Chapter 1
A Fluent Tongue
"This is-though some might punish my candor-so fucking Medieval!" Juliana Bisque-Hardy Mellroot's dulcet voice rang off the tiled cell walls.
Chained wrists jutting backward, she offered a piquant icon of aggrieved British womanhood. Her head thrust forward, chin high above her rumpled blouse. Her skirted seat dug with bulldog defiance into the cushion resting on the floor.
"Ju', honey, your candor nailed our asses to the lamppost once already." Lucretia Sue Merydith shifted her naked bottom on its brocade pillow.
She spoke above the numbing drone as a machine labored to cool and humidify the desert air for their window less cell. "As to being Medieval, the folks back home in Georgia got some downright Gothic ways where womanfolk's concerned."
Six feet tall, the American redhead wore only a man's shirt on her whipcord and whalebone frame. Silken wrist fetters kept her hands demurely at the small of her back.
"I've seen Hee-Haw and your Smoky Mountain bucolic, Miss Parton." Juliana's nyloned, unshod toes rippled. "I have reference to this Inquisitorial backwater on the oozy Persian sewer so politely termed a Gulf."
"95% of humanity is still sniffing around the Declaration of the Rights of Man like a randy hound circling a wolf-bitch, uncertain if it wants to begin its mating nips," Lucretia Sue pointed out.
"When I played exchange student," she continued, "a whole lot of mistresses and their giggly girl praelictor co-conspirators took care to thwack into my hide that cute public school maxim that 'Life is Pain.' " Juliana's flaxen Saxon head inclined pityingly. "There is such a thing as Justice. I had hoped that you learned thai at Miss Maelstrom's with us, Trews. Without Justice there can only be Darkness. This vile farce mimicking jurisprudence, this frowning Arab mumbo-jumbo masquerading as procedure does not-cannot-and could never hope to ape simple Law, much less Justice."
She set her shoulders resolutely. "I am an adult British subject. I do not intend to countenance receiving corporal correction."
At least not from wogs, I won't, she added fiercely. Not for all the oil in Araby.
"Lord . . . I'm the one they confiscated the jeans from." Lucretia Sue informed the universe at large. "All they took were her snippy ol' spike heels."
Juliana looked unhappy. "Item: one pair of virgin yak skin high-heeled shoes, suitable for office or evening wear, Adjudged 'provocatively feminine attire.' To be burned by order of the Magistrate's Court.
"Item: one pair of 14-karat gold earrings, for pierced ears. Adjudged 'seductively feminine attire.' To be returned to the prisoner-thank you, gentlemen, I assure you-upon her deportation, due to the quality of workmanship.
"Item: One Lady Wachovia Executrix gold wrist chronometer, with international date and seven distinct time functions, musical and optical alarms, and limited calculation capacity."
Juliana leaned toward her friend earnestly. "Said wrist chronometer adjudged by the court to be 'severely unfeminine apparatus.' To be retained within the state, by order of the magistrate, after deportation of the prisoner due to 'masculine utility.' "
"I got to admit your watch didn't resemble any feminine apparatus I ever eyeballed, or, in the case of Beastly Bella Ponsonby, laid--"
"Trews," the Englishwoman firmly shook her tired coiffure, "it is not quite the thing to discuss such matters after schooldays. Frank Harris set a regrettable precedent. He was Irish."
"I only intended to say, 'laid other sensory equipment upon.' "
"The point," Juliana pursued primly, "that I broached is that the very time is a specifically masculine province in this blighted heathenscape."
" 'Once the people know how to tell the time, they'll ask how time is used. You will no longer be called the king of time'--or some such eloquence from The Thief of Baghdad."
Lucretia Sue contemplated the ornate bronze door set in the blue and white tile walls. No fear of listeners at keyholes since push buttons worked the electronic lock.
"Arabian fantasies in the movies are a whole hell of a lot healthier than the one we are in the process of living," she concluded.
"These diseased feudal throwbacks--"
"Ju\ out here in the puckerbrush the folks have their li'l ways which it does not behoove us to be inordinately vocal about. That magistrate we saw earlier, for instance.
