Mrs Weagle not only ensures that the lads earning the Silver Shilling are consenting, but that they are of the age of eighteen.
***
The hedge around Pergold House is high and neglected. The three of us scurry between the two worn stone heraldic lions and down the ten wide steps that are smudged with patterns of moss. Ned is slow of thought, and gait. Roland is contrastingly agile and swift of wit. They are unlikely companions, yet we've been friends since childhood. There are blown leaves curled crisp that crunch underfoot across the shaded paved area below, with the peeling green-painted door that lets us into Mrs Weagle's kitchen, the appetizing aromas of baking cakes and rich puddings assail us the moment we step inside. The beams are low, reflecting the dancing light of a blazing fire in the grate where a huge black cauldron is suspended above the greedy flames, with the moist sounds of stew bubbling and sizzling around a flotilla of fat round dumplings.
Mrs Weagle billows like a galleon in full sail, her mop-cap scrunching up stray strands of the silvery hair around her round maternal face, forever suffused with the flush effects of her culinary exertions. She takes it upon herself to ensure that the youths who come here to earn the Silver Shilling are not only consenting, but that we are over the age of eighteen. Just as the verger does when the vicar is in the mood for buggering members of the church choir.
'Lawks a-mussy, are you lads here for a-fucking again?' she greets us.
Ned doffs his cap and twists it nervously between his hands. 'Yes Mrs Weagle, thank you Ma'am.'
'I hope you've washed yourself ready' she cautions, ticking with a cautionary finger. 'The Master wouldn't want to find your bum-boy shit all over his nice clean todger afterwards now, would he!'
'We bathed in the lake aforehand' offers Roland, 'once we'd got the summons.'
Her face beams its most radiant smile. 'You are good boys. Each one of you.' She thrusts three thick scones across at us, still warm from the oven, speckled with fresh date and walnut pieces. Ned scoffs his in two eager mouthfuls. Roland and I nibble our way around the crumbly rim, the better to savour each morsel of taste.
I remember our earlier visits when she'd personally attended to our hygiene herself, with a flannel moistened from a steaming bowl of warm water, inspecting and cleaning each puckered anus in turn. Now she relies on our own sense of propriety to ensure our fastidious cleanliness.
'Leave your shoes here' she chortles, 'then you'd best be running along. The Master's prick will doubtless be impatient.'
'Thank you Mrs Weagle' I manage around the final mouthful of scone.
We leave our buckled shoes in a neat row beside the grate, then scramble the three steps up past the scullery where she stores bags of flour, fresh fruit, giant hams, eggs and condiments, to the door that leads into the house itself. Creaking it open it cautiously. Cranford is standing there ready to usher us inside - the tall and thin manservant wears a permanent frown of distaste, as though he's detected an offensive odour. Always a little intimidating, he indicates the flight of stairs leading us three ragamuffins towards the upper rooms. Ned, the son of the jovial village landlord and drunk, says Cranford is scary, that he's never once had sex in all his long stifling life. Ned could be right. Roland, son of the village doctor and veterinarian, says otherwise, with a snigger. As though he knows things he's never confided to us. As an orphan, I was adopted by the local blacksmith, intended to be the apprentice who would eventually assume his vocation, to which I feel singularly ill-suited. I have the soul of the artist, touched by the flame of poetry.
Chuckling and playfully shoving each other, we bundle our way up each maroon-carpeted step beneath the tall family paintings that loom above us. I feel their eyes gazing down at us grubby peasant intruders. Those deviously corrupt Pergold ancestors were sodomites and deviants to a man, notorious for their Black Mass blasphemies, rapes, debauches, and heretical Hellfire orgies, it's a wonder their wandering carnal passions ever resulted in actual progeny. Then we are on the landing, hushed as though our ragged sounds would be a form of sacrilege. We know which door to approach. His Study. We have been here before. We know the correct method by which we are to enter.
Ned is first to pull his faded green jerkin up his fleshy chest and over his head, while Roland shoves his britches down and off. We glance across at each other grinning. If nervous, my companions are concealing it well. If so, that is all we dare conceal. I feel the air brush my bare skin. We've seen each other naked, but I still get a warm unsettling catch in my throat each and every time. Ned is thick-set, his pendulous cock hooded in foreskin and forested in a tangle of black pubic hair. I remember how, after the hay-making I'd hidden in the loft and watched as five harvesters drunk on cider grabbed him in the barn, stripped him naked, hauled him over a straw-bale, and took turns fucking his bum-hole. His howls of protest only encouraged them, as two dairymaids clap and chant time with each anal thrust. I was breathless, helpless. All I could do was watch his humiliation in rage, and be there for him once it was over.