A Collar and Tie (Ganymede Quartet Book 4) (14 page)

“Open your eyes. Look at me, Henry.”

Henry opened his eyes. Martin’s hair fell in loops and
snarls around his face, and his expression was all reassurance, all acceptance,
nothing but love laid bare. He put his hand on Henry’s cheek, brushed his lip
with the side of his thumb.

Dreamily, he asked, “Are you as happy as I am? I want to
know you feel like I do.”

Henry flushed, shy and pleased. “I’m happy, too. Very
happy.” He lowered himself to lay atop Martin, chest to chest, and kissed him
tenderly, lingeringly, just as Martin had taught him to do, with his fingers
knotted in Martin’s hair. He broke away to lick the cooling semen from Martin’s
throat and bony chest.

Martin shivered and sighed. “You like that, don’t you?”

“I like everything about you,” Henry told him simply. It was
true. There was nothing about Martin he would change, and yet at the same time
he was confident he could adapt to or accept any variations that might arise,
whether they be in the flavor of Martin’s spit or the density of the flesh
padding his flanks. Maybe it was premature to think so, but he believed Martin
to be the love of his life, short and limited as it had been.

As they kissed again, Henry thought back to his conversation
with Freddie, and of Freddie’s grudging indulgence of Tom’s pleas for sex. He
was fortunate, so fortunate, that he and Martin wanted the same things. When
he’d seen Martin in the Ganymede showroom, he’d only known he wanted him—he’d
had no way of knowing whether Martin would want him in return. He’d had no way
of knowing how well their bodies would fit together, how much pleasure they’d
be able to give one another. It had all been a matter of luck.

Henry eased himself down to lie at Martin’s side and put his
head on Martin’s chest. “Hey,” he said. “I was talking with Freddie today, and
he tells me he doesn’t actually want Tom.”

“Oh, yes, it’s true. He’s very fond of Tom, but he doesn’t
desire him. That’s why he let him run so wild.” Martin combed through Henry’s
hair with his fingers and then bent to kiss the top of his head.

“What about the others? What do you know? I know Louis
doesn’t really want Peter.”

“No, it’s just a matter of convenience for Mr. Briggs. It
truly is for health reasons for him, but he
is
fond of Peter.”

“I’m guessing Charles wants Simon, though.” Based on what
Martin had told him before, Henry was quite confident of this.

“I would imagine so. Simon feels very pampered and indulged.
I believe he and Mr. Ross have sex nearly as often as you and I do, which is
quite
often.”

“Tell me about some others,” Henry urged. “Tell me gossip.”

“Can I tell you without names, Henry? There are some secrets
I really have to keep otherwise.”

Henry would prefer names, but he’d settle for unattributed
stories. “Fine. If you must.”

“Well…” Even with the caveat, Martin seemed hesitant to
share his secrets. “One of your friends prefers to be the…the receptive partner
in sex.”

Surprised, Henry lifted his head off Martin’s chest to look
him in the eye. “Really?”

“Yes, really and truly.”

Henry thought about his friends and wondered which of them
was brave enough and
subversive
enough to let a slave fuck him. He
envied that boy his daring.

“That’s the best secret, Henry. The rest are all little
niggling things.” Martin tightened his arm around Henry’s shoulders for a
moment, then eased out from beneath him and swung his legs off the side of the
bed.

“Don’t go.” Henry clung to his arm but Martin gently pulled
free.

Martin shook his head. “I need to get you cleaned up,
Henry.”

“Nothing terrible would happen if you didn’t wash me at
all,” Henry suggested, though he knew it would not go over well.

Martin wrinkled his nose. “It would be very unhygienic.” He
smiled at Henry, genuine and fond. “I’ll be right back. Just wait and relax.”

