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This book is for sale to ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It contains substantial sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which may be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.
All sexually active characters in this work are 18 years of age or older.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This work was previously available as “The Five Cards.”
Cover Photographer: Aldra©iStockphoto.com
Cover Design: Dr. Elliot Mabeuse and “shereads”
The Love Doctor and the Phantasm © 2008 Dr. Elliot Mabeuse
eXcessica publishing
All rights reserved
The Love Doctor
and the Phantasm
By Dr. Elliot Mabeuse
Chapter One
"'Quietude,'" the one-eyed man said. "This is the first card. This image shows a woman sitting in a tower room. The priest stands behind her—"
"Is that a priest? He doesn't look like a priest. Why do you say he's a priest? I don't see a crucifix—"
"Shut up," the one eye-eyed man said. He was a thickset man, dressed in scruffy black velvet. "He is known as the priest because you wouldn't understand his real function. The priest stands behind her with his hand on her shoulder. There, look at her tits if you want something to look at. She is relaxed, as you can see. The sea behind her is placid, and ships come and go, carrying the commerce of the land. In the fields, the grain is ripening. There are grapes full on the vines. The boar and the sow lie in their sty. The prince is on his throne, the sun is in the heaven, and all is at peace. In the land I come from, they make much of balance, of the balance of things. They say things are in balance."
"You stupid Jew! Why are we listening to this stupid Jew?"
"Get him out of here," Don Andreo Testarosa said, pulling at his nose, and two of his men grabbed the man, a clerk from the diocese who everyone knew was a spy for the Castiglianis, and they dragged him out.
"It smells better without him already," Don Dreo said. "Go on, Maestro Robinetti. That is the first card. 'Quietude'. I understand. What's next?"
The one-eyed man wore a leather patch over his left eye and over the patch was an ornate silver medallion set with small gaudy jewels surrounding what should have been a large, centerpiece stone, but the setting was empty. His lips were full and sensual, the lips of a wine-drinker, framed by a black and gray beard. His one eye was worried, wise and crafty. While he spoke, he kept one hand on his broad belt, and those who were aware, were aware that his fingers were on the handle of a dagger kept up his sleeve.
"The second card is 'Arousal' and we see here imbalance, the awakening of desire. Desire, gentleman, is the first gate, the stimulation of the will towards action. The woman stirs, her head is back. She presents her breasts for the priest's stimulation. Her hands are on her thighs. She is caressing herself in anticipation of her lover's touch. The ships feel the wind. The grain is now ripe in the field. The Prince hears the trumpets of war. The boar nuzzles the sow. Balance has been upset and action must be taken to set things aright.
"There is much more going on in this card than I can reveal to you here. In the Tarot, for those who follow such things, this card is Archon to the Wheel of Fortune, and this is where that witch plied her foul magic, applying it to this joint, using her magic as a lever at this point in the girl's soul—"
"How do you apply force to a card?" a young man asked, leaning on one arm and playing with a dagger against the white tablecloth. This was Claudio Testarosa, Don Dreo's nephew and a hothead, and Don Dreo gave him a look of such withering contempt that Robinetti's was hardly needed.
"Perhaps it's best if we send the children out of the room before we continue." The one-eyed man turned from the table, taking up his wine. He waited as all but Don Dreo and his two most trusted advisers had filed out.
The one-eyed man turned around, turned over the three remaining cards on the white damask tablecloth and leaned over them. He was a big man and not handsomely made, yet he gave the impression of one who knew his business and who had a certain impressive power in his shoulders and neck.
"The third card is known as 'Satisfaction' to most of the world. That's what they call it. This is where the woman has sex and receives the man's seed and the business ends as far as they know. If we turn the card upside down, though, we see another image."
He turned the card over and Don Dreo and his advisers twisted their heads, looking at it, squinting.
"What's he doing to her?"
"He's hitting her!"
"Pulling her hair!"
"Mother of God! He's—"
"What he's doing isn't important," Robinetti said. "The fact that he's doing something is. In this position, the card is called 'Incitement' and it goes beyond 'Satisfaction'. He hasn't stopped at mere sex. He is taking the woman higher, inciting her to a higher plane of arousal and invoking the sexual beast within, the source of her lust, her female phantasm.
