The Chateau Pt 03

"Where else might my path lead me? Foolish it is, this path; it goes in loops, perhaps it goes in circles. Let it go where it will, I will take it." (Hermann Hesse,

Siddhartha

)

After the Masters finished their banquet, they retired to the "sanctum", a drawing room that women never enter, except for housekeeping. (It is such a hallowed place that only the senior slaves, Lydia, Sabrina and a couple of others, are assigned this chore.) With the men thus absent, those of us females not on kitchen duty had time for dinner and ablutions. We eat well in the Château. The food is simple, but appetizing and nutritious. Although we are denied alcohol, we are permitted one cup of coffee and one of tea per day. We take our meals in the dining room but do not sit at the table. We kneel on the floor and eat in silence. We are not supervised, but no one disobeys the protocols.

The bathroom is located next to our sleeping quarters. There is only one for all the women. (Each Master's bedroom has its own.) We are allowed no privacy; there are not the facilities nor is there ever the time for us to perform our toiletries separately. In any case, showering together, like sleeping together, helps reinforce the bonds of our sisterhood. And the Masters may come in to watch us, although only the neophytes take much interest.

Afterwards, as normal, everyone in the house assembled in the courtyard for the entertainment. This evening most of the women were dismissed because the men had more games to play with the new slaves. And life in the Château is not all service and suffering. With so many of us women available, our chores do not fill all the hours. Most of the work is menial and repetitive, and very often redundant. You cannot scrub spotless floors more spotless. But they remind us to be humble, dutiful and conscientious. (We don't need to be reminded, but as slaves we must be.) Nevertheless, we have leisure. During the daytime we may stroll in the gardens, swim in the lake, read and study. There is a library, with armchairs and desks for the Masters and velvet cushions for the slaves. While television, computers, phones and newspapers are forbidden, an unspoken rule is that a woman using her "free" time in the library is never bothered. She can be called on at any time for any duty, but most of the Masters regard excessive demands as boorish. (They also never violate the sanctuary of our dormitory. It has no door, nor even a curtain for privacy, but it is no man's land. Only in there are the women allowed to converse without a male's permission. In return for this privilege, we never speak about the Masters.)

On this night, Sabrina and I were not dismissed. We had yet to be punished for my earlier indiscretion. It was, however, a light penalty this time, since my offence had been unintended, and in any case Master Eric was too preoccupied with the newly inducted slaves to come up with something more imaginative. After the requisite thrashing, we scrubbed all the toilets in the house until past midnight. They were already sparkling clean, naturally, but that was not the point.

When we returned to the bedchamber, the other sisters were asleep. They numbered about half the slaves in the house, the rest (including the newbies) sharing the Masters' beds; but the line of mattresses, which carpeted almost the entire floor, only just accommodated all their bodies, huddled, cuddled and snuggled. On the few occasions when the Masters forsook their nighttime privileges, it was a very snug fit. And some of the women took advantage of this. For although, strictly speaking, it was forbidden unless for the entertainment of the men, those whose affections were for their own sex made the most of it. The rest of us didn't mind, and sometimes we joined in. If discovered we were punished... but the Masters would always find some pretext to be punitive.

The mattress was cloud-soft goose down, the pillows of silk brocade -- the only luxury we enjoyed -- but there were no sheets or blankets, because the room was kept warm, and the vision of the row of naked slumbering bodies softly glowing under the dim yellow lamps that were never switched off had a dreamlike quality. Arms and legs twitched and bodies quivered to the tempo of actual dreams; and each tremor moved along the line like ripples in a shimmering pool of golden flesh. There were sighs and moans, and one girl whispered "No, no!" Even in sleep we could not escape the Masters' ministrations.

A small space had been left for Sabrina and me at the end of the bedding closest to the doorway. We squeezed ourselves onto it, Sabrina behind me. Her breasts pressed into my back and her nipples were still hard. Her body was warm, but when her hand rested on my shoulder it was ice-cold. As I lay awake, her breathing on the back of my neck grew slowly weaker.

We arose at dawn. Those of us assigned to breakfast preparation left immediately. I don't know how the roster is devised, because I never saw any logical order to the allocation of chores. It appeared so arbitrary or even haphazard -- you could be on kitchen detail three days in a row while other girls missed out -- that I suspect it may have been done that way to keep us on our toes or off balance... in either case just to make a point, that we should not expect consistent or equitable treatment. It was perhaps a reminder and a reinforcement of our status as the property of men; but I think it had another purpose. The regimen was harsh but not mechanically predictable. We were in the Château Chaînerie to be trained to become better slaves, not programmed to be automatons with vaginas or mindless drudges.

