“Demure,” the woman who had once been Glade’s mistress replied hesitantly in the Knights’ language. “Not Lady Demure. I no longer have a title, just as I no longer have an estate or a husband.”

Glade crouched down beside Demure under the shade of a palm tree. The appearance of both women had changed in the intervening years. Their hair was much longer and fell over their faces. Although Demure was as elegant as ever, there were small scars on her knees and ankles that hadn’t been there before. The face that peered out between the hanging curtains of black hair exhibited a hint of humility that had been totally absent before.

Demure studied Glade carefully. Perhaps she wasn’t certain whether she did recognise the strange woman who’d approached her so boldly after the initial welcome party dispersed. The fact that Glade addressed her by name in her own language must have disconcerted her.

“Have you lived in this village for long?” she asked Glade cautiously and still in her own language.

“For more than two years,” said Glade, careful not to use the honorary titles that had once been mandatory. “And you? How long have you lived with the Ocean People?”

“For about the same length of time,” said Demure who appeared to still be puzzling as to who Glade might be. “The village where I lived is towards the North.”

“Do you know what happened to Quagga?”

“Quagga? Why should I be interested in the fate of a wild horse?”

“You ran away with Quagga on the night of the rebellion,” said Glade. “She was your slave…”

Demure’s face suddenly shone with the light of recognition and understanding. She placed the long delicate fingers of one hand on the inside of her companion’s thigh. Despite Glade’s resentment at her one-time mistress’ ill-treatment, this excited in her a spasm of excitement she’d not felt for years. Demure traced her hand up the thigh towards Glade’s crotch which opened instinctively as did her mouth.

“As you were also my slave…” she said with a wicked smile. “And now you are known as…?”

Glade was reminded with a jolt that Demure had never known her name. Nor was it likely she’d known that of Quagga or even Mimosa, who was now a more powerful woman in the savannah than Demure had ever been. The name she gave in reply was the one by which she was known by the Ocean People. It actually meant ‘beach’ as their language lacked the vocabulary to describe woodland.

“You were always a very pretty girl,” said Demure, whose smile steadily deepened as her fingers delved deeper between Glade’s inner thighs.

Glade placed a steadying hand on Demure’s. “Tell me about Quagga. What happened to her?”

“The slave who accompanied me when I fled the village…?”

Glade nodded. “She was my friend…”

Demure pressed her other hand over Glade’s and gazed into her eyes with a sympathetic earnestness that seemed almost genuine. “Then I’m sorry to have to tell you this…” Demure began, pushing her face close enough to Glade’s for her breath to brush against her cheeks, “…but your friend is…” She paused again for affect and held her gaze long enough to gauge Glade’s reaction. “She is dead.”

“Dead?” One of Glade’s few pleasures during the time she was in Demure’s service was the love she shared with Quagga. “Was she savaged by a lion? Was she attacked by wolves?”

“She was hit by a spear while we were fleeing from a troop of barbaric warriors,” said Demure. She squeezed Glade’s hand and brushed aside the hair over her face. She pressed her lips to Glade’s forehead, nose, chin, and then her slightly parted lips. Glade felt ashamed to acknowledge that she was already sexually aroused by the attentions of her former mistress even while she was being told this dreadful news. “Your friend had been my faithful servant for many moons. Every night I relished the pleasure of her body against mine as we sheltered from the animals of the night and fled the cruel barbarians who massacred my tribe. One day our luck deserted us and we unexpectedly encountered a hunting party. Your friend was struck by a spear as we fled. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to rescue her, but she is now surely dead. The mountain barbarians are truly pitiless.”

“Mimosa is now their queen,” said Glade.

“A queen?” wondered Demure, with genuine interest inscribed on her face. “The barbarians have a queen? Who is this Mimosa?”

“She was your other slave,” Glade reminded her. “The dark skinned one.”

“And now she is a queen!” said Demure with evident admiration. “Who’d have thought that one of my slaves would rise to such a height. She was a feisty girl, but not an enthusiastic fuck. Not like you, my darling.” She cupped a hand behind Glade’s neck to pull her towards her and delicately placed a finger on the very tip of her former slave’s clitoris. “You were always my favourite fuck. No one I have known, either male or female, has ever given me as much passion and love as you. No one has given me such powerful orgasms.”

Reluctantly Glade eased Demure off her, but was as aware as her former mistress how extraordinarily excited she was at their unexpected reunion. Her breath was short. Her heart was beating ferociously. Her brow had exploded in perspiration.

“Why have you come to live in this village?” asked Glade. “Was it because you’d heard that I was living here?”

