Nights and Maidens

I went upstairs for a shower and a shave. After that I went to breakfast. In the dining hall, a half-dozen Knights were standing about, sipping coffee with the listless, unfocused, look of the barely awake. They were languidly watching a dozen Maidens who were busily setting out the regular buffet and studiously ignoring their audience. One of the girls was Sabrina.

I had not spoken to her in a long time, so while it was against protocol to disturb the girls as they worked, I said "Good morning."

"Good morning, Sir," she replied, not even glancing up from her task organizing cutlery on one of the tables. But she instinctively brushed her left shoulder with her hand, as if making sure the strap of her little dress had not accidentally ridden up to breach the décolletage rule.

I was hoping for something more of a response. Whatever the reason for the chilling of our friendship, the events of this morning, and my leading part in them, had hardly helped. She thereafter ignored me, moving on to the next table. But I couldn't resist a puerile poke.

"Carry on."

"Thank you, Sir."

That was it. There was nothing of value for either of us to say. It felt as if something was leaving me, like an exhaled breath, like a shadow that fades as the light dims. I have spoken no more than a few sentences to her since.

I went to the window to check the weather. The day which had begun so brightly had turned bleak. A blustery wind rattled the panes and a light but dismal drizzle dappled and fogged the glass. Yet from somewhere distant there was shouting and laughter.

"Have you chosen yet?" Mike asked through a mouthful of toast, cheese and tomato.

"They're in the common room," someone else said.

I thanked them for the reminder. In contrast to the almost deserted dining hall, the lobby and the corridor leading to the common room was packed with people and noisy with idle chatter. There were both Knights and Maidens. As I approached the crowd parted and all heads turned to follow my progress. That should have made me feel self-important, but it just made me self-conscious.

Inside the room, the women abducted from the Maidenhall were arranged in a rough circle which took up most of the space. The captives sitting facing outwards, close enough that their shoulders were touching. All were blindfolded, and they were still in their undies and nighties. Tops had been pulled down off shoulders in the usual manner. Their wrists were still bound, stiffly, behind their backs, but now with silk rope, which was softer and therefore less abrasive than the nylon. (This was not intended simply out of mercy. It meant they would be this way for quite a while.) In the middle of the ring, four of the women were lying on their bellies, hog-tied and ball-gagged as well as blindfolded. Around the throat of each was tied a broad black ribbon with a name tag attached. They were Annabel and Olivia, and two others whom I knew by sight though not by name. One of these was the very first girl we'd captured when we took the Maidenhall.

Except for a few soft moans and whimpers, the room was unnervingly quiet. Two young Maidens were in attendance, with water bottles, sponges and towels. They stood back respectfully, their eyes downcast, as I entered the circle by stepping through a small gap in the corner nearest the doorway. One of them crouched beside the four prostrate bodies and I thought. in a moment of ill-at-ease conceit, that she was genuflecting. But she picked up a rope and leather strap and handed it to me. I took it and looked about, at all the young women facing away from me. I paused, though my decision had been made days before.

Alice was in the line opposite the door. She was still in her pyjama top, which had been drawn down to expose her breasts down to just above her nipples. Her knickers were still on backward. Though sightless, she seemed to know what was coming, because her fists were clenched so firmly that her knuckles reddened. Her body was slightly rocking, her head slowly rolling. When I nodded in her direction, the two attendant Maidens helped her to her feet, guided her into the centre of the circle next to the other four, and assisted her to lie down on her stomach. She went limp and uttered not a sound as I lifted her heels up to her backside.

She must have known it was me. For a second or two, our fingers touched and intertwined. The reversed panties covered little of her derrière; so as my fingertips brushed across the soft warm flesh to bind her wrists to her ankles, I felt it quiver and I heard her gasp. Her head was turned to the side, and her face, the part not concealed behind the blindfold, was flushed and sweaty. Her hair was disarrayed and moist with perspiration. The soles of her feet were begrimed with dried dirt and grass from the midnight trek through the forest. To my shame, all I could think was that I had never seen Alice so sexy.

