Standish

STANDISH – Published by PD Publishing – Autumn 2006

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A great house, a family dispossessed. A sensitive young man, a powerful landowner, and the epic love that springs up between them.

Ambrose Standish is a studious and fragile young man with dreams of regaining the great house his grandfather lost in a card game, but when Rafe Goshawk returns from the continent to claim the estate, their meeting sets them on a path of desire and betrayal which threatens to tear both of their worlds apart.

Set in the post-Napoleonic years of the 1820′s, Standish is a tale of these two men, and how the relationships they make affect their journey through Europe and through life.

Painting a picture of homosexuality in Georgian England, illegal as it was and punishable by death, at heart it is a simple love story and the tale of one man’s discoveries of his sexuality and his true feelings for the man who released it.

Chapter Three

“Well, lets see the chestnut then,” Rafe barked and an extremely nervous ostler darted towards the stable block and brought the pony out. Less of a pony and more a miniature horse, the small elegant gelding obviously had some Arab in its veins. Rafe stepped up to the animal and ran a practised eye over the withers, the rump and the deep chest; expertly ran his hands down each slender leg feeling for splints or strains. “Run him up,” he ordered, his eyes narrow, as he watched its action carefully as it moved away from him in a brisk trot. When the pony came back, he opened the mouth.

“He’s rising four sir,” stammered the boy.

“He’s nearer six,” snapped Rafe, “but that’s no bad thing, he won’t be as skittish, yes, I’ll take him too, so that’s the black stallion, the 4 Cleveland bays, the matched greys and this fellow here. Have them sent to Standish.” He turned on his heel, pleased with the day. Sebastian would love the little chestnut; he had been heartbroken to leave his scruffy little pony behind him in France.

Horses were Rafe’s passion, which without a fixed home he had been unable to indulge before now in the manner to which he wished to do. Now, with the acres of parkland and time enough at last to do nothing, he intended to own a string that would be the envy of the equine world. He was considering branching into racing, but that was a dream yet to be realised, first his son needed a tutor.

As he sat in the barouche on his way back to the house, he found that he still winced when he thought the word. Tutor. Maybe it was the sun making him drowsy, or maybe it was the pleasure that buying the horses gave him, but for the first time in possibly 15 years, his thoughts ran away with him and suddenly Tomas Quinn’s face was before him.

Quinn had touched Rafe’s mind in ways he had never been touched before. His knowledge of the past was encyclopaedic and he taught in a way that brought the dead to life. When he spoke of the wars of Roman and Greek gods, of battles on long forgotten sites, his hazel eyes blazed and he would stand behind Rafe, his hands on the boy’s shoulders, and they would gaze into space together, their minds recalling the glories of Odysseus and Agamemnon.

The youth was hotly involved in the throes of his first crush and this was when he realised that money may not be able to buy him everything he wanted. He loved and he wanted Quinn. He had read the tales of Zeus and Ganymede, of Apollo and Hyakinthos. He knew of Socrates; Socrates had said “Gnothi seauton”, and Rafe found that he did indeed “know himself.” He wanted to be naked as one of his father’s marble statues and to have Quinn pressed naked to him. He studied the portrait “The Death of Hyakinthos” and longed to be held in Quinn’s arms in such a tableau. He didn’t really think further than that as the mechanics involved seemed too crude for his young romantic mind. In bed alone at night, he would re-read the love of Achilles and Patroclus, and his hand would lift his nightshirt, caress his slender boyish penis and dream that the hand that fondled him belonged to the tutor. His youthful ejaculations were violent and over very quickly. He studied hard, desperate to please the man, he brought him books of mythology and poetry, left fresh flowers on his desk every day, but if the tutor noticed the boy’s attentions he never said anything.

But he had noticed. Quinn, in his way, was almost as innocent as his pupil. He was only 24, and had recently left Oxford. He had no sexual experience, having filled his time with study as he was a scholarship boy with little money like most of the other students. So whilst the rest of the young men in his year went drinking and chasing women, Quinn was alone in his study. He had not encountered many girls, but on the rare occasions he did was always too shy to speak, so he blamed his disinterestedness on the acute embarrassment he felt when they were near.

Upon his appointment at the Goshawk’s, he had liked Rafe from the first. The boy had a fine mind, although he was headstrong and understandably indulged. Quinn loved beauty in all things and was quickly hypnotised by the wolfish eyes, the half smile, the lustrous hair. He knew his thoughts were wrong, so very wrong, but he soon found his day could not begin until Rafe had smiled at him. He told himself every day that he would give notice make some excuse to Goshawk Senior and leave the temptation of Rafe behind him.

