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Mal de Mer - A Silco x Mel Piece - Ch: 2 ~ Sealegs

Summary:

A high-seas honeymoon. Two adversaries, bound by matrimony. A future full of peril and possibility. And a word that neither enjoys adding to their lexicon: Compromise.

War was simpler business…

Part of the 'Forward But Never Forget/XOXO' AU. Can be read as a standalone series.

cw: rough sex, rough oral sex, manipulation.

tw: unhealthy parent-child dynamics, abandonment trauma.

Thank you for the graphics @lipsticksandmolotovs<3

Mal de Mer on AO3

Mal de Mer on FFnet

CHAPTER

I - II - III - IV

꧁꧂

Touch if you will my stomach Feel how it trembles inside You've got the butterflies all tied up Don't make me chase you Even doves have pride

~ "When Doves Cry" - Prince

Dawn breaks against a paling sky.

The sun, a fat gold disc, hangs low on the horizon. The wind blows a steady ten knots.

The SS Woe Betide slits through the waves with a sensation not unlike a fingertip dipped down the edge of a rowboat, soft ripples fanning outward. Mel feels the velocity of the turbines in her bones. But the vessel's fine-tuned calibration keeps it perfectly stable. There is only the sleek purr of power; the gliding cut of friction.

And, far beneath, the vast dark unknown.

Her fever has broken. She's still a little languid. But it's a deep, rejuvenated languor. As if the Mal de Mer had drained her body, and sleep has filled it again.

Sleep—or Shimmer.

In small doses, the drug's efficacy is renowned. In large doses: reviled. A Philosopher's Stone, and yet a Devil's bargain—all in one sip.

Mel's never condoned the drug's use. But she's no fool. In Zaun, Shimmer is a necessity. The air, foul. The water, contaminated. The food, inedible. To survive, one needs ironclad immunity. And Shimmer, in moderation, keeps the body's defenses strong.

She's seen Silco, with his bad eye and the wreckage of his scarred face, rely on it daily. A single drop, pierced into the eyeball, the plunger bottomed. Ssssss—his gasp afterwards. A hiss of bitter necessity, not want. His is a pragmatic, utilitarian dependence. Not a millimeter more, and only once per day.

For him, Shimmer is a means to an end. And the end is survival.

And survival, Ambessa always said, is its own justification.

Slowly, Mel sits up. Her breakfast is ready on the sideboard. A pot of steaming green tea paired with a bowl of hot oatmeal. Her husband has come and gone. And she, alone again, with the rising sun.

Not this time, Mel thinks.

This time, I will rise with him.

Last night's thwarted seduction is a splinter. Irksome, in hindsight. She's never had to work so hard for a man's interest. Usually, her smile is enough. But her husband, she's learning, is not a creature to be coaxed or cajoled. He's a man to be met on equal terms.

And if that means she has to fight, to show him the woman she truly is—a woman not afraid of hard truths, or a harder sell—then that's a challenge she will rise to meet.

You are a Medarda, Ambessa always said. You will find your sealegs in the worst storms.

And your footing in the darkest fathoms.

Mel, rising, finds her sealegs. They are, admittedly, precarious. Her balance is off.

Strange how that works. One spell of illness, and the world's axis tilts. Suddenly she's a girl again, stumbling after her mother. Trying, and failing, to walk the path laid out for her.

My path, Mel reminds herself, is my own.

Ignoring the porridge—her appetite, reawakened, cannot be fobbed off by gruel—she slips into her peignoir. Then, barefoot, she pads into the shared bathroom between hers and Silco's berth. The humid air is an olio of him: astringent tea-tree aftershave, the bittersweet tang of bergamot oils, the lingering trace of cigarette.

Inhaling, Mel feels a tug between her thighs. It's a visceral reminder of last night's unfinished business.

But first: the real business of the day.

Beautification.

The clawfoot tub, huge and gleaming, beckons. The past week, she's made do with the washbasin, and a sponge soaked in lavender water. But it's an inferior substitute for the luxury of a proper soak. Twisting the tap, she lets the water run hot, and fetches her favorite scented salts: Kalishma rose petals, jasmine, and a generous dose of vanilla.

Then, shedding her peignoir, she slips in.

Bathing, for Mel, is always a languorous affair. Mornings are her rare moments of solitude before her day takes flight. A chance to meditate and set her plans in order.

A time, too, for self-reflection.

In the water, she can never stop the memories from bubbling to the surface: her mother's tutelage, absorbed both willingly and otherwise. Lessons in warfare and wile; in politics and poise. The many things she'd been taught, and the one thing she'd refused to learn:

To be a Medarda first—and a woman second.

To Ambessa, the two were one and the same. Their lineage was of singular, inviolate importance. The rest was frivolity.

Here, Mel relishes the woman within. And the pleasures of being that woman.

The hot bathwater suffuses her muscles. Her locs, unraveling at the ends, are gently coiled into separate rolls, and pinned up to await later care. She massages a special scrub, scented with Icathian lavender, into her scalp. Then, with lukewarm water, she rinses out the suds. A second lather follows: a heavy moisturizer of honey and coconut oil. With a warm towel, she lets it set into hair. Then, she scours her body from neck to feet: a pumice of sea sponge and a soft, sugary exfoliant of crushed pearls.

Nothing goes without attention. Every part, every inch, is carefully tended.

In her girlhood, she'd never had the luxury. Cleanliness was a necessity, not an indulgence. Mel was expected to be presentable: in mind, and in form. Under Ambessa's exacting scrutiny, she'd dressed as a Noxian noblewoman should. Her curls, pinned back in a simple bun. Her face bare, with mimimal flourishes of jewel and paint. And her body, a mantel for unadorned high-collared gowns of beige, blue, or black.

No frills. No furbelows. Just the austere, unvarnished truth of her person.

It was the style favored by Ambessa, no aficionada of feminine frippery. Not that Ambessa needed frippery to stand out. Her mother could wear bloodstained armor to the grand ball, and turn every head in the room.

Mel, meanwhile, was a late bloomer. Of her family, she'd been the plainest: her mother, the iron lioness, all dark mane and fierce eyes; her father, a Targonian admiral, his sinewy physique weathered by the winds of daring voyages; and her brother, Kino, the best of both worlds, so chiseled he could've been cut from pure bronze, and possessed of such guile he could've outwitted man or monster at the bargaining table.

Whereas she, the spare, was a mere slip of a thing. Delicate in her stance, and saddled with a heart too tender to match her family's martial ambitions. As for her looks: well, she was comely enough, or so Ambessa conceded. But she'd never hold a candle to the great beauties of their dynasty.

She'd tried, as a young woman, to be the mirror of her mother. But the reflection was a pale imitation. She was never as tall. Her shoulders, never as broad. Her nose, her eyes, her chin: all too soft.

Ambessa was a force of nature. Mel was a girl, still finding her feet.

In the end, she'd been relegated to a consolation prize. Mayhaps she'd catch the eye of a warlord's bastard, or the youngest son of a merchant clan. But she'd never be esteemed as a person of consequence. Never be the face that launched a thousand ships, nor the fist that won a thousand wars.

Never, truly, be the heir Ambessa wanted.

In the end, Mel's duty, her only value, was her readiness to play by the rules. Be the docile daughter. The biddable bride. She had no place in the halls of power, where the real bargains were struck. No say in the brokerage of alliances, nor the redistribution of spoils.

And no right, certainly, to her own ambitions.

Ambessa saw only weakness in Mel's softness. Mel, though, knew better. Soft was just a different sort of strength. One that, even in the worst darkness, must endure. Must, in fact, shine brighter.

Because, Mel thinks, real power isn't in the closed fist.

It's in the open palm.

In the end, she'd done exactly that. Chosen mercy instead of the blade. Philanthropy over bloodshed; diplomacy over conquest.

In short, she'd chosen progress.

And paid the price.

By her twenty-first year, Ambessa, despairing of her daughter's idealism, had cast her out. She was not, Mel knew, an unfit heir. She was merely unfit, period.

The banishment—Mel's final lesson—was the cruelest cut of all. Yet, in the aftermath, Mel learnt that cruelty was not, by definition, the absence of love. The opposite: cruelty was the most extreme form of survival. It was a mother, unable to express the full depth of her heart, reduced to the worst of her instincts.

That cruelty—its extremity—was Ambessa's way of protecting Mel, from their world and from herself.

The exile, the rupture of their bond: they were sacrifices.

Sometimes, Mel thinks of how reptiles will sever their own tails, forfeiting a piece of their selves to escape a larger threat. It's a hard and terrible choice. But a necessity if the whole is to survive.

And survive, Mel did.

In exile, she'd found her own worth. She'd found her self. The self that she'd polished to a sheen, slowly and painfully, from the splinters of a broken psyche. The self built, brick by brick, out of a lifetime's loneliness and despair.

She'd never be a force of nature like Ambessa. So, she'd become something else.

A luminary.

In Piltover, she'd undergone a breakthrough into breathtaking beauty. She'd left off her old wardrobe: the gowns with their plain, high collars and the muted palettes. She'd learned how to gild herself like a lily in an elysian garden: dresses in dozens of sun-kissed hues, cut tantalizingly low to trace the shadow of her decolletage, or cut daringly high to showcase the smoothness of her thighs. Jewels that were a symphony in a spectrum: emerald, amethyst, citrine.

And gold, lots and lots of gold: until she'd glittered bright enough to outrival the sun.

As a girl, she'd worn her hair in its natural curl. Simple, stark, unfashionable. Now, she'd let it grow, and grow, and grow. Glossy locs coiled in gold, and styled into a coronet at the crown of her head: a diadem fit for a queen. As for her face: she'd learnt her best features, the way an artist learns the play of light. With philters of plum lip-stain, phials of indigo kohl, and pots of golden dust, she'd highlighted what nature had given, and exaggerated what it had not.

Until the girl was gone, and a goddess remained.

It was a transformation as gradual as the phases of the moon. As shocking as a solar flare.

And when, finally, she'd seen herself in the mirror, she'd felt the strangest sensation. Like the face staring back was a reflection, not of the woman she'd failed to be, but of the woman she'd been all along.

Mel, at last, had seen herself.

Piltover had seen her too. And, once they'd looked, they'd never stopped. She'd entered the elite circles as a mere footnote in the Medarda family-tree. Yet her footfall had stirred a stampede. Men and women vying for her attention; artists clamoring for her likeness; suitors offering themselves on a silver platter.

They didn't know where she'd come from. Only that she was here.

And, in her, they'd seen a rarity worth keeping.

Her beauty had been the key. Her cleverness, the lock. Together, they'd opened doors for her all the way to the Council chambers. In the space of a decade, she'd flourished from a foreign enigma into the Patroness of Progress. Wherever she stepped, she shone. Wherever she looked, they fell in line.

She was the impetus behind Piltover's transformation into a technological juggernaut. She'd bankrolled Jayce Talis, the boy who'd become the Man of Tomorrow. She'd spearheaded the Council's most forward-thinking social reforms, been the architect behind its boldest public works, and the guiding light for its brightest scholastic minds.

Her golden fingerprints were all over the City of Progress. She'd made it, the world swooned, a paradise. Her brand—the Medarda brand—was synonymous with a better tomorrow.

And she'd done it without spilling a drop of blood.

Her mother, Mel thinks, would detest the irony. Her daughter's ideals, once a folly, had given her the impetus to imagine a world where her family's sins were not a burden to carry, but a gift to give.

A brighter world.

In the tub, Mel feels for her wedding ring, twisting it gently on her finger.

And then...

And then, she'd met the Eye of Zaun.

And wanted, in a flash, more than the sum of what she'd built.

Wanting a man, Ambessa always said, is a fool's errand. They're empty vessels. The more you give, the more they need. You can pour your whole life into a man, and he will still be empty.

Better to keep yourself full.

Mel, as a girl, had learned the words. Mel, as a woman, had heeded the lesson. Men were tools. In the boardroom, pieces on her chessboard. In the bedroom, morsels on her tray. She'd made a study of their wants, molding them to suit her ends as a sculptor molds clay.

Each man she'd bedded was, in his own way, the same. Predictable. Easy to seduce; easier to discard. She'd always kept a measure of distance. Kept her heart separate from her head; her self, her own.

Only Jayce—her darling—had breached that divide. Their relationship had been a seamless fit. He was the same person, wherever he went. Always honest; always, forthright. He was the best piece of her, and she'd loved him for it.

Truly—loved him.

But the rest of her was a Medarda. And Medardas were neither honest, nor forthright. Least of all in matters of love. She and Jayce had both suffered for it. And, finally, they'd broken. Jayce, with his ideals, and Mel, with her pride.

Their city had broken too: the rift between Piltover and Zaun spilling blood into their streets.

And in the aftermath, their faith lay in wreckage. Jayce, a disillusioned husk, had left to heal in solitude. And Mel, a woman scorned, had turned to the shadows for succor.

She'd sworn to herself.

No more broken hearts. No more broken cities.

Then she'd met a man with a taste for both.

In Silco, she'd found, first an adversary, then an unlikely ally. Found, in his eyes, the answer to a question she'd never dared ask:

How far will I go to safeguard what's mine?

