Illusions by Candlelight

By Jean Roberta

There is so much to say on this topic that I hardly know where to start.

At one time, I didn’t think it was possible to write explicit sex scenes in the style of some past era. I probably believed that sex hadn’t been discovered before the time of my parents’ courtship (WW2, hubba-hubba). Then I read The Mammoth Book of Historical Erotica, edited by Maxim Yakubowski (circa 1999). Those stories were both hot and realistic, and some were set in times and places before the Christian Era.

I wanted to write that stuff, but I wasn’t sure I could.

A lot of popular historical art that has been produced since 1980, approximately, manages to produce the flavor of a past era, but with full use of current technology and the relative freedom of a culture that isn’t dominated by a Church or an all-powerful Emperor. Historical movies that fit that description include the painterly films The French Lieutenant’s Woman (with a kind of Victorian palette) and Goya in Bourdeaux (which looks like the kind of film the Spanish painter Francisco Goya would have produced if video cameras had existed in the 1700s). Then there is Schindler’s List, set in the 1940s and shot in black-and-white, but with a crisper, clearer chiaroscuro than you can see in any movie actually made in that time.

The literary version of that kind of thing avoids the kind of euphemisms that were generally used in “literary fiction” (as distinct from “porn”) right up to recent times. (Try reading Hemingway’s famous line that “the earth moved,” or the intense abstractions in D.H. Lawrence’s sex scenes, or Radclyffe Hall’s version of lesbian sex: “And that night, they were not divided.” See if you can keep a straight face.)

Like Lisabet, I love the Victorian era (1830s-1900), though the Enlightenment and Romantic eras seem fun too (mid-1700s-1830s). I like the combination of a culture that is now far enough in the past to seem exotic, yet close enough to our time that the literature actually written in those days is still comprehensible. The language doesn’t need to be translated.

Shakespeare’s era (approximately 1590-1616) is a little more remote, but as Sacchi demonstrated, it’s still possible to write a story with a Shakespearean feel that doesn’t require pages of footnotes to be understood. (And on that note, William Shakespeare was born AND died on April 23. We can still drink to his memory a day late.)

Then there is the Renaissance and before that, the Middle Ages. Linguistically, 1100-1450 (more or less) was the era of Middle English, which definitely does not look or sound like modern English. Here is a famous passage (part of the Prologue of the Canterbury Tales, circa 1380s), which I can still recite from memory:

WHAN that Aprille with his shoures soote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
And smale fowles maken melodye,
That slepen al the night with open ye,
(So priketh hem nature in hir corages):
Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages.

(There are many more lines, but these are the ones I remember.)

Anyone who wants to set a plot in an English-speaking environment before the mid-fifteenth century, and lure a non-scholarly 21st-century audience to read it, has to improvise a lot.



In order to write a story set in the universe of King Arthur (though technically, it’s about his conception), I reread my old copy of The Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Mallory (mid-1400s).

Here is the beginning of my story:

My lord, the Duke of Cornwall, has accepted Christ Jesus as his savior for a score of years. As his lady, I have a duty to pray as he does before our people, whatever I believe in my heart. My lord’s honor deserves no less.

How different things were when the Maiden, the Mother and the Crone commanded us to follow our hearts. No man took offense if his lady held a paramour in her arms before the Beltane fires, nor would a good woman try to keep her wedded lord on a short tether throughout life. I remember a time when love was not confined, but I was a little maid who barely understood it. I was simply Igraine then, and I was too merry to be wise.

Now I wait alone behind the thick stone walls of Castle Tintagel for news of my lord Cornwall, and of the King that I love beyond measure. They plan each other’s destruction, and I fear for them both.

I’ve written elsewhere about the challenges of writing this story. The editor to whom I sent it liked the style, but didn’t find the story sexy enough, even after I had revised it to give Igraine more, shall I say, physical ecstasy. Her emotional ambivalence (the King and the Duke are threatening to tear the kingdom apart over her – oh, for the love of all the saints!) seemed inherent in the original story. Whether this story will ever find a home remains to be seen. I might have to rewrite it as straight historical fiction, with much of the sex kept out of sight.

Since Annabeth was so flattering about The Flight of the Black Swan (set during the American Civil War, 1861-1865, and slightly beyond), I’ll introduce the narrator, Emily (represented in the audio version by a British actor, Catherine Carter). Here are her opening lines:

Almost the worst thing that can happen to a young lady is to be loved by her parents.

Consider it: attentive mothers and fathers do all in their power to protect their daughters from risk and notoriety—in short, from every experience which gives savor to life. Fortunately, I approached the age of majority with my most exciting memories of childhood intact.



