Queering Benedict Arnold 13 Child's Coffee-House, London: April 26, 1762 By: Jake Preston
Although most of the characters in this chapter are historical, the action is fictional. It includes explicit gay-sex episodes, so if you are a minor, you should not be on this site. For other readers: remember what while "nifty" stories are free, your contributions are needed to maintain the website! Jake will respond to all sincere comments and suggestions at jemtling@gmail.com
In full view of St. Paul's Church, Child's Coffee-House was an ideal setting for a colloquy on Reason and Revelation, the topic of conversation announced for the Monday evening when Benedict Arnold was introduced to Dr. Samuel Johnson's circle of friends. He went accompanied by David Garrick. On this occasion they rode in Garrick's coach from Southampton Street to St. Paul's courtyard. Garrick refrained-diplomatically-from asking the whereabouts of Caribou Brave. He was aware that Benedict had something up his sleeve, and as an actor, he was the sort of man who relished surprised.
"There must be eighty coffee-houses to choose from in London," Garrick explained, raising his voice above the clatter of coach-wheels on cobblestones. "After my performances at Drury Lane, usually I retire to the Turk's-Head, which is frequented by playwrights and actors, but between us I prefer the more diverse company at Child's. My brother George defames it as a den of ecclesiastical loungers, but the company includes writers and critics, medical men and merchants, and an occasional MP. You know Mr. Dempster, of course, our MP at the moment. The Turk's-Head alternates between unconstructed socializing on theatrical evenings, and academic debates of the Rota Club on Tuesdays. On days when I'm not engaged in the theater, I prefer the mean between these extremes: sprightly but civil debate among men who are learned but not pedantic. That's Child's Coffee-House."
"Not pedantic?" Benedict asked. "Why, Sir, from what I've heard about Samuel Johnson, he's one of the most pedantic men in England, if by 'pedantic' you mean having a memory for details about subjects that too other men seem obscure."
"Well put, Mr. Arnold," Garrick replied. "You ring true every time. I should have said that the conversation is not allowed to be pedantic, although it is quite so at the Grecian, where Sir Isaac Newton and his circle debated regularly about mathematics and astronomy, and at Thomas Slaughter's Coffee-House in St. Martin's Lane, the present haunt of antiquarians. Taken collectively the coffee-houses are a 'penny-university' where any man can advance his education in the most specialized subjects, if he's alert enough. In this regard Child's is the department of Discourse Civil and Moral, as Sir Francis Bacon would have called it. Of course there are 'mercantile' coffee-houses, too. You'll be wanting to visit those. I recommend Jonathan's, in Exchange Alley, where merchant-investors have taken to trading in commercial stock. There are low-class establishments, too, Sir. You'll see the color of London at Moll Key's, where pimps and harlots mingle with men of all social classes and the conversation is always an exercise in 'flash'."
"Flash?"
"Ah, yes, flash: the latest in slang, but quite artificial, you see, concocted from the expressions of pirates and prisoners, prostitutes and publicans, the Four Ps of London, Sir. If Child's has an exact opposite, it would be Moll Key's, where gin is mistaken for coffee and 'flash' is cultivated as its own peculiar dialect. Were Ben Jonson still alive, bless his soul, he would have gone to school at Moll Key's for instruction in character for his comic drama."
Child's was a three-story wooden building with clapboard stained red with residue from a copper-mine in Wales, facing the southwest corner of St. Paul's courtyard. It cannot have been a century old, as all wooden structures around St. Paul's were burned in the Fire of 1666. It housed a mercantile center on the first floor, and Joseph Child's coffee-house on the second floor, where three oversized windows command a view of St. Paul's. The second floor seemed designed for a coffee-house, so perhaps the building was constructed in the 1680s or 90s, when (after modest beginnings in the 50s and 60s) "coffee-house" culture took hold in London. Joseph Child's family lived in the back, on three floors like the Dutch in Amsterdam: their parlor was on first floor, their kitchen on second floor where it doubled as the coffee-house kitchen, and their bed- chambers occupied third floor. Garrick and Benedict climbed the narrow stairs to the second floor, and paid their three-penny admission.
One penny got you admission plus one cup of coffee; for three-pence you got enough coffee for the evening. Their waiter, Joseph Child, Jr., was a sharp sprightly lad who had no trouble remembering which customers had paid the basic price, and which ones had paid for the evening. Many customers came to Child's to admire the periodic oratory improvised by Dr. Sam Johnson, but Benedict Arnold felt greater admiration for his young waiter.
