Prologue: Families

She was a natural blonde with a slim figure and good teeth. Her hair was worn shoulder length and straight. Amelia Smith was just twenty and reading medicine at the University of London when she met Prince Abdullah from the Emirate of Kobekistan and fell head-over-heels in love with his dashing good looks and enormous fortune. Dinners at restaurants, the like of which a country doctor's daughter could only dream about soon led to visits to his sumptuous apartment overlooking Hyde Park.

She was, unusually for the late 1970's, still a virgin when she met him; this small inconvenience was soon disposed of and they were soon revelling in every imaginable sexual activity possible for two people. Amelia loved the games they sometimes played and one of her favourites was where he pretended to be her ruthless Master and she his abused Slave. For some reason pretending to be used by a powerful Master whether she wanted it or no, excited her. She adored his penis and could spend hours playing with it, pausing whenever it looked like boiling over, or using her mouth to revive it after a joyful mutual climax. They rutted like the two magnificent young animals they were and, although he usually came in her anus or mouth, they made a mistake.

As she described it when she told him, "We've had an accident, Abby, a fœtal accident."

The next time they met Amy asked her real life Prince for a thousand pounds to pay for an abortion and he put her over his knee and spanked her for even thinking of it. He spanked her seriously, not in fun as they sometimes did, but she also had the best orgasm of her life so far as he pumped into her womb from behind with his pubic hair chafing on the sore buttocks. Nevertheless, she couldn't sit down for days without being reminded of the spanking, nor could she go anywhere without two large men in Arab dress escorting her. They even joined the Prince's bodyguard when they went to Dorset to meet her parents. Their purpose was, according to Prince Abdullah, to protect his son, and also her.

"We go to Kobekistan next week," he announced about two weeks later, "My father, the Emir, wishes to meet you."

"Why do we go there? Couldn't he come here just as easily?" she asked.

"Because we are to be married there in ten days time. My son must not be illegitimate and must not be born in any other country than my own. I dare not risk that," was the perplexing reply.

"You haven't asked me to marry you," Amy pointed out, reasonably enough she thought.

"It is all arranged. Your father gave his permission last week when we visited them. It is not my fault if he has not told you."

"Hmmph. And what is the risk involved if your son, who may equally be a daughter, is born in England?" she demanded.

"Politics," he replied, in a bored voice, "I am fourth in line for the throne and should I ever inherit, my first-born son must have the indisputable pedigree of being borne by a wife, rather than a concubine, and in Kobekistan, rather than abroad. If it is a daughter, none of that will matter of course, but I want to be safe."

Amelia sat down rather suddenly, overwhelmed by the sudden realisation that her magic prince had turned out not just to be rich, but to be a real Prince, for whom succession to a throne, only a little one but a real throne none-the-less, was unlikely but by no means impossible.

When they arrived in Kobekistan she was given a abaya to wear on the journey from the airport to the Emerald Palace. The sheer magnificence of the triple palace was overwhelming; its central section was bigger than Buckingham Palace and gleaming gold, flanked by the Ruby and Emerald Palaces. Together the effect was like a giant Kobekistani national flag of red, yellow and green. Abby explained to her that the Emir, his father, lived in the Golden Palace, his eldest half-brother Crown Prince Gamal lived in the Ruby Palace, and she would live in the Emerald Palace. As they passed through magnificent room after room with decorations on the walls and luxurious carpets on the floor, Amelia was imagining herself as the hostess at splendid gatherings and walking with her Prince when Royal visitors arrived from abroad.

They went into a smaller room through doors which were guarded by very large men carrying scimitars. Amelia thought they seemed the sort who would chop your head off as soon as look at you. The room was long and narrow with another door at the far end. It wasn't lit by windows but had a frosted glass roof. There were several chairs round the walls. In the centre of the floor was a dais which was about three feet square and two feet high. To her surprise the walls were decorated with bedroom scenes depicting couples in various forms of sexual congress, almost all of which she and Abby had tried.