“No, not at all,” said Demure, who was not so easily distracted and made sure that her hand still rested on Glade’s thigh. “I am a woman in pursuit of a husband and this village has many men in pursuit of a wife.” She returned her lips to Glade’s and kissed her again. “But had I known you were here I would have come much sooner.”

“Get off me!” cried Glade who at last expressed her indignation. “I’m not your slave any more. In this village we are all equal. You have no hold on me.”

“Of course not, sweetheart,” said Demure in a chastened tone. “There is a new world order and amongst the Ocean People there are no mistresses and there are no slaves. Please forgive me the error of my old unreconstructed ways. The shock of losing everything has been hard on me and I was so pleased to meet a former lover.”

“I’m not your lover now.”

“That may be so,” said Demure regretfully. “But could you at least help me build a shelter for the night?”

Glade thought at first she would say no. Never! But instead she nodded. “Yes,” she said meekly. “I’ll help you.”

Ivory was shocked by Glade’s show of forgiveness. “After all that the disgusting woman had made you suffer...” she said to the shaman as they trudged in the crisp snowy footprints of those ahead of them. “You should have shunned her. She should have been expelled from the village. She had mistreated you for many years.”

“That had been in the past,” said Glade. “I was sure she was a reformed woman. I was ready to forgive her.”

The truth was that Glade didn’t believe that Demure had changed at all, but she still extended her forgiveness. The fascination her mistress had exercised on her during her years in captivity and the memories of the love they shared were as strong as ever. Glade helped Demure construct a hut and, indeed, put rather more effort into it than her former mistress. And then, when they’d finished and there was at last a place of privacy for them in the village, she and her former mistress fell together onto the sandy floor and abandoned themselves to urgent, passionate and exhausting love-making.

It was much more like the physical carnality of full-on fucking with a man such as Dolphin than the relaxed and gentle lovemaking she normally enjoyed with Macaque or Dignity. Demure assured her that she’d not made love to anyone with as much enthusiasm or with as many orgasms in all the time since the rebellion; and Glade believed her. Just as she was certain that Demure had not led a life of celibacy—it was unlikely that she had only recent chosen to pursue marriage and equally unlikely that she had remained chaste—Glade had enjoyed enough sexual encounters to recognise real passion. Just as Glade was drawn to Demure by the woman’s sexual charisma, she could see that her former mistress’ need for her body was genuine.

The biggest difference from the years when she and Glade were tied by the institution of slavery was that Demure now had to ask for Glade’s love rather than simply demand it and expect it to be given. She now had to reciprocate the love she was given by some of her own. Glade was gratified to see that this was one lesson of sexual etiquette that Demure had mastered and expressed with genuine affection.

“If only I had treated you with the love you deserved, my sweetest,” said Demure sweetly as she held Glade tightly to her bosom.

If only she had, thought Glade. All that unearned chastisement... There was the occasion when her nose bled for hours after a particularly savage punch but she was still expected to make love to the woman who’d just hit her. There were the vicious and unrelenting slaps her mistress unleashed on her when Glade was little more than a useful punchbag.

“Why have you chosen to live amongst the Ocean People?” Glade asked her lover.

“I was lost and lonely,” said Demure, “They welcomed me. I’d been wandering alone for many moons and was hungry from eating only raw fruit and vegetables. When my slave…” She corrected herself. “When Quagga died, I no longer had the skill to make fire. My knowledge of life on the savannah was only useful to escape wolves, jackals and lions and to find the most basic food. When I strayed beyond the savannah I could no longer fend for myself. The Ocean People saw that I was in a sorry state and they took pity on me.”

Glade wasn’t quite sure that Demure’s account was wholly true. “Other Knights were also roaming the savannah,” said Glade. “You weren’t the only one. You could easily have sought them out and gained safety in numbers. And why did you come as far as the coast. It’s a very long way from the savannah. I don’t believe you stumbled across the Ocean People merely by chance.”

“That’s what happened to you,” Demure reminded Glade, who had told her of her own travels. “You and your troop followed the river aimlessly until it took you within sight of the ocean.”

“I don’t believe you ever do anything by accident,” said Glade, revealing a degree of insight that Demure might not have suspected. “You must have chosen to avoid the other Knights. You knew that they would be hunted down like mad dogs after the rebellion. I heard your husband talk to you about an unsuccessful hunt for slaves by the sea. You knew there was a tribe that lived on the coast. And a tribe, moreover, that had never been conquered by the Knights.”

Demure nodded good-humouredly, although her eyes also narrowed. “Yes, you’re right,” she said. “I was fascinated by what I’d heard about the Ocean People. Any tribe able to fend off the Knights must surely be worth getting to know.”

“What do you think of the Ocean People now?”