"A man charged with the authority to order anything from having your eyebrows tweezed to sewing your living carcass into a bloody pig's hide and having you towed from a helicopter as a rifle target-a man like that's not used to being called a 'witless parrot of megalomaniac misogyny,' or even a 'dictatorial cameldriver.' "
"My words needed to be strong to decry grave wrong." Juliana pursed her lips, all dignity.
"Lord ... all they did was catch you doing some two-fisted he-man work, some rugged data input and a little hairy-chested double-ledger bookkeeping. Me they nabbed with a hip flask of ol' Uncle Jack's No. 7 sourmash elixir."
"Trews, you suffered for that vulgar habit at Miss Maelstrom's, I rather do recall."
"Funny how ol' nicknames continue to apply." The American grinned. "Trews I'm wearing none of because they peeled 'em off me for the crime of wearing them in the first place. I got my first sixer at Miss M's female academy for just that."
Her English companion corrected, "Miss Maelstrom told you they were unsuitable, unfeminine attire straight away she saw you in them. Your six came for lip."
"I merely pointed out denim britches seemed a whole lot more modest than those school uniforms, the skirts of which couldn't get shorter without giving us girls a whole new set of lips to paint."
"Unintended vulgarity may be verbally corrected. Deliberate barbaric speech merits more painful and, one hopes, more lasting measures."
Miss Despina Maelstrom stood in the school's Great Hall, a converted stately home refectory. Rank on rank of briefly skirted girl scholars sat agog at the American exchange student's impudence.
The headmistress gestured and two lusty senior girl praelictors advanced on Lucretia Sue. The carrot-curled American debated showing the assembly a judicious dose of rib-cracking Okefenokee free-for-all.
Then she mentally shrugged. She'd applied for the Mothers of the Third Manassas overseas scholarship a taste foreign customs first hand. She dealt herself the cards; she made up her mind to play them out.
"Stand up, Merydith," Messaline Straightways directed her, raven-haired and wolf-jawed. "Palms flat on your head, if you please."
Lucretia Sue obeyed.
"I'll have those hoyden's trews removed, thank you," Miss Maelstrom enunciated crisply.
Messaline personally stripped down the offending denim She unbuckled the two-inch heeled pumps and handed them to the other prae. With officious relish, she plucked the furled jeans off Lucretia Sue's lifted feet.
The second prae, a hip-heavy blonde, guided the American to the rear of the room.
The assembly continued with exhortations to triumph on the games fields during the coming terms. Coveted cups and shared tradition flourished in Miss M's rhetoric as Lucretia Sue's arms grew heavy. A glance at Messaline convinced her not to drop them.
The girls had called the prae Dire Straits. A bony eighteen and hell on the hockey field, the senior girl served as one of four student overseers holding the pupils in check. Eyes and ears everywhere, they had limited authority to punish on their own, and often handled painful correctional chores for the adult school mistresses.
Peculiarly, some staff felt a senior girl could administer physical chastisement more fairly since she held fresher memories of punishment's pangs. "Dis-MISSED!" announced Miss Maelstrom. "With the exception of young Merydith and Bisque-Hardy."
A wheat-haired, stunningly figured girl hung back as the other students trooped out. The severe black-and-white school uniform accented her ripe strawberries-and-cream complexion. Her ears and cheeks glowed brighter as she shuffled toward the rear of the hall.
As with all senior girls, Miss Bisque-Hardy's midnight-hued woolen skirt flared from the lips and ended promptly three inches above her knees. Stark white regulation cotton stockings covered the full calf.
The outfits on the younger girls came snugger and shorter. Lucretia Sue imagined they'd been designed by Humbert Humbert in an inspired fit.
The four praes wore identical tailoring with the colors reversed. Black blouses and stockings with white skirts and jackets reminded the Georgian of the S.S. crossed with the Ku Klux Klan.
"Shall we adjourn to a more convenient place?" Miss Maelstrom's eyes raked them, sharpened icicles. "Be certain to incinerate those vulgar trews once we've done, Straightway s."
Messaline smiled tightly, squeezing the folded jeans. She fell in beside the unhappy Juliana Bisque-Hardy as the party followed the headmistress out into the huge, chill corridor.
"You may put your hands down," the blonde prae whispered, striding beside Lucretia Sue.
