Fred Bottomley and Mr. Hanspacker were ensconced in Hanspacker’s favourite bar. He was due to fly home soon and was bidding the place a sad farewell; now that he was about to leave England forever, he realized that it was not such a bad place at all. It sure as hell beat Switzerland! He had never been so mid-crushingly bored in all his days than when living there!
"So what have you to tell me?" asked Fred.
"You remember I saw this bare-ass-naked chick running round the wall, the time I stayed with you and your dear wife? Well I sure recognized her at the time but chose to keep my trap shut for the time being. Since then I have seen something really incredible and I think you ought to know!"
"You have?"
"Yeah. I knew at the time she was our mutual friend, Professor Granville’s wife. No mistaking that gorgeous honey, dressed or undressed! But that‘s only the half of it. Before I had to skip the country last Christmas I looked up Granville in "Who‘s Who." Some kind of impulse, I guess. But when I saw the entry. Well, guess what I found?"
"I give up! I never did much care for riddles and guessing games! What did you find?"
"Under the heading "Granville, Professor James E" it said "see Fortescue, Earl of"
"Fuck me!" ejaculated the normally well-spoken Fred. "The Girl is the wife of that nice Professor who glared at me as if I was something the cat had dragged in! And the Professor is a bloody Earl! You did say he was some kind of egghead, when we first discussed buying the castle. I suppose he knew from some local contact of his that I had just given that lovely wife of his a frightful belting on that sweet little bum of hers! No wonder he was none too chummy! I‘m lucky he didn‘t knock me out, which he certainly could - a big guy that that!"
He explained to the incredulous Hanspacker how his wife had enslaved a filthy beggar girl almost exactly a year ago and subjected her to more and more vile torments with every passing day, delighting in constructing an ever more elaborate regime of pain and humiliation. His distaste for all this beastliness together with his own shameful enforced part in it was why he hardly ever saw his wife any longer nor visited that castle unless it was absolutely necessary.
"What do you mean to do about this?" asked Hanspacker. " I feel your wife might be in some kind of danger. My guess is that the young woman has insinuated her way into the place for some reason connected with getting her husband’s family home back."
"I intend to do sweet bugger all, old sport. The wife has made her own bed. Let her lie in it! The Professor Earl is more than welcome to have the place back. Good luck to him and that lovely wife of his. If you knew the half of what that brave girl has put herself through, you‘d agree she has earned it!"
And then he thought fondly of the well-stacked and lovely Amy, who would never want to abuse and torture a fellow mortal -- sweet girl! He looked at his watch; soon he would be in her arms again!
Miss Parradine was working through the second page, transcribing it line by line and growing more and more excited. This was weirder than the first page!
"When the year and day is passed away
The Virgin Wife shall have her way
And seven times her naked form
Shall run around the Castle Wall.
At the stroke of Midnight, that witching hour,
The run shall be and the exile o’er!"
Miss Parradine looked at her watch. Eight PM. Plenty of time for Dorothy to throw the Girl out of the Castle and render her year’s exertions fruitless. Not that she believed any of this stuff and nonsense! She was an educated woman, not a superstitious peasant, daily looking up her horoscope in some trashy tabloid rag !
She got to her feet and pulled at the door. It was stuck fast! Try as she would, it was quite beyond her power to move it, not even by the merest fraction of a millimetre! This was the door that had been declared without fault and whose hinges were smooth and clear of obstruction. But she was stuck fast in this horrible dusty vault. It was then that Miss Parradine realized that she was helpless to alter the course of events. Soon the Girl would be the mistress of Fortescue Castle and she, Amelia Parradine and all the others who had connived at the daily torture of Cynthia, the lovely young Countess of Fortescue would be disgraced, or worse. She already felt the policeman’s hand on her shoulder and saw the Judge, stern and bewigged in his scarlet robe, passing sentence on them all, with Dorothy being put away for life!
Cynthia was still a little out of breath as she reached her darling husband's shuttered cottage. She had indeed run seven time around the walls and as she had finished, gasping because of her continuing weakness after the whipping the other day, the ghost of the old and long-dead Earl had appeared to her again. Words had been whispered into her ears and then the old reprobate had disappeared, with one final job to do -- terrorizing the wretched Dorothy Bottomley and the other two servants -- before going to his rest at last.
