Of her own things there was no sign at all now, and she could only assume that Oren, or someone, had slipped into the room while she was bathing and taken her grimy, over-worn clothing to be washed.
She had also been left a meal: a tall glass of milk and several slices of home-baked bread, thickly spread with butter. Plain fayre, and taboo in an age of diets and cholesterol, but somehow exactly, and uncannily, what she fancied. The milk was rich and frothy and the bread still warm. The butter was creamy yellow and tasted of sun.
The only thing she wanted for now was company.
Still unsure of the time, Belinda didn’t know whether the food was breakfast or lunch, or even afternoon tea, but that didn’t stop it satisfying her hunger. When she had consumed every last delicious scrap, she began to feel restless and fidgety, and she went to the open window, hoping to see Jonathan as he crossed the park to join her.
There was no sign of him, or of anyone else. But what did catch her eye was the formal garden.
It was lush with flowers, a brilliant tapestry of colour, but as she sniffed the rising scents, she frowned in puzzlement.
How could she have missed all this last night? In the thundery downpour, all she had noticed was sparse shrubbery and rain-lashed bushes. The brilliant floral hues wouldn’t have shown up well in the dark of course, but all she could remember was a sterile, tangled wasteland.
Must have had something else on my mind, she reflected wryly, watching a flock of chattering birds sweep across the park.
‘So? What next?’ she demanded of her blue-eyed companion, as if the vivid portrait had life and could advise her.
The man’s image regarded her silently, his ambiguous expression a silent provocation. Belinda shook her head, realising that she had genuinely half-expected him to answer.
She certainly couldn’t lurk around in this room all day though, simply waiting for Jonathan to turn up.
Feeling an amorphous sense of longing, mixed with something akin to fear, she opened the heavy door and stepped out into the oak-lined corridor. To her left was the way to the great staircase and the lower floor, which was the logical direction to take if she hoped to find Jonathan or Oren or perhaps even the owner of the priory; and to the right was uncharted territory. Her conscious mind said ‘go left, get things sorted out’, but to her surprise she ignored it and turned right, her footfalls silent on the thick carpet runner.
After a moment, she found herself in a long, airy gallery filled with more portraits and a vast treasury of objets d’art and antiques. Once again, heavy velvet drapes hung from ceiling to floor and kissed the edge of a richly-patterned carpet. Brilliant sunshine from the windows cut into the design in bright slices, but in the shadows the darkness seemed over-dense. Belinda felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle for no apparent reason, and squaring her shoulders she headed resolutely for the first patch of light.
‘Blue Eyes’ – as she realised she now thought of him – was once again the principal subject of the portraiture, but there were also several likenesses of women. Or ‘woman’, to be correct, in the form of a slender, gentle-eyed beauty whose long, intricately-coiled titian hair and creamy skin looked peculiarly familiar.
‘I don’t know your boyfriend, but I do know you,’ said Belinda, standing in front of one of the pictures which showed the lovely woman in a green velvet gown. ‘Although I’m damned if I know where from.’ The sense of recognition was at the very edge of her consciousness, and when she tried to reel it in, it became less and less accessible. The more she tried to place the woman, the less she seemed able to; and after a moment or two, the conundrum made her head ache. Rubbing her eyes, she moved further along the gallery.
The owner of the priory had some beautiful but very strange things. Statues of gods and goddesses from the Ancient Egyptian pantheon; a long series of painted wooden representations of animal-headed deities. Gilded boxes, their lids open to display the mummified creatures that lay within: cats, snakes, even a wolf. Huge crystal vessels displayed in pairs, their attenuated spouts entwined. Stuffed birds in glass cases, caught in attitudes of flight and conflict. Two half life-size human figures, male and female, cast in gold and portrayed having sex on what appeared to be an altar.
