogue by name, Father Clement, a veritable ogre to the luckless sinner and the entrapped wench who fall into his brawny clutches?”

“The very same. But, look you, Thomas, I will need two rooms in your comfortable inn this night, for my three wards. Come, my daughters, we are in England, and here is the worthiest of hosts to greet you and look to your creature comforts. Why, not even the King himself and all his court could find better lodging nor more palatable viands than at the sign of the Dawn of Somerset!”

“You do me too much honor, good Father,” chuckled the landlord. “Oh ho! Tonight my humble establishment will be graced with beauty such as never yet has set foot in it – not one, but three comely wenches, each more tempting than the other so that a poor devil of an unregenerate Protestant would not know with whom or where to begin!”

“Aye, but he would doubtless know how, my valiant Thomas,” chuckled the English ecclesiastic. “Now pay heed before we repair to your havening hostel – these damsels speak but little English, being all from the heart of warm Provence in that nation which is notable for so much courtly handkissing! Therefore seek not to startle or affright them with your bluff and direct manner, for they are not common wenches, mark you, but rather delicate virginal novices intended for deliverance up to the holy men of St. Thaddeus, and hence their maidenheads must not be impaired by such fearful brunt as I know you capable of giving!”

“The devil take it, and here I believed that you had, in honor of our brotherly reunion – for I knew you when you were but a stripling and no candidate at all for book and pulpit and mealymouthing, forget not that – conveyed these toothsome saplings hither that we might each of us let flow our vigorous sap to make them grow, if assuredly not big with child, fulsome with bedlore in the science of sweet buff-to-buff fucking!”

But before the good Father could hush his exuberant friend, Marisia, with her sweet Gallic intonation imparting a cock-stirring inflection to the naughty word, had interposed in halting English: “Oh, mon Pere, is this already the Seminary, where we are to fuck?”

“Hush, my daughter!” Father Lawrence quickly gasped, and then to his old companion of hearty cock-endeavoring: “Pay no heed to the sweet Marisia, good Thomas. The child has a mind like a parrot, and, now that I am teaching her the complexities of our honest English speech, seizes here and there upon a word that chanced to resound in her dainty little ears and, without warning or lewd intent – for she is pure virgin, have no doubt! – expounds it at the least occasion!”

“Nay, I will not make the lass blush by chiding her over what she has just said – but damn if she has not unerringly grasped the very crux of the regimen which awaits her at that academy of cocksmiths!” the landlord laughingly declared. “And more, just from her enunciation of that delicious word, she stirs within my loins the readiness to that pleasurable act to which the word is so descriptively mated!”

“Be that as it may,” Father Lawrence reprovingly countered, “she is not for you, nor are these delicious damsels Denise and Louisette!”

“May I roast in everlasting fires if I do not tell the truth and avow to you, my erstwhile brother in combats against the handmaidens of Venus – who, I warrant you, are far more comely than ever you will find whoresons and rogues whose devil's breed you solemnly inveigh against in your new occupation – that this creature with soft pink skin and long tumbling wheat-colored curls makes me bethink myself of a time scarce thirty years ago when, during a thunderstorm, I took shelter in a friendly hayrick and found, to my unforgettable joy, a wench wearing only a torn kirtle and, like myself intent upon hiding from the storm. A double storm, it seems, for she had but recently fled through the fields to escape a fat bailiff who wished to tumble her and, in the process, ripped her kirtle down to two of the juiciest, roundest titties it was ever given with a lusty man to see and fondle and suck -”

“Enough, enough, Thomas, I have heard that narrative a hundred times over. Aye, and in the consoling of her, did you not, though you were then – if your tale be accurate – no more than nineteen summers, know her in the Biblical sense some half-dozen times before the storm quieted and she with it? And each time in the retelling, that temptress' bubbies grow in span just as, I fear, the accomplishments of your untried cock!”

“Damn for an uncircumcised villain if I had not by that time already initiated my cock in a score of beldames and maidens, for my first tumble was when I was but fourteen, a meager lad who knew his station.”

“Aye, between the straining thighs of whatever wench would spread them for you,” the English ecclesiastic laughingly intervened. “But the demoiselle whom you have likened to your hayrick partner in carnal coupling is named Denise, and this coppery-haired coquette is her sister Louisette, nearly her twin but for the incidence of an hour between them in emerging from their worthy mother's fabricating womb.”

“And these fair sisters, equally are they maidens, Father?”

“Equally, though in varying degrees as to eagerness and zest. They can fend for themselves, I am certain, but I have taken them under my protection, as they plead to have their kidnapped young brother released from the dungeons of the evil Bey of Algiers. At St. Thaddeus, I will seek to interest the Father Superior in their special case so that intercession can be made to that infidel ruler. But now, let our luggage be taken to our rooms, and do you bring me a mug of good brown ale to toast your health, my amiable Thomas!”

