Imajica 01 - The Fifth Dominion

24

England saw an early spring that year, with the days becoming balmy at the end of February and, by the middle of March, warm enough to have coaxed April and May flowers forth. The pundits were opining that if no further frosts came along to kill the blooms and chill the chicks in their nests, there would be a surge of new life by May, as parents let their fledglings fly and set about a second brood for June. More pessimistic souls were already predicting drought, their divining dampened when, at the beginning of March, the heavens opened over the island.

When—on that first day of rain—Jude looked back over the weeks since she'd left the Godolphin estate with Oscar and Dowd, they seemed well occupied; but the details of what had filled that time were at best sketchy. She had been made welcome in the house from the beginning and was allowed to come and go whenever it pleased her to do so, which was not often. The sense of belonging she'd discovered when she'd set eyes on Oscar had not faded, though she had yet to uncover its true source. He was a generous host, to be sure, but she'd been treated well by many men and not felt the devotion she felt now. That devotion was not returned, at least not overtly, which was something of a fresh experience for her. There was a certain reserve in Oscar's manner—and a consequent formality in their exchanges—which merely intensified her feelings for him. When they were alone together she felt like a long-lost mistress miraculously returned to his side, each with sufficient knowledge of the other that overt expressions of affection were superfluous; when she was with him in company—at the theater or at dinner with his friends—she was mostly silent, and happily so. This too was odd for her. She was accustomed to volubility, to handing out opinions on whatever subject was at issue, whether said opinions were requested or even seriously held. But now it didn't trouble her not to speak. She listened to the tittle-tattle and the chat (politics, finance, social gossip) as to the dialogue of a play. It wasn't her drama. She had no drama, just the ease of being where she wanted to be. And with such contentment to be had from simply witnessing, there seemed little reason to demand more.

Godolphin was a busy man, and though they spent some portion of every day together, she was more often than not alone. When she was, a pleasant languor overcame her, which contrasted forcibly with the confusion that had preceded her coming to stay with him. In fact she tried hard to put thoughts of that time out of her mind, and it was only when she went back to her flat to pick up belongings or bills (which, on Oscar's instruction, Dowd paid) that she was reminded of friends whose company she was at present not disposed to keep. There were telephone messages left for her, of course, from Klein, Clem, and half a dozen others. Later, there were even letters—some of them concerned for her health—and notes pushed through her door asking her to make contact. In the case of Clem she did so, guilty that she'd not spoken to him since the funeral. They lunched near his office in Marylebone, and she told him that she'd met a man and had gone to live with him on a temporary basis. Inevitably, Clem was curious. Who was this lucky individual? Anyone he knew? How was the sex: sublime or merely wonderful? And was it love? Most of all, was it love? She answered as best she could: named the man and described him; explained that there was nothing sexual between them as yet, though the thought had passed through her mind on several occasions; and as to love, it was too soon to tell. She knew Clem well and could be certain that this account would be public knowledge in twenty-four hours, which suited her fine. At least with this telling she'd allayed her friends' fears for her health.

"So when do we get to meet this paragon?" Clem asked her as they parted. "In a while," she said.

"He's certainly had quite an effect on you, hasn't he?" "Has he?"

"You're so—I don't know the word exactly—tranquil, maybe? I've never seen you this way before." "I'm not sure I've ever felt this way before." "Well, just make sure we don't lose the Judy we all know and love, huh?" Clem said. "Too much serenity's bad for the circulation. Everybody needs a good rage once in a while."

The significance of this exchange didn't really strike her until the evening after, when—sitting downstairs in the quiet of the house, waiting for Oscar to come home—she realized how passive she'd become. It was almost as if the woman she'd been, the Jude of furies and opinions, had been shed like a dead skin, and now, tender and new, she had entered a time of waiting. Instruction would come, she assumed; she couldn't live the rest of her life so becalmed. And she knew to whom she had to look for that instruction: the man whose voice in the hall made her heart rise and her head light, Oscar Godolphin,

If Oscar was the good news that those weeks brought, Kuttner Dowd was the bad. He was astute enough to realize after a very short time that she knew far less about the Dominions and their mysteries than their conversation at the Retreat had suggested, and far from being the source of information she'd hoped he'd prove, he was taciturn, suspicious, and on occasion rude, though never the last in Oscar's company. Indeed, when all three of them were together he lavished her with respect, its irony lost on Oscar, who was so used to Dowd's obsequious presence he barely seemed to notice the man.

