Chapter 135 Devadanyi - "The Woman Who Felt No Pain"
Chapter 135 Devadanyi - "The Woman Who Felt No Pain"
Jasper Slegg had come by his gift for showmanship naturally. When he had
been a boy his father, who at various points in his disreputable life had been a
tout, a pimp, and a confidence man, had, for a time, run a traveling carnival,
exhibiting various human unfortunates and oddities. Among them had been
'Thelma, The Thirty Stone Woman', 'Evelyn, the Hunchbacked Hermaphrodite' and
'Felipe, the Pin-headed Man'. Other occasional part-time players had included
Tuppence, the Twelve-fingered Milkmaid, Rex-Rex, the two-headed dog who ate as
if he had had four stomachs, and a curious assortment of albinos, bearded
ladies, cretins, dwarfs and the like.
But Amos Slegg, ever the entrepreneur, soon came to appreciate that a
significant number of his better-heeled male customers had interests of a more
private and personal nature, interests to which he was only too happy to cater,
provided the law could be kept at a safe distance. And so it was that a
handful of women of dubious virtue began to accompany Slegg's Circus of Marvels
on its seasonal peregrinations through southern and central Britain.
Once the women and children and the tamer male hearts in the audience had
been packed off and sent safely home to dreams filled with pinheads and
hermaphrodites, Amos Slegg would whisper in the ear of patrons with a certain
gleam in their eye, that a second show, one reserved for gentlemen with special
tastes, would be offered later in the evening. And it was during these
night-caps that Amos Slegg fattened his purse. For a shilling or two Maggie the
Middlesex Midget could be induced to display that part of her body connoting the
region of her birth. Rhiannon, the Welsh Pony Girl, did more, much more, than
traipse her equines around a dung-strewn earthen ring during the late show.
Zenobia, the Persian snake dancer, allowed her wriggling serpents considerably
more liberties than she did in the early evening show. And Alana, the Levantine
Pretzel Woman, who could contort her body into positions nearly impossible to
describe, was obliging enough to wrap her naked legs behind her own neck - or
around a generous gentleman's -- for half a crown. It mattered not a whit, of
course, to Amos Slegg that neither Zenobia or Alana had ever been closer to the
middle east than the east midlands.
********
During the December of Jasper Slegg's thirteenth year his father had set up
winter quarters in an out of the way cul-de-sac in Whitechapel, a district
notorious for the sins and the sinners of its dark alleys, but one that was
only a short hansom cab ride from the imposing stone edifices of the City of
London. Quickly word had passed, among men interested in such things, that a
new entertainment, one of the most debauched variety, was being offered to
free-spending rakes who took little pleasure from the sedate cultural and
educational attractions that the recently deceased and much-loved Prince Albert
had done so much to foster in London.
It was during that same dismal winter that Amos Slegg had introduced the
Devayani, the "Woman Who Felt No Pain". The exotic beauty was actually the only
one of Amos Slegg's strange cast of itinerant entertainers who actually hailed
from a faraway land, in her case from the land of the Taj Mahal. Her unusual
name, Jasper Slegg had learned years later from an oleaginous brothel-keeper in
Madras, meant 'daughter of Shukra', a Hindu deity whose name in turn was
derived from the ancient Sanskrit word for 'semen', the giver of all life.
During the early hours of the evening, Devayani, clad in an elegant sari,
would entertain the general audience by pricking the skin of her arms with
slender golden needles. After piercing her soft flesh, she would wave the palms
of her hands through the licking flames of an array of bright-burning candles,
seemingly heedless of the keenness of the needles and the heat of the flames,
while she intoned mantras of the east in a voice as light and fresh as a
bubbling spring.
But when the conventional audience departed, along with it departed the
constraints of Victorian London. Each night, at about midnight, after Maggie,
Zenobia, and Alana had performed (Rhiannon having run off with a
massively-endowed coachman from Shropshire a few weeks earlier), Devayani,
wearing a colorful costume from the east that brought out the highlights of her
mocha-colored skin, would re-emerge from behind a filmy curtain. During her
first few moments on stage, she would kneel motionless before a tall mirror
alongside the curtain, seemingly oblivious to the ring of heavy-breathing
bankers, brokers, and lawyers who sat tight-collared and impatient around the
tiny stage....
********
The tears of Queen Victoria lamenting the death of her beloved Albert were
not yet dry when Devadanyi had joined Amos Slegg's Circus of Marvels. In fact,
all of Britain was still in mourning on the foggy night in January 1862 when a
curious twist of fate had enabled young Jasper Slegg to see the midnight show of
the Indian beauty. On most nights his father had packed him off to their dingy
rooms near George Yard once the boy had finished sweeping up the refuse left by
the patrons of the first show. But the weather on this particular night had
been so desperately cold and foggy that Amos Slegg had told him to bed down in a
loft overlooking the improvised stage.
Weary from the day's labors, young Jasper had dropped off to sleep quickly,
but he was awakened an hour or two later by the sound of wooden chair legs being
dragged across the floor below. He sat up, shivering a bit in the cold, and
rubbed at his eyes as he listened to the familiar rumble of his father's voice.
"Slide yer chairs closer, my friends, because for the next 'arf an hour you
won't want to blink yer bloodshot eyes! For tonight ye happy few have the
distinct honor and rare privilege of witnessing the most thrilling, the most
exotic performance ever seen in Londontown! Without further ado, 'ere she is,
gents, our own Star of India -- Devadanyi, the Goddess of the Ganges, the Woman
Who Feels No Pain!"
