It was quite by accident that I met her at that pub north of Cambridge, but of course accidents are ubiquitous and enliven the world unmercifully. It was impossible not to overhear her conversation, of an obviously professional nature, at the next table. I could not mistake noting the terminology she and her male companion employed. Naturally my ears pricked up with the mention of the ‘bastarda hand’ and the ‘monastic scriptorium at Sponheim’, attributes of the manuscript they were discussing.

She was small, trim but softly succulent, late twenties or early thirties in age, with dark, loose, half-curly hair that did not make it quite to her shoulders. Her smile was easy, engaging, the dimple on her left cheek arresting. She spoke with an animation and energy that is rare in a profession that tends towards pedantry and is dominated by desiccated old men with archaic sensibilities.

It was an early summer evening, darkening outside, and in fact rain was on its way. The pub, The Boar, was one of those dismal English affairs, all dark wood and encrusted history, no exuberance to be found anywhere. Except their conversation. I listened to them at my table whilst clutching my pint glass, ears straining, entranced, but pretending to be engrossed in the reading material in front of me.

Earlier that day I had grown weary of pacing the halls at the university archives, waiting for a sign from the higher authorities, any sign, that their interest in my fifteenth-century manuscript was sincere.

A dim-witted lackey who went by the name of ‘Murdoch’ indicated the university wanted two more days to deliberate before discussing any offer they might make for its purchase. They had had the manuscript for a week already. The potential end result was worth the wait, but my patience was tried sorely.

Aggravated, I had driven north from the town centre, until I came upon the pub and vowed that a pint or two of this cloudy English ale, warm and disagreeable as it was, would quiet my mind’s movements and ease it back to tranquillity. I was wrong, as it turned out, much to my pleasure. Tranquillity is always trumped by excitement.

My organ stirred as I heard her mention ‘orthography’ then ‘blind stamped calfskin’. How sensuous – arousing – those bookish terms are! Her words were not chosen inexpertly. Her companion, on whose left hand flashed a wedding ring, although there was no counterpart on her own, asked probing questions about the manuscript, ‘the Abelartus codex’ he called it, the precious manuscript – my precious manuscript – that I had deduced was the topic of their intense interest.

My erection grew insistent, poking most unpleasantly up against the confines of my trousers and closely-cinched belt, whilst I contemplated the various ways I might insinuate myself into their discussion. As luck would have it, no subterfuge was required.

His mobile rang, interrupting their talk. A short frantic conversation ensued with whomever was at the other end, his face growing increasingly worried, and he was up from the table and off to the races about some crisis or another.

My opportunity could scarcely have been handed to me under more promising conditions.

I glided over to her table, presented my business card, was pleased to hear her name uttered by way of introduction – Sophia – an honourable appellation with ancient meanings in my mother tongue, and we commenced an energetic dialectic on the manuscript.

Whilst I am not often taken by surprise in my field, her youth and sex argued against the breadth and depth of her paleographical expertise. She indicated that the sixteenth-century constituted her professional focus, but she clearly knew the fifteenth and earlier centuries well. Her intuitions on the manuscript were alarmingly accurate, and I found it necessary to deflect her increasingly ardent queries with a pretext.

The ‘owner’ I said. ‘The owner’s desires do not permit extra-curricular discussion of the manuscript unless under conditions of a negotiated offer.’ I felt no need to mention that I was the owner, instead implying I was representing the owner’s interests, which was accurate enough.

It is always the mention of the ‘owner’ which brings talk to a halt. She could not have guessed ownership, even more that I wore the authorial mantle. That it was I who was responsible for the calligraphy, the pen and the ink, and the untold hours of toil that had brought the manuscript, ‘the Abelartus codex’, into the world of men at that remote monastery centuries ago.

We talked for some time. She would not be outwitted, her knowledge of Sponheim was far greater than I would have imagined. She had read Trithemius, although not everything. Her sense of the range of the abbot’s occult interests was deficient however, which I attempted to correct with a few hints. She was completely unaware of his sexual proclivities. My member stirred anew.

I manoeuvred her, with the offer of a ride, back to her cottage, although the verb is excessive. By that time she was intrigued. Shortly it would be more than that.

I had not previously seen the likes of her fourteenth-century psalter from the Dover Priory, as she shyly brought it out for my inspection. The aged leather of the binding was dried and cracked, but the vellum felt smooth and timeless in my hands. Her own pride in possession was pleasing to witness.

It was left only for some sherry and the chess match, that eternal jousting of intellectual (and sometimes erotic) wills in a game, to forge the next link, extend interest. I knew her nipples had grown erect with excitement as our chess-pieces traversed the board. Once she even looked down at the front of her dress to see how obvious they were. I smiled inside.

A ‘spilled drink’ on my part, a retreat by her to the kitchen for a clean-up cloth, and I had her pelvis pinned from behind against the kitchen counter, my member pressed against her soft, warm bum. Her protests scarcely rose to a level one might consider symbolic.

Her dress up, her entry was supremely ready, moist beyond belief – her juices must have been stewing for some time. My penetration was like the proverbial hot knife through butter. I mounted her flattened face-first onto her kitchen counter.

I was a bit rough with her, to be fair. I noted teeth-marks on her neck afterwards, although ultimately she did not mind. Her channel gripped me with a most pleasing ferocity, and within ten minutes we each had climaxed, my seething fluids well discharged within her innermost recesses.

She was distraught, naturally, but I remained calm, and I think soothed some of her fears, although I know I introduced others, especially when she glimpsed my member. She broke away for a moment and I had time to think.

I would wait for my spawn to do its work.

I left her later that night sexually exhausted, after another coupling and a second infusion of spawn. Yet also troubled. And she also now had a puzzle to untangle: my references to those oblique passages in Trithemius’ occult work Steganographia in a note I had left on the chess set. These would assist her understanding of ‘the Abelartus codex’. I knew this would inflame her curiosity.

I could scarcely have scripted the affair more perfectly, but I have felt that way before. I would let the intervening time play out.

The manuscript did not need to be sold, for money anyway, although the funds would allow some other work to be done more easily. It was more to see if ideas, dangerous ideas full of subversive aspects from the text, might seep into the higher reaches of the academy – an influential, esteemed academy – always an intriguing place to begin anything disruptive.

