Eliska

by von Mechtingen

  For an instant I conjectured that Ladislav, still eager for a further victim, was about to lay his whip into this girl but, as if aware of what was demanded of her, she crouched low and went to work on Maryska’s sex, unfastening the chains from clitoris and genitals to commence a fierce cunnilingus. Maryska stiffened and drew her breath with a gasp, then lunged forward as if to encourage the lips and tongue while behind the penetration continued to bore and thump into her.

  The girl twisted her small hand into Maryska, burying it as deeply as possible, the ball of the thumb circling over the erect clitoris. The little red tongue licked and flicked over the dripping labia and joined the thumb until Maryska’s loins were jolting with desperate spasms. The head had now risen, the mouth agape with hoarse groans as the orgasm that had been made to stagnate in her was ready to erupt and lay waste the entire body.

  It was Ladislav, almost at the same time as Eliska behind him cried out in a wild tide of further paroxysms, who came first. With a shout of satisfaction, he emptied into Maryska; he remained inserted until the sphincter ring had squeezed the last drop out of him. It was certainly when she sensed the scalding gush enter her that Maryska’s excitement towered; she thrust her cunt violently into the girl’s face below, grinding herself against the lips and teeth. The orgasm shattered her body; she shuddered in her bondage, lifting herself aloft by her chains with an unearthly cry. Then she collapsed as if lifeless upon the girl beneath her, drenching the face with glittering discharge.

  I was at a loss to understand how a female who had just been thoroughly flagellated could come with such lust. She hung, panting and jerking in the aftermath of one of the most intense and passionate convulsions of orgasm she had ever achieved, for by now, Nephew, I had seen many. It was as if the expiatory victim sought by her own sexuality to appease and then outdo her flogger. There ensued a long silence in the dungeon filled with the scent of lilacs. Quite incredible!

  As Sebastian began to unchain his charge and prepare her for the next sequence, Eliska had regained her physical composure and regal equanimity; she was evidently well pleased with the evening so far. She raised her glass to Ladislav - and curiously to me also - and we drank to her and, at my (ironic?) toast, to the future of Zatoransky. I wondered how long her Garden of Eden was deemed to endure...

  “Prepare her, Sebastian!” she said, “and let it be erotic, man! And then, my dearest ones,” she turned to her men, “I need to be well fucked for the rest of the night. I cannot wait too long in my bed. Proceed, Premsyl, my lover.”

  Sebastian dragged Maryska to the side of the dungeon and began to prepare her for the lord Premsyl’s flagellation. I shall tell you more later, Nephew.

  With my blessings from this backwater of Lethe. Tell your mother I have written (not in the same vein!)

  Huldrych

  Letter The Sixteenth

  I must relate to you, before describing briefly Premsyl’s turn with Maryska, what he told me the other day.

  He is certainly not the most eloquent of men, but he is far from unintelligent. He tends to be morose - perhaps on account of his splenetic humour. Apart from reading and his smouldering interest in sex, particularly with Eliska who indulges and pampers him, he is an excellent falconer, a subject about which I know little or nothing.

  He was out in the meadow before the castle when I came across him, a hooded hawk linked to his gloved hand and his dogs at his heels. The falcon carried a tiny silver bell on the leg above its spur and I was stupid enough to mention another silver bell, and instead of discussing falconry I found myself engaged in a familiar subject.

  “You may wonder, since you mention it, why we use a bell in our rituals,” Premsyl said gravely. “We desire the purification ceremony to be reminiscent of the Mass and to avoid the spoken word once the condemned victim has been prepared and is ready to be cleansed with a suitable horsewhip.”

  “Pray, what is meant by ‘prepared’ and ‘preparation’, my lord?” I asked. “I am aware of the piercing, ringing, oiling and chaining of your victims...”

