The Pleasure Palace

by Caroline Swift

  “I must be getting back, Vasa,” he said, kissing her gloved hand. “I have to work on the Swedish bitch also, you know.” He uttered a sigh of the overworked.

  “What you mean is that you’re about to fuck the beautiful English slave! Well, I don’t criticize or blame you. We’ve not had a slave of that quality here for months. As to the Swedish slut, you’re becoming infatuated also with that big, obdurate whore of a slave! She needs the crop not the cock. But go ahead.”

  As he left for either his ‘English bitch’ or his ‘Swedish slut’, or both, Vasa issued her final orders to the valet.

  “Take them to the Slave Hall, explain the rules, introduce them to the others and allot them bed space.”

  Both girls rose from their knees at a jerk on their chains from the valet and bowed as Vasa walked majestically out of the induction chamber.

  Their first ordeal was over and had proceeded tolerably well - at least as far as the girls could assess. They were free to meet the other inmates. And perhaps make love.

  As they were led back along interminable corridors, some hewn out of the living rock, Verena strove to lessen the tension on the chain wrenching uncharitably at the rings in her already raw nipples, a traction that, strangely, did not displease her. It excited her and she was aware how the teats connected to her sex.

  As they passed the iron rings where they thought they had glimpsed on their way down the nude female hanging, they saw she had disappeared; in her place stood a good-looking, naked youth, heavily chained and almost suspended by a thong round his bunched genitals. He was the first male slave they had seen.

  Finally, they entered a wide, pleasantly lighted chamber that stretched a long way to the right. The whole of one side of the room was occupied by a row of beds, each joined to the next; above each bed hung a ring and chain from the wall. Further aloft were a series of barred windows through which the girls saw the morning clouds scudding above the rain. Two huge chandeliers, the bulbs still glowing, threw a mellow light on the scene, which was completed by a long table and benches in the centre of the room. They were in the Slave Hall. And there were a number of females in it.

  As Restif detached the nipple chains and designated two mattresses side by side, covered with fresh linen sheets, the slaves looked at the occupants of the hall. All were indeed female, some still in bed, reading or talking, others sitting at the table among the remains of breakfast. A couple of girls were lying enlaced together on the far end of the bedding, obviously making love which Verena felt was the best augury of the day so far. The man then took a board from the wall and read out the rules in a toneless voice.

  While slaves were free to amuse themselves in the Hall, where they ate and slept, they were obliged to obey summons at any time, day or night, to training sessions or to special assignments. Inmates’ numbers would be called and immediate attendance was required at the far end of the Hall where the doorway led to the Preparation Chamber and the cellars below, as well as to the Hall of Ceremony. Before attendance at sessions, all slaves would sluice themselves out and present their bodies in total cleanliness.

  Clauses followed governing oral contraception and reporting menstruation, after which a long list of punishments was appended, citing errors of conduct, such as lack of hygiene and personal beauty; disobedience; insubordination; attempts to bribe servants with sexual favours - something the girls had not imagined possible. Each item carried with it its specific punishment, so many lashes, so many hours on the cross, so many sessions in Cellar IV - whatever that implied. The final paragraph merely stated that all slaves were at the entire sexual disposal of (1) the Master and guests; (2) the overseers; and (3) the senior valets and maids, at the express discretion of the overseers. Naturally, all sex would be performed stark naked.

  Restif rehearsed the list so rapidly that neither girl grasped the half. Then he hung the board on the wall and left, after designating the beds reserved for the newcomers and stating that they would be fitted with their riveted bondage straps that evening.

  Chapter Nine

  “Don’t worry about the rules. They don’t mean a thing.” It was a superbly handsome, dark-skinned woman with raven black, cropped hair, who addressed them from the table. She seemed older than the other inmates, sitting around her. “My name’s Nastasia, better known as 71, which won’t mean much to you except that I’ve been here quite some time. I’ve seen slaves come and go. What are your names? Are you here to be sold or just for mere training?” Then she added: “Does either of you play chess or bridge?”

  The girls coyly went to their beds and sat on the edge, looking at the inmates. Some were very beautiful, some less so, but all were fascinated at the arrival of the two new slaves.