But every day passed and he had done nothing about it.

As his fascination increased he found he was making a game of taking every opportunity to touch the youth. He would stand by Rafe’s shoulder as he read and put a hand on his back, revelling in the heat that came through the fabric. Occasionally he would, very casually, brush dust from the boy’s shoulders or tidy a stray wisp of hair from his face, his fingers burning from the silken feel of it. Best of all though, were the Astronomy lessons, where he would go to the boy’s room at night and wake him. Sometimes the boy did not stir when Quinn entered the chamber, and Quinn would find intense joy in watching the long pale face in sleep, the beautiful shining black hair spread on the pillow. Then what joy it was to reach and touch the slim arm, and shake it gently, to see the endless eyes open and the soft beguiling smile that appeared every time the boy saw his tutor.

He would follow him up the narrow attic stairs drinking in the sight of his boyish form, outlined in light breeches and a shirt. Once in the darkness of the night, on the flat roof there was a large and elaborate telescope, and standing behind Rafe, would put his arms around him, while he adjusted the mirrors and explained how the mechanism worked.

He almost imagined that Rafe was aware of his shameful thoughts, and sometimes he allowed himself to think that he could feel that the boy was deliberately pressing back against him. He knew it was madness, and that it could never be, it was simply co-incidence and his own sinful wishful thinking and he deserved damnation for imagining that an innocent boy would share his lustful fantasy.

Six months after coming to Tavistock Square, another star gazing lesson loomed. Quinn was in his small cell-like room, which contained only a single bed, and a table and chair. He was anticipating the joy and the agony of that brief moment when he held Rafe in his arms. A bottle of wine was on the table and he had had more than his normal one glass. I have got to leave here, he thought. I cannot continue to teach that boy; another starlit night with that slender body pressed to mine, and I will lose my control, my employment, my reputation. His member was hard, achingly hard, as it always was before going to wake his young charge. He always had to wait for the longing to recede before knocking on his door.

Unexpectedly there was a soft rap, and Quinn leapt to his feet, his hand coming away from the front of his breeches where it had been resting, almost unconsciously.

“Who is it?” he said.

“It’s me Quinn,” came the boy’s soft and beloved voice. Quinn felt his stomach turn over with the sound of it. He took a deep breath, and opened the door. Rafe stood there, his eyes wide and questioning. “I was worried, you were so quiet at dinner, and then midnight came and went and you didn’t come…” he trailed off. Quinn grabbed his arm and pulled him into the room, the feel of the bare forearm, exposed from the flowing shirt which was pushed up to his elbows, burning his fingers.

“Come in you f. fool,” he stammered, losing control of his speech impediment in shock. “Anyone could see you, the last thing you need is to be seen entering my room in the middle of the n…night.” Quinn’s voice was uncharacteristically angry, and Rafe looked hurt, and then disdainful.

“As if I care what the servants think.” He boasted and Quinn’s heart swelled to see the burgeoning arrogance in the boy’s face.

“You m. may not.” Said Quinn, in a calmer tone, quickly turning away and putting on a frock coat to hide the very obvious bulge in his breeches, “but you don’t have a character and a position to lose.” Rafe was not unobservant. He had seen the sign of the tutor’s desire and his own hardness throbbed at the thought of it. Could this mean that Quinn loved him as much as much as he loved him? In his youth and romantic innocence lust and love were very much the same thing. He smiled happily, his agile brain formulating a plan.

“Come on then, Venus won’t wait all night.” He said, moving toward the door and smiling again as the implied double meaning registered on Quinn’s face and led the way up to the roof. Quinn appeared very ill at ease when they arrived there, and distractedly talked of the planets and stars and their relative positions. When Rafe stood up to the telescope, he waited patiently, but Quinn made no move to assist him. Finally, he had to turn round to the man in the darkness. “She’s moved,” he said softly, meaning Venus, “and I cannot find her.” Quinn had no option but to put his arms around the boy and move the eyepiece accordingly. Rafe acted quickly, instead of leaning back against the tutor as he had done many times, he spun round and swiftly put his arms around Quinn’s waist. Quinn took a sharp breath in but he didn’t move.

“Rafe?” he said dazedly. “What?” Rafe’s head only came up to Quinn’s chin, so tall was he.

