by Sarah Fisher
Sarah picked up Casswell’s file, and then, looking at her transcript on the screen, re-read the last few lines of the previous day’s work. In an instant she was catapulted back into the events at the castle. Beatrice had been trapped in the woods by Michael, and as the darkness crept towards them, the dense trees deadened the sounds of the slave girl’s fears:
…‘Scream all you like, my dear Beatrice,’ he gasped in my ear, his breath as hot as flame on my cheek. ‘No one is going to hear you. No one will come to your rescue. Your precious lord and master is already safely back in his apartments with his cousin Lord Usher and that dissolute bastard priest. We are all alone, you and I…’
Hot tears coursed down my face.
In the short time between Michael’s discovering me with my master, and the time I crouched before him in the mud, everything in my life had changed. I just pray that I have not lost everything in those few brief moments. Though repellent to me, I know too that I am beholden to that evil boy.
Around me in the woodland the shadows lengthened, or perhaps it was fear alone that made the world around me seem such a dark and unforgiving place. I have no idea how I got back to my chamber, nor where Michael went after his passion was spent. But in my heart I already know I have not seen or suffered the last of Michael and his obscene desires…
Sarah hastily turned the page, wondering if now that Michael’s lust was satisfied he would leave Beatrice alone, although she knew in her heart that was unlikely. With her fingers poised above the keyboard, she read on:
…Today began as bright as any this season. My master and his cousin, the Lord Usher, announced – even before we had time to break our fast – that they intended to take my lord’s sons out to join them in the hunt. But even as my master stepped down into the chamber my heart fluttered with desire, and I looked away for fear of blushing and betraying all I that feel for him.
As he and the rest of his entourage turned to leave, he beckoned me closer and caught hold of my arm, tipping my face up towards his, recklessly, as if he didn’t care who might see us together.
My cheeks flamed wine-red.
‘I want you to come to my chamber as soon as we return,’ he said. ‘I would have you read a little to amuse me, Beatrice.’
With all my heart I heard the need and the desire in every last word, and feared that others might hear it too.
I nodded and curtseyed deep. ‘As you please, sire.’
He smiled, and I saw the passion in his dark eyes. God preserve me from such thoughts, such hunger as coursed through my veins at that moment.
The little boys’ noisy and excited departure left me with the family’s two daughters, Alice and May, who were well pleased to be rid off their boisterous brothers, with all their noisy and mischievous rough and tumble.
I thought to suggest that the girls and I spend the remains of the morning at our embroideries, when I saw to my horror that Michael had been watching me from the shadows of a slightly ajar door. He beckoned me closer.
‘What do you want, master Michael?’ I asked, in as civil a tongue as I could manage.
The boy leered at me. ‘Not I, pretty Beatrice. Oh no, not I. It appears that your fame is spreading. The mistress wants to see you in her apartments as soon as you have settled the girls with their nursemaid.’
I stared at him. In some ways my mistress has always seemed a distant figure in the life of the castle, more removed, more remote, more formal than his lordship. She spends much of her time following a pilgrim’s path. Since I arrived, thrice now she has been on long pilgrimages to the great shrines.
So, it did not bode well that she summoned me to her chambers. The children’s nurse, Aggie, has many times told me that my ladyship was a woman who should never have married. If it weren’t for her father’s insistence she would most likely have taken the cloth and spent her days in the cloister behind a convent wall.
She is a dour woman, despite a strong-boned beauty, and in middle age her ladyship’s face has settled into hard lines and her blue-grey eyes are as cold like flint. In the dark of the night I have often wondered about the couplings between my lord and lady. Was there ever any passion mixed with their sense of duty that fuelled their desire? I cannot imagine my master ploughing that particular furrow with any sense of relish.
But enough; my thoughts are wandering. Michael was still there in the chamber watching me, his eyes fixed on me like a hound on a hare.
‘It doesn’t pay to keep her waiting,’ he goaded with a sneer. ‘I’ll tell you that for nothing.’
