Rahab Bk. 03 Ch. 09: Temptations

Sir Francis was pleased.

'You played your part magnificently. You obtained that list, and it is invaluable. We shall give out that the source of our information was one of my agents, but we shall not reveal your name. But you have deserved well.'

'So, shall I get what I need before I return at the end of the month? Shall England agree to work with us against the Catholics? After all, if you execute Mary, they may decide to invade you, and then you will need an ally to take the pressure off you. So, Sir Francis, will I get that alliance?'

'It will need arranging with My Lord Burleigh, but not even that ditherer can be in doubt as a result of what you have uncovered. If, as we shall have to, we execute the Scots Queen we will face real danger, and if you can arrange things so that, should we need it, there is some attack on the Habsburgs, that would be of material advantage.'

'That, can be arranged, especially if I can tell my Master you would welcome a trade mission.' I had no intention of not striking while the iron was red hot.

'You shall have that, too Rahab. It is a shame we cannot keep you here as ambassador, but I am told your Sultan needs you back in Istanbul.'

'Yes, Sir Francis, he does, and though my heart is here, it is also with him.'

'With him, or with the Empire, Rahab?'

'With the Empire. We stand at a cross-roads. My Master, should he survive, is the man to restore the Empire's vigour, but there are many forces which press for an easy and luxurious life. Should we go that way, then within a century or two, I would not answer for the future of the Ottomans.'

'Hah! Like the Catholic Pope, you take a long view, Lady?'

'It seems to me, Sir Francis, that the view that in the long run we are all dead, and therefore all that matters is the short-term, is no policy for an Empire. Men like quick satisfaction with instant results; women are in less of a hurry. We look to the fate of our children's children.'

He looked at me, curiously.

'You are the strangest creature I ever did meet. You have the body of a girl, but the spirit of a man. Goodness me, I would that I had you as a collaborator, what things we could do together.'

'Well, Sir Francis, I am going, God willing, to be around for a while yet and as long as England holds fast against the Catholics, she can rely on me to keep the Ottomans true. The Padishah is not recalling me to offer me a perfumed garden and retirement.'

'I should hope not, my dear.'

I liked Sir Francis.

And so it was as he had said.

Bess agreed that English policy in the Middle Sea should be to support the Ottomans, and she was, she said, happy to receive a larger, more formal Mission to consider trade and diplomacy. My own Mission was crowned with success. The sadness was that it set a term to my time in England.

When I told Lady Emma, her usually sunny nature grew shadowed.

'I knew it would come, my Lady, but I had hoped to have more of you.'

Her pale blue eyes filled with tears. I looked at her. She was magnificent. The low-cut gowns fashionable at Court suited her. The bare shoulders allowed her long blonde hair to fall in ringlets around them while show-casing her swelling bosom, which heaved as she breathed deeply to contain her sorrow.

'Emm, I have so enjoyed your company. I love that you play the part of a beautiful but dim slut - but you are far from that.'

I loved the way the colour came to her breasts and face.

'I am confused, I don't know what you mean, I am sure,' she giggled.

We both laughed.

As the time came closer for my departure, the hours I spent with Bess were more and more precious. The Winter Queen had touched my heart, but Bess had captured it. There was a sweetness about our loving, made all the sharper by its fixed duration. Towards the end, we spent every night together.

'You are the two things I cannot have, my Pixie,' she said, as we lay together, me cuddling up to her, as she stroked my hair; her heart beat faster, 'a lover and a child. You love me as both, I feel it.'

I admitted the truth of what she said.

I leaned into her, kissing her, my mouth sucking her bottom lip. She pushed me onto my back, putting her weight on me, propping herself up on her elbows, looking into my eyes. I looked deeply into hers.

'I love you, Bess,' I said.

'I love you too, my little Pixie.'