  “Let me first give you, my noble lord, some history. There was a time when the whipmaster, Sebastian’s father it was then, performed his duties clad in leather - mask, jerkin and breeches. He was part of the household and had merely use of the dungeon where grain was stored. So, victims (far, far fewer than now, I can assure you) were delivered to him as they stood, in working clothes, and only then were they stripped partially, if at all, to permit whipping. The females retained their head-wraps and hose. The Gräfin changed all that after the death of the Margrave - may God safeguard his soul” - we both crossed ourselves - “many things were changed and ritual flagellation was introduced. The Gräfin insists now on total nudity on the part of the victim to be cleansed as well as her flogger. We maintain this to be commendable and far more appropriate for the act of purification, both for the actors and for us as witnesses.”

  He paused, but after a moment went on with solicitude for my ignorance. “We now have five categories of flagellation to correct transgressions among our serfs and slaves. First, any clumsiness, tardiness, disreputable grooming or dressing, particularly on the part of females waiting on us at table, in our bedchambers or in the cellars, is dealt with by the bailiffs in the stalls, with which I believe you are familiar. That slut you saw spilling wine the other evening is an instance, although she escaped her whipping, alas, through your intervention, sir.”

  He sounded truly resentful. “Ah, Tereza?” I said, at which Premsyl shrugged as if such a slut had no name. Then he went on, smoothing his falcon’s breast.

  “The second category concerns offensive or vulgar behaviour, disrespect to us, the bailiffs or overseers, impertinence, insubordination, swearing, blasphemy and so on. Here again the stalls are used. Thirdly, cases of dishonesty, duplicity, lying or theft are severely disciplined.”

  Emphasizing each heading by counting on the fingers of his hand, he continued: “The fourth rank of punishment is reserved for far more important and serious cases: sexual misconduct such as illicit prostitution - as this wretched whore has had the effrontery to commit. Such cases are handled by Sebastian, as you are aware, in the dungeon proper in formal or informal ceremony and according to the sentence we decide upon. All unlawful relations fall under this category. Except a few which are subject to the last and most rigorous retribution of all.”

  Intrigued, I waited for details as Premsyl caressed his falcon’s speckled breast and offered the bird a morsel he produced from his leather satchel.

  “Attempts to escape from the castle are punished severely, of course. But also lesbian practices. The Gräfin is adamant in her hostility to the unnatural habit of women sleeping with women, at least as concerns the common herd. Alas, this happens far more frequently, sir, than you may imagine.”

  Premsyl then offered me a recent example.

  “The convents are particularly to blame and the culprits are almost always delivered to the Gräfin to correct. Only a month ago, a Sister from our nunnery of St. Barbara over there” - he pointed over the roofs of Zatoransky towards the east - “was visiting us. She was found naked in bed with a young serving-girl in the guests’ bedroom in the west tower, in fact the very chamber you occupy at present, my lord. Now, normally the nun would have been returned to her convent for correction but, with the consent of the Mother Superior and the Bishop, she was handed over to us. Both females were judged by the Gräfin and ourselves, both were pierced and ringed and underwent a full series of sessions naked, such as you are attending these days. They were also given to the bailiffs to be used in the stalls before being sent out to the fields, chained together by the neck, to labour, clothed only with a piece of sacking round the loins. I can point them out to you, if you wish, when you go riding. Otherwise you can attend their weekly flagellation in the vault, if the Gräfin agrees to the request.”

  I begged to be ex
cused both spectacles, and mentioned that Eliska had already been considerate enough to describe to me some of the problems lesbians caused her. Premsyl looked surprised and alert, since he was not aware of these divulgations. He looked out over the pine woods and shook his head.

  “My own solution, my lord, would be very simple. Stake out a masturbatrix naked on the bed she has defiled and flay her rump.” He rose and proposed a walk. “Ah well, Hector will catch us a few hares for supper,” and he stroked his hawk lovingly again.

  I had hoped to escape and return to work after the breath of fresh air but, by my own doing, I was engaged now in the explanations regarding ‘preparation’ and could not curtail the dialogue without giving offence.

