Rahab Bk. 03 Ch. 02: Bess

The fascination of Elizabeth's conversation lingers, even these many years later. As I write, I am transported back to that Hall where I sat on a velvet covered mini-throne opposite the Great Queen.

Wherein lay the fascination? The Sultan himself asked me later, but neither in my dispatches nor in my oral report, could I quite capture the charm and charisma she exuded.

She was not beautiful as the world sees beauty. She was too thin, her nose too hooked, her skin too sallow, and she lacked that generous bosom that, for example, her Groom of the Stole, Lady Emma Somerset possessed; but it mattered not. As she leaned forward, those dark eyes flashing, that mellifluous voice cascading over the full register, and those fascinating hands moving to illustrate or make a point, you were drawn in. Yes, she was the Queen, but had she been a mere lady-in-waiting, the fascination would have been there. She was a force of nature, and you got no choice about being drawn in.

I saw men, and women, flutter round her as fireflies around a candle's flame, and she held them, nay, us, with effortless grace and ease. You were, for that moment, not only the most fascinating person in the world, you were the only other person in it. Oh, yes, her anger was like thunder and lightning, and in that mood, she could be frightening, but when she wished, she could charm a girl out of her clothes - and more.

Used as I was, to charisma, I had encountered such force only once before. As I handed her my credentials, plus the letter from Ana, I was struck by the intensity of her gaze and the beauty of her smile. She drew me in, wanting to know all about the Sultan, and smiling with delight when I described his manly attributes.

'Ah, for such a one as him, mayhap I would forego my virginity. Ah, yes, you may tell him so,' she smiled flirtatiously.

Her smile was like the dawn on a bright spring morning, and I saw behind it mischief. She intended no such thing, but for that moment, belief was willingly suspended; it was a sharing of a secret between intimates. I was drawn in, honoured, a sharer of her secrets - or so it seemed.

She interrogated me about the Ottoman diplomatic situation, wanting to know what had happened in Damascus, and who opposed the policy I had come to London to advocate. Some use nails and hot irons to extract information, England's Virgin Queen used charm. You wanted to please her, you needed to make her happy, to see that smile. I fell for her there and then.

The Great Queen seemed interested, genuinely; even then I could tell when she was putting on the charm. Her sharp intelligence grasped the chess-like intricacies of the diplomatic situation.

'They did not lie about you, little Vizier. Your mind is like a razor. You would not expect me to say yea or nay now, and no doubt you have already been briefed about my own political situation. I am an absolute ruler, but I have a bunch of old women who pretend to be men, who will tell me a thousand and one reasons to do nothing intelligent. Damned men, we'd do a better job if we could act as we wanted, do you not concur, little one?'

That smile.

Of course I concurred; frankly, I'd have done so if she'd told me it was necessary for me to jump in the Thames. Oh, yes, in my time I have seen wizards and witches, but never one who could wield the spells of the Great Elizabeth.

'And is it also true that you believe women are to be preferred to men in other spheres?' She smiled.

That was a direct flirtation, and I met her thrust with a parry.

'Highness, like yourself, I am a virgin.'

Smiling at my skill in parrying her thrust, she essayed another angle.

'Are you now? So all that mighty manhood cannot tempt you?'

Realising we could have continued this mock sword play all day, I met her beautiful eyes and said:

'No Highness.'

She drove her advantage home.

'But you are not a virgin when it comes to our sex?'

Looking her straight in those oval, lustrous eyes, I met her gaze and returned with a thrust of my own.

'As I say, Highness, I am like yourself.'

She smiled. I had taken a risk, and it had worked.

'I am glad to hear it. I hope my Lady-in-Waiting, Emma Somerset, is proving an aid?'

'Yes, Highness.'

'Good, she is the Groom of the Royal Stole, which means she attends me in my private needs.'

As my mind imagined what those might be, Elizabeth drove her thrust home.

'And she will attend to yours while you are here.'

'Thank you, Highness, but as ambassador I would hope for confidential conversations with yourself.'

I looked at her. I was flirting back.

She liked that.

'Of course, it will be necessary to check your credentials and to examine what you bring to our joint enterprise. But take care, Rahab, those old women will not take kindly to our games, and we must cause no scandal.'

'Highness, you will know I am the soul of discretion.'

'I do, Rahab, and we shall understand each other the better for it. Oh, and before I forget, Lady Emma is especially good if your arse needs attending to.'

That was so naughty, and very her, I discovered, just to suddenly drop into the conversation some sexual reference, and then move on as though she had said naught.

She stood, to mark an end of our first audience.

I stood and bowed low.

'This evening we dine in your honour, little Vizier, and after there will be a private party with you and your ladies in waiting, to welcome you to our sisterhood.'

Lady Emma curtsied.

'Highness, may I escort the Lady Rahab to her quarters?'

The Queen smiled.

'Naturally, and you are to attend to her as you do to me. Slut!'

That last word was whispered, only we three heard it, but it made Lady Emma blush, the colour rising up her cheeks from her bosom. My, she looked good enough to eat, and that was not just because I had been eight weeks without sex or orgasm. I felt between the Scylla and Charybdis of erotic desire. Lady Emma was the ripe, lush, young fruit in bloom, the Queen was the woman of the world, who oozed eroticism where Lady Emma, frankly, oozed sex. I was suddenly conscious that my own sex was wet.

