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When Cardinal Mazarin died, bells tolled in Paris, and the castrato Atto Melani had himself a great panic.
In life, the man had been a benefactor of great power, and his protection had allowed the careers of many of his clients to wax into splendor. His patronage had been the very thing securing Atto’s status at the Parisian royal court, and its loss was a great blow. It had, however, also made it frustratingly difficult for Atto to carry on with the Cardinal’s beautiful nieces. Once he had ceased to panic, therefore, his next course of action was logical: to determine which of these ladies he might now seduce. If he was both lucky and brave, perhaps he would come out of this the stronger, with a new patroness and a new lover. It was a lot to hope for, but Atto had never been one to temper his ambitions.
Marie was the first to receive his affection. She was as gentle as she was beautiful, and had quickly offered him both friendship and protection. Only briefly, alas - now she had left Paris, and taken her patronage with her, and worst of all, she had not even agreed to go to bed with him first. This vexed him only a little, in truth, because the woman he wanted most of all was her sister Hortense, and it was she who remained enticingly near.
“Your Grace! I beg your attention one moment!” Atto scurried across the courtyard toward the object of his desire, who was crossing slowly with her skirts gathered in one hand. Always graceful in movement, the slight breeze fluttered the fabric of her gown and gave her the impression of an angel painted on a fresco. More importantly, her husband was not anywhere nearby to intervene. If there was one thing that Atto had learned in his time at court, it was that one seizes an opportunity where one can.
The Duchess of Mazarin did not stop until Atto was nearly standing on her heels, and then she looked over her shoulder with a simpering expression that a man less clouded by passion might have interpreted as amused contempt.
“Good day, Signor Atto,” said the Duchess. The resigned tone of voice did nothing to detract from her beauty. Her skin was as smooth and lovely as the moon reflected off still water; her rose-petal lips immaculately rouged; her dark brows perfect arches above her large brown eyes. Atto had to take a deep breath before continuing.
“I hope you will forgive my candor if I tell Your Grace that she is looking especially lovely today,” said Atto boldly. The Duchess lifted a hand to her mouth, made some inscrutable expression, then lowered it.
“That is very kind of you, Signor Atto.”
“And I hope you will believe me,” Atto continued, “when I tell Your Grace that her beauty outshines that of any lady at this court. No, of any lady in France! But it is not only your beauty, but your extreme goodness and gentleness, which compels me once again to declaim that I, Atto, am your most humble and loving servant, and that I wish only to please Your Grace in whichever way I may, and that this purpose is greater than any other God has given me, and nearest to my heart.” Atto paused in his effusions, having quite run out of breath.
The Duchess was smiling, but her eyes were flinty. “Yes…your devotion is quite evident,” she said. Atto puffed out his chest.
“Yes! Ask anyone! I am loyal, always loyal!”
Hortense laughed a little. “Ah, indeed? Then it seems you have turned over a new leaf.”
“Your Grace?”
“Good day, Signor Atto.” The Duchess turned her back, and Atto thought he heard her giggling to herself as she strode away. Ah! Defeated again! Atto thought of finding a place where he could sulk publicly until the Duchess noticed him and felt pity, but decided against it. It was hot, and he was tired, and he had already tried that once to no effect. Wounded, he returned to his apartments instead and took to his bed.
Atto closed his eyes as though stricken with fever. If he fell ill from heartbreak, then the Duchess would be sorry for scorning him! Perhaps she would come to his chamber with tears in her eyes to apologize. Perhaps she would bring some of her sisters to comfort him in his convalescence. Perhaps they would find him all cold and alone in his bed, and sad (but in a noble way), and dying (but in a manly way), and would crowd up onto the coverlet to embrace him. Of course, he would humbly and graciously accept their apologies (by nuzzling into their bosoms). Then perhaps they would be so overwhelmed with emotion that they would begin to kiss one another…
Atto wiggled his toes and adjusted his bedcovers, contemplating this. Lately he spent a lot of time meditating on these topics: bosoms, and kisses, and scorn. The seeds of such obsessions had been planted when he was a boy: he had begun to bloom early, and by the time his parents had sent for the surgeon he’d already been guilty of the sin of self-pollution. It was true that the operation had dampened his emerging passions, but it had never extinguished them. Atto was uncertain if he was lucky, or if it would have been easier to be one of those musicians who were cut so early that they never had the chance to feel the barest stirring of desire. One of these, a boy named Pietro, had sung with Atto at the cathedral in Pistoia when they were both fourteen. Pietro had been cut at seven, and he had had long, coal-black lashes and very full lips. Atto had been stunned by him, and when they were alone together he had at last tried to kiss that lovely mouth. But Pietro had looked at him with such confusion that Atto had felt a sudden pit open in his stomach. So I am not like other boys, he had thought. But I am not like other eunuchs, either. Behold: Atto Melani, inflamed and alone!
