‘I should know your name,’ he said.
She shook her head. ‘No names. And you tell me no names neither.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because,’ she said, and sighed. ‘Because I know you’ll be gone in the morning. So what’s the point?’ She smiled a little sadly. ‘Now then…’
She pushed him down and knelt with him in the hay, and leaning forward she put her mouth to his and they kissed. It was very silent. After a little while she slipped her tongue between his lips. Attila had been kissed before, of course, in greeting – even, revoltingly, by Eumolpus when they were first introduced – and on the lips as well, as was the custom in the Roman court. That was one Roman custom that no barbarian nation, and certainly not the Huns, would ever adopt.
But this was a different kind of kiss, thrillingly close and intimate, and he immediately felt a surge and warming of his blood. He kissed the girl breathlessly in return, their tongues running over each other, entwining, their mouths opening to each other, their hands reaching out to stroke cheeks and hair…
‘My, you are the greedy little one, aren’t you?’ she whispered. He could see her white teeth in the moonlight as she smiled. She lay back in the hay and pulled her shift up to her waist. She opened her thighs to him, and ran her middle finger, the index lascivius as physicians have named it (although perhaps rather lascivious of them to have done so) down between her ripe lips.
‘Come on then, my darling,’ she said softly. ‘And here, too,’ she said, pulling her tunic down off her slim shoulders and exposing her breasts, ‘touch me here too, here, put your mouth to my breast, kiss me there, and with your tongue, oh my darling, oh…’
Her sighs and gasps filled the air of the little hut; the boy was silent and enrapt, the girl whispering all the time as she guided him and stroked his tousled hair. ‘Oh I love that, I do love that, here, kiss them, take them in your mouth, gently, yes lick them like that, suckle them, oh that is so sweet, do they taste sweet to you, oh my darling, that feels so sweet, and there, oh yes, inside me, touch me there, oh sweet gods, oh I love you, my darling, I do love you…’
And as she sighed and gasped, she reached down and pulled up the boy’s tunic, and felt for his hard cock, and said nice things about how he might be small for his age but that wasn’t, that wouldn’t shame a grown man, that wouldn’t. She spread her thighs wide and guided him inside her and closed her thighs tightly round his waist, and together they made excited young love for a short while, before the boy shuddered between her legs and pressed his cheek against hers and hugged her tightly and tensed and gasped and then slowly relaxed in her arms, his face pressed against her breasts. A few moments later he was asleep.
She looked down and stroked his tousled hair. ‘Typical,’ she whispered.
‘And how was that, you little monkey?’ cried the girl’s mother, grabbing him round the waist. ‘You been outside with my daughter, I know you have, rifling through her treasures like a little bandit. I knew you for a little robber the moment I saw you outside. And I know what you’ve been up to, smile like that, like puss with the milk. Like a hedgehog at a young cow’s udders, look at you, almost licking your lips you are.’
‘Mother, don’t embarrass him,’ said the girl.
‘Embarrass him? He knows well enough what he’s been up to,’ she laughed. ‘And I know what he’s been up to, too, eh? Boy that age, I bet you’d be up for another feather-bed jig later on, eh, my sweet-heart? How’s about something a little more grown-up later on tonight, hey? A bit of a lying-down dance with her old ma, eh? A bit of moaning at the ceiling and groaning at the moon?’
‘Mother!’ cried the girl in outrage.
And then the bawdy peasant-woman was away, whirling among the dancers with flushed cheeks and saucy eyes, her clay cup of wine held high in the smoky air.
Attila and the girl sat down at the table again, both hungry after their exertions. Under the table he took the girl’s hand and squeezed it tight. Save me, he thought. The girl squeezed back and leant over and whispered in his ear, her slim hot hand resting on the back of his neck, ‘You sleep in my bed tonight, don’t you worry.’
There was more formal dancing, with lines of men and women advancing towards each other, exchanging kisses in the centre of the hall and retreating again, with giggles and mock-bashfulness, eyes shyly averted even from those who had shared their beds the night before.
Then with still greater dignity, and with all the happy solemnity of the old pagan spirit, the little wreathed olivewood Priapus was taken up, and the whole village processed outside to the edge of the woods, where there stood a simple stone shrine. Within, lit by two precious beeswax candles, stood a naked statue of the Great Mother, smiling distantly, with benevolence and power, upon her simple devotees. Both men and women took it in turns to kiss the phallus of Priapus, before the little god was laid reverently between the Great Mother’s thighs. A white woollen veil was drawn over the pair, and they were left in discreet privacy for the night, to couple and so to ensure that the Earth herself should be born again in the spring.
No sooner had the villagers stepped back from the shrine, and bowed their heads one last time to their beloved deities, than there came a hoarse cry through the night air, from the hills above. The frenzied words cascaded down upon them, in a voice as cracked and dry as the wind in dead leaves.
The girl leant close to Attila, so that her soft hair tickled his cheek deliciously, and whispered, ‘It’s a local madman called Holy John.’
The boy nodded. ‘We’ve met,’ he said.
‘Idolators! Fornicators!’ cried Holy John. ‘May Christ have mercy upon all your Christless and unshriven souls! For ye dwell in the very mouth of hell, and are mired in the very mire of the devil’s own bowels in all your lusts and filthy fornications.’
The people looked at each other and guffawed merrily. Some even began to dance, as if his words were a kind of irresistible music.
‘Holy John,’ they cried, raising their foaming mugs of wine as if in salutation. ‘Holy John, come down from the mountain. Welcome to our Feast of the Great Mother, Holy John.’
There was a scuffling in the woods above, and the old man appeared, standing on a jutting rock, looking more wild-eyed than ever, Attila thought. He wore a long, begrimed habit of coarse brown-stuff, his grey beard was matted, and his thin lips worked in a fury. Even from this distance, the boy thought he could smell the old man’s rank odour: many hermits took literally the injunction of St Jerome: that those who have washed in the blood of Christ have no need to wash again.
‘Woe unto you, O Israel, for your filthiness is in your skirts. And, as the prophet Ezekiel saith, you have committed harlotries, and have lusted after your paramours, whose members are like the members of donkeys, and whose emissions are like the emissions of stallions.’
‘Where? Where?’ cried one of the women in the crowd. ‘I could do with some of that!’
‘Wherefore I say unto you-’
But already Holy John upon his rock was being besieged, first by loud obscene cries, so that his cracked and ancient voice was drowned, and then in person, by the girl’s mother, who to the approving roar of the onlookers hauled her considerable bulk up onto the rock below Holy John, and tried to lift his skirts.