Raine: The Lords of Satyr (2 page)

Salerno’s voice rose, catching her attention and signaling the imminent unveiling.

She let the cloak drop away, revealing her nakedness. Pushing up on her elbows, she awaited what was to come.

“Gentlemen! I bid you behold—”

The curtain swayed as her tormentor tugged on its tasseled pull cord. The heavy velvet parted and swept back with a flourish. And Salerno’s gloating voice introduced her as…

“—the hermaphrodite!”

A
choo! Achoo! Achoo!

Lord Raine Satyr—the secondborn of the three wealthy and sought-after Satyr lords—sneezed in triplicate. Pigeons scattered as he stalked across the expansive Piazza San Marco toward the streets that would lead him to the theater where the lecture he planned to attend was to take place.

Behind him, a pair of bronze figures clanged their hammers on the great bell in the clock at the top of the Campanile.

Five o’clock. It couldn’t be. He pulled out his watch. It was.

By the seven devils, he was late! The afternoon lecture regarding the grapevine-destroying pest known as phylloxera would be well underway by the time he arrived. He disliked not being punctual. He disliked this cold. And he thoroughly disliked Venice at the moment.

Unsure as to how long his business might keep him here and not wishing to spend any more time in the city than necessary, he had taken rooms just southeast of Venice on the island of Lido. The palazzo hotel he’d chosen had once housed a wealthy family, but times were hard and they’d been forced to vacate when they could no longer pay their hefty tax bill. One of the Austrian interlopers, who’d come in the wake of the departing French, had bought the place and now rented its rooms to visitors who could afford such luxurious housing.

He’d left Lido an hour or so earlier and crossed the lagoon toward Venice in a private gondola. However traffic in the Grand Canal, the main artery of transportation through the city, had been congested because of some sort of accident farther ahead. So he’d chosen to disembark at San Marco and was now making his way on foot to his destination along the Riva del Vin on the far side of the Rialto Bridge. After the completion of his business, the gondola would await him at a prearranged location on the southeast bank of the canal near the terminus of the bridge.

Though he determinedly kept his eyes from straying as he walked, familiar sounds assailed him. Like vipers waiting to strike, memories lurked everywhere in this city. Crowding him. Reminding him of what he’d prefer to forget.

He’d been born in Venice and raised here in the bosom of a well-off shipping family. Heir to the Altore fortune, he’d been schooled and expected to one day succeed his father at the helm of Altore Shipping.

However, at the tender age of thirteen, his life had taken a dramatic turn in a single afternoon. On that day his mother had admitted a long-held secret. That in fact he was not the son of the man he’d called father for thirteen years. Rather, he was the bastard son of the infamous Lord Marcus Satyr, whose randy exploits had been a source of titillating gossip throughout Italy while he’d lived.

Within hours, Raine had been banished to live out the rest of his years on the Satyr Estate in Tuscany. There he’d been raised under the guidance of his true father and had learned what it meant to be of Satyr blood.

In typical forthright fashion, Lord Satyr had bluntly informed him soon after his arrival that he was not entirely Human, but rather was a half-breed with the blood of both EarthWorld and ElseWorld coursing through his veins. He’d discovered that he had two half-brothers—Nicholas being older than he and Lyon being younger. The three of them were heirs to a dynasty that was far more affluent and far more indispensable to the survival of both worlds than he could have ever previously imagined.

He hadn’t set eyes on Venice, or on any member of the Altore family, since that horrible day fourteen years ago. His steps quickened to outpace memories he’d rather not retrace, and he started down another alley that was barely wide enough for two men to pass.

Achoo!
Damn this disorganized, verminous city. Since Napoleon had been driven out, it had fallen into a calamitous state of disrepair and poverty through no fault of its current Austrian leadership. The poor were everywhere, sneezing and coughing. Yesterday he’d caught some of what they were spreading when he’d purchased a small gift for his sister-in-law Jane from a young ragazzo in the piazza. Within the pocket of his coat, he fingered the tangle of ribbons he’d bought from the ragtag boy who’d been peddling them dockside outside his hotel.

King Feydon’s deathbed plea had brought him here. He hadn’t wanted to come and begrudged this duty that had been foisted upon him to locate and wed one of the dying king’s FaerieBlend daughters. The harvest was underway on the Satyr Estate in Tuscany and there was much to do. But according to Feydon—who was not to be trusted—his three FairieBlend daughters were each in some sort of danger and time was of the essence. His older brother, Nick, had found the first of the daughters, Jane, on the outskirts of Rome in mere weeks. The threat to her had indeed proven to be real, but she was now safe on the estate and happily wed to his brother.

