Chapter 1

The funeral of the famous English lord known affectionately as “Tarzan” to his admirers on the The Dark Continent was an odd affair that perplexed the town folk in the small village close to his traditional family estate in the Northlands.

They had come to love the quiet and reclusive man that was so generous to the poor and afflicted in ways that reflected his humble solitude. The sisters in the Convent of Saint John provided beds and provisions to the guests from far and wide that attended his last rites according to the stipulations of his will that provided the good sisters assurance of continued support long after his demise. Allegedly, his only offspring, a wisp of a girl called Charity was tucked away in their castle-like lair in a private cell on top of the far tower. There were rumors that abounded concerning her inability to finish a simple sentence without staring off into space and losing all sense of where she was and even the fact of her own identity. Other than this strange curse, which had been visited on her since childhood, she was normal in every other regard, including a fair share of beauty that her long deceased mother had possessed in her role as a star of the London stage for a full two seasons.

The mystery of her affliction was so strange that the town folk thought of her as some sort of latter-day witch closeted in secrecy away from ordinary folks for their own protection.

Some of the visitors to the funeral specifically asked to be given an audience with the isolated girl, but they were left wanting because the nuns were instructed that she was to be left to her own devices without interference of any sort.

The other sisters, with their vows of chastity and poverty chatted about her extensively because they had no vow of silence in their order.

There was much ado about the lack of a proper heir to the lord’s fortune because distant relatives were constantly besieging the attorneys for the estate with petitions for sharing in the vast sums of wealth sitting dormant in secure spaces in the vaults of several large financial institutions deep in the bowels of the London seat of commerce.

The diminutive Mother Superior of the Order of the Convent of Saint John was reading the lengthy letter recently received from the postal facility in Portsmouth and bearing stamps from the far-away King’s postal station in Nairobi, Kenya. The envelope was somewhat strange in that it appeared to have been pressed from some thin pressing of animal hide rather than convention linen paper. The writing was in formal block letters no longer popular in educational circles because of the pressures of modern society. The one sentence that she repeatedly referred back to in her repetitive reading of the written words caused her noticeable concern and made her press her face closer to the page to make certain she had understood it properly.

“The esteemed Chief Tarzan’s son, Tarzan Jr. is now safely hidden in the household of Doctor Larson, Esq. now of Johannesburg, South Africa and is known as Adam Smith. He is described in the census particulars as “an orphan of the white race found surviving in the ruins of the Congo tribe camp chased from the escarpment by the slave traders from Sudan.”

She read the short section several times and the words were seared into her brain by the fact that there might be a true heir of the Lord’s fortune after all.

When the lawyers were unable to furnish any details about the Kenya connection, the Mother Superior decided to send two of her best sisters to Africa to determine the true story behind this astonishing letter. They would go first to South Africa because the last known location for this young lad known as Tarzan Jr. was in Johannesburg. It just so happened that the close-knit order of nuns had a small clinic and school in that area and the investigating sisters would be welcome to stay in the relative safety of their high-walled compound

Sister Monique was actually French by birth and she spoke several languages fluently because her family had traveled extensively around the continent in her childhood more by necessity than chance because her parents were circus people and they never tired of presenting their high wire act in any venue that would show a profit. At the time of the dreadful accident that claimed the lives of her parents in Vienna, Monique was only fourteen years of age and she was sent to the Convent House to subside until she reached her majority as there were no known other next of kin. When she reached eighteen, she decided to cast her lot with the sisters because it was a way of life that pleased her with the simplicity and the lack of stress to do things she was not yet prepared to do in order to survive in a modernistic society.

Monique was barely five foot tall and she only weighed a paltry ninety pounds soaking wet. Of course because of her lifestyle, she was still a technical virgin but she had plenty of education on matters of a sexual nature because she read extensively and much of the content was quite detailed in describing the various fetishes and perversions of the European hedonistic society.

She had a reputation with the other sisters of sinful inclination in the wearing of French undies with their flimsy construction and often titillating design. Of course, her black habit and long skirt tended to offset that weakness of the flesh and her every movement was a study in complete ladylike behavior of the most circumspect expectation.

The other nun selected for the African mission was the most unsuited sister in the convent.

Her name was Heidimarie and she hated to be called just Heidi or just Marie because she insisted that was not her name. She had been sort of a street person in the homeless category before being taken in by the convent for training as a food services nun with a friendly personality to communicate with the lowest of the low and not feel in the least bit superior. She had also gone through a short spell with the use of drugs and booze before her calling. She was well-versed in the daily strife of carnal relations with a varied assortment of male admirers. They were drawn to her pretty young thing vision of innocence despite its falsity. It was about as deceptive as could be imagined in view of her hidden side of lustful urges of the flesh.

Sister Monique and Sister Heidimarie booked a steamer from Liverpool to Johannesburg that allowed them to trade the fear of flying for the uncomfortable bouts of seasickness in two different storms enroute.