It had not remained that way, however. At sixteen, there had been Giuseppe. Giuseppe was slow and sweet and had been cut at six. His cock was smaller even than Atto’s, like a little button, and Atto had liked to press his thumb against it while he fucked him. Giuseppe did not seem to either like or dislike their couplings, but approached him often, smiling dreamily and taking him by the hand to lead him to an empty closet. Atto thought that perhaps he did it to prove that he could. But his own passion had started to embarrass him in the face of Giuseppe’s impassive yielding, and at eighteen he had started to turn his attention to girls.
This was a natural progression, because by then he was performing on the public stage, and groups of giggling women lavished him with attention at every turn. The responsiveness of their bodies had driven him out of his mind. He had discovered hips and breasts and buttocks, so many lovely places to touch, and he had gone up under their skirts and found even more excitement adventuring between their thighs. After that had been his first encounter with an intact boy, which had been an exercise in both pleasure and miserable self-consciousness. Once there had been a girl who had liked to do it wearing men’s clothes, pressing Atto down into the bed and pushing her fingers inside him, and possibly he had liked this best of all.
He had been promised an eternal boyhood, but the reality was much more disorienting. As he grew into the fullness of his passion, he understood that his body was a man’s body, until it was with another man’s, and then it felt like a child’s. With women there was a sort of mutual sympathy, an understanding of sorts that he first resisted and then welcomed.
Perhaps this was why he had come to notice girls. They were unspeakably lovely to him. Their skin, their voices, even their scent: all of this obsessed him. There was, at times, a certain frenetic excitement that built in his belly like a gathering storm. When women embraced him, it summoned a delicious warm fizz behind his navel. But this amorousness could disappear as quickly as it arose. At times he went months without a whisper of it, and at other times it drove him to near-distraction. Such as now, when bedding the Duchess of Mazarin had become his sole reason for living. Atto covered his face with a pillow.
Hortense. Even the scent wafting off her skin drove him mad with desire. He spent his nights rubbing himself raw to the thought of taking her to bed.
He would lick her until she was dripping like a ripe peach. He thought he could get hard enough to fuck her, because the mere thought of it made his prick twitch in his breeches, but he was willing to spend an hour tugging himself in front of her if that was what it took. For even a couple of pumps into her slit, it would be worth it. He moaned, rubbing his palm over his cock, dreaming.
Hortense, Hortense. I am waiting for you, sweetheart. I promise to make you come. I’ll pull out everything in my bag of tricks. I want you smeared all over my mouth. I want your juice in my hair. I want you riding my fingers and my face and my thigh and my cock. Look: I have it hard for you even now. You are the only woman in the world who could make a eunuch stiff. Hortense! Darling, come have me.
Atto continued on this way for twenty minutes, thirty, forty, rutting up against his palm. When he climaxed, it was with a series of bestial sounds, thinking of Hortense’s pretty little red mouth sucking on him. His ejaculation was a little dribble of something the color and texture of egg white. Some of his orgasms were dry, but the best ones were inevitably wet. He wanted to have a wet one with Hortense. He wanted her to take it inside her while they lay belly-to-belly and rutted. That last thought made him squirm anew.
This was how he was tied to his desire for her: he’d learnt how to make himself come the first time simply because he couldn’t stop obsessively touching himself to thoughts of Hortense, and after two and a half hours of it one night his body had finally given up the ghost and he’d finished with a shocked little yelp.
