The powerboat nosed its way into the jetty for the second time that afternoon. As it approached Stephanie could see Mrs Agnes Bloom sitting in the transom on the striped canvas padding that formed a long bench seat. She was not smiling. A broad-brimmed straw hat and a pair of elaborately decorated sunglasses covered most of her face.
The servant, who waited on the jetty with Stephanie, tied the boat's forward line to the cleats in the dock while the boatman secured the aft line.
'Welcome,' Stephanie said holding out her hand to help Mrs Bloom ashore. 'I hope you had a good journey.'
'No, I didn't as a matter of fact,' Mrs Bloom said, taking Stephanie's hand to steady herself as she stepped from the bobbing deck of the boat. Her hands were both bejewelled with rings, every finger ringed, some with two or three rings. The fingers were long, thin, bony. 'The Italians, everything is domani, domani. I don't know why I bother to set foot outside the States. Europe is so damn inefficient.'
Mrs Bloom set off up the stone steps. She knew the way. She had been to the castle many times before. Stephanie followed in her wake as the powerboat was quickly unloaded and untied, to return to the mainland for another cargo.
Inside the castle Mrs Bloom walked determinedly into the main salon, very much as if the castle was a hotel. 'I need a drink,' she said.
Stephanie summoned a waiter.
'Dry martini,' Mrs Bloom instructed as though speaking to a small child. 'Very dry. Secco. Comprehende?'
'Si, signora,' he said and scuttled off.
Mrs Bloom took a pack of Lucky Strikes from her Hermes handbag and lit one with a Cartier gold cigarette lighter. She inhaled the smoke deeply, then blew it out in an unwavering straight line.
'You're new,' she said sitting on one of the large sofas and crossing her legs. She was wearing a white suit, the jacket heavily decorated with two rows of bright gold buttons bearing some sort of Roman insignia. Her legs, in common with the rest of her body, was over thin and over tanned. Too many years of strict diet and concentrated sunbathing had left her bony and hard with a skin as dark as a tanned hide of leather. Her hair was blonde, a whitey blonde, brittle and coarse, the bleach bottle taking its toll on the natural sheen of the hair.
She dumped her hat and sunglasses on the sofa beside her. She had light green eyes. Her face was attractive, symmetrical and well-proportioned; only her nose was slightly too big for the rest of her features.
'I've been here for awhile now,' Stephanie said, sitting in a chair opposite.
'So what? You're the brothel keeper now? What happened to Bruno? He been pensioned off?'
'He's still here.'
'Well you sure look good. If I were into women I'd want to fuck you myself.'
'I take that as a compliment,' Stephanie said finding it hard to like Mrs Bloom.
'But I'm strictly into cock.'
The waiter came back with a silver tray on which was perched a triangular martini glass, frosted with condensation. He set the glass down on the table in front of the American. She sipped it tentatively.
'Well at least you can mix a decent martini, Gino,' she said. 'Now go and be a good boy and get me another, pronto.'
Bowing slightly to indicate he understood, the waiter went to get her second drink. By the time he'd gone the first had all but disappeared.
'So what? You're one of Devlin's pack of thieves are you? On the take and got caught?'
'No,' Stephanie said calmly, her dislike for the woman growing by the minute.
'No, I thought...'
'I'm a free agent, Mrs Bloom,' Stephanie said sharply.
'Okay, okay. Don't get antsy with me. I'm only asking. I like to know where I am, is all. So what time's dinner?'
'Eight. We have two other guests. Mr and Mrs Clarke.'
'Well I'm sure you've got enough to go round. I want two of the best sent up to my room right after dinner. Right?'
'Anything you want,' Stephanie replied.
'And make sure they're real athletic. They're going to need to be.'
The waiter returned with the second martini and removed the empty glass.
'So what's the story?' Mrs Bloom continued.
'What story?'
'With you?' You've got your hooks into Devlin have you? I don't blame him, you're a real piece of work.'
Stephanie didn't reply. Mrs Bloom downed the second martini.
