Dark Matter

The girl, who told me her name was Deborah, was most lovely and, drawing back the bedclothes, invited me to lie with her; but I had no courage to meddle with her, for fear of her not being wholesome, until she sold me a length of sheep’s intestine with which I could sheath my manly parts, whereupon I fucked her. It was most ignoble of me, but all the time I stayed mounted upon her and gazed upon her face, which demonstrated much enjoyment, I told myself that this was indeed Miss Barton and that I was taking my carnal pleasure of her flesh. So that when at last I ejaculated within her, it felt like the best I had ever had, and I shuddered all down my shanks like some horrid dog, before collapsing upon her breast in the manner of one shot through the heart.

For a moment the whim of doing it thus amused me greatly.

“Want to go again, dear?” asked Deborah.

“No,” I said. “Not yet.”

And then the sadness came. Of course, it is normal for a man to feel this way. But this was a sadness like no other I had ever felt, for I sensed that I had somehow tarnished the bright perfection that was the regard I had for Miss Barton. And I felt the remorse of it most acutely. So that when I heard a man cry out in pain, I almost thought the sound came from within my own breast. It was Deborah’s laughter that persuaded me the sound had come from somewhere else; and when I heard the man cry out again, this time he seemed to have been prompted by another, sharper report.

“Why does that man cry out?” I asked.

“Oh, that’s just Monsieur Vogueavant,” said Deborah, trying to coax my cock to crow again. “Vogueavant’s French for ‘stroke.’”

“I had quite forgotten him,” I confessed.

“And he is beaten with a whip.”

“A whip? Good Lord, where is there pleasure in that?”

“Not so as you would notice. I’ve beaten him myself upon occasion. But I care not for it. It’s warm work. Warmer than this. For Monsieur Vogueavant has a tolerance of pain like no other man I have ever met. And one must lay on hard to please him. The English perversion, they calls it, but Monsieur Vogueavant learned his taste as a galley slave on a French ship. His back tells the story well enough, for I never saw the like.”

Once again I heard Mornay cry out in response to the sting of the whip.

“And the Major has himself beaten in order that he should recollect his experiences? How monstrous.”

“I believe that it is more confused than that. He himself told me that he is beaten so that he will never forget his hatred of the French, and of Roman Catholics in particular.”

I was properly confounded by this information, which at least served to take my mind off the insult I had privately done to Miss Barton, and would have said more about the disgusting things men will have done to them in pursuit of pleasure, yet I feared Deborah’s abusing me for a hypocrite and so I kept silent. Which was more than she did, for momentarily she was troubled with some wind in her cunny parts, and I was moved by her farts to take my leave of her bed.

I had just started to piss in her pot, which be another good precaution against the clap, when I heard Mornay’s door open, followed by the sound of his boots stamping downstairs; and I made haste to dress and go after him.

“Why do you rush so?” asked Miss Barton’s facsimile.

“Because he does not know that I am here. And I know not where he goes now.”

“Oh, I can tell you that,” said Deborah. “He goes over the water to the Dutchman’s house in Lambeth Marshes.”

“To do what, pray?”

“It ain’t to have his fortune told by gypsies. It’s a wicked place he goes. What a man with money cannot obtain there, let him not search for it anywhere else in this world of ours. He wanted to take me there once. Offered me a guinea to go with another woman, he said. Well, I don’t mind that so much. It’s safer than going with a man. Just licking another girl’s cunny and moaning a bit. But I’ve heard tales about that place. Called The Dutchman’s. Some of the poor molls who go to work there are never seen again.”

Having for a shilling obtained some directions to this house of evil repute, I went outside onto Fleet Street, took coach, and went down to White’s Stairs in Channel Row, where, hearing a wherryman shout “Southward, ho!,” I joined a boat that was crossing the river.

The moon edged out from under a black flap of sky like a curling yellow fingernail. Halfway across the river a mist descended upon our boat that was like some floating pestilence. In the distance, the windows of the leaning houses on London Bridge were lit up like a necklace of yellow diamonds.