Once I was certain that the girls were safely closeted with their nurse I set off through the narrow passageways of the castle towards my lady’s apartment in the east tower. Michael led the way, as if there was some possibility that I did not know where I was going, though with each step my heart grew heavier and heavier as I considered what might lie in store for me. What spiteful tales had the upstart servant told?
As we reached the great oak door that divides my lady’s chambers from the rest of the castle, I was horrified to find that Arturo, my master’s man-at-arms, was awaiting our arrival on the landing.
‘Well, well… what is it we have here?’ he said with a sly grin as he took my arm in a painful grip and led me into the anteroom. ‘A whore? A pretty little painted trollop who repays a noble kindness with adulterous seduction? Have you any idea what the punishment is for adultery, oh corrupter of the sacred marriage bed?’
I could scarcely believe what I was hearing, and felt my pulse quicken with fury. Rounding on the vile brute, I snapped, ‘If there is a corrupter here it is not I, Arturo, as you well know. You and that bastard priest—’
Arturo laughed heartily in my face, his evil eyes fixed upon me. ‘Oh, how very little you know of the realities of life, my dear little slut. The truth would be of little importance to an angry mob. The heathen peasants would only be interested in how things appear. How they would crave to get their hands on that pretty little body of yours.’ His eyes crawled up and down my transfixed body, and he licked his thin lips with a serpent’s tongue. ‘Mmm, I will take the greatest of pleasure in seeing the arrogance beaten out of you, Beatrice. And when you are broken – truly broken – I have been assured you will be mine to do with as I please…’ he sniggered as his eyes fixed themselves on my heaving breasts, ‘and you would not like that.’
I stepped back in terror. ‘W-what do you mean?’ I whispered.
‘Enough of this!’ snarled a female voice from close by. I span on my heel and saw, to my horror, that my lady was watching our exchange. And to my astonishment her eyes, usually so cold and unfeeling, were aglow with an inner fire that quite unnerved me.
‘Strip her and let us proceed immediately with the punishment,’ she snapped, waving to Arturo. ‘There is much to do.’
Before I could protest or defend myself Michael and Arturo had grabbed my arms and ripped away the bodice of my gown. I screamed out in indignation and humiliation, fighting to cover my nakedness, but no amount of pleading or begging would stop them. Their bloodlust was truly up, and I was their prey!
Arturo snapped a set of manacles around my wrists and secured me like a bitch to a chain that hung from the ceiling. He pulled down with all his might, and my arms were hauled upwards until I my toes barely touched the cold floor, completely helpless to their evil approaches. Crouching at my feet, with a triumphant glint in his eye, Michael bound my ankles together.
Exposed and totally at their mercy I begged them to stop, calling on all the saints for assistance in my time of need – but perhaps my sins were too great for divine intervention.
‘For God’s sake silence her whining,’ hissed her ladyship. ‘Make haste with a gag, before the tart attracts any unwanted attention!’
She approached me then, her fine clothes presenting a stunning contrast to my raw nakedness. I hung from the rafters like a side of m
utton, swinging this way and that, my arms screaming their protestations as the two men finally stripped away the last remnants of my clothes.
She grasped my hair viciously and pulled me towards her. ‘I want you to understand that this is just the beginning, Beatrice. Your vile betrayal of my Christian charity cuts like a knife. If it were not for Arturo – who seems to think you will make an interesting bed companion – I would have your worthless carcass thrown to the rabble with nothing more than the clothes you stood in.’
She smiled thinly, but there was no amusement there.
‘You little whore,’ she hissed, quietly. ‘Let you ply your chosen trade amongst the farmers and the tradesman, the sailors and the scum down at the docks… slut!’
She drew back her hand and slapped me hard across the cheek. Her face flushed with a disturbing mixture of anger and excitement.
‘For some reason Arturo seems to think you have some worth. So whatever follows is thanks to him; a punishment for your adultery rather than expulsion from the castle.’