'So what. Keep it to yourself. I should care. I'm not here for the conversation. You can show me to my room now. I'm done here.'
She stubbed the cigarette out in the large glass ashtray on the coffee table and stood up. She brushed cigarette ash off her suit.
Stephanie led the way up the sweeping marble staircase and down the corridor to the room that had been prepared for Mrs Bloom. Fortunately it was on the other side of the castle from herself and the Clarkes. She wanted to have as little to do with Agnes Bloom as possible.
By the time she got back to her room Stephanie could hear the powerboat approaching across the lake again. Mrs Bloom had not been the only passenger aboard Devlin's Lear jet flown in from London that afternoon.
Stephanie had worn a tracksuit to greet Mrs Bloom. Stripping it off, she went to the wall of wardrobes to find an outfit a little bit more suitable for her next visitors. It did not take her long to find what she was looking for. She had bought it in Rome at the special shop she had found. The jodhpurs were made from leather, with a blouson type leather blouse worn on top. The blouse had long puffed sleeves and a high collar.
Stephanie sat on the bed and pulled the jodhpurs up over her legs. They were a tight fit. She buttoned up the leather blouse and found a pair of short high-heeled boots which she zipped on to her feet. Gloves were essential too. She found a pair that matched the dark brown of the rest of her clothes.
She looked at herself in the mirror. A picture of authority she thought smiling back at her own reflection. Her black hair streamed over her shoulders. She brushed it quickly and tied it loosely at the back.
For some reason, when the castle had been built a staircase had been constructed that led directly from this room down into the cellars. What purpose this served the original fourteenth-century proprietors Stephanie could only guess at - perhaps they had gone to watch enemies and religious heretics tortured as a prelude to a night of sexual excess - but whatever the reason Devlin had had the staircase restored and, on occasions like this, it was ideal. Remembering the first time she had opened the small door hidden in the silk panelling of the room, on the first night she had spent with Devlin in the castle, she picked her way down the circular steps, holding on to the rope that formed a handrail, and going slowly in the high-heeled boots.
At the bottom of the staircase she unbolted a small wooden door that had been newly built into the corridor of the main block of cells. The cells lined the brick-vaulted cellar, identical individual cubicles with thick wooden doors and circular viewing ports that could be opened by drawing back a rotating steel plate. As yet the cells were empty; the slaves had not returned from their duties in the gardens.
Stephanie walked to the end of the row of cells and through a door into an entirely different arrangement. Here there were a suite of rooms, two large bedrooms with adjoining bathrooms as luxuriously appointed as any of the rooms upstairs - a full bar, a video system, a large double bed - and a third room altogether less comfortable. This room was more like the cells, its walls the stone of the original castle, its floor stone too. Here, in what was called the bondage room, there was every conceivable piece of sexual equipment to satisfy every conceivable sexual taste. There were punishment frames, pulleys, sets of rings secured to the wall, even an iron cage suspended in midair in one corner of the room. There were wardrobes of clothes too: rubber, leather, women's underwear and women's clothes in sizes that would fit men as well as women. There was a rack of wigs, a shelf of high heels again in sizes that would fit men and women. Hanging from hooks on one wall was every type of instrument of flagellation from a coiled bullwhip to a leather tawse, wooden paddles, crops, tiny whips with multiple thongs, whippy schoolmaster's canes and even whips made from rubber.
Whatever the guest's requirements, whatever fantasy he wanted to create, he was unlikely to be disappointed in the bondage room.
It was here that Stephanie found Bruno and the rest of the Lear jet 'cargo' - two new slaves, a man and a woman. As she approached Bruno, mute since birth, and still harbouring a resentment over Stephanie's new position in the castle, superseding him in charge of the cellars, grunted but did not stop what he was doing.
In London the slaves had been packed into padded wooden crates after being tightly bound inside canvas 'body' bags. The crates, marked agricultural equipment, were then loaded aboard the jet. None of the slaves ever knew where they were being taken, nor, when they got to the castle, where it was. Transported as they were, they had not the slightest clue.