Jude soon learned to match suspicion with suspicion, and several times verged on discussing Dowd with Oscar. That she didn't was a consequence of what she'd seen at the Retreat. Dowd had dealt almost casually with the problem of the corpses, dispatching them with the efficiency of one who had covered for his employer in similar circumstances before. Nor had he sought commendation for his labor, at least not within earshot of her. When the relationship between master and servant was so ingrained that a criminal act—the disposal of murdered flesh—was passed over as an unremarkable duty, it was best, she thought, not to come between them. It was she who was the interloper here, the new girl who dreamed she'd belonged to the master forever. She couldn't hope to have Oscar's ear the way Dowd did, and any attempt to sow mistrust might easily rebound upon her. She kept her silence, and things went on their smooth way. Until the day of rain.

A trip to the opera had been planned for March second, and she had spent the latter half of the afternoon in leisurely preparation for the evening, idling over her choice of dress and shoes, luxuriating in indecision. Dowd had gone out at lunchtime, on urgent business for Oscar which she knew better than to inquire about. She'd been told upon her arrival at the house that any questions as to Oscar's business would not be welcomed, and she'd never challenged that edict: it was not the place of mistresses to do so. But today, with Dowd uncharacteristically flustered as he left, she found herself wondering, as she bathed and dressed, what work Godolphin was about. Was he off in Yzordderrex, the city whose streets she assumed Gentle now walked with his soul mate the assassin? A mere two months before, with the bells of London pealing in the New Year, she'd sworn to go to Yzordderrex after him. But she'd been distracted from that ambition by the very man whose company she'd sought to take her there. Though her thoughts returned to that mysterious city now, it was without her former appetite. She'd have liked to know if Gentle was safe in those summer streets—and might have enjoyed a description of its seamier quarter—but the fact that she'd once sworn an oath to get there now seemed almost absurd. She had all that she needed here.

It wasn't only her curiosity about the other Dominions that had been dulled by contentment; her curiosity about events in her own planet was similarly cool. Though the television burbled constantly in the corner of her bedroom, its presence soporific, she attended to its details scarcely at all and would not have noticed the midafternoon news bulletin, but that an item she caught in passing put her in mind of Charlie.

Three bodies had been found in a shallow grave on Hampstead Heath, the condition of the mutilated corpses implying, the report said, some kind of ritualistic murder. Preliminary investigations further suggested that the deceased had been known to the community of cultists and black magic practitioners in the city, some of whom, in the light of other deaths or disappearances among their number, believed that a vendetta against them was under way. To round the piece off, there was footage of the police searching the bushes and undergrowth of Hampstead Heath, while the rain fell and compounded their misery. The report distressed her for two reasons, each related to one of the brothers. The first, that it brought back memories of Charlie, sitting in that stuffy little room in the clinic, watching the heath and contemplating suicide. The second, that perhaps this vendetta might endanger Oscar, who was as involved in occult practices as any man alive.

She fretted about this for the rest of the afternoon, her concern deepening still further when Oscar failed to return home by six. She put off dressing for the opera and waited for him downstairs, the front door open, the rain beating the bushes around the step. He returned at six-forty with Dowd, who had barely stepped through the door before he pronounced that there would be no opera visit tonight: Godolphin contradicted him immediately, much to his chagrin, telling Jude to go and get ready; they'd be leaving in twenty minutes.

As she dutifully headed upstairs, she heard Dowd say, "You know McGann wants to see you?"

"We can do both," Oscar replied. "Did you put out the black suit? No? What have you been doing all day? No, don't tell me. Not on an empty stomach."

Oscar looked handsome in black, and she told him so when, twenty-five minutes later, he came downstairs. In response to the compliment, he smiled and made a small bow.

"And you were never lovelier," he replied. "You know, I don't have a photograph of you? I'd like one, for my wallet. We'll have Dowd organize it."