Demure was diplomatic. “They are generous and hospitable. They are peaceful, ingenious and inventive. They are a noble tribe. And I hope by dint of marriage to become a full member of the tribe.”

Although nothing was ever said between them, Demure and Glade both accepted that they were lovers who would now share the same hut. Their bodies could hardly bear to be apart for even a moment before their reciprocal desire pulled them together. Nothing was more natural than to exchange kisses, to cuddle and for their fingers to roam within each other. When Glade regarded Demure’s face, her bosom, her crotch, the contours of her body, even her slender fingers and narrow wrists, she knew for sure that this was what she’d yearned for in all the intervening years and what she never wanted to lose again.

Neither Macaque nor Dignity was at all pleased with this state of affairs. It wasn’t simply that there would be one less lover sharing their hut and bodies. In fact, such a change of affairs was long overdue. Their love for one another could no longer be compromised by a wayward third partner. What horrified them was Demure’s very presence in the village, let alone the fact that Glade and she would share the same bed.

“How can you?” said Macaque with genuine astonishment. “If there is any woman in the world you should loathe without reservation it is that disgusting cunt.”

“I never liked her,” said Dignity, who clung to Macaque for comfort. “She was cruel and unkind to everyone. It wasn’t just the slaves who suffered. She once beat my father with a cudgel when he didn’t proffer what she considered enough respect. All the women in our village were wary of her. It was said that she’d fucked every man in the village on her path to marriage with Lord Valour. And even then she had no reservations about letting a man or woman fuck her when it was to her advantage. She had a fearsome temper. She never let matters rest until she got her way.”

“If even the Knights hate this bitch, how can you be so different?” asked Macaque. “You can have the love of almost all the men and women in this village, but of all the bodies you can enjoy you decide to live with the one person who, if she were not a guest to this village, I wouldn’t hesitate to throw to the mercy of jackals. And my hope would be that they would show her no mercy at all!”

“Please reconsider,” said Dignity who loved Glade the more now that she was about to leave their shared hut. “You can make love to Macaque and me whenever you wish.”

As indeed she did that night. As Glade nibbled at Dignity’s vulva and licked her pursed anus with her tongue and as their bodies rolled over together with the added weight and support of Macaque’s, she was reminded of another body just as black and perfectly formed. One whose straight nose and delicate fingers and full round buttocks, let alone the texture, colour and scent of her skin, belonged to the same tribe but who was uncompromising if selfish, loving if manipulative, and passionate if calculating. Glade didn’t understand why she was drawn to someone whose vices were so evident or why these were the very qualities of Demure that Glade loved the most.

“It doesn’t make sense,” said Ivory, who was forced to speculate about the sanity of the woman whose bed she shared. “You knew it was foolish. You knew that Demure was a vicious woman. And yet you chose to live with her in the same hut. It isn’t prudent or rational to be so intimate with pure wickedness. Unless, that is, you are wicked yourself.”

Glade contemplated this thought as they trudged past a herd of grazing horses. “Some say that I am a wicked woman,” said Glade philosophically, a trait that Ivory now attributed to her life with the Ocean People. “They say it’s a sin to be promiscuous and unfaithful. But I don’t believe that I am or ever have been truly wicked. I’ve never deliberately harmed anyone.”

“This woman was once your slave-mistress,” said Ivory. “She was wicked, wasn’t she?”

“Perhaps,” said Glade. “Perhaps she was. But she was not as vicious as the Knights who slaughtered the Forest People. She was never as cruel as the Mountain Warriors were towards the Knights when the opportunity came for revenge. She was never gratuitously cruel in the way that a lion is with his prey. Everything she did was in her own self-interest, but she only harmed someone if they were in her way.”

“If that’s not wickedness, then what is?” exclaimed Ivory.

——————————

Glade sensed that a distance had grown between her and the rest of her immigrant community now she and Demure were living together. The Ocean People were less troubled. They knew nothing of Demure’s role in the Knights’ village and no one had the spite to tell them. Demure never mingled with Glade’s original companions. She spoke the language of the Ocean People and, of course, that of the Knights, so there was no barrier in communication, but she must have known that those who had been slaves of the Knights were unlikely to welcome the wife of a village chief in their midst. She must have recognised that those Knights who’d chosen to live as equals with their former slaves wouldn’t appreciate being reminded of their former relative status. In fact, beyond bland pleasantries, the only immigrant she ever spoke to was Glade and even then she showed absolutely no interest in the welfare or goings on of people who had in many cases come from her village.

It was the Ocean People and in particular the men that interested Demure the most. When she told Glade that she was a woman in pursuit of a husband she hadn’t lied. Every night she gave her body unreservedly to her lover. The couple enjoyed animal passion that stained the sand with their conjoined perspiration and left their vulvas sore and swollen for much of the following day. However, during the day Demure was a woman who focused her energy on getting to know those men in the village most in need of a woman.

