Eliska
Page 18
My hosts made their entry ceremoniously. Eliska was no longer wimpled; the dark hair was drawn back strictly to a black bow and, to mystify her face, a short purple veil of Bruges lace hid her eyes. She was sheathed in tight black leather, probably dyed chamois skins, that left her breasts bare, the tips painted violet, the triangle of her sex brushed to the full to reveal her rolled labia. Her spurs jangled on the supple calfskin boots. Superb.
For their part, her lovers only wore boots and strapping, leaving the pectorals to ripple under the chest hair. The cocks were cradled in thongs to hold the scrotum and lift the great shafts into frightening protrusion. Eliska was a woman who worshipped a hard strapped cock, and I’d seen Maryska , too, revel in the rasping of leather knots.
A host of serving girls followed them in, each delightfully naked and powdered, pattering about attending to the wine and sweetmeats to be offered later. For the moment, while awaiting the condemned, my hosts offered their cocks for a rapid suck or frigging.
At the usual tinkle of the silver bell that could summon up the ghouls of hell, Sebastian dragged in the three victims, lashing them forward with his whip. Like galley slaves, the trio hobbled to the centre. They were completely naked and oiled, their wrists shackled to the back of the neck straps. Zdenka led, trembling and blanched, her nipples erect from a stimulation obviously just received. Her breasts seemed enormous, almost as copious as Maryska’s, who followed her.
Maryska looked magnificent. Even the branded letters on her rump, burnt deep into the gluteal mounds, looked attractive. She was, of course, the senior sex slave of the three and knew it. But she also knew she was to whipped severely. Perhaps she looked forward to it and to displaying her sublime nudity and sexuality. She certainly looked erotic.
Behind her trod the young monk, his fine circumcised prick in rigid erection, an iron ring swinging from the underneath of the curtailed prepuce. His narrow hips and finely shaped, clenched buttocks, together with his hairless, shaved body, gave him a look of pure sexuality, as if born to be a sex slave and put to the whip for pleasure.
While the two novices knelt bolt upright, Maryska swayed to show off her perfect curves that were inured to being displayed. She at least knew what her torturers wanted of her. She had been flushed out, oiled, and her rings burnished by the ever-present Radka who sought to show her at her best for this, the last flagellation. She looked neither compliant nor proud; she was already in a sort of ecstasy. She seemed to adore the presentation.
Eliska’s voice was as smooth as silk. “You have been brought before us to give us pleasure as well as to be cleansed in soul and body. What we are about to inflict on your guilty flesh will help you to requite your carnal sins and obey our laws. Prepare them!”
I was again nauseated by the sanctimonious hypocrisy.
Zdenka was prepared first. The bald quivering nude was hauled to the great wooden horse, a monster half-covered with leather; soiled with the sweat and discharges of so many unfortunates before her. It was perfectly designed for female flagellation.
Sebastian hooked the wrist rings to the chain above the girl and wound her up until she was swinging over the hump of the horse. Then he lowered her on to something I had not noticed until that second. Jamming the ratchet and chain, he raised two hinged shafts in the form of human cocks, each embossed with gnarling studs hammered into the leather.
He adjusted the angle of the opposing artefacts and let the victim sink down on to the greased stakes. Zdenka’s cry was the cry of the neophyte as she was doubly impaled. As the buttocks flattened, the ankles were chained under the belly of the horse.
Sebastian whipped the young monk to a rugged flogging post. He stood calmly, facing the stake, made to stand on a block no thicker than a church bible, if I may be permitted the comparison. The whipmaster slipped the prepuce ring over a crude iron hook and removed the step, leaving the man teetering on tiptoe, straining to alleviate the abrupt tug on his penis. Arms bound behind the neck, the youth arched back, tethered by his cock. After seeing this, I hoped they would be lenient with Maryska on her last night.
The contrary was the case. She was bound atrociously for Ladislav’s pleasure.