  “Preparation, then, is an important chapter of our ritual,” he said, as we strolled towards the conifers. “Having heard her sentence, a culprit is fully aware of what is in store for her but we insist that she is presented fully aroused sexually, despite her fear. Sebastian prepares his charge on the slab in the privacy of her cell, first by oiling and greasing the flesh at length, a sensual operation to say the least and one that excites the woman without fail. She is then prepared further by means of the quirt.”

  Here Premsyl interrupted himself, calling his hounds to heel and unhooding the falcon. He released him from his outstretched arm with a cry. The bird left in a tumult of wings, towered high, held its hover and plunged, to return minutes later to the wrist with a twitching hare in the scimitars of its claws. Premsyl broke the neck and thrust the prey into his game bag. I sensed a grim affinity between what he was describing and the hawk’s swift unerring ferocity.

  “As I was saying, sir, the quirt, as you probably know, is a riding-whip much used out here while hunting. it has a short handle and a couple of braided strands, again quite short.”

  I nodded, indicating that I was acquainted with the quirt or ‘cuerda’, meaning cord, widely used by the Spaniards in the Low Countries and, I added, not necessarily on their horses.

  “Except that here the quirt is of leather not cord,” Premsyl remarked. He was right and I regretted my stupid display of Spanish.

  “The quirt is used here in the castle for one particular purpose. As it is of soft leather and different from the tough whips used in sessions, it serves to stimulate and excite our female victims and ready them for what is to follow. It is laid on by the whipmaster in the privacy of the cell across the buttocks and hips without undue force. The female is made to prostrate herself over the corner of her slab, her cunt thrust firmly down against the promontory of stone. The strokes across the rump drive the clitoris into the angle of stone, splaying the flesh until the loins are brought to as high a level of sexual arousal as possible.”

  Murmuring to his hawk, he spied out the ground before us for movements and then went on.

  “As you know, sir, the buttock-meat is the easiest portion of the female body to stimulate sexually with the whip.” As I did not know, Nephew, I let him continue. “The girl grinds into the slab as she is whipped - or ‘prepared’ - slowly. The loins become lit with fire and desire, the breasts also scraping their nipples until the flesh is throbbing with lust. You must remember also that the female is stark naked and is also excited by the noise of the quirt on her nudity. All this never fails to bring her close to orgasm.”

  I concede that he described the process eloquently.

  “Our man Sebastian is an artist in taking a naked female to the height of sexual arousal, leaving her trembling on the precipice of orgasm. On no account is she permitted to come. She is then presented to the gathering, trembling, the rump scarlet; all she asks for is to be fucked. Such is the work of the quirt,” he ended conclusively.

  After a further lethal flight Hector brought back another hare which was stuffed into the satchel. Premsyl had now warmed to his subject.

  “As I say, the quirt is used without force.” Here he enlarged on points made to me earlier during my stay and which, I think, I recounted to you in an earlier letter. “Once the flesh has been properly prepared, the full flagellation can be administered. The lash or crop makes the nerves in the flesh or epidermis” - I was impressed by his command of modern terms in German - “contract and regain their former state a moment later. It is this that creates pain. But if correctly aroused beforehand, the sensitivity of the flesh decreases rapidly and is replaced by a mixture of pain and sexual pleasure. The greater the arousal, the longer can be the scourging and the less the pain. A strange cloud of erotic lust and pleasure blurs the pain; now the one prevails, now the other. As you will now have seen in our sessions, the lash is laid on the naked female with slow, regular, well-spaced strokes to ensure the thong reaches down into the nerves. While the flesh begins to flare up in red and purple stripes, the cunt is also kindled like a fire being stoked. After all, sir, the centre of sexual lust is the cunt; in sex it is the cunt that is fucked. Flagellation and fornication are twin sisters...”

  I saw his language was becoming coloured, unseemly and rather wild, despite his saturnine disposition; I admit that I followed his reasoning with difficulty.