This last item made Belinda shudder and blush, even though there was no one around to make her feel embarrassed. The copulating figures had been created by a master craftsman. Every detail was perfect, ecstatic, almost alive; even down to the grimaces of pleasure on the two gilded faces, and the intricately moulded genitals, which were fully visible as the pose had caught the outstroke. The man’s thick penis pierced the woman’s stretched vagina.
Looking more closely at the mating pair made Belinda’s belly quiver, and she spun around when she seemed to hear laughter.
But the gallery was empty.
This is crazy, she thought. It’s all the eyes in the portraits that are making me feel as if I’m being watched. There’s nobody here. I’m quite alone. It’s imagination –
A door creaked, and she whirled again, her heart pounding, her throat tight, her mouth dry.
‘Who’s there?’ she called out, noticing for the first time that a previously-concealed door at the very end of the gallery was now gaping open a little. ‘Who is it?’ she asked, then a thought occurred to her. ‘I’m sorry if I shouldn’t be here … I couldn’t find anybody …’
There was no answer and the open door moved no further. Belinda crept apprehensively towards it, then stopped dead when she heard a second sound.
It was a faint cry; the sort of indecipherable moan one might make while having a nightmare. Belinda’s hand froze on the edge of the door as she wondered what lay beyond it in the dark.
Screwing up her courage, she pushed the door a little further open and discovered that the area behind it wasn’t in total blackness. From somewhere up above, a faint shaft of sunlight illuminated a vestibule and the steps of a steeply-rising staircase that doubled back on itself again and again and again. Belinda made her way to the foot of it, then paused, listening carefully for more sound. None came, so she put her foot on the first worn step.
‘Here goes,’ she whispered, beginning to ascend, and knowing that both the cry and the situation had made her nervous. More than nervous. She felt genuinely fearful, but also, inexplicably, quite aroused. Beneath the flimsy shift, her bare nipples were hard and puckered.
Still straining to hear any faint sound, Belinda climbed the stairs as slowly and carefully as she could. The switchback construction of the staircase made her feel giddy, and she clung on for dear life to its rather insubstantial handrail. Beneath her, the stone steps struck a chill through the thin soles of her slippers.
Halfway to the top, judging by the quantity of steps that remained when she looked upward, there was a small landing and an anonymous panelled door. She considered turning the handle and looking into the room beyond, but instinct told her it wasn’t her goal.
It took her a further minute of vertigo to get to the top, and when she did she had to stand for a few minutes breathing deeply and still clutching the thin iron rail. She was in the turret she had observed from outside the priory, she presumed, and which seemed to consist of two storeys and two large rooms. When she could at last catch her breath and her heart rate had settled, she realised she was standing on a second small landing and that the door before her must lead to the upper room.
It’s just like a fairy-tale, thought Belinda, placing her hand on the massive iron ring that opened the door. Still not sure she was doing the right thing, she turned it and the door swung open silently and smoothly.
The chamber beyond was also stone lined, but its walls were hung with huge tapestries. Between these, more of the omnipresent deep-pile velvet curtains were drawn across the windows, and several thick candles in elaborate stanchions lit the room. Belinda absorbed all these facts in the space of a couple of seconds, before she focused her attention on the centre of the chamber, where there stood a great
bed, all swathed around in what seemed like dozens of thin gauze draperies.
A naked man lay on the bed. A perfectly naked man with long, tousled hair and a face that she already knew too well.
Blue Eyes! thought Belinda, biting her lips so she didn’t exclaim aloud. With slow, silent steps, she crossed the room then pushed her way carefully through the many layers of gauze.
In the flesh, the slumbering man – who was obviously the latest of his line – was much more striking than any of his painted forebears, even though the family likeness was still incredibly strong. His skin was very pale and his hair rather oddly coloured in that it appeared to be quite dark but thinly streaked with blond. His powerful limbs and torso were classically formed. Unable to help herself, Belinda centred her attention on his genitals, and was shocked when she saw his penis was half erect. Even as she watched, it twitched disturbingly and rose up further.
