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The trip back to Old Mother Earth had been uneventful, unprofitable too as I discovered soon after I’d landed. Apparently there were still some taxes due. Now I know such things can be evaded for a while, avoided if you’re really clever but I also know that the bastard taxman will catch up one day.

So I left the paperwork with a man I knew, put my ship in quarantine and slipped off to the Low Countries to see what might be cooking with my friends over there. A high powered member of the Lady’s order lives in an old part of Amsterdam and I thought the time more than right for me to visit him. It’s who you know, usually isn’t it, not what you know, that gets to the bottom of most things. Which was all well and good until, upon making enquiries after my arrival I discovered the man in question wasn’t there.

For ten days I waited patiently in a cheap room above a brown bar, ten days while the rain dripped through a leaky roof and the rats ran back and forth behind the wainscot. They had their own secrets to keep, no doubt. Shame they couldn’t be a little less noisy doing it.

Ten days in which I dithered undecidedly about my gender again. Boredom, I am ashamed to say had brought me to that. Boredom and need and the worry of constantly being on my guard regarding Her secrets. It was ever so, I know that but of late. Of late there is a change of attitude in the world and many of us, of the so called Cowries, are well aware of that.

Even the Dutch girl who brought my food always had an air of secrecy about her, a burden indeed, weighing heavily, as if she had some additional lore of her own which she dare not impart. Indistinctly she appeared in the doorway, pausing to observe me silently for a second or two, like a wraith, apron askew, a tendril of dark hair falling crookedly across her face before stepping into the room with her tray.

Her greeting remained the same for the three days that he served me, a single guttural word I did not recognise, but she bore the cowrie cushioned carefully within the folds of her dress and though she offered no signs that I could recognise her hands trembled each time she poured milk for me. Both her attitude, eyes downcast, demeanour submissive and the fare she bore on the tray, remained the same, until of cheese and brown bread I’d had my fill, and of warm, creamy milk too I am sorry to say.

Secrets then, in the shadow swathed arched dusty doorways and worn stone steps disappearing upwards into the thickness of the wall, and in the secrets which in time we learned to share in the tiny room above my own which was her meditation cell.

Secrets too in the ironclad box which I had so painstakingly brought with me, and in the trail of false clues I’d laid to elude those who might try the best to follow.

……………

Strange how fickle fate sometimes lends a hand when one is at the point of beginning to despair. Today I was quietly reading when the Dutch girl came in. I’d half heard her swishing, half felt the movement of air as she bore my tray down the stairs, why I could almost taste the dark tang of coffee on my lips.

“Day after tomorrow he come back!” she said in a monotone.

“To……who does?” I asked without thinking. For days I’d endured virtual silence from her, gruff days and moody in which I’d convinced myself she spoke only some foreign language. Three days in which I’d had time to ask myself one or two questions. Like who the hell was Georgio Madracus anyway.

That was the easy one. He was the man I’d travelled all this way to see, the man I’d waited for all this time, the man who……yes.

One or two questions. Like: If you knew a woman who was pregnant, who had eight kids already, three who were deaf, two who were blind, and one who was mentally retarded because of it’s mother’s syphilis, would you recommend that she had an abortion?

Huh! That wasn’t even cause to sweat, it wasn’t a question at all. The third was more annoying and went something like this: It is time to elect a new leader and here are some facts about the three candidates who are standing for the position. Candidate one has associates with crooked politicians, and consults with astrologers. He's had two mistresses, chain smokes cigarettes and drinks a dozen martinis every day. Candidate two was kicked out of office twice, sleeps until noon, used opium in college, smokes heavily and drinks a quart of whiskey every evening. Candidate three is a decorated war hero. He's a vegetarian, doesn't smoke, drinks an occasional beer, paints pictures in watercolours in his spare time and has never cheated on his wife.

One or two questions like I said. Added to which I now had, unexpectedly, who is coming back ‘day after tomorrow’?

I looked up and there stood the blasted Dutch girl grinning brazenly at me. She’d brought cups and saucers and milk on a tray along with a coffeepot unless my nose was mistaken.