There was something in the tone of his father's voice that led young Jasper
to wonder if his father, who he knew to be both a cynic and a charlatan, had
actually come to believe his own bombast --- at least in the case of Devadanyi.
The elder Slegg's grandiloquent introduction was marked by some further
shuffling of chairs, and then a somewhat inebriated voice was heard to call out,
"Off you go, then, Slegg. We came to see the wench, not to listen to you!" The
outburst was greeted by the muffled laughter of impatient men.
His boyish curiosity aroused, Jasper Slegg inched his way soundlessly
across the debris-strewn floor of the loft until he found a vantage point from
which he could peer down unobserved at the proceedings below. There were eight
men arranged in a semi-circle around a tiny stage dimly illuminated by a pair of
oil lanterns hanging from opposing walls. Three well-dressed -- and even
better-fed -- men of business from the City sat together, brandishing thick
cigars as they passed a flask of brandy back and forth. A pair of pipe-smoking
veterans clad in the regimental yellow of the Highlanders sat to their left,
their ruddy complexions testifying to a recent tour of duty in the tropics.
Further to the left of the soldiers sat two dripping and half-drunk rakehells
who had just come in out of the rain. One of them was the wag who had just
called out to Amos Slegg; the other wore the insignia of a sable griffin on his
cravat proclaiming him a barrister at Gray's Inn.
To the right of the three men of finance, a solitary toff sat slightly
apart from the rest. This last gentleman was dressed in a cape of funereal
black, with a dark scarf wound closely round his face even though Amos Slegg had
made sure that the coals in the poorly-ventilated fireplace were burning briskly
on such a chilly night. Behind the scarf, Jasper Slegg could see that the man's
face, while still quite young, had the chalky pallor of a nocturnal creature
unused to the midday sun; despite the relative darkness of the room, he still
wore the dark-tinted glasses of a man sensitive to light.
Alongside the fireplace an array of wet raincoats had been hung up to dry
within easy reach of the other half of the circular stage. Fifteen tall,
upright candles had been positioned around that arc, but of them, only the
tallest and centermost had been lit.
Just as Jasper had finished surveying the half-circle of eager patrons,
Devadanyi, clad from head to toe in iridescent silk, emerged through an opening
in a gauzy curtain and stepped lightly onto the crude stage of Amos Slegg.
Although he had seen her routinely in recent weeks, Jasper had always been
pre-occupied with his own chores and had never really taken note of her striking
appearance. The Indian maiden was about his own height - a little over five
feet - but the masses of thick, lustrous hair piled high on her head made her
appear somewhat taller. Her complexion was an appealing shade of bronze and her
facial features were of a classic purity - lovely cheekbones, a proud chin,
full, seductive lips, and deep, dark eyes of bottomless beauty. Between her
artfully trimmed eyebrows lay a beguiling red dot, the bindi worn by many Indian
woman, the third eye of Hindu lore.
Devadanyi began by bowing submissively toward her male audience in the
Indian fashion, with her hands pressed together as if in Christian prayer. Then
she turned and took down the single lit candle and flitted back and forth from
one side of the semi-circle of tapers to the other, using the lit candle to
light the others, thus providing a flickering backdrop for the performance that
was to follow. As she did so, Jasper noticed that illuminated images of lustful
Hindu divinities and vengeful demons seemed to appear out of nowhere on the
dingy wall behind the arc of candles, as if to ensure that in this room on this
night, a centuries-old tradition of male dominance would be served. Behind the
drapery from which Devadanyi had emerged, Jasper saw the silhouette of a
reed-thin, turbaned flautist lift a flute to his lips. A moment later a
haunting, sensual tune began to waft its way upwards toward the boy's place of
concealment. Out of the corner of his eye he could see his father dimming the
pair of oil lanterns, leaving the stage illumined only by flickering
candlelight. The performance was about to begin....
********
Jasper's young heart began to pound the moment the south Asian temptress
began to twirl in time to the music, the bangles on her slender wrists
glittering in the candlelight, her bare feet gliding across the tiny stage as if
she were walking on air. At first he thought that Devadanyi was still wearing
the sapphire-blue sari that she had worn during the earlier show, but upon
closer inspection he realized that she was now encased in a cocoon of veils, the
outermost of which had been cut from the same bolt of cloth as her sari.
She danced for a minute or two, seemingly in a rapture, her brown eyes
nearly closed, her soft lips whispering what Jasper took to be supplications to
her pagan gods. Then she stopped in front of one of the raffishly dressed young
lawyers and offered him the corner of a veil. Winking delightedly at his
companion, the law student took it and gave it a firm tug. The Indian beauty
spun around slowly twice, letting the veil unwind from her lower body before
drifting slowly to the floor.
Her legs now bare to mid-thigh, Deva continued to dance to the sensual
music as ten pairs of hungry eyes followed her across the stage, savoring the
sight of her slender, shapely limbs. Jasper, who had rarely seen so much as a
female knee, was transfixed by the sight of Deva's bare legs and felt a
pleasurable stiffening between his young legs, a stiffening that he greeted with
a furtive brush of his hand.
On the stage below, the dark-skinned temptress paused in front of the bank
of candles for effect. She reached up and unclipped the pair of ivory
hair-clasps that had kept her lush mane of ebony hair piled high on her head.
