“A remarkably large monkey!” the mandarin commented. “Almost human in appearance!”
“A Man of the Forest, they call this creature, your Excellency!” the chief keeper said, grovelling before the representative of justice. “They are said to be prone to lechery at times and are then dangerous to human women. The vile and rightly disgraced Wang Tzu having heard of such beasts from a trader in birds nests had him specially collected, your Honour, as a mate for the pride of his collection.” They moved on to view this latter cynosure, exhibited appropriately at the centre of the garden in another little ornamental pavilion. Its double-cone tiled roof, curled up at the edges, was supported by six slim red pillars, the pillars being repeated in miniature in support of the upper cone, which was topped by a gilt finial. Approached by a set of broad marble steps, a low ornamental balustrade railed the other sides between the pillars. Though a more delicate example it might have reminded a European of municipal park bandstands. The female beast was kept at the end of a stout brass chain depending from the roof above, although the collar of gilt metal to which it was locked was almost lost from view amid a mane of russet hair covering her back, shoulders and breasts and sweeping the floor before her. A bushy tail, identical in colour and style, spread out from between the cheeks of her humanly plump behind and the russet embellishments were replicated in miniature between the creature’s thighs. Otherwise, unlike the male, the rest of her was bare and curiously varied in colour, her blue-green face peering from amid the red hair and her forward parts striped the same colour, fading to pale pink on hands and knees and the smoothly rounded convexities of bottom-cheeks and breasts. The chain was just long enough to allow the creature to reach the limits of the pavilion, enabling her to extend her head and neck beyond the low railing in order to reach on one side, the food bowl of blue, red and green porcelain sitting upon a pedestal, itself of glazed earthenware decorated with mythical beasts, or on the other an equally decorative water bowl and similar pedestal.
“What is this creature?”
“A female of the same species, your Excellency, as the vile Wang Tzu was assured, your Honour, although his attempt to breed from them was unsuccessful, your Excellency.”
“Is she carnivorous?” the mandarin enquired, seeing that as her bushy red moustache lifted, her mouth was revealed as blood red and her white teeth within, were as sharply pointed as a cat’s.
“She eats human food quite readily, Your Honour!” the keeper pointed to the relevant bowl.
“The bowls are quite expensive ware!” the magistrate noted in the tone of a connoisseur. “That tub to the rear is as good piece too and a large size!” His secretary nodded and scribbled busily, glancing behind the pavilion, where below an arched aperture in its balustrade stood a decorated ceramic tub with large handles, its round lid leaning alongside.
“The she-beast has been taught at times of need to protrude her behind through the gap, Your Honour,” the keeper explained. “The tub is half-filled daily with chopped rice straw ready to receive her wastes and carried off every evening to be added to the rest of the animal droppings in aid of the fertilisation of the garden.”
“And what is that thing?” A long nailed finger indicated a marble block within the pavilion from which projected a phallic object of large dimensions, knobbled over the extent of its vertical shaft and curiously rose-coloured.
“It is a stuffed animal penis, Your Honour. The vendor claimed it was taken from a male of her kind. The live male perhaps is merely an immature specimen. The she-beast has been made to mount the preserved example regularly to reduce her savage heat.” There was a sudden rattle of chain and Isobel, who had sensed some drastic change impending in her circumstances, began to croak. Her voice, though it had been gradually returning to her, hardly permitted any close approximation to the mandarin’s tonal delivery and her muzzle limited the attempt even further.
“Such uncouth sounds! They almost remind me of the way the foreign devils speak!” the mandarin commented with distaste, turning away. “No great value in such curiosities. Have all these beasts and their cages transported to the city and exposed for sale.”