“It is better this way though is it not?” and he held his body against Quinn, grinding his hardness against the older man’s leg. Feeling Rafe’s erection the spell broke and Quinn backed away, shaking from head to foot, one hand outstretched as if to ward the boy off, panting. Rafe stood where he had been left, hurt and tears of rejection sprang into his eyes. Seeing this pain he had caused, the boys agonised expression, Quinn’s heart and resolve finally broke, and he moved back to Rafe and embraced him, one arm around his back, the other on his hair, pulling the head to his shoulder, murmuring his name over and over, stroking him and soothing him.

“You love me…you do love me…” muttered Rafe, almost stunned that his fantasies of Greek lovers were coming true, loving the feel of the arms around him; Quinn smelled delicious, chalk and wine and sweat. Quinn knew he had made a mistake, and summoning a courage he didn’t know he had, he realised that he had to finish this and fast. He took hold of the boy above the elbows and shoved him backwards sharply. He kept his voice deliberately harsh; he had to hurt the boy now, for both their sakes.

“Rafe, what you are feeling is not love. You cannot love another man in the way you mean. God created love for marriage, for procreation. You simply have mistaken your feelings of comradeship for what you will eventually give to a woman.” All the time he spoke the traitorous words, his own heart was stabbed through and through, and his member throbbed beyond anything he had felt before. Every instinct told him it would be so very easy, so very easy to pull the boy to his arms, to lower his mouth upon those beautiful red lips, to reach into the boy’s breeches and…. NO. He tried not to imagine Rafe naked but his blood was screaming its lust in his loins and for a fleeting moment the vision of the two of them entwined on a bed branded itself upon his brain.

He gave a wordless choking sob and turned away to the tower steps, tore open the door and fled, leaving Rafe weeping angry bitter tears.

After the night on the roof, Rafe and Quinn became icily polite to each other. Rafe retreated into aristocratic arrogance, and Quinn became business-like and more severe than Rafe had ever seen him. He was unrelenting in his lessons; he coached him in his least favourite subjects. He refrained from touching the boy at all, and never even looked directly at him. The only astronomy they studied was from huge illustrated books, although unbeknownst to Rafe, Quinn returned to the roof night after night and sat in the darkness trying to rid his brain of the unnatural thoughts, which were increasing rather than decreasing.

Quinn was becoming frantic. He knew that such perversions were punishable by the full force of the law, pillorying and imprisonment were the lightest you could expect if you were caught, but he could not help himself. Whenever he closed his eyes all he could see was Rafe, in his arms as he had been in this place, smiling, his lips parted, expectant for the kiss that Quinn longed to place there.

He would sit on the roof, leaning against the parapet and would bash his head against the stonework, as if trying to force the thoughts from him. The headaches he suffered as a result of these vigils helped him to remain impassive and harsh through the day’s lessons. Rafe however was a maelstrom of anger. It was all so simple to his boyish mind. He loved Quinn and Quinn had proved to him that he was as aroused as he was, so he could not understand why the man was rejecting him.

This state of affairs may have continued for sometime, and indeed their feelings may have eventually have cooled, but for Rafe’s youthful impatience and determination. He had never been denied anything in his sixteen years of life and the thought of failure never entered his mind, so he tried another assault; confident in being able to break through Quinn’s resolve.

He sat beneath the stairs one Sunday afternoon. It was the tutor’s day off, but Rafe knew he would be spending it in the library and the only key was in his own pocket. He watched hawk-like as Quinn passed by, not seeing the boy crouched in the shadows of the stairs, and Rafe saw him enter the library. Rafe counted slowly under his breath. Quinn had to get to the other end of the library, find his books and get settled. 500 heartbeats should be enough. As he counted, his breath increased in speed, his pupils dilated as the anticipation of the hunt excited him. Rafe was an excellent hunter. He had learned under his father’s tutelage the patience needed to hide in covert downwind, sometimes for hours. It always excited him and this had the added frisson of the sexual frustration he was feeling. He had been hard for so long and no amount of masturbation would control it. Quinn, although older, taller with more authority, had become his prey.

Finally, he stepped out of the shadows, opened the library door and silently locked it behind him. He kept to the rugs to eliminate noise and peered around the line of bookcases. Sunlight streamed through the huge full-length French doors showing every mote of dust in the air.