The book is available in several formats from Amazon and from the publisher, Lethe.

I would love to read a sexually-explicit version of the gothic novel Wuthering Heights (written in the 1840s, but with much backstory set in the late 1700s). Since a certain British publisher has been soliciting raunchy versions of the “classics” for several years, I suspect that someone more qualified than I will write it before I could finish the necessary research. But then, there are quite a few intense female-female relationships in the fiction of that era that would benefit from a clearly lesbian interpretation. :)

In Love with the Past

By Lisabet Sarai

Ever since I began reading (which was not long after I got out of diapers), I've loved historical fiction. As a child, I couldn't get enough of ancient Egypt or imperial Rome. Give me a tale set in medieval France or colonial America, Moorish Spain or Druidic Britain, and I would disappear into that other world for hours or even days. My mother would despair of getting me to do my chores or persuading me to go outside and play. The historical realms that I visited seemed far more real than my family's three bedroom ranch house or our grassy back yard.

I still enjoy a well-crafted tale centered in another time and place. In fact, I think I appreciate historical fiction more deeply now that I understand how difficult it is to write it well. A successful historical novel should transport you back to the past. You should see the sights, smell the smells, experience the sensual delights and the painful inconveniences of the time in which it occurs. (No matter how romantic the Age of Chivalry might sound, I’d never want to live in those dark and uncomfortable times!)

Of course, you've also got to get the details right. However obscure the period that you've chosen, there's bound to be some reader who will be an expert on that time, that dreaded critic who will throw the book at you (literally!) when your characters in twelfth century England drink tea, or your Aztec prince wears robes of silk. I remember long rants on one list I belong to, because a well-known romance author mentioned a spinning wheel in a period before they'd been invented. (The ranter was an individual with extensive knowledge about textiles.)

Immersive description and obsessive accuracy are not enough, though. To write convincingly about another historical period, you need to have a sense of how people thought, what they believed, how they behaved—the unspoken rules and assumptions of their society. I've read some so-called Regency erotic romance set in eighteenth century Europe in which the characters acted, and interacted, in ways that were far too modern to be believable (particularly in the area of sexual expression). These books were entertaining, but they didn't really deliver on the promise of a genuine historical experience.

The best historicals that I've read also capture the cadences and vocabulary of speech in the period. The most engaging historical romance that I've read in a very long time is Erastes' homoerotic Regency novel, Standish. I could almost believe that the story really had been penned by an author of the period, rather than a modern writer. Another writer who excels at capturing the linguistic tone of a historical period is Louisa Burton. The stories in her Tales of the Hidden Grotto series range freely through history, from pre-Roman times to the modern day. Each segment does an exceptional job anchoring the reader in a particular time and place.

Most of my own work thus far is contemporary, though I have taken a few stabs at history — with great trepidation! Incognito has a subplot, revealed in a secret journal, that takes place in Victorian Boston. I had a wonderful time doing research for this, particularly in the area of costume. I had actually lived in the historic district of Beacon Hill for a year, so it was relatively easy to bring the setting to life. Walking the streets of Boston, I found the past was palpable.

Monsoon Fever is set on a tea plantation in British India just a few years after the first World War. This was much more difficult to pull off, even though the time period is more recent. I've never visited Assam and even if I could discover what was going on in Europe or America during the 'teens, extrapolating to a remote colonial outpost required considerable imagination to fill in the factual gaps.

(Fortunately, imagination is not something I’m usually lacking. My husband accuses me of routinely making things up when I don’t know the answer, and I have to admit, he has some reason for this claim.)

My bawdy story Shortest Night is set in Elizabethan London, during William Shakespeare's time, and indeed the plot is a riff on the cross-dressing comedies of errors Shakespeare did so well. In fact, the Bard himself has a bit part in that tale. London and the theater also figure in “Opening Night”, the alternative history story I wrote for Sacchi’s anthology Time Well Bent, in which I imagine what would have happened if William Gilbert (of Gilbert and Sullivan fame) had been seduced by his star actor during the debut of the infamous operetta “Ruddigore”.

My most recent attempt at historical erotic fiction takes place much closer to the present. Challenge to Him is set in Newport, Rhode Island during the Gilded Age, sometime before 1910. I’ll never forget visiting the Newport mansions (now museums) and marveling at their near-obscene opulence. My hero is one of the newly-wealthy industrialist class who built those mansions, while the heroine is an intellectual and labor activist from (yes, Sachi!) Amherst, Massachusetts.

