Naamah's Curse - Jacqueline Carey [75]
He wetted his pen, tapping it on the edge of the inkwell. “But it was part of your job to service the queen in a sexual manner, was it not?”
Give my brother whatever he wants.
He would not listen; he would never listen. These Yeshuites accused me of closing my ears to God, but at least I was trying to understand what they wanted and why. The Patriarch of Riva would never hear aught but what he wanted to believe from my lips. To service, gods! As though anyone in their right mind wouldn’t rejoice at the chance to share Jehanne de la Courcel’s bed, as though anyone could consider it a job, and not an honor and a privilege. It was an ugly, sordid term to describe something lovely.
“Yes,” I said wearily, leaning back on my stool and resting my scarf-wrapped head against the wall. “It was part of my job.”
The Patriarch’s pen skated avidly across the page. “How?”
“What do you mean?”
He gestured impatiently at me. “These are sins against nature, child. You must confess them in full. What acts did you commit?” He lowered his voice. “I have heard that D’Angelines sculpt vile semblances of a man’s generative organ through art and artifice. Did you play the man’s role with her? Or did you take turns at it?”
I closed my eyes, remembering Jehanne in Cereus House, showing me the ivory aide d’amour, cradling it in her palm and promising with a wickedly sweet smile to demonstrate all its uses to me. It had been one of the only times. “Not usually, no.”
“Did you perform unclean acts on her?”
“Unclean acts?” I opened my eyes.
The hectic sheen had returned to his gaze. “Did you pleasure her with your mouth?”
“Oh.” It wasn’t a topic that had arisen before. I wondered if it was because the act of the languisement was less unclean when performed on a man, or if the confession of fornication had sufficed, or if the Patriarch had been saving the accusation for the moment when it would hurt me the most, knowing my grief was still fresh. All three, mayhap. “That, yes.”
He muttered to himself in Vralian, recording my confession. “How many times?”
“Many. But it is not listed among the things that God finds an abomination, my lord,” I observed. “Why is it reckoned unclean?”
His head jerked up, outrage written on his features. “Need you ask?”
I shrugged. “Apparently so.”
Pyotr Rostov’s face darkened, and he leaned forward in his chair. “God gave you lips and a tongue that you might give praise to him, Moirin. Not that you might pollute them by placing them where the body’s foulest excrescences emerge. It should be obvious. Is it so hard to understand?”
I flinched away from him, my chains rattling.
Give my brother whatever he wants.
I couldn’t, not this. “You speak of the very font and wellspring of life, my lord,” I whispered, tears stinging my eyes. “And no, I do not understand.”
My memories blurred.
There was my lady Jehanne, lying indolent and languid in the bower she’d had created for me, her arms stretched above her head, her thighs parted so I could kneel between them, her pink nether-lips already glistening with desire. She had smiled at me, her eyes sparkling with unremitting delight, the overhanging ferns painting intricate green shadows on her oh so fair skin. And Checheg, grunting and straining in the ger in the throes of labor, the babe Bayar’s head crowning, tearing delicate flesh. It was all part and parcel of the same thing.
My voice shook. “How is that not a sacred thing to worship?”
The Patriarch did not answer, not right away. He sat very still, gazing at me with fixed intensity, until I had to look away. “It is not your fault that you were born into sin, Moirin,” he said at length. “But your actions are your own. If you cannot learn to acknowledge them for what they are, I cannot help you.”
“I am trying!” I said in frustration.
“Not hard enough.” He took his line of questioning in a different direction. “Let us move forward in time. You spent a great deal of time travelling with the Emperor of Ch’in’s daughter. Did you serve as a royal companion