“My sister's young nephew Jemmy will see to the quartering of the wenches – aye, begging your pardon, Father, virgins then. Come you with me, and I will draw a cooling draught from a newly tapped barrel.”

Next I heard the robust landlord call impatiently, “Jemmy, you worthless, shiftless scamp, stir your lazy stumps and be helping these young damsels to the two rooms on the second floor to the west! And mind you do not give them offense with your gawking about and your sheep's eyes, or I'll drub your young hide till every bone is broken!” Then, in a softer voice to Father Lawrence, “He's a good boy, but I keep him in his place by letting him fear my constant wrath. To praise and cozen him would be to let him grow slothful.”

“A good precept. But how he blushes at the sight of my wards!”

“'Tis because he is as yet untried in playing the game of the two-backed beast, though I've caught him more times than I would remember slipping his apprentice tool out of his breeches and pretending that he had a wench to ready for its entry.”

“Poor youth! That is a pleasure which is more seemly when one comes to the last ages of man than the first,” Father Lawrence chuckled. “But my throat is parched, so let us sample this nut-brown ale you brag of worthy Thomas!”

“T-this w-way, my – my 1-ladies,” I heard the little squeaky voice of a youth stammer out, and it was followed by soft giggles from the three fair wards. They might not yet be able to discourse in his native tongue, but I wagered they knew already what a fainthearted, blushing young son of Onan he must be, already stricken into gawkiness by the mere sight of three such luscious, tempting morsels of cunt.

“Go with the estimable young man, my daughters,” Father Lawrence now bade them in French, “and I will come to you later when Thomas has prepared our dinner. I have told them, my friend, of your mouthwatering roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, and the gooseberry tart. It will be a feast for them.”

“Aye, if at St. Thaddeus they are to dine on black bread and water, and the scourge and droning prayers for dessert.”

“Not so, go to, you sacrilegious rogue. My colleagues are, I trust, astute enough to tempt my wards with puddings and comfits and sweetmeats, if they hope to initiate them into the raptures of carnal communion.”

“From what I know of that hairy bull Father Clement,” the landlord chucklingly gave reply, “he would fuck before a feast, during it and long after it, without once casting an eye on the groaning sideboards laden with viands.”

“On what presumption do you thus defame the character of that worthy prelate?”

“On what my own eyes beheld not a week hence, when he and two other portly priests commandeered my best rooms and ale and nearly a quarter of beef, sent my servants screeching for help from the sheriff to save them all from ravishment, and tumbled my bound girl Emily – though in all justice and fairness, I must tell you that she is readily tumbled. Come, the ale awaits us. Jemmy is not to be feared with your treasured lambs, so forget your momentous obligations for the nonce and let us talk of halcyon times when maidens would gaze at each of us in turn and then select him whose swollen weapon was the more fearsome.”

“Ah, golden days of youth! But even in those dimly distant days, Thomas, I was selected at least thrice to your once!” the English ecclesiastic hilariously made answer.

“Now that you wear the cassock of a learned and holy man who hears the confessions of heaven alone knows how many adulterous baggages,” the landlord jestingly if impiously intervened, “I will not boldly denounce you as a liar. But if for one night before you take up again your consecrated duties, set both of us upon those three fledglings, and on the morrow see whether I do not outscore you fully two to one!”

“And what would that prove, good Thomas, save that you are a man of impatient appetites, which I knew years ago,” Father Lawrence laughed. “No, I am always charged with safe delivery, unmolested and unadulterated, of my wards to the Seminary. And while privately as a sinner who was once a man in breeches such as you are now, my good friend, I may pine to give them swifter delivery by far of their womanhood than any of my colleagues at St. Thaddeus, I would reproach myself to my dying day for having thus broken faith with my new order and the Father Superior who dispatched to me my orders to convert young souls to the blessed flock which is contingent upon him and his fellows. Ah, this ale is not at all impaired as I remember its vigor!”

“It equals its provider as to that,” Thomas quipped.

“And its drinker too, if that be true. Again, to your health!”

“And yours!” Both men smacked their lips and then clanked their tankards down upon the counter, and the locket shook in his pocket and I in turn was shaken, but not sadly. For now I had learned much of my jailer; he had been a man of parts who loved the good things of life till, perhaps in some melancholy evening after carousal, he had seen a vision and repented. But just because he had been a sinner, he was more indulgent than most who are called to the dour black raiment of the priesthood. So I had compassion on his nocturnal strayings when Lucifer beckoned, for he had not come by venery with the assumption of the cassock, but long before he had even been persuaded to don it.

