The Bride's Education

A Tako Taco Tuesday story

This was a bit of fun to write. Flash fiction is good for days where I have little time. Also, I have a tendency not to research deeply which makes it even faster to write up. I put my tongue firmly in cheek, and thought of Wodehouse. Hopefully you enjoy!

“Absinthe, check. Bohemian glass, check. Bail money, check. Live python – hey, where’s Snookums?”

Tommy Smythe looked at his best friend since childhood. He was currently looking up to him, but that was due to his posture in the rather low chair, not his respect for Freddy Jonstone. 

“You have execrable taste in furniture, dear boy,” he complained, gently gesturing with his own bohemian glass full of absinthe. It matched the one currently perched on the mantle next to the stack of gold coins only in the color of the liquid they both contained. In addition to the petite legs of his furniture, Freddy seemed to abhor matching... anything. 

“Have you seen a judgmental snake?” Freddy was looking under the cushion of the puce chaise with mauve patterns, having already tossed aside the one fine piece of fabric in the room, his fiance’s gorgeous silk shawl. He was, as usual, paying no attention at all to Tommy. 

“Not even to cock a snook at it.” Tommy assured him, feeling pleased with his wit. He sipped the vivid green drink. Unlike the myths assured him, he had never - yet - gotten a glimpse of the green fairy. He would persevere in his attempt. 

“Snookums keeps the rats at bay. Felicia wanted a cat, but I won’t have ‘em. Foul beasts. Snake is much cleaner and won’t claw the furnishings.” Freddy was mumbling, but Tommy had heard the diatribe before and could fill in the indistinct utterings from memory. Tommy didn’t disagree with the need for a snake, or something, to keep the rats out. They seemed to ooze from the stone walls. Their mutual friend Lieutenant Henlen had a mongoose, which was a clever beast. Tommy himself had imported a rat terrier, but she had died in whelping and currently he was wading in rats at his rooms. Feeling a pang for poor Freddy, who would not only be bereft of his affianced bride, but his snake, and thus up to his neck in vermin shortly, Tommy pushed himself up from the chair designed for persons of vertically challenged stature, or perhaps children. 

“Where,” he inquired mildly of Freddy after surveying the familiar room with a jaundiced eye, “does Snookums like to hole up after a meal?” 

“Oh, that’s empty, I looked there first.” Freddy wandered over to a bookcase, ornately carved, currently half-empty of volumes, and peered behind it. “Not even a scale.” 

“I fail to see why you need a live python to secure Felicia’s release.” Tommy bent to look under the table nearest the door, where several baskets nested together seemed a likely snake hiding spot.

“Oh, I don’t. It’s just that she will look for Snookums first thing when she comes home, and if she can’t find her...” 

“You seem confident in securing her release. What’s she in for this time? Pamphlets on giving women the vote? Reading for girls? Perhaps she was wearing her divided skirts in the souk?” 

“No, no, nothing like that. She sneaked into the hareem.” 

“What?” Tommy’s voice went up. It wasn’t because he had, finally, located Snookums, who was metaphorically cocking her snook at him, with the fingers she hadn’t got, while he pulled on her tail. It was the gravity of Felicia’s crime. “My boy, even that stack of dosh is...” His words failed him. 

“I know,” Freddy moaned. 

Tommy got all of Snookums out of the frame of the chair he’d been sitting in not that long ago and held her out at arm’s length so she couldn’t give him the hug around his neck she so obviously desired. 

“I mean, the hareem. What was she thinking?” 

“That women aren’t chattel, or some such rot.” Freddy collapsed onto the chaise. “If I didn’t love her...” 

“And if her uncle didn’t have a bean.” Tommy snorted cynically. He stuffed Snookums into a basket, but she objected to the stuffing and one half of her would escape while he crammed the other half in. 

“Well, we could hardly marry on my prospects.” Freddy pointed out practically. “But I do wish she were, er, less passionate.” 

“Better toddle off.” Tommy gave up on the snake and watched as she returned to her lair in the chair. 

Freddy tossed back the glassful of absinthe, coughed for a full minute, and then knocked a stack of gold coins into a small silk bag. After weighing it thoughtfully in his hand, he added another stack. “If I’m not back in an hour,” He told Tommy gloomily while he donned his hat and gloves. “Bring the rest of that lot, will you?” 

