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Henry had become rather annoyed. Lauren had agreed that she would provide a report on their progress before his regular weekly meeting. She hadn't and, as a result, he had had to suffer the embarrassment of trying to explain to Mr. Kerrish why he still didn't have the details on their plans for repayment of the loan.
He'd called her several times. Mostly he'd got her voice mail and, on the few occasions that he had actually managed to speak to her, she'd promised to call him back and then hadn't.
The only way to resolve it, thought Henry was to go out and see Lauren, whether she was ready to have a discussion or not. Anch was not at all happy with the thought. “I'm not sure that you should be planning to visit a Kuhtian woman without the permission of her husband,” she said.
“I'm sure you are right Anch, normally,” said Henry. “The difficulty is that he doesn't seem to be in any condition to give his consent. He's very unwell, I feel. The only time I met him, I wasn't even certain that he was conscious.”
“It makes no difference,” said Anch emphatically. “For a Kushtian man, his wish is his wish. Would you visit his wife when he was sleeping because he could not give his yes or no?”
“I think it’s different Anch. And I'm worried that his wife may be taking advantage of the situation.”
“No, that cannot be possible. A Kushtian wife can only respect the wishes of her husband.”
“I think you are forgetting that Mr Koresh's wife is not of Kushtian upbringing. I feel I must go and see what is going on.”
Henry arrived at Koresh's estate late in the afternoon. He was welcomed, if that was the right word, at the door by Koresh's overseer.
“Mr Koresh not seeing any one,” he said, helpfully. Husna Hannish was tired by the comings and goings. The women brought by his master's young American wife and the English wife of the Kalinin's son would cause nothing but trouble, he was sure.
“That's all right I wish to see Mrs Koresh.”
“I have no permission to admit you.”
“I really think you should tell Mrs Koresh that I am here.”
“I cannot do that.”
“Of course you can. I will wait here.”
“No I cannot do that. Mrs Koresh, not here.”
Henry and Husna Hannish were debating whether or not he should be admitted when a veiled Victoria appeared over Husna's shoulder.
“What is it, Hannish” she asked.
“This bank gentleman. He seeks Mrs Koresh but I tell him, she is not here.”
“Quite right, Hannish, quite right. However, I will see if I can help him. Let us extend the hospitality of the Koresh to him.”
With ill grace, Husna gestured for Henry to enter. Victoria led the way to one of the comfortable formal rooms off the entrance hall. She sprawled on a pile of cushions and waved to Husna to leave them. Husna, scowling, did so.
“He is a loyal servant but not very able to adapt to western ways.”
“I hadn't thought that much of western morality or custom had penetrated here.”
“You would be surprised what goes on behind close doors, Mr Clegg.”
Henry noticed that as she stretched out on the cushions one of the slits in the long panelled skirt that she was wearing had fallen open affording him an excellent view of her legs. She reached out for the silver mouthpiece of a large hookah that stood beside the couch, slipped it between her lips and inhaled deeply. Almost at once a beatific smile came over her. She picked up a second smoking tube and offered it to Henry. “Won't you join me,” she said, stretching sinuously towards him, her eyes wide and looking straight at him.
Even with Henry's usual slowness to react he realised that what was on offer might be more than a puff on her hookah. But, as he told himself, it would be rude to refuse her hospitality and besides he really needed to get to the bottom of what was going on with Lauren's business. “Thank you,” he said, sitting down beside her on the couch and taking the second mouthpiece from her and inhaling himself.
The cool smoke had a curiously calming effect. He found himself smiling as easily as Victoria was. He looked at her as she smiled back at him. “This isn't tobacco is it?” he said.
“Partly,” Victoria grinned mischievously. “and partly hunashif. It is a traditional herb, burnt in the halls of the seragla, the harems, to sooth and relax the man's wives and concubines.”
“Who needs relaxing, you or me?” said Henry as Victoria lay back on the cushions.
“Let's just say we believe in a more, ah, intimate relationship between a bank and its customers than might be the custom in Europe.”
“Hmmm,” said Henry thoughtfully, the expression of doubt and curiosity dragged out by the intoxicating effect of the hunashif.
“Mmmm,” responded Victoria, stretching out a hand to Henry's thigh.