That left Raine with the task of locating the second of Feydon’s daughters. Twice he’d gone to Paris on wild goose chases. He’d wound up concluding he might not have been meant to find the daughter in Paris after all. That left the one here in Venice. It was just like Feydon to play such a cruel prank as to send him to this city, which held so many painful associations.

He turned a corner and his jacket flapped in the breeze that came off the canal. At last! He started across the Rialto Bridge, passing the shops that lined it without pause. Ahead on the far side, a barge was unloading its cargo of wine along the Riva del Vin.

The smells of sea and of silk, wood, candle wax, perfume, and bread from the shops were indiscernible to him. Without the use of his olfactory senses, he felt strangely cut off from the world around him.

“Are you here for the lecture, too, signore?” a nasal voice inquired from behind him.

Twelve hells!
Raine whipped around to confront the man who’d spoken. Having someone sneak up on him was extremely disconcerting. Normally, his impressive beak of a nose scented the approach of everything and everyone within sight and beyond. Double damn this cold.

“You do not remember me?” the man who’d accosted him asked.

Now that he examined his assailant, Raine realized he was familiar—a clerical man of some sort if his robes were any indication. He wore the bishop’s violet-colored zucchetto—the skullcap. And the alb—a robe tied at the waist of his potato-shaped body with a corded cincture. Though built as oafishly as the roughest dockworker, he had a simpering girlish quality that sat strangely on shoulders so broad.

The man introduced himself as a bishop, pressing all ten of his well-manicured fingertips to his chest to emphasize his importance as he did so. A pair of close-set brown eyes peered from his doughy, unhealthy complexion, but they failed to smile along with his mouth, lending his face an expression of falseness.

“I’m stationed at the Church of Santa Maria Del Gorla,” he announced loftily, “not fifty miles from your estate. We met at last autumn’s festa della vendemmia—the festival of the grape harvest.”

Raine sneezed. Considering that an adequate reply, he then turned and continued on his way. The man two-stepped alongside him, his words and feet attempting to keep pace.

“As you may know, I attend the vines at the church. I expect to bring my vintage to the harvest festival as always next month. You’ll remember my efforts from previous years perhaps? But of course mine is a modest attempt, ever to be humbled by the lofty wines produced by you and your brothers at Satyr Vineyards. Ah! Such ambrosia!”

Raine never knew how to respond to social blather, so he simply didn’t respond at all. He normally left such niceties as social discourse to Nick and Lyon. Without his brothers to run interference, he was at the mercy of this man and anyone who wished to pass idle conversation with him.

Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, the bishop seemed able to carry on a conversation for the two of them. “I assume you are here for the lecture? Naturally. Why else? I’ll accompany you, for I, too, am here for the exact same purpose. Not that the phylloxera had assaulted my vines. No, no, nothing of the sort. I assure you my grapes grow healthy and plump and bursting with readiness for the harvest.”

He drew the quickest of breaths, then continued on. “Imagine the coincidence of two men from the same region of Tuscany arriving for the same lecture in Venice on the same afternoon. We might have shared a conveyance and conversation on the journey northward had I known. Perhaps on the return?”

Raine shuddered at the very thought of traveling with this man’s constant chatter. Plus the bishop had an annoying way of eyeing him up and down as though he were famished and Raine were a delectable crostoli cake.

Quickening his stride, he left the bridge behind him, forcing his companion to hike his robes and break into a trot. Impervious to any subtle rebuffs, the bishop buzzed along at his side like some sort of annoying insect.

To his great relief, Raine saw the carved front doors of the lecture hall a short distance ahead.

“The lecture?” he inquired of the first attendant he came upon inside the building.

“Si, signore. You’ll find it upstairs in the theater on the right,” the elderly man told him, pointing upward. “Or is it the left? We have several lectures in session here today. I’ll summon an escort.”

“No need. I’ll find it,” said Raine.

“Si! Si! Signore Satyr and I will find our way,” the bishop assured the man, nudging him aside.

Raine’s long stride took the upward-curving stairs two at a time. The bishop followed in a mincing prance. “You’ll be returning to Tuscany soon I trust? To prepare your submission for the vendemmia festival?”

“I sincerely hope so,” Raine replied truthfully. His home at Castello di Greystone on the Satyr Estate was precisely where he should be now, assisting with the harvest of the family grapevines and attending to the racking and blending of fermented grapes already harvested and crushed in prior years. His work was his life, and he felt out of sorts when not attending to it.