And she was a possible, even promising, entry-point and ally.

I did not answer the first communication she sent the next day. I almost regretted having given her my card. Finally, after her fourth increasingly frantic try, late in the afternoon I issued a cryptic reply, and vowed not to respond to anything until the day following.

I did not see her again until that Friday, when the foot-dragging university officials finally acceded to my ultimatum. I had told them I needed an answer by the weekend, or I was off to Oxford with my manuscript, insisting that I had already booked a room there and was anxious to get on with it all.

I shouldn’t have been surprised by her presence at the meeting, which looked rather clumsily organised to me, judging by the expressions of the three present. The weaselly Murdoch was there along with a pompous, fleshy-faced, dark-suited fellow named Wadsworth, who seemed to be the one in charge of the negotiations.

We were officially introduced to each other at a ponderous wooden table in one of the older buildings of the university, built probably about the same time as the manuscript was written. The room overlooked an immaculate grassy court, the mullioned renaissance windows letting in the sharp summer afternoon light. Wadsworth struggled with my name, ‘Phausto Sabazios’, and squinted at the Greek lettering on my business card, which Sophia had already seen.

During ‘introductions’ she identified herself as ‘Sophy Eastern’. Of course I had heard her first name at the pub but was unaware of her surname. We had to pretend we had not met. Nor that my penis already had been inside her, twice yet. As the two of us shook hands, formal smiles on our faces, my organ twitched with the memory.

In preliminary discussion her eyes widened when I disclosed myself as the manuscript’s owner. Her startled glance to me had elements of accusation and betrayal but was predominantly of puzzlement. The mystery had deepened for her.

I did not expect the haggling to be a short-lived affair, and I was not disappointed.

I pointed out the extraordinary nature of the manuscript, its condition and provenance. They tried to downplay its significance, although the greed in their eyes was unmistakable. Murdoch seemed to have a middleman’s role, whilst Wadsworth drove the financial details. Sophia was quiet until asked her opinion, and I was pleased with her observations, rational, succinct and spot-on.

Even better, I could tell she had divined some of the more sinister, and thus unique, aspects of the text.

They broke three times for private consultation.

Eventually they capitulated, and whilst I gave away enough financial ground in our negotiations for them to think they had driven a good bargain, it was not the healthy amount of specie that made me smile, it was the possibilities of dispersal of the ideas of the work.

I knew from the way Wadsworth looked at her towards the end that she had had a major influence on their decision. His stern gaze almost shouted ‘You’d best be quite sure we get some serious academic capital out of this acquisition, young lady!’

But I knew I could help with that part.

As I signed the agreement I saw Sophia carefully studying both the gold nib of my Montegrappa fountain pen and my signature.

Dinner afterwards? They wanted to know. Would I consummate the transaction with them that night at a restaurant in town?

I demurred, citing my need to arrive in Oxford early on the morrow, for pressing reasons besides the manuscript.

‘But I will be back in town Friday next, before heading home to Thessaloniki’, I replied, ‘perhaps we might defer a celebratory toast until then?’ I also would then know whether their funds had cleared my bank account.

They agreed. I apologized for declining their offer that night, insisting that the week’s exhausting activities had left me too ‘boring’ for dinner company.

Sophia gave a start and shot me a look. I nodded with my eyebrows.

Thus discreetly signaled, we would meet at ‘The Boar’ again later that evening. I wasn’t sure if she would need to dodge other social arrangements with the group. Since we had not established a means to set a time, I got to the pub on the early side and settled in with a pint of ‘Oakem Ale’, unable to resist choosing from the tap handle labelled ‘Inferno’.

I watched her arrive off a bus from my window-side perch at the pub, her sandstone-color dress hugging her hips and waist most appealingly as she darted across the street, breasts jogging up and down in her hurry.

She sat across the table from me, her face flushed from her rushed entrance, her hair tousled. I imagined all the different ways my penis would enjoy her later.

I thanked her for her advocacy on my behalf (the ‘manuscript’s behalf’ as I called it) and heard a bit more about what she had said to convince them. Also, about how the responsibility for publicizing the purchase and analyzing the textual content and publishing the cultural significance of the work would largely be left in her lap.

I smiled, both inwardly and out.

‘I can likely help with that’, I said. ‘Already you have seen some of the connection of the manuscript with Steganographia, yes?’

She nodded vigorously. ‘If you hadn’t pointed me in that direction so that I could press that point, I don’t think they would have gone for it.’

‘But I am going to have to digest the work, publish my findings in a top journal, come up with some sort of brilliant analytic conclusion. It will take a good deal of time and effort. You probably don’t appreciate how tight research funding is here in Britain now. In the humanities anyway. We have to provide significant academic “output” for every project.’ She sighed but her eyes shone.

‘There is much, much more to the manuscript and its context’, I said. ‘I think, with some suggestions I would be willing to make, you will rise to the challenge.’

She looked relieved.

We drank ale and talked, then ate, my erection insistently reminding me of its presence. The drive to her cottage, only a few kilometers away, seemed to take forever whilst each of us entertained our own thoughts.

I do not think ten minutes elapsed between the time we opened her front door and then were in her bed together.

She wanted the bedroom light left on this time. I asked if she kept candles in the house. So we compromised, although at this point I do not think what she might regard as anomalies in my anatomy would have been fatally repulsive. Still, I far preferred the softer, flickering and more erotic lighting of a taper.

Spectacular frisson results when two intellect-driven individuals indulge in carnal amusements. Imaginative faculties are stretched, sensual perceptions heightened, lascivious tendencies indulged and satisfied.

She spent some time examining my member more fully, with greater light this time. Her wide eyes took in the size and ardent condition of my prick-head. She kissed me on my flanks whilst fondling my testicles, running her hands along my shaft, hard and anxious. Soon she was nestled between my legs, nuzzling my testicles, suckling, dragging her fingernails along the inner parts of my thighs, then easing my prick-head into her mouth.

