The Prince's Slave

by P. J. Fox

  Stephanie, as always, was the voice of reason. Boys explored. And young men, too.

  He’d kept his explorations confined to his maids, the old man had replied darkly.

  An avenue of access, which Ash was denied. Stephanie’s voice had been all sweet. Anju had indeed been pensioned off, after the discovery. Years later, Ash could still picture the look on his father’s face. And on his business associate’s. But the worst part hadn’t been his father’s disgust, or the other man’s amusement. It had been that Ash had somehow, in the excitement, wound up with semen on his face. Dripping, indeed, in a revoltingly gelatinous lump from his eyebrow. And there had been more in his hair.

  This never happened when he masturbated.

  An activity to which he’d confined himself for a long time.

  But then, when he’d been at Oxford, his father had caught him with one of his male friends. Behind the boathouse, at the Henley Royal Regatta. His father had flown in for the event, which lasted five days and took place every year over the first weekend in July. Races began on Wednesday and ended on Sunday; they were head-to-head knock out competitions, raced over the course of 2,112 meters.

  Ash had his fingers curled in the blond hair of a rower, who was there to compete in the Grand Challenge Cup for Men’s Eights. The man’s mouth had been firmly attached to Ash’s cock. He’d asked for the privilege and was doing a fair job, when Ash heard the familiar yell. Half shock, half horror.

  “Hello, old man,” Ash had said. “Would you mind giving us a minute?”

  As it turned out, he would mind.

  After that, the old man decided that Ash needed the talking cure.

  He’d been convinced, all those years ago, that the pale-faced demons at Harrow would convert his too-feminine son to the joys of homosexuality and, as Ash delighted in pointing out, he hadn’t been half wrong. But Ash had agreed to see the psychiatrist his father found, both because doing so was a condition of his continuing to receive tuition funds and because Ash found the idea amusing. Here was an opportunity to talk about himself, as much and for as long as he wanted.

  He bedeviled the old man, convincing him over time that the only reason he fucked men was because he couldn’t fuck goats. There simply weren’t any available and besides, cashmeres, his preferred breed, were too apt to die of fright. Which was true—the part about them dying of fright, at least. His family owned several ranches, all dedicated to producing the expensive wool. Or, at least, to producing the expensive goats that in turn produced the expensive wool.

  Ash recalled, in loving detail, how he’d fantasized about penetrating goat after goat but worried that their internal organs might rupture. He then switched to rhapsodizing about an unusual fetish he’d researched called sacrofricosis, or the process of making a hole in one’s pocket to facilitate public masturbation. He wasn’t entirely certain which was supposed to be more exciting, making the hole or using it; so he extolled the pleasures of both.

  Just for scientific purposes, he cut the bottom out of his pants pocket and, slipping his hand past the ragged silk, pleasured himself while making faces at the pigeons on the banks of the River Cherwell. The pigeons didn’t seem to mind. Although he had a devil of a time explaining the disaster in his pants to the cleaner.

  Dendrophilia described sexual interest in trees. He drew the line at actually humping one, study or no study. Frotteurism, or rubbing against a non-consenting person to facilitate arousal, was beneath his dignity. He preferred willing partners but, more to the point, took umbrage to the suggestion that anyone might be unwilling. He was, after all, a god.

  At least in his own mind.

  He told his psychiatrist that he’d placed an ad online, seeking a partner interested in pursuing his ederacinism fetish. Or, more succinctly, his uncontrollable urge to pull his own generative organs out by the roots. Ash would whip up some popcorn and watch.

  The old man, a white-haired crumpet even older than his father, came to dread their weekly sessions. Ash could tell by the enthusiastic manner in which he was greeted. He began bringing along playlists of background music. He described his last encounter with a prostitute while playing Pink Floyd’s Mother.

