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My mobile rang the following day. It was Kelly. “Hi,” she said. “I didn’t know you were going to the Fetish Fair. Why didn’t you say? We could have gone together?”
I made some, eh? who? what? noises and said that I would have called her but I had to be there on business. (Which was true.) I’d been looking over the hall as a possible venue for an exhibition that one of my clients was planning. (Which wasn’t.)
She asked if I’d seen Hettie’s “kidnapping”. I didn’t want to tell too many porkies – besides that might have been where she’d seen me - so I said, “Sure.”
“Wasn’t it just a hoot!” said Kelly. “One of the best things I’ve seen. Those people knew how to put on a show.”
“I was impressed,” I said, “more elaborate than any of our games.”
“Maybe but we still have fun. When are we getting together again? Assuming that you want to?”
“Sure, sure,” I said. “I’m sorry I’ve been busy lately. You know how things are. When are you free?”
“I’ve got to be down in
“Mmm, Tuesday’s good for me,” I said. “Tell you what, text me where you’re staying and I’ll catch up with you at some point in the evening.”
“Sound like fun,” she said. “Why do I think that might not be just you buying me dinner?”
“Send me a text and you’ll see,” I said. She laughed and hung up. I headed off to find Freddie.
Freddie and I turned up at the Castle in plenty of time for the engagement announcement. Hettie had been brought along too, in the back of a van, in some very special packaging. We’d also brought a transport case for Lauren in case the Emir needed it.
The biggest surprise was that Lauren was waiting in the lounge dressed in full traditional Kushtian woman’s dress. True the robe and veil that she wore were goth-black and the pill box hat appeared to have been fashioned from leather and was decorated with studs rather than the coins which symbolised an unmarried girl’s dowry, but at least she was making the effort we thought. There was one incongruous feature of her appearance, however. From each ear, the trademark white wires of iPod earphones snaked down to disappear beneath her robe.
“Hello, Lauren,” I said. “Nice to see you. Is your father around?”
She looked at is as if we had just crawled out from some stone or other. She didn’t bother to turn down the volume on her iPod. “Whatever,” she said waving her hand in the general direction of the garden. “He’s out back. Looking for that rank gimmer. He’s probably mounting a sheep or looking for a yak to freshen up his breath with.”
I assumed she was referring to her, still unknown, intended. Freddie and I took ourselves off in the direction of her wave.
We found Brad in the garden. “Hi,” he said you haven’t seen Kushnati, have you? There was a terrible row earlier on with Sarah. She wouldn’t dance for him. He starts in at her in that dialect of his. I couldn’t understand much of it. Hell, I’ve only got to chapter five on ‘Teach Yourself Kushtian’ and that only covers the version spoken in Kolin and the surroundings. She tries to explain and he isn’t having any. He drags her off. I assume he’s gone down to the dungeon to give her a taste of some of my toys so I think it’s better if he gets it out of his system. Anyway, I’ve just been down there and there’s no sign of them. Lauren said they came through this way but there’s no sign of them in the garden.”
We set off in different directions in search of Kushnati or Sarah or both.
I went towards the golf course. I was the first to find them. As I reached the first tee, there were sounds of raised voices coming from my right somewhere on the approach to the eighteenth green. As I crossed the green a bizarre sight confronted me in the deep bunker at the edge of the green. Standing in the base of the bunker clutching a spade and a jar of some kind was Kushnati. He had a disapproving scowl on his face. At his feet was all that could be seen of Sarah, her head. For a moment I thought he had sliced it off with the spade but the lack of blood and the fact that she was grunting animatedly from behind a ball gag told me I was wrong. She had been buried up to her neck in the bunker. In deference to the etiquette of the course, at least Kushnati had raked the sand where he had been digging; so the man wasn’t a complete barbarian.
There were two of the other slaves alongside her. Femke Toos and Greetje Van Bruijn, both wearing bikinis, were kneeling either side of her head. Kushnati gestured at the two girls. Femke unfastened Sarah’s gag. Toos leant forward with a drinking bottle.
“Oh, thank, you, thank you,” said Sarah trying to move her head sufficiently to take the drink. She sipped from the bottle and immediately spat the liquid out. “Oh! No, no, it’s horrible,” she yelled. Kushnati barked at the two girls urging them on. Femke grabbed hold of Sarah’s nose and pinched it shut. Unable to breath Sarah could do no other than gulp at the air and the drink that Toos was pouring into her mouth. Once the bottle was empty, Toos jammed the ball gag back into Sarah’s mouth. Kushnati waved them away. Sarah was shaking her head in discomfort. I watched as the two girls walked off, laughing together, no doubt remembering their discomforts in the dungeon as a result of Sarah’s initial refusal to betray her friend.