Hortense. You see how I have to abuse myself because of you? My rod is burning for want of you. Come quench it with your cunt.
Atto stretched on the bed and savored the feeling of the silk against his skin. He had always been a sensual creature. It was something that he liked about himself. Some evirati paid whores even though their cocks didn’t work at all, so desperate were they for a woman to hold in their arms. Atto thought this was pathetic, and industriously seduced tavern wenches so that he could baffle them with the embarrassing weakness of his loins. Regardless, he had found ways around his limitations: he got very good at using his hands, and his mouth. He learned which positions made it easiest to keep himself up, and when that failed him, he could distract a lady so thoroughly that she would forget to be disappointed. Thus did sheer force of will triumph over nature any day of the week!
And if Atto had a rash temperament, and weak loins, and a tender heart, then he also had a will of iron, and so, he decided, he would win the Duchess’s hand. At the very least, he would win some other parts. He would find a way.
When Hortense rose in the morning, she bathed. She had her maidservants paint her face with special care, and apply fragrance to her wrists and neck. She took time to dress in finery, and ensured that her hair was immaculate. Then she went out to find the singer.
When Atto had first begun courting her, Hortense had met him with the same chilly disinterest that greeted all of her undesired admirers. Soon, however, his frenetic attention had begun to amuse and charm her. He would throw himself into her path at every opportunity, bringing her jewelry and fine things, and offering her wine and fruit unbidden. He would compose verses and cantatas for her and follow her around threatening to perform them. Many of her suitors saw her as fruit ripe on the vine, easy to pluck, and expended only a little effort at closing their hands around her. Hortense enjoyed being wooed, charmed, romanced. Perhaps she did have time for a little intrigue after all.
Fortunately, finding Atto was easy: all she needed to do was slip past the bravos the Duke had assigned to keep watch over her, and there he was, right at her elbow, ready to resume his quest. In fact, he was so close that she had very nearly tripped over him.
“Your Grace! It is, as always, a delight to be in your radiant presence!” Hortense smothered her laughter. He was, she had decided, rather handsome. The softness of the jaw and chin had surprised her at first, but now she found it appealing; his face had a youthful innocence with its delicate nose and apple cheeks.
“You have saved me the effort of seeking you out, Signor Atto,” said Hortense, and watched him come alive with happiness.
“Ah! Please, let me know why! I am your especial servant!” She thought he might leap into her arms like an excitable puppy.
“It is your service, in fact, that I am interested in,” said Hortense.
“Please, allow me to serve! I can play the lute and the viola, I can sing so many things for you! If you need me to find some treasure in the city and bring it here, I will leave right now!”
“And what if I require your services in my chamber?” Hortense asked slyly.
“To perform for you there?”
Hortense smiled winsomely. “In a way.” Atto’s eyes went wide.
“You need only snap your fingers and your Atto will come running to you!!” he exclaimed breathlessly. “This would be the most rewarding sort of service for one as devoted as I!!”
He was near hysterical at the idea. Hortense could imagine him bowling over courtiers and servants alike in his haste to climb into her bed. She ought to have felt bad for teasing him, but his enthusiasm was intensely flattering. The Duke never expressed any such sentiments. He merely muttered “Wife.” and waited for her to roll over.
“Oh, but I could hardly think to abuse you in such a way…” Hortense said, biting her lip to hide her delight.
Atto was turning pink in the face, rapidly crossing the leagues between “excited” and “absolutely beside himself”.
“Not an abuse, but a delicious reward! Please, I want nothing more than to do whatever you require! The favors and courtesies you have rendered me have left me with the most burning desire to satisfy your every whim!”
“Ah, I am uncertain…”
“Signora, I am perishing with ardor!!! ” Atto looked fairly alive to Hortense. She swallowed her laughter.
“Oh, you are too good. I will come to your rooms tonight, then, and you may offer me an evening’s entertainment, if you are truly so keen.”
“Your Grace! You have my undying gratitude for the courtesies you have offered me!” And he seized her hand and began to kiss it, over and over, until she gently tugged it away.
