Raptor (2 page)

He paused, and I nodded.

“Very well. Then I shall not say a word about your secret, your imposture.
If!”
He raised an admonishing finger. “If you do not say a word about our private devotions. We will continue practicing them hereafter, but they are not to be mentioned outside this cookhouse. Agreed, young Thorn? My silence for your silence.”

I had no clear idea of what I was trading my silence and complaisance for, but Brother Peter seemed satisfied when I mumbled that I never did discuss with anyone my private devotions. And, true to my word, I never once spoke to any monk or the abbot regarding what occurred in the cookhouse, two or three noontimes in every week, when Peter had finished cooking the midday refection—the day’s only hot meal—and before he and I carried the food to the monks at the tables in the frater.

After another time or two of being impaled, I ceased to find it painful. After several more times, I found it only a nuisance and a boredom, but bearable. And then there came a time when both Peter and I realized that he no longer needed the goose grease to ease his entrance. On that occasion, he exclaimed in delight, “Akh, the dear little grotto lubricates itself! It
invites
me in!”

That was all he noticed: that I now got moist down there in expectation of being gored. I supposed that it was something my body had learned to do to avert discomfort for itself. But I was aware that the devotions were having another effect on me besides that—and the fact gave me further wonderment and perplexity. Now the devotions also aroused the same part of myself as that which Brother Peter employed, making mine strive to stand and stiffen like his. In addition, I felt a new feeling: a sort of aching urgency, not painful, more like being hungry, though not for food.

But Peter never realized any of that. He always performed that particular act by having me bend forward over the chopping block, and he always hastened to enter me from the rear. He never glimpsed, never touched with his hand, never once realized that I had anything other than an oblong orifice between my legs. During a whole spring and most of a summer I shared—or endured—those devotions. Then in late summer, Peter and I were caught in the act, and by the abbot himself.

Dom Clement walked into the cookhouse just before the hour of refection one day, to find Peter straddling me and pumping away. The abbot cried, “Liufs Guth!” which is “Dear God!” in the Old Language, as Peter disengaged from me and leapt clear. Then the abbot wailed, “Invisan unsar heiva-gudei!” which meant “Within our godly house!” Then he absolutely roared, “Kalkinassus Sodomiza!” which at that time meant nothing to me, though I remembered once having heard Peter use one of those words. Wondering why the abbot should sound so distressed at our making devotions, I simply lay where I was, my smock bunched up at the back of my neck.

“Ne, ne!” bawled Brother Peter, in terror. “Nist, Nonnus Clement, nist Sodomiza! Ni allis!”

“Im ik blinda, niu?” demanded the abbot.

“Ne, Dom Clement,” whined Peter. “And, since you are not blind, I beseech you to look here where I am pointing. There was nothing sodomitical about it, Nonnus. Akh, I was wrong, ja. I succumbed shamefully to temptation, ja. But only
look,
Nonnus Clement, at the perfidious, long-hidden thing that tempted me.”

The abbot glared wrathfully at him, but moved around behind me, out of my sight, and I could guess what Peter was pointing at, for Dom Clement gasped yet again, “Liufs Guth!”

“Ja!” said Peter, adding piously, “And I can only thank the liufs Guth that it was none but myself, a lowly newcomer and a mere pedisequus, whom this spurious man-child, this sneaking, secret Eve seduced with her forbidden fruit. I thank the liufs Guth that she did not ensnare one of the worthier brothers or—”

“Slaváith!” the abbot snapped at him—“Be silent!”—and yanked my smock down to cover me, because a number of other monks, drawn by the shouting, had come to peer inquisitively in at the cookhouse door. “Go to your place in the dorter, Peter, and stay there by your pallet. I will deal with you later. Brother Babylas, Brother Stephanos, come in here and carry these platters and pitchers to the frater tables.” He turned to me. “Thorn, my son—er, my child—come with me.”

Dom Clement’s quarters consisted of only one room. It was set apart from the monks’ communal dorter, but was equally bleak and austere. The abbot seemed rather confused as to what he should say to me, so first he prayed at me for a long time, while presumably he waited for inspiration. Then he got up from his bony old knees, and motioned for me to stand up also, and he questioned me for a time, and then he told me what he would have to do with me, now that my “secret” was out. This caused a good deal of melancholy on the part of us both, for the abbot and I had been very fond of one another.

