Flail of the Pharoah (8 page)

‘Don’t you remember?’ He drew her fingers up to his lips and bestowed a soft kiss on them. ‘You shall have the honour of witnessing the royal coupling tonight. Not many women have ever beheld such an intimate display. You are honoured indeed.’

His tone was ironic yet he still regarded her with that warm, seductive look that turned her insides to curds and whey. For an instant Charmian pictured him wielding the flail, every sinew in his body straining to the task, and she gave an involuntary shudder.

‘Poor Charmian,’ he mocked, ‘it is all so strange for you, is it not? You know nothing of the ways of men and women, do you? You are an innocent child.’

For an instant Charmian wanted to argue, but he was right; she was naïve and inexperienced.

Neshi walked to the door and opened it for her, to show their private chat was at an end. Charmian felt bewildered, both by the prince himself and by her own feelings about him. The way he spoke to her had been friendly and she began to think of him as her only ally in that place, yet she knew she must still be wary of him. The incident with Kiya had demonstrated that he could be dangerous, whatever the truth of his encounter with the Nubian girl had been.

As she entered the queen’s apartments there seemed to be a chill in the air. Iras was calmly brushing Mira’s long black hair, but there was a distinct atmosphere of tension between mistress and servant. As Neshi announced Charmian’s presence he was waved away, leaving the three females alone together.

‘Sit down,’ Queen Mira commanded. ‘Iras will attend to you after she has finished with me.’ When Charmian was seated on the nearby sofa, Mira continued, ‘You know that you are to be admitted to the king’s bedchamber tonight?’

‘So I understand, your majesty.’

‘He thinks it will give you an “education” in the arts of love.’ Mira’s tone was scornful. ‘You should be grateful that I am the one who will demonstrate, and not some lesser concubine who doesn’t know her arse from her elbow.’

The coarse expression passed Charmian by, but Iras tittered and was instantly silenced by a look from her mistress.

‘The actions I shall perform with the Pharaoh he will expect you to repeat, some day soon,’ Mira continued. ‘So you must watch and learn. He is a kind and patient man, but there are limits to his tolerance. If you turn the whole business into an ordeal, or lie like a stuffed mattress, he will not be pleased. And when the Pharaoh is not pleased, you will be at best ignored and at worst discarded. Your life in the harem will not be worth living if you join the ranks of the rejected ones. Do you understand?’

The veiled threat alarmed Charmian all the more since she did not fully understand what the queen was implying, but she nodded anyway.

‘Good. Now Iras, leave me alone for a while as I wish to rest. Do your best with that pale-skinned creature, make her look as much like an Egyptian as you can.’

The queen retired behind the curtains that screened her bed. Charmian sat patiently while Iras made up her face and put a black curly wig on her head. Then she was dressed in a diaphanous, off-the-shoulder gown that knotted between her breasts and was split down the front. Charmian imagined she must look very glamorous and alluring, but no mirror was brought forth this time for her to admire her appearance.

Although Iras did not speak to her, the girl’s touch was gentle and seemed to communicate a degree of sympathy and kindness towards her. Charmian thought that perhaps she too had been taken from her home in some faraway land, and could understand how lonely and bewildered she felt.

Eventually the queen appeared, and gave a nod of approval when she saw how Charmian had been made-up. ‘Quite the Egyptian maid now, isn’t she?’ she said, with the hint of a sneer in her voice that Charmian found disquieting.

Iras finished off her mistress’s toilet with meticulous attention to detail, while Charmian sat and watched. Although Mira was no longer young, the expert use of cosmetics and the addition of a perfumed wig with tumbling black curls, soon transformed her into a beauty. She wore a scanty gown similar to Charmian’s, showing off breasts that were still large and firm even though the queen had given birth to three children.

While the finishing touches were being put to Mira’s wig by Iras, a page appeared at the door, bowing low and shaking a little bell. Charmian guessed this was the summons to the royal bedchamber.

The queen smiled at him. ‘Tell his majesty that we are on our way. Come, Charmian, you will follow a few paces behind me,’ she added imperiously.

Charmian felt very nervous as she followed the Queen of Egypt in slow procession out of the room and down the corridor where torches flickered in the darkness, throwing grotesque shadows. The two females took on gargantuan shapes, like giantesses thrown in relief against the painted walls, and there was a strong smell of incense in the air that confounded Charmian further so that she felt as if she were in the midst of a bizarre dream.

