The Bacchanal at the Inn No Monk Confessed
We had spent years wandering beneath the patched habit of itinerant monks, the sort no rule would claim and no council would recognize. We begged from village to village, faked our prayers for a hot meal, and kept on down the road. We had trod the routes of Rome and Jerusalem, but none left such a mark on us as the one that led to Compostela, crossing the mountains of Lobagrís.
My companion in hardship was named Floriano, a novice with a sparse beard and an innocent little face who made his living from two things: pretending to be a saint and doing the opposite. I had picked him up in a double convent in those mountains, where the widows shut away by their husbands and the nuns themselves wrung him dry night after night. I hauled him out of there half spent, and brought the color back into him by dint of road and stale bread.
I won’t lie: there was some of that between us too. On cold nights, out of every gaze, Floriano showed why the nuns fought over their turn. And I, who am no slouch in what nature gave me, paid him back in kind. More than one village crossed itself when it heard us bellowing among the pines, unable to understand what kind of beast could moan like that.
It was precisely as a beast that I had been made famous. In that region the legend of the Garruño ran everywhere, a huge, hairy creature that haunted the woods. One afternoon, while I was bathing naked in a stream, some girls surprised me; when I turned around, they screamed that name and ran off. From then on they pointed me out as the Garruño, which had its good side and its bad: women wanted to find out whether the rumor was true, and men looked at me like a satyr ready to leap over their wall.
***
After days lost in that greenish fog, we came out into a clearing where a large inn stood. It was run by two married couples from the same family. The men were well into middle age and quite well padded. The women, on the other hand, stopped our eyes in their tracks. The elder one, Doña Casilda, was full-bodied without being excessive, with white, firm flesh. The younger, Doña Ginebra, let a pair of full, pearled breasts show between her neckline, announcing a recent pregnancy.
The older innkeeper, a sour-faced fellow named Bertoldo, greeted us with a growl. But the women, seeing our ragged habits, knelt and kissed our hands with devotion. I took advantage of the gesture to look closely at what they, with a wicked smile, made no effort to hide. Before long we were seated at the table, with hot food and a pitcher of mead they would not let us empty.
The inn was overflowing that night. Some nobles had arrived with their ladies, on their way to Court, delayed because a carriage axle had broken and they were hunting for a blacksmith. While Bertoldo argued over where to put us — he suggested the henhouse, so we could sleep among the feathers — Doña Casilda settled the matter: we would sleep near the rooms, like watchdogs for the house, paying nothing in exchange for lending a hand wherever needed.
—Everything is needed here — she said, looking me up and down —. And two pairs of young hands are never too many.
—Ours are at your service, mistress — I answered, holding her gaze —. For whatever you need.
She bit her lip and turned away. I knew then that night was not going to be one for prayers.
***
Among the distinguished travelers was a fat prelate in red vestments, Bishop Anselmo de Brena, who never took his eyes off Floriano. I knew that look. The novice, sharper than hunger, let the bishop call him to a corner under the pretext of kissing his ring, and there, instead of confessing, he began to pour out a sly little sob story about how much he had suffered at the hands of others. The prelate, moved and aroused in equal measure, promised to hear him in private later.
When the time came, I stationed myself in a crack in the partition wall. The bishop went from moralizing talk to practice in a heartbeat. But Floriano knew exactly what he was doing. He let the cleric grow excited, made him believe it was the best thing that had ever happened to him, and little by little he turned the tables. The bishop’s knees went weak with pleasure when, as the novice turned around, he spotted the rod the boy had hidden beneath his habit.
—Give me penance, son — the prelate panted, hitching up his purple robes and bracing himself on the bed—. Make it hard.
And Floriano, to settle old accounts, gave it to him to the hilt. I took advantage of that moment of carelessness. I had my own reasons to get something back from the higher clergy, so I went in, got my own tool ready, and told the novice to cover his mouth with his as I drove him from behind. Between the two of us we left him breathless and with no other request than a muffled groan. To our surprise, the rougher the treatment, the more the damned man asked for it.
