Griselda

1. Discovery

There can be few places as deceptive as Nether Slype.  The churches are well attended and the all children say their prayers.  Such presumably innocent pleasures as the fete, the sack race, and the village pantomime are milestones in its calendar.  There are also summer and winter sports gatherings, though all these events, I later learned, are curiously unique to the village.  There are two pubs, a school, two shops — one with a post office — a tea rooms where the old ladies gossip, and a Saturday market where you can buy anything from a home-made cake to an antique grandfather clock.  The village garage takes forever to fix your car, the mobile bank comes once a week, and the small library boasts the 1974 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.  The few Saturday-night drunks are harmless; there is no vandalism and no rowdiness, which is as well, because Jack, the village bobby, couldn't handle more than the mildest altercation. 

Nether Slype nestles among wooded hills, and the woods encroach into it.  It is a place of nooks and crannies, green shades, cool shadows, high hedges, privacy, and footways.  There are bridleways where big-bottomed, bouncing-bosomed girls ride their ponies and other things besides — very vigorously.  The long, curling, hedge-rowed lanes are overarched with heavy branches of wimpling leaves.  The river murmurs under the mediaeval bridge, flowing fresh and clean, down from the higher hills on the Welsh borderland.  You'll see an occasional fly-angler there, standing midstream in his waders, his fly whipping back and forth across the sparkling water; but their numbers are few and they're all local, for no one comes to Nether Slype to fish; in fact, hardly anyone comes to Nether Slype at all. 

Nearly all the villagers marry within the community — and they firmly believe in marriage.  I am aware of the commonly held urban belief that rural folk are interbred, but there is little risk of that in Nether Slype, with its population of twelve hundred, and Long Wallop, two miles up the valley, with a further six hundred, not to mention Threshers Bottom, over the hill, with another five hundred.  Therefore, as I've learned, few in this hidden, tucked-away place look beyond the three villages for a mate, which might account for a number of their local quirks.  

I found Nether Slype by accident, as you must, for no one goes there by design or drives through it by accident, because the narrow twisting lane that winds six miles from the A road is unsignposted and goes nowhere else, except Long Wallop and Threshers Bottom.  But many years ago, I took a wrong turning.  I drove for miles with no clue where I was going.  Several times, I nearly turned back, but when I had almost given up hope of arriving anywhere other than a dead end in a farmyard, I came to a rise, and looked down through a gap in the birch trees. 

It was autumn, and there below me, thrusting up from a tousled leafscape of greens, ambers, and reds, I saw a mediaeval church tower, and on the further hillside, four conical-roofed turrets peered over the trees towards me, as though a watchful castle hid in the forest there.  So I drove for another mile, the trees thinned slightly, and cottages appeared to left and right, peeping slyly from behind high hedges of yew, beech, and blackthorn.  

I saw an elderly couple walking arthritically up the lane towards me.  Winding down my window, I leant out and called, "Excuse me.  I'm  lost.  I was wondering—"

With a sprightliness I wouldn't have thought possible, the old couple recoiled and scuttled behind the nearest hedge.  Their reaction wouldn't surprise me now, of course — they don't like talking to strangers in the three villages — but on that day, it perplexed me.

I drove on; the cottages drew closer and became more regular, yet all seemed to hide behind something — hedges, large shrubs, or weeping trees.  Then, suddenly, the vista opened before me and I drove out onto a large village green, with a few shady, monumental oaks and a lilied pond at its centre where ducks quacked and geese honked deafeningly.  Close by stood ancient stocks and whipping post that looked remarkably well maintained.  Dotted all around were ancient cottages, timbered or red-tiled; tumbledown irregular cottages with shutters, nooks, and many corners, cellars, rambling attics, and tall chimneys with weathercocks on them.  I saw a couple of shops with bowed and bulls-eyed windows, and what looked like a moot hall.  Behind it rose the mediaeval church tower, solid and timeless. 

Outside a timbered pub, curiously named The Seven Stripes, a group of locals sat on a bench drinking beer.  I drove up, but I was only half way out of the car before they leapt to their feet in alarm and scuttled inside.   I followed them in.  I needed directions and I was also thirsty.  As I walked into the bar, the conversation stopped like the fall of an executioner's axe.  I looked around to see twelve pairs of dilated eyes swimming at me.  Ahead of me, the landlord, a large florid man with red hair, was wiping the bar.

"What can we do for you, stranger?" he asked in a surly voice that told me he would rather do nothing at all.

"I'm lost," I said simply.

He gave me a half smile.  "Strangers always are.  Where are you trying to get to?"

I told him.

"Well," he said.  "You know the road you took to get here?"

"Yes."

"Take it and drive back out again."

I stared at him hard.  What he'd said to me sounded like a roundabout way of hoisting two fingers and saying "Fuck off".  But he read my reaction, unbent a fraction, and shook his head with a wintry smile.

"I'm not being funny, stranger.  There's only one road out of Nether Slype that goes anywhere much.  That's the one you came in on.  So wherever you're going, that's the one you need to take."

"Then why did you ask where I was going?"

He shrugged.  "On the off chance you were looking for somewhere close by."  He smirked.  "But I didn't think it likely."

I supposed it sounded fair enough.  I ordered a beer and looked around.  Country pubs are frequently hung with horse brasses and bits of tack, all ersatz, but the décor of The Seven Stripes looked genuine, and appeared to reflect its history as a coaching inn, being an assortment of straps, whips, chains, and what looked like bits and harnesses.  There were also some leg irons and manacles, a scolds' bridle, and a thumbscrew.  I assumed that convicts had once been transported through the village and kept manacled at The Seven Stripes overnight. 

I have never drunk beer in such a tactile silence.  While I consumed my pint — which was outstanding —  the twelve pairs of suspicious eyes never left me, not a word was uttered, not a floorboard creaked, not a glass was lifted other than mine.  I left the pub reflecting that, in remote villages, such a reception must be regarded as part of the local charm, and I soon put it from my mind, for as I drove round the village green, past all the quaint, old-world cottages, and back along the leafy lane, I fell in love with the place — it's picturesque antiquity, and most of all its remoteness, hidden in its folds of woodland, a precious perfumed relict of an England I had thought lost for ever, and I swore that one day that I would return to live there.

*****

I am a writer by trade.  I have no pretensions so I don't call it a vocation.  I published my first novel when I was thirty.  It was a middling success, but enough of one to encourage me to pursue my craft.  My reputation gradually grew, and finally I was able to give up the day job and seriously consider moving to the soft, secluded delights of Nether Slype.  I now had adequate means, so I thought it would be easy, but I discovered in the event that it was anything but.

My first problem was finding the local estate agent's telephone number.  None was listed on the Internet, or in any telephone directory.  I tried to order a local paper from my newsagent but drew a blank there.  None seemed to exist and the nearest town's local paper made no mention of the village.  None of the main estate-agent chains had a branch there or had even heard of the place. 

So I went back there one late summer's day.  The trees were more deeply in leaf than before and I found myself driving down the lane of yew hedges and set-back cottages before I even realised I had entered the village again.  It being a Saturday, more people were about, but as soon as I started to drive round the green, they all vanished like smoke into doorways, or down side alleys.  It was as though word had gone round that marauding Vikings had arrived to rape and pillage.  I drove round the green until I saw a window with some photographs of properties in it.  As I entered, a grey man sitting at a large, dusty partnership desk looked up at me and goggled, as though I'd sprouted a second head.

"Can I help you?" he enquired in a surly voice, giving the unmistakeable impression that he wasn't prepared to help me at all. 

I told him that I was looking for a cottage in or around the village.

"There aren't any available," he said flatly.

"So what are the properties in the window?"

"Not for you.  You're not from the village, are you!" he asked in a tone of voice that sounded like a deadly accusation.

"Er, no.  But—"

"Nor from Long Wallop or Threshers Bottom either, I'll be bound!"

"Well, no.  But—"

"Didn't think so.  I'd have recognised you.   No family here either I presume?"

"None at all.  But why should any of this be relevant?"  I asked sharply, stung by his rude, negative attitude.

"Because all the land and properties round the valley are owned by Lord Shackles.  They're leased to villagers and no one but villagers."

My disappointment was crushing.  "Is there no way at all of acquiring one?"  I asked.

"You could petition his lordship."  The man sniggered unpleasantly.  "But it won't get you anywhere."

"Why not?"

He sniggered again.  "Try, and you'll find out."

After much remonstrating, I obtained his lordship's address at Nether Towers, the turreted pile I had seen peeping through the trees on my fondly remembered previous visit.  Back home, I drafted several letters to him, but the estate agent's comments gave me pause.  If I enquired and he refused, as the estate agent's manner had suggested probable, then I would have shot my one and only bolt, and that would be that.  So I spoke to Celia, my literary agent, who offered to make some discreet enquiries on my behalf that might hopefully give me some idea of how to proceed. 

This too proved fruitless at the outset.  Try Googling Nether Slype, Threshers Bottom, or Long Wallop, and the engine returns "not found", and this result holds true for any Internet search.  The three villages were like Brigadoon, appearing only when you drove into them from the winding lane through the woods, and then vanishing from the face of the earth when you left. 

At last, Celia found a single obscure newspaper reference to a Colonel Gremdyck Flaythm from Nether Slype, who had mysteriously disappeared from the front in the Great War.  No body had ever been found, and no trace of him had emerged since.  He, like the village, had mysteriously vanished.  There were many who vanished like that in the trenches, had deserted or been blown to pieces, and the intelligence at first glance, appeared to be of no use to me. 

But then my writer's imagination took hold and I started to invent a subsequent biography for the colonel, and a possible means of worming my way into Lord Shackles' good graces.

I thought it best not to imply that Colonel Flaythm had deserted for any reason; Lord Shackles might not like that.  So I decided that he had received a glancing blow to the head from a piece of shrapnel and wandered off, bewildered, into no-man's land.  He had been captured, but as he was suffering from profound amnesia, his captors could not identify him and advise their British counterparts of who he was.  However, his ardent British blood remained pure (I felt Lord Shackles would like that).  He subsequently escaped from incarceration, still not knowing who he was, and, after many subsequent adventures through Eastern Europe, Siberia, and Tibet, he had finally surfaced in the remote outback of Australia, where he lived out the remainder of his life under the assumed name of Bruce Brown. 

Late in life his memory had returned, but being married, and a pillar of his community, he had continued his subterfuge, confiding the truth to his son, my fictional grandfather, only on his deathbed.  Since then, his family had wandered the dissolving Empire, being pushed from colony to colony as it broke up.  Along the way the name had reverted to Flaythm and I, the alleged last of the line, had returned only recently to England in search of my long lost relations and my roots.   

Before acquainting Lord Shackles with my new history, I reinvented myself completely, changing my name to Flaythm by deed pole and setting all my affairs in order under that name.  I have always cherished my anonymity — I write under a pen name — and having no family, there was absolutely no emotional or other difficulty in this.  Indeed, I enjoyed the sense of adventure it gave me.  So this done, I wrote a tearful and harrowing account of my Flaythm family's history since that fateful day in 1915, couched in suitably servile language, and posted it to Lord Shackles.  I then sat back, prepared for a long wait, and the possibility, even now, of a blunt refusal.

So I was overjoyed when, only a few days later, I received a reply, not from his lordship but his wife, Lady Griselda Shackles, telling me how my tale had moved her to tears, and inviting me to attend an interview at Nether Towers.  This invitation I immediately accepted in the most excruciatingly obsequious terms, and a few days later, I was driving up from the village of Nether Slype to the turreted pile on the hillside.  

2. Interview

Nether Towers is a castellated, eighteenth-century country mansion of buttresses and Gothic windows, topped with crenulated battlements, pointed turrets, tall twisted chimneys, and dragons, straight out of William Beckford or Ann Radcliffe.  It stands in a charming wooded glade of lush grass and rampant wild flowers ringed with the screen of dense trees that obscures everything in Nether Slype, though the view back along the approach provides a wonderful view across the valley.  It arrested me when I got out of the car — a panorama of wooded, tousled hills, winding lanes, and red-tiled cottage roofs, and beyond, the higher, blue hills of the Welsh borderland.  As I stood there, I prayed as I had never prayed, that my ruse might work, so I could live in this enchanted place. 

I rang the bell and the great double-doors were thrown open by a grave butler in a tailcoat, with a bald crown and two wings of iron-grey hair neatly combed back over both ears.  He confirmed that I was expected, and he directed me to wait in the gloomy wainscoted hallway, whose walls were dense with generations of Shackles in oils.  They scowled down at me from aloof heights while I patiently waited for the butler's return, for he had gone to inform Lady Shackles of my arrival.

As I waited, a piercing scream and a peal of diabolical laughter from the bowels of the mansion shattered the peace. 

"Bring me a wench and I'll flog her fucking arse off!"

I jumped up startled, casting about for the source of this violent outburst.  As I did so, the butler returned and told me that Lady Shackles was ready to receive me.  He made no mention of the outburst, which he must have heard, but merely coughed, and said that her ladyship was waiting in her office.  I asked him to lead the way, but we hadn't gone more than a dozen steps before a second peal of diabolical laughter rent the air.

"Bring me a wench and I'll flog her fucking cunt off!"

The butler's gravity deepened, and he deferentially cleared his throat.  "His lordship, I'm afraid, sir.  You'd might as well know.  He's, er . . . how can I delicately put it?"

"Suffering some unfortunate mental health problem?"

"Not quite, sir.  To use the exact medical terminology, he's barking mad, sir.  We've been obliged to confine him to the dungeons."

I do not know whether I was surprised or amused.  "You have dungeons here?"

The butler looked aghast.  "Of course we have dungeons."

After a few further steps, he tapped his knuckles on an oak-panelled door and opened it.  Beyond, sitting at a large desk was an aloof and horsey looking woman of about forty, typical of her breed, with a large nose, a weak chin, and two prominent teeth that overhung her protruding lower lip.  Her profuse chestnut hair was scraped back into a bun. 

The deferential butler cleared his throat once more.  "Mr Owen Flaythm, ma'am."

She smiled and rose to greet me, and I saw that she was dressed for riding in hacking jacket, jodhpurs, and knee boots.  Her large and apparently firm bust surged through the opening in the jacket like Niagara Falls in the wet season, and she vigorously slapped her thigh with a riding crop as she strode purposefully across the wide room towards me.  As she approached, she extended her free hand, which, I noticed, dripped jewels.

"Mr Flaythm," she lisped through the gap in her front teeth.  "I'm Griselda Shackles.  Welcome to Nether Towers."

I almost took the hand and shook it, but somewhere from the depths of my subconscious, a cautionary voice shouted, No!  Therefore, stooping slightly, I took the tips of the gem-encrusted fingers in my own and lightly kissed them.  "A profound honour and a pleasure to meet your ladyship."

As I straightened, I saw that she was beaming; her riding crop slapped her thigh even more enthusiastically than before. 

"I knew it, I knew it," she gushed, ogling me from head to toe.  "Every inch a Flaythm.  The manners.  The poise.  The easy and natural subservience to the social superior."  She lurched towards me and seized my arm.  Her grip was like a vice.  "Come!  Come to the window and let me take a good look at you!" 

She marched me by the arm into a deep window recess, where I was obliged to pose for inspection while she clucked all round me.  "No question.  No question at all.  You have the Flaythm nose, the Flaythm brow, the deep Flaythm upper lip — you could grow a magnificent moustache.  No doubt of it.  Magnificent!"

I heard the deferential butler cough.  A spasm of annoyance crossed Lady Shackles' face, and she turned and sniffed.

"What is it, Thwacks?" she demanded coldly.

"I regret to inform you, ma'am, that his lordship seems to be becoming . . . er . . . how shall I put it?  Agitated again."

Lady Shackles' slapped her thigh with the riding crop so hard that I flinched.  "Oh very well," she sighed with clear annoyance.  "Send a girl down!"

It seemed an odd response.  Surely, the poor man needed a physician or nurse, not a girl.  But the impeccable Thwacks merely bowed.  "Immediately, ma'am."

When the butler had gone about his strange business, Lady Shackles directed me to a deep sofa.  She flung her riding crop onto the desk and surprised me by stripping off her jacket.  As she flexed her muscular shoulder back to slip it off, I couldn't help noticing that her bust was truly monumental, and jutted with surprising firmness.

"Might as well make ourselves comfortable, Mr Flaythm," she announced briskly, throwing herself vigorously into the armchair facing me, and smoothing her blouse over her thrusting curves, as if for my appreciation.  "Of course, some said you had to be an imposter," she confided.  "And I confess I entertained doubts myself.  But now I have met you no doubt remains.  None at all.  You are every inch a Flaythm.  Every inch.  And so you shall remain."

"I only hope the others concur, your ladyship."

She swatted the notion waspishly away.  "Peasants, Mr Flaythm!  They don't count.  I and I alone am mistress here.  My opinion alone matters.  They do as they're told."

"Of course, your ladyship."

"Of course!  Precisely!  You understand.  You're a Flaythm," she lisped softly, and I noticed that her eyes were wandering all over me again.  "Now, you said you wished to trace your relations.  I'm afraid you'll be disappointed there.  Your great grandfather, the colonel, had but one sibling, a brother.  He in turn had only the one child, and that child died without issue.  So I'm afraid you're the last of the Flaythms."

I affected deep sadness at the news, but I was secretly relieved.  Living relatives might have been a complication, one I was prepared to deal with, but life would be much simpler without them.

"So you'll have to find yourself a wife," said Lady Shackles enthusiastically, throwing one booted leg over her chair arm and showing me the leather crotch of her riding jodhpurs.  "Get busy and produce lots of children.  In the meantime, I shall ensure that you are fully and immediately accepted into the three villages, as is your due.  Otherwise it might take years."

I was genuinely elated.  "So you'll allow me to live here, after all, your ladyship?"

"But of course.  The Flaythms have served the Shackles for centuries.  You are one of us, and, as a Flaythm, you will enjoy considerable prestige here . . . so long as you do as you're told."

"Of course, Lady Shackles," I assured her, terrified of putting a foot wrong.  My ruse had succeeded more surely and swiftly than I could have hoped.  "And I'll happily serve you any capacity you deem appropriate."

She smirked, slowly regarding me under heavy eyelids.  "Indeed you shall.  Now," she added, briskly again.  "I assume you have adequate financial means?"

"Yes your ladyship.  As I told you, my grandfather prospered in South Africa and produced a fortune in diamonds.  My father foolishly lost much if it, but enough remains for me to enjoy a substantial private income."

"Yet, despite that, you still wish to return to Nether Slype?"

I feigned emotion.  "Of course, your ladyship.  It's . . . it's  . . . my home."

Unexpectedly, she leapt out of her chair towards me, perched herself on the arm of my sofa, and placed her hand on my shoulder.  Her encrusted fingers gripped it with remarkable strength.  "Oh Mr Flaythm," she said as her eyes bore into mine with fierce rapture.  "You are a prodigal returned, and you are more than welcome.  I look forward to our developing a close and fruitful association.  Indeed, a close and fruitful friendship, for I have no doubt that we shall becomes friends . . . very firm friends."

"You fill me with rapture, your ladyship," I croaked, biting back my crocodile tears in the way I thought a Flaythm ought, and reflecting that I'd well and truly fallen on my feet.

"Good man!  That's the spirit!  That's the Flaythm style!" 

She strode back to her chair, flung her leg back over the arm, and her eyes continued to wander all over me.  We talked about where I might live.  To give my pose credence, I had converted all my assets into liquid form, and deposited most in a South African bank.  When I told her ladyship that I could install myself in the village at a few days notice it was the literal truth.  She appeared overjoyed and decided to give me a large, rambling cottage on the village outskirts, as befitted my apparently high status. 

"It's only six bedrooms, but that'll do for the time being."

"Time being?"

"Until you find a wife, of course.  That won't be a problem for you; we have a huge surplus of available women here.  And you’re a Flaythm, so you can take your pick of them.  But I counsel you to choose wisely and not weaken your Flaythm blood.  And then," she added enthusiastically, "when you've found a suitable woman, get down to it with a will and impregnate her, time and time again!  You owe it to your ancestors to perpetuate the Flaythm line."

I blushed.  "Of course, Lady Shackles.  I'll follow your generous  advice — naturally."

While we spoke, I studied the room.  It was the sort of panelled affair you expect to find in such an old country mansion, lined with ancient, dusty books of no possible interest or value, and even duller pictures of horsey looking men and women with large noses, weak chins, and protruding teeth, whom I assumed to be Griselda Shackles' own ancestors.  One arrested me though: a brutal looking, florid-faced man in the tricorn hat and naval uniform of Napoleonic times.  He was standing proudly in front of what appeared to be a mountain of steak tartare.  Beneath the picture, in a glass exhibition case, lay a heavy cat of nine tails, though it looked more like a cat of fifteen or twenty tails, all knotted at intervals and embellished with vicious hooks, spikes, and other spiteful ironmongery. 

Lady Shackles noticed my interest, and she positively glowed.  "Ah!  I see you've noticed my great ancestor, Admiral Lord Horatio Shackles!"

"My grandfather spoke of him many times, your ladyship," I lied fluently, reasoning that he would have done so, had he existed, and hoping that she wasn't going to test me with awkward questions.

"Of course he would.  We're so very proud of the admiral."  Her face flushed with ancestral joy.  "Just think.  The only Royal Navy officer ever to flog his entire crew to death in a single session," she added with deep relish.  "And he did it with his own hand, you know.  Ripped out their backs in bloody gobbets.  Every last one of them."

I tried not to blench.  "So I understand, your ladyship.  An outstanding feat of, er . . . seamanship, to be sure."

"And so efficient!  Amazing!  Truly amazing!  He started work after a late breakfast of oysters and Champagne, you know, and he finished the work well before elevenses."

"Stupendous," I simpered.  What else could I say?

"And as you must already know, his second in command, Captain Rickett Flaythm, stepped forward and gallantly offered to hold his coat for him while he administered the punishment." 

"Indeed, your ladyship," I choked.  "It's a matter of immense family pride to us."

"Yes, a superb testimony to the captain's breeding and the Shackles Patent Flogger's efficacy."  She walked across the glass case like a woman in a dream, her face alight with enthusiasm.  I noticed how her well-developed horsewoman's buttocks heaved and strained like two bound slaves against the tight captivity of her jodhpurs.  "And here it is."  She gazed down at the grotesque object in the exhibition case.  "The very flogger the admiral used to achieve his stupendous feat.  It's an inspiration, Mr Flaythm."

"I'm overawed to be in its presence," I lied, trying to look away from the hideous thing.

She gazed up at the portrait of the monstrous admiral, her hands clasped in schoolgirl rapture.  "And there he is, standing proudly before the product of his achievement.  Just think — eight hundred men ripped to pieces in less than three hours . . . .  It makes the blood surge."

I suddenly realised what the steak tartare really was, and my gorge rose. 

"Of course, had the spineless Admiralty been wise enough to adopt the Shackles Patent Flogger, there would have been no mutinies at Spithead and the Nore.  The men would have learned the true meaning of the words, discipline, and punishment."

"Without a doubt, your ladyship," I dutifully crowed, despite myself.  "A criminal folly."

"Criminal.  Lamentable.  Softness, Mr Flaythm.  Softness.  That's the country's ill.  We seem to have forgotten all about discipline."

"To our great cost," I resolutely toadied.  "A national disgrace."

"Except in Nether Slype, of course," she said, vigorously marching back to the desk and retrieving her riding crop.  "No silly softness here.  No insolence.  No disobedience."  As she said this, she slashed her thigh three times, so hard that I winced.  "The three villages are the last stronghold of the firm hand, the disciplinarian, as I'm sure your grandfather told you."

"Indeed, your ladyship, and thank heaven for it," I chorused without fully understanding the implications of her tirade — though perhaps I should have twigged by then.  "No weak, watery, namby-pamby shilly-shallying here, thank God."

"Oh, Mr Flaythm!"  She tossed her riding crop over her shoulder, positively skipped across the room to me, all girlish and gushing.  "This is a true meeting of minds.  A wonderful day for both of us.  Just think!  The Shackles and the Flaythms united again after all this time — mistress and servant.  And friends too.  True friends, I hope."

"Your deep condescension overwhelms me with joy."

She took my hands in hers wrung them with unnerving intensity, almost breaking my fingers.  I noticed that her breathing had shortened.  "Oh Mr Flaythm.  Not half so much joy as your return promises to give me."

I finger of apprehension touched me.  "I don't think I quite understand your ladyship," I stammered.

"Don't you?  Come, come, Mr Flaythm, you're a man of the world."  She paused.  "And yet you probably have little idea what it's like for me here?  This life . . . this cold friendless existence . . . alone and blue-blooded among peasants . . . and other inferiors . . . with a mad, slavering, sexually impotent husband, chained in the dungeons.  No one I can trust . . . no one I can turn to . . . confide in . . . open my heart to.  No one with whom I can . . . can . . . can . . . ."

"Can what, Lady Shackles?"

"Can I be brutally frank with you?  I feel I can talk intimately to you as I could to no other without soiling myself.  Please?"

I swallowed.  "You do me too much honour, your ladyship."

"Very well."  She paused, smoothing her blouse and pointing her magnificent bust directly at my nose.  "I must be blunt.  Have you any idea how cold and empty my bed is, Mr Flaythm?"

"Your ladyship?"

"I don't mean physically cold, of course.  I have countless hot water bottles.  And if I chose, I could summon any well-hung man in the three villages to service me to satisfaction whenever I wished.  But, of course, I cannot."

I swallowed again.  "Cannot?  But surely—"

"The considerations of class, Mr Flaythm!  How could I allow a dirty peasant to crawl up my nightie, no matter how well equipped he was for the job of sexually gratifying me?"

I hadn't anticipated this turn in the conversation.  Perhaps I should have.  I cleared my throat.  "Perish the thought, your ladyship."

"Indeed!"  She paused and looked at me steadily.  "You understand.  Of course you do."  A slow smile crept furtively across her face.  Her hand slipped surreptitiously to my knee and started working slowly up my thigh, while her eyes smouldered provocatively into mine.  "Yes.  I'm sure you understand — perfectly."

I suddenly realised what she had meant when she said, not half so much joy as your return promises to give me.  I blushed — I'm sure I did.  Fighting her off would probably ruin my prospects of moving to the village.  On the other hand, I reasoned that giving her what she obviously wanted wouldn't trouble me at all.  She was a provocatively built woman, despite the teeth, though I felt I'd rather not do it in the presence of the steak tartare and the patent flogger.

In the event, I was rescued by a sudden knocking at the office door.  With a spasm of alarm, Lady Shackles leapt up as though electrocuted, and fled back across the room towards her large desk. 

"Enter!" she snapped, when she'd gained some composure.

The door opened and Thwacks the immaculate butler entered and bowed.

"What is it, Thwacks?" Lady Shackles demanded coldly, looking dramatically away from him.

The balls of Thwacks' fingers and thumbs twitched together, as though he were rubbing fat into delicate pastry.  He cleared his throat, drew himself up to his full height, and addressed the ceiling.  "I regret to inform you, ma'am, that his lordship seems to be becoming . . . er . . . how can I delicately put it?  Agitated again."

"Again?  But we sent him a girl not one hour ago!"

Thwacks coughed deferentially.  "His lordship seems to have . . .  er . . . finished with that one, ma'am."

"Already?"

"So it would appear."

"Very well.  Send down another.  But that's the last for today — there's a limit to my indulgence."

Thwacks bowed.  "Very good, ma'am."

He started to withdraw backwards at a dignified stoop, but Lady Shackles stopped him.  "Before you do that, you can show Mr Flaythm out."  She turned to me and extended her hand, smiling warmly, while her eyes again wandered all over me.  "I'd better let you go while I still can, dear Mr Flaythm," she simpered through her front teeth.  "I'm sure we can pursue any outstanding matters at a more opportune time and place."

Her meaning was plain, and it certainly suited me to delay payment for her generosity until after I was securely ensconced in my cottage.  I rose, bowed over the jewel-encrusted fingers, and kissed them again.

I turned to leave while Thwacks stood aside for me.  As a walked through the door I distinctly heard Lady Shackles lisp, "Until we meet again . . . Owen" in such a smoky voice that Thwacks' eyebrows abruptly rose and his eyes popped, though his po-face remained set in stone.