After a short while the queen turned off into an antechamber where the same pageboy who, Charmian surmised, must have run ahead of them at top speed, rang another bell to announce their arrival. The smell of incense was overpowering now, and the torches flickering at the entrance to the Pharaoh’s bedchamber were made of gold. Tinkling music could be heard and, in the shadows, she could just make out a group of musicians huddled in the corner, playing for their majesties’ pleasure.

The queen walked straight on, head held high, and swept through the curtained entrance without further ceremony. Charmian followed, her heart beating rapidly. One day she would come here alone to face the unknown. Tonight she must watch and learn, so that when her turn came she would not be so overwhelmed by the experience.

Yet it was hard not to feel overawed when she entered the dimly-lit room, where carved columns rose towering above her and a carpet strewn with rose petals led up to a canopied bed. There reclined the Pharaoh wearing the double crown of Egypt, his neck and arms laden with exquisite jewellery and his body clothed in a white pleated tunic from which his muscled thighs emerged onto pure white linen sheets scented with lotus.

‘My queen,’ he greeted her eagerly, opening his arms.

She bowed low as she approached and then knelt beside the bed for his blessing. He kissed the crown of the black wig, but then his gaze turned to Charmian, hovering in the shadows. ‘And you too are welcome, Charmian. Come here, where I may bless you.’ But as she moved forward, eyes downcast, there came a gasp from King Seti. ‘By the Lord Osiris, what have they done to you?’

She looked up then to see an expression of utter consternation on his face, which only left her bewildered. Queen Mira moved aside nervously from the bed, allowing room for Charmian to kneel in her place, but there was to be no calm and kind benediction for her. Before she could approach Seti addressed his wife in angry tones.

‘Are you responsible for turning this girl into a street whore? Speak at once!’

Mira looked shocked. ‘I… I know not what you mean, sire.’

‘The face paint she is wearing makes her look like a clown! Where is her beautiful pale skin? Where is her golden hair? You have turned her into a travesty of an Egyptian girl. Is it out of jealousy that you have done this, woman, or are you trying to upset me?’

‘My king, I had no such intent,’ Mira asserted, seizing his hand. ‘I am loyal to your majesty, your true wife. I thought that if Iras made the girl look like one of our own people you would like her more.’

As Mira spoke Charmian had the feeling she was not being sincere. Whatever game the queen might be playing was obscure, but she knew one thing: she was being used as a pawn.

Seti shook off his wife’s hand and swung his sturdy legs over the side of the bed. He put both hands on Mira’s shoulders and faced her squarely.

‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘The appeal of this girl, Charmian, lies in her exotic looks and foreign ways. I should have thought any woman close to my heart would understand that. I want to see her natural beauty. If the gods permit, from our eventual coupling a rare child shall emerge, darker than the girl, paler than myself. A child perhaps with dark hair and blue eyes, or fair hair and brown eyes. Would you have that child usurp your own son as crown prince, Mira?’

The queen looked horrified. ‘Oh no, never! You would not do that to me, Seti!’

His face softened a little and he touched her cheek. ‘I have chosen you as my consort, Mira, but if you do not allow me to follow my instincts freely then you shall no longer have the privilege of power. Take care, lest you lose everything for you and your son.’

The queen broke into a sob and kissed the fluted hem of the king’s tunic. He patted her head. ‘Come, no tears at bedtime; that was our pact, remember?’ She looked up at him with glistening eyes and nodded. ‘But you have been a trial to me today. First the matter of Kiya’s punishment, and now this.’ He sighed. ‘I think it is you who should be chastised now, Mira.’

‘Oh no,’ she gasped. ‘You would not put me to such shame, Seti.’

‘You know how the saying goes, “a gentle smacking now saves a harsh beating later”. Are you prepared to submit to some light punishment, for the good of your soul?’

Mira looked chastened, but dumbly she nodded. The king spread his thighs apart so that the apron draped over his privates and gestured across them. Obediently the queen bent across his lap. Charmian watched in amazement as Seti pulled up the flimsy skirt of her garment and exposed her naked buttocks, in the flickering torchlight the twin mounds gleaming like dimpled bronze.

The Pharaoh raised his right hand and brought it down sharply upon Mira’s behind, the slap echoing around the high chamber, followed by the soft moan that escaped the queen’s lips. Charmian watched in fascination as Seti caressed the round cheeks for a few seconds before raising his hand to strike again, this time with stinging force. Mira groaned, yet her cry was not so agonised as the cries Kiya had emitted that morning. Instead, there was a kind of yearning in her tone that puzzled the watching girl. This seemed more like play than punishment.

