Morgana's Handmaid and the Creature of the Dungeon

by Purple Hazel

  “Viciousness and vengeance, that’s all,” said Alguin of the tribunals. Plus the more cynical of the townspeople would join right in with the surreal spectacle and cheer or encourage the “witnesses” to exaggerate and embellish their testimonies. Naturally, when the tribunal would elicit suggestions from the crowd as to how the accused should be purified—or prove their innocence—the situation inevitably turned from absurd to downright depraved.

  Women would be stripped to the waist, then tied to a post with their hands over their heads. Their accuser would then be given a switch and instructed on how many strokes they could deliver. Vindictive housewives, jilted lovers, attention-starved youths, spiteful women—even old perverted men could walk up and level charges against any unfortunate person—or perhaps a very attractive and extremely popular young lady. If the crowd liked their story and desired seeing the person “punished,” Mordred’s handsome guards would seize the terrified young lady and tie her up while the tribunal stirred up the crowd’s ire.

  Screaming and begging for mercy, vehemently denying the charges, and struggling against her bonds, she’d almost always be hauled over to the whipping post or the pillory, which was yet another popular item I might add. She’d be whipped on her breasts and back, if the crowd called for it; or she might be secured bent over in the pillory, and her buttocks exposed, so that the accuser could whip her bare bottom!

  Sometimes it was young men, but increasingly it became young women who found themselves “accused” and then punished for ridiculous or baseless infractions. It went back and forth, too, with everyone settling old scores and getting even with one another. One day’s accuser would become next week’s accused in some cases. The crowd however couldn’t get enough of it; embraced it with a lustful edginess that should have shamed most anyone. But they just had to come - had to come out and watch—couldn’t help themselves I guess.

  Alguin told me over and over again about the goings-on, and it disgusted me. After what I’d gone through years ago, how could I possibly tolerate such a thing? Oh, how I should have admonished those haughty people of Camelot for standing by and letting such a thing go on. If only I could have, that is. As Alguin put it, “The more good and pious folks of the town shun the events and stay clear. But no one will speak out against it, not even the church!” Nevertheless, as evil as things became with the tribunals, more was yet to come…

  Chapter 13

  Seduction of the Masses

  One day Mordred announced that he was going to hire “hundreds” of workers to construct a public bathhouse that everyone in the kingdom could come visit. This created quite a stir around the castle Alguin said, and just from the announcement of the proposed groundbreaking, new businesses soon started sprouting up within the surrounding town. Mordred decreed that it should be a massive edifice, available to all people, both noble and commoner alike. He hired the best architects for the design, and even worked with them personally to devise its layout. Folks in Camelot were suitably impressed!

  A large section of poor housing within the town was ordered demolished, displacing many undesirables from this low rent part of the city surrounding the castle’s citadel. However the upper classes of the city appreciated this move on Mordred’s part, because it looked to them like “civic improvement.” To be fair, like any sprawling city that develops around a large castle, Camelot had its share of slums where prostitutes worked the streets, and ne’er-do-wells grifted a living right under the very noses of local authority. “These people will not be sorely missed,” assured Mordred.

  Indeed, these poor tenement houses soon came down, one by one, leaving large lots full of scrap that had to be hauled away on carts. It required many men and teams of oxen to tackle this project, yet Mordred continually boasted that he had plenty of money to hire more if needed. Workers in no time cleared out the debris, and soon began burrowing down below the surface to create an underground furnace for the baths. Mordred spared no expense. “This project will be quite elaborate and state of the art,” he promised everyone.

  Educated by his royal tutor about the culture of the ancient Romans, he had learned while growing up about their concepts of public hygiene and cleanliness. Therefore, this was a standard of health and well-being that Mordred wanted to bring to our kingdom. Of course that’s the side of the story that the community thought they understood. Reality would later prove to be far different. However, my lover Alguin, since he was at least temporarily out of a job as “Vile,” soon was to learn he’d be assigned to operate those massive furnaces personally.

  At first, most everyone in the kingdom marveled at Mordred’s plan for the enormous facility. Yet Alguin sensed from the very beginning what the prince was really up to. The public tribunals, you see, had shocked and offended Alguin, who could not begin to fathom public punishment of young women. In his view, it was a mistake abusing young females in such a carnival-like atmosphere which smacked of perversion motivated by carnal lust just as much as anything else. And mind you, no one understood the more base and sadistic instincts within the dark depths of human nature more than him.

  “That he would devise, condone, or in any way support such a disgraceful display speaks to the young man’s character,” Alguin would say. Of course only time would tell if he was right in his suspicions about Mordred, but for the time being most everyone in the city was in full support of the young prince.

  The bath was built around three principal sections: The Caldarium, or hot bath, the Tepidarium, or warm bath, and the Frigidarium, or cold bath. These areas were partitioned to separate women from men so that no one’s nakedness could be observed by the opposite sex. Small cubicles and apartments were to be made available for visitors to disrobe in private and secure their belongings. Plus there was a giant atrium constructed to greet the visitor and collect his fee for attending the baths. Meanwhile, single women could not enter the facility alone—at least initially, that is. It all seemed so wonderful and above-board, that no one imagined how this could turn out bad for us.

