Excerpt:

He knew the kisses of a hundred willing lips that night: those that rouged in secret and those all the sweeter for their unpainted innocence. Fair hands passed the loving cup tied with ribbons into stronger hands; then the tickle of thin moustaches and the taste of the gentlemen who had sneaked a taste of something more potent.

They sang in his honor:

Wassail! wassail! all o'er the town,
Our toast it is white and our ale it is brown.

And they carried bits of him away to burn in their bellies. Their echoes drifted back to him, there in the loving cup, and he reveled in the secret desires of their hearts, shared their small joys and mourned the smothered loneliness that was inevitable with this season.