The Secret Memoirs

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Elizabeth's journey from schoolgirl to harem slave.
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The Secret Memoirs of Elizabeth Bartlett

Chapter I.

I have lived a life of strange and fascinating adventure, of violent contrasts between abject subjugation and sublime command, of both the greatest pains and the greatest pleasures imaginable in the life of woman. But these pleasures were those unspeakable to society, those carnal pleasures, those deep, dark revels of the body that in our age are hid away and forever banished from the light of day. Much as I yearn to, I dare not speak of them aloud. Instead, it is to mute paper I commit my story, in expectation of the day when, perhaps, my name may rise from the page, and these scratches of ink conjure images of soft sanguine flesh and bodies locked in passion.

For the purpose at hand, little need be said of my first eighteen years upon this earth. I was an English country girl, raised first on my family's own modest farm until the death, first of my mother when I was six, and then my father when I was twelve. From then I grew up on the estate of my widower uncle Thomas Bartlett, a man of some wealth and also a stern, strict follower of the old sort of religion. Of my neighbors, none need be mentioned except Katherine, who was to become my best friend. Kat, as I called her, was two years older than me and much less ignorant of the ways of the world; even as I carried on in complete ignorance of all carnal matters, she was playing kissing games with the boys from the village; it fit our characters, somehow, that her hair was a playful blond, and mine a dark, rich brown. As we grew into the flower of young girlhood, Katherine's figure filled out to a voluptuous collection of curves, wonderfully matched by her sly and playful face.

I, on the other hand, grew more svelte and smooth, though my breasts and buttocks turned out full enough; I believe it is not too immodest to say that I was quite a pretty girl. By the time we were seventeen, Katherine resembled one of Boucher's coquettish nymphs, in appearance as well as character, while I, not tall or petit but admirably well-proportioned, possessed the passive grace of a Grecian nude—though, of course, my modest demeanor always kept me most resolutely clothed. (I am not sure the same could have been said for Kat.)

I was, indeed, a most modest young woman, and carefully kept so by my pious uncle Thomas. In Kat, however, I saw a hint of something strange and unimaginably forbidden, something I felt stirring, if only most faintly, within the depths of my own being.

* * *

In the Summer of 1866 I embarked on the first journey of my life. Uncle Thomas, shaking off some of his customary domesticity, decided it was high time for a grand tour of Europe and the Holy Land, and so we set off. With us were Katherine (and only Katherine, for while Thomas was willing to pay for her passage, even his generosity did not extend to treating her entire family) and another family of our neighbors by the name of Whipple, consisting of a mother, a father, and their young son.

We traveled through France and Italy, celebrating my eighteenth birthday in a searing hot Rome on the twenty-sixth of July. Our tours were perfunctory in the extreme, restricted, as they were, merely to viewing such ruins, churches and palaces as we could before returning to our place of lodging in the evening. But for a girl who had never left the English countryside it was more than enough.

From each stop we were conveyed to the next by the same steamship, the Galatea. Along the way a sort of society sprung up among the passengers. We attracted a young man by the name of John Grayfield to our expedition. Even then, I could not but notice that it seemed to be Katherine's bold charms, more than an interest in Biblical history, that persuaded him to join our tour of the Holy Land.

We arrived in Palestine in August and made our way through the various more or less uninteresting towns of the region. (The only attraction of these decrepit villages, it seems to me, is the attachment of their names to certain passages in a dusty old book.) John left us in Jerusalem as we prepared to cross the Sinai to Egypt—his constitution, he said, was not meant for desert voyages. So the rest of us set out across the dunes on camelback with two hired Bedouin guides armed with antique muskets showing us the way.

Here, however, is where my narrative breaks from the model of the usual travelogue. For as we passed through the broiling desert something happened that was to utterly change the course of my life.

We were three days into the desert. I was in the center of our little caravan, perched precariously on my camel, clothed only in a loose yellow walking dress and no corset, with my face shaded by a wide-brimmed straw hat—a loosening of sartorial rigor permitted by my uncle as an accommodation to the heat.

It was near mid-day with the sun pounding down when I heard a crack echo through the air.

