Bertha

"Look on her," cried Mr Rochester in a wild bitter tone. "My wife. The woman to whom I am chained. That is where I am told by the law I must seek for human comfort and happiness."

The creature snarled, and appeared ready to hurl herself at him, but he quelled her with a growl and an upraised arm.

"I was young and foolish, and the victim of my father's greed and my brother's ambition. They formed a plot to marry me to the daughter of a rich West Indian merchant. The fortune was real enough, but the girl was a sham, a deceit. The family was decaying into madness, and she worst of all. At first my youthful ignorance was dazzled by their wealth and her voluptuous body, and I could not, or would not, see the rotteness inside. We married in great style, and some haste, for they knew well what lay beneath that ivory skin, those rounded limbs, that witching smile. On our wedding night she began to disgust me by her sexual demands, for it was clear from the first she was no virgin. As our married life progressed, so did her wild adventures, becoming more and more indiscreet, while her behaviour became more and more violent, creating actual danger to her servants, and even to myself.

Her distance from all decent standards of womanly behaviour may be judged from the fact that, far from expressing remorse for her actions, and deriving benefit from the corrections of her lawful husband, she openly gloried in her exploits and, though she was frequently corrected, could not be made to mend her ways. On more than one occasion, I had her triced up taut on the triangle where the household slaves were whipped, and flogged her myself, until the blood ran down her shoulders, but all to no avail. She was so lost to decency that a husband's hand had no influence over her.

The climax came when we had endured this dreadful marriage for a year. On a night, I was walking in the town with friends when we came across a lighted doorway advertising an amusement of some kind under the sign or L'ƒme d'Or; The Golden Ass.

Encouraged by my friends, and the drink we had taken, I entered, to find myself in a form of small theatre, where a performance of some kind was about to start. The audience was mainly of men of all sorts and conditions, with a few women of the town. As I looked around me more, I spotted a small group of more heavily veiled females, half hidden by the pillar that sheltered them. The rows of seats ran in circles round a shallow pit in the centre, which was empty, save for a simple wooden structure, formed like a trestle for supporting a table or such, but with a padded top, one end formed into a domed boss. From there the rail ran downwards, the far legs being somewhat shorter than the near.

We had not been there above five minutes, when the crowd gave a deep murmur, as a woman entered the arena, accompanied by two men. She wore a golden veil about her head, but otherwise she was quite naked. Her voluptuous body stalked to the trestle, a hand on one shoulder of each of her escorts.

Showing no shame at her exposure to so many lustful eyes, her proud breasts thrusting before her, like figure-heads before a great ship, the delicate narrowing of her waist, before the flaring of her haunches, lending her a certain grace, despite the depravity of her display.

She reached the trestle, and positioned herself at one end, her legs spread wide, the padded boss pressed against the tangle of curls that adorned her fork, just below the firm swelling of the gently rounded belly. Her assistants helped her to lie forwards along the sloping top. The boss under her belly raised her slightly so that her heels left the ground a little, but left her comfortably positioned enough. With her chest supported by the padded rail, her breasts hung either side, although they were so firm that they still kept much of their fine shape, the large dark teats seeming to be fully engorged as they thrust towards the floor. While one of the men left the arena, the other laid a species of thick rug, or pad across the woman's back, covering her from her neck almost to her waist.

Positioned where we were, my party had a clear view from a little behind her and to one side, the wide spread stance opening up her thighs, so that the split fig of her vulva pressed back between. Indeed, her hips were canted up so by the boss under her belly, that the pouting vulva pointed upwards like a mouth set to catch a thrown sweetmeat. One of the attendants approached with a small pot and a soft brush, and gently lathed the gaping labia with a greasy ungent, though they were so swollen and glistening already, I did not think she would have need of further lubrication, for such it was clearly intended to be..........".

[Forgive me reader, I cannot bring myself to pen more. Thus far in my account I have been totally frank with you, baring my body, as my soul, holding nothing back, but the events that Mr Rochester described on that fateful evening, I cannot set on paper. Indeed, I must believe, since the law and those who have responsibility for the well-being of the body politic declare it so, that, should the facts of what took place come to the ears of the lower classes, servants and the like, or those weaker vessels, women, civilization would collapse. Men might run rabid in the streets, bent on rapine, women throw off their clothes and their restraint, and openly invite even worse debaucheries than the woman of Jamaica. The mighty British Empire itself might topple, as that of Rome in its decadance, and its crowing jewel, the Monarchy, be swept away.

I cannot risk to be the instrument of such a catastrophe and, if there are among my readers those endowed with Academic Curiosity, and strong stomachs, who would like to know the whole truth of the depraved episode, they must apply elsewhere. For myself, I can only pass over that part of Mr Rochester's narrative, and take it up again when the terrible doings in that evil place had reached their monstrous conclusion.]

"Her assistants helped her to her feet, and she walked back between them, albeit a little stiff and limping, but still holding herself with pride, as she had at her entry. In the throes of the jolting intercourse, her veil had become loosened, and now, as she retraced her steps, a hand on each assistant as before, it slipped to one side, just as she passed before me. It was Bertha!

The shock was such that I did not react for some moments and, when I came to myself, she had disappeared. Distraught I burst from that place of depravity, and ran through the midnight streets shouting and cursing. Then I calmed, my mind instantly made up, and returned to my home. When Bertha returned I forced her to the dungeon beneath the house, and stripped her to confirm her guilt, for even then I did not wish to believe what I had seen with my own eyes.

In a cold fury I bound her wrists and hauled them up tight to a hook in the ceiling. With leather thongs I drew her legs apart and secured her ankles to iron rings set in the floor.

'Since you seem incapable of having an excess of sensation in these parts,' I cried, 'it would be ungallant to refuse you more,' and I took a black snake whip and lashed her back until the blood came, her buttocks until they, too, wept red, that insatiable gash between her legs, until it contributed its share. The next day I took ship to England, bringing my hideous bride, to incarcerate her in this attic. Now she still poisons my life by depriving me of my chance of happiness with Jane."

Whether she understood any of what was being related, I do not know, only that she became more and more agitated as the narrative progressed. At his final words, she gave an animal snarl and leapt at me, grabbing for my throat, missing as I leapt back in horror, and grasping the neckline instead, ripping it to my waist, leaving my breasts exposed in their lacy nests atop my corset. Mr Rochester had rushed to defend me and seized the rabid woman, wrestling her to the ground. With a knee in her back to quell her, he drew the belt from his waistband, and tied her wrists. Amid frantic struggles and lurid curses on his head and mine, she was dragged to the chamber next door, where stood the triangle on which both Grace Poole and I had been flogged. In a moment she was strung up as tight as either of us had been, and her one garment ripped from her back. Her husband, for that was what I must call him now, took up his whip and set about to lash her to the blood.