Shaking her head from side to side, she let the dark tresses cascade down over
her shoulders. A few moments later, one of the men from the City, a tall,
distinguished-looking man in his early thirties, relieved the graceful beauty of
a second veil, and was rewarded with hearty claps on the back from his
colleagues, one of whom was heard to mutter, "Bravo, Jamieson! Well done!"
The removal of the second veil left Deva's shoulders and upper chest nude
under a storm of jet black hair. As she continued her dance, all eyes were
drawn to the upper slopes of her perfect breasts and the delicious valley
between them.
Half-fearful that the hard-eyed men below could hear his ragged breathing,
Jasper unbuttoned the threadbare trousers which had become uncomfortably tight
around his groin and liberated his swelling penis, which responded to its new
freedom, and the touch of his eager hand, by growing larger by the moment.
The flautist began to play faster as the bare-legged dancer whirled around
and around as she spun across the stage toward the solitary gentleman in black.
Her body was turned obliquely toward the boy in the loft as she posed for the
pale young man in the ebony cape, her bare feet remaining in place, while her
supple young body continued its seductive dance. Jasper gave his youthful
erection a long pleasurable squeeze as his boyish eyes drank in the silky-smooth
texture of Deva's tawny thighs, and he imagined the feminine mysteries hidden
away beneath the rest of the veils. How far would she go, he wondered, as his
excitement mounted. He watched enthralled as the Indian beauty's breasts
oscillated beneath the filmy fabric, her sharp-pointed nipples seeming to dance
to each note of the flute-player's hypnotic tune.
Her eyes half-closed as if in prayer, Devadanyi leaned forward, offering
the end of the veil around her midriff to the bespectacled gentleman in black.
As she did so, Jasper, looking down from above, had a perfect vantage point to
enjoy the splendor of the deep, enticing cleavage between her close-set breasts.
He stroked himself again, slowly, from the very root of his cock to its
sensitive crown, which he teased gently with the tip of his thumb, and then
again, faster and harder, as he imagined himself fondling the Indian beauty's
succulent breasts. His breathing quickened as he stroked himself again. What
would it be like, his mind raced in youthful wonder, to touch those luscious
breasts, perhaps timidly at first, but then more boldly, testing their
resiliency, and then nudging them gently together so that he could bury his face
in their softness. He saw himself using his lips and tongue to explore the
pebbly texture of her areolae and the taut, sweet firmness of her jutting
nipples.
Jasper's hand slid up and down the length of his throbbing organ as he
wondered how Deva's bronze love-gourds would taste. Would they taste of the
perspiration that gave them such a superb sheen, he wondered, or would they be
scented with some exotic eastern perfume?
After exhaling deeply, young Jasper Slegg pictured himself and the dusky
Indian temptress lying entwined in a shady meadow, far from the squalor of
London, her nude body poised above his own. His eager lips captured a swollen
nipple, as her hands, her soft knowing hands, fondled him, teased him, stroked
him to the limits of his endurance. She took his manhood and pressed the
excruciatingly sensitive tip of his penis against a nipple taut with desire and
then shamelessly pressed her glorious dark-tipped breasts together around his
fleshy shaft, making love to it with wanton abandon. Only then, when he was
half-maddened with desire, did she swirl her tongue around the head of his penis
once and then a second time, more slowly, before sliding forward and mounting
the column of flesh that she had erected with such loving care....
Abandoning himself to this ecstatic vision, Jasper's hand became a blur
as he fondled his throbbing erection until it exploded, shooting jet after jet
of seed into the air. So powerful had his delicious orgasm been, that the boy
had to scoot back from his vantage point in order to keep his spunk from arching
downward into the room below.
Jasper Slegg sat back on his haunches, panting, spent for the moment, but
his ardor was rekindled almost immediately as he watched the man in the dark
glasses disdain the corner of Deva's veil. Instead the pale figure snarled
under his breath and ripped the filmy garment from her mid-section with a
violent wrench. Devadanyi spun around awkwardly, almost falling, and Amos Slegg
interjected, " 'ere now, guvnor, there's no call for ..." but the man in black
silenced the showman with a withering look and slid silently back into his seat
once again, staring fixedly at the tawny belly he had bared.
And what a belly it was! Deva's wasp-thin waist contrasted beautifully with
the womanly convexity of her hips. An imitation ruby sparkled in her exquisite
navel, which seemed never to stop moving, even during those rare moments when
her feet were perfectly still. The faint impression of her lower ribs could be
seen against her baby-soft belly-flesh, as could the sweet swell of her lower
abdomen. All the while the sphinx-like man in the cape continued to scrutinize
every detail of her torso with the thoroughness of an anatomist.
After wiping the spent fountain of his healthy young cock on a scrap of
sacking, Jasper leaned forward again, peering down through the smoky haze at
the exotic creature below. Devadanyi, her belly now bare down to the low-slung
veil that clung to her womanly hips, stood with her eyes closed and her
shoulders bent back, undulating sinuously as if she were offering herself to one
of the salacious deities who looked on from the iconic paintings she had placed
on the walls. The Hindu priestess, (if his father was to believed), was now
down to her final pair of veils, two pale wisps of gossamer around her ripe
breasts and shapely hips that were hardly more substantial than a spider's web.
The men below had grown silent now. Their was no joking, no ribald banter
now, as they watched with intent faces, their chins firm, their unblinking eyes
glued to the voluptuous body of the Asian seductress whose tawny legs glistened
in the candlelight. The dancer had her back to young Jasper Slegg now, and the
young boy felt a second surge of virility as he stared rapturously at the
alluring groove between Deva's shimmering buttocks which was plainly visible
through the sheerness of her nether veil.