Ahem. Reason versus Revelation; yes, well, Garrick and Arnold broke into the dialogue in media res, and found Samuel Johnson advancing the claims of Revelation in his famously Ciceronian style: "The Christian religion has very strong evidences. No doubt it appears in some degree strange to Reason. But in history we have many undoubted facts against which a priori in the way of ratiocination we have more arguments than we have for them; but then testimony has great weight, and casts the balance. I would recommend Grotius, Dr. Pearse on Miracles, and Dr. Clarke."
David Garrick winced at Johnson's pedantic oral footnote, and was surprised to see Benedict take out his notebook to write down the names of Pearse and Clarke. Benedict asked Johnson for clarification, and wrote down "Zachary Pearse, Bishop of Rochester, Miracles of Jesus Defended, 1729," and "Samuel Clarke, Cartesian philosopher, The Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity, 1712, and Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion, 1705."
"You won't find those books at Donaldson's on the Strand," Garrick quipped. "But they might be at Flexney's in Paternoster Row."
Benedict wrote down "Flexney's-Paternoster." "It's for my apothecary shop in New Haven, you see," he told Garrick.
"And Grotius?"
"Why, everyone in the Colonies knows Hugo Grotius," Benedict replied, rather hyperbolically. "The Dutch in old New Amsterdam still venerate him as the intellectual father of the Protestants, especially in his Mare liberum, the Freedom of the Seas, and his edict of religious toleration, Decretum pro pace ecclesiarum." Benedict blushed when he realized that everyone in Child's had gone silent and were listening in on the private conversation of him and David Garrick. Quite unawares he had established for himself a reputation for learning. Their posture toward him changed from condescending tolerance for a visiting Colonial, to admiration for a man who had Latin learning. Benedict wondered if anyone in the room, except Samuel Johnson, had read as much as a page of Grotius, Pearse, and Clarke, but he kept this thought to himself while Samuel Johnson walked over to shake his hand. "I've taken a liking to you, Mr. Arnold, as a plain-spoken young man," Johnson remarked.
The discourse returned to Reason and Revelation. George Dempster, who distinguished himself as Samuel Johnson's antagonist for the evening, argued that the argument for Revelation was flawed by there being so many religious factions in Britain. "Protestants and Papists, of course," Dempster said, "but even among the Protestants there are High Church and Low Church Anglicans, Presbyterians in Scotland, Quakers the West Country, old-fashioned Puritans in East Anglia, Methodists crawling around the Low Churches and singing hymns on Oxford Road, and Anabaptists idling in the alleys of London."
Everyone laughed at Dempster's little joke on the Anabaptists. Samuel Johnson replied that "all Christians, whether Papists or Protestants, agree in the essential articles. Their differences are trivial, and mainly political. The essential articles of faith are the effect of Revelation, whilst the trivial differences disclose the interference of flawed human Reason."
He would have continued in this serious vein, but was interrupted by the sudden appearance of two Indians at the entrance, clad in buckskin trousers and jerkins and wearing dramatically elaborate head-dresses decked in eagle-plumes, variegated in white and in a rare brown streaked in a reddish hue that looked purple in the light of the oil-lamps. Joseph Child, the proprietor, welcomed them, and when one of them rifled his purse for some coins, he excused them the cost of admission to the coffee-house. When they drew near the company, gaudy beads strung round their necks gleamed in the flickering oil-light. Their faces were painted red, white, and green in geometric figures; their cheeks glowed with bright yellow rows of symbolic wigwam-designs.
"The wigwams signify that these Indians have come in peace," Benedict said to David Garrick.
"Why, then, does one of them brandish a tomahawk?" Garrick asked.
"Ah, but the other carries a peace-pipe," Benedict replied. "These are but tokens of their status as warriors."
"So these are the Abenaki you promised us," Garrick said.
"More like designer-Indians, I should think, decked out as they are for their grand entrance," Benedict laughed. No one else in Child's Coffee-House saw through the eclectic deception of their costumes. Benedict proceeded to introduce Caribou Brave as the son of Chief Natanis, and Prince of the Abenaki nation, Britain's newest ally in the War against France. Caribou introduced his companion as Adam, knowing that his name would arouse curiosity, but they came prepared.
Reverend Norton Nicholls: "Why, Adam, I take it that you're a Christian, and that you were given the name Adam at baptism, but pray tell, what is your native Indian name?"
"Why, Adam, Sir."
"Adam was baptized at birth, and has always been known by that name," Caribou said. "You must forgive his reluctance to speak on his own behalf. He is loath to offend by the imperfections of his dialect." Caribou spoke some Abenaki words to Adam, who nodded in response and took a seat at Benedict's table, next to David Garrick. The younger Joseph Child served him coffee. Benedict smiled at their ingenuity, for while Caribou Brave was the real article, Adam's speech would have given him away as a native of Staffordshire.
"The name of Adam is well known among the Abenaki," Caribou continued. Benedict marveled at Caribou's ability to deceive without uttering a single falsehood.