Although she couldn’t see the sun now and didn’t know the time, it suddenly seemed strange to Belinda that the man before her should be asleep during the day. Was he ill? she wondered. Was that why he had not been around to greet her? She peered more closely at his queer, unnatural pallor.
The sleeper looked almost as if he had spent many years indoors. There was no hint of tan about him anywhere, although paradoxically, he did not look unhealthy. His body was muscular and appeared to be in a hard and well-toned condition; it was only his unweathered skin that made him look like an invalid.
And there was certainly nothing fragile about his penis, which seemed to grow ever more rampant by the second. Belinda caught her breath when the man stirred slowly, then touched himself.
Standing at the foot of the bed, she almost swayed with excitement and arousal. The sleeper was a supremely attractive man, and the way he handled his genitals made her own sex twitch and weep. Longing to reach into her borrowed panties and caress herself, she felt weak with desire as she watched the drowsy man masturbate; fondling his hard length in extended, graceful strokes. Belinda felt a real need to hang on to the bedpost to stop herself falling, but she dare not do it for fear of disturbing her companion. As he began to writhe among the sheets, she heard him mutter; a string of foreign words and then what sounded like a name – ‘Belle’ – which he cried out with increasing force and anguish.
Belinda expected the man to wake at any moment; to open his eyes – which she had no doubt at all were brilliantly blue – and find her standing there watching him. The sensible thing was to sneak away; now, while he was still too far from consciousness to perceive her. But she was so bewitched by the sight of him that she stayed.
He was squirming now, twisting his powerful-looking body against the mattress as his clasping fingers continued their steady work. Unable to stop herself, Belinda reached down and pressed the heel of her hand against her pubis, trying to stanch the sweet ache of mounting lust.
‘Belle! Oh, Belle!’ cried the tormented figure on the bed, before launching into yet another frantic, impenetrable chant. He was lifting his bottom now, pushing his penis through his gripping fist, as his heels gouged and scrabbled against the bedlinen. When his cries and exhortations became one long strangled groan, Belinda looked away; not embarrassed, but too moved by his beauty to watch his climax.
Eyes tightly closed, and with her hand at her crotch, she waited in frozen immobility to be discovered. But when discovery didn’t come, she opened her eyes again, but still felt unable to face the figure on the bed. Ignoring the heavy frustration in the pit of her belly, she darted glances around the peculiar gloomy chamber, then stopped dead, her breath caught yet again.
On top of a massive mahogany sideboard, a little way from the bed, there was a small carved box made from a lighter, more rosy-toned wood. It was an unremarkable thing, and Belinda probably wouldn’t have noticed it save for the fact that it was glowing in the dark. It was pulsing with an unearthly blue radiance that – when she turned again to the sleeper – she realised was synchronised exactly with his breathing.
Her desire almost forgotten, she could do nothing but observe the weird phenomenon. What the hell was happening? Was it a trick of some kind or her imagination going crazy again? The box was definitely radiating in some way, the rhythm of its pulses uncannily regular. Half of her wanted to move closer and investigate but the other half knew better and held back. There was a special, personal bond between the sleeping man and the delicate blue light, and Belinda suddenly had the feeling she was intruding. Turning silently on her heel, she moved away towards the door, feeling an odd mix of enchantment and true terror. Once through the door, she closed it as quietly as she could, and – her earlier vertiginous feelings forgotten – raced down the round staircase at breakneck speed. She was gasping for breath as she almost burst into the gallery.
Collapsing on to an oak settle, she took in deep lungfuls of air and tried to think clearly and calmly.
What had she got herself into here? Who was the handsome, sleeping man, the one she had just seen masturbate to orgasm? And what the devil was in that luminescent box?
Suddenly Belinda felt very frightened and out of her depth. She really needed to see Jonathan’s dear and rather ordinary face and to hear his pleasant, sensible voice outlining a reasoned explanation for what she had just seen.