When Devadanyi spun around and posed before him, the taller of the two
Highlanders gallantly swept the penultimate veil away from her hips, leaving
behind a miniscule golden crotch piece held in place by chains so fine that
Jasper could barely see them through the smoky haze. As Devadanyi spun for the
Highlander, her quivering buttocks now bare save for the slender golden chain
nestled between them, Jasper noted that the bewhiskered face of the shorter of
the two officers was contorted by some violent passion ... Anger? Lust?
Hatred?
Deva pirouetted across the floor once more, finally coming to rest before
another of the City men, a corpulent young banker with thinning hair and the
smug countenance of a plutocrat who felt it advisable to re-tally his extensive
holdings every hour or two.
The dancer fell to her knees before him, still, gyrating, still silently
mouthing an esoteric chant. Then, with her thighs well parted, she arched her
lovely body backward, affording the banker, his companions, and Jasper Slegg an
exquisite view of a bare belly glistening with perspiration, the shapely legs
doubled up beneath her, and the bewitching no-man's-land between them, which was
guarded by the golden crotch-piece. She shimmied orgiastically for a moment or
two and then sat up again and leaned forward so that her pulsating lust-globes
strained against the diaphanous silk scant inches from the banker's eager face.
"I think she likes you, Benson - or your bank account," the elegantly-
dressed Jamieson teased his crony.
But Benson wasn't listening. His piggish eyes were welded to the luscious
pair of dark-nippled breasts that jiggled so enticingly within their tissue-thin
confinement. His pudgy hands clenched into menacing fists as he wheezed, "Good
girl, good girl. Shake those sweet tits for me, you heathen slut!"
Devadanyi seemed to shrink from this crude outburst, but only for a
moment. Averting her soulful eyes from his, she gestured toward the knot
between her breasts, which held the last veil in place.
Grinning obscenely, Benson extended his short arms and fumbled clumsily
with the knot. But it might have been the knot of Gordius, for all of Benson's
ability to solve it. He cursed and tugged at it, while a subtle smile on
Devadanyi's face betrayed her contempt for the impotent banker.
But suddenly a black sleeve appeared out of the darkness, a sleeve holding
an oddly-shaped knife. As the audience held its collective breath, the pale man
in the black cape pressed the blade of the knife against the scarlet spinel in
Deva's navel. His dark glasses glittered eerily as he slid the sharp edge of
the blade slowly up her trembling belly and between her shuddering breasts,
before deftly flipping the blade over in his hand and cutting through the silken
knot as if it were butter on a summer's day.
He retreated as silently as he had advanced, and re-took his seat, allowing
the others to enjoy the sight of the veil falling away from Deva's superb
breasts, leaving her ripe-nippled, sweat-slick globes nude for their
delectation.
Jasper Slegg was hard as a rock again, but this time he had no thoughts of
soft meadows and sunny skies and shady trees. It was the glitter of cold steel
against Deva's soft breasts, naked power tyrannizing naked flesh, that had
aroused him this time. His jaw set, he squeezed new blood, new power into his
cockstaff. For now Jason Slegg was admiring Devadanyi's body with the cold,
hard eyes of a man, not the curious eyes of a boy.
Amazingly, Devadanyi had recovered her poise. Her doe-brown eyes closed in
a secret rapture, she sank gracefully into the lotus position and dripped a
small quantity of oil from an ornate ampulla into the palms of her hands. Her
fingers thus anointed, she spent a minute or two rubbing the oil, fragrant with
scents of mint and sandalwood that refused to be drowned out by the acrid stench
of burning tobacco, into the flesh of her arms and the soft, supple skin of her
limber thighs.
Her audience watched her dainty ministrations with bated breath, as if
enchanted by the crimson dot between her eyebrows, which glowed in the
half-light given off by the candles and reflected by the gemstone in her navel.
Ten pairs of lecherous eyes followed every motion of her hands as she smoothed
the sacred oil over the planes and hollows of her shapely body. From above the
younger Slegg stared down in wonder at the mesmerizing jut of her ripe-nippled
breasts as Deva lathered her love-mounds with oil until they glistened like
polished cherry-wood.
It was only when her nipples stood out from her breasts like slick, sturdy
sentinels that Jasper realized that Devadanyi had been temporizing until the
desired number of gratuities had been proffered by her audience. It was then
that Jasper Slegg realized that to this point, he had been witnessing a pleasing
but inconsequential prelude.
The final act of "The Woman Who Feels No Pain" had yet to begin....
********
During the next few minutes, young Jasper was to learn that a gentleman who
placed a pound-note or a golden sovereign on the apron of the stage earned the
pleasure and privilege of piercing Devadanyi's soft flesh with one of the fine
golden needles that she had used to prick her arms during the earlier, tamer
show. When Devayani took the coin or the banknote, and stood before its
offerer, and held out the elegant jewel case that housed several gleaming
needles, it was a timid toff indeed who contented himself with using the
scarlet-studded needles to poke at the flesh of her arms.
Amos Slegg could have told his son that on prior nights some men had
driven a needle into her thigh-flesh, hoping to elicit a reaction. Some had
chosen to probe her flanks or her shapely buttocks or her trim belly, so devoid
of fatty tissue that the needle seemed certain to draw a gasp of pain. But most
chose her tempting young breasts, confident that a sure hand and a vigorous
thrust into a sensitive underslope or a nerve-rich areola would be sure to
elicit a cry of distress from this mysterious young woman whose soft, serene
chant once again echoed endlessly in the airless, smoke-filled room.
