Chapter One

 

“Good day, sir!”  The slim golden-haired woman strode forward, one hand steadying the sling of her rifle, the other extended in greeting.  The man who had been surprised supervising the adjustment of the load on one of a string of donkeys, broke off with a startled expression and then slowly came forward.  The woman wore a mannish shirt in the newly adopted khaki colour of the British Indian military and a long thick skirt in a similar colour that just reached the tops of her brown leather boots; under the wide brim of her straw bonnet she appeared to be no more than in her mid-twenties.  She was followed by a tall young black in European clothes with the look of mission cast-offs, he too carried a rifle. Behind them appeared a file of native followers armed with hunting spears, though one older man carried a muzzle-loader, bound with brass wire but no doubt serviceable. 

The leader of the donkey-train was a tall white man, in dusty black European clothing and broad brimmed hat, with a revolver tucked into his waist.  The other two were darker skinned but similarly clad.  Stretching back along the trail other donkeys were halted, guarded by a half dozen very black men, more raggedly attired.  The leader hesitantly shook the extended hand; he was a tall sunburnt man, with angry pale blue eyes, gaunt-featured above a greying patriarchal beard.  “Langemann,” he said reluctantly.

“I am Lady Alice Butterworth.  We are hunting for meat for my followers.  I have just trekked up by ox-cart from the Anabaptist Mission at Kabali looking for elephant herds.  I heard they gather here in great numbers after the wet season in the mountains.”  She looked at the nearest donkey.  From an oblong box on one side of its pack saddle she saw glistening metal through smashed packing.  “Martini-Henry rifles?”  They saw her cast her glance upon the loads of the other beasts as if for confirmation.  She smiled at their expressions.  “I was brought up in a military family. My father commanded a regiment in the Indian service.  Presumably you are not traders since international agreements forbid trading arms or spirits to Africans.  Are you Portuguese, perhaps?  Surely King Leopold’s Belgians have not got this far?”

“We are civilian contractors, madam,” Langemann said quickly. “Engaged by the authorities of the German colony to deliver urgently needed supplies to an inland post.” 

“You are far out of your way then!” she declared confidently.

“Not at all!” he bristled. “I assure you that we are in territory to which His Majesty the Kaiser has every claim.”

“I think not,” she insisted.  “You have pressed too far inland.  The country hereabouts is claimed by tribal chiefs who are under the protection of Queen Victoria.  I have an excellent map provided by my uncle Colonel Sir Edward Butterworth and moreover, my faithful guide, Ezekiel, has travelled in these parts before with the Reverend Mr Dobbinson.”  She produced the map and spread it out on the pack-saddle.  “I understand that the nearest German post is at Mbembe.”

“Not at all!” Langemann dismissed the map with an irritated gesture.  “It is you who have strayed.  This area is under the suzerainty of His Majesty the Kaiser.  We have come from Mbembe bound to a newly established post.  A lady should not be foolishly roaming about in such primitive country, I will give you one of my men to escort you safely back to the mission, in case you are attacked by unruly natives.”

Lady Alice looked scornful. “I’m sure such primitive people will not hurt us.  Since we are in British-protected territory, I shall report your presence.” She moved briskly away. “Come, Ezekiel, tell the men to go forward.”  By way of a parting shot she added.  “I’m sure you will soon make the benefits of civilisation known with the aid of all those rifles!”

Left in doubt whether the promise to report them had been merely a passing jibe or a real threat, the three men stood, heads together, in an uncertain murmuring group as they watched her little caravan resume its movement.  

“Baas, do you think there’s anything in this white woman’s claim?” one of them asked the leader doubtfully.

“The English will claim anything,” Langemann said sourly.  “They claim a protectorate over the Tswana but their tribal lands are well to the east.  The Portuguese claim to protect the Ovambo, but they’ve never done anything about it.  King Leopold will have his hands full in Katanga.  That madman Stummf thinks he can keep the English at bay and claim the centre of the continent for the Kaiser, then produce his fabled diamond mine so that he will be like the Englishman Rhodes and the Kaiser will make him a Von.” he snorted.  “The woman recognised what we are carrying, though,” he ruminated, tugging his beard.  “Is she in this place just by accident?  She was careful to make it clear that she has important connections.”

“She is just one of those eccentric English travellers who wander where they will, acting as if they have a charmed life,” suggested the third man, swarthy in complexion with drooping black moustaches. “Even if she reports what she has seen, it will not trouble us this trip.”

