Doña Maria? She was a simple, old-fashioned girl. She approached me directly and made it obvious that she wanted no fancy frills with her lovemaking. Given the choices, it wasn’t hard to make up my mind that she was the girl for me.
The other witches accepted Wica’s selection. They danced around us wildly, chanting and naked, a peripheral part of our lovemaking, but too intrusive to be ignored. Still, Doña Maria was both well endowed and adept, and it was no strain to keep my mind on making love to her.
She pulled me over her on the floor and dug her nails into my back. Now She was a different girl than she’d been with the Mooress. It was as if her entire body was one responsive erogenous zone. Her breasts bobbled enticingly, her hips rolled back and forth with my weight, her derrière bounced with the muscular contractions of her desire.
The witches’ chant roared in my ears. Their naked bodies spun before my eyes. Doña Maria’s musky perfume filled my nostrils. Her urgent, rhythmic moans inspired me. The taste of her lips was an aphrodisiac. The burning softness of her body enveloped me. We mounted to the peak of our passion together and sustained it to the sound of the long-held, final wailing note of the witches’ chorus.
And then it was over. The Black Mass ended as it was supposed to end. The witches, weary, left by twos and threes. Dona Maria and I dressed and she led me back to the waiting coach. Inside of an hour, I was back in my bed in the royal palace.
I was just drifting off to sleep when the door opened and a figure carrying a candle appeared. It was Doña Maria again, her long red hair combed out, her voluptuous body more revealed than hidden by the diaphanous nightgown she wore.
“I thought to myself, it will be even more of a blessing to know Wica in private,” she said as she approached my bed.
“Don’t you witches ever sleep?” I groaned.
“If Wica would rather I left . . .”
I looked at her and felt the renewal of desire. “No,” I sighed at my own weakness. “You may stay.” I raised the covers invitingly.
Doña Maria blew out the candle and slipped beneath the blankets. I was just starting to warm myself at the torch of her body when there was another knock at the door. Before I could answer, the door was flung wide open and a middle-aged woman in the clothes of a palace servant entered.
“Doña Maria,” she cried, obviously distraught. “You must come quickly. It’s the Princess. She has been seized by the unholy spirits again.”
“Right away,” Doña Maria replied. “Wait outside.”
The door closed behind the servant and Doña Maria started to climb out of the bed. “I have to go,” she told me. “I am the dueña to the Princess Joanna. I’m responsible for her.”
“What’s wrong with her?” I asked, curious.
“The doctors are unable to say. Some say she is mad. Indeed that is what they call her—Joanna the Mad.” Doña Maria had a sudden thought. “Perhaps you can help her, oh Wica,” she suggested.
“I don’t think—”
“I pray you try. I am at my wit’s end. I no longer know how to cope with the child. But you, with your occult powers -- At least grant me the favor of seeing her, Wica.”
“All right.” Reluctantly, I agreed.
I threw on a robe and followed Doña Maria and the servant up a back staircase to the quarters of the Princess Joanna. Doña Maria dismissed the servant at the door. Then she removed the iron bar securing the door and led the way inside.
Princess Joanna was an attractive child in her early ’teens. She was sitting cross-legged in bed, pounding her budding breasts with her fists and howling like a banshee. The sounds coming out of her mouth were unintelligible and her eyes were rolling back in their sockets. There was a trace of foam at her lips and a trail of saliva down her chin.
Doña Maria Went straight over to her and pried her jaws open. She took a stick lying on the nightstand and put it between the child’s teeth. “She gets so carried away during these convulsions that there’s a danger of her biting her tongue in two,” Doña Maria explained.
I nodded. I had just enough medical knowledge to make a guess. I don’t know if I was right or not but I guessed at some form of epilepsy. If I was right, it was complicated by something much more pronounced, something much more like a dangerous mental illness. It was only a couple of moments before I was forced to an appreciation of that.
Doña Maria left to fetch some cold water, the idea being that an icy dousing would snuff out the fit. Maybe she also figured that Wica would more readily work some black magic miracle if he was left alone with the lid-flipping chick. But even if I’d had the wizardry of Wica, things happened too fast for me to put it to use.
As soon as we were alone, Joanna the Mad set about proving her fit could be physical. She bounced out of bed, upped her scream an octave, and ripped off her nightdress. She had the appurtenances of a woman on the frame of a young girl. The trouble was that she was off her ovarian trolley. Like it wasn’t enough she was an epileptic and psychotic; also she was having a fit of ovarian tremors—and, it dawned on me—-for my benefit.
Well, hell, I was the only man handy. And she didn’t know I was a demon—not that I think it would have made any difference. The thing is she’d swooped down on me and torn off my nightrobe before I could say “Shazam!” She was real precocious for her age-—-and overwhelming for mine.
The loony royal Spanish Lolita must have been munching on the national fly. She came down on me like a ton of royal jelly out to be pollinated. I didn’t even have time to mutter an incantation to cope with her obsession.
It was at this moment of naked truth that the door was flung open. The King was in the counting house with a shotgun glower furrowing up his features. I knew he was the king because he was wearing a crown on his head and who else but a king would top off his bedwear with a crown instead of a nightcap. Besides, we established his identity quickly enough.
“Who are you?” he thundered majestically.
“Wica the Wise,” I told him, figuring I could use all the status I could summon up under the circumstances. “Who are you?” It seemed reasonable to return the question.
“King Ferdinand V!” he roared royally.
“What’s the ‘V’ for?” I wondered.
“Vindictive!” he “told me. “And that’s my royal naked daughter you’re nakedly clutching to your naked bosom.”
His Highness was obviously hung up on the bare essentials. “I can explain,” I suggested doubtfully.
“I doubt that. But go ahead and try. In the first place, what are you doing in the Princess’ quarters?”
“Her dueña brought me here to help her.”
“Her dueña! You mean her ex-dueña! Go on.”
“She thought I might be able to cure your daughter’s hysteria.”
“Are you a doctor?”
“Not exactly. I’m Wica. You see, Doña Maria is a witch and___”
“You’re a witch doctor then?”
“Well, no. But-—-”
“You accuse Doña Maria of being a witch? That’s a very serious charge!”
“I didn’t mean—-”
“You are diseased!” The King pointed at my golden equipment.
“I am not.” I was indignant.
“You are diseased and you are possessed and you have attacked my daughter and driven her mad and now she is possessed. There’s only one person who can cope with such heresy.” The King stepped to the door and called to the guards outside. “Fetch Torquemada immediately.”
Doña Maria returned just as the Grand Inquisitor answered the summons. Queen Isabella was with her. Joanna the Mad took one look at the Queen and uttered her first intelligible words. “You’re a mother!” she said.