Theirs was the anti-match for the annals. And yet it proved the perfect antidote. They were so dissimilar at first glance, they threatened to cancel each other out. Like the sum of their parts was null.

And yet, in their duality, they were a force to be reckoned with. He possessed so many traits Noxus esteemed: grit, pragmatism, resolve. Traits extolled by her mother; traits Mel had grown to despise.

Yet, on him, they weren't hollow trappings. They were hard-won byproducts of a hard-lived life.

A Zaunite's life, through and through.

His grit was rooted in privation, not privilege. His pragmatism, a necessity, not a vice. His resolve, fed not by conquest, but the desire to carve out a future. A better life for his child, and his city.

Zaun was the lodestar of his compass. And Jinx, the lodestone of his heart.

It was that blend of ruthlessness and tendresse that had first intrigued Mel, then attracted her. Their courtship was a slippery thing, conducted in stolen glances and double-edged banter. Under the spotlight, they'd traded barbs. In private corners, they'd traded confidences.

They'd circled each other, closer and closer: a slow spiral that led to a low-down smoldering, and finally, after months and months, burst into catastrophic flames.

The fallout had sent shockwaves through both their cities. And yet, after the secrecy was blasted away, and the scandal had burned itself out, the spark between them had kept on fizzing.

And fizzing.

A walk down the aisle, Silco had written in a letter to her, isn't much different than a walk down a corridor. It's a means to an end.

The end being the two of us.

In a room. Alone.

In other words: marriage.

The stone on Mel's ring glints: a green spark. She lifts it to her lips.

Sometimes, it still feels surreal. That Silco, a subterranean predator with no heart in him for trust, no room in him for mercy, had given her his ring. Had pledged himself to her in a simple vow: I do. And she, a sunlit mirage, the chambers of her own heart hidden beneath layers of guile and grace, had repeated the same vow: I do.

A binding oath.

Elora, in her gentle way, had cautioned Mel not to sign on the dotted line. He's a dangerous man, Mel. I've seen the way he looks at you. He'll do anything—anything at all—to get what he wants.

Mel had smiled.

So will I, Elora.

Jayce, predictably, had been less circumspect. He's a crimelord, Mel. Worse, he's a monster. He'll ruin you. He'll ruin our city. Why the hell are you doing this?

Mel had kissed his cheek.

Progress, my darling.

Loyalty had stayed Elora's tongue. Love had stayed Jayce's. But in their eyes, she'd seen the same misgiving. They'd both feared that Mel was blinding herself to the truth. That the Eye of Zaun, with his black heart and blacker past, would tally up her life, and take it for all it was worth.

Take her coin, and her city, and her soul.

Their doubts, Mel knows, have merit. Except she's no doe-eyed naïf. She's a Medarda. And because she's a Medarda, she'd known the truth from the beginning. Known it, and chosen anyway.

Chosen, because it was the truth she'd grown up with. The truth that'd defined her entire life. A mother, who'd culled her children's weaknesses with the same blade she'd cut down her enemies. A childhood, spent first as a spare, then an exile. A womanhood, alone, trying to reconcile her heart with her head. Trying to understand, the difference between power and cruelty; between a fist, and an open palm.

Ambessa's lesson: Power is absolute. Cruelty is the means.

Mel's answer: Power and cruelty are both means.

The end is mercy.

She'd learned, at Silco's side, not to fear power. Not to flinch from the cruelty that came with it. And she'd never feared him, though she had flinched, once.

Because she'd understood that his power, like his cruelty, had a source:

Love.

To safeguard it, he'd resort to the worst of himself. He'd be the monster to end all monsters. He'd hide his open palm in a fist, and close the deal, whatever the cost.

For his city—and his child.

I am not, he'd told Mel once, a good man.

But for my family's survival, I will do what must be done.

Perhaps it was a measure of Mel's own hypocrisy, that she'd recognized in Silco the same monstrosity as her mother's, and yet embraced its paradox. Perhaps it was a measure of her own madness, that she'd seen past the scars, and into the eyes of a kindred spirit. Perhaps it's a measure of her own strength, that she'd taken the monster's hand, and taken him to bed, and in the morning, awoken not only whole, but held.

As if he'd found something, in her, that he'd likewise dared to keep.

Something that could survive the sum of their pasts.

Survival, Mel reminds herself, is its own justification.

Both she and Silco are survivors. They've seen, in each other, two halves of a greater whole. The promise of a future. He's seen Zaun: a city transformed. No longer an industrial blight, but a cutting-edge marvel. She's seen Piltover: the City of Progress. A shining jewel on the cusp of eternity.

She's seen him. And he, her.

And together, their vision can be made real.

They are so close. The game is in hand. The prize, on the hook. All Mel needs to do is reel it in.

But her guests aren't the challenge.

The real challenge sits on the other side of that door.

"Sea legs," Mel whispers.

The bathwater has become a perfumed broth. Her skin is tingling. Her curls gleam like spun-black sugar. Rising, she douses herself with a blast of cold water, then wraps up a thick towel. Padding out is like walking on clouds.

Her mind and body are humming, primed.

Ready.

In her berth, she opens the armoire. Inside, the dresses she'd chosen for the trip are neatly arrayed: each one a study of tasteful luxury. Silk, organza, damask.

Since her wedding, she's favored a number of Zaunite clothiers. Every gown, exquisitely tailored, combines sartorial elegance with political substance. Not a single thread of silk, but an entire industry. Not a single motif, but a manifesto.

Fashion, she knows, can be a handstitched masterclass in diplomacy.

Already, her strategy has borne fruit. At press engagements, her gowns are photographed from every angle. High-end publications, from the Gazette to the Illuminator, feature her wardrobes across their glossies. Each label she patronizes, the jetsetters have followed suit. Zaun's textiles, once derided as subversive trash, are becoming the toast of the town.

Last summer, she'd sponsored an entire exhibition: 'Zenith.' A collection of avant-garde couture, by the most talented Fissure=bred artisans. In a mere week, the exhibition had sold out. Newsreels had praised her 'daring tastes', and the Sun & Tower Newspaper had devoted three full pages to the 'cultural significance' of the collection. In the space of a season, Piltover's fashionistas had begun making pilgrimages to visit their edgier sisters belowground. They'd flocked to the bazaars, gaped at the splendor, and left with a veritable caravan of textiles.

It's the opening, Mel hopes, of a dialogue. An invitation for Zaunites and Piltovans to meet each other halfway.

One fashionplate, Silco often disparages in his wry way, won't fill a dozen empty stomachs.

Perhaps not, Mel concedes.

But a starving artist, with the right benefactor, might become a rich one.

She takes a dress off its hanger: a chiffon day-gown of the palest champagne. It boasts a paneled bodice in a deep V-neck and sheer overlay, and a pleated skirt that cuts away into a slit at the knee. Light and ethereal, with a coy touch of sin.

Retwisting her locs, Mel pins them up into a high sleek bun, baring the swanlike curve of her neck. Then the finishing touches: a dusting of gold powder on her cheekbones, a dab of plum stain to her lips, and a slash of indigo to her eyelids. The green and gold flecks in her irises leap out.

There.

Not quite ready to greet her guests. But not a woozy invalid, either.

She needs to look vibrant. For herself—and her husband. Her pride won't allow otherwise. Three weeks of marriage, and she's already been felled. By Mal de Mer. By a novice's nerves. By a costly error, and her own failure to read the tides.

Now, she must make a show of her vitality.

Sealegs, she thinks.

Mel exits her chamber. No sound comes from the baronial stateroom, just a diffuse light stealing from behind the drawn blinds. The space holds the gloomy masculinity of a bachelor's den: the floral bouquets withering, the basket of exotic fruits competing for space with cut-glass decanters of whiskey, the elegant mantelpiece crowded with papers.

The whole scene, an artist's rendering of old-world baroque, is muddied by a fug of stale smoke.

Mel's lip pinches.

It's Silco's morning routine: shortening a cup of black coffee and a cigarette as he goes over the dispatches from his network. Thousands of miles away from Zaun, and yet his grip is merciless. His lieutenants keep him in a constant loop. A barrage of reports: delivered by radio-wave, or through a series of cyphers embedded in the latest editions of the local newsprints. His orders: a litany of edicts, read by dawn and set into motion by dusk.

The Eye is an all-seeing entity, his system a web of a thousand threads. His informants are everywhere in Zaun: its rooftops, its basements, its ginnels. Nothing goes unnoticed. Nobody is beyond reach. He keeps a tally of all his assets, and moves his pieces accordingly.

Even away, his presence remains: cold, remote, watchful.

But here, Mel thinks, it should be different.

Here, he should relax.

This idyll was meant to be a respite. For both of them, and the duty of their stations. By her own plan of events, they ought to still be in bed. Instead, she's been laid up for a week. And he, of course, has defaulted to a state of hypervigilance.

He's a creature of instinct, her husband. And instinct, in this instance, is to reconnoiter and safeguard his territory.

At land—and at sea.

It's plain he hasn't let a soul enter their cabin since she's fallen ill. He hasn't even let the staff air it out. The dimensions are steeped in neglect. And Mel, despite herself, feels a twinge.

Was he... concerned?

Then: a second twinge, sharper.

He needn't be.

She can look after herself. And the sooner she puts a foot back in the game, the better.

At the table, calling cards spill from a silver tray. Her guests, Mel sees, have paid their respects. And, soundly, been declined. Their messages—fawning, frivolous, full of platitudes—pinch her lip again.

The lot are as predictable as clockwork:

'Pray, accept my sincere well wishes, Mel; your absence has cast a poll over our bridge games' — 'Dearest Mel, I hear the seasickness has laid you low. May I suggest a cure? Better company than the sort you'll find in your berth.' — 'Madam, my heart is a-breaking. My eyes a-aching. When will you come out, and let me feast them on your sweet face?' — 'To the loveliest Melusine on the SS Woe Betide. Please accept this small token of my esteem, and my earnest hope that the sun will shine on me again.'

And etc.

In the margins, the original reader has scrawled notes in his own spiky script. His messages, however, are the antithesis of flattery.

In a few choice strokes, Silco eviscerates every line:

'Poll, you say? How about a grammatically calamitous plague?' — 'Better company than at the bottom of a bottle? That's how much I'd have to drink to stomach yours.' — 'Feast your eyes on this: I have a knife, and it's a-begging to feast on you.' — 'Sunshine is the last thing you deserve. How about a tempest? Better yet, a kraken? Melusine, pray oblige.'

And etc.

Mel smiles. The penmanship is neat as a pin. But each line cuts to the bone. The guest who'd penned the last lovelorn verse is left, rather literally, hanging: his message ends with the phrase, "Darling, dearest—" only to be punctuated by a single, damning word.

Dead.

Mel stifles a laugh. Then, a third twinge. This time, behind her ribs.

Silco, since their departure, has been perched on a knife's edge. Small wonder he's kept to their quarters. For a self-made man, wading night after night into the piranha-infested waters of Zaun's underbelly, the open seas of Piltover's high society must seem a veritable abyss of boredom.

That he's shown his face, each evening, is a credit to his patience. That he's not stabbed anyone—with a fork or a pen or a single sharp word—is a miracle.

And miracles, Mel knows, are not the currency her husband trades in.

Squaring her shoulders, she goes to Silco's berth. A hand lifts to knock.

Then:

"Not there."

Mel turns.

The voice floats from their private saloon. The door is ajar. The sunlight, a cool white-gold, filters through the skylight above. The rays fall upon a veritable feast on the table. Not a lavish Piltovan spread, with its towers of sugar-spun dessert and silver trays laden with exotic fruits and rare cheeses, but a simple, savory repast. Fragrant heels of bread, sausage, scrambled eggs, and spiced congee.

A Zaunite breakfast, born to fill the bellies of miners, factory workers and chem-fiends.

And Silco.

He sits in a louche sprawl across the settee. His lounging robe is charcoal linen, Fissure-woven, the collar trimmed in a subtle gold braid. The color suits him. His scar, usually a lurid slash, is softened by the milky morning light. And his eye, the one without the red, is cut as if from the sea.

He reminds Mel of a creature caught between worlds: a merman, perhaps. Or a sea-monster, half-submerged.

But his double-take is the same as any man's.

"Hell's bells."

Mel purrs, "Good morning to you, too."

His stare—detaching from the letters in his lap—takes its prowling measure of her, head to toe. It lingers on her bare throat. His favorite place to cut a target. Or to bite.

His smile is a bite too: slow and sharp. "Here I thought you'd be another day on the rack."

"I'm a resilient creature, you'll find."

He crooks a brow. "And the Mal de Mer?"

"Gone as the fog."

"In that case, I'm waiting."

"What for?"

"Those three sweet words."

Without missing a beat, she coos, "Schön bist du."

"The other ones."

Sighing, she relents. "You were right. The Shimmer worked. I feel better."

"Not quite yet."

Rising, he pulls out her chair. He's no stickler for etiquette; every act of chivalry is as calculated as the rest of him. His manners, in fact, are the exact opposite of Jayce's: sardonic rather than sincere.

Yet in their focus, the two men are cut from the same cloth. Both give Mel their undivided attention.

Except, where Jayce was sensitive to Mel's whims, Silco is attuned to Mel's wants.