Thwacks and I retraced our steps to the gloomy, wainscoted hall, where generations of Shackles sneered down at me from the shadowy walls as though they, at least, knew me for an impostor. 

Suddenly, a shriek of diabolical laughter from the deep bowels of the building rent the air. 

"Bring me a wench and I'll flog her fucking tits off!"

"We'd best hurry if you don't mind, sir," urged Thwacks.  "His lordship seems particularly agitated today.  It's almost—" He looked at me guardedly. "—almost as if he knows you're here, sir."  He paused and glanced up nervously at all the ancestors.  "Strange."

Indeed it was.  I had no idea what he meant and might have asked him, but another thought was uppermost in my mind. 

"The girls?"  I asked, as he held one of the great front doors ajar for me and positively thrust me through the opening.  "What do they do down there?"

"Do, sir?"  The balls of Thwacks' fingers and thumbs rubbed together again, I thought a trifle nervously.

"Yes!  Do!"

"I suppose that you might say that they provide his lordship with the necessary remedial treatment for his condition, sir."

Enlightenment dawned, or so I thought at the time.  "Ah!  I see.  They're trained therapists."

Thwacks cleared his throat yet again, and his face remained impassive.  "I suppose you might say that too, sir," he murmured, and the door closed.

3. Dark Designs

As I drove back towards London, I reflected that there were advantages and disadvantages to my remarkable progress.  I would soon be installed in a substantial cottage in the village of my dreams, and it was clear that I would be welcomed and given a status I had never expected, and didn't particularly want — but never mind about that.   I also would also enjoy the close and avid support of Lady Griselda Shackles, provided I played my cards right.

That was a two-edged sword.  There would be obvious advantages to a close relationship with her.  She clearly wanted me to shag her, a small price to pay for the cottage and the lifestyle I was promised to enjoy, and I wondered what other sweeteners and emoluments she might offer if I shagged her to her complete satisfaction.  I entertained no doubt that I would satisfy her, in bed at least.  I am not a braggart by nature but the women I've bedded over the years have never expressed disappointment.  Besides, despite her nose and her front teeth, Lady Shackles' body would be more than acceptable when the light was out.  Once I got to grips, I would have no problem giving her what she wanted — or so I thought.

   On the other hand, there would be consequences, perhaps terminal ones, if I ever tried to withdraw from whatever arrangement she decided suited her, or if I disappointed her in other ways.  What if I made other women friends and she became jealous?  What if I fell in love with another woman?  What if Griselda Shackles fell in love with me and demanded more than a good stiff weekly poke?  She had made it perfectly clear that she was totally in charge of everything and everyone in the three villages.  I had no doubt that she could handle her authority, and would be every bit as ruthless as Admiral Shackles if crossed.  Yes, there was no doubt of that at all, and she would be holding all the cards.  And I was less than enthusiastic about her evident love of whips, crops, and patent floggers.  I don't mind a bit of spanking, provided I'm the one administering it, but I did not intend to be Griselda Shackles' whip slave.

So did I still want to move to Nether Slype and live in her cottage on her terms, as a sort of glorified sex serf?  I most certainly did.  Or, to say the least, I was prepared to give it my best shot.  I loved the place and had set my heart on living there years before.  I also knew that I was an intelligent and resourceful man; I had no doubt that given time I would be able to forge a more equable and even-handed arrangement with Lady Shackles than she probably had in mind.  Moreover, I assumed that I was far better able than the other villagers to protect myself if she became difficult or spiteful, and that I appreciated better than the other villagers, the differences between her perceptions, and stark reality.  She might think that she was lady of the manor, and the rest of us peasants without rights.  In reality, of course, we did have rights, civil right, tenant's rights, even human right — which can cover just about anything you want them too, provided you can hire a good lawyer. 

And I certainly had the means to do that.  If she ever threatened me, she would have to deal with counter-threats in turn.  At least, I thought so at the time.

*****

They didn't put the bunting up round the village on the afternoon I arrived, together with the van Lady Shackles had sent to my London address to transport my possessions.  On the other hand, bunting was the only thing missing, apart from the brass band.  A group of local dignitaries greeted me at my front door and immediately whisked me up to Nether Towers for an arrival party in the grounds — where there was a band, a marquee, and bunting by the mile, threaded between the encircling trees.  Despite her ladyship's deeply held convictions about social class, the entire village appeared to have been invited, and I was introduced to so many people that I became giddy.  Lady Shackles herself took little notice of me beyond formally shaking my hand and making a speech of welcome to a respectfully silent and bareheaded audience. 

It wasn't until about half past six, when the crowd was melting away down the hill towards their homes, that we finally spoke confidentially.  I had looked for her, fearing that it would be impolite to leave without thanking her for her welcome, and I had become lost in a tangle of yew hedges — some sort of maze — when she crept up behind me.

"BOOH!"

I leapt out of my skin, crashed back to earth, and turned to find her standing there, still wearing her riding habit, and vigorously slapping her thighs with her crop as she laughed at her schoolgirl joke.

"If I wasn't a fit man, you could have given me a heart attack," I complained, forgetting my manners for a moment.

She became suddenly seriously.  She stepped up to me and slid her hand inside my jacket, where she stroked my flank.  "I hope you are fit, Owen," she lisped in my ear.  "You'll be no good to me if you're not."

"Fit enough," I laughed, a little bashfully for a man of my experience, for her meaning was plain. 

"And you'll stay to dinner?"

She couched it as a question, but I knew she meant it as a command.  Oh well, I thought.  Looks like I'm on shagging duty tonight already.  Just so long as she leaves her riding crop downstairs!

Upper-crust dinners can be tedious affairs, especially when there are only two of you, sitting at opposite ends of a table so long that the food can be served piping hot at one end and au froid when it finally reaches the other — though in this case there were two substantial compensations.

She had left me to amuse myself for a while in the library, which was crammed with more leather-backed books and more chinless portraiture, while she went upstairs to change out of her hacking jacket and jodhpurs into "something more suitable for the occasion".  It certainly was — a figure-hugging, low-cut dress of dark yet iridescent silk, held up by nothing but the incredible firmness of her magnificent breasts, and revealing a yard of cleavage so deep that I longed to plunge into headfirst into it.  We walked to the dining room arm-in-arm, in the time-honoured fashion, but when she turned to take her seat, her buttocks undulated so provocatively under their tight restraint that I struggled to keep my hands off them, reflecting that if Lord Shackles hadn't been able to produce a rock-hard erection over his wife's body, he couldn't produce one over anything.

I no longer noticed the prominent teeth, the weak chin, and the horsey nose as I sat there at the opposite end of the long table undressing her in my mind, taking out those mouth-watering breasts sucking her plump nipples, running my hands over her firm round bottom, parting her legs, and getting stuck in with a will.  She would have no cause to complain of my efforts, not tonight at least, not the way I was feeling.

The conversation over dinner was desultory, as it must be when two serving men are perched on your elbow like carrion crows, outraged ancestors are glaring down at you from the shadowy wainscot, and you feel you are being observed by inscrutable-looking suits of armour, standing like linesmen around the walls.  As I chewed my way manfully through several courses, the silence was punctuated only by the occasional pleasantry, and invitations to take more wine.  I wondered why Thwacks wasn't hovering at the table, for it is a butler's duty to pour the drinks.  I assumed he was outside, keeping a sharp ear peeled for the cries of the impotent madman downstairs in the dungeons.

So it transpired.  We had just finished our sherry trifle and were waiting in rigid silence for the coffee to be brought in when there was a discreet knock at the doors and he appeared, sombre as an eminence grise, and walked with sedate steps to Lady Shackles' end of the table.  He coughed into his cupped hand and waited.

"Well?" she snapped, her face suddenly turned to stone.

Thwacks drew himself solemnly to his full height.  "I regret to inform you, ma'am, that his lordship seems to be becoming . . . er . . . how can I delicately put it at the dinner table?  Agitated again."

Her eyes flickered, and she slapped her hand onto the tabletop so hard that all the silverware leapt several inches into the air and all the suits of armour hummed like ceremonial gongs.  "No more!  Understood?  No more!  Close all the intervening doors and let him get on with it!  Understood?"

Thwacks' face was unreadable.  "Very good, ma'am," he said at length.  "It's your decision."

"And keep your impertinent observations to yourself!" she blazed, looking away from him.

Thwacks swelled with forbearance, bowed admonished, and stalked out of the room without a further word.  As soon as the door had closed behind him, Lady Shackles leapt to her feet and flung he napkin onto the dining table.  

"We'll take the coffee in my drawing room!" she barked at no one in particular, and then she also swept from the room, snapping her fingers in my direction for me to follow her.  And so I did, like a poodle.

She had cooled somewhat when we reached her drawing room, after a forced march through labyrinthine passages of many widths, up and down steps, round corners and bends, through arches and doorways.  This suggested to me that the building was much older than I had previously thought, probably mediaeval.  It was certainly cold.  The perpetual draught cut like a razor.  Our footsteps rang on bare stone more often than not, some of the walls were undressed stone, and where they were panelled, the woodwork looked dark and ancient, relieved only by narrow lancet windows, arrow slits, several threadbare tapestries, more armour, and many more generations of outraged ancestors glared at me through the gathering gloom, for the evening had advanced. 

So the drawing room, when we finally arrived, pleasantly surprised me: a light, warm, airy room where the panelling sparkled and smelled of beeswax, the sweet-sharp smell of fresh fuchsias spiked the air.  There was a comfortable chintz suite and other elegant pieces of furniture.  The pictures surprised me even more.  Gone were the apoplectic ancestors; instead, the walls were hung with attractive landscapes in watercolour and oils, interspersed with some more modern and abstract pieces; and a large abstract sculpture shaped like a fully erect penis, which surprised me less.

"You furnished this room yourself, didn't you?" I asked to melt the already softening silence, for I was sure no one else had done it.

"Yes.  Look.  Sorry about the outburst," she said in a surprisingly small voice, her brow furrowed.  "I didn't want unpleasantness on your first day here, but I assume you know all about Flavius."

"Your husband, Lady Shackles?"

"Husband in name.  He's mad, Mr Flaythm.  Barking mad.  And worse — incapable of producing any sort of erection."

"So I'd already gathered."

"Totally incapable of pleasuring a woman, let alone a hot-blooded sexually-demanding one."  She flung herself down on the sofa pulled me down beside her, and threw her arms possessively round my neck.  "And I'm very highly sexed, you see.  I have needs.  Burning, desperate needs, that can only be quenched by a well-equipped, vigorous, and attentive man from the right sort of social background.  That's why I get so agitated, you see."

"Yes, well, I'd already—"

"And I couldn't help observing, Mr Flaythm, when we first met, the more than satisfactory bulge in your trousers."

"Well.  As I was saying, I'd already—"

"Let us be frank with each other, as only true friends can.  When I spoke before of friendship, of a meeting of minds, I confess that I was dissembling in part.  I was also thinking of something . . . more physical . . . more urgent, more . . . necessary."

"My dear Lady Shackles.  That too I'd already—"

Her embrace had tightened; her breathing had become ragged.  She thrust her magnificent bust into my face and started stroking the back of my head with fluttering hands.  "For God's sake call me Griselda when we're alone!"

"Of course . . . Griselda.  I'd be—" 

Suddenly, her lips were working vigorously on mine; her tongue was in my throat.  She hoisted her dress and straddled me, her powerful horsewoman's legs tightly gripping my thighs as her crotch started rubbing vigorously into my groin.  The desperate power of her kiss felt as though it was wrenching my tongue out by its roots.  I struggle for air but this only excited her more, her legs tightened, she jerked more feverishly, and her strong arms crushed the breath from me.

"My God, you're well endowed, Owen!" she gasped.  "A true Flaythm!  How you stimulate me!"

Her crotch now flexed with accelerating vigour for several minutes before she finally groaned, slowed, flopped on top of me, exhausted.  Her grip relaxed and she lay on me panting.

At that moment, a knock at the door interrupted us.  She gasped and leapt up from me like a startled hare, and fled across the room, desperately smoothing her dress.

"Enter!"

This time it was the coffee.

"Leave it!  I'll pour," she said to the serving man, more softly than before.  She even managed to sketch a smile as he silently bowed and left backwards, but not before I'd heard a distant maniacal scream echoing through the winding corridors beyond.

"Bring me a wench and I'll shag her raw.  I'll stretch her fucking cunt to kingdom come and thrash her arse off with a—"

The closing door mercifully cut off the rest of the sentence.  But it also left a question dangling.

"I thought you said your husband was impotent?" I asked as neutrally as possible.

"So he is."

"Er . . . he doesn't sound particularly impotent to me."

"I told you.  He's stark staring mad."

That could account for it, I supposed, but it posed another question that had nagged me since my first visit, and more so because of Thwacks' evasive comments.

"So what precisely does he do with the girls you send down there?"

"Let's not talk about him," she panted, flinging herself back on top of me, her hands exploring my body while her lips worked feverishly all over my mouth, my face, my throat.  "Our time together is too precious to waste on him.  Let's talk about us."

"Yes, but—"

"Anyway, I'll be rid of him within the year," she added, as though it were a trifle.  "So there's nothing to talk about really, is there?"

"Rid of him?"

"Yes.  Rid of him!  I'd do it today if I could — now I've met you.  But I mustn't be precipitate.  Appearances are everything.  It must look natural . . . and plausible.  But an opportunity will present itself.  Then, when I've disposed of him, I shall be fully available.  Frantic to be pleasured . . . and pleasured . . . and pleasured . . . and pleasured."

She was positively gnawing my face now, like a ravenous dog trying to tease the last fragment of meat from a stubborn bone.  My manhood, which had been aroused to the point of ejaculation by her twitching crotch, was now deflating rapidly as I digested her alarming ambitions for her poor mad husband.

"But Griselda—"

"Yes, Owen darling," she lisped as she broke off trying to insert her tongue all the way into my left ear.

"When you talk about disposing of your husband, what exactly—"

"Oh, don't go on about him, darling," she pouted, and then tried the other ear.  "So far as we're concerned, he's ancient history, isn't he?"

"Exactly my point.  How precisely—"

"Then, once we're rid of him, I'll pull out your gleaming manhood.  I'll suck it, I'll eat it, I'll worship it, I'll take every glorious inch of it into my every empty, aching hole.  I'll toss myself up and down on it for hours and hours and hours like a mad woman until the sheets catch fire, won't I?"

"Fine, but—"

"We'll get one of those books, and learn how to do it in all sorts of unusual and interesting ways.  We'll find new ways that no one's ever tried before."

"Wonderful, but—"

"Like doing it for hours and hours and hours and hours in a bath full of really thick, sticky custard"

"Yes but—"

"Or warm treacle."

"What?"

"Treacle, darling."  She popped a chaste kiss onto the very tip of my nose.  "At least you were listening."  She dismounted me, glanced at her watch, and, with a look of regret.  "My, my, look at the time."  She crossed the room and touched the bell pull.  "You'll have to go for now, for appearance's sake, or else the low-lifes will start gossiping about us."

"Go?"

"But of course."

"So we're not popping upstairs to . . . er . . . ?"

She giggled like a horse whinnying.  "Not yet, silly!  Not until Flavius is out of the way.  Why do you think I'm so eager to get rid of him?"

I was relieved to a point.  I had passed my peak, largely because of her alarming intentions concerning her husband, and it wouldn't have done to disappoint her first time.  But I was also worried about what I was getting into.  "Look, Griselda.  About Flavius.  I'm not —"

"Oh, please don't go on about him, darling."  She faced me squarely, and her expression was softer now, and more fully mature.  "Look.  We can't get down to the serious shagging until I've dealt with him, if only because if it became known, it would make him far more difficult to dispose of — people might say I had personal motives, mightn't they?  You must see that."

"But if we we're discreet—"

"We couldn't be — not here, not in Nether Slype where everyone knows everyone else's comings and goings — especially yours and mine," she said soberly.  "And a scandal circulating among the peasants would be unspeakably demeaning.  Therefore, much as I lust over you, Owen my darling, we must be content to be friends until I'm permanently rid of Flavius.  Then we can immediately progress to something more athletic and mutually satisfying.  Agreed?"

I admired her control.  In fact, Griselda Shackles' stature had grown in my estimation, in many ways.  Even her ruthlessness was to be admired.  Nevertheless, but her plans for her husband were clearly serious and they terrified me

"Look, about this disposal business, I—"

The opening door interrupted me.  Thwacks sombrely entered the room, coughed and bowed.

"You took your time!" observed Griselda harshly.

"My apologies, ma'am.  I—"

"Silence!  Mr Flaythm will be leaving in a moment.  Wait outside and then show him out!"

Thwacks bowed.  "Ma'am".  He withdrew backwards to wait outside. 

Griselda's eyes followed him and she made no effort to hide her dislike of the man.  The door closed; she plucked my arm to draw me close, and her voice was low.  "One word of advice, Owen.  Don't ever trust that one."

"Thwacks?"

"Yes.  He's the main reason I must be prudent and so very careful when I dispose of Flavius."

"Yes.  About that.  I—"

"Not now!  Listen!  I won't pester you.  I'll leave you alone . . . until the deed is done.  So as not to arouse any suspicions.  Understood?"

Of course, but—"

"Hush!  He's probably listening at the door."

I dropped my voice to a murmur.  "If he's such a threat, why do you employ him?"

"Reasons.  But not for long.  Once I'm rid of Flavius I'll dispose of Thwacks too . . . with very great pleasure."

I bitterly regretted my words rash words.  "Look, Griselda.  About this disposal business—"

"No time!  No time!  He'll get suspicious.  Go now!"

*****

I returned to my cottage and spent a sleepless night, despite the sweet, fresh country air wafting in through the open window, and the tawny owls calling each other in the nearby trees.  Keeping Griselda Shackles sexually satisfied would be no hardship, not with that magnificent body, though I was a little daunted by her blithe assumption that we could do it for hours and hours and hours and hours on end, as she had put it.  But her intentions concerning her husband were something I had not anticipated.  I had never met the man, probably never would — unless I got a move on — and cared nothing for him.  But he was still a fellow human being, if a foul-mouthed and barking mad one. 

There was no doubt that she intended to murder him.  I reasoned that she was in a strong position to hush the matter — I assumed that the physician who examined him, and the coroner, would both we tenants of hers — but if she were caught and tried, I would be an accessory.  My ambition had been to live in Nether Slype, not to view the world through prison bars for a number of years.  So what should I do?  Flee the village?  Paradise no sooner gained than lost?

I reasoned that doing so wouldn't help me much.  If she still went ahead and murdered her husband, and my foreknowledge became know, the outcome would be the same.  Should I turn her in?  For what?  I had no proof of anything.  I might find myself accused in turn of being a failed gigolo with a grudge, or a would-be blackmailer — for I had no doubt that Griselda would fight tooth and claw and use any means to refute my allegation.  Then I would lose paradise and my reputation.

Then another, even more horrible, thought struck me.  Would I be the next, after Flavius and Thwacks, for I had little doubt that she intended to murder her butler too?  Had there been others?   Would I become a minor statistic in a long line of murdered lovers?  Was she mad and Flavius sane?  Were they both mad?  Was I too going mad? 

As the weeks passed without any developments, these anxieties over Griselda's intentions abated somewhat, though never entirely.  She had insisted that we appear to be no more than friends until she had disposed of Flavius.  And so it was.  I often saw her trotting round the village — booted and jacketed, hand imperiously on hip.  As she passed the men's hands would twitch to their forelocks, and the women would sketch a curtsey.  She ignored them all, but when she saw me her face would light up and she would wave.  On a couple of occasions when I walked up the valley to Long Wallop, along the lane loops between the fields that carpet the valley floor in that direction, a big black old Daimler swept past.  I noticed it because there are so few cars in the three villages, and I saw that Thwacks was driving it, and in the back sat Griselda, waving and smiling at me. 

The small number of cars is a peculiarity of the three villages, seeing that they are so remote.  I keep my Jaguar, of course, though I scarcely use it, and I suppose that is the reason.  People rarely travel outside their own village, and then only to one of the other two.  There are exceptions, of course: the doctor, the vet, and other professionals.  The local farmers have their Land Rovers.  You see more vans, tractors and lorries than private cars.  For the need to be always dashing here and dashing there is alien to the way of life in Nether Slype, just as it was to our ancestors, who lived with their family, friends, work, and wants within close proximity. 

This is not to say that the three villages are without transport amenities.  There are several local taxis, as well as a minibus that circulates the three villages on market day.  Given the lifestyle, using these on occasion works out much cheaper than running your own car.  Not that money is the issue; the villages are prosperous and the standard of living is high.  People work in and around the villages, on the farms and in the woods which they coppice for timber as they have for centuries.  A number of large workshops make handcrafted, top-end hardwood furniture, much of which goes overseas, and others turn out fence panels and the like.  They send top-quality free-range eggs, beef, lamb, game, and poultry to butchers and restaurants countrywide.  

No one goes without, no one is neglected, and no one is poor.  The three villages are exemplars of the social, extended-family mode of life that modern society — for all its welfare state, social services, and rights culture — has lost.

*****

Time passed without any developments, and I found it increasingly hard to believe that Griselda Shackles was plotting to murder her husband and her butler too.  There again, it was difficult to believe that she kept her husband chained in a dungeon, and I knew that to be a fact.  However, I suppressed my logical faculty in that respect, hoping, as people do in such situations, that I was somehow mistaken, and all would turn out for the best.

On one occasion, when it was raining, she offered me a lift, but if I'd hoped or feared that she would assault me as she had on the sofa in her drawing room, I would have been wrong.  I suppose the presence of Thwacks in the front seat had a damping effect, but Griselda made no attempt even to extend a discreet finger and stroke my hand with it, and she could have done that easily enough. 

Instead, she asked me how I was getting on, if I was making friends, and all the usual things you ask a newcomer.  Warm, cool, interested, friendly.  No more.  There were no sexual innuendos and no allusions to Flavius, no winks, no secret moues, and, more importantly, there was no atmosphere of repression, or unvoiced, shared secrets.  It was as though all her snogging, gnawing, groping and crotch rubbing had been my imagination.

She was either a consummate actress or her interest in me was cooling.  I started to wonder if it had all been a game, but never seriously.  Yet, in that hidden place in my consciousness where ultimate truth dwells, I knew that it hadn't.  She had said it would be like this, that we would appear to be only friends for a while, and so it was.  I knew deep down that what she said she would do, she did.

And that included Flavius.

4. Quaint village customs

My 'cottage' was a glorious rambling seventeenth-century timbered house, standing behind tall yew hedges, far back from the lane at the end of a snaking drive at the village's edge.  The ridiculously modest rent included a plump little maid, Ginny, who came daily, and a gardener who came twice a week, and it was made clear that a man of my means would be able to hire other domestic help as required, without difficulty. 

Once installed, I threw myself into village life with zest, eager to recover years lost in grey suburban modernity.  I joined committees and local societies, and Griselda's interest ensured that I was welcomed into all of them with alacrity.  I started attending church again, where my exalted position entitled me to use the pew directly behind Griselda's.  She, of course, occupied the front pew in splendid isolation, her husband being too mad to attend.  I did not attend from any deep religious zeal, but because it was part of my deep rediscovered culture.  I sang hymns I had forgotten since childhood, and the feeling was good.  For some indefinable reason I felt a better person for it, and I assumed that those who sang alongside me were good people too.

They are, as the run of humanity goes, but appearance is deceptive.  In some respects, the world is the same everywhere, no matter how different it might look and feel in a particular place.  During my first few weeks in Nether Slype, I thought I had rediscovered lost innocence, because despite the strange goings on at Nether Towers, the surface seemed so innocent.  However, with time you come to know a place better, as an angler knows his stretch of river.  He knows what lies beneath the placid, smiling face of the water — where the deeps are, where the hungry pike lurk, the subtle currents you can never see but feel tugging at your feet, and precisely where to cast your lure to catch the juiciest fish.

I've learned that Nether Slype is like that, benign, idyllic, serene — and deadly.  Deadly, that is, unless you learn to enjoy its darker undercurrents and secret pleasures.  But if you do, then the three villages soar beyond the confines of the humdrum world, and you enter paradise.

I should have twigged some of the dark undercurrent earlier, but I hadn't.  I had been preoccupied and besides, I had no reason to expect that the three villages were as unusual as I now know them to be.  But it wasn't long before strange customs started to manifest themselves.

Perhaps there is inbreeding after all.  It is certainly true to say that nearly all the women in the three villages are busty, though not all so much as Griselda.  They also have finely developed and prominent bottoms.  I don't know what the reason for this is, perhaps the vigorous outdoor life that most adopt, the country diet, or perhaps it's simply in the genes, but whatever the reason; you'll hardly ever see a flat-chested or scraggy-arsed woman there. 

I noticed this during my first few days — how could any red-blooded man not notice it?  It being late summer, and warm, there were wobbling buttocks and bouncing tits everywhere, and the nipples that poked through the thin summer blouses and bras were fat and perky.  It is difficult for a single man not to gaze at such things, and they drew my gaze as a magnet draws iron filings.

I was leaving the post office one morning, a few weeks after my arrival and stepped aside for a woman whose breasts were truly magnificent, even by Nether Slype standards.  Her blouse was low-cut, her cleavage deep and freckled, and the nipples poking through were the size of my thumbs.  I ogled her, discreetly, I thought.

I felt a tap on my arm and turned to see Ted Foxter, the gamekeeper at Nether Towers.  Griselda had introduced me to him on my arrival and I had already joined him for a few pints at The Seven Stripes.

"You don't want to go ogling that, Mr Flaythm," he said with a sage shake of the head.

"Was I?" I said, disingenuously.  I thought I had been discreet and besides, in the outside world, blatant ogling was nothing unusual.

Nevertheless, Ted regarded me coolly.  "You were, Mr Flaythm, and you know it.  No question.  She's a married woman — see.  Look too interested and you'll upset the husband."

"I'm sorry," I said.  "I meant nothing — and I didn't notice she was wearing a ring."

"Feel your way carefully, Mr Flaythm," he said in a friendly, philosophical way, and I didn't mind for I knew his words were kindly meant to a newcomer who didn’t know the ropes yet.  "There are two classes of women in Nether Slype — excepting her ladyship, of course — those that are married or spoken for, and those that aren't.  You stay well away from the first class, and you can pretty well do what you like with the second — and God knows there's plenty to choose from.  You'll come to know who's who in time.  In the meanwhile, you'd be wise to check your ground before you make a move."

"And what are the rules if I find an available woman I fancy?"

He threw back his head and laughed.  "Get stuck in, man."

"Provided she's agreeable, of course."

"If she isn't, then you show her the error of her ways, Mr Flaythm — until she is."

I didn't understand him, though I pretended to, replying to his sly wink with one of my own.  I had lived long in the outside world, the world of women's rights that eschews any sort of sexism or assumption of predatory male domination — or, at least, it pretends to.  I had yet to learn that these notions were alien to the three villages, so for the next few days I consciously avoided looking hungrily at any woman.  It was difficult with ripe temptation is everywhere, and although the women seemed very friendly, I became aware that there might be other local rules of conduct, so I remained wary.

The caution also made me aware of why Griselda was so insistent that Flavius should be 'disposed of' before we started shagging.  Clearly, small irregularities were noticed, and if I started frequenting Nether Towers too often, or was too frequently seen in her company, there would be talk as she had said there would be.   Everyone knew everyone else's comings and goings in a place like this and it was clear to me that certain proprieties had to be seen to be observed — even if a man had to die for it.  I pushed the thought from my mind.  I didn't want to think about Flavius, or any of the repercussions that might flow from his murder.

The relationship between the sexes started to become apparent a few days later.  There are many shaded footpaths in Nether Slype, and one runs along the bottom of my long rear garden, a path so green and overhung that you would never guess that it lay within yards of a village street unless you knew it.  It provides a short cut to the village centre and I already used it frequently, as it was a quicker route in the fine weather. 

I was walking home from the library when I heard an abrupt bark of command beyond a hedge.

"Liz!  Out here!  This instant!" 

