The Origins of Rahab's Red Book 02

And there, for a time it rested. Much as I wanted to know more about the trunk I had brought back from Istanbul, and the "Red Book of Rahab", the break up of my marriage to Sarah and the exigencies of what became the Sinn Agency, meant that time to spend on the conundrum was limited. Wait, I reasoned, for better times - as well as more time. As these things tend to, it took longer than imagined but, following the dissolution of the Sinn partnership with Miss Sinn's return to the United States, and Annie's decision to return to Australia, that time finally came.

There comes, if we are fortunate, a time in one's life for reflection and rebooting. The adrenaline rush of being "Pixie, 006.5" had been intense, and the monetary rewards not at all bad. As a single woman with her own house and no mortgage, I could, for a while at least, live off my savings, if I was frugal. Then a certain Government Agency asked if I would be interested in "consultancy work", which, as it turned out provided an interesting, if sporadic, occupation, giving me the time, and finance to contact Helen at the British Library to see whether more work could be done on the Rahab project.

We arranged to meet for lunch at a little restaurant near the British Library. Helen was already seated at a corner table when I arrived. She gave me a cheery wave.

"White wine, Pix?"

"At lunch time?"

"Well," she smiled, "I have the afternoon off, and as you are a lady of leisure nowadays, why not?"

I admitted she had a point. I had just finished a report for the Agency on the Ukraine, using information provided by Emm's Mistress, Ekaterina, and was at a loose end, hence turning to the Rahab project.

Helen had chosen what turned out to be a decent bottle of Pinot Grigio, and so over it, and its successor, and a treat of Dover Sole, we got down to business.

As it was ages since we had met, she wanted updating on my life, and updated me on hers. She'd been promoted to senior conservator, but just as her career was prospering, her love life had taken a dive. Her long-time boyfriend, Symeon, had, it transpired, been cheating on her, and when confronted with the evidence, had decamped to his lover's.

"I tell you Pix, you made the right bloody choice in avoiding men. Don't get me wrong, love cock, it's the pricks attached to them that fuck me off!"

"I'll have to take your word for that, Helen, never had one, never wanted one!"

"Really, Pix, you really have never tried cock?"

"No, nor do I intend to. But come on Helen, are you really going to eschew it? You always seemed to like it. Mind you, a gorgeous Amazon like you has never had any problem attracting blokes."

Helen suddenly looked sad.

"That's just it Pix. They see my body and want it. But then the fuckers see another body and want her too."

"Well," I reminded her, "that was why we hung out together for a while at uni, they never wanted my body", I giggled.

"Silly sods," she replied.

"Oh," I said, emboldened by a third glass of wine to flirt, "don't say you accepted lunch to get into my knickers."

Helen's eyes momentarily locked with mine.

"I didn't, but could think of worse outcomes."

It was ages since I had had sex, or even a casual lover. Indeed, since I didn't do the last, in the year since Annie's departure I could have given a nun a run for her money, so Helen's words and the look on her face, sent shivers through me; I felt a little tingle. Well, I thought, she was gorgeous, we were very old friends, neither of us had a partner, so why not?

Our eyes held each other just a moment too long to dismiss it as "just flirting", though even as that, it was more fun than I had had in an age.

"If you want to try women," I told her, after another sip of wine, "I am happy to be your guinea pig," I giggled.

"You are not a guinea piglet, Pixie, you are more like a little China doll."

I liked the comparison - and the idea. Then the waitress arrived and the question of dessert arose. We had managed two courses and a bottle and a half of wine without discussing what we had come to discuss.

"What are you doing for the rest of the day, Helen?" I asked her.

"You, if I can!"

The boldness of her response surprised us both, and we giggled. I put out my hand and squeezed hers. She smiled back.

"Good, that's settled. So, shall we discuss what we came here for and then go back to mine?" She seemed happier. I assented.

So, over strawberries and cream, she told me more about the Red Book.

"That chest you found Pix is a treasure trove. It's not high on our official list of projects, but it has become a sort of hobby of mine."