Seeing her wavy head-hair moving about as her mouth and tongue fellated me was most arousing. When she shifted to a sideways position, I fondled breasts, soft dangling breasts, with the hand that could reach them. I squeezed them, tweaking nipples until she squirmed. Too forceful perhaps? They were erect enough, hard pinkie-width appendages at the apex of her sultry orbs, supremely sensitive.

Far more assertive than I anticipated, she soon had determined to lower herself down on my member. She was puzzled, again, at the counter-intuitive curve of my shaft, out and away rather than up and in, but her pudenda were swollen and wet, the texture and viscosity of the flesh of a ripe, freshly incised peach, her entry initially tight but easing way smoothly.

Her facial expression riveted me at full impalement, her surprise at the stretching fullness of my penis transitioned into a look of pure, illicit pleasure. I have noted that for many a woman, the first penetration of the night is experienced either as a sense of coming home or of enduring a barbarian invasion, perhaps both.

Regardless, she leaned forward, hands on my shoulders whilst she rocked her hips into mine and I felt my serpent glide up and down her channel.

Her chest was larger than one might have expected having first met her clothed, in her professional garb. Untethered from a bra, her breasts were globular, the size of the larger grapefruits that graced the orchards of the island of my birth. Firm-skinned and milky white on the outside, they were soft within as my hands held them, and when free, they moved enchantingly, asymmetrically, as she rode me.

Once again, her arousal reached a critical point rather too quickly, and I was compelled to slow matters down. I pulled her down onto me, squashing her breasts onto my chest and holding her close so that only the smallest hip movements could be conducted by either of us. Spreading her firm bum cheeks with both my hands whilst twitching my penis inside her was enough to keep her on edge without going over. I bit her neck, a favor which she pleasantly returned.

But I wanted to be on top.

Catching her by surprise, I rolled her over, my member still impaled, and I began a rather vigorous driving into her. My bum cheeks squeezed with violence, pleasure coursing through my nerves. She caught her breath, her thighs held me tightly, and I knew she was near. But I would not let her feel release, not yet.

In and out, side to side, my penis slid along the gripping embrace of her channel. My teeth were on her neck, my hands on the sides of her hips. She turned her head and let out a gasp. Her fingernails dug into my back. I thrust deeper whilst her breath was expelled violently. Her legs went quite rigid and her pelvis shook. I made sure several waves of pleasure traversed her before I discharged within her, a satisfying release of built-up tension.

We lay stuck together, the sweat and languor of expended energy fusing our bodies. My penis shrank inside her. Her ribcage stopped its heaving and her breathing returned to normal.

She looked into my eyes, and I disengaged and rolled to the side, face-to-face with this charming English girl.

I was able to note the features of her bedroom a bit more. Faded Victorian-era wall-paper covered the walls, two small windows were on the eastern side of the room, a low ceiling with plaster cracks in it looked down on us, but overall the room was clean and tidy. The candle flickered on her bedside table, casting a warm, inviting light. Her shoulders, ribs and flanks shone with sweat, her wet groin hair matted down, head hair distraught.

With my member softened, lying limply on my thigh, she examined my body closely. She held my scrotum, and with testicles relaxed rather than all drawn up together in excitement, she rolled each of the three in her hands, looking carefully.

‘I have not met a man with three testicles before’, she confided, as if not sure what to do with this observation.

‘I imagine it will not likely be an experience you find again.’

She looked at me warily.

‘Why three?’

I laughed. How was I to answer that?

‘They represent the Holy Trinity.’

I pointed to one. ‘The Father.’ Gesturing to the others, ‘The Son, and the Holy Spirit.’ I used their Latin liturgical names.

‘This way your worship session remains orthodox.’

She gave me an odd look, her mouth in an unwilling but amused smile.

‘The manuscripts you concern yourself with are all religious, Phausto. Theological in content, in tone, in approach. Your body as well?’ Her eyebrows arched. ‘You are trying to tell me you are somehow divine?’

‘In the medieval period’ (I almost said ‘my era’) ‘there was nothing not suffused with religion. You have seen enough dedications, manuscripts, and textual polemics to know that the thought of God, and often his counterpart, was omnipresent. Why not now, too? Is the region of the sacred and the profane off limits to modern life?’ My words challenged her.

‘Don’t we all worship? Something?’ I continued. ‘The numinous calls us when we least expect, and in erotic activities the call-and-response is magnified a hundred times. Was our coupling just now not in some fashion elemental, transcendent?’

She held my soft penis in her hand. It stirred. I willed it erect. She watched it harden before her eyes over several minutes. She looked at me, alarmed.

‘But you just climaxed! It stiffened all by itself?’ Her words had the timbre of accusation. She looked straight into my eyes.

‘I have trained well, for those such as you.’

I stroked her left breast, soft and pliant under my touch.

‘Yes, but take note, your nipples are still erect as well.’

She looked down, as indeed they were.

‘They don’t normally act that way.’ She looked away, as if digesting disturbing information.

‘After an orgasm they go quite soft. Usually.’ Her eyes returned to me uneasily.

I offered a suggestion. ‘Perhaps being so close to the Trinity they find they cannot relax?’ A wry smile crossed her face.

She looked back at me. My penis was quite stiff, its shaft hovering an inch or so above my navel, pointing away, the head engorged, held tightly by my foreskin. Of course it was still damp from just having been inside her, and well pleasured.

‘But the real divinity is not there with the Trinity’, I said, her hands now around my risen trio of testicles. ‘But here.’ I squeezed my anus and my prick bobbed, the head waving like a talisman in front of her.

‘So what is the polar opposite of the Trinity?’ I asked, with provocation.

‘The Antichrist?’ she ventured, perhaps amused.

‘Kiss the Antichrist’, I said, twitching my prick-head in front of her face. ‘See if you can withstand his charms.’

For a long time she looked me straight in the face, although her hands still cupped my testicles, running them through her fingers.

‘Certainly you have read St. Augustine?’ I asked. I could not imagine she had not.

‘Yes, of course. De Civitate Dei, the Confessions.’

‘Any of his anti-heretical polemics?’

‘No.’

‘In one of them, Contra Faustus, he elicited more clearly than anywhere else in his writings the nature of his thoughts on the evidence and cause of Original Sin.’

Her eyes held mine, and she cocked an eyebrow.