"I gather," he says, as she slides into her seat, "you skipped your porridge."

"I find I've lost my taste for oats."

"Even mine?"

"It's seven o' clock in the morning, husband," she chides sweetly. "Do turn your mind from the gutter."

"I was born in the gutter. Seven o' clock is prime time."

"For what, precisely?"

"Breakfast," he says, all innocence except for that gleam in the bad eye. "It's kept me busy, at any rate."

Mel stops mid-furl on her napkin. "You made this?"

"I've had to. Your chef can't tell a Ripper from a Wreck 'em."

"Which is which, exactly?"

"You prove my point."

Spearing a sausage with his fork, he holds it out to her. It's a smoky morsel, dotted with sprigs of herbs. Mel hesitates, then takes a bite. The flavor is bolder than she's accustomed to. But, chewing, she finds her smile lit with a softer glow than a moment ago.

He is, her husband, a man of many layers. Some, she'll never unravel. Others, reminders of the humanity he's never fully forfeited.

"Well?" he prompts.

"A bit much, perhaps." She takes another bite. "But it grows on you."

The gleam returns, full-force. "It's seven o' clock in the morning, wife. Do turn your mind from the gutter."

"I'm married to you," she rejoins archly. "It's a lost cause."

But she makes no protest as he heaps the rest of her plate. The sausages are piled high; the bread, thick-crusted, is slathered with butter. Even her tea is soused with dollops of honey.

It's a far cry from the delicacies of a Piltovan palate. But Mel, her belly grinding with hunger, finishes every bite. Silco, settling across her in a chair, rests his chin on his knuckles, and watches. It's less a look of appraisal than of absence.

It occurs to Mel—

"Did," she asks, "you used to make this for Jinx?"

"If I hadn't, she'd have grown up eating gummy bears and gobstoppers." The barest grimace. "Just contemplating the inside of my daughter's belly makes me shudder."

"What was her favorite food?"

"Cat's Eyes on a Checkerboard."

"Which is?"

"Waffles with tapioca pudding." The grimace becomes a sly grin. "The ingredients smuggled, naturally."

"From Piltover's larders."

"Your city has plenty to spare."

"As a rule, we do." Mel bites a forkful of egg. "Is that why you're feeding me Fissure fare now? To repay a debt?"

"Not a debt. A favor. Another day of the galley's swill, and you'd have keeled over and left me a widower. Jinx would've composed the perfect eulogy. 'Woe Betide, the best of brides—'till she stuck a spoonful of porridge down her pie-hole.'" His mimicry is eerie. Then again, Mel sometimes thinks he and Jinx share a hivemind. Or, at the very least, a very morbid sense of humor. Refilling his coffee cup, he adds, "She sends her regards, by the way."

"Jinx?"

"A postscript attached to her report." He stirs a fingertip through the pile of letters on the table, and plucks out a glittery pink envelope. Unfolding the sheet, he recites in a droll monotone, "Dear Silly. Hope you're having a whale of a time. Hey, can you get me a whale tooth? I hear they're great for bludgeoning. I'll use it on Sevika—she's been driving me crazy. Why'd you leave her behind? She's already smoked all your cigars, and converted the study into a pool room. Also, Dustin's filched your cigar-box, but he won't admit it. I'm gonna string him up from the ceiling by his ankles till he fesses. Oh, I've just designed a new batch of generators for the mines. If they work, they'll double the output. So, get your butt back here soon. And maybe get me a crate of sun apples? I hear they're super juicy. Tell Step-Mel I liked the dress she sent me, but no lace next time. Lace makes me itch. Also: the new Sheriff is a tool. Get rid of her, will ya? And her hat, too. XOXO."

Mel hides a smile. "Step-Mel, is it?"

"A marked improvement from your moniker before the wedding."

"This, I take it, signifies progress."

"Or a bullseye in motion." He folds the letter, then pockets it. The fond paternal gleam is replaced by the usual half-lidded enigma. "Speaking of: hers and Sevika's report warrants a consultation."

"How so?"

"Noxus is playing at sabotage again. Warmasons are making overtures to the chem-barons. Shimmer-fueled weaponry in exchange for a shot at destroying Piltover's Hex-Gates." He leans back, steepling his fingers. "In my absence, the chem-barons are tempted."

"That's troubling."

"Isn't it just?"

"And your response?"

"I've told Sevika to wait until my honeymoon's done."

His smile is a slow, lethal thing. Mel returns it, sweet as nectar. It's an old game between them: petty one-upmanship played out on the surface, while currents, unseen, run beneath.

They make a game of it because they both know his remark might've been a threat, once, but that now it isn't, and cannot be. It is their way of keeping score. Not of their place in the game, but at each other's side.

Progress.

And yet...

"I trust," Mel says, deceptively light, "you'll make the right choice."

"I figured I'd give you the first shot. After all, they're your brethren."

"They are not," Mel corrects him, with a fixed smile. "Noxus was my nation. Piltover is my home."

"A distinction without difference."

Her smile dims a degree. "Only to an exilee."

There's a moment's silence. Then: a slow clink-clink. Silco's fingers against the rim of his half-empty cup. The gesture is, for him, the equivalent of a sigh. Concession, in the language of their détente.

"If the distinction holds," he says, "then I'll humor the warmasons until the end of our trip."

"Lull them and gull them, as the Zaunite saying goes?"

"Exactly so. By the week's end, my network will have intercepted every last correspondence between them and the chem-barons. The latter, their hands down the cookie jar, will have no choice but to renege their assets. Or their heads. And Topside's Wardens can have the warmasons for themselves. After a fee to Zaun for services rendered." His teeth, a serrated gleam between curving lips, put Mel in mind of a shark's. "No fuss, no muss. Also a Zaunite saying."

Moments like this, Mel marvels queasily, are when she can glimpse her husband's true face. The face she's seen delineated in her mother's visage time and again: a carnivorous hunger that exists only to consume.

It's a face he is adept at concealing. He can wear the mask of the gentleman, or the statesman, or the patriarch. A versatile repertoire: yet each with its infinite capacity for cruelty. A cruelty that is a necessity.

And yet...

Silco's mismatched stare hooks hers. The darkness dissipates.

"You should know," he says.

"Yes?"

"For all that you're an exilee, you've got a home. In Piltover, yes, but more. Zaun is where Topside hides its dirty little secrets. But it's also the place the lost lay their heads. And you, my dear, are the patroness of lost causes. My city will always welcome you into its fold."

There is no tenderness in his tone. And yet, for a man who has never had the luxury of giving away his heart, the matter-of-factness is, perhaps, the best he can offer. A pledge of loyalty, as real as the ring on her finger.

Mel fights down the dizzy dip in her chest.

Monsters, she thinks, know a thing or two about pledges.

"I hope," she returns, softly, "my stay in your city comes with a tour of its best parts."

"The brothels?"

Her foot, beneath the table, nudges his leg. "The breakfast. Because the chef's quite outdone himself."

"Has he now?" he drawls. "Well enough to earn a tip, or a...?"

"If you dare finish that sentence with tup, Silco—"

He smiles, unrepentant. The shadowed mood is dappled with tiny pricks of light. So it always goes between them. He lays a gold nugget of honesty in her palm, and she exchanges it for a fistful of diamonds. They trade in the currency of extremes rather than trust.

The former comes easy; the latter, hard as a heart.

Yet, incrementally, the balance is shifting. Bit by bit. An ounce of feeling, for an ounce of faith. A gleam of promise, for a glimmer of truth.

In time, Mel thinks, they'll learn fair trade.

Maybe, one day, the language of compromise.

"I suggest," Silco says, stretching out his legs, "you thank the chef the proper way, and eat. There's nothing fouler than cold congee."

She complies, taking a spoonful. It's rich and heavy, spiced with cumin, and garnished with fried shallots. Silco, meanwhile, piles the remnants of breakfast on to his own plate. They compete, in their own way, to finish what's left. Each vying for a place of their own: the upper and the underhand.

Though it's a game, Mel can't help but be caught up.

Caught up, but far from caught.

"So," she muses, "what is your agenda for today?"

"Besides fortifying you like a warship?" He tops off his cup, then hers. "Nothing."

"Then why are you in such high spirits?"

"Is your good health not reason enough?"

"You're never in high spirits. Not unless there's wickedness afoot." She hesitates. "And last night, you seemed—cross."

Silco says nothing. From his waistcoat, he withdraws his silver case, and a matchbook. Lighting a slender roll, he taps the spent match. The smoke, a thin grey veil, obscures his features.

Six a day, Mel knows, is his current limit. He's been trying to cut down: for Jinx's sake, and hers.

"What you call 'cross,'" he says, "is my natural state."

"With me?"

"Only now and again." He takes a drag. "But since you're so very curious: we're taking an excursion. Today."

Mel, finishing the last bite of bread, frowns. "You mentioned. But to where?"

"Someplace close."

"How close?"

"A few kilometers. I've had a word with the captain. He'll lay down anchor. We'll take the motor launch there." He blows a rippling smoke ring. "I'm told the scenery's pleasant."

"What?" Mel sets down her slice. "Silco, we can't delay. Our itinerary—"

"—has been adjusted. Our guests will enjoy an afternoon on the water. And a late supper at the villa."

"We were scheduled to arrive by midday on the island. Take a tour of the local sights. I had a meeting with the Wuju chieftain. He and his wife have requested a private reception. There is a dinner, at night, on the High Councilor's flagship. To simply alter our schedule—"

"—will have no consequence. And if it does, so be it."

"We are not freewheelers," Mel objects. "We don't make and break plans at our own convenience."

"We are not cogwheels," he counters. "We are not beholden to the whims of those who wish to use us. And if they are offended, well. The wind changes direction all the time."

"You are being absurd!"

"I'm being a man with a message."

"Which is what, exactly?"

"Compromise." He nudges her teacup closer. "Drink up. You'll need your strength."

Mel's mouth sets in a stubborn line. "Will I?"

"The captain's expecting us at the wheelhouse in one hour."

"I don't like surprises."

"You'll like this one."

He takes another drag on the cigarette. The tip glows a fiery red. His expression, beneath the smoke, brooks no argument. She can't read the currents. Whatever his diabolical designs, she's going to find herself caught up in them.

She'll either have to fight him, or ride the tide.

Sealegs, she reminds herself.

"Silco," she warns. "If you've some elaborate scheme planned, I'd rather not have to apologize for it later."

"Elaborate?" He grinds out the cigarette in his empty cup. Smoke curls everywhere. "Nonsense. I've no interest in grandstanding. Only a modest spectacle."

"Silco—"

"We needn't linger. But your presence would be appreciated."

"Why?"

"Because," he says, "I want you there."

Mel, stymied, stares. She's lost the thread, somewhere. His mood, too, has changed. It's as if the currents have shifted, and the tide is rising.

The question is whether to dive, or let the flood overtake her.

Silco, taking advantage of her lapse, hooks a finger into her bodice. He gives a playful tug. The space between them closes. His scent is a cool wash: bergamot, tobacco, and a touch of body-warmed musk.

It's the scent of a Morning After. Déjà vu lodges low in Mel's belly.

Last night's near-miss still burns vividly on her skin. Her fever's gone, but another's taking its place. This one: hotter, headier. Nothing to do with Mal de Mer.

Everything to do with him.

Tipping her chin up, Silco holds her eyes.

"I want you there," he says, "because, as my wife, I think you ought to see your husband's world."

"My husband's world," she says, a touch breathless, "is cutthroats, and cons, and chaos."

"Not his whole world. Not the heart of it."

"But—"

He kisses her. His lips, cool, are flecked with spice. Then they part, and she tastes his tongue. The flavor is the same, with a hint of smoke. The kiss itself is a slow, searing thing. The kind of kiss that leads to other, equally slow and searing things.

"We have," he says, a little hoarse, "one hour."

Mel's breath hitches. She wants nothing more than to take him up on his offer.

But she cannot afford to lose sight of the stakes.

"One hour to explain yourself," she says, trying to disentangle. "And this isn't fair. I can't think, when you're—"

"When I'm, what?"

He dips his head. His lips touch the base of her throat. The tip of his tongue tastes the hollow, a hot, slick glide. Mel shudders. Her eyes fall shut. She's lost her appetite. Now, all she wants is his.

"Silco," she tries again. "Our itinerary."

"Damn the itinerary." His lips drift lower. "Tell me."

"Tell you, what?"

"Do I feel like a liar?"

Mel's lashes flutter. Her breath quickens. She shakes her head.

"Good." He flows like a spool of shadow to kneel between her thighs. "I've always told you the truth. Even when you didn't want to hear it." His gaze, dark and steady, rises. "Today's no different."

"But—"

"You want the future. So do I. But I've a different view of what it holds." His hands settle on her knees. "So: compromise. I've seen your world. Now you'll see mine. And we'll both have what we want."

Mel struggles to gather her wits. "The guests—"

"Are our guests. They'll play by our rules." His hands, cool and rough-tipped, coast up her thighs. Her skirts rustle into a crumpled heap. "Ours, Mel. Not theirs."

He's a man with a plan, her husband. The plan is, at present, undoing the buttons holding up her stocking garters. His fingers pick each one. Each, with a faint plink, gives way. The fabric, a whisper-fine silk, is tugged loose.