Langemann shook his head. “The English use such people as secret agents.  She clearly realised that we were smuggling the guns and her masters will guess they are intended to help the Matabele resist Mr Rhodes’ plans, so favouring my own people’s expansion.  If she is here for that purpose, she will send off a messenger as soon as she gets clear of us.  If we take no action to prevent it, the diplomatic fuss will end with our sponsors disowning us!”

 

That night as the lady’s entourage lay camped under the stars, her guide Ezekiel lay awake, wondering reluctantly if the journey would indeed have to come to an end.  His belly was comfortably full and he felt ready for something more than a meek retreat.  The day before his madam had shot an antelope and they had all eaten well, feasted rather, Lady Alice tearing at the tender meat with sharp little white teeth, careful of the grease and licking the juices off her long pale fingers.  The madam had been contemptuous about the white men they had met, but her followers had been worried. Being far away from their own territory, they were afraid of the reputation of the white men. King Leopold’s men had caused hideous rumours and now the aggressive Germans were slaughtering whole tribes.  The men wanted to retreat to safer territory.  He had persuaded Lady Alice to deal out a generous tot of whisky each to hearten them and they were sleeping soundly enough, but he turned restlessly in his own blankets.  He reluctantly concluded that he should try to convince her that they should humour the porters, at least to avoid the proximity of the men they had met.  The madam’s tent was still lit.  No doubt she was writing still in her journal.  He threw the blanket aside and crept towards the tent, quietly not to arouse the sleeping porters.

“Madam,” he whispered.  The wet season river ran noisily near at hand and he couldn’t tell if she heard or replied.  He parted the tent flap.  The madam was apparently sound asleep on her back on the camp bed, that strange lustrous hair cascading over the pillow.  The lighted candle stood upon the portable desk by her shoulder tilting perilously.  He tiptoed forward to extinguish it and she moved restlessly, spilling the blanket from her figure.  Her high-necked long-sleeved nightgown was undone at the neck far enough to show the rounded swell of her breasts and the thin material had somehow become rucked up high about her white thighs.

Lady Alice had taken a glass of whisky herself after dinner and was in a restless drowse, dreaming of brown skins and muscular flat chests.  She had been thinking all that day of Ravi and the delightful nights by the shore of Lake Shalimar when she had been such a disgrace to her family.  From there her mind went to the stalwart Ezekiel.  His limbs were darker, his hair tighter curled, but his manly length and muscular torso had made her wonder what it would feel like to snuggle up against that broad chest.  She had watched him washing in the river, noting with a blush that his penis was thick in his wet shorts, like Ravi’s had been after swimming in the lake.

Stooping over her, Ezekiel heard her sigh his name, eyes still closed. Her slender white arms came up and enclosed him, drawing him down.  He extinguished the light with a closure of his fingers as he sank into her soft embrace. He would be gentle, he resolved, and make sure he gave her every pleasure this night.  His fingers delved to find the lady’s fleshy bud stiffened with desire, her lips slick and moist.  Her soft sighs grew steadily more welcoming, her thighs opening to his gentle nudge.  He slipped his suddenly urgent shaft inch by inch easily into receptive depths and her reaction was only to arch gently to take its length more deeply.  He could delay no longer, having watched her so long, finding her so succulent and even as he began to thrust gently, she murmured sleepily, her hips and belly squirming in languorous circular motion.  Her body began to arch more and more, Ezekiel hastening on in panic as he felt her body wakening, though still churning in desire and crying out in full sudden passion just as he fired inside her at last.

On the ridge above, with his half dozen men lying by their weapons, the leader of the gun-runners, having tracked Lady Alice’s caravan thus far, had cursed quietly as the light vanished.  They had seen the Englishwoman retire, her shadow moving within the glowing square with fascinating suggestiveness and waited for her to settle to sleep.  Then they had spotted the black who acted as her guide, advancing softly half-naked upon her tent, stoop and enter and held their breath, anticipating the outbreak of feminine shrieks that would rouse their prospective victims and make their task of assassination that much more difficult.