I smiled, reflecting that few men in the outside world would dare shout at their wives in such a peremptory fashion. I was intrigued to see the outcome, for I naturally assumed that the wife would march out and give her husband a mouthful in return.   I noticed that there was a small chink in the hedge, and my curiosity prompted me to peek through it.  I looked carefully both ways, to make sure that I was not observed, and then applied my face to the chink.

There I saw a long orchard garden, very much like my own.  A thickset middle-aged man was standing there, not far from me, looking furious, his arms tightly folded.  I saw his wife, a blonde, broad hipped woman, come running out of the house towards us looking nervous.  She was wearing a tee shirt and shorts, she had big thighs, and although I couldn't see it, I knew that her generous bottom would be wobbling delightfully.  She drew up to her husband and he pointed furiously at the grass near his feet.

"You did that, didn't you!"

To my surprise, instead of folding her arms in turn and saying "so what!" she hung her head and flushed like a schoolchild pulled out before the class.  "Yes husband.  I'm truly sorry, husband," she said breathlessly.  "Please don't punish me."

"What precisely have you done?"

"I'm sorry husband.  I didn't see them.  Please."

"What have you done?"

She swallowed and stared intently at her feet.  "I mowed over the cowslips, husband," she whispered so softly that I could scarcely hear her.  "I know I've disobeyed.  Please don't be severe with me."  There was a long silence while she remained looking at her feet, and her arms hanging limply at her side.

"So you knew what you'd done," the husband said at last.

"Yes, husband," she whispered so softly that I only just caught her words.  "I know I should have confessed, but I was frightened."

The husband's face was stone.  He unfolded his arms and started to unbuckle his heavy leather trouser belt.  "Face the tree!" he snapped.

The wife's shoulders sagged.  Without another word, she turned and stood as directed.  Her back was towards me now and I noticed that she was indeed a plump-bottomed lass.  Meanwhile the heavy belt was off and the husband wrapped it twice round his hand leaving about two feet of it hanging free.

"There'll be six for mowing down the cowslips and another six for not telling me."

"I understand, husband."

"Knickers down!"

The big bottom heaved and strained as she pulled down her tight shorts and then her knickers.  Both fell to her ankles, and I saw her two enormous globes, white above her sunburnt thighs.  My prick stiffened.

"Lean against the tree!"

She shuffled forward a few steps and leaned forward, bracing herself against the trunk.  The muscles in buttocks twitched in anticipation of what was to come.

"Count!"

The husband brought his arm back and the flying belt delivered a resounding blow across his wife's bare buttocks, and they quivered delightfully at the impact.

"One, husband."

The arm came back again, followed by a loud cracking retort and the plump bottom wobbled again.

"Two, husband."

He whipped her with his belt as I've seen people whipping a dog with its lead, and I've never liked seeing the dumb creature so ill-used.  Yet I felt no such qualm at watching this man ruthlessly spank his wife's bare bottom.  It was gloriously erotic, and I found that I had unconsciously unzipped my flies and started wanking myself as I watched.  The thrashing continued, and it was only after eight sound strokes that the wife's count started to labour.  Her thighs were working now and her previously white cheeks displayed a broadening red stripe across them.  But her husband continued remorselessly.

"Ah!  Eight, husband."

Smack!

"Aaah!  Nine, husband."

I saw her head go back, and she was gasping and jerking at every stroke.

Smack!

"Aaaaah!  Ten, husband.  I'm so sorry husband."

He continued relentlessly.  Her thighs were twitching ceaselessly now and she was heaving her big bottom up and down with a steady mechanical rhythm as people do when they're in pain.  I wanked faster.

Smack!

"Aaaaah!  Ooooh!   Eleven, husband.  Please be merciful."

I knew she was crying, I knew by the sob in her voice.  Her thighs wriggled and her plump darkening bottom cheeks rotated ever faster.  She was in severe pain now.  My wanking accelerated. 

Smack!

"Aaaaaaah!  Aaaaaaah!   Twelve, husband.  No more, I beg you."

Her whole body jerked, I could hear her crying, but the husband seemed unconcerned.  He slid his belt back through his trouser loops and buckled it.

"I'm finished now," he said calmly.

The wife collapsed weeping at the foot of the tree, her hands scrabbling and clawing at her soundly-thrashed and deeply reddened buttocks.  I shot my load into the hedge.

But the husband merely turned away and continued surveying his garden.

The experience had aroused and excited me, but it also perplexed me.  I was new to Nether Slype so I initially assumed the husband's behaviour to be an exception rather than a hallowed rule.  My main interest was in my own response to it.   I had never hit a woman.  I had been tempted to but had always considered it unmanly to use violence against a woman, besides which, it was taboo in the circles I moved in, and any man who beat a woman would have been despised for it.  Yet my prick had stiffened and I had orgasmed.  For me, seeing the wife standing obediently with her knickers round her ankles while her husband soundly whipped her bare bottom had been an erotic sexual experience.  I had indulged in a little mild spanking in bed with consenting women, but that was just slap and tickle, a bit of fun, usually after we'd got a good few drinks on board, but nothing heavy, severe, or serious. 

Then I remembered Griselda's words about discipline and the firm hand, her ever-twitching  riding crop, and her enthusiasm for the patent flogger.  I also recalled Ted Foxter's words about showing a reluctant woman the error of her ways until she was agreeable.  Enormous possibilities exploded in my mind.  Bloody Hell, I thought.  Is the whole bloody village at it?

I swallowed as I wondered what role Griselda might have in mind for me, before and after we shagged for hours and hours and hours and hours in the thick custard.  Aroused as I was by the performance in the garden, I reflected that I wouldn't mind giving her magnificent bottom a good spanking.  On the other hand, I was damned if the boot was going to be on the other foot.  But would I have any choice, and what might happen to me if I refused?  Was that where Flavius had stepped out of line?  Might I quickly follow him if I failed to obey? 

I shook the thought from my head and said, Ridiculous!  I was aware that my own frustrations were feeding my imagination.  I persuaded myself that a couple of months ago, I would not have responded as I had to the thrashing in the garden.  I was frustrated, no doubt of that, which was probably why I had started to ogle women more blatantly than I ought. 

I had never been short of sexual partners, though in recent years none had meant much to me beyond the physical relief.  But since coming to Nether Slype, I hadn't got my end in once.  I had been told that I would experience no difficulty in this respect.  I had been told that unattached women were openly available, but I'd seen no evidence of it, and I didn't know how one went about propositioning them in Nether Slype.    Did you simple brush up to one and say, "Hello darling, fancy a shag?" and put her straight over your knee if she said, "Sod off!"  Somehow, I didn't think so.  And, to be blunt, so crude an approach has never appealed to me.  I am a bit of a romantic at heart, and even a blatant one-night stand has to be more romantic than wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am.

As for the spanking, I soon realised that this was indeed the way things were done in Nether Slype.   Only a couple of days later I was in the village shop buying my groceries.

"I can't see any wholemeal bread," I said to Meg, the girl who usually serves behind the counter.

I expected her just to say, "it's here", "it's there", or "we've run out".  But instead, her face fell.  "Of course, Mr Flaythm," she said in a hushed voice.  "You always buy wholemeal, don't you!"

"I much prefer it to white," I said casually.

The girl looked chastened, though I thought I could detect an evil gleam in her eye.  "Then I'll fetch Mrs Bryce right away, sir."

"No!  Really!  It doesn't matter," I remonstrated.

"I'm afraid I've been told I must, sir," said Meg, though her lips quivered impishly as she made for the back of the shop.

I hovered, feeling embarrassed at the fuss.  I heard Meg's voice through the open doorway, "Another regular for wholemeal, Mr Bryce" and there was a note of deep, malicious relish as she added, "and Mr Flaythm of all people.  Most put out, he is."

"No, no!" I called, though no one heard me.

"Right!  That'll be double," said a stern male voice beyond the door that I assumed to be Mr Bryce's.  "Out you go, woman!"

From out the back came Mrs Bryce, a pleasant looking woman with a square face framed by dark-brown curly hair.  She walked up to me looking very contrite and stood before me like a supplicant, wringing her hands, and her eyes never left the floor.

"I'm very sorry about the wholemeal, Mr Flaythm," she said quickly and breathlessly, as if by rote.  "I forgot it was Friday, Sir, and I didn't order enough.  Please forgive me."

"Forgive?"  I laughed.  "Don't be silly.  It doesn't matter.  I'll come back for some tomorrow."

"I'm dreadfully sorry for the inconvenience I've put you to, Sir."

"Forget it, Mrs Bryce."

"Thank you for being so forgiving, Sir," she said with a small curtsey, but her eyes remained firmly fixed to the floor.  She turned and walked slowly away towards the back of the shop.  Her hands disappeared round her front and she appeared to be adjusting her clothing; I heard the unmistakable sound of a fly zip.  Her hands reappeared and she hooked her thumbs inside her loosened waistband.  As she walked through the door to the back of the shop, she started to push it down, and I saw her bottom crack and ample buttocks start to emerge.

"Leave the door open!" came the man's stern voice again.  "I want Mr Flaythm to hear this.   Over the chair back with you!  And get those knickers right down.  Grip the chair!" 

Mr Bryce didn't tell his wife to count the strokes as the man in the garden had, but the sound of leather thrashing a woman's soft bottom was the same.  I had clearly been mistaken to assume that the corporal disciplining of wives was an occasional and closet aberration in Nether Slype.  I now understood without any shadow of doubt what Griselda and Ted had meant when they spoke of discipline and making women see the error of their ways.

Meg sidled up to me, nodded and winked.  "She's getting double because it's you, Mr Flaythm.  Twelve.  I thought you'd like to know."

"How many others have there been?" I asked, wondering just how many strokes in total Mrs Bryce would receive for forgetting to order extra bread, and what the punishment would be for a genuinely serious offence.

"You're the seventh to voice disappointment," said Meg.  "She got six for each of the others."  She smirked.  "You don't mind when it's the boss's wife, do you, Sir!  And she's a real cow to me sometimes."

Out back, Mrs Bryce was grunting like a bull at each stroke.  It was hardly surprising, seeing that she had by now received around forty during the course of the day and her bottom already must be sore, bruised, and swollen from her earlier ordeals.  Finally, the punishment ended, the door closed, and there was silence from the back.  Despite my finer values, I felt my cock stiffening again and I drew my jacket round me to hide the embarrassing bulge from Meg.

"Can I do anything else for you, Mr Flaythm?" she asked slyly.  She was clearly enjoying Mrs Bryce's ongoing punishment and that might have accounted for the relish in of voice.  But perhaps she had also glanced down and noticed the telltale sign of my enjoyment too.  I wondered whether she was inviting me to enjoy some sexual hanky-panky with her.  I glanced at hr sideways.  She looked the type who enjoyed a good shag.  But she was a good-looking girl and it seemed inconceivable too me that she wasn't already being regularly seen to. 

I remembered Ted Foxter's warning about staying clear of women who were spoken for, and I thought it highly likely that Meg was.  My problem was that I simply couldn't be sure, one way or the other, and I wouldn't be until I got to know these people much better.  So I merely smiled and, "That's fine for now, Meg.  Thanks all the same."

But my frustrations deepened.  When I left the shop, I was still stiff and all the stiffer because I knew that if I was wrong about Meg, I might just have passed up an invitation to a very acceptable shag.

My prick was stiff most of the time during those early days in the three villages, what with all the bouncing breasts and bottoms everywhere, and now the extra thrill of what promised to be participation in regular spankings, as an observer or auditor at least.   And I confess it did thrill me; it thrilled me very much, especially the spanking in the shop, which had been applied for my benefit.  A woman had bent over a chair and had her bare bottom spanked, especially severely, for my satisfaction.  The one disappointment was that I wished I were applying a strap to a nice plump bottom myself.  A demon had been awakened in me, yet despite the fact that it was going on all around me, there seemed no immediate prospect of administering a good spanking myself.  I think I still assumed at that time, that a woman's bare bottom was only available for this sort of enjoyable attention from her husband. 

For these reasons, I made no move to either discipline or ravish my maid, despite her short skirt, extremely wobbly bottom, and the come-hither looks she gave me.  There was stimulation and frustration everywhere, but no release, or so I thought.  Yet I was soon to learn that I still hadn't plumbed the full pleasurable depths of Nether Slype.

5. Initiation

A few evenings later, I stopped by The Seven Stripes as I often do, for a pint or two and a chat with my neighbours.  I had been in the village for about two months, and I liked to think that they were starting to accept me genuinely, and not just because Griselda Shackles had told them to.  Nearly everyone I passed in the course of the day stopped and chatted to me.  I was everywhere welcome, and I found them likable and neighbourly people, despite their seemingly habitual use of the strap. 

That evening, when I walked into the pub, the four regulars round the bar all nodded.  I asked Dick Shag the landlord I'd met on my first visit, for my usual pint of the local ale, for they have their own small brewery in Nether Slype.

"A pint of Nelly's Knockers, please Dick."

Dick's face fell.  "Dreadfully sorry, Mr Flaythm.  Nelly's Knockers are off, sir."

"Oh, well, what have you got?"

"Freda's Fanny?  Rachels's Rump?  Easy Edna?"

"Whichever you recommend," I said

As Dick started to pour my beer, Ted Foxter sidled up to me and winked. 

"Don't let it go at that, Owen.  You're entitled to satisfaction when the beer's off." 

"Satisfaction?"

"Aye, it's the custom," chorused the other three regulars at the bar.

"You must demand it," said Ted impishly, with another wink.

"Don't egg him on," cautioned Dick the landlord, pushing my beer across to me.  "He's still very new here."

"Nah, he's one of us," said Ted emphatically.  "He's a Flaythm.  And he's already a regular, so he's entitled to his satisfaction when the beer's off."

The chorus of agreement came again and Dick looked at me hesitantly for a few moments, but in the end, he sighed and shrugged to the inevitable.  Reaching down under the bar he leaned towards me and enquired gently, "Would you like satisfaction, Mr Flaythm, Sir?"

I glanced down to see what he had retrieved from under the bar.  There, in is large fist, peeping discreetly over the rear edge of the counter was the curved handle of a slander bamboo cane.  I blinked and almost demurred, but a chorus of encouragement from the others immediately overwhelmed me.

"Go on, Owen!"

"Show us what you're made of, Owen!"

"Show us how the Flaythms lay it on, Owen?"

I hesitated, as you so often do when they thing you have dreamed of is offered too readily, or for too low a price.  You ask yourself where the catch is, for you are sure there must be one, and there was.  For I had never done this before, and had no idea of how to go about it.

Much as the idea appealed, I would have preferred to try my hand first in private, but I realised that I was facing a test I couldn't decline.  Come through it and they would fully accept me as one of the chaps; fail and I would be a laughing stock.  Yet if I refused, I would lose face.  I imagined that here in Nether Slype, backing off from applying corporal discipline might be regarded as tantamount to confessing I was homosexual — and I didn't want that sort of reputation at any price.   I knew I would have to go through with it, and pray that I made a reasonable job of it.

So I stuck out my chin, I reached across the bar, and Dick pushed the cane into my hand.  It was long, thin, and very whippy, clearly fashioned for the purpose.  I made a few cuts and the cane whistled pleasantly, but what was the point of a cane and no bottom?  I turned enquiringly to Dick.

"Whose?  Which?  Er . . . ."

Dick put his head round the door behind the bar.  "Girls!  Out you come!  Mr Flaythm requires satisfaction.  Move yourselves!"

Immediately I heard the rattle of footsteps on the wooden floor behind and out trooped the three bar and kitchen maids.  They came round the bar, lined up in front of me looking coy.  One of them giggled, nervously, as I later realised.  But at the time, I suspected that they thought me incapable of doing what was required, so I made a few more fearsome looking cuts through thin air

"What do you say to the customer?" said Dick sternly.

"Sorry about Nelly's Knockers, Mr Flaythm. Would you like satisfaction of our bare and willing bottoms, Sir?" chorused the three maids, parrot fashion.  They had obviously done this many times.  The youngest, Nell, giggled again.

I licked my lips, sure that I was about to make an idiot of myself.  I dimly remembered hearing or reading somewhere that the cane is the aristocrat of corporal-punishment instruments, devastatingly effectively when expertly wielded, but much less so in the hands of an amateur.  I would be mercilessly exposed as a tyro.  "Well, I—"

"Don't mice words with wenches, lad!" piped up Old Horace, the retired shoe mender, shambling across to me.  "It's the cane and the strap that talks to a woman."  He turned to Nell, the youngest barmaid, who had nervously giggled.  "You mind your manners, girl, or I'll tell your father to give you two dozen of the riding crop next time I see him!"

The girl whitened and hung her head contritely.  "Yes grandfather.  Sorry, Mr Flaythm."

"That's better," said Old Horace.  "Though too little too late, as you're about to find out, girl."  He turned to me, all solicitude, and patted me gently on the back.  "Don't be nervous, lad.  I've been whipping women for over fifty years, and I know what I'm about.  I'll see you through it."

I must have coloured at being so transparently a novice. 

"Right now," continued Horace, patting my back again, reassuringly.  "The rule here is that every customer who misses a pint of his favourite gives each girl one stroke.  That's one for each pint.  Now, you're a three pint man—"

"Two," insisted Ted from behind the bar.

"Three!" chorused of regulars.

"Come on lads," pleaded Ted.  "I've a dozen or more regulars due later.  I want these girls to be able to stand up and wash glasses come closing time."

"Then you should have laid on the fucking beer!" snarled Ted.

"Aye," chorused the others in jolly unison, thumping their beer mugs on the bar top.  "Three!  Three!  Three!  Three!  Three!  Three!  Three—

"Oh very well," sighed Ted, flinging down his cloth and folding his arms like a long-suffering fishwife.  "Three it is."

"What do I do now?" I whispered in Horace's ear.

"What do you think?  Get Nell over a table, yank her knickers down, and give her plump rosy cheeks three of the best."

"Right."  I tentatively extended my hand to take Nell gently by the arm, but Horace knocked it aside.

"Nay, lad!  You do it like this."  With one fluid motion, Horace stepped in front of me, took Nell by the scruff of the neck, summarily marched her across to the nearest table, and pushed her over it.  "Now the knickers, lad."

"Right."  I put the cane under one arm and lifted Nell's full skirt to reveal a bulging pair of navy blue knickers.  I noticed the visible part of her buttocks and the tops of her thighs were already criss-crossed with half-a-dozen or more red welts.  I tentatively took hold of her knicker elastic and started to ease the knickers down.

"Sorry, lad," said Horace at my ear, gently removing my hand.  "Let me show you once and for all.  When you pull down a woman's knickers, whether you're going to feel her up, shag her, or thrash her, you don’t mess around — you do it this way."  He seized the elastic and whipped it down so fast that Nell's knickers fairly flew down her bare legs to her ankles, and her bottom, free of its restraint, bulged before me.  I felt my prick start to swell mightily.

"Right, Horace," I said, taking up the cane again and flexing it self-consciously.  I was aware that five pairs of critical eyes were on me, not counting the other two maids'.  This was make or break for me.

I stepped back, and gave Nell's bare buttocks a few ranging taps, silently counting the red welts to fifteen and wondering how many more they would receive before closing time.

"Excuse me, lad," said Horace, interrupting again.  "I take it you haven't done this before."

I licked my lips.  "Er — not with a light cane," I lied sheepishly.

"Then let me show you.  It's not like a strap, which only requires leverage and power.  With the cane it's speed and accuracy that counts.  For a start, you're too tense.  So relax!  Second, you step right back and use the full length of the cane and your arm.  Remember, the tip is travelling fastest under the greatest leverage.  If you apply a cane half way down its length, or bent-armed, you'll only tap her, no matter how much energy you put into it, and what's the point of that?  Third.  You don't aim at her bottom, but at a point six or so inches in front of her pussy.  In other words, you thrash right through the bottom with the extremity of the cane and the arm.  Understood?"

"Yes, Horace," I said hoarsely.  "Thank you, Horace."

Horace thrust his hands in his pockets and looked wise.  "Of course, using the full length holds true whether you're using a strap, belt, riding crop, tawse, whip, or whatever: use the extremity and you can't go far wrong.  It's like hammering nails.  When you're hammering, you use the full length of the hammer shaft.  The same goes for thrashing a woman.  Now, relax, and cut right through, as fast as you can.  Start with the cane held right back behind your neck, and bring it right round in an arc, at an angle of about forty-five degrees, through to that point in front of her pussy.  That way, she'll know what you're about."

"Right, Horace."

"Here, lad, let me show you."

Horace retrieved one of his hands from his pockets and took the cane from my hand.  He stepped right back from Nell, tapping her bulging bottom several times with the extremity, his arm fully extended.  Her legs wriggled in anticipation, and I fancied I heard her whimper. 

"That's the range, lad," continued Horace conversationally.  "Now watch!"  The brought the cane right back behind his neck, froze for a second, then with a brief high whistle, it whipped round.  With a piercing scream, Nell's bottom leapt off the edge of the table.  There was a murmur of approval from around the bar and I knew that I was in the presence of a master.  "Take note of that, lad?" said Horace with pride.  "Unless she screams and her bottom leaps, you haven't done your job properly."

The cane went back behind Horace's neck again, froze for a second, and then whistled again.  Nell screamed again and her bottom leapt even higher.  I saw that there were two more vicious red welts on it.

"Now, lad," said Horace with an expert's gravity, directing my attention, as though it were necessary, to Nell's writhing bottom.  "Notice my two welts.  Absolutely parallel and about an inch apart.   The art is to lay them on close.  Better still, on top of each other.  Ideally, you want to see one broad stripe developing, not a criss-cross.  Lay on a dozen heavy strokes on top of each other, and you'll be peeling her off the ceiling before you're done, and that's what you're aiming to do.  Now, I'm going to lay the third one between the other two, extra hard, like so—"

"Please don't grandfather," whimpered Nell.

"Quiet, girl!"

The cane whistled, even more shrilly, Nell screamed her heart out, and her bottom leapt so high in the air that she almost dove head-first off the opposite side of the table.  I saw that she was quivering and crying, but that didn't stop the regulars from giving Horace a round of applause.  He handed me the cane.  "Now, lad, lay three more on top of mine."

"Oi-oi!" shouted Dick from behind the bar.  "She's had her three."

Horace turned on him.  "She's my granddaughter and I'll thrash her whenever I like — without your leave.  Now it's Owen's turn."

There was another murmur of approval.  Dick raised his hands in surrender, and then carried on wiping the bar.

I stepped back from Nell.  The girl was sobbing, and that gave me a moment's pause, but I couldn't appear callow in front of my audience.  Besides, she had parted her legs slightly and her pink slit was winking at me between a fringe of downy brown hair.  My stiffening prick took over from whatever remained of my conscience: I knew I was going to enjoy hearing her squeal again, and I wanted to watch her wriggling bottom and juicy little slit perform desperate acrobatic feats all over the table.

I brought the cane behind my neck, froze for a second and delivered a stinging swipe right through the red, twitching buttocks, missing Horace's stripe and catching Nell right across her slit.  She howled, jerked, and her legs writhed like fury.

The crowd round the bar applauded warmly.

"Not bad for starters," said Horace.  "Across her crack's as good a place as any.  Teaches her that it's a man's property."

There was a murmur of agreement, then, as I drew the cane behind my neck, I saw a new red wheal across the crease between Nell's bottom and thighs and right across her slit.  The slit itself was splayed wide open, its lips quivering.  My work! I thought proudly as the last remnants of my conscience deserted me.

The cane whistled more shrilly, Nell screamed and leapt energetically this time.  Her legs wriggled even more and I noted with satisfaction that a second new stripe had appeared just above my first.  The cane came back a third time.  Aiming firmly through the gaping slit I consciously relaxed and then let fly with all my might.

Her scream was piercing.  Her whole body jerked off the table, jack-knifed, and she fell onto the floor, thrashing and clutching her crotch.

"Good shot!" chorused the regulars, and they rushed across to her, pulling her hands away and examining her.

"Three in a row," shouted one and they turned to give me an extended round of applause.

"Well done, lad," said Horace, gently patting me on the arm.  "You'll be on free beer all evening for that."

The two older girls remained.  Despite Nell's suffering, they looked remarkably uncontrite.

I chose Ruth, the kitchen maid next.  She was the slimmest and eldest of the three.  She must have been well over thirty and she wore her breasts lower than the other two did.  I'd removed her bra in my imagination several times when I'd drunk at the Stripes, fancying them pendulous, with large dark areolas.  I was pretty certain they'd be dark, for her hair was black, and her eyes and complexion also dark.  In former centuries, they would probably have presumed her a witch, but even Nether Slype isn't that conservative.  It was a pity, I thought, that I could only thrash her bottom and not her breasts.  For at that time I foolishly assumed that tit whipping was taboo in Nether Slype. 

I boldly took Ruth by the scruff of the neck and she came forward without resisting.  I marched her to the table and roughly pushed her across it...  My drinking companions applauded.  Next for her knickers.   I threw up her skirt over her back.  She was wearing black stockings, black suspenders, with black lacy knickers over them.  I almost shot my load straight through my trousers, and all over her. 

Eagerly I took the elastic waistband of her black full-cut knickers in my hand and ripped them down.  They fell no further than her knees but I was pleased with the result.  Her bottom was slightly slimmer than Nell's was, and I noticed that, as well as a welter of vivid red stripes from earlier that night, it was also criss-crossed with small scars, some white, ancient, and faded, others newer and still pink.  She'd certainly been comprehensively whipped in her thirty-something years.  Although her thighs were also slimmer than Nell's and didn't quite meet at the top, I couldn't see her crack because of the forest of thick black hair that sprouted like a huge brush from her crotch and fringed her slit like a heavy beard.    

"Fucking Hell, Ruth," called one of the drinkers.  "When are you going to see a barber?  Nothing can get through that jungle."

The men laughed.

"Ha.  Ha.  Ha," quipped Ruth, face down across the table.  "Just because you can't manage to push your limp prick into a woman's cunt, Ned Ferris.   It doesn't mean a man couldn't."

"It's certainly the loosest in Nether Slype," suggested another, and all the men laughed again.

"Nah!  That was my wee hole you were fucking, Ted Foxter."

The men roared now.

"Thought I was being shagged by a dead maggot," Ruth continued.  "Then I looked up and saw Ted Foxter hanging on the other end of it."

The men fell about laughing.  One even spilled his beer.

"Come on, Owen, lay it on the mouthy bitch!" called Ted, who was less amused than the others were.

Following Horace's instructions, I aimed for a point six inches in front of Ruth's luxuriant pussy and laid on my first stroke with a resounding crack.  Nothing happened.

"Come on, Mr Flaythm, sir!" said Ruth, archly coy.  "Start!  I haven't got all fucking night to lie around here airing my cunt."

The men roared.  I brought the cane back and, with a shrill whistle, laid another welt just above the first.

"Bloody hell!  Some filthy sod's trying to tickle my arsehole now."

By this time, I was laughing myself, so much so that I made a complete mess of the last stroke and merely glanced it off her.

Ruth got up, curtseyed to her audience, and marched triumphantly off towards the kitchen to a great round of applause.

Rosie, the third girl, was by far the most buxom of the three.  She walked up to the table without prompting, dropped her skirt to show all the men she was wearing no knickers at all.  She sat on the edge of the table, leant back, and spread her legs invitingly wide, showing us all her orange pussy and pink open slit.  She flexed her muscles and her cunt winked open and shut for us several times, to a great round of applause.  My prick was so stiff now that I had to turn round quickly, and ease it past the elastic waistband of my underpants.  Meanwhile, Rosie pulled up a chair, knelt on the seat and bent over the table for me, sticking her big plump bottom invitingly in the air.

There were calls of "Lay it on, Owen" and "You couldn't miss that one if you tried."

Rosie wriggled her bottom inviting again.  It was pink, with small freckles all over it.  And like the others, it was criss-crossed, with welts, old and new.  It wobbled delightfully, like a strawberry blancmange sprinkled with brown sugar crystals, and in many ways it was as sweet.  I laid on three heavy strokes, but I'd lost my concentration in all the merriment, and although Rosie squealed and her bottom leapt at each of them, I knew that she was performing for the benefit of her audience.