When I released my hold and the tension of her bindings pulled on her arms and legs, she groaned and squirmed. An attendant handed me a large, red ball-gag and a black ribbon. I pressed the bulbous orb to Alice's lips. She made a weak gurgling sound but opened her mouth as I pushed it gently in. It forced her jaws wide apart but was pliable, so she bit down on it and the soft vinyl bulged slightly out from her teeth. The ball was perforated so she could breathe if necessary through it, although this produced a rather disconcerting wheezing noise. She grunted as I wrenched her head backwards to tighten and buckle the strap. I carefully tied the black ribbon about her throat, printed my name and hers on the small card that came with the plastic label.

Having done my duty, I left the room as one of the senior Commanders came in to perform his. In the doorway I turned back for another look. Alice had stopped wriggling, but her shoulders heaved as she puffed and panted. So she was breathing through her mouth, as you do when you're stressed or excited, and she was sucking in air through the holes in her gag so forcefully that a delicate froth of saliva bubbled from the corners of her mouth past the edges of the ball that filled it. I felt guilty that I had made her hog-tie so strict (though no more than on the women who lay beside her). Her body was flexed and arched backwards; and her head, instead of resting on one side, was facing directly ahead, putting strain on her neck. One of the attending Maidens was dabbing her forehead and cheeks with a wet sponge.

A weird thought flitted through my mind, that the sponge was soaked in vinegar; and it wasn't until I was back in the corridor that I understood the message. If a cock had crowed thrice I would not have been surprised. I had left Alice -- my friend, my confidante, my mentor, the unsung heroine of my rapid rise in the Order of the Temple -- lying on the floor bound and helpless and awaiting her fate.

***

No one had been kept deliberately or completely in the dark about the origins of the Temple and of Templar traditions. On the day after our arrival, we novitiates were each assigned a mentor, one of the older Knights whose job it was to show us the ropes and answer our questions. However, they focused on general and routine matters like rules and schedules. To that end, the history of the Order was basically irrelevant; and any really important insights into its workings we might wish to acquire were apparently to be gained through personal experience. Well, that was precisely what the Senior Master had told us on our very first evening.

More valuable for practical purposes were the counselling groups to which we first-year students were allocated. Attendance was compulsory, but most of us welcomed the opportunity to expand our knowledge and understanding.

All thirty novitiate Knights were freshmen, as were thirty of the thirty-six new Maidens. The larger intake of females each year was a puzzle at first, until it occurred to me that perhaps it was intended to offset a higher resignation rate expected for the Maidens. The Temple held a second recruitment later in the year, to maintain male numbers and increase female numbers to forty. Again, the gender disparity was to make up for the anticipated attrition. But the policy was founded on the expectation (itself a cogent commentary on the nature of the Order) that more girls would indeed quit than guys, when in reality this was not the case. As a consequence, the Maidens outnumbered the Knights by a substantial margin. At the end of my first year the tally was 121 Knights and 152 Maidens. Of course, this disproportion brought into starker relief the inequality between the

Compagnie

and the

Société

.

Lists were posted assigning us to the ten counselling groups. Each consisted of three males and three females, plus the group leader. And what stood out immediately was that all of the leaders were Maidens. But that made sense. For us males, it accorded us a perspective different from what we got from other Knights. The girls benefited because it enabled them to be a little more open about their feelings and opinions and enquiries. In fact, having both sexes in these groups provided one of the few points of contact (at least on an official basis) between the Knights and Maidens.

Kate's name was at the top of one list, and I was glad that mine was not on it. Unlike our mentor Knights, she and the other leaders served principally as academic counsellors, rendering advice and assistance on research and writing skills, citation conventions, computer usage and library procedures -- the stuff our course lecturers never got around to teaching us (because they seemed to think that we absorbed it through some process of intellectual osmosis).

The guys in the group besides myself were Ben and Zach. The latter occupied a place in the taxonomy between me and Ben, the nerd and the ne'er-do-well. As for the girls, Libby, Hannah and Rachel, each possessed what I call the Temple trifecta: beauty, brains and appealing personality. On the whole, we were an engaging and attractive bunch. I don't want to come across as arrogant in saying this, but the fact is that it was hard not to think of the Templars as an elite, and that was due to the recruitment policies of the Order.

