Chapter 4

December 1871

My life has been turned topsy-turvy by the arrival of one Miss Emma Jones. It appears Miss Jones is another of those bible-thumpers from the Missionary Society of Birmingham, of which my own dear sister is a prominent member. Now it seems, not content to bother the poor of that unfortunate city, they have decided to send an emissary to Nambhustan; presumably in an attempt to kill any joy that may be going spare here. I feel in some wise responsible for this pestilential visitation, if it were not for the letters I penned simply to shock and annoy my saintly sibling, she - and the Missionary Society of Birmingham - would never have heard of Nambhustan.

Miss Jones is a pleasant-enough baggage to look at, make no mistake but the odour of sanctity - or hypocrisy, as I believe - is a little rich for my taste. Her first action on arriving here was to attempt to persuade Cat to don some ludicrous neck-to-ankle shift that resembled nothing so much an old maid's nightgown. Needless to say, she was very much flogging the old deceased horse with that suggestion. Cat speaks little English but understands a great deal more and chose, in true Cat fashion, to pretend to a complete lack of comprehension. I therefore volunteered to translate. The exchanges went along these lines:

Miss Emma Jones: "But don't you see, parading yourself almost naked will only inflame a man's baser passions?"

Cat: "That's the whole idea. Not that His Majesty needs any help in that department."

Miss Emma Jones: "But don't you know it is sinful to disport yourself lewdly like this?"

Cat: "What a load of old elephant dung. What's wrong with this woman, Your Majesty, hasn't she got a yoni or has it shrivelled up?"

I can tell you I had fun translating that for the missionary miss's benefit!

There was more in a similar vein and their conversations concluded with Cat throwing one of her hissing fits and threatening to scratch Miss Jones's eyes out. I rolled about the divan, laughing fit to bust while Miss Jones, face aflame, beat a strategic retreat while Cat hurled a veritable shower of pots, ornaments, inkwells and other sorted bric-a-brac in the unhappy interloper's general direction, fortunately with more spirit than accuracy. I heard later from Baljit that Miss Jones attempted the same misguided reformations on her with less violent but equally predictable results. Baljit speaks very passable English and told our visitor, in no uncertain terms, that she'd worked bloody hard for the right to be a part of my harem and was not going to put on a winding sheet and dress like a three-day-old corpse for anyone's benefit.

Our Miss Jones has now made an unholy alliance with a nasty little Jesuit priest, who has been trying for local converts for some years. This ecumenical harmony is destined to be short lived, I feel, particularly as I have let it slip in the bazaar that they intend evangelising the locals with the aid of fiendish drugs manufactured alternatively from either the fat of pigs or the fat of cows - if it worked for the Pandies during the mutiny I dare say it will serve here. Nonetheless, the woman's arrival is a thorough nuisance and something I could certainly live without. Her constant sermonising has got some of the girls in a tizzy and I have seen the odd ghostly apparition stomping about the place so it would appear that some, at least, have accepted her gift of a nightgown. The wretched woman and the poisonous little priest are to be seen each morning and evening on the steps of the Jesuit Mission, haranguing the passers-by with threats of eternal damnation and promises of salvation if only they will become good Catholics/good Methodists. Ah yes, I didn't mention that. It appears the estimable Missionary Society is of the temperance persuasion - another reason for me to despise them and all their works with a passion. Accordingly, I have retired to my chambers with a bottle of cognac and Cat and Baljit for company, locking the doors and placing two particularly large and obtuse sowars on guard with strict instruction that I am only to be disturbed in the event of the second coming. Should that happen I am likely to revise my religious opinions but will not do so for the sake of Miss Emma Jones of Birmingham. I can see Christmas is going to be exceedingly tedious this year.

(Editor's Note: Now we shall see how the villain is served. I cannot but believe that some of the goodness of this missionary lady must rub off on the villain.)

January 1872

God bless Jahengir Khan! The hugely-hung rogue has only gone and seduced Miss Jones from the path of virtue and soundly rogered the vixen. What a lark! I can imagine the worthy elders of the Missionary Society rotating in their graves like whirling dervishes. It happened thus. Jahengir was going through his usual routine of fucking a couple of gals before dinner - presumably to work up an appetite - when Miss Jones burst in upon him, attracted by the noise. Some of the girls get a wee bit vocal when he's giving them a seeing-to and our Emma heard the wailing and general brouhaha and got it into her pointed little skull that murder was being done. When she saw the cause of the commotion - the 'murder weapon' - if thus I might describe Jahengir's buffalo-sized organ - she was quite overcome. That is to say, the dirty bugger whipped his lingam out of whichever orifice of whichever girl he was currently pleasuring and proceeded to ejaculate a vast quantity of prime tribal seed all over our Missionary Lass's face. At this somewhat unusual greeting, she fainted clean away.

Never one to miss a trick, Jahengir had her out of her clothes in a trice while she swooned and, legend has it, when she came-to, our randy hero was lapping at her yoni like a demented puppy. Soon her arse was wiggling about like a good 'un and Jahengir pops in the same hideous piece of meat as caused her to swoon in the first place and proceeded to plumb her depths to good effect. By all accounts, said religieuse was soon coming like one of Mr Brunel's express trains without brakes and howling like a rabid mongrel. She had to be carried from his quarters on a litter, so weak in the legs had she become. My only regret is that I heard all this second hand from one of the girls and was unable to witness such an epic turnaround for myself. The upshot of all this is that she now spends every night in Jahengir's bed and neither of them gets much in the way of shut-eye. She walks like a sowar that has been too long in the saddle and it would take some of Mr Nobel's dynamite to remove the grin from Jahengir's happy visage. At least the lascivious bastard leaves my girls alone now.