By now, Dowd was conspicuous by his absence. Most evenings he would play chauffeur, but tonight he apparently had other business.

"We're going to have to miss the first act," Oscar said as they drove. "I've got a little errand to run in Highgate, if you'll bear with me." "I don't mind," she said.

He patted her hand. "It won't take long," he said. Perhaps because he didn't often take the wheel himself he concentrated hard as he drove, and though the news item she'd seen was still very much in her mind she was loath to distract him with talk. They made good time, threading their way through the back streets to avoid thoroughfares clogged by rain-slowed traffic, and arriving in a veritable cloudburst.

"Here we are," he said, though the windshield was so awash she could barely see ten yards ahead. "You stay in the warm. I won't be long."

He left her in the car and sprinted across a courtyard towards an anonymous building. Nobody came to the front door. It opened automatically and closed after him. Only when he'd disappeared, and the thunderous drumming of the rain on the roof had diminished somewhat, did she lean forward to peer out through the watery windshield at the building itself. Despite the rain, she recognized instantly the tower from the dream of blue eye. Without conscious instruction her hand went to the door and opened it, as her breath quickened with denials.

"Oh, no. Oh, no...."

She got out of the car and turned her face up to the cold rain and to an even colder memory. She'd let this place— and indeed the journey that had brought her here, her mind moving through the streets touching this woman's grief and that woman's rage—slip into the dubious territory that lay between recollections of the real and those of the dreamed. In essence, she'd allowed herself to believe it had never happened. But here was the very place, to the window, to the brick. And if the exterior was so exactly as she'd seen it, why should she doubt that the interior would be any different?

There'd been a labyrinthine cellar, she remembered, lined with shelves piled high with books and manuscripts. There'd been a wall (lovers coupling against it) and, behind it, hidden from every sight but hers, a cell in which a bound woman had lain in darkness for a suffering age. She heard the prisoner's scream now, in her mind's ear: that howl of madness that had driven her up out of the ground and back through the dark streets to the safety of her own house and head. Was the woman still screaming, she wondered, or had she sunk back into the comatose state from which she'd been so unkindly woken? The thought of her pain brought tears to Jude's eyes, mingling with the rain.

"What are you doing?"

Oscar had reappeared from the tower and was hurrying across the gravel towards her, his jacket raised and tented over his head.

"My dear, you'll freeze to death. Get in the car. Please, please. Get in the car."

She did as he suggested, the rain running down her neck.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I... I wondered where you'd gone, that was all. Then... I don't know... the place seemed familiar."

"It's a place of no importance," he said. "You're shivering. Would you prefer we didn't go to the opera?"

"Would you mind?"

"Not in the least. Pleasure shouldn't be a trial. You're wet and cold, and we can't have you getting a chill. One sickly individual's enough."

She didn't question this last remark; there was too much; else on her mind. She wanted to sob, though whether out of joy or sorrow she wasn't sure. The dream she'd come to dismiss as fancy was founded in solid fact, and this solid fact beside her—Godolphin—was in turn touched by something momentous. She'd been persuaded by his practiced understatement: the way he talked of traveling to the Dominions as he would of boarding a train, and his expeditions in Yzordderrex as a form of tourism as yet unavailable to the great unwashed. But his reductionism was a screen—whether he was aware of the fact or not—a ploy to conceal the greater significance of his business. His ignorance, or arrogance, might well kill him, she began to suspect: which thought was the sorrow in her. And the joy? That she might save him, and he learn to love her out of gratitude.

Back at the house they both changed out of their formal attire. When she emerged from her room on the top floor she found him on the stairs, waiting for her.

"I wonder... perhaps we should talk?"

They went downstairs into the tasteful clutter of the lounge. The rain beat against the window. He drew the curtains and poured them brandies to fortify them against the cold. Then he sat down opposite her.

"We have a problem, you and I."

"We do?"

"There's so much we have to say to each other. At least... here am I presuming it's reciprocal, but for myself, certainly ....ertainly I've got a good deal I want to say, and I'm damned if I know where to begin. I'm aware that I owe you explanations, about what you saw at the estate, about

Dowd and the voiders, about what I did to Charlie. The list goes on. And I've tried, really I have, to find some way to

make it all clear to you. But the truth is, I'm not sure of the truth myself. Memory plays such tricks"—she made a mur-mur of agreement—"especially when you're dealing with

places and people who seem to belong half in your dreams.