Chapter Seven
Isobel’s travelling cage had been re-employed and within it she was being transported from the place of sale, through the city by way of a warren of narrow alleys, the cage loaded upon an outsize wheelbarrow. The alleys were lined with open fronted shops, their counters almost within reaching distance on either side. Every vertical surface of the shop fronts were painted with complex ideograms on bright red backgrounds and a wealth of red cloth streamers stretched between poles. The barrow was propelled by a coolie who supported the weight of his cargo by a broad sling over his shoulders. The cage constantly brushed against startled foot passengers, yokes of merchandise in baskets and, with more difficulty, scraped past an occasional gaudily red painted sedan chair. Then, entering one of the small open spaces that marked the junction of several alleys, the crowd suddenly became even denser, producing a deafening and ugly sounding clamour, made worse by the frantic beating of gongs. Isobel’s bearer promptly set down the wheelbarrow in the midst of the throng, though fortunately the people nearby seemed not to be immediately interested in what the cage contained. The man who seemed to be the centre of their attention and the confusion occasionally came into sight through gaps in the crowd, a slow moving figure clad in dusty black with the sharp features of a European, his bald head bowed and his hands clasped behind him, the black garment being just distinguishable as a cassock. A missionary! Isobel made urgent sounds and shook the bamboo bars, then, unable to make enough noise, gathered her breath to shriek, seizing her empty water tin to bang it on the bars. The missionary was just visible in a kneeling position and then a gleaming sword swung high above the heads and went flashing down. The crowd howled and roared and Isobel, dropping the tin, kept very quiet. She was thankful when the coolie, having satisfied his curiosity and vented his spleen by a few minutes of yelling and fist shaking, picked up the shafts and calmly resumed his journey.
She had been sold in a food market, exposed alongside the extraordinarily eclectic array of creatures, dogs, cats, birds, monkeys, snakes, amphibians as well as the more conventional varieties of meat animal destined for the table. She had been the centre of some debate as buyers prodded her and argued over whether she was some kind of monkey or merely a wild sub-human. But in the end, the only bidder had been a man who had taken particular pains in his examination, employing a pair of the wooden chopsticks the natives used to eat with. He had tested her pierced nose and nipples, lifted her moustache and thoroughly probed all three of her orifices, nimbly manipulating her flesh with his implements. A sharp spank had induced an involuntary reaction that made Isobel reveal the mystery of the foundations of her tail, a detail the keepers of the menagerie had not ventured to reveal to their master. Now her immediate destination in the city was a poky workshop in an alleyway devoted to the manufacture of small curiosities, where her new owner having already preceded her was impatiently awaiting her delivery by the dilatory barrowman.
The workshop shelves were filled with carved items of wood, bone and ivory, and hung with small ornamental metalwork, rings, chains and buckles. The craftsman’s young apprentice took a firm grip of Isobel’s hair, clearing the great volume of it from off her nape, pulling hard to force her to stretch her neck out from the cage resting it against a small anvil. The golden collar had already been removed for separate sale and no doubt decorated some rich woman’s pet dog. It was a heavy leather collar that replaced it, closed firmly about Isobel’s neck and held in place by the boy. Bellows pumped rapidly and hissed viciously, blowing a little brazier into sudden vigour producing rapid pulses of heat and light. The craftsman raked with a set of tongs among the coals. Isobel made a last effort at speech though she knew they would not understand her, seeing out of the corner of her eye something approaching her between the jaws of the t
ongs. She quivered as she felt its sudden heat against the side of her neck and smelt singeing hair, then close to her ear the smith’s small hammer beat a rapid tattoo, a few stray sparks stinging her skin. A splash of cold water cooled hot rivet, leather, hair and scorched flesh all at the same time. It seemed a prosaic replacement that symbolised Isobel’s reduction from the status of a rich man’s curiosity, but to what?
Still held firmly in place, her muzzle was removed and her tongue drawn out with pincers to be clamped in that protruded position between two pieces of split bamboo. Her dumb condition was being ensured! A hole was pierced though her extended tongue and plug of bone fitted through, with a threaded end to which a bone finial could be screwed. Her strange appearance was further embellished with two fake tusks that stuck out from her lower gums to beyond her upper lip, connected inside by a thin, flat, bridge of bone to which her newly pierced tongue was also securely fastened.