‘It is here.’ I twitched my penis again, stiff and rod-like, the head moving like a cobra. ‘He noted the fact that is possible for men to control all the rest of their lives, all their habits, their behaviors, their bodily functions, even their thoughts, but not this…’ I squeezed my anus and made my penis bob again.

‘The lust-stiffened penis, the male member, is the foundational source of sin, the legacy of Adam. A penis can grow erect even against a man’s will. At night. In dreams. Even when a man desires for all the world for his organ to remain quiescent, unaroused. Yet its power goes deeper, and when erect, everything it does is contrary to the notion of God. When emitting his seed a man cannot think of anything but his own pleasure. The idea of God, then, is impossible. Lust is the work of Satan, distracting otherwise firmly virtuous humans from their contemplation and prayerful approach to the Divinity.’

The vehemence of my words alarmed her. I suspect my oration sounded dated to her, but she of all people would understand.

‘That was all the evidence that Augustine needed. The concrete example of man’s Original Sin.’

‘But what about women? We have no irrepressible penis. Does not that change the nature of lust?’

‘Ah, but you excite lust. She what your presence has done?’ I waved my penis in front of her face again, entreating her attention.

‘How can one ignore an erect penis? The ultimate organ of desire? Which seeks nothing more but its own pleasure? Completely selfish, the diametric opposite of God.’ The skin of my organ gleamed in the candle light, the veins outlined.

‘Yet, does it not have its own, perhaps demonic, allure?’ She looked again at my erection. The head indeed now was leaking clear fluid, aroused into a white-hot condition.

She held my shaft, stared into my face for some minutes. There was no need to speak further.

Eyes still on me, she extended her tongue to the tip of my member, gently poking into my slit, tasting my oozing fluids. Then her lips went over the head, and her mouth descended my shaft. Her eyes closed as she focused on taste and touch alone.

The warmth, wetness and subtle ministrations of her mouth were welcome, intoxicating.

The next hour represented one of those enchanting, early-stage intertwinements that inevitably develop between two new partners in the grip of mutual, relentless desire. Whilst we had coupled only three times, already we were avid for each other. She had already divined my cock-head’s most sensitive spots. I had intuited the best means to tease her vulva lips with my fingers, moistening them from time to time with either my own saliva or her channel’s fluids. I had already gauged, and largely controlled, her own climax cycle.

The initial frantic excitement of our evening sated, we were happy to take our time for a second round. I straddled her chest, dropped my penis into her mouth, had my testicles suckled. I penetrated her on top for a leisurely non-climatic session, then took a break whilst each of us fondled the other with fingers and tongues. I ended up mounting her from behind.

I placed a pillow underneath her torso, elevating her bum, and for many minutes before penetration, I ran my penis up and down her glistening lips, whilst she inhaled with each teasing rub. Barely touching her lips, only the lightest graze to her clitoris, these teasing touches would become my habitual practice with her.

Finally a prolonged entry, millimeter by millimeter, as my penis forced its way in, sensing the gradual opening of her already well-spermed channel. Embedded up to my testicles, feeling the wetness of her groin hair, I twitched my penis inside her, gratified at the reciprocal squeeze-back she performed.

It was a slow, lovely fornication, an easy well-lubricated gliding, with pauses for me to lie on her back, squash her breasts together underneath her, rub fingers along slippery vulvar lips until her hips urged me into further thrusting.

I held her excitement in check for some time, but finally brought her release with violent strokes of my member, at the same time rubbing my fingers along her notch. Her eyes closed, my teeth in her neck, she growled face-first into her pillows, gripping my member with the force of Scylla and Charybdis.

My testicles tightened, a last long thrust, and my spawn erupted with a vibrant, excruciating intensity. Five more anal-clenches and my seminal load was completely discharged. I lay on top of her for some time, breathing into her neck.

After slipping my depleted organ from her sodden channel, I lingered by her side, she asking me, almost beseeching me, to stay the night with her. I could not yet let her know how difficult this was. I slept only a few hours at a stretch, except when completely exhausted, and found that my bed-mates never appreciated nor enjoyed that I had risen from bed to do other things during the night, feeling abandoned, or perhaps worse.

I cited work I needed which required attention back at my lodgings, told her that our sleeping together might have to wait for another time. She nodded reluctantly.

We kissed at her cottage door, and she looked up into my eyes.

‘I shall be back in town on Thursday, the day before our “big dinner” of celebration with your colleagues next week. Might I see you Thursday eve?’ I asked her.

She considered for a moment. ‘Perhaps you could come here? I worry if we meet at The Boar too often we will be noticed. This is not such a large town, after all.’

‘I have thought of that as well, yes, good idea.’

We parted with another kiss at the door, and a promise of an after-dinner visit Thursday next.

xxxxx

Sophy was nervous letting me in.

I sat on her sofa, her cat approaching me easily and staying close. She sat across. She poured me a glass of wine, a Barbera which I was pleased she had on hand. Since we were not in a pub, there was no need to subsist on ale.

‘I have so many questions for you!’ she began breathlessly. Her cheeks were flushed, which I found arousing. She was twitchy, slightly off-center. Perfect.

‘About the manuscript?’ I asked.

‘Yes, I have gone over it many times this week. But other questions as well.’

‘I will answer three only’, I replied. Her expression reflected disappointment, perhaps annoyance.

‘Three tonight’, I added, which eased her a bit, the suggestion implying that there might be more at a later time.

‘What do you know about the author of the piece? This “Abelartus?”‘

‘You must pose the three questions all up front, so that I can answer them fully, in a nexus.’

Her eyes went a bit wild.

‘So the author, yes, what are your other two?’

‘About the manuscript’s connection to Sponheim and Trithemius.’

I nodded.

‘And then, perhaps most importantly, who are you?’

I laughed. ‘You have my card. Phausto Sabazios, from Thessaloniki.’

She shook her head . ‘No, I mean really. Who are you?’ Her unruly head hair shook appealingly with her defiant movements.

‘Alright, three questions it is. You may be satisfied with the answers to the first two, although you will have developed more by the time I am done. The third I will answer to the best of my ability, but you may not be content with its completeness.’

She looked at me sharply.