Bruno had humped the body bags out of the crates and they now lay side by side on one of the punishment frames, bed-like structures made of slatted wood. Unzipping the length of the bag, he pulled each slave out in turn, the man first and then the woman. They were still unable to move, their bodies bound by thick straps made of nylon webbing, their mouths gagged with tape. Bruno unbuckled each strap in turn starting with the woman. He worked up from the ankle, ripping off the tape from her mouth last. He repeated the process with the man.
In the canvas bags there had been no need for blindfolds. Now as their eyes blinked to get accustomed to light again Stephanie saw them trying to work out where they were. It was several minutes, after the long period of enforced darkness, before they could properly see their new surroundings.
Bruno ripped the tape off the man's mouth.
'You may go now, Bruno,' Stephanie said.
He grunted again but obeyed immediately, the keys on his thick leather belt which he wore over a black tunic like a medieval executioner, jangled as he shuffled out.
Stephanie turned her attention to the new arrivals and they sat massaging the circulation back into their atrophied limbs.
'Not a pleasant way to travel, is it?' she said. 'Stand up when you can.'
The man tottered to his feet.
'What's your name? Christian name only. That's all we use here.'
'Andrew,' he said hoarsely not having used his voice for several hours.
Stephanie went over to a small metal chest on a shelf by the door. Inside was a selection of metal discs all inscribed with various names. She found 'Andrew' and clipped it to a thin metal chain.
'Put this round you neck. It's to be worn at all times. Is that understood.'
He nodded as he hung the chain around his neck.
'And you?' Stephanie said to the woman.
'Grace,' she said timidly. Stephanie found the corresponding disc, clipped it to a chain and handed it to the woman who immediately put it around her neck.
'Now take off your clothes and put them in the boxes over there.'
Bruno had prepared two cupboard boxes. Grace and Andrew stripped off their clothes and packed them away in the boxes.
'Not bad,' Andrew said looking at Grace's naked body.
'Shut up,' Stephanie snapped.
Andrew was not tall and though he was not fat, his skin was sallow and his muscle tone nonexistent. As feeling had flooded back into his aching body so had a definite cockiness. Andrew, Stephanie could see, regarded himself as a jack-the-lad, the cock of his particular walk.
Grace, on the other hand, could not have been more pliant. She packed her clothes away neatly, item by item, skirt, blouse, a cream bra and matching knickers. Her body was distinctly plump, not fat in any particular place but covered in a thin layer of fat all over. Though she was short her body was well proportioned. Her breasts were firm, her legs shapely. Her nudity clearly embarrassed her.
Stephanie slid the lid on the boxes.
'You'll get these back at the end of your stay.'
'So what happens now?' Andrew said jauntily. 'Do we get whipped before or after dinner? Or is there some randy bird wants to use me first?'
'Speak when you're spoken to,' Stephanie said.
'Sorry darling, you're the boss.' Stephanie could see his cock was starting to become erect as his eyes darted between Grace's nakedness and her own leather-clad body.
'You both know why you're here.'
'Yes,' Grace said quickly not looking at Stephanie directly.
'We have only one rule. Obey everything you are told to do immediately. That is all. If you do that you won't have any problems.'
'And if we don't?' Andrew said his eyes focused on the tight leather that covered the junction of her thighs.
'Then you are given a simple choice. We can send you straight home to face the criminal charges that you would have faced in the first place...'
'Or?' Andrew prompted.
'You can ask to be punished.'
'Ask to be?'
'Put this on.' Stephanie picked up the hard leather covered metal pouch worn by all the male slaves. Bruno had laid it out next to the boxes. He was very efficient, she thought. Never forgot a thing.
'I'd rather not,' Andrew said.
'I told you to obey immediately.'
'Looks like a boxer's jockstrap,' Andrew said taking it from her hand. For a second Stephanie could see he was deciding what he was going to do. Then he stepped into the chains and pulled the pouch over his now semi-erect penis. Stephanie cinched the chains tight and padlocked them in place with the small lock that fitted the links where the chain rising between his buttocks was attached to the one around his waist.