Rev. Nicholls: "Until now I've been skeptic of the argument that the Indians in America are descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, but now Adam appears in our midst as evidence that confirms this hypothesis."
"For sure, Sir, there are better evidences in the native religion, in the veneration that these nations show to the Great Spirit, whom they call Manitou," Caribou said. "Moments before we were admitted so courteously by our host, we heard Dr. Johnson extol the essential articles of faith which are held by diverse factions of Christians. It is the same with Indian nations. They differ in customs and language, but all worship Manitou. They make no graven images on wood nor stone, nor do they worship idols, but only Manitou, who is their name for the God of the Christians."
Rev. Nicholls: "What of mountain-spirits, then, and animal-spirits that we hear so much about, like Coyote and Raccoon, the gods of trickery?"
"These are but nature-allegories," Caribou said, "and as characters in our folktales they resemble the heroes and heroines of your saints' lives. To worship them would seem as superstitious as to worship saints."
All the company in Child's, even two or three Papists, admired the diplomatic way in which Caribou aligned himself to the Protestant cause without naming the Roman Church or the Pope. Benedict seized the opportunity to relate how the war in North America turned favorable to Britain after the Abenaki repudiated their French alliance and supported the English Army instead. "It was Caribou Brave who persuaded his father to make this momentous change," Benedict said. He went on to describe the meeting that he had witnessed in the Abenaki village, omitting certain details that might possibly be remembered by You, the Reader.
"The Ministry of War says that Canada has been won by the English," Dr. Johnson said, "but this not so, for the French are a numerous people there, and they are unlikely to allow us to take it."
"Surely the Ministry...."
"The Ministry of War, yes, well, they have put us to enormous expense, and it is their interest to persuade us that we have got something for our money."
"But so we are told by thousands of men who were at the taking of Quebec."
"Ay," Johnson said, "but these men have still more interest in deceiving us. They don't want us to think that the French have beat them, but that they have beat the French. Now suppose you should go over and see if it is so, that would only satisfy yourself; for when you come home, we will not believe you. We will say you've been bribed. Yet, for all these plausible objections, we believe that Canada is really ours. Such is the weight of common testimony."
"What say you to that, Prince Caribou?" George Dempster asked.
"Why Sir, I would say that the French are driven out of Ticonderoga by the British Army, and out of Lake Champlain by the Abenaki, and that after the Battle of Quebec, the French ceded almost all of Canada to the English," Caribou said. "Even so, Canada does not belong to the English." A hush of silence came to the coffee-house as everyone waited for Caribou to explain his bold statement. "To the west of the Abenaki lies the Huron nation, the strongest and most numerous of all Algonquian tribes. Their chief is named Pontiac, a relentless warrior, and he has been forging an alliance with other tribes with a view toward mounting a massive rebellion against England. From this I conclude that Canada does not belong to the English, but for a reason quite other than the one proposed by Dr. Johnson, namely, that Canada will be the prize in a contest between King George III and Chief Pontiac."
His interlocutors urged the Abenaki Prince to say more, but Caribou replied, "What I have said is commonly known by the Colonists, who heard it from friendly Indians, but Gentlemen, for the rest, I am bound to silence by the laws of diplomacy."
"Will you disclose your secrets to the King?" Dempster asked, speaking, for the first time in Child's, in his capacity as a Member of Parliament.
"Aye, Sir," Caribou said. "It is for this purpose that I came to London."
Dr. Johnson had intended his remarks about Canada to serve him as an exemplum of the unreliability of common report in contrast to the inerrant Christian doctrines of Revealed Truth. He now found himself in treacherous waters, for Caribou Brave had diverted the canoe down a different course. Even so, after momentary confusion, Johnson reverted the debate to its original theme, Reason versus Revelation. "Now that Mr. Caribou Brave has revealed himself to us as the son of a King, for Chief Natanis is indeed a sort of king, it would not be unfitting to put the case that the King can do no wrong, as he is God's representative in the affairs of a nation, and therefore an agent of Revelation," Dr. Johnson said. "In the English Constitution, the King is the head. There is no power by which he can be tried. Redress of grievances is possible only by punishing his agents. The King cannot force a judge to condemn a man wrongfully; therefore it is the judge that we pursue. Political institutions are formed upon the consideration of what will most often tend to the good of the whole, although now and then exceptions may occur, but when they do, it is the King's agents who are in the wrong, never the King."