Then his palms, cupping her knees, tip them higher. Spreading her wide. His breath is a hot susurration across her thighs. And between them: a wet heat gathers in throbbing counterpoint.

"This is how compromise works." His thumbs hooks into her satin drawers. "By giving. By taking."

"This isn't compromise," Mel pants, one last-ditch effort. "It's extortion."

"Is it?" He smiles, a sly little curl. "Here I thought I was taking my due."

"I—"

"Six nights," he muses, the satin slipping down. "Five days. And you've been laid low the entire time." His breath ghosts her bare flesh. "It's robbery. And I aim to rectify."

"I would've happily—"

"In your sorry state? Tch. You needed rest."

"I needed—"

"My attention. My care. My patience." He peels her drawers down, leaving them to dangle from one ankle. "Now I'll give it. All of it. Every drop. But first: a down payment."

"Silco…"

"Ssh." He looks up. "Let me."

The last of Mel's willpower melts. He's too close. Too much. And she, the shrewd stateswoman, the expert negotiator, is a lost cause.

She is, Ambessa would say, a child yet. Too easily distracted. Too eager to forget her lessons. She is, Ambessa would say, a woman yet. With a woman's needs, and a prerogative to seek them.

She is, Ambessa would say, a Medarda yet.

And a Medarda, at heart, is a hungry thing. Hungry, and never, ever full.

He spreads her thighs wide, curling one over his shoulder. His hand splays the small of her back, arching her up. Mel, gasping, grips the chair arms. In the bright clean light, he can see everything. Her naked thighs, the folds of her smooth-shaven labia, the dewy moisture gathering at her entrance.

The display is as obscene as his slowness. Turning his head, he dots kisses along her inner-thighs, first one, then the other, until they quiver. Then, the barest bite. Another, and another. Harder, then harder still.

Reflexively, Mel's legs try to squeeze shut. He doesn't let them. There's iron hidden in his lanky form. When he holds her down, there's no quarter given. With a touch, he strips away decades of pretense. With a kiss, he cuts her to the quick.

And with a look, he rips her last veil to shreds.

Veils, for Mel, were once her armor. The veil of her beauty: worn in the Council chambers, to hide the full scope of her cunning. The veil of her grace: worn in the ballrooms, to disarm the most hardheaded adversaries. The veil of her composure: donned since girlhood, to keep her most raw hurts hidden.

And the veil of the dark: her body bared and her heart barred, while her bedmates groaned and shuddered and finished atop her.

The last is, perhaps, her own fault. For years, she'd made a game of it: playing a part, but withholding the sum. Her affections were an exquisite riddle; her lovers, a revolving door. If they courted her with enough finesse, she'd consider them worthy of her bed.

But the thrill was always brief.

During the act, they'd try too hard. They'd want too much. Quite often, she'd slip from the moment, even as she lay in the heat of it. She'd keep the satisfaction for herself. Afterward, as the men slept, she'd finish with solitary caresses what they'd failed to give her. In the morning, she'd smile into their eyes and bid them adieu.

Their egos were her little trophies. Her heart; their loss.

Only Jayce—sweet Jayce—proved the exception. Jayce, who'd kissed her, and shown her the stars. And in his arms, she'd found a sanctuary she'd never imagined. She'd bloomed as a night-flower does, shy and secret, in the safety of his hands.

After they'd parted, he became the standard by which she measured every paramour. Each one proved a pale imitation; the disappointment barely worth lingering on. And she, in turn, made bitter peace with the loss.

Life, she told herself, was made of a thousand little losses, and a hundred little gains. And sometimes, a heart must lose the one to gain the many. Sometimes, a heart must accept, even as it breaks, that the dream is over, and it's time to wake up.

Silco's kiss hadn't woken her.

It had ripped her wide open.

She still remembers their night, in the depths of Zaun's underbelly. How, in his smoky little bower, the glow from the windowslats had cast a deep-green hue across his silhouette. How the shadows, slow and shifting, had cut dark rills like blood across his scarred skin.

How, bad eye glowing, he'd drawn her to him, and taught her the pleasure of the darkness.

She'd always been a woman who made love beneath the sheets, with the shutters drawn and the lamps low. Her body, her greatest mystery, was only ever hers to reveal. She did so with deliberation: a coy unraveling of garments, a languid unfolding of limbs.

In the dark, her nakedness was an offering. And she, the secret garden in bloom.

With Silco, the dark became something else. A realm of unshackled instinct. Inhibition was a four-letter word to him. His tastes were neither gentle, nor genteel. And that night, she was—as he'd made indelibly plain—all his. Her body, his domain.

And he'd possess every inch, even if he had to carve her open to do it.

Mel hadn't expected her own surrender. But surrender was all she could give. She, who'd always enveloped herself in beguilement, even as she saw through others. She, who'd divined their needs, and kept her own at bay.

And yet...

And yet, there was a side to her. A side she'd never revealed, even to Jayce. A hunger that verged on ravenous. A darkness, deep and desperate, that ached to delve into the unknown.

To be uncaged.

Monsters, Mel thinks, know a thing or two about cages, too.

Silco had understood. Sometimes, Mel thinks, he'd understood before she did. And that night, he'd looked at her, and she's been reflected in his eyes: the want and the woman.

He'd seen her for all she was. All he could take, and give.

Afterward, they'd lain tangled in the sweat-soaked sheets. She, sore and spent and throbbing in every particle, too drained to do anything but breathe. He, with a hand on her bare throat, breathing in turn. He'd fallen asleep that way, still half-buried inside her. His body a little heavy, a little sharp, but solid and grounding.

And Mel had felt, for the first time, completely and utterly unveiled.

Veils, Silco had written, in a final letter delivered with a single, ink-black orchid, a day before their wedding, are a bride's prerogative. Wear one as you will.

But remember: a groom's prerogative is to cut through it. To lay bare what's beneath.

He'd signed the letter: Yours, S.

Then, a postscript, scrawled in his spidery hand:

I promise, whatever is beneath, I'll keep it safe.

Mel, on her wedding, wore no veil. She didn't need one. Silco had already seen through her luminous façade, and glimpsed the starveling beneath. And she, whatever Elora or Jayce believed, had long since pared down the man from the monster.

"Mel," the monster rasps now, his breath hot and close. "Look at me."

She does.

He holds her gaze, as he holds her spread wide. She's pinned head to toe, her skirts a froth, her ankles trapped. She is, in his eyes, bared to the heart of herself. The heart that beats, in her throat, in her breasts, between her thighs. She feels a single droplet of moisture seeping out, tracing its way down. His eyes, rapt, follow its course.

And finally, mercifully, his mouth covers her.

Jolting, Mel cries out. He doesn't relent. Hooking her heel behind his shoulder, he holds her steady. And then his mouth is teasing her open, one slick nudge at a time. His tongue, dipping lower, tasting her: one savoring slurp after another. He's a connoisseur of his craft, her husband. He devours with idle relish, as if sampling a rare oyster. And she, shivering, is the pearl. The very deliberateness is a torment.

She needs more. She needs everything. She needs—

"Silco," she whimpers, the air thickening with musk. "Gods—"

"Patience. Breakfast's not to be rushed."

"Please—"

"Sssh. Let me finish." His chuckle vibrates deep. "And then, petal, I'll finish you."

His teeth close, and suckle. Her vision flashes white. Her nails score the wooden armrests. He's an absolute beast, her husband. The only mercy is his own hunger. His tongue teases her clit until it is taut and throbbing, and she is gusting high-pitched contraltos that are not quite song but nearly prayer. Then his hands shift: two fingers sliding into her. Not prodding, but slyly insinuating, a come-hither curl.

Mel's thighs spasm. Her eyes roll upward. Through the skylight, she sees the sky. Blue, bright, endless. She's at the crest of a wave. She's at the bottom of the sea. She is sobbing, her fingers seizing his hair and her heels kicking at his spine.

His hand, cupping her bottom, hauls her up. Now, her only anchor is the chair, and him. And he's lapping her without pause: tongue liquid, teeth scraping, fingers digging. His growls, low and filthy, reverberate straight to her core.

She feels as though she could be consumed by him. Devoured top to toe. She'd welcome it.

But her husband is nothing if not an opportunist.

Before the climax can claim her, he drags his mouth away. She wails, clawing at him. He wrenches loose. Kneeling between her splayed legs, he is a disheveled mess: his hair wild, his lips glistening, his bad eye spitting fire.

Their shared breaths saw raggedly in the sun-streaked parlor.

"Silco," she moans, her body wracked with tremors. "Silco, Silco—"

"Ssh." His palm stills her hips, a firm press. "That's only the first course."

"What—?"

Her juices gleam on his mouth. He takes his time licking them off.

"A proper breakfast," he says, "proceeds in stages."

"Oh, I hate you," she groans, and falls back. "I absolutely hate you."

"Not quite yet."

With a sinuous stretch, he rises. A moment's work, and his lounging robe is tossed over the chairback. In the stripe of golden sunlight pouring through the skylight, he is a lean, coiled creature: all scarred sinew and jutting bone. No ink on the pale swathe of his bare torso. But his body, like hers, is all history. His wounds, etched, where hers are veiled. His shape, utilitarian where hers is ornamental.

And yet, between the extremes, they find their golden mean.

Compromise.

He undoes the buttons of his trousers. Mel, half-lidded, stretches a leg to stroke his thigh. "Do that quicker."

"If you insist."

The last button, flicked free. His cock, jutting from the peeled-back flies, is hard and wet-tipped.

Ready.

Mel, staring, licks her lips. It's been a week since she's had him, and her appetite is a high flame. She imagines sinking to her knees. Taking him, deep, in her mouth. It's not a service she doles out on whim. But with him, it's nearly a reflex. Her palate pools with saliva. Her tastebuds tingle. She wants the tang of him: smoke, salt, musk. Her throat wants all of him: the fullness, the heft, the ache.

Except it's nothing to the ache between her thighs. Every breath is a sharp-toothed misery.

Silco's fingers thread into her hair.

"Open, petal," he rasps. "Open wide."

Mel, wetting her lips, obeys.

He's not gentle. He shoves himself inside without prelude, a heavy slide across her tongue. Mel's jaw unhinges wetly. Her breath hitches. He's ungodly thick; blunt-tipped and heavy-veined. But the rest is all smooth elegance: silk and velvet.

Her palms starfish his hipbones. Her tongue swirls. Once, the knob past her throat was all she could manage. But he's a patient man, and she's a canny woman. In his own words, she's graduated, From a competent little cocksucker to a downright connoisseuse.

The lascivious praise still sends a thrill through her. It's an act of mutuality, when she pleases him. To give her power away, and yet be given more. To yield, and yet have all her hungers met.

Even the ones so dark, so deep, they threaten to swallow her whole.

Mel suckles, her cheeks hollowing. Silco grits out a curse. One hand fists her hair. The other curls under her jaw, tipping her head back. His cock hits the back of her throat. The pressure makes her world blur. She gags, tears spilling.

He doesn't let up. His eyes, red and black and blue, lock her in place.

Be a good girl, they warn. Finish your breakfast.

So she does.

His first thrust is goading. The second is dizzying. The third is deep. And she takes it all. Every last inch. Her mouth, swollen and wet, works his shaft. The sounds are obscene: slurp, swallow, slurp. Her hands, trembling, cup his testicles. They're heavy with their load. She fondles them, rolling the sac, teasing the base.

Silco's head tips back, the pale smoothness of throat bared. The muscles work as he bites down a guttural groan. Anguish. Agony. He's not a man given to raptures. But in the grip of his own, he's a sight well worth savoring.

"Mel," he grits, "fuck—"

Then he's taking her, filling her, using her. The only thought in her mind is his cock. The only thing she wants is more. Her jaw burns. Her lungs burn. Between her thighs, the throb becomes a clench. Reflexively, Mel's nails score his hips. Her mouth seals around him. Sucking, laving, begging.

"That's it," Silco gasps, voice raw. "Such a greedy little slut."

She keens around his cock.

"Soon," he pants. "Soon, petal."

Then, he's gone. The loss is a shock. The sound her throat makes—a wet, lewd pop—echoes through the parlor. Panting, Mel stares up through watery eyes. His own are a seething void.

She's what's undone him. Her, and her insatiable need. The knowledge makes her drunk.

"Silco," she rasps, "now, now, now—"

He doesn't argue. Seizing her shoulders, he drags her from the chair. The room spins. A moment later, the carpet's a soft landing. The skylight, a blue corona.

And Silco, blotting out everything: the eclipse.

He is upon her, one long continuous line: sharp teeth, sharp elbows, sharp hips. His cock rides against her mons. Mel, spreading herself wide, tries to urge him where she needs. Her hips roll: seeking friction. Her sounds are wordless, wanton, weeping.

"Ssh," he soothes. "Ssh. I've got you."

And then, at last, he's there. A hot slide, and a slow shocking stretch.

A sob tears out of Mel. He's so much, and she's so full. The sensation is almost too much. But her body, her mind, her heart: they are greedy creatures. They will never be satisfied until she is split wide open. Until she is utterly, completely, his.

Until he is hers.

"Harder," she gasps, thighs locking. "More, more, oh—"

Her husband, no less greedy, delivers.