They strained for long to hear any untoward sound until, his patience breaking, their leader whispered orders.  They moved cautiously downhill, stalking their sleeping quarry like hunters. At a gesture, four men broke from him to creep silently towards the motionless forms of the native followers while he and the other man turned their attention to the tent.  As they closed with the faintly discerned oblong shape, they heard the rhythmic sounds that emanated from within.  Over where the followers lay, knives flickered in the moonlight rousing no more than a grunt or a gurgle.  The leader of the assassins rose, stooping by the tent flap and at that moment the noises inside rose to a crescendo and became explicit; a female voice crying out in passion.  “Yes… yes… darling…” 

Lady Alice awoke completely, floundering under her overturned camp bed, the crash of repeated gunshots ringing in her ears.  A heavy body was dragged from on top of her and she gaped up into the suddenly flaring light of a struck lucifer.

“The bitch is still wet from him!  She has his cum all over her belly!” A swinging hand hit Lady Alice in renewed darkness as she tried to protest the outrage, confused as to what she protested but terrified by events.

Another brief flare of light.  “Look at her!  The lady explorer whose influential connections you were so nervous of!  See what sort of connections she has been enjoying?  She has been well explored by a black man!” 

Lady Alice flung out her hands against repeated dazing blows then the light was gone again.  She was towed out by her ankles, screaming for help from her followers and trying to prevent her nightdress from sliding up around her hips.  Out in the noisy darkness, she was picked up, kicking convulsively, and tucked beneath a man’s long arm.  Her captor swung this way and that shouting orders, twice slapping Alice’s thinly clad bottom hard when she tried to interrupt him.  Otherwise she was ignored.  Oxen bellowed in alarm.  Fire flared up where the tent and wagon had been set ablaze.  Her cries for help had gone unanswered.  Even as they left her lips she realised they were wasted and that, as much as the humiliating smacks of his hand succeeded in silencing her.  She was alone with this brute and his murderous followers.

“Degenerate kaffir-loving bitch!  You are a disgrace even to the nation whose treacherous ends you serve!”  Lady Alice was carried in a few strides apart from the activity but still within the light of the blazing wagon, tucked under the strong left arm of her captor in the posture of a delinquent child, with only her long hair unbound and tumbling about her head down to the dusty earth to hide her panicking expression.  Her nightdress of plain white lawn had pulled tight about her hips, its smooth enhancement of the twin curves of her bottom cheeks, distinctly illuminated by the reddening light of the flames.  Alternately she tugged at her captor’s legs or with reaching fingers to the ground sought to push herself upwards and though she was keeping her thighs clamped tightly together, one or other of her bare heels kicked spasmodically upwards as if only wanting the resolution to break free.  As the man bellowed angrily above her, Lady Alice threw up her head in panic, the muscles of her bottom tightening instantly as she glanced back over her shoulder to see her captor had his belt undone and swinging in his fist.  Her indignant protests had been succeeded by wild appeals and were now reduced to apprehensive sobs. 

She was conscious that she had been no match for the man’s strength and fury. The demonstration of her vulnerability had strangely affected her, both daunting and disturbing.  She had thought that a journey of exploration would be a test of her resolution.  That surrounded by black men who were servants and subordinates, she could learn to resist their strange attraction.  Suddenly, at the hands of this white stranger so overwhelmingly masculine himself, she looked to be made to pay a penalty for her humiliating failure.

“I couldn’t help it…!” she wailed in horror.

“I shall cure you of it, as your father should have done!”   Langemann’s words struck upon his victim’s mind with more force than he realised.  When Lady Alice’s disgrace had been discovered that first time, the wrath of her father had been expressed only in words of shame that brooked no reparation.   Her belly churned and she experienced blind panic at the thought of punishment, but the effect of the words in her mind made it seem only requital of her folly deferred. 

Langemann’s belt struck her even more effectively. As it came down. the light glinted briefly on the metal that gave it impressive weight.  The thick, hard, buffalo-leather carried a heavy brass buckle with a regimental crest.  He had taken it from the body of an enemy soldier years before when he was a youthful rebel fighting the English Colonial government and it landed across Lady Alice’s thinly clad bottom with a crack like a pistol shot.  She managed to stifle the agonised scream that rose against her teeth and then only just swallowed another as it quickly rose and fell again, adding a second stripe to the one already showing darkly through the thin fabric.

“This to cure your filthy lust…!” The third application of the leather, smacking broad and hard across quivering female flesh, broke the young gentlewoman’s initial resolution and elicited an unfettered howl of anguish and confusion.  Lady Alice lost her head completely and her wild kicks tossed the loose folds of her nightdress up to the backs of her knees. 