'This isn't very comfy,' he said trying to work the chains out from the crease of his thigh.
'So what is your choice, Andrew?'
'Can't you loosen this a bit?'
'I asked you a question, Andrew.'
'What choice?'
'Do you want to be sent straight back home or be punished?'
'Punished for what?'
'I told you to speak only when you are spoken to.'
'Oh come on.'
'I don't think you've understood properly, Andrew. I think I should send you straight back, don't you? You're not suitable. How long do you think you'll get? I haven't seen the file. How many years?'
For the first time she saw the cockiness go out of his eyes.
'Bruno...' Stephanie called. He had been waiting outside. He lumbered back into the room, his keys ever jangling. 'This gentleman has decided he doesn't want to stay.'
'No,' Andrew said quickly.
'No?'
'No. I don't want to go back.'
'What then?'
'I'll stay.'
'What then?' Stephanie said firmly again.
Andrew looked her in the eyes but this time there was no defiance and meekly he looked down to the stone floor.
'Punishment,' he mumbled.
'What did you say?'
'Punishment,' he repeated louder. He wanted to call her a bitch and tell her what she could do with this lousy place but he dared not. He did not want to be sent back. At all costs he didn't want that.
'Please, say "please madam".'
'Please, madam,' he repeated.
'Bruno take Andrew away and give him what he's asked for.'
Bruno stepped forward and pulled Andrew by the arm.
He did not look at Stephanie but as he got to the cell door he could not help himself from reasserting his independence.
'It's been fun,' he said under his breath.
'What did you say?' Stephanie snapped.
'Nothing.'
'I think your attitude will have changed the next time I see you, Andrew. I hope so for your sake or your time here is going to be very unpleasant.'
Stephanie signalled for Bruno to continue and turned to Grace as Andrew was led out of the room.
'I hope you're not going to give me any trouble, Grace,' she said.
'No, no madam.'
'Good.'
'May I ask you something, madam?'
'Yes what?'
'I'm not very... I mean... I have... I'm not very sexually experienced.' She was looking around at the equipment in the room. 'It's expected, isn't it?'
'What did you do, Grace?'
'I was embezzling, madam. Not a lot. Well I suppose it was a lot over the years. It mounts up.'
'And you chose to come here?'
'I'd certainly have gone to jail. It wasn't my first offence. I couldn't have stood that. It's only I know we've got to be available, sexually I mean. It's just that I've never had much sex and I don't think I'm very good at it.'
Grace looked as though she were about to burst into tears. In the high-heeled boots Stephanie towered over her. Grace was not more than five feet tall. She was pretty Stephanie thought. Despite her subcutaneous fat her breasts were not large, they were wide and wedge-shaped. But her apple-shaped bottom and rounded navel were appealing.
'Some men like that, Grace,' Stephanie assured her.
Grace was definitely not going to be a troublemaker. 'Do they?'
'Have you ever been with a woman?'
'No.'
'You may have to.'
'I don't think I'd mind that.' The tone of Grace's voice had become suddenly more up-beat.
'Have you thought about it then?'
'Yes... I think I'd like it.'
'Just do as you're told and you'll be fine.'
'Thank you.'
Grace cast her eyes to the floor and stood waiting for what was, in effect, her sentence to begin. As the leather-clad woman strode from the room she felt a sensation of foreboding but at the same time, if she were honest with herself, it was mixed with a strong measure of excitement too.
The thick glass-topped dining table had been set for four people. It could have seated thirty. As usual the table was bedecked with flowers, a massive arrangement in its centre and a small sprig of orchids on the napkin of each place setting. Georg Jensen silver, Czechoslovakian handmade glasses and fine white German crockery completed the picture.
Stephanie had changed into a short black strapless dress, a satin silk with a subtle sheen. It was too short for a suspender belt so she wore hold-ups with lacy tops that matched the black lace of her panties and strapless bra. She had pinned her hair up so her long neck emphasised the bareness of her shoulders and her breasts, arched up by the bra and pushed into a deep cleavage.