A tall silver coffeepot shaped like a dragon with steam coming out of its nostrils.

“Day after tomorrow Georgio come back!” she said again.

Some biscuits too by the look of things.

Maybe I should have taken her off to bed there and then. Complete with tray of coffee and biscuits. Maybe I should have grabbed her and kissed her. Maybe I should have done all manner of things, but I didn’t. What I did do was sit in the window seat with her, eat a biscuit or two and drink some very good coffee.

“I wasn’t sure quite how to take you at first” she said eventually.

“No?”

The Dutch girl nodded.

“Well why……”

I poured more coffee for us both and for some while we drank in silence. Sometimes you can have far too many damned questions.

I wanted to ask why she hadn’t spoken to me in a language I understood before now instead of communicating in clicks and grunts like a Bushman or a mad Wallonian. I wanted to ask what she did up there in her little room all day. When she wasn’t attending to my needs that is. I wanted to ask why, but then, like I said, there were too many damned questions.

“And I had my reservations about you too, I don’t mind saying!” I said.

Mutual wariness it was, a feature not unusual amongst some of the Cowries where caution, even after the acknowledgement has passed, may be no bad thing.

“Doubly sure!” she stated putting down her coffee cup.

“And no mistaking” I replied.

The Dutch girl grinned, pushed back the chair in which she was sitting and stood up.

“Shall we?” she asked softly, signing me rapidly.

Desire and urgency, there was certainly no mistaking that!

I swallowed what was left of my own coffee, set the cup down and followed her to the arched doorway.

There were stone steps, as I’d expected, curling around the central column of the turret, dusty and worn in such a way as to force any climber to begin correctly or be forever wrong footed.

“Will you ascend ahead of me” she asked.

Understanding the need for urgency I moved to comply, feeling her hands on my bottom the moment my foot touched the first step. A quick thrill of pleasure jolted me and if I hesitated at all it could have been for much less than the smallest split second. As it was by the time I had negotiated the first half dozen steps her hands were pressed against me firmly. Had I not known better, I might have thought her actions were an effort to assist me in my climb. Twenty one steps I counted before, in a hushed voice she stopped me.

“Do tell” she whispered, the pressure of her hands not for one moment lessening “What your favourite position woman to woman might be?”

Her question caught me rather unawares, at least the timing of it did, for I had hoped at least to gain the safety of her chamber before we tested progress further. Without doubt her actions so far had sorely aroused me but until that moment I had deemed it prudent to keep my feelings hidden. Now as I paused at her bidding and began to consider her question I saw, close in front of me a narrow doorway set at right angles to the stair.

“I have many favourites” I began “Depending upon this and that……”

My companion stepped higher, placing her feet somehow upon unseen steps and her hands first upon my hips and then my waist until she stood closely beside me.

“It would please me greatly?” she said softly her whole body now pressing against me “if you would allow me to show you some of mine”

Without further ado she began to kiss my lips avidly holding her body tightly against my own with her arms around my waist. Against she’d caught me somewhat unprepared and while I found her kisses sweetly agreeable I became, as her actions continued unabated, more than a little afeared of us both tumbling back down the stairs.

Presently the pressure of her lips upon my own lessened as, reluctantly she paused for breath.

“Can we go up……?” I asked quickly. “It is……”

“Yes, yes!” She said quickly “Of course we can!”

Indecent haste describes it exactly. She put her hands on my backside again, keeping them there until we got to the top of the stairs, by which time I was feeling more than a little excited.

Her room was smaller than I expected, more of a turret than a proper room, an oddly shaped space with narrow arched windows on three sides and an alcove with a tiled iron fireplace in it on the other.

It was a peculiar place, more like a temple than a room anyone would choose to sleep in, more of a garret in which some unknown poet might dream his life away hopelessly while his words, unread built up, page after page upon the floor around him.

A warm room, happy with sunlight shaped with the colours of the stained glass which filled the windows. Reds and green, blues and purples predominated, intricate in patterns of foliage and flowers.

I stepped into those colours with the girl close behind me and felt as if I was stepping into a cathedral.

“Bes’ room in the house, Georgio always says!” the girl told me.