"The fourth card is 'Liberation'—the freeing of the female beast, gentlemen, the most hazardous part of the procedure, for she is pure female spirit here, unalloyed and untamed, recognizing neither master nor lord nor God nor judge. This is the seed of Lillith, spawn of the succubus, the phantasm of pure womanhood which all good Christians, woman as well as man, are terrified of and with good reason. This is sexual appetite unleashed and this is what I mean to do to your daughter, Don Testarosa, to bring her to this state."
The two advisers stood up and peered at the last two cards as Robinetti quickly put the last one on top of the fourth and stacked all five into a pile.
"What's on that last card?"
"This fifth card? There's nothing on it."
"It shows just a circle."
"What's the meaning of this, Maestro?"
"The fifth card is not for your understanding. The name is 'Both Vanished'. It has to do with the workings of the formulas. The preparations."
Don Dreo looked up at him and his two eyes focused on the Doctor's one. "Vanished, Maestro?"
"It's not meant to be taken literally, Don Testarosa. In my art, such language is employed to guard our secrets. I would hardly cause your daughter to vanish if I wanted to collect my fee, would I?"
Don Dreo shook his head thoughtfully. "No. No you wouldn't. And you would hardly cause my daughter to vanish if you still wanted an eye to see through and a dick to piss through. You wouldn't even think of it."
* * * *
In the winter of 1505, the feud between the Testarosas and the Castiglionis in the town of San Duranese where the mountains plunge into the sea grew so in hatred and vindictiveness that the families were no longer content to do violence to each other's bodies, but began to employ accursed magicks and the devil's own unholy arts to assault each other's spirits and immortal souls, not caring for the threat of damnation or the sins they accrued by so doing, so much did their spite outweigh their fear of heaven's retribution.
That winter, not only were five retainers killed by dagger, sword or crossbow and seven seriously wounded, but who knew how many had been laid to bed or even earthly grave by the Castiglionis' use of infernal witchcraft which no good Christian should countenance. Hearing that the Testarosas had arranged a marriage between the flower of the family, the young and shockingly beautiful Elena Testarosa and the son of the Head of the Cloth Merchant's Guild of the City of Florence—a marriage which would have given the Testarosa's a crushing advantage in their struggle against the Castiglionis—the Castiglioni family brought in a notorious witch from the Marches of Rome to put a spell on said Elena—a love spell, a wasting spell of enchantment.
This spell would make her fall in love with the Castiglioni's own scion of young manhood, the impetuous and hot-headed Guido Castiglioni, and thus make her totally unfit to wait on any other man, or so it was hoped—fit for nothing, in fact, but to serve as Guido 's groveling bitch dog, mad with lust for him and existing only to do his merest, most demeaning bidding.
With Lady Testarosa at his beck and call, it would be nothing to totally humiliate the fair Elena such that the son of the Head of the Cloth Merchant's Guild would have nothing to do with her and she would beg to marry Guido instead, a marriage which would bring the Testarosa fortune under Castiglioni control, and that would be the end of the Testarosas.
It was a foul plan, clever and insidious, and worthy of the viper that crawled upon the Castiglioni coat-of-arms. Yet such was the perfidy and scheming within the Castiglioni family, that even a plot destined to assure the family's triumph hatched its own plots like a spider hatches her own brood which devour her before they even leave the nest, for the forty-four year old Capo Antonio Castiglioni, a rapacious, much hated man, the captain of his family's forces and horny as a goat, with a family, two mistresses and lust unabated, bribed the witch such that the beneficiary of the spell be not young Guido, but him instead.
So it was, that when Lady Elena walked out from the Church of San Francesco—the Testarosa Church—they wouldn't dare set foot in the Church of San Marco, the Castiglioni Church—she was suddenly startled by mirrors flashing in her eyes, assaulted by rose petals drenched in vinegar and urine and assailed by the sight of Antonio Castiglioni dressed in emerald green and gold, the Castiglioni family colors.