She dropped her palms and gave her panties an upward tug. The cold marble corridor made her feel distinctly vulnerable.
Beneath a grand staircase rising to the second and third floor sleeping rooms, a chapel-sized chamber had been consecrated to corporal punishment.
Girls and mistresses going and coming ensured that It would be overheard, with all consequent deterrent effect.
Lucretia Sue and Juliana marched in glumly. They stood against a wall whose faded gilt paper sported 18th Century shepherdesses dallying in fields the French Academy would have found saccharin.
The blonde prae firmly closed the door as wolf-smiled Messaline proudly used her own keys to unlock the punishment case. The double cabinet doors let a heavy, pungent vinegar smell into the room when opened.
"Bisque-Hardy, you recall my promise end of the Spring term." Miss Maelstrom extracted a violet sheet of note-paper from her sleeve. "I have your mother's sad report on your summer scholarship and her most earnest exhortation to deliver a regular straightener -- 'something to pull the girl's socks up' -- until your studious efforts bear tangible fruit. I must concur in her judgement."
Juliana's gaze rooted itself to the veined and aloof stone floor. At one side, Messaline and the other prae shed their pumps. They pulled on rubber-soled gym shoes . . . floor-clinging flogging shoes.
"Mondays, following Great Hall, until marked improvement dictates otherwise, you shall receive ten strokes of a birchrod across your buttocks."
The well-bosomed girl exhaled sharply.
"In four weeks, if the practice should still be required, the number shall advance to twelve. And so on, each four weeks."
A concerned frown creased the headmistress' lips. "If you find Christmas an unduly warm season, imagine the Lententide. I regret other inducements have proved futile, Bisque-Hardy."
Lucretia Sue's bottom had known some enthusiastic switchings in Georgia. She blinked incredulously at the rod Messaline drew from the glass pickling trough in the punishment case.
Five nastily budded birch withes, each rapier-tough, had been bound at their severed ends with red ribbon. The pencil-thick switches splayed from the ribboned handle and would obviously strike separately, each imparting its own stinging welt.
Juliana meekly folded her jacket on a small table. Her fingers clumsily worked at the absurd skirt. It dropped, exposing the brief silk slip required by school decorum.
She set the skirt on her jacket and twisted her plain, unfigured slip into a roll beneath her blouse's hem. Cotton panties clung to full-bodied hinds, roundly summited with cute hollows along the hipbones that made the cheeks stand up and out.
"I imagine you should remove those completely." Messaline skillfully took charge. "I don't propose to secure your legs and the knickers you exploded last term weigh upon my conscience.
Lucretia Sue watched the British girl expose her succulent bottom. With a nervous fold, she placed her panties atop her skirt.
She advanced to a short, padded horizontal beam set on an iron frame. The blonde, meaty-hipped second prae loosened fat-winged nuts. A lever wrenched groaning squeals from the metal till it raised the beam to meet Juliana's thatched pubes.
The upper surface slanted away. The girl bent forward till her loins rested on it. Her torso pointed at an angle toward the floor. She reached down.
The second prae put a mahogany dowel into Juliana's hands. The wooden stick had been secured to the floor by fat nylon stretch bands. They pulled the girl down, drawing her buttocks up smartly.
"Prepare," Miss Maelstrom called.
Messaline stepped into position, the five-fanged rod hissing as she swung upward. She lunged, her full weight behind her stroke.
The birch wands spread and clung to that cream-pale girlhide. Muscles bunched violently. Messaline held the rod in place for long seconds as the cleft squeezed and sensation rioted. She swept the birch away. Icy, bloodless tracks radiated across the soft skin. Then color flooded in, darker on the right, where vinegar-hardened buds had rapped the flesh.
"Prepare."
The buttocks shuddered. The birchrod flashed up-hard across. Messaline's rubber sole gave a final stamp. Juliana contributed an abrupt, woeful noise. Her legs quivered.
The withes had spread over some fresh territory and overlapped some prior marks. Streaks of flame gleamed brightly as they swelled.
By the fourth and fifth cuts, Juliana danced on urgent tiptoe. Her hindcurves glowed from mid-line to thightops.