Henry sighed and did as he was told, and thought about the
fact that one of his classmates was bending over for his slave. That was quite
a momentous secret, but Henry thought their own secret, that Henry was in love
with Martin, was probably actually the best one of all. However, Martin had
been trustworthy and circumspect, and no one would ever possibly know unless
Henry did something stupid and gave it away himself. Henry had no illusions
he’d be able to throw up some brilliant subterfuge to dazzle his friends, but
he hoped he was at least capable of not doing anything too exceptionally
clumsy.

Over the weeks of dancing instruction in preparation for the
Metropolitan Ball, Henry had become increasingly anxious anticipating his
inevitable interactions with Abigail DeWitt as she left Gill’s Dancing Academy
with her Helena. Henry was too tall to hide in the crowd, and Abigail was too
determined to flirt with him to make hiding practical anyway. She would come
out of the dance school alert and searching, and when her eyes hit upon Henry,
she’d smile and wave and march right over to greet him, Helena hurrying in her
wake.

Today, he watched her face light up as she spotted him, and
he gave her a wan smile as she made her way through the crowd of young people.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Blackwell. How are you today?”

“Er, fine, thank you,” Henry said stiffly. “And yourself?”
He was painfully aware of Louis at his elbow, eager as a pup to take part in
this stilted conversation.

“I’m just lovely, Mr. Blackwell. Simply divine!” She batted
her lashes and smiled up at him. “Our lessons are going ever so well. We girls
are definitely looking forward to dancing with
you
in two weeks, though.
You boys, I mean, of course—not just
you
, Mr. Blackwell, goodness me!”
She colored prettily and showed her dimple, and Henry wondered if she was able
to blush at will; he doubted she did anything without volition.

“We’re certainly looking forward to dancing with
you
,
as well, Miss DeWitt,” Louis hurried to assure her. “All this dancing with
slaves seems like such a waste of time. We ought to be dancing with each other
from the very beginning, don’t you think?”

Abigail wore a look of fastidious distaste and leaned back a
little, subtly recoiling. It filled Henry with despair to see how little regard
she had for his friend. Why had Louis fixated on this girl? Surely there were
others who would be receptive to his attentions?

“Perhaps you’re right, Mr. Briggs,” she said with a
dismissive sniff. “But what about you, Mr. Blackwell? Aren’t you looking
forward to dancing with
us
, as well?”

Henry hesitated a long moment, blushing. “Um, well, yes. Of
course. I’ve always enjoyed dancing.”

“Is your Martin a good partner, Mr. Blackwell?” Abigail
cocked her head to the side, curious.

Henry flushed a furious red. He wished she would not even
mention Martin’s name. “Er, yes, he’s fine,” he said gruffly.

“You probably shouldn’t become too accustomed to him,
though,” she suggested. “He’s far taller than even the tallest girl you might
dance with. The proportions will be so different with a girl, you see, Mr.
Blackwell.”

“I’m sure I’ll adjust,” Henry said stiffly.

“Henry’s a good dancer,” Louis told her with a little pride
in his friend, elbowing Henry. “He’ll adapt. You’ll see soon enough.”

“I’m looking forward to it.” Abigail spared Louis a smile,
for which he was obviously grateful, before turning her face up to smile at
Henry again.

“Louis! Henry! We’re going to be late!” called Joshua. “Come
on, you idiots!”

“It was a pleasure to talk with you, Miss DeWitt,” Louis
said, giving her a little bow and his most winning smile.

“Goodbye,” Henry said stiffly.

“I’ll see you again Tuesday,” Abigail called after him
merrily, and Henry cringed a little, knowing she was right and there was
nothing he could do about it.

On Monday, lounging in the yard at lunchtime, Henry was
well-pleased by plans being made for their group to visit the dime museum
around the corner from Gill’s before their lesson the next afternoon, and thus
avoid the girls entirely. Martin, of course, had never been to a dime museum,
and was excited to go.

“There’s a mermaid, Sir!” Martin told him. “My friends who
have been say there’s a man covered in tattoos and a two-headed kitten!”

“It’s not a real mermaid,” Henry told him. “It’s—well,
you’ll see. It’s not pretty like what you’re thinking of.”