She pushed her thigh between mine, pressing onto my sex, which I rubbed hard against her, loving the feeling the friction gave me. Manipulating my body to where she needed it to be, she pushed her wet sex into mine. Her prominent bud teased the entrance to my sealed kitty. The sensation stimulated my wetness. As she pushed, it was almost as though she was taking me with her bud. Her wetness mingled with mine, my smoothness rubbed into by her hair. I moaned, gasping for breath as she redoubled her efforts, pressing into me, her bud making me tingle there.

As she pressed and rubbed, my mouth found her nipples, first the right, then the left, I kissed, licked and then sucked them, redoubling my efforts to rub against her. It was harder and harder to breathe, I felt as though I would explode. She pressed more, and I moaned louder.

'Does my little Pixie like me taking her?'

All I could do was to grunt and moan my assent.

'Yes, I am yours!' I moaned.

Then, suddenly, I felt warm and wet, she was climaxing, rubbing into me; I climaxed too.

To be taken thus, by the most powerful woman in the world had its own erotic charge. Bess had a charisma and a power which, on an everyday basis she employed as Queen, but when applied to the bed-chamber, it was equally effective, if not more so, as it was applied just to me.

She was correct, as she usually was. I was her lover, I wanted to be with her as her erotic playmate, and would do anything she wanted. But she aroused other instincts in me. I also saw her as a maternal figure. I loved it when she took me to her breast. I had a mother, so it was not that I wanted her to be that, quite, but the age difference added a frisson to our relationship. After climaxing, she would often pull me to her breast, where I would nuzzle and suck. I seemed to satisfy the maternal need that affairs of State had never allowed her to fulfil, while she was my step-mother, one to whose bed I could return for comfort.

Even as I attempt to set it down, I am conscious that to others it will seem incomprehensible, and perhaps perverse, but with one sole exception, it was the purest love I have ever known. It is a rash woman who says what History will say of a great woman, but Bess will, I think, echo down the ages. But while History will record her deeds and her greatness, how can it record her needs and her wants, or the pleasures she sought and gave? But should this ever be read, then perhaps one day, that account can be redressed. She was a great Queen, but she was a greater woman. I doubt there will ever be one to match her.

Our morning parting was always such sweet sorrow, and with each day my departure drew nearer, the sharper the pain. But the pleasure was also sharpened. Human nature is strange.

As I walked back to my chamber in the early hours, I heard noises from Emm's room. It was early for her to be awake. I stopped.

'So, I am Lady Flora, and you are Emm, the maid, is that right?'

'Yes, Miss Flora, I am just a lowly maid.'

'You look more like a cow to me, Emm, you strumpet, those big tits on show. Squeeze them for me!'

Emm was being used by her maid again. It was a peculiarity of hers that, being high born, she liked her maid to change places with her and use her as a low whore.

'Yes Miss,' I heard Emm gasp. She was clearly playing with her nipples. I knew that sound.

'My arse needs cleaning, whore, do it, now!'

Goodness me, I was suddenly wet again. Seized by the impulse, I opened the door.

There was Emm, on her knees, behind her maid, her face buried in her backside.

'Lady Rahab,' Flora said, 'do stay and watch that whore clean me. Would you like to join her?'

The erotic thrill of seeing the gorgeous Lady Emm naked, on her knees behind her maid, licking her backside, was intense. There was a time when the invitation from the maid, Flora, to join in would have had me on my knees, submitting; but that time was no more.

'Thank you, but I'm content to watch!'

Emm blushed, but clearly loved the idea, as she redoubled her efforts; Flora had no strong opinion. Emm loved the humiliation of being used by her maid, who peppered her comments with insults, which Emm loved.

'You slut, you whore, you dirty bitch. Licking your maid's arse, you are such a dirty girl.'

Emm licked frantically, rubbing herself as she did so. Flora was doing the same. She had very large breasts, even larger than Emm's, as she leant forward, pleasuring herself, they swayed from side to side in a most mesmerising fashion. Emm's breath became more ragged, as did Flora's.