“It hurts…!  Oh it hurts!”  She squirmed and wriggled, grinding her loins against the restraining solidity of the male knee as if to dissolve it by her frenzy.  “Oh please…!  she wailed.  “Oh… no … it won’t … it won’t…!”

“Then try this!” Langemann broke in savagely and applied the brass-weighted soldier’s belt to the seat of her white nightdress with unremitting vigour, the hard leather making worn striations across the once pristine cloth as it slithered this way and that over the lady’s bobbing and twisting bottom rounds, doing nothing to disguise the curves beneath.

 “And this…!  And this!”  Twice the man paused to readjust his grip and each time, Lady Alice’s expressions of submission and panic were disregarded. 

“I can’t help it … Owww!  Please … Ohhh … Spare me…! Owwwohhh!  I didn’t mean…!”  Her abundant hair flying loose in a cloud, getting across her face and into her mouth, finally clogged Alice’s cries.  Her nightdress split under the strain of her threshing, ripped gaping open between her thighs and the next descent of the belt sent the end curling deep into that dark split beneath the rounds of her bottom.  The lady’s shriek rang among the trees.

“I couldn’t help it…!  I couldn’t help it!”  Her belt-striped bottom jerked upwards, the violence of her kicks parting the loose edges of the garment to either side of her thighs and right back to her hips, leaving her nakedly exposed, but as if reluctant to close upon the throbbing swelling between them, her thighs still remained wide, blatantly displaying what lay between.  “I am a wicked creature…” Lady Alice sobbed.  “I must be possessed…!”.  Desired atonement for sinful lust seemed only to remind her of its allure.

Langemann thrust her from him as if she had turned into a writhing snake, his face working.  Lady Alice remained at his feet where he had tumbled her, wholly at his mercy, but somehow that idea only added to the throbbing heat the fiery stripes had aroused within her.  With the confused feeling that there was something unfulfilled, she struggled to her hands and knees, back hollowed, and sought coolness by thrusting her burning bottom rounds upwards with thighs still unheedingly parted. 

“Vile Jezebel!” Langemann hissed.  Alice felt him drop to his knees behind her but a nervous paralysis seemed to possess her.  Hard male hands slapped to her naked hips and she jerked involuntarily, her breasts swinging loosely in the slack breast of her nightdress.  He was going to put his thick, hard, male instrument into her! 

“No…!  No!” she moaned. As a lady of breeding and propriety, she knew she ought properly to have swooned.  But shockingly, the throbbing heat that spread from her thrashed bottom, deep into her secret core, seemed to have focused her mind instead upon more earthy reactions.  Shamefully reacting to his grip, her fear and trepidation burst forth in a quaver.  “Are… Are… you?  Are you going to…?”

“I’ll not go where a kaffir has been!” he snarled in thick disgust, but she felt his hairy thighs slide past hers, nevertheless, and a hot truncheon of flesh pressed close into the soft crevice between her bottom cheeks. 

Lady Alice gasped and squealed as his big hard hands pressed the plump hemispheres close about what she knew must be the male stem.  Wide-splayed gripping fingers sank deep, torturing her belt-seared flesh.  Lapped in the medial trough of two softly distorted globes, the thick hot column of his masculinity seemed gigantic to her inflamed imagination, occupying her mind and engrossing her expectations.  Every time he surged upwards, thrusting and grunting more like an animal than a man, Alice felt heavy globes bounce against the open gape of her wanting orifice, wiry hairs simultaneously rasping its tender lips and tantalising the swollen bud exposed within.  Her feelings blundered in confusion between shame, revolt, and horrifying desire for penetration.

Fierce, agonised curses flew from behind her and a succession of wet blobs landed first at the base of her spine and then slithering down the cleft as the source of the discharge suddenly retreated through its warm clasp. 

“Filthy Jezebel! You lure men on!”  Langemann staggered to his feet.  Denial beyond her, feeling the marks of his fingers like burning brands and possessed by the feeling she had somehow failed the test, his victim squirmed and sobbed in helpless confusion.

“I see what you need, lady!  You will be cured of that!” Alice’s captor stormed.  He shouted angrily into the darkness, summoning one of his black followers to him, giving him orders then thrusting the distraught lady towards his man.  “Go on your knees to the kaffir!”  The donkey driver was evidently not quite certain of what was expected of him and, having undone his pants, handled his down-curved penis diffidently before Lady Alice’s burning face as if slow to believe his luck.