My own time has been taken up with affairs of state. I now insist on an audit of the treasury once each year. It doesn't entirely stop the peculation but it makes the thieving swine know that I know what's going on. Sometimes I truly believe that I am far too lenient on the bastards - the old Nizzam would have lopped their hands off. I also have to confess to feeling a trifle seedy of late - perhaps I'm sickening for something. It hasn't left me feeling much like putting the girls through their paces, which is a shame, as they all appear to be absolutely panting for it at present. I might even have to consult the court physician. I really would prefer to avoid such an encounter if at all possible; the man's an utter charlatan and his cure for everything seems to be powdered monkey balls, a substance with which I have no desire to become familiar!

Word has also reached us from over the northern border that the Afghans are feeling their oats again. It is an unfortunate fact that whenever the tribes get their bowels in an uproar, it spills over into our frontier provinces. This usually results in a bit of raiding, thuggery, buggery and rape. I had sharp words with Jahengir and his brothers and told them to remind their esteemed sire that, if he wants them home with their ghoolies still firmly attached, he'd better behave himself. As Jahengir, at least, is much in love with his organs of generation, I feel sure that the missive thus despatched will have been firmly worded. I can but so hope.

April 1872

My hopes proved ill-founded. I am only just now beginning to recover from what has proved to be a most dastardly attempt to poison me instigated by none other than Jahengir Khan and his brothers. As they knew that Baljit is my unofficial food-taster, the cunning misbegotten bastards found an ingenious way of administering the toxin without arousing any suspicion. They achieved this by interfering with the cigars in my humidor. It now appears that they doctored my cheroots with a distilled essence of the opium poppy adulterated with some other pernicious herbal extract. The result was that I became distracted, unable to concentrate and weak in both mind and body. The effects of this drug were so egregious that both Cat and Baljit feared for my life and my sanity. I have learned that I became irascible in the extreme and that my face took on a wild aspect as one sometimes encounters in a bedlam.

I do fear that the British officials who visited during this period will have gone away believing me to be quite mad. Apparently all I could do during their audience with me was to rave and drool by turns. The worst part of it is that the miscreants bribed my syce to do the actual dirty work. Cat caught the treacherous swine red-handed but he would not confess until faced with the prospect of being sewn into a cow's hide and cast alive into the waters of the river. His confession availed him nothing, however, we did it anyway.

Jahengir's head and lingam, along with those of his brothers, are now are on their way to his father in a sack. All agree that my punishments were just with the exception of Miss Emma Jones, who seems to believe I may have overreacted. She currently mopes about the place clad in black sacking and wailing some sort of dirge, which only ceases for the duration of her frequent attempts to scratch my eyes out. All around me insist that I take firm action against her - to do otherwise might encourage others to think that they can attack my royal personage with impunity. I will confess that the idea of punishing an Englishwoman bothers me. Although I am certain that I would be in my rights to do so, word of such an occurrence would almost certainly have repercussions of the most undesirable kind. As it is, I had a visit from some interfering busybody, possibly the same stuffed shirt as came here previously. Unfortunately this occurred while I was in the throws of the poison and I have no recollection whatsoever of the man being here. Cat tells me I threatened the Raj with war if I was further plagued - that alone should give one some idea of how far gone I was. Still, there is no help for it. These assaults upon my person must be stopped and if Miss Jones has to suffer to get into her thick skull, so be it.

Later the same month...

To avoid any charge of humiliating the wretched woman in public, I decreed that Miss Jones was to be seized and taken into the seraglio. She yowled and yelled and kicked up the most frightful commotion when the eunuchs took her but it was to no avail. She encountered little sympathy from any of the girls either, as they were incensed that she had the temerity to try and lay hands, or in her case fingernails, on the king. Such actions placed her beyond the pale and the girls were among the most insistent on her punishment.

At a sign from me they stripped her of her rags and dragged her across the floor, casting her at my feet. I asked her if she understood that, as the reigning monarch, I had the absolute right to judge all crimes and determine appropriate punishments as I saw fit. She hissed and spat and swore: saying I was but a jumped-up Sepoy officer and that Jahengir was only striking a blow for his people and freedom. Isn't it strange how seemingly rational human beings can ascribe honourable intentions to the most dastardly acts, excusing any manner of murder or treachery by the simple expedient of imputing some sort of higher motive? I replied, somewhat pithily, that one man's freedom-fighter was another man's murdering fanatic; whatever wrongs she laid at my door in respect of the hill tribes, I did nothing more than attempt to prevent them from looting and killing their neighbours: which acts, I believe, are hardly their God-given right.

It was apparent that any attempt at civilised conversation was doomed to failure and I nodded to the eunuchs to take and lash her between two pillars by the wrists and ankles. Seeing her there, naked and spread-eagled, was deeply arousing. Whatever her precarious hold on reality, she has a magnificent body. Her breasts are large and rounded, drooping slightly and tipped with large areolae and small, brown wrinkled nipples that stood out proudly. Her yoni was covered by an enormous bush of black hair that completely obscured the treasures within. I have rarely seen so much pubic hair on any woman and decreed immediately that she should be waxed.