Harriet

by Peter Marriner

  Only exhaustion on the part of the customers saw her disengaged at last. She was retrieved by her new owner to be taken inside and led upstairs by way of the bare and narrow service staircase, emerging unexpectedly into the upper corridor of what had once been a stylish house, dimly lit by a pale dawn light from grilled windows at either end. On one side a line of doors in heavily carved mahogany displayed by contrast rather crudely painted numbers, a class above the primitive cribs outside. On the other, a more showy staircase descended in a curve to the floor below, perhaps to a reception parlour, from whence came music and the rumble of deep male voices. A sudden burst of male laughter produced panicky reaction and speeded Harriet’s rather waddling steps overcoming wobbly knees and painful chafe between her legs. At the far end another numbered door stood square on to the corridor. The walls were of rough cast whitewashed with its single window high up, showing only blue sky through the heavy, intricately worked iron grille. The room was flat ceiled showing black rafters with white plaster between. The principle furnishing was an ornate four-poster bed, luxurious though curtain-less, by the side of which were a heavy stool and a leather-cushioned armchair. A heavy dark wood press stood against the wall. The furnishing was completed by a wash-stand with a coarse pottery bowl and jug.

  In this room, Harriet was to be used nightly by a succession of sailors, soldiers and port workers eager to pay extra to shag a woman reputed to be a genuine Captain’s lady. The curiosity value lent to the new harbour whore by the tale of her former status being recounted in garrison barrack rooms, brought in officers civil and military, ready to sample this example of depravity and wickedness. To enhance the lady-like impression for these customers, Harriet was dressed richly en dishabille, tightly corseted, her round-necked chemise of silk and lace, her stockings of silk, with ruched silk garters. One of her regular visitors was the secretary to the town Governor, an active and ambitious young man who was closely associated with her owner and, knowing Harriet’s history as relayed by Simon Le Gris he exercised his influence with the brothel proprietor to indulge his own predilection. He added to the furnishings of her place of work, filling the heavy press with the apparatus of punishment and trained Harriet to expect their use upon her as part of her repertoire. He amused himself by testing every technique that Harriet had been obliged to acquire, rewarding her with scent and sweetmeats, dividing his gifts as his days and nights, between his helpless slave whore and his chaperoned maiden fiancée.

  One night, a party of English military officers were entertained by the municipality, the city having been surrendered without resistance to a force landed from troop transports on their way to take part in the River Plate campaign to detach the colonies from Spain. The banquet was held in another of the large stone houses, this one still in its original use as the residence of the Governor. The public rooms were laid out around the first of the series of courtyards behind the arcades. Though open to the rafters of the upper rooms, the furniture was splendid and the polished wooden floor of the dining room was laid with valuable carpets.

  The ladies having departed the table, the men set about drinking local brandy. Since the Governor was conversing with a naval captain who spoke Spanish, his secretary, relieved of his task as interpreter, moved to the chair vacated by the governor’s lady to conduct an intimate conversation with Lord Footling the General commanding the invaders, upon the subject of the attractions of nocturnal London for young men of fashion.

  “Indeed sir! London has a whole galaxy of delights!” the Englishman declared. “Thousands of ladies of the night patrol the streets and innumerable brothels exist that provide for every rarity of taste.”

  “I have heard that flogging is a common English taste, sir!” the secretary remarked.

  “Surely, sir! There are many houses which provide that service to customers who desire to be flogged by the girls!”

  The secretary frowned as if at a strange idea. “And the other way about, I suppose?”

  The English commander was enlivened in his turn by this, but regretful. “More difficult to arrange, you know. But here in a slave owning nation it must be easier to provide such things with black women purchased for the purpose.” Leaning closer and dropping his voice, the Secretary assured him that such things were indeed possible. The General’s fat-pouched eyes gleamed and he wiped his glistening chin and wet mouth hastily with his napkin, eagerly attending as the secretary continued.

  “There is a very well stocked house of pleasure in the port, with enough accomplished black and brown whores to satisfy you all. There if you wish, I can introduce you to a more delicious victim. Her name is Harriet; officially she is classed as a slave and one sixteenth black, but her owners advertise her to customers as being the wife of an English naval captain, cast off for having fallen into a whoring way of life. She is so fair skinned that one could easily believe it, but I expect they say that merely to make her more marketable. She came here by way of a Brazilian slave-dealer and if there is any truth in her being English, I am sure that she is nothing more than a runaway from your plantations in Demerara, a maidservant or a planter’s whore who fled after committing some crime, for she has been branded with the mark of a crown.”