“Show your gratitude tonight,” she said gently. She could hear footsteps approaching on the flagstones. Atto removed himself and made a bow. When she took her leave of him, she was pleased to observe that he was trembling.
That night, Hortense slipped out of her bedchamber with practiced skill and went to her new lover in her nightgown, with only a candle for light. She knocked gently at his door, and it swung open with such haste that Hortense assumed Atto had been standing right beside it, waiting for her.
The amorous castrato had doused himself in perfume and rubbed unguents into his long-fingered hands. His tunic was red embroidered with gold, and very fine. Hortense smiled to see him. When the door had closed, she removed her hairpin and allowed her curls to spill around her shoulders, catching the candlelight in a way she knew was becoming. Atto looked at her with shining eyes.
“Your Grace, you are so beautiful,” he said reverently, as though he were whispering in a cathedral.
“As are you.” Hortense smiled. “I hear all sorts of ladies fancy you here.”
“Really? What have you heard?”
“Later,” said Hortense. “Where is your bed?”
Atto gestured at the door to his bedchamber, but allowed Hortense to lead the way. The room was sumptuous with fabrics and dark wood, though difficult to see in the half-light. Hortense pressed her candle into Atto’s hand before pulling her nightgown over her head.
She knew that she was pleasing to look at, but she was still gratified by the sight of Atto’s mouth hanging open. She put her hands over her breasts and lifted them.
“Yes? What do you think?”
“I am going to faint away,” said Atto breathlessly. He set the candle on his desk and reached out for her, sliding his hands around her waist. It was good to be held with due reverence. Hortense pinched his nipple roughly through his tunic, and he jumped a little, gasping.
“Now, I have not had the pleasure of taking liberties with a soprano before,” said Hortense, “so you will need to enlighten me as to how to proceed.”
“If I may,” said Atto, “I would very much like the honor of a certain task which I know does not fail to please a lady….”
“And what is that?”
“My mouth is good for one thing besides singing.”
“Yammering?”
“Two things.”
Hortense thought first to have him kneel before her, but decided to favor comfort and settled onto his bed instead. Propped up on a heap of pillows, she watched him through slitted eyes as he fumbled with the hem of his tunic, then seemed to think better of it and crawled up onto the bed after her.
Atto lowered his head and kissed her stomach, his hair brushing softly against her naked thighs. “I’ve imagined you here so many times,” he said. “In the dead of night, when I couldn’t sleep. How I’ve ached for you.”
“A singer and a poet,” said Hortense, feeling his lips against the place below her navel, and then his tongue swiped hot across her sex. Atto lifted her thigh, and Hortense lifted it further to brace against his shoulder as he covered her with his mouth. His tongue found the place, the sweetness of Venus, rolling over it in slick waves. Hortense scratched her fingernails over his scalp and felt him moan.
That he enjoyed this was not in question. Hortense groaned quietly and felt him seize her buttocks in his hands, licking into her with ravenous hunger, devouring. His finger found its way inside and she arched, pressed herself against his mouth, and loosed a little cry. By the time she was nearing the end, wet and messy, she could see Atto wriggling his hips to rub himself against the bed.
His mouth formed a hot, sucking seal, and Hortense felt herself rise and then peak, and she clenched down hard around his finger, pulling at his hair. She was dewy with sweat and panting when his ruddy face reappeared between her knees, beaming. His lips were wet, and his chin.
Most intriguingly, there was now a certain something concealed beneath the drape of his tunic. Hortense had heard stories about such things being possible for certain emasculated men, but she had never thought to see it herself.
Atto followed her gaze. “You cannot believe your eyes!” he exclaimed, resting his hands on his hips proudly. “I am a musician of many talents.”
“Then I expect you would have me handle your instrument,” she teased.
“It is much in need of being handled!” he said. “Tuned! Polished, perhaps…”
He was not shy in anything, this Atto. Hortense bit her knuckle, feigning coyness. “Let me see, then,” she said. He hastened to comply. And this was one of her favorite things, truly: watching a man undress, the abrupt reveal of hidden secrets, the slow uncovering of goosepimpled flesh to be kissed and touched and adored.
Atto turned his back briefly while he stripped off his hose, and then he surrendered to her inevitable curiosity, knelt on the bed and spread his thighs and let her look.