Here’s an excerpt from that novella, which describes the first meeting between the hero Andrew MacIntyre and the heroine, Olivia Alcott, outside a textile mill in Lowell, Massachusetts.

“We’d rather starve quick than starve slow. A living wage or we just say no.”

Olivia Alcott chanted along with the mill girls as they marched in a circle in front of the rambling brick factory buildings. A semicircle of police and spectators fanned out in front of the strikers, but no one made a move to hinder them. Behind her, the normally clattering machinery lay quiet. When the workers paused for breath, Olivia heard the muted rush of the falls.

Itchy sweat gathered under her arms and at the base of her neck, where random strands of her hair had come loose from the pins that secured it. It was several hours past noon, and the summer sun battered them all. Like the women with whom she marched, Olivia wore a drab, ankle-length shirtwaist and heavy, laced boots, though her clothing was of finer fabric and in better repair. A red scarf knotted at her throat added a spark of colour—and soaked up some of her perspiration. She was desperately thirsty, but they’d agreed not to take a break until three o’clock. She certainly wasn’t going to be the one who gave up early.

She glanced around at her companions. They ranged in age from fourteen to fifty-five, though most were younger than her twenty-six years. Their lean, wiry bodies showed the effects of their twelve hours of back-breaking labour per day, six days a week. Even the young women had lined faces and streaks of grey in their hair, and the older ones looked frail, almost skeletal.

In the cool of the morning, when they’d started the strike, there’d been a holiday atmosphere. Liberated from work, they’d laughed, joked with one another and sung old Québécois songs. Now each woman’s face was a grim, dusty mask. Each was determined not to surrender to fatigue or discomfort. They had made a commitment to one another. No one was willing to betray that commitment—certainly not Olivia.

Doubts assailed her, though, as her back ached and the blisters on her feet stung. Had she done the right thing, coming here and stirring up these women’s aspirations? Would it do any good? Greed ruled the modern world. Profit was all that mattered. Human beings were expendable, just cogs in the great industrial machine that was America. If one component failed, it could be replaced. Meanwhile, the masters of the new century grew ever richer.

She could have been at home, reading in her father’s shady garden with a glass of iced lemon at her side, or walking with her sister under the spreading elms of the Common. Indeed, if the strike failed, she could return to her safe and comfortable life in Amherst—become a teacher like her parents, or an author like her brother Will.

These women around her, though, didn’t have those options. For them, this was a matter of survival.

“Mademoiselle Olivia!” A skinny girl raced up the street that led to the riverside mill, stirring clouds of dust. “Il vient! He is coming!”

The sputtering racket of an internal combustion engine drowned out the girl’s excited voice. The crowd parted like the Red Sea for a boxy vehicle of shiny black, with silvery headlamps like extruded eyes. The noisy Studebaker rolled to a stop in front of the strikers, who stopped in their tracks like everyone else to stare at it.

The door creaked open. A tall man unfolded himself from the somewhat cramped interior, snatched off his hat and goggles and tossed them into the vehicle. He strode towards the massed strikers, his fists clenched at his sides.

“Where is she? Where’s your damned leader?”

The newspapers generally described Andrew MacIntyre as handsome. The epithet did not do him justice. As he stormed towards her, Olivia was struck with a sense of physical power and keen intelligence. He had wavy red-gold hair, a high forehead, a square chin, a determined mouth. His eyes were hazel, deep set under brows darker than his hair. Those eyes drilled into her, fierce and compelling. The women around her shrank backwards in alarm. Olivia steeled herself, holding her ground and fighting the urge to grovel at his feet. Instead of retreating, she took a step forward, holding out her hand.

“Mr Andrew MacIntyre, I presume?” She marvelled at the steadiness of her voice, the cool neutral tone.

“Damned right. And you are…?”

“Olivia Alcott.” She pulled herself up to her full height and forced herself to meet his gaze. She saw anger simmering there, but behind his irritation there was something else, something that intrigued and thrilled her. Something that she might be able to use to further her goals. Olivia Alcott recognised lust when she saw it.

He towered over her by at least a head. Though his body was hidden by his loose touring coat, his decisive, economical movements suggested he was lean and athletic. For a moment he hesitated, staring at her proffered hand. When he finally accepted it, his firm grip confirmed her impression of strength. His palm felt warm and dry against hers. She suddenly wished that she were not so sticky and dishevelled. When he released her, a momentary lightness swept through her, as though she might float away.

“And can I assume that you are the instigator and cause of this illegal strike, Miss Alcott?” He seemed flustered, less confident than she would have expected. Her spirits rose.