Messaline surrendered the birch to the blonde prae. That senior girl put hip and shoulder into her strokes. The five claws thwapped solidly along the upper cheeks. Burgundy pips showed where the stone-budded tips scalded gentle skin.
Juliana's sniffly whimpering meshed with the singing switches and the lunging stamp. The prae marched the birch down the bottom's length. Her final cut lashed across Messaline's lowest marks. Two vagrant withes dipped down to lick greedily into straining thightops.
Juliana's legs kicked like a startled filly.
It took two minutes for her to come erect. Face stark, eyes salty, she bent her leg in a pained and shaming curtsey. "Th-thank you for taking the t-trouble to . . . admonish me."
The two senior girls inclined their heads graciously.
"Straightways shall monitor your progress." The headmistress addressed Juliana. "I shall review your situation when she feels your achievements warrant it."
Juliana sniffed another well-tamed "thank you." She took her panties from the small table. Her teeth serrated her lower lip as she raised one leg to slip them on.
They slid slowly up to snugly embrace her weal-blotched rear. The fit seemed tighter, the gluteal cheeks more pronounced. Her fingers chased her slip down.
With equally gingerly motions, she resumed her skirt. Her blurry eyes stayed humbly averted as she tugged on her jacket and stood by Lucretia Sue.
The American felt tension from her calves ripple the full distance to her shoulders. Miss M spoke: "Six of the cane's best, for improper speech."
Messaline replaced the birchrod in its smelly pickle. She chose a vivid yellow punishment stick thin as a little finger. The handle crooked; its striking end thickened to a wincingly bulbous tip.
The blonde prae also selected a cane, as lean and hearty.
Lucretia Sue cleared a suddenly dry throat. "Shall I. . . ? Of course."
She removed her own panties with tightly compact motions. She gave them a double fold and put them where Juliana's clothes had rested. She covered the warm, slightly moist cotton with her uniform jacket.
She advanced to the padded beam. The blonde prae squatted, forcing the iron frame higher. It screeched at the tall Georgian girl's nerves until the beam reached her legtops.
She bent across the padding, feeling Juliana's humid heat against her own naked loins. Her lips canted up, her head rocked down. Her bra straps began to bind in that position. Hair swung around her face as she gripped the extended dowel.
The mahogany had been polished by generations of palms. The strong elastic bands tugged her firmly over. She felt her well-muscled rump grinning broadly back at the prae lectors.
The two British girls stood on opposite sides. With a rising panic that shamed her, Lucretia Sue hoped they wouldn't hit simultaneously.
"Prepare," Miss Maelstrom called. A blush of satisfaction lightly tinged her normally stony voice.
An angry electric tremor livened Lucretia Sue's innards. She relaxed her buttocks by pure will.
The blonde prae stepped back and pranced into a tip heavy cut. The air shredded like ripped silk. Bloody blue blazes seared through and through Lucretia Sue's bottom Hot-hotter yet!-her fingers twisted on the dowel. Her hiking-firm buttocks jumped wildly.
"Prepare," she heard, the agony still mounting.
Messaline's arm drove the lithe stick from the opposite side, hellishly low. Solid undercheeks rose in outrage Fires leaped, bracketing the whipped girl's vulval gash.
Lucretia Sue fought the feverish pain.
"Prepare ..." The broad-fleshed blonde made her weight count. The cane sank deeply across knotted muscles.
Lucretia Sue sucked air, strangling down a yelp. She screwed her eyes against tears as her bottom squirmed childishly.
"Prepare ..." Messaline's humming wand whacked into flesh a hair's width above her first welt.
The Georgian girl's lips stretched over locked teeth as she heard the damning, merciless, "Prepare ..."
She couldn't steel herself. The blonde flogged her writhing buttocks. She gasped and snorted an indelicate blob onto the uncaring stones.
She felt three years old and on fire. "Prepare ..." Messaline's thumping stroke completed a seething band along her lowest curves. Lucretia Sue let herself shudder and kick-she couldn't help it. The weals ate into her, a white-hot grill barbecuing her pride. She couldn't guess how long it took her to rise. Her eyes burned, but she didn't cry. Miss Maelstrom stood, remote as a Victorian bronze casting. "Custom requires an expression of gratitude for the trouble taken to set one's feet upon the proper path."