  The dark-skinned woman introduced the others promptly, after asking the girls their names. “This is Krystyna, an old-timer too.” She pointed to a completely shaven female, playing cards with another inmate. “She’s a Polak and very good fun, you’ll see. She’s waiting for a buyer too, poor darling. She can take a lot of whipping but just can’t find the right owner who likes her body.” Then she asked: “I suppose you are owned, no?”

  Verena nodded, looking at the strong, lascivious Polish body at the table. “We’re together,” she said lamely.

  “Oh, you mean you’re lesies?” Nastasia smiled. “Well, over there, you have our blonde, freckled Sylvie and her delicious Renee, a bit timid but a nice girl if you can get her to talk. They make love most of the time but you may be able to get a word in sideways. They’re owned by a German countess of some sort who wants them toughened up, if we understand the idea. They’re rather special, Verena,” - she addressed the younger girl as Marina was holding back in embarrassment - “because they have gold rings. Their bitch of an owner is filthily wealthy and flogs them before guests once a week, crucified.”

  The bald Krystyna laughed. “You’re just jealous, darling. Admit it! Leave them alone, Renee’s about to come. Can’t you hear her groans? Don’t distract them.”

  Nastasia grinned. “Well, over there,” she threw out her arm, “is our special companion and someone we really love. Come here, Marie-Laure, and say hello to our new flesh.”.

  A gorgeous redhead, with superb ringed breasts, rose from the table and came across to kiss the new arrivals. “I’ve been here a week and I’m managing to put up with it. They tease me because I’m allowed to wear high heels but that’s what my master requires. It’s not my fault!” The woman was extraordinarily sexual to look at. Both girls stared at her perfect body; it was lacerated with whip marks.

  It was Krystyna who then continued with the introductions. “Katia, over there, doing crosswords, is our Russian...”

  “For the last time, Krystyna, I’m not Russian, I’m Ukrainian!” the well-fleshed woman replied with a smile. “I was an emigrant, you see, and got bought up. The only way I could survive in West Germany. I didn’t want to become a simple whore. And anyway, I’m in good hands.”

  “What she means,” put in Nastasia, “is that she has found a master who says he loves her. Isn’t that right, Katia? And he beats her into kingdom come.”

  “So what?” the lovely Katia replied. “That’s what I want. And to be looked after as a proper slave should be. He spoils me terribly.”

  The girls noticed that Katia carried a ring in her septum, hanging to her upper lip. They were learning a great deal very rapidly. And learned even more when Nastasia introduced the lovely Marja.

  Pale-skinned, thin, with a boy’s slender body, Marja had been the slave of an important industrialist who, said Nastasia, adored her but flogged her mercilessly and offered her to guests night after night, weighted with chains, hooded and pierced with scores of needles. “She’s here, aren’t you, darling, to be sold as your master’s fed up with you! And to learn how torture is inflicted on lovely tits? As if a competent slave hadn’t already enjoyed that mundan
e entertainment! Marja’s really only half trained, aren’t you, sweetheart?”

  “Maybe,” the sallow-fleshed girl admitted. “But I can take the quirt over my breasts now, which is probably more than you can, Nastasia.”

  “Oh, for goodness sake, Marja, my darling. I’ve had that and cunt flogging, which is more than you’ve had. But you’ve only another week and then, who knows? - back to Dusseldorf or wherever, if ever you get purchased!”

  The girls listened in trepidation. “Then, there’s our Birgit. She’s our oldest,” Nastasia went on. She seemed obviously to be the head girl in rank in the Slave Hall, even if, apparently, she too was for sale. “Well, Birgit’s not here for the moment. She’s undergoing sex torture down below. She’s the slave of a very important couple of Swedes who want her to be relegated to total subjugation and, for some reason, quite beyond us docile darlings, she refuses to give in, I mean to fellate and do normal sex service. She thinks she is adequate as she is. Which obviously is not her owners’ conception of her role. Our Birgit, flogged and tortured, but refusing any other cock or clit but those of her owners! And she has still four days to go, if not longer.”

