Title: LAST YEAR AT LANGERHANS
Author: R Schultz, from a concept by Linda Hancock ( cousindream@aol.com )
Fandom: Not Star Trek
Series: Über VOYAGER
Pairing Code: B'Elanna/females
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: Rich white guys at Paramount own Trek. This fiction just seems sorta Trek-like, so all characters and story belong to me according to Berne Laws. 3500 words, February 2003.
Warning: This fiction presents lesbian romance as lovely and worthy. If this abrogates the mental vacuum seal on your dirt free mind, do not read. All those residing in thought-free or censored locales or countries must go away right now. Shmoo!
Summary: Victoria's Diamond Jubilee is next year, the sun never sets on the British Empire, and America stretches untroubled from sea to shining sea, the white man's burden is heavy, and the right sort flock to the spas of Europe for the Season. They go to Karlsbad, Bath, and such, for the health-giving waters. They flock together to preen and to see and be seen by their peers. But especially they throng to Marienbad on the Islands of Langerhans, for it is there that one absolutely MUST be seen. It is the Gilded Age and it will last forever and ever.
Written for Round X of the Femme Fuh-Q Fest, and will be archived at the ASCEML.
For more great FFF stories, visit http://www.oocities.org/femme_fuhq_fest
Comments as always to cousindream@aol.com
by R Schultz
It was a shadowy overcast night, warm, and the wake of the ferry was phosphorescent in the warm Mediterranean, even this late in the Season. I fixed a melancholy stare on Marienbad, wondering when and if I might come to this vicinage again. Fortunately the crossing to the mainland was over in a few hours, and the night stretched before me. All the way home, if I wished. Was somber and ecclesiastical Norway still my home?
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
As befitting a lady of obvious quality, such as myself, I deposited my fine linen handkerchief back in my stiff black purse.
Underneath my wide straw hat, I gazed out at the passing throng. My foundation irritated me in the Mediterranean heat, and I felt faint after having spat my carmine sputum. It did not matter. None of it mattered. I did not even know really why I had bothered to arrive for the season. Mayhaps I did so in memory of a vanished love. Also, my days of snaring a likely husband was long over, as witness the fact that my mother had stayed home in Kobnhavn this season.
She had already written me off as a lost and rudderless ship. As had my father. There was to be no prize catch for me.
Custom now allowed her to work to find a good match for my younger sisters. I wished the others joy in their games. Last fall both Letta and Margethe had come out, and had even enjoyed the season immensely. The Spanish Ambassador's son had taken an interest in Letta, but it was a hopeless and forlorn hope.
As persons of substance, we were restricted to a match with gentlemen of the protesting churches. Papa had been adamant about that. Letta wouldn't have cared a whit, but it was not her place to decide, not as some lower caste girl might. We were a people of substance, after all.
My brothers had their own places now. Gunther's Dentistry practice in Oslo was tainted with the stain of tradesman, but nowadays it was an honorable profession. My entire family existed in a state of security and propriety. I lived out of it. I should be in an expensive and right sort of a sanitarium, no doubt. But I had my fill of them.
I had four lethal bottles of laudanum hidden in my trunk for when I could no longer rise up from my morning purges. Let the dark master take me then.
The bench moved as the girl, the young woman, sat next to me.
I had the privilege now, I supposed, of staring forthright at a stranger. It no longer mattered.
Dark haired, she was smiling at me. Quite pretty, in the way so many did, here in the papist climes. Creme and tule and bone-yellow adorned her, a lady of substance. She turned to a small older woman, her chaperone, I presumed, and laughed a few words at her in a Latin tongue. Not French, or Spanish, or Italian, but reminding me of all of them.
The chaperone went to sit alone on the bench directly opposite us. As the sun was now sliding down the sky, the promenade was becoming thronged with important bourgeois, as well as children with servants in dark blues or greens and stark starched whites.
She ventured some German at me, but I replied in English. She was a bit forward, venturing so without an introduction, but this was, after all, the season at Marienbad, on the Islands of Langerhans. Many things were allowed.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"Here ya go, darlin's, something sweet to settle your stomach," Kathryn said. She handed out small bowls of sweetened and whip-stiffened cream cheese to Belle and myself. It was stuffed with fruit bits and flavors. My lover immediately dug into her treat, acting like the little girl she sometimes resembled.
Being a bit of a pig, she quickly slopped a bit or two of it on her girl's breasts. She was about to remove it with a bit of garment from the piles on the floor, when Kathryn stopped her.
"Annika," she purred at me, "you lick the breast nearest you and I'll swipe the other clean."
In a second we had our naked girl squealing on the floor. Belle was pretending to fight both ourselves and our mouths as we licked her exquisite little breasts. Being ladies we carefully placed our bowls out of danger before our fighting became too extreme or impassioned.