Or in your nightmares." He drained his glass and reached for the bottle he'd set on the table beside him.

"I don't like Dowd," she said suddenly. "And I don't

trust him."

He looked up from refilling his glass. "That's percep-tive," he said. "You want some more brandy?" She prof-fered her glass, and he poured her an ample measure. "I agree with you," he said. "He's a dangerous creature, for a number of reasons."

"Can't you get rid of him?"

"He knows too much, I'm afraid. He'd be more danger-ous out of my employ than in it."

"Has he got something to do with these murders? Just today, I saw the news—"

He waved her inquiry away. "You don't need to know about any of that, my dear," he said. "But if you're at risk—"

"I'm not. I'm not. At least be reassured about that." "So you know all about it?"

"Yes," he said heavily. "I know a little something. And so does Dowd. In fact, he knows more about this whole situation than you and I put together."

She wondered about this. Did Dowd know about the prisoner behind the wall, for instance, or was that a secret she had entirely to herself? If so, perhaps she'd be wise to keep it that way. When so many players in this game had information she lacked, sharing anything—even with Oscar—might weaken her position; perhaps threaten her life. Some part of her nature not susceptible to the blandishments of luxury or the need for love was lodged behind that wall with the woman she'd woken. She would leave it there, safe in the darkness. The rest—anything else she knew—she'd share.

"You're not the only one who crosses over," she said. "A friend of mine went."

"Really?" he said. "Who?"

"His name's Gentle. Actually, his real name's Za-charias. John Furie Zacharias. Charlie knew him a little."

"Charlie... ." Oscar shook his head. "Poor Charlie." Then he said, "Tell me about Gentle."

"It's complicated," she said. "When I left Charlie he got very vengeful. He hired somebody to kill me...."

She went on to tell Oscar about the murder attempt in New York and Gentle's later intervention; then about the events of New Year's Eve. As she related this she had the distinct impression that at least some of what she was telling him he already knew, a suspicion confirmed when she'd finished her description of Gentle's removal from this Dominion.

"The mystif took him?" he said. "My God, that's a risk!"

"What's a mystif?" she asked.

"A very rare creature indeed. One would be born into the Eurhetemec tribe once in a generation. They're reputedly extraordinary lovers. As I understand it, they have no sexual identity, except as a function of their partner's desire."

"That sounds like Gentle's idea of paradise."

"As long as you know what you want," Oscar said. "If you don't I daresay it could get very confusing."

She laughed. "He knows what he wants, believe me."

"You speak from experience?"

"Bitter experience."

"He may have bitten off more than he can chew, so to speak, keeping the company of a mystif. My friend in Yzordderrex—Peccable—had a mistress for a while who'd been a madam. She'd had a very plush establishment in Patashoqua, and she and I got on famously. She kept telling me I should become a white slaver and bring her girls from the Fifth, so she could start a new business in Yzordderrex.

She reckoned we'd have made a fortune. We never did it, of course. But we both enjoyed talking about things venereal. It's a pity that word's so tainted, isn't it? You say venereal, and people immediately think of disease, instead of Venus... ." He paused, seeming to have lost his way, then said, "Anyway, she told me once that she'd employed a mystif for a while in her bordello, and it caused her no end of problems. She'd almost had to close her place, because of the reputation she got. You'd think a creature like that would make the ultimate whore, wouldn't you? But apparently a lot of customers just didn't want to see their desires made flesh." He watched her as he spoke, a smile playing around his lips. "I can't imagine why."

"Maybe they were afraid of what they were."

"You'd consider that foolish, I assume."

"Yes, of course. What you are, you are."

"That's a hard philosophy to live up to."

"No harder than running away."

"Oh, I don't know. I've thought about running away quite a lot of late. Disappearing forever."

"Really?" she said, trying to stifle any show of agitation. "Why?"

"Too many birds coming home to roost."

"But you're staying?"

"I vacillate. England's so pleasant in the spring. And I'd miss the cricket in the summer months."

