by G. C. Scott
Hannelore looked at him with anger. ‘I will deal with you later,’ she hissed, turning away and locking the door once more.
Richard lay back in the straw. Gretchen was sobbing quietly against the wall. When she grew still, he spoke. ‘Are you going to be all right?’
Gretchen raised her head, the mask concealing her features, and nodded slowly.
‘I’m sorry you got such a beating.’
‘It’s not the first time,’ Gretchen replied. ‘Madame sometimes forgets herself. She will make it up to me. She always does. Sooner or later.’
‘How much longer will you have to wear the mask?’ Richard asked.
‘I am not sure. Madame will probably remove it this evening when she gets back from the bank. Or she will have one of the other servants unlock it. It is no great inconvenience.’ Gretchen fell silent.
Not long afterwards, the sound of a car departing came to them. Richard surmised that Hannelore Bern was on her way to work. He wondered how long she planned to leave them locked up in the barn. The door opened again shortly, and another young woman came across the barn to the loosebox. She too wore a maid’s outfit, almost identical to those worn by Margaret’s servants. She unlocked the door and helped Richard to his feet. She motioned for him to move outside before turning to Gretchen. She untied the ropes that bound her ankles and knees. Richard could see deep red lines where the bindings had cut into her flesh during her struggles. They must have hurt, but neither Gretchen nor the other woman mentioned them.
Without untying Gretchen’s hands, the woman helped her to her feet and guided her outside to join Richard. Holding Gretchen’s elbow, she led the way to the door. She seemed to be under orders not to speak, and Richard didn’t know quite what he should say to a strange woman who was shepherding him across the open ground towards the cottage. So he said nothing. Once more he had the sense of being watched by hundreds of eyes, but there was no one else in sight. He was relieved when they reached the house. The maid led them to the back door and into the kitchen.
She signed for him to wait as she led Gretchen away. He pulled one of the chairs away from the table and sat on it, only to get up again immediately. The plug in his arsehole made sitting an uncomfortable exercise. Richard prowled restlessly around the kitchen, waiting for the next development. Approximately a quarter of an hour later, the maid came back for him.
She watched him pacing, then looked at the chair he had tried earlier. ‘Not too comfortable sitting down, is it?’ she asked with a sardonic smile. ‘Madame often leaves me plugged when she wishes to punish me. It is tiresome not being able to sit all day.’
‘What about Gretchen? Does she stay plugged all day too?’ Richard asked.
‘Yes, that often happens. But for her it is not a punishment. She likes it. I imagine that even now she is working on her next orgasm. She can amuse herself for hours that way.’
‘Yes, I noticed that last night,’ Richard said with a smile. ‘But what about me? I mean, what happens now?’
‘Madame has left orders that you should be made ready for her arrival this evening. She told me she will attend to you when she gets back from the city. You may find the attention unpleasant. She was not in a good mood when she left a short while ago.’
‘Yes. I noticed that too,’ Richard said. ‘We’ll just have to hope she makes a great deal of money today so that she will be in a better frame of mind.’
‘Perhaps,’ said the girl. ‘But now you should come with me.’
She led the way down a short hall towards the south wing of the house: apparently the servants’ quarters, if one judged by the number of rooms opening off it, all nearly identical in size.
Richard followed, wondering what Hannelore might have in store for him. He was in two minds: he knew he had to think about escaping, and at the same time he was beginning to anticipate the next encounter with Hannelore. Whatever happened, it would be a bizarre experience. Ever since meeting Helena and Margaret, the bizarre had become the everyday.
The girl led him to the last room at the end of the hall, then unlocked the door and stood aside for him to enter. Like his room at Margaret’s house, this one had a heavy door with strong locks. Unlike the room at Margaret’s house, this one didn’t have anyone like Heidi near at hand ready to help him with getting out. Escape would not be so easy, but there had to be some way. Or so he told himself as he looked over the bedsitting room he was to occupy.