But it was a lucky stroke that he’d happened to come to Venice in search of Feydon’s daughter just in time for this lecture. The phylloxera was of great concern to him and his brothers. Every possible cure for it must be studied and exhausted. In the end he feared that its origins might prove to be not of this world.

Deep in the heart of the Satyr Estate stood a secret that had long been guarded by his family—an aperture that was the only joining point between EarthWorld and another world unknown to Humans. Called ElseWorld, it was home to creatures spawned by gods of a bygone era. Shrouded in mist and foliage, the portal’s rocky entrance lay hidden just through an outer gateway formed by three gnarled trees—the oak, ash, and hawthorn of Faerie lore.

If the phylloxera’s origins were unEarthly, it meant the more malignant creatures of ElseWorld had already somehow infiltrated this world. If he didn’t discover the means by which they’d done so, the pox was certain to eventually reach Satyr lands. The consequences of that could prove devastating.

For it was written that if the vines of the Satyr were ever felled, the gate would fall as well. And if that happened, ElseWorld creatures would spill into EarthWorld, wreaking havoc.

By the time Raine reached the landing, the huffing, puffing bishop lagged half a staircase behind him. Raine tried the first door he came to and stepped inside with the bishop hard on his heels. Both came to an abrupt halt at the sight that met their eyes.

Across the dimly lit theater, a man outfitted in white surgeon’s garb stood before a velvet stage curtain. An air of expectation permeated the well-packed audience that appeared to be largely male. With the man’s brisk tug on a cord, the curtains swung open to reveal two figures on the stage beyond him. He waved an arm in their general direction, announcing in a grandiose voice:

“Gentleman! I bid you behold—the hermaphrodite!”

W
hen the curtains opened, all eyes fell on Jordan. She faced the audience for this initial inspection, assuming the semireclining pose Salerno had taught her years ago. Both arms were braced straight behind her, with elbows locked and her hands flat on the table, fingers outward. Her back was arched so the surrounding light caught her chest. Her knees were high and widespread. Salerno wanted the features of her body that were so at odds—breasts and phallus—to be prominently on display.

As always, there were gasps and murmurs.

“Aberration. Monstrosity. La Maschera,” they whispered.

La Maschera—The Mask. It was what Salerno had dubbed her in view of the bauta she wore as a disguise. He felt it lent an air of mystery and intrigue to the novelty of her, his prized exhibit.

Those in the back rows stood for a better look. Goosenecks craned. Avid eyes were eager for a glimpse of her—the human freak show Salerno had promised them all today.

Typically, most of the attendees were medical men, here only in the interest of scientific study. But there were also those who came hoping to be titillated or to gather an amusing anecdote with which to amuse other acquaintances in the days to come.

Inspired by her strangeness, some gawkers in the farthest rows would eventually turn silent and slump in their seats. Their hands, hidden under hats or coats on their laps, would begin busily working at their cocks.

In fact, the show today was exactly the sort of event that would appeal to some of her wilder male friends here in Venice. She dreaded that one day she might gaze into the audience at one of these annual spectacles and find Paulo or Gani in attendance.

Her greatest admirers had come early enough to garner prime seating in the front row as always. They were the ones Jordan privately dubbed the Worshippers, though they referred to their group as LAMAS, an acronym for the La Maschera Admiration Society. Comprised of a half-dozen men and women, they’d come every September for the past five years. They saw her as some sort of mythical goddess and occasionally wrote odes in her honor, which a disinterested Salerno passed on to her. They were an odd but harmless bunch.

After the initial wave of speculation and consternation waned, Salerno extended a hand in Jordan’s general direction. “Learned colleagues and interested spectators—I offer for your enlightenment a living specimen of ambiguous sex! One willing to be examined for the purposes of advancing science.”

Jordan lifted a hand and wiggled the tips of her fingers at the audience. A nervous rustling wafted across them. In general, medical men were more accustomed to attending lectures involving the study of cadavers that were far less animated than she. Only the members of LAMAS waved enthusiastically to her, tossing posies and small tokens onto the stage.

The artist stood suddenly, dragged his chair away, and shuffled through his drawings for a few moments. His footsteps were loud in the momentary quiet as he made to withdraw from the stage.

Jordan turned her head and watched him go. She saw that he’d finished the last sketch and left it positioned on the easel. He’d portrayed her genitals three times actual size. They’d been faithfully rendered. He really was quite good.

“Bear witness to this spectacle. This miracle of science,” Salerno went on. Like a conductor, his hands moved in staccato gestures to punctuate his words and lend them added importance.