“Instigator? Perhaps. But not the cause.” Sweat trickled from her hairline, down into her eyes. She wiped it away with the back of her hand.

“Here.” He surprised her by offering a crisp handkerchief of fine linen, of a white so pure it almost seemed to shine with its own light. The initials ‘AM’ were embroidered in the corner, in golden thread. A faint scent of lavender reached her nostrils.

“Why, thank you!” The square of cloth was far more effective than her hand. When she’d mopped the perspiration from her face, she held out the swatch of now-damp fabric. “Here you are.”

He waved dismissively. “Keep it. I’ve got dozens more. Let’s get back to the matter at hand.”

“How much did this handkerchief cost, Mr MacIntyre?”

“I have no idea. My secretary handles my personal expenses.”

“It’s imported linen, I suspect. Belgian, perhaps?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. Look, Miss Alcott…”

“And the monogram looks like real gold. Is it?”

“Honestly, what does that have to do with anything?”

Olivia tucked the handkerchief into her bodice, noting that MacIntyre’s eyes followed the movement. Indeed he didn’t try to hide his survey of her figure, rude as it was. Another tremor of strangeness fluttered in her belly.

“I’m no expert—I don’t have anything so fine myself—but I’d estimate that each of the dozens of handkerchiefs like this that you possess costs at least ten dollars.”

“Ah—really I don’t know—perhaps. Something in that vicinity.”

“That’s about two weeks of salary for one of these women who work here in your factory.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“The cause of the strike, Mr MacIntyre. You asked about the cause of the strike. These poor women—your employees, sir, to whom you have a certain responsibility—generally make five dollars a week. They’d have to work for two weeks—twelve days, twelve hours per day—to afford one of your handkerchiefs. Do you think this is just?”

“Well, they should be grateful they have jobs.” MacIntyre leaned closer, his manner and his voice menacing. “And if you don’t stop your meddling, they won’t. I’ll fire every single one of them in a minute. There are plenty of people who’d be happy for steady work, for a reputable company that’s not about to go bust and put them out on the street.”

“Won’t you consider raising their salaries, Mr MacIntyre?” Olivia countered, inserting a bit of sweetness into her own voice. She laid her hand on his upper arm and felt his muscles shift under her fingers. “An additional dollar a week would make a big difference to them.”

“I’m running a business here, Miss Alcott, not a charity.” He pulled away from her grasp and shook his head, as if to clear his thoughts, then stepped past her to speak to the assembled workers.

“Go back to your machines, ladies. Don’t listen to this—this rabble-rouser. She’s only here to make trouble. You know that MacIntyre Textiles has always taken good care of you…”

“Oh, really, Monsieur?” Lisette Beauchamps pushed her way through the clot of ragged women to confront him. “Did you care when my daughter got the brown lung? Poor petite wheezing and coughing so hard that she couldn’t walk, let alone work? And no money for a doctor or medicine? Or when Maria Clermont’s hand got tangled in the spinning machine? After they cut it off at the wrist, the fever took her. Left her four children all alone, les pauvres. Now they work here too, in this hellhole that killed their mother.”

“Oui!”

“C’est vrai!”

The women besieged Andrew MacIntyre, crowding around him, blurting out their sad stories in broken English. For a moment, Olivia almost felt sorry for him.

“Silence!” His voice drowned out their pleas and complaints. The babble died away. He raised his fist as though to batter the closest of the supplicants. Then he let it fall to his side. “The next person who makes a sound will be arrested and thrown in jail.” Despite his rough words, though, he appeared uncertain.

* * * *

I should mention that this book includes quite a lot of BDSM. I have no idea how much of that is historically accurate!

Past Lives

By Lisabet Sarai

Ever since I began reading (which was not long after I got out of diapers), I've loved historical fiction. As a child, I couldn't get enough of ancient Egypt or imperial Rome. Give me a tale set in medieval France or colonial America, Moorish Spain or Druidic Britain, and I would disappear into that other world for hours or even days. My mother would despair of getting me to do my chores or persuading me to go outside and play. The historical realms that I visited seemed far more real than my family's three bedroom ranch house or our grassy back yard.

I still enjoy a well-crafted tale centered in another time and place. In fact, I think I appreciate historical fiction more deeply now that I understand how difficult it is to write it well. A successful historical novel should transport you back to the past. You should see the sights, smell the smells, experience the sensual delights and the painful inconveniences of the time in which it occurs.