There was a bathroom leading off to one side, to which the girl motioned him. Inside, she produced a small bunch of keys from the pocket of her maid’s outfit. With one of them she removed his handcuffs. While Richard stretched his cramped arms, she unlocked the chain around his waist and pulled the plug from his arsehole. She left the chain hanging from his balls. Either she didn’t have the key to it, or she had been told to leave it alone.
‘What is your name?’ he asked her. ‘We should at least introduce ourselves.’
‘Gertrude,’ she replied. ‘And you are Richard. Gretchen told me. Madame wants you to take a shower. Only,’ Gertrude said, a hint of apology in her tone, ‘I will have to lock you in while I am away.’
‘Yes,’ Richard said drily. ‘Madame’s orders.’ He heard the door close as he adjusted the shower.
Ten
When Hannelore came home that evening, she sent for Richard, receiving him in the front sitting room whence they had all set off for the bridle path the day before. He had not been allowed to dress, even in the clothes he had brought with him. That was as effective a way of keeping him from running away as any that could be devised. He wore only the chain and ring on his balls, and was beginning to wonder if he would ever have it off.
Gertrude had come for him. She brought the handcuffs with her, and Richard allowed her to cuff his hands behind his back before she led him to the audience with Hannelore.
Standing naked before Hannelore Bern was a daunting experience, Richard thought. Especially when she was dressed, as now, in her leather corselet, shiny tights and stiletto heels. She must have changed as soon as she arrived home, in order to be as daunting as possible. But he was not going to look daunted. There was such a thing as self-esteem. He wondered if she was planning on another outing in the woods, and another night for him in the barn with Gretchen. And a beating for the culprits afterwards. But he said nothing.
Hannelore Bern looked both beautiful and dangerous, regarding him as a cat studies a canary. She appeared to be deciding what line to take with him. Richard decided to speak first, even knowing her preference for silent obedience.
‘How long do you plan to keep me here?’ he asked, with, he hoped, just the right mix of curiosity and irritation.
Hannelore looked sharply at him. Her eyes flashed in anger. ‘As long as I like. Months. Years. Until I get tired of you.’
‘No,’ he said, watching the anger redden her face. ‘I need to get back to Soltau. I want to leave tomorrow morning.’
‘You will not be going back to Soltau. Margaret told me why you want to go back there, and why she did not want you to come back.’
‘Why I want to go is none of your business. But I am going.’
‘Like that?’ Hannelore gestured with amused contempt at his nakedness. ‘I don’t think you will.’
‘Give me my clothes, and I will go,’ Richard told her.
‘I think not,’ Hannelore replied. ‘I want you to stay here. I need a manservant, if only to make the women here know what they are missing. Later, after you have been house-broken, I will let you into the chateau. In the meantime, you will help out at the bank. No one there will suspect that I have a male assistant. Gretchen knows better than to tell anyone about you. You will be Pamela Rhodes, whom I have hired to take care of translation for our Anglophone customers. I believe you will grow to like it in time, and forget about Margaret and little Helena. And besides,’ Hannelore added, stretching like a cat to display herself in the figure-hugging corselet, ‘there may be other benefits in staying.’
She smiled at Richard.
Despite himself, Richard felt his cock grow stiff as he stared at this beautiful brunette who was half offering herself to him.
Hannelore noticed his interest. She laughed mockingly. ‘See, already you are changing your mind.’
Richard said nothing.
The next morning, Richard was woken by the alarm. He heard the distant sounds of feet moving about the house. The smell of coffee brewing came to him. He got up and shaved carefully before beginning to dress. He taped his cock as Ingrid had shown him, then put on a new pair of black tights, threading the chain on his ring through the hole that had been made in the crotch. The corselet came next. Again he fed the chain through the hole in the gusset. Next came the new latex breast pads, provided by Hannelore the day before. He had to admit that they looked more realistic than the ones he had been using. The moulded nipples showed through the corselet.
The sound of the door opening interrupted his routine. It was Gertrude in her maid’s outfit.
