Page 45 of Burying Venus

‘Lord Robert, I don’t know what to say. My apologies… please, I will clean your boots,’ Dermot said. He knew he could not charm like Will; he was no sweet coquette.

Robert sighed as the carriage came to an abrupt halt. ‘To think I nearly allowed you to bed my brother.’

Tristan inched further back, and Dermot realised that he, being in such a peculiar state, might imagine it was his dignity being traded.

Amusing as this idea was, for Dermot would’ve certainly accepted, Robert’s anger brought him to reality. As soon as the doors creaked open, Robert jumped out, marching towards the portcullis where his guardsmen looked to be readying for some attack. Dermot cringed as he leapt down himself, having no desire to be trapped with Tristan.

Immediately his eyes met a few eager soldiers outside, and he rushed after Robert. These men despised locals, and Dermot liked them even less.

‘Dermot, take these,’ Robert said.

The boots were thrust into his waiting arms, secured by Robert’s strong grip. As they moved to part, fingers grasped his forearm. Never before had he, a man of good height and strength, been ensnared by another. Robert was a different beast; he had all the strength of their conquerors and no native blood. Dermot did not know if their ancestors had ever met, but he reasoned that surely they hadn’t, else he would not be living.

‘I shall deal with you later,’ Robert said. As he left, Dermot heard a guardsman calling out for him.

All that remained of the day were the sodden boots clutched firmly to his chest. Aunt and nephew left no mark on the world. They lived briefly in poverty and suffered at the hands of men born to a superior station. Even Dermot was naught but a plaything for the Stanleys. Clenching his fists and cutting the fine leather under his fingernails, he hurried away. He had no patience for any guardsman or maid that dared approach him for news of the day’s events. They would hear soon enough.

To his surprise, the castle was quiet. Hardly anything could be heard beyond the distant talk of guardsmen; what a fool he had been in his ignorance, their presence being so obvious that it should’ve caught no man unawares. The eeriness chilled him, there being no servants about. The place was devoid of life.

Turning the corner to the shared bedroom, he recognised the paint peeling from the walls and with it the gradual deterioration of stone. With this and the guard’s words that morning, it seemed perhaps change was finally taking hold; that the aristocrats would soon get their due and the castle would become nothing more than a bygone.

Turning the handle and stepping in, Dermot swiftly closed the door behind him. Both Will and Stephen were absent, their beds perfectly made. There was no sign that three men shared the small space. Dropping Robert’s boots at the side of his bed with burgeoning suspicion, he set off for the rest of the supplies.

Even going to the alcove nearest the courtyard yielded no result. Perhaps Will and Stephen were in the kitchen preparing dinner, else there was a meeting where Dermot’s presence was, as ever, unwanted. Clutching the scrub and brush in one hand and the wax in the other, he stumbled back. The stress worsened his affliction so that his eyes burnt terribly; forcing out the day’s pollution of smog and death.

Shuddering as he recalled the aunt’s pain, Dermot threw his body against the door. He still held the cleaning supplies tightly to his chest, Robert’s boots languishing against his bed.

‘Maldred!’ Dermot called. He lumbered about, turning his head so that his neck ached with the force of it. If anyone were to see him, they would think him mad. Robert likely would’ve tied him to the pyre himself. ‘Two people lie dead!’ he shouted again, cringing as he recalled Weston’s plans, not daring even to relay them to the instigator. ‘What am I to do? Was this your plan all along, that my kinsmen should die? To seduce me to do your bidding?’

There was not so much as a murmur in reply. Dermot fell onto the bed, hoisting himself forward as soon as the cover chafed against his back. He slipped wordlessly to the floor, Robert’s boots unmoving as he thundered down beside them. Taking the cloth that he’d shoved crudely into his trousers, Dermot relished spitting on the thing and smattering it onto the boots; degrading and defiling in any small way he could. He had first known Lord Robert for the fineness of his boots; the terror as they edged ever nearer. They were, he was certain, worth more than his life.

‘Bastard,’ Dermot said, scrubbing with all his might as to rid them of any smatterings of vomit. They were handsome things, black as ever, and only made the incident fester further in his mind. Despite any supposed friendliness between them, Dermot would always be lesser, filthy.

With that thought, he smashed his head against the wall, fists curled so tightly as to make his hands shake. The violence he wished to enact was without limit. Briefly, he thought about taking a torch and casting it down upstairs. If he put enough effort into the task, he might manage to set Robert alight.

Even this caused his wretched body to take an interest. Immediately he imagined rutting against Tristan or Thorne, for to practice pleasure at the expense of a devil surely wasn’t a grave sin. The hotness of his body simmered into desire and the beginnings of pleasure lashed through him. He was not without wickedness himself.

Upon biting his lip, he tasted the healthy thrumming of blood and thrust hard against Robert’s boots. His masters would never know that he spat in their food and treated their belongings with disdain. Obeisance born from necessity was nothing but revolt smouldering away, and with that thought, his pleasure reached its peak with Robert’s boots as his only bedfellow.

Red-faced as a demon and groaning his release, he cast the boots aside in a fit of shame. He was no less deranged than his enemies. Two of his kinsmen lay dead, a mainlander foisting experiments on their corpses, and Dermot had been sat pleasuring himself with all manner of sordid imaginings.

Grabbing the rag and giving Robert’s boots a scrubbing, for something more offensive than vomit had found its way onto them, he turned the wax’s lid and winced as the heat touched his skin. No trace of defilement could now be observed, the boots shining blacker than cinder.

Though he knew Robert was ignorant, fear coiled in his gut. It was undoubtedly the worst thing that had been done to the man. Casting his head down onto his knees, Dermot curled into himself and sobbed.

He did not care who heard. His whole body rattled, hands twisting worriedly over his chest. He had just seen two people die; their screams haunted. Never again would he find solace.

‘Maldred!’ Dermot cried. He no longer cared to look around, secure in his loneliness. Upon receiving no reply, he whispered, ‘Monster.’ That he had been tricked into doing such a thing, slaughtering his own countrymen for the benefit of mainlander lords, did not bear thinking on. He had been betrayed. His plot with Maldred was meant as a boon to his people, not a punishment, yet it had come to this. His own hatred was used as a tool by his enemies to further their cause. Yet he could not make sense of Maldred’s design. Some of their people still prayed to faeries, though they would soon be burnt as heretics. Ponder as he might, the sky steadily darkening as he did, he could not come to it.

Robert’s boots at his side, he cast himself forward so he was on all fours. Only then, stifling a yawn and blinking blearily, did he attempt to get up properly. He had spent so long on the floor.

Throwing the door open and finding the halls empty, boots clutched firmly to his chest, he rushed to the entrance and again found no one. There was no chatter as he stumbled up the servants’ staircase, meaning dinner had likely come and gone. Cursing himself when he thought of Robert missing his favourite pair of boots, he strode to a place he only dared go in the afternoon while the inhabitants were absent.

Ambling as he did, he could not see much. The place was lit dimly in flame, walls of stone adorned by a few sparse tapestries that he could not discern due to the time of day. He knew Robert’s room, of course, for it was the largest on the floor and the best decorated. Sometimes he had dared look through Robert’s books, great tomes penned in dead languages, and lamented he would never be privy to their wisdom.

‘… a wretch,’ Robert was saying as Dermot stumbled to his door, a flicker of candlelight his only guide. ‘I have no patience for it.’

Another person shushed him. Intrigued, Dermot leaned against the door. He knew no one with so much sway.