‘But who is anyone?’ I asked. ‘Could you answer that yourself if the tables were turned? In one night? Who is Sophy Eastern?’

The dimple reappeared. ‘Of course you are right. But let us begin. The text’s author?’

The manuscript, as she had guessed by now, was not as simple as it seemed. And of course the only reason the university had come through with an offer was because she had convinced them of that.

I told her that the text was Abelartus’ only work, which was was true in a literal sense, if not strictly accurate. It was the only work in his name. I told her as well that Trithemius had been his disciple in the dark arts before their regrettable falling out, and that it was the abbot himself who had urged the production of the work in 1498, with some urgency.

I filled in some gaps in her understanding of that troublesome Benedictine monastery at Sponheim, of the wild nature of theological debate in that time just before Martin Luther inaugurated the Great Disruption. How unsettled the intellectual sphere was, how deep the magma seethed underneath the surface of the Church, how built-up forces were straining its tectonic seams.

I did not tell her that she was sitting across from ‘Abelartus’ himself, that it had been my hands who had inscribed those carefully coded words, blotted the ink, and then completed the colophon, just as she had guessed, in a powerful hurry, for speed and secrecy had become critical to the book’s future.

We talked for some time, and as I predicted, each detail I furnished only generated further questions from her. I finally waved a hand. She looked piercingly at me.

‘So Phaustos, who are you?’

I began with the obvious, mentioning my university education, such as it was, at Heidelberg. She was surprised I only possessed Bachelor’s and Master’s in Arts, not a doctoral degree. I was not yet ready to tell her that I intercepted in 1484.

I told I had read Aristotle and Boethius, but also less traditional works.

How manuscripts had fascinated me, ever since I saw the first one. How they allowed the arc of knowledge, or for me, subversion, although I did not mention that part, to travel along the paths of men, creating networks of understanding, leading to action, and change, sometimes of a cataclysmic nature. How the aesthetics of text production often appealed to me as much as the content.

She nodded. She had seen her own share of handsome medieval manuscripts.

‘So where are you from?’

‘Greece’, I answered and she frowned in annoyance.

‘Of course, but where? When?’

‘The island of Patmos, off the coast of Anatolia.’ I avoided the second part.

She started. ‘Doesn’t the legend suggest that John the Baptist visited there?’

I shook my head in assent. ‘A little before my time.’

She nodded but I could tell she was having to weigh each statement I made, trying to determine truth value.

‘My boyhood was spent amongst trees, of orange and other citrus.’ I continued. ‘There was neither running water nor electricity in our home.’

She nodded. She could not know that neither would reach the island for many centuries after my birth.

The questions grew detailed, more pointed. She was less satisfied with the answers. For the first time in our conversations together it felt as if we were engaged in a cross-examination. She probed unceasingly.

‘How did you get from Patmos to Heidelberg?’ she pressed.

‘Ship, then overland by horse’, I let slip.

‘When?’

She eyed me intently. A long silence ensued.

‘In 1479’, I finally said. There was no point in continuing the dissimulation.

A long, fraught silence hung in the air between us. Our eyes met. Wind blew tree branches outside the window. I could hear a clock ticking somewhere in her house.

‘You are Abelartus.’ Her words were soft, breathless.

I bowed my head. ‘At your service.’

Her eyes widened and she opened her mouth, then shut it slowly.

‘I thought that might be the case.’ Her voice was small, just above a whisper.

She looked away.

In a quiet voice she continued. ‘The handwritten note you left me on the chess set? Our first night?’

I nodded.

‘I tested the ink in the lab.’ Her fingers fidgeted. ‘The composition was identical to the ink used in the Abelartus – rather your – codex. The text’s ink dated from circa 1500 of course, and your pen’s ink is contemporary. But it appears to be the identical chemical formula.’ Her eyes sought mine.

‘You still make your own ink? No modern pen utilizes such an archaic combination of ingredients.’

‘I find some habits from my past difficult to shed. And it is a fine ink, dark black and durable. You must use a gold nib however, over time the ink is corrosive to other metals. Although finding suitable oak galls is harder than it used to be.’

She nodded, recognizing the importance of this particular ingredient.

She was silent.

‘So I have been copulating with a five-hundred-year-old man.’ She paused again.

‘A small correction, if you please.’ She looked at me keenly. ‘”Fornicating.”‘

Her eyes glinted. ‘Copulation is not exact enough a term for our activities?’

‘Never use a general category term when a more precise one can be employed.’

‘Every sexual act we have undertaken is prohibited in the scriptures. We are not married. I am not sure that any religion or ethical system, anywhere or at any time, would sanction our behaviour.’

I continued. ‘You said you read Augustine’s Confessions?’ She nodded. ‘You remember what he said about pears?’

She smiled thinly. ‘Yes, as a boy he stole pears from his neighbour’s tree. He said that a stolen pear always tasted sweeter than one gained by more legitimate means.’

‘That is the difference between fornicating and copulating. The former is always superior.’ I looked at her, thinking how delectable it had been to first ravish her, make her body quiver with lust, flood her with spawn. And then do it again, and again.

She held her breath for a moment. ‘Yes, I suppose you are right.’

‘But enough questions. You have learned enough about my history for the moment. It is time we learned more about each other in other ways.’

We made our way to her bed. Our coupling was short, intense, and then we lay next to each other. She looked quite spent.

On her back, she turned her head towards me.

‘When do you leave?’ She meant my flight home.

‘The Saturday after our dinner tomorrow. I drive to Heathrow in the morning.’

‘Is your given name Abelartus? Or Phausto?’

‘Neither, although the latter is closer. You should call me that.’

For the dozenth time she looked at me with surprise, sceptically, but she accepted my explanation.

I left regretfully, looking forward to our rendezvous the next day.

xxxxx

Our Friday dinner in town with the negotiating crew went well, everyone in good spirits. The wine flowed easily, we traded stories of unusual manuscripts. Even Murdoch had a tale or two to tell.

Finally, the group began to break up. Murdoch looked a bit unwillingly to Sophia. ‘I expect you will require a ride home?’

‘Which direction do you need?’ I asked, feigning ignorance.

‘I live in Oakington, to the north of town.’ A faint smile flickered over her face.