We both came at once, and left the bishop exhausted on the bed, convinced he would not know how to continue the journey the next day.
***
Just then a mature lady came in with a younger one dressed with less modesty than is proper. The elder was Doña Estefanía, aunt and godmother to the girl; the younger, the bishop’s own niece. They had come to present the girl to the prelate, and at the sight they found, they threatened to cry out.
I could not allow that. I closed the door and, without losing my manners, presented our respects and our tools, which we placed at their disposal. I also offered them a sweet drink to calm their nerves. Doña Estefanía, far from being frightened, sized up Floriano with her eyes and then sized me up.
—If Your Eminence is not up to it — she said, unlacing her bodice — someone will have to attend to us.
We rode her together. While I mounted her, she French-kissed me with a long, skillful tongue, and I invited her to take it wherever she pleased. She did, and I swear she took me to seventh heaven. Meanwhile, Floriano tended to the niece, who first looked at him warily and then with amazement, used as she was to more modest things.
—Slowly — the girl begged —, I’m not used to so much.
The novice, patient as a good confessor, worked her open with his tongue before giving her the rest. The lovely girl went from fear to delight, and ended up asking for more and faster, just like her uncle a little while before. Doña Estefanía, riding me, set the pace for the whole scene with her broad hips, while the young woman beside her discovered pleasures she had never suspected.
When both of them collapsed, spent from the effort and the wine, we left there free of all debts, leaving the bishop dreaming of his penance.
***
As soon as we stepped out into the corridor, we ran into Doña Casilda and Doña Ginebra. From the disorder of their skirts and the flush on their faces, I understood we had had an audience. A hand extended and not refused, a smile that invites: that was enough for us to understand one another. They wanted us in their beds, if we could get the grumbling Bertoldo off our backs.
I worked out the plan during the next day’s siesta. While the innkeeper slept, we painted spots on his skin with dye, and when he woke we made him believe he had contracted one of those illnesses that carry a man off. Terrified, he accepted the remedy we proposed: spend the entire night praying, shut up in a barrel of salt and sawdust with his head sticking out, until the sickness left his body. Poor Bertoldo commended himself to all the saints, never suspecting that the only miracle of the night would happen elsewhere.
While he prayed in the dark in the stable, I took care of Doña Casilda. To see her spread-legged, with those generous white curves, was a feast. She devoured me with her mouth first and then took me on all fours, swallowing whole the rod her husband had never given her in like measure. I worked her into a proper heat amid sighs, explored other avenues that she shut down with a jerk — “not there, that’s too much” — and left her for Floriano, more modestly proportioned, who was waiting his turn with Doña Ginebra in his arms.
—Let each of us take what suits him best — I said, and we exchanged partners.
The novice positioned himself behind Doña Casilda while I put Ginebra at my mercy. The two women felt both rods enter at once, slender and slick, into warm caves, and the sly hussies knew how to wring every drop from them. Later we swapped again, and Doña Casilda, by then completely surrendered, received without shame what had made her cry out before. It was a long night, one with no end, with the innkeeper insatiable and the young woman quieter but just as active.
***
At dawn we freed Bertoldo from his barrel, cured of his false leprosy. He was so grateful for having had his life saved that he begged us to remain as eternal guests, and from then on he gave himself over to prayer with a fervor he had never had before. The inn, he said, would from that day on be a place of penance and recollection.
It did not last. That inn lost among the mountains of Lobagrís ended up becoming a secret refuge for nobles who sought far from their palaces what they could not have in them. Doña Casilda grew ever bolder every night, and Doña Ginebra discovered that her vocation went far beyond serving mead. Floriano hesitated between returning to the Order or continuing the road with me. And I, who have borne the Garruño’s fame since that stream, knew that my destiny was still the same as always: to travel the roads, console those in need, and never confess what I left in my wake.
When we learned that Bishop Anselmo was returning in a fury, with his female relations and a problem difficult to explain beneath their skirts, we did not think twice. We gathered our habits, bade farewell to the good inn with one last bacchanal in which no one had anything left to hide, and put some distance between us before dawn could catch us.
Berenguel de Tordoya