Chapter Ten
I arrive in the parlor just in time to see Botana complete some small details in securing an enormous male to one of the ubiquitous eye hooks embedded in the smooth concrete wall. He is wearing a hood, which covers his entire head, ears and eyes included, except a single opening for the mouth and nose for breathing. His only other garment, if it may be so termed, is a single leather glove, holding his arms painfully close together behind his back. He quietly stands on a block of wood.
Botana is wearing a simple cotton throw-over dress, which gracefully hangs from her shoulders and disappointedly conceals what I know to be the delightful form of a native ingénue. We briefly engage in conversation and I learn that the male is an experienced steed, at one time Lady Constance’s f