Of course, you've also got to get the details right. However obscure the period that you've chosen, there's bound to be some reader who will be an expert on that time, that dreaded critic who will throw the book at you (literally!) when your characters in twelfth century England drink tea, or your Aztec prince wears robes of silk. I remember long rants on the Erotica Readers & Writers Association, because a well-known romance author mentioned a spinning wheel in a period before they'd been invented. (The ranter was an individual with extensive knowledge about textiles.)  

Immersive description and obsessive accuracy are not enough, though. To write convincingly about another historical period, you need to have a sense of how people thought, what they believed, how they behaved - the unspoken rules and assumptions of their society. In medieval times, for instance, God and religion loomed very large in most people's consciousness. Meanwhile, life was short and fraught with danger, even for members of the upper classes. Throughout much of history, in many societies, women have been relegated to the status of children or even property, with little or no personal freedom. I've read some so-called historical  erotica set in eighteenth century Europe in which the characters acted, and interacted, in ways that were far too modern to be believable (particularly in the area of sexual expression). These books might be entertaining, but they didn't really deliver on the promise of a genuine historical experience.

To be effective, a historical novel must also capture the cadences and vocabulary of speech in the period. It helps if the prose also adopts the grammatical structures used during that time. Short declarative sentences are a relatively modern development in fiction. Multiple dependent clauses, subjunctive mood, passive voice, and lengthy description were common and approved structures in the English up until the middle of the twentieth century.

The most engaging erotic historical fiction that I've read in a very long time is Erastes' homoerotic Regency novel, Standish. I could almost believe that the story really had been penned by an author of the period, rather than a modern writer. Even though the book is a romance and thus fated to end happily, the author really made me believe that one of the heroes might be executed for his homosexual behavior.

Another author who excels at bringing the past to life is Sarah Waters. I'll never forget the “aha” experience of reading Tipping the Velvet. Given the novel's rather unusual setting (the world of music hall performers), I can't guarantee the book is realistic, but it certainly felt real. Ms. Waters manages the same feat in The Night Watch, evoking London during World War II with astonishing vividness.

Most of my own work thus far is contemporary, though I have taken a few stabs at history -- with great trepidation! I have a story that unfolds in Shakespeare's time (Shortest Night) – and indeed which includes the Bard as a minor character -  and another set on a tea plantation in British India just a few years after the first World War (Monsoon Fever). One of my earliest published shorts, Communion, takes place in a convent in thirteenth century France. In general, though, I've avoided writing historical tales, out of a combination of fear and laziness.

There's one time period that is an exception, however: the Victorian era. Sometimes I believe that I had a past life during Victoria's reign. Even as a child, I was attracted to the period's architecture (my siblings use to tease me about my fondness for “gingerbread houses”) and styles of dress (in high school, I often wore high-necked blouses with cameos at the throat and long, full skirts). I remember visiting the Tampa Bay Hotel, a classic example of the Victorian fascination with all things “Oriental”, and having the distinct impression that I'd walked those dark, high-ceiling corridors before. And during the eighteen months that I lived in Boston's Beacon Hill (where the buildings mostly date from earlier in the nineteenth century, but which had its heydey during the Victorian era), I felt as though I'd come home.

Meanwhile, writing Victorian fiction is easy for me – well, as easy as writing ever is. I can hear the language of the times in my mind. I can picture the settings, smell the coal smoke, hear the clip clop of horse's hooves on the cobblestone streets and the cries of the market hawkers. I imagine the whale bones of my corset, biting into my flesh. I fear the social and economic ruin that would ensue if my true, sensual nature became known.

I've written a variety of shorter works set in the Victorian period, including a couple of steam punk stories. My longest literary sojourn in the era, though, is in Incognito.  The novel includes has a subplot, revealed in an antique journal, which takes place in Boston in the 1880's and involves the wife of a wealthy merchant who, like my heroine Miranda, has a secret life of sexual excess. At least a quarter of the book takes place in the nineteenth century.

That part simply flowed from my metaphoric pen, with little conscious effort. If you want to read an example, just click here.  I did some research, particularly in the area of costume, but the character of Beatrice came to me full-fleshed, complete with her forbidden hungers and her knowledge that her adventures might well destroy her life and livelihood.

Do I really believe I'm the reincarnation of some carnally-curious society woman from Victoria's time – or perhaps even the author of one of the many “anonymous” erotic tomes the period produced? Maybe my sense of familiarity with the linguistic structures and the social intricacies of the time derives from all the nineteenth century fiction I've read, starting with Arthur Conan Doyle and Charles Dickens as a child and moving on to The Pearl and My Secret Life. I was first exposed to Gilbert and Sullivan at the age of five; did that play a role?