“You in here? Quinn?” Rafe’s voice was soft and low. He could see the tutor at the end of the room, and his head shot up like a deer alerted to a sudden twig snapping. Seeing Rafe, his stomach gave a familiar lurch and he stood. There was a look in the boy’s eyes he had never seen before, the wolfish expression was predominate, and he had his head bowed slightly, and his lips were parted as he stalked down the corridor of books towards where Quinn was standing. Quinn moved around the table and met the boy as he reached the end of the room.

“Rafe,” Quinn started, “you know you shouldn’t disturb…” Instead of saying a word, Rafe kept coming and startled, Quinn backed up, and feeling one of the upright reading chairs behind his legs, had no option but to sit. Before he could think, Rafe threw his leg over the tutor and straddled his lap, his expression still one of menace and determination. Without words, he took the tutor’s head in his hands and kissed him on the mouth, his lips closed, his breathing ragged.

Conquered, Quinn surrendered his soul. He was defeated; dazed. His arms flew around the slender form and crushed him to him. There was nothing. No past, no future, no time. Just the beloved body of Rafe, the smell of soap and sandalwood, the silken hair, long and loose over the shoulders. Quinn opened his mouth with a moan and Rafe thrust his tongue into him, possessing him, their tongues duelling, mating.

Rafe was ecstatic, he’d won. He’d won at last, the feel and taste of Quinn’s mouth, so new and exciting, the hard bulge in the tutor’s trousers which was pressing against his buttocks, the feel of his own heart roaring in his ears: it made him dizzy and delirious. Quinn broke free and Rafe buried his mouth against the man’s neck, licking and biting him gently, kissing the pale skin as Quinn’s head rolled back, murmuring Rafe’s name. With eager fingers, Rafe undid Quinn’s stock and threw it aside then ran his tongue over the man’s Adam’s apple, and Quinn groaned aloud in pleasure, which made Rafe’s insides melt away.

It was far more exciting than Rafe had ever dreamed of, but he knew he could not stop now, whatever he needed to do he had to see it through. Keeping his lips on Quinn’s face, he tore his own waistcoat from him and undid the strings of his shirt. Quinn’s eyes flew open and the raw naked lust in them nearly made Rafe ejaculate; he was expecting shock, disapproval, guilt, remorse, disdain, not eyes that were hazel and gold infernos, terrifying in their need and arousal. Quinn tore the shirt from Rafe’s body, kissing his bare shoulders in passion, then pulling him further up his lap, stood up, picking the boy up with him. Rafe wrapped his legs around the tutor’s waist and Quinn carried him to the library table and sat him on the edge, then knelt down in front of him. With trembling hands he removed Rafe’s shoes and hose, and Rafe looked on amazed as he kissed his naked feet. Rafe unbuttoned his own breeches and Quinn gently pulled them off, together with his underclothes and then sat back on his heels and just looked up at Rafe, in worship. There were tears rolling down the tutor’s face.

“Rafe,” he said in a broken voice. “Rafe.” He had no words to describe how beautiful he found the boy, except for his love for literature. He began to quote Solomon’s Song, murmuring the words like a prayer. “His head is as the most fine gold, his locks are bushy, and black as a raven. His eyes are as the eyes of doves by the rivers of waters, washed with milk, and fitly set. His cheeks are as a bed of spices, as sweet flowers: his lips like lilies, dropping sweet smelling myrrh. His legs are as pillars of marble, set upon sockets of fine gold: his countenance is as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars. His mouth is most sweet: yea, he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved.”

Rafe’s eyes were wide and rapturous, this is how he imagined it would be, a Greek love, filled with longing and poetry, and he held his arms out for Quinn. Quinn stood up and started to unbutton his waistcoat.

There was a roar and a terrible crashing of glass, Quinn’s eyes flew past Rafe, and Rafe spun his head around. His father was climbing through the now shattered French doors, which he had obviously broken with a pickaxe which was now lying amongst the broken glass. He was shouting almost incomprehensibly and as he reached the naked boy and trembling tutor the words were clearer.

“I suspected you were up to something like this, you unnatural sodomite! I knew you had been luring him to your room, but by God I’ll see you hanged for this!” without a glance at Rafe, he grabbed the tutor and threw him onto the ground, “How dare you touch my son? How dare you?” Using his cane he started to beat the man about the body and head. Quinn was curled into a ball and the blows rained onto him. Rafe threw on his breeches and started to shout at his father.

“Leave him alone Father – it was me! I started this!” and he tried to get between his father and Quinn, catching several of the blows as he attempted to wrest the cane away from Gordian. Gordian paused and looked at the boy as if he had never seen him before, then his eyes glazed as if he was looking straight through him. He was breathing heavily and his face was blood red, but he stopped beating Quinn who was curled and sobbing on the floor. Gordian’s voice was icy.

