Norman Invasions Page 5

  Soberly, I did not see how that had been possible.

  But it was gone.

  She was breathing heavily. I could see the sweet fullness of her breast against the rock. She seemed not to dare to move.

  “It is gone,” I assured her.

  “No,” she said, “it is not.”

  I looked about. There was no sign of it, of the calpa.

  “What are you going to do?” she whispered.

  “Free you, surely,” I said. “We must get you home.”

  Strangely, though, I turned her to her back, rudely. She went to lower her hands, to bring them before her body, but I thrust them back, angrily, over her head. She kept them as I had placed them.

  I have waited a long time to have you thusly.

  She looked at me, her eyes wide, frightened. I did not understand this reaction.

  “We will get you some warm blankets, some hot tea,” I said.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Were you given permission to speak?

  “No,” she said. “Forgive me!”

  “For what?” I asked.

  “I—I do not understand,” she stammered.

  I knelt across her body, doubtless to lean forward and free her hands.

  You may lift your mouth, and kiss me.

  I was startled at the unexpected, timid, soft touch of her lips on my body.

  You are mine.

  She turned her head to the side, trembling. “Yes,” she said. “Yes.”

  “Yes?” I asked.

  “Yes, I know,” she said.

  “You know what?” I asked.

  She looked at me, confused, miserable.

  Then it seemed to me I heard her say, and clearly, “If you are a true man, use me. Use me as is your right, in accord with your right, as a master!”

  “What?” I said.

  “I said nothing,” she whispered.

  Then, oddly, I backed a little away from her, on my knees. I stroked the interior of her left thigh. It was soft, and there was golden hair. Then I touched her curiously, softly, intimately. She, to my amazement, squirmed, and lifted her body, piteously, to me. Clearly she was begging another touch. I did not give it to her. Tears sprang into her eyes, and she put her head to the side.

  Why did I make her wait? Why had it amused me to deny her, to remind her of her place?

  I had not touched her because I was a gentleman, of course. It would have been improper, bestial, to have so touched and dominated her.

  “Be kind,” she begged.

  I assumed she pleaded for mercy, to be unbound, to be clothed, to be hurried to safety, and shelter.

  I looked down upon her. She was indeed the Victorian maiden of the dreams, but removed now from the fortress of her society. She did not seem so prim now, so proper, proud, and prudish, so reserved, inert, formal, and cold. No. Gone now was the crisp white shirtwaist, the severe black skirt, the brooch, her civilization. She lay before me, arched over the rock, bared and bound.

  She is mine, I thought, literally mine.

  How is this happening, I asked myself. Why am I not unbinding her, and hurrying her to warmth and shelter? Why am I keeping her before me, as she is, naked, bound?

  She might as well have been a female slave, no more than a rightless, meaningless slave.

  She is a slave, I thought.

  She had been bred, and raised, for me, I thought, and has now been given to me, as a lovely gift.

  She is mine.

  I am a slave, and I beg the touch of my master.

  “What?” I said.

  “I said nothing,” she whispered, “—Master.”

  “What did you say?” I said.

  “—Master—,” she whispered.

  “I do not understand,” I said.

  “You must understand,” she said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “That I am yours, your slave. I have had dreams. Have you not had dreams?”

  “Yes,” I said, “I have had dreams.”

  “I have been prepared for you,” she said.

  “How have you seen me, in your dreams?”

  “As you are now, as my barbarian lord, as my barbarian master.”

  The waves crashed about the shore.

  “How could I fail to recognize my master?” she asked. “Have I not knelt enough before him? But why has he never touched me, why has he never fulfilled me? Has he not found me pleasing?”

  “I am sure he would find you pleasing,” I said.

  “And how has he seen me?” she asked.

  “As something to be taken, and put to a man’s feet,” I said, coldly.

  “Yes,” she cried, “that is where I belong, that is what is fitting for me!”

  “Surely,” said I, “this is madness.”

  “No, it is not,” she said, “Master.”

  “If I accept you as a slave,” I said, “you will be kept under perfect discipline.” I could not believe that I had said this. Could it be I who was speaking?

  “She who is slave,” she said, “would will it, were she permitted to will, no other way.”

  Then she looked up at me, pleading, helplessly. She squirmed a little, tears in her eyes, and lifted her body just a tiny bit, as though fearing that I might be angered by her unsolicited importunity.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I am pleading silently, without speaking, for I have not been given permission to speak, hopefully, timidly, for the touch of my master.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “Please,” she said, “be kind—Master.”

  Rain still assaulted the beach, and occasionally lightning illuminated it, and the rocks, and sea.

  “Ignite me, Master. Make me burn! It is what I am for!” she cried.

  I caressed her flanks, and her breasts, and shoulders and throat. I did touch the interior of her thighs and she encouraged me with a tiny supplicatory moan. I did not, however, deign to touch her intimacies. I knew that if I did so, she would buck and go mad with pleasure.

  Clearly she had the makings of a slave.