Even if there's a logical explanation, I like to pretend that in a previous life I was someone like Beatrice. Maybe in the future, I'll try to write the story of that past life.

Reincarnation

By Lisabet Sarai



June 12, 1886

I scarcely know how to begin this account of my adventures and my sins. Indeed, I do not fully understand why I feel compelled to commit these things to writing. Clearly, my purpose is not to review and relive these experiences in the future, for in twenty minutes’ time these sentences will be invisible even to me. Perhaps in the years ahead, I will trail my fingers across the empty parchment, coloured like flesh, and the memories will come alive without the words, coaxed from the pages by my touch like flames bursting from cold embers.

I have a secret life, another self, and that secret has become a burden that I clutch to myself, and yet would be relieved of. So, like the Japanese who write their deepest desires on slips of rice paper and then burn them, I write of secret joys and yearnings, and send that writing into oblivion.

Let me begin again. My name is Beatrice. The world sees me as poised, prosperous, respectable, wife of one of Boston’s leading merchants and industrialists, mother of two sweet children, lady of a fine brick house on fashionable Mount Vernon Street, with Viennese crystal chandeliers, Chinese porcelain, French velvet draperies, and Italian marble fireplaces. I devote myself to the education of my dear Daniel and Louisa, the management of my household, works of charity, cultural afternoons. In sum, the many and sundry details of maintaining oneself in proper society.

Though I have borne two children, I am still considered beautiful. Indeed, with my golden locks, fair skin, turquoise eyes and rosy lips, I am often compared to an angel. How little they know, those who so describe me. For in truth, I am depraved, wanton, and lecherous, so lost that I do not even regret my fall.

My husband is a kind, intelligent, and honourable man, for whom I have the deepest regard and affection. He treats me with the utmost consideration and respect; he rarely comes to my bed and when he does, he is profuse with apologies for his unfortunate lust. Alas, he hardly knows or understands me. I understand him to a much greater extent, enough to know that I must lie still and silent under him, not move or cry out as his manhood dances inside me. Everyone knows that for proper women, the rites of the flesh are a trial that must be endured; men are subject to carnal weakness, and women’s lot is to be the passive receptacle of their spending. This is what my husband believes. Knowing he believes this takes the fire from the moment, and makes it easier for me to play my frigid, compliant role.

I know better, though.

Today, I walked in Louisburg Square with Daniel, Louisa, and their nurse. The weather was glorious, sky of limpid blue sown with fluffy clouds, new leaves dancing in the breeze. My parasol raised against the sun, I did not see him until he was almost upon us.

He was of medium height, sumptuously attired, as fair-haired and blue-eyed as I. His mouth had a fullness that I liked, the look of someone who savours the sweet things in life, and a readiness to smile. As he swept off his hat and bowed, I noticed his hands, with long delicate fingers clad in beige kid gloves.

“Good afternoon, Madame,” he said courteously. “I trust that you and your children are enjoying this fine weather.”

Meanwhile his eyes were sending me a different, more intimate message, which would have been lost on someone who was not sensitised to such things. There were no words in this message, only images, emotions, sensation, a quickening of breath, a heat, a tightening.

I am perpetually amazed at how we recognise each other, those of us who live beyond the pale of propriety. Is it some primal scent that we exude? Some subtle clue in posture or expression? Could it in fact be some spiritual connection, a mingling of thoughts in the ether? The mechanism is obscure to me, but I know the phenomenon only too well. I have sat in a concert hall with two hundred elegantly dressed, respectable members of proper society and found my eyes drawn to a single face in the balcony, a set of eyes that knew me, saw through my finery to the hungry flesh beneath.

“Good afternoon, Sir,” I said, my voice low and modest. “It is indeed fine, especially for so early in the season.”

“Of course, that may indicate that it will become hot sooner than usual.” The gentleman’s eyes sparkled with humour at his little private joke. Hot indeed, I thought to myself, adjusting my expression to signal some slight disapproval.

“I do not believe that I have the pleasure of your acquaintance, Sir,” I said.

“Forgive me for my lack of courtesy.” He reached into his waistcoat, withdrew a card, and wrote something upon it. “Here is my card.”

“Thank you.” I examined the card. It was not, in fact, a visiting card, but a blank upon which he had inscribed the following few words:

Ten O’clock this evening
No. __ Beacon Street
With respect and hope,
Charles Burnside

His name was unknown to me. Clearly he must be one of the many visitors to our prosperous city. I gave him my most luminous smile. “Perhaps we will meet again, Sir.”