It's not the tender lovemaking she'd dreamt of all her girlhood. Younger, she'd imagined sex as no different than a ballroom dance. Two bodies, one harmony. Each step, a perfect accord. A graceful, inevitable union.

Diplomacy in motion.

Her husband is the antithesis. His body, a taut, sinewy cage, keeps her pinned. His rhythm is the same as his zest for everything else. Merciless. Remorseless. Relentless. It hurts, it hurts so sweet, her whole body a single raw nerve singing in a pitch that verges on pain. The sounds he makes: growls, grunts, harsh-edged curses. The sounds she makes: whimpers, sobs, incoherent pleas.

It's the fever, come back. It's her senses, aflame. It's him, the only cure.

"Mine," he hisses, driving into her. "Mine. Mine. Fucking mine."

"Yours, yes, yours—"

He lifts one of her thighs over his shoulder, their bodies wedged impossibly close. Then he's grinding, grinding, grinding. She's so wet, every motion is a visceral squelch. Every thrust hits where she needs: deep and unerring. She seldom climaxes except in her own time. But here, she's already halfway to the edge.

And then, he takes her over.

His slick thumb finds her clit. Her head falls back, thighs seizing.

"Silco, gods—"

"Let me feel you, Mel. Come for me—"

The crescendo hits in a shockwave. Mel cries out, a shriek torn from her bones. She, who's always held together with threads of glossy gold, is unspooling into wet ribbons. It's no pretty picture. It's sweat, and slick, and spit. It's her, and it's him, and it's theirs.

It's everything.

The aftershocks don't ebb. They crest into another wave: smaller, sharper, sweeter. Keening, she rides out the spasms. Silco, teeth gritted, hitches himself deeper. His thumb is still on her clit. And his cock, gods, his cock, the way he's working her, is a bliss tantamount to torture.

"Again," he growls, "fuck, again—"

She cannot. She's going to. She cannot. She has no choice.

She's not anything, anyone, except his, his, his—

Her third peak is a slow-burning quake. Mel feels it from her heels all the way to her heart. Her spine arcs. Her body locks. She is the sun, and the sea, and the sky. The world is blue. The world is gold. The world is red, and black. She cannot take her eyes from Silco. Needs to see him watching her, her reflection in that monstrous, burning pupil.

He is a monster, her husband. A devil in scarred mortal flesh.

And his mouth, his hands, his cock, are a hell she will gladly suffer.

"Mel." His thrusts, rapidfire, are losing tempo. "Gods, you feel—"

"Come," she begs, her thighs quivering. "Inside, now, please—"

He does, with a hot, pulsing rush. She feels it: each distinct throb. He's buried achingly deep. She is full of him, filled with him. In that moment, she knows nothing else. His face, above her, is a rictus: bared teeth and wild eyes.

All the layers, undone.

"I should," she gasps, "do a painting."

Silco, chuckling raggedly, collapses. His weight, pinning her, is deliciously heavy. Mel cradles him in place. His body is a little angular, a little cutting. But she's filled with such a languorous, liquid warmth, the discomfort doesn't register.

She wants only this: him, and the sun-dappled silence, and the whole day to come. A hundred days of this. A thousand nights.

She can be selfish, and take it all.

Except he's already peeling away.

One cool palm smooths the curve of her skull. Cooler lips touch her temple. Their bodies disengage wetly. The echoes of him throb inside her, a visceral pulse of emptiness.

Mel bites down a whimper. In the aftermath, he seldom lingers.

A shark, she'd once read, must keep swimming, or die. Silco is the same. After the attack, he's gone. A cigarette lit; smoke suffusing the silence. A caress imparted: cool, light, fleeting. An endearment, if he's well-pleased: petal, darling, sweetness.

And then he's off to whatever wickedness his mind's conjured up. To his office, where his Amazonian lieutenant waits. To the clubs, where the chem-barons congregate. To the workshop, where his daughter, his pretty little mirror, sits spinning her own wicked webs.

His is never idle, her husband. His languor is all surface: a silhouette gliding beneath the black.

Always on the prowl.

But here, he's no shark. He's just a man. His body, spilling onto his side, is a study in elegant lines. Long, lean, sated. Sweat cools on his hairline. His breathing evens. His good eye, the one that's all blue sea, holds a gleam she knows.

A little raw, a little real.

All hers.

"A painting," he repeats, his voice a drowsy husk. "Of what?"

"You."

"Ghastly."

"Only when you're scowling. When you're like this—" she lifts a hand, fingertips tracing his scarred torso, "you're almost handsome."

"Almost?"

"Beauty is different from magnetism. The first is best appreciated from afar. The last draws you in. Forces you to look past the surface."

Her palm, roving down his shoulder, finds a knot. She kneads until he hums. Tactile hooks are her little specialty. They keep him close. Keep him from straying away.

"I remember," she whispers, "the first time I spent the night with you." It's not an easy memory to conjure up. So much is layered on top of it: before and after. "In the morning, I saw you in full daylight. You were lazing naked in the patch of sunshine, with your awful cigarettes and your awful musings. And as the sun rose, it dyed your skin to all the colors of an autumn forest. Amber, copper, ash. And I thought: I must have him in the sun again. I must paint the sea in his eyes."

"What sea?"

"It's there, in the right eye. There's a hint of storm in it. A little thunder, a little lightning."

Her palm aligns to his cheekbone. Thumb edging his notched lower-lip. Testing the waters.

"A little darkness, too," she whispers.

His teeth, closing gently around her thumb, make her jump.

"Is that what you'll paint?" he says. "My eye?"

"All of you. The way you move. The way you look at me." Her voice hoarsens. "Everything."

"And the selling price? What'll that be?"

"I'm a Medarda. We don't sell. We stake our claim."

"Hmmm." His tongue laves the pad of her thumb. "So I'm a resource to be hoarded."

"Not hoarded. Admired. Like a rare cut of onyx." Her palm, drifting, finds his belly: a supple stretch of bare, bony muscle. "I'd frame you in gold. For posterity. And my own pleasure. I'd never let a soul see it."

Idly, he rolls over. "A dirty secret, hm?"

"A private delight."

Mel, turning too, curls against him. She is, by default, a cuddler. He, by design, is not. But sometimes, default outstrips design. The trick, she's learnt, is the timing. Sometimes, the tide's high, and he's gone. Other times, it's a low ebb, and he'll let her cling.

Today's her lucky day. His arm encircles her: proprietary. His lips brush the crown of her head: possessive. Their legs entwine: a lazy braid. Nestled against his chest, Mel listens to the cadence of his heart. There's the urge, as the minutes melt together, to slip beneath the surface.

Sleep, and wake, and start the morning all over again.

"I wish," she sighs, "you were a painting."

"Silent, and easy to put away?"

"Easy to hold." Her palm starfishes his chest. "Easy to keep in place."

His hand covers hers. "Is that why you married me?"

"Not the only reason."

"But a factor." His thumb, caressing, is calloused. "A gilded box for a beastly thing."

Mel tips her head up. "What?"

"Beneath the layers of oils, pigment, and gold leaf, that's the only painting of me you'd have." His hand imparts a squeeze. "That's all I'd become. Your caged monster."

"I—"

Before she can marshal her expression, she sees him take it in. His hand drops hers.

"Our hour," he says, peeling himself away, "is nearly up."

"But—"

"Come along."

With a twist, he's unfolded to his feet. His silhouette, a pale-skinned apparition, is framed by the skylight.

Mel, head full of sea and sharks and shadows, rises too. Her legs wobble. Little aftershocks still pulsing from her core. Her updo's unspooled in a halo of loose curls. The rest of her is unmoored. And the tide, without her knowledge, is creeping in.

She has to keep up, or drown.

"Tell me," she says, steadying herself, "what's this surprise of yours?"

"Nothing too grand." His hair curls in silver-threaded vines over his temples. He smooths it back. "Just a small show."

"A show of what?"

"You'll have to see."

"Silco—"

His good eye is a searing blue. "Afterward, Mel."

Mel stares. This, she knows, is no mere excursion. She's caught a whiff of blood.

She could stop him, and demand answers. Demand to know the plan, and the terms. She could threaten, or cajole, or plead. She could throw a fit, and storm out. She could even, as she's done before, try to dissuade him. He'll listen to her. He'll even bend, sometimes.

But not now. His course is set, and those fins are in motion.

And yet…

And yet, there's something. Something in the way his good eye tracks her. Something in the way his hand lingers on the small of her back. Something, behind the fierce, hard lines of his face, that tells her the world won't end.

That, if it does, it's not the end of their world.

"I don't suppose," she says, a touch tart, "you'd tell me why we're rushing."

The corner of his mouth hitches. "To make a grand entrance."

"Without the benefit of a script?"

"You're a better performer when you improvise."

Mel, shaking her head, kneels to scoop up her underthings. One stocking laddered; the other split at the seam. She gives them up for lost. The rest of her is a disheveled wreck. She'll need to wash, and redo her makeup, and re-tame her hair. She'll need a different dress, and a pair of heels that won't wobble.

All before the hour slips away.

"Give me a moment," she says, turning toward the door. "I'll need to—"

Unexpectedly, he enfolds her. His scent is different now: not the usual cool smoke, but a warm, salty musk. Arousal, savoringly spent. The evidence of their coupling is all over him, too. A wet stain, glistening across his abdomen. Her lipstick, smearing his throat. Her scratches, furrowing his shoulders.

Mel, eyes dipping, inhales. She is sated, physically. And yet there remains, always, a residual fascination.

And, like Mal de Mer, it will always, inevitably, return.

Like all else between them.

"I meant it," he says. "I want you to see my world. I want you to understand what I've fought for, and why. Because the alternative is to live the rest of my life a painting in my wife's house."

"Not my house," she corrects him. "Our home. There's a difference."

"Only to an exilee."

"That's who I am, Silco."

"You are not." Cupping her chin, he holds her stare. "If Noxus has cast you off, the last thing you should call yourself is exiled. Exiles are people without a place to go. You've built yours. You've built a city." He tucks a curl behind her ear. "You've made the whole damn place shine."

"And I want to keep it so." Her hands find his chest, smoothing the scratches. "Keep you so."

"You can't keep me, Mel. Not in a portrait. Not on a ring. Not in any gilded cage. I am who I've always been: the man you'd never have met, if he'd not cracked the ground open beneath your complacent feet, and let all his monsters out." His voice is hard. His eyes, harder. "And monsters can't be caged. Only fed."

Stung, she drops her hand. "I'm not trying to cage you."

"You are. Not because you wish it, but because you believe it's best. 'Keep him distracted, and he'll be content. Keep him close, and he won't wander. Keep him in sated, and he won't have his way.'" His mouth, a bare inch from hers, crooks. "It's not a bad plan. Twenty years younger, and I'd be putty in your hands. But a cage, whether it's built of caresses or chains, is still a cage. And I'm not your Golden Boy, Mel. I don't have his heart, or his dreams. I've only ever had my own. And I am can smell the fear on you, whenever I go chasing after them."

"I'm not—"

But she is, and they both know it. The buried horrors of her past, and the hidden hungers of her present. How, with a touch, he resurrects them all, and bares her down to the bone. How, if she missteps in their two-quotient dance, he'll do the same to her city. He'll bleed them both dry, and then he'll be gone. Leaving her to pick up the pieces.

Alone, again.

She whispers, "Why marry me, if that's how you felt?"

"Because the alternative is a war neither of us would win." He exhales, and the heat of it fans her lips. "We understand each other. We want each other. So we'll compromise. We'll take, and we'll give. But not a single thing more. Not for diplomacy, or duty, or anything else." His thumb traces her jaw. "This, between us, is ours."

Mel, blinking hard, is suddenly, absurdly, near tears. "And the rest?"

"The rest is fair game."

"And that's not an act of war?"

"No," he says. "It's a choice."

"I—"

"You chose me," he says. "Why?"

"Because—"

The sunlit air congeals between them. Past dopplers queasily through the present. She sees Jayce, his eyes full of hurt. Jayce, who'd asked her, Why him?

She sees Elora, a hand on her heart. Elora, who'd pleaded, What does he mean to you?

She sees Ambessa, a shadow looming. Ambessa, who'd warned, Where does his loyalty lie?

Where, Mel thinks, does mine?

She knows. She's known for a while. But to breathe it into words is to give it life. It's too dangerous. The undertow is stronger than she'd expected. If the current claims her, the last thing she wants is to go under. The last thing she wants is him cutting her loose.

Except he's not.

He's keeping her close.

"Do you know," he says, "why I chose you?"

"Silco—"

"Let me tell you." His cool palms cradle her hot cheeks. "Because you, with your pretty dresses and painted smiles, have always known the price of survival. You, who've swum in the currents of compromise, even as you watched the ships of war sail in. You, whose eyes see farther than the rest, and yet whose hands are never far from a pen." His thumb caresses her mouth. "You, Mel. Nobody else."

And that, in its simplicity, is her answer. It is also, she thinks, the sum of her truth.

And he, whatever else, has always valued his sums.

"I won't ask why you chose me," Silco says. "I'll ask, instead, for something simpler."

"What?"

His stare is a strange thing. An uncanny glint of dark and light.