  Krystyna added her view of things. “Birgit is trying to outplay Beaucastel, the poor whore. Here one gives in and learns, as Ashley, our princess, would tell you, were she here. She’s been down in the cellars a long time - probably with Lalaniere, poor thing.”

  Almost at the same moment as this was said, the girls saw a woman enter the Hall from the far end. She was so beautiful, so exquisitely modelled and moulded that the girls held their breath. It was obvious she had just been flagellated - and certainly used sexually - to judge by her condition. Restif led her to her bed, released her nipple chains, and left her lying on the sheets, breathing heavily with pain. She was extraordinarily lovely.

  “Well, talk of the devil!” the high-heeled Marie-Laure exclaimed. “There she is, our princess, well beaten, as usual, but at least not on the cross, for a change.”

  She indicated a monstrous crucifix in the penumbra at the end of the hall. “This girl can take more than any of us. That’s Ashley. English and tough!”

  The two girls looked at the reclining body. It was true that she had been severely whipped but the woman did not seem extenuated. She even lifted her head to glance at the newcomers.

  “It’s senseless, all this flogging,” Nastasia remarked. “We are trained already but the overseers, and particularly those bitches Gerda and Gabrielle, take delight in reducing us to flagellated flesh. There’s no reason for such beatings, except to pleasure them.”

  Suddenly, the beautiful English girl rose from her bunk to walk unsteadily towards the group. She was more than superb. Her body was unadulterated sexual beauty; immaculate except for the lash marks across most of her flesh, utterly lovely in all its respects: the breasts were flawless with full nipples reaching outwards, the belly withdrawn over the swell of the thickly haired pubis. The thighs were magnificent. Neither girl had seen a body to rival the splendour of Ashley’s. The face was serene, framed in chestnut hair, which although matted and dishevelled after her ordeal, curled round her neck. The eyes were still wide and tearful from the effect of the treatment she had just endured.

  “What are you telling these new girls?” she said softly. “You have all become whip happy and miss the point.”

  Exhausted, she leaned carefully with one thigh against the edge of the table before the two girls. “Don’t ever listen to slaves who seek a master or a mistress! My name’s Ashley. What are yours?”

  The newcomers introduced themselves, gazing at the spectacular body. They noticed that her sex was carrying at least ten rings pierced through the inner and outer lips, the mass of metal gathered to a point and linked firmly with a padlock, enclosing the entry to the vagina. The clitoris ring was dragged down to espouse the same imprisonment.

  “I don’t know what they have been telling you two,” Ashley said, “but let me just say that you are here to learn. To give your bodies to the whip and to cocks and clits until you are competent slaves. If that is what your proud owners demand of you, then you must obey and surrender your flesh to what these people here are paid to do. Only with training,” she said earnestly, “can you become properly submissive slaves. The pain is immaterial - the pleasure, for yourselves and for your owners, is the criterion. That is what this place is here for. To make sexual slaves of us. If that is what you want to be, well and good. If not, then you protest like Birgit or Nastasia here.”

  “I don’t protest!” Nastasia frowned. “I just think these overseers and valets take sexual advantage of us, whipping and fucking whenever they feel like it.”

  “Nastasia, darling, that’s not true! They have a duty to perform. You’re just a body slave like me. Accept your calling and become a true, dedicated sex slave and accept. That’s what we’re made for as sexual submissives. Be proud of your humiliation.”

  The girls listened with awe to Ashley. Indeed, they too were sex slaves, even if they were novices, and basically their deepest wish, apart from staying together, was to serve their owners. Ashley was right. Sex slaves served their masters and mistresses sexually and erotically. That was all there was to it. Otherwise, one retracted and became a housewife, a pathetic bourgeoisie going to market. A nothing.

  “It’s all very well, Ashley darling,” Krystyna objected, “for you to preach subservience and obedience. You endure the whip better than any of us and have special sessions with all the overseers because of your wonderful body but you’re safe and sound in the hands of loving owners, powerful people who adore you. Some of us are just saleable flesh.”

