CHAPTER ELEVEN
When finally the coach halted and I heard the scurrying of footboys and the hoarse shouts of the coachman himself, I knew that we had arrived at the inn at Somerset. I recalled also Father Lawrence's mouthwatering description of the Lucullan feast that was in store for his three tender wards and himself, and my jaws ground enviously at the notion of feeding. Still, I was not really famished yet, so I could await with relative imperturbability the moment of deliverance, when I promised myself a goodly feast on diverse anatomies.
That Father Lawrence had not been a braggart concerning his familiarity with the landlord of the inn at Somerset was demonstrated a few moments after our arrival, when a jovial, booming voice bade him welcome, “Zounds, good Father, step you down on terra firma and be welcome after your long journey. I have missed you greatly, and would, if your spiritual obligations do not take priority, sup with you this night, you to be my guest, and exchange confidences.”
“I should like nothing better, my brave Thomas,” said the English ecclesiastic, “but on the morrow we leave at once for St. Thaddeus, where I am now to be quartered in my priestly endeavors.”
“Not that seminary which boasts that ugly rogue by name, Father Clement, a veritable ogre to the luckless sinner and the entrapped wench who fall into his brawny clutches?”
“The very same. But, look you, Thomas, I will need two rooms in your comfortable inn this night, for my three wards. Come, my daughters, we are in England, and here is the worthiest of hosts to greet you and look to your creature comforts. Why, not even the King himself and all his court could find better lodging nor more palatable viands than at the sign of the Dawn of Somerset!”
“You do me too much honor, good Father,” chuckled the landlord. “Oh ho! Tonight my humble establishment will be graced with beauty such as never yet has set foot in it – not one, but three comely wenches, each more tempting than the other so that a poor devil of an unregenerate Protestant would not know with whom or where to begin!”
“Aye, but he would doubtless know how, my valiant Thomas,” chuckled the English ecclesiastic. “Now pay heed before we repair to your havening hostel – these damsels speak but little English, being all from the heart of warm Provence in that nation which is notable for so much courtly handkissing! Therefore seek not to startle or affright them with your bluff and direct manner, for they are not common wenches, mark you, but rather delicate virginal novices intended for deliverance up to the holy men of St. Thaddeus, and hence their maidenheads must not be impaired by such fearful brunt as I know you capable of giving!”
“The devil take it, and here I believed that you had, in honor of our brotherly reunion – for I knew you when you were but a stripling and no candidate at all for book and pulpit and mealymouthing, forget not that – conveyed these toothsome saplings hither that we might each of us let flow our vigorous sap to make them grow, if assuredly not big with child, fulsome with bedlore in the science of sweet buff-to-buff fucking!”
But before the good Father could hush his exuberant friend, Marisia, with her sweet Gallic intonation imparting a cock-stirring inflection to the naughty word, had interposed in halting English: “Oh, mon Pere, is this already the Seminary, where we are to fuck?”
“Hush, my daughter!” Father Lawrence quickly gasped, and then to his old companion of hearty cock-endeavoring: “Pay no heed to the sweet Marisia, good Thomas. The child has a mind like a parrot, and, now that I am teaching her the complexities of our honest English speech, seizes here and there upon a word that chanced to resound in her dainty little ears and, without warning or lewd intent – for she is pure virgin, have no doubt! – expounds it at the least occasion!”
“Nay, I will not make the lass blush by chiding her over what she has just said – but damn if she has not unerringly grasped the very crux of the regimen which awaits her at that academy of cocksmiths!” the landlord laughingly declared. “And more, just from her enunciation of that delicious word, she stirs within my loins the readiness to that pleasurable act to which the word is so descriptively mated!”
“Be that as it may,” Father Lawrence reprovingly countered, “she is not for you, nor are these delicious damsels Denise and Louisette!”
“May I roast in everlasting fires if I do not tell the truth and avow to you, my erstwhile brother in combats against the handmaidens of Venus – who, I warrant you, are far more comely than ever you will find whoresons and rogues whose devil's breed you solemnly inveigh against in your new occupation – that this creature with soft pink skin and long tumbling wheat-colored curls makes me bethink myself of a time scarce thirty years ago when, during a thunderstorm, I took shelter in a friendly hayrick and found, to my unforgettable joy, a wench wearing only a torn kirtle and, like myself intent upon hiding from the storm. A double storm, it seems, for she had but recently fled through the fields to escape a fat bailiff who wished to tumble her and, in the process, ripped her kirtle down to two of the juiciest, roundest titties it was ever given with a lusty man to see and fondle and suck -”
“Enough, enough, Thomas, I have heard that narrative a hundred times over. Aye, and in the consoling of her, did you not, though you were then – if your tale be accurate – no more than nineteen summers, know her in the Biblical sense some half-dozen times before the storm quieted and she with it? And each time in the retelling, that temptress' bubbies grow in span just as, I fear, the accomplishments of your untried cock!”
“Damn for an uncircumcised villain if I had not by that time already initiated my cock in a score of beldames and maidens, for my first tumble was when I was but fourteen, a meager lad who knew his station.”
“Aye, between the straining thighs of whatever wench would spread them for you,” the English ecclesiastic laughingly intervened. “But the demoiselle whom you have likened to your hayrick partner in carnal coupling is named Denise, and this coppery-haired coquette is her sister Louisette, nearly her twin but for the incidence of an hour between them in emerging from their worthy mother's fabricating womb.”
“And these fair sisters, equally are they maidens, Father?”
“Equally, though in varying degrees as to eagerness and zest. They can fend for themselves, I am certain, but I have taken them under my protection, as they plead to have their kidnapped young brother released from the dungeons of the evil Bey of Algiers. At St. Thaddeus, I will seek to interest the Father Superior in their special case so that intercession can be made to that infidel ruler. But now, let our luggage be taken to our rooms, and do you bring me a mug of good brown ale to toast your health, my amiable Thomas!”
“My sister's young nephew Jemmy will see to the quartering of the wenches – aye, begging your pardon, Father, virgins then. Come you with me, and I will draw a cooling draught from a newly tapped barrel.”
Next I heard the robust landlord call impatiently, “Jemmy, you worthless, shiftless scamp, stir your lazy stumps and be helping these young damsels to the two rooms on the second floor to the west! And mind you do not give them offense with your gawking about and your sheep's eyes, or I'll drub your young hide till every bone is broken!” Then, in a softer voice to Father Lawrence, “He's a good boy, but I keep him in his place by letting him fear my constant wrath. To praise and cozen him would be to let him grow slothful.”