I was taken, next day—Dom Clement himself leading me and helping me to carry my few personal belongings—to the far other side of the valley, to St. Damian’s sister establishment, the Abbey of St. Pelagia Penitent, the nunnery of virgins and widows who had dedicated themselves to the cenobitic life.

Dom Clement presented me to the old abbess, Domina Aetherea, who was quite taken aback, for she had often seen me at my daytime work in the fields of St. Damian’s. The abbot had to ask her to take us to a private chamber, where he made me bend forward in the posture Brother Peter had so often commanded, and Dom Clement averted his eyes while he flipped up the back of my smock to expose my nether portions to the abbess. She uttered an appalled exclamation—the Gothic “Liufs Guth!” again—and herself snatched my smock back down to cover me. Then she and the abbot engaged in a rather agitated conversation, in Latin, but muttered too low for me to overhear. The interview ended with my being admitted to the convent in the same status I had enjoyed at the monastery: an oblate, a postulant and the jack-of-all-work—or rather, now, jenny-of-all-work.

Of my time at St. Pelagia’s I will have more to tell later. Suffice it here to say that I had been working and worshipping and receiving instruction at the nunnery for many weeks when, on a warm day in early autumn, I was accosted by a convent counterpart of Brother Peter.

This time, however, the person who slid a hand under the back of my smock, and caressed my buttocks, and remarked on the shapeliness of my figure, was not a beefy Burgund monk. Sister Deidamia was also a Burgund, true, but she was a pretty and winsome novice nun—only a few years older than myself—whom I had for some while been admiring from afar. I did not mind at all when, as she fondled me, Deidamia pretended accidentally to let her hand move farther, where a dainty finger slipped into the oblong opening Peter had used. And, very like him, she said in delight, “Oo-ooh, were you anxious for affection, little sister? You are noticeably warm and moist and palpitant in that place.”

We were in the abbey’s byre, whither I had just brought the four cows in from their pasture for milking, and Sister Deidamia was carrying a milk pail. I did not inquire whether she had been sent this day to help me with the milking, because it seemed much more likely that she carried the pail simply to justify her visit and thus enable the accosting of me in private.

She now came leisurely around in front of me and began tentatively to lift the front of my smock, saying, as if asking permission, “I have never seen another female entirely unclad.”

I said, and my voice was husky, “Neither have I.”

She said coyly, lifting my smock a trifle higher, “You show me first.”

I have related how the attentions of Peter had sometimes caused a disconcerting physical change in myself. I may say now that the intimate touch of Sister Deidamia’s hand had already had the same engorging and erecting effect. I felt a little embarrassed, though I did not know why, to have her see that. However, before I could object, she had raised my smock all the way up.

“Gudisks Himins!” she breathed, her eyes widening. The Old Language words mean “Great Heavens!” and I told myself that I had rightly been reluctant—now I had shocked the girl. And so I had, but for a reason I could not have known. “Oh vái! I always suspected that I was deficient as a woman. And now I know it.”

“Eh?” said I.

“I had hoped that we might… you and I… enjoy ourselves as I have seen Sister Agnes and Sister Thaïs do. At night, I mean. I have spied on them. They kiss their lips together, and run their hands all over one another, and rub their… well, that part of them… against one another, and they moan and laugh and sob as if it gives them great joy. I have long wondered how that pleasured them. But I never could see. They never undress entirely.”

“Sister Thaïs is much comelier than I am,” I managed to say, through my constricted throat. “Why did you not approach her instead of me?” I was trying mightily to seem in possession of my faculties, but that was difficult. Deidamia was still holding my smock high and staring at me. The ambient air was cool on my bare body, but I felt mostly the pulsing warmth at the focus of her gaze.

“Oh vái!” she exclaimed. “Be impudent to Sister Thaïs? Ne, I could not! She is older… and she has been granted the veil… and I am but a callow postulant. Anyway, seeing you, I can divine now what it must be that she and Sister Agnes do at night. If all other women have a thing like that…”

“You do not?” I asked hoarsely.

“Ni allis,” she said, with much sadness. “Small wonder that I have always felt inferior.”

“Let me see,” I said.

Now it was she who was reluctant, but I reminded her, “You said me first, big sister, and I showed you. Now you must, too.”