I twirled my head around. One of the Bedouin guides rolled over in his saddle, dead. The other pulled his long musket from its sheath, but before he could bring it to his shoulder another shot pierced the sky and he, too, fell dead. I looked to my left. A dozen or more men swathed in robes and turbans streamed over the nearest dune, guns at the ready. A flurry of shots flew out.

Uncle Thomas drew a revolver from his side.

"Run, Elizabeth! Run!" he shouted.

Without thinking I kicked the flank of my camel, sending him racing forward. Though I heard what seemed like a thousands shots ringing out, I did not turn my head to see the struggle raging behind. Instead I rode as fast as I could—to where, I knew not. As the sound of gunfire faded in the distance another sound took its place: pounding hooves, and the yells of men fast on my trail.

I desperately kicked my camel in a wild attempt to outrun my pursuers. The chase was short. Suddenly I felt myself slipping; the camel tumbled into the sand, sending me sprawling. As I regained my senses I became terribly aware of the two black-robed men standing above me.

They wore smiles of malicious glee and spoke to one another in foul, barking voices. Their faces were shaded by their great turbans. Fear swept across me. Their burly hands grasped my shoulders and pushed my back into the sand. Their bodies pinned me to the ground. I squirmed. Then one of them, a man with a terrible scar across his cheek, slipped a great curved knife from his waist and held it to me bosom. I became absolutely still, except for the heaving of my chest with each of my short, panicked breaths.

The scarred Arab slipped the tip of his knife under the neckline of my dress. I though my life was surely about to end. But rather than driving it into my flesh, he pulled it violently away, cutting the cloth the ribbons. The other Arab grabbed hold of pieces of the mangled fabric and rent them apart with his powerful hands, while the other cut slit after slit in my dress with his knife. I was terrified. Soon nothing was left but shreds.

Beneath the ruins of my dress only a short chamise shielded my flesh from their touch. And this, too, was soon under attack. The scarred Arab made an incision in the fabric just above my navel; then, roughly but with unexpected precision, he carefully pulled the knife up, extending the incision between my breasts and up towards my neck. Every second I feared he would slip and send the blade slicing through my tender flesh.

When the scarred man had made the final cut through the neckline of my undergarment, the other instantly seized either side of the rent material and pulled it violently apart. I gasped. My breasts were suddenly exposed, naked to the desert air and to their eyes. No man had ever seen them before, those full mounds of softest ivory. To my terror was suddenly added a tremendous sense of shame, such as I had never felt before.

The two men's mouths curled in vicious grins. Their calloused hands fell onto my virgin flesh, grasping my tender breasts. I recoiled, but there was nothing I could do. I did not have any idea what it was they wanted to do to me, but I knew that whatever it was I would have no choice but to submit.

And then another gunshot rent the air. The two men jumped to their feet. I looked up in a daze. There was a man on horseback, astride a magnificent black horse like none I had ever seen—and the man, too, was like a vision. He was tall and dark, dressed from head to foot in gleaming white robes. In one hand was a raised, smoking pistol. At his side were a sword and dagger, each in a jeweled sheath. With the sun behind him I could not make out his face.

The two men in black robes pointed at me and barked something. The man on horseback said something in return, with a deep voice that was even, yet filled with resolution. The others walked away from me, mounted their camels, and rode of across the dunes.


The man in white dismounted his horse and walked to where I lay half-naked in the sand. He knelt by my side and calmly drew his dagger. I was terrified, once again, for my life, certain that he had come to put me to death. But instead he slipped the tip in the slit cut into my chamise and drew it down, from my navel to the hem. When the cut was completed, he pulled the entire undergarment—split now from top to bottom down the middle—and threw it behind him.

I knew not what to do. Her I was, lying naked as Eve in the desert underneath this great, strange man. He had a thin black mustache. His dark brown eyes had a burning intensity I had never seen before. For what seemed like a very long while he merely looked at me. In spite of myself, I felt an unfamiliar fascination stirring in my belly.

The man put his arms around me and pulled my face to his. His lips met mine—the first time I had ever been kissed. He pressed himself against me in a long, deep embrace, as if the passion I could feel raging in his heart were passing from his body to mine. What will I had to resist died at that moment.