“I do hope so, Madame. Adieu for now.”

I swept past him, my silks rustling, my heart pounding deliciously.

My husband was away this evening, as he so often is, visiting his mills in Lowell or consulting with his agents in New York. I would never risk one of my encounters if he were at home. He is a pillar of Boston society, universally admired and respected. He has even been urged to stand for the Legislature in the next election. Never would I allow the slightest hint of scandal to tarnish his good name. I am scrupulously careful in my dark liaisons. Even these private words will vanish shortly, so that there should be no evidence of my shameful behaviour.

Tonight, however, I was free to pursue my desires. After the children had been put to bed and their nurse was on guard at their side, my maid Pauline assisted me in my preparations. Pauline is the only soul who knows my secrets; I trust that she will take them with her to her grave. She is French, and experienced in the ways of the world. She does not condemn me for listening to the siren call of the flesh, though she sometimes regards me with a strange light in her eyes.

I chose my costume with care, a rich but somber dress of midnight blue poult de soie, with a cashmere mantle to match. I wished to appear respectable, remote, and infinitely desirable. My hair shone like spun gold in contrast with the dark fabric, and my eyes had depths like the ocean. I donned my hat and veiled my face, then followed Pauline out the back door and into the alley where the hansom carriage she had summoned awaited me.

The address he provided proved to be a small townhouse facing the Common, with fine leaded glass windows. A sour-faced domestic answered the bell, took my wrap, and led me to the drawing room, which was furnished with indifferent taste.

My fair-haired Charles leapt up as I entered, his face glowing.

“You’ve come, Madame! I hardly dared hope.”

“I could scarcely refuse such an enigmatic invitation,” I said, holding out my gloved hand. He bent to touch it to his lips, then stopped himself. “If you will permit me,” he said with a shy smile. Then without waiting for my reply, he stripped the glove off my fingers and planted a delicate kiss on my bare palm.


(From Incognito by Lisabet Sarai.)

I sometimes believe that I had an earlier life in the Victorian period. Even before I had read My Secret Life and The Pearl, I was drawn to the time--the fashions, the fanciful buildings, the characters, real and imagined. Sherlock Holmes, Jack the Ripper, Oscar Wilde, Gilbert and Sullivan, Sarah Bernhardt, and the Queen herself. There are photos of me from high school, wearing a frilly, high-necked white blouse ornamented with a cameo, and dark flowing skirts. I was dressing the part before I was even aware of what I was doing. I had a Victorian body, too, full-bosomed and hipped, completely unfashionable in the Twiggy era but perfect for the 1880's.

I've always longed to live in a house with turrets and gingerbread. My favorite BDSM fantasies take place in a tower room in a San Francisco Victorian, one of those marvelous places with curved wrap-around glass and a conical roof. When I visited Tampa and saw the incredible Tampa Bay Hotel with its verandas and minarets, I had the weirdest sense that I had been there before. Of course, by that time, my Victorian sexual associations were well-developed. Every mahogany-and-brocade chaise offered itself as the ideal spot for a spanking. I won't even mention about the four-poster canopy beds.




Why the fascination? I'm really not sure. I believe that it has something to do with the radical split between public and private lives during the period, the overt propriety contrasted with the by now well-documented secret lasciviousness. Most erotic authors appreciate the extra excitement associated with violating taboos. The broader the societal constraints, the more opportunity there would have been for breaking the rules.

When I began writing Incognito and realized that it was going to have a historical sub-plot, I immersed myself in Victoriana, both erotic and ordinary. Normally I'm not that assiduous about research. I do enough to get by. In this case, though, I was hooked, almost hypnotized. I felt as though I understood the life of the period, the excitement of new worlds and new technologies, the conflicts between public social norms and private behavior. And when I started writing the entries in Beatrice's diary, it was as though I was channeling the character. I knew her as well as I knew myself. She was a secret outlaw, a devotee of the flesh hiding behind a mask of respectability.


Her journal chronicles a range of sexual adventures. I felt that I had experienced every one of her trysts, from her forbidden seduction of the virile black handyman to her beating and buggering in the stables of a suburban mansion. I could feel my cheeks flush as I stole through the shadowy, cobbled streets of Beacon Hill, veiled against the gas lights. My breathing was fast and shallow against the whale-boned constraint of my corset. Excitement drenched my lace-trimmed silken pantalets, hidden beneath my voluminous skirts.

