“Were you never brought in here before you married?” Faust asked.
“Never,” Danaë answered. “The Salon de Sade was not judged proper for a maiden’s eyes. Besides”—she smiled at Andō seated beside her on their sofa—“until I was united with my husband, I had no contact with affairs of state. I still find this room rather overwhelming, which is why I do appreciate your kindness in exercising restraint when I attend.”
“No trouble at all, my dear, no trouble at all.”
It was a brash lie, of course, here in a room designed to fill the mind with two things of which politics was not the primary. This was not a room built for restraint. The picture window down to the lovemaking of the hoi polloi filled one wall with living pornography. Two more walls were covered with museum cases which preserved the relics of Great Men: portraits, busts, quills, locks of hair, manuscripts in the hands of Patriarch and Philosophe, Jean-Jacques and the Divine Marquis, glittering reliquaries of Madame’s favorite Catholic saints, and, when they have survived, tools of love from the boudoirs of history’s greatest. The last wall held the tools of love for this one.
Faust’s eyes laughed as he settled onto the sofa. “Wearing a hole in the rug isn’t going to get Bryar ready faster either, Déguisé.”
The Anonymous froze, embarrassed now by his own pacing. At Madame’s, in case any outside the inner circle might wander within earshot, the Anonymous answers to the slightly subtle title of the Comte Déguisé, the Count Disguised. Trust Europe to have a system of etiquette prepared even for the eventuality of royalty who must stay ‘in disguise’ amid a company all of whom know the truth.
“Well put, dear Felix.” Madame’s laugh lit the room, as did the silver embroidery sparkling on her gown of powder blue. “The Headmaster is right. Come, My Lord, sit before you make us all dizzy.” Madame was too far from the Anonymous to grab his sleeve, but she steered him toward an empty couch with a gesture.
My Lord the Comte Déguisé obeyed, but sat only on the sofa’s edge, ready to spring up, like a loved one lurking outside a surgery, waiting for news.
Madame’s smile pitied his tension, but she could do no more, so she stretched back in the embrace of the two gentleman who flanked her on her couch. To her left, his legs lost in the ocean of her skirts, sat His Imperial Majesty Cornel MASON. His costume was an adapted Eighteenth-Century military uniform, cording and rows of bright buttons, fashioned in Masonic Imperial Gray with the left sleeve dyed black. Their bodies as they sat—Madame’s and Caesar’s—were intertwined, his lips a neck stretch from her ear, her hand in his lap a light squeeze from excitement. Theirs is a comfortable, habitual closeness, enjoying the taste of a cheek or the tease-thrill of crotches brushing under cloth, all in the course of chat, as if they had forgotten one might sit upon a couch in any other way. See, even as Madame chuckles at the Anonymous’s impatience, the Emperor chuckles with her, not even noticing the sympathy of flesh and flesh. I had never seen Caesar unstiff, reader, until I saw him with Madame. On the same couch on the Lady’s other side, his costume barely more elegant than his everyday European suit, sat the King of Spain.
“I hear the Outsider is calling the European Parliament again,” the Emperor remarked as he nuzzled his Lady’s ear. “Something about the land crisis.”
Spain nodded. “It is also to approve funds for the distribution of that new anti-aging drug.”
“I thought they passed that eight months ago.”
“This is another new drug. Utopians work fast.”
Caesar tickled something among Madame’s skirts. “I just found out about the new drug yesterday. The Outsider works fast too.”
“They do,” Spain granted, “commendably so.” English, reader, they spoke English, despite the pull of Paris, for such a universal company can only speak the universal tongue.
“Her Excellency,” an usher called now from the doorway, “Cousin Chairwoman Bryar Kosala.”
“Sorry to make you wait, everyone!”
Bryar Kosala entered in a rush of ruffles, her black hair mounded as elaborately as a wedding cake, her gold-trimmed gown of poppy-red satin making her deep Indian skin glow like amber.
“Oh! My Lord!” she squealed as the Comte Déguisé pounced like a hunter, lifting her by her corseted waist and drowning her neck with kisses. Kosala laughed, the others too, delighted, even after so many repetitions, at a pair so very much in love.
Why does Kosala not wear a sari? It is a fair question, reader, why this daughter of India does not wear the Eighteenth-Century costume of her own people, as Andō and Danaë do of old Japan. The Comte Déguisé’s tastes, conditioned by Madame, are part of the lady’s reason, but exoticism is more. Bryar Kosala is here to sample the strange, romantic mysteries of this exotic France; India is her everyday.
“Now who’s making the Princesse uncomfortable, Déguisé?” Faust teased.
It was true. Danaë had averted her modest eyes from the lovers’ kisses, filling her gaze instead with her husband, who sat beside her on their couch, and her brother, who lay sparkling across the couple’s laps, naked as God intended. Golden Ganymede was stretched out on his side, his head nestled against the pillow of his sister’s breasts, with his lower parts in Andō’s lap, so the Director’s idle hands could enjoy the Duke’s flawless buttocks. Ganymede’s back is his more dangerous side, I think, the golden mane trailing down his spine as soft as sunlight, since that back could be either a man’s or woman’s, so practically no spectator is immune. There is no incongruity, reader, in bashful Danaë averting her eyes from kisses to feast on her brother’s nakedness. Ganymede’s nude form is not licentiousness but art, a public service, no stranger than an Aphrodite in a fountain, and certainly nothing unfamiliar to his sister or the rest of this company. Besides, excepting myself, all the people present here have enjoyed the Duke to some degree, whether completely as Andō does, or the single night which the King of Spain will doubtless regret to his grave.
“Our apologies, Princesse.” Kosala had to push the Anonymous away, prying his hands from her bodice and holding them in forced and modest friendship.
“It’s quite all right,” Danaë answered, adjusting the front of her glittering kimono where the weight of her brother’s head threatened to bare too much of her chest. “I know how le Comte misses you between meetings.”
Her Excellency Chair Kosala settled on her own sofa, and the Comte Déguisé squeezed as close beside her as the framework of her dress allowed. The lust in his eyes bordered on starvation, but, to spare Danaë, he confined himself to stroking Kosala’s fingers, where the wedding ring drowned amid more dazzling period jewels.
Drop this farce, Mycroft. I know who thy Anonymous is, all the world knows. Save the trouble and call him by his name. Never, reader. The illustrious title of Anonymous has passed from virtuoso to apprentice virtuoso for seven generations, Earth’s most influential voice for so long that even Ganymede considers theirs a noble line. Tradition lets each Anonymous reveal the identity of their predecessor’s predecessor upon their death, so Earth may decide whether to honor the body in the Pantheon, but to reveal an Anonymous while still alive? Unforgivable. As you know, disaster forced the unmasking of this Anonymous, but I shall not strip the holder of his regal title in my history a moment sooner.