The Life Cycle Of Archambeau

*The members of the Archambeau family also appear in Gallows & Galleries

THE LIFE CYCLE OF ARCHAMBEAU

Phillipe had been entertaining him with miniature reproductions of certain saucy artworks almost all evening. Raphael had been mostly unimpressed & distracted. Although, he HAD felt drawn to the small oil painting titled Le Concert Champêtre which had been copied from the original painting from the master 'da Cadore,' Tiziano Vecellio.

The image, which was set in a pastoral landscape, was of a pair of women, completely nude, keeping company with a pair of seated, fully-dressed musicians. It intrigued him. The men were seemingly ignoring the luscious, ripe flesh of the women, who appeared to be entirely at ease regardless of their public nudity. He knew that had he been a young man between such lovely, warm, voluptuous morsels he would have fallen upon them like a hungry wolf.

His cock had twitched once, lacklusterly, as he gazed at the painting, & he crossed his legs. As boys, Phillipe & he had dabbled in a tender, exploratory & mutually enjoyable experiment with each other. Mostly they touched each other but sometimes, Phillipe would even allow Raphael to take his cock in his lips.

He still remembered the taste of his oldest friend's member in his mouth, & still remembered the look on Phillipe's face as he'd held his seed on his tongue before spitting & wiping it out. It was the simple, innocent foray into lust that many a young man quietly participated in as their bodies approached adulthood. It was common, though almost never spoken about.

Phillipe had outgrown that desire when he'd been able to satisfy himself with the softer pleasures of women & Raphael had felt cast aside for a while. Returned to the cage of platonic friendship. Not that Raphael didn't also enjoy the wet, deep suffocation of a woman's quim, her breasts & mouth. Even now his desires burned as those of a younger man. It's just that his desires weren't always limited only to the fairer sex & his aged body no longer cooperated.

In their middle years his favourite nights had been when he & Phillipe had shared a whore, he'd always allowed his friend to take the first ride & had enjoyed the sight of the man's naked body, his member firm & proud as he rocked himself back & forth into the soft offering. He had revelled in the taste, smell & sensation of the man's slippery discharge coating the interior of the whore's cunt as he took her afterwards. His first thrusts would be slow as he tried to draw out that secret pleasure.

When he sought out the discrete boy whores (alone, never with Phillipe) he'd often imagined himself sodomising his old friend when he thrust his cock in their skinny asses, it had been something they'd never tried & now he felt grief over the missed chance. He sighed, remembering the first time he himself had enjoyed receiving a dick in that hole behind him. It had been fairly late in life, when in his early 30s his father had sent him abroad to England, where he'd suffered dreadfully at the vulgarity of the English people, the filth of their streets & general ignorance.

Finally, after several days travelling through the hellish isle, he'd delivered the missives he'd been charged with to the overstuffed acquaintance of his father. Sir Nicholas Bacon's home however was a welcome, clean & quiet reprieve from the uncouth rabble he'd travelled amongst & he was especially delighted, when he was introduced to Bacon's youngest, Francis. He more than made up for the inedibility of the local cooking, their harsh accents, the insufferable weather.

Francis was rumoured to be physically weakened, even frail, but intellectually, Raphael found the pale, thoughtful boy both stimulating & erudite. He'd seduced the boy, or so he thought, into meeting with him late that night within the guest chambers where he'd been roomed. The boy had tiptoed by candlelight to him & they'd devoured each other with wet kisses & grasping hands.

He was to learn that the 19 year old had in fact seduced HIM & whatever the truth of his state of health, Francis had easily bent the older man over & taken him like a woman. Raphael had found himself biting his pillow in ecstasy as the young man pumped him full several times over the same late night. The next morning he'd sat gingerly upon the padded chair for breakfast, his asshole feeling loosened & sore by the night's exercise. He'd happily continued to secretly accept the boy's firm member until he was regrettably, tragically, called back to France by his father & wife.

His rut upon his wife had been frenzied when he returned to France, still aflame from the newly discovered pleasures of his diversion to England. Even Nicole had commented on her husband's passionate reclaiming of her body, he had been hornier than usual, which was saying a lot, as the fires always burned hot in his humours. He was known to be insatiable to his wife, & even by the mistresses whom his wife had accepted to assist in handling his manly & unquenchable needs. Although neither knew how frequently he visited the whores & harlots in the city.