For the rules of the house were such that if Devadanyi raised her hands or
voice to stop him, the gentleman wielding the needle was permitted to keep the
amount he had hazarded, and better still, to strike again, adding a second
needle to the first. Night after night, Amos Slegg's fortunes had risen as
strong men who had ventured a pound drove the bejeweled needles into nearly
every part of Devayani's lovely body. But never once did the sublime composure
on her face change; never once did she cry out. And at the end of each night
she and Amos Slegg had divided their proceeds evenly between them. Is it any
wonder that the avaricious showman had come to believe in the mystical talents
of his 'Goddess of the Ganges'?
For the wager of a guinea, a gentleman was permitted to hold a candle at a
distance of two inches from Devadanyi's body - any part of her body save for the
feminine treasure shielded by the golden crotchpiece - for five seconds by Amos
Slegg's watch. Not infrequently a man would hold the candle under the soft
undercurve of an oil-gleaming breast that his neighbor had just pierced,
confident that by compounding pain upon pain he would win the day. But always,
always, Devayani would stand perfectly motionless, her eyes closed, her dusky,
dark-nippled breasts thrust forward proudly, her soft lips intoning the words
of a mantra which had doubtless been ancient eighteen centuries earlier, when
Boadicea, the proud Queen of the Iceni had sacked Londinium to revenge herself
upon the Romans who had flogged her and raped her daughters.
But on this occasion, Jasper Slegg watched with ever-growing excitement as
the young man from Gray's Inn, his hand visibly trembling from a combination of
nervousness and alcohol, plunged a needle into the fleshiest part of Devadanyi's
upper thigh. Even from above, young Slegg could see the muscles in Deva's leg
quivering noticeably, but her soft rhythmic chanting never stopped and she moved
on to the next pound note, which had been proffered by the taller of the two
Highlanders.
"Remember Kanpur, Major Campbell?" his stocky comrade goaded him with a
snarl. "Remember how the cow-loving bastards slaughtered the men and raped the
women? The Sepoys killed my brother and his sweet young wife, Major. Make her
pay, Major, make her pay!"
Even a boy of Jasper Slegg's station in life knew the story of the Sepoy
Mutiny a few years earlier and the dreadful massacre that had taken place at
Kanpur. So this was why the bushy-whiskered Highlander had glowered at
Devadanyi with such intensity earlier....
Nodding to his fellow adjutant, Campbell removed one of the needles from
Deva's box and twirled it thoughtfully for a moment between his fingers as he
contemplated his strategy. Having decided, he grabbed Devadanyi firmly by the
wrist, twisted her around and stabbed the needle deep into a bare buttock. She
gasped softly and the ring of men watched the delightful play of the muscles in
her sweet bottom, but once again there was no real sign that Devadanyi's mystic
defenses had been breached.
The third man to try his hand was Benson, the portly banker in the
expensive pin-striped suit who had wrestled so futilely with the knot at her
breasts. But his piggish eyes had not left Deva's pleasure-mounds since the
caped figure had cut away the filmy fabric which had half-heartedly attempted to
veil her mouthwatering globes.
The pot-bellied man of property began cleverly, holding a needle by its
jewel-studded hilt as he leisurely scraped its entire length against the
underside of the Indian beauty's left nipple, teasing the already-swollen bud to
a remarkable length and fullness. His fashionably-dressed companions looked on
excitedly, their faces flushed with after-dinner port and an arousal fanned by
the most exciting game of darts in all of Greater London.
Benson nurtured the sensitive nipple of Deva's breast until it blossomed
into a distended bud of desire. Only then, urged on by the tight-lipped
mutterings of his companions, did he press the point of the gleaming needle
against the very tip of Devadanyi's left breast.
"That's it old boy! Do it!" called out the disappointed young rake who had
just lost his wager. "Jab her good, Benson!" rasped the mercenary colleague
from the City who stood at Jamieson's left . "Get your money's worth from the
little tart!"
Although the pressure against her tender nipple would have brought tears to
the eyes of any another woman, Deva never opened her own, and her outthrust
breasts continued to rise and fell gently with her even breathing. It was as if
her body and soul had been transported from Amos Slegg's tawdry den in the East
End to the tranquility of an eastern temple.
From his hiding place above, Jasper Slegg had seen the unmistakable
banger-like erection pressing against the front of Bennett Benson's pin-striped
pants even as he stroked himself to an erection mightier than the one he had had
before. The florid-faced banker, his porcine face contorted with lust, fondled
Devadanyi's well-oiled breast with his free hand for a moment or two before
chuckling, "In for a penny, in for a pound, eh, gents?" to his companions. Then,
as Jasper gently cupped his swollen, aching testicles, the belligerent banker
squeezed the shining gemstone between his fingers and plunged the tip of the
golden needle deep into Deva's outthrust nipple.
Despite a subtle fluttering in the muscles of her bare thighs, and a sudden
exhalation of breath that bespoke the depths of her silent suffering, Devadanyi
uttered not a sound. The portly banker continued to put pressure on the hilt of
the needle, pressing it into her tender breast with his thumb until his thumb
grew so sore that he pulled it away in disgust. But never once did Devadanyi
give voice to whatever pain she felt.