Again Seti caressed his wife’s sore bottom before inflicting more pain upon it. Charmian saw the flesh quiver, the muscles contract, knew it must be hurting the queen and yet her voice still held that strange note of desire, as if she craved more pain, and yet more. Between the blows she was pressing her pelvis hard against her husband’s lap, clenching her thighs and rolling her hips a little. It was all very puzzling to Charmian.

When, after several slaps, the Pharaoh continued to caress his wife’s buttocks tenderly it looked as though punishment had transmuted smoothly into pleasure. She saw one of his broad hands move down between Mira’s thighs while the other continued to stroke her nether cheeks; cheeks that must be smarting as keenly with pain as Charmian’s were flushing with embarrassment. She had not realised she would be witnessing quite such a naked display of intimacy between the royal couple, although exactly what she had expected was impossible for her to say.

She could hear Queen Mira gasping now, with increasing force, and the smile on the king’s face was rapt. His eyes were closed and he seemed to be in another world as his wife writhed and moaned on his lap. To Charmian it was all a mystery, yet a compelling one. She longed to know what the man was doing with his hidden hand, and why the woman was moaning so. Was this what men and women did together in the privacy of the marital bed?

They seemed to have forgotten her, sitting quietly on her haunches in the shadows, but now, even if she could have crept away unnoticed, Charmian would not have wanted to do so. She was riveted by the strange sight before her, curious to know more and where it would lead. Furthermore, a distant voice in her head was telling her that she must make mental notes, for one day she would be required to behave in a similar fashion in the king’s bed. It hardly seemed possible, and yet it must be so. Fear and excitement gripped Charmian equally as she contemplated the prospect of submitting her body to the Pharaoh’s will.

Mira felt the Pharaoh’s hand strike her trembling buttocks yet again, but a forefinger was gently caressing the swelling nub between her labia, the part the poetic Egyptians called the ‘lotus bud at the delta of heaven’. He knew so well how to pleasure her and he had lost none of his touch. She could feel the coming wave of ecstasy long before it flooded through her, inflaming her whole body with exquisite sensation.

Just before the climax engulfed her, Seti slapped her bottom one more time precipitating one of the most intense orgasms she had ever experienced. The world was lost to her as she moaned and writhed, pushing her throbbing mound against the Pharaoh’s unyielding thighs. The rapture continued from peak to incredible peak, filling her with pulsating energy that took a long while to subside.

Eventually she flopped onto the bed, utterly exhausted, and Seti sat beside her, softly caressing her naked bottom, soothing her flesh back to normality. She breathed in the heady fumes of the incense and felt her senses reel, but she had no desire for sleep. Her desire fully aroused, she longed for nothing more than to feel the king’s shaft moving inside her, completing her satisfaction.

She had completely forgotten the presence of the foreigner, the new girl in the harem. Only when she sat up and looked beyond her husband’s smiling face was she aware of the pale-faced one, sitting there bemused in the half-shadow. A sense of irritation seized her, despite the extreme pleasure she had just experienced, and she wished the creature would just melt away into the darkness – but she knew that could not be.

‘My love,’ the king murmured. It was a while since Mira had heard those words and they went some way towards mollifying her. She reached up and pulled his mouth to hers, for a long kiss. Seti’s fingers deftly untied the knot between her breasts and they fell out of the flimsy garment like ripe fruit. His mouth fastened eagerly on one erect nipple and she moaned and threw back her head as the fire in her belly was rekindled.

The Pharaoh was also inflamed with desire for her and threw open his tunic to reveal his huge phallus, rearing like the snake on the Egyptian royal crown, the sacred uraeus. Almost roughly he turned his wife over facedown on the bed and clambered astride her. For a moment Mira thought he was going to enter her anally as he used to do after she had borne him two male heirs, to spare her the rigours of more childbirth. His hands felt beneath her to lift her hips, but then she felt his glans nudging at her tumid lips and soon he was lodged in the entrance to her quim, making the sweet juices flow from the secret springs within.

Mira moaned as his hands moved to caress her smarting buttocks. The length of him slowly slipped inside her and she squeezed the rigid flesh, feeling the dizzying sensations return to her lower regions. She began to grind into the mattress to stimulate her throbbing bud and soon the steady climb towards orgasm was initiated again.

Seti thrust more powerfully into her, nibbling the nape of her neck the way she loved. Now, oblivious of her smarting buttocks, Mira started to move her pelvis in reckless abandon in order to increase both her own pleasure and that of her husband. Soon the two were working in complete harmony, each seeking to fulfil both their own desire and their partner’s.