The man who had bought her produced a short whip which he cracked expertly, evidently impressing the other men and conveying an equally convincing message to his purchase. With her muzzle carefully replaced, Isobel was removed from her cage, gurgling pitifully, and stretched out on a low form. Thick leather cuffs were fastened about each wrist in the same way as the collar with the ends riveted together. She could see the metal-rimmed openings that took the rivet and supposed the collar to have been fitted in a similar manner. Her legs were lifted up to have leather bands riveted in place just above her knees. All the bands held metal D-rings obviously designed to secure her limbs. Finally the sharply pointed bone spindles that pierced her nipples were replaced by larger versions made in two pieces with carved knob ends, drawing particular attention to her breasts and nipples which, though no longer milk-producing, had never lost their enormous bulk and bold protrusion. The spindle through her clitoris was withdrawn, to be replaced by a small metal ring carrying a small bell that made a silvery tinkling between her legs as she was moved back into her cage for final delivery.
Her new owner, it transpired, was the owner of a waterborne travelling circus, housed aboard a river sampan, a circus in which double-jointed acrobats, mostly tiny girls perform extraordinary feats of skill and daring, jugglers manipulated complicated combinations of objects and where, as a side attraction, a menagerie of strange wild beasts were exhibited in cramped cages. Isobel had been prepared for her appearance as a circus freak, the Wild Woman of the Forest.
Chapter Eight
As darkness gathered and lanterns were lit in the great floating town of boats, a mobile congregation of craftsmen, traders, food vendors and entertainers, the circus boat lay close to the Flower boats as usual. The performances and menagerie inspections were over for the day, the jugglers and acrobats gone off to seek out their evening meal upon one or other of the boats selling ready-cooked food. Feet sounded behind Isobel and the circus master’s whip landed with a loud crack across the cheeks of her behind, making her squirm so wildly as to make the cramped cage creak at all its fastenings. The whip descended inexorably again and again, skilfully slicing the small curves of soft flesh, where her bottom cheeks bulged vulnerably between the vertical bars of her cramped travelling cage. Isobel shrieked wildly and with expedient lack of inhibition.
The rear door was unfastened and dropped down with a clatter, leaving her whip-stung backside exposed and fully vulnerable, looking very white in staring contrast to the blue-green hued and striped skin of the rest of her and embellished with the red traces of the whip. It had been more a warning than a punishment, skilfully noisy and dramatic enough to impress the visitors that they were to encounter a wild animal. Isobel responded dutifully to the hint. Clutching the bars before her and curling her fingers round them to show her long nails, claw-like and enamelled in scarlet, she uttered an angry squealing growl. Though her voice was returning, her pierced tongue hampered its proper use and the showy muzzle of leather straps, pretending to be a precaution lest she savage the customers, effectively completed the gagging effect. Wriggling her hips and wildly rattling the cage, she moved backwards as if seeking to escape, just sufficiently to allow her to lift her rump until she felt the rim of the cage across the small of her back and could spread her knees wider than the cage had allowed. She felt the familiar leather straps tighten around each of her thighs just above the knees, catching and holding her there, rendered immobile and waiting with numb resignation.
The showman, Tsang, had been rowing up and down the line of Flower boats, offering any of the more venturesome customers aboard the chance to experiment with sexual deviance of an unusual kind. Now he was making his set speech and seemed to have rounded up a group of giggling young men whom Isobel took to be members of the more affluent class of native society. He was no doubt enlarging upon the she-creature’s untamed savagery and instilling in the customers a sexually exciting sense of their own daring. Upon all fours, with her own body filling most of the cage, the only way Isobel could see how many prospective customers there were was by peering back between her spread thighs. She didn’t bother, they might not all take the bait anyway, but she could sense the point at which the debate reached a decision and forecast the imminent approach of the first adventurer by the tense silence of his companions. She tightened her grip on the bars with whitened knuckles as she felt the head of the man’s cock prodding the gaping red furrow that she was presenting so indecently, secretly finger-greased by the showman beforehand and no doubt appearing to offer the glistening sexual readiness of a female animal on heat. As far as the customers were concerned the show had always arrived at their town just when the she-beast was at the height of her breeding cycle.