For Kushnati, Sarah’s discomfort was not yet enough. He upended the contents of the jar he was holding over her head. From the way that ants, flies, bees and wasps were immediately swarming about her, I guessed it was honey. I could understand Sarah’s gagged screams and yells. I thought I’d better fetch Brad.
I took both him and Clegg back to the bunker by the eighteenth green. Kushnati was still there staring down at Sarah who was gasping hysterically into her gag at the centre of a cloud of flies.
Brad tried to discuss things with Kushnati using his limited command of Kushtian. A great deal of gesticulation was going on from both of them. Eventually Kushnati calmed down and he and Brad dug Sarah out. She’d been tied into a ball, so the hole Kushanti had dug wasn’t as deep as I’d thought. For all of his sixty eight years, though, he was obviously fit.
Brad called into his mobile phone. Femke and Greetje were sent back out, this time with a brush and hose. Together they untied Sarah, hosed her down and brushed the sand from her. As they took off her gag, she retched and threw up whatever unpleasant drink, Kushnati had forced down her. Even from where I was standing I could smell it.
Brad was still remonstrating with Kushnati but eventually came across to explain. “Sorry about that guys,” he said. “Just a bit of a domestic. Sarah refused to dance for him, like I said. I’ve told him to use the stuff in the dungeon if he needs to but he doesn’t trust these new fangled things as he calls them. Things like this have been good enough for his tribe for at least fifteen centuries. He doesn’t see the point of changing to stuff that’s only five hundred years old as long as the old ways work.”
“No problem,” I said. “Is it Freddie?”
“Hmm. What? Oh, errr, sure,” Freddie responded. He was obviously miles away, thinking that he really needed to find a way to talk to Kushnati to see if there were any other ideas he could pick up from him.
“I’m surprised at Sarah though, she’s normally quite obedient and she quite likes dancing, I thought.”
“It was the snakes,” said Brad. “She didn’t like the snakes. She’s scared of snakes.”
“Snakes?” I said.
“Yes, it’s the Pythork, a fertility dance from the hill tribes. Some people reckon it comes from the same roots as the Minoan religion. The dancer performs her dance with two live snakes and finishes with the ‘snake’ of the person she is performing the dance for. Kushnati was keen she should perform it for him.”
“Ah,” I said.
“Let’s go back inside,” said Brad. “I’ve told Sarah to clean herself up and then come and apologise. Properly. Poskalic,” he said to Kushnati.
We went back to the pool side bar. The Emir played the host and served us all drinks. Kushnati’s humour improved with each one that he downed.
Sarah reappeared. Kushnati’s first instinct to growl was interrupted by his sight of her in the costume of a court dancer. “Arrgn!” he exclaimed with approval.
Sarah stood at the edge of the room. She wore an elaborate head band around her brow. Coins dangled from it across her forehead. Her veil was fastened so that it looped down from the head band to cover her face and then draped down in long folds to be fastened at either side to heavy bracelets that circled her arms above the elbow.
Behind the half transparent veil it was
clear that Sarah had followed the convention of the
She dropped to her knees and bowed her head
to the floor. “Arrgn,” grunted Kushnati
as she reached squeamishly into the two small round baskets on either side of Kushnati’s feet. She pulled out two small snakes and,
holding them at arms length to either side of her, started to dance. I wasn’t
sure how authentic the dance was. At first it looked more like
Brad leaned across to me as she finished her dance, falling to her knees and sliding across the floor to lie at Kushnati’s feet. She knelt up and lowered each snake in turn into its basket. The snakes seemed hapy to be released. She stretched her hands forward so that they finished in Kushnati’s lap. He grunted with satisfaction and pressed his own hands down on top of hers making it plain what she was to do. “He seems to have forgiven her,” Brad smiled as Sarah commenced her attentions on the third snake.
“So how are things going for the engagement?” I asked Brad.
“Well, Lauren still doesn’t know. But she’s been very good. You see she’s taken to wearing the chanoosh?”
“Chanoosh?” said Freddie.
“The long gown and veil of the femnyette, a ‘woman not yet a wife’ – that’s basically any unmarried girl of marriageable age. Kushnati has a very traditional view of things; nagged her that it was inappropriate for a high born woman to disport herself in the same way as slaves and concubines. In the hills only whores uncover their bodies. She got into that outfit a day or so ago. I think she’s only doing it to get a quiet life. She’s just hoping he’ll go away and she can have Sarah back. I think she’s quite missing having her to bully, but then she always did take after her mother.” Brad looked philosophical. “Still the engagement. Yeah, sure, that’s all fine. Kushnati is happy aren’t you?”
“Arrgn!” Kushnati concurred enthusiastically grinning toothily and lifting his glass as Sarah worked away with her hands in his lap.