When she'd been caned, she too marched triumphantly back to the kitchen, to a round of good-natured applause.  I received pats on the back for my efforts, and I decided I ought to buy a round of drinks for the entire gathering.  I could easily afford to, though I didn't make it a habit, considering it rather cheap to try to buy people's goodwill.  However, tonight I had an excuse.

"Nelly's Knockers is back on now," said Dick as he started to pull the first pint.

"I thought you were out of it," I said.

"No, I forgot to put a fresh barrel on earlier.  It hadn't quite settled when you came in."

Now that my desire was cooling, my conscience kicked back in.  The girls had been caned, not for their own negligence but Dick's.  I didn't feel bad about Ruth and Rosie, who could handle it and had made an entertainment of it.  But Nell was only about eighteen and it hadn't been so much fun for her.  I felt suddenly and privately ashamed.

 

One round followed another and as the evening wore on, I became quite drunk.  My drinking companions slowly left, one after the other and, shortly before closing time, I was sitting alone in a corner, feeling content with the world, and wondering if I could be bothered to get up and take the short walk home.   

Something moved at the edge of my consciousness and I looked up to see Ruth the black-haired, dark-eyed kitchen maid glancing at me speculatively.  Our eyes met and she walked across.  She was an attractive woman with a wide, well-shaped mouth, a pert chin and those glorious dark eyes shed dark light on me like pools of liquid night.

"How are you feeling?" she asked, leaning over me so that her long, pendulous breasts swayed mouth-wateringly before my semi-focussed eyes.

"I've had too much," I confessed, wondering whether I had the nerve to reach out and fondle them, and I suppose my voice was slurred.

"Come on," she said.  "I'm done for the day.  I'll help you home if you like."

I almost refused, but then I wondered why I should.  I looked up again, bathed in those glorious dark eyes, and a voice in the back of my reeling brain told me that I might be onto a shag here.  God knows I needed one.

"Yes, I think I might need help," I confessed.  "But I warn you I'm very drunk."

She smiled warmly.  "I'm used to it, and I've seen worse, besides, the walk home will help sober you.  Come on!"

I hope it sobers me up, I thought.  I won't be able to shag you unless I do sober up a bit.  And I desperately wanted to get inside a woman's knickers, and I really fancied running my fingers through Ruth's glorious pussy before I tried her cunt for size.

She leant down to haul me up, her bodice filled again, and I knew that I desperately wanted to get inside her bra too, and pull out those tantalising breasts.  They brushed against me as she put her arm under mine, and with surprising strength, she pulled me upright.  I staggered, and burped.

"Not going to be sick, are you?"

"God, I hope not."

"Are you?  Tell me!"

"Don't think so," I slurred, staggering again, and the room revolved.  I knew that I probably wouldn't get home at all without her, and I also knew that I probably wouldn't be capable of shagging her, even if I did.

"If you feel it welling up, tell me immediately.  I'll help you."

"Feel what welling up?  A hard on?" I slurred, sagging against her.

She smiled.  "Not much chance of that tonight.  I meant, if you feel you're going to be sick."

"God, I hope not."

"Just do it!  Tell me!  All right?"

"Yes, miss."

"And no lip," she smiled, "or you'll find your own way home.  Come on!"

She took my weight and helped me to walk unsteadily out of The Seven Stripes.  Outside the air felt cool.  I felt cold sweat on my forehead and scalp, and that was all I remember.  Therefore, I didn't see the large black Daimler that was parked outside on the green.

6. Ruth

When I woke next morning, warm sunshine was flooding through my bedroom window, my head was still slightly muzzy and I reckoned it would feel more so when I tried to get up.  Apart from my shoes, I was lying fully dressed on my bed, though my collar and trousers were loosened.  I assumed that I had somehow managed to make my way up the stairs and done the necessary.  I suddenly realised that my bladder was bursting.  I flopped out of bed, staggered, and headed for the door, missed it, bounced off the doorframe and somehow found my way along the passage to the bathroom without falling over or wetting myself.  I used the loo and, relieved, I stumbled back the bed, threw myself on it again, and waited for the window to stop orbiting the room. 

It was then that I heard movement downstairs.  Immediately sobered, I staggered back to my feet, shambled to the end of the passage, and peered round the corner down the stairs.

Ruth, the dark-haired barmaid, was coming up them.

"Ruth?" I squeaked.

She was carrying a mug of black coffee and she was wearing my dressing gown.  She glanced up, smiled, and accurately read the expression on my face.

"Hope you don't mind me wearing this, Mr Flaythm, but you needed looking after last night — you were in a terrible state — and I needed to wash my dress.  I don't want to go back to work smelling stale.  So I put it in your washing machine.  I hope that's OK."

"Of course, Ruth.  Help yourself.  And thanks for helping me last night.  Was I really so bad?"

She smiled and put her free hand under my arm to guide me back to the bedroom.  "You were terrible."

I lowered myself gingerly and sat on the edge of the bed.  "When are you due back at The Seven Stripes?" I asked when everything had finally stopped revolving.

"Couple of hours."

"What time is it now?"

"Ten.  No hurry.  Come on!  Lie back and drink this.  Then I'll make you some breakfast."

"Thanks Ruth.  I owe you."

As I lay back and propped myself against the headboard, she climbed onto the bed beside me and held both the coffee and me steady while I drank.

I felt her body move against mine, and my prick started stiffening again.

"Last night," I said.  "We didn't . . . I didn't . . . I mean we—"

She put her arm round my shoulder and popped a kiss on my brow.  "Mr Flaythm.  Last night you were in no condition to do anything.  I managed to get you up here and you just sparked out."

"I just wondered," I said, taking another mouthful of the hot coffee.

"Why?  What if we had?  Would it have mattered?"

"Yes," I giggled — it must have been the after-effects of all the booze.  "Because I'd have had no memories to treasure of the experience."

"No need to be sarcastic!" she said harshly.

"I'm not being."

"Yes you are.  I've seen the way you look at my tits, thinking, bloody hell, look at those horrible saggy old jugs.

"I don't think that at all," I protested

She looked unconvinced.  "Oh really?  What then?"

"It's a bit embarrassing," I said, hiding my face in my coffee mug and taking another mouthful, my head clearing rapidly.

"Why?  We're on your bed together; I'm wearing your dressing gown — and not a lot underneath."

"Really?"  I said, poking my finger in the neck of the dressing gown and trying to open it.

She slapped my hand away, but only payfully. 

"If you want to get inside my undies, Mr Flaythm, you'll have to tell me what you really think about my tits."

"Will I get inside them then?"

She gave me that dark, speculative look again, and her hand slid slowly and tantalisingly down my stomach, then stopped just short of my prick.  I groaned.

"Let's say that if I believe what you say, I'll give you a fuck if you want one."

"Yes please."

"And if I like what I hear, and I also believe it, I'll give you a really slow, tight, extra-quality fuck.  What do you say about that?"

I choked on my coffee.  "Yes please."

Her hand moved slowly in circles around my groin.  She leaned close and whispered in my ear, her lips brushing it as she whispered in my ear.  "And whatever you might think about my tits and my hairy pussy, you'll find that I've got a very . . . very hot, juicy, and satisfying cunt.  And regardless of what they said about it in the pub last night, I can make it as tight as you want.  That's a promise.  So what do you say?"

My prick stiffened in jerks now and her fingers trailed lightly across it.

"Yes please."

"Then tell me the truth, and my cunt's yours." 

I put my coffee down on the bedside table with a clatter and almost spilled it. 

"Well, if you insist on the truth—"

"Go on!  You're onto a decent fuck, regardless."

"To be perfectly truthful. I've always fancied you have really long breast with big dark aureoles and long nipples."

She hoisted an eyebrow.  "That turns you off, does it?"

I blinked.  "Hell no!  It turns me on like anything."

"More than my cunt?"

"I don't know.  The way you describe it, that sounds pretty fantastic too."

"Hmmm!  We'd better find out then, hadn't we?"

She turned towards me, opened the neck of her dressing gown, showing me her generous cleavage and the tops of her black bra cups.  "Like to be turned on some more, mister big prick?" she breathed invitingly as she nuzzled up close to me, a single finger stroking my erection through my trousers.  "Would you like a feel around a bit first?"

"Yes please."

She undid the dressing-gown cord, it fell open and I felt inside.  She was warm and her skin was wonderfully smooth, like velvet.  I ran my hands over her bottom and between her legs, over her fully cut knickers.

"Come on!" she giggled in my ear.  "You didn't have any trouble getting them off last night."

"I thought we were going to show me your tits," I reminded her.

"Perhaps you'd like to feel round my bra cups first, to be sure you really want me to get them out for you," she suggested

I moved my hand up to the lacy cups.  He breasts were very soft, and as I ran my fingers over them, I cupped their weight in my palms, and I felt that her nipples were long and very hard."

"Yes.  Please get them out for me," I croaked.

She pushed herself off the mattress, straddled me, and slipped off the dressing gown.  Her breasts swung bulky and low against her thin lacy bra cups, and I could see the tantalising shadow of large dark disks round her protruding nipples.  She leant forward to unclip the bra, the breasts swung forward towards me and I saw the full, glorious length of her cleavage.   Kneeling upright again, she held the loosened cups in her hands to ensure that she didn't yield up her treasure prematurely, and then, ever so slowly, she started to lift.  The white undersides of their mouth-watering cargo slid from the slowly rising cups, half an inch at a time, then, just as it seemed it would slide for ever, I saw the first hint of her large, chocolate brown aureoles.  The bra lifted even more slowly now, tantalisingly so. Suddenly the breasts were falling free; they slapped her stomach, seemed to bounce, and then swayed forwards toward me, ripe and heavy.

Ruth threw the bra across the room with panache.  "I imagine we won't need that for a bit."  She crossed her arms behind her back and thrust her breasts towards me.  "Satisfactory?"

I took them in my hands, gently stroking the undersides, and gazed admiringly at the large brown buttons and the long pink nipples dangling tastily before my face.  Ruth leaned forwards more and they brushed the hard teats against my lips, and I put out my tongue to taste them as she swung them slowly back and forth.  She knew how to tease, but I didn't mind.  She put one hand behind my head, took a breast in the other, stroked it to make sure the nipple was fully up, then slid it slowly and deeply into my mouth.

"How do you like the taste?" she enquired, and her voice was smoky.

"Mmmm.  Wonderful.  Does the other one taste the same?"

"Greedy man!"  She giggled. "You'd better suck it and see."  She swung the other nipple so that it dangled just in front of my lips.  Reaching down, she put her hand behind my head and lifted my mouth to that one too.

"How's that?" she asked, lifting it out.  "Tasty as the other one?"

She lifted it out, dangled it, and then slowly lowered it into my gaping mouth again.  "Take your time.  I don't want you leaving the table hungry."

Lifting herself to a kneeling position astride me, she slowly unzipped my flies and pulled out my rigid prick.  I gasped as she stroked it with her fingers, and more when she started to stroke it with the crotch of her knickers, luxuriant padded with her abundant pussy hair.  Back and forth, back and forth, she stroked while her long dark nipples swung in and out of my mouth.

"I think you deserve the slow, tight fuck after all.  Would you like that?"

"Yes please," I gasped.

"Would you like it now?" she enquired huskily.

"Yes please, Ruth.  Now.  Please."

She got up and I raised my bottom while she slid my trousers and pants off, then deftly unbuttoned my shirt and slid that off too.  Stepping out of her knickers she climbed back on me and straddled me again, wonderfully naked.  Taking my swollen prick in her hand, she started stroking my knob it with her pussy hair, and I could feel the warmth and wetness within.  I smiled.

"Like that?" she asked.

"Oh yes.  Ted Foxter doesn't know what he's talking about."

"I know, and I'll show you why."

With a quick stroke of her finger, she parted her hair and ever so slowly slid herself down over me, hot and moist.

"How's that?"

"Wonderful," I croaked, hardly able to contain myself now.

She slowly worked her cunt up and down a few times, then, gradually, the sensation started to change.  I felt my prick being squeezed by degrees, as if in a hot, powerful, lubricated fist. As Ruth heaved her body, the tight fist slid up and down the length of my shaft, pulling and pushing it, crushing it in its powerful grip.

"How's that?" she enquired.

My mouth was dry with ecstasy.  "Unbelievable," I barely managed to groan.

"Ted Foxter's never had it like this," she grinned.  "I only tighten my cunt and give the slow fuck to men I really like."

"It's not a cunt, Ruth — it's paradise," I moaned.

Indeed it was.  I hadn't thought my erection could grow more, but it did, painful so against its unyielding constraint;  The more it grew, the tighter she gripped it, until I felt it was being crushed in the awesome depths of a deep, hot, perfumed sea.  Yet if Ruth's cunt was an instrument of torture, it was a torture I didn't want ever to end.  Just as I thought my prick would burst, she loosened her hold and I ejaculated long and deep into her.   I shot and shot.  I thought I would shoot for ever.  Then I lay back, feeling blessedly at peace.

"Thank you," I said.

She leant over me and kissed me with surprising tenderness.  I wrapped her in my arms and kissed her in turn, thanking her from the bottom of my heart for the most wonderful orgasm of my life.

"I can think of only two other men in the village who've ever thanked me for a fuck," she said conversationally, a little later, downstairs in the kitchen where we had shared a late breakfast.

"What?"  I couldn't believe they were all so ill mannered.  "What do the others say?"

"Nothing.  Your typical Nether Slyper unzips his flied, pulls his pathetic little cock out — shoves it in — jerk, jerk, jerk — squirt — then zips his flies up and walks away again.  Mind you, they don't get what you just got.  They get it loose.  I make the miserable fuckers work for their bit of fun.  But not you."  She stroked the back of my hand.

"Because you like me?"

"Yes," she said, her dark eyes looking frankly into mine.

"Why?"

"Because you laughed at my comments about the limp pricks at the bar, but not theirs about me."

"How do you know?" I asked dropping my gaze to my hands, because I recalled that she had been bent over the table at the time, waiting for me to cane her.  "You were looking the other way," I added awkwardly.

She smirked.  "I've developed a fine directional ear for a dirty laugh."

"You were certainly a lot wittier than they were."

Her eyes widened momentarily.  She leant across the table and kissed me again.  "Carry on like that and I'll start falling in love with you."

"Why?  Because I've paid you well deserved compliments?"

She grimaced.  "Men in Nether Slype don't pay compliments.  They just grunt and take."  She clasped my hand.  "Don't ever change.  Don't ever lose that."  She slipped on the dress she'd washed and ironed and picked up her bag.  "I'd best go.  You can guess what my punishment will be if I'm late.  And Dangling Dick can make even me squeal."

"And what about Nell?"  I asked, remembering the debauchery of the previous evening.

Ruth shrugged.  "Sore, but she'll learn.  She'll have to."

"Learn what?"

"What Rosie and I know.  Make 'em laugh and you get off lightly.  Act the poor frightened little wench and you inflame them, and you get it ten times worse."

"Inflame me, you mean," I said remembering how I had thrashed Nell with a will, and, now that Ruth had quenched my lust like no woman ever had before, I was ashamed, visibly so.

"I wasn't your fault," she said with a curt shake of the head.  "It was that revolting grandfather of hers.  It was the third time that evening he'd given that ghastly demonstration of his prowess.  His own granddaughter too, for pity's sake, displaying her like a whore, and she's only eighteen.  Plying the cane is his one skill you see, and, of course, typical of a man, he has to show off his little bit of tawdry prowess to his boozy friends, time and again.  He was a lousy shoe mender, you know."

"Perhaps, but I did my bit too."

"You couldn't have done otherwise, Mr Flaythm."

"Owen."

She smiled and gave me the frank glance again.  "You couldn't have done otherwise, Owen — the way they were egging you on."

"But I wanted to, Ruth.  I wanted to.  And now I've done it I . . . ."

She squeezed my hand again.  "Not to worry.  You're a nice man deep down."

"I don't think so."

"But you are.  You know the old saying: a stiff prick has no conscience?"

"But it ought to, oughtn't it!"

"Perhaps.  But we all have to conform, Owen, to a certain extent at least.  You'd have been a laughing stock if you'd backed down last night.  Anyway, must go.  And if you want the slow job again, just give me the nod.  I'd rather shag you than any of the others.  Anyway, must dash."

That was wisdom of a sort too, I thought.  Now I was in Nether Slype, I supposed I had to do what they did.  At least, I had to do it to a degree, but it was a poor excuse.  Moreover, I knew that I would not only do it again, but also enjoy it again, again, and again.  Nevertheless, I vowed that in future, I would spare Nell and any others like her, and I would never be excessive, no matter what.

7. Griselda

"Owen!"

I was walking along the bridle path back from the church when I heard the soft clip-clop of hooves on the sweet-rancid-smelling leaf mould, for it was deep autumn now, and there had been rain.  I turned to see Griselda trotting towards me, in hacking jacket, boots, and jodhpurs, her magnificent bosoms jerking up and down like two pile drivers.

"Hello," I called.  I hadn't seen her for weeks, and then only to nod and wave to in passing, and I stepped to one side assuming that she would ride past me.  Instead, she reined up, jumped down and smiled at me dazzlingly while she walked round to the horse's head and pulled down the bridle to lead it.  At least, her teeth dazzled in the golden autumn light.     

"Hello, Griselda," I said again.  "I haven't seen you for a while."

"I know," she pouted.  "I'm beginning to wonder if you care for me at all."

"Why?"

"I never see you."

"Well, I never see you.  You told me you'd leave me alone until . . . until . . . ."  I thought of Flavius and changed my tack.  "You're in charge, Griselda."

"Yes, but you could have made an effort."

I was bemused.  "What sort of effort?"

She kicked glumly at a stone.  "So many times I've looked from my bedroom at night, hoping to see you standing below, flushed and rigid with bottle-up lust, looking hopefully up at my window.  But you never are."

"But you said we must appear to be just friends," I reasoned.

"Well . . . perhaps.  But I still hoped you might show some interest."

"But what about all the gossip you were so frightened of."

"Not frightened!" she furiously kicked up a cloud of dead leaves.  "It would simply have been demeaning."

"And you said it would make disposing of Flavius more difficult," I reminded her, realising that standing erect under Griselda's window might be a way of prolonging the inconvenient man's life.

But she beamed at me.  "Oh, my poor darling!  Was that the only reason?"

"Well.  Erm . . . ."

She threw the bridle over the horse's neck and lunged at me with both hands, her lips working feverishly over my face, her strong arms crushing me as she forced me back against a tree.  Her hand snaked down between us to my crotch and she caressed my prick through my trousers, and it inevitably stiffened in response.  "Oh my darling!  You mean you've been restraining yourself in the hope that we can be together sooner?"

"Well—"

She groaned and gnawed at my throat.  "Be brave just a little while longer, my stallion.  Just a little while.  Promise?"  And she applied her ravenous lips once more. 

"I promise," I gasped as I struggled for air, promising myself that from now on I would make regular visits by night to Nether Towers and loiter under her window, in the hope of warding off Flavius's murder.  "I'll try, Griselda.  But it's so hard.  I . . . I don't know if I can keep away for much longer."

"Ooooh!"  She flung her arms round my neck and kissed me again, as though she believed all this play-acting was real and not a bizarre pantomime.  "Let me take your arm at least.  No one can see us, and after all, we are sort of engaged, aren't we!"

I jerked as though struck by lightning.  "Engaged?" 

"Well, yes."

Dear God!  "But how can we be?  What about Flavius?"

She stamped her foot.  "Don't keep on dragging him up, darling!  Let's forget about him while we're together."

She slipped her arm through mine and we walked together like two old and close friends.  Bizarre!

"Perhaps we can see each other more often," she suggested thoughtfully after we'd walked fifty yards or so in silence.  "Perhaps you were right when you said we could meet discreetly.  But we'd have to be very discreet indeed."  She glanced up at the red and brown leaves arching overhead, and hugged my arm tightly.  "It's a pity winter's coming on.  I was silly.  We could have met in the woods while the weather was still warm.  We could have ripped each other's clothes off and made naked, savage love in the bracken for hours and hours and hours and hours on end.  Perhaps we still could."

"In the winter?"

She tugged at my arm.  "Don't be a bore, darling.  It might be a bit chilly to start with.  But we'll soon warm up if we're shagging really hard," she added brightly.  "Won't we?"

"I still think it might be a bit—"

She stamped her foot and her eyes flashed.  "I said, won't we!"

"Yes, Griselda."

"Darling!"

"I meant darling."

"Of course you did."  She pecked my ear and hugged my arm tighter.  "And I doubt anyone will notice us.  Part of my estate is off limits, and I'm out with Phallus in the woods most days and—"

"Who or what is Phallus?" I laughed.  Her nonsense was unfathomable.

She blinked. "My dear horsey, of course."  She slipped her arm out of mine and turned to the large chestnut stallion who was walking obediently behind us.  She stroked his nose and planted three kisses on the end of it.  I'll swear the horse looked uneasy.  "I have lots of other horsies, of course, but Phallus is my favourite — though you mustn't believe the revolting stories they tell in that low, disgusting public house."

"The Seven Stripes?"

She sniffed.  "I don't care to know what the ghastly place is called.  Anyway, there's no truth in them."

"Of course not," I assured her, though in truth I wouldn't have put anything past her.

"I use Bronco for that."

My eyes must have popped, and Phallus rolled his as if to say, I told you so.  "You mean you . . .  you . . . with a horse?"

"Bronco's my rocking horse, silly."  She giggled, slipping her arm back through mine and clinging on as though it were a parachute.  "He's my surrogate you.   He's on four powerful springs and there's a large knobbly dildo bolted upright to his saddle.  So when I'm feeling frussed — as I am most of the time — I go up to my bedroom, strip naked, leap on Bronco, and work him up to a really vigorous canter.  For hours and hours and hours sometimes.  It's satisfaction of a sort.  The only satisfaction I've been able to get with Flavius still around.  But when we're together, I promise I won't use him any more — Bronco, that is.  I'll jump on you instead . . . for hours and hours and hours and hours."

"In thick custard?"

"Mmmmm!"

We walked on together in a strangely companionable silence.  She hugged my arm and stroked it, just like a normal woman would.  The last of the leaves were falling and the trees clawed at a grey sky with gaunt, black fingers.  The year was almost dead, and that reminded me again of Flavius.

"Look, Griselda, I—"

"Oooh!" She pouted at me so sorrowfully that her two front teeth disappeared behind her lower lip.  "Can't you at least remember to call me darling when we're like this?  After all, we're alone, and we are in love."

The machinations of a woman's mind can often be bewildering, but how could she possibly think that we were in love? 

"Look, Gris . . . darling, we hardly know each other and—"

"But we went through all that, didn't we?  If we can't be in love with each other, then who else can we be in love with?  Not with any of the peasants, surely?"  She sniffed.  "Unless, of course, you think you're in love with that trollop from the public house."

"Ruth?"

Her lips twitched.  "Ruth is it?  I don't bother with names where low-lifes are concerned.  I saw you one evening staggering out of the public house with her, blind drunk, and heading in the direction of your house.  No need to ask whether you ended up in bed with her.  And Thwacks has seen you on other occasions—"

I was angry now.  "You're having me watched?"

"Just keeping an eye on you, my dear, for your protection, and because I love you.  You know that"

"All I know is that Ruth isn't a trollop!"  I said harshly, for I didn't like hearing her called that.

"In other words, you are in love with her!"  Griselda sniffed again, like a wronged wife.  Her eyes latched balefully onto mine and a tear meandered slowly down one cheek.

I sighed.  I couldn't afford to upset her.  "Look, I'm not in love with her, but all the same—"

"But!  Oh, of course.  But!"  Griselda's riding crop twitched alarmingly.  "I suppose you call her, darling often enough!"

"I don't, actually."

"Don't lie, Owen," she said bitterly, with a very unladylike sniff.  "Of course you do!  I bet you say all sorts of things you never say to me . . . when you're in bed with her!"

"Maybe because I never am in bed with you," I countered disingenuously.  "I did offer to take you upstairs at the outset, you know."

"That's unfair.  You know why I couldn't."

"Because you're a married woman."

"Heavens, Owen!  Must you keep throwing that excuse for a man in my face?"

"I'm not.  But he's your husband."

"But he's not a husband.  That's the point.  He's ten limp inches of useless gristle — that's not a husband."

"Even so."

"Look let's not have a tiff over him, darling."  She rubbed my arm vigorously.  "Although I don't mind us tiffing, because it proves we're in love.  But not over him.  He's not worth it, and anyway," — her eyes narrowed — "he won't be around much longer.  Then we'll get rid of the trollop too.  Understood?" 

"Dear God!  You're not planning to murder her too?"

"Murder?" she blanked.  "Whoever said anything about murder?"

"Well, how else are you going to get rid of Flavius, as you put it?  And Thwacks?"

She blinked at me, utterly bewildered.  "Don't be silly, darling!  You can't go round murdering people!  Even dregs and peasants — more's the pity.  No," she smiled darkly.  "There's more than one way of skinning a cat, my dear.  We'll do to him what we always do to those who threaten our way of life, but in Flavius' case I must find an excuse."

So I'd been wrong.  My relief was overwhelming, but a mystery remained.  " So what do you do to people who threaten your way of life?"

"Our way of life."

"Oh very well!  Our way of life, then.  What do you do with them?""

"Oh, darling," she sighed, hugging my arm and laying her head on my shoulder like a wearied and exasperated wife.  "Can't we talk about something else?"

I couldn't budge her.  Try as I might, I couldn't persuade her to tell me what happened to the people who threatened the Nether Slype way of life.  I was relieved, of course.  At least she wasn't planning to murder anyone, so the threat of prison withdrew, or so I thought.  For it never occurred to me that what did happen to them might be as bad, or even worse, than murder.

We turned off the bridle path and into my lane.  When we emerged from the seclusion of the trees, she dropped my arm for discretion's sake and walked beside me, leading the horse.  "Tell you what," she suggested brightly.  "Why don't you show me your house?"

"But what if you're seen coming and going?  The neighbours?"

"It'll only take five minutes.  Besides, your girl will be there."

"Well . . . yes.  But I warn you, it's a mess."

Griselda blanked again, as though she'd just heard me fart in church.  "A mess?  What on earth do you mean, a mess?"

"It just is," I grinned, and if I'd had my wits about me, I'd have known better.

Griselda marched round my drawing room in disbelief.  "A mess?  This place is a pigsty!"

I looked around.  It didn't seem so bad to me, but I'm not the tidiest of men.  My workroom usually is a mess, but I hadn't yet got round to organising a proper one, so at present I was working in the drawing room. 

"This is what comes of consorting with trollops," snapped Griselda, her riding crop twitching ominously.

"It's got nothing to do with anyone or anything."  I shrugged.  "I imagine I'll get round to sorting out a proper workroom come winter."

"You do it?  You?  A Flaythm?  Do menial work like sorting out rooms?  For heaven's sake, darling, it's the girl's job, not yours."

"Ginny?  She's a great help.  She does my washing and ironing and cooks my dinner."

"And?"

"And what?"

"And what!"  Griselda cast me a withering and exasperated glare, and making cuts through the air with the riding crop. "You're clearly not working her hard enough!  Where is she?"

"I the kitchen I think, but—"

"Right!"

"No!  Wait!  Hang on, Griselda!  No!"

I fled after her, remonstrating all the way, as she stamped out of the room, down the passage, and flung the kitchen door open.  Ginny was sitting at the table reading a magazine while she waited for the washing machine to finish.  She glanced up.  Her eyes widened in sudden terror, she leapt to her feet startled, and backed away towards the dresser as Griselda bore down on her, riding crop swishing.

Ginny swallowed and dropped a hurried curtsey.  "Good morning, Lady Shackles."

"Never mind about that, girl!"  Griselda glared at her, flexing the riding crop before her fearful eyes. "You've been slacking."

Ginny's lips trembled.  "No, my lady, I—"

"You dare answer me back, girl?"

"No, my lady, I—"

"Insolence!"

Griselda lunged at Ginny like a fury, seized her by the hair a positively flung her across the broad oak kitchen table, just as Old Horace had done in The Seven Stripes.  With a flick of the crop, Ginny's skirt flew up over her head.  Griselda put her riding in her mouth and ripped down her knickers revealing two plump pink buttocks that wobbled like Rowntree strawberry jellies.

"Please, my lady—"

"Silence!"