Martin seemed a little disappointed. “What about the kitten,
Sir?”

“Oh, that’s real,” Henry assured him. “There’s a whole room
of two-headed things.”

Louis was going, too, of course—he was one of the
instigators of the visit—and Henry hoped that the marvels of the dime museum
would keep him from obsessing over Abigail, at least for a little while—or
would at least keep him from
talking
about her. Abigail was not a
fascinating topic, in Henry’s opinion, yet Louis could speak about her
endlessly, examining her every utterance for nuances of meaning and import, and
discussing her beauty both in isolation and in relation to the attractiveness
of other young ladies. Henry thought that even if he was attracted to women, he
couldn’t possibly find any woman as interesting as Louis seemed to find
Abigail.

Tuesday after school, the boys got off the omnibus across
the street from Gill’s, but instead of going to the ice cream parlor and then
loitering outside the dancing school, they went around the corner to the World
of Wonders and paid their dimes to be admitted.

The first room was crowded with looming waxworks, figures
from antiquity dressed in dusty armor and wide-skirted dresses, including a
leering Vlad the Impaler and a Marie Antoinette who cradled her own severed
head in her graceful arms.

For the most part, the slaves separated from their masters,
but Henry kept Martin with him, wanting to see his reactions to the “wonders,”
both real and fabricated. The “feejee mermaid,” a composite creature made from
the upper half of a monkey and the rear part of a fish, was a letdown, as Henry
had expected it would be.

“It doesn’t even have long hair, Sir,” Martin complained.
“If they were going to go to all the trouble to sew the halves together, Sir,
couldn’t they have also taken the trouble to sew on a wig?”

Martin had expected the two-headed kitten to be a living
cat, which Henry had not anticipated, but Martin quickly adjusted to this
disappointment and took a keen interest in the deformities on display. Besides
the kitten, there were two-headed snakes, a two-headed pig, a two-headed
turtle, and a two-headed calf which also had a fifth leg sticking out of the
center of its chest. These were all either taxidermied or preserved in large
jars of brackish fluid, and the room had a peculiar sweetish, musty, chemical
smell that, while not entirely unpleasant, seemed unwholesome.

There were also weird, desiccated creatures purporting to be
demons, like small children with horns and tails; a selection of shrunken
heads; and something called a Hand of Glory, which was the severed hand of a
man who had been hanged, and this was said to be useful for some vague occult
purposes.

“It’s probably a monkey’s paw,” Henry pointed out. “It’s
hard to tell with it being so dried up.”

There was a vitrine containing a variety of misshapen human
skulls, some accidents of birth and others apparently the deliberate work of
ancient, exotic tribes. Another case displayed examples of the “procreative
members” of various animals, though no human specimen. Henry did not think he
would have identified any of these brown, wrinkled, dry strips of skin as genitals
without the labels, but it was interesting nonetheless to see the sizes in
relation to one another.

“Where would mine fit in, do you think?” Henry whispered in
Martin’s ear, and Martin recoiled, horrified.

“I don’t even want to think about that, Sir!” He shuddered
and backed away from the case, and Henry hurried him along to the next display.

They looked at some taxidermied animals which were not
deformed but merely unusual, including an Australian platypus and an
otherwise-unremarkable dog whose spots formed an image of the Virgin Mary.
Henry was willing to concede the spots looked like a human face, possibly
female, but nothing more than that.

There was a room full of things that had been used or
touched by remarkable personages, uniforms and weapons and flags and dresses,
but it hadn’t the lurid character of the rooms preceding, and most of the boys
passed through without much interest.

The live exhibits were never the same from one visit to the
next, and it had been quite some time since Henry had been to the museum, so he
hadn’t known what they could expect. A signboard outside the auditorium
promised a tattooed strongman, a Circassian beauty, a monkey-faced boy, a
leopard boy, a Chinese giant, a midget Countess, and a two-headed girl who
would play the piano.