Improvising, Lucretia Sue agonized her rear by attempting a full genuflection. She begged pardon for any uncivil words. Blood sang in her ears as she stood.
"A curtsy will suffice on future occasions. Kindly write one hundred lines before Room Dark is called. I will avoid the impression of sarcasm in word or deed.' Since this is your first imposition, you will write them before Straightways.
The headmistress exited in grandeur. The canes went back onto their pegs in the punishment cabinet.
"Orphaned in the Blitz," the blonde prae spoke unexpectedly, confidentially. "Pinned in rubble for two days, with her family massacred around her. Not a tear in the tot's eye when they dug her out. Ice water in her veins, that one."
She appraised the American girl and smiled. "Call me Aramilla. You'll do, you know, you really will."
She shook Lucretia Sue's hand and sauntered out. Juliana Bisque-Hardy's fingers teased at her birch-flogged bottom beneath her skirt.
"Beastly Bella, we call her. Short for La Belladonna Senza Pieta. Watch out for her, Merydith." She left with panged steps, blotting her wet cheeks.
Messaline Straightways pointed to the jacket covering Lucretia Sue's panties. "Perhaps you should put your knickers on, though most girls know what a contrite crupper looks like.
"Or is yours contrite?" She drank deeply of the Ameri- can's murderous expression. "I should temper that mutinous eye, Merydith. Remember, I can have those knicks at your knees again for up to three licks on my own authority "Be at my room to do your lines by, say, seven o'clock. You may do them standing."
She watched as Lucretia Sue dressed, hands stiff with icy anger.
The red-haired woman stretched her naked legs. "Now I'm back into short kit and facing a hiding. Somewhere--I'd hope in a Marseille wharfside cathouse screwing for their supper-Dire Straits and Beastly Bella might be enjoying a laugh."
"You obviously failed to profit from the lesson the first time." Juliana retained a prim posture in their cell. Her adolescent gorgeousness had ripened to a mature beauty, shopworn as it seemed at the present moment.
"If Miss Tsk-Tardy had ever learned to hustle her huggable heinie, as they stressed as Miss M's, she'd have been safely locked in the computer room with the other gals when the Girl Patrol made its swoop. Your final 'Late! Eight!' from sweet Aramilla didn't have much lasting effect, either."
Juliana shuddered at the memory. A week before the senior girls graduated, a week before her freedom as a young woman of fashion, she had made her final visit to the punishment chamber.
She'd lagged behind in the controlled scramble to get to Sunday chapel. No fault of her own; it never actually was-things simply delayed her. If the praes would only see that and judge on the facts of the case, instead of being prejudiced by past . . .
Aramilla Ponsonby had applied to Miss Maelstrom for a full dozen cane strokes on grounds of "undue repetition of fault." Permission granted, she had shared the rigorous duty with a horse-strong, inarticulate Yorkshire prae.
Juliana had been sliced, diced, and set out to dry. For "unchristian epithets under correction," Miss Maelstrom had ordered Beastly Bella to deliver three more to Ju's corrugated backside before bed.
That evening, the terrified young woman of fashion had pleaded to thoroughly brown her nose up Aramilla's nightie, in exchange for remission of the extra stick licking.
The Rubenesque praelector had gloatingly collected the treat.
Juliana admitted her thoughts had been far from that degrading episode when the sudden appearance of the Girl Patrol had set the few women working in Dillingham Eastern's offices scuttling for the computer room. The constables made spot checks at intervals to assure the government that no foreign women labored in violation of traditional law.
"God knows what toll these heathen intend to extract." The Englishwoman began to slump, then squared her shoulders valiantly. "And by 'God' I refer to the Universal Deity-and by 'Universal' I most certainly mean the Anglican Catholic faith."
"I always found the Wesleyan Chapel just a might easier on the bee-yew-tee-tee," Lucretia Sue reminisced. "I figured that out first minute I laid eyes on the compulsory religious attendance reg in the school prospectus.
"Since sashaying to the chapel down the road met the standard, I told Miss M my folks were five generations Southern Methodist. Not exactly a lie. You can't tell a moss-backed Southern Baptist from a rock-ribbed Southern Methodist without a strong light and a magnifying glass."