"Griselda!" I shouted

"Quiet, Owen!  This girl needs disciplining."

Griselda took the crop in her hand again and enthusiastically launched into a long sequence of vicious cuts, while Ginny thrashed about on the table, screaming.  I shut my eyes.  Why was I so impotent?  The screaming became shriller and shriller.  Ginny's fiercely thrashing legs drummed against the table as Griselda delivered stroke after stroke after stroke with gusto and military precision, much as I imagine, Admiral Shackles had.  When at last she stopped, I could hear only sobs.  Griselda walked slowly and triumphantly round the table surveying her handiwork, slapping her own thighs with the crop.  "That's just a taste, girl, of what you'll get if I come again and find this place looking like a pigsty.   Understood?"

I opened my coward's eyes.  Ginny lay on the table writhing and gasping like a fish that had just been pulled from a river, her hands twitching as they clutched at her cruelly lacerated bottom.   

"Speak up, girl!  Or I'll give you another twelve!"

"Y-yes . . . my lady," sobbed Ginny painfully.

"And stop that irritating noise!"

Ginny sniffed.  "Yes, my lady."

Griselda then turned to me and eyed me sternly.  "And I'm disappointed in you too, Owen.  You're obviously not using your whip on the girl.  A fine lapse for a descendant of the man who held Admiral Shackles' coat."

"Perhaps I should have held yours," I said bitterly.

Griselda's eyes blazed.  "Don't be flippant!"

"Aren't you being?  At least Rickett Flaythm was my ancestor.  You talk about the admiral as though he were yours, but actually he was your husband's?"

"My husbands?" she screamed furiously.  "My wretched — my . . . ."

She stared at me blankly for a few seconds, then, to my surprise, she dissolved into laughter.  She was still laughing when we returned to the drawing room.  She lifted a pile of books unceremoniously out of the sofa, dropped them on the floor with a thump, and then plunged her ample bottom into the vacated space, still shaking.

"I'm the Shackles, Owen dear," she said when she'd recovered herself.  "My father died when I was twenty-five leaving me as his sole heir, and I immediately realised that I needed a husband — well, I wanted one . . . rather badly in fact . . . for reasons we've already discussed.  None of the local men were acceptable on grounds of class, so I put a small ad in one of the more exclusive hunting magazine: wanted for marriage, one blue-blooded eighteen inch penis—" 

"Eighteen inches?" I snorted.  "There's no such thing."

"So they tell me.  But I worked on the premise that men exaggerate such things.  Anyway, Flavius arrived.  He wasn't very bright but I didn't want him for his brains.  So I sent him along to Dr Specter in the village for an examination.  Specter was amazed; he'd never seen anything so long — ten inches flaccid.  Of course, I should have locked Flavius in a room with a cheap tart — like yours from the public house — and made sure he could do the required job.  But I didn't.  More fool me!  Ten inches flaccid it was, and ten inches flaccid it remained.  What with that and his complete lack of brains, conversation, or any desirable attribute at all — he can't even ride a horse, for heaven's sake! — I lost patience with him within a month.  I tried sending him back to his family but they didn't want him either and they sent him straight back with a curt note telling me he was no longer their concern.  I didn't blame them either, but all the same, what was I to do with him?  So I decided there was nothing else for it.  I chained him in the dungeon and there he's remained ever since."

"So he was already mad when you married him?"

"No darling.  Well, possibly he was.  I don't know — I didn't notice.  He was so dull and gormless that you really couldn't tell one way or the other.  You see, he's not chained in the dungeon because he's mad.  He's mad because he's spent fourteen years chained in the dungeon.  At least, Thwacks reckons he's gone mad because of it.  I can't say I've noticed any change myself, but I really can't be bothered to go down and check, so I take Thwacks' word for it."

"But his shouting," I reasoned.  "He sounds like a slavering sex fiend."

"Typical man, darling.  All talk and no action, so let's not waste more time talking about him.  He's history, or soon will be." 

"So, if you're not going to murder him, exactly what are you going to do with him?"

She rolled her eyes.  "For pity's sake, darling, do try to vary your conversation, or I might suspect you're Flavius's brother and pop you in the adjacent dungeon.  And I wouldn't want to do that, at least, not before you've given me a good few really hard shaggings."

While I digested this threat, she picked up the top book from the pile she'd dropped on the floor beside her and read the cover.  "Writers' and Artists' Yearbook?  What on earth do you want that for?"

"I'm a writer," I said negligently, and immediately bit my tongue.

She looked at me querulously.  "A writer?  But you said you had a private income?"

"So I do," I lied.  "I wouldn't be able to afford to write if I didn't.  It's a hobby — well, more than that, a pleasurable occupation."

A shadow of concern crossed her face.  She got up and started pacing round the room, glancing in a desultory way at the other piles of books and the manuscripts lying everywhere in disordered piles.  "I do hope you're not writing about Nether Slype," she said at last, and there was a note of regretful menace in her voice.  "We don't take kindly to people trying to parade our little ways to the spineless puritan world beyond."

"I wouldn't call it puritan," I scoffed.

"No, but it likes to think it is.  And it's incredibly nosey.  It likes telling other people what they can and can't do.  It endlessly questions their morals but not its own."  She turned towards me and her eyes were creased with worry.  "So watch yourself, darling.  You wouldn't want to be sent away would you!  And I for one wouldn't want to see you go.  Truly I wouldn't."

On the face of it, she was threatening me with eviction from my house, and as all the properties in the villages were hers, I would be forced to leave.  Yet there was a note in her voice as she spoke the words sent away that sent a small shiver down my spine.  And her obvious regret reinforced it.

"How sent away, Griselda?" I asked.

She turned away and ran her fingers along the bookshelf.  "Never mind," she murmured.  "I'm sure it won't be necessary.  You're an intelligent man, and your life here could be pleasant, especially as my husband.  But being a Nether Slyper requires discretion.  Others have been indiscreet and they've been forced to leave."

"But isn't that even more dangerous.  Once they're gone they can blow the whistle with impunity."

She wrinkled her mouth.  The two prominent teeth vanished then appeared again.  "Not . . . necessarily."

There it was again, the threat.  And as if that weren't enough she added quietly, "Don't ever force me to do something that we'd both regret, my darling.  Duty must come before love.  I wish it didn't, but it does."

Dear God.  She really did think she loved me.  Perhaps she did, in her screwy way. However, the other matter was uppermost in my mind.  I wondered whether to pursue it, but caution told me that I had nothing to gain by making her suspicious.  I realised that Nether Slype like all nefarious and illicit pleasures, came at a price, and I was increasingly nervous about what that price might be.  So Flavius and Thwacks were not going to be murdered but sent away, permanently, no doubt. 

At least it made sense of a sort.  If people were sent away for transgressions, then her need to find an excuse for 'disposing' of Flavius made sense.  But how ere they set away and where?  Where could they go where there was no threat of their blowing the whistle?  Some place of incarceration no doubt, but what could it be?

She was eying me narrowly.  "I don't want to make threats, darling, really I don't," she said soberly.  "You must believe that.  But you must also understand that paradise comes at a price."

I realised that there was no pointing in trying to question her further.  Instead, I needed to convince her that I was no threat.  Indeed, I had absolutely no intention of becoming one.  Keeping Nether Slype secret and secure was as important to me as it obviously was to her.

"Look," I assured her.  "I've absolutely no intention of writing about Nether Slype.  As you can see from my books, I'm a mediaeval historian, or rather, I write novels about mediaeval times — thrillers and whodunits mostly.  So there's nothing for you and the village to worry about.  I've been working in here, you see, and my workroom's always a mess when I'm right in the middle of a project.  I'm going to organise an office upstairs, but the present project overtook me.  That's why I told Ginny not to clean in here.  I didn't want anything disturbed," I added pointedly.  "She didn't deserve the thrashing you gave her, Griselda."

"Oh, don't make a fuss about nothing, darling."  She brushed my objection away with an airy flick of her hand.  "It's what the peasants are there for.  If you want a peasant girl to work properly, you must keep her whipped, on principle.  I always do."

"So I notice, but I don’t possess a whip, and I'm not—"

"Owen darling!"  Griselda blinked, her eyes lit up, she skipped across the room to me, suddenly girlish, threw her arms round my neck and planting a big wet kiss on my lips.  "We're having our second  tiff."  She kissed me again.  "Isn't it exciting!  So we really must be I love, mustn't we!  Tell you what.  I'll make it up to you.  As soon as I get home, I'll send someone down with one.  How about that?"

"With what?"

"A whip, of course," she said gleefully.  "I'll tie a big red ribbon round it and a card: With all my love, Griselda.  Then you'll think of me when you're thrashing the girl with it," she added, eagerly.  "Or better still, I'll send you an assortment.  That'll be romantic, won't it?"  She kissed me on the nose, just like she'd kissed Phallus, and I felt as bemused as the horse had looked, like a dog being given a chocolate drop.  "Anyway, must dash.   Phallus has been tethered out there for a while and people will talk if he's there much longer.  See me to the door, darling!"

I dutifully walked her out into the hall, but as I put my hand to the door to open it, she seized me and gnawed at my face again for a moment.  "It won't always be like this darling.   Soon we'll be together, naked in our bed, strenuously shagging as only desperate lovers can — for hours and hours and hours and hours on end."

She kissed me again, softly and passionately, and gave me a last caress.  Then she was off down the drive.  I watched her climb on her horse.  She waved.  "Toodle pip!"  And she was off.   Her kisses and caresses were becoming more tender, and I realised that the dotty and dangerous woman wasn't playing a game at all; she really was falling in love with me, or thought she was, which was just as alarming.  Worse, she seemed convinced that I was in love with her.

Poor Flavius.

8. Celia

Next day, just after breakfast, I was at work on my new novel when the doorbell rang.  Ginny was out shopping, so I opened it myself to an attractive dark-haired girl of about twenty holding a large brown-paper parcel.  She was wearing the grey dress and apron of a maid from Nether Towers.

"With her ladyship's compliments, sir," he said breathlessly, and bobbed.

I took the parcel.  Through the paper, I could feel that it contained several long, flexible objects.  "Er . . . thank you."

I made to close the door but the maid slipped deftly past me into the hall.  I looked at her perplexed and she bobbed again.  "I'm Heather, sir," she said, still breathlessly.  "Her ladyship said you were to use me as you wished. Rigorously and repeatedly, sir."

"Rigorously?  Repeatedly?  How?"

"Any way to like, sir.  Any time of the day . . . or night."  She gave me the coyest of blushes.  "If you see what I mean, sir?"

How could I not see?  But I'd been with Ruth overnight and I was full of my new book.  I simply wasn't in the mood for sex games.  And it seemed odd that Griselda should profess love for me and then send such a girl.  Perhaps she was testing me.   

"Look," I said as coldly as I could.  "Why don't you go into the kitchen and wait for Ginny to return?  She'll tell you what needs doing."

"Don't you want to inspect my credentials first, sir?" said the girl, smoothing her dress and apron provocatively over her ample bust, her coy smile now edged with wantonness.  She began to unbutton the bodice of her dress.  "I think you'll find them more than satisfactory, sir."

I've never been susceptible to the brazen approach, and never less than at that moment.  "Not now," I said, even more coldly.  "I'm busy.  Go and see what Ginny wants you to do."

Her eyes flared at the put down.  I thought for a moment that she was going to slap my face.  But the struggle was only brief.  Her eyes fell to the floor and she bobbed again.  "Very good, sir."

Back in my workroom I opened the parcel.  The only surprise was the variety of whips Griselda had sent me, ranging from straps and tawses with ornately sculpted handles, several plaited jobs of varying lengths and weights, and a particularly vicious one with three knotted tails — a sort of cadet version of the Shackles Patent Flogger.  I took them into my drawing room come workroom.  As I dropped them on the coffee table, something fluttered out.  I bent to pick it up and found that it was a card written with black ink in a schooled masculine-looking hand.

Enjoy, my darling,  and think of me.  With desperate love, Griselda.

With desperate love!  She could produce a nice turn of phrase.  I couldn't help smiling at her screwy earnestness, and an evil thought entered my mind, that perhaps I'd baptize her gift on her own bare bottom.  She certainly needed a good spanking — with a bottom like hers clad in those tight jodhpurs, she was positively begging for one — and I assumed no one was giving her one.

Some while later, Ginny returned and came in with my tea.  She usually put it on my desk and left quietly, being sensible enough not to disturb me at my work, for which I was grateful.  She was an excellent girl for me: quiet, unobtrusive, and intelligent. But today she hovered at my elbow, waiting.  I had ignored her since Griselda's tirade.  She had not deserved the punishment, which was anyway excessive, but I was embarrassed, feeling that I had lost control of a situation.  I, as the man of the house, should have been in control.

"Sorry about yesterday, Ginny," I said softly, looking especially hard at my computer screen.

"That's all right, sir."

"No it's not all right.  I should have been firmer with Lady Shackles.  I should have stood up to her.  I should have stopped her.  I'm sorry."

There was a brief silence, then, "So will you still be wanting me any longer, sir?"

I looked up at her in surprise.  "What do you mean?"

She swallowed.  "Well, sir, I'm obviously not giving satisfaction, and her ladyship has sent a replacement, and—"

"Not a replacement, Ginny," I assured her.  "I'm more than happy with you—"

"It's just that the new one's trained, sir.  Properly trained to work, trained to pleasure, trained to the whip—"

"Trained to it?"

Ginny seemed surprised.  "Why yes, sir.  She's one of them as has been to Mrs Birch's Academy for Naughty Wicked Girls in Long Wallop, and she passed out top of her class — or so she says.  Loves it, she does, sir.   And she's already told me what a tight, juicy cunt she's got, sir, and all the tricks she's been taught to play with it."

"She fancies herself.  That's for sure," I murmured.

"That's as maybe, sir.  But as you've never seen fit to sample my cunt—"

I turned and looked at her in alarm.  "But you've got a boyfriend, Ginny," I exclaimed.

"Perhaps, sir, but I'm not properly spoken for as yet.  And as my employer, you're entitled to take your pleasure of me if you wish.  A girl expects to be tried out at least once, sir.  But you've never shown interest, so I've been thinking maybe you're dissatisfied with me and—"

"I'm perfectly satisfied, Ginny," I assured her.  "More than satisfied and very pleased with you.  Look, I can't offend Lady Shackles by sending the other girl back right away.  So let's make use of her.  Set her to work.  Get her scrubbing and cleaning.  She can sort out all those unused upstairs rooms.  Then you can send her down and clean out the cellar — thoroughly.  You're in charge, Ginny.  If she gives you any lip — any lip at all — come to me and we'll find out how trained to the whip she really is — both of us."

I noticed an evil glint in Ginny's eye.  For the first time ever, she bobbed.  "Yes, sir."  To my surprise, she leaned over me and kissed me chastely on the cheek.  "Thank you, sir.  I'll make the bitch work all right."

I gave her a hug for that — nothing sexual, you understand; no groping; just a hug.  She was a nice girl and I liked her.  "Your job's perfectly safe with me, Ginny."

*****

I was in a good mood when I entered The Seven Stripes for a lunchtime pint, where I spent half an hour in amiable conversation with a couple of my neighbours.  But as I was leaving, a hand touched my arm and I turned to see Ruth.  She cocked her head meaningfully towards a discreet corner so I followed her into it.

"There was someone asking for you last night, Owen," she said in an undertone, once she was sure no one could overhear us.

"Asking for me?  Asking whom?"

"Me thankfully.  It was a stranger.  A woman.  She marched in, looked around and made a beeline for me.  She was trying to find out your address."

"What did she look like?" I asked, trying to keep my voice steady, for an awful premonition had struck me.

"Quite tall, thin as a rake, long blonde hair . . . oh, and she was smoking a cigarette with a gold filter end."

I swallowed.  I knew who the woman was, Celia my literary agent.  I'd given her detailed instructions for contacting me, and they hadn't included walking into The Seven Stripes, bold as brass, and asking for my address.

"Did you give it to her the address?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because . . . ." Ruth looked around the bar to make sure that no one was prying, and then she pulled me further into the corner and lowered her voice.  "She asked first for a Peter Jenkins."

That had been my name before I changed it to Owen Flaythm.  I swallowed.  "Go on."

"Then she asked for a Rupert Butler.  I said I'd never heard of either of them.  So then, as if it was just a final, spur-of-the-moment thought, she asked if I'd heard of the name Flaythm.  She said she thought someone of that name had just moved in."

"And you said?"

"I told her I'd heard of none of them."

But Celia had dug up Colonel Flaythm for me, and she knew I'd moved here. She'd have put two and two together and strongly suspected that Ruth was lying.  Knowing Celia, that would set her devious mind working overtime.  Damn!  "Who else heard this?"

"No one."

"You're sure!"

"Yes.  She walked straight out again, got in her car, and I watched her drive round the green and back down the lane out of the village."

Perhaps, but Celia wouldn't take no as a permanent answer if her curiosity was aroused.  I knew I should have sacked her before I came to Nether Slype.  I should have sacked her before I announced my intention of living there.  I should have hired less of a go-getter to take her place, someone who could be trusted to protect my anonymity.  Fool!

Ruth was eyeing me with sharp now.  She clutched my arm and drew me towards her.  "What's going on, Owen?"

"Going on?"

"Who's Rupert Butler?"

"Oh, that's easy.  I was a historical novelist — am a historical novelist.  Rupert Butler is the name I write under."

Her eyes popped with surprise and she smiled.  "Oh!  They've got one of yours in the library.  I've read it.  It's ever so good."

"I know they have," I grimaced.  It was the worst thing I'd ever written.  Nevertheless, I thanked Ruth for her compliment.  "I don't advertise the fact," I said, "but Lady Shackles knows about it.  She knows I'll be discreet."

"You'd better be.  And who's Peter Jenkins?"

"Ah!  He's . . . he's . . . .  O bloody hell!"

She was looking at me earnestly now, and her eyes were bigger, darker, and more beautiful than they'd ever been.  She also looked scared — for my sake.  "Look, Owen, you can trust me," she said softly, and I knew it to be the simple truth.  "I am your friend, you know."

I gently squeezed her hand.  "Perhaps the only true friend I have here — and the only one I want to have."

Half an hour later, we sat out on the green, on a remote but open seat where we could talk without risk of being overheard.  We must have looked a strange pair, sitting in the cold slanting rain, me in my thorn proof jacket and Ruth in her raincoat and hat. 

"So, who is he?" Ruth asked again.  "Or perhaps I should say, who are you?"

I licked my lips.  "Why do you ask that?"

"Because I've slept with you quite a few times.  You've muttered one or two strange things in your sleep. Most men do that, of course, but there have been other times, when we've talked, and I've formed the impression you're being very careful with your words, and thinking before you speak.  I think you're a man with a secret, my dear.  A man with a history."

"Who have you told of this?" I asked, perhaps a little shortly.

"No one!" she countered fiercely.  "I'm your friend, Owen . . . or should I say Peter?"   

I blew a long breath.  Well, I thought.  I'm not surprised she's worked it out.  If a man has two names, why not three?  "Best stick to Owen for all our sakes," I confessed. 

I told her my story then, about discovering Nether Slype and loving the place, the apparent impossibility of living here.  The subterfuge.  It was good to tell someone, though I worried that I might be compromising Ruth and that was last thing I wanted to do.

"So you're not spying on us?"

"No!  Good heavens no.  I've told you the absolute truth, all of it.  I just came because I loved the place — a precious surviving piece of the old England I write about, and I had no idea at all of your local peculiarities before I moved in."

She savoured that for a moment. "Of course, to us, they're not peculiar.  It's the outside that's strange."

She wasn't far wrong either.  "In some ways I suppose it's better out there in the big bad world," I said.  "Women have more legal protection and higher status, though I'm sure that's not all it's cracked up to be.  It's a world of illusion, pretence, image, gloss, and little substance.  It can be a grubby, murky place — at least I think so — and in many ways, its far worse than anything you'll find here.  I came here because I was searching for something cleaner.  And I still think I found it, despite your little foibles."

She digested that.  "And the woman who came questioning?   Who's she?"

"Celia, my literary agent.  She knew I was coming here, of course.  She had to.  But I told her to leave me alone, the nosey bitch."

"So why hasn't she?"

"That's what worries me."

"Could she be trouble?"

"Oh yes," I sighed deeply.  "Most certainly."

*****

And so it came to pass.

A few days later, an hour after sunset, there was another knock on my door.   The new girl, who appeared to assume she was a live-in, came into the workroom and bobbed.  "A lady to see you, sir."

I thought it might be Ruth, or even Griselda, but my face fell when the workroom door opened again, and Celia was standing in the threshold.  She marched in with a triumphant smirk on her face that I knew spelt trouble.  Without thinking, I took her through to my workroom come sitting room and shut the door, forgetting what was still lying on the coffee table.

"You're a hard man to find, Peter," she said provocatively, helping herself to my sofa.  It sounded strange being called Peter after months as Owen.

"What do you want?" I asked bluntly, and pointlessly, for I'd already thought through all the likely reasons.

"That's not a nice way to greet me, darling."

"How did you find me?"

"I asked some drab in the pub.  I assumed you'd know all the local pub sluts."

"Watch your tongue!"

Celia giggled.  "So you are shagging her!  Thought she looked your type.  Her knickers were positively round her ankles, and as for that bra she was wearing. . . ."

I fought to control my temper.  "Never mind that.  She told you nothing.  Did she!"

"No.  But I reckoned she'd come running to tell you I was looking.  She obviously did — which proves you're shagging her.  So I came back tonight and played the poor lost little female.  I found some ghastly old man out in the street somewhere and wiped my fanny round him.  He looked as though he'd never seen a woman like me—"

"I imagine he hadn't," I snorted.

"Meow, darling!   I almost had to go down on my knees and suck his cock to get the address.  Almost, thank God."

"So now you're here, what do you want?"

By way of reply, she looked curiously at the paper parcel in the coffee table before her and I regretted more than ever not keeping my workroom tidy.  She'd always been a nosey cow, so she lifted the edge and looked inside.  Her fiercely pencilled eyebrows rose.

"Kinky!"

"Nothing of the sort," I lied, fighting the obviously guilty temptation to snatch the parcel and move it out of her reach.  "They're research items for my latest novel."

"Hmmm.  Sounds a sight more interesting than your last."  She picked up the card and smirked.  "Who's Griselda?  You whip slut?  Sounds more like a dominatrix to me — high boots and riding crop."  Celia, for all her irritating ways, had a habit of hitting the nail on the head. 

I snatch the card out of her hand.  "This was attached to something else entirely," I lied.  "You know how untidy I am."

"Hmmm.  So she's not the drab from the pub then?"

I gritted my teeth.  "No!  And my personal life is none of your damned business."

"I'm afraid you're wrong there," she said triumphantly.  "And as for your kinky BDSM gear, it bears out my other discoveries."

"Discoveries?"

"Whispers, darling and a few juicy little piccies.  Things that would have the women's-rights commandos besieging this place with gelding knives."

"Since when did you care about women's rights?"

"Don't be silly, darling.  I don't give a toss about them.  But I'll become a fully-paid-up sister if it's to my advantage."

That was typical of the bitch.  I knew she was telling the truth.  "And?"

She got up and walked round the room with that infuriatingly smug look on her face that I'd seen before when she knew she held all the cards.  So often, when she's been acting in my interest, negotiating for me, it had been an infallible sign that we'd just won a nice, fat, remunerative point or were about to.  And Celia knew all about remuneration.  Cash and cheques were her sole interest in life.  Her avarice had done wonders for my bank balance, and hers of course.  Even so, I'd never liked it, or her.  And she wasn't acting in my interest now, but her own, — and something cold trickled in the pit of my stomach.

"Nice place you have here.  Must be worth a bit."

"What have you come for, Celia?  I didn’t invite you."

"I was concerned for you, darling, and—"

"Cut the shoddy crap!  The only thing about me that's ever concerned you is the commission I pay you and how you can extend it."

"The commission I deduct, darling."

"Don't chop words!  Why are you here?"

She smiled smugly at me again, and the ice trickled once more.  Without asking permission, she produced her silver cigarette case, took out a cigarette, knocked it on the lid, and lit it.  "Got an ashtray, darling?"

I went into the kitchen and found a saucer.  When I returned, she was lying full length on the sofa, her expensively stockinged legs were crossed at the ankles, the cigarette hung of the corner of her mouth, and she was idly reading my latest manuscript — of pretending to.

"That'll be ready in about three months," I said, pulling it out of her hand.  "If you're interested."

"Perhaps," she replied, knocking out ash into the saucer.  "Perhaps not.  I'm onto something far bigger than a measly commission.  I might cut you in, but only for a small share."

"What?  Why?"

"Because you're compromised, so you can't bargain.  But as you might prove useful, so I'm throwing you a bone."

She smiled a smile that says, I've got you by the nuts, and if you don't jump when I say so, I'll pop them into the mincer.

I knew I had to tough it out as best I could.  "I don't know what you're talking about," I lied.  "How compromised?"

"The same way every other man in Nether Slype is compromised, darling.  They, of course, were born here.  But you . . . oh, well, you came looking for it."  She stretched out and nudged the parcel of whips with her foot.  "You can't very well claim ignorance.  Now can you?"  She let the point sink in, and then continued.  "I wondered why you were so keen on this piss-hole of a place.  I heard your tale about driving through here and falling in love with it . . . blah  — blah — blah.  But I was curious.  After all, there are so many quiet, dull little villages in England.  Why jump through such fantastic hoops to move to this one?"

"It happened to be the truth," I said patiently.

"Yes, yes of course, darling.  And I foolishly believed for a very short while that the architecture, the oldie-worldie charm, and the woods had captivated you."

"They had," I protested.

"Quite.  But that wasn't all, was it!"  She exhaled smoke extravagantly, as she so often did before delivering the deathblow.  "I never realised you were a bottom freak."

"I don't know what you mean," I said too hurriedly, and the shrewd glance that slanted at me through the thin blue smoke told me that she knew I was lying.

She took a photograph out of her handbag, put it on the coffee table, and slid it across to me.  I looked at it and cringed.  The vicar was there with his colleagues from the adjacent villages.  They were sitting side-by-side in one of the vicarage gardens having tea.  Their wives were there too.  One was carrying a tray, painfully suspended from nipple clamps.  The second was bent over the table holding a cane between her clenched buttocks — clearly waiting for punishment.   The third was on her knees servicing the three vicars' cocks, sucking the middle one and wanking the other two.  The three women were all naked.  Their bottoms were clearly visible, and all three bore multiple strap welts.

I cleared my throat and tried to affect an unimpressed shrug.  "Three kinky clergymen in a domestic setting.  What of it?"

"Yes, I thought you'd say something like that.  There are others, too, though this is the best so far.  I've been skulking up on the hill over the village with my telephoto lens.  Vicars and bottoms — hardly word news, though it's still grist to the Sunday rags' mill."

"You despise the Sunday rags."

"I used to, darling, but they've become prospective milsch cows, so I've become enthusiastic about their crusading moral zeal.  I mean, they will be absolutely appalled by this, won't they!  And their dull-brained readers will be so horrified they'll have to rush out and buy the story in instalments.  I think I feel an undisclosed six-figure payment coming on."

"For one dodgy photo?  The Internet's dripping with them."

"Yes, but there's more than that, to dig for," she said with maddening certainty.   "When I came here, I thought only to enlist your help with my story, however—"

"Your story?" I sneered.  "Since when could you write a story?"

"But when I saw your kinky bondage whips I knew—"

"I haven't used them, for God's sake," I insisted, and it was the literal truth.

She shrugged.  "Perhaps, perhaps not.  I don't care one way of the other.  But I have other photos — not as good, nor as clear as the three kinky vicars, but enough to show that this place is a hotbed of sexual perversion.  And I really think that the outside world, with its high moral values, should know about it."