  I did not reject this thought, but accepted it. I saw no need to reject her slave needs. Clearly that was what she was. I would not shame her for this, save insofar as it would serve to heighten her passion, and make her the more helpless.

  “You are a miserable, worthless, pathetic, needful slut,” I observed.

  Tears sprang to her eyes.

  “Your ice has melted, my dear,” I informed her.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  My Victorian maiden, I saw, was now no more than a slave, and clearly one desperately needful.

  I wondered how many women were such, or would find themselves such, did they encounter masters.

  “Subject me to the attentions appropriate to my nature and condition, Master,” she begged.

  I then touched her, and she screamed with need, a surrendered, begging slave.

  She looked up at me, wildly.

  “Split your legs, bitch,” I said.

  She dared to look at me, reproachfully.

  I slapped her with the flat of my hand once, sharply, and then, sharply, with the back of it. This left a bit of blood on her lip, where my blow had forced it against her small, fine teeth.

  This may seem brutal, but one does not accept insubordination, or hesitancy, in a slave.

  It is not done.

  “Now,” I said.

  “Yes, Master!” she cried, joyfully, then instantly obedient, tears mixing with the rain on her face.

  I did not think further discipline would be necessary in this instance. She had been a slave from birth, bred for me, destined for me, but only recently, I supposed, had she comprehended that she had now, suddenly, come into the act
ive state of her bondage, a state which, once initiated, would not be revoked.

  One who has tasted slave meat does not return to the stale crusts of pampered sluts; compared to the slave all other women are tepid, and mediocre. And boring. It is no wonder that the fearful slave, anxious to obey and please, finds herself prized, and determinedly sought, amongst the abundant, disappointing garbage of her inert, confused, petulant, neurotic sisters.

  I then took her into my arms and placed the seal of my claimancy upon her.

  So, too, I now understand was my mother bred for my father, and perhaps my grandmother for my grandfather. They are thorough, I thought, those who care for such matters.

  When I awakened it was to voices on the beach. I was lying alone, freezing, half in the cold water, half on the rocky sand.

  Men from Hill House brought me back from the beach. They had begun searching for me when it was discovered I was not in my room. I kept to my bed for four or five days, recovering from my ordeal, accepting two visits from a physician, from one of the nearby towns, and being coddled by diligent, concerned Mrs. Fraser, she and her wonderful pots of hot green tea. I suppose I was fortunate not to have contracted pneumonia.

  It had turned out to have been a markedly dreadful, terrible night for the village, for young Gavin had gone missing, and old Duncan, drunk, stumbling from the pub, lost in the storm, had somehow wandered into the sea and drowned.

  Perhaps, I thought, he had come too close.

  A day or two after I emerged shakily from my bed Gavin’s body was found in the sea, by a trawler, several miles to the south of the village. I did not care to look on it, but I was told he had not drowned, but, apparently, had fallen from the cliff, and been dashed on the rocks below. His lantern was found at a spot at the cliff’s edge, oddly flattened. His body was so battered, and torn, that it might have been trampled, but a fall to rocks, and being cast again and again by angry waters against rocks, was surely sufficient to produce these hideous effects. I was very sorry, for had I liked old Duncan, and Gavin, too. Indeed, the latter had been, in effect, my one friend, or closest friend, in the village. I acceded to the constable’s conjectures, in his inquiry, that I had seen Gavin’s lantern and had left Hill House to investigate the light, that I must have come on the scene of Gavin’s fall, and had then, too, fallen from the cliff, though more fortunately than he, for I had managed to miss the rocks below. I was not the last person who had spoken to old Duncan but some of the other villagers. He had been alive and well when last I had seen him. It was not clear why Gavin had been about that night, but the constable had conjectured, sensibly enough, at least from his point of view, that he had been up to no good, out on such a night, that he was the trickster who had been playing the village for a fool, and was up to further mischief, taking advantage of the storm to avoid surveillance. He had heard of the prints, and of the disturbance in my room, and such, for old Duncan had told him about these things one day when he had biked to the village. That, it turned out, was the day I had seen Duncan talking to the constable. Duncan, of course, I knew from personal acquaintance, would not have favored the “hoax theory” of the anomalies. Such an explanation, of course, would be that which would first occur to a sober outsider, one not from the village, one like the kindly, sensible constable. “What did he say?” I asked, curious. “Nothing, really,” said the constable. “Only a lot of nonsense, superstitious nonsense. He was a decent, sweet, but daft old man. And, too, I think he may not be the only one in the village, the crazy things they say. I think it may be the wind, the never-stopping wind, the sea, too, always, slapping at the cliffs. After a while, I suppose, anyone could go mad here.” As the constable was leaving, he turned and said to me, “One of the things old Duncan wanted me to do was to keep an eye on you.” “Why?” I asked. “More nonsense,” said the constable. “Good-day, sir!” “Good-day, officer.” That, I supposed, was why Duncan had so apparently abruptly concluded his discussion with the constable, when I had appeared on the scene. I bore him no ill will, sweet old Duncan, with his ale, and his pipe. I think he meant well. He had apparently known my father. He claimed to have seen the calpa. I wondered if he had. If there is such a thing, perhaps he had come too close. Indeed, perhaps he, like Gavin, had been abroad that night, curious, reconnoitering, unwisely. If so, he, like Gavin, might have been well advised to leave well enough alone. He was a character in the village. The village would miss him. I would miss him.