“Handle it! Put your lily-white hands round it! Make him stiff!”  Langemann harassed her relentlessly and the black man himself quickly caught on, capturing her timorous white hands in his dark ones to demonstrate what she should do.  Alice had only the memory of her Indian boy’s youthful prick with which to compare by way of masculine furnishing.  On her knees in the dust, her hind quarters throbbing from the punitive leather, her belly with something else, she was presented with more than a boy’s equipment, a formidable dusky column suddenly rising at a stiff angle with the purplish dome almost entirely exposed, the foreskin having drawn back to make a taut encirclement at its lower edge.  Her head swam and her fingers trembled as she clutched the slithery irregularity of burgeoning male flesh, imagining in panic where it was to be used next.

“On all fours, Milady!  Invite him to mount you like a bitch in heat!”

Bowing her head in shame Lady Alice was almost glad to turn her back and on hands and knees in the dust, dumbly present her behind to the man whom she had left so enlarged, hearing his heavy breath and sensing his closeness as he knelt behind her.  Large masculine hands slid her nightdress forwards off her hips and clasped her trembling flesh, lifting her naked hinder end until her knees came off the ground and the folds of her nightdress slid on further to bulk about her back and shoulders.  She knew what she would have to take; after all she had measured its length and girth with her own trembling hands.  Its owner distracted her attention momentarily with words thick and incomprehensible, but then thrust at almost the same instant.  Lady Alice began a scream as she felt honour bound but as the stiff column rammed brutally in, she quickly abandoned it from sheer breathlessness. 

The thickened surging flesh was sunk inexorably deep within her, withdrew and then returned, over and over, a throbbing coring within her belly.  Shamefully her flesh began to react to the penetration as if it had filled some needful vacancy and carried a promise of fulfilment.  Her insides seemed to fill with a surge that demanded a response and she gave up the futile struggle to remain inert.  It was too late to regret having chosen submission, too late to attempt to deny the lust she had aroused in the man and now brought to bear upon her.  In an effort to excuse her surrender she reminded herself of the penalty she would pay, crying out at the thought of the descending strap, her jerking backside and squirming hips exciting even greater reactions and eliciting appreciative grunts from her enforced partner.  Sense of punishment to come, only fed her lust by releasing her from the demands of duty by the certainty of expiation.

The uncomprehending black man at least relished the complex effects, pumping his massive rod vigorously in and out while Lady Alice mewed and squirmed beneath him, trying all the time to conceal her belly-churning approach to orgasm from the ears of her other captors.  She groaned through clenched teeth, thrust to and fro by the black donkey-man as he reached his limit and spurted into her with grunting triumph.  At the last she was thrusting backwards in return, wailing in recognition of her frailty, but suddenly reluctant to lose him.  He withdrew his quickly softened shaft, despite her sobs and stood up, breathing heavily, hastily restoring his pants to order as he turned away.  Only then did either party remember the lone spectator.

Lady Alice, crouching close to the earth, looked on huge-eyed as Langemann, now purple in the face, unshipped the dreadful belt and handed it to her erstwhile partner, intercepting his retreat towards the fire and hectoring him on a job half finished.  Alice tried to be brave, gritting her teeth and clenching her fists, presenting her naked bottom to the belt, hoping to cure her unwelcome longings, but the black man, temporarily sated and evidently impatient to abandon her, dealt her only the lightest of blows, placing no great strength of arm behind the belt.

“Give it to her harder!”  Langemann yelled angrily.  Though at a distance, he was evidently alert to the level of sound made by the impact of the leather upon naked flesh.  “I want to hear her shriek!”  The black fellow grunted, shrugging he rolled his eyes with apologetic effect at the white woman’s anxious tear-filled upward glance, but he followed his orders.  Grasping at clues, Alice guessed that a display of fortitude only made things worse and, seeking to collaborate in his simulated rigour, had no difficulty in responding with unfeigned howls.

“That will teach you how kaffirs treat their women!” Langemann gloated.  “Are you on fire to take black men now, my lady?  Confusion filled Lady Alice’s mind regardless of his jibes.  From a dominant position as a well-bred English lady of influential family, commanding instant respect in the world, and in assured control of her little band of followers, she had crossed the path of this murderous brute and been instantly reduced to helplessness.  She told herself that she had submitted to save her life, but she knew that she had also been excited by such treatment.  The thrashing never quite obscured her thoughts of how effectively that same black man might have served to appease her wicked lust.  She had failed in the behaviour expected of one in her position and must bear the penalty.