for myself.
It was Princess Honoria’s habit to take a bath in the evening as well as the morning, and thereafter to lie sleepily upon her couch and have her slaves anoint and massage her with warm oil perfumed with the petals of roses. Soon it was noticed that this task was reserved exclusively for Sosostris, while the other slaves were dismissed from the royal presence. Furthermore, by day, the looks and glances exchanged by the princess and the slave-girl seemed to betoken more than the merely affectionate relations that might obtain between a mistress and a loyal slave. It was as though their looks communicated some illicit and secretive passion, only augmented by their subtle smiles exchanged in public, as they silently remembered together the pleasures of the night before, and anticipated the pleasures of the night ahead. Sometimes, it was said, cries were heard coming from the Princess Honoria’s private chambers after dark, which sounded very strange to the ears of those who had always assumed that such cries in a woman could only be provoked by the presence and the dutiful attentions of a husband.
Indeed, if Rumour is to be believed, the worst fears of the palace were well founded. For on her very first night in Honoria’s service Sosostris began to administer those seductive oils to her mistress, murmuring gently that she had great skill in this art. The other slave-girls helped the young princess from her bath, wrapped her in soft cloths, carried her over to her wide, cushioned couch, laid her down on her stomach and carefully dried her.
Then the Egyptian took her bowl of perfumed unguents, and poured them into the hollow of Honoria’s back, and with her slim and delicate brown hands she began to rub and knead the oils into the princess’s shoulders and neck, her back and flanks. To looks of some surprise from the other slave-girls, she began to run her hands beneath the soft white cloths that covered the princess’s modesty, and also to massage her smooth white buttocks.
After a few moments, the cloths slipped aside altogether and fell silently to the floor, leaving the princess naked and exposed, but she seemed to mind not a whit. And then, to the great astonishment of the attendant slave-girls, who not being Egyptian would never have dreamed of taking such a liberty with the royal person, Sosostris took up the bowl again and poured a thin golden trickle down between the princess’s thighs, which were still at this point held tightly and chastely together. And the impudent Egyptian, a knowing smile playing upon her lips, actually sat down beside her mistress on the couch, rather than kneeling subserviently beside it, as was the usual custom. She was wearing a long white tunic, loosely belted about the waist with a red sash. Now, to make it easier to sit on the royal couch, albeit uninvited, she shamelessly drew up her dress almost to her knees, baring her long, smooth legs for all the world to see, and exhibiting her fine leather sandals, saucily high-laced in the brazen manner of a common harlot of the Suburra.
She leaned over her mistress closely so as to press more of her weight upon her hands, but as she did so her own ripe breasts beneath the white linen tunic brushed lightly against the princess’s back with a shocking intimacy, and the princess stirred beneath that touch, making no move to reprimand it. Then the impudent slave began to run her fingertips teasingly up and down the smooth and glistening crevice from the princess’s buttocks down to knees and back again, but teasingly, as if she were engaged not in work at all, but in pure play.
Then, before the shocked eyes of the other slave-girls, Sosostris actually eased those young white thighs apart. Leaning down, she unloosed her tresses and shook them free, and began to sweep her long black hair up and down between her mistress’s thighs, and up over her buttocks and her back and then down again. Sosostris’s hair was of that magnificent Egyptian hue, blue-black in intensity, long and perfectly straight and reaching almost to her waist. Now she used it not as mere decoration but as an implement of seduction. Under her wicked ministrations, Princess Honoria gave a soft moan and, almost despite herself, it seemed, raised her buttocks a little and arched her slender back. When she settled herself again upon the silken cushions beneath her, it just so happened that her thighs were no longer quite together, but just a little apart, as if with lewd invitation. The Egyptian girl smiled a smile of quiet triumph, and dipped her fingertips into the bowl of perfumed oil again.