  Passing through the principal entrance, the visitor descended a flight of steps to a small chamber. To the sides one could find latrines for customers to relieve themselves. Then they could proceed into the bath area and slip into one of the apartments or small closet areas where they could place their belongings and disrobe. Males were directed to one side, and women proceeded in the opposite direction to their own side of the baths.

  Servants, usually attractive males and females assigned to assist in disrobing the visitor, would attend to them and protect their belongings whilst they bathed. The servants were subsequently given the Latin title of Capsarii, and the apartments were named Apodyterium. Few in Camelot really knew how to pronounce that title quite well so most townspeople just called them closets. Yet when the baths were eventually finished and customers started going there, the disturbing truth began to reveal itself as to what was really going on late at night.

  Truly, the Capsarii eventually evolved into mere prostitutes—from both genders—who received gratuities for their services in assisting with the patrons’ clothing and protecting their belongings, but soon became notorious for offering far more than these “basic services.” If a visitor desired more, shall we say “carnal” attention during their visit, the Capsarii were more than willing to provide this, too, and many of the more attractive ones I heard made quite a good living there. This illicit activity occurred more and more frequently, when the facility had been open for several months and the more perverse side of Mordred’s nature began to run wild.

  The Tepidarium was where they were led first, these awe-struck new customers to the baths. This area was for both men and women, with a partitioned wall separating the two sexes. The warm water loosened up their pores so that soot and dust and grime from their daily lives could be washed from their skin, whilst attendants provided massages and body rubs to those who requested them. Attendants also oiled the customer’s body and smoothed out rough skin weathered by th
e mostly outdoor life many citizens of the kingdom endured. It was all quite less than discreet I must say, and sometimes these “massage” services were said to degenerate into a solicitation for other more sensual comforts.

  The Tepidarium was certainly the most ornately decorated of the three bath areas. Many took their bath in the Tepidarium and went on to the Frigidarium to cool their bodies, get dried off by their assigned Capsarii, and then dress themselves. But many people chose the Caldarium to proceed to next.

  This “hot bath” area was steamy, hazy, and perpetually shrouded in fog; and on that end of the building, several feet below the floor of the bath, toiled my poor Alguin who fired the furnaces which heated the water from below. Fifty people would commonly fit in this pool area quite easily, and if they stood side by side, probably a hundred could squeeze into the pool itself. Therefore, obscured from view and with the thick fog that descended on the water and wafted across the room, this area grew into quite the perfect place for sexual encounters.

  The Caldarium had a flimsy canvas partition wall, suspended from the ceiling to the water’s surface, and the “official rule” was that men stayed on one side while women stayed on the other. Of course most people behaved; and for that matter most could not stand the heated water for very long either. They merely sat pool-side enjoying the steam as a means of sweating out impurities in their bodies and feeling quite refreshed when they returned to the Tepidarium for a warm dip.

  The Frigidarium was the final stop; and that was quite a ways from the furnace area. The furnace was on the other side of the building underneath the Caldarium you see, so the farther you were from the furnace, the cooler the water was. Half-naked servants would occasionally scoop buckets of hot water from the Caldarium side to pour into the Frigidarium to keep it from getting too cold especially in winter; and every so often the entire pool complex could be drained and cleaned before being refilled and opened once again to the public.

  At the outset, customers began to come in droves to the baths to enjoy viewing the elaborate décor of the Tepidarium and the well-appointed atrium. Visitors came from all over the kingdom to see the place, and soon prices gradually crept higher and higher to exclude the poorer classes and make sure mostly well-heeled clientele partook of the facilities. Still the building was always quite crowded, and when Alguin worked at night, it was often filled with people well into the next morning!

  Now I must confess to you that I did witness this first hand! Alguin and I could get into the Caldarium quite easily from the furnace area; and whenever I’d go to work with my lover at night, we’d sneak into the steamy obscurity of the male section of the chamber and have a delightfully intimate bath together in the fog. Mere torches lighted the room, and frankly it was quite romantic for us.

  However the first couple of times we did this, we discovered what Mordred really intended for the place because the canvas partition, which suspended from the ceiling, was rather promptly removed late at night, so that people of both sexes could frolic about naked together in the amber-lit glow of the chamber. Wine and beer would be brought in too; and indeed what a racy party it soon turned into I must say!

  We also finally got to see those so-called Capsarii in action, even saw a few people I knew from the past as well. But alas, they were typically too heavily engaged in their rather shameless, indecent activities to recognize me in that milky fog. Eventually it was simply too much for Alguin and me to tolerate. After only a few visits, we’d had enough. At our age, such wanton excesses were no longer appealing.