He kissed me again, and then again, each time lingering over my lips before parting. Not understanding, I let him do as he wished. As he kissed me, his hands slowly slipped all over my naked body. Without thinking I wrapped my arms around his back—why, I could not imagine. It seemed as if he were covering me completely. Gradually, his hands made his way to my waist, and then between my thighs. He gently parted my legs.

For a moment he raised himself off me and took lifted his hands from my skin. I heard a rustling of his robes. When he settled back down I was startled to feel a pressure against my loins—something warm and hard. I could not imagine what it was. Till then I had seen the male member only as sculpted in marble, and never erect—the mystery of that moment was untainted by carnal knowledge. Uncomprehending, the sense of terror returned to me. The pressure built between my loins.

But the man's kisses and caresses, combined with the shock of all that had happened in so little time, had sent me into a strange state, something like a waking dream. To my surprise I began to feel a strange pleasure, a warmth rising from the depths of my body, such as I had only felt a few times before—once when leaning forward on a galloping horse, or sometimes when dipping into the hot water of a newly poured bath. He entered with such slow delicate force that I hardly was aware of what was happening—and if I had been, it would have done me no good, since I knew nothing of such things.

But after a few minutes I became aware of a pain within me and the fear returned. I wanted once more to flee. The man in white, though, did not stop. Instead, he kept pushing, gently but firmly, pushing, pushing, against the walls of my body. And, after a few more moments, I felt something give way. There was pain, too, but something had changed: the way was clear.

Not long after, he started pushing in and then pulling out of my sex. Looking down, I glimpsed the strange, confusing sight. Something, it seemed (though I could scarcely believe it), was penetrating me, something attached to the man himself. Of course I did not understand. But I did not need to understand. Each stroke was filling me with greater pleasure than the last, and each was a greater pleasure than any I had felt before. Without thinking I began to strange sounds, somewhere between a gasp and a moan.

"Ah, ah, ah, ah. . ."

I pulled my arms around his body and pressed my chest to his. This strange sensation, this man pressed against me, inside me, as if he and I were one, overpowered any thoughts I might have had. My back buried in the dune, my eyes blinded by the sun, I abandoned myself to the pleasure building within.

After what seemed at once an eternity and a moment, I felt a wave of ecstasy wash over my body. I cried out.

"Oh! Ah! Ahhhh. . . Oooohhh . . . Ooooohhhhh. . ."

My cries transformed into moans—deep moans of the deepest satisfaction. I shook from head to toe. As this unprecedented rapture swept through me I felt the man above shake and moan as well; deep within my body I felt him twitch and jerk. We shook together, united, our pleasures mingling—and then, as the climax faded away, we fell into each other's arms.

Some time later—I cannot say how much later—we separated. He fixed his robes. I lay on my elbows in the sand. Despite all the horror of the day I felt an odd satisfaction, almost, even, a sense of happiness. A few moments passed—and then, without warning, the man in white scooped me out of the sand and set me on top of his horse. A second later he mounted the saddle behind me and we were off, speeding towards the falling sun.

The desert wind whipped through my long, brown hair and over my skin. Grains of sand glistened on my naked breasts. Strangely, I did not think of Uncle Thomas or of the Whipple family or even of Katherine as we rode across the dunes. Perhaps somewhere below my reasoning mind there was something telling me they were gone, forever gone, and best forgotten. I did not feel grief, nor pain, nor regret, but only a tremendous sense that my life had begun anew, for better or worse, and what was to follow would undoubtedly be unlike anything I had known before.

* * *

After perhaps an hour or more riding the dunes an encampment appeared before us. Several dozen tents were pitched in the bed of a dry river; near the center of the cluster rose a tent that was higher than the others, its cloth crimson embroidered with gold. Around the tents swarmed a great number of robed bodies. As we approached I felt fear rising anew in my, fear that my naked skin would be subject to the gazes of countless unfamiliar men. I tried to cover my breasts as they gathered around

But as we passed the outermost tent, the man in white yelled something at the men around us; instantly, they fell prostrate on the sand. Riding through the camp I saw not a single eye raised from the ground. A minute later we reached the great tent—in fact not one tent but several stitched together to create several connected rooms—in the center of the camp. The man in white dismounted, lifted me from his horse, and set me down in front of the tent. He raised the entrance flap and gently pushed me forward.