The Clarkes were the first to join her. Jacqui, too, was wearing a strapless dress, but in red. It clung to the slim curves of her body to spectacular effect. Like Stephanie she had pinned her long hair up so her shoulders were bare. Her cleavage, the dark channel formed by her two heavy breasts pushed together by the material of the dress and its carefully engineered underpinning, looked so deep and dark a man could drown in it. The dress fitted tightly until it reached the top of her thighs, then flared out into a mass of pleats. As it was full length it gave no hint of what Stephanie knew she was wearing underneath.
Terry looked dapper in an evening suit and black bow tie. What little hair he had was neatly brushed. He held his wife's hand as they walked in.
The waiter poured champagne into the crystal flutes and they all clinked glasses. There was a definite conspiratorial air. As the two women stood together in red and black, a blonde and a brunette, Stephanie could read the look in Terry's eyes as he glanced from one to the other. He was remembering the afternoon, remembering how the two women had looked naked, as he'd fucked them both in turn. He was wondering, no doubt, if he would get another opportunity. Before he could even hint at such subjects Mrs Bloom marched in.
'Hi, there,' she said. She came up to the fireplace where a big log fire had been lit and warmed her hands. Even in the summer the thick walls of the castle let little heat into the main building.
Stephanie made the introductions. Mrs Bloom was wearing a green velvet suit with a white blouse under the jacket, and curiously, a black bra which was clearly outlined under the silk. A heavy gold chain hung down between her small breasts, a gold brooch glittered on her jacket and she wore gold bracelets on both her wrists. She had taken none of the rings off her fingers. She even wore a little gold chain on both ankles under the tanned nylon of her stockings, and her shoes were embossed with gold medallions.
Stephanie offered her a glass of champagne.
'Jesus, no,' she said. 'It gives me gas. I need a martini. Where's the guy who made my martini?'
A servant was despatched to get the necessary drink. 'You from England?' she said to the Clarkes.
They chatted about nothing in particular while Mrs Bloom consumed three large martinis in quick succession one after another, the waiter being told to fetch another immediately he had delivered the first.
The dinner was made up of local specialities, fish caught from the lake that afternoon, Umbrian lamb with rosemary, a local goat's cheese made no more than ten miles away on the mainland, a home grown salad, and a dessert of raspberries soaked in sponge and sweet wine. There was Frascati with the fish and Barolo with the meat. A delicate vino Santo was served with biscotto. Stephanie had taken to the local custom of dunking the biscuits in the wine.
Mrs Bloom drunk no wine. She stayed on martinis throughout the meal, eating the twist of lemon that came with each one by nibbling it between her front teeth. Apart from the lemon peel she ate little, pushing each course away after no more than a mouthful and calling for another martini. The more alcohol she consumed the louder she got.
'See,' she told everyone over the dessert, 'sex is like food. You ought to taste everything so you know what you really like best. I mean if you've never eaten chocolate how do you know whether you're going to love it or hate it? I mean sex isn't just straight up and down, is it? I mean that's what the animals do 'cause they don't know any better. Jesus that's so boring.'
'You must draw the line somewhere though,' Terry said.
'Oh sure. Listen I don't want some guy peeing over me to get his rocks off. I can do without that.'
'What?' Jacqui sounded astonished.
'You hadn't heard that one honey? Oh it's common enough. Works the other way too. I mean women want to pee on men and men want to be peed on. If that's what turns you on.'
'People really do that?'
'It's not my bag. But anything else. Oh except animals. I draw the line at animals, definitely. You've never had animals in the cellars, have you?'
'No,' Stephanie said. She had been hoping Mrs Bloom wouldn't mention the cellars. It was a subject she wanted to bring up with the Clarkes herself.
'Everything else though. I mean some of the guys down there. Wow... I suppose they get a lot of practice is all. But I tell you these guys know how to give a girl a good time. A real good time. You'll have a ball, honey, take it from me. And I'm a veteran.' She patted Jacqui's hand as it lay on the table. 'Can't speak for the women,' she said turning to Terry. 'I've never been into women. Oh like I said I tried it once. Sure. I came here one weekend and got two of those slave girls to do everything a woman could do to another woman, I mean licking and sucking and diddling in every orifice. Well it was okay. I mean I wasn't lying there thinking I'd left the cooker on or nothing. But I didn't get no real fireworks. Not like with a cock.'