Nor did they know of his activities with the men who worked their fields, or attended to their animals. Or his father's accountant who would often suck his engorged pin when they could find a stolen moment alone in the family estate or offices. Or his secret yearning for Phillipe, his oldest friend, his second cousin, close as a brother who had seemed to spark that forbidden lust in his heart.

Despite his untamable virility in bed, his wife, Nicole had struggled to bear a child to full term. They'd all but given up until she'd finally borne a daughter who survived, small & purple, a caul covering her face. She hadn't breathed when she was extracted from his wife's womb. Hadn't cried for several minutes until the midwife had slapped her three times. Her mother had doted upon the girl, & Christened her 'Delphine'.

As she grew it became obvious the girl was touched, mentally deficient, almost entirely dumb, & unable to take her place in polite society, even with all the wealth & status of the Archambeau family name. The child masturbated herself almost constantly, even after being strapped & beaten to try & train her out of it. She rubbed her cunt against furniture, always with her hand in her undergarments.

Even with her hands bound behind her, servants would find her rubbing herself against the corner of chairs, or on the bannisters of staircases. Raphael had been bitterly disappointed that he had (as far as he knew) no male heir & only an unmarriageable & ruined daughter. His favourite mistress, Guillemette, was also rumoured to destroy his seed with unguents & douches of acidic tinctures.

Now he was old, & he was left with naught but memories of his days as a lover. He struggled to maintain even a temporary firmness over his withered organ which lay shrunken & useless against his leg. For years he'd been frustrated, ill-tempered & resentful of the young men around him who could still plow the fields of women & men to their heart's desires should they wish it. It had been worse, of late, due to the arrival of the fascinating stranger in his province.

The man, he learned, was called James Harris, was thought to be English perhaps, although when he'd spoken to him, Raphael had been less certain of his provenance. His accent was unplaceable. & he had something of the arab about him, or the moor, or the mysterious Oriental, but also the Frenchman, the Englishman, the noble. He couldn't put his finger on it. Even alone, when he tried to sketch the stranger's features from memory he struggled to recall his details.

His skin had been the colour of caramel, had it not? Or was he as pale as the flesh of a fish? No, that wasn't it, was it rich, bronzed, like the copper of a pipe? Pink like a girl's cheeks? & his eyes? What colour were the man's eyes? He seemed both incredibly unusually rare, exotic, eerie & unnatural, & yet, whenever they spoke he seemed ordinary, almost mundane in his commonplace. He was an enigma.

Regardless of his slippery appearance, something about him both attracted & unnerved Raphael. He was obsessed with the young man. & WAS he young? He could never recall. When he was standing, talking to the man, he'd felt the remnants of his long lost lust, felt ghostly twists & twitches in his gut & balls.

He dreamed of the man kneeling in front of him, taking his member deeply into his mouth, looking up at him with his stormy eyes, grinning at him with needle-sharp teeth, with ancient goat-eyes. He'd wake, shivering & covered in his own spent seed. Infuriated that his only erection had been wasted in his sleep, his orgasm on his bed covers & not within a soft, warm lover. Frustrated that he only had a vague, uneasy memory of the dream that raised his member from its death-like slumber.

Even now, idly rubbing his lips with a blade of grass he'd plucked as he sat on the stone steps of the family castle, thinking about the strange man, he found himself feeling that leftover tickle as his prick reminded him of his lost days as a lothario. There was something so magnetic, so sexual about the man Harris, that even imagining him he felt he could almost smell his pungent sweat, & the smell of his dick.

It felt to Raphael, that the WORLD was heaving with sex that morning. As if all of nature was pulsing & wet with a furious & unchecked madness, a perversity, a need. The crickets seemed to be singing triumphantly of fucking, the boughs of trees, swaying in the wind like phalluses, like hanging breasts or dangling labia, the earth full of moisture, ready for plumbing, ready for a hard & fearless dicking.

He imagined the foxes, the marmots & voles of the forest, entwined in ecstasy, knotted together in a pulsating pile, an orgy of creatures as they dipped their genitals into each other & bit each other's necks, the flowers of plants spewing pollen, the streams of water around them. Even the cold, old castle seemed to stretch itself open, like fingers in a cunt, like the gaping moistened receptacle of a male whore. A dragonfly landed on his arm & he observed it for a moment before it flew away.