Wasting not a moment, the stocky, vengeance-minded Highlander threw a
guinea on top of Benson's banknote and reached for one of the flaming candles
that had illuminated Devadanyi's remarkable performance. His face was contorted
with long-suppressed fury as he held the candle under Deva's pierced breast at
the prescribed distance. The bright yellow sleeve of his dress uniform trembled
with vindictive wrath as he sought to retaliate for the atrocities of the recent
insurrection, by exacting a cruel revenge on the beautiful body of a young woman
who had no one any harm.
There was a crazed look in his eyes as he watched the candle's flame strain
to reach its tempting target for the full ten seconds permitted. Then, when
Jasper Slegg called, "Time!" and he still had not elicited a cry of pain from
the dark-skinned beauty, he cursed and raised the candle so that its eager flame
licked directly at the glistening half-inch of golden needle that protruded from
Deva's quivering nipple. He heated the slender skewer for another second or two
before Amos Slegg could step forward and pull his hand away.
" 'ere now, Lieutenant Roberts, you know the rules."
The fuming adjutant angrily thrust the candle at Amos Slegg and sullenly
backed away, wiping furiously at the spittle that had formed in the corner of
his mouth.
Meanwhile, the corpulent man of property had launched into a rancorous
outburst. "It's hocus-pocus, that's what it bloody well is!" Benson raged.
"Like those fakirs in the east who pretend to walk on hot coals. It's a
swindle, I swear by the Christian God, or my name's not Bennett Benson!"
"So ye think it's all a trick, d'ye Mr. Benson?" Amos Slegg's brow was
wrinkled in thought.
"Of course it's a trick. Or a Hindoo hoax. You can't trust these wogs, man.
This hot-blooded little tart's no more a priestess than I'm the Archbishop of
Canterbury. I just haven't figured out how she does it yet."
Amos Slegg eyed the banker pensively. "Listen, guv'nor. If ye think it's a
bloody swindle, I've got twenty quid that says Deva can press her pretty
breasts into a bed of 'ot coals for three seconds, without lettin' out a peep."
Amos Slegg gestured toward the blazing fireplace. "Whaddye say, guv'nor?
Willin' to put yer purse where yer mouth is, are ye?"
"Done!" barked Benson, as he reached for his thick wallet and extracted two
ten-pound notes. "Take a good look at 'em sweetie," he taunted Devadanyi,
waving the banknotes in front of her while he eyed the thin trickle of blood
oozing from the point where his needle had lodged in her breast. "Cause this is
as close to them as you're going to get!"
Young Jasper had seen many men of twisted pleasures during his two years
touring with his father, but never a man so overtly crude as Bennett Benson. A
pot-bellied man of thirty or so with thinning hair, his thick body seemed
ill-suited to his thin banker's pin-stripes. The malice given off by Benson's
manner had had an effect on Devadanyi as well. For the first time, Deva seemed
in danger of losing her composure, as if she had been unnerved by the brazenness
of Amos Slegg's challenge. And for the second time that night, Jasper Slegg
wondered if his father had really begun to believe his own inflated rhetoric.
While Amos Slegg wrestled a sturdy table onto the stage, Jasper watched
Devadanyi sink to her knees facing the mirror before which she had knelt briefly
at the very beginning of her performance. She stared into it humbly, as if
seeking strength, and then she bowed her chin on her chest and closed her eyes,
unconscious of the lascivious stares of the watching men, while she chanted and
prayed to some august deity of the east.
Once the table was safely centered on the stage, Amos Slegg stalked over to
the fireplace and began shoveling chunks of coal ash and glowing embers into a
large cast-iron skillet. When it was full he gingerly carried the heavy skillet
back toward the stage.
" Stir 'em up," Benson snapped, pointing to the coals, as Slegg carefully
set the improvised brazier on top of the wooden table. "Stir 'em up and bring
'em back to life. Or the bet's off!"
"Stir 'em to suit yourself, guv'nor," the senior Slegg said obligingly, and
Benson began to poke at the coals with his walking stick until they were
crackling with new-found life.
"That should do it," the young banker said with an evil smirk as he edged
the pan of glowing coals back toward the center of the table. Then he laid his
two tenners down alongside the skillet. "Let's see you stick your pretty tits in
there, you swindling slut!"
"No need for language like that, guv'nor. Deva's a lady. And she'll do
what she's told. Won't you, Deva?" Jasper heard a grim undercurrent of menace
in his father's voice.
"As you wish, sahib." Something in Jasper Slegg thrilled to the sound of
the word, 'sahib.' It meant 'master', he knew, in the language of the east. He
began to stroke himself again, his ardor rising at the sound of that soft,
submissive "Master"!
"It's only three seconds, dearie, but you understand I'll have to 'old you
down while one o' these gents," Slegg gestured toward the onlookers, "counts off
the time."
Devadanyi trembled in a way that Jasper had not seen her do before. But
she rose to her feet and took two steps forward, until her bare thighs were
pressed against the table that held the smoking skillet.
" 'ere, let me take out the needle. No need for that now, right, guv'nor?"
"That wasn't part of the bet!" snapped Benson sharply. "Leave it in!"
"Whatever ye say," said Amos Slegg nervously. Jasper could tell that his
father was beginning to have misgivings about the bet.
"Are ye ready, Deva?" Amos Slegg asked as he placed his hand between
Devadanyi's bare shoulder-blades.
"Yes, sahib."
"See that you press down hard enough, Slegg! I'm not paying off for a
Punjabi parlor trick!"