After several tankards of nut-brown ale and many a hearty backslapping and exchanges of reminiscences of happy times past, the good landlord at length went to his kitchen to order the evening repast for his four new guests. I heard Father Lawrence sigh nostalgically, as if this reunion had brought back memories still too vivid to be churchlike, and then I heard the sound of soft footsteps and a sudden little catch of breath, followed by a stammered, hasty, “Oh, forgive me, Your Worship, I did not see you. Is there aught I may bring you for your comfort, holy sir?”

“Be not afraid of my somber gown, my daughter. Are you perchance possessed of the Christian name of Emily?”

“But indeed I am, Your Worship! Do you know me? Yet I confess I have not seen you at my master's hostel ere this.”

“How old are you, my pretty creature?”

“E-eighteen, Y-Your Worship.” There followed another gasp, and then a hesitant, “Do-do you truly find me so, Y-Your Worship?”

“If I might see you alone at your prayers, my daughter, I would deem you nigh unto a young angel, or at least a seraphim, so comely is your presence. What a mantle of dark brown hair, like unto this agreeable ale in hue! And that visage, with pure high brow and dainty nose and full ripe mouth on whose soft lips prayers assuredly must speed faster to sympathetic listeners than from the lips of a duke or baron! Of medium height, yet not fragile, with richly ardent contours shaping out the modest veil of skirt and bodice. And such large, infinitely gentle dark brown eyes with long curly lashes that, I know, are quick to flutter and shut out the sight of iniquity! And yet, bound by indenture to a hard though just master, menial toil has not marred the peach-like bloom of your carnation skin, my daughter! And all this marvel of grace and youth and loveliness is called Emily!”

“Ohhhhh, Y-Your Worship!” Emily breathed in awe-stricken adulation.

I heard Father Lawrence chuckle benignly: “My daughter, you address me with the titular nomenclature befitting a judge on the bench, whereas I am far from that, being only a humble priest. Yet, not wishing to be rude in response to your evidently sincere greeting, which shows the deepest respect, I might tell you that as a judge – a mortal and unfrocked judge solely, I would pronounce your charms and bearing to be admirable. How long have you been indentured to my good friend Thomas?”

“T-three years, Your – I mean – what am I to call you?” the minx stammered.

“Father, or Your Reverence, or my true name, Father Lawrence. And I in turn shall call you my daughter Emily. Are you happy here, considering that no one who is bound over to another can truly know the ultimate of happiness?”

“Oh, yes, Your – Your Reverence. My master is rough but kind, and does not beat me more than every other month, and mostly when I am lax in my chores.”

“To recognize authority and discipline shows your inherently good nature, my daughter, and I am happy to state that he has not tyrannically enforced his rights as holder of your indenture. But tell me,” and now his voice was suavely unctuous, “has he sought other rights upon your lovely person?”

“Oh, sir! I – I mean, Y-Your Reverence! He would not like me to prattle of such matters, I'm sure,” Emily gushed.

“Then he has taken you to bed with him, my daughter?”

“B-but it was not a sin, as he has no wife and is a man of nature, which has its needs as even a lowly bound girl has hers, Y-Your Reverence!”

“Spoken with a tolerance that shows the essentially free spirit which motivates you, my daughter! Now, I am desirous to talking more privately with you after your duties are done this night. Will that be possible, my daughter?”

“Y-yes s-sir. I – I mean, Y-your Reverence. I – I am off at ten, I am, and I have my own room, the master's very nice about such things, not making me sleep on a pile of straw in the cellar as he did the servant who was here before I came.”

“And where is your room, dear Emily?”

“At the top of the stairs, just off the broom closet, Y-Your Reverence. It is a little room, but then, as the master says, all a body needs a room for is to sleep in.”

“Eminent wisdom, my daughter. Then, I look forward to our resumed discussion somewhat after ten this night. Thank you, my daughter, for your graciousness, and I will not occupy you further.”

“Thank you, Y-Your Reverence!” And with a stifled little giggle – why must females emit that sound so resembling the muted bray of a jackass when under the stress of perfectly basic emotions? Emily scurried off for I heard a door bang to and assumed she must have gone back into the kitchen to see to the roast beef and all the other condiments of the forthcoming repast.

I heard Father Lawrence sigh, “What a charming creature, that one!” and then, after a pause, say in louder voice, “And now to look in upon my lovely little wards to make sure they are cozily quartered.”

And with this, he strode up the stairway to the rooms he had engaged, the locket and myself bouncing up and down in his cassock pocket every energetic step of the way.