But I was the lover of the Great Queen. Her juice had dried on my lips. I had just come from her bed. There seemed something almost treasonable about taking another lover. It was more than that though.

Love and lust, I thought, as I watched Emm and Flora, were more sharply differentiated than I had imagined when I first began to have sexual feelings. I thought back, to Calliope, the mother of the Sultan, who was my first great passion, where gratitude and the need for a mother-figure had led me into a puppy-like devotion I called love. Then to Jess, with whom there was a passion, wrought from the need to have someone to call my own, which turned into a version of what I was witnessing now.

Thinking her mine, I had become hers. The eroticism of our love reminded me of what Emm and Flora had, a role-reversal which intensified the passion - and the climaxes. But it was essentially self-indulgent, and I had decided against that path. Tempting for a moment though it had been, I could not step twice into the same river.

With the Druze Princess, Damila, there had been an intense physical flame, which had again, lit that part of me which needed to submit to another. And then there was my darling Ana, the Warrior-Amazon who guarded the sacred places and whose deep passion for me had first shown me that lust and love were not the same. The Damascus Road had brought loss, but also enlightenment. Ana was my soul-mate, and the sadness which haunted me was the thought that I had lost her forever.

And so I had come to London. I took the decision to come alone. I needed to separate myself out from everyone; a need which grew stronger as time passed. But if I had thought to leave the Orient in coming to this foggy northern Isle, I discovered I had brought it with me; it was inseparable from who I was.

That the Great Queen herself should love me was beyond any imaginings, as was what that meant in terms of the balance between lust and love. With her there was none. It was a seamless garment. It was the love she felt for me which poured into the love I returned, enriched by our mutual desire: lover, step-child, step-mother, we were each other's all in all. I love her still; I always shall.

And then there was the brief moment with the sad Winter Queen of Scots, where for those few hours, life returned before the tide ebbed forever.

That had been my journey, and not even for the luscious breasts on offer with Emm and Flora, would I retrace those footsteps. The lover of Elizabeth could not betray her, as she had betrayed the Winter Queen. Time takes all away, but these he cannot take.

And so I remained Rahab. I longed to be with my Ana, but could never see how it would be possible.

As I think back, so young, taken from a parochial setting and plunged into the currents of the Seraglio, I had survived. That in itself was an achievement. But I had also prospered. The Occident would never understand the Orient, and yet Bess and I understood each other so well. If I was the Sultan's slave, yet within that, free, I was love's slave to Bess, and within that, free. Within an entirely different setting, I was still Rahab, and brought with myself the Orient to the West.

And as I looked at Emm and Flora, now about to climax judging by the looks on their faces, I envied them the simplicity of their passion and the ability to indulge it. The constraints of rope and chain were naught compared to those of the cares of State. And were the pleasures heightened thereby? As I watched Emm climax, her beautiful thighs glistening with her juices, and as Flora did the same, her full breasts reddened by the release of passion, I thought not. What took me to the heights was not the erotic pleasure, though I desired it so much, it was the sort of link I had with Ana or with Bess, that opening of the soul. Would I have it again? Or should I simply thank God that I had enjoyed it at all?

'Oh Lady Emm, you are so naughty,' Flora giggled as they embraced.

'And so are you, but you are such a delicious girl, don't you think Rahab?'

Seeing the smile on Emm's face and the happiness in her eyes, my heart swelled.

'Oh Emm, I think you are both delicious, and I shall miss you, my darling Lady Emm, so much.'

Emm, naked as the day she was born, stepped over and pulled me to her capacious bosom.

'You know I love you, Rahab, I have from the moment we met, but the Queen comes, and cums, first, and so we never consummated our love, but you will take it with you. A part of me will always be with you.'

Oh, darling Emm, even at this distance, I remember that embrace, the warmth, the love. I wonder what became of her, of them all? It all seems so long ago now.