The rest of us had tasks, of course, since women are not permitted to be idle before the males are up and about. For most of the year the kitchen is the most favourable place to be, especially in the morning when our naked bodies have no protection against the cold. For that reason the best alternative is to be assigned heavy duties, like collecting and cutting wood for the Château's several fireplaces. Some of this is gathered from the surrounding forest, but the bulk of the supply is hauled from the estate's front gates, which are a long way from the house. (Delivery vehicles are not allowed past the fence which encircles the domain.) Even in the frosty depths of winter, trotting along the meandering, undulating path dragging a cart laden with timber quickly and delightfully warms exposed skin, benumbed limbs and shivering torsos.

On this particular morning I had table-setting duty in the dining room. With half a dozen pairs of hands it's the easiest job, but for that reason you can be inactive for perilously long periods, and you don't want to be caught slacking off by a bored Master who has nothing better to do than to scrutinize your workload. So I made regular trips to and from the kitchen. There the women were working nude while aprons hung unused from pegs on the wall. It's a matter of pride, albeit perverse, that a female never wears anything in the Château, even when slaving (literally) over a hot stove. Apart from Corinne giving terse, curt orders, nobody uttered a word.

Around mid-morning about half the women, including Lydia, returned to their lives outside the Château, along with several of the men. Two dozen slaves (including the new arrivals, naturally) and seven Masters remained. The men amused themselves with the neophytes until lunchtime while those of us given free time made the most of it. So, determined not to let my skillset slip, I spent three hours in the library finding out what I might be missing out on in the realm of physics (what used to be my sole life's work).

Afterwards, the males organized more games in the yard These put us through our paces as a demonstration for their two new comrades. The highlight was the pony-girl event. We were adorned with "tack" more elaborate that the rig I had seen on Desirée -- bridle and bit (with a vile rubber tongue depressor); halter, collar and reins; blinkers and martingale (the harness used to maintain the proper head bearing); and a bonnet with feathered plume. A tail was attached to my rear end, and though held in place with a butt-plug it was not otherwise secured. Since we were promised a severe whipping if it fell out, the technique was to constrict the buttocks, making movement more difficult but a flogging less likely. Our wrists were strapped behind our backs and our ankles hobbled so we could canter but not gallop. We were hitched up to sulkies. Four at a time we raced along the paths and around the gardens, urged on by our drivers with whip, rod and electric prod. We pranced and capered in the dressage event. The new girls, already worn and weary from their morning playtime, never faltered, though conceding the occasional "What have I let myself in for?" expression.

The games continued until late afternoon; and at the end of the day, dirty, smelly and exhausted, we were thoroughly pleased with ourselves for having passed every gruelling test. Leila emerged as champion. Tall, slim and sleek, with lustrous coffee-toned skin that gleams an aureate bronze in the sunlight, she is an accomplished athlete who has forsaken gold medals for the chains of our sisterhood. I somehow managed second place. Our reward was the honor of wearing the white garter for three days. It is worn around the left breast by a girl who has been especially pleasing to her Masters. She also becomes the object of the severest treatment, to remind her that vanity does not befit a slave.

After dinner, Leila and I were hog-tied and joined together, by our collars, a binary gag consisting of two fused balls, and a contrivance of four steel hooks welded together and inserted into our lower openings. We spent the rest of the night locked in our embrace. Linked so intimately to her partner, there was no way for either of us to ease the stress on her body or relieve the ferment. Each motion, each wiggle, each squirm increased the stimulation from the metal shafts lodged inside us. Leila and I puffed and panted. I felt the rapid pulses of her heartbeat through her breasts as they heaved against mine. The whiff of perspiration merged with her perfume, fragments of fragrance that had survived the afternoon's sweaty exertions, to compose a bouquet of sweet, seductive piquancy, like some exotic spice.

Every couple of hours one of the Masters would release us long enough for a sip of water and a chance to empty our bladders. Then, once we were rejoined, he administered a thrashing. Though fit and firm, one of the most resilient slaves in the house, Leila hates being flogged. She cried and yelped, and a fine spritz of spittle sprinkled my face as it erupted from out of the sides of her gag.

It was an interesting time. But it always is, in the Château.