“Engagement? Who’s getting engaged?” We turned around to see the robed and veiled Lauren standing at the back of the room.
“Lauren,” said Brad, biting his lip. “I need to have a talk with you.”
She looked for a moment at Kushnati’s leering grin and then, realising what was intended, yelled “No! Noooo!” She ran back into the house.
Brad looked tired. “Daughters!” he exclaimed, shrugging his shoulders. “Can’t live with them, can’t sell them.”
“She looked pretty upset,” said Freddie, “in as much as you could tell behind that - what did you call it - chanoosh.”
“Yeah, She will be. I’ll let her cool down a bit. Sarah, why don’t you go up and help calm her down?”
Sarah reached up and removed her gag. “Yes, Emir,” She said obediently. Bowing first at Kushnati, then ourselves and then Brad, she went of in the direction that Lauren had taken.
Kushnati appeared unconcerned. He waved his glass indicating his desire for another drink if he wasn’t going to have Sarah to amuse him.
We stayed in the bar drinking with Kushnati for about an hour or so before Brad said. “I’d better go see how she’s getting along.” He was back moments later and beckoned to Clegg and myself. Kushnati was well under the influence. We slipped away, leaving him to doze.
As we left the bar, Brad hissed, “Now I really do need your help. It looks like she’s run off.”
Clegg gave a pained look. “Are you sure?” he said.
“I think so,” said Brad. “Her room’s empty. She isn’t anywhere else around the place.”
“What does Sarah say?” I asked.
“I can’t find her either.”
We followed Brad back up to Lauren’s room. There didn’t seem to be any sign of her. The chanoosh had been flung across the bed. The rest of the room was in what I imagined to be the normal muddle for any teenager. We all heard a quiet moan coming from Lauren’s wardrobe.
Brad pulled the door open. Inside Sarah, still in her dancer’s costume but bound and gagged with strips torn from Lauren’s bed sheets, was trying to free herself. Together we hauled her from the cupboard and cut the ties from her wrists and ankles. Brad un-knotted the cloth that was gagging her. She spat another wad of cloth from her mouth. It was a pair of panties; Lauren’s I assumed. “Oh, thank you,” she gasped. “It was Lauren. She attacked me. She put some clothes in a rucksack and pushed me in here.”
“Do you know where she’s gone?” Brad was concerned, though whether for his daughter’s well being or for his own problem with Kushnati I couldn’t tell. Sarah shook her head disconsolately. He turned to Freddie. “You have to help me with this,” he said. “Kushnati will be furious if we can’t go through with the engagement ceremony.”
Clegg looked thoughtful. “I hate doing this sort of off-the-cuff thing but I’ll do what I can,” he said. “Can you say what she was wearing?”
Brad looked down at the discarded chanoosh. “Well,” he said.
“A pair of white jeans and a dark sort of khaki tank top.” Sarah chipped in. “She had a grey sweater with her and some regular denim jeans that she put in her bag and the rucksack - that was a sort of muddy green colour.”
“Thank you, Sarah,” said Freddie, “that’s most helpful.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Sarah realising that she had almost certainly given Freddie essential information that would lead to Lauren’s recapture. She just hoped no one mentioned to Lauren who had told him.
Freddie and Brad wandered off, Clegg, chatting into his mobile phone. I felt a bit spare. Sarah was busily tidying up the torn up sheets and clearing the muddle left by Lauren. Seeing that the Emir had gone she turned to me. “Please,” she said, please. You must get me my old job back. Get Harry to take me back, please.”
“You know I can’t do that, Sarah,” I said.
“But it’s awful here. All the other slaves hate me because of the Cindy thing and the torture room and Lauren treats me like dirt. Koresh is horrible. I mean he can’t help being old but he smells so and what’s worse he’s obsessed with sex but he can’t do anything about it. I had my hands in his lap then and it made no difference. It’ll be awful if I have to stay with him and Lauren. You have to take me away. Please!”
“Sarah, you’re a slave. You have to put up with it. Harry isn’t going to take you back if the Emir doesn’t want to release you. If you carry on like this the Emir will have you back in the dungeon for more training and you’ll find that difficult. I suggest you make the best of it. Work out how to keep Koresh amused. If you can do that he’ll be happy and Lauren will be too. Why don’t you go back down to the bar and see what you can do for him?”
Sarah looked at me for a moment and then looked as though she had decided that I was right. “Thank you for your advice, Sir,” she said. “I shall do just as you suggest.”
I watched as she rearranged her costume and fastened her veil back across her face. She gave a deep curtsy and headed off back downstairs. She didn’t know her rental to the Emir was going to finish soon. There didn’t seem to be any point in telling her.
© 2006
Freddie Clegg
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