The drums stopped suddenly and the shimmering of a thousand bells rang out. Hands pulled Alistair into a spread-eagled position, pinning down his arms and legs. His silk robe was torn away. Every mouth descended upon him—male and female—traveling over his body, sucking, licking, kissing. Struggling to hold himself back, Alistair shut his eyes. Against his lids danced an image—a flushed face of a beautiful man in his midthirties, bearded, a mysterious smile playing across his full mouth. Burst, burst into leaf, he whispered in Latin. Recognizing the god Dionysus, Alistair’s eyes flew open.
The mouths left his flesh and Lady Whistle took his yard into her mouth, encircling him slowly with her tongue, cupping his balls in her hand, his arse, penetrating him with her fingers. Not yet, not yet, Dionysus whispered into the scholar’s ear as Alistair reached up and drew the plump buttocks of the young blond girl onto his face. The rich scent of her filled his nostrils as his fingers wound their way across her sticky labia and then into her while his tongue flicked across the erect bud of her clitoris. She guided his blind hands to full breasts that he knew must be Lady Whistle’s as the aristocrat lowered herself onto his rock-hard cock.
The blond moved away. Now Alistair could see Lady Whistle riding him, her breasts bouncing gently. Behind her, Toby knelt and eased himself into her nether entrance. An expression of both ecstasy and pain came across her features. Above Alistair’s head another man thrust out his penis, the goat fur on his thighs and his cloven hooves vividly realistic to Alistair’s befuddled mind, which was now entirely transported back to a mythological time of satyrs and fauns.
Lady Whistle leaned forward and took the goat-man’s cock into her mouth, sucking greedily. Alistair squeezed down hard on her nipples. The man being sucked began to caress the breasts of the girl on his left as she parted her legs for another man’s organ. Alistair was dimly aware that the formation was being completed through touch and intercourse—each body linking with the others to form the backbone, flanks, and legs of the Ram.
Alistair felt his spirit rise from his body and float to the roof. It hovered there and he looked down upon the revelry. A couple covered each of the stars, limbs stretched out to complete the outline. He could see himself beneath Lady Whistle, the only unmasked
person, his lips pulled back in bliss as she rode him over and over. The figure of the bearded priest on the mural began to glow as a shaft of sunlight traveled across the room, illuminating one by one the figures undulating in their strange dance. Finally it reached the central nucleus of Lady Whistle and Alistair. Whoosh: Alistair was sucked straight back into his body. He felt the tight, burning ring of Lady Whistle’s sex sliding up and down his cock and the mounting pressure of orgasm building at the back of his head, deep in his balls, as every nerve ending tensed in preparation to blast forth in a shuddering propulsion of energy.
Now! Dionysus whispered, now!
“Now!” screamed Lady Whistle. “Now!” Her vagina began to clench, and, blinded suddenly by the passing sunlight, Alistair exploded, his seed shooting forth in a great shuddering of white-hot pleasure. All around him orgasmed in unison and he felt his life energy ejecting itself away from his body, leaving him suddenly drained.
As the screams and groans subsided, with Lady Whistle still sitting astride him, Alistair opened his eyes and found himself staring at the blank fifth panel. To his horror, it magically began to form a tableau—the missing section he had always suspected existed. He saw the orgy, moments after completion, the spent satyrs lying across their nymphs, emperor across priestess, empress across gladiator, all still masked. In the center, the priest lay spread-eagled as if sacrificed. His face was now a mass of wrinkles, the visage of the old Dionysus, the gnarled vine waiting to be cut down to make way for the new.
Alistair touched his own face. Rough and wrinkled, it did not feel like his skin as he knew it. Lady Whistle slid off her mask. Smiling down at him was the face of a beautiful young woman; herself at twenty-three. Alistair pushed the aristocrat off and began to scream.
The elderly man sitting alone, obviously shaken, catches the attention of the young woman. She crosses the room to his table and offers a polite curtsy.
“Excuse me for interrupting, sir, but I was wondering whether you might be a relative of a dear friend of mine whom I have not seen for some three years—a Mr. Alistair Sizzlehorn. You bear a strong resemblance to him. He was a most promising archaeologist with the British Museum at the time of his disappearance. We were intimates; indeed, I waited a good year for him before I considered other suitors.”
Alistair stares fully into Margaret’s face until the scrutiny moves from impolite to plain alarming. As the older man’s countenance gathers intensity, Harry, the young merchant, fearing for his fiancée, places his arm across her shoulders, as if to protect her.
The elderly gentleman stands suddenly, breaking the moment. “I am sorry, I have never heard of him. Now, if you will excuse me there is someone I have to meet.”
Alistair Sizzlehorn makes his way around the street corner and out of sight of the teahouse. There he leans heavily against the wall, emotion shaking his aged body.
Bat
Off the Cape of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805
The signals had gone up and the Lord Admiral’s immortal words—“England expects that every living man will do his duty,” followed by the more pointed message, “Engage the enemy more closely”—had been read eagerly by every sailor, from the midshipmen to the gunners. Nelson’s direct appeal had spread through the men like a virus, infecting them with a heart-pumping patriotism mixed with something far sweeter: the love of a great commander and the soaring sensation of being part of a momentous occasion that everyone knew would change both history and the fate of England itself.
