Read Online The Mammoth Book of Erotica presents The Best of Lucy Taylor by Lucy Taylor - Free Book Online Page B

neither of her parents had shown the slightest warmth or caring toward one another or, for that matter, toward her. Theirs was a union based on practicality and the running of a household, a way to satisfy the needs for sex, security, and mutual support. Love was a luxury for idle, wealthy ladies and lovestruck troubadours. The poor had no time for such frivolity.
    Now Gabrielle observed the change in both her parents, a transformation that appeared wrought by suffering, and found herself both horrified and envious. For never had anyone shown her the kind of tenderness her parents now bestowed upon each other. It was as though, through suffering, they had paid some terrible price required for the giving and receiving of affection.
    Looking at neither her father nor her mother, she hurried toward the door.
    “Gabrielle!” The undercurrent of fear in her father’s voice brought her up short. “You are coming back, aren’t you?
Aren’t
you?”
    “I–I don’t know.”
    “What if I fall ill? Your mother’s taught you about herbs and medicines. You could make my dying easier.”
    Gabrielle stared at this man whose love she’d never managed to win, who’d never offered her a moment of affection. “I know nothing of my mother’s skills,” she said stubbornly.
    “She taught you everything,” her father insisted. “Please, girl, I don’t want to be alone. Promise me you’re coming back.”
    “I’m sorry,” Gabrielle murmured.
    Behind her, her father’s voice rose in anger.
    “You think you’re safer in the outside world? The plague is everywhere. Only God can keep you alive.”
    Only God.
    But God was nowhere to be found these days. The young abandoned the old, the healthy left the sick to expire in alleyways and filthy deathbeds, even priests refused to hear confession from the dying, lest they contract the sickness. Some people reacted to the danger by living lives of ascetic abstinence, while others, wanting to make the most of what time was left, indulged in every kind of excess and debauchery.
    At the cathedral in the town square, Gabrielle stood at the edge of the crowd and held a handkerchief dipped in perfume to her face, for it was common knowledge that pleasant odors helped protect one from disease.
    The Flagellants marched up the main street, men in the lead, women following. The men were stripped to the chest. Each carried a hard leather whip festooned with little iron spikes which he brought down, rhythmically and slowly, across the back of the one preceding him. Bent and bloody, the procession snaked toward the cathedral. They were silent and sweaty and a great stench rose from them – not the sickly sweet odor of sickness, but the musky tang of unwashed, bloodied bodies.
    Gabrielle watched the blood streaming down their raw backs, saw how the sweat glistened and ran in the deep furrows that the pain had etched in their faces. Some appeared to be in agony, others simply exhausted. And some appeared to have gone beyond the pain and seemed entranced in what looked like ecstasy.
    Gabrielle stared, transfixed by the bizarre spectacle, amazed by the stoic silence in which the Flagellants bore their pain. As one man passed by, she could not stop herself, but reached out to caress his mutilated back.
    “What do you suppose it feels like?”
    At first Gabrielle didn’t realize the voice was speaking to her. Then fingers gripped her elbow. She whirled around, appalled and startled by the presumption of this stranger.
    A young man with fair hair, tanned, pockmarked skin, and black eyes that glittered like a raven’s regarded her. He was dressed in the rough, simple garments of the Flagellants, but his clothing had no rips or bloodstains, nor did his sturdy-looking arms bear signs of abuse. Something in the cunning, slyly mirthful way that he appraised her made her uneasy, as though he knew things about her she did not even know herself.
    “What are you talking about?” she whispered, holding the