‘I am staying in Huntingdon’, I lied. ‘Are you far off the main road? Perhaps I can drop you off?’

Murdoch looked relieved, he clearly was not relishing a late night drive that would take him out of his own way home.

She climbed into the Aston and we drove the now familiar route to her cottage.

It was an odd night. My departure the next day had obviously affected Sophia more than either of us imagined. She wanted to know what was next, what trajectory our relationship might take. I could see that she had become far too attached, not just to me but the entire scenario, the enigmatic text, the abrupt purchase by her university, the tasks now in front of her.

Our talk grew a bit calmer. I promised not only to stay in contact, but assist with textual analysis in her publication efforts. I also, to her evident relief, indicated that I would return to town in four months, and would stay for several weeks. We would have extended time together.

Our coupling that night was intense but tinged. She climaxed early, and hard, but dissolved in tears when I left. Despite a womb full of spawn and the languid exhaustion our coupling produced, she was most unhappy.

xxxxx

I returned in early November, after what Sophia had described as a glorious autumn. It had stayed unusually warm though October, with only desultory rains. Yet I arrived on a cold day with deep swirling fog off the fens.

Our correspondence had been productive, although neither as frequent nor as satisfying as I knew she wished. She had sent me drafts of her paper with the somewhat unwieldy title ‘The Abelartus Text: A Fifteenth Century Labyrinth of Lexicons and Hidden Meanings’. It had become quite good, her analytic qualities and codicological expertise were exposed in her narrative and impressive by any standard. That I could add context and decipherments of the manuscript did not hurt. I knew she would be anxious for serious discussion.

The latest draft of her article had been provisionally accepted to a prestigious palaeographical journal, although one reviewer had raised serious questions about the ‘liberties’ she had taken in interpreting sections of the text, doubting the connections she drew from Trithemius’ work. He was quite mistaken of course, but she still would have a challenge in refuting his objections.

Part of my time on this visit would be devoted to assisting revisions to her draft. She joked to me about the difficulties (and impossibility) of crediting me on the piece, as consulting with the actual author of a medieval manuscript was not a traditional academic practice.

On my first visit back to her place, by prior arrangement, I parked some distance away from her cottage, at a nearby small public walking park. We had decided that discretion suggested my Aston was too noticeable stationed in front of her home every visit, and that it would be best not to excite neighborly interest.

She greeted me at the door that Friday night, excited, girlish, brimming with energy. Dinner and conversation was good, anticipatory to a high degree. Bed beckoned.

Our coupling that first night back did not even include our customary twice, the pent-up energy expended by us of immense proportions. I left her drifting off to sleep in her own bed, promising a rendezvous at her cottage again the next evening.

xxxxx

‘I have more questions.’

She announced this scarcely after I had entered her cottage the next day whilst we sat at her sofa, wineglasses in hand, an aromatic dinner in her oven.

‘You have far too many’, I laughed.

‘No, this is about interpretation, not about you. I have been poring over the manuscript as well as the other texts you recommended.’ She paused. ‘This is about the substitution of various words and phrases, translating the text as it were.’

‘So I have a huge puzzle you can help me solve.’

‘Yes?’ my eyebrows arched.

‘The the second section in the third quire, where it says – where you say – “It is always best when the voice of God is unquestioningly swallowed by the firm believer.”‘

I nodded.

‘The word “swallowed” – “devorabat” in the text – is a most unusual term in such a theological context. I am not aware of any similar phrasing in anything I have read from that era. It is counter-intuitive in the text, you don’t “swallow” sound, never mind a “voice”‘. She peered at me closely.

‘But if I am deciphering correctly, using both Steganographia and the Polygraphia as lexicons, the “voice of God” is “semen”, and the “firm believer” is an “acolyte”‘.

‘You recollect the next passage, presumably?’ I asked, amused at the route her investigations were taking.

‘Something about the enjoyment, the ecstasy of the “firm believer”, how faith is furthered by this action, how it pleases God. Am I right?’ She looked at me closely.

I laughed. ‘Spot on. But enough along this line, I promise a chance to explain more fully. Later.’

Her eyes gleamed.

It was an enjoyable dinner. I was being fed well at her place, the only drawback being her continued request to have me spend the night.

Her dining table was small, we sat across from each other. I never tired of the habitual unruliness of her hair, how she unconsciously brushed a strand of it off an ear with one hand when speaking.

I noted how she spooned the viscous stew she had prepared past her lips, her tongue flicking a large broad bean into her mouth. My member twitched. In her turn, she watched intently later during dessert as I enjoyed her quince pastry, my tongue deliberately, and lovingly, sliding along and caressing the smooth slices of baked quince as they entered my mouth. I am sure I saw her hips give a little quiver.

We settled into bed and had our usual first furious fornication. She had most aggressively ridden me on top, holding onto me tightly as my spawn erupted forth into her.

Lying next to her afterwards, I called her attention to the passage she had mentioned earlier.

‘Your translation was accurate as far as it went, but there is one other part. You perhaps have noted that often “God” as cross-referenced by Trithemius means “the teacher” or “the elder”‘.

She nodded, ‘Yes, you are quite right.’ She looked closely at me. ‘You are certainly my elder,’ and gave a little laugh. ‘Perhaps my teacher as well?’

‘And mayhap you are my acolyte?’ She looked away then back at me.

‘Yes, it is time. For you to swallow.’ My words were soft but decisive.

She had licked me, she had taken my member fully into her mouth, but had not ingested my spawn. Her eyes gleamed.

‘I should like to inseminate your mouth. We have not done so yet.’

She looked at my penis-head, then at me, alarmed.

‘But first, your own pudenda need another pleasing. That alone will be enough to harden me.’ She smiled at the phrasing, but then laid back on her pillows, languid, beckoning, and spread her legs.

Such a mess she was, groin hair plastered down from our coupling, spawn and her own fluids leaking from her entry.

I tasted her, tickling, teasing, letting her oozings register on my tongue. My own spawn is strong in smell and flavour, the mixture with her own aroused fluids a sensory delight. I should find a way to prepare a meal with this sauce. Perhaps stewed eels and butter beans all coated with the mucilage? My member twitched.