Juliana's eyes widened. "Girls always said you were a rancid little sneak for going off-school for chapel. I imagined they were joking, envious that you didn't have Dire Straits or somebody watching the door with a great thumping cane."
"I may pridefully say you have to rise powerfully early in the a.m. to catch an Okefenokee Merydith napping." The Georgian stretched her tethered arms.
"However, I do admit that these fig-pluckers here in Qu'imram got up at midnight, at least. You may picture my embarrassment when that nice Constable Fa'ud kicked the lock off the door and stomped in on my li'l seminar in Western Culture."
"I was unaware that Gloria Vanderbilt and Jack Daniels occupied such pinnacles."
"Levi Strauss, honey. I only wear the gen-u-ine article. No one in the family ever married Leopold Stokowski, but they make damn good britches. I wear Levis," she chortled, kicking her bare legs, "or I wear nothing at all."
"Thank God-please take the qualification as read-that Fa'ud didn't actually hear you discussing any 'obnoxiously unfeminine ideas' with the local ladies."
"A-men, sister."
"Two days ago I played at battledores and shuttlecocks with the emir's wife," Juliana mused. "Such a charmingly Victorian sport in the age of Virginia Wade and Nastassja Kinski."
"Nastassja isn't the Virginia Slims all-star, sugar."
"Whomever. The bony foreign ballbasher."
"You were always good at outdoor games. Me, I preferred a little draw poker, or cut-throat gin rummy."
"And suffered for those lapses, also."
The birching had been a shock in its severity. Thirty-nine strokes lacerated Lucretia Sue's publically bared posterior. Dotty Nurse Quince rubbed her hated brine "styptic" no less than three times during the application in the Great Hall.
Lukewarm sentiment had fired and consolidated firmly in favor of the American girl. Trews Merydith had "come through" in style. No Maelstrom girl could deny her pluck.
Juliana had been proud to claim the foreign girl as her chum, and the flogging had cemented a very tentative friendship.
"You know, I am rather sorry to have enticed you to visit us in this utter armpit of depraved humanity," the Englishwoman voiced her remorse.
"Ju\ whatever they do'll be no worse than the time papa and the preacher found me with Billy Jim Hotchkins playing strip blackjack."
Lucretia Sue reflected. "We-e-ell, now that I think on it, we weren't exactly still playing cards. Having won my last stitch and then some, he was busy collecting a forfeit.
I'll admit that I acted like a real good sport about it, since although I was fourteen and he was twelve, he'd turned out to be real advanced for his years. "My enthusiasm in helping him collect his winnings set the choir loft to creaking so thunderaciously that the preacher and pa came up for a look-see. "Pa was a parish elder. He'd been consulting with the preacher on church finances, over a glass or two of some venerable corn by-product that pa's tennant, Mr. Diddlebock, made out where tax stamp men seldom came to visit.
"The two hadn't understood how an earthquake had crawled up the ladder into the loft, so they climbed up to investigate.
"They did raise some noticeable ruckus with razor strops and hickory switches." The redhead sighed. "I ate off the mantle for two full weeks. My brothers found the sight almighty entertaining, 'specially since I wasn't wearing anything at the time, as a slight reminder of my sin. "I had to feed Calvin a face full of mud to inhibit him from telling the schoolyard the full details, down to my birthmarks and bruises. It was just his hard luck that some pretty fresh cow plop had gotten trampled into that mud when I gave him a flying tackle.
"Ol' Farmer Hawthorne drove his stock to pasture across the schoolyard, mornings, and some had been indiscreet right where I headlocked my smarty-mouthed brother and taught him some loyalty.
"So then it became the principal's turn to wale me for being rowdy." Lucretia Sue chuckled. "He had to have me peel stark jaybird naked-in front of the nurse, of course; though word had branded Lucille Grimsby trash for spending her evenings at the principal's house -- in order to search my hide for some fresh spots to work on, "The strop marks seemed plum ubiquitous along my hinderscape from heels to the top of my crack-pardon, my cleft. He did take care in avoiding the switch welts as he plied his ruler.
"A hard man, but fair. Just like that full eleven inches of prick I found when I unbuttoned his trousers afterwards. Fair licking, but hard to melt down, even with help from Lucille Grimsby."