It was entirely too cute. Smaller, certainly, than what most men were equipped with, but standing up pink and plump between his blushing thighs. The scrotum was small, too - more a textured patch of skin than a proper pouch - but Hortense found the aesthetic effect was not at all displeasing. It was, of course, empty, with a slender white scar at the top.
The rest of him, too, was delicious to look at. He reminded her of a cherub or a nymph, with slender limbs and a little round belly. The softness of the arms and chest was boyish, and attractive. He had a sparse smattering of freckles. She was surprised to note that he had a little nest of dark hair between his legs, though it was sparser than that of her other lovers, and nestled more closely around the base of his sex.
“I am at your service, my lady,” said Atto with a grin.
Hortense went for him with her hands first. She gripped him in her fist and tugged up the foreskin, delighted in the quiet, shivery noise he made. I am touching you, yes, really touching you, just how you wanted.
“Come here,” said Hortense, laying back on the covers. She parted her thighs invitingly, letting him look at the wetness between them. “Have you had a woman before?”
“Yes,” said Atto, scrambling to put himself between her legs.
“I thought as much,” said Hortense. “That is what everyone says.”
“Really, what do they say?” He paused with one hand on her knee.
“That you’re the most viciously amorous eunuch in the world. That you go to bed with men, women, and boys alike.”
“Other eunuchs, too,” said Atto. He tickled the insides of Hortense’s thighs.
“What do two eunuchs do together in bed?”
“Whatever we like,” said Atto, and pressed inside her with a little wiggle.
He immediately commenced to make short, quick, jackrabbiting thrusts, his face buried in her neck. Hortense lifted her legs to cross behind his back and felt him press up and in at an angle that was enough to make her gasp. Good boy, she thought, and grabbed at his hips, tousled his hair. When he lifted his head, he was blushing. Hortense kissed him, dragging his lower lip between her teeth, and he moaned into her mouth.
Soon, however, she became aware that he had started to soften inside her. Even so, he made a valiant effort until he was at last forced to admit defeat. Atto sat up between her knees, sweaty but dour.
“It is my condition,” he said quickly, “and not lack of desire.” He hunched his shoulders, pouting down at his lap as though he were angry at his own body for betraying him.
“I assumed as much,” Hortense soothed. “Come here, come here.” She opened her arms to him and he lay with his head on her breast. He became distracted by the sight of said breast almost immediately, and cupped it in his hand.
“Only give me a minute,” said Atto, thumbing her nipple. “Then let us try again.”
“I have another thought,” said Hortense. She nudged him a little so that he shifted over and lay stretched out beside her. “It is sensitive, yes? In whichever state?”
“It is,” Atto confirmed.
“Then let me play with you,” she said, “and whatever happens is with God.”
Arousing men was a thing that was so easy for Hortense that she did it without effort. She applied the very best of that skill, waking sleepy flesh with deft fingers.
“Look how you make it grow,” said Atto approvingly. He was swelling under her caresses, slowly rising to her touch.
“But can you climb to the peak of the mountain, so to speak?” Hortense asked.
“I can, but it will take me a long time. My blessing, and my curse!” Atto lay a hand over his heart.
“I have time,” said Hortense. “The night is long.”
“Well, it will not take quite that long.”
“Open up your legs a little.” Hortense smoothed her fingers over the milky skin of his belly. “You are so fair,” she said. “My poor boy never gets any sun.”
“What point is there to standing around in the sun like a dockworker?” Atto sniffed. “Certainly it benefits me to remain soft and pretty like a prince.”
“How so?”
“I got you into my bed, did I not?”
Hortense laughed. “Signor, you are a wolf in sheep’s clothing!”
“I know. One benefit to being beardless - ladies do not anticipate our passions. They come close, thinking themselves safe, and then we snap them up!”
“Do all sopranos truly feel as such?”
“Well, no. Of course not. But I have always been especially prone to such feelings. Even when I was a boy, before I began to sing in the church, I became enamored of the wives of some of my father’s friends. At supper, I would drop my spoon on the floor so that I could crawl around under the table and look up their skirts.”