Blinded by the light of the desert sun, I was at first unable to make out anything but a soft red glow. As my eyes adjusted to the muted light I perceived the countless pillows and cushions lying on the floor and the odd, unfamiliar gold and silver vessels strewn among them: water pipes, vases, and so forth, a veritable garden of luxury. The chamber was bound by thick red cloth and perfectly round on all sides except the one adjoining the next tent in the complex. At the center a pole stretched perhaps four yards to a peak, where the only direct sunlight penetrated the tent as a shaft of shimmering white.

The man in white clapped his hands and called out in words I could not understand. A silent moment passed—and then, the flap on the flat side of the tent opened. To my amazement, two women passed through it into the room. Both, like myself, were young—in their twenties, no doubt—and, what was more, completely nude.

I had sometimes looked at my own form in a full-length mirror in my uncle's house. But I had never seen another woman unclothed, except as statues or paintings. Indeed, these two women had something of the statuesque; they had that graceful ease of bearing that warrants calling them nude rather than merely naked. Each possessed long black hair that flowed over the shoulders. One, the taller of the two, was a creamy light brown, an Arab woman of the finest stock; her figure was suave and slender, elegant as the desert itself. The other was a far darker shade, like fine chocolate, and much fuller in figure: she was an Indian, cut from the same stock as the voluptuous sculpted maidens that embellish her country's heathen temples. The triangles of skin between their legs, I was amazed to see, were both completely without hair, like the women in paintings.

The man in white said something to them and then, without another word, left the tent, fastening the flap behind him. The Arab woman turned around and went back through the flap to the other tent. Her movements were smooth and unhurried. The other woman stood perhaps five feet from me. Her eyes looked deep into mine, while her full lips were pulled into the gentlest smile I had ever seen. Around her neck and between her bulging breasts ran a chain of large white pearls. Her ankles were adorned with delicate chains of gold.

With a silent gesture of her hands she indicated for me to sit. I sunk into a mound of pillows on the floor. I became aware of the sweet intoxicating scent of some enchanting exotic incense permeating the air. In the half-light of the room the woman's skin seemed positively to glow—so did mine, for that matter. She sat down beside me, never letting her eyes leave mine, as I lay on my back. For a long while—I cannot say how long—we stayed in this position. I felt myself slipping slowly but irrevocably into a state of intoxication.

So deep was I in this spell that I was not startled when the woman reached out and touched me gently on the shoulder. She leaned over me, her smile and her eyes filling me with a sense of infinite relaxation. Pointing at her heart, her lips opened, and I heard a whispered word.

"Ananda."

It was her name.

"Elizabeth," I whispered in response.

Just then the Arab woman reentered the room. She was still nude, but now carried a large bowl of steaming water in both her hands. For a moment the unexpected sight threatened to disrupt the trance, but Ananda's gentle touch soothed me. The Arab woman set the bowl at my side and knelt beside it. She looked into my eyes and pointed at herself.

"Numa."

Her voice was as soft as her companion's. I noticed now that she had also carried in—under the bowl, I assume—a neatly folded stack of several small and very fluffy white towels. She dipped one of these into the bowl, squeezed it slightly to expel excess water, and brought it to my belly.

The sensation of the warm, moist towel on my sun-parched skin was intensely pleasurable. Numa lightly ran the towel over my body. Ananda took another towel and started doing the same. Together they touched every inch of me. I had never felt anything as soothing. I let them move my body any way they wished. They lifted my arms, turned me over. My back, my breasts, my buttocks, my legs, my neck, my arms—every inch of me was offered to their touch.

Numa slipped her hand between my inner thighs and gently parted my legs. I did not resist as she pressed her towel into the brown curls of hair above my loins. Gently and without haste, often returning the towel to the bowl for fresh water, she touched my most intimate regions; even as she did, Ananda kept herself occupied ministering to the rest of my body. Pulling my legs aside, she stroked the delicate skin where my thighs met the soft mound that lay between them.