Lizard World by Terry Richard Bazes

certainty I did hanker to swive this wench -- I was then the veriest thrall to the lickorous, hot blood of my youth. I neer spent in my breeches, I had such a mind to her. And there was somewhat in the smell of dankish air that meseemed did beckon me into those forests. But, over and above that, I had been bewitch’d by an antique volume I had filch’d and now did much consult -- an old Spannish Friar’s history of his travels which averred that these heathens possess’d a vast deal of gold and a wondrous elixir of eternal life.
           It would be tedious to relate how thereafter we did wend thorough the heats and hillocks of those forsaken climes. If there were gold, I saw it not, though still I had hopes. For salvages are great fashioners of gold, though they reckon not its worth. Besides, there were dragons enough and where dragons abound, there treasure needs must lie concealed. For crokadells aplenty did languish in the mud. Yea, and other slime-begotten monsters -- such as the Lyzard-man of which the Spannish Friar Montalvo had writ -- sure did lie in ambuscado in those pestilential forests.
           And now for the first time I did sigh and bethink me how far I did find myself from Oxford, though ’twas not for the Latin I repined. Indeed, I had sooner studied buggery, for bordelloes more than books had ever been my schools. Natheless, Oxford had been merry and had it not been for the gaming and the dueling and the deflowering of my cousin (which did most particularly provoke my father’s ire), I might still have drunk my fill at Balliol and cribb’d my lessons with the other wags. But the Duke my father had taken exception to my peccadilloes and threatened to settle his fortune on my pious brother, were I not to bring his business to some good account. And so now I trafficked in sugar and tobacco, though I had no great liking for these seasick ships and the company of men less worth my while than dogs.
           How oft did I recall the odour of ale on a barmaid’s breath, the smell of baking bread on St. Giles Street when dawn blushes like an unclothed virgin and huswifes sweep the cobbles, yea, and Mistress Felsham’s bawdy-house wherein for a guinea my ardour was wont to sate itself in fleshly fragrance which outstripped the seraglio of the heathen Turk. Thus within my litter did I pass long hours sighing for Oxford, nor was there solace save in sleeping or in nosing the treasures of my portmanteau. For -- I know not how it was -- but my fancy had long been inflamed by smells, in such wise that a harlot (even though she be otherwise most grievous to look upon), yet if she were possess’d of a good ripe smell and were ready for the sport, I did find her greatly to my liking. My cousin Belinda, by way of example, did have a schoolgirl’s wan and soapish smell, the which was very indifferent by itself but when blended with the robust odours of the barn wherein we lay, bravely spiced the pleasure of her taking. These smells, I say, held such soveraign sway o’er my manhood that even soiled stockings and pettycoats, the which I kept in my portmanteau against the hap of abstinence, could very well -- so long as they exhaled some goodly savour -- excite the gratification of my ardour.
           Yea, each entombed memento did evoke the fervid perfume of the past. A garter which I filch’d off a harlot in Bristol, Belinda’s night-cloaths still pungent with the sweat of her lying-in, my brother’s wife’s smock yet fragrant with the sap of her reluctant hunger -- these divers under-garments, whereupon my nose did graze like a foxhound hot upon the scent, did incite the riot of my blood and relieve the tedium of my journey. Indeed, odour and pleasure had been so long thus commingled that I was now a very idolater of soveraign smell: for smell did arouse my manhood like the pink flesh and kisses of the stews.
           “Milord! Milord! Milord!”
           Thus thrice rudely,