Hortense pinched his hip playfully. “Ah, so your father promised you to the church because you were a menace.”
Atto laughed. “Precisely! He thought, Ah, this one will sire a dozen bastards. I will get the shears. ”
Hortense clapped her hands over her own mouth. “Atto!”
Atto looked at her from under his lashes. “What? I am the one that it happened to. I can make light if I wish.”
“But you are distracting me from my purpose, now.”
“Your purpose! You’ve given it a pet name already?”
“Basta, Signor Atto.”
Hortense bent to kiss a tiny mole near Atto’s knee, then brushed her lips against the trail of fine white hairs that mapped the way up his thigh. He’d slackened again in this interlude, but Hortense paid it no mind. She sucked him into her mouth regardless, and Atto made a delighted gasp and wound his fingers into her hair.
“Your Grace is so good to me,” he cooed. Hortense slipped her hands under his thighs, felt the tacky sweat there, and lifted him to bring him closer to her mouth. Atto moaned and wriggled as she toyed with his cock, tossing it about on her tongue and then sucking hard.
“Ah, ah,” he sighed, clutching at her shoulder. Hortense swallowed around it, felt it grow plump and full on her tongue. It was a sweet little mouthful, easy to love and to please, and she lavished it with her attention until her jaw began to ache. When she could continue no more without her muscles seizing up, she slipped most of it out of her mouth and suckled around the head. Atto was groaning and tossing against the covers
Hortense slipped him into her hand and vigorously rubbed. She had been in bed with enough men who were paralytically drunk to know that a tight grip might be best if she did not want to spend two hours at this. On a whim, she lowered her head again and gave his slender white scars a swipe with her tongue. Atto made a hysterical little gasp.
“Oh! You are too much!”
He was a handful, this one. She stroked him until her hand began to cramp, and then she switched hands, and when that hand began to cramp she put him in her mouth again.
“It’s close,” Atto hissed. “Oh, please…”
Hortense clasped his scrotum between her forefinger and the meat of her thumb and gave it a little tug, and Atto pushed his hips up in response. He rather abruptly went very firm in her mouth, and he gasped, pulling at her hair.
“Ah- ! I’m going- Oh, I’m right there- !”
Nothing spurted from the end, but it twitched and flexed against her tongue in the old familiar way, and Atto groaned, toes curling in the sheets. Hortense was uncertain how to tell when his climax had finished, so she continued to suck until he winced and pushed at her forehead.
Afterward, the poor man lay face-down on the coverlet, spent. Hortense ran her fingers through the curly auburn hairs on the nape of his neck. Overbearing nuisance or no, he was really rather sweet in his way. She saw no reason why he oughtn’t have all the companionship he desired.
“Do you want my mouth again?” he offered, eyes closed. “I can please you more. I would not mind…”
He looked half-dead. “You did very well,” said Hortense. “Rest now.”
“Always your praises,” he murmured.
“Do you want me to seed the rumor that you are a good lover?” asked Hortense. “I am certain the court’s ladies are curious. I could ask one of my maidservants to pass it around. Then you will never spend a night alone.”
Atto smiled. “Such flatteries you offer me!”
“And well earned,” said Hortense warmly. “I think now that your condition is no deficiency at all. Think of how a rose only grows stronger and more healthy when it is pruned? Perhaps it is the same with men.”
“I think not, Your Grace,” said Atto, suddenly somber. She touched his shoulder and then gave him a kiss on the cheek.
“It is only your unique qualities which give you your talents, then,” she said.
Atto propped himself up on an elbow. “Speaking once again of unique talents…seeing as I am once again without a patron to secure my status, I have been hoping that-”
“Lord God, Atto,” said Hortense. “May I at least dress myself before you start your entreaties again? I have only just given you something which you wanted very much.”
“I want many things,” said Atto. “Everything.”
“As do I,” said Hortense. “We are alike in that way: insatiable.”
Always seeking, never satisfied, it was true that they were both creatures of great and scintillating desires. Regardless, when Hortense returned to her bedchamber before sunrise, she felt that she had been at least temporarily sated. She went to her bed, closed her eyes, and dreamt of Atto’s kisses.