It didn’t take long for the queen to reach her second climax and then she remained tumid while the stout penis drove into her throbbing cunny, again and again, bringing her to the brink and then into the full flood of her third orgasm. She groaned and thrashed on the bed, and this time her pleasure triggered his. Seti gave a roar like a lion as he shot his seed into the heart of her womb, clinging to his wife’s shoulders all the while.

The couple collapsed in a heap and for a long while Mira remained inert, feeling the weight of her husband pinning her down. It was comforting feeling the weight of a man on her again, covering her, his cock snug inside her body until slowly, slowly, it diminished and slid out with a faint plop. She could feel their mingled juices tickling her labia, and she squirmed against the bed once more. Desire for him returned in a fleeting moment, before the languid mood returned to her limbs and she relaxed into a deep post-coital slumber.

She opened her eyes to find Seti lying beside her, his arm around her. ‘Wife, you have lost none of your allure,’ he smiled. ‘And you are as skilled as you ever were…’

‘Despite the lack of practice?’ she added slyly. In the blissful afterglow she knew she could get away with making teasing remarks.

He smiled indulgently at her. ‘Perhaps you shall have more practice soon, but your first task must be to train the new girl.’

To Mira’s great displeasure he beckoned the girl out of the shadows. Once again Mira had completely forgotten about this alien presence, and she felt embarrassed as she recalled her abandoned lovemaking, especially the way her husband had slapped and rough-handled her, as if she were a slave to be used any way he wished. Oh, if only, a voice within her longed for such treatment, although she could hardly admit it to herself, let alone Seti, and still less to this stranger in their midst who was fast becoming a thorn in her side.

Yet when the pale-skinned girl approached the bed she was wide-eyed with admiration.

‘You see, Mira, this young woman is amazed by what she has just witnessed,’ the Pharaoh said. ‘She marvels at the grace and beauty of the Queen of Egypt, her agile skill in the Pharaoh’s bed. Is that not so, Charmian?’

She bowed her head, blushing. ‘Yes, sire.’

‘And you wish to perform like the queen, don’t you?’ The girl nodded and Seti smiled with satisfaction. ‘She will tell me when you are ready. Then I shall take your virginity gently, the same way I possess all my women. You have nothing to fear. Now, Mira, take her back to the harem. I shall see you in the morning, my queen.’

Mira felt bitter disappointment strike at her, like the bite of an asp. She had expected to be allowed to spend the night with her husband, as in the old days, but it seemed she was now no more than a concubine to him. But she would not let this green girl see she was put out. Far from it. She rose swiftly from the bed and, gathering her robe around her, held out her hand to Charmian with a friendly smile. ‘Come, girl, let us take our leave of the Pharaoh.’

The two females bowed low, then backed out of the bedchamber still holding hands. As soon as they left the king’s presence, however, Mira let go of her hand and began to stride out, impatient to return to her quarters, leaving Charmian to hurry along behind.

‘Go back to the harem, and say nothing about what you have seen tonight,’ she rasped at the girl when they arrived at her doorway. ‘I shall see you tomorrow.’

‘Yes, Queen Mira,’ she replied, curtseying humbly.

Mira swept into her room and clapped her hands for Iras, who quickly appeared. ‘Prepare my bath and night robe,’ she snapped.

The girl sent for hot water and soon Mira was wallowing in the scented warmth, which began to melt away her irritation. The king had well satisfied her, so what did she have to be cross about? Her position was so obviously superior to that of Charmian that it was ridiculous to feel envy or resentment. She would always come first in Seti’s heart and he had told her so a thousand times. So why did she have this empty ache in her own heart, and that cold fear at her back? Was it because of the beautiful child Seti hoped to beget through his union with the blue-eyed girl? Well, if it came to fighting on her son’s behalf against some young upstart, then she was up to the challenge.

But first she must deal with the girl placed in her charge. Some of the lowborn Egyptian women had secret methods of birth control, involving sponges soaked in vinegar. Perhaps she would send Iras on a secret mission to learn their arcane arts. It was a risky endeavour, for it was a terrible sin to impede the passage of the king’s seed, but if it secured her son’s supremacy in the court of Egypt it was a risk well worth taking.

Charmian crept back into the sanctuary of the harem. It was dim and quiet with only a couple of small lamps burning, most of the women being sound asleep, and she was grateful for the blanket of night that covered her. She could not have born to have dozens of pairs of curious eyes upon her now.