He was seated on a white horse, plumes in his hat, falcon on his sleeve, the perfect image of Phoebus Apollo himself, burning his impression on her eyes as the very image of divine masculinity, and thus was the spell cast. Her spirit wavered and admitted his image and she fainted dead away in the street and had to be carried home by frantic and agitated Testarosa retainers who had seen what had happened but did not understand. At home, she lay in a swoon for hours, waking only long enough to take some weak barley tea, and then was put to bed on a lavender pillow to compose her humours.
No one knew what had occurred except for Arabella, Elena's old childhood nurse. She suspected. She knew about love spells and she suspected her little flower had been cursed with the demon of love and made slave to that pig Antonio Castiglioni. She could not tell yet if the spell had worked, but Elena had fainted and that was a bad sign—a sign that her spirit had yielded to his—and she had lain unconscious for hours! A terrible sign. And still no one was doing anything.
There was talk where the surf broke down by the quay near the harbor, where the fisherman mended their nets, and there was talk in the taverna across the way from the harbor. To the North, the lights in the Castiglioni palazzo burned bright, and there was shouting and arguing as always, as an outraged Guido gave vent to his hot-headed temper, cheated of his chance to play King Cock with the delicious Lady Elena by his arrogant uncle Antonio.
"You bastard, Uncle! You pig-licking bastard! I wanted to make the bitch crawl! I wanted to make her suck my fucking cock in the square on Sunday after mass! I wanted to come all over that rich-bitch face, the way she's always looking at me with that kiss-my-ass look!"
"Quiet, quiet!” Antonio peeled an apple with his dagger and stabbed a juicy chunk. "That's all you know is foolishness like that. You can still have your fun with her after I'm done. I just want the choice parts—the cherry—three, four nights. Besides, what's done is done. The bitch is mine. The hag said the spell would begin to work in a day or two and reach its maximum in a week. We have to figure out a way to get her out of that damned palazzo while it's at its height! That's what we should be talking about. I want every man working on it—a way to get the bitch out of there and into my hands while she's ready to give Antonio what he wants!"
To the south, on the other side of the village, the lights burned low in the Testarosa Palazzo as Arabella wrung her hands in grief. She knew, as did all the doctors in Tuscany, that lovesickness was a real and serious malady that could cause permanent madness, wasting away, sickness and death. It was discussed in universities, debated in colleges; cures were searched for, doctors sought, for love was nothing to sneeze at when family fortunes were at stake.
Not three days ago, Arabella knew—though it was supposed to be very confidential—a Love Doctor had cured the son of a friend's employer, had cured the lad of a painful, agonizing longing for a widow woman which had led the lad into much foolishness and cost the family much money. But that doctor was an unknown, perhaps a charlatan—so many were—a man with no recommendations, no references, no credentials and a Jew to boot. Should she send for him? Dare she, without consulting Don Testarosa?
She did. She sent Salvatore, the kitchen boy, that very night, on the road to Florence to find the Jew Love Doctor and bring him there. If Elena was not enchanted, then no harm would be done. He was just a Jew and they could kick him out and what could he do?
But if her darling Elena were enchanted, then God knew what might happen—showing her skirts, her breasts, bawdy cries and moans in the stillness of night... They would need a Love Doctor—any Love Doctor. Tomorrow, or the next day at the latest, Elena might come into heat.
* * * *
As it turned out, it was the next day. The next night, to be exact. Elena was cheerful all morning and afternoon and even teased them for their concern, making fun of the idea that she might be enchanted or infected with love sickness. From her window, she could look down at the harbor and see the young men dragging in their nets and she teased her maids by pretending to expose her breasts at the boys, who could not, of course, see her for the flowers on the balcony, but her girl friends were totally scandalized and closed the shutters.
Elena had lovely breasts, exquisitely sensitive, and even in play she enjoyed touching them and making show of them. She had honey colored hair that cascaded over them in coin-sized ringlets and striking, yellowish-green, terribly alert eyes that scared off many men. Her legs were shaped like the pillars of heaven, her bottom as saucy as cupid's cheeks. Her face was an object of astonishing beauty, such that all she had to do to silence a room was to keep still. Eyes were drawn to her in silent wonder and conversation fell away like snow on a hot copper roof.