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The Count’s Man
I Ferdinando
is the prized weapon of Count Tancrède d’Espinel, a bloodless, serpentine Frenchman who
prefers to be fucked by his olive-skinned mercenaries. Ferdinando fucks him
on Persian carpets and marble benches, bites his shoulders, leaves
coin-shaped bruises along his throat. Tancrède
doesn’t mind. He’s never minded being used—only being
bored. But Tancrède knows that Ferdinando is cheating him. In
Jerusalem, Ferdinando is bored. The city is a wrinkled whore, every stone
sodden with centuries of cum and sorrow, every alley stinking of rot. He
spends his coin in the taverns off David Street, slurps bitter arak with
Syrian sellswords, bets on pit fights between
starved dogs and Armenian boys. If he’s not fucking, he’s
fighting. If he’s not fighting, he’s fucking. Tonight
he fucks the dog-boy, a curly-haired thing with snaggled
teeth, behind the water-sellers’ tent. He comes twice in the
boy’s mouth before noticing the shifty, sunken eyes of the
alley’s other inhabitants. The city watches, always. He
likes that. He
thinks of Tancrède as he laces his
trousers—pale and elegant, with his meat-soft hands and the mole just
above his navel. Ferdinando’s cock is still half-hard, bobbing as he
staggers back through the moonlit souk, boots squelching in the filth. He
stops at a wine-stall, downs a skinful in one pull,
and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Hey,
Ferdi.” A voice, honeyed with Levantine slur,
coils from the shadows. He
grins, recognizing the silhouette: Ghaith, one of Tancrède’s favorites, a Nubian with
shoulders like a ship’s prow and a laugh that booms louder than
catapults. “Looking
to get fucked?” Ferdinando calls, pitching a walnut at him. Ghaith steps from the dark, teeth shining, his robe
half-open to show a chest slick with oil. “You wish, Siciliano.” He glances at the sky, at the heavy
coin of the moon. “The boss wants you. Said it’s urgent.” Ferdinando
cocks an eyebrow. “He can wait till morning.” Ghaith smiles—an odd, sorrowful thing. “He
said to bring you. Now.” The man’s
jaw has the set of finality. Ferdinando’s hands go to his belt, feeling
for the knife. Ghaith notices. “Don’t
be stupid,” Ghaith says. “We’re
friends, yes?” Ferdinando
shrugs. “Sure. I like your ass.” But he
doesn’t resist when Ghaith leads him through
the blue-lit maze of Jerusalem’s side-streets, deeper and deeper into
the city’s bowels. Two other men join them, shrouded and silent. Ferdinando
recognizes the glint of Spanish steel on their hips. They
walk. They do not speak. Only the wet slap of sandals, the distant barking of
dogs, the rustle of linen against stone. Finally,
they reach a courtyard slick with piss and old blood. It smells of slaughterhouse
and soured wine. Ghaith’s hand clamps on Ferdinando’s
shoulder. “Here?” “Here,”
says Ghaith. Ferdinando
laughs, teeth white in the darkness. “So this is how the count wants
me? Fucked in a pigsty, by you three?” No one
answers. Ghaith grabs Ferdinando’s arms, pinning them behind
him. The Spaniard punches him in the gut, doubling him over. The other
man—a Frank with a harelip—knees him in the balls, hard enough to
make him retch. He tastes vomit and old bile. He
spits, snarls, tries to twist free, but they’re all over him,
manhandling him to the ground. His face is mashed into the cobbles. His arms
are yanked up so high behind his back he thinks his shoulders will split. Ghaith’s mouth is close to his ear: “Sorry.