He'd watched, jealously, enviously, as Harris had taken every man & woman at the auberges & lodging houses in the area to his room, wherever that was. He'd taken them one at a time, sometimes two or three at a time. He'd watched the next morning as those men & women stumbled out from the corners & walls of edifices & gardens, a glazed, entranced look on their face as they reacclimated to their lives, their wives & husbands, their duties.

He'd questioned them all, at first discreetly, delicately, but soon angrily, demandingly, to explain where they had gone with Harris, what they had done with him. He'd felt mocked by their recalcitrance but soon realised it wasn't from unwillingness but from genuine confusion. They seemed to neither remember their time away, nor, in fact, the man Harris, at all. Nevertheless, Raphael felt deep within his bones that each of them had been made love to by the man. He smelled Harris on them, as if they were clothed in the damp sheets of their tussle.

Their eyes shone for days following their trip to God-knows-where, their mouths teased by subconscious smiles as they drifted, blank & humming around town until they finally sobered up from the mysterious experience. He'd tried to follow Harris & his prey but had always seemed to lose their direction, to find himself turned around, back at the table, or in the dead end of an alleyway, once he came to, sitting, leaning, against a spruce, half a mile away, being examined by curious sheep. He couldn't remember how he'd found his way there or how long he'd been outside his senses.

Today Harris was to visit him. Who knew who had levied the invitation, how it had been arranged? He couldn't even clearly recall their conversation, had they ever even had a conversation? He always felt a sense of drunkenness, of disorientation, when he tried to fix his mind on the man. He watched, as Harris sauntered, perhaps flit, along the driveway, through the walls to the grand entrance where he perched waiting.

"Bonjour old man," Harris greeted him. His voice rumbled like the crashing of waves, boomed like thunder & sang like the whisper of a spring breeze. An impossible voice, in harmony with itself. A voice that vibrated through Raphael's body & landed like the piercing of an arrow.

Raphael inwardly rankled at the familiarity & impudence of the salutation but didn't respond.

Harris appeared relaxed, at home. He sat beside Raphael without being invited, as if he owned the place. He was uncaring of decorum or the informal nature of their visit.

They watched as servants bustled, as washer women took linens & clothes toward the lines where they'd catch the sun & bleach them clean, a footman brushed a horse. Bees hummed & zipped busily, flowers opening & filling the air with perfumes & scent. Raphael felt he could almost hear the coiling of worms in the earth, felt he could sense the gaze of birds on them, could feel the heat radiating from the man's body, warmer than the sun. Again his ancient, dried up cock twitched a little, a phantom pang of what it once was.

"How would you like to be young again?" Harris asked from that hot, shining spot.

Raphael felt impatient. He'd called him an old man. Of course he wanted to be young again. Did he have time for such a nonsense conversation? & yet... he found himself unable to move, unable to dismiss the man, unable to speak without a sense of permission from the stranger. He felt as though the man beside him could read every thought, was peeling his mind open & flipping his way through invisible scrolls that held the essence of his very soul. He shifted uncomfortably.

"I will make it so you can be young again, should you wish it," Harris spoke. "You can be allowed to live in the spring of youth over & over. I will even make sure that your flaccid thing will be hardened again, even in the winter of your cycles. You'll be renewed, perhaps undying, you may carry your knowledge between centuries as you explore the wet, dark, fungal hunger of your cock. You'll be a sorcerer of a kind, your staff a wand of magic, you'll have power over others, you'll have wealth & longevity & familiars from your father's loins. Should you wish."

Raphael was spellbound, perplexed but wildly tempted. For some reason, despite the ludicrous & absurd proposal, he didn't doubt for a single moment that Harris could deliver on his promises if he chose to.

"What would it cost me?"

"What would you give?"

"Almost anything."

"Almost anything is what it costs."

There, in the bright light & scorching heat of the summer day, the nobleman Raphael Archambeau bent over, rolling his hose to his ankles, flipping the doublet up to expose his elderly asshole & was fucked like a woman by James Harris on the steps to his family's castle.

