advise you to ask not about what concerns you not, lest you hear what pleases you not.’
The council chamber turned out to be a spacious wooden kiosk on a low hill in the Palace’s garden. Its interior was painted with scenes of hunting, picnicking and flirtation. Though pleasant, the place hardly seemed suitable for the transaction of government business. The Vizier, possibly anxious not to be interrogated further about any prayer-cushions, having made a hasty obeisance, hurried away. Orkhan seated himself on one of the low, cushioned benches in the kiosk and waited.
He had not waited long before someone entered. It was not a minister, but a woman, who came wriggling on her belly across the floor, making her way towards him. This time it was not Anadil, for the waggling rump, sheathed in a tight black robe belonged to an older and bulkier woman. She did not raise her head or say anything, but once she had reached the bench on which he was sitting, she set to work, licking his feet and sucking at his toes. Occasionally she moaned, whether from pleasure or disgust was not clear.
Orkhan was so surprised that for a while he allowed her to have her way with his feet before he recollected himself and pulled them away.
‘Go away, you foolish woman!’ he told her. ‘I am not in the mood for your Harem games. This is a place for business, not pleasure. Get out before the ministers arrive.’
‘But, oh my master, I am here on business. I am the first of the Sultan’s petitioners. I prostrate myself utterly before you, for I have come to beg for mercy for my mistress, Anadil. My name is Perizade, which means the Fairy- Born.’
And only now did she raise her head. Orkhan found himself gazing on a tear-stained, pudgy face. Perizade’s nose was slightly hooked and her lips were thick. Her heavy breasts pressed tight against the black sheath. As Orkhan gazed on them, she too looked down on them and smiled.
‘I abase myself utterly. I am yours to do with as you please. I am the Sultan’s prayer-cushion. Do with me as you will. Please forgive Anadil. Unless you forgive my mistress, she will be angry with me.’
‘You are mistaken. She will be dead rather than angry.’
Perizade thought about this. But she looked unconvinced,
‘But you must give mercy to Anadil.’
‘“Must” is not a word to be used to sultans. Anadil is my slave and I shall deal with her as I choose.’
‘It is true that Anadil is your slave, but she is a slave of her body first. It is the same with all of us. From the moment of our birth we, all of us, find ourselves swimming in a great ocean of desire, whose sexual tides carry us to unfamiliar shores, whether we will or no.’
Orkhan snorted at her words, but Perizade continued,
‘It is certain that none of us are free. We are all driven by Destiny. Destiny is a mad scribe, who writes our stories on our bodies. It writes upon our skins, covering them with a script of lines, spots, veins, freckles, and swellings.’
‘So, Perizade, you are a philosopher?’ Orkhan was amused in spite of himself.
‘I am a washerwoman, Oh Sultan. I wash the clothes of Anadil and the other concubines. She is young and you are young. If she was foolish last night, it was only a child’s game and that was perhaps the only fun she will ever have. You are a sultan and we are your slaves, but we are all humans as well. Anadil is not a toy to be torn apart and discarded when she does not please you. Think again. Spare my mistress and I will grant you anything you desire.’
‘How can you, a washerwoman to slaves, give the Sultan anything he does not already have?’
‘I can give you good fortune.’
‘What? You are a lucky slave or something?’
‘Or something. I tell fortunes. I am a phallomancer.’ She licked her lips in a suggestive fashion and continued,
‘Show me your cock and I will tell you your fortune,’ and, rising from her kneeling posture, she stood over Orkhan, so that her breasts hung over his face and she tugged urgently at his robe. Orkhan, who was curious about his fortune, did not resist. Having uncovered his cock, which stiffened instantly, she set to licking it.
‘This helps to bring the veins out,’ she explained, before reapplying her mouth to its divinatory work.
Her mouth worked its way from base to tip. She gave the tip a special tongue-lashing. Then, holding the swollen cock between thumb and forefinger, she drew back to contemplate her work.
‘Sultan or shop-keeper, they are all pretty much alike at first sight. There are just tiny differences in the veins for the fortune-teller to work with.’ She ran a tracking finger down his cock. ‘This line, for example, is your heart line, and over here your line of procreation… Taste is also part of it,’ she confided. ‘I should say that you are a kind man, only you have not had enough tenderness. Ah, that is unusual! Your line of Destiny crosses both the line of Mars and the girdle of Venus. How interesting!’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I am getting wet thinking about it. It means that you will fall in love and marry and, if I have read these lines correctly, our fates and our sexual juices will mingle, for I am the lucky woman you will marry and make your queen!’
Orkhan emitted a barking laugh.
‘No it is true,’ she insisted. ‘Your fortune follows the mouth of the fortune-teller. But, if you do not believe me, you can see for yourself. Just as Destiny has written upon your cock, so will my fate be written on my cunt. The science of vulvascopy is very ancient. Is it not said that round the cunt of every woman is written the names of the men who are destined to enter it? Come on, come and have a good look!’ she urged, as she wriggled about.
With some difficulty she pulled the dress up over her hips. Then she lay back upon the cushions and spread her legs. Intrigued despite himself, he lowered his face between her plump thighs.
‘My fortune will be written on the folds closest to the clitoris. Hurry up and tell me, am I not going to be your queen?’ Her voice, no longer that of wheedling petitioner, had turned imperious.
Unlike Anadil, Perizade was not clean shaven between the legs. Orkhan gazed at the folds of the vulva, uncertain what it was that he was looking for. The fancy entered his head that he was gazing on an oracular mouth. It seemed to him to be whispering indistinctly, summoning him to approach closer. Almost swooning, he did find himself moving in closer. He thought that it was as if the strange mouth did indeed have the power to command him. Then, at the very last moment, he remembered the Vizier’s warning about not letting the viper sup at the Tavern of the Perfume-Makers and he pulled away.
‘What did you do that for, you silly man?’ Perizade’s voice was shrill. ‘I want to know my fortune. But I know I’m destined to be your queen.’
Orkhan made no reply, but knelt and gazed at Perizade’s breasts and hips. His memory of Anadil was of a girl whose flesh was young and healthy, yet in a sense devoid of life. But Perizade’s soft heavy body was different. It seemed to speak to him of lived experience — of so many meals eaten, carpets sat upon, men embraced — and, because of this, it was infinitely desirable. He had to have her now, no matter how much he might regret it later. (He was quite certain that he would regret it.) Once again he moved towards her and placed a hand on one of her thighs.
‘What are you doing?’ She tried ineffectively to pull the dress back down over her hips.
‘I want you, Perizade.’
‘This is not what was meant to happen!’
‘This is your destiny,’ replied Orkhan.
It was after all the one-eyed man and not the viper who forced his way through the door of the Tavern of the Perfume-Makers. He pressed down hard upon the washerwoman, not caring how he hurt her. She was stony-faced and sweaty. She made no moves to help him, but her body quivered under his thrusts like a mattress filled with water. Perizade was silently weeping. She did not want to submit, but in the end she did and, at the last moment, she put her arms around him and hugged him tightly.
Orkhan lay for a long time on top of her, kissing and licking the tears from her cheeks. When, finally he did withdraw and rolled over to lie beside her, he fell instantly into a heavy post-coital doze. He awoke to a kind of nightmare, in which some immovable weight, some monstrous creature perhaps, was squatting on his face, so that he was unable to breathe. Then he realised that this was no dream, but that Perizade was indeed sitting on his face. He could dimly hear her crooning with pleasure. In a thrice, he threw her off and pushed her onto the floor. But, though he had swiftly dealt with the incubus, it was not before the viper, possessed of a will of its own, had once again drunk in the Tavern of the Perfume-Makers.