"They play cricket everywhere, don't they?"

"Not in Yzordderrex they don't."

"You'd go there forever?"

"Why not? Nobody would find me, because nobody would ever guess where I'd gone."

"I'd know."

"Then maybe I'd have to take you with me," he said tentatively, almost as though he were making the proposal in all seriousness and was afraid of being refused. "Could you bear that thought?" he said. "Of leaving the Fifth, I mean."

"I could bear it."

He paused. Then: "I think it's about time I showed you some of my treasures," he said, rising from his chair. "Come on."

She'd known from oblique remarks of Dowd's that the locked room on the second floor contained some kind of collection, but its nature, when he finally unlocked the door and ushered her in, astonished her.

"All this was collected in the Dominions," Oscar explained, "and brought back by hand."

He escorted her around the room, giving her a capsule summary of what some of the stranger objects were and bringing from hiding tiny items she might otherwise have overlooked. Into the former category, among others, went the Boston Bowl and Gaud Maybellome's Encyclopedia of Heavenly Signs; into the latter a bracelet of beetles caught by the killing jar in their daisy chain coupling—fourteen generations, he explained, male entering female, and female in turn devouring the male in front, the circle joined by the youngest female and the oldest male, who, by dint of the latter's suicidal acrobatics, were face to face.

She had many questions, of course, and he was pleased to play the teacher. But there were several inquiries he had no answers to. Like the empire looters from whom he was descended, he'd assembled the collection with commitment, taste, and ignorance in equal measure. Yet when he spoke qf the artifacts, even those whose function he had no clue to, there was a touching fervor in his tone, familiar as he was with the tiniest detail of the tiniest piece.

"You gave some objects to Charlie, didn't you?" she said.

"Once in a while. Did you see them?"

"Yes, indeed," she said, the brandy tempting her tongue to confess the dream of the blue eye, her brain resisting it.

"If things had been different," Oscar said, "Charlie might have been the one wandering the Dominions. I owe him a glimpse."

" 'A piece of the miracle,' " she quoted.

"That's right. But I'm sure he felt ambivalent about them."

"That was Charlie."

"True, true. He was too English for his own good. He never had the courage of his feelings, except where you were concerned. And who could blame him?"

She looked up from the trinket she was studying to find that she too was a subject of study, the look on his face unequivocal.

"It's a family problem," he said. "When it comes to... matters of the heart."

This confession made, a look of discomfort crossed his face, and his hand went to his ribs. "I'll leave you to look around if you like," he said. "There's nothing in here that's really volatile."

"Thank you."

"Will you lock up after yourself?"

"Of course."

She watched him go, unable to think of anything to detain him, but feeling forsaken once he'd gone. She heard him go to his bedroom, which was down the hall on the same floor, and close the door behind him. Then she turned her attention back to the treasures on the shelves. It wouldn't stay there, however. She wanted to touch, and be touched by, something warmer than these relics. After a few moments of hesitation she left them in the dark, locking the door behind her. She would take the key back to him, she'd decided. If his words of admiration were not simply flattery—if he had bed on his mind—she'd know it soon enough. And if he rejected her, at least there'd be an end to this trial by doubt.

She knocked on the bedroom door. There was no reply. There was light seeping from under the door, however, so she knocked again and then turned the handle and, saying his name softly, entered. The lamp beside the bed was burning, illuminating an ancestral portrait that hung over it. Through its gilded window a severe and sallow individual gazed down on the empty sheets. Hearing the sound of running water from the adjacent bathroom, Jude crossed the bedroom, taking in a dozen details of this, his most private chamber, as she did so: the plushness of the pillows and the linen; the spirit decanter and glass beside the bed; the cigarettes and ashtray on a small heap of well-thumbed paperbacks- Without declaring herself, she pushed the door open. Oscar was sitting on the edge of the bath in his undershorts, dabbing a washcloth to a partially healed wound in his side. Reddened water ran over the furry swell of his belly. Hearing her, he looked up. There was pain on his face.

She didn't attempt to offer an excuse for being there, nor did he request one. He simply said, "Charlie did it."

"You should see a doctor."