“Damn Bony, and damn the French and the Spanish,” whispered Norwich Pebblesmith, an eleven-year-old drummer, to his companion but his words were lost as the instruments began their frenetic beat. Ahead, the massive Spanish three-decker, the Santa Ana, seemed almost within arm’s reach. It towered over the Royal Sovereign but already the English cannonballs had smashed into the hull of the flagship and shattered the beaked bow. All around the small boy lay the injured and the dying. Somewhere there was screaming, but the drummer held firm, focusing on nothing but the motion of his wrists, which now seemed to be thrashing through treacle. In front of him, Vice-Admiral Collingwood stood defiantly dressed in his epaulettes shouting orders, exhilarated by the stench of gunpowder and blood, his face flushed, his eyes glittering dangerously.
Suddenly the deck shuddered and there came a massive crunch and the sound of splintering iron and wood as the Royal Sovereign rammed the crippled Santa Ana.
Norwich was thrown to the deck. As he lay there dazed, staring up at the billowing smoke that scarred the otherwise perfect blue sky, he noticed a whitish creature lazily flapping its way toward the Spanish vessel. At first he took it to be a bird, but there was something unnatural about the manner in which its wings lifted and descended. Rolling onto his side Norwich crossed himself, believing he might have seen the manifestation of a dying man’s spirit or, worse still, Old Nick himself.
Falkland Islands, 20 May 1982
It was white and covered in fine pale hair that looked translucent in the light. Red beady eyes swiveled around in a head that was delicate, almost noble in its structure. The nose—an organ dedicated to the invisible art of scent detection (Nature had cared little for its external appeal during its evolution)—was an intricate labyrinth of folded skin and quivering tissue shot with a lattice of minute veins. The two oversized ears covered most of the small domed head and were similarly complex organs that seemed to promise a view right into the creature’s skull should one be so brave as to peer inside. Its wings, when spread, were a startling ashen hue and reminiscent of the battered fabric of a beach umbrella. The mouselike torso boasted two bright pink nipples—a rude reminder that the animal was a fellow mammal. Two claws, seemingly grafted carelessly at the end of each wing, looked like a mistake in design. Its minuscule penis (hidden beneath a fold of gray skin most of the time) and furry scrotum hung upside down against the animal’s body along with everything else. The creature lived in Chaplain Murphy’s quarters, its wooden perch located in the corner of the crowded cabin, next to his missal and a large bottle of whiskey.
The bat had been HMS Ardent’s mascot for as long as the current captain could remember—and he had been with the Royal Navy for a good thirty years. The tradition was that the creature’s welfare was entrusted to the chaplain in residence, which was how Father Murphy had acquired the animal, inheriting it from Chaplain McDougal upon his retirement.
It was easy to keep, requiring little food except pieces of fruit from the galley and the occasional bowl of milk, which it would drink delicately, balancing like a trapeze artist from its perch, furry white neck stretched out, the inverted snout dipping down to the creamy surface and its long pink tongue steadily scooping the liquid up into its hairy mouth. It had no name except Bat, and had been on the ship for so long that only new recruits ever noticed it.
Father Murphy had once tried to identify the exact species the animal belonged to, but had been forced to give up as its albino appearance had proved a source of confusion. It most closely resembled the fruit-eating bats of the Amazon, but its snout was longer, its teeth sharper and its wingspan proportionally longer than the miniature bats in the tattered copy of National Geographic he had found in the library. It squeaked only very occasionally and its droppings were dry and pelletlike—easy to sweep up. Perhaps the strangest thing was that the bat had no scent whatsoever. This disturbing characteristic seemed to contribute to its invisibility and it was easy to forget that it existed at all.
Father Murphy, a corpulent man in his late sixties, had nevertheless grown fond of the creature and had taken to reading his favorite psalms aloud to it. The bat would hang quietly from its perch, occasionally lifting its head in the chaplain’s direction, a quizzical expression on its mouselike face. After moving on to the New Testament the cleric noticed that the animal responded particularly well to the parable of Saint Francis of Assisi, thus convincing him that it possessed an intelligence. In his more inebriated moments, Father Murphy imagined its brain would be
a grid, like you might see peering through a gun sight, made up of muffled sounds, its dimensions divided by echo and the scent of heat. Very different from his own brain, but possessing an intelligence nevertheless.
A closet animal liberationist who felt morally conflicted over the imprisonment of the creature, the cleric had persuaded himself that the animal was happy. Being albino it would never have survived in the natural world anyhow—an observation Father Murphy found comforting whenever the bat shook its waxen wings restlessly, as if the distant memory of flight had suddenly fallen upon it like a shadow.
But today the bat was not happy, it wasn’t even content. The thud of rocket fire vibrated through the metal hull of the ship and the animal could smell the acrid scent of battle permeating the musty confined air of the cabin. With one claw the bat preened behind its left ear, then hopped along the perch to peer haplessly at the empty food bowl below. It hadn’t eaten in over four days. Swiveling its head around, it stared at the bunk where Father Murphy—an amorphous miasmatic collection of scents and movement to the bat—usually lay. The bunk too had been empty for several days.