The legs were chained far apart to the floor rings, the shackled wrists drawn up behind her back, making her crane forwards from the hips. Her superb breasts swung voluptuously beneath the horizontal thorax. Ladislav ordered Sebastian to pull back the head and secure it to the tensed arms with a chain passed across the mouth. Typically, Maryska did not seem reluctant to being prepared in this manner. She hardly groaned.
Suddenly the tintinnabulation announced supper, leaving the three bodies fully prepared for later. The meal, at least for me, was more than welcome. There were my preferred dishes. salads, ham, tongue and anchovies in smetana, followed by smoked trout, cold roast pheasant and a wine my hosts call ‘Whore’s Blood’. That was all the more delicious being offered to me by the bewitching Ottla in Bohemian cut glass flutes.
Ladislav studiously avoided me for reasons now obvious. The others chatted about hunting, raising cygnets and the best height for hop trellises. No one afforded a mustard seed’s worth of attention to the naked victims. The only one to moan was Zdenka, fully plugged up and distended. I wondered why they had not gagged her third orifice. I think they relished the gasps and sighs of the newcomer, the petrified little lesbian...
The supper finished, it was for Zdenka to suffer first at Milan’s hand, the young monk being given to Premsyl who plainly had devised the position imposed for whipping.
Zdenka showed courage as Milan thrashed her, but not when it came to the needles.
To my surprise, it was the beautiful Ottla who presented the tray of silver bodkins to Milan. It was fright rather than pain that swept through the horsed girl as she was pierced many times. She looked very beautiful as she was tortured. That I must admit, Nephew.
Now Milan jabbed his whip haft into the girl’s clitoris, between the needles, and brought her to her climax at once. The shrieks, if I understood them, were highly inappropriate for a nun, as she dived headlong into the abyss of her orgasm. She was learning fast...
The young monk took Premsyl’s six-thonged whip heroically. The pale flesh, so common among prelates, reddened immediately and it was clear he was used to being beaten. Then Premsyl began sodomizing the man. It was the first time I had witnessed this act. At least between males.
Whatever Premsyl left inside the youth, it was matched by an explosion from the hooked cock. The thick grey sperm spurted out in a jagged series of jets, slapping the torture stake, before slithering down the timber. It was a copious discharge and Eliska approved.
I was glad I would not be around to witness what Eliska had in further store for the youth in the weeks to come. And then? Back to the monastery? Chained in a secret room in the brothel to satisfy the wealthier widows of Zatoransky? Or the slimy moat? Enough for tonight, Nephew, I need strength to recount Ladislav’s revenge on Maryska. May God protect you from such monsters.
Letter The Thirty-First
“You see,” Milan whispered to me as we watched Ladislav prepare, “the whore’s prong has swollen to three times the size it was when she was arrested. The mashing it has received from the bailiffs and our friend Sebastian, and the regular elongation with the sex tongs, leave alone her own continuous clandestine frigging, have enlarged it to the dimension of a thumb.” He held up his own gloved digit to compare it with Maryska’s protuberance. “She’s able to grasp and frig the thing between her fingers. It’s like a small cock. I made her do it one night. Quite remarkable, my lord! A gifted slave.”
After a pause, Ladislav began to take his revenge. And in sheer spite.
In point of fact, as I am becoming something of an expert, Nephew, what the man did to Maryska was classical enough. But brutal to a degree.
He flogged the branded buttocks, adding to what
Eliska had inflicted the night she had hung the beauty by the breasts for the supposedly final flogging. He lashed into the bent body with a vehemence that shocked me, using the same crop he used when out hunting. A horse can take such occasional incentives, but Maryska’s rump was already very tender.
Although the victim reacted bravely, Eliska had to caution her lover.
“Whatever your sentiments, Ladislav, my angel,” she murmured, enjoying the expert flagellation as much as he, “I don’t want spatterings of whore blood on the floor of my residence. Whip the bitch to your sweet heart’s content but don’t slit her open. Get to the breasts!” she urged. “They’re there for your enjoyment. So use them and slake your anger.”