Beginning to think more clearly, she realised that if someone really had been sent to fetch Jonathan at the time she had encountered Oren – what felt like many hours ago now – then surely her boyfriend must be here in the priory? Somewhere in the labyrinth of rooms and corridors?
Squaring her shoulders, Belinda set off determinedly along the gallery, not looking up at the blue-eyed portraits that seemed to watch her.
What she needed now, she told herself, was normality and reassurance. A bit of comfort from a man whose eyes weren’t blue.
Chapter Four
Reassurance
‘WHERE HAVE YOU been?’ demanded Jonathan, as Belinda strode into the opulent crimson sanctum that she supposed she could now call ‘her’ room.
‘I might ask the same of you,’ she snapped back, thrown off balance by terseness when she had hoped for understanding.
Jonathan was lying on the lush red counterpane. His feet were bare, and he was wearing a rather baggy white T-shirt and khaki shorts. His dark hair was slicked back and wet, as if he had just that minute stepped out of a shower. As she approached him he swung himself up so he was sitting on the edge of the bed. He appeared fazed by her belligerent response.
‘I’m sorry,’ Belinda said, relenting. Jonathan looked as confused as she felt, and they were both at sea in a strange situation. It seemed stupid to fall out over nothing. ‘I was having a look around while I waited for you to turn up. Oren told me he’d sent someone to fetch you.’
‘Who’s Oren?’ enquired Jonathan as she sat down beside him.
Alerted by something odd in her boyfriend’s voice, Belinda studied him more closely, and noted that his expression was guarded.
‘Well, it’s hard to say,’ she began, watching Jonathan start to blush, and wondering what had caused it. Last night, perhaps? What they had done in the folly had been fairly wild. ‘I don’t really know who he is,’ she continued, keeping her own expression neutral while she considered reasons for Jonathan’s embarrassment. ‘He seems to be a servant of some kind, although he’s not what you’d expect as a butler. He met me at the front door when I first arrived. It was weird, really, he almost seemed to be expecting me,’ she said, realising as she spoke that it had been true. Her appearance had caused the big mute no surprise. ‘Anyway, he welcomed me on behalf of his master, and showed me to this room. Which was pretty clever of him, considering that he doesn’t seem able to speak.’
‘You mean he’s dumb too?’
‘What do you mean, “too”?’
‘The two girls who came to fetch me can’t speak either.’ He was pinker than ever now. ‘But … Well, it just seemed the simplest thing to come with them.’ His eyes slid away from Beli
nda’s, and he began picking at an invisible thread in the bedcover.
Something had obviously happened between Jonathan and these unknown, unspeaking ‘girls’. Belinda could tell that, but own feelings rather surprised her. Her natural response should have been suspicion and anger, but somehow the idea of Jonathan with other women was exciting. She experienced a peculiar inner surge at his undisguised guilt; a superiority that, to her surprise, was quite arousing.
‘Did they bring you to this room too?’ she enquired in neutral tones. ‘I assume you managed to tell them we’re together?’
‘I told them …’ he began, then paused, making a track on the velvet bedspread with his finger. ‘But I’m not sure they understood me. I seem to have been given a room further along the corridor. They insisted and it was easier not to argue.’ He looked up, frowning. ‘So when I’d taken a shower, I did a little exploring of my own and found this room … And it just “felt” as if you’d been here, I don’t know why.’ He shrugged his shoulders and looked around. ‘This is some weird set-up here, isn’t it?’ Belinda nodded, still watching him. ‘I mean,’ he continued, ‘last night it looked like a total run-down heap … and it still looks a bit dumpish on the outside. But inside –’ He gestured roundly, as if to take in the whole of the priory ‘– well, it’s like a palace. The furniture alone must be worth millions.’
‘You’re right there,’ observed Belinda. ‘I’ve done a little exploring myself and the whole place is just crammed with paintings and antiques and all sorts of weird and wonderful treasures.’
‘You know …’ Jonathan hesitated, taking her hand. ‘It might be rather nice to stay here a while. We certainly seem welcome.’
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