  His father flew in to see how his sessions were going, as Ash had steadfastly refused to answer his father’s calls. Or his numerous emails. He’d been too busy partying at clubs and, on occasion, even doing schoolwork. He’d met Professor Graham by then, and others who’d encourage his natural academic inclinations and he was finally finding his footing—at least in that one area of his life.

  Father and son were supposed to meet for a joint session. Instead, the former walked in on the later screwing his psychiatrist’s equally aged secretary, behind her desk. His equally aged female secretary. Thrilled, the old man had pronounced Ash cured.

  During one especially unpleasant conversation prior to that moment, the old man had asked him, why must you insist on being homosexual?

  I’m not homosexual, Ash had replied. I’m simply extraordinarily fond of my own cock. So why shouldn’t I be fond of other men’s cocks, as well? It seems rather narcissistic, don’t you think, only favoring my own? I certainly favor more than one cunt.

  And frequently, he didn’t add.

  Fidelity was not in his repertoire.

  He was, he’d determined early on, allowed to make his own rules for his relationships. If relationships they could be called. Marriage had done fuck all for his father, a man who’d abandoned one and destroyed another. And Ash, while he loved sex, couldn’t imagine hating any woman enough to ruin her life. As long as he kept things casual, he didn’t have to worry—about hurting them like his father had hurt his mother or, perhaps even worse, becoming so attached that his innately selfish nature overrode his higher impulses and he forced a woman to stay with him.

  He didn’t need, and he didn’t want to be needed.

  Not really.

  He wanted to be in control, and that wasn’t the same thing.

  Part of the appeal of men, as sexual partners, was that there was no danger of getting attached. He might appreciate the finer points of the male form, but he’d never had a single romantic thought about a man. He’d never lusted after a man the same way he’d lusted after Anju. Or other women, since. Even so, those women had all been conquests too.

  He’d never fallen in love.

  SIXTY-NINE

  He hadn’t been entirely honest with Belle about the purpose of his trip.

  He regretted that, as much as he was capable of regretting anything.

  But there were certain things that, as much as he would have liked to, he couldn’t share. He valued the life they had together, valued the happiness that she’d brought into his world. A world that had been, he had to admit, sapped of color. Until he met her. If only happiness were as easy as wealth and a large cock. He had both; he’d never been happy.

  It was the power of expectation: as he acquired more and more, his expectations adjusted.

  An acquaintance of his at Oxford had had a real shot at professional football. Not American football; real football. He’d loved the sport since he could remember; he was living his dream. And then one afternoon, leaving practice, he’d been hit by a cab and paralyzed from the waist down.

  He left school for awhile. For a long time after that, he felt terrible. Like everything he’d lived for was now gone. Which it was. Ash had expected the man to kill himself. Which is what Ash would have done. But Ash had caught up with him sometime later—they never had been friends, not really, and so over time they’d lost touch—to discover that he’d become an investment banker. A breed with which Ash interacted a fair bit.

  And he told Ash, apparently quite sincerely, that he felt almost as good now as he did before he’d been disabled. He laughed about the fact that he couldn’t feel his feet; at least he didn’t mind the cold! Ash, who’d met him in a café for lunch, had supposed at the time that this was why his species had taken over the world. They were remarkably adaptable.


  First Ash had wanted his own flat. Then his own townhouse. Which he did still own. In Battersea. And then he’d wanted his own castle. A need for financial independence had transformed, over time, into a need for financial dominance. And still he wasn’t filled.

  But he liked to think that, given where he’d come from, he’d adapted.

  The people he was going to see had never adapted.

  Had never wanted to.

  They stood, rather, as a sad testament to the world as it had once been. And to how a lifetime of professional victimhood led to ruin. His cousins were the scions of a once-great family. Although one would never guess so now

  And as much as Ash had felt surprisingly critical of his acquaintance for what seemed like settling, at least to Ash, he knew in his heart that Allan was a brave man. Far braver than Ash’s cousins. Or Ash, himself.

  Ash’s surroundings were proof of that.

  He sighed.