There were, she said, actually three different narratives in the trunk, and it was their nature, along with that of some of the artefacts, which made it a difficult, but for her, an intriguing puzzle.

"There's that Red Book, which is seventeenth century, and seems to be the story of an Ottoman Vicereine who ruled in what is now the Lebanon and Syria. She was clearly a lesbian and at the centre of a network of like-minded women. We don't know how it ends as it breaks off after the sixth book, but it seems, from internal evidence and the poems with it, to have been written toward the end of her life. But what is equally fascinating is that it may be part of a longer narrative."

Helen explained that there were two other codices. One dated from just after the Norman Conquest, which was the memoir of an ancestress of Rahab's called Danegyth, who had been the lover of King Harold's Queen, Edith Swan's Neck. She, if Rahab's book was to be believed, was a direct ancestress.

"Both women, Pix, were petite, flat-chested lesbians, and that icon you brought back, the one of Rahab, does look like you. We don't have any portrait of Danegyth, but Rahab inherited her physique and sexual tastes - as you have!"

I was stunned. I had noticed the likeness with the icon, but if what Helen was implying was true, there could be a link further back. But just as I was digesting that, with the aid of a latte, Helen threw in two more thunderbolts.

"There is a third codex, Pix, but the manuscript is in a bad way and not easy to read, It is on sheepskin vellum of variable quality, and it is written in a debased form of Latin commonly used in late Roman Britain. It's tells a story which throws light on the end of Roman Britain and the legend of Arthur."

"But where does it fit in, why is is there?" I asked, gripped by her account.

"Wait, Pix! The journal was written, and wait for it, by a petite lesbian called Carwen, and recounts a quest which took her eventually to Constantinople."

"Do you know how Rahab came by it?"

"No, but my guess would be that since Rahab's wife, Anastasia, was the leader of a group of Amazons who preserved the memory and traditions of the Eastern Roman Empire after the fall of Comstantinople, I'd guess that was the connection, not least because of these artefacts. But it needs a lot more work on it."

She found the photo on her phone and showed me what looked like two glass dildos.

"What do they look like to you, Pix?"

I felt myself blush.

"Like the glass dildo I have in my bedside cabinet."

"Dirty girl," Helen growled sexily in a manner that drew my attention to the fact that my knickers were damp.

"Well, if Carwen's account is to be believed, that is what they are, and more, according to her, they belonged to Sappho herself!"

I was stunned. My mind struggled to process it all.

"Does this account for your sudden interest in women, Helen?"

It was her turn to blush.

"Like many women, Pix, I have occasionally wondered what it would be like, to make love to another woman, but yes, as these journals give quite graphic accounts of lesbian love-making, I can't deny they may have played a part."

"Graphic?" I queried, wanting to know more.

"I can read you some examples back at mine," she said, as she signalled to the waitress.

"I could give you some examples," I said, reaching out to hold her hand. She smiled - I wanted her, I realised. I wanted her badly.

It was a short cab ride to her flat. As we went upstairs, I could feel the tension in her, and as we went in doors, I felt it mount - so didn't do what I so wanted, which was to leap on her and tear her clothes off and make mad, passionate love. Instead, as we removed our coats, I guided her to the sofa. It came to me that she needed me to do something I never did, which was to take a lead. This was new, and scary to her. The occasional wondering of what "it" was like, was about to give way to a reality; I wanted her first time to be special.

My lips brushed hers. She tasted, as I did, of wine. My hand ran through her dark hair, and gently but firmly, I pressed her to me. Her mouth opened and our tongues began their play; she let mine in, and I explored, loving the slipperiness and the textures. As my hands slipped downwards to caress her breasts through her top, she gave a gasp, and I felt her begin to relax.

"We might be more comfortable on the bed," I whispered. Assenting, she led the way, and as we stumbled together, our outer garments seemed to somehow find themselves where we found them later - in a trail on the way there. As we fell together on the bed, I unclasped her pretty lacy blue push-up bra, freeing her breasts to my kisses and my hands.