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
"You are sure we have not met before," she continued. Her eyes were warm brown, her smile impish and coy, a perfect tease, accustomed to driving the swains wild with unkept promises.
"Quite positive," I replied. "This is my first season on the Langerhans, though I have been with my parents to Venice, and Neuheim, in the Eifel, and twice to Spa. Perhaps our paths crossed in one of those other places, though I am sure I should remember if we had been formally introduced."
Then I was totally embarrassed, betrayed by my worthless body. I turned my head, and spat into my purse's handkerchief. The evidence was quickly stowed in it's stygian depths.
The girl's face was full of concern, but there was a strange glint to her eyes. She was focused on my purse, and only with some difficulty returned her gaze to my own.
"Well then," she continued, "let us pretend we are old friends, glad to reawaken old mutual memories and make new ones. If we are strangers this year, we shall not be strangers the next time we meet." She broke custom boldly, and held out a hand to me. She had removed the white lace glove, and left it in the air for me to grasp. If I wished.
"I am Belle Anna Irena de Ragosczy, of the Aspre'me Racosczy's, and apart from my professional traveling companion and chaperone sitting opposite us, quite friendless, here, in Marienbad. And yourself?
"Do allow me to be so unforgivably forward, but life is so short, and no one seems near who might introduce us the one to the other."
Finally I carefully removed my own black cloth glove and lightly grasped the one offered me in friendship. "I am Annika vom GothenundSkrindge Hansen." The lengthy name placing me at least in the squirage, if not the nobility.
Of a sudden, in a fit of impropriety, I became smilingly fey and forward, producing a meaningless familial datum for her to mull over.
"My mother is the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter. I am the seventh of nine children and my name was once seven, seven of nine. And you? Did you have some childish phrase attached to yourself, something for friends only?"
"I have had many names in my years," she lilted. "Belle Anna is my nom de guerre, here, in the Langerhans. But you may call me anything you wish and I shall answer to it."
Could she be flirting with ME?
Troubled, I continued. "My father once called me his Seven, and his first girl. Yet I am now just another visitor to this clime. You may call me Annika, and I shall call you Belle."
She cocked her perfect face and smiled at me. "Danish," she began, then switched her head to a new position. "Norwegian."
"Quite correct," I returned.
She frowned suddenly. "You are quite sure we have never met before?"
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The night was young, but it was cooling on the strand. The season would soon end, here, on the Islands of Langerhans. The lights of the Casino still burned, taking some of the night away. But already the end of my stay here was drawing near.
"Shall we meet again?" I asked.
"Many times," Belle answered. "Certainly next year, as planned, in Kobnhaven. And for many years to come.
"We shall walk the pathways of the future together, my dearest Viking, my sweet maiden of the Aesire. I shall be the happier when next we meet and smile and laugh and love again."
"Until then?"
"Until then you have much to do. You must go home to prepare for your imminent death, and I shall go to my home to do likewise, and yet our years will march on. Do you doubt me?"
"Never more, never more," I quoted, gazing into my lap.
Belle rose, and began to draw off. Leaving me for my own paths, such as must we all find.
Kathryn, sweet Kathryn, ever calm, sat placidly on the opposite end of my bench, rocking her foot into the air.
Belle walked on ten paces, and turned to see Kathryn still sitting, unmoving, staring ahead.
"Aren't you coming?" Belle asked Kathryn.
"No, Ma'am," she stated in a flat voice. "I have a new employer now."
"Short notice," Belle laughed.
"As it shall be," Kathryn continued.
"Then I shall see you both. Some day. Take good care of the Princess of Heimdell Hall," Belle said. "You have my letter of recommendation, if you wish it, sweetest lover. I would be quite effusive of your charms and abilities," she chuckled.
To me she continued with one more ever-cryptic remark. "Ragnarok must come some day, no matter how much Odin delays it." Belle turned and was gone into the night.
I sat closer to Kathryn and clutched her hand.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"You see?" Belle coaxed. "Most all the legends are just that. Myths, untruths, exaggerations. Have you truly earned the reprobation of the inquisitory zealots these moments past?"
"They will be well satisfied," Kathryn crooned from my other side, a swipe of her hand in the air indicating the two young males in our bed. "Gold ever pleases such as these. For that they have no curiosity of us. They will remember a night of sport, nothing more.
"Tonight we shall engage one or three more such, or maybe a young rake of better and more noble vintage. Just for you."
Our room of love was heavily draped, our lives as our passions, well hidden from outside view and light. Only the summer heat stayed with us, and it was less when we stayed naked.
I still shuddered, both with shame, and emotional response. Was the moiety correct, was I damned?