  In my convalescence in Hill House I had, of course, given a great deal of thought, sometimes even against my will or intent, to the seeming events of the past few days, and particularly to those of the night of the storm. I supposed that, somehow, after returning to Hill House that night, and having fallen asleep in my room, I had then, again, risen in my sleep, and walked about, and that the events which had seemed to occur had been no more than the troubling aberrations of an unusual dream. I was fortunate not to have been killed in a fall from the cliff, in the midst of this dangerous, wayward peregrination. I remembered the details of the dream, of course. It was not the sort of dream one would be likely to forget. It had to have been a dream, of course. I could not have behaved in so uncouth and deplorable a manner as the dream suggested. Such behavior would have been crudely and inappropriately atavistic, not to be countenanced, simply unthinkable. Such things hark back to realities and times so ancient, basic, and primitive that they are best precluded from civilized attention, from polite inquiry. Let us not remember what men and women were, for fear we might learn what they are. Not all curtains need be parted. Not all doors need be opened. Perhaps it is well not to search for the truth; there is always the danger that one might find it. The rivers of blood flow deep. Doubtless it is best that we remain masks and shadows to one another.

  I discovered that one change had taken place in the residents of Hill House. The cat had disappeared on the night of the storm. No one knows where she went. No one has seen her since.

  One other incident may be worth recording, which occurred on the day I left the village, to return to the city. I was wandering on the beach, and, drawn by what morbid curiosity I know not, found my steps taking me to the vicinity of the cliff and the terrible, sea-washed rocks where the tragedy of the stormy night had occurred. There were no hoofprints on the beach, I am pleased to report. It had come to seem likely to me, over the last few days, that Gavin had indeed been perpetrating a hoax, one which, grievously, tragically, had cost him his life. When I came to the place beneath the cliffs, where the morning waters were roiling amongst the rocks, I climbed up a short way, perhaps some ten or twelve feet. There was the fresh, keen odor of salt and kelp. I looked up. The top of the cliff was some one hundred feet or so above me. I could see it edged, dark, against the sky. Then I looked down, and to my right, at the rocks. They were large, abundant and jagged. They were bright with spray in the morning sun. I had been fortunate, indeed, to have passed harmlessly between them in my fall. Then I looked down, between the rocks, into the dark, wicked, churning, violent waters, the lashing foam. I shuddered. It was amazing that anything could have lived in such waters. I had indeed been fortunate. I then made my way, carefully, slipping a bit, back down the rocks to the beach. There, on the pebbled, rocky sand, I stood for a time, looking out to sea.

  The calpa, I thought, is not evil. It bears you no ill will. It is, however, territorial, and will kill to conceal its presence.

  No one knows where lies the house of the calpa.

  Also, it must breed, and seeks shallower spaces, waters where first, perhaps, it was spawned.

  Coming back, one supposes, in each generation, from unimaginable journeys in alien seas.

  It is capable, it is said, of taking many forms.

  I supposed it then might, if it wished, take the form of a human being.

  I then put these thoughts from me, as they seemed alien to me. I turned about, to return to Hill House.

  My attention, as
I turned about, was taken by a large, rounded, boulderlike rock. It reminded me, in its form, and location, of the rock in the dream.

  I went to the rock.

  I put out my hand. Caught on the rock was a long strand of golden hair.

  Unscheduled Stop

  He ran across the soft earth, sinking not much into it. He did not run toward the hill behind him, that on the far side of the highway, the large hill pointed out by the tour guide.

  “Stop!” they called after him.

  It was the other hill, the hill of the stand, where it had ended, that he climbed, knowing this, and not knowing it, I would suppose.

  When the sun is right you can see your own reflection in the window of the bus. You can look out and see yourself, and when the sun is right, in that place, it seems you can see the other self, too; a face looked back at him, maybe. We really don’t know. He was far ahead of us now, and we called to him to stop.

  He had cried out “Stop the bus!” and had pounded on the window, leapt up, fled down the aisle.

  “He’s ill,” said someone.

  “Stop the bus,” said the guide.

  The driver drew the bus to one side of the road.

  “Do not demean me,” she said. “Remove your shirt. I will not be demeaned. Spread it here, on the soft grass, and let us lie upon it and sing a little, just a little.”

  He looked back. The bus was far behind. He began to run up the hill.

  “It is base treachery,” she said. “Run, run from here. The guests in your father’s house, they are McCormick.”

  He gasped, climbing the hill.

  Behind him he could see the smoke, rising from the sheds in the hill fort, then the fire.

  “I will tell him his name another time,” she said.

  “Cursed thing!” he cried. “I might have watched. I might have known.”