  We saw couples making love, usually beneath the surface but occasionally by the sides of the pool on benches or stools. There would be naked women straddling their partners as they bucked and grinded their bare bottoms up and down. We’d also see men sitting on the side of the pool having ladies pleasure them with their mouths or stroke their shafts, giggling and laughing salaciously. Sometimes there’d be women bending over, or on their hands and knees having intercourse with men in the foggy mist. We’d even see partners trading off from time to time and experiencing another’s wife or husband! It was disgraceful!

  That said, we did take the opportunity to stick around more than once and view the festivities from a safe distance! Then, when we’d seen quite enough, we’d return to Alguin’s dungeon and have a splendid time alone together.

  Seeing almost immediate financial success with the venture, Mordred continued dumping money into the operation. He even sent out teams of recruiters to find more workers to become attendants. Many could command quite an income from their services we commonly heard, and if they were good salespeople, in only a few months they might make quite a bit of money to take back to their villages and support their families.

  Industries popped up around the baths as well, as additional services like inns for out of town travelers, shops for new clothing, and food markets were suddenly in high demand to serve the needs of customers visiting Camelot. Everyone sensed they were coming to our city just to see and use the Baths, and this greatly improved the town’s economy, which improved tax revenues, which filled the coffers of the royal treasury, even if little of this directly benefited the common people.

  Thus the investment paid off, and not surprisingly the citizens of Castle Camelot and its surrounding city were willing—for a while at least—to look the other way when it came to the sinful acts purported to be going on there. To be sure, from midmorning until right about dusk, the baths were a very socially acceptable and quite appealing place to go, for those people from the merchant class who could still afford admission. There they could see other townspeople taking an occasional break from their hard-working lives to go get refreshed, or just to unwind before heading home to their families. Yet as the sun set, the baths transformed into a well-known den of iniquity for the more pious and God-fearing people of the city.

  Mordred loved his drink you see, and especially loved his royal “playmates” as Alguin referred to them. So he became an almost nightly patron of the very baths he’d ordered built, sauntering down from the palace with an entourage of gorgeous and pristine young men and women to enjoy the night together. After all, that’s really why he had the place built.

  It took about a year to finish it as I recall, and yet by then he’d already rubbed the local nobility—and I also heard many of the more conservative castle servants—completely raw with his wild parties. They simply weren’t accustomed to this, and when Arthur was there, such revelry was not nearly so risqué. Once built, the baths became Mordred’s nightly sanctuary.

  Barrels of beer and wine were rolled in directly from the palace, and food was served in the facility’s atrium for his party guests. Prices were set absurdly high at night; and after dark a royal chamberlain personally ran the admission process, taking the customer’s admission fee, and directing them to an attendant who would lead them to a dressing room.

  Yet at night, these chamberlains also performed the more delicate task of sorting out desirable from less desirable visitors to the facility and making sure the people admitted were going to be acceptable to Mordred and his throng of revelers. Upon entering the facility, if the chamberlain did not find the ‘guest’ to be appealing enough; or for that matter not likely to be inclined to participate in Mordred’s more unseemly activities over in the Caldarium, then the visitor would be informed there was a private party going on and only “invited guests” could enter.

  Never mind that he’d turn right around and admit an attractive woman only seconds later, if she looked like someone Mordred might enjoy. What’s more, it seemed the initial rule forbidding single women to ever enter the baths unaccompanied had loosened quite a bit and then faded away completely over time, particularly whenever a desirable young lady caught the royal chamberlain’s eye!

  As Alguin put it, “Yes, even this rule went right out the window after only a few months.” Indeed, everything was quite different at the royal baths after the sun set.

  Unfortunately, it was also dur
ing this time that my lover got sicker and sicker. Alguin was once so strong and virile as I’ve said, but being exposed to extreme heat now combined with the sooty air of the furnace room demanded far too much on his lungs. Eventually he was assigned additional servants to help him stoke the furnaces though, and he was able to spend less and less time near the inferno needed to heat the massive pool above them. That probably saved his life to be honest. Yet for the better part of a year he had been exposed to it. The damage had already been done.

  Gradually, too, the people of Camelot tired of Prince Mordred and his arrogance. Generosity and magnanimous gestures can only fool the people for so long, you know? The reality of the baths, and the sordid activities happening there, eventually wore thin on those commoners in the streets who saw little improvement in their lives. See, it would have been one thing to have spent the growing surpluses in the royal treasury on a lovely cathedral for the city that all could attend and adore. If that had been done they might have felt like they were a part of something important. The baths however were something far different from a House of God. Priests spoke out against the depravity it brought to the town; and soon the remaining nobility still living in Camelot—and those visiting from other counties—began to shun the place.

  Well then again not all of them did, I have to say. Those who continued to patronize the facility simply snuck in and out more discreetly—those who knew full well what they’d find inside that is—if the notion ever struck them to go enjoy a night of scantily-clad attendants giving rub-downs, drinking wine all night in a steamy bath chamber, and perhaps even participating in the naked debauchery. Oh, yes, it wasn’t that uncommon to see groups or even just couples, covered in hooded robes obscuring their faces, scurrying into the baths right after dark, then shuffling away in the wee hours of the morning.