I turned and let her slide her arms around my waist, push her body into my own, her breasts against mine so that, in spite of the material of our garments I felt the shape of them clearly.

“Two days……” she whispered “then Georgio back”

……………

There followed a period whose details to this day remain hazy. If two days had elongated into a week or a year I should not have been surprised, had the Dutch girl herself been two or three, or even several different people I would not have been surprised either. The room itself did not even have a bed in it, as such, arrangements for comfort being many and varied in the form of couches and cushions and deeply soft places on the floor, every one of which it seemed was alive with patterns of coloured light. I wondered if the sun always shone there, seeing shadows shift but slowly as we lounged. But the fire burned that night and candles with it, mysteriously for I saw no one light either. With Una in Shangri La there’d been an underlying urge to perform, an unspoken urge to outdo each other in some way. Here, in the coloured light of the Dutch girl’s chamber anything and everything progressed slowly and dreamily.

I hadn’t even thought of her as being very attractive physically until she undressed, which in itself was a revelation for the dowdy, servant girl clothing she’d worn had deliberately hidden all her beauty and charm from me.

She allowed me to undress her hair and as I stood behind her, removing pins and grips and strings of pearls I treated my eyes to the wondrous shape of her. As one woman to another you can believe me implicitly when I tell you her body was beautiful and that beauty was matched by the perfection of her nature. Had I wished for an angel to appear then surely I had one when finally I released the encoded intricacies of her hair.

I suppose it was thigh length, most of it, though it moved as she breathed, shimmered as she smiled, shone like a forest in the patterns of sunlit coloured lights seeming now and then, like the fronds of an exotic tree, to brush the floor around her feet.

Spellbound I stroked her, slipping my hands down her sides, from headtop to waist, to hips, lower……and again and again, quivering and growing ever more unsteady on my feet while she sighed and smiled, exuding most powerfully the desires she had for me.

I found a loose pearl in her hair when we sat down, caught up somewhere that I’d missed. My fingers caught it, flicked it, clicking onto the floor. We spoke little, kissed a lot without with any haste to explore all the usual places. And when we did their discovery came by circuitous routes as if completely accidentally. We’d fingers and lips soon enough for each other, toes and teeth with which to tickle and bite, shapes and the shadows and shades of brightness in which to discover. And we found similar likes and dislikes, not many of the latter for neither of us in that condition were much interested in restraint or pain. But likes, likes oh Sweethearts, we had so many, likes and loves, too many to number.

……………

We lay on the floor before the fire, two dozen candle flames dancing around us like wraiths while the fire burned quietly in its hearth, black iron, blue and white tiles and a scattering of soft orange which spilled like a liquid across her body. Pastelled contours as curvaceous as wind shaped desert sands contrasting with unfathomable black in the magics that were alive in the room that night. Blue back gleamed the veins beneath her skin, a single lick’s depth for a persistent tongue, but blacker still and hypnotic, her wild triangular copse, cleft riven, the lightest touch away from a gentle fingertips exploration.

There hid the pinks and the greys, the purples and the pearlised, all the colours in a morning’s rainbow but oh so much more subtle. And there hid one other pearl, one softly glistening when the hunters in my hands went in search of it.

I should not boast, no we should not, nor pray, but we must feel blest for in our hands and in our hearts assuredly did all heaven lay. And Sweethearts tell me, if you can; could you hope or wish or want to win, any greater prize than this?

……………

In the quietest reaches of the night I dreamed I looked down at us, and in the crook of my arm tightly against me an exquisite woman lay, curled in innocence, her perfect face against my breast.

Until pinkness faded into dawn where a candle guttered, and in the embers of the fire the salamanders slept. We did not move, we did not breathe, until the sun rose high enough to sear the sills with emeralds of fire, burning through grey gloom to banished the night.

One last candle, larger than all the rest had been wavered wearily, hooded by a blob of blackness on its wick as transient as any dream.

I felt her lips on my cheek, on my forehead, on my breasts, heard her words as yet only distantly. Then the disc of the sun returned to the windows and the turret room became engulfed once more in an ocean of coloured light.

© Aahlu. 241010.