She scrabbled in the ground for a few minutes and found what she was looking for, in the shape of a leather pouch, inside which was the key to the cottage.
Still naked, she let herself in and went upstairs. Soon she was luxuriating in the blessed goodness of her first hot bath in many a long month. The wound to her back was healing well now and did not sting as she had feared it might. Finally she got out and looked at her back properly for the first time in a year and more.
"Not too bad! I doubt that scar will ever properly fade, but that’s OK! It’s a mark to bear with pride for the rest of my life!"
When the Whip had struck her, the lights had gone out and the ground had trembled horribly. The others had fled from the cellar and Cynthia found that the shackles had been loosened in some mysterious manner. Bleeding from the terrible effects of the one and only lash that she was ever to receive from the dreaded Whip, she had staggered back to her room. The others were still shell-shocked on the last day of Cynthia's servitude and the threat of the Whip had vanished forever.
The bath over, Cynthia emerged from the bathroom clad in her favorite fluffy pink bath-robe, the first clothes she’d worn for over a year. It was still night and she paced around the house for a while and then got into bed, warm and comfortable for a change and slept. She awoke at an hour or so after dawn and slipped out of bed and into a lovely hot shower! No more Spartan cold showers for her, ever!
Her husband should be on his way by now, as anxious as she to be reunited. Cynthia decided not to get dressed just yet, although she had already decided on what she would wear today, the first day of her freedom and future as the soon-to-be new Mistress of Fortescue Castle. Let the Professor be greeted by the sight of a naked Cynthia, when he finally turned up. What was keeping him?
She heard footsteps coming up the path. Cynthia in her eagerness, sped downstairs at the speed of light and pulled open the door, running down the path to meet the owner of those footsteps. In a second, her husband was clasping her in his arms, sobbing his relief and joy at being reunited with her after such a long time apart.
Finally he pushed her away to be at arms length. He took a long look at her.
"You look remarkably well considering those terrible reports I was getting from young Reg (the grocer’s boy). When I heard about your time clearing snow, I was on the verge of storming up to the Castle and dragging you away before you came to fatal harm. I admit I’d deeply like my family home back, but not at the price of your precious life! But you were always so sure of yourself and what you were determined to do. So I calmed down and let it ride. I had faith in you!"
They stopped talking and went upstairs.
"I think it’s about time you lost that virginity of yours!" laughed the Professor. "High time!"
"Not yet, my darling. Not just yet. We have one more thing to do."
She led her husband down to the cellar. On the way she picked up a pickaxe, a heavy hammer and some goggles from the hall.
"Sorry, my darling, but I’m going to do a bit of damage to the cellar wall! You’ll see how strong your delicate little Cynthia is after her year’s hard labour!"
"I don’t think you ever were what I would call delicate, my precious!"
"Well -- stand back. I don’t want any chips flying into that sweet nice learned old face!"
She adjusted the goggles and swung the pickaxe at the wall a few time, soon making a small hole. Then she picked up the sledgehammer and attacked the weakened structure with a fury that astounded the noble Professor. He watched transfixed as those work-toughened sinews stretched and strained and her sweet but wiry arms forced the heavy metal hammer to demolish a goodly part of the cellar wall. At last, there was a hole large enough for the pair to step through.
"Take a torch and go and have a look, my angel. I want you to be the first to see how you are going to buy back your ancestral home from those common as dirt Bottomleys!
The Professor did as he was told. He shone the torch around the small room that had been laid open to view and began going through all the contents, which were numerous and incredible. He gasped and called out to the eager Cynthia.
"Come on through, my sweet! This is amazing. The old bastard hid his art collection in here. They said it had been destroyed in a fire a hundred years ago, but it would seem to be all here and in marvelous condition. It must be worth millions at today’s prices! We won’t have to sell it all, not by a long chalk! That Titian alone should pay for the purchase of the estate. And to think I was several times on the verge of selling this place."
Cynthia did as her husband told her -- she was to be a most obedient wife from now on, expert at wrapping him around her little finger, while always making him think he was having his own way.
"And now," giggled Cynthia, "now is the time to say goodbye to my virginity. My work for you is done, at last! Then I suggest we should go and see Mrs. B, the fat old bitch! Is she in for a nasty shock when she finds out who I am!"