  Lord Footling rubbed his hands. “We shall make up a party later and while my officers pleasure themselves with the other whores, I shall test your fair offering’s capacity myself.”

  “Delightful!” The General belched as he examined Harriet. In her character as an English lady held an unwilling captive, she was made to wear a helmet of soft black leather with a half mask that just covered her cheekbones. The eye slots were slanted and narrow adding to the mystery and a V-shaped cut-out accommodated her nose. The helmet came deep at the back to link into a deep studded leather collar and fitted closely, but a long slot up over the crown allowed her long hair to expand through the gap and flow like a mane down her back. Tonight, to add to the effect, she wore a restricting muzzle of thin straps anchored to the helmet that spanned her soft cheeks to hold a silver frame that kept her mouth open in a permanent red-lipped oval. Extending inwards, a smooth disc of the same material that pressed firmly down on her tongue and rendered her suitably mute, her mistress cautiously seeking to preserve her anonymity with this unexpected English-speaking customer. Before entering this upstairs room in the House of the Cockerel, Lord Footling had stripped off his gold-laced scarlet coat, neckcloth and wig and was almost as anonymous as his quarry in his shirt and breeches, displaying a bald head, hairy forearms and a formidable bulge of belly, his glistening red face, unsteady gait and noisy eructation giving evidence of the extent of his recent carouse.

  The thin four-foot length of cane, supplied him courtesy of the house, flexed whippily in his fist and as he swished it experimentally it made a quick hiss in the air. The eyes of the young woman facing him widened within her leather mask and falling hastily to her hands and knees she crawled swiftly towards him, head down and lace-trimmed silk chemise bunched up about her corseted waist, her naked bottom raised high bobbing as she crawled.

  “Well trained!” the General said admiringly, as she bent her head, the long sweeping ponytail swishing forward over one cheek and, unable to use her tongue, nuzzled fervently instead at the gilt buckles of his shoes. “I shall enjoy making that plump bottom dance even more, my dear!” There was an inarticulate uncertain sound from at his feet she looked up and hesitated, but then with a further sound expressive of resignation or despair she turned about and, scuttling on her knees to the heavy chair, knelt up on the leather cushion, face against the back settling her chemise up around her waist and then reaching forward to grip the uprights. Spreading her silken knees wide and setting them against the arms she presented her bottom to him thrust backwards between tumbled flounces of chemise and scarlet-gartered black stockings.

  “So you understand your business, Miss!” The plump bottom cheeks had trembled visibly as if their owner recognised
all too well the noise the General kept on producing with the cane. He was breathing heavily, his belly wobbling over his belt. He swept up the whippy cane full armed at last and then swung it back in a whistling arc, which ended with a crisply resounding crack as it sliced across instinctively tautened bottom cheeks. The woman jerked madly upright at the cruel impact, almost ramming her belly into the chair back, her chemise descending like a curtain. Then with a gasp she subsided again, uncovered her bottom once more and thrust it back out, this time displaying a vivid red line ruled across both plump hemispheres, just below the duller red mark of a spiky coronet that lay level with the top of her bottom cleft on the right hand side.

  Thwackkk! Thwackkk! Thwackkk! The strokes fell relentlessly and mercilessly while the jiggling twitching bottom rounds acquired red line after red line. Lord Footling paused giving little grunts of pleasure between his gasps for breath; the woman took the opportunity for equally deep draughts of air, but then let go a wavering cry when his forefinger explored the thickness of the rising weals.

  Thwackkk! Thwackkk! Thwackkk! The shrill sounds emerging from the orifice of the mask rose higher and sounded more desperate. Though she clung to her perch with white knuckles her hips swung this way and that, as if seeking for escape, but only distributing the places where it fell. The noble warrior paused again grunting to himself, wiped his scarlet face and fumbled with his bulging breeches, then as if unable to contain himself longer, he lifted the cane unsteadily and at once resumed. The cane hissed viciously, the sounds emerging from the distorted lips became a gargling gasping medley of animal sounds, while her bottom striped with the fiery results, jigged and writhed violently. Had the branded mark not been so high up, the multiplying red and purple weals would have totally obscured its emblazon.

  Thwackkk! Thwackkk! Thwackkk! Between the strokes, the man’s heavy grunting and panting made a steady accompaniment to the shrill female cries, his fat cheeks puffed, mouth wet and eyes devouring his target’s reactions. Her hollowed back held in place the crumpled folds of silk and lace and the widespread thighs with ruffled garters tight above her knees most effectively framed and displayed the fleshy bulge of her pubis, split like a juicy fruit with a wet-lipped slot that bobbed and gaped with evidently frantic invitation. Growing wilder in his aim and the intervals lengthening between the strokes gave his victim hope that her ordeal was over and each time the resumption cruelly disabused her, seemed to inspire her to thrust up her bottom even more desperately.