George Dempster rose to dispute Johnson's argument. Benedict was apprehensive as to what he might say, knowing that Dempster cannot have approved the means that magistrates used to persecute sodomites; so vigorously, in fact, that even non-sodomites got caught in the malicious net of the King's justice. "Let us consider but one case of royal justice," Dempster said. "In 1664, a conclave of ladies published a broadside called the "Women's Petition Against Coffee." They claimed that "Coffee made men as unfruitful as the desert whence the unhappy berry is said to be brought." Two years later, in 1666, King Charles II proclaimed an edict that closed the coffee-houses. I have a parchment here, with King Charles's seal," he declaimed, raising a small scroll. "It is the edict. Let but the company hear this testimony-which, pardon me, I do not mean to read."
"We'll hear the edict," David Garrick said, "read it, Mr. M.P." He laughed and laughed, recognizing at once the Shakespearean source of Dempster's comic declamation.
"The edict! The edict!" Dr. Johnson chimed in.
"Have patience, gentlemen, I must not read it. It will inflame you, it will make you mad."
"Read the edict; we'll hear it, Dempster; you shall read the edict, the King's edict," David Garrick cried.
"Will you compel me, then, to read the edict? Then make a ring about me, and you shall hear how the King prohibited the sale of coffee, tea, chocolate, and tea in coffee-houses and in private homes!"
"What, in private homes, too?" Someone in the company asked. "Alas for English liberty!" someone else exclaimed. A dozen or more conversations took place simultaneously, as each man declared himself and his neighbor champions of English liberty.
"Good friends!" Dempster shouted above the fray, "Good friends, you speak among yourselves, saying you know not what. I am no orator, but, as you know me all, a plain blunt man. I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth, action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech to stir your passions: I only speak right on. I cannot make my case for the King's justice except by reading the King's words. But friend, you have forgot the edict that I spoke of."
"Read the edict, then," George Dempster said, getting a little impatient with the Scotsman's antics.
"The edict! The edict!" everyone cried in a collective voice.
"Here is the edict, then," Dempster said. He unrolled the scroll, ceremoniously, and read:
"Whereas it is most apparent that the multitude of coffee houses of late years set up and kept within this kingdom, and the dominion of Wales, and the town of Berwick-upon- Tweed, and the great resort of idle and disaffected persons to them, have produced very evil and dangerous effects as well as that many tradesmen and others do there misspend much of their time, which might and probably would otherwise be employed in the conduct of their lawful calling and affairs, but also for that in such houses, and by occasion of the meeting of such persons therein, may false, malicious, and scandalous reports as devised and spread abroad, to the deformation of his Majesty's Government and to the disturbance of the peace and the quiet of the Realm, his Majesty has thought it fit and necessary that the said coffee houses for the future be put down and suppressed."
"People in London and in other cities were dismayed to hear this edict, which disrupted their daily lives, and, indeed, caused more disturbance of peace than all the coffee-houses in England put together. For sure it was not the cause of the Great Fire of London, I must not say that it was, but when King Charles saw the commotion, he quietly revoked the edict. No more was heard of it.
"So I ask you, gentlemen, in the affair of the coffee-houses in 1666, at what point was King Charles's word infallible, at first when he published the edict, or days later when he revoked it?"
"Hear! Hear!" David Garick cried out, amused to see his old friend Johnson bested by an upstart MP from Scotland.
"To take the short view of things is the prerogative of youth," Samuel Johnson retorted, alluding to Dempster. "To take the long view is the wisdom of age, and in the long view, all's well that ends well, for here we are, drinking coffee in Child's."
When the conversation at Child's was concluded, Benedict Arnold, Caribou Brave, Adam Bede, and George Dempster took the coach with David Garrick's in Southampton, where their conversation grew lively with spirits of Garrick's best brandy. For the benefit of Caribou and Adam, Dempster explained that his comedy of King Charles was an improvisation borrowed from Julius Caesar. David Garrick followed up with the speech of Mark Antony, and his dialogue with the Roman crowd from beginning to end, remembering every word he'd performed in the previous year. "You must take me to Drury Lane," Caribou said to Benedict. "Something in the English character goes deeper than I could have imagined; I must learn more about this."
The four men bid David Garrick good night, and walked down the block to Benedict's and Caribou's house. In the parlor, Benedict brought out a fresh bottle of brandy. "The time has come, brave Caribou and bold Adam, to take Dempster into our confidence. He can be trusted, if he is willing to be bound by an oath of secrecy."
"Gentlemen, I swear on my honor as a Scot that I will never betray you nor your secrets," Dempster said. "I ought not to swear as a Christian, for I'm a skeptic at heart, as Benedict already knows."
Adam looked perplexed. Caribou looked anxious. "I assure you, my friends, that Dempster is F.O.T.," Benedict said.
Adam still looked perplexed. "F.O.T.: From Our Tribe," Caribou explained. "He means that we're all brothers in love." The dark cloud of mystery lifted from Adam's countenance and he brightened the room with a smile.