At half an hour past midnight, the Vault door yielded easily to Miss Parradine’s touch and she knew that all was over and her friend Dorothy was done for. She had no idea how the old owners, the Earl and that deceitful cunning vixen of a former Slave would return, but there was absolutely no doubt in her mind that they would.
Amelia let herself out of the County Offices and drove herself home. As she put the car away, she looked up at the dark bulk of the Castle, so peaceful, yet so full of menace. She went indoors and to bed, where she slept poorly.
Muriel, the younger Miss Berriman was by her sister Agnes’s bedside in the hospital. The poor woman had been there since Christmas, not having said a word in all that time. The doctors were convinced that she would come out of her coma one day, there being no neurological damage that they could discern.
"Some kind of hysterical shock," the Consultant had explained.
It was mid morning on the day after Cynthia and Professor Granville AKA the Earl of Fortescue had finally consummated their marriage.
The elder woman woke up and smiled at her sister.
"Hello Muriel, where am I?"
"In hospital, my dear! It’s August and you have been ill since Christmas Day. They say you had some sort of shock. I knew you would be all right one day. I never lost hope." And Agnes started to cry in her relief and joy at seeing her sister restored to life once more.
Agnes said nothing for a while. She knew why she had been in a state of shock. Realizing that the Girl was married to the present Earl had done that. And now it was August. Something told her that her enforced silence had been meant to be. Now that she was free to speak, her words would no longer be able to affect the issue, whatever the issue was.
She was not anxious to return home. The memory of how she had delighted in witnessing the Slave’s punishments on a number of occasions haunted her now. She knew that she would never be able to face Cynthia’s accusing stare as long as she lived.
Muriel was delighted that Agnes wanted to come and live nearer to her and the two sisters were both happy.
I mentioned that the ghost of the spendthrift Earl, whose debts had caused his grandson to sell the Castle, had one final task to do. I have to report that he did it very well indeed, to the extent that Jenkins, Huskisson and Mrs. Bottomley were so terrified by his magnificent and inspired haunting that it was months before the three were released from a high-security Mental Hospital.
Fred, on learning of his wife’s precipitate decline into insanity, had been overjoyed to hear from Mr. Ivor C. Richards that an offer, and a generous one, had been received from a Professor James Granville, who also happened to be the present Earl for the purchase of the Castle.
Mr. Richards was an increasingly happy man in the days that followed. Miss Parradine, the County Archivist had found a job in New Zealand and had put her house on the market. Miss Hardiman, the Magistrate (she who had so lewdly inspected Cynthia’s private parts) had also found it imperative to seek her fortune elsewhere and HER house was on the market. Several other of Mrs. Bottomley’s circle also beat a hasty retreat from the locality.
What with all the commissions he pocketed in the following weeks, he was able to go into business on his own account.
Amy decided to stay with Fred, and not blackmail him with all the miles of film that had been taken of their sexual athleticism in the discreet hotel with its very special mirror. The couple bought the cottage from the Earl and frequently spent weekends there. When a haggard and prematurely white-haired Dorothy came out of the nut-house, Fred divorced her and he and Amy married and lived happily ever after.
Cynthia loved being a real Countess, living in an old Castle. After a time, her husband (under his wife’s gentle influence) gradually lost touch with the academic world with all its boring left wing political correctness and became the very picture of the fox-hunting, shooting and fishing landowner. From being reluctant to use his ancient title he came to appreciate how lucky he was to be the inheritor of so much tradition.
The art collection, minus the couple of items sold to buy back the Castle, occupied the former ballroom, where the Countess had once worked so diligently to provide the floor with its glorious sheen. Many visitors flocked to see these long lost treasure and the shrewd Cynthia, despite the demands of a steadily growing family, made sure they paid handsomely to do so, to the great benefit of the family finances.
The Grocer’s boy became the head servant at the Castle and his mother and grandmother were comfortably installed in a spacious flat in the upper floors of the Castle. Fitch returned to tend the gardens and he and the mistress would often meet early in the day to relive those times when the pair had worked together to make it the runner up in the Gardens of England competition three years running and then, finally, the winner.
I’m not sure what ultimately became of Jenkins, Huskisson and the ex spouse of Fred Bottomley. And who cares?
THE END