Chapter Three

Madame Zurra’s brothel was established in what had once been the home of a family of rich landowners. Built in the old Eastern fashion, to present high blank walls to the outer world, it faced inwards onto the privacy of an interior now largely paved, where water splashed amid palm and fruit trees growing in great earthenware pots. In the centre, where once had been an ornamental pool, was now a small dance floor with a tiny stage for exhibitions. Around these, set beneath the trees, were small tables lit at this midnight hour with coloured lamps hanging amid the boughs. From this courtyard, music, the clatter of dishes, the deep murmur of male voices and the tinkling of female laughter drifted upward through the dark leaves to the two tiers of carved wooden galleries that overlooked the scene. Up here was the crux of Madame Zurra’s business, the ultimate destination of the customers below, as dining, drinking and watching the performance on stage led inevitably to the main purpose of their visit.

Off the galleries, behind the elaborate balustrades of the upper stories, lay ranges of rooms thick walled and secret, built so to keep the heat at bay. By day, all up here lay cool shadowy and silent. Now after dark, it was frequented with patrons and servants passing to and fro, softly illumined by the red-shielded lights above the closed, enigmatic doors; lights that to the initiated, signalled busy occupancy; doors behind which a passer-by who paused to listen, might hear sounds of pain or ecstasy or both. From behind the last door at one end of an upper gallery, where a red light showed, such sounds emerged. Within the small room Elizabeth Seaton, now known as the slave whore Lady Elizabeth, was hard at work, being taken by her current customer in the position of the Ram, El Kebachi.

The room was functional to its purpose, with white-plastered walls and one narrow iron-grilled window high up on the outer wall. The only indications of its special use were the iron bars that secured the wooden louvers of the door. The principal furnishing of the room both in size and function was a large bed of entirely Victorian, brass-railed ornate splendour. The other items merely supplemented it, a small bamboo washstand and basin, a wooden stool and a narrow black leather-covered ottoman along a side wall. Madame Zurra occupied this, squatting cross-legged, massively brooding and puffing from time to time upon a thin black cheroot, watching the noisy activity opposite her with the detached alertness of an animal trainer assessing the performance of her charge.

El Kebachi, the position of the Ram, had been the man’s expressed choice, but Lady Elizabeth’s ability now extended to a comprehensive range of such positions. Her training partners had been a succession of randy but penniless soldiers whom Madame employed to serve her purpose in return for a meal and the fuck, free of charge.