Dear God, what a mess!  I thought of what it would do the people here.  I considered that not every man in the village was a vicious wife beater.  What would become of them, the poor sods?  They'd go through life hearing: so you lived in Nether Slype did you?  Nudge-nudge, wink-wink.  I thought of the lives ruined.  And what of the women?  How would they cope out there in the big bad world?  They'd be assumed easy meat by the sort of men who'd knock their teeth out, or worse, which the men in Nether Slype definitely didn't do.  What sort of interests would home in on them, prowl round, and snap them up?  How many would end up on street corners, on drugs — which were nowhere to be found here?  How many might end up in brothels?  How many would turn to drink, which was not abused here.  How many would be able to deal with debt, which was endemic outside?  How many would be able to deal with the deep dishonesty of so many enterprises and advertisements?  They would believe what they were told and they would suffer for it.  For all its faults, Nether Slype was an honest and uncomplicated place, free of cynicism.  No.  They could never deal with the 'freedoms' and stresses of Celia's bright, clean, tacky world.

Nether Slype had its flaws — no doubt of that — its illicit delights, and its injustices, but so did the outside world.  That was why the Sunday rags went hunting for dirt — to persuade their readers that the world they thrived in was not as grubby dishonest, cynical, nasty, dirty, pernicious, and downright dangerous, as I knew it to be.

"Don't do it Celia," I asked.

"Why ever not, darling?"

"Just don't do it."

"Well, I'm sure I'd be most happy to oblige you, but money's money and one never quite has enough of it."

"No matter how much damage you do?  How many lives you wreck?"

"Not my life; not my problem."

And that attitude irritated me beyond endurance.  It was so typical of the times, one of the things I had run away from when I came to Nether Slype.  I have never been averse to money, cleanly and honestly made.  I've made a good deal of it myself, but only because people wanted to buy my books, none of which were written for the purpose of making an obscene or dishonest fortune.  In Nether Slype, those who prospered were those who worked, cleanly and honestly, and they did work too.  Despite their quirks, they were honest and industrious in the old-fashioned way.  There was no dirty money here — the sort of money Celia was after — the way money could made outside, where even as dead child had a market value — called compensation.  That struck me as the true obscenity, and whatever went on in Nether Slype was venial by comparison. 

"It's all right, darling," said Celia, looking at me with big mocking eyes, knowing that I was helpless.  "Play ball and I'll protect your blessed good name."

"How?  Why?"

"Well, I might believe that you didn't know everything that's going on here when you arrived."

"I didn't."

"Quite.  So tell me, what's the really juicy stuff — gay orgies in the church at midnight?"

"Nothing like that?"

"What about kids?  I bet there's plenty of child abuse."

"For pity's sake!  None at all.  Nothing like that.  It's all straight, and kids are brought up a damned site cleaner here than most are outside."

She pouted.  "A pity.  There'd certainly be money in that.  Child abuse is a real headline grabber.  Never mind, you can always drop some hints.  A few pregnant hints are much more marketable than one miserable fact.  All you have to do is drop the question:  If that's what the parents get up to, what about the kids?  Nudge-nudge.  Wink-wink.  See what I mean?"

"What do you mean — all I'll have to do?"

She furiously stubbed out her cigarette in the saucer and lit another.  "Didn't I say?  That's where you come in useful.  You write the piece.  You do the sleuthing.  You dig out all the lovely lucrative dirt — let's say twenty-thousand words, broken down into handy two-thousand-word chunks for the Sunday rags.  After all, the morons who read them have no attention span.  I'll market it.  I'll make sure your name — whichever you're masquerading under at present — is kept out of it.  Then we'll split the haul — seventy-thirty."

"And who gets the seventy?" I asked, my mind racing for a means of stalling her.

"Me, of course.  You're hardly in a position to negotiate."

"Fifty-fifty."

"You're not listening, darling.  I said—"

I rounded on her.  "Fifty-fifty or go to hell!  Think of it Celia.  You can go running to the papers with your feeble half-cock yarn, but if Rupert Butler then steps forward with the whole story, claiming to have been working on an under-cover expose which you tried to pre-empt, breaking your confidentiality contract, and offering the real juicy dirt, I'll be the hero and you'll crawl away looking pretty bloody fifth rate.  So it's fifty-fifty, and no argument."

She screwed out her second cigarette with fury and lit a third.  I was gratified to see that my bluff had rattled her.  Her hand shook slightly with stress of seeing all that easy money slipping through her viciously manicured fingers.  "No need to make threats, darling," she simpered.

"Who's making threats?  I'm just telling you where you stand, just as you were pathetically trying to tell me a while ago.  You're a clerk, Celia.  You're the sort of drudge creative people like me get to do their boring menial chores.  That's what I pay you for.  You're the vermin that crawls around talent licking up the dirty crumbs off the floor.  I'll pay you fifty-percent to do all the newspaper legwork, fill in the forms, attend the tedious meetings, the bloody lot, and you'll keep my name out of it.  But the copyright remains mine, as per our standing contract.  Break that contract in any shape or form and I'll sue.  Then you and your tawdry fucking partners will be the pariahs of the book trade for the rest of your miserable lives.  Don't forget, Celia, a compromised high-profile author can make enormous money, but a crooked agent is dead meat.  So you'll do as your bloody well told!"

She looked really scared now, and I enjoyed that.  It had been a strong bluff before I realised it wasn't a bluff at all.  She was my agent.  What she had threatened to do would constitute a breach of agent confidentiality.  Even if I couldn't press it, she knew as well as I did that once the story was out, no self-respecting author would touch her.  Now it was time to close for today and think what to do next.

"So I'll write your piece.  You'll return for it in fourteen days, and you'll return discreetly, like tonight.  Until then, sod off!"

She blinked.

"Are you deaf or brain damaged, you gutter slag?  I told you to fuck off!"

She fucked off all right, tail between her legs, and it gave me deep satisfaction to see her crawl away like that.  One thing was sure; when this was over, I'd drop the evil cow and use another agent for my future novels.  I'd also put the word around that she'd tried to strong-arm me.  That would properly finish her.

But deeper down, I was less elated.  The story was out.  Nothing could stop Celia whispering.  And whispers beget rumours, rumours beget scandals, and scandals can beget deep trouble.

"Shit!  Shit!  Shit!" I yelled at the top of my voice once I'd heard the front door slam.  I picked up a couple of books and hurled them across the room, and then kicked furniture in my anger and frustration.  "Shit!"

I heard my workroom door open again and turned to see the new girl, Heather, leaning in the doorway.  She was completely naked, her firm young breast thrust at me almost accusingly, and her eyes smouldered.     

"You called for your piece of wanton pleasure shit, sir?" 

She walked brazenly towards me, lithe and loose hipped, her triangle of pussy swaying and the fat nipples on her pert breasts nodding as though they were on elastic.  She was mesmerising, but I was angry and not in the mood for sex.

"Fuck off!"

She still approached, smiling.  "Heather would love you to fuck her, sir."

"I said, fuck OFF!"

"Heather would love you to toss her off, sir."

I rarely get uncontrollably angry, but this girl was tipping me over the edge.  "Don't you understand English, girl?" I yelled at her.

She stood right before me, challenging me, her eyes dancing with delight.  Her hand slid to my fly and I stood, stunned as she slowly unzipped it.  Her finger slipped inside and she started to expertly stroke my cock.  All the while, her eyes smouldered into mine and the tip of her tongue slicked between her wet lips.

"Heather only understands the whip, master."

Despite my stiffening cock, something in me snapped.  Slapping her twitching hand away, I seized her by the hair and flung her to the ground, where she lay squirming, and a slow, unfathomable smile suffused her face.

  "That's it, master," she murmured with ill-suppressed excitement...  "Use your whip!  Enjoy yourself!"

In blind fury, I reached for Griselda's parcel and grabbed the first whip that came to hand.  I'd show the bitch what a real whipping felt like — not the feeble crap they obviously dished out at Mrs Birch's Academy for Naughty Wicked Girls but the real thing.  I seized the big whip with the three knotted tails, but I didn't care.  Standing astride Heather's naked body I started lashing her with all my strength.  She writhed and thrashed under a dozen merciless strokes — three tails each, but every time she twisted, she glanced up at me and her face was alight with pleasure.

"That's it, master!  Pleasure yourself!"

Still I slashed at her, her shoulders, her back, her buttocks, her thighs; all quivered under my merciless tirade, slender red wheels and cuts criss-crossing them.  She juddered; I still plied the whip with all my strength.  Still she smiled, turning herself onto her back and offering me her breasts and stomach.  Her legs were open, her back arched; she was thrusting her pussy towards me for punishment, still smiling.

"Don’t forget to whip my cunt, master."

On an on I lashed in a frenzy I'd never experienced before.  I didn't care how much I hurt her, I needed to hurt her.  I lashed everything she offered me while she writhed, smiling still, her face flushed with some indescribable ecstasy that drove me ever onwards.

She rolled back onto her stomach, rose to her hands and knees, and started to crawl, but not towards the door.  I felt her hands sliding softly and slowly up my legs.  Still she smiled up at me, her mouth open, panting in her wild pleasure.  I lashed all the harder now; the leather tails slapped sliced into her soft flesh with pistol-shot retorts.

Still the hands slid slowly upwards, up my thighs, towards my cock.  She rose to her knees, seemingly oblivious of the new vertical stripes the whip was cutting into her back and bottom.  Her hands reached my open flies; her fingers slid inside, and with well-practised deftness, found my rigid cock and pulled it out.

"You're so angry, master," she breathed. 

And then she was sucking, powerfully, frantically.  I felt her throat moving round my knob, her tongue wriggling like a snake all round my rigid shaft, her firm lips circling it moving succulently back and forth.    

"Shit!"

I was blazingly angry now.  I flung down my whip, pulled her off by my cock the hair, grasped her wrists, and hauled her to her feet.  Then I slammed her across the desk, pinning her down by the shoulders.  Still she didn't stop teasing me.  Her hand reached down stroking my swollen cock, her legs wrapped themselves round me, she slid her whipped crotch towards me and her cunt enveloped my manhood like molten lava.  Her vaginal muscles tightened round it, and she flexed her cunt this way and that, toying with my swollen cock.

"Enjoy yourself, master," she purred.  Her legs wrapped round me more tightly, pushing her tight, juicy hole right over me, down to my balls.

I was thrusting now, uncontrollably, thrusting deep inside her despite my anger, jerking her body rhythmically across the desk with each gigantic heave.  Thrust, thrust, thrust, thrust. 

Then my anger was gone, I was shooting my load right up her, long and thick.  The release was heavenly.  I flopped across her, and as my gasping breath eased, I relaxed, and my conscience kicked back in...

"God, I'm, sorry," I groaned, knowing that it was weak and inadequate.  "Why did you provoke me, you stupid girl?  I was so bloody angry."

She smiled up at me and her voice was gentle, controlled, and warm.  She kissed me on the nose and then softly on the lips.

"Not to worry, master.  That's what Heather's here for.  Lady Shackles thought you might need a release, so she sent me to you."

9. Confession

But relief and respite of the type Heather gave me is brief.  I awoke next morning to find her curled round me.  Her perfume was heavy and it started to arouse me, but as I ran my hands over her body, I felt the raised welts, and remembered.  Not only did my shame return, but also the reason for my fearful tirade.  Celia.  Now that the anger had gone, and only the fear of what she might do remained, none of Heather's wiles and arts could distract me from it.  So I gruffly sent her downstairs to make my breakfast while I wondered what I could do.

I could simply turn and run with my tail between my legs — return to the world of monotonous grey, relentless health warnings, free credit checks, shoddy ethics, and increasingly perverse human rights.  Alternatively, I could fall in with Celia's shabby little scheme — but I wasn't prepared to give her that satisfaction.  I don't think it was courage that decided me to remain and tough it out, nor stubbornness — though I'm a stubborn sod when I'm crossed.    Neither could I entirely persuade myself that I meant to do it for the sake of the villages.  If I'm honest, I did it for myself.  I liked living in Nether Slype, and I was damned if some dirty little moneygrubber was going to spoil it for me.

Therefore, I fled to the one person whom I could trust and who already knew the truth.

"So early in the morning?" quipped Ruth with a grin as she opened her cottage door.

"I'm not after that, Ruth."

Her smile vanished.  Her perceptive eyes read the trouble in my face.  "Celia?"

"Celia."

"You'd better come in."

While she made me coffee, I told her all about my confrontation with Celia. 

"Sounds as though you managed to get rid of her, though," she said as she placed my steaming mug before me on the scrubbed kitchen table.

"But not for long, Ruth.  I made a lot of threats, and they have some substance to them.  As my agent, she's contractually bound not to compromise my interests.  I could make a lot of trouble for her if she did.  I could sue her for very substantial damages, and she'd never work again in the book trade.  But she'd a devious and resourceful bitch, and she has friends of the same type.  Next thing you know, some grubby reporter will be skulking around after dark taking pictures through windows.  Celia will find an indirect way of making her point and her dirty money, and I won't be able to stop her."

"And you say she's coming back in a fortnight?"

"So she says.  I've promised her a story.  I'm pretty sure she'll be back for it, though I'll fancy she's come a day or two late, to rattle me, then try to start horse trading again."

"But I thought you'd reached an agreement."

I laughed.  "Celia's agreements are like European Union referenda.  She keeps revisiting and revising them until she get's the result she wants.  Once that happens the subject is closed for ever.  Still," I added more soberly.  "On this occasion I can't criticise because the sole purpose of my bargain was to stall her.  I've no intention of keeping to it either."

"So what are you going to do?"

"I'm going to stop her, by fair means or foul."

"How?"

"That's why I'm talking to you."

"Owen, we're not all stupid," said Ruth a little later, as we walked along the rain-sodden bridle path towards The Seven Stripes.  All the leaves were gone now, it would be Christmas soon, and I wondered what Nether Slype would be like in the snow come January and February.  "The villages cannot stay as they are forever.  Some are already saying that we must moderate, before there's a terrible commotion and drastic change is forced on us."

I snorted.  She didn't know the half of it.  "Along with prosecutions, mass counselling, mental health workers crawling over you like lice, single-issue storm troopers manning every street corner, and God knows what else?  If Celia can't be stopped, you'll have all that and plenty more besides coming down on you from a great height before the year's out.  Then the moneymen will take over and turn the three villages into a theme park.  A rural counterpart of the London Dungeon where we'll all be portrayed in wax effigy, wielding thumbscrews, branding irons, and whips.  Even before that happens, we'll be on the front pages of every newspaper in the land for months.  There will be books, television documentaries, even a shoddy drama or two, assuming Hollywood doesn't buy up the right first. 

"The villages will be overrun with sightseers and sex tourists.  Every third-rate politician and has-been celebrity will have to be photographed in front of The Seven Stripes looking suitably aghast.  All the children will be taken into care, and the adults who escape prison will find themselves performing seals in a tawdry zoo.  We'll all be caricatured on mugs, tee shirts, mouse mats, ball pens and Christ knows what other trash.  You've no idea what a dirty, squalid, money-grubbing thing the public outrage is out there beyond the three villages.   And if you dig down through all the ordure, you'll find Celia at the bottom of it."

Ruth's eyes were bright with horror.  She was an intelligent woman and she clearly had some idea of what the world was like outside the three villages, but even she hadn't grasped the full grotesque hypocrisy of modern moral Puritanism.   "Surely it won't be quite as bad as that!"

"Worse, Ruth.  Much, much worse."

"So," she said after a pause.  "You'll have to steel yourself, my dear."

I swallowed; I wasn't quite sure what she was suggesting, but it sounded bloody ominous.  She took my arm and stroked it gently while she spoke. 

"I'll give you all the help and support I can, though I don't know how much use it will be.  But you have no option.  You'll have to go to Griselda Shackles.  You'll have to tell her everything."

I was sweating now.  "And what will she do?"

"To you?  That depends if the rumours are right.  They say she's in love with you."

I snorted.  "I think she likes to play a game of being in love with me," and yet I knew that that wasn't true.  Somewhere within her fanciful and bizarre mind, I was sure Griselda really did think she loved me.  But she'd also told me that she would put duty first.

"I hope it's more than that."  Ruth squeezed my arm more tightly.  "Throw yourself on her mercy.  Tell her you're on her side."

"And Celia?"

"I'm sure Lady Shackles can handle her. There have been other occurrences, you see.  Not many, but I can remember a handful of disappearances."

I too remembered.  I remembered Griselda using the term sent away.  Flavius was going to be sent away, and I distinctly recalled her saying, you wouldn't want to be sent away would you!  And I wouldn't want to see you go.  But sent away where?  I had asked her but, as usual, she had adroitly sidestepped the question, and that sent a trickle of fear down my spine.

"Were they all sent away, Ruth?" I asked.  "The other disappearances?  Were they sent away?"

She sighed.  "That's the term I've heard used.  Whispered.  No one talks of it openly."

"Is there fear here?  Are people here afraid of being sent away?"

She put her head on one side and cogitated awhile.  "I wouldn't say afraid.  We're aware that we have to behave ourselves.  But so does everyone  — outside too, I imagine."

Oh yes.  Heaven help anyone outside who spoke or wrote a word that might be construed, however incorrectly as sexist, or racist.  They could be persecuted, their careers ruined, for the slightest breach.  But they weren't sent away, though many might have preferred to be.   

Ruth was right.  I knew that despite the retribution that might lie in store for me, I would have to go and confess everything to Griselda.  She had already made the threat.  The question was: would she carry it out?  It would be bad enough to leave this place, strange as it was, and return to the grey puritanical world, but I feared that being sent away meant something much worse.

"Do they ever come back, Ruth?"  I asked.  "The ones who've been sent away?"

Her large dark eyes found mine, and they melted.  "No.  Never."

She hugged kissed me when she left me to go into The Seven Stripes.  She had asked me if I wanted to her come with me, to hold my hand, but that would compromise us both, so I refused point blank.  I wanted to keep her out of it if I could.  Her eyes melted over me again, as though I were a soldier going of to war, and we might be parting for the last time.  I had seen newsreels of such partings, and now I knew what they felt like — the soldier going to the front; the woman waving and smiling bravely while tears flooded down her face.  I turned and started to retrace my steps home with heavy heart, meaning to collect my thoughts and my words before making my way up to the hall.

*****

"Owen!"

I turned, and to my surprise, I saw Griselda on Phallus, following me down the bridle path.  Her smile was sunny and she slowed to a walk when she drew level.  Clearly, she hadn't seen me with Ruth.

"Sorry, but I couldn't shout out darling, in case someone heard," she said in a stage whisper, leaning down towards me from the high saddle.  "But I shall soon, shan't I?" 

She hugged herself eagerly and giggled at the thought while I tried to raise a smile, and miserably failed.  Then her brows creased a moment and she jumped down.

"Anything the matter, darling?" she enquired, looking right and left before taking my arm.  "You look so glum."

I stirred dead leaves with my toe.  "Well . . . ."

Her look of concern deepened.  "Don't tell me you didn't like my present!"

"I liked it very much," I mumbled, trying to persuade myself that it was the thought that counted, and I had to admit to myself that I'd enjoyed whipping Heather, and shagging her afterwards, though Ruth was still more to my taste.  But my eyes were sliding over Griselda now, over her large heaving bust that was pushing open the neck of her hacking jacket, her finely developed horsewoman's bottom, even the two teeth slightly overhanging her pouting lower lip.  I fancied her much more than I ever had before. I didn't just want to whip her fine muscular bottom and make it wriggle.  I didn't just want to shag her, take charge of her, and master her.  There was more to it than that.  For, eccentric as she undoubtedly was, I realised that compared with all the Celias of the world, and even the Heathers, she was a treasure.  I realised that however screwy she was, she was real, and genuine in her affections, she believed what she said, no matter how strangely she expressed it.

"And you won't fall in love with the girl, will you!" she warned me archly.  "Because I'll be very cross if you do.  She's meant for your relaxation, nothing more."

"What?  Heather?  No!  I've always preferred the more mature woman myself."

"Really?"  She put her hand on her heart and gasped.  "You haven't gone off me then?  I'd die if you went off me.  Really I would."

"No, Griselda.  I haven't gone off you," I said, wondering why a woman so desperate to win my affection should send me another as a casual gift.  And how would her affection weather the tale I had to tell her.  Would love conquer all, or would she, like so many of the old school she was a relict of, put duty before all, as she had already indicated she would?  Now that I had reached my Rubicon, and I stood on the brink of perhaps losing everything, my freedom, perhaps even my life, my desire to get inside Griselda's knickers overwhelmed me. 

It occurred to me that one way out of my problem would be to master her, dominate her utterly, and dictate terms, as perhaps only I, her chosen lover, could.  Yet I knew there was no certainty of succeeding.  Hidden beneath that gushing, goofy surface was steel.  This was the woman who'd incarcerated her husband, for God's sake.  This was the woman who had thrashed Ginny, the woman who sent people away.  I was still unclear as to precisely what that meant, but reason told me that it wasn't pleasant.

"What then, darling?" she was asking, her eyes bright and watery with concern.  "Look.  I'm sorry I whipped your girl, but I was so cross.  Please forgive me."  She glanced right and left again, and popped a wet kiss onto the tip of my nose.  "Please?"

It tickled and I almost laughed, despite myself.  After all, how could I criticise her for whipping Ginny?  Hadn't I whipped Heather in the same fashion, because I too was angry?  That was where Nether Slype was different.  The people there weren't monsters, or deviants.  They were just allowed to follow inclinations that so many outside shared, but were obliged to deny.

"Something's the matter," Griselda was saying, hugging me close.  "It doesn't matter.  You can tell me.  I do love you, you know.  Really I do."

How could she?  How could she truly love me?  And yet . . . .  "Can I come up to the hall later, and we'll talk?" I asked hesitantly.

"Of course you can, darling."  Something of her old coquettishness glimmered through the anxiety; she brushed my lapel with her hands.  "But you must promise to behave yourself and not take advantage of me.  Remember, we're not married yet."

Nor ever will be, I thought, unless you really do love me, and can forgive my grievous fault.  For the first time I prayed that she did love me.

*****

"Look, Griselda," I said later, when we were ensconced on the sofa in her office, before a roaring fire.  This was the room where I had first met her, first masqueraded before her as Owen Flaythm, and a small voice told me — I don't know why — that she had decided that we would talk here, rather than in her drawing room, for a reason.

I looked down at my hands and they trembled.  "I'm afraid I have a terrible confession to make, and a warning to give you."

"Make your confession first, darling," she said, sliding close and threading her hand through my arm.  "That way, I can forgive you first, and then you can warn me about whatever it is you want to warn me about."  She smiled eagerly.  "So why don't you make your confession?  After all, I already know what it is . . . Owen.  Or should I say, Peter?"

My mouth fell open and I stared at her like a loon.

"I knew you were an imposter from the outset," she said still sitting close, with her hand threaded confidingly through my arm.  "The council didn't.  They were just unsure, so they insisted that they keep an eye on you for a while.  That wasn't my doing, but entirely theirs.  But I knew for sure that you weren't Owen Flaythm, though I never said so, and I always trusted you."

I looked at her and blinked.  Had she built a charade of love to counter my charade?  But why?

"How did you know?" I asked, dry mouthed.

"Oh, easy.  For a start, you looked nothing like any of your alleged Flaythm ancestors — we have whole corridors of portraits here — though you might have taken after your mother, of course.

"But you also answered the description of a man who enquired of Gripes, my land agent, if he might buy a cottage.  Gripes is a miserable cuss who knows how to keep the inquisitive away, but this man was uniquely insistent and asked for Lord Shackles' address.  You might not remember, but when Gripes asked you if you had any family here, you replied with an emphatic No."

I didn't know where to put my face.  I couldn't recall the estate agent asking the question, but I had no doubt that he had done so.

Griselda squeezed my hand.  "Then, low and behold, a few weeks later, up popped Owen Flaythm, either the man who'd made the earlier enquiry, or his double."

I smiled sheepishly.  I had thought I was so clever, fooling her.

"Then, of course," she added gently, "there was your mistake over Captain Rickett Flaythm."  She giggled and popped a kiss on my burning neck.  "That was my little trick, I'm afraid.  You see, the admirable captain never held Admiral Shackles' coat, but was in irons for opposing the admiral's use of the patent flogger.  As captain of the ship, he was within his rights too.  At the subsequent court martial, he was exonerated, and the admiral was cashiered in disgrace.  It took fifty years for the bad feeling between the Shackles and the Flaythms to heal.  A Flaythm, who'd heard his family history from his grandfather, would have known that."

"Not necessarily," I countered weakly.

She merely snorted at the idea and jumped up.  She was a magnificently athletic woman, I noticed.

"Do you want to know what a Flaythm looks like?" she asked.

I was in a maze.  "What?"

She swept her arm round, indicating the rows of chinless ancestors all round the walls. 

My mouth fell open.  "But they're yours."

"So they are, but they'd have been yours too.  You see, after the Rickett Flaythm incident the families fell out, so badly that they couldn't meet without cutting each other dead.  And so it persisted until my great-great-great-grandfather Beowulf Shackles married Ernestina Flaythm in 1851.  So, you see, my darling, that it is I who has the Flaythm chin, the Flaythm nose, the Flaythm deep upper lip."

"And could grow a magnificent moustache," I murmured absently up at Admiral Shackles and his monstrous pile of steak tartare, hanging above me on the wainscot.  "What about him?  Do you really admire him so much?"

"Ah!"  She flung herself down next to me again and started stroking my inner thigh.  "You see, being a descendant of both Admiral Shackles and Captain Flaythm, I can take a disinterested stance.  I am not partisan, but I have to confess that I greatly respect the captain's courage.  I admire courage above all things, Owen."

"And the Admiralty's spinelessness?"

She laughed.  "Your face was a picture when I extolled the virtues of the patent flogger.  I almost gave myself away. "

"But you're not averse to whips, Griselda," I countered carefully.

"Perhaps not, but I've never flogged anyone to death, nor would I.  But consider: If every captain had been as ruthless as Admiral Shackles had, there would have been no navy left within a very short while.  No one to work the ships, at least. "

"So why do you keep the picture by your desk, and that awful flogger?"

"To remind me of the price of excess.  Drastic measures are sometimes necessary and one should not baulk employing them when they are.  That's a lesson so many outside have forgotten: pragmatism before all."

I looked at her anew.  Even her horsiness and goofiness was part of the old England I had sought to recapture.  And with it came the old pragmatism.  They hanged and flogged in old England, but within the bounds of pragmatism.

"As if reading my thoughts, she added.  "We do what we must, my darling, but only what we must."

"Including thrashing wives and whipping girls like Ginny and Heather?" I asked, for her justifications did not seem to entirely stack up.

"Nothing is without its price.  There are greater evils outside than here.  We have had no murder for two hundred years, no suicide for three hundred, no muggings or burglaries.  We have no loneliness or despair, no alcoholics or drug addicts, very few broken families, no homeless children, no unemployment, and our old people are well looked after within their families and the greater community family.  We have our quirks, our faults, and many outside would consider us dangerously odd.  We practise the old disciplines, perhaps to excess.  Life here is far from perfect, but it has great blessings too.  And if we gave up the quirks, and the occasional injustices, I fear we would lose the blessings with them.  That is my fear and my justification."

We sat together in companionable silence for a couple of minutes.  She had stopped groping my thigh now, and we were holding hands.  I felt closer to her for that.

"Did I make any other mistakes?" I asked at last. 

She shrugged.  "Not a mistake exactly, but once I knew you were Rupert Butler, I checked up on him and found that his real name was Peter Jenkins, published by Littlegood through his agents Merridew and Trollope.  He's been resident in the UK all his life, and he's very reclusive, but his few shadowy public-domain photographs bear a startling resemblance to you, my darling."

Indeed, telling her I was Rupert Butler had been a mistake, but the big question remained.  "Then why did you allow me to come?  Why didn't you just send me away?"

"Oh, that's easy."  She smiled directly into my startled eyes and blushed.  "Because I fell in love with you at first sight, silly.  Chemistry.  At least, that's what they call it.  I knew you didn't love me, of course — how could you?  But I hoped you might grow to.  And I believed your reasons for wanting to live here were deep and genuine.  At least the man who'd visited Gripes seemed desperate to live here. 

"I knew you might be dangerous, but I was prepared to take the risk.  I behaved foolishly when we first met.  I'm a terribly frustrated woman, you see, and you drove me right over the edge — I couldn't contain myself.  Were I a beautiful woman, you'd have lapped it up.  I'm not, so I kept my distance for a while, hoping to start again, more sensibly.  But every time I met you, I lost control again.  I kept reverting to an oversexed teenage girl.  You press my button, Owen, like no one else ever has."

