already carried away.
'Keep the glass, Amanda, a refill is already coming.'
Three of the native officers, slim and smiling, came towards her. One of them was carrying an ice bucket with the long neck of a champagne bottle protruding from the top. More officers were breaking up into small groups, each group with a bucket and a bottle, and each group walking around the pool and stopping at the back of one of the women.
It was as if each of the wives had been assigned her own escorts.
Amanda realized with a shock that was probably the truth, the selection already made of which man – which men – would have each woman. She looked around and saw the same knowledge dawning on her friends' faces. Amanda also noticed that none of the women were refusing to drink. Jean Ellington had been the most obviously reluctant to pick up a glass but Carol Carnac-Smyth had snapped something to her which had made Jean comply. And that was no surprise, what with those damned snakes hanging overhead.
'Now, who's the senior lady present today?' The Prince demanded.
He was smiling, rubbing his extended thumbs against the silk sleeves of his jacket as he grinned at his prisoners. It was a joke, a sly joke about the Indian caste system as adapted and practiced by the British. Every civil servant's desk had a warrant of precedence on it, a book which showed the relative status of every servant of the King-Emperor. Without the warrant nobody would have known how to arrange the seating at a dinner party, and whether an Inspector of Smoke Nuisances and his wife should be further up the table than a Junior Settlement Officer and his spouse. But in the Army the whole system was much clear cut. The Colonel of the 17th was a bachelor, so the senior major's wife was the senior lady. Which meant, amongst other things, that she was the wife who gave the signal for the women to withdraw after a meal and leave the men to drink their port in peace. But not today: no segregation of the sexes today.
'I'm the senior lady,' Carol Carnac-Smyth admitted.
The Prince nodded: 'Oh yes, so you are, Carol. Now, will you come out here or shall I try my marksmanship again? And I should warn you that I'm a very poor shot. The bullet may go anywhere.'
Carol didn't exactly stand up, for she didn't get the chance, not with eager brown hands at each elbow to help her up, then to take her wrists and arms. The Kultooni men standing behind her almost lifted her out of the pool and then provided a close quarter escort as she was walked around the pool towards the Prince. All the eyes in the room were fastened on the sight of Carol's lean and shapely figure clearly displayed under the thin wet sari. Especially where the fabric clung to the slowly swinging shapes of her breasts. One of the officers spun the rocking horse around on its rockers so that the big simpering blue eyes were looking directly towards the pool. Carol was made to stand behind the wooden model, each of her arms still being lightly held.
'Well, Carol, you seem to have plenty of prisoner's friends eager to help you along' Ravi chuckled. 'Let's get her ready for mounting.'
There were answering laughter from the men around Carol as two of them kept their hands on her wrists while Ravi stood closer behind her. He reached around her body with one hand and used it to gently cup her left breast, then to tweak the fold in her cleavage which kept the sides of the sari together. The women in the pool and the men standing around it all saw the spasm of anger which showed in Carol's face, though she made no effort to break away from the men holding her, clearly realising the futility of any such attempt.
'Come on, more champagne all round before we unveil the senior lady in all her beauty,' Ravi sneered. 'Drink up, ladies, for the clock is already running. Failure to comply would be jolly bad news all round for all of you.'
Each of the four women left in the pool found themselves being touched on the head and shoulders by different hands as they were given refilled glasses. Amanda Priller accepted hers as numbly as if she was at some party instead of involved in this madness. Even when the hands which had touched her began to gently rub the lobes of her ears she still sipped from the glass as if her entire universe hadn't suddenly turned inside out. She ignored the fingers gently rolling her flesh between them, but gaped at the sight of both of Ravi's brown hands stroking Carol's breasts again, the woman's blonde hair hanging down as she lowered her head from the watchers. Or perhaps it was in anticipation of the popping flashbulb which suddenly went off above Mr Manji's camera. Yet even Carol's humiliation at the Prince's hands wasn't enough to stop all the women's eyes turning towards a large blackboard being set up on an easel beside the table.