Back in my chamber, Lady Emma ordered some small beer and sweetmeats. We had, she said, sometime before the feast. She asked me what I wanted to do?

After the eroticism of the audience with the Queen, I was anxious to scratch my eight-week itch, but I hated rushing things, and so asked her about her duties.

'What, Lady Emma, is the "Stole" of which you are "Groom"?'

She blushed, as she had a tendency to do. Although, as I would discover, possessed of prodigious sexual appetite, talking about the subject with any explicitness, made her blush. It was an attractive trait.

'Oh, please, call me Emm, everyone else does. Well, it's like this.'

She went on to explain that the post went back to medieval times, and that 'Stole' was an old-fashioned term for 'stool,' or, in plain English, shit. The Groom, she explained, was the person most trusted by the Monarch, and would, sometimes literally, be with him when he was at stool in the closet.

Not for the first, or the last time, I found myself wondering about the English and their strange obsession with the anus, but I let it pass, and listened as Emm explained further.

'Of course, it isn't literally that the Groom wipes the arse of the Monarch, it is rather a way of expressing the closeness of the adviser and the King, or now, Queen.'

To be frank, I was not sure that amended matters, there was still an obsession with the anus and its products, but that was something one simply had to accept.

'And so, Emm, what is your relationship with the Great Queen? Do you wipe her arse?'

Emm went the colour of my kaftan, bright crimson.

'Erm, well, as it happens, erm, I do, sort of.' She blushed furiously.

'Emm, I am not sure I grasp English fully. Either you wipe her arse, or you don't, how complicated is that?'

'You are confusing me!' She protested.

Upon examination, it transpired that Emm provided Sapphic services to the Queen and that this included anal play with her tongue, although Elizabeth preferred her to concentrate on her sex. Emm was, effectively, tonguing the Queen to orgasm with her mouth, as well as satisfying her needs anally. This, I thought, was a Court I could happily join. There was no way I was not going to press this.

'Emm, when the Queen said that you had to satisfy me as you did her, do you suppose she was also referring to the functions we had just been discussing.'

'I thought you'd never ask,' said Emm. 'Girl!'

One of the maids, a pretty girl with brown hair and a nice smile, came in.

'Yes, Lady Emma?'

'Help me undress!'

The maid, whose name was Flora, helped her ladyship out of her dress.

'Now help Lady Rahab!'

I let her help me.

When we were both in our underwear, Lady Emma dismissed Flora,

In her shift, Emm looked even more delicious. Discarding it, she stood forth in her beauty.

'Don't be shy,' she said, as she helped my strip.

'Now, here is how I serve the Queen. If you get onto all fours, I will show you.'

Thus it was that I found out what it was the Groom of the Stole did for Queen Elizabeth.

Lady Emma's skills were exquisite.

Parting the cheeks of my bottom, she quickly buried her face there, her wet tongue lapping at my anus, teasing it, and making my sex wet and needy. Then, when, I was gasping, she inserted a thumb into my anus, as her fingers strummed on my bud. Sensing that my hymen was intact, she did not go there, almost by instinct. I wondered if that was because with the Queen, she had to do the same thing?

Her ministrations were driving me wild with desire. I was not used to being on the receiving end of such service but was not complaining. Emm knew what she was doing, and I envied the Queen if she was the regular recipient of such attention.

Then she stopped.

'Oh, Emm!' I whimpered.

'Come here!'

I turned, and as her breasts were the nearest to my hands, I found myself fingering her long, thick nipples, before sucking on them. It was Emm's turn to gasp.

My fingers went down to her sex, which unlike the ones I was used to, had hair. Probing through the thatch, I penetrated her, rubbing her bud at the same time. She moaned. I thrust in harder, and she moaned louder. She shifted position.

By the time she had finished, her face was positioned in my sex, licking it and playing with my anus, whilst I occupied a similar position in relation to her. Then, without warning, she climaxed.

I had thought the Sultan's mother, Calliope, the woman who had the wettest and most intense climaxes, but I had not then met Lady Emma Somerset. She smeared my face with her juices, and my orgasm gathered pace, and then broke, like a huge wave on the shoreline. We both shuddered. It was so intense, so wet, so wild and overwhelming.

Slowly, the waves subsided as the tempest slowed and the tide ebbed. It was the best way to break an extended period of abstinence.

She laughed.

'I shall get Flora to draw a bath!'

'Well at least wait until we are half decent!'

She giggled.

'That is part of the fun! Flora!' She shouted.

The maid came in, acting as though it were an everyday occurrence to find her mistress nude and licking another woman's sex. It was only later that I realised that was, indeed, the case, and her lack of reaction came from familiarity.

'Draw a bath, girl, then bring us robes.'

Thus it was that I found myself in the tub with Emm, which had, among others, the advantage that we could soap each other.

'Emm, now I know what you do for the Queen, I have only one question.'

'Hehe,' giggled Emm, 'what is that?'

'Does she do for you what I did?'

'Now that, my dear, would be telling.'

And clearly, she wasn't - telling.