"Peter.  My name's Peter."

She emphatically shook her head.  "No!  It's Owen.  You are Owen Flaythm now, and will be for so long as you behave yourself and remain."  She hugged me more closely.  "That's not my threat, my dear.  I don't make the rules here, though I have influence.  The council makes them.  A few years ago, I had hoped that a new generation of councillors might realise that we had to moderate our lifestyle here, that we couldn't go on as we do forever without consequences.  But the reverse has happened.  They've dug their heads into the sand as small minds do when threatened with inevitability.  They've even reversed some of the moderating decisions their fathers made.  So I need allies, Owen.  I need allies if we're going to salvage anything here."

She looked deeply into my eyes, and I saw she was pleading.  "But that's not the only reason I want you to stay.  I'm desperately in love with you.  I know you're not in love with me but—"

"I'm becoming very fond of you, Griselda

"You don't have to say that."

"I know, but . . . ."

I had meant to play up to her, make preposterous overture to her on the mistaken assumption that she was essentially silly and believed her own nonsense.  But I now realised that would be a mistake.  Griselda was no one's fool, and moreover, I realised that I liked her, despite her violent streak and her love of whips.  And the better I knew her the more I liked her.  I would miss Ruth if I went away, but for some strange unfathomable reason, I would miss Griselda more.  But I knew I would have to be honest with her and not overplay my hand, the hand that was now stealing its way round her shoulder and drawing her closer.

"You're a one-off, Griselda," I said.  "I've known a lot of women and I've bedded a fair number — and some very attractive ones at that.  But I've never met one quite like you.  Added to which, you have a magnificent bust."

She kissed my ear and giggled.  "That was honest at least. Would you like to feel it?"

"Feel what?"

"My magnificent bust.  I know you've always liked it.  You ogled it when we first met.  But you can only put your hand inside my blouse.  You'll have to give me greater assurances before you get inside my bra?"

"What about your knickers?"

"Greater assurances still.  I'm prepared to give you everything I have, my darling — but not for nothing.  You won't get a one night stand out of me."

"You're a sensible and intelligent woman too," I said unbuttoning her blouse and sliding my hand across her bra cup until I found her nipple and rolled it between finger and thumb. 

"So," she said, purring as her nipple hardened, and stroking my inner thigh so that I hardened too.  "What's this warning you have to give me?"

I told Griselda all about Celia.  Every detail.  At the outset, I tried to play down Ruth's part in it, but it soon became clear that Griselda believed Ruth had handled the situation well.  We agreed to meet again several days hence, the three of us, and formulate a plan.  It was clear that we would have to ambush and apprehend Celia.  It was also clear that we would have to find out whom else she might have apprised of her fraud, and where she might have concealed evidence. 

"Once we know," said Griselda crisply, "we have agencies who can deal with it."

"The same agencies that take people away?"

She looked away.  "Their close cousins, at least."

"And where do they go, Griselda?  The people who are sent away?"

She shrugged, and immediately, I felt a distance grow between us.  "Far away," she said at last. "Where no one will ever find them.  I don't know on an instance-by-instance basis — I'd rather not.  Even Flavius has his price, you know.  You've no idea how much some Arabs will pay for an English milord — even a limp-pricked wonder like Flavius.  I've wanted to be rid of him for years.  All I need is an excuse to be rid of him, and this Celia might provide the expedient I've been looking for.  I wouldn't want to give them the real reason why he so disgusts me."

"Which is?"

She pulled a face.  "It's too disgusting for words."

"Go on.  I assume it has something to do with the girls you send down there."

"Yes but it's not what you think.  He doesn't whip them.  That's just talk.    Flavius likes urine and scat, dear.  He likes to use the girls as his toilet, and when he's suitably anointed them, and smeared it all over them, he likes them to fellate him.  It's the only thing that gives him an erection, you see.  On our first night be told me his requirements.  I refused.  So he whipped me, tied me spread-eagled on the bed, and used me as his lavatory.  That gave him an erection, which he promptly stuck down my throat — all twelve inches of it — and almost asphyxiated me.  He went to the dungeon next morning, and he's stayed there ever since."

My stomach churned.  "And is that what he does to the girls?"

"Not quite.  He's chained.  He can't overpower them or ram his thing down their throats as he did to me.  We have a few girls who aren't too fussy what he smears on them, and they're happy to suck him off provided they're well paid — and I do pay them well.  But Flavius is an animal.  I'm desperate to be shot of him."

I could see her point of view.

She warned me that extracting the information from Celia might prove unpleasant — and I knew that unpleasant by Nether Slype standards would be very unpleasant indeed — but she claimed there was no choice in the matter and I couldn't demur.  I knew what she meant.  I knew that the methods used to extract information would be extreme if Celia didn't cooperate.  But I had few qualms about that.  Celia was prepared to destroy any number for her dirty money, besides, I've always believed that whatever comeuppance blackmailers, extortionists and their like receive, is their just deserts.  Even so, Celia's punishment, when it came, was draconian by any standard.

10. Celia's ordeal

I threw myself into my work, but the calendar was always in the corner of my eye.  The days dragged but, even so, the fortnight gradually ran its inevitable course. 

But Celia didn't come to my door when the time had finally expired.  The days dripped past, like a slow irritating tap: fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, and I began to wonder if she would come at all.  I hoped that she had maybe decided to shelve her money-spinner, but I wasn't sanguine about that.  More likely she'd found some other way and even now she was out there in the dark, with a new accomplice, probably some shabby reporter, photographing, making notes.  We had men staked out in the woods all round the village, more men at both ends of my lane, and others round the back in the footpath and the bridle path, but the type of creature Celia would use would have a nose for that sort of surveillance.  I wondered whether we shouldn't simply have placed men in the house to apprehend her when she arrived, assuming she did come.  It was seventeen days now.

I tried to concentrate on my work.  As we'd agreed, I left lights on in my working room only, and the curtains were slightly parted so anyone spying on the house would see me working alone.  Somehow I didn't imagine Celia would stand out in the lane, looking in.  She would be more subtle; she would take me by surprise.

There was a harsh rapping at the front door.  I jumped up.  I had expected her to creep round the back.  When I opened it, it was to one of Griselda's senior foresters. 

"We've got her, Mr Flaythm, sir.  She's on her way to the hall now.  You're to follow."

I took a deep breath.  It was a relief in a way, but I knew it would also be a trial.  I stuck my chin out.

"Right.  Let's go."

They had taken her downstairs, not to the dungeons, I was told, but to the cellars where they had a room equipped for interrogation.  We descended stone steps, and walked purposefully along a narrow, stone-walled and stone-flagged passage with heavy studded doors on either side of us.  It was like a scene from a Spanish Inquisition film I had seen years before.

The interrogation room did nothing to dispel the memory of the film.  I noticed immediately that there were some manacles attached to a wall, and several suspension chains on pulleys hung from the ceiling, though at present the ends of these were gathered neatly in wall rings.  In the centre of the room stood a large table, heavily built like a carpenter's bench, with restraint straps fixed to the four corners.  It was December now, and a fire roared in the huge fireplace.  I noticed that several irons were thrust into the flames.  For effect surely.

As I entered, I saw Celia sitting in a chair with a heavy guard on either side of her.  Thwacks was busying himself with a decanter of sherry and some glasses.  Griselda stood by the fire, clad in boots, jodhpurs and hacking jacket, her back to Celia.  As I watched, she stooped and withdrew one of the irons.  Its tip glowed red.  She spat on it and it hissed for a brief second.

"You'll answer our questions one way or the other," she was saying calmly, as if in a dream.  "Be sensible and make it easy on yourself.  Once we start extracting answers, we won't stop until we're completely satisfied with them, and then we'll carry on a while longer . . . just to be absolutely sure.  You won't like that, Celia.  Really you won't."

Celia snorted.  "What's this — the village pantomime?  You bumpkins really don't think you can frighten me, do you!"

Griselda replaced the iron and walked slowly back to Celia's chair, when she stooped over her, her hands firmly placed on its arms.  "Stupid woman!  What can I do to make you understand the gravity of your predicament?"

Celia laughed now.  She had clearly not been abused in any way — not yet.  She was in a tweed skirt and thorn proof jacket, all elegantly tailored by the look of them.  Nothing was scuffed, torn, or muddied, except for her boots.  Her makeup was unsmeared, not a hair of her head was out of place.  Perhaps they should have knocked her about a bit when they were bringing her here, I thought.  That would have stripped away some of her cockiness.

"Get over yourself you horse-faced bitch," she laughed directly into Griselda's face.  "I already have you for assault and false imprisonment.  I'll sue you for every penny you've got.  I'll have this crumbling dump, your poxy village, the lot and turn it into a theme park, and I'll hire all your dumb yokels to perform for the crowds.  I'll make millions."

"Yes, fine," replied Griselda wearily, standing and walking away.  "In the meantime we want the names of anyone you've divulged your discoveries to.  The locations of any relevant documents and photographs—"

"Go toss yourself on your dildo, horsey!"

"Complete with access passwords—"

Celia sighed.  "Oh, fuck off, you plummy cunt!"

Griselda stepped forwards, stooped, and placed her hands once more on the arms of Celia's chair.  She leaned right forward into her prisoner, so that their faces almost touched.

"You've had your say, lady.  Now I'll have mine.  We're not interested in your career and your fortune, but only with protecting our way of life, which you have threatened for your own pecuniary ends.  Owen cautioned you not to proceed—"

"Owen!" scoffed Celia, but Griselda took no notice.

"Owen cautioned you not to proceed, but your greed was unstoppable.  You have been arrested in the act of commissioning a crime against us that we deem unforgivable.  Whatever you might think of us, we have done you no harm."

"No," sneered Celia — she had guts for sure.  "But what about the beaten women, the—"

"Save your sermonising for the gutter press!" scathed Griselda.  "Your pious morals run no deeper than your greasy pocket or the bubble celebrity you hoped to achieve.  You'd sell any man, woman, or child if the price was right, and we both know it, so for God's sake don't bore us with your infantile preaching.    You would have destroyed us for gain, paltry gain, and you leave us with no choice but to destroy you instead.   We have laws that have stood for centuries. You will be tried, but before you are, your confession will be required.  If you're wise, you'll write your confession now, and sign it.  If you're a fool, you'll try our patience and we'll extract the confession the hard way.  I'll give you one opportunity to answer.  Which is it to be?"

"Stupid, pony cunt!" sneered Celia.  "Go shag your fucking horse!" Then she hawked and spat in Griselda's face.  Griselda recoiled backwards as if she'd been struck across the face.  She hovered above her prisoner for a moment, wiping away the spittle with a small lace handkerchief. Then she turned to the men and her face was stone. 

"Strip her!"

I stood impotently and watched as the men do it.  They did it the easy way.  One pinioned her while the other took a large pair of what looked like sheep-shears and cut up the front of her skirt and through her belt, and then up the front of the jacket.  The skirt fell away and the jacket hung open from her shoulders.  He then ripped off her tights and knickers in two seconds, so ruthlessly that her legs left the ground.  Taking the neck of her sweater, he ripped that down over her shoulders with such force that it tore down the sternum.  Feeling inside for her bra and wrenched it out so that it snapped in the middle.  The other man pushed her forwards and pulled away the tattered remains of her jacket, sweater and bra.  Despite her frantic struggles, she was naked in less than fifteen seconds.  She tried to cover her pussy and tits with her hands, but these were pulled away and forced behind her back.

All the while, she screamed obscenities.  As a writer, I've always loathed the descent into verbal obscenity, not from prudishness, but because of its sheer stultifying monotony.

"You fucking cunts!" she screamed.  "You fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking cunts!  Let me go you cunts!  You fucking cunts!"  And so on and so on, though it was amusing to see how easily the veneer of urbane sophistication was stripped from Celia, along with her clothes.

"Strap her on the table!" snapped Griselda, as soon as Celia was naked.

One man seized her thrashing ankles, the other held her arms pinioned, and they swung her up onto the table.  She fought like a fury but they were far too strong for her.  One held her ankles hard down on the bench top while the other restrained her wrists with two straps that were already fastened to the wood near the corners.  Then they took an ankle each and strapped those to the bench corners too, leaving her spread-eagled.

"You can go!" said Griselda imperiously, looking away.  The men nodded towards her and obediently left, leaving Celia naked and writhing impotently on the bench top.

I noticed that her blonde pubic hair was cut in a Brazilian.  I remember being mildly surprised.  I'd assumed that she shaved it, though I hadn't thought of it much — I'd never fancied the bitch.  Nevertheless, I couldn't resist wandering across to the table and stroking it, not for any sexual pleasure, for I felt none, but because of the power it gave me over her helplessness.  She tried to spit at me too, but her mouth was dry.  I saw from here eyes that she was terrified now.

"How the hell are you going to get away with this you demented fucking throwbacks!" she was screaming, squirming, trying and failing again to spit in my face.  "God, I'll sue you for this you fucking cunts.  I'll fucking sue for fucking millions I will, you fucking cunts."

Meanwhile, I heard a deferential cough at my elbow. 

"Sherry, sir — er, before we start."

I turned to see Thwacks at my elbow, proffering a silver tray on which stood two glasses.

I took mine and he offered the other to Griselda, who threw it back with one gulp and then stared hard at it, as though it were the useless end of a broken lifeline.  Then she looked up into my face and here own was ashen. 

From outside my fiend of vision, Thwacks coughed again, not deferentially this time but insistently.  Griselda shivered and seemed momentarily paralysed.  She seemed to have shrunk, and I realised her true position here.  She was not in charge, but merely a figurehead, acting as the council expected her too, according to the laws the council had passed.  She had been acting on those laws when she took steps to apprehend and arrest Celia.  And whatever she did now, she would do under those same orders. 

I gently took the empty glass from her hand and replaced it with my own full one.

"Here," I said gently.  "Drink this too."

She looked at the glass, and then at me once more, and I saw that she realised I understood.  It seemed to bring her back to life.

"Thanks, Owen."

She knocked back the drink and blew.  "Carry on, Thwacks!" she barked, much as I imagined Admiral Lord Shackles would have done.  But instead of looking on, she turned abruptly away...

Thwacks laid down the tray and took a long wooden box from one of the shelves.  Carrying it across to the bench, he laid it on between Celia's struggling feet.  He opened it and retrieved a long needle, like a knitting needle, highly burnished with a slender, tapering point.  I imagined that it was not only viciously sharp, but also incredible strong.  He walked to the head of the bench and held the thing before Celia's horrified eyes.

"No!" she screamed.  "No!"

Her breasts were quite small, but well-shaped and firm, standing up like two conical hillocks crowned with brown autumnal trees.  With his free hand, Thwacks seized the left one by the nipple and pulled it vertically so it stretched, as you stretch a balloon before inflating it.

"Get off my tits you randy fucking cunt!" yelled Celia.

Thwacks ignored her.  With the precision and detachment of a man decanting port, he inserted the long needle into Celia's left breast, through the aureole, just behind the nipple.  She screamed.

"AAAAAAARGH!"

While she screamed and writhed pointlessly against her restraint, I watched the punctured breast with fascination.  The skin on the nearer side of her aureole started to pucker and erupt to a blunt point.  Then, with a piercing scream from Celia, it burst and the needle emerged from it.  Celia left breast was pierced right through, now.  Still she thrashed and screamed.

"AAAAAAARGH!  AAAAAAARGH!  AAAAAAARGH!  Pull it out you sadistic fucking cunt!  AAAAAAARGH!  AAAAAAARGH!"

Thwacks ignored her utterly.  With slow deliberation, he walked round the head of the table, seized Celia's right breast by the nipple and stretched it vertically too.  Slowly and precisely he inserted the needle through the right aureole, also just behind the nipple.  Celia was shrieking like a mad thing now, her whole body thrashing against her restraints.

Foolishly, I thought that was the end of the softening up and Griselda would now start the interrogation.  I watched her as she stood like a statue, her back to the table, her arms folded tight, as if she was cast in bronze and unable to move.  Surely, she would step forward now and start bawling questions.  But Celia's torment was only starting.

Thwacks went back to the box.  He took out two pierced rings with wing nuts.  One he attached to the sharp end of the needle, above the tapering point, so that Celia's punctured and quivering breasts couldn't slip off the sharp end.  The other, I noticed, was slotted.  He snapped it onto the very centre of the needle, equidistant between the two swelling nipples and turned the wing nut, locking it tight.  Walking slowly to the wall, he freed one the suspension chains from its tether and attached the end of it to the ring at the needle's centre.  Reaching out, he grasped a pulley rope and pulled.

Celia's back spasmed and arched as the pulley stretched her punctured breasts skywards. 

"AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRGH!"

Tethered to the corers of the bench, her spread-eagled hands and feet scrabbled desperately to gain a purchase on the smooth wooden surface.   She wasn't screaming now; her head was thrown back, her mouth was open like a landed fish's, her lips reaching, as if for air, and she was breathing in low moaning gasps. 

Thwacks now returned to his box and withdrew another, much smaller box of black plastic with some leads and plugs attached.  He inserted a small plug into the needle's blunt, bulbous end, and the other he plugged into the wall socket.  He snapped a switch on the black box. 

I expected to see a violent, jerking reaction as electric current surged through Celia's breasts, but there was no immediate change.  Seconds ticked by.  Celia twitched and whimpered, her back arched, her hands and feet pitifully scrabbling to relieve her mutilated breasts of their cruel tension.  Then, as I watched, the panting became more bovine, Celia's hands and feet scrabbled ever more frantically at the wooden surface, as if for life itself, and I saw that the needle's bright slender surface was growing dull.  Bloody hell, I thought.  It's heating up.  Celia's stomach muscles flexed now with a grisly gyrating rhythm, her whole abdomen rolling like an expert belly dancer, only belly dancers don't pant and scream so. 

"AAAAAAGH — AAAAAAGH — AAAAAAGH — AAAAAAGH!"

For with the heat she had found her voice again.  Much as I loathed the bitch, I had to grit my teeth to endure that terrible screaming.

Still her heels drummed on  the bench top as she strained to spread her thighs wide as she could, as if giving birth, trying desperately to bend her knees and get some purchase on the table with her feet — anything to take some weight from her stretched and burning breasts.  It seemed she couldn't spread her legs wide enough.  She jerked her wide-open vulva into the air like a shameless, desperate whore, only whores don't scream like that, even when they're getting a thrashing.  But if I expected to see her breasts sizzling on the red-hot poker, I was to be disappointed for a moment.

"Switch it off!  Let her down!" snapped Griselda, jerking round, as if from a trance.

Without a single facial muscle twitching, Thwacks bowed deeply.  He walked slowly to the black box and snapped the switch, and grasping the suspension chain, he lowered Celia to the bench top, where she lay gasping and groaning.

Griselda looked down at her dispassionately, but I could see that her face was grey. 

"Let her recover her breath and her wits," she said.  "In the meantime, we'll have another drink.  God knows I need one."

     We didn't speak as we drank our sherry; in fact, we avoided each other's eyes now.  I've since learned since that in this situation you do.  There can be no small talk in a torture chamber while the necessary work is being done, not unless you're completely hardened to it.  Griselda wasn't.  I could see that from her stony expression, and I noticed that her hand shook.  It was a necessary duty for her and the sherry was a comfort for her, not a ghoulish embellishment.  She had the stomach for Celia's torture — just about, but she derived no relish from it.  I suppose, if I'm honest, I enjoyed seeing Celia squirm, at the outset at least.  How I loathed the evil bitch!  And for that reason too I couldn't meet Griselda's eye.  This was different from the sort of spanking and whipping that was common currency in nether Slype; this was brutal, mediaeval.  Yet from small acorns do great oak trees grow.  If you spank your wife for mowing over the cowslips, what do you do to serious and dangerous offenders?  I remembered thinking that as I watched the man in the garden, relentlessly strapping his wife's bare and quivering bottom.  Now I was finding out.

Griselda finished her sherry and walked across to the bench like a woman in a dream.  She stood there for a moment gazing down at her victim with pity.

"Look," she said in as reasonable a voice as she could muster, though it wobbled all the same.  "Agree to tell us what we want to know and the pain will stop.  Understand?  This can stop now if you see sense.  Refuse, and it will get worse.  Believe me, it can get a lot worse, and you will tell us in the end.  You must see that resistance is useless.  Well?"

Celia's eyes rotated glassily, her mouth worked but no sound came.  I had no idea what was going on in her reeling mind.

"Take your time," said Griselda.  "I don't want to hurt you more than I must.  Just give me some sign that you will cooperate."

Celia's mouth worked as though trying to summon spittle, but she had none to spit.  So she clenched her teeth for a mighty effort.

"FUCKING, FUCKING, FUCKING CUNT!"

She was mad.  The torture had driven her mad.   I knew she was stubborn but this was lunacy.  Griselda turned to me, and I could see from the pain in her eyes that she wanted the torture to stop but couldn't stop it until Celia talked.

I too stepped up to the bench and stood beside her.  "For God's sake, Celia," I muttered, despite myself.  "Do yourself a favour.  Talk.  Resistance is useless."

"HORSEFUCKING CUNTS!"

I sighed; Griselda sighed and seemed to crumble.  Whatever was done to Celia now, she'd well and truly brought it on herself.

Griselda turned away, and poured her own sherry now, her back to the bench, and downed it with a noisy slurp. 

"Carry on, Thwacks!" she said woodenly.

Yet if Griselda loathed what she had to do, Thwacks didn't.  He remained every inch the butler, and his face was impassive, but I glanced at his eyes.  They glinted with relish and the tip of his tongue slicked across his dry-as-dust lips, moistening them. 

"Ma'am," he bowed.

He returned to his box and withdrew another shorter and more slender needle. Griselda and I were standing at the foot of the table and we clearly saw him reach down into Celia's crotch, push his finger into the vulva and stroke up her clitoris.  Griselda flinched and turned away.  Celia groaned, though whether from pleasure, pain, or ghastly anticipation, I'm not sure, but she shrieked like a banshee as he took her clitoris between his fingernails and inserted the needle behind it. 

"If we sell her to the Arabs, ma'am," he observed casually.  "It will at least save them the trouble of circumcising her."

Griselda visibly shuddered.  "For pity's sake just do it!" she snapped.  "Get it over with!"

Thwacks remained inscrutable but his eyes glinted again.  "Ma'am."

I knew that the bastard was loving every minute of it.  Was this why Griselda hated him so?  I watched the deliberate slowness with which he plugged the lead attached to the shorter needle into the small box, the way he lingered before seizing the pulley, stretching Celia's breasts towards the ceiling again, and clicking the switch.

This time, we didn't have long to wait before the terrible screaming tore the air.  As Celia writhed, her arched body twisting in mid air, the needles canted this way and that, like rowboat tossed in a storm, her elastic smouldering breasts twisted and stretched as though she was desperately trying to rip them off their slender burning shaft, and lower down her crotch gyrated and pulled at the shorter needle in the same way — anything to be rid of the agony.   Small coils of smoke started to rise, and with them the savoury smell of roasting meat.  Never before had that smell of cooking so sickened me.

While she thrashed and screamed, the needles started to glow red.  Thwacks turned to us and inquired discreetly.  "More sherry, ma'am, sir?"

Griselda flinched away from him, gritting her teeth.  "For pity's sake!"

I too declined, but unlike Griselda's, my eyes were riveted to the obscene contorting thing on the bench.  Celia twisted impossibly in air like a pitchforked serpent as she danced her obscene limbo dance on the bench top. She'd had screamed herself hoarse.  Now she was bellowing like a stag, but no stag ever bellowed like Celia did.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!"

"How long does this go on for?" I asked Thwacks, unable to tear my tear my eyes away from the horror. 

"Until the good lady decides to be reasonable, sir," he answered impeccably, and without emotion, as a butler ought, and he dusted a mote of dust from his black tailcoat sleeve.  "But if I may say so, sir, I don't think she'll inconvenience you for very much longer."

Celia evacuated her bladder now.  Such were her contortions that the golden rain showered and fell all over the bench and the floor.  Griselda fled to a far corner of the room and I followed, but Thwacks, the fastidious butler, pulled a distressed face, set down the sherry bottle, donned pair of yellow rubber gloves, and started to mop it up with a large sponge.  The screaming became unbearable, the stench became unbearable, and every time Celia drew breath, I could hear her breasts sizzling horrible.  I felt sick.  Griselda covered her ears and sagged against the wall for support.  I put out my hand to support her but she irritably knocked it away.

"Not now, Owen!" 

Meanwhile, Thwacks drew close and coughed.   We could only just hear his voice above the inhuman screaming and the hiss of burning flesh.  "Excuse my interrupting, ma'am, sir, but I think the lady is trying to tell us that she's ready to cooperate now."

Griselda shut her eyes with immense relief and drew her hand across her eyes.  "Yes, yes, for pity's sake.  Switch the wretched thing off and let her down."

"Very good, ma'am."

The men came back in and took Celia off the table.  She hung between them like a doll, her face expressionless, as if the woman had already fled elsewhere, and only the charred throbbing flesh remained.  Her nipples and aureoles were scarred, black, and swollen right out of shape, and her crotch still quivered uncontrollably and she struggled to keep her thighs as wide as possible, for she could not bear the pain of closing her legs. 

"You understand, madam," said Thwacks a little later, after they had lashed Celia to a St Andrew's cross, "that your ordeal so far has been contrived simply to make certain parts of your body receptive to persuasion.  For example . . . . "

He reached down between her legs.  I saw his fingers go up into her crotch as she whimpered and struggled.  Suddenly, the fingers gave a tremendous jerk.  Celia leapt against her bonds and screamed her lungs out.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!"

I felt Griselda flinch at my side, but she said nothing.  Thwacks turned to us.  "I think the lady has regained her voice and is receptive to persuasion, ma'am, sir."

Griselda put down her riding crop and when she addressed Celia, I could see that her face was drained of colour.  "Now!  Let's get this over with as quickly and painlessly as possible."  She swallowed and her lips trembled.  "You know by now what we are prepared to do.  If you refuse to satisfactorily answer out questions, I shall order the men to put you back on the bench again.  So in your own best interests, cooperate.  Please cooperate.  Understood."

Celia groaned, her hanging mouth gaped, her eyes were dead and glazed, her chest laboured, and her breasts, recently so ripe and shapely, hung limp like dead, blackened meat about her lower ribs.  She was scarcely recognisable as the cocky woman who had strutted into my house with demands two-and-a-half weeks previously.

"Now," said Griselda briskly.  "We need the names of any other person you have told about your discoveries here.

"Peter."  The word was only just recognisable.

"You mean Owen."

"Yes, yes. Whatever."  She whimpered.  "Please stop the pain."

Griselda licked her lips.  "All in good time.  Who else?"

"No one.  Please."

"I said, who else!"

"No one, I swear.  Please.  I swear.  Pleeeease!"

Thwacks stepped forward again.  When she saw him approaching her, Celia started to struggle against the bonds.  Griselda turned away and her face was ghastly.  Celia screamed even before Thwacks touched her, but when her reached down into her crotch, took her swollen clitoris between his finger and thumb, and squeezed, she howled like a woman possessed.

"AAAAAAAA—AAAAAAAA—AAAAAAA—AAAAARGH!"

He stepped away again.

"Who else?" asked Griselda, still looking away.

"No one.  Please, please , don't let him hurt me again," sobbed Celia, so pitifully that I almost felt sorry for her.  "Please.  I'll tell you anything.  Please . . .  please . . . please . . ."

"And where have you stored the photographs?"

"In my car, on my laptop.  Nowhere else.  Please believe me.  Please.  Please!  Pleeeease!"

She howled and leapt again as Thwacks' fingers went to work once more on her swollen clitoris.

"PLEEEEASE!  PLEEEEASE!  PLEEEEASE!"

Thwacks' fingers went to work again.

"Where else?"

"Nowhere.  PLEEEEASE!  PLEEEEASE!  PLEEEEASE!"

"Where on your Internet backup?"

"Nowhere.  OH PLEEEEASE!"

"On which flash drive?"

"None.  PLEEEEASE!"

Thwacks was still pinching and manipulating her clitoris, clearly enjoying it, though like all true sadists, he looked ever regretful, thought I noticed how he lingered at his work.  Celia thrashed, pleaded, and screamed incessantly.