"There'll be no swindle, guv'nor." Amos Slegg looked around and his eyes
settled on the one guest who had come alone, who seemed the most likely to be
independent-minded. " 'ow about doing the counting, sir" he asked the
chalk-faced man in the black cape. "No funny business, eh? Three seconds.
Fair's fair."
"Let me get my watch from my bag," the man in the cape whispered in an
asthmatic voice. He bent down next to his chair and reached into a black
leather bag in which an array of scalpels, lancets, forceps and other medical
instruments were neatly nestled.
"Medical man, eh?" muttered the tipsy barrister to the muffled man in
black. "You might want to give a thought to your bedside manor, old boy."
The man in the cape gave the man from Gray's Inn a look that would have
done a gorgon proud.
"Hurry it up, the lot of you!" Benson snarled. "And be sure that you mash
those beauties in there good and proper, Slegg!" Benson snarled, gesturing at
the hot coals. "Or I'll have the law on you before the tide goes out!"
Amos Slegg glared at the banker angrily, knowing that his illicit income
was entirely dependent upon a conspiracy of silence between his patrons and
himself. If he were to displease even one of them ...
Jasper Slegg had shifted his position slightly so that he could get a
better look at Devadanyi's lovely face. He saw things in her dark eyes, as she
stared fixedly at the glowing coals, that he had not seen there before.
Hesitation. Fear. Perhaps even panic. And that fear, that panic, only added
to his excitement. His swollen cock was aching with dark desire as he eyed
Deva's glistening breasts, one of which was bisected by the golden skewer and a
rivulet of red nipple-blood and seemed to quiver in the half-light given off by
the flickering candles.
"Get on with it, man! Before the fire cools!" The intensity in the
banker's gruff voice matched the feverish brightness in his piggish eyes.
Jasper had never forgotten the steely strength in Devadanyi's voice when
she averted her eyes from the glowing coals, and silenced Benson by addressing
him in a respectful but determined voice. "If you think the fire is cool,
sahib, put your hand in it."
Trembling but serene, Deva removed Amos Slegg's hand from between her
shoulders, whispering, "There is no need, sahib" and glanced at the time-keeper.
"Ready?" Slegg asked the mysterious figure in the cape.
The man in black nodded silently. But the tiny beads of perspiration that
had formed on his ashen brow and the manner in which he stared fixedly at
Devadanyi's bare breasts and belly betrayed his excitement.
When he nodded, Deva closed her eyes, and began a new chant in a soft
sing-song voice that seemed to issue forth from the depths of her soul. After a
few seconds, she slid her bare feet a little further apart, and clasped her
hands together behind her back, a movement which accentuated the pleasing jut of
her breasts. Then, chanting slightly faster, she bent forward from the waist
and pressed the turgid tips of her breasts against the glowing coals.
Jasper heard a hiss not unlike that of water thrown on a fire as every
muscle in Devadanyi's bare arms and legs jerked bowstring taut. He stroked
himself twice and then paused on the very precipice of desire.
"One!"
Deva's chanting began to come louder and faster. Jasper Slegg could see
tears streaming from the corners of her tightly closed eyes. Despite his
father's protestations, this was surely not a woman who was impervious to pain.
"Remember Kanpur, you Sepoy slut!" Lieutenant Roberts' voice was thick
with blood lust.
His eyes greedily drinking in the sight of Deva's nudity, Jasper stroked himself
again, re-kindling his passion.
"Two!!"
"Deeper! Stick 'em in there deeper, you heathen whore, or the bet's off!"
Devadanyi's body shuddered violently as she leaned forward a bit more,
burying the protruding needle deep in the smoking embers, until her well-oiled
breasts were completely enveloped by the fiery coals. She held that agonizing
pose for an endless second until Amos Slegg cursed at the pallid timekeeper,
who, ignoring his watch, had become transfixed by the expression of suffering
on Devadanyi's lovely face. Belately he regained his self-possession and
rasped out "Three!!" in a voice choked with male arousal.
And on that 'Three!!' Jasper Slegg, his lust inflamed beyond measure by
the cruelties the men huddled around the stage had inflicted on Devadanyi's
beautiful breasts, came once again, as surge after surge of pleasure shot
through his genitals.
It was some seconds before Jasper recoverd his composure. Below him,
looking like a tortured goddess who had bathed in a volcanic lake, Devadanyi
had straightened up, her soft lips still mouthing words in an unknown tongue.
She slowly gathered herself before setting about removing the three needles.
The ones in her thigh and backside slid out rather easily, but the needle that
Benson had thrust into her nipple seemed to have been fused into her flesh by
the heat of the coals. It took long painful seconds and a number of agonized
grimaces to extract the bloody pin, but at last she managed to do so.
She then proceeded to collect the veils and wrap the largest of them
around her nude body. Having covered herself, she took one of Benson's bank
notes and tucked it into her bosom, leaving the other for Amos Slegg. Then,
with a gesture inflected with both submissiveness and pride, she bowed to the
ring of gentlemen, and then to Slegg, before disappearing behind the silken
curtain from which she had emerged only a quarter of an hour earlier.
Most of the men in the audience watched her departure with something
approaching awe. They stood milling about for a moment talking to one another,
offering each other their impressions of the remarkable performance they had
just witnessed. Just as the audience was about to go its separate ways, Benson
approached the figure in the black cape, who remained off to one side as he
carefully returned his watch to the black bag.
"Benson's my name," the banker muttered gruffly as he extended his hand.