  He wasn’t visiting his cousins because he wanted to, but because he has to.

  Cousins was a loose term besides, he thought as he got out of the car. He’d forgotten how their families interconnected, if he ever knew. He slammed the car door. He was driving himself. He did prefer to, when it was practicable. Belle thought him spoiled and perhaps he was, but he had hidden depths. The car wasn’t his, though; it belonged to his brother, who’d loaned it to him for the occasion.

  Anish, who lived in the home where he’d been born. With their father, whose title he’d one day inherit. Anish, who was nothing if not traditional, and who saw helping Ash as a distasteful but necessary duty. Because Anish certainly wasn’t going to make this trip.

  And so Ash had come home.

  Not home to London, the place he’d come to think of as home, as much as any place was home, during his years at Harrow. But his true home. India. A place he hadn’t been to in years and to which, in truth, felt strange to him. The sounds, the smells, were as foreign to him now as any Brit.

  He’d driven for hours, stopping in a café where a monkey had pelted him with kumquats. Belle would have been delighted. But Belle wasn’t there and thinking about her only put him in a sour mood. His coffee had been adequate but, even so, he’d paid the tab and left his cup half full.

  Belle would also have been captivated by the street itself. By the study in contrasts that was every Indian city—that was India, itself. Camels jockeyed for position alongside modern, French-built cars; some pulled rickshaws cobbled together from reclaimed parts. Shacks squeezed between Western-style high rises. In monsoon season, their tar paper roofs buckled under the weight of the rain.

  Some streets were paved and some weren’t and everything smelled like piss.

  Above him, laundry lines crisscrossed.

  Two street urchins fought over something in a gutter. Neither of them could have been more than five or six. A slat-ribbed cow wandered by.

  Ash had been raised in an observant Hindu household. He hadn’t eaten beef until he went to Harrow. Nor had he eaten pork which, while not as offensive to Lord Krishna, was nevertheless considered a lower caste meat. And Ash’s father was nothing if not sensitive to his place in the world. A place he’d fought hard to achieve, by being born.

  That cows roamed the streets while children starved summed up, in Ash’s mind, everything he loathed about his own culture. The consumption of beef was frowned upon in religious circles all over India and outright forbidden in a number of municipalities. This, to Ash, was a perfect example of caste prejudice: higher caste food, such as mutton, was forbidden to the lower castes, because it was considered above their station. And lower caste food, such as beef, was forbidden to them as well because their eating it offended their betters’ sensibilities. Better, then, for them to starve.

  At least they’d die in a state of religious purity.

  The freedom to eat what one wanted was a privilege granted only to those like Ash: men and women who’d had the good fortune to be born well. The man who’d scrubbed the floors at the palace when Ash was a child had, like one in six Indians, been cursed with the misfortune to be born Untouchable. The man—Ash never knew his name, one didn’t converse with Untouchables—had accepted his place stoically. Most did. Why would they be born Untouchables, if not to atone for the sins of past lives?

  To be born a Hindu was to enter the caste system. To accept, in turn, one’s caste as a reflection of one’s karma. Ash had been taught from birth that all men were not equal; that the ranks in Indian society were, indeed, ordained by the Gods and reflected the Gods’ will. The Brahmans were the priests and teachers, the Kshatriyas were the rulers and soldiers, the Vaisyas were the merchants and traders, the Sudras were laborers. And within each caste, of course, there were hundreds of sub-castes.

  No one spoke of the fifth group.

  Rejected by the Gods, these were Achuta. Untouchable. Those considered too impure, too polluted, too revolting to qualify as true human beings.

  Of course, the caste system meant different things to different Indians and discrimination was technically illegal. But tell that to those in rural areas, where most of the country’s population still lived. Shunned, insulted, banned from temples and most private homes, their lives were a horror of segregation such as no American had ever imagined.

  Violence against them was common. Sometimes extreme violence. Men and women who, under other circumstances, might have done great things. But who, for reasons too stupid to warrant discussion, were denied all but the meanest existence.