"AAAAARGH. No. Pleeeease.  I've told you everything!  PLEEEEASE."

"Perhaps," said Griselda patiently.  "Let's just go through it again to make sure you haven't forgotten anything.

Celia's face hung grey and haggard.  She shuddered and her hips began to eave in a grisly rotating dance as Thwacks' fingers delved back into her crotch.

"PLEEEASE.  No!  PLEEEASE!"  she whimpered.  "Not more.  No more.  I can't stand any more.  PLEEEASE! " 

The merciless fingers jerked and pinched.  Celia leapt and bellowed her lungs out. 

"PLEEEEASE!  PLEEEEASE!  PLEEEEASE!  I've told you everything!  Mercy!   MERCY!  Pleeeease, I beg you!"  And her voice trailed away to a sob.

Griselda turned enquiringly to me.  Her face was as grey as Celia's.  I too must have looked shaky.  I felt sick, and my legs trembled.  Griselda and I stared at each other like cold ashes.

"Well, Owen?"

"She'd tell us if she knew," I whispered hoarsely.

"I agree."

"I know she's telling the truth," I said, not because I felt for Celia, but because I believed it to be so.  "She cares for no one; she'd hold out for no one.  And she'd have kept her little scam to herself for as long as possible, hoping to maximise the proceeds.  It's the way the bitch works."

"Well," Griselda demanded of the grey haggard wretch on the cross, for that's all she was now.  "Have you told us everything?"

Thwacks' eager fingers delved again.

"Yes, yes, YES.  Oh, for God's sake!  Pleeeease stop the terrible pain!  MERCY!  PLEEEASE!"

Griselda considered for a moment and then nodded at no one in particular.  She turned to Thwacks.  "It's finished!"

But Thwacks' fingers still hovered close to Celia's crotch.  I saw the spasm of disappointment flicker across his rigid countenance.  The fingers twitched and moved minutely back towards Celia.  Griselda snatched up her riding crop, stamped across, and cut him viciously across the wrist.  He yelped and sprang back, nursing his injured wrist and glaring fury like a cornered beast.  

"Are you deaf?" Griselda screamed at him, and her face was terrible to behold.  "I told you it was over.  Clean her up!  Give her something for the pain!  Call the council for tomorrow morning!  Move yourself!"

Thwacks fought to control himself.  His visible anger flickered, and then slowly faded behind his inscrutable countenance.  He bowed stiffly.  "Very good ma'am."

*****

The woodsman drove me back home in the Land Rover.  He'd been one of those who had stripped Celia, and strapped her to the bench and the St Andrew's cross.  We said nothing on the way to the village.  Such procedures breed reticence.  I studied him.  He looked an ordinary and decent enough type.  I had always supposed I was too.  Imperative breeds brutality.

11. Trial and retribution

He picked me up again and drove me back to Nether Towers next morning. I had noticed how quiet Ginny was at breakfast.  She usually prattled, sometimes irritatingly so, but that morning she was as quiet as a mouse.  I noticed how heads turned and stares followed us as we drove round the green and took the hill road to the Towers.   It seemed that everyone knew something terrible was happening, though not what and why, but terrible all the same.  Even inside the Land Rover, I could feel the atmosphere.

The tribunal was held in the mansion's great hall.  It was a harsh affair and I wondered why they bothered with it.  But people seem to feel better when the ceremony of law is observed, no matter how bizarrely.  In the event, horror descended into farce, and I've sometimes wondered since if the farce was, in its way, worse than the horror.

The council of ten sat across the bench.  According to the rule, if their decision was hung, Griselda would decide the outcome, but that wouldn't happen today as Ned Grackley had died the previous month and not yet been replaced, so there were only nine of them. 

The chairman read the charge.  The prisoner wasn't asked to plead because guilt was assumed.  Like all English trials back in the seventeenth century and earlier, it was merely a demonstration of guilt, not an enquiry into it.  Celia was asked to affirm her confession of the night before.  She was still naked and would remain naked now until she left Nether Slype.  This was symbolic and deeply traditional, though to me unnecessary.  But to the Nether Slypers, she was no longer a person, and as such, she possessed nothing, not even a stitch of clothing. She would take nothing away with her, least of all dignity, so not even the smallest pair of knickers was required protect the modesty she could no longer possess.

But Celia cared no longer for modesty or dignity, even if she had been allowed any.  She dangled before the council, her face grey and haggard like an old woman's, a man holding her up on either side, her private parts exposed for inspection.  Everyone could see the punctures near the swollen, blistered, blue-black tips of her abused breasts, and you didn't have to look hard to see the scorch marks in her pubic hair, or where her mutilated and distended clitoris poked out like a bloody chancre between the misshapen lips of her pudenda.  And, of course, she couldn't close her legs.  The way her guards held her, shoulders back, they splayed apart and her whole crotch was displayed to casual view, as if she was offering her tortured sex to the council for their pleasure. 

But these clear marks of excruciating torture earned her no pity.

"The prisoner will stand forward!"

Her two guards jerked her forwards, her mutilated breasts swung against each other and she gasped.  

"The prisoner will affirm that her confession was freely and frankly given."

Celia seemed not to hear what she was told; she was in a daze or another world entirely.  She hung between her guards like damp washing, open mouthed, dead eyed, and uncomprehending.

Thwacks stepped up to her.  "The word is yes, madam."

Her eyes rotated towards him her mouth lolled.  "Wha?"  She couldn't even articulate the word.

"You say yes to the judges, madam."

"Wha?  No . . . I . . . thy . . . ."

Thwacks turned to the bench and coughed apologetically.  The nine councillors gazed intently at their table top while he gently took hold of the tips Celia's mutilated breasts and started rubbing her nipples with his thumbs.  She gasped and gurgled, her body twitching, but in a half-hearted sort of way, her head lolling back as she struggled pointlessly against the men holding her, who also looked away.

"The word we're looking for is yes, madam."

"Wha?  No  . . .  I—"

Thwacks viciously twisted the blue-back swellings.  Celia's legs thrashed in the air and she screamed a jagged, blood-chilling scream.

"AAAAAAAARGH!  YES!  YES!  YES!"

"The record will state that the prisoner confessed of her own free will," said the chairman, white faced, but otherwise unmoved as he stared hard at his fingernails.  "And without undue duress."  He swallowed and turned obsequiously to Griselda.  "I believe, your ladyship, that you have evidence to give?"

Griselda took a deep breath and rose. "Only insofar as it links the woman to the man.  Her guilt is plain."

The chairman simpered.  "As your ladyship says." He turned to the court and bellowed.  "Bring the man forward." 

I noted that the council never used the prisoners' names, I supposed this was because the prisoners, no longer being recognised as people, had none.  This was the most refined indignity.

Meanwhile, the man who had been Flavius was dragged forward also naked.  I had never seen him before and he appeared much older than I expected, though that might have been the result of madness and years in a dungeon.  He was short and grey haired, with a distended paunch and a flaccid penis that hung down to his knees.  His lower lip drooped like a simpleton's.

"Has the man confessed?"

Thwacks stepped forward again, lifted Flavius's penis revealing a distended but very full testicle sack.  Taking hold of the testicles in his hand, he jerked and squeezed.  Flavius jolted, his eyes popped, and he shrieked like a woman.

"It sounded to like yes to me, sir," commented Thwacks with impeccable gravity.

"I heard it quite distinctly," agreed the chairman, staring hard at the tabletop in front of him. "The record will state that the prisoner confessed of his own free will, without undue duress."  He then turned obsequiously to Griselda.  "In your own time, your ladyship."

Griselda rehearsed the story she, Ruth, and I had concocted, though I'm being overmodest putting it like that.  Primarily, it was my tale.

She said that Celia was a freelance reporter — the confession she'd signed with an unrecognisable squiggle said as much — hoping to sell a story about Nether Slype to the Sunday press.  We'd recovered pictures from her laptop, left in her car a mile back up the lane from the village.  These we showed to the council as 'proof' of the allegation.

Somehow — we weren't sure how, perhaps through his family — she had discovered, or suspected, that Griselda's husband was being kept under restraint at the Towers.  Her proposed coup was not only to publish her scurrilous account, but to produce Flavius as living proof.  The two had conferred and agreed to this, their confessions confirmed it.

"But, excuse me, you ladyship," queried the chairman deferentially.  "How did they do this?  My understanding is that your husband has been incarcerated in the dungeons for years, on account of his — er — dangerous propensities."

"She knew the times when Thwacks and I would be out and about the estates," lied Griselda with remarkable steadiness.  "And when there are few servants left in and around the Towers.  It was not difficult for her to gain access, hide in one of the unused rooms, and make her way down to the dungeons when the coast was clear."

"You must improve your security, your ladyship," simpered the chairman, wagging an indulgent finger at her.

Griselda bridled at his insolence, and then fought to calm herself.  "It's already in hand," she said neutrally.  "Meanwhile, we have learned how the woman knew so much about us and our movements."

"How, your ladyship?"

I stepped forward now and slapped down on the bench a component I had removed from an old laptop of my own the night before.

"Phone bug," I said.

They all looked at it amazed.  Clearly, none of them had seen one before, which was as well.

"I had suspected as much," I said blandly.  "My family used to mine diamonds in South Africa.  At one time, there were attempts to intercept our randomly timed and routed shipments.  We called the police, they checked security, and found bugs attached to several of our own phones.  They looked remarkably like this."

It was the merest moonshine, but it convinced the council, as it was intended to.  The logic was simple: if a bug was there, it was there for a reason and a purpose.  This was obviously the purpose alleged because no other was known.  Therefore the allegation was proved.

Ruth gave the fiction further substance with a slightly revised version of Celia's arrival at the pub.

"She started asking me questions about her ladyship's husband, and Mr Flaythm."

"And what did you do?" asked the chairman.

"Gave non-committal answers and immediately informed Mr Flaythm."

"And I immediately informed her ladyship," I said.  "We expected the woman to return, so we deployed men to trap her.  We had a couple of near misses.  She was seen lurking near here watching the Towers one Sunday morning when her ladyship and most of her staff were at church in the village.  I thought I saw her on another occasion, lurking near my house when I arrived home.  But on those occasions both I and the man who spotted her prowling round the Towers hung back.  Neither of us was in a position to make a clean capture, and a bungled attempt might have scared her off and caused her to make some precipitate disclosure to the press."

"You both behaved very wisely," said the chairman, and the rest of the council rumbled agreement.

"However, yesterday we managed to make a clean capture." 

"We are in your debt," said the chairman.  "Indeed, we're obliged to everyone involved."

"Hear!  Hear!" cheered the other councillors.

The case for the prosecution was complete — there was no defence.  The councillors huddled for only a few perfunctory seconds before reaching their verdict.

"We find the case against both prisoners proved beyond question," said the chairman.  "Their confessions are proof alone, and these have been corroborated by the three witnesses, and this nasty little gadget."  He pointed gingerly at my laptop component.   "We assume that when the female prisoner was loitering round your house, Mr Flaythm, that she intended to place another device in your own phone."

I'd never thought of that, but I wasn't going to admit it.  "That was my suspicion too, Mr Chairman.  I've checked my phone and it's clean, as are all the phones here at the Towers, which have also been checked."

"Much obliged for your thoroughness, Mr Flaythm.  The sentence of the court is the both prisoners be banished, having each first received one-hundred lashes at the public whipping post."

"Mr Chairman!"  Griselda jumped up.  "I plead we dispense with the public lashing, given the identity of the male prisoner."

The council huddled again.

"Agreed.  We have no wish to embarrass your ladyship.  The sentence is banishment.  Your ladyship has our leave to make the appropriate arrangements."

"And my marriage, Mr Chairman?"

"Dissolved as an inevitable consequence, your ladyship.  Your quondam husband no longer exists as far as this community is concerned.  It shall be cried throughout the three villages."

Griselda bowed.  "I'm obliged to the council."

"I hope that never happens again," said Griselda, as we walked through the December woods above the Towers, for we both needed fresh air.  "I know it's theatrical but it's the way they like it."

"Not good enough, Griselda," I countered.  "We must make sure that it doesn't."

"But how do we do that?"

"We just do it.  The trial was a farce."

"Complaining?"

"No.  I can't exactly do that, but—"

"It's the way it's always been done here, darling.  And you cannot always save just part of the thing you cherish.  You must take it whole or leave it whole."

"Meaning?"

"Well, you say you came here because you loved the place — part of an old England you thought dead.  But can we save that without also perpetuating what we've just attended?  That was the Old-England way too.  Remember?  They tortured people, their executions were horrible; hunger, want, injustice, brutality, and horrible prejudices were all rife in this never-never England you wanted to rediscover and live in.  My father and my grandfather knew that if you want to preserve part, you must preserve all.  We have a choice they said.  Perpetuate it all for as long as we can, or lose all.  An environment is not an a-la-carte menu, my father would say.  You can't choose to keep the bits you want and jettison the bits you don't."

"So we must either keep the torture and the trials, or we loose everything?"

"I think we have to, don't you?" she asked soberly.  "Loose it, I mean?"

"Yes," I agreed.  "It's too high a price to pay.  But we'll do it on our terms.  Perhaps we can save something, and this place will still be special."

"We?"

"Well," I said more gruffly than I meant.  "You can marry me now — if you still want to."

She slipped her arm back through mine.  "You still want to marry me, after what I did?"

"What we did.  And what we'll never do again."

12. Aftermath

But we didn't marry straight away.  After the interrogation and the trial, an embarrassed coolness developed between Griselda and me.  She invited me up Nether Towers for Christmas and I went, but there was none of the old canoodling in corners.  I found that I missed it.  I missed it a lot.  I missed it more in February when Ruth let me know that she had a new boyfriend and was close to being spoken for.

"There's no future for you and me," she said.  "You're Griselda's, whether you like it or not.  It's best we act accordingly."

Her lot had risen in the village since the arrest and trial.  She was something of a heroine among the women, and Mrs Brittles had offered her a partnership at the village tearooms.  She snapped it up.  Who wouldn't have done so in her place?  As a result, men regarded her as a more attractive and respectable proposition than a pub kitchen maid any man in the village could spank for the price of a beer.

We remained friends, we still are friends, but she no longer came to my bed with those delicious long breasts.  I missed her warmth, and I missed Griselda's too.  In fact, in a way I missed Griselda's more.  Despite my early suspicions of her plans for Flavius, she had been funny.  She had brought sunshine and amusement into my life from the outset, and I knew she had a lot of warmth and love to offer too.  But still the distance remained, and the gulf seemed somehow unbridgeable.

I followed the police investigation of Celia's disappearance.  They never came anywhere near Nether Slype.  Her compulsive secrecy frustrated them.  She had left no clue to what she was doing or where she was going, other than the files on her laptop, and we had incinerated that.  We had incinerated that.  In the end, they assumed that she had fallen foul of one of her many estranged lovers.  I pitied their taste in women.  Griselda and I never discussed the case.  For a while, we discussed nothing at all.

Then, out of the blue, I received another invitation from her.  There had been another death on the council of ten, and I had been elected to it.  More surprisingly, Ruth had too, the first even woman member, apart from Griselda herself.  We had to attend monthly meetings up at Nether Towers, but on this occasion, Griselda invited us all for dinner instead, with wives and partners invited.  Ruth's new boyfriend was with her, and Griselda and I found ourselves paired.  We played our parts sociably enough yet the awkwardness remained between us.

But at one point in the evening Griselda sidled up to me and whispered in my ear.  "Owen, will you stay for a while when they've gone?"

"Why especially?"

"We need to talk.  Don't we!"

"I want to," I said, wishing that the courage to make the first move had been mine.  "I miss you, Griselda."

She briefly squeezed my arm.  "Later."  And she drifted off.

Later we sat by her large open fire kin her comfortable drawing room, watching flames consume a log the size of a small tree trunk.  Neither of us had spoken for several minutes.  We'd just sat together and watched the flames.

"I've retired Thwacks," she said suddenly.

Then it struck me that I hadn't seen him all evening. 

"Why especially?"

"I couldn't stand being in the same room with him.  Every time he said, sherry, ma'am, I remembered that awful interrogation and wanted to run outside screaming.  The man is such a sadist.  He didn't do what he did to that woman because he had to, as you and I did, but because he loved doing it.  One of the maids told me that she heard screams from the cellars later, and saw him coming up from them in the early hours.  He'd been down there again to enjoy himself, hours after I'd told him that it was finished.  Sadist!"

"But aren't we all?"

She sighed.  "Yes.  We all like inflicting and receiving a little pain now and then, Owen, but there are degrees.  The woman had told us all she knew.  It was over.  I had told him it so."

"So what was your objection, his sadism or his disobedience?"

"Both.  The sadism for obvious reason, but the disobedience too.  Obedience at such times is essential.  Excessive measures must always be disciplined and subject to rules and reasons." 

"It must.  And that's what's come between us, isn't it?  The awful responsibility we share.  The fact that we obeyed the rules despite our horror of them."

She bowed her head.  "Yes, it has, and I wish it hadn't."

"Me too."

She stared into the fire.  "Look, I know we're strange here, but we have our limits — usually.  Wives can divorce their husbands, you know, and appeal to the council for protection.  A real brute can be restrained.  It's basically consensual."

"Not always," I said.

"You mean your girl, Ginny."  She bit her lip.  "Yes, I'm sorry about that.  I thought she was letting you down and I so wanted to make everything right for you and me that I lost my temper.  It wasn't my place to whip her, but yours."

"It wasn't mine either, or to whip Heather.  At least, most outside the three villages would say so."

"Perhaps they would, but they weren't born here.  We are isolated, Owen, and we have stood still  while the world outside changed.  They would say they progressed, but I would demur.  I've been to London many times, and I haven't seen much social progress.  But mostly I think it's because a certain lifestyle is in our blood, our genes.  We have to do it, give it or receive it.  It's the way we're made.  It's our culture."

I laughed grimly and she looked at me nervously.  "I think I might have Flaythm blood, after all.  I did rather hold you jacket while Celia was being interrogated.  Not physically perhaps, but you know what I mean."

"And you have to admit, Owen, that you derived far more satisfaction from it than I did."

"At the start perhaps.  But not for long."

But I knew that she was right to a point.  I had wanted to see Celia taken down because I had loathed the bitch, and what she had threatened to do to us all.  Griselda had acted solely from duty.

 

"Shall I put on some music?" She asked suddenly.

"Music?"

"I want to get that noise out of my head.  It still haunts me.  Now Thwacks has gone it will be easier.  He had to go.  He had a way of half-smiling.  Every time he did so, I heard that woman scream again.  I've heard many girls scream when they're getting the strap or whatever, but never like that — nothing at all like that."  She hugged herself and looked ashen.

I reached across and squeezed her hand.  "At least we can talk about it now, Griselda."

She walked across to her hi-fi, a surprisingly up-to-date one I thought, for I had half expected her to crank a handle and put on a crackly seventy-eight.  She selected a CD, inserted it into the slot, and a few seconds later I heard the opening bars of Vaughan Williams' fifth symphony, which I have loved since I was an adolescent.  It seemed almost obscene to hear such serene beauty after what had gone on downstairs, and yet, as the sound washed over me the screaming subsided to the back of my mind.

"I've loved this since I was a teenager," I said.

"Mmmm!  Me too.  I often hear it in my head when I look down the approach road and see the distant Welsh hills.  It's what I fight for, you see.  But look" — she took a deep juddering breath — "that was only the third time Thwacks had used the needles since my father died.  The other two were men — both from the three villages.  One had tried to corrupt a child and the other had done something similar to what woman Celia wanted to do.  Thwacks put the needles in different places, of course, but the result was the same.  Not pleasant."

I don't know why — it must have been delayed shock — but I laughed.

Griselda's eyes turned on me, large, and somehow vulnerable.  "What's so funny about it?"

"It's the first time I've ever heard you use an understatement."

"I know," she said at last. "I was bloody ghastly, wasn't it?   Hideous.  Almost unbearable.  But it's the way it's always been here."

"Then we'll have to change it," I suggested softly, as I had after the trial.

"And put our way of life at risk?"

"If we don't do it on our terms, Griselda, someone else will, and we'll surely lose it all one day."

"But we shall anyway, if we start to change.  Remember what my father said.  He was right, you know."

"But the loss will be slower, smoother and, in the end, not missed so much.  You can't keep history in chains, Griselda, much as you might wish to.  And hopefully we'll be able to retain something, if we all want to.  Nether Slype will still be special."

There was a long silence, then she walked slowly across and sat on the arm of my chair, very close, like she had to a few seconds on the day I met her, but this time she lingered and her hand found mine.

"Will you help me?"

"Of course."

"I'm glad you're here, Owen, even if you don't want to marry me — especially after this.   I feel perhaps you don't, but duty had to come first you see, even though I knew it would break my heart if you left."

"Would it?"

"Yes."

"Really?"

"Yes."

"Nothing to worry about then," I said huskily.  I drew her off the chair arm, and onto my lap, and hugged her properly for the first time ever.  Then I kissed her for the first time too.  Till then, she had always kissed me. Then we sat in silence together, listening to the heavenly music.

We didn't jump straight into bed together, though I'd eagerly have taken her upstairs there and then.  For now that the awkwardness between us was dissolved and we could talk about necessary things, I was desperate to make up for lost time.  But Griselda had to do things properly. The bans were read three times and during that period there was no hanky panky, though she resumed pushing me up against trees, walls, doors and just about anything vertical she could conveniently prop me against while she devoured my face.  But that was as far as it went.

One good work I did was to find Ginny another position with an elderly widowed lady, who thought the world of her and provided her with her own little cottage next door, so that she and her boyfriend would have somewhere to live when they married, which Ginny told me, they were planning to do. 

Griselda and I married in early April, just as the trees were staring to leaf, and I was amazed to think that I had been in the village for less than a year.  But during that time, my world had changed utterly.  For worse, and also for better.  When the day arrived, the church was packed and the churchyard was full of people who couldn't get inside for the crush.  I waited by the altar with Ted Foxter, praying that Griselda wouldn't change her mind at the last minute.  When she did arrive, wearing a white dress — not a wedding dress but a simple thing of sheer white — her hand continually twitched as though she were slapping her thigh with a riding crop, even though she'd left it at home for once.  She marched up to the front, grabbed hold of me, looked round to make sure everyone was there, and barked.  "Right!  Let's get on with it!"

I think horsewomen develop large nipples from all that jogging up and down.  Their nipples must be perpetually rubbed.  When I went into our bedroom that night, Griselda was sitting up in bed wearing a cotton nightdress with a low neck.  Her cleavage was deep and delightfully freckled.  Her nipples, I noticed were long and poked through her thin nightdress like twin naval guns under covers.  My mouth watered. I'd get to grips with all that in a minute.  In the meantime, I had an important point to make, so I marched up to the bed and tore the covers down.

"We're going to start as we mean to go on, Griselda," I said sternly.

"Whatever you say, husband."

"Nightdress off!"

"Yes husband."

She lifted the nightdress, her magnificent tits splayed out into full view and I salivated.  Lying back, she opened her legs.  Her pussy was carpeted with luxuriant chestnut curls and her pink crack was open, waiting for me.  I'd get round to that in a minute too. 

"You do understand that you're no longer in charge here, don't you Griselda?"

"Of course.  You're my husband and master now."

"Just so."

So I unbuckled my trouser belt and pulled it out of the loops, wrapping it round my hand twice, as I'd seen the man in the garden do.  Griselda's eyes were like plates.

"Are you going to spank me before you've shagged me, husband?" she asked eagerly.  "Or afterwards?"

"I'm going to do it now.  You're going to be severely strapped for what you did to Ginny.   Very severely strapped indeed.  You've had it coming"

"Yes, husband, I know I have.  That was very naughty and I deserve it.  You're right to punish me severely."

"On your stomach!"

"Yes husband."

She rolled over on her stomach and her magnificently developed horsewoman's bottom can into view.  I almost burst my fly zip.

"This is exciting isn't it!" she said eagerly.  "I haven't been spanked since my father gave me thirty of the riding crop on my twenty-first birthday.  I'll feel like a real woman now"

"Silence!  Grip the headboard rails!  Count!"

I raised my arm and the flying belt delivered a resounding blow across Griselda's big bare buttocks.  They quivered elastically and ecstatically.

"One, husband.  Isn't this exciting!"

"Quiet!"  I lifted my arm again.  There was a loud and the plump bottom quivered again.

"Two, husband."

I whipped her with a will now, laying it on as hard as I could.  She had given it and now she would have to take it back.  One thing I was very sure of; she would know who her husband was and which of us was in charge.  She could forget all about sending me to the dungeons as she had sent Flavius, and I felt no qualms.  She had defended the custom and now she would live by it, and if she ever stepped out of line, I would thrash her until she stepped back into line again. 

The thrashing continued and it was only after ten sound strokes that she started to labour.  Her strong horsewoman's thighs were working now and her beautifully sculpted white cheeks displayed a broadening red stripe across them.  I continued remorselessly.

"Ah!  Ten, husband."

Smack!

"Aaah!  Eleven, husband."

I saw her head go back, and she was gasping and jerking at every stroke.

Smack!

"Aaaaah!  Twelve, husband.  I'm so sorry husband."

I continued remorselessly.  Her thighs were twitching ceaselessly now and she was heaving her bottom up and down with a steady mechanical rhythm as people do when they're in pain. 

Smack!

"Aaaaah!  Ooooh!   Thirteen, husband.  I'm so, so sorry.  Please be merciful."

She was crying into her pillow, I heard the sob in her voice.  Her thighs wriggled and her plump darkening bottom cheeks twitched ever faster.  She was in severe pain now.  The point was sinking in.

Smack!

"Aaaaaaah!  Aaaaaaah!   Fourteen, husband.  No more, I beg you."

Her whole body twitched, I could hear her crying, but I couldn't let that soften me, any more than Ginny's screams had softened Griselda.

"I'll decide when you've been strapped severely enough, Griselda.  And you haven't been strapped nearly enough get."

"Of course, husband.  Please forgive my impertinence.  Please strap me to your heart's content."

Smack!

"Aaaaaaah!  Aaaaaaah!   Fifteen, husband."

Smack!

"Aaaaaaah!  Aaaaaaah!   Sixteen, husband."

Smack!

"Aaaaaaah!  Aaaaaaah!   Aaaaaaah!   Seventeen, husband.  Mercy!"

Smack!

"Aaaaaaah!  Aaaaaaah!   Aaaaaaah   Eighteen, husband.  Mercy!  I beg you!"

I'd made my point, and I'd enjoyed it.  "I'm finished now," I said calmly.  "Back under the covers!  On your back!  Legs open!  Crack open!"

"Yes husband."

I undressed while she wiped her eyes and composed herself. 

"I'm sorry, Griselda," I said, "but you've given enough of it, so now you'll have to take it back."

"Yes, husband.  You're right to correct my faults."

"Of course I am.  I'm your husband."

"Yes, husband."

I undressed, climbed on the bed, and onto Griselda.  I rubbed my cock gently but pleasurably on her pussy hair.

"And now, my dear," I whispered in her ear.  "At long last, I'm going to take my rightful possession of your cunt."

"Yes husband," she said, wrapping her legs right round me.  "It's waiting to pleasure you.  But please be gentle with it."

"Gentle?"  I laughed.  "It's been bouncing up and down on Bronco for God knows how many years.  It surely doesn't need gentleness!"

She swallowed.  "Bronco's in the corner, husband, next to the wardrobe."

I squirmed over and looked where she directed.  There, standing in the corner of the room was a very small, old, and tatty child's rocking horse."

"Where's the big, knobbly dildo?"

I felt her blush.  "There never was one.  I just loved talking about sexy things with you, hoping that talking about them would make them real.  No girl in the three villages wants to admit she's a virgin."

"You're a virgin?" I asked incredulously.

She bit her lip.  "I'm sorry I lied to you, darling.  Shall I fetch your strap for my further punishment?"

"Don't be silly," I whispered and kissed her as I slid my prick into her hot, tight, and responsive cunt.  "Oh!  That's better.  That's much better."

She hugged me tightly and gasped with pleasure.  "Enjoy it to your heart's content, my lord and master."