Henry looked down at it, taking another drag on the hookah that left him wondering if the hand had suddenly appeared there or had been there all along. He looked back at Victoria, somehow her shoulders were now bare, the deep green velvet of the top of her costume contrasting with the soft cream skin of her bosom and the dark shady chasm of her cleavage.
“Are you trying to seduce me, Mrs Kalinin?” he asked.
“Would you like me to?”
“I can't help but feel that might make our business dealings more difficult, Mrs Kalinin.”
“It's Mrs Kalanis, Kalinin is the title of my father in law.”
“Oh,” Henry found himself laying back on the cushions. He took another puff from the hookah. The hunashif certainly seemed to have a calming effect. “Well, Mrs Kalanis, I most certainly apologise. The bank is at all times concerned with ...” His voice trailed off. He couldn't think what the bank could possibly be concerned with. What interest could they have in the fact that one of their senior officers was sprawled, half intoxicated, in the company of the wife of the country's ruler while her hand slid sinuously across towards him and unfastened the belt of his trousers?
While Henry was enjoying Victoria's company, he didn't notice his mobile phone being slipped out of his jacket pocket. Some time later Anch responded to the bleeping of her own phone and read the text message she had received. “Most important meet you. Spice Market. Old Fountain. 14:00 Please bring Koresh file. Henry.”
Anch wasn't sure what to think about the text. She was intrigued by puzzle it presented. Why did her boss suddenly want a meeting away from the office? And why in the Spice Market? Then there was the reputation of the Spice Market itself. Once upon a time the Spice Market had been notorious as the venue for secret assignations between lovers, between errant husbands and their lovers or adulterous wives and theirs. The old tenements of the spice merchants had been the scene of many an illicit tryst and the old fountain was at the heart of the maze of alleys between them. It would have been nice if Henry had discovered a romantic streak during their sessions in the cubicon. However, the fact that he'd asked her to bring the Koresh file rather implied that he hadn't.
She tossed the file into a shoulder bag and headed off towards the east of the old town.
The closer Anch got to their meeting place, the more out of place she felt. She had almost forgotten how different the old parts of Kushtia were. Compared to the modern centre of Kolin, the area around the Spice Market seemed to belong to a different century. Of course as a good Kushtian girl Anch was veiled but she wore her head and face covering with a smart skirt and blouse in the season's fashionable colours for the office. Here though the women all dressed alike in the all enveloping dark chanoosh. They bustled by her carrying wicker tubs containing their day's purchases. She couldn't tell whether they noticed her or not as she made her way through the alleyways of the old town but she felt conspicuous anyway. There were few men on the street, but occasionally as she passed a coffee house one or other would look up from a game of tavla and give her an appraising silent stare as she walked by. She was careful to keep her properta on view; that way she was seen to belong to a prominent family and should as a result be safe from molestation. Even so she didn't feel entirely safe here, she clutched the strap of her shoulder bag tightly.
Anch turned a corner into the square of the fountain. She looked at her watch. She was a few minutes early. There was no sign of Henry and the tiny square, surrounded by Merchants houses that seemed to crowd in on every side and overlooked by the houses' overhanging balconies, was deserted. She sat down on the wall surrounding the fountain.
There was a noise from one of the houses, an argument from one of the balconies. Anch stood up and looked to the source of the noise. As she did so there was a movement behind her and a hand grabbed at her bag. A sharp knife sliced through the shoulder strap and the bag was snatched away from her. Anch turned to see a woman clad in a dark brown chanoosh, running as best she could in the long robe, towards one of the alleyways. Anch gave chase.
In her shorter, albeit tighter, skirt, she began to narrow the distance between herself and the thief as they ran through the maze of alley ways. Then Anch had a stroke of luck, the thief turned a corner and found herself in a dead end. With high walls surrounding her and no doors leading from the street the thief turned to face her pursuer.
“Give it back to me,” Anch demanded in Kushtian. “It's only papers, of no value. Give it back to me and I'll let you go.”
The thief shook her head, clutching the bag closer to her.
“Come on,” said Anch advancing towards her as the thief backed up against the back wall of the cul de sac. “Give it to mmmmm!”
Anch's demands were cut off by a hand clamped tightly over her mouth. Another reached around her waist and pulled her back. She was held tightly by an attacker from behind.
“You should have turned left not right,” Anch's attacker said to the woman that had been running from her. “It's the other side of the alley. Come on.” Anch felt herself being pulled backwards. Unable to cry out she was dragged across the alley and through a door, into, she presumed, one of the Spice Merchant's houses.