There had been no conversation, no negotiation for the act, or the publicity of it. He'd simply known that for the granted wish, the contract would be signed not with ink but with semen & submission. Harris had been quiet as he rutted him but for Raphael, it had felt like a nirvanic ecstasy, the pleasure was so overwhelming that he was unable to quiet his moaning & could only smile, beatifically, like a child being blessed by a saint as he felt a fullness he'd only dreamed of. His member, engorged, waved triumphantly in the warm air, a glistening white drop trembling on its tip. A bee landed on it, he felt the tiny legs fluttering as it rested on the shaft before it flew away.

His face was glazed, coated in a strange, thin sweat, a bead of drool dangled from his mouth as he was plowed, his hands hung limply at his sides as he rocked with every thrust from Harris. He had never felt such euphoria, never imagined it even possible. Harris mounted him as the sun crossed the sky, but had the world turned a thousand times it would have been too short. His cock pulsed with sensation, it twitched in the air like a serpent. The man behind him, the creature, whatever Harris was, was deep within him, stirring every part of him with confident, smooth thrusts.

The members of his serving staff who gardened & swept around them appeared, if not to notice, then not to concern themselves with the public buggery of their lord. Did they see him? Or did their minds not understand what their eyes perceived anymore? Raphael would never know, would never ask. When Harris had finally ejaculated into Raphael, after what had seemed hours upon hours of drilling, his seed had been as cold as ice.

When Harris extracted his phallus from him, Raphael's cock twitched eleven times, releasing a ludicrous amount of seed, a thick, opaque puddle on the steps that ran into the gravel of the driveway like a river. He trembled all over & almost fell over from the force but felt Harris steady him with an iron grip on his arm. The climax was so startling, so otherworldly, he almost expected the man to vanish like a spirit upon completion of the act.

Yet Harris had strolled around to face him, Raphael bent over still, as if to allow Harris's seed to dry within him, as if genuflecting before the man who'd just fucked him. Harris had leaned down & kissed the lord gently upon the lips & when he stood, Raphael had been amazed to see the man was completely naked. Had he always been? Had he walked the road to him entirely unclothed & nobody had stopped or been startled? Between his legs swung a penis of ridiculous girth & length, it dwarfed that of a horse, made miniature an oxen's cock.

It nearly touched the ground beneath him as he stood straight-legged, nude, in the midday sunlight, it would have brushed the short grass of his lawns. The man without a clear face was tall, nearly eight feet tall, & the tip of his organ reached his ankles. It was thicker than Raphael's thigh. His scrotum hung like buoys behind it, under a pungent, massive bush.

The pubic hair was thick, dark, mossy, & there were spider's webs & fungi growing from it, centipedes twisting at the roots, whenever he moved, leaves or dirt drifted from it. It was entirely unhuman. Unlike any other genitals on a natural creature. How had the monster fit the tower inside him? How had he not cried & struggled at its penetration of him? How had it not split him apart in violation? Like all things about Harris, he could neither understand nor fix his thoughts on the questions. Regardless of how the magic had been worked, he wanted Harris to put it back inside him. It had been delicious.

The man, the creature, spoke to him, "your father died this morning. I tell you, today there are only two living, aside from you, in your direct line. You'll know what to do. Farewell, Raphael." He turned & walked away, moved away, perhaps glided or faded into the sunbeams. Raphael was too confused, too stunned, too changed to even wonder.

Was it true his father had died? He didn't feel anything about it. Wasn't even curious. He sat down, his hose still around his ankles, his ass still bare, on the stone steps & sat there, like a statue, until the sun began to set.

When he stood, it was as if he appeared back into the world, apparated like the lovers Harris had taken from the lower classes, the ones who'd materialised from shadows & corners. He was returned. A servant ran towards him, out of breath, they'd been looking for him, his father, his father had died sir, his father had died in his sleep. He was sorry, they'd been looking for him, none had found him until now or they would have advised him earlier.

He ignored the implied pleading of the young man, he pulled up his britches as the boy blushed at his exposure, at seeing his master's long penis, he asked to see his father's body & was told it had been taken by the religious men to be prepared for burial in the family crypt. Very well. He visited it there & sat with it. He expected to cry, as he had when his mother had died. His father was an old man, older than any other had ever been in the province, nearly a hundred. Even so, he had expected to feel grief. He felt nothing.