Indeed he did, despite what previous torture had done. With savage horizontal strokes, Ladislav gave the breasts a whipping he hoped the absconding whore would never forget. Each lash sent the bulges slapping against the ribs and upwards to the clavicles. For all the world, Nephew, the breasts resembled heavy burnished bells of red flesh tolling, the nipple rings swinging like clappers.
In his fury, Ladislav spared the girl nothing. Soon she was moaning, unintelligible sounds issuing from her chained mouth. I thought the mammary capillaries and ducts were about to burst or at least spurt from the swollen teats, It was one of the most ruthless whippings I had yet seen, then suddenly the flogger stayed his hand, discarding his whip on the flagstones.
His taking of Maryska became violent. After twisting the scorched cheeks, he wrenched them apart and penetrated. After a long reaming of the anus, during which the dark inner membranes extruded with the withdrawal of the strapped cock, he forced the girl to flex downwards to the extent her arms allowed. He pulled out callously, leaving the anus gaping, paralysed by the fierce sodomy, only to ram into the wet vagina, slapping the buttocks with his studded gloves.
Maryska was equal to the challenge. She lifted her tear-stained face as far as the chain permitted, spitting out obscenities, yelling her craving, and came. She seemed to launch out into space among the stars, disintegrating under Ladislav’s cock thrust. The orgasm continued through at least six spasms.
As if to stop up her crazed jubilant gullet, the man tore away the bit across the mouth and went in, thudding against the back of the throat.
It was then, mercifully, that he emptied into her. And even there he tried to choke her with his cock and its thick clots of sperm. Maryska defied him, swallowing the full load of the discharge with a sort of relish, pleasure written on her face.
“Whore!” the man cried through his clenched teeth. “Bitch of a cunt whore!”
To see Maryska orgasm so victoriously was one thing, but to see her escape the brothel was quite another. He was doubly thwarted. I thought he resembled a spoilt child, deprived of a precious toy.
“Ladislav, my love,” Eliska soothed from her throne, “we have plenty like her. Calm your passion, darling. Look,” she extended a scarlet, gloved finger towards Ottla, “you can use this one from now on and flog her until her body craves only for you, until she can’t live without the kiss of your riding crop. I give her to you.”
I saw the blood drain from the sweet countenance of this most sensuous of all the serving girls. Poor, exquisite, ambitious Ottla! For my part, the prospect of seeing Ottla bound naked to the torture wheel, her limbs strapped to the rim, the loins arched over the great hub, waiting for the whip and irons, was unbearable. But who am I to defend such delicate, white angels? I have sufficient problems wresting the sensuous carcass of the lansquenet’s mistress from hell.
Eliska rose and faced me. “The girl is yours, my lord,” she announced. “She will remain chained tonight in her holding cell and be thrown out of the castle tomorrow. I want no more of her and her pestilential orgasms.” The noble lady paused a second. “I should have flogged her to death long ago or driven her to suicide in the brothels. But take her!”
The whole company swept out of the cellar in her wake, leaving me with Sebastian, who unbound the two other slaves and whipped them back in the direction of their cells or rather cell, since they were to be chained next to each other. I was left alone, face to face with Maryska.
“Tomorrow,” I said, touching her sweating shoulder, “you will be free.”
The girl’s head lifted slowly, mauve circles of fatigue under her expressionless eyes. In her soft dialect she said: “That flogger whips hard and well. He excites me. He makes me come. But you are right, it’s my dear soldier of fortune I want... He makes me come with a kiss.”
In my chamber, the lancet stood wide open on the warm, calm night sprinkled with stars, gleaming over this castle of terror. The moon was almost full and the air alive with wise owls and knowledgable nightingales telling me I had done well. But they also warned me to watch my step.
I felt for my precious documents under the goose-down pillow. They were still there, crisp and real, bound with the episcopal ribbon.
I dozed off, wishing the soldier and his mistress the good fortune they merited. What I had done was not much but well worth it, even if beyond the mandate of my mission. All that remained was to see that Eliska stood by her word.