As was to be my case with her, always, the extended tease preceded the climax. The longer I could keep her at the edge of the cliff, the more strongly her body would divest itself of the built-up tension.

I licked her until her hips were squirming underneath me, then dallied at her side, nibbling at her neck whilst fingers ranged over her nipples, along ticklish flanks, back to her swollen, oozing vulva. Little flicks of my fingertips on her clitoris caused violent wrenchings from her hips as she tried to meet my hands in a more satisfying fashion. But I would hover, slide fingers lightly along one side of her lips, then the other, almost, but not quite approaching her engorged notch.

Her breath was restless, legs stiffening and then moving about. We reached a level where I suspected I could just vibrate the tip of my tongue on her notch and she would climax.

So then I left off again, rubbed her chest, dragged my mouth and tongue along her side, found hip bones and soft inner thigh muscles to kiss whilst she quivered.

A few times a strangled ‘Please!’ escaped her lips, she was so reluctant to ask for release, to vocalize her intense desire.

I settled in between her legs, spreading them wide. Her head turned to the side, her arms hugging her chest, wrapping her breasts in her own embrace.

A long lick up one side of lips, down the other, her hips pressing into me, begging for more. Tip of my tongue to her notch and another quiver. Then a slow finger insertion. I could feel her grip my digit.

Mouth on notch, tongue working, my finger pressed up and inwards. She exploded.

Her head thrashed from side to side, hips shaking uncontrollably. The first wave was long and intense, the next three diminished in length and magnitude, until she lay limply on the bed, the left side of her head pressed into a pillow. Ribs were heaving, her thighs had turned soft and lifeless. I eased up alongside her.

We dallied for some time in an embrace, my penis in a furiously aroused state. When I judged her recovery adequate, I settled back on her pillows, my organ fully tumescent, and she began to stroke me.

I would like to think that the shining in her eyes was due to her own excitement, but I am not positive. This was the first time that the translated text had intruded itself so explicitly into her consciousness and our own activities. That what we were about to do had been written down, urged, set into impermeability. Almost prophecised.

Her eyes went to the head of my organ, full, taut, expectant, damp at the tip.

Her lingual ministrations to my penis had always been more than pleasant. Her tongue was soft, wet, imaginative, and her attention had been focused and invariably sensitive to my own pleasure. One cannot ask more when one’s genitals are under the control of another’s care.

Her tongue and mouth worked me with affection, without rush, concentrated.

Lips over my head, constricting then loosening. Sliding down my shaft, tongue pressing along the ventral surface. My head pressed fully against the back of her throat, yet she did not demonstrate discomfort. Her breathing was relaxed, her attention as though riveted on a manuscript in front of her, not a difficult one, but one worthy of care.

Fingers played lightly along my testicles, stroking, rubbing. She took time off, to my delight, to nuzzle beneath my scrotum, licking wetly, nosing my anxious mass of spawn-producing organs around in their oscillating sack. Each testicle spent time in her mouth, getting suckled.

Then back to my penis, a cycle that went on for perhaps a half-dozen times. My hips grew restless as she continued, it was harder and harder for me to resist pushing back into her throat.

She changed position a few times, most pleasant when I could reach a breast, tweak a nipple. Her head movements excited me, the way her hair moved about, the tip of her tongue extending to sensitive spots along my shaft, the head of my penis.

She could tell, perhaps due to the change in texture of my penis-head, that my crisis was imminent. Her lips constricted around my head, slid up and down my shaft with urgency. My testicles churned wildly, my nerves on edge, close to an impossible state.

A heave and the first spurt was released, several more followed. She held my penis tightly in a lip embrace, moving up and down but never letting go. The discharge from my loins was explosive, abundant, gratifying.

Her throat contracted twice, perhaps three times, as she swallowed. Just the thought of my spawn entering her mouth and innards excited me, another destination for my work.

She nursed at my penis as it shrank, until it became too sensitive to touch. She looked up at my face, her lips with a slight sheen of spawn on them. No one could have exhibited such wanton abandonment. She had pleased me greatly and knew it.

Yet there was one more orifice to infuse.

xxxxx

‘Have you a pair of your archival gloves here at home?’

My question caught her by surprise the next night after dinner.

‘Yes, why?’

‘I should like you to bring them to bed tonight.’

I thrilled when she looked at me with such puzzlement in her eyes, attempting to parse my thoughts.

Before disrobing later, candlelight casting a warm glow around her bedroom, she saw me place a small shallow bowl, of a medieval Swabian design, on the bedside table. She raised an eyebrow.

‘You’ll see’, I said.

While she divested herself from her clothing, I laid myself out naked on the bed, head supported by pillows and the backboard. My organ lay outstretched, fairly limp, on my left thigh.

‘I should like you to put your gloves on. Slowly if you would.’

She gazed at me with an odd expression. At this stage I think I could have asked her anything and she would have done it, but the whole evening had departed from even the barest semblance of our normal routine.

I watched as she pulled her gloves on, one finger at a time. Her breasts quivered with her movements, the candle-light casting her curves into shadows. Her facial expression was focused, although she looked at me quizzically as the gloves went on. Already my penis began to stir.

She stood in front of me, nothing on her body save the inconsequential fabric of the gloves. She appeared even more open, bare and vulnerable than if gloves had not encased her hands.

I spread my legs and raised an eyebrow.

She settled in between my legs and held my shaft in one hand, the other underneath my Trinity, slowly rolling them with her smooth, thinly clad fingers.

Her gaze went back and forth from my penis, gradually expanding, to my face, her eyes probing, searching for signs that she was pleasing me. The signs were not subtle.

My penis grew erect until it pointed up, curving away, my foreskin tightly holding my penis-head proud. The friction-free sensation of her gloves differed from the other times her fingers had aroused me. They glided over my taut skin, soft cotton teasing my sensation nodes into delightful spikes of excitement.

She changed rhythm, alternated grip by stroking my member then pulling on it, rolling drawn-up testicles in her smooth-gloved fingers. The knowledge that these gloves had touched other, textual, valuable items in the course of her professional life increased my enjoyment. Desecration has its own pleasures.

I spread my legs further, my erection now quite anxious. I had the ability to climax quickly if I wanted, but willed my arousal into a slower, longer cycle.