"I don't trust doctors. Besides, it's getting better." He tossed the washcloth into the sink. "Do you make a habit of walking into bathrooms unannounced?" he said. "You could have walked in on something even less—"

"Venereal?" she said.

"Don't mock me," he replied. "I'm a crude seducer, I know. It comes from years of buying company."

"Would you be more comfortable buying me?" she said.

"My God," he replied, his look appalled. "What do you take me for?"

"A lover," she said plainly. "My lover?"

"I wonder if you know what you're saying?"

"What I don't know I'll learn," she said. "I've been hiding from myself, Oscar. Putting everything out of my head so I wouldn't feel anything. But I feel a lot. And I want you to know that."

"I know," he said. "More than you can understand, I know. And it makes me afraid, Judith."

"There's nothing to be afraid of," she said, astonished that it was she who was mouthing these words of reassurance when he was the elder and presumably the stronger, the wiser. She reached out and put her palm flat against his massive chest. He bent forward to kiss her, his mouth closed until he met hers and found it open. One hand went around her back, the other to her breast, her murmur of pleasure smeared between their mouths. His touch moved down, over her stomach, past her groin, to hoist up her skirt and retrace its steps. His fingers found her sopping—she'd been wet since first stepping into the treasure room—and he slid his whole hand down into the hot pouch of her underwear, pressing the heel of his palm against the top of her sex while his long middle digit sought out her fundament, gently catching its flukes with his nail.

"Bed," she said.

He didn't let her go. They made an ungainly exit from the bathroom, with him guiding her backwards until she felt the edge of the bed behind her thighs. There she sat down, taking hold of the waistband of his blood-stained shorts and easing them down while she kissed his belly. Suddenly bashful, he reached to stop her, but she pulled them down until his penis appeared. It was a curiosity. Only a little engorged, it had been deprived of its foreskin, which made its outlandishly bulbous, carmine head look even more inflamed than the wound in its wielder's side. The stem was very considerably thinner and paler, its length knotted with veins bearing blood to its crown. If it was this disproportion that embarrassed him he had no need, and to prove her pleasure she put her lips against the head. His objecting hand was no longer in evidence. She heard him make a little moan above, and looked up to see him staring down at her with something very like awe on his face. Sliding her fingers beneath testicles and stem, she raised the curiosity to her mouth and took it inside; then she dropped both hands to her blouse and began to unbutton. But he'd no sooner started to harden in her mouth than he murmured a denial, withdrew his member, and stepped back from her, pulling up his underwear.

"Why are you doing this?" he said.

"I'm enjoying it."

He was genuinely agitated, she saw, shaking his head, covering the bulge in his underwear in a new fit of bashful-ness.

"For whose sake?" he said. "You don't have to, you know."

"I know."

"I wonder?" he said, genuine puzzlement in his voice.

"I don't want to use you."

"I wouldn't let you."

"Maybe you wouldn't know."

This remark inflamed her. A rage rose such as she'd not felt in a long while. She stood up.

"I know what I want," she said, "but I'm not about to beg for it."

"That's not what I'm saying."

"What are you saying?"

"That I want you too."

"So do something about it," she said.

He seemed to find her fury freshly arousing and stepped towards her again, saying her name in a voice almost pained with feeling. "I'd like to undress you," he said. "Would you mind?"

"No."

"I don't want you to do anything—"

"Then I won't."

"—except lie down."

She did so. He turned off the bathroom light, then came to the edge of the bed and looked down at her. His bulk was emphasized by the light from the lamp, which threw his shadow up to the ceiling. Quantity had never seemed an arousing quality hitherto, but in him she found it intensely attractive, evidence as it was of his excesses and his appetites. Here was a man who would not be contained by one world, one set of experiences, but who was kneeling now like a slave in front of her, his expression that of one obsessed.