The show ran all day long, the acts repeating so that the
audience need miss nothing. All Henry’s friends were sitting together, and
their slaves were doing the same. Louis was waving Henry over, and Tom was
likewise trying to get Martin’s attention, so Henry let Martin go and went to
sit with his friends.

On stage, the tattooed strongman was teamed with the
Circassian beauty, who was a pretty girl unremarkable except for a puffy corona
of frizzy hair. The strongman, with his glistening, intricately-patterned skin,
lifted her above his head, seated in a straight-backed chair, as if she weighed
nothing at all. She cast a gimlet eye on the audience of mostly boys and young
men and arranged her skirt so as to show a bit of thigh.

The strongman was bulkier than Henry preferred, but he was
nearly nude, dressed only in tiny trunks that left nothing to the imagination,
and Henry felt he might as well enjoy the view. The man’s skin was covered
everywhere with elaborate designs in colored inks, leaving only his hands, feet
and head unmarked, which led Henry to wonder about his cock, whether it might
be tattooed, as well. Although Henry’s thoughts were prurient in nature,
picturing what a hard pink cock might look like poking forth from all that
decorated skin, the question occurred to normal boys, as well: Louis nudged him
and whispered, “Do you think his johnson is tattooed?”

The strongman and the Circassian girl did a little dance
routine that was mostly remarkable for the many lifts they performed. He carried
her offstage to polite applause.

The showman next brought out the monkey-faced boy, a person
of indeterminate age whose entire head was covered in long, luxuriant
honey-brown hair. It was combed back from his eyes in dramatic swoops, and was
parted with a neat line bisecting his upper lip. Henry had seen a bearded lady
in the past, but thought this was a much more impressive person. The
monkey-faced boy, who wasn’t really a boy, per se, wore the clothes of a
discerning gentleman and gave a dramatic  and exceedingly patriotic recitation
that was most notable for the sonorous quality of his baritone.

The leopard boy was a colored boy whose skin was dappled
with patches of milky pink, and a man was brought up from the audience to touch
the boy’s skin and verify that it was not painted. The showman claimed that the
boy had a leopard’s grace to go with his spotted skin, and then the boy sought
to prove it through an impressive gymnastic display, flipping and jumping and
prowling the stage.

The Chinese giant was questionably Chinese, but wore a
Chinese-type robe embroidered with dragons. He was, however, definitely quite
giant, standing perhaps two feet taller than the showman. He was paired with
the midget Countess, who came swanning out on stage in a ball gown and hiding
behind a fan. She scarcely came to the showman’s knee and looked like a doll
beside the giant, who picked her up and held her on the palm of his outsized
hand. While there, she sang an aria, her voice clear and sweet.

Henry was deeply curious about the two-headed girl, and
there was a delay in bringing her out on stage that only whetted his desire to
see her. When she did emerge, she was a surprisingly attractive young woman,
perhaps around Henry’s age, who wore skirts somewhat shorter than usual so as
to make it very apparent that she had the same number of legs as a one-headed
girl. She had two upper bodies, four arms, and two heads, as advertised. A
grand piano was wheeled out behind her, and she turned in a circle and
curtseyed to the audience before sitting down and playing a piano duet. She
played three truncated tunes in total and curtseyed again before leaving the
stage.

The showman reminded the audience that signed souvenirs of
these amazing performances were available in the exit lobby, and that there
would be a ten-minute break before the beginning of the next show.

“We only missed a little bit of the strongman,” Henry told
Louis. “I don’t need to stick around for that.”

“Me, neither.” Louis checked his watch. “Besides, we have to
go to our lesson.”

They met up with their slaves on the way out.

“Have you ever seen anything like her, Sir? That two-headed
girl?” Martin was excited, wide-eyed and full of energy.

Henry had seen people with extra parts at the dime museum in
the past, including one fellow with a tiny, limp body dangling from his chest
like a doll with its head wedged between his ribs, but the two-headed girl was
a cut above.