Yet the truth of the matter is that I felt in no sense part of a patriciate. Indeed, I found the very idea absurd as well as unsettling. For as dissimilar as Zach, Ben and I were in many ways, in others we were very much alike, socially awkward over-achievers, the walking wounded of the high school popularity wars, who suddenly found themselves in the role of the cool kids. The girls seemed to be more worldly wise and serious-minded, but we all, to some extent, had absorbed the "in-crowd" mentality.

Outside the group I rarely saw the girls around the Temple, except on every eighth day when they served dinner, and on a couple of occasions when I found one of them on laundry duty. On the other hand, I regularly saw our leader, Devashni, because she was one of my sister's roommates. Devi, as she was known, personified her name, which means divine. She was an exotically beautiful girl, half Indian and half something else, with intensely expressive eyes, a dazzling smile and a rich, melodic accent. Our introduction had been memorable, that Saturday morning when I first visited Kate in her dorm. Devi was insanely sexy in a tiny white mesh and lace teddy that almost glowed against her smooth-as-silk skin. Of course, at that time my attention was diverted by the outrageous Lucy, but when our group met for the first time a few days later, I made a half-witty reference to our previous encounter. She responded with a mystified frown and then a diffident smile, as if trying to recall the occasion; but she must have known who I was, so she was just being coy. In any case, it threw me off-kilter, which was probably her intent. The other three girls gave us each in turn a funny look. Ben and Zach stared at me and then at the lovely Devi, at once baffled and impressed.

As our leader, Devi cultivated this rather stand-offish manner, but when she let her guard down I found her to be warm and whimsical. Apart from Kate she was the girl in the Annexe with whom I had the most contact, my friendship with Sabrina having inexplicably cooled. Extremely intelligent, she was very knowledgeable about the university and supportive in her counselling; and I regretted that after three months the tutorials ended. Their usefulness in aiding our transition from school to university had reached the point of diminishing returns; but I missed the camaraderie that the weekly meetings provided. Of course, I could still speak to Devi when I visited Kate.

Libby I knew from my pre-university days. There were around a dozen alumni/alumnae from my high school

alma mater

amongst the Knights and Maidens -- a not surprising number considering it was one of the largest out-of-town schools from which the Templars recruited. Libby and I had both been members of the students' representative council (the sort of recruit the Templars favoured). In fact she was its president in our senior year. I remembered her as serene and sensible most of the time, but very passionate once she'd found a cause worthy of her time and effort.

Rachel was the girl who came directly after me at the interviews in Lakeside Village. I was intrigued by what motivated the daughter of a professor to join the Templars, but she was tight-lipped about the subject. She bristled defensively whenever I inquired, a reaction I found perplexing because about half of all the members were protégés, including myself. Eventually I learned that her mother had been a member of the old Order, before there were Knights and Maidens. Everyone of my generation looked upon those pioneers with awe, inspiration and appreciation. She was one of a handful of veterans remaining on the campus, and I was determined to secure an audience for my historical investigation.

Hannah combined sensual athleticism with a carefully crafted detachment. I think she enjoyed her aura of enigma. But novice Maidens generally behaved coolly towards neophyte Knights. When we socialized, like during that first-weekend party, they were friendly enough; but when it came to formal events or official business, such as our counselling sessions, they tended to be more aloof.

We seldom talked specifically about our gender roles in the Temple. At first I thought this was due to an unwritten, unspoken law, that it was too sensitive an issue to discuss openly. However, things are rarely so simple. On the few occasions when the topic did come up, Rachel in particular could be quite animated in her criticism of our -- that is, the males' -- sense of entitlement. This was always in a good-humored, even tongue-in-cheek way, but the barbs were prickly nonetheless. Whereas Libby was more reticent in expressing such thoughts. We both had trouble, even a little discomfort, adapting to our unfamiliar dynamic as noble Knight and obedient Maiden, because on the student council I had been her deputy, and we were also friendly academic rivals. Hannah, meanwhile, cultivated her image of pensive impartiality.