A huge obese black man with an odd-sounding voice took over from the Prince as her escort and she passed through the far door into a large greenhouse-like area with trees and pools of water beside which some young women were sitting. Amelia drew in a sudden breath when she realised that they were all nearly naked. The items they wore were like the ones Abby had had her dress in in London when they played the Master and Slave game. Above the waist they were naked and rounf the waist was a sort of grass skirt effect made from inch wide, twelve inch long strips of chiffon, each skirt in one of several pastel colours. The strips hung from a waistband, which left most of the rump bare and did not really cover the private parts at all. The black man waved away the women who came over to investigate the newcomer and ushered her into a suite of rooms somewhat secluded from the rest of the complex.

"This is your suite, Princess," he said, "I am the Chief Eunuch to the Prince Abdullah. You will be prepared now to meet the Emir and the bath girls will see to your bathing, depilation, oiling and scenting. I will provide suitable attire according to the Prince's wishes. Do not cause trouble or you will learn that in the harem here I am in charge."

Amelia got the distinct impression that he didn't approve of her, nor of the Prince's choice of attire. The only difficulty with the bath girls' attentions was some embarrassment when they insisted on applying rouge to her labia and nipples and oiling her vagina and anus. She had shaved her mons only the previous day though they did it again, more meticulously than before.

The clothing was much as she would have chosen, a light linen suit with a loose skirt and a white blouse. However, there was no underwear at all and when she went to find some in her luggage it was all missing.

"Such things are not worn in this harem," the Chief Eunuch decreed.

When she protested he took out the whip and casually struck one of the bath girls, causing her to scream in pain and raising a nasty weal across her shoulder.

"It is not impossible that I might use this on you if you make trouble," he said, "now put this on."

He handed her an ornately embroidered abaya to wear over her suit.

"Why must I wear this?" she asked.

"You will be moving through the palaces where men might see you," came the disquieting reply, and her visions of elaborate dinner parties faded.

The visit to the old Emir was equally disturbing. When she and Prince Abdulla were safely in another room rather like the anteroom to the Emerald Palace's harem, but larger and with a second dais bearing a small throne on which the Emir sat. He spoke only to the Prince and only in Kobekistani of which she understood only a few sexually-oriented phrases. Abby asked her to stand on the dais and remove her abaya. The older man walked round her, inspecting her as though she were a prize cow he was considering purchasing. Then he left the room without another word.

On the way back to the Emerald Palace alone with the Prince, Amelia ventured, "He seems a taciturn man, your father."

"He does not speak unnecessarily, but he approves of you," he replied, "Otherwise he would have ordered you out of the country and out of my life."

"And would you have allowed him to do that?" she asked.

"Of course; he is the Emir. One other thing," he continued, "I understand you were a little difficult with the Chief Eunuch this afternoon. That is unwise; there are many ways he can be unpleasant to you and make life in the harem unbearable."

"I saw the whip used," she replied tartly.

"For the moment he will use a bath girl as your whipping girl," said the Prince, "but when we are married that will no longer be true."

"What do you mean, my whipping girl?"

"When you misbehave, one of the bath girls will be given the whipping you deserve," he replied, shocking her into silence.

Amelia was duly married to her Prince in a small ceremony in the anteroom to the harem, wearing an abaya with very few others present. Thus she became the Princess Zubeydeh. She was then incarcerated, as she saw it, in the Prince's harem, which was far from empty, but in which life was terminally boring. Her wedding night she spent alone in her suite wondering if she had done the right thing.

However there were three consolations for her in her prison life; her position, her status and a friend.

She was the only one married to the Prince. The others were concubines and that made her number one in the harem, as the Head Wife.

Her pregnancy meant that she had her baby to look forward to and to plan for.

And there was one other English girl there, Beryl. Beryl was an ex-chambermaid from a Brighton hotel who had seduced the rich Arab guest, and persuaded him to take her home with him, only to find herself classed as 'just another concubine' who was, on occasion, even lent to the Prince's friends.

