“Don’t get too close to the king’s personal property,” she said. “You touch it, and he might cut your hands off.”
If he did that, Davis thought, scores of the males in the kingdom would be without hands.
“You’re not much of a man,” she said. “A real man’s tallywhacker would be lifting that towel right off his waist, rip the Velcro apart.”
The slave girls giggled though they did not understand English. But they had heard similar phrases in Esperanto for a long time. They knew that she was saying something taunting and demeaning.
Davis envisioned closing his hands around the queen’s throat. It wouldn’t take long.
Then he prayed, Oh, Lord! Save me from such sinful thoughts!
“Perhaps,” he said, “I should massage your knees, too? They seem to be rather stiff.”
CROSSING THE DARK RIVER
31
She frowned and stared hard at him. The she smiled and laughed.
“Oh! You’re suggesting… ? Yes, do. I have spent a certain amount of time on my knees. But they’re on pillows, so it’s not so bad. However…”
Instead of flying into a rage, as he had expected, she was amused. She also looked somewhat triumphant, as if goading him into saying something insulting to her, even an innuendo, was a victory. However, she probably did not regard his comments as an insult. The bitch was more likely to think he had complimented her.
What did he care what she thought? To be honest with himself, he cared a lot. Unless she was stopped by Ivar, she could make his life unbearable, torture him, do anything with or to him. Davis had not heard any stories about her being cruel, except for her sexual teasing, which could not be ranked with torture or killing. But he had no guarantee that she might not become so. Especially in her dealings with him.
Ann Pullen was a fellow American, though a nauseating example as far as he was concerned. She had been born about 1632 in Maryland. Her family had been Quakers, but when it converted to Episcopalianism, she had gone to hell. Those were her own words. She had been married four times to tobacco plantation owners in Virginia and Maryland. She had survived them all.
No wonder, Davis thought. She’d wear any man out, if not from her incessant sexual demands and infidelity, then from her TNT temper and willfulness.
Mostly, she had lived in Westmoreland County, Virginia, which was between the Potomac and Rappahannock rivers. In her day, the area had many thick forests and large swamps but no roads. Travel was mainly by river or
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Philip Jos6 Farmer
creek. Nor did the plantations resemble those of a later era. There were no beautiful many-pillared mansions and broad well-kept lawns. The owners’ houses were modest, the stables were likely to be made of logs, and chickens and hogs roamed the yards. Pig stealing was common even among the plantation owners. Cash was scarce; the chief currency was tobacco. The people were unusually hot-tempered and litigious, though no one knew why.
By her own testimony, Ann had once been sentenced to ten lashes on her bare shoulders because of her libelous and scandalous speeches against a Mister Presley. She also had once attacked her sister-in-law with bare hands.
It had been recorded in the Order Book of the county in A.D. 1677 that Ann Pullen had encouraged her daughter Jane to become “the most remarkable and notorious whore in the province of Virginie.” But Davis had to admit that, in the strict sense of the word, she was not a whore. She fornicated because she liked to do so and never took money.
The Order Book also said that Jane’s mother, Ann Pullen, had debauched her own daughter by encouragement to commit adultery and break the whole estate of matrimony.
The daughter’s husband, Morgan Jones, had enjoined more than once (as the court had recorded) any man from entertaining or having any manner of dealing with Jane or transporting her out of the county or giving her passage over any river or creek.
It was also recorded that Ann Pullen had declared that Jane had no husband at that time, Jones having died, and she (Ann) did not know why her daughter should not take the pleasure of this world as well as any other woman.