Zenobia

From a journal kept by Matthew Bowles, Master of the Indefatigable

I have written little over the years that has not been recorded in a ship's log, details of weather and navigation and so forth. But perhaps what I am setting down here is also a sounding of sorts, one that measures the fathoms of the heart or plunges into a man's memory instead of the depths of the sea.

'Tis summer again and now that I am ashore I find it is a season that warms my blood in more ways than one. Not that I long to be young again, for the life I have now is all I could wish. But walking along the lane of a morning with the sun rising up behind me and the tang of the distant sea in the air, I recall so sharply what it was to be young and to have tasted love for the first time. If in writing all down I can relive a tenth of what I then felt it will more than be worth the time, paper and ink.

The delights of the flesh are one thing, and fine delights they are. I learned that in the summer, too--my fifteenth--thanks to the cheeriest and most obliging little milkmaid who ever graced a dairy. Sweet Rosie, bless her, she said she could not get over the size of my machine as she called it and that cannot help but send the blood rushing to a young chap's head not to mention other places. All that season, she had me every which way and I her for many a joyous day and lingering twilit night, whenever she was not actually milking cows and I was not tilling soil or hauling water or pitching hay.

How she did not fetch up with a swollen belly, I'll never know, but I thank the Lord for it. Such an event would have changed the course of my life. I would never have gone to sea that autumn, though as it was I shed a tear. Even if you knew she'd had a fair few before you and would have a fair few since, you could not help but feel attached to a buxom older woman of seventeen who had shown you the ways of the world.

I don't believe it is coming it too high to say she gifted the women who came after her as well herself when she taught me always to bestow at least as much pleasure as I took, not to mention demonstrating a universe of ways and means. At a stripling age you don't know such things, so 'tis only looking back that I see what kindness she did me and what a good heart she had.

I had not been pressed, o' course, but volunteered for the Royal Navy, the Seven Years' War as it's now called being in full cry and me longing to see the world beyond Dorset's green hills and interminable sheep. The first handbill I saw in Weymouth sold me on the notion:

"My lads! Stout hands, able to rouse about the field pieces and carry an hundred weight of pewter without stopping at least three miles. Such a chance perhaps will never occur again!"

Aye, my mam was never so sorry she taught me to read.

Dublin was my first berth, and she was the first British seventy-four, too. I was that proud just to be a landsman aboard her with an eye to being rated able seaman one day. She was a taut and happy ship, the best I served in until I came aboard Indefatigable as master so many years later.

Dublin saw action in the Baltic and happening to be on the quarterdeck for the whole of that first battle, I thrilled to the thunder of guns and the pungent smell of powder blowing aft. Her master maneuvered her as deftly as though she were a rowing craft; the ship and her company acquitted themselves well that day.

Yet this is but prologue to the bright recollection that visits me today, the events of my eighteenth summer, one of the loveliest England has ever known. Never was I supposed to be ashore those days, let alone in my home county and at first I chafed to be so. 'Twas soon enough that I never wished to be anywhere else.

Nay, it weren't battle but heavy weather that did me in. Dublin was running up the Channel when the mizzen splintered in a nasty squall and a falling cross-timber broke my upper arm clean in two. Master's mate by then, I was paid off in Chatham and told to come back when I was fit enough to carry out my duties.

My mam being poorly and widowed she had let our smallholding go and gone to live with her sister in Brighton. Since I was not fit enough for farm work, I found a position as gardener's helper at a grand house near Wool. My weak arm was not strained overmuch by the tasks the head gardener first set me. In time, the arm mended and I took on heavier labor as well as tilling and planting and tidying up the borders. Old Quince found me a willing worker and I made myself cheerful, so we got on very well.

There are worse things than spending spring and summer in the gardens of a fine house and Vernon Lacey was and is a very fine old house indeed, though not particularly large. The Vane family were older than the house by far and reasonably wealthy, known mainly as scholars for the last generations according to Quince, but the family fortune no doubt came from plunder in the first place like every other set of nobs in Britain.

I soon realized that Mr. and Mrs. Vane lived in all those rooms entirely alone for they had no children. They each spent time in the gardens, though not as a rule together. Afternoons in fair weather, Vane would stalk down the lime avenue like a heron, muttering nonsense or reading from some dusty old tome as he walked. On occasion he might be accompanied by some visiting gentleman who would often as not turn out to be a strange character in his own right, perhaps walking backward in the notion it improved his exercise or hopping on one foot as he conversed.