This one’s penis entered Isobel like a javelin, sliding easily. Really thick ones were rare, but she screeched diligently, just as if she were receiving something of outstanding size and the excited bystanders added an admiring chorus of grunts and hisses. Their champion went full in and then almost right out, repeating his vigorous strokes several times before her owner rapped the end of his whip under Isobel’s nose. Obedient to the reminder she began to growl and yowl like an excited cat, shoving her hinder end back onto the customer’s penis every time it slid in, feeling the ring that held her tail jerk sharply as the red bush was lifted up against his belly, dropping back between them when she surged forward and the shaft withdrew. He was not very big at all, few of the natives were as impressive as her Melanesian captors had been, let alone Jacob, whom those black savages had roasted and eaten. The bold adventurer was now producing boastful sounding cries of his own, communicating ecstasy to his companions. Her owner would be pleased. She let her mind slip into a kind of daze, her body automatically keeping time with the man’s, squeezing the sliding penis both as it entered and as it withdrew, just waiting for the expected quickening of its penetration to alert her to the imminent discharge, her imitation animal noises quite as mechanical. After all she had been doing this in scores of places up to now.
The showboat was one of a huge fleet, a slow-moving, floating town of merchants, craftsmen, prostitutes, fortune tellers, acrobats and jugglers, puppet shows and the companies of actors who presented loud dramatic interchanges interrupted by wailing songs and noisy clashing of gongs. This floating entertainment moved up and down the great river, setting up alongside the waterfronts of towns and cities in a seasonal rhythm. The sampan was a long shallow vessel like a giant Thames punt, with squared ends and a long house with a matting roof that extended almost end to end and slid open in places for easier access. Tsang’s seemed to be a family business, the acrobats being the owner’s daughters, whether by birth or by purchase was not clear, while two sons poled or rowed the boat and performed as jugglers, or provided sparring partners for their father who specialised in displays of whip skill and acrobatic fencing with bamboo staffs or swords. Most of the day Isobel spent upon all fours in a cage only slightly larger than her travelling one, the leather straps on her wrists and knees ensuring that she was kept in the bes
t position for display. For a small copper coin with a square hole in the middle usually taken from a string of such, curious natives could view the whole menagerie containing, in addition to the Wild Woman of the Forest, a black and white furry bear, a pig with six legs, two monkeys with manes like lions and one with an enormous, nose which the customers instantly compared with Isobel’s.
There were numerous Flower boats in the floating community, so called from their elaborate decoration rather than their flock of gaily-clad prostitutes. They were roofed with light awnings the length of the boat and ornamental railings round the edges. Within they were furnished with low beds and facilities for eating, drinking and smoking opium, with the female staff in attendance, most of whom played instruments and sang in high wailing voices, apparently to the appreciation of their customers. In the evening the lanterns under the eaves were lit and small boats sculled to and fro, carrying parties of young gentlemen and extra supplies of food, drink and opium pipes. It was in the later part of the night, concealed discreetly within slatted screens on the rear deck and by the light of a paper lantern, that Isobel was required to provide her more intimate service, supplementing what the natives considered the more aesthetic attractions of the Flower boats. Her owner evidently found the overspill of their customers provided takings lucrative enough for the circus sampan to keep the Flower boats close company.
The small market towns along the river, which most frequently saw their visits, were all walled and gated like medieval cities had been in Europe. In the countryside between, lines of blue-clad, bare-legged peasants stooped under wide conical straw hats in flooded fields, men and women almost indistinguishable. Animals were few since there was little grazing to support them and even transport seemed to be largely done by humans. Wherever a little wooded eminence rose above the plain, it seemed to be crowned by a gaudily decorated, multi-storey pagoda. The towns held regular fair days with acrobats and beast shows competing with noisy opera troupes for audiences of wondering peasants, but failing such a fair, if the moon was full or new, one of the bigger pagoda temples was sure to be holding a revenue raising event beneath walls girt about with brightly painted giant figures of gods, demons, grimacing warriors and writhing winged dragons, to which the acrobats, the beast show and Isobel were a welcome additional attraction.
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