Glade’s and Demure’s independent but parallel pursuit of sexual satisfaction seemed much the same to the Ocean People who thought it natural that two such predatory women should sleep under the same roof, although few imagined how close their relationship was. Dolphin confided to Glade the next time they nestled together in a quite spot away from his wife and three children that he’d also enjoyed Demure’s body.

“Whatever difference there is between how you two minxes share your bodies is immaterial,” said Dolphin. “There are some in my tribe who don’t like to see the virtues of the village men being compromised by two immigrants. That may be why your friend Demure had to leave the village in the North where she used to live.”

“I thought she’d left wholly voluntarily,” remarked Glade as she ran her fingers through Dolphin’s thick pubic hair.

“Not totally,” said Dolphin. “My wife has spoken with the other two women who’d accompanied Demure to this village and who, incidentally, have already found husbands without the trial and experimentation she appears to need. It seems she’d so annoyed the elders of her village that they asked her to leave. As no one would willingly abandon a woman to the perils of wild beasts and starvation, she was offered the opportunity of finding a husband elsewhere. It was proposed that a village that already had a sizeable number of immigrants would be the one best suited to her. I don’t know how Demure antagonised the elders, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it was because of her casual seduction of men without regard to ethics and custom.”

Glade smiled faintly as she reflected that Dolphin’s words were probably also a warning to her. She’d become steadily more discreet in her rotation of lovers since she first came to the village but there was now no man, except the very young and very old, whose cock she hadn’t tasted.

“Fuck!” said Demure when Glade told her of Dolphin’s words. “What the fuck is he suggesting? I’m nowhere near as promiscuous as you. In fact, I’ve barely fucked much more than a handful of men. And I don’t believe that in my last village I did anything other than what I am doing now and that is to actively seek a husband.”

“But you still didn’t get married,” remarked Glade. “That was a long time to seek out a husband and not find one. Especially given the dedication with which you pursue your mission.”

“I’m very choosy, sweetheart,” Demure protested as she stroked Glade’s arm lovingly.

“Was it because you’d fucked all the men that you were expelled from the other village?” Glade challenged her.

“I wasn’t expelled,” said Demure. “I left voluntarily. There was no man in the village I thought would make a suitable husband, so I had to seek one elsewhere.”

“Is it really a man you want?”

“Of course,” said Demure adamantly.

“And how can that be? It’s me you love the most. I know from when I lived in your village that it’s the love of women you most enjoy. Why then do you need a man?”

“The reason is simple,” said Demure without a hint of bitterness. “Men rule the world and it is only through a man that I can possibly hope to share that power and responsibility.”

“Is that what you want?” asked Glade who was unsure whether her lover was being ironic or mischievous. “You want power through being the wife of a powerful man, just as you had by being married to Lord Valour.”

“How else could I have ever become a Lady?” countered Demure. “I was born to humble parents. My father was nothing but a simple knapper and his ambition rarely extended beyond a single day’s hunt. It took determination and perseverance to gain the love and respect of the man who was soon to be lord of the village. And had it not been for my encouragement and advice, Valour would never have risen to any rank of significance whatsoever.”

“But Demure, darling,” said Glade who was suddenly anxious for her proud lover. “This is not the Kingdom of the Knights of the Savannah. This is an independent republic of democratically governed villages. There are no lords and ladies amongst the Ocean People any more than there ever was amongst my tribe.”

“There is nowhere in the world,” said Demure, “where human nature is different to what I know it to be. When a man senses the chance to rise above his fellows then he will take that opportunity. If that man is helped in that endeavour by the woman at his side then he is more likely to succeed. Although there is a veneer of equality and an associated pretence that there is no rank or hierarchy, no man can resist the temptations of power and status. My duty is to find the man in the village who can best rise to the challenge.”

Glade decided not to tell anyone, least of all her lovers amongst the Ocean People, of what Demure had told her, but she hoped that her lover was mistaken in her analysis. She didn’t relish the idea that the Ocean People could come under the sway of a single powerful man, however much he might profess to the virtues of democracy and equality. Glade hoped that the philosophical discussion that characterised the village’s government should stay so forever.

It wasn’t just that she enjoyed witnessing the debates that took place between the elders and the others. It wasn’t just that the very notion of there being individuals of more power and status than others was fundamentally alien to the ethos of her tribe. It wasn’t even that she didn’t believe that wise government by an individual was possible, although she had yet to see any evidence of this.

What most troubled Glade was the very notion that the real power behind the throne, whether or not it was officially recognised as such, should be a woman as ruthless and single-minded as Demure.