Mrs. Vane appeared each morning after her breakfast, her bright shawl wrapped close against the chill. I might glimpse her in the distance but it was impossible to predict where she would wander or what she would do. She kept a scrammy dog, said Quince, but often left him behind because she did not wish to frighten the birds or little creatures that called the garden home or wandered in from the wild park beyond.

"Knows every nook and cranny, she does," he told me. "Every hedgehog, every twig, and leaf. What else has she got to do?"

What else indeed, since ladies were seldom among Vernon Lacey's visitors and she appeared to spend little time with her husband. Not my business and I didn't give a toss until I saw her from close by the first time. It was only then that I realized how truly mad her husband must be.

I heard the slightest sound one still and misty morning while I was planting seedlings in a border. Before I could even raise my head, the hem of a dark blue gown trailed across the fresh-turned earth at my side.

"Have a care, ma'am," I said without thinking, and looked up straight into the sweetest face I had ever seen. Mrs. Vane, passing by on her way toward Vernon Lacey's vast wilderness of a park, turned back to smile at me and I felt myself turn into the proverbial pillar of salt.

She asked me if I were the new gardener's help and I said aye, I was.

"The border's looking well," she told me. "I thank you."

If I'd ever spoken to gentry before I could not recall, Dublin's officers aside, but certainly never to a lady. I sprang up, as was only proper, but without saying a word. I wasn't even sure if I should look at her, but it was impossible not to. I took a good long look, in fact, while trying not to stare.

She could not have been above eighteen years of age herself, same as me, with a gentle countenance and eyes that seemed to look right into my confounded heart. My first thought was the impossibility of a lovely girl like this married to an old scarecrow like Vane. I'd little experience of how some in the so-called upper classes buy and sell their daughters to better their own lot in life.

Aye, a bit of money never goes amiss, but at least the farm folk and villagers of Dorset don't treat young girls like the cattle at a drover's fair. How else could such a marriage have come about I wondered, struck by the utter injustice of a fine-looking, pleasant young lady married to a man who was not only old enough to be her father but who appeared to take no interest in her.

"Not at all, ma'am," I managed to croak as I pulled off my hat.

"Well, you've a fine day for it," she said, giving me another smile as she turned to leave. Walking away into the grassy meadow beyond, she threw back the soft blue hood she wore, for the mist was lifting. Her dark gold hair glinted in the pale sun, her skirts growing damp where they dragged through the dew.

I stared after her for a moment, then shook my head to clear it and went back to my seedlings, half wondering if I'd been visited by one of the fairy folk. She was real enough and after that I saw her nearly every day. She would always speak to me as she walked by and sometimes stop to ask what I was planting or whether I'd seen a robin or some such.

I lost my shyness around her and would meet her smile with a grin and a nod, trying not to gaze openly at her elegant back as she walked on. Which was impossible, o' course, for I was bit as bad as can be. Wild to know everything about her, I would get Quince talking about the family or listen to the gossiping kitchen maids as I stood at the back door to cozen them out of a bit of bread and meat.

Zenobia, her name was. An exotic name, is it not, for a girl so like an English rose? And yet it suited her perfectly, for she was like no other. Her smile shone on me like the yellow sun, her voice was always gentle, her carriage proud and correct. Yet I had the notion she would much rather have laughed aloud, called gaily across the lawn to her little dog, or run heedlessly out toward the trees while holding up her skirts.

It made me tilty, as they say in Dorset, that her life was so circumscribed. A middling farmer's son like me had seen more of the world and tasted more of life than it appeared she ever would. She came from a Wiltshire family worth a good deal of money, Quince said. Vane had married her when she was barely seventeen to keep Vernon Lacey in good repair and to provide funds for his scholarly and scientific endeavors, though these never seemed to yield any results.

I know now that Vane was not all that old at the time, thirty perhaps, and that he was merely eccentric and remote, not necessarily unkind. Yet Zenobia--for that is how I had come to think of her--seemed sorely alone, with only a scrammy spaniel for company if you did not count the servants.

I wondered if she would be happier with a child, though I shuddered to think of Vane bedding her. Could it be that he was one of those singular men not interested in the pleasures of the flesh, or even that he was more inclined toward masculine companionship? I did not like to think of them together as husband and wife. Foolishly, I wished with all my heart that there was some way that she could be mine.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Spring turned to summer so that the countryside burgeoned all 'round, the trees in the park leafy and green, squirrels chattering in the branches. Bees and insects buzzed and hummed, the thrushes sang in the hedges. The gardens at Vernon Lacey were bright with roses, fragrant with honeysuckle and the summer house at the end of the long border was cloaked in flowering vine. The whole world seemed to throb with life. Zenobia came to the garden wearing her lightest gowns, her hair held back with a ribbon, to walk among the flowers or stray out across the fields, her little spaniel darting about her.