"And since we are brothers in love, we must share this brandy direct from the bottle, while Caribou Brave tells the story of his adventures, beginning with the assault of the Mock- Magistrates in the courtyard of Newgate Prison." Benedict said. "And for God's sake, take off those Choctaw feathers!" He took a swig and passed it around. Dempster laughed at this new revelation.
Caribou helped Adam remove his head-dress, and folded it into a bundle with his own. "I'd rather you hear our story from Adam," Caribou said. "I think you'll discover that he is not quite the dumb silent Indian that he acted so well in Child's Coffee-House."
Adam told the story: how a merchant in London accused him of attempted buggery to avoid paying him wages for his work as a carpenter; how on the day of his trial, he was brought to chapel for morning prayers, and assaulted by a gang of street-urchins dressed up as magistrates; how in the confusion, a stranger pulled him into the chapel and dropped him down a hole behind the baptismal font; how together they crawled in the tunnels until they came to a cavern occupied by hundreds of bats; how they took refuge in the Cavern of Bats, which creatures showed them the way to freedom through an exit at the Thames, somewhere near the southwest edge of the city. "As for showing ourselves as Abenaki warriors, you saw the effect at Child's Coffee-House," he concluded.
"You must continue this disguise," Dempster cautioned. "No one must know. Even the most well-intentioned of friends would be tempted to repeat such a colorful tale, which might give you away even if it were told as a hypothetical fiction."
"My disguise is becoming reality, Sir, for I am bound to Caribou as an Abenaki, and that is my future. Caribou teaches me, and our discourse in Abenaki grows longer each day."
"It's amazing with what precision the attack of the mock-magistrates intersected with your escapade," Dempster said, smiling slyly.
"By my faith as a Methodist, Sir, I believe that the magistrates were angels come down from heaven," Adam said.
"I doubt not that," Caribou said, and eager to change the subject, he praised Adam for his masculine beauty and owned that he had fallen under the spell of Adam's masculine charms.
"Come, Sir," said Dempster to Caribou Brave, "it would appear that young Adam has omitted telling part of your story, a love-romance within your Gothic tale of adventure, the best part left out!"
"I cannot betray his confidences," Adam said firmly.
"Perhaps we'll see proofs of your masculine beauty while Caribou tells the tale of your masculine charms," Dempster said merrily.
"You're outrageous, Dempster!" Benedict exclaimed.
"A fair challenge, I would say, and I'm willing," Caribou interjected. "But first I'm off to the water-closet to piss off this brandy."
"By now we're all ready to piss," Benedict said. "It's dark enough, we can do it in the garden."
The men played a contest to see who could piss farthest and longest. It was too dark to see who went farthest, but Adam went longest. They others were back in the parlor when Adam returned, butt naked. The only traces of Abenaki disguise were geometrical designs and wigwams painted on his face; that, and matching designs that Caribou had painted on Adam's arse-cheeks, the remnant of a playful game in the Cavern of Bats. At the base of his spine was a bat with wings outstretched, and an elongated nose diving downward toward Adam's well- defined cleft.
"So this is the prize that you're getting, and well deserved, too," Dempster said to Caribou Brave. "These boys don't come cheap in the raw. To get yourself one, you've first got to save him from hanging."
As Benedict was sitting next to Caribou on the sofa, Adam moved toward Dempster in the sofa opposite. He offered his arse for inspection. "Do these caribou tracks in the hills lead down to the valley?" Dempster asked.
"Aye," Caribou said.
With one finger on each cheek, Dempster traced the geometric artistry of Adam, moving in slow motion toward the cleft and in the downward direction pointed by the bat. Adam was unused to being fondled in the view of spectators, but his blushes were hidden beneath war-paint. His nether cheeks palpitated to Dempster's hands, which he accommodated by parting his legs. Dempster pried the cleft open at the base and praised the aperture for its delicate appearance. "Would you be so kind as to place your left foot on the coffee-table before you?" he asked. Adam complied.
"How wonderful to see such a perfect blend of Artifice and Nature, emerging unexpectedly from its hiding place in a hair-frosted cleft!" Dempster exclaimed. He ignored Benedict's amused comment on his clumsy pun: "Hair-frosted, hoar-frosted, ha!" Dempster continued: "Why Adam, your aperture has the shape of an ostensorium, and the color of a delicate wild rose. Pray tell me, lad, has it been bloomed, or is it virginal?"
"Why, neither one, Dempster. It is promised to another," Adam said, and gazed at Caribou Brave.
"Then he shall have it tonight, and we shall be witnesses," Dempster said, glancing at Benedict. Adam's cock had gradually expanded and now throbbed at full length.
"What's an ostensorium?" Caribou asked Benedict.