Most significantly, though somewhat bafflingly, whatever misgivings and disapproval the girls expressed (openly or obliquely), these were never directed at the Templar culture itself, only at how we males did not always appreciate our advantages. Devi liked to say that we should all strive to become "the best you can be". Normally this is one of those trite but true encouragement platitudes; but within the Order of the Temple what "you can be" depended on your gender.

Naturally I got to see all four girls at dinnertime. Devi was on duty the same nights as Kate. Indeed the roomies all worked the same roster, which made sense. Apart from my sister, the waitress who drew my attention -- in fact, who made the biggest impression -- was of course Lucy. She was just as spirited and provocative soaking up the attention in the packed hall as in the dorm. Like her fellow Maidens, she had to work to keep her dress from slipping down to her waist. She had a distinctive technique, thrusting out her chest to give it something to cling to (but also increasing the tension and therefore the chances of failure). That made her popular enough, but she flirted with everyone in trousers as she went about her chore. After our sensuous encounter in the dorm, whenever she was serving dinner she took extra special care of me. I received some envious and admiring looks from the guys around me. I was acquiring a reputation which I did not deserve.

Devi, on the other hand, barely acknowledged my existence; but that was how she treated all the diners. I could see it on her face that she did not like waitressing, of any kind, let alone in these circumstances. And three years of attending to the whims of a roomful of entitled, self-satisfied young males showed. She forced a thin-lipped smile whenever she got a compliment or a proposition. As she was standing next to my seat and reached across the table to refill a pitcher, the straps of her dress rode up onto her shoulders. In a move that had become automatic through long repetition, when she straightened up she drew them back down her arms. But as she did so, her eyes and mine met, and I detected a shade of self-consciousness.

Rachel and Libby maintained their remoteness. They never feigned amusement or pretended to like their chore. It was Hannah who surprised me, because she was the most even-tempered and hard-to-faze member of the group. When she was in a happy mood, which was most of the time, her smile could light up and warm up a wintry night; but in the dining hall she went about her duties with an aloof, haughty expression, as if looking down on those whom she was so diligently serving. Maybe she did, and I could hardly blame her. For this was something I began to pick up on, when I could finally see past the obvious... just as Kate had advised me to do that first morning. And one of the things I started to discern was that the girls found a source of pride in what they were and what they were not. Genuine solidarity arises from adversity, and strength comes from struggle. But the Maidens' struggle was not against the rules and customs of the Order, and certainly not against the Knights. It was against weakness, irresolution and evasion of responsibility. Which sounds very portentous, and I imagine that if I had presented these thoughts to the girls, most would have dismissed them with a metaphorical pat on the head. In fact (and I am getting ahead of my story here), when I later embarked on my quixotic campaign to reform the Templars, I never anticipated that the decisive opposition would come not from the overprivileged Knights but from the Maidens.

Yet at the time, what fascinated me about the Temple and the Order in general was that everyone took his or her role in stride. The girls were smart, self-assured and assertive, yet their place was to be subordinate and (to an extent) submissive. A few, such as the irrepressible Lucy, revelled in that persona. Most, like Kate and Devi, took pride in their service, their sacrifice, sense of duty and acceptance of tradition. In fact, for this reason I came to understand that the Maidens, and not the Knights, formed the bedrock of the Temple. The exemplary qualities celebrated in the name of their sisterhood were the very source of the Order's strength, solidarity and continuity. That might be counterintuitive; but in the course of my research into its history I'd observed that the relationship between the sexes had evolved, via both natural and self-selection, into something more symbiotic than cooperative... with ultimately detrimental consequences for the Knights.

Of course, we rookies were still in the earliest phase of adjustment, the girls to their obligations and auxiliary status as Maidens, we males to our privileged rank as Knights. The contrast was as stark as that, and each time we met as a group there was always the tacit, at times tense, acknowledgement that Ben, Zach and I, deserving or not, enjoyed certain rights which the girls -- not just the new ones but the long-serving Maidens like Devi -- did not share but were obliged to recognize and to honour. Our exalted status as Knights was a prize which we had done so far nothing to earn, an approbation we did not merit, a reward for responsibilities not yet taken up and for potential not yet fulfilled.