‘I’ve come to help you with the make-up and the wig,’ she announced. She carried a pair of leg-irons.
Richard wondered if Madame had forbidden anyone to say even a simple ‘good morning’. Everything here was business, carried out in as few words as possible. Nevertheless he sat quietly as Gertrude locked the leg-irons around his ankles and began to apply the make-up, lipstick and eye shadow. The face which looked back at him from the mirror was almost unrecognisable, his own but yet not his own. Gertrude fitted the wig, combing and brushing the long hair around and off his face. The result was an even greater transformation. When she was finished, she stepped back to inspect her work.
‘That will do for now,’ she pronounced. ‘Madame will tell you if she wants any change. I’ve been instructed to leave the leg-irons on you. You can finish dressing now, but don’t take too long. Madame doesn’t like to be kept waiting.’ She left the door open as she departed.
Richard guessed that Hannelore Bern was taking his threat to leave seriously: hence the leg-irons. With a shrug, he put on the slip and the blouse. Next came the skirt and jacket. He stepped into the high-heeled shoes. Except for the chains, he looked like any other female secretary setting out for a day’s work.
Gertrude was in the kitchen preparing breakfast. Leg-irons had been added to her costume since Richard had last seen her. He looked curiously at her, but she said nothing. He shifted his gaze to her legs, which were sheathed in shiny black nylon tights. Against them the heavy shackles looked at once incongruous and highly arousing.
Footsteps and a faint clinking of chains announced the arrival of Gretchen, whom he had not seen since they were parted after the night in the barn. Although she no longer wore the steel face-mask, she too had been put into leg-irons. There was no outward sign of the woman who had been so strongly aroused by being left bound and helpless. She was dressed for work, a smaller and blonder version of Richard himself. He could see by her unnaturally erect carriage that she wore the saddle strap again. He wondered if the twin plugs had been left inside her as well. She sat down carefully in the chair, keeping her back straight as she ate her breakfast.
‘Good morning,’ she said to them both. To Gertrude, she added, ‘Madame is ready for her breakfast.’
The maid nodded and began to load a tray with coffee, toast and butter. Gretchen said nothing more until she had gone out.
‘We will be working today as Madame’s assistants. She told me she plans to keep you here and have you work at the bank.’
Richard said nothing of his resolve to leave as soon as possible. Pointing to Gretchen’s leg-irons, he asked instead if they would all be wearing them henceforth.
Gretchen replied that today was out of the ordinary. Normally, she said, she wore only her saddle strap at work. She said she would never dream of running away from Madame. But Madame had decreed that she be shackled as a reminder not to disobey.
Remembering Hannelore Bern’s reaction to what they had done during their confinement together, he didn’t need to ask what form the disobedience had taken. He asked, ‘What about Gertrude? What has she done to make Madame angry?’
‘Oh,’ Gretchen said, ‘she has done nothing. She wears her leg-irons all day whenever she is to be left alone in the house. The chauffeur will be attending to his duties in the city, and Gertrude will be alone here all day. She will be locked in, but the leg-irons are an added incentive not to run away. I do not think she would run away in any case. She likes her work here with Madame.’
Richard thought he detected irony in the reference to ‘work’.
‘What does she do here?’ he asked. ‘I mean, aside from maid’s work.’
‘She dresses Madame and looks after her wardrobe, she cleans the house, and she performs certain other duties for Madame.’ Gretchen reddened at these last words.
‘What other duties?’ Richard prompted.
Gretchen hesitated, obviously choosing her words carefully. She looked over her shoulder to be sure they were alone before speaking. ‘She performs … intimate services. For Madame.’ She reddened further.
‘You mean lesbian lovemaking?’ Richard said, thinking of the relation between Helena and Margaret.
‘Please, not so loud.’ Gretchen looked over her shoulder fearfully before nodding.
Richard continued without heeding her signs of alarm, ‘So Gertrude is the lesbian part of the household, while you are the resident masochist?’