"A sunburst," Benedict replied. "Not a real one, but the image of the sun on a rod, carried by Papist bishops and posts during Eucharist-procession. But Dempster is no Papist. He worships Uranus, whose star was found lately in the skies of Paris by Pierre Lemonnier, the French astronomer, and he (I mean Dempster) means to carry Adam's ostensorium on his rod, but he's sensible that you must precede him in the Uranist procession to which Adam has already consented."
"Precede him I will," Caribou said, "but as to Dempster, well, when God created Adam, He created Free Will, and it is Adam who must choose whether he will or no."
"I heard that," Dempster said, peering at Benedict and Caribou as if from a hunting-hide behind Adam's arse. "Eucharist-Uranist, very funny! It seems that Dr. Samuel Johnson is easily mocked for his Ciceronian periods, but Adam's arse is my text, and a well-illuminated one it is, too, adorned with mystical symbols of the Ten Lost Tribes, and in it I've found the best of all possible periods." He nudged a finger into Adam's periodic hole, wriggled erotically, and slowly pushed upward while Adam gasped, with his eyes fixed on Caribou. Dempster slid his finger in and out, rhythmically, and proclaimed, lyrically: "Ah, ostensorium! Ah, wild rose! With petals overlapping, and variegated in subtle layers of pink, each one with a variation that is all but invisible to the naked eye! And instead of a golden sun at the center, a mystic-dark aperture, no period, methinks, but the Gate of Paradise!"
"Now I'm jealous," Caribou said, "for I've not seen Adam's arse except in a dim light in the Cavern of Bats." To keep solidarity with Adam, Caribou doffed his clothes, for it seemed wrong to him that his lover should be the only one standing naked in the company of four men. Caribou's butt-cheeks were painted, too, not with geometric designs, but with the figures of twelve bats. When asked, he explained that "each time after Adam buggered me, he painted a bat on my butt. It was a game we played in the Cavern of Bats."
"You had a merry escape," Dempster laughed. "But what are these figures of two bats with wings joined together?" Four of the twelve were double-bats. Four single bats, and one double-bat, had circles drawn around them.
"You tell him, Adam," Caribou said.
"That I cannot," Adam said. His modesty was genuine, though it seemed contradicted by his pose, standing in the beauty of cock-swaying nudity before Benedict and Caribou while Dempster manipulated his arse from inside, in digital buggery that had graduated to two fingers.
"The double-bats signify double-fucks," Caribou said. "Adam is, as you said earlier, quite a vigorous man."
Dempster reached between Adam's thighs and fondled his pulsing cock. "May I extract the same promise from you that you gave so freely to this Abenaki Prince?" Dempster asked while he stimulated Adam's cock.
"I will," Adam said, panting with the Uranist lust that grew strong in his groin.
George Dempster was a man possessed of multiple paradoxes. In Parliament he cut a modest physical appearance, but he spoke with commanding intelligence, in a rhetorical style that improved in an upward trajectory, schooled as he was in civil discourse at Child's, and at Turk's-Head, for unlike David Garrick, who avoided the academic dialogues at Turk's-Head, he joined the Rota Club and attended their debates every Tuesday. In Firth he was known as a strict Presbyterian, whilst he was High Church in London, and worshipped at St. Paul's, but his coffee- house fellows knew him as a skeptic: a child of the Scottish Enlightenment who recited texts from Descartes's Discourse of Reason, not in English translation, but in French, as he had memorized them. He never darkened the doors of Rose Tavern or Moll's Key, and was quite unknown to the sodomite fraternity in London, yet he seemed to recognize his true brothers, the beefy ones anyway, and from these he chose bed-companions: a select few of respectable fellows, masculine, bold, and above all bigger and stronger than himself, for he was slight in build, though charming and handsome, especially when he smiled and his face dimpled. Except for the Edinburg Wrestler (when he was still a minor in Firth), his devotees were Englishmen. As a Scot, he took particular pleasure in subjecting them to his will. During those seductions, he spoke cant in the broadest northern brogue, by which he concealed his identity as an MP while satisfying his strongest desire, for he enjoyed inversions of all kinds. A Tory opponent in Parliament once called him 'Mr. Oxymoron Personified'; his Whiggish allies overturned the insult by naming him 'George Dempster, O.P.', meant as a term of affection, but his select circle of male companions called him Giant-Killer, they having been the giants who were buggered by him, more than one or two for the first time. Over such men as these, Dempster had charismatic power, perhaps not 'in spite of' but 'because of' his slight build, which contrasted his aggressive boldness, the audacious liberties taken on their anatomies, and (not least) the seductive promise in his trousers, which, when the basket was opened, proved a monstrous welcome reality, as Benedict, and You, the Reader, already knew, although, at the moment, Adam and Caribou Brave had read only the Book of Promise in the crease in his trousers, and took pains to conceal their apprehension about what the Book of Fulfillment would reveal once the trousers were opened, and how it would be experienced by them.