"Trust me," he says. "For today, if not tomorrow."

"What makes you think I don't?"

His lips shape a small sly smile. "Because you've no reason to."

Mel falls silent.

"We've a bargain between us. A marriage. But you've never been tied to something you couldn't shape, or bend to your will. You're a Medarda, after all. You stake your claim. And if you'd chosen a different man, a more pliant one, you'd not have any of this—" He strokes a stray curl from her temple, "—Mal de Mer. Now I need to know: is it well and truly gone? Or do you still feel it? That pull. That dread, when I'm elsewhere, that I'll never return. That one day, I'll wake up, and decide to take everything? Because if you do, and if that's where you'll stay, I'll let you go." Wryly, "I'll even help you pack your trunks."

Her lips part. His thumb touches them, silencing.

"If it's not," he finishes, "then a single word will suffice. Yes, or no."

The moment is a knife's edge. His scrutiny is a physical paring-down. It makes her feel—not naked. Transparent. All her veils gone. Herself laid bare, and every secret exposed.

For a heartbeat, she nearly breaks. Nearly blurts her deepest fears. The ones he'd promised, in his last letter, to keep safe. To let her believe, however desperately, that it was all worth the gamble. That he, and she, and they, could be—if not happy, then something close.

But there is no close.

There's only the tide, and her choices.

"Yes," she whispers.

"Say again?"

"Yes." Her palms, flat on his chest, curl. "I trust you."

A pause, so brief she nearly misses it. Then the scarred corner of his mouth lifts. "I will hold you to that."

He leans in, and kisses her. It's not tender, but it is true. She tastes the currents, the tides, the undertow. She feels, she fears, she knows:

If she lets go now, she'll drown.

The danger, strangely, is freeing. It's a leap, not a fall. A choice, not a compromise.

It's her, and him, and the rest be damned.

Breaking off, he whispers, "One thing."

"What is it?"

"Change out of the chiffon." Detaching, he looks her lazily up and down. "It won't survive."

"Survive you?"

"Survive the day." He's already moving toward the bath, stripping his clothes. "You've plainer dresses in the armoire. Choose something durable."

"Durable?"

"Something—" he glances over his shoulder, "—you wouldn't mind never seeing again."

The door swings shut. The roar of running water begins.

Mel, perplexed, stands in the sunlit parlor. It's not yet midday, and she's already jelly-legged. Mal de Mer—or just the man. The aftermath is a slow, sticky, aching throb. Reality takes its time sluicing back.

And when it does, there is nothing to do but meet the tides.

Sealegs, she thinks, aren't enough.

Sometimes, the only choice is to swim.

Fortunately, she's never been afraid of the deep-end.

#arcane #arcane league of legends #arcane silco #silco #forward but never forget/xoxo #forward (never forget)/xoxo #arcane mel #mal de mer #arcane mel medarda #mel medarda #melco #silco x mel #mel x silco #arcane ambessa #ambessa medarda

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drbased · 10 months

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Slavery - From Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape by Susan Brownmiller

[tw for rape, violent dehumanisation, anti-black racism, misogynoir]

The American experience of the slave South, which spanned two centuries, is a perfect study of rape in all its complexities, for the black woman's sexual integrity was deliberately crushed in order that slavery might profitably endure.

In contrast to rape during the Indian wars, which was largely casual and retaliatory—men getting even with men through the convenient vehicle of a woman's body—rape under the Patriarchal Institution, as it was named by the patriarchs, was built into the system. The white man wanted the Indian's land, but the coin he extracted from blacks was forced labor. This difference in purpose affected the white man's relations with, and use of, the black woman. Rape in slavery was more than a chance tool of violence. It was an institutional crime, part and parcel of the white man's subjugation of a people for economic and psychological gain.

The Patriarchal Institution took the form of white over black but it also took the form of male over female, or more specifically, of white male over black female. Unlike the Indian woman who was peripheral to the conquest of land, the black woman was critical to slavery. She was forced into dual exploitation as both laborer and reproducer. Her body, in all of its parts, belonged outright to her white master. She had no legal right of refusal, and if the mere recognition of her physical bondage was not enough, the knife, the whip and the gun were always there to be used against her. Forced sexual exploitation of the black woman under slavery was no offhand enterprise. Total control over her reproductive system meant a steady supply of slave babies, and slave children, when they reached the age of six or eight, were put to work; it did not matter whether they were full-blooded or mulatto.

An important psychologic advantage, which should not be underestimated, went hand in glove with the economic. Easy access to numerous, submissive female bodies—and individual resistance was doomed—afforded swaggering proof of masculinity to slaveholding males, while it conversely reduced and twisted the black man's concept of his role.

"Sexually as well as in every other way, Negroes were utterly subordinated," writes historian Winthrop D. Jordan of the slave South. "White men extended their dominion over the Negroes to the bed, where the sex act itself served as a ritualistic re-enactment of the daily pattern of social dominance." Jordan's words are too temperate. "Bed" is as much a euphemism as not, and "ritualistic re-enactment" implies a stately minuet of manners—a vastly in-adequate description of the brutal white takeover and occupation of the black woman's body.

"Lawdy, lawdy, them was tribbolashuns!" an eighty-seven-year- old ex-slave by the name of Martha Jackson told a recorder for the Federal Works Project in Alabama (who wrote down her words in an approximation of her dialect). "Wunner dese here womans was my Antie en she say dad she skacely call to min' he e'r whoppin' her, 'case she was er breeder woman en' brought in chillum ev'y twelve mont's jes lak a cow bringin' in a calf."

Martha Jackson's choice of imagery was grounded in the realities of slavery. Female slaves were expected to "breed"; some were retained expressly for that purpose. In the lexicon of slavery, "breeder woman," "childbearing woman," "too old to breed" and "not a breeding woman" were common descriptive terms. In-country breeding was crucial to the planter economy after the African slave trade was banned in 1807, and the slave woman's value increased in accordance with her ability to produce healthy offspring. Domestic production of slave babies for sale to other slave states became a small industry in the fertile upper South. In

fact, it was observed to be the only reliably profitable slave-related enterprise. Quite an opposite state of affairs had existed in the North before abolition, where slavery had never been profitable. In colonial Massachusetts, one observer has written, slave babies when weaned "were given away like puppies." But the state of Virginia annually exported between six thousand and twenty-thousand homegrown slaves to the deeper South, where the land, the climate and a harsher work load took precedence over fecundity. The Virginia-reared slave, like Virginia leaf tobacco, was always in great demand.

A member of the Virginia legislature used revealing language when he addressed that patrician body in 1831:

It has always (perhaps erroneously) been considered by steady and old-fashioned people, that the owner of land had a reasonable right to its annual profits; the owner of orchards, to their annual fruits; the owner of brood-mares, to their product; and the owner of female slaves to their increase . . . and I do not hesitate to say, that in its increase consists much of our wealth.

The fellow from Virginia, Mr. Gholson, was attempting to make the point that a slaveholder would not mistreat a female slave as he would not mistreat his broodmare, since the "increase" of each needed a period of nurture in order to show a profit. In return for the production of slave babies, the female knowingly bartered for more food and a reduced work load in the weeks before and after birth. But despite Mr. Gholson's protestations, a lightened work load was not an automatic quid pro quo.

Nehemiah Caulkins, a white carpenter who worked for a time on a North Carolina rice plantation, presented this picture of breeder women in an antislavery pamphlet of 1839:

One day the owner ordered the women into the barn, he then went in among them, whip in hand, and told them he meant to flog them all to death; they immediately began to cry out, "What have I done Massa? What have I done Massa?" He replied, "D—n you, I will let you know what you have done, you don't breed, I haven't had a young one from one of you for several months." They told him they could not breed while they had to work in the rice ditches. (The rice grounds are low and marshy, and have to be drained, and while digging or clearing the ditches, the women had to work in mud and water from one to two feet in depth; they were obliged to draw up and secure their frocks about their waist, to keep them out of water, in this manner they frequently had to work from daylight in the morning till it was so dark they could see no longer.) After swearing and threatening for some time, he told them to tell the overseer's wife, when they got in that way, and he would put them upon the land to work.

The Georgia journal of Fanny Kemble, whose husband owned a pair of cotton and rice plantations, records this entry:

The women who visited me yesterday evening were all in the family way, and came to entreat of me to have the sentence (what else can I call it?) modified which condemns them to assume their labor of hoeing in the field three weeks after their confinement. They knew, of course, that I cannot interfere with their appointed labor, and therefore their sole entreaty was that I would use my influence with Mr. [Butler, her husband] to obtain for them a month's respite from labor in the field after childbearing.

Fanny Kemble was unsuccessful in her intercessionary mission. Breeder women were sometimes blatantly advertised as such, for if they were "proven," they could command a higher price. The following advertisement from the Charleston, South Carolina,

Mercury became an abolitionist classic:

NEGROES FOR SALE—A Girl about twenty years of age (raised in Virginia) and her two female children, one four and the other two years old—is remarkably strong and healthy—never having had a day's sickness, with the exception of the small pox, in her life. The children are fine and healthy. She is very prolific in her generating qualities, and affords a rare opportunity to any person who wishes to raise a family of strong and healthy servants for their own use. Any person wishing to purchase will please leave their address at the Mercury office.

It mattered little to the slaveholder who did the actual impregnating, since the "increase" belonged to him by law. Paternity was seldom entered in the slaveholder's record book, and when it did appear, it was strictly for purposes of identification. The female was often arbitrarily assigned a sexual partner or "husband" and ordered to mate. Her own preferences in this most intimate of matters may or may not have been taken into account, depending on the paternalistic inclinations of her master. "I wish the three girls you purchest had been all grown," an overseer wrote to an absent master. "They wold then bin a wife a pese for Harise & King & Nathan. Harris has Jane for a wife and Nathan has Edy. But King & Nathan had sum difuculty hoo wold have Edy. I promist King that I wold in dever to git you to bey a nother woman sow he might have a wife at home."

Sexual activity for the male slave after the day's work was done was considered by the slave and master to be in the nature of a reward, but it is difficult to make such a generalization for the female. The accepted modern authority on slavery, Kenneth M. Stampp, writes, "Having to submit to the superior power of their masters, many slaves were extremely aggressive toward each other." It is consistent with the nature of oppression that within an oppressed group, men abuse women. "We don't care what they do when their tasks are over—we lose sight of them till next day," one planter wrote. "Their morals and manners are in their own keeping. The men may have, for instance, as many wives as they please, so long as they do not quarrel about such matters."

Another slave owner kept marital law and order in the following fashion, as recorded in his diary: "Flogged Joe Goodwyn and ordered him to go back to his wife. Dito Gabriel and Molly and ordered them to come together again. Separate Moses and Anny finally. And flogged Tom Kollock [for] interfering with Maggy Cambell, Sullivan's wife." The narrative of Charles Ball, Fifty Years in Chains, tells of a slave woman who was forced to live with a fellow slave whom she thoroughly detested and feared—and who never stopped reminding her that in Africa he had ten wives! That warm, sustained relationships did develop between male and female slaves in bondage is a most profound testament to what can only be called humanity, which everything in slave life conspired to destroy.

Field laborer, house servant and breeder woman were the principal economic roles of the female slave, but she was also used by her white owner for his own sexual-recreational pleasure, a hierarchical privilege that spilled over to his neighbors ("I believe it is the custom among the Patriarchs to make an interchange of civilities of this kind," wrote a correspondent in Missouri to a New York newspaper in 1859), and to his young sons eager for initiation into the mysteries of sex. The privilege, apparently, was also expected by visitors. "Will you believe it, I have not humped a single mulatto since I am here," an aide of Steuben's wrote to a friend in condemnation of the lack of hospitality at George Washington's Mount Vernon.

The sexual privilege also filtered down to lower-class white males in the planter's employ (overseers with the power of the whip and craft workers with access to the plantation) and to certain black male slaves ("drivers") who were also handed the whip and directed to play an enforcer role within the system. At the top of the hierarchy, setting the style, was the white master.

Nehemiah Caulkins testified:

This same planter had a female slave who was a member of the Methodist Church; for a slave she was intelligent and conscientious. He proposed a criminal intercourse with her. She would not comply. He left her and sent for the overseer, and told him to have her flogged. It was done. Not long after, he renewed his proposal. She again refused. She was again whipped. He then told her why she had been twice flogged, and told her he intended to whip her till she should yield. The girl, seeing that her case was hopeless, her back smarting with the scourging she had received and dreading a repetition, gave herself up to be the victim of his brutal lusts.

Solomon Northup, a shanghaied New York freedman who was forced to spend twelve years on a Louisiana plantation and later published his narrative of bondage, wrote a sympathetic description of a field slave, Patsey, who had to endure her master's "attentions."

Patsey was slim and straight. She stood erect as the human form is capable of standing. There was an air of loftiness in her movement that neither labor, nor weariness, nor punishment could destroy. Truly, Patsey was a splendid animal, and were it not that bondage had enshrouded her intellect in utter and everlasting darkness, would have been chief among ten thousand of her people. She could leap the highest fences, and a fleet hound it was indeed that could outstrip her in a race. No horse could fling her from his back. She was a skillful teamster. She turned as true a furrow as the best, and at splitting rails there was none who could excel her. . . . Such lightning-like motion was in her fingers as no other fingers ever possessed, and therefore it was that in cotton picking time, Patsey was queen of the field.