I worked hard and Quince was pleased with me, but in truth I thought of nothing and no one else. I yearned for her day and night. Each time I saw her, my heart pounded like a hammer and my chest grew tight. I would do my best to keep her close by me with a few words, but my throat would grow dry and I could hear myself mumbling something that no doubt made little sense.

Once or twice I inhaled a trace of her scent, which was like lilies-of-the-valley, delicate beyond compare. I'd have given anything I owned (which I grant was little at the time) just to press my lips to her bare neck or bosom. In truth, I sometimes grew stiff at the sight of her, for she was not only fair of face and possessed of a kind disposition but had as comely a figure as man might wish. I would have to turn away then or crouch down as she came toward me, missing a precious opportunity to look again into her beguiling eyes.

There came a week when it rained every day and Zenobia was rarely out of doors. Quince and I worked rain or shine and I was able to take advantage of break in the weather to haul mulch for the long flower borders stretching out toward the park. I leaned on my spade from time to time and turned my face up to the weak sun, content for the moment to be in such a beautiful spot on God's earth. The whole world was fresh, rich with the smells of green growing things, of just-turned earth and the pungent wood chips underfoot.

The next instant, the wind picked up and the sky grew dark. I heard a great clap of thunder as a curtain of showers spread across the gardens. Zenobia must have been walking nearby but I hadn't any notion she was even there until she dashed past me into the shelter of the summer house. Without even thinking, I let the spade fall to the ground and followed her.

She stood just inside the arched doorway, panting a little, her hand at her throat. Then she turned to look up at me, her face moist with raindrops. She glowed with good health and she was laughing. Her laughter had such music in it that I simply laughed along with her. A familiar way to behave you may think, but I swear on my life that any man with blood in his veins would have done the same. Mayhap with the exception of her husband.

"You will catch cold, ma'am," I said, for it had grown chill and she shivered in her thin gown. I took my jacket off to give her. I should have let it drop down around her but my hands had a life of their own and smoothed the rough material across her shoulders, just for a moment. I could feel her body trembling beneath my fingers and ached to believe it was not only because of the cold.

She looked out across the lawn and the borders. "What could be lovelier than this?" she sighed. "An English garden in the summer rain. The white roses and delphinium all jumbled together..."

"Oh, you are the prettiest flower in this garden!" I exclaimed, so overcome by her nearness that I could not but say what I was truly thinking. My words tumbled out too loudly and all at once, and I flushed at having been so bold. Zenobia stood perfectly still, not speaking, though she did not look at me again. We stood side by side as the downpour continued for another minute, then another and another.

Neither of us broke the silence, but for however long we stood there we each breathed in rhythm with the other, as though we were one being. The rain finally eased and she gave me back my jacket, gazing up at me at last. When I opened my mouth, she put her fingers to my lips, her eyes wide but unreadable. And then she left.

I was mortified to think I had offended her and at once began making plans to strike out for Portsmouth or Plymouth to look for a ship, even though my arm was not yet all it could be. But the next day, everything was as before. Zenobia did not shun me and my heart swelled. I was still smiled upon, still a party to conversations about where to find water lilies and wood pigeons. But nothing more. It was simply as though the rain had never come.

Except that she began to visit me in the night. As I lay in a state of longing and lust, she entered first my fancies and then my dreams until I was never free of her. I had a cubby-hole of a room in the stone building used to store pots and dry herbs. 'Twas too grand to be a potting shed but could hardly be called cottage, let alone a house. Any road, it was mine alone, so the state of affairs in my bed could not affront anyone.

The first time she came to me, the scent of flowers floated in through the tiny window. Of a sudden, she was there, dressed in a pale blue gown and kneeling next to my narrow bed. The light from my single candle glinted softly in her hair, which fell loosely about her, covering the shape of her breasts.

She seemed entirely real to me as she took my hand and drew it into her thick tresses, seeming to will me to push them back so I could see the gleam of her fair skin in the flickering light. My fingers grazed across warm, smooth flesh and I heard myself sigh.

Now, as you may know, a highborn lady's garments in those days were a mystery to man. All whalebone corsets, acres of petticoats and miles of laces, conceived by the devil to make a desperate man spill his seed while his fingers fumbled with knotted ribbons and he cursed such injustice. Oh, one could fling up skirts and have at it, but I could never have approached Zenobia in that manner, not at first, anyway. Not even in my dreams.