She fell silent for a few moments – deep in thought as she studied my face in a disturbing manner that made me shudder. Her eyes became misty.
‘And when he is done with beating you,’ she eventually continued, ‘you will give me what I long for… what I deny myself…’ Her mood swung again and she spat, ‘You little Jezebel! You unnatural harlot!’
I stared at her ladyship in disbelief of what I was witnessing, and then shivered with utter horror and revulsion as she wrapped a wiry arm around my waist, pulled me close, and kissed me hard, her tongue driving furiously between my lips. She cupped my breasts, her long fingernails outlining the taut peaks of my nipples. As she pulled away, the both of us breathing heavily – me from shock and disgust and she from, I know not what – the look in her eyes was as sinister and intense as the wildest darkest storm in the forest.
I had barely time to consider the implications of these most unnerving of caresses before Arturo snatched a horsewhip from his belt and swept it down like a streak of white-fire across my back.
I howled as the unjust agony bit into by flesh. My body twisted like a bizarre puppet dancing to the tune of its sadistic puppeteer. My lady had said that Arturo meant to break me, and I knew now that she truly meant it. It seemed no quarter was to be given. As I spun around and writhed in vain attempts to avoid his spite, he hit me again. This time the crop caught me full across the breasts, lifting a broad welt on my sensitive bubbies and making me wail like those who had lost their minds and were condemned to spend their days rotting in the madhouse.
As I recovered a degree and tried to twist away from the next excruciating cut my lady’s eyes narrowed and darkened, and I saw there, in their depths, the evil pleasure simmering in her very soul. So this was the secret passion that drove her.
I do not know for how long Arturo beat me, nor how many strokes exploded across my hapless flesh. It seemed to continue for an eternity, my mind ablaze with pain and fear until finally my body surrendered and my senses were too overwhelmed to feel anything more. My conscious mind retreated into a dark corner where the sound of the whip and the crack of leather on flesh became abstract – almost unrelated to me.
When Michael and Arturo finally cut me down I fell forward onto my hands and knees, exhausted, all passion, all humanity thrashed from me. I wanted nothing more than to curl into a ball and let the tender sanctity of sleep claim me. One of them tugged my head up by my hair and pulled the gag from between my limp and dry lips, while the other cut through the ties that bound my ankles.
Across the room her ladyship was arranged on a day-bed. Her bodice was undone to the waist, and her skirts lifted to reveal the dark triangle of her sex.
She beckoned me closer with a thin finger.
‘First,’ she purred, in a voice that came straight from all the demons of hell, ‘you will suckle me. You will lick and draw at my pretty little dugs, take them deep into your mouth, and use your whorish tongue to excite them. And then you will kiss me here…’ the same thin finger traced the fissure where the lips of her sex met. ‘I want you to show me what pleasure, what joy, is it that has drawn my husband and Arturo under your sluttish spell.’
She paused, clearly seeing my fear and revulsion. Her expression was grim. ‘You will do as I command, girl, and you will do it now, or I will have Arturo drag you down to the market like the bitch on heat that you are and sell your worthless carcass to the highest bidder!’ Her voice crescendoed as the threat reached its end, and I silently wondered for her sanity. ‘Do I make myself perfectly clear?!’ she screamed, like one possessed.
Before I could reply she snatched my arm with a strike as quick as any snake, and pulled my face towards her breasts. They were heavy pendulous sacks, etched with faint blue veins like the roots of a tree, and tipped by crinkled dark brown nipples. I tried to resist her strength, but the beating had weakened my resolve, and I knew I had little choice but to give her all she demanded.
She cupped and lifted a breast to my lips. I ran my tongue around the dry teat, before anticipating her need and reluctantly drawing it deep into my mouth. As I struggled with my abhorrence her ladyship caught tight hold of my wrist and guided my hand to the forbidden place between her thighs. I stiffened as my fingertips brushed her clammy flesh. It was so strange to touch another woman’s quim, and what disturbs me most was that mixed with my disgust and fear, was a strange and unexpected curiosity.