Alarmed, Gretchen put her finger to her lips.
‘Well, are you?’ Richard asked.
She nodded.
‘Tell me about it,’ he said.
Gretchen bridled. ‘You have no right to ask me these things. You are only another servant. Madame makes you wear women’s clothes and take her orders, just like the rest of us.’
‘You’re right about the orders, but the clothes are nothing to do with Madame. This is how I arrived. Of my own free will,’ Richard told her. ‘But you might as well tell me. You know you’re going to anyway. As you said, we’re all fellow workers – sufferers, if you like.’
‘Workers of the world, unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains,’ Gretchen said sneeringly.
‘So you don’t want to lose your chains?’ Richard asked.
‘Yes … No … You are confusing me.’
‘So tell me about it,’ he said, more gently. He could see that she wanted to talk to someone. And he might learn something from her that would help him to get away.
‘Gertrude,’ Gretchen said, beginning her revelations by talking about someone else, ‘is the more passive part of the partnership, though that hardly describes her adequately. She is only passive in comparison with Madame, and only because Madame herself wants to be the one who gives all the orders. If she had her way, Gertrude would be making the beast with two backs every time she saw Madame.’
He thought he detected malice in the description, but didn’t want to interrupt Gretchen now that she was talking.
‘So Madame – wisely, I think – makes her keep her distance and exercise moderation. Otherwise she would have no time to do anything else.’
Or anyone else, Richard thought.
‘As you said, I am the resident masochist,’ Gretchen said with a faint blush. She managed to convey that being a masochist was somehow superior to being a sweaty lesbian nymphomaniac. ‘Madame punishes Gertrude with the whip. The whip is my reward.’
‘It didn’t look that way the last time I saw you beaten,’ Richard said.
‘Ah, but there are ways of being whipped, and ways of being whipped. When Madame takes the trouble to use the whip erotically, there is no greater pleasure in the world. It is not wholly a matter of severity. Intent has as much to do with it. When Madame wants to tease or arouse me with the whip, I wonder why anyone bothers to aspire to heaven. Especially as the heaven to which they aspire is such a sexless place.’
Richard had to agree with her reasoning. Otherwise he would not be here either. Or at Margaret’s,
he added silently.
‘Last night, for example,’ Gretchen began.
But at that point Gertrude came back into the kitchen, and she turned the conversation to the more mundane matter of going to the city.
Hannelore herself came in a few minutes later, and they got up to follow her. Richard and Gretchen got into the car wearing their leg-irons. The chauffeur paid no more attention to them than he did to the car. He probably saw this every day, Richard guessed.
The car deposited them at the private entrance at the rear of the bank. Richard and the two women went inside while the chauffeur parked the car. Richard felt self-conscious, but Gretchen behaved normally. He tried to emulate her sang-froid. And he wondered if anyone in the front office had any idea what was going on in the director’s office. If word ever got out, there would be an extremely unpleasant reaction on the part of the conservative Swiss. The idea of mixing sex with finance would be deeply disturbing to them.
And there, suddenly before him, was the way out. The whole game depended on a willingness on the part of every player to abide by the two main rules: secrecy and acquiescence. Break either or both of these rules, and Hannelore Bern’s hold over him would cease to exist. She might manage to restrain him physically, as now with the leg-irons, but not at every moment. Sooner or later her vigilance would slacken.
There was no one in Hannelore’s office when they arrived. She simply walked into the room, and they followed. Hannelore seated herself at her desk and lifted the telephone. ‘Do not disturb me until I ring,’ she ordered the front office. She settled down to deal with the paperwork that always accumulates overnight. Richard and Gretchen were left to their own devices. Gretchen took herself off to the file room, beckoning Richard to follow.
‘It would be better if you had something to do,’ Gretchen said. ‘Madame doesn’t like to be disturbed while she is catching up on incoming correspondence. And she has a strong aversion to idleness. I will show you the filing system, and later you can help me.’