  “Damme...! You... tempting bitch...!” Wet chinned and gobbling with cheeks puffed like a turkey cock, the General suddenly tore open his breeches and fell upon his prey. She let out a howling sound as she was seized from behind and felt the effect of hasty fingers digging into welted bottom curves and the ramming belly that flattened their striated roundness with excruciating effects. Age, girth and the after effects of a night of heavy consumption of wine and punch made the veteran warrior slow to achieve his intention. With his breeches tangled about his ankles and shirt-tails flapping, he laboured ponderously with much grunting and cursing, resting his heavy belly on the crest of her behind in the pauses, then enlivening his victim with smart spanks to perform her part. Her flimsy slippers flew off and her ponytail lashed back and forth as she writhed and bobbed, her hips going up and down, squeezing and flexing her bottom and thighs about his thrusts.

  After a long period of creaking and groaning, both of wooden and of fleshly components, the combination fell apart, the General now apoplectic and gobbling furiously. The woman had been spilled down onto all fours on the floor and apparently appreciating her dire situation, turned to clasp her flagellator’s hairy thighs and set to work to swallow up his half-stiffened cock into the warm wet rounded orifice of her mask. A mere dozen or so of strokes in and out, deep and gurgling, the swinging balls bouncing off her exposed chin each time, sufficed to stiffen his martial and masculine vigour to the point where, pulling her free like a man pulling off a boot, he resumed full charge, bending her over the chair once more and throwing up her shift, falling upon her again from behind, this time swiftly achieving his full and noisily exhaustive satisfaction.

  “Some foreign crown, that on her backside; looks oriental!” the General opined as he rejoined the secretary in the parlour and carelessly paid the fixedly smiling Madame her fee. “I dare say I could afford to buy her from her owner outright!” he added with relish. “When I changed my name from Horter, I inherited my cousin Footling’s fortune as well as his title!” He laughed. “She would be a nice surprise for Lady Footling! I can just see the bitch’s face if I turned up with a slavegirl in tow!”

  A few nights later the Casa del Pollo was noisy with a large crowd of red-faced scarlet-coated soldiers, drinking, roaring, gambling and quarrelling, with a constant heavily booted traffic up and down stairs, the presiding dominatrix bustling in and out, run off her feet and overborne by numbers. A youthful private descended and pushed his way to the fireplace where an older man was seated comfortably in an armchair.

  “Sergeant!” he hissed excitedly, “They’ve got an English whore upstairs. The madam hires her out as a whipping girl for the gentry to play with, but the house being so busy tonight they put her to work like the rest of the whores. Her jaws were kept plugged, but a sailor from one of the transports cut her plug out to see if she would suck his cock.”

  “And did she?” The sergeant roused himself to interest.

  “She told him she’s the wife of a captain of a ship that was castaway and made prisoner!” the youth pursued. “The sailors have been queuing up to shag her all day!”

  “Oh hell, lad! Sailors’ll believe anything a whore tells them!” the sergeant said derisively.

  “Well Sam and Nobby and me want to rescue her,” the soldier insisted stubbornly. “The sailors found some rope in a cupboard. We could lower her from the roof and take her back to camp with us.”

  “Oh all right!” The sergeant finished his glass of rum smacking his lips happily and wiped his moustache. “One more woman won’t make any odds. But she’d better swear to the provost marshal that she belonged to the 40th. They’ve gone to Monty viddy ayo and they’ll never find out.”

  “What’s all that row about?” the officer of the day at the temporary encampment of the British expeditionary force, shouted irritably.

  “Sir!” the corporal of the guard stuck his head into the tent. “There’s a dago tried to get hold of one of the women.”

  “What the devil for?”

  “I can’t make out, sir. He says she’s a puta, that’s a whore, sir, something about dollars and then something complicated about a casa; that’s a house, sir.”

  “Bloody women! Been looting houses again, I suppose! The General’s given strict orders against thieving!”

  “She isn’t one of ours, sir,” the corporal said defensively. “Says she belongs to the 40th.”

  “Straggled or deserted, eh! Do the usual then. Parade her in front of the house she robbed, put her over the drum with her skirts turned up and have the drummer give her a good dozen with the cane on her bare bottom!” Lieutenant Horter went back to his afternoon siesta.

  Also Available