Jordan looked beyond him, scanning the sea of faces blurred by darkness. Because of her, Salerno’s reputation had spread far and wide. Today the theater had filled to capacity. Several hundred were in attendance. Candles lit the stage, so they could easily see her. But beyond the candles, the crowd of onlookers appeared to her as shrouds with shadowed features.

“Hermaphroditism has never been as pronounced in any other subject, now living or dead,” Salerno was saying. “This is a rare opportunity, I assure you. The subject is nineteen years of age. Such cases rarely endure so long. Early death due to venereal disease or suicide are typically the fate of these creatures.”

Jordan rolled her eyes. “No, really. Don’t bother trying to spare my feelings,” she muttered sotto voce.

It wasn’t that Salerno was being intentionally cruel to her. He didn’t care enough about her as a person to bother with cruelty. To him, she was merely a medical curiosity. A stepping stone to fame and glory in his chosen field. That she might also be a human being with feelings was immaterial. His lack of empathy made him all the more dangerous.

In time, Salerno grew weary of his own voice and called for the interrogation to commence.

“Why the mask?” a voice inquired from the crowd.

“It is a requirement the subject’s family insists upon,” Salerno replied. “Hence the moniker, La Maschera.”

“But why specifically the bauta when any mask would have done?” another called.

“I’ve always worn the bauta of Carnivale,” Jordan returned. “Even before the Austrians.”

Salerno shot her an annoyed look. She might have to obey him in most things, but she refused to play the silent victim he would prefer her to be. He should be accustomed to that by now.

Onlookers always questioned the mask, but it had taken on added significance this year. Because some Venetians who still rebelled against Austrian rule had chosen to disguise themselves behind Carnivale masks to make mischief, such masks had recently been outlawed. The festival that had for centuries been so integral to the city was now forbidden.

“Let me direct your attention to matters below the subject’s neck,” Salerno said, indicating her bosom. His hand was cold as he took the weight of one of her breasts between his thumb and two fingers, lifting. “Paired with what is displayed between the subject’s legs, such objects often draw
titters
from the crowd.”

Jordan cringed at the pun, having heard it before from him on every birthday since her breasts had developed. She’d had to bind them every morning thereafter to perpetuate the fiction that she was entirely male.

“They’re not much proof of sexual ambiguity,” a voice complained. “I’ve seen men with tits as big.”

“But only fat men, I’ll warrant,” Salerno quibbled. “And this subject is hardly fat.” He let her breast flop free.

“Let’s hear the subject speak further so that we may judge the quality and timbre of the voice,” someone called.

Jordan tilted her jaw to a challenging angle. “What would you have me say? That you’re a toad? A prick? An ass?”

The questioner blushed. Appearing quite sorry he’d dared ask, he meekly added, “The voice is too low to be strictly female, yet too high to be male,” before quickly reseating himself.

Another man stood. “Has the, uh, subject been clean shaven? Does, he, she, uh—” His words trailed off as he searched for the appropriate pronoun to apply to her.

Nouns always sprang with ease to the audience’s lips when they beheld her—freak, specimen, subject, monstrosity. At the Paris school of medicine where she’d been taken for observation as a child, she’d been labeled
le malade
, the ill one. But no one ever knew what pronoun to apply to her. Sometimes they labeled her “her,” sometimes “him,” and worst of all, in imitation of Salerno, “it.”

“You may to refer to the subject as ‘La Maschera’ or ‘it,’” Salerno informed him.

“Very well then,” the man continued. “Does it have a beard?”

“Of course, just look between its legs,” joked another voice from somewhere in the audience.

The group guffawed. Jordan affected a bored expression. She’d heard the jest before from other doctors in other theaters.

“I only wondered if its jaw might have been clean shaven before this event in order to throw us off a proper diagnosis,” the man protested.

Salerno’s hand cupped her jaw, massaging. “Soft as an infant’s behind, I assure you. Come. I invite you to feel for yourself.”

Jordan steeled herself for what was to come. This invitation would be the first of many.

The questioner strode forward. His fingers stroked Jordan’s cheeks, neck, and throat. He tilted her jaw one way and then the other. She purposely caught his gaze, hoping to startle him with her unusual obsidian eyes.

Under her unwavering stare, he quickly dropped his hand. Wiping it on his pants leg, he stepped away.

“Beardless,” he pronounced to the audience, before striding back to his seat.

More questions came, thick and fast. None were new to her. But she lay in wait for the one question to which her answer would be new. It would almost be pleasant to see the shock on Salerno’s face.

“Is the vaginal canal blind?” someone asked.

“No, there is a small perforation at its climax,” Salerno assured him.

“How small?” asked yet another.

