The Devil's Surrogate Read online

  Today's visitor, Sir Peregrine Wellthorne, was younger than most. The sort of money the Grayling enterprise commanded for its human products tended to be beyond the reach of all but the most wealthy and such wealth usually took time to accumulate. Sir Wellthorne looked to be in his early thirties, although his flushed countenance suggested a lifestyle not conducive to longevity. Wellthorne had inherited his father's shipping fortunes when the old man had, unfortunately, gone down aboard one of his merchantmen during an unseasonable storm in the Channel. Peregrine had since proceeded to employ much of his wealth in ways that would have had his father turning in his grave, had they ever been able to recover his body and give it the luxury of one, that is.

  'Yes, I'm sure you know what you're doing, Mister Portfield,' Sir Wellthorne drawled, his eyes bulging slightly as two buxom females appeared in the doorway at the end of the long barn, naked except for stringent leather harnesses and matching leather hoods that completely obscured their features. Behind them, a young and lanky sandy-haired fellow cracked a heavy whip. The wicked thong missed the girls' defenceless shoulders by mere fractions of an inch, but the sharp report made them flinch nonetheless.

  'Tell me, though,' he continued, swivelling his head to watch the progress of the glistening bodies with their bouncing bosoms, 'why the hood thing? Don't want your clients to see what they're buying, is that it?'

  Adam smiled, but kept his face turned away so that his companion could not see his amusement. It was the usual question, after all, and few visitors understood without having it explained to them, sometimes more than once, and then there were still those who were unable to grasp the concept. 'The girls are slaves now,' Adam said very slowly and deliberately. 'They all come from different backgrounds - city streets, country lanes, and even, sometimes, from quite comfortable circumstances. The only thing they have in common is that they are comely, young, fit and pleasing to the eye. Once they arrive here, however, they have everything and one thing in common, the only thing that counts, namely that they are now slaves and have no will, or choice, of their own. Neither will a pretty face or a pleading smile avail them, not while they are kept hooded, as you see most of them now. By hiding their faces we submerge their individualities, indeed their very personalities. They soon come to understand that now they are seen as only one thing, a means of gratification and service to their masters and mistresses to be. Here we view them only as one might view any other livestock. A farmer doesn't value his cows by the prettiness of their faces, after all!'

  Sir Peregrine guffawed and nodded enthusiastically. 'Indeed not! A good point, and well made, sir. Though a good brood mare may oft times be judged by the lines of her muzzle and not just by her flanks.'

  'Which is why we always give our buyers every opportunity to view the goods properly before buying,' Adam said. 'Meantime, however, we keep the bitches masked and their hair shorn, so that even when they are not wearing the hood for bathing they all feel as if they look alike. Besides, for those we send abroad, the lack of hair is an advantage when it comes to ensuring they don't become flea-ridden during the long voyage.'

  Sir Peregrine retorted, laughing, 'Well, a few fleabites never hurt a wench, that's for sure! But I daresay you fellows know your trade.'

  'Indeed we do,' Adam muttered. 'The easier it is to keep our cargoes clean, the more of them survive to reach their destinations. Lost stock is lost money, Sir Peregrine, and I was raised to abhor waste in any shape or form.'

  'Well, I must say, the shapes and forