For many days after I drank from that young man, I remained in bed. I was a complete naif, an innocent, and felt that something important had happened to me, and wanted the time to consider it. Even now, I am driven to quiet rooms on my own, to consider how things are with myself, and enjoy sequesterment. These days there are recordings I can listen to, and little videos which sometimes mon enfant wants for me to watch, but in those days it was only looking out the window and doing things with the hands.
After returning home, I protested against being locked in my bedroom again, and so Laurent changed the bedclothes in Dasius's room, and opened the windows, and let me stay there. In comparison to the other, it was a very small bedroom, but it had a view of the water far distant, where I could watch merchant vessels and small pleasurecraft blowing on the wind. Sometimes, at the height of the day, the smell from the Seine was too foul, and I shut the windows then, but at other times, I enjoyed the breezes very much. There were many papers and metal implements for writing on the secretary desk in that room, which made pleasant music in the wind.
Occasionally, Dasius would come, and I would cover my eyes with my arm, because I could not stand to look on him. Still, I felt very strongly a sense of dread, of instinctive alarm at his presence, which I could not overcome. Once, he tried to sit down beside me, and to ask me if I wanted to learn to read and write, and it was as if some imp had come and shut my lungs, strangling me, so that I could not speak to him at all.
On the fourth day, Laurent came in quietly and shut the door. Until then, I had never seen him dressed in any way except in frock coat and stockings, tied up in cravat, hair pinned back, wearing low heels embroidered with seed pearls. That day, he came in a silken dressing gown, with heavy hems. Beneath, he wore a long cotton tunic. He had left his pale blond hair wild, and there were dark circles under his eyes. He came to me in bed and pressed the book of copper plate prints I was looking at out of my hands. He pushed his face against my bare neck like a cat until I put my arms around him. "Pet," he said, "hold me. I am so tired. I am so cold."
"What's gone wrong?" I asked, so much the naif.
"Nothing at all," he said, rien du tout, puffing air on my neck dismissively. "Do not be concerned."
"Where have you been?" I asked.
"Taking the air in the north," he said. "I see that you have been well-looked after in my absence. But I hear that you will not learn to write."
I opened my mouth to ask with whom, but he caught me before the words could get out.
"If you ask me, what answer would you like? Alone? With that boy from the salon? With some stranger you have never met? Have I not done enough for you?" he snapped. "I am devoted to you, pet. What more do you want from me?" His hands were at my neck, and then they were at my knees, spreading my thighs so that he could sit back against me between them.
I was unused to such a greeting, but I am not normally quick to anger. I held him securely as he had held me after my convulsions in the salon, puzzled and hurt by his coolness.
"Oh, but you are warm still," he hummed. "Hold me tightly. Please God, roast me. I have such a chill."
"Is it because you haven't drunk?" I asked, arms locked around his chest, knees knocked over his petit body.
"Bien sur," he said. "Of course. What else? I cannot get warm."
I held my breath against a dry cough tickling my insides.
"Let it out, pet. It does you no good to keep it in."
"I wish that I could have just a drink of water, for my throat," I said, without breathing.
"I know. There's no helping it. But come now, I will teach you an old trick which may do you as much good."
He helped me out of bed and took my arm, remarking on my bedclothes and making smalltalk so that I wouldn't think of my lungs. He sat me on a low chair in the sitting room, near the window, and went away. I heard him call Dasius to heat water and find rose and sage. Then he came back and went to the sideboard. I watched him curiously as he drew out a meter-by-meter square bolt of white linen and a large shallow dish of silver. He turned the dish around and around to see that it was clean, and set it on a tall side table, as there was no dining table in the room, or indeed, in the house. I had been exploring a little in his absence and found that all rooms on the second floor were draped with white sheets, though underneath, all the furniture and fittings were as fine as those found on the first.
After twenty minutes, Dasius came silently with the water and the aromatics, and without peeking at me, he filled the dish and broke rose and sage into it, draping the linen over the mixture. He departed without a word. Laurent came and took my hands and led me to the table delicately, as if I were made of glass.
"They used to say, in old times, that Frances the First took steam every morning, before levee, before anything. One wonders if it's true. Personally, I feel it quite wakes up the skin. And I think that you have taken enough of my blood to be strong enough, though you ought to keep your eyes closed. They are still delicate. I will be sick if you damage your eyes."
I found him quite chatty and fussy over me, and it pleased me well. I lifted the linen and went under, breathing in greedily of the humid air and heady fragrance. The sage and rose assaulted my new senses, saturating every orifice with their aroma, waking my skin like a fresh slap. I kept my eyes closed tightly and withdrew only at a tug on my nightshirt. "Don't burn," he said, smiling and pressing his cool hands to my cheeks. "Oh, pet, you look almost like when I first laid eyes upon you. Flushed as if struck by Cupid's bow. How do you fare? Do you feel well?" He was laughing and touching me all over, pleased at my being struck dumb by pure contentment. "Look at how good he judges it," he said, as happy as he ever was.
I took him then by the cheeks as he'd had me and gazed into his face in the weakening daylight, measuring his sleepy pleasure, and I kissed his forehead, as it is of a height with my lips. "I think that you are quite old," I said.
"Not terribly old. Not yet," he said in echo. "Not so long as I have you. Leis, if you leave me, I am done for. Say that you won't."
"I haven't known you long," I told him, the naif, thinking I was playing hard to get. "I must be measured and not rush into love."
"But my darling, that is why it must be you who stays. My God, do I drive you away by saying it? Innocence, did I teach you something useful? If you stay with me always, I will teach you all I know." He was sounding terribly desperate, darkening with the room. "I will keep you safe forever. I will let you be my master and follow you wherever you would go. Yes, I am quite old. Let us grow older together. I beg it of you. Never stray away. All I have is yours. I am your poor body to do with as you will."
I have never known anything so much as that those words were genuine, and sacred to him, and true.
"Poor body," I said, feeling sorry, and envigorated by the steam, "how shall I pay you for this knowledge?" I kissed him. which took him by surprise. "Tell me. How might I make payment?"
"Kitten, I'm being serious now."
I tried to kiss him again and he fended me off playfully.
"Keep your filthy coquette's tongue in your mouth, kitten. You abuse an old creature who loves you."
"How old are you?"
"I speak the Latin of Martial and Juvenal, and repeat you their verses as I heard them in the forum as a boy. I did not think you so thick." He screwed up his face and checked my neck under my collar, the way a mother would check her son's head for lice. "You are healing quite fine. Dismissed."
"What's Martial?" I asked, not put off by his playing at anger, bobbing my head with his as he ducked my lips.
"I exhort you now, pet. I am serious. I am feeling old and tired and sad, and I would be let alone." He emphasized the last two words, but did not push me with the force I knew he was capable of.
I caught his protesting hands in mine, and bubbled again, "How should I pay you?" against his neck, kissing him and kissing him. The heavy hems of his silken sleeves slipped back to his elbows, his hands held fast at shoulder-height.
"Will you count the days of your life by moments of passion, little one?" I heard him mutter, face buried in my hair. I licked the shell of his ear and felt him shudder in my arms. "Won't you speak to me?" he asked.
"I don't have pretty words, or words that rhyme," I said, blowing on his licked ear, as he had done to me, exploding my head before my first kiss. "I am just an illiterate urchin from a provincial city who happened to grow up virginal and pale. I am just full of blood and heat. My head is full of roses. I know nothing of Romans. Of Martial, or Juvenal, or Catullus, or Cicero either. I am thick." Every time I took a breath he was touching me on the neck with his little teeth. "I am a soldier of God," I said, losing my breath with every touch, "a sweet begging child for the Virgin. I want to walk to Lourdes with you. I want to give Her my Louis d'or. If an old creature bites me now, now, right now, perhaps I'll give to him instead and worship. But if he continues to gnaw on my neck like a kitten searching for the tit I will thrust him aside instead." I paused, cheerful. "Bite me."
"Beg for it."
"I die," I breathed out.
"I want to hear your voice break. Beg for it," he said.
There, over Laurent's shoulder then, I saw Dasius, shocked and silent, holding the pitcher of hot water. He watched us with eyes I could not read, and I wondered how long he had been stilled there. My heart beat in my head with sudden fear. When I opened my mouth to speak, I swallowed the words in a gasp of pain, eyes meeting his, and I knew what was in his gaze then. Cold, furious jealousy. He had been frozen in a rictus of envy. Every shiver of pleasure under his eyes felt like the shudders of a whore in church, and the swoon, as my master took too much, was a mercy.