'Slave girls...' Jacqui sounded bemused.
'Perhaps you'd like some coffee,' Stephanie said trying to change the subject at least for a moment.
'I'd love some. Do you have espresso?' Terry asked. 'In Italy it's obligatory.'
'Of course.'
But Mrs Bloom was in full flood and not to be put off. 'I even tried both together. A man and a woman. There's a lot of combinations, believe me. Need to be a geometry teacher. You can have anything you want. That's what I mean. I tried everything. But I can tell you for me it's men. I know what I want. I know exactly what I want. Talking of which I hope you've got two live specimens for me.' She was looking at Stephanie.
'Everything's taken care of, Mrs Bloom,' Stephanie said.
'Two real athletes, that's what I need tonight 'cause I'm as horny as a rattlesnake and twice as mean. Matter of fact,' she said grabbing Terry under the table by the knee, 'I nearly made a play for your husband over the main course. You wouldn't have minded would you, honey, long as we did it out in the open so you could get an eyeful. This is one big table. We could have done it at the other end. Hell with a glass top like this you could have all watched from underneath.'
Agnes Bloom laughed loudly and finished another martini. Their was an expression of disbelief on both the Clarkes' faces.
'Don't worry big man,' she said getting to her feet, not before tweaking Terry's knee one last time, 'I've got enough to satisfy me upstairs. They've never let me down yet. That's why I keep coming back.'
She marched to the door remarkably steadily considering the amount she had drunk. At the door she paused.
'Don't forget the cameras will you, sweetie?' she said to Stephanie.
'It's all arranged,' Stephanie replied. Devlin had left her instructions. Mrs Bloom always returned to America with a full video tape recording of all her activities, no doubt to be played and replayed until her next visit.
'I'll say goodnight then. Have a good time. Fill your boots. There's plenty for everyone. And if you want to look in be my guest. I'm not shy.'
'Look in?' Terry said.
'Sure, I like an audience. Why not?' She winked one heavily mascaraed eye.
With that Mrs Bloom walked out of the dining room, closing the door behind her.
Terry took a large swig of his wine.
'What is all this? Slaves, cellars, cameras...'
'I told you there were other... experiences. I'd hoped to explain it to you a little bit more subtly.' Stephanie said.
'Go on,' Terry prompted.
Stephanie sipped the small glass of vino Santo. 'Well...' She told them everything. She told them about the cellars, about the slaves and the way they were recruited, even about her own introduction to the castle. After their initial surprise Stephanie thought she sensed not shock but a frisson of excitement.
'And cameras?'
'Oh apparently Mrs Bloom likes a video of her activities. Her bedroom's wired with cameras.'
'That's what she meant by looking in,' Jacqui said.
'There's a monitor in the cellars, yes.'
'That I'd like to see,' Terry added.
'I didn't know you were a voyeur, darling,' his wife said playfully.
'I didn't know I'd be turned on by seeing you in the arms of another woman until this afternoon, but I was.'
'I didn't know I'd like to be there...'
'Exactly. So what happens now?' Terry asked.
'If you like I could show you around. If you're sure that's what you want.'
Terry turned to his wife. Stephanie could see the excitement in his eyes. Fortunately for him - and for their marriage - it was matched by the look in Jacqui's eyes. What had happened in the afternoon had broken the ice: now they were keen to jump into the water.
'Jacqui?' Terry said.
'Like Mrs Bloom said we should try everything at least once, shouldn't we?'
'Exactly.'
'In the cellars we can cater for every possible sexual fantasy. That's what Mrs Bloom meant. Anything you've ever wanted, or imagined. We can make it come true.'
'What sort of fantasy?' Terry asked.
'You'll see for yourself. A brandy first?' Stephanie suggested.
Neither of them wanted anything else to drink.