It was very strange. In many ways, Miranda, the contemporary heroine of the novel was far more similar to me than Beatrice. We were both bookish and serious, hot-blooded but shy. Some of Miranda's history was borrowed from my own life. My own experiences in academia served as general background for the tale.

I liked Miranda quite a bit. However, it was with Beatrice that I identified, despite the differences in class and culture. I don't have children. My marriage is an unconventional partnership vastly different from Beatrice's traditional union. Yet I felt that I knew Beatrice intimately, that I understood her wantonness at a visceral level.

Maybe Beatrice really existed, or someone like her. Perhaps that is the key to my fascination with the period. Could it be that Beatrice's diary took shaped itself out of the flickering memories of my own carnal explorations, in another time, another place?

Perhaps that's the germ of another novel.

I've always loved reading historical fiction, from practically any period. I admire and envy authors who can bring the past to life, not only awaken the sights, sounds, and smells of a period but also convey the world view of its denizens. In general, that is not particularly a talent of mine. The Victorian world is an exception.

The master summoned me to the library just after tea. “Come in, Mary” he called in response to my shy knock. I could not help but wonder what he wanted with me, merely a downstairs maid, the least of his great household.

“You asked to see me, sir?” I curtseyed as gracefully as I could.

“Yes, Mary.” He did not rise from his armchair by the hearth. “Come here, Mary, and stand before me.”

I did as he bid me, trembling a little, for his voice was cold and severe. He looked me up and down, as I stood there with my eyes on the figured carpet.

“Mary,” he said at last, “are you happy here?”

“Oh, yes, sir”, I exclaimed. “Very happy.”

“Then why do you steal from me?” he asked sternly.

“Steal from you, Sir? Nay, I would never do such a thing!” I dared to look at him, and saw a strange light burning in his eyes.

“Cook tells me that you have been rifling the pantry while the house is asleep, stealing the choicest delicacies and hiding them in your room.”

“What, Sir? Why would I steal food? The provisions here are far better than I’ve had in any other house, wholesome and plentiful.” Indignant in my innocence, I held his gaze. “To be honest Sir, I believe that Cook is envious of me, though why she should be so I cannot tell. Always she gives me the most unpleasant tasks, and never does she have a kind word for me.”

“Hmm,” he said, stroking his beard. “I almost believe you. You are quite sure, Mary, that you are not telling me falsehoods to save your skin?”

“Of course not, Sir! You and the Mistress have been very good to me since I entered your service two months hence. I would never lie to you.”

“Still, Mary, I must punish you. If I do not, Cook will be so grouchy that she will poison us all with lumpy soups and undercooked roasts. I believe you, Mary, but nevertheless you must be punished.”

He reached behind the chair and retrieved a wicked-looking bundle of birch switches. “Turn around, lift your skirts, and take down your drawers,” he said in an odd, strained voice.

“Please, Sir, no! T’is not fair!” Tears streamed down my face, but even at my young age, I knew there was no fairness for one such as I. There were the highborn and the low, that was the nature of things, and if one of the high had a fancy to beat one of my standing, it did not matter whether the supposed culprit was guilty or not. Silent and reluctant, I obeyed his instructions. I blushed as I let my linens drop to the floor, baring my hind parts to his scrutiny. Surely this was improper, I thought, hoping wildly that my Mistress would knock on the library door and interrupt this scene. Then I remembered that she was taking tea with her mother in Knightsbridge, and my heart sank.

“Kneel on the edge of the chair,” he commanded. I knew he meant the matching armchair on the other side of the hearth. “Bend over and hold tightly to the back of the chair.”

I disposed myself as he dictated. Looking over my shoulder, I attempted one last appeal. “Please, Sir, I beg you, do not birch me. I will do whatever you wish, but do not punish me unjustly.”

“I have no choice, Mary,” he said, almost sadly. “However, if you take your whipping well, I will do something nice for you afterwards.”

I crossed my arms on the back of the chair, and buried my face in them. I waited for the first sharp cut. Something seemed to delay him, though. For several minutes, there was no sound but the crackling from the hearth. A draft swept between my naked thighs, and I shivered a little, from suspense as much as cold.

Finally he spoke, almost in a whisper. “You have a lovely bum, Mary,” he said, and then the switches slashed across my bare bottom.

I swear, I can feel the birch scorching my skin. I can smell the smoke from the hearth, hear the tick of the mantel clock and my master's labored breathing. I'm there in that chilly room, bent over the stiff mahogany chair, tears welling in my eyes and a different moisture gathering between my thighs, fear and shame battling with excitement.

I feel as though I am where I belong.