Her quim seemed to be alive, a sleek furred creature, and as I stroked down over its corona of curls – my caresses guided by her ever tightening grip – she opened for me, giving me greater access, pulling me into her. Her vagina, so familiar and yet so alien, was silky smooth; a glistening, moist trap. And almost without thinking I gently guided a finger into the sucking recesses. My reward was a long and throaty sigh of pure pleasure from my lady.
I am both ashamed and excited by the events that followed in my lady’s chamber. For some reason her delight in my caresses, the way her body writhed against mine, made me tremble with intense and unexpected excitement.
I did not resist her guiding me; in fact, quite the opposite. As she drifted a hand across my belly, my rogue carcass lifted up to give her the access she sought; the little cherry stone that nestles between the lips of my sex.
With her example to guide me, my fingers hurried on to circle the twin of that swollen little bead between her heavy thighs, while all the time my mouth was fixed tight on her leathery nipple. She began to moan then, and thrust her hips up to my fingertips and, as she did, the scent of her passion flooded my senses, and the spark she had kindled in my belly suddenly bursting into flame.
I blush even now for thinking about what went on. My ladyship dragged my limp form up onto the day-bed alongside her and began to kiss me hungrily, one hand caressing my breasts, teasing at their swollen peaks, while her other continued to stroke and cajole the very seat of my pleasure.
I was lost.
Such sensations were a stunning contrast to the bite of Arturo’s whip. My ladyship’s womanly body, the way it moved and felt, was a revelation too. If I closed my eyes it almost felt as though I was making sweet love to myself.
The gentleness of her touch, and the sensation of her breath against my trembling skin, were so astonishing. No wonder such unnatural couplings are forbidden by holy writ. Black alchemy bound us. In my lady’s arms I understood only too well how each of my caresses would feel for her, and within seconds of my surrender, the seduction became an intense, all-engulfing game of follow the leader. One touched, one copied. One led, one followed. The roles changed again and again as our mutual rapture mounted.
And it was undiluted rapture; this frenzied fall from grace.
When she gently pressed my head down towards her lap I offered no more than a token resistance. My mouth opened to enfold her, to drink her in. She whispered encouragement and lifted her hips. My to
ngue dipped again and again into the ocean of her passion – our pleasures overseen by the forgotten Arturo and Michael.
My ladyship whimpered with joy and began to move in earnest as my tongue breached her. Her back arched, her hips thrust up to meet me, and her groin buffeted my perspiring face.
I slithered to the floor between her legs to service her all the better. My lips, tongue and fingers took her to the very edge of the abyss, and as she edged closer and closer to that moment, I slid my hand down between my thighs, between my own sopping folds, and drew myself inexorably along the same wondrous path.
I felt her sex tighten around my fingers, like an avaricious mouth drawing them in. The tightening was as intense and shocking as anything I have ever felt, and as her body cocooned me my own ecstasy engulfed reason.
Above me, her ladyship thrust forward again and again and urged me on and on to greater efforts. I was exhausted, but she was insatiable.
At last there was a long, sobbing howl of release, but from whence it came is still a mystery; her soul, or mine. Such was my delirium that even to this day I know not which of us spent so passionately.
Finally there was stillness, and with it a growing sense of self-knowledge, as if I had woken from a deep and fever-soaked sleep. With the taste of her body still on my tongue and lips, shame rose and flooded my belly like the in-rushing tide. While my lady tidied herself Arturo grabbed me by the arm and pulled me roughly to my feet.
‘We’ve not quite done with you yet,’ he said softly, jerking me close to him. I could smell his excitement like sweat; watching me with her ladyship, had I sensed, been almost more than he could bear.
‘Bring that iron over here,’ he said to Michael, who watched our exchange over his shoulder. ‘Let us ensure that Beatrice never forgets again where her loyalties lie.’ I glanced over at the servant boy, and to my horror I saw he had a branding iron wedged in the grate, its end already glowing red-hot.