Juliana's interest in the recital curdled. "I'll take shuttlecocks, thank you. Richard has attempted to interest me in the noisome sport you allude to, but without offering decent reciprocity."
"Pedophilia, you mean? Or just garden-variety matrimonial cocksucking?"
The Englishwoman elaborated with grace. "I have reference to fellatio. I'll be damned and frying on Satan's griddle if I'll lip-coddle any man's thing without getting a nub-tonguing in fair return.
"And by 'Satan' I most emphatically refer to that diseased Adversary plainly in control of this benighted pagandom."
Lucretia Sue spoke lightly. "Now, to be fair to your husband, I do seem to recollect that you pine for a tongue-diddling at a rather peculiar time of the month.
"I did hear-tell of your more intimate tastes and eccentricities at school-Frank Harris wasn't alone, honey, so you can stop wiggling your face so Old Girlishly about the curtain being lifted on dorm room frolics.
"I can't quite quote Alicia Trent, but she did admit to having a rather bloody mouth after she'd cunt-kissed you, in exchange for not being tied up and wee'd on, or some of the other homey little pranks you hellions used to visit upon the young and unprotected.
"And by 'hellion' you can most certainly insert one of those Gospel-true Ronald Searle images of St. Trinian devilment," the Georgian concluded.
Juliana averted her profile. "I'm more in need at some times than at others. A fingering just isn't adequate relief. Besides, Alicia Trent should have been hazed out along with the other queeqs and squinges."
"Honey bunch, just because I came to the school in my last year doesn't mean I ain't a queeq at heart. My daddy worked for a living, just like two drop-outs you-all chased from Miss Maelstrom's, and whose winter woolies now warm seats in the House of Commons.
"Now, as for squinges, our ol' brick-solid girl-type buddy, Pamela Jellicoe, used to roll on her back and fawn once Beastly Bella became the boarding school bum-brusher par excellence."
"Jellybuns had an overly active nervous system highly susceptible to pain. Besides, Aramilla had been her rave for years." The Englishwoman pointed out.
"A masturbatory relationship not terribly exclusive in nature. Jelly's too-tender tush had a high sensitivity to pleasure and pain, as someone not miles away once remarked to me with a grin like the Cheshire cat who ate Alice.
"A ration of the birch and the martinet had suitably admonished friendly Pamela for her chummy night wanderings after Room Dark. Even a secret and eventful journey to the Ponsonby passion pit hadn't quenched the longings of spring. So, Ju', helpful sugar lamb that you were--" Juliana interrupted firmly. "Pamela Jellicoe treated everyone quite decently, even if she did worship Aramilla as some kind of goddess. Please try not to make some carnal remark, Trews."
Lucretia Sue changed position. The heavily embroidered cushion had etched its pattern into her bottom. She tried to vary the imprint.
"Our rear ends will be longing for the days at Miss M's, once the magistrate finishes cogitating on how much of a sin he convicted us of."
"Trews, listen." Juliana bent earnestly. "It has been simply hours since that vulgar interlude with that medieval maniac. I'll wager you that my loving Richard-good, clever, resourceful Richard; 'the boy ferret' as the Foreign Secretary once personally called him-has been working behind the scenes to get us off.
"Oh, I expect deportation, of course. Perhaps a fine to Dillingham Eastern for employing me sub rosa. I mean, what crime can it be for a consul's wife to amuse herself and keep her mind active with a little office work . . . ?"
"In the Qu'imram Protectorate, chile, it's a full-blown felony."
"But, Trews, you don't know my Richard! I can see him cozening that prince who handles Internal Affairs, the one who got him this post because his palace is here. The man wanted an old friend to be about when he left the capital and came to the sea shore."
"Daoud Abdullah ibn Qu'imram." Lucretia Sue gazed at the tiled walls thoughtfully. "That wily Oriental gentleman's already been cozened, honey pie. He's been cozened by an expert who's been cozening since she was eleven. I have a feeling that this was one hand of strip-poker she overplayed, even though it gave the glands a fun workout while the game lasted."
Juliana stared. She realized why her friend had been so long in joining her in the cell after the hastily convened magistrate's session.
"I may in my quiet, reserved, British Maggie Thatcher way be frightfully ill."