“What are we going to do with her? I only wanted to grab the bag.”
“Why don't we keep hold of her for the time being. She might be useful.”
“All right, I've got some rope here, turn her around.”
Anch tried to struggle as she was first spun around and then as her arms were dragged behind her back and rope knotted around her wrists and then around her ankles.
“Put her down in the store room.”
“OK. There's a moaungf here too.” Anch knew what was coming next. Although she had never had a moaungf used on her they were common in Kushtian households. A servant that spoke out of turn or a concubine that was found guilty of gossiping might well have to wear one. Anch tried to wriggle free of her captor as the woman that she had been chasing pulled up her veil, prised open her mouth and pushed in the heavy leather covered wad of the silencing moaungf. The strap was fastened behind her head and Anch knew that there was no point in trying to cry our with her mouth so well stuffed. Her two captors picked her up and carried her across the room. On the far side was a wooden chute that led to the store room below. Anch was lowered on to the chute and let go. She slid down the chute squealing helplessly into her gag as she fell to the bottom. She slammed against a pile of spice filled sacks and sending a cloud of aromatic dust up into the air leaving her gasping for breath as a result of the impact and the stifling scent of the spices. She looked up to the top of the chute. Her assailants were staring down at her.
“She will be all right there for now,” the thief said.
“I guess so,” said the other and then the two of them were gone, leaving Anch wondering why they had attacked her, why one of her two assailants spoke Kushtian with a pronounced American accent and why Henry had lured her into their clutches.
Henry on the other hand was greatly enjoying his afternoon with the wife of the son of the hereditary ruler of Kushtia. She had explained to him a great deal about the constitution of Kushtia, about the way in which the Kalinin was appointed and the access that this gave her to some of the most powerful men in the land. While she was doing this and servant girls were bringing cool drinks or sweet meats as Victoria asked, he had managed to lose more of his clothes. At the same time she had been able to demonstrate some most acrobatic poses learned, she said, from the great practitioners of the art of love in the Kalinin's seragla, his harem. Henry, bemused by the circumstances as much as the hunashif, had found it easy to while the afternoon away in her company, persuading himself that he was, indeed, getting to grips with a deeper understanding of his clients.
While Henry was being entertained by Victoria, Natalya Uranova was being subject to yet more humiliations as her captors insisted that she progress with her training. “You learn to be good slave girl,” Husna had said to her. “You fetch and carry for your Master and Mistress. You practice that now.” And so he had taken her from her cell, put manacles around her wrists and ankles and taught her how she should serve drink or offer a hunashif pipe; kneeling beside her Master and offering up the item in question with her head bowed submissively. The slightest failure to conform to her teacher's exact instruction had earned her blows from a cane. She had been beaten so many times over the past few days that she had no desire to earn more cuts and so she was trying very hard to carry out each task to the letter.
She was following her teacher along some corridors, as they passed one open door she looked through. Within, a veiled woman - another slave like herself, she guessed – was sprawled on a couch with a man, a westerner. “You money has already bought you all of this,” she heard the woman say as she leant back on her cushions. Natalya recognised Victoria's voice. Victoria's remark had been in response to Henry's expression of concern about the bank's finance for her project but Natalya interpreted it as Victoria accepting her status as the man's slave. So, Natalya thought, she is as much his captive as I. As Natalya watched the man's lascivious reaction she was in no doubt that he was the ring leader of this gang of white slavers. A moment later her trainer realised that she had stopped and returned to drag her away from the doorway.
Suddenly Victoria announced to Henry that he would have to leave, declaring herself delighted to have enjoyed his company but explaining that she needed to be ready for a dinner for some ambassador or other that evening. She swept out of the room, leaving Henry to pull up his trousers, button his shirt, refasten his belt and to try to quell his unsatisfied erection.
As he stumbled out of the Koresh's house he looked at his watch and thought that he had better phone the office. It took him some time to find his phone. It wasn't in his left hand jacket pocket where he always kept it. Somehow it had found its way into an inside pocket. “Odd,” thought Henry, “I can't imagine how that happened.”
© Freddie Clegg 2009
All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or reposted without permission.
All characters fictitious
E-mail: freddie_clegg@yahoo.com
Web Groups: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/freddies_tales/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Femdom_Fables/
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