Birds of Prey

While he had been ashore his father had written on the slate a series of navigational problems for him to solve. He tucked it under his arm, grabbed a pewter mug of small beer, a bowl of fish stew and, holding a hot biscuit between his teeth, darted down the ladder to his cabin, the only place on the ship where he could be alone to concentrate on his task.

Suddenly he looked up as he heard water being poured in the cabin next door. He had noticed the buckets of fresh river water standing over the charcoal fire in the galley and laughed when the cook had complained bitterly that his fire was being used to heat water to bathe in. Now Hal knew for whom those steaming pails had been prepared. Zelda's guttural tones carried to him through the panel as she harangued Oliver, his father's servant. Oliver's reply was truculent. "I don't understand a word you say, you grisly old bitch. But if you don't like it you can fill the sodding bath yerself."

Hal gri

"All right, you old trull!" Oliver baited her, as he lugged the empty buckets from the cabin. "There's nothing you've got that would keep me here a minute longer."

When Oliver was gone, Zelda went through into the main cabin and Hal heard her speaking to her mistress. A minute later she ushered Katinka through the doorway. Katinka paused beside the steaming bath and dabbled her fingers in the water. She exclaimed sharply and jerked away her hand. Zelda hurried forward, apologizing, and poured cold water from the bucket that stood beside the bath. Katinka tested the temperature again. This time she nodded with satisfaction, and went to sit on the stool. Zelda came up behind her, lifted the splendid shimmering bundle of her hair with both hands to pile it on top of her head and pi

Katinka leaned forward and, with her fingertips, wiped a small clear window in the clouded surface of the mirror. She examined the vignette of herself in this clear spot. She thrust out her tongue to examine it for any trace of white coating. It was pink as a rose petal. Then she opened her eyes wide and peered into their depths, touching the skin beneath them with her fingertips. "Look at these horrid wrinkles!" she lamented.

Zelda denied it vehemently. "Not a single one!"

"I never want to grow old and ugly." Katinka's expression was tragic.

"Then you had best die now!" said Zelda. "That's the only way you'll avoid it."

"What a terrible thing to say. You are so cruel to me," Katinka complained.

Hal could not understand what they said but the tone of her voice touched him to the depths of his being.

"Come now," Zelda chided her. "You know you're beautiful."

"Am I, Zelda? Do you really think so?"

"Yes. And so do you." Zelda lifted her to her feet. "But if you don't bathe now, you will stink just as beautifully."

She unfastened her mistress's gown, then moved behind her, lifted the gown from her shoulders and Katinka stood naked before the mirror. Hal's involuntary gasp was muffled by the panel and the small sounds of the ship's hull.

From that slender neck down to her tiny ankles Katinka's body formed a line of heartbreaking purity. Her buttocks swelled out into two perfectly symmetrical orbs, like a pair of the ostrich eggs Hal had seen offered for sale in the markets of Zanzibar. But there were childish, vulnerable dimples at the back of her knees.

Katinka's own image in the clouded mirror was ethereal and could not hold her attention for long. She turned away from it and stood facing him. Hal's gaze flew to her breasts. They were large for her narrow shoulders. Each would have filled his cupped hands, yet they were not perfectly round as he had expected them to be.

Hal stared at them until his eye watered and he was forced at last to blink. Then he let his gaze sink down, over the slight but enthralling bulge of her belly, and onto the misty cloud of fine curls that nestled between her thighs. The lamp-light struck them and they sparked purest gold.

She stood a long time thus, longer than he had dared hope she might, staring down into the bath while Zelda poured perfumed oil from a crystal bottle into the water, and then knelt to stir it with her hand. Katinka continued to stand, her weight on one leg so that her pelvis was tilted at an enchanting angle, and there was a small sly smile on her lips as she reached up slowly and took one of her nipples between thumb and forefinger. For a moment Hal thought she stared directly at him, and he began to pull away guiltily from his peep-hole.

Then he knew that it was an illusion for she dropped her eyes and looked down at the fat little berry that poked out rosily between her fingers.

She rolled it softly back and forth, and while Hal stared in amazement it changed colour and shape. It swelled and hardened and darkened. He had never imagined anything quite like this a little miracle that should have filled him with reverence but instead tore at his loins with the claws of lust.

Zelda looked up from the bath she was mixing and, when she saw what her mistress was doing, snapped a prim reprimand. Katinka laughed and stuck out her tongue, but dropped her hand and stepped into the bath. With a luxurious sigh she sank into the hot, perfumed water, until only the thick coil of golden hair on top of her head showed above the rim of the bath.

Zelda fussed over her, lathering soap on a fla