Yet Patsey wept oftener, and suffered more, than any of her companions. She had literally been excoriated. Her back bore the scars of a thousand stripes; not because she was of an unmindful and rebellious spirit, but because it had fallen to her lot to be the slave of a licentious master and a jealous mistress. She shrank before the lustful eye of one, and was in danger even of her life at the hands of the other, and between the two, she was indeed accursed. . . . but not like Joseph, dared she escape from Master Epps, leaving her garment in his hand. Patsey walked under a cloud. If she uttered a word in opposition to her master's will, the lash was resorted to at once, to bring her to subjection; if she was not watchful when about her cabin, or when walking in the yard, a billet of wood, or a broken bottle perhaps, hurled from her mistress's hand, would smite her unexpectedly in the face. The enslaved victim of lust and hate, Patsey had no comfort of her life.

Northup described one incident in the field when he and Patsey were hoeing side by side. Patsey suddenly exclaimed in a low voice, "D'ye see old Hog Jaw beckoning me to come to him?"

Glancing sideways, I discovered him in the edge of the field, motioning and grimacing, as was his habit when half-intoxicated. Aware of his lewd intentions, Patsey began to cry. I whispered her not to look up, and to continue her work as if she had not observed him. Suspecting the truth of the matter, however, he soon staggered up to me in a great rage.

"What did you say to Pats?" he demanded with an oath. I made him some evasive answer which only had the effect of increasing his violence.

"How long have you owned this plantation, say, you d—d n****r?"

Master Epps chased Northup across the field and then re- turned to Patsey. "He remained about the field an hour or more. . . . Finally Epps came toward the house, by this time nearly sober, walking demurely with his hands behind his back, and attempting to look as innocent as a child."

Patsey's story had a terrible ending. The jealous Epps became convinced that his slave had had relations with a white neighbor. He ordered her stripped, staked and beaten into listlessness. "In- deed, from that time forward she was not what she had been. . . . She no longer moved with that buoyant and elastic step—there was not that mirthful sparkle in her eyes that formerly distinguished her. The bounding vigor—the sprightly, laughter-loving spirit of her youth, was gone."

Narratives such as Northup's, published by the Northern abolitionist press in the nineteenth century, and oral histories of former slaves that the Federal Works Projects Administration collected in the nineteen thirties cast cold light on the life-style of slavery. W h e n the female ex-slave was asked to tell of her experiences, not surprisingly she did not dwell on sex. "Them was tribbolashuns," and a combination of propriety, modesty and acute shame on the part of narrator and recorder must have conspired to close the door on any specific revelations. (Male ex-slaves, because of a freer convention among men, were permitted to discuss the sexual abuse of females.)

But horror at the sexual abuse of enslaved black women was a recurring theme among white female abolitionists. The Grimké sisters of South Carolina and Margaret Douglass and Lydia Maria Child, among others, did not let it rest. They spoke and pamphleteered relentlessly (but alas, delicately—so dictated the times) out of a strong sense of identification with their black sisters in bondage. Margaret Douglass, a Southern white woman who was convicted and jailed in Virginia for teaching black children to read, wrote from prison in 1853:

The female slave, however fair she may have become by various comminglings of her progenitors, or whatever her mental and moral acquirements may be, knows that she is a slave, and, as such, powerless beneath the whims and fancies of her master. If he casts upon her a desiring eye, she knows that she must submit; and her only thought is, that the more gracefully she yields, the stronger and longer hold she may perchance retain upon the brutal appetite of her master. Still, she feels her degradation, and so do others with whom she is connected. She has parents, brothers, sisters, a lover, perhaps, who all suffer through her and with her.

The politically keen Mrs. Douglass, writing to a white audience, then added these lines:

White mothers and daughters of the South have suffered under this custom for years; they have seen their dearest affections trampled upon, their hopes of domestic happiness destroyed. I cannot use too strong language on this subject, for I know it will meet a heartfelt response from every Southern woman. They know the facts, and their hearts bleed under its knowledge, however they may have attempted to conceal their discoveries.*

(*Kenneth Stampp unfairly uses this portion of Mrs. Douglass' letter to buttress his contention that "Southern white women apparently believed that they suffered most from the effects of miscegenation.")

Mrs. Douglass' analysis went further:

Will not the natural impulses rebel against what becomes with them a matter of force? For the female slave knows that she must submit to the caprices of her master; that there is no way of escape. And when a man, black though he may be, knows that he may be compelled, at any moment, to hand over his wife, his sister, or his daughter, to the loathed embraces of the man whose chains he wears, how can it be expected he will submit without feelings of hatred and revenge taking possession of his heart?

The slave's revenge took many forms—although white retribution was swift and certain. A traveler through the South wrote in 1856:

A Negress was hung this year in Alabama, for the murder of her child. At her trial, she confessed her guilt. She said her owner was the father of the child, and that her mistress knew it, and treated her so cruelly in consequence, that she had killed it to save it from further suffering, and also to remove a provocation to her own ill-treatment.

A visitor to Mississippi in 1836 sent a letter to a Northern friend:

The day I arrived at this place there was a man by the name of G----- murdered by a Negro man that belonged to him. [The black man was publicly lynched.] G------ owned the Negro's wife and was in the habit of sleeping with her! The Negro said he had killed him and he believed he should be rewarded in heaven for it.

The narrative of Charles Ball tells of a mulatto slave woman, Lucy, who rebelled against her forced sexual servitude to her white owner and successfully plotted with her slave lover, Frank, to kill him. Charles Ball himself played a role in their apprehension and confession. Lucy and Frank "were tried before some gentlemen of the neighborhood, who held a court for that purpose," and were hanged at a public gallows. "It was estimated by my master," Ball records, "that there were at least fifteen thousand people present at this scene, more than half of whom were blacks; all the masters, for a great distance round the country, having permitted, or compelled their people to come to this hanging."

The case of Peggy and Patrick received considerable notoriety in New Kent County, Virginia, in 1830. This pair of slaves, who were lovers, were condemned to be hanged for murdering their master. Extenuating circumstances caused the local white citizens of New Kent to submit a petition to the governor asking that punishment for the pair be reduced to "transportation."

One black witness whose testimony was solicited declared that

the deceased to whom Peggy belonged had had a disagreement with Peggy, and generally kept her confined by keeping her chained to a block and locked up in his meat house; that he [the witness] believed the reason why the deceased had treated Peggy in this way was because Peggy would not consent to intercourse with him, and that he had heard the deceased say that if Peggy did not agree to his request in that way, he would beat her almost to death, that he would barely leave the life in her, and would send her to New Orleans. The witness said that Peggy said the reason she would not yield to his request was because the deceased was her father, and she could not do a thing of that sort with her father. The witness heard the deceased say to Peggy that if she did not consent, he would make him, the witness, and Patrick hold her, to enable him to effect his object.

Since it was the slaveholdirig class that created the language and wrote the laws pertaining to slavery, it is not surprising that legally the concept of raping a slave simply did not exist. One cannot rape one's own property. The rape of one man's slave by another white man was considered a mere "trespass" in the eyes of plantation law. The rape of one man's slave by another slave had no official recognition in law at all.*

(* Some evidence exists that masters attempted to police, in their own fashion, the more blatant abuses that male slaves committed against females. An 1828 advertisement in the Elkton, Maryland, Press for runaway "Negro George Anderson, about 21 or 22 years of age," declared informatively, "A few days before he absconded he attempted to commit a rape upon a young female of his own color, the punishment for which has caused his running off.")

Moral objections to the "liberties" that the slaveholder and his overseer took as a matter of course were voiced within the oddly angled framework of miscegenation, amalgamation, mixture of the races, licentiousness, degradation and lust. Typically for the power class, the slave's coerced participation in the act was turned on her. Her passive submission—the rule of survival in slavery—was styled as concubinage, prostitution or promiscuity when it was alluded to at all. Even the Northern abolitionists shied away from defining coercive sexual abuse under slavery as criminal rape, preferring to speak emotionally, but guardedly, of illicit passion and lust. Modern historians tend to operate under the same set of blinders.

The patriarchal institution of marriage dovetailed with the patriarchal institution of slavery to prevent perception, by even the most enlightened observers, of a concept of sexual rights and bodily integrity for the female slave. In the nineteenth century, a married woman was considered by law to be the property of her husband, and any abuse to her person was considered, by law, to be an abuse to his property. If the woman was not married, the abuse was to her father's property. But slaves were not permitted to marry legally, and criminal sexual abuse of a female slave (a rape) could not be considered by law an affront to her slave "husband" or slave father, who had no rights of their own. The examples we find in abolitionist literature that express concern over the sexual abuse of female slaves are frequently couched in terms of sympathy for the abused women's husbands! As a Maryland lawyer observed at the time, "Slaves are bound by our criminal laws generally, yet we do not consider them as the objects of such laws as relate to the commerce between the sexes. A slave has never maintained an action against the violator of his bed." Of his bed.

Statutory prohibitions against interracial sex, or more accurately, against the act of sex between slaveholder and slave, were on the books of all the slave states from the time they were colonies of the king. Even in South Carolina, where the slave-trading city of Charleston earned a dubious reputation as the libertine capital of North America (a reputation later claimed by New Orleans), and where "interracial liaisons were less carefully concealed than else- where on the continent/' a grand jury in 1743 took notice of "the too common practice of criminal conversation with Negro and other slave wenches in this province," and scored this conversation—or intercourse—as "an Enormity and Evil of general Ill-Consequence."

But it was "pollution of the white race" and not concern for the rights of slaves that lay behind such pronunciamentos. The laws against "admixture" that white men wrote were not applied to white men. They were applied by white men against white women —as several divorce suits and bastardy charges of the time showed—and they were applied with a special vengeance against those black men who entered into liaisons with white women. (The implications and consequences of this sex-race quadruple standard are still with us. See Chapter 7, "A Question of Race.")

A Louisiana Supreme Court decision of 1851 after some backing and filling proceeded to define concubinage as a "mutual" liaison, although one participant was a slaveholder and the other a female slave bound to him by law and force.

The slave is undoubtedly subject to the power of his master; but that means a lawful power, such as is consistent with good morals. The laws do not subject the female slave to an involuntary and illicit connexion with her master, but would protect her against that misfortune. It is true, that the female slave is peculiarly exposed . . . to the seductions of an unprincipled master. That is a misfortune; but it is so rare in the case of concubinage that the seduction and temptation are not mutual, that exceptions to the general rule cannot be founded upon it.

It is difficult to gain a clear understanding of concubinage as it was practiced in the slave South. I do not mean to argue the point that all sexual liaisons between white masters and black slaves fall within my extended definition of rape, although such an argument is tempting. For many black women, concubinage was the best bargain that could be struck, a more or less graceful accommodation given the hopeless condition of bondage; certainly for some it was as close to emancipation as possible, short of a run for freedom with Harriet Tubman. But first, last and always, concubinage was a male-imposed condition: a bargain struck on male values exclusively, resting on a foundation of total ownership and control. Accommodation in lieu of forcible seizure could bring a variety of amenities into one's life: relative status, pretty dresses, gold earrings, and the hope—always the hope—of manumission for one's self and children. This last must have been held out to the black concubine like a carrot on a stick. Several slaveholder wills survive in which freedom for a favored slave and her children is provided, along with bequests of money and real property. Sadly, but not surprisingly, the terms of these wills were often successfully challenged in the courts by the slaveholder's lawful heirs.

Sexual exploitation of black women by white men was understood as one of the evils of slavery by the abolitionist movement, even though abolitionists were unable to bring themselves to call it rape. Specific cases of concubinage and "amalgamation" reported by travelers through the South were incorporated, with appropriate moral outrage, into American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses, compiled and collated by the Grimké sisters and Theodore Weld, Angelina Grimké's husband, in 1839. The Grimké testimony, and that of Margaret Douglass, formed the backbone of an i860 antislavery pamphlet edited by Lydia Maria Child. The abolitionist women, in dealing with the sexual behavior of men, were treading on dangerous ground, bound by conventions that decreed that a man's private life was beyond the pale of political scrutiny. "We forbear to lift the veil of private life any higher," wrote Angelina Grimké, whose brother had sired mulatto slave children. "Let these few hints suffice to give you some idea of what is daily passing behind that curtain which has been so carefully drawn before the scenes of domestic life in slaveholding America."

The "few hints" of which Angelina Grimké wrote and spoke were scandalous enough for the times. "The character of the white ladies of the South, as well as the ladies of color, seems to have been discussed, and the editor of the Courier was of the opinion that the reputation of his paper, and the morals of its readers, might be injuriously affected by publishing the debate," a Northern newspaper reported after a Grimké speech—neatly turning the crime of men into a matter of the "character" of women, in the age-old tradition.

In the winter of 1838-1839, while Weld and the Grimkés were compiling their documentary record of slavery in New York, the English actress Fanny Kemble was in residence on a Georgia island plantation, recording her shocked observations in a journal that remained suppressed for twenty-five years. The celebrated and strong-minded Miss Kemble had inadvisedly married a young Philadelphian, Pierce Butler, who inherited a pair of cotton and rice plantations employing more than one thousand slaves. The marriage went badly, but it proved invaluable to history, for Fanny Kemble traveled with her husband to Georgia and wrote down what she saw in the form of letters to a friend.