With consummate tenderness, he began to undress her. She'd known fetishists before—men to whom she was not an individual but a hook upon which some particular item was hung for worship. If there was any such particular in this man's head, it was the body he now began to uncover, proceeding to do so in an order and manner that made some fevered sense to him. First he slipped off her underpants; then he finished unbuttoning her blouse, without removing it. Next he teased her breasts from her bra, so that they were available to his toying, but then didn't play there but went to her shoes, removing them and setting them beside the bed before hoisting up her skirt so as to have a view of her sex. Here his eyes lingered, his fingers advancing up her thigh to the crease of her groin, then retreating. Not once did he look at her face. She looked at his, however, enjoying the zeal and veneration there. Finally he rewarded his own diligence with kisses. First on her lower legs, moving up towards her knees; then her stomach and her breasts, and finally returning to her thighs and up into the place he'd forbidden them both till now. She was ready for pleasure, and he supplied it, his huge hand caressing her breasts as he tongued her. She closed her eyes as he unfolded her, alive to every drop of moisture on her labia and legs. When he rose from this to finish undressing her—skirt first, then blouse and bra—her face was hot and her breath fast. He tossed the clothes onto the floor and stood up again, taking her knees and pushing them up and back, spreading her for his delectation, and holding her there, prettily exposed.

"Finger yourself," he said, not letting her go.

She put her hands between her legs and made a show for him. He'd slickened her well, but her fingers went deeper than his tongue, readying herself for the curiosity. He gorged on the sight, meanwhile, glancing up to her face several times, then returning to the spectacle below. All trace of his previous hesitation had gone. He encouraged her with his admiration, calling her a host of sweet names, his tented underwear proof—as if she needed it—of his arousal. She started to push her hips up from the bed to meet her fingers, and he took firmer grip of her knees as she moved, opening her wider still. Lifting his right hand to his mouth he licked his middle finger and put it down against her pucker of her other hole, rubbing it gently.

"Will you suck me now?" he asked her. "Just a little?"

"Show me it," she said.

He stepped away from her and took off his underwear. The curiosity was now fully risen and florid. She sat up and put it back between her lips, one hand holding it by its pulsing root while the other continued its dalliance with her own sex. She'd never been good at guessing the point at which the milk boiled over, so she took it from the heat of her mouth to cool him a little, glancing up at him as she did so. Either the extraction or her glance set him off, however.

"Damn!" he said. "Damn!", and started to step back from her, his hand going down to his groin to take the curiosity in a stranglehold.

It seemed he might have succeeded, as two desultory dribbles ran from its head. Then his testicles unleashed their flood, and it came forth in uncommon abundance. He moaned as it came, as much in self-admonishment as pleasure, she thought, that assumption confirmed when he'd emptied his sac upon the floor.

"I'm sorry..." he said, ".., I'm sorry...."

"There's no need," she said, standing up and putting her lips to his. He continued to murmur his apologies, however.

"I haven't done that in a long time," he said. "So adolescent."

She kept her silence, knowing anything she said would only begin a further round of self-reproach. He slipped away into the bathroom to find a towel. When he returned she was picking up her clothes.

"Are you going?" he said.

"Only to my room."

"Do you have to?" he said. "I know that wasn't much of a performance, but... the bed's big enough for us both. And I don't snore."

"The bed's enormous."

"So... would you stay?" he said.

"I'd like to."

He made a charming smile. "I'm honored," he said. "Will you excuse me a moment?"

He switched the bathroom light back on and disappeared inside, closing the door, leaving her to lie back on the bed and wonder at this whole turn of events. Its very oddness seemed appropriate. After all, this whole journey had begun with an act of misplaced love: love become murder. Now a new dislocation. Here she was, lying in the bed of a man with a body far from beautiful, whose bulk she longed to have upon her; whose hands were capable of fratricide but aroused her like none she'd ever known; who'd walked more worlds than an opium poet, but couldn't speak love without stumbling; who was a titan, and yet. afraid. She made a nest among his duck-down pillows and waited there for him to come back and tell her a story of love.

He reappeared after a long while and slipped beneath the sheets beside her. True to her imaginings, he said he loved her at last, but only once he'd turned the light out, and his eyes were not available for study.