  “Maybe, but it’s up to you to relinquish yourselves totally to sex and flagellation and sex torture, if that’s what you aspire to. Otherwise you’ll be on sale for a long while.”

  Nastastia and the others knew she was right. They held back too often.

  Co-operate docilely, surrender to their whips and irons and bodkins, and try to enjoy the endless nights in the cellars, stretched naked and hooded, awaiting the inevitable lash across the breasts and belly. That was Beaucastel

  Ashley became less formal and sat down at the table, though her buttocks pained her. The group then told the newcomers what awaited them: the summons to the cellars, the unpredictable subterfuges of the maids and valets when they wanted sex and, above all, the horrendous week-end sessions in the Hall of Ceremony in the presence of the Master, buyers and owners who were anxious to see the progress made on their slaves.

  Then they mentioned Alana. “Quite apart from the warder Gabrielle, be very careful of Alana,” Krystyna warned the girls. Alana was neither slave nor servant; she was below the level of both but attended all sequences of preparation, training and whippings. She seemed doomed to act as a house slave; being used for any task the servants, maids or menials found distasteful or demeaning. She was always naked, carrying a pair of chains linking her neck, wrists and ankles. The inmates feared her since she seemed to ferret herself everywhere, listening in to conversations and reporting all to the valet, Restif, who used the slut unashamedly and openly. Alana’s rump was consistently welted with crimson and purple bruises; she was scourged daily, it appeared, which merely sharpened her gifts of espionage. Moreover, Marie-Laure informed the newcomers, it was Alana whom the overseers charged with organizing one of the games popular among the valets and maids as entertainment and a pastime to while away the time between formal sessions.

  “It’s called ‘Dodging the Candle’,” the lovely redhead told them.

  “Candle?” Verena’s queried.

  “Not for what you think a girl uses a candle, Verena! No, a nasty bit of spiteful fun they have at our expense. Tell them, Katia. You had it the other night in the valets’ quarters.”

  In her exotic Russian accent, the golden-haired woman explained that a slave was bound to a trestle with her torso b
ent forward horizontal with the ground and held there by binding the arms to an overhead chain behind the back. The breasts thus hung over a low table or stool advanced beneath them; on this Alana placed a couple of lighted candles just below the slave’s nipples. To avoid being burnt, the girl was obliged, to the delight of the onlookers, to rotate the torso to keep her breasts swinging over and across the flames. The valets would keep the slave swivelling frantically from side to side for long periods until she sagged exhausted and the metal of the rings began heating in the flames. Then, guffawing, the company would order Alana to snuff out the candles, allowing the enfeebled slave to slump forwards with relief, only to receive a lashing across the buttocks for good measure. The beating was almost a welcome respite, for the extremities of the breasts could suffer badly over the candles. “If you don’t dodge them,” Katia concluded.

  The girls heard many stories of the same type but above all they paid particular attention to Nastasia’s description of the overseers, valets and service maids. As to the Master of Beaucastel, no one present had ever really seen him, even in the Hall of Ceremony where he appeared during the end-of-week formal sessions with guests; the light in the Hall was too dim to allow the slaves to discern his features. If ever, Krystyna added, a slave was taken up to the Master’s luxurious apartments for his amusement which was rarely pleasant - she was usually hooded, gagged and chained, seeing and hearing nothing but feeling a great deal. Depending on the number of slaves in residence at any given time, Beaucastel functioned on a two-shift system: the overseers Vasa and Lalaniere were assisted by the valet Restif; the overseers Roscoff and the dreaded Gerda having the equally feared Gabrielle as assistant. Overseers had total rights over slaves’ bodies and could delegate these to the valet or service maid, empowering them to scourge; Nastasia pointed out that such rules were rarely observed - a slave could be seized at any time of day or night by Restif or Gabrielle, flogged, tortured or used sexually with absolute impunity. There was little an inmate could do about the situation since, to report such licence and laxity to the overseers, would merely result in a rough night, spread naked with chains weighting the flesh rings, in one of the torture cells below the cellars, with Restif or Gabrielle - or often both - in very active attendance. Therefore, bear it and try to smile, was the motto, and emerge from Beaucastel as little damaged as possible.