Finely lettered words had been meticulously painted in white on the board. The top line read: 'RUNNERS AND RIDERS FOR THE GAZEPORE FILLIES FORNICATION STAKES'. Underneath those words was a grid of painted white lines. On top of the left column was the single word, 'MOUNTS': underneath it one of the officers had already begun chalking in Carol's name in full: 'Mrs Carol Carnac-Smyth'. To the right of that column were more columns, four of them, each column with the word 'RIDERS' above it. Each still blank but waiting to be filled in. It was past comprehension that these Indians thought they could do such a thing to white women. Yet they seemed quite without qualms as they continued their preparations. Ravi was laughing, now cupping Carol's tits in the palms of his hands and whispering something in her ear which made her lift her flushed face up for all the audience to see.
'Every glass empty now?' The prince asked. 'OK, gentleman, please do the honors.'
The men on either side of Carol reached out and tugged at the top of her sari, loosening the knot between the pale skinned white mounds that Ravi was fondling so avidly. The material wrapped around her body came loose and slipped down as another flashbulb popped. Camilla Hartley-Dexter heard the men stroking her arms and shoulders gasp with excitement: the fingers rubbing her ears squeezed harder. Up above there was a jabber of excitement like a monkey taunting an enemy from the treetops as the boy on the rafter saw Carol's naked figure – a figure well worthy of the attention it was getting.
Like her friends, Carol rode miles every day, swam in the club pool most days and played tennis or hockey at least three times a week. It was an article of faith in Anglo-Indian society that the surest way to stay healthy in the tropics was through sport, and in a society where all menial work was done by servants the opportunities for sport were many. So, though in her early thirties and a mother, she still had an excellent figure. Rather taller than the average, wide hipped, and well breasted, but with only a few extra pounds to show for her age, and those distributed to good advantage.
She was by any standards a good looking if not a beautiful woman, with a body which any man would want to possess, and all the lustful male eyes in the Moorghi-Khana were taking in her large red nipples and the wet curls of the patch of straw colored hair visible between her legs.
The incongruity of the well tanned arms and bleached hair against the milky whiteness of her soft curves would have seemed strange only to those not bred in one climate and grown accustomed to living in another. But most of the officers inside the hut were in exactly that category and their first sight of a naked European woman bought forth comments of appreciation, many of them in perfect English and clearly audible.
'By Jove, that Carnac-Smyth woman is looking like a jolly good fuck, Musad, old boy,' Amanda Priller heard one of the Kultooni officers standing behind her say with glee in his voice. Then a hand patted her on the head as if she was a dog and another officer answered.
'Not to worry, Yasir, I think our mare here will give us all even better rides once we get the whip out to her on the straight.'
Everything that was happening was clearly impossible in the real world. Amanda decided this had to be a drug induced dream and very soon reality must break through. She saw Carol putting a foot in one of the stirrups and swinging a graceful leg over the rocking horse.
But instead of sitting on top of the plump red pillow, Carol had to bend forward over the horse as though she were a jockey, her lower belly on the pillow, her hands clutching on the reins and her bottom directly above the toy's tail.
An officer stood on either side of the front of the horse and pushed down on the rockers with their feet, tipping it forward and lifting Carol's bare backside higher up for Ravi's inspection. He clapped his hands, took the riding crop off his wrist and called behind him. The ayahs giggled into the hands they were covering their faces with and formed a line behind the horse. Whether by accident or by her own efforts Manga was at the head of the queue and eagerly accepted the riding crop the Prince offered her.
'More drinks, girls, more drinks,' he called out genially. 'You must enjoy yourselves for we've gone to no end of trouble to arrange this entertainment for you.' The Prince sounded to Amanda like the Garrison Padre introducing a magic lantern show about English cathedrals.
The glasses were refilled, the woman accepted them with shaking hands and sipped from the dew beaded glasses. As Camilla reached up for hers one of the Kultooni officers put his fingers around her hand and rubbed the
