“Madame, allow me to present Mademoiselle Thisbe Saneer of the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash’, and the Reverend Doctor Carlyle Foster, a Fellow of the Sensayers’ Conclave and protégé of Her Holiness Conclave Head Julia Doria-Pamphili.”
Madame curtseyed her greeting, no simple gesture but a grand process as the heights of her wig, its white peaks crowned with ruffles and dyed feathers, dipped and rose like the crags around Olympus nodding their respect to passing gods. Her gown today was midnight blue, open in the front over an inner gown of rosy salmon laced with gold, with a wide framework underneath which made the skirts swell to more than thrice the lady’s width, as if she waded in her own private ocean. She wore gems on her fingers, her wrists, at her throat, not distracting but serving her body as gems should, their glitter luring one to notice the curve of an arm or the slope of a tender breast. The face that stared back at the new arrivals was a painting, the precise, stylized ideal which stares from every flattering portrait that ever graced a palace wall in the age when men’s portraits showed distinct features and character, but ladies were homogenized into one doll-perfect face. It really was all paint, the heavy makeup of the period whose whites and rouges did not let a hint of skin peek through. Her age? She seems more a time-stopped goddess than a woman whom the count of years could touch, and sometimes I wish our anti-aging drugs were less powerful, so one might see what greater transformations maturity had planned for such a beauty. It is not polite to discuss a lady’s age, so I shall say only that, were all the Seven leaders of our world assembled in one room, Madame the Eighth, only Headmaster Faust would recall more of history than she.
“Mademoiselle Thisbe, Doctor Carlyle,” I continued, “may I present Madame D’Arouet; also His Grace Ganymede Jean-Louis de la Trémoïlle, Duc de Thouars, Prince de Talmond, President of the Humanists, and His Excellency Chief Director Hotaka Andō Mitsubishi.”
I assure you, reader, the pair beside me were no less startled by Madame’s illustrious company than you are. Golden Ganymede lounged against the summer wall, his diamond sparkle finally in a setting as brilliant as itself. Across the room from him stood Director Andō, dignified but with something of the harried look of a man who has just rushed to replace his pants. Actually, the Director was not wearing pants but pleated hakama, whose belts and knots require much more time and skill than trousers, for at Madame’s he exercises the option of wearing the Eighteenth-Century period costume of his own country, marking himself a “foreign dignitary” among so many Parisians. Ganymede, of course, always dresses the same, but here it feels normal.
“Pleased to meet you, Madame.” Enterprising Thisbe drew the folds of her cloak up into a makeshift curtsey.
“The pleasure is mine, my dear.” Madame approached and embraced Thisbe like a sister, the pinkish tint of her forearms set off by the long trailing ruffles of salmon lace which framed her half-length sleeves. “It’s high time one of your household came to visit mine. I’m sorry if your initial reception was a bit rough, but the back door is not the best entrance for new guests.”
Thisbe accepted Madame’s jasmine-scented kisses on both cheeks. “But more interesting!” she offered.
Madame’s smile liked that. “I suppose so. And dear Doctor Carlyle, please sit. From what I’ve heard you’ve had a very trying few days, encountering Dominic and Mycroft and my Son.” Before Carlyle saw it coming, Madame had kissed the Cousin and swept him over to a daybed, where she plopped him down and settled down beside him, her vast skirts filling the space between the sensayer and curving couch arm, as blankets fill a cradle.
“Yes,” Carlyle confessed to the warmth of her inviting smile. “It’s been awkward.”
“Of course it has, of course it has. And for my part in it I’m very sorry. Sit, everyone, sit, sit.” She gestured Thisbe to a vacant loveseat opposite. “And thou too Mycroft, thou art the very picture of exhaustion; take the corner stool before thou fallest down.”
I bowed. “Thank you, Madame.”
“Good, all settled, now, how can we help you, good Doctor Foster?” Madame glanced at the President and Director, who pulled up ibis-slim chairs to flank her and the sensayer, like family gathered around a troubled child. “You’re concerned about my Son?” she asked.
“You, uh…” Carlyle’s tongue faltered beneath the President and Chief Director’s stares. Duke and Chief Director, I should say; in this house Ganymede is far more Duke than President.
“Come, speak your mind!” Madame chided. “We’re all friends here, whatever we may be outside. You have worries?”
Thisbe spoke up, her smile growing more … ‘tickled’ is the word. “Are you J.E.D.D. Mason’s mother?”
“I am Jehovah’s mother, yes,” Madame answered.
Carlyle managed not to wince this time. “And you run this place?”
“Yes.”
“Which is a…”
“A brothel?” Madame chuckled at Carlyle’s timidity. “You mustn’t be scared of the word. I usually call it a Gendered Sex Club. I offer archaic sex, with old-fashioned gender-differentiated men and women. My clients like to seduce or be seduced, and enjoy skirts and breeches, rather than the neutered egalitarian copulation one gets outside nowadays. Whom did you meet on arrival? The Chevalier? Did you like him?”
Carlyle swallowed hard. “So you don’t do anything … more extreme here?”
Madame’s laugh was indulgent as a nanny’s. “I hope you don’t think that badly of Blacklaws.” Though nearly impossible to spot among her skirts’ flare, there was a Blacklaw Hiveless sash about her hips. “Our clients get quite enough of the thrill of the forbidden with gender.”
The Cousin frowned. “I’m surprised people find gendered costumes that exciting, frankly.”
“Oh, my dear,” she chuckled at his innocence, “human culture spent, what, ten thousand years working out ways to code exciting gendered sexuality into every shirt and gesture? Our poor three centuries without it simply haven’t had the time develop anything to match.” Her eye caught on me. “It’s like a language. A young invented language with a couple thousand words might manage baby books and street directions, but Voltaire, Shakespeare, the profound peaks and doggerel troughs of literature, those take a million words. Many of my clients find what we offer here quite addictive.”
Carlyle’s wrinkled nose showed that he found the thought … odd. “So this is all just historical reenactment?”
“In a sense, yes,” she answered warmly, “although, since you ask about the forbidden, Doctor, in the intimacy of this room I will confess there is one more … borderline thing that goes on here”—she caught a sparkle in Thisbe’s gaze, and, smiling, sparkled back—“though we make sure it harms no one. You see, my guests enjoy reenactments of Eighteenth-Century intimacy, particularly the forbidden and scandalous sides thereof, not only my gendered ladies and gentlemen, but the Enlightenment art of mixing forbidden sex acts with forbidden things, especially forbidden talk.”