  On my way back to the drawbridge, I wondered if Maryska, Marja, Tereza (spared for once), Ottla and the beautiful young nun, Zdenka, and so many countless others would confirm, as they writhed naked under the whips and thongs, the pleasurable emotions described by my lord Premsyl. After all, it was their flesh that burned in pain.

  In time of plague, you recall, Nephew, we invoke St. Anthony and St. Sebastian. The latter not a propitious name here; whom can one invoke to spare these girls from the lash held or commanded by Eliska’s hand in its Venetian glove of expensive kid?

  What cheers me, however, is that today I received by rider from Regensburg my papers of safe-conduct for the octroi and customs at the Palatinate and Bavarian borders. The Margravine is to provide an escort to the confines of her lands. The sooner I conclude my work, the sooner we can ride out under that awesome portcullis that I never wish to see again. (I say ‘we’ but I have still to ask the Gräfin if I can take Tereza with us. I hate to ask a favour of her. And when best to approach her?)

  Huldrych

  Letter The Seventeenth

  The third session finished in the small hours of the morning with Premsyl’s whipping of Maryska. Like Ladislav, he had an unquenchable appetite for naked buttocks and therefore his victim was again positioned to display her rump. Sebastian stretched her arms and legs well apart, making her stand on tiptoe, curved forward in a long, slender arc of lubricious flesh. Again her most delicate parts were chained to maintain her body still. Tottering on her toes, Maryska strained to protect her extremities from damage.

  She looked exquisite, still exhibiting some self-confidence although she seemed languid and physically extenuated after the two first floggings. Sebastian began oiling the area again, sensuously massaging her as Maryska swayed and groaned with wild erotic pleasure. Then the man thrust his hands between the thighs to lubricate the distended crotch, frictioning the clitoris and the viscid inner walls of the vagina. Sporadic jerks of the loins testified to the effect; the girl’s head swung from side to side, her mouth beginning to gasp as her entrails were brought to full sexual arousal. From where I stood I could plainly see the stub of the clitoris erect between Sebastian’s fingers. The victim was ready.

  Premsyl was masked in dark mauve, matching the colour of such other clothes as he wore: a brief jacket, heavily embroidered, and tight hose, no doubt from Italy from where most of their beautiful garments come. Dressed like this with his genitals swinging free before him, the man looked so different from his usual daily appearance. Then he produced from his doublet his whip: a thin length of supple leather hafted in an intricate handle of carved ivory - obviously his own.

  For an interminable moment Premsyl whipped the girl from the armpits to the thigh muscles, laying the lash each time a finger’s breadth lower than the previous streak. He
did not flog too hard but tended to snap away the tip, causing Maryska to cry at each sting; the buttocks, however, received their full ration of heavy strokes, adding to the damage done by Ladislav. Now and then, and I believe purposely, Premsyl let his whip strike the chain holding the cunt and nipples, at which Maryska’s groans filled the chamber.

  I have to say, Nephew, that of all the scourgings I have witnessed here, this was the most dexterous, skilful and, if you will allow the term, most erotically done. Despite her cries, I believe the girl tolerated it with strange acceptance and voluptuousness, to judge from the liberal trail of liquid squandered by her cunt and glinting between her legs.

  When the silver bell sounded, Maryska had slumped forward and I saw that my hosts were again enjoying each other; Eliska was lying back in her throne, her legs dangling over the arms, her sex opened wide with sperm seeping from the lips. More trickles of bright semen ran down her brocaded bodice. Milan and Ladislav were using the serving-girls to clean off their penises with their lips and kerchiefs. Premsyl approached his divine Mistress and straddled her where she sat. Turning inwards the facets of her precious-stoned rings on her fingers, Eliska took her lover’s erection firmly in hand, holding the testicles tightly, her forefinger reaching behind to excite him further and to enjoy the imminent rush of the sperm along the hidden pathway between the thighs as the ejaculation burst. Using both hands and with her mouth over the head, Eliska masturbated and sucked with fury.