Boss’s orders.” It’s
only then, as they force his legs apart and pin his calves, that he
understands. A fourth man emerges from the dark: the old Moor, Tancrède’s house physician, in a robe the
color of funeral ash. The
Moor kneels, opens a leather roll of tools. Glittering hooks, curved knives,
a chisel. Ferdinando starts to laugh, but the noise turns to a shriek as
someone stabs him—once, twice, four times—in the lower belly,
just above the root of his cock. Not deep enough to kill. Enough to hurt. Blood
pools on the ground, hot and sticky. He is
held open. He can feel his own blood pulsing in his balls. Ferdinando
howls, thrashes. The Franks have to sit on his legs, pin his head between
their knees. The old Moor takes a curved knife and, with a practiced flick,
saws through Ferdinando’s scrotum and cock, root and all. The pain is a
bonfire that drowns the world. He can see, between his own knees, the red
ruin where his cock was. The
Moor holds up the severed flesh, as if to appraise the cut. Then,
methodically, he shoves it into Ferdinando’s mouth, gagging him. Blood
and salt and old, bitter piss flood his throat. He’s
crying now, blind with agony. He tries to breathe, to spit, but the meat is
too big, choking. The
Spaniard draws a short dagger. Without drama, he plunges it between Ferdinando’s
ribs, twisting up into the heart. The
world goes out on a rush of iron. The
men let his body fall to the stones. Ferdinando’s blood seeps into the
cracks, mingling with the old stains. They look at him a long while, then
wipe their hands, gather their tools, and vanish into the night. Ferdinando’s
corpse stays behind, mouth full of itself, cockless
and still grinning. II But
sometimes, when the story is retold in the bathhouses and wine-shops along
the Via Dolorosa, it goes another way. In
this version, Tancrède knows about the
cheating for months. He lets Ferdinando think nothing is amiss. The Count
bides his time. He waits for spring, when his country estate is frothing with
almond blossoms and the cicadas drown out the priests’ moaning from the
city. One
morning, Tancrède asks Ferdinando to
accompany him for a hunting party—an honor reserved for the
Count’s closest men. The horses are ready before dawn. The best food
and wine packed into leather satchels. Four others ride with them, men with
soldier’s hands and eyes that never blink. They
ride north, out of the city’s choking dust, and into the hills. The
estate is a white scar along the olive groves, the house itself a squat
fortress of sun-bleached stone. Ferdinando spends the morning wrestling with
the dogs and teasing the kitchen maids; the afternoon, drinking with the
grooms and the archer from Blois. At
dusk, Tancrède gathers the men in the outer
courtyard. “We go tonight,” he says, his tongue clipped and
precise. “The moon is full. The boars are bold.” They
arm themselves. Ferdinando takes two knives and a short sword; the others
bring bows and ropes. They set out into the woods, torches bobbing among the
cypress and pines. The
moon is so bright it casts shadows. The men joke and piss in the undergrowth,
but the woods swallow up their laughter. They
walk for an hour, maybe two. Ferdinando starts to wonder if Tancrède even means to hunt at all. There’s
no sign of boar. Just the rustle of lizards and the distant howl of something
with too many teeth. They
stop at a clearing. It smells of leaf-rot and cold water. “Here,”
Tancrède says. Ferdinando
waits for the order to circle up, to track, to flush the game. Instead, the
men encircle him. He turns, grinning, assuming a prank. But
they’re closing in, moving in perfect silence. Tancrède’s voice is a soft
breath: “You know why, Ferdinando.” He
does. He’s known all along. It happens
quickly: Two men seize his arms, twist them behind his back with brutal
efficiency. A third rips open his shirt, strips him naked. His boots are
wrenched off, one by one, taking skin with them. He
spits in Tancrède’s face. Tancrède only smiles, teeth white and small as
pearls. “You’re
not the first to betray me,” the Count murmurs, almost kindly.
“But you are the one I’ll miss the most.” The
men drag Ferdinando to the biggest tree, a cypress thick as a wine barrel. A
rope is thrown over a high branch; the noose dangles, waiting. Ferdinando
thrashes, bucks, curses them all in Sicilian and French and gutter Latin. They
fit the noose around his neck. He’s
hard. He’s always hard when he fights, and the others see it—some
look away, embarrassed, but Tancrède drinks
it in, eyes shining. “Do
you want to say anything?” the Count asks. Ferdinando
laughs, gobs a clot of blood onto Tancrède’s
boot. “You’ll never find another cock like mine,” he says. “That’s
true,” says the Count. He
gives the nod. The men haul the rope, and Ferdinando is yanked from the
ground, kicking. His toes claw the air, scrabbling for purchase. His neck
bulges against the rope. His cock swings, purple and angry. He
makes it a full minute—longer than any of them expect. At first he
curses, then he gasps, then the noises become something else. The men let go
and watch. Tancrède steps closer, face
tilted up, mouth slightly open as if tasting the spectacle. Ferdinando’s
body betrays him. As the world tunnels and flashes white, his cock grows impossibly
hard, leaking. A string of clear fluid arcs from the tip. His legs twitch,
bowels loosen, piss rivers down his thighs. The face turns blue, tongue
lolling. He
comes as he dies, the semen splattering his belly and Tancrède’s
boots. None
of them speak. They let him hang, swaying, until the last tremors fade. The
body dangles for hours. Night insects find the eyes, the mouth. A line of
ants works its way up the foot, over the shin, toward the cock. In the morning, Tancrède
comes back to see him. The rope has carved a purple channel into the neck so
deep the boy can see gristle. Ferdinando's blackened tongue protrudes between
teeth that have bitten through the lower lip. The eyes bulge from their
sockets, red-threaded and fixed on something terrible. Yet the body below the
neck remains obscenely beautiful—marble-white against the forest floor,
and the cock still jutting upward, as if death itself couldn't tame it. |