"Gentlemen!"-when Dempster pronounced the word in comic inversion, since two of them stood stark naked, one of them arse-pivoted on the intrusion of his fingers, "Gentlemen, Caribou Brave and Adam must be celebrated in an epithalamium. I propose that we let Benedict prepare Caribou's body for their union, whilst I do the same with Adam."
"Why, our bodies are prepared already," Caribou said.
"Ah, but Caribou, you have not yet told us what happened in the Cavern of the Bats, which you promised us. Let your tale be the text. I'm sure Edmund Spenser will have no objection, or if he does, he'll not complain, since he's been dead these 162 years."
"I'll tell it, with the aid of tobacco," Caribou said. The others watched his naked figure in motion while he fetched his peace-pipe.
"I've got a fresh pouch of India-tobacco on the dressing-table," Benedict called out to him as he climbed the stairs. "And don't forget the bugger-bear." Benedict and Dempster removed their boots and their shirts, but kept their trousers and linens. "It's not really tobacco; it's called cannabis," Benedict said while Caribou filled the pipe, lit it with one of the candles, and passed it round.
Caribou cuddled with Benedict, and Adam with Dempster, and were fondled freely and gazed at each other while Caribou told his story: "I first saw Adam behind iron bars at Newgate, and recognized in him a noble spirit, but I pretended to take no notice, except when I warned him to watch for my return the next morning. It was I who organized the assault of Mock- Magistrates, and they were well paid for the risk and the trouble they took. You already know about our escape. After many hours in the tunnels, we discovered the Cavern of Bats and took refuge those wicked-looking creatures. When they proved harmless, I cast off my priest-disguise, and my linen, too, hoping that my nakedness would prove a temptation to Adam. When we fell into our first embrace, Adam let me undress him. But for a few English features, he could have been Abenaki. Beauty is in the beholder's eye, but in the modest light of our candle, Adam seemed to me as the world's only perfect beauty. He offered me buggery, but when I learned that he was a virgin, I told him that I would not deflower him in the dirty dampness of a cave. If our escape was successful, only then would his body be my reward. As Adam had proved himself courageous and tough, I had the faith to believe that we would make our escape.
"The love between us grew strong, and Nature demanded her due. We shared a burning desire for union, which could be attained, I said, if Adam buggered me. That's how it happened that Adam promised himself to me, and I gave myself to Adam. We had no bear-grease nor any other means of lubrication, so the penetration of Adam's yard was felt in my arse as a grievous pain. I told him to stop, but he wouldn't. Instead he whispered endearments and offered to stop while he cudgeled me from the inside with his wicked rod."
"You're a warrior, Caribou, and trained to fight. I'm just a carpenter from the country," Adam interrupted. "You could have fought me off if you'd wanted. My first thought was to breed you quickly while I could, but our congress brought so much joy that I prolonged it as long as I could."
"Oh, Adam, you're such a naughty boy," Dempster said. He fondled Adam's throbbing cock. "Your pleasure was physical and mental, and Caribou's pain was the source of your mental pleasure."
"It's true," Adam acknowledged. "I knew that Caribou was suffering for my sake, and his suffering gratified me, but not nearly so much as the gratification that came with learning that I could also give him pleasure."
"A naughty boy, all the same," Dempster said. From his position in the middle of the sofa, he draped Adam over his lap and proved his arse. "Such a naughty boy needs spanking," he said, and administered several sharp swats. The redness of hand-prints could not be seen below the geometrical designs of war-paint on his nether cheeks. When Adam resumed his seat, he rewarded Dempster with a kiss.
"You're tuppers at heart," Dempster said. "You're committed to each other as lovers, but I wonder, Caribou, were you not disappointed to learn that the most beautiful man in the world turned out to be another top?"
"It's true, what you say," Caribou replied. "As an Abenaki warrior I was trained to be prideful, and one of Adam's great virtues is humility, so when we first met it was natural for me to conclude that he would be buggered my me, and willingly. But when Nature demanded our union, Fate interfered and reversed the order between us. So I played Dido to his Aeneas in our Cave of the Bats. But you must understand, Dempster, that when a man loves another, he can be whatever his lover needs him to be."
"Well spoken," Benedict said, thinking that Dempster was not the sort of man who would fall in love.
"The painting of bats on Caribou's arse, whose idea was that?" Dempster wondered.
"That would be me," Adam said. "My Uranist urges (as you call 'em) kept coming back, and Caribou was willing, and buggery came easier as his arse was well-oiled by my seed, and as he had brought war-point for our Indian disguise, I asked him if I could inscribe our performances on his body. He flipped over so I could paint his butt. At the first painting-session, the double-bat marked our first union, and three single bats marked the others."