The only emotion I was sure of was that I wished to use their bodies again and again. That they were the male of the species only made it easier to stand back from their near innocence.
In the mirror opposite, my visage stared back at me, same as it had hours, days ago. Too much a thing of angles in my face, not really beautiful for all the long blond hair streaming over my naked shoulders.
I stood, looking out the half-closed screens, viewing the impossible business of the harbor vaguely seen. So near, the bustle of day lost to me. I hurt, but I knew my few burns would quickly heal. I had always been fortunate in that manner, even as a child.
Our filial bed was bedecked with the two young men draped nude upon it. They were clean, at least, and smelled of cheap male barber's scents. They looked so healthy, so young, even to me, even against the clear olive toned skin of Belle. My senses tingled to be near them.
They were male courtesans, but were pleasing in aspect. They were of quality enough so that they did not snore, or lay down ungracefully. They were quite appealing, actually. I could sense their bodies bursting with young life, even after we three females had used their bodies in our varied ways.
Kathryn stroked me, laying her lush little body against my buttocks and back.
"You grow used to it," she purred. "And restraining your appetites never become easy, but you grow used even to that."
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
It was stifling, even with all the wide screens open to the languorous breeze. I lay with my head on Kathryn's belly as a pillow, idly tracing the ancient shadows of once-had-been scars there along her lower abdomen.
"Go ahead," Bell Anna requested of her dearest. "Tell her."
Kathryn gathered herself, one hand nuzzling in my long unbound blond hair. "Very well," she murmured.
"I was born in a primitive village along the course of what was probably the Shannon, in southwestern Ireland. I was a child, and my future was not immutably fixed, but probable. I would grow up, wed, and bear children for my husband, and in the doing of my life find what grace and joy and tears a woman might in that time. Be not mistook, we were not chattels of our menfolk, but owners of our own souls.
"Then the Vikings came, as they did often to Ireland, looking for slaves to steal. There was little else to find in Ireland's leagues.
"They took most of the children of the village, and used us roughly. We were transported to somewhere in Moorish Spain and sold to the blackamoors for gold and silver.
I was eventually part of the household of some lordling to the west of Valencia, I think. I bore four children for him and his sons over the next dozen or fifteen years. I delivered a daughter, I believe, in my twelfth summer.
"As the Koran forebade making slaves of Muslims, we were classified as Christians, and forbidden conversion to Mohammedanism. That was so in order to permit generation after generation of slave to bear a crop of future slaves for their owners.
"For some reason I was sent off with the Lord's younger son to, I believe, Sicily. While on the journey our ship was captured by Saracen pirates, who then sold us to some factor in Constantinople. It was there I met Irena. I never knew what ever happened to my poor pitiful children.
"I was a corsair myself, in the late 1680's, operating out of northern Sardinia, barely staying one step ahead of the Spanish grandees. I had a French Letter of Marquee, for the little good it might have done.
"We captured a fat coaster east of Algiers. It had amongst it's cargo some fifteen young female slaves, children really, none possibly over ten summers in age. They were going as a gift to the musselman Bey of Tripolitania. The crew had been busy amongst them.
"We roasted all the crew over open fires."
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
We entered the open doors of the Coffee House, caught up immediately in the buzz of the day's inhabitants happily recreating the airs of their own cities, even here in the Langerhans. I knew this busy place from old, and Belle and her stiff chaperone followed trustingly in my wake.
In seconds we were at our own table, happily investigating the menus. A few chirps indicated pleasure at the selections. The chaperone was Irish, named Kathryn, but she ordered dark coffee. Belle ordered a latte of coffee, and I followed suit. Already I felt that where Belle led, we would follow.
Belle ordered a trio of slices of Viennese tortes, and explained we would each sample that of the others. It sounded conspiratorial, somehow. Mine was pistachio, and I wound up fighting off the other two when they would have raided my shrinking treasure. I carefully snared pieces of the other two slices before my fork touched lip.
Belle and Kathryn exchanged looks, and somehow suspected they knew of my curious affliction before I had ever mentioned it.
"You are absolutely positive we never met before?" Belle once more queried. "I am at a loss myself to understand why I feel so, especially when I am positive I should have remembered meeting a beauty as yourself. Maybe it was when you were young, before you reached your glory."
And how old should young Belle herself have been when that occurred?
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
"Come, sweetling, it is past time for us to go," Belle Anna whispered. She pulled me erect, her own dainty kerchief patting my mouth clean. She pulled on my arm but I would not yet go. Strength was roaring in me. I could see Kathryn's eyes glitter in the pitch of night, and essayed the thought that mine must also glow in likely manner.
I was befuddled, confused, reluctant to leave. I felt warm for the first time in life. Content with things as they were.
"Will they remember us when they awake?" I asked.