When she slept, it was deeply, and when she woke again, it was like sleeping, dark and pleasurable, the former because the drapes were still drawn, and between their cracks she could see that the sky was still benighted, the latter because Oscar was behind her, and inside. One of his hands was upon her breast, the other lifting her leg so that he could ease his upward stroke. He'd entered her with skill and discretion, she realized. Not only had he not stirred her until he was embedded, but he'd chosen the virgin passage, which—had he suggested it while she was awake—she'd have attempted to coax him from, fearing the discomfort. In truth, there was none, though the sensation was quite unlike anything she'd felt before. He kissed her neck and shoulder blade, light kisses, as though he was unaware of her wakefulness. She made it known with a sigh. His stroke slowed and stopped, but she pressed her buttocks back to meet his thrust, satisfying his curiosity as to the limit of its access, which was to say none. She was happy to accept him entirely, trapping his hand against her breast to press it to rougher service, while putting her own at the connecting place. He'd dutifully slipped on a condom before entering her, which, together with the fact that he'd already poured forth once tonight, made him a near perfect lover: slow and certain.

She didn't use the dark to reconfigure him. The man pressing his face into her hair, and biting at her shoulder, wasn't—like the mystif he'd described—a reflection of imagined ideals. It was Oscar Godolphin, paunch, curiosity, and all. What she did reconfigure was herself, so that she became in her mind's eye a glyph of sensation: a line dividing from the coil of her pierced core, up through her belly to the points of her breasts, then intersecting again at her nape, crossing and becoming woven spirals beneath the hood of her skull. Her imagination added a further refinement, inscribing a circle around this figure, which burned in the darkness behind her lips like a vision. Her rapture was perfected then: being an abstraction in his arms, yet pleasured like flesh. There was no greater luxury.

He asked if they might move, saying only, "The wound..." by way of explanation.

She went onto her hands and knees, he slipping from her for a tormenting moment while she did so, then putting the curiosity back to work. His rhythm instantly became more urgent, his fingers in her sex, his voice in her head, both expressing ecstasy. The glyph brightened in her mind's eye, fiery from end to end. She yelled out to him, first only yes and yes, then plainer demands, inflaming him to new invention. The glyph became blinding, burning away all thought of where she was, or what; all memory of conjunctions past subsumed in this perpetuity.

She was not even aware that he'd spent himself until she felt him withdrawing, and then she reached behind her to keep him inside a while longer. He obliged. She enjoyed the sensation of his softening inside her, and even, finally, his exiting, the tender muscle yielding its prisoner reluctantly. Then he rolled over onto the bed beside her and reached for the light. It was dim enough not to sting, but still too bright, and she was about to protest when she saw that he was putting his fingers to his injured side. Their congress had unknitted the wound. Blood was running from it in two directions: down towards the curiosity, still nestled in the condom, and down his side to the sheet.

"It's all right," he said as she made to get up. "It looks worse than it is."

"It still needs something to staunch it," she said.

"That's good Godolphin blood," he said, wincing and grinning at the same moment. His gaze went from her face to the portrait above the bed. "It's always flowed freely," he said.

"He doesn't look as though he approved of us," she said.

"On the contrary," Oscar replied. "I know for a fact he'd adore you. Joshua understood devotion."

She looked at the wound again. Blood was seeping between his fingers.

"Won't you let me cover that up?" she said. "It makes me queasy."

"For you... anything."

"Have you got any dressing?"

"Dowd's probably got some, but 1 don't want him knowing about us. At least, not yet. Let's keep it our secret."

"You, me, and Joshua," she said.

"Even Joshua doesn't know what we got up to," Oscar said, without a trace of irony audible in his voice. "Why do you think 1 turned the light out?"

In lieu of fresh dressing she went through to the bathroom to find a towel. While she was doing so he spoke to her through the open door.

"I meant what I said, by the way," he told her.

"About what?"

"That I'll do anything for you. At least, anything that's in my power to do or give. I want you to stay with me, Judith. I'm no Adonis, I know that. But I learned a lot from Joshua... about devotion, 1 mean." She emerged with the towel to be greeted by the same offer. "Anything you want."

"That's very generous."

"The pleasure's in the giving," he said.

"I think you know what I'd like most."

He shook his head. "I'm no good at guessing games. Only cricket. Just tell me."

She sat down on the edge of the bed and gently tugged his hand from the wound in his side, wiping the blood from between his fingers.

"Say it," he told her.

"Very well," she said. "I want you to take me out of this Dominion, I want you to show me Yzordderrex."