“Buck up, old chap. If you leave her there long enough, they will pay you for her parole.” Tommy clapped Freddy on the back and took up his own togs. “I’ll walk you as far as the minaret, any way.” 

The two young men, one dark and the other fair, had no sooner started down the narrow, dusty road outside Freddy’s lodgings when a commotion at the end of the street caught their attention. They stopped dead in their tracks, a little wide-eyed, as the spectacle progressed towards them. 

The brilliantly-clothed men, their lower limbs swathed in silks, with wide bands at their waists which bore up flyssas and pistols both, surrounded a single heavily-curtained palanquin. Slowly, the procession reached the two Englishmen, and the turbaned man in his long robes clapped his hands sharply, twice. The bearers and guards all stopped instantly. 

“Monsieur Frederick Jonstone?” The man’s split-forked beard was silvered, indicating his age and status. His English was French-accented, but perfectly clear. 

“Y-yes.” Freddy stammered. “Er, that is I.” 

The man bowed slightly from the waist. Unconsciously, both Tommy and Freddy imitated him. The thin lips under the heavily waxed and sharply curled mustache may have quirked upwards ever so slightly. 

“I have come to tell you that your presence at the palace is unnecessary.” 

“What?” Freddy looked and sounded stupefied. 

Tommy didn’t blame him. You didn’t get a group like this calling on you every day. 

“The mademoiselle has consented to join the hareem.” Now there was a definite smirk on the emissary’s face. 

“Now, just a minute here!” Freddy drew himself to his full height, which was a half-head taller than the emissary and a full head shorter than the matched pair of guards just behind the older man’s shoulders. “My fiancé...” 

“Oh, stuff it, Freddy.” The piercing female voice was unmistakable. “It’s not like that, old thing. I’m going to be joining them for lessons, Zaya insisted. She is going to teach me all about the hareem and how to be a bride. Of course I leaped at the chance, because I can do much more good on the inside explaining suffragettes and liberation to them. Do you know, she had a year at Oxford before she came into the hareem? I feel we have much to say to one another. Anyway, they say that when the wedding day comes, I shall be released into your custody, with a splendid bride-gift from the Bey himself.” 

“But Felecia!” Freddy cried. “Whatever shall I do...!” 

“You’ll be just fine without me. Tommy shall keep you on track.” She twitched aside the curtain, and they got a glimpse of her for the first time. Her wiry black hair had been sleeked back and mostly hidden under a silk veil, and her eyes were rimmed in kohl and looked huge above berry-stained red lips. She was wearing cosmetics, Tommy realized somewhat belatedly, something he’d never seen her do before. “I will be able to conduct my work among the women. You have your own things to accomplish in the diplomatic service.” 

The curtain fell again, and the now-grinning emissary shook his head slightly. “The Begum Zaya has thoughts, about the mademoiselle. She will be quite safe, and I think you will find her... amenable as a wife, after the Begum’s kind tutelage.” 

Freddy gaped like a fish. Without another word, the emissary lifted his hands and clapped twice. The entire group executed a neat about-face and headed back the way they had come. 

“What just happened?” Freddy muttered to Tommy. 

“I think the absinthe finally affected me.” His old friend took him by the arm. “Come on, let’s have another glass and see if that helps it make more sense. When is the wedding, any way?” 

“Three months...” Freddy was putty in Tommy’s hands. “What on earth did the Begum want with my Felecia?” 

“I think,” Tommy poured carefully over the sugar cube. “The lady has had enough of the emancipation movement in the form of one tedious female. You should count yourself lucky, old fellow. I suspect you’re going to have a well-trained bride and much less bail money paid out from here on.”

The spark of this story came from my Odd Prompt for the week, courtesy of Fiona Grey, with “Absinthe, check. Bohemian glass, check. Bail money, check. Live python – hey, where’s Snookums?”

I prompted Fiona in return with “First you dissolve the eggshells”

You can read all of the prompts, and join in on the challenge yourself, over at More Odds Than Ends.

You can find my compatriot in Taco Tuesday writing over at

with another chapter in her story this week.

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