"They will never awake," Kathryn hissed. "And the world be a better place for their being amongst the missing." She lifted each easily in a single hand, tossing their remains further into the shadows of the narrow and rubbish-littered way.
"They were brigands, and meant to do us harm," Belle caressed. "Instead, this night, they did much good."
"How did they die?" I harried myself into the asking.
"You took enough o'er this one to make certain his demise. Da ye not feel finally full this night? At last? After all the cries of hunger you have been told you must endure?"
"Me? I .... he is dead because of myself?"
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
"Come," Belle coaxed. "Relieve yourself of some few of your cares. We are not diabolic daemons here, this is not a parcel of Abaddon, there is no hint of sulfurs in this room."
Kathryn laughed here, no longer the dour servant, the coadjutive dependent of her Latin mistress. Now she presented an air of companion more than minion. Kathryn unpinned her hair once she had taken off her straw hat, and did likewise for Belle.
"It is much too hot for odorous formalities. We intend to divest ourselves of much of our girdling cloths and we firmly resolve to relax in the company of our learned and new-found friend."
It was with some relief that I gave my jacket and overblouse to the auburn-haired woman. Still ever the servant at heart she fluffed the linen headguard-hangings on a high-backed chair for Belle, falling to her knees to remove the high-ankled shoes.
Kathryn moved her hands high under the skirts and petticoats of the Hungarian lady in a most undecorous and lascivious familiarity. My body froze as Kathryn and Belle stared at me, the one's hands doing obviously unpardonable things to the soft flesh hidden beneath proper raiment. I froze again as the Irish woman kissed the ankles and toes of my new acquaintance once her stockings were removed. Kathryn was quite overly-familiar with Belle, indeed.
A fever had struck me whilst watching this display, wondering, bemused, confused. Kathryn rose, running her naughty caress through the long black hair atop Belle's small lovely face. When asked, I acceded to a glass of wine, watered six to one as was proper for this early in the day.
Kathryn came back with three small goblets balanced on a small Silver salver, serving the guest, hostess and herself in that order. After the first sip, she bent to touch, to caress the elegant noble neck of the young woman staring at me most fixedly.
Belle bent up her face to Kathryn, kissing her in a scandalous manner, their lips touching in forbidden regard. They parted, and then kissed again, with more spirit and passion. I was no longer in no doubt as to the nature of their ties the one to the other, and wondered why they had dared to reveal themselves thus to me? My heart pounded, and I knew sweat blossomed on my intemperate brow.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
We loitered on the strand, myself daring to digest the impeccable pistachio torte. For a few moments when standing I feared my deceitful flesh would shame me with it's weaknesses and I would lose my morsels.
Out of the blue Belle asked me a cutting question. "The Sanatoria have been of no effacey to you?"
She knew whence cometh the pallor my skin, the edginess of my diet, the weaknesses so at odds with a young robust woman.
"My flesh will as it will, and no nostrums or necromanic vintage has been able to assauge my affliction. Would some alchemist could assist me. Alas, the most potent invuluation but delays the course or cushions the pain."
Belle closer came, her hand touching my arm in sympathy, her brow troubled with unwonted projections.
"It were a crime to see such a young beauty as yourself so irreversibly bound to a karmic wheel of tragedy."
Then she said the most curious phrase I never expected to hear from any mortal lips.
"And if your disease might be driven out, your sickness removed, your years returned to your future?"
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
My new and most dear servant followed me down the broad gangplank of the steamer. Our two bags appeared a burden in her hands. At one point the ageless imp firmly brushed against me, inviting me to push back. We were in a line in our day's hotel, the bags were soon to be whisked away by the staff, and her hand quickly promised more satisfying contact soon to come.
I fevered to think of her smooth flesh laid bare just for me, and thought how few weeks ago such a congress of Sapphic life should have been beyond my reach. My parents would be quite outraged if they knew the talents of my new maidservant.
I cared not. For greater thresholds had been crossed.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"And when I awake?"
Belle caressed my body through the soft black cloths in which I had chosen to lay. "The world will be changed, much altered. You may defer your death, if you wish it. Go home to Norway, spit into your kerchiefs, and be left fevered and dying one morning with naught to help you. Is that what you wish?"
"You PROMISED....!" I managed in a tone of wounded admonishment.
"And you shall have my death and my life, as I promised. Lie back, dear Annika, I shall scratch my chest deeply, and you will drink of my blood, as the legends truthfully have stated.
"After that .... we shall have the night."
"Peace," Kathryn whispered in my ear. "You shall die the false death and rise up into the night eternal. After a hundred years or so you shall even have the day back. As do I.
"Peace," Belle whispered as a fingernail produced a font of her blood.
And so I died.
END