I had never been this way with Sarah or Annie, they had always led, but here, with Helen, I found an unsuspected ability to do so myself; I liked it. Her breasts in my hands, I cupped them together, and straddling her tummy, I sucked both nipples at the same time, kneading her breasts as I did so, and rubbing my knickers against her.

"Fuck, Pix, that feels so good, suck them harder."

My sub-conscious interpreted that as bite them, so I did, softly at first, but given the intensity of her reaction, I bit a little harder. She gasped and bucked on the bed. I looked at her face, which was suffused with passion; it was time.

I licked my way down to her knicker-line, then, slowly pulling away the matching lacy fabric, let my tongue and fingers explore her bush. When my fingers found her wetness, they confirmed what the state of her knickers showed me as I pulled them off; she was soaking wet.

Lovingly, I kissed her mound and, gently pulling her thick lips back, exposing her glistening pinkness so my tongue could get a first taste of her nectar, I applied myself to it. I had always preferred what the French call la chatte naturelle, and savoured the mix of tastes. As my fingers teased the entrance to her wetness, my tongue found, and flicked, her clit. Unhooded, it drew my lips to it so I could suck. Remembering how she had reacted to my teeth on her nipples, I essayed the same trick with her clit. Gasping, she gripped my head and I found myself pushed against her wetness as she ground her pussy on my willing face.

By this time she was moaning loudly, and the lewd noises coming from her pussy as I licked were sending me wild. I bit her clit, harder than I had intended, but my goodness the reaction! Screaming something incomprehensible in a loud voice, Helen came. Of that there was no doubt as she squirted in my face, gripping me to her as though rubbing my face on her pussy would give her even more release.

Nothing ventured, I waited as she calmed down before inserting two fingers into her gooey wetness. Her pussy gripped them.

"Yes, yes, fuck me Pix, fuck meeeeee."

As her words raced into incoherence, I finger fucked her hard and fast. She thrust herself onto me. Her pussy squelched deliciously. As I fucked her, my lips found her nipples again, and I squeezed and pulled both of them, one after the other. With a hard thrust in with my fingers, I bit hard, one nipple, then the other. Her fingers gripped me and she wailed like a banshee. I didn't know my sexy Helen knew such language - begging me to "fuck my dripping twat" was not quite what I had expected from a senior library official - which, of course, made it all the more arousing.

I knew she would cum again as I felt her pussy clench my fingers hard, and she did as I bit her right nipple hard. The look on her face as she came for me made my heart (and pussy) melt. I let the after-shocks settle, and then slithered up to cuddle her. She snuggled into me, whimpering with pleasure. It took time before anything coherent came from her lips.

"Pix, oh Pix, fuck, is that what I have been missing all there fucking years?"

"Look at it this way, Helen", I replied, helpfully positive as ever, "it's what you can have with me if you want to be my girlfriend."

Her eyes locked on mine.

"You look so pretty with my twat juice on your face, darling Pix. Can I try it?"

With that, she kissed my lips, and then licked her cream from my cheeks.

"Oooh, I taste nice. Would you like me to do it to you?"

I caught the uncertainty in her pretty eyes.

"There will be time for that my love - when you are my girlfriend."

"Well", she grinned, looking like the cat that had licked the cream, "in that case, consider it done. Pix, will you be my girlfriend?"

"Of course, my darling Helen," I replied, kissing her.

Two hours later we fell asleep in each other's arms. Her first attempt to make me cum was a resounding success, and we took it at the pace she needed. She smiled after I came:

"Your twat tastes quite different," she giggled.

"No", I said, "it's your twat that tastes different!"

We agreed to try again when we had recovered our energy. Snuggling her close to me, for the first time in an age I felt calm and whole. It was not until I woke in the dawn's early light that the thought came to me that Rahab had brought her distant descendant something precious. There was so much more to know, and explore. With that thought, I snuggled up to Helen's warm back and spooned, sleeping until we both woke to a new day - and new life.