As Fanny Kemble made the acquaintance of slaves on her husband's plantation, it dawned on her that the complexion of some of them was decidedly light, and for a very specific reason— the plantation's overseer, John King. She described the slave woman Betty:

Of this woman's life on the plantation I subsequently learned the following circumstances. She was the wife of head man Frank . . . the head driver—second in command to the overseer. His wife [Betty]—a tidy, trim intelligent woman with a pretty figure . . . was taken from him by the overseer . . . and she had a son by him whose straight features and diluted color . . . bear witness to his Yankee descent. I do not know how long Mr. King's occupation of Frank's wife continued, or how the latter endured the wrong done to him [italics mine]. This outrage upon this man's rights [italics mine] was perfectly notorious among all the slaves; and his hopeful offspring, Renty, alludfed] to his superior birth on one occasion.

Betty was not the only slave on the Butler plantation whom the white overseer, King, forced into sexual service, Fanny Kemble discovered.

Before reaching the house I was stopped by one of our multitudinous Jennies with a request for some meat, and that I would help her with some clothes for Ben and Daphne, of whom she had the sole charge; these are two extremely pretty and interesting looking mulatto children, whose resemblance to Mr. King had induced me to ask Mr. Butler, when I first saw them, if he did not think they must be his children. He said they were certainly like him, but Mr. King did not acknowledge the relationship. I asked Jenny who their mother was. "Minda." "Who their father?" "Mr. King." . . . "Who told you so?" "Minda, who ought to know." "Mr. King denies it." "That's because he never has looked upon them, nor done a thing for them." "Well, but he acknowledged Renty as his son, why should he deny these?" "Because old master was here then when Renty was born, and he made Betty tell all about it, and Mr. King had to own it; but nobody knows anything about this, and so he denies it."

The Butler plantation operated under absentee ownership for most of the year and the white overseer, King, was left in charge as a virtual dictator. The power of his station, and its sexual privi- leges, extended to those directly below him in the chain of command, the black drivers, who themselves were slaves. Owners, overseers, drivers, neighboring white men—all could force the black woman against her will, and she was held morally responsible for the injury done to her. Fanny Kemble herself started from this premise, but rejected it in time.

Quizzing more of her husband's slaves about the paternity of their offspring and hearing the names King and Walker (a white mill hand) and Morris (a black driver) repeated by many of them, she recorded:

Almost beyond my patience with this string of detestable details, I exclaimed—foolishly enough, heaven knows— "Ah! but don't you know—did nobody ever tell or teach any of you that it is a sin to live with men who are not your husbands?" Alas, Elizabeth, what could the poor creature answer but what she did, seizing me at the same time vehemently by the wrist: "Oh yes, missis, we know—we know all about dat well enough; but we do anything to get our poor flesh some rest from de whip; when he made me follow him into de bush, what use me tell him no? He have strength to make me." I have written down the woman's words; I wish I could write down the voice and look of abject misery with which they were spoken. Now you will observe that the story was not told to me as a complaint; it was a thing long past and over, of which she only spoke in the natural course of accounting for her children to me. I makeno comment; what need, or can I add, to such stories? But how is such a state of things to endure? and again, how is it to end?

Kemble privately circulated a handwritten copy of her journal among her friends and it quickly gained an underground reputation as the most explosive insider's antislavery testament. Lydia Maria Child urged her to publish portions of it, at least, as ammunition for the abolitionist cause but Pierce Butler flatly refused permission. As a slaveholder he thought the journal was unseemly, which it was. As a husband he could withhold consent, by law, to any publication of his wife's, which he did. The journal, Kemble's antislavery views, and her equally daring belief in equality in marriage, figured prominently in Butler's eventual suit for divorce. Butler won custody of their two children and the visitation-rights agreement stipulated that Kemble must do nothing to embarrass him. In 1863, earning her own living again on the English stage,

Fanny Kemble finally published her Georgia journal. By that time the War Between the States was well under way and Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, based in part on the Weld-Grimke pamphlet, had stolen much of her thunder.

The appointed roles of concubine and breeder woman forcibly progressed to outright prostitution in the last decades of slavery. Traders dispensed with pretense and openly sold their prettiest and "near-white" female chattel for sexual use on the New Orleans market. The cavalier term was "fancy girl." The place was the French Exchange in the grand rotunda of the St. Louis Hotel, and the favored hour was noon. This gaudy fillip to the slave trade was no more than a logical extension of institutional rape, the final indignity.

"Every slaveholder is the legalized keeper of a house of ill-fame," the ex-slave and orator Frederick Douglass thundered to an abolitionist meeting in Rochester, New York, in 1850. Douglass' understanding of the dynamics of slavery far surpassed that of any other single person. That night in Rochester he instructed his audience in the dynamics of sexual oppression.

I hold myself ready to prove that more than a million of women, in the Southern States of this Union, are, by laws of the land, and through no fault of their own, consigned to a life of revolting prostitution; that, by those laws, in many of the States, if a woman, in defence of her own innocence, shall lift her hand against the brutal aggressor, she may be lawfully put to death. I hold myself ready to prove, by the laws of slave states, that three million of the people of those States are utterly incapacitated to form marriage contracts. I am also prepared to prove that slave breeding is relied upon by Virginia as one of her chief sources of wealth. It has long been known that the best blood of Virginia may now be found in the slave markets of New Orleans. It is also known that slave women, who are nearly white, are sold in those markets, at prices which proclaim, trumpet-tongued, the accursed purposes to which they are to be devoted. Youth and elegance, beauty and innocence, are exposed for sale upon the auction block; while villainous monsters stand around, with pockets lined with gold, gazing with lustful eyes upon their prospective victims.

New Orleans was "fully tenfold the largest market for 'fancy girls,'" Frederic Bancroft wrote in his unmatched study, Slave Trading in the Old South. " The prospect of great profit induced their conspicuous display." Beautiful New Orleans! Ambitious slavers chained their prettiest catches to the coffle and headed for the balmy Gulf port. Racing season and Mardi Gras were especially remunerative times. The Hotel St. Louis on Chartres Street was a beehive of activity. Bilingual auctioneers tickled the libido of the sporting men in simultaneous French and English, for a 2 percent

commission. The slave women stood near the auctioneer's hammer and smiled, bedecked in bonnets and ribbons. Sales of two thousand dollars and up were not unusual. Private rooms off the main rotunda of the Exchange were always available for the gentleman who wished to inspect his prospective purchase. Inspection at the French Exchange was a serious matter. "To gamblers, traders, saloonkeepers, turfmen and debauchees, owning a 'fancy girl' was a luxurious ideal."

The master-slave relationship is the most popular fantasy perversion in the literature of pornography. The image of a scantily clothed slave girl, always nubile, always beautiful, always docile, who sinks to her knees gracefully and dutifully before her master, who stands with or without boots, with or without whip, is commonly accepted as a scene of titillating sexuality. From the slave harems of the Oriental potentate, celebrated in poetry and dance, to the breathless descriptions of light-skinned fancy women, de rigueur in a particular genre of pulp historical fiction, the glorification of forced sex under slavery, institutional rape, has been a part of our cultural heritage, feeding the egos of men while subverting the egos of women—and doing irreparable damage to healthy sexuality in the process. The very words "slave girl" impart to many a vision of voluptuous sensuality redolent of perfumed gardens and soft music strummed on a lyre. Such is the legacy of male-controlled sexuality, under which we struggle.

ADDENDUM: THE CLIOMETRICIANS

By running two sets of statistics into a computer and by making a few unsupported, outlandish statements, "cliometricians" Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman argue in Time on the Cross, their statistical view of slave history, that the sexual abuse of black women by white men was not a common occurrence. Dismissing all known reports collected by the abolitionists, they write:

Even if all these reports were true, they constituted at most a few hundred cases. By themselves, such a small number of observations out of a population of millions could just as easily be used as proof of the infrequency of the sexual exploitation of black women as of its frequency. The real question is whether such cases were common events that were rarely reported, or whether they were rare events that were frequently reported.

This is a "real question" only for someone who does not want to accept how infrequently cases of sexual assault are reported even in this day and age, let alone in the time when Angelina Grimke wrote, "We forbear to lift the veil of private life any higher."

Fogel and Engerman heap scorn on Fanny Kemble for having a distorted vision of slavery based on her "upper-class English" bias. In fact, Kemble's origins were not upper class. She was the daughter of a family of celebrated but impecunious actors who relied on her income—hence her gamble on a marriage to Pierce Butler. Ignoring the reasons why her Journal remained suppressed for twenty-five years, they try to slough it off as "a polemic aimed at rallying British support to the northern cause." It is not a polemic, as the dictionary defines the word, nor was it aimed at the British at the time of its inception. These errors of fact and interpretation could have been cleared up if Fogel and Engerman had read the Journal in its entirety, had read the Butler divorce papers, or had read one of the several biographies of Kemble.

Claiming they deal in facts, not conjecture, the authors, by presenting the results of two tangential computer runs, argue that white men did not as a rule molest black women, coyly adding that in their opinion interracial exploitation "would undermine the air of mystery and distinction on which so much of the authority of large planters rested." The first standard they employ is an analysis of the number of mulattoes reported in the i860 census. Thirty-nine percent of the freedmen in Southern cities were reported as mulatto that year. Among urban slaves the proportion was 20 percent and among rural slaves, who constituted 95 percent of the slave population, the percentage of reported mulattoes was 9.9. Since the overwhelming majority of slaves lived in rural areas, the authors required no sleight of hand to arrive at a figure of 10.4 percent for the census proportion of mulattoes in the entire Southern slave population. From this they conclude, "Far from proving that the exploitation of black women was ubiquitous, the available data on mulattoes strongly militates against that contention."

Several things are wrong here. The progeny of an interracial union can "come up dark" or "come up light," so in itself the color of the offspring is no sure-fire test. Secondly, how were these i860 census reports obtained? In their supplemental methodology volume Fogel and Engerman tell us that the census was taken by "thousands of enumerators" who were "drawn from the category of literate middle- and upper-class whites," and who used the criterion of skin color. We may assume that the freedmen reported their heritage to the enumerators in person, but do the authors suggest that the slaves did the same, or that the industrious enumerators entered the grounds of each and every plantation and counted heads and judged color from shack to shack?

It is reasonable to assume that the owners did all the reporting for their slaves, particularly in the rural areas, and it is reasonable to assume that plantation owners would be most reluctant to admit to the government that they were siring mulatto children, especially since miscegenation was technically against the law. Plantation owners, I am certain, saw what they wanted to see, and reported what they wanted to report to their class allies, those middle- and upper-class white enumerators. Any census statistic on the proportion of mulattoes on a plantation would be a most unreliable figure. In addition, why do Fogel and Engerman assume that a rape, even in a "non-contraceptive society," as they put it, is necessarily going to result in pregnancy and birth? Periods of fertility being what they are, a rapist plays Russian roulette with more than twenty chambers, yet the authors would have us believe he impregnates every time.

This fallacy in thinking also affects the import of their second set of computed facts. From a limited number of plantation records, the authors of Time on the Cross draw up a distribution chart indicating the age of slave mothers at the time they gave birth to their first child. (Unfortunately the cliometricians do not tell us how large a sample was available to them.) Thirty-six percent of all first births took place between the ages of fifteen and nineteen, and an additional 4 percent took place among girls below the age of fifteen. "Some readers might be inclined to stress that 40 percent of all first births took place before the mothers were 20," the authors generously admit—in the fine print of their methodology volume. In their major volume they write only that "the average age at first birth was 22.5, the median age was 20.8."

The median age is the more significant of these two figures, since it shows that there were as many first births below the age of 20.8 as there were above. The average age in the Fogel-Engerman computation is beefed up by each first birth that planter records claim occurred at age thirty-five and over; it does not mean that "most" slave women gave birth to their first child at twenty-two.

From this limited presentation Fogel and Engerman extrapolate, "Only abstinence would explain the relative shortage of births in the late-teen ages," and "the high fertility rate of slave women was not the consequence of the wanton impregnation of very young unmarried women by either white or black men." They hopefully conclude, "The high average age of mothers at first birth also suggests that slave parents closely guarded their daughters from sexual contact with men."

Leaving aside the entire question of the accuracy of slave ages, which does not seem to bother the authors, or the incidence of spontaneous miscarriage and folk-remedy abortions for the very young (information certainly not available), what is most troubling about these first-birth statistics is that nowhere are they matched up against the average age of menarche, the time of the first menstrual period. As it happens, the age at which menstruation begins has been perceptibly declining. In 1960 it fell between twelve and thirteen; however, in 1860 first menstruation usually occurred between the ages of sixteen and seventeen. Not only that, there is evidence in modern medicine and anthropology that fertility in the first few years after the onset of menstruation is comparatively low.

Fogel and Engerman's statistics tell us nothing about the sexual exploitation of black women in slavery. Statistical analysis is a valuable tool when it deals with reported crime. Unreported crime, however, remains beyond the magic of computers.

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