The Englishwoman sat, striken and silent.
The Honorable Richard Deathshead ("Deeth-shed, old darling. You'll be amazed how many chaps figure me for some butcher Army type, a sort of Chinese Gordon, when they read my name.") Mellroot drew languidly on the hookah.
Water-cooled cannabis fumes invigorated his brain while soothing a frame wearied by a day on consular business. "Bangladesh Red, old boy?"
"Saigon Green--or should I call it Ho Chi Minh City Green? A present from their U.N. envoy to my brother."
"Lovely stuff, absolutely suc-u-lent. You don't know how quiet the afternoon's been, Daoud old top." He dragged dreamily on the blackened ivory mouthpiece.
"There is a wise saying circulating among my people." The tawny Arab intoned: " 'A fluent tongue is the only thing a mother don't like her daughter to resemble her in.' "
"Quite, quite. Sufi Wisdom, old thing?" "Richard Brinsley Sheridan." "Ah. Just the man."
Time expanded and contracted rhythmically. At length (unless it proved to be almost at once) the honorable diplomat ventured. "I suppose you chaps really do need to ... I mean, old fellow, I let her while away her time at Dillingham really for my convenience and peace, although what with Foreign Office salaries, the lolly made a pleasant appearance first of each month . . .
"But I imagine simply deporting her isn't sufficient, is it."
"Dickie old chum, the flogging and the various punishments are essential!" The black desert eyes widened. : "Your vastly charming wife, my too-terribly-effulgent hostess on occasions without number, a woman beyond her peers in her beauty and virtues--ah, this paragon of all things feminine uttered such words when she came before the wise and clement magistrate--things so scandalously spoken that only my timely intervention prevents her corrections from being performed in public.
"Should I do more, it would cause unfortunate tales to spread among uninformed parties." He coughed delicately. "The also-fluent tongue of rumor would impeach my dedication to the cause of Islamic Renewal.
"As we know, the Devil Khomeini is today the enemy of our great friend Iraq. By the inversion of Fate, whose hand no mortal may descry-or, so seeing, stay in its course-the blaspheming suckers of Sheytan's tout can be restored to a former intimacy as our great friends--"
"Particularly if they win their war." Mellroot nodded "Too true, old seed. Don't expect you could intercede in the American woman, either. Ju' is quite keen on her,and I find her refreshing."
"A savory and refreshing wench, indeed." The prince sigh of contentment brought a raised, mazed eyebrow from the English consul. "This Merydith person, I mean, Dickie, not your pillar of spousal virtue.
"Yet her crimes-so blatantly flaunting herself before decent women in masculine attire; violation of the most sacred abstinence prescribed by Holy Law; and attempted subversion of the very bulwark of our nation, the enforcement of our statutes!"
"Do say, old egg?" Mellroot had a puzzled look.
"The use of carnal means to interfere with the duly pronounced judgments of Holy Justice." The Arab shuddered. "You plain-dealing, open-hearted Europeans have yet to understand: "Woman is in no way inferior to man in her capacities You Westerners delude yourselves to believe that. She is the full equal of our sex, always recall that.
"Fail to bridle her cunning mind, fail to curtail the application of her lethal charms, fail to subdue her-so-amoral appetites- "Fail and she will prevail over you in all things, great or small. As your own Nietzsche so subtly phrased it. 'You go to woman? Ah, carry the whip!' "
"Surely not our Nietzsche, old stuff. Some other chap Nietzsche, I'm certain. The bally Germans, perhaps."
An eloquent ripple of dismissal transcended a mere shrug. "These tribal differences do not matter to the objective Eastern mind, Dickie old bird."
"Mmmmm ..." The consul sucked and mulled. "The magistrate won't be too hard on Ju', do you imagine, come the sentencing? A near cousin of yours, you sail old lad?"
'Of course. Our Protectorate is a family affair. But-" The dark face showed a self-consciousness bordering on embarrassment. "He is a Harrovian, I regret to say. Not Eton at all."
"Ah." Richard commiserated. "Not a bad tie, of course. But, I say, old tick, didn't I hear he was also a Christ Church man-now that's something in his favor, after all."
"Cambridge."
"Oh!"