She found her narrow bed in the alcove at the far end of the vast room and pulled the curtain around it. The fard on her cheeks and the kohl around her eyes smelt stale, and now the perfume had evaporated from her wig it exuded a stench of animal fat. She was disgusted and pulled off the black curls, throwing the hairpiece into a corner. Then, seizing a stray scarf from her wardrobe she rubbed frantically at her face until most of the paint had come off.

Only then did she sink gratefully upon her bed, still wearing her diaphanous robe. She stared up at the ceiling, which was painted with stars and an image of Nut, Goddess of the Night, and thought about what she had witnessed in the king’s bedchamber. The images were still as fresh in her mind’s eye as if they had been burned upon her retina, and she began to replay them, over and over again, trying to make sense of the extraordinary display she had seen.

It took a long while for sleep to come. Charmian felt a strange restlessness invade her body and her hands unconsciously began to stroke her breasts and stomach. She could imagine the Pharaoh’s hands there instead of hers, pinching her nipples as he had pinched the queen’s, bringing them to a firm ripeness. Tentatively she squeezed them between thumb and forefinger and felt ripples of exquisite excitement course through her.

‘King Seti…’ As she breathed his name into the night air her palms closed over her taut young breasts and she cupped them, caressed them, increasing her own arousal.

Charmian let her right hand pass into the shaven cleft between her thighs and gently part the tumid lips of her sex. How wet she was. She had never explored her body in that way before, since girls were prohibited from ‘spoiling themselves’, as the phrase had been back in the land of her birth. How distant all that seemed now. Here she instinctively knew attitudes were much freer, and sexual behaviour was considered a natural part of life, not something secret and hedged around with rules.

She began to rub the swollen nub that pulsated with such tempting pleasure, but then she stopped and withdrew her hand. What if the Pharaoh could tell she had touched herself there? What if she were to be considered spoilt goods and end up like the rejected ones in the harem, the embittered coterie that sat in a corner gossiping and spying because they had nothing better to occupy them? Queen Mira had warned that might be her fate if she failed to please the Pharaoh.

For another hour or so Charmian tossed and turned on her narrow bed, feeling for the first time the ravages of unappeased lust. She began to long for her turn with King Seti, so she might be able to express the mysterious desires that raged within her innocent flesh. She recalled seeing his hand slap against the padded cushions of the queen’s buttocks, again and again, and how Mira had seemed to relish the stimulation. She imagined the Pharaoh putting her across his knee too, his broad hand making her flesh sting as he slapped it mercilessly. At the same time she imagined him caressing between her nether lips, letting her copious juices flood over his fingers as she writhed and convulsed, just as Mira had done.

The thought was driving her half-insane, and her body burned with sweet agony. How long would she have to wait for release from this new and unforeseen torment?

Eventually Charmian slipped into an uneasy sleep, punctuated by confused dreams. She was late awakening and the curtain had been drawn back around her bed to reveal the busy activity of the harem, with the officer of the harem making his morning inspection. Realising she had overslept Charmian rose hastily and pulled on her day robe, doing the best she could with her hair and hoping the cosmetics she had hastily scrubbed off last night had not left unsightly smudges.

The portly eunuch stopped before her. ‘Charmian, you were in the king’s favour last night.’ It was a statement, not a question. The officer would already have seen the nightly record kept by the scribe of the royal apartments. ‘Make your ablutions at once.’

Relieved, she hurried to the bathroom in order to perform her ritual ablutions. For a moment she feared that some misdemeanour had been reported, but her only fault was oversleeping, and the officer was usually indulgent in that respect with any concubine who’d had the honour of spending the night with the Pharaoh.

However, when she returned from bathing she was astonished to find Prince Neshi lurking in her sleeping area. He had drawn the curtains again, after the officer had departed, and she felt a stab of apprehension. After seeing what had happened with Kiya she was in awe of him, but he gave her a polite smile, sat on the bed and patted it, inviting her to sit with him. She dared not disobey.

‘Well, Charmian, I believe you witnessed the coupling of my royal parents last night,’ he began in a friendly tone that was obviously intended to put her at ease. However, it did nothing of the sort. She merely nodded and he continued, ‘I would like you to tell me what you saw.’

Charmian shook her head. ‘I… I cannot, your highness. The queen, your mother, made me promise to tell no one what I saw.’

‘Oh, she didn’t mean to include
me
in her prohibition. I am her son, for heaven’s sake. She would tell me all about it herself if she were here. Come now, did you see my father’s organ? Did my mother arouse him well? Which position did they use for their coupling?’

The direct questions confused and embarrassed her. She felt trapped behind the curtain, and the memory of Kiya returned as an awful warning of what might happen if she were less than compliant.