So she let go of my smock and, with tremulous fingers, untied her belt rope to let her burlap robe fall open in front. If the physical enlargement of myself could have got any more pronounced, surely it did so then.

“You perceive,” she said shyly, “I am at least normal enough
here.
Feel.” And she took my hand and guided it. “Warm and moist and widely opened, as yours is, Sister Thorn. I can even, when I insert a small gourd or a sausage, feel some small pleasure in there. But
here
I have only this little nub. It stands, much as yours does—you feel it?—and playing with that also gives me pleasure. But it is so insignificant, no bigger than the wart on Nonna Aetherea’s chin. Not at all like yours. It can barely be seen.” And she sniffled.

“Well,” I said, to console her, “I do not have hair around mine. And I do not have those things.” I indicated her breasts, where there were also nubs standing pert and pink.

“Akh,” she said dismissively. “That is only because you are still a child, Sister Thorn. I would wager that you have not even had your first menstruum yet. You will commence to sororiare before you are my age.”

“What does that mean?”

“Sororiare? The breasts, to do their first swelling. The menstruum you will recognize, when it comes. But already you have
that”
—she touched it and I gave a violent start—“which clearly I never will. As I suspected, I am not a complete woman.”

“I would be glad,” I said, “to rub mine against you, if you think that would make you feel joy, as it does those other sisters.”

“Would you, dear girl?” she said eagerly. “Perhaps I can
take
pleasure even if I cannot give it. Here. Here is some clean straw. Let us lie down. That is how Thaïs and Agnes do it.”

So we lay down and stretched out and, after some awkward essaying of different positions, we at last brought our naked lower bodies into contact, and I began the rubbing of that part of myself against that part of her.

“Oo-ooh,” she said, panting like Peter. “It—it
is
most pleasant.”

“Ja,” I said faintly.

“Let it… let it go in.”

“Ja.”

I did not have to do any manipulation. It found its own way. Deidamia made many incoherent noises, and her body bucked against mine, and her hands groped wildly all over the rest of me. Then there seemed to occur inside her, inside me, inside both of us, a sort of gathering and rushing and then a soft bursting. Deidamia and I gleefully cried aloud when it happened, and the enjoyable sensations subsided into a radiant and happy peacefulness that was almost equally enjoyable. Though my enlargement seemed to have had its urgent yearning satisfied, and it dwindled back to normal size, it did not slip out of Deidamia. The membranes of her grotto went on doing a kind of soft, repeated
swallowing
movement that held me gripped tight. The same soft convulsions were going on inside me, too, though my grotto had nothing to hold on to.

Not until everything inside both of us had subsided to tranquillity did Deidamia speak, in a quavering voice. “Ooh… thags. Thags izvis, leitils svistar. It was wonderful beyond belief.”

“Ne, ne… thags
izvis,
Svistar Deidamia,” I said. “It was wonderful for me, as well. I am so pleased that you thought of doing it with me.”

“Liufs Guth!” she suddenly exclaimed, with a small laugh. “I am much wetter here than I was before.” She felt of herself, then of the same place on me. “You are not near so wet as I. What
is
this, leaking out of me?”

I said, with some diffidence, “I believe, big sister, you are supposed to think of that fluid as the Eucharist bread, only liquefied. And I have been told that what we did, just now, is merely a more private way of making Holy Communion.”

“Say you so? But how marvelous! Much nicer than stale bread and sour wine. No wonder the Sisters Thaïs and Agnes do it so often. They are exceedingly devout. And this lovely substance came out of
you,
little sister?” Her happy face abruptly got less bright. “There, you see? I cannot do that. I am deficient. Why, the pleasure must have been
twice
as much for you…”

To prevent her starting again to pity herself for her deficiencies, I changed the subject. “If this way of making Communion gratifies you so, Sister Deidamia, why do you not simply take a man, niu? Men have even more of a—”

“Akh, ne!” she interrupted. “I may have been ignorant of the female body until now. That was because there were no other girls in our family and my mother died when I was born and I had no female playmates. But brothers I did have, and them I have seen unclad. Ugh! Let me tell you, Sister Thorn, men are ugly. All hairy and bulgy and leathery, like the great wild ox úrus. You are right in saying that they are—in that part—of substantial size. But it is a gross and gruesome thing. And under it they have dangling a hideous, puckered, heavy leather bag. Ugh!”