“Discover it for yourselves.” Salerno beckoned the two questioners toward the stage.

Jordan lay back, folding her hands across her midriff. This was proceeding as all the other events had in prior years. In some ways, it was boring. In others, painful. But first and foremost the exploitation engendered a deep, private humiliation in her.

Salerno produced a pot of ointment. It was passed between the two men. The first of them scooped a dollop onto two of his fingers.

Salerno sought a glass of water to soothe his vocal chords as he waited.

A cold, lubricated finger slid along her slit, finding her opening. It poked inside her. Anger filled her as steadily as the finger, but she focused on breathing evenly, waiting for it to be over.

“No virginal barrier,” announced the first poker, suspicion coloring his tone.

“It once existed, I assure you,” said Salerno. “It was breeched years ago by other investigations.”

Yes. Jordan remembered.

The finger probed deeper, searching, until even the knuckles of the hand had folded into her. Eventually the finger prodded the end of her canal, exploring the perforation it found.

“Ah! Yes, I feel it.”

Jordan gritted her teeth against the cramping in her abdomen.

He pulled out.

The lubricated finger of another replaced his in her vaginal channel, probing again. The man found the opening, nodded in agreement, and then withdrew.

Fury swelled in her, but she tried to tamp it down. Whatever was done to her on this day, she must allow, she reminded herself. Her mother’s as well as her own continued comfort depended on her obedience.

Obedience. How she detested the word. Every year she balked when Salerno came for her at dawn, but her mother always wept and pleaded. Was one day too much to ask of a child so that her only parent might live in luxury for the other 364 days of the year? she wheedled.

Jordan’s father’s wealth—a considerable fortune—had hung in the balance that morning when she was born nineteen years ago to this day. He had been struck dead in a hunting accident only a week prior. If Jordan had been pronounced female upon her birth, a distant male cousin would have inherited it all. She and her mother would have lost the lovely house and its sumptuous furnishings, the investments, the jewels, the social standing, and the esteem of every patrician family in Venice.

But were Jordan to be pronounced a male—ah! That was entirely different.

Salerno, a young surgeon at the time, had attended her mother at the difficult birth. When Jordan had been born a case of ambiguous sex—one body possessing both male and female parts—he’d been crafty enough to see the potential for his future. A bargain had been struck between him and her mother. He had pronounced Jordan male. And her mother had inherited the entire Cietta family fortune.

For all of her nineteen years, Jordan had faced the world as a man. She wore trousers, was addressed as signore, and was given the respect due a wealthy young man of family name and status.

But this was not what she wanted. And as each day passed, she chafed under her masculine mantle and grew ever more desperate to make a change.

“If a creature has a phallus, it is male. It’s as simple as that,” a man in the audience postulated.

“You call that puny little cannoli a phallus?” scoffed another, waving a hand in the general direction of Jordan’s genitals.

“I hear that’s what the ladies say to you in the privacy of their bedchambers,” Jordan quipped.

Laughter exploded.

“Yes, I call it a phallus,” Salerno interjected, raising his voice in an attempt to restore order. “What would you have it called?”

“A hypertrophied clitoris,” the man replied, loudly so as to be heard over the din.

Salerno sliced the air with his hand. “Absolutely not. There’s no such organ to be found here. I contend the phallus has displaced it.”

“May I put a question directly to the subject?” another man called out.

“Yes,” Jordan shouted back, before Salerno could. “But I don’t guarantee an answer.”

“Quiet, please!” Salerno commanded moving to the forefront of the stage. “Only then will we continue.”

When order was finally regained, the man tossed his query at her. “Do you bleed?”

“No,” she replied with a shrug. It was an easy question.

The questioner snapped his fingers. “That’s settles it then. There is no uterus. No womb.”

“Whether or not a uterus exists is a matter undetermined as yet,” said Salerno. “I’m sure you realize that some women who possess female organs do not bleed, yet they are still female.”

“Overall, do you have a sense of maleness?” another voice asked her. “Or femaleness?”

Her eyes found Salerno’s. “Femaleness,” she said defiantly.

“Never of maleness?” the questioner pressed.

She hesitated. “That’s difficult to say. For instance, I enjoy needlework and female fripperies. But at the same time, I enjoy male pursuits—riding a good mount or having a stiff drink and a good laugh with friends. Of course, I don’t mean to imply I ride and do needlework literally at the same time.”

A few uncertain snorts and giggles came and were quickly snuffed. Her interlocutors preferred to think of her as a specimen under a microscope. When she revealed humor, they were uncomfortable and never quite certain what to make of her.

“Are you now living in society under the guise of female?” someone shouted.