She almost never saw the Prince. All she saw were the black eunuchs who were at once her servants and her jailers. They all carried whips, but didn't often use one on Princess Zubeydeh because she was the Head Wife, and pregnant to boot.

Her son, also with two names, David Smith on his British passport, and Mahmoud Abdullah on his Kobekistani passport, was born easily and quickly in the superbly equipped hospital in the palace. His father came and checked him over, then gave him to her to nurse.

Some three months after his birth, her husband, her Prince, sent for her one night and they made love all night. Her heart was finally broken when she heard that her friend, Beryl, had been sent for the very next night and they too had spent rapturous hours together.

Life went on and the boy baby learned to walk and to talk a little in English and more in the Kobekistani dialect of Arabic. He was the only baby in the harem at first, but soon after his birth several of the concubines became pregnant and just after one of them had a son, Princess Zubeydeh learned that the Prince had married her also.

The Prince visited her son on his first three birthdays and played with him for a while. They were the only times Amelia ever saw him.

Just a week before David's fourth birthday, they brought her the news that her husband was dead. He had fallen off his pony playing in a polo match arranged to celebrate his father's fiftieth birthday, and had broken his neck, dying instantly. The Emerald Palace, including the harem, was to be closed and all the women except the mothers of his sons were to be sold. She was to move to the main harem in the palace, nominally as the inherited property of her son, to look after him until he reached the age of twelve and moved out of the harem. Her real Master would be the Emir, her father-in-law. She knew enough by now of the politics of the palace to surmise that the Emir could, and probably would, take her to bed, if only to try out the woman his son had used to mother his first-born.

Sure enough, a few weeks later, she was selected for the night by the Emir. That scared her, because she had already made an enemy of the Emir's Head Wife, and this would not endear her to Djamilla in the least.

When she arrived in the Emir's bedroom and had offered the usual obeisance, she sat on a chair and said, "Father-in-law, I am glad we have met, for I want to return to England."

"Nonsense, my child," he answered, eyeing her youthful charms, dressed as she was in the uniform of his harem, consisting of a short waistcoat which did not fasten across her breasts and open crotch thin silk slacks, "You will be happy in my harem, and you could easily be chosen by Allah to have one of my children."

"Sex with you would be incest and is prohibited to me as a Christian," she answered.

"Christian?" he queried.

"Yes. I never changed my religion, and Abdullah never asked me to do so," she answered.

Her bravery was ebbing fast and her body beginning to react to the all too virile man before her. She was still a young woman and had not seen a whole man but once a year for four years, and had not had sex with a man for three years. Her body was dampening at the thought of this powerful man mastering her on that bed. The perfumes she had been prepared with helped this arousal and she knew she would yield if he took her; yield to, and welcome his body invading hers.

The Emir thought for a while, and said, "I could take you on this bed by force. I could have you whipped until you begged me to take you. But for some reason I don't understand I want you to desire to be with me."

He paused.

"So ... If you give me now a night to remember, on that bed; if you truly show me why my son chose an infidel as the mother of his first-born, you can go back to England and take your son with you. No conditions, but no money from Abdullah's estate, except what is rightfully little Mahmoud's, and that will be administered by our ambassador at the Court of King James."

"Saint James," Amelia murmured.

"What?" the Emir demanded.

"It's called the Court of Saint James, Master, after St. James's Palace where it officially meets," she said; taking a deep breath she knelt before him and continued, "Do you want me to prepare you for the bed by sucking your mighty weapon, Master? I am already prepared and oiled as I should be."

Safely back in England with David, she lived at her parents' home in Dorset. She took care to comply with a wish expressed by the Emir, that David, whom he called Mahmoud Abdullah, should not be allowed to forget the stories and traditions of his father's country, though the language was difficult as they had nobody with whom to practice. After all he was fourth in line for the throne and might just, one day, be the Emir if enough people died in the right order.