But my apparition it seemed had different ideas. I moaned at the thought of rosy nipples puckering beneath the thin cloth of her chemise and clasped her to me. She came willingly, clambering onto my cot, pulling away the sheet that covered me, smiling at my nakedness, my hardness, my determination to have her no matter what the cost.

She knelt across me, settling herself easily, lifting her skirts and petticoats just high enough to allow her bare thighs to graze directly against me. I could feel the heat of her sex resting against my flesh. It brushed the heavy sac and I groaned. My prick rose up hard against her smooth belly. I wanted to love her, yes, but also to kiss her and hold her and whisper her name.

"Zenobia, my darling girl. You are here! You..."

She hushed me, placed a finger on my lips just as she had in the summer house, then replaced her finger with her lush mouth. My hands had been grasping her squirming hips, but now I brought them up to cradle her face and kissed her tenderly, coaxing her to give me her tongue. The taste of her mouth, her perfume, and her yielding body caused my already burgeoning shaft to grow larger and heavier yet. It felt like a damned cudgel, yet I was determined to hold back.

Zenobia, however, did not seem in the least reluctant. Her tongue mated with mine wantonly as she whimpered and pushed her soft little love nest right up against the root of my prick.

"Matthew," she whispered urgently, begging, and my heart nearly burst to hear my name on her lips. "Matthew, please!"

She was so in earnest that I could not deny her and began stroking her satiny thighs with one hand and searching for those enticing nipples with the other. This delightful activity went on for a good long while until, stroking her upper thigh, my fingers at last encountered a heated and slippery little notch where they slid right in.

"Ah, heavens!" I heard her exclaim. I had never felt closer to heaven myself. She quivered and sighed beneath my touch, my fingers sinking deeply into her sweet, moist quim and my thumb brushing lightly over the sensitive nub at its entrance. In only another moment she cried out again and I knew that her crisis was but a moment off. I watched as she came apart in my arms, panting and crying out with each ripple of pleasure, her eyes unfocused and wild.

After a few moments, though, she reached for me, measuring the girth of me in her small hand. I was prodigious strong as a young man and I rose up and pulled her under me in one motion. Her skirts were bunched at her waist, her breasts pushed up out of her stays, her glorious hair tumbled and wild.

"Please, Matthew" she said again. "Please take me. I want you--"

What could I do then but cover her face and throat with my kisses, tease her pointed nipples with my fingers, push her round thighs apart, and, when she began to rock her hips up against me, make ready to enter her.

She took me in her grasp again, steering the course herself, but it was I who controlled the pace. I was beyond reason, wanted to bury myself to the root in her, again and again, but I did hold back. I wanted to possess her completely, release a flood of my seed into her tight little burrow. Hell, I wanted to see her walking in the gardens of Vernon Lacey, her belly swollen with my child.

But I wanted to give her pleasure as well, so in fact I moved in and out of her yielding body with long leisurely strokes, filling her tight wet honeypot completely, then slowly withdrawing almost entirely. She would moan until I thrust again, making me shudder with barely-bridled desire.

God, she reached down to stroke and cradle my balls, the minx, and I could feel them tighten, threatening to explode. Blood rushed in my ears as the heat gathered in me. In the end, I spilled myself, panting, on her smooth belly as I cried out her name.

It was many moments before I came to my senses, lying prostrate on the rumpled bed, my slackening member still gripped in my own hand. I stared unseeing at the sheets, the walls, the floor, barely able to believe she had not been there with me, that an experience so deep had not been shared.

She has visited me, down through the years, Zenobia, and I can feel the echo of that unconsummated love over all this time. A part of me yearns for her sweetness even now. But it was pain that drove me from her. The temptations and pleasures of her visits to my room were soon outdone by the torture I suffered each time she came into the garden and I knew I must away.

My heart heavy, I bid goodbye to Quince and set out for Weymouth, vowing to fish for herring if I could not find a naval berth. 'Twas no problem in the least, the handbills were posted thick as ever.

"Stout lads, join the finest crew ever to sail a ship of the line! Prizes and glory await! Master's mates, able seamen, landsman--apply to First Lieutenant, Justinian, Portsmouth, under the command of Captain Keene."

The rest, as they say, is history.

The End

Author's Note: One of the 2006 HHAH Secret Santa requests was for "a young and lusty Mr. Bowles" and that is the request I am claiming here. True, it also fulfills the request for "a journal entry from my Santa's character of choice, imagining himself in an erotic encounter with a woman whom, for whatever reason, he knows he can never, ever have."

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