She watched as the head of my penis bobbed, grew large and turned colour in the candlelight.

Her own nipples had grown prominent, engorged. They pranced like little ponies as her breasts shifted with her hand movements. I could tell by how she settled on her haunches that her own arousal was under-way.

I laid back a bit further and allowed my serpent to enter its desperate, not-to-be-denied phase. Her right hand groped under my testicles, the other stroking, teasing my penis-head, now wet at the tip.

She sensed my legs stiffening, the catch in my breath, the tautness of my torso. A few more determined strokes and my anus clenched shut. My loins issued forth, an eruption of five good long strings of spawn, coating her gloves, my navel, my chest. She looked satisfied, and we gazed at each other, my ribs expanding and contracting with the exertion.

I reached for the bowl and scooped a bit of the spawn up off my skin. Her eyes followed me, unsure of my purpose. I placed the bowl back on her table. She pulled her well-spermed gloves off carefully, then retreated to the WC to clean herself off, returning with a towel to wipe me dry.

She settled in next to me, entirely unsure of what was to be next. We embraced and I was gratified that when my fingers reached her lips they were slippery, open, beckoning. I nestled, kneeling, between her legs.

My tongue dallied along her lips, taking in the scent and texture. The increasing tautness of her legs and torso were intoxicating to me. I teased, but not for long. This time I wanted her climax to be short and strong.

Soon her hips were bucking into me, my tongue darting up her channel and flicking her clitoris. She hugged her chest, breasts squashed together. Her legs grew rigid, her hips jerked and a good strong series of clenches signalled her climax. Her head went from side to side, little restrained moans escaping her mouth. Rhythmic cycles of tension-spasms coursed through her body, gradually dying to limpness.

I nursed at her slick channel for some time, her overpowering olfactory deluge affecting my own member, which had grown quite hard again.

When her breathing had calmed and her flesh felt limp and soft, I retreated up her body for an embrace. Her eyes shone.

We lay together for some time. Her fingers wandered down to my organ, playing lightly over my engorged head.

I eased her over on to her belly, with a pillow underneath. The sight of her exposed channel, glistening with fluids, was intoxicating, and I ran fingers briefly up and down her lips.

I nursed with my mouth at her split, the lovely liquid lips wide and inviting. One of my fingers, wet with her own fluids, circled her anus and I felt her tense involuntarily. I continued low-level attention to her channel, but increased pressure with my finger along the perimeter of her fundament. My own member was growing impossibly anxious.

I knelt behind her and I knew she expected my now familiar rear-entry, since she settled her head down into the pillows. Yet this time with two fingers I scooped up some of the left-over semen from the bowl and dribbled it about her anus. A finger circled the rim, pressing. Slowly but deliberately her final orifice was massaged, coaxed into a slippery, reluctant willingness. She held her breath when a spawn-slicked thumb pressed firmly enough to open the entrance.

I took my time, employing more spawn as necessary to coat her anus and fundament. She was quite tense, holding her hips still while I opened the way, probed inside her.

When three fingers could fit, I judged the time right.

I sidled up behind her, ran my penis up and down her slippery lips, even just barely inside her channel, enough so that the head was enclosed. She held her breath, and pushed her hips back on me. But I withdrew, and put my head at the entrance of her anus, glistening with spawn.

A long slow push, all the while fingers along her notch, providing stimulation and perhaps distraction. It took several minutes for the head of my member to push past the forced gate of her fundament until it completely encompassed my prick-head.

I paused in delight. The grip on my penis was extraordinary, a constricting jacket of rebellious muscle. I leaned forward over her back, reaching underneath to grope breasts and nick her neck with my teeth. She was tense underneath me. It was clear she had never done this before.

Gradually my penis eased its way in, each slow advance followed by an acclimatising pause. Her rectum walls gripped my member with python-like tightness.

Finally my testicles rested against the bottom of her lips, my member at complete penetration. I bit her neck in pleasure, and she clenched her anus involuntarily. A ring of intoxicating tightness gripped my penis. I twitched my member, she squeezed back.

Breasts were soft in my hands, her body no longer stiff and resistant, but more relaxed, although still hardly welcoming.

I began a series of long, slow pushes, a retreat as my member’s head slid along her rectum walls, almost to the clenching anus mouth itself, then carefully back in again, testicles enjoying the pressure against her groin at full impalement.

I rubbed fingers along her lips, which had grown large and swollen again. Pleasure was beginning to grow inside herself, her movements were no longer reluctant, and she pushed back on my penis as it moved forward into her.

Just the thought of our actions, the violation I knew she was enduring for the first time, was enough to inflame me. Her smooth white body laid out beneath me, head hair tossed wildly about her pillows, bum-cheeks spread wide, all of this was incendiary.

I picked up the tempo of my movements, now thrusts rather than pushes. Her breath grew rapid, her fundament clamped down on me with severity.

She climaxed suddenly, her anus grabbing my penis with a frantic death-grip. This urged me into more violent thrusts. I bit her neck, her hips quivered, and my spawn was drawn forth by both the relentless constriction she produced and the violence of my thrusts.

Six good eruptions of spawn discharged into her innards, my testicles straining for a complete infusion. Her head was turned, my teeth in her neck. Her own teeth were clenched about a section of the pillow fabric.

We rested for some time, bodies slick with sweat, muscles expended, energy spent.

Again she wanted me to stay. I had told her I would be away for the week, up north, but I promised her an overnight stay at my lodging, my friend’s place, when I was back in town on Friday. I could tell she would prefer the location to be her own home, but she was grateful nonetheless.

We kissed after I dressed, my organ in one of those gratifyingly exhausted conditions. All penile nerves were still tingling, antagonistic to any contact, however gentle. I walked gingerly to my car. I had to keep my legs more deliberately spread than normal when driving back.

I was jubilant. Her final entry had been breached, my spawn now infused into every possible opening she had to offer. I would leave it to her to find the relevant page in the text about this progression. She was now fully anointed.

I thought of the next stages for us, how fervently felicitous they would be.

I wanted to please her. I also wanted to torture her. The two are not always that far apart.

Next, Bound to Know

THE END