  And then, on the other end of the spectrum, there were his cousins.

  And now here he was.

  SEVENTY

  Ash pushed back the vines, reading the plaque. It was in English, and announced that the reader had both reached his destination and was not welcome there. Hundreds of years ago, soldiers had guarded these gates. But now the guard house had fallen down into rubble, along with the wall to which it had been attached.

  The gate, a great iron thing, was still formidable, but when Ash pushed it gave way with a screech.

  Frightened birds took flight, their cawing and the flapping of their wings the only sound.

  Ash got back into his car and drove through the gate.

  The drive was a ribbon that cut through jungle. This hideout, nestled in the foothills, was a world away from the city below; as far away as its glory days were from its current condition. And there were creatures here. Ash was armed, but against people. The Beretta Pico .380 he wore in an inner pants holster would protect him against robbers, but not tigers. Or worse.

  A mile down the road, he stopped. The palace reared before him, a silent sentinel in the unnatural gloom. No effort had been made to cut back the encroaching jungle.

  Nor was there anyone to greet him. But that, at least, he expected. There hadn’t been servants here for a long time. Not since the Raj sent its last territorial agent.

  That had been in 1945.

  He ascended the steps. He considered knocking, and didn’t. He pushed open the door and stepped inside. It wasn’t locked; there wasn’t a lock. The door itself looked original to the palace, which had first been used as a fortified retreat and then as a hunting lodge. A different kind of retreat, from the oppressive heat of summer.

  Inside, the place smelled of mold. Pigeons flapped among hand-carved pillars. Priceless carpets rotted in the gloom. There were no lights, other than the weak beams that filtered in through the high-placed screens. Screens that were rotting, now.

  Ash’s own home had looked something like this when he bought it, although not nearly so bad. He wondered now, for the first time, if that hadn’t been part of the place’s appeal: a chance to right an old wrong. At least in the metaphysical sense.

  He’d brought electrical outlets and insulation; Belle had brought light, and warmth.

  He sighed again.

  He found her in an upstairs sitting room, looking out at the dense green that had once been formal gardens.

  “Hello, Lakshmi,
” he said.

  She didn’t turn. “We are hemmed in on all sides by affliction!”

  That was one way to describe it.

  “Cousin, I’ve come to speak with you.” He paused, dreading what was to come next. He’d only met Lakshmi once before, and that was when he’d been a child. He’d come here, on a similar errand, with his father. And his brother, too. Anish had been here since. With, according to him, no greater success. When Ash had refused his visit, he’d supposed that Anish had wanted to carp at him about his lack of stability. In truth, he’d wanted help.

  He’d tried to phrase the matter delicately, but his feeling was that Ash was…more suited to bargaining with those who chose to live on the fringes.

  “About the future.”

  “We were rulers, once.” Lakshmi still hadn’t turned her head. “We reigned over thousands of miles. But we have been left in darkness.”

  Ash sat down near her, but not too near. The carpets beneath him were spongy and gave off a decidedly unpleasant scent. Somewhere, far below, something growled.

  She turned her head sharply, as impervious to her surroundings as if she’d been a hologram. Her hair was shot with gray, and had the texture of steel wool. She’d made no effort to comb it into any particular shape. Her cheeks were sunken and hollow, her nose like an eagle’s beak. But her eyes, beneath her heavy eyebrows, glowed with vitality.

  And something more: madness.

  This was his future.

  The thought hit him like a lightning bolt. This was where people like him ended up, if they didn’t grow up. Alone in the gloom, dreaming of a long-lost kingdom.

  “Lakshmi,” he said seriously, “this isn’t a good place for you to be.”

  Spreading pools of black mold covered most of the ceiling. Weeds sprouted in the spaces between the tiles and vines curved through the railings on the balconies outside. There was no running water; there couldn’t be. What did this woman eat?