At this point it is said, though I would fain not believe it, Honoria turned her head slightly, and murmured to the rest of the slave-girls that they were dismissed, at which they all retired from the chamber. But, women being slaves to concupiscence as well as to insatiable curiosity and gossip, they did not retire completely, but concealed themselves in a neighbouring antechamber, pretending to close the doors, before opening them again silently and peeking out between the drawn curtains at the Egyptian slave-girl’s treatment of their mistress.
It seemed Sosostris was no innocent as to this, either, for after a few moments she glanced towards where the other slave-girls were concealed, and looked saucily at them, even though she could barely have seen them there in the shadows. And she arched her eyebrows and smiled at them, as if she knew very well that they were there and watching, and even enjoyed the knowledge that her pleasuring of the princess was being watched.
Now she… But here I must break off, for decency’s sake. There is more to tell, much more; but let not such scandalous lewdness stain the pages of my humble chronicle. Other writers of a lower type may write of the loves of Princess Honoria as they choose, and make a grubby penny thereby. Let that not be my fate, O Muse!
For there is no way to tell all that I know of the Princess Honoria and remain within the bounds of decency. Many a time after that, the secretly watching slave-girls stood long into the night, and heard many more sighs and moans, and witnessed many more outrageous lecheries performed between girl and girl, which would have shamed the most shameless quayside whore of Corinth. Yet how to tell more without offending beyond recall the modesty of my readers?
How to tell of how those two wanton hussies, one a royal princess and one a mere slave, spent that whole night devising new depravities, and attaining thereby new and hitherto undreamed-of summits of pleasure? How to tell of the night when they half dressed each other again, but only to augment the delight they took in each other’s semi-nakedness, which is always more lewd than pure and unadorned nakedness, as any whore knows? How to describe the slave-girl seating her mistress upon the couch, and lacing the giggling princess into her own high-laced red leather sandals, and clasping a slim gold chain round her slim girlish waist, and applying fresh lipstick to her already swollen and cherry lips, and dark kohl round her eyes, until the hitherto innocent girl, in appearance now as well as in conduct, looked like the most fatal succubus of every chaste man’s dreams? And how the Egyptian slave-girl…
But no, horresco referens, I shudder to relate. No more I say, for shame. It would be grievously wrong to detail further acts of such wickedness.
Now my lamp burns low, and the hills of Italy beyond my window are fallen silent for the night, but for the lonely cry of the lych-owl. There I must break off. At my age it is not good to work so late, as I shall exhaust myself. The silent scriptorium is growing chilly, and yet I feel a strange and over-rapid beating of my heart, as if from great exertion, and a heated perturbation within myself. Suffice it to say that Princess Honoria, as I have painted, was most shamelessly given up to pleasures of the flesh, to which she gave her exclusive attention; and that these pleasures were equally derived from, and slavishly bestowed upon, both men and women, with all the indifference that is the true mark of the inveterately promiscuous and enflamed temperament. But it would be wrong to dwell further on the princess’s private and lamentable practices.
And so to bed; and the Lord keep me from lewd and unchaste thoughts.
13
The following morning: and to return to Honoria.
After the awakening of her lower nature, and while she still enjoyed the vile attentions of Sosostris to the full, it was only a matter of time before this incorrigible nymphomaniac surrendered more dangerously to the charms of a man. His name was Eugenius, and he was her chamberlain. In the midst of the tedious limitations and formalities of the royal court, the princess yielded to the impulse of her nature and threw herself into his arms, more out of a longing for experience and adventure, perhaps, than from any real love for him. Her guilt and shame were betrayed soon enough by pregnancy, made even more obvious by her slim form.
Her mother, reserved and correct in all things, was angered and shamed beyond telling. She had the poor girl instantly confined to one of the darkest, dimmest chambers of the Imperial Palace behind a locked door, and put on a starvation diet such as you might impose on the most disgusting criminal the night before his execution. Honoria’s brother, meanwhile, ever vengeful, suspicious, and still without children of his own, plotted an even worse punishment.