And if not?
My weary salutation Nephew,
Huldrych
Letter The Thirty-Second
(This letter has come down to us in perfect condition, possibly owing to its having been added to the batch later)
Eliska and her companions stood on the castle steps as dawn broke. I confess it was a moment that raised a lump in my throat - although I have never been more delighted to leave a place (except perhaps the battlefield of Marignano near Milan where, as I told you once, Nephew, the French nearly annihilated me as well as our army in 1515). It was very chilly and, as Hans secured our baggage to the packhorse, we three stood there to say goodbye with mixed feelings. The courtyard filled up with people, mainly the female servants, many of whom were weeping to see Tereza, the fortunate Tereza, leave.
Bojena was there also and Jana and Ottla and, of course, Radka, grieving with a dirty kerchief to her old nose. The aged Ignatius mumbled a blessing over us, just as he mumbled in the chapel or when sanctifying the instruments of flagellation in the dungeon - the same old priest who had risked so much.
I put my lips to Eliska’s fingers and our eyes met, sealing so, so many secrets. She smiled once and then we moved off with the two guards we had been given as escort as far as the border where we would enter the Palatinate.
It was Tereza, sitting behind Hans on the horse they were sharing, her arms tight round his leather jacket, who noticed it first.
“Look,” she cried, “it’s Maryska!”
And indeed, there were the bailiffs carrying Maryska out bodily from the door of the guardhouse. She was stark naked, still pierced with her flesh rings but without her manacles. She looked very beautiful. Once beyond the drawbridge and portcullis, the masked men deposited her in the wet grass at the side of the road. A bargain, I said to myself, is a bargain.
We rode slowly to the gatehouse and this time it was I who saw him first.
Out of the broom and lilac bushes, a figure hurried towards the prostrate naked body. Immediately I recognized the silhouette, profile and beard. The lansquenet officer, her soldier, knelt down over the girl. He stared at her body for a moment and then gently raised her.
Maryska struggled to her feet before recognizing her man, then clung to him as that vine clings to the castle wall. The man passed his cloak over her bare shoulders that glistened not now with oil but with fresh dew, led her towards his piebald stallion grazing a little way down the slope and helped her to mount.
As my little troop drew level with them, they both looked at me from afar. It was I who raised my hand in casual greeting as if they were chance travellers encountered on the way. Then they were gone, cantering east as the sun rose over the distant hills.
Only once did I look back to glance for the last time at the ugly hulk of Zatoransky Castle - perhaps partly in the hope of catching sight of Radka’s bent figure somewhere. But already the great drawbridge had creaked upwards, sealing up its secrets. No one was to be seen, only the pennons fluttering on the towers with their solitary E for Eliska.
Crossing the heartland of the province through the lanes soaked from last night’s storm, I listened to the guards talking together and Tereza chirping like a jay, and felt I had drowned in the vicissitudes of a history that had nothing to do with me. Nothing. Except a mission carried out under special orders.
We crossed the borderline and the octroi last night and I seem unexpectedly to emerge from a pernicious dream, the sort I do not wish to dream again.
Huldrych
Letter The Thirty-Third
Imperial Court, Nuremberg.
My dearest Nephew:
So, finally, we have arrived, tired but without incident. I bought a young gelding for Tereza once in the Oberpfalz, so from Tiefenbach onwards we had the four horses. Tereza rides competently but then, of course, she has a pair of well-hardened buttocks!
Speaking of her, I want to make arrangements as soon as possible here for her to marry my faithful Hans; it will make them happy and avoid offending propriety in this now partly Lutheran city. They are truly in love. Nevertheless I intend to keep Hans on as my servant and have told them so; hence she must become accustomed to his absences or travel with him, which I would not object to. They are lodged with the domestics at the Bishop’s residence for the moment. It is a pity that Radka and Ignatius - and, for that matter, the lansquenet, whose name I never learnt and his Maryska, will not be here for the marriage.
I am becoming sentimental or nostalgic!