Assegai

That evening at dinner she was almost genial and expansive, but not entirely so. She urged Leon to take another glass of the excellent Krug, and peeled a grape with her long white fingers before placing it between plump Heidi’s lips.

‘Eat, my darling! You did fine work today,’ she urged. But immediately afterwards she shrieked at her secretary and ordered him to leave the table for his ill manners in taking up a warthog chop in his fingers without excusing himself to her. When she had finished, she stood up without another word and stalked away to her tent.

It had been a long, hot, hard day and Leon was hoping for a full night’s sleep. He had just finished scrubbing his teeth and was buttoning his pyjama jacket when he heard the dreaded pistol shot.

‘For king and country!’ he grumbled, as he went to her tent, but he was intrigued to discover what entertainment the princess had planned for the evening.

The princess was stretched out languidly on the big bed. However, she was not alone. Her maid, Heidi, knelt in the middle of the floor. She was stark naked except for a miniature saddle on her back and a gold bit in her mouth. The tiny golden bells on the reins tinkled as she tossed her head and whinnied.

‘Your steed awaits you, Courtney,’ said the Princess. ‘Would you like to take her for a little trot?’

When she had exhausted her imagination, she sent Heidi away, but when Leon started to follow the girl the princess stopped him. ‘I did not say you could leave, Courtney.’ She moved over on the bed and patted the mattress beside her. ‘Stay awhile, and I will tell you interesting stories of the wicked and wonderful things that I do with my friends in Berlin.’

The goosedown mattress was wondrously soft and warm. Leon stretched out on it. At first he listened idly to her anecdotes. They seemed so far-fetched that they must be fairy-tales, the kind that the devils of hell must spin to their offspring. They were about witchcraft and Satan worship, obscene and sacrilegious rituals.

Then, with a creepy sensation that made the hair at the back of his neck rise, he began to realize that she was naming well-known personages from the upper reaches of the German aristocracy and military. What she was relating as amusing titbits of scandal was political cordite – and sweating, unstable cordite at that. What would Penrod make of such volatile information? Would he believe a single word of it?