"Anglo-Chinese Bank. I appreciate your giving me another second or two just
now. Damned shame it didn't do any good! But at least we made the hot-blooded
slut pay dearly for her windfall, eh?" he added with the complacent smile of a
capitalist who felt he had gotten fair value for his money. "I still don't see
how the little trollop did it, but no use crying over spilled milk, is there?
Sorry, but I don't think I caught your name?"
The caped figure tugged the scarf tighter around his face as he stared
disdainfully at the well-heeled banker's outstretched hand.
"Jack," he whispered in a dry, asthmatic voice. "You can call me 'Jack'."
Then, as a somewhat mystified Bennett Benson looked on, he reached down for his
bag, strode to the door and opened it. The muffled figure paused in the
doorway, staring out into an almost impenetrable London fog before pulling his
cape tighter around his shoulders and setting out. By the time he had taken
three steps, he had disappeared into the mist as if he were no more substantial
than the shadow of a streetlight.
********
To his chagrin, Jasper Slegg never saw Devadanyi again. It was only years
later that he learned that she had submitted to the pain and degradation of his
father's exhibitions because it was the only way she knew - aside from
sacrificing her virtue in a way that she refused to do, to earn sufficient
money to liberate Indukala, her younger sister. For Indukala, whose serenity and
loveliness did justice to the moonlight for which she had been named, had been
the unhappy victim of an arranged marriage to a corrupt and sexually abusive
Indian aristocrat who had brought the two young women to London.
Despite all of her devout prayers, Devadanyi had not been a mystic at all,
although the unguent with which she had generously laved her lovely body had
afforded some protection against scars resulting from burns. She had cringed
inwardly at every stab of the needle, and screamed silently at every lick of the
flame. But she had endured, and in the end had conquered. Three days after
bathing her breasts in Bennett Benson's lake of fire, she had bought her
sister's freedom and after a joyful reunion, they had returned home to begin a
new and happier life.
********
Even now, more than twenty years later, the memory of that beautiful Indian
enchantress was still sufficient to rekindle the fires of passion in Jasper
Slegg. Had Captain McMahon's announcement that Erika Weiss would be tried for
mutiny in the morning turned his thoughts to the Sepoy Mutiny of more than a
quarter-century ago, he wondered briefly?
But Jasper Slegg was not a man much given to profitless speculation. He
glanced at Erika Weiss, whose bound, half-clothed body was the cynosure of all
eyes below the decks of the Yang-tze Dragon. He smiled to himself as he
examined the faces of the men gawking at the bare legs of the long-stemmed
blonde. They were twenty-odd years and half a world away from the men who had
exploited Devadanyi's charms, and even more unlike them in terms of language,
religion, and culture. But at a primitive, instinctive level, were they not
much the same? From the alleyways of London to the back streets of Bombay to
the brothels of Shanghai men dreamt of enslaving beautiful young women, of
forcing them to submit to their will, of using and abusing their soft bodies for
their own selfish pleasure. So it had ever been, and so it would always be.
So why should he not profit from that manly impulse? He had learned the
art of separating a male audience from its collective purse at his father's
knee. He would give these men what they craved so desperately, a taste of
sexual dominance, but on his own terms, and in his own time, for the benefit of
his own account.
Slegg winked slyly at his patrons and ran his hand up Erika's left leg,
squeezing her thigh-flesh as she wriggled in revulsion, and then higher still,
lifting the hem of the loincloth slowly, giving his audience another peek at the
pale perfection of her buttocks and a glimpse of golden-fringed pink labia that
was sure to stoke their passions.
"Seven scenes, mates. Seven scenes that you'll tell your sons and their
sons about when they ask you to tell them about the most beautiful woman you
ever saw. Seven scenes of a beauty in bondage unlike anything you've seen
before. Seven scenes that you'll never forget. For a paltry shilling apiece!"
Slegg smiled to himself, and as the last few stragglers deposited their
coins in Deng-shan's money box, he was reminded of the extra strut visible in
his father's gait on the morning after an especially good box office. Jasper
Slegg was a simple man, but he understood what motivated men. It had only been
a few years earlier that the American, Barnum, had come to London and acquired
'Jumbo', the prodigious African elephant. In Europe, Jumbo had been a large
elephant; in America, thanks to the unceasing drumbeat of Barnum's publicity
machine, the great pachyderm had become the Eighth Wonder of the World.
From Barnum, that consummate salesman, Slegg had learned that the art of
pleasing the customer lay as much in shaping the customer's wants as in
supplying them. And tonight, he concluded, as he studied the faces of the men
whose glazed eyes were devouring the sight of Erika Weiss's luscious body, he
would have little difficulty in convincing each of these simple fools into
believing that it was his own hands, his own manhood, which had subdued and
enslaved this proud, long-legged beauty. There was indeed, Slegg conceded with
an inner smirk, 'a sucker born every minute.' They were sheep waiting to be
shorn. And he was just the man to shear them.
But now, he concluded, as he slowly surveyed the Bird Cage taking in the
coils of rope of every description that hung from the walls, the sturdy hooks
and rings which had been driven into the walls and floors, and the various
bondage frames than Deng-shan had built with his clever hands, it was time for
the show to begin. And as he rubbed at his still tender ribs he vowed that his
voluptuous semi-nude prisoner would come to rue the instant that she had aimed
a shovel or a kick at Jasper Slegg....
Author's note: Sorry this episode has been a bit long in coming; I was
traveling for a time. And a special thanks to all who have written me in recent
weeks. Your comments were gratefully received and very much appreciated.
Boccaccio