"And there were eight more paintings to come, including three double-bats!" Dempster exclaimed.
"Aye, it was the Twelve Labors of Hercules, all brought together in the Chamber of Bats," Caribou said. "It cost me a groaning each time, but as Adam has said, he learned to give more pleasure than pain. As a post-orgasmic ritual, Adam notched my butt with a new bat- painting each time we fucked."
"And the circles around five of the bats?" Dempster asked.
"Those mark the occasions when Adam brought me to orgasm without the aid of fingers or hands," Caribou said. "Before Adam, I never thought that was possible. The circles were my idea."
Caribou Brave and Benedict fondled each other with long-standing familiarity, on this occasion deriving their passion from cannabis and from the spectacle of Dempster and Adam. It might seem a cruel application of droit de seigneur to deprive Caribou of the rites of foreplay, his office performed by a libertine intruder, but the lovers gazed on each other, imagining themselves in a parallel world, extracting a text of true love from the interpolations of Dempster.
Like Cheiron who trained Achilles for the bed of Patroklos, George Dempster played the lusty centaur, preparing Adam's body for defloration by Caribou; but Dempster liked inversions: "I'll show you some moves that will keep Caribou in line as your butt-boy," he said. "When you see how they work on you, you'll know to apply them on him." Everyone laughed. He intended humor, but still it was his opinion that Caribou's submission to Adam should continue. In a lavish parody of David Garrick, he presented his argument in a five-act drama that he called 'The Play of Adam'. In Act I he demonstrated aggressive kissing and the silent persuasion of a projected tongue. Act II was followed with pinching and biting of nips while simultaneously fondling Adam's arse. While all this was going on, Adam and Caribou gazed at each other "in a subplot of Thisbe and Pyramus, meeting at night at a chink in the Wall of Babylon," Demptser mused.
"The secret is for Cari-, er, ahem, Caribou's arse to receive sensual messages from other parts of his body," Dempster said. He winked at Caribou. Adam allowed that what Dempster said was true. Why wait for Ben Franklin to print his broadside on the principle of electricity, when Dempster could demonstrate it well enough in Adam's erogenous zones: a tongue behind the ear; a tongue in the pits for some vigorous axillingus, and lower down for navellingus accompanied by anal stimulation. Adam and Caribou gazed at each other with longing.
Act III in Dempster's 'Play of Adam' was oral sex. He illustrated the difference between aggressive mouth-fucking and relatively more passive cock-sucking. Dempster shoved his cock into Adam's mouth. Adam choked in a gag-reflex at the rhythmic intrusion, but settled down to it and savored its bulbous taste. "It's a precursor of yard-arse and an imitation, you see," Dempster said. Adam knew this, but hadn't noticed (as Caribou did) that Dempster's precursory rod had grown to nine inches.
Having completed this face-fucking scene, Dempster put Adam prone on the sofa and sucked his cock gently while fondling his arse; the Act IV, Scene ii. "Think of your dick as a giant clittie," he whispered to Adam, who laughed out loud at the notion-it seemed an absurdity-but even so, he felt himself feminized, if only vaguely and temporarily.
Dempster stripped off his trousers and linens for Act V, where the first scene found him on the floor with Adam engaged in mutual fellatio. "Rule 69 is that the man on top is offering his arse for buggery," Dempster said. Adam was so engaged, and could find no flaw in his reasoning. Dempster's ministrations proceeded to analingus, which he demonstrated in diverse positions in Act V, scene ii. In their final scene, Dempster sat on the sofa while Adam knelt between his knees and rimmed his arse in return. "There are two motives for analingus," Dempster explained. "A tupper rims his partner's arse to prepare it for buggery. When a tuppee does it, it's a form of submission to reconcile his spirit to the role that he must play."
"Instead of making a five-act play, you should write a book about this," Benedict said.
"I already have," Dempster said, "but what printer would dare print it? What bookseller would dare sell it?"
"Well, as for that, we've waited long enough," Caribou said abruptly. He stood and took Adam's hand. "We're going upstairs to my bed so I can ravish him," he said. "You boys can come up and watch, or you can stay here and play." Adam buried his face in a pillow while Caribou nailed him. Meanwhile, on the sofa downstairs, Dempster motioned to Benedict, who knelt between his legs and sucked cock. He was running his tongue along Dempster's perineum when the Adam's first cry and groan could be heard. Adam's second groan was louder. Dempster chuckled at Caribou's imagined relentlessness. When Adam groaned a third time, Benedict unexpectedly shoved his rod up Dempster's arse. "Shit!" Dempster exclaimed, and clenched his teeth.