“Get out of my house this instant.” He said to Quinn. “You will get no character from me and no salary, and if I hear you are tutoring any other man’s son, trust me in this, I will find out, and I will allow the law to take its course, scandal to my family or no.” Rafe moved to help Quinn up and Gordian turned his full rage on him. “He has bewitched you boy! You will not touch him! He is unclean! Filthy! Unnatural!” Rafe tried to get to Quinn again, but Gordian called to the garden staff who were at the French doors. “Hobbs, take this piece of filth, ” he spat, indicating Quinn, “and throw it into the gutter where it belongs, you need not be gentle. Adams, take my son to his room, lock him in and return this key to me.”

Hobbs and Adams both leered unpleasantly and Rafe was grabbed by the arm and dragged off by the heavy-set gardener. Desperately turning his head, he saw Hobbs kick Quinn twice before yanking him to his feet. There was blood streaming from his nose and mouth and with that vision Rafe was dragged through the broken doors, which slashed at his bare legs and feet. Adams threw him into his bedroom; as the key turned in the lock, he flew to the front window, sobbing with grief and loss, desperate to catch a glimpse of Quinn. He was finally rewarded with the sight of both Adams and Hobbs dragging a clearly unconscious figure past the front gates and dropping him onto the street like a sack. It was now pouring with rain, and from the window Quinn looked dead. Rafe tore open the window and screamed the tutor’s name, his voice torn and broken tears blurring his vision. As he stood there sobbing there was a noise behind him, and Gordian entered the bedroom, a horsewhip in his hands.

#

Rafe had never spoken another unbidden word to his father from that day to the day he had died three years later. Two weeks after Quinn’s departure, another tutor came to the house and Rafe was allowed out of his room. The new tutor, Simon Mauvaise was a puritanical, vile and violent man with a taste for blood and castigation. Gordian gave no objections to the practices he performed on the boy. Rafe had been brutalised, beaten and humiliated. The youth had lost all interest in learning which simply goaded Mauvaise to worse punishments. Rafe was sullen and uncaring about the beatings; in his heart, he felt he had deserved them for being the cause of Quinn’s destruction, but he railed against the injustice of it. Mauvaise would beat him for the slightest thing; being slow in a Latin declination, or translating a word incorrectly. If on the few occasions Rafe answered back, or showed rebellion and fire behind his eyes, this merited Mauvaise’s particular favourite form of torture. The new tutor had discovered the small disused icehouse at the back of the house, and his extreme punishment was to strip the boy, march him through the garden and shove him into the small wooden box. There was barely enough room in there for Rafe to crouch into, and as he grew in stature the pain of being forced into a space too small for him was crippling. There were rats there, and being unable to move, he was unable to chase them away and they had bitten his feet, his hands, his ears. He grew up with a horror of rats.

Winter or Summer, snow or rain, it mattered not to Mauvaise, and several times he had opened the box on a sweltering day or a frosty night to find Rafe comatose. Rather than produce any sympathy, the fact that Rafe’s conscious mind had escaped the punishment would make the tutor violent in his rages, and he would beat the boy until the pain revived him. One snowy morning, as he dragged himself to his feet, the blood dripping from his naked back onto the white snow beneath him, the boy saw his father watching him from one of the house’s windows.

After three long years of this mistreatment Rafe was changed almost beyond all recognition. He was hardened, mistrustful and vengeful; his love of life torn from him, but he was not broken. When the time came he went up to Oxford, not for the love of learning, but finally to be free of the horror of Tavistock Square…and tutors.

Which brought him sharply back to the present. He loathed the idea of Sebastien being subjected to anything other than an enthusiasm for learning. Woe betide the tutor who mistreated his son. He would not countenance the thought of the child being sent to boarding school as he did not feel that he was strong enough having inherited his mother’s sickly constitution, so like it or not a tutor must be engaged. Rafe was determined that it would at least be a kind man, and his brow furrowed again as Quinn’s smiling face forced its way into his head.

“Stop at the village,” he ordered the coachman and as the fields passed, Rafe wondered what had happened to Quinn. He had tried to find him several times in the intervening years, but he had vanished without a trace. For all Rafe knew he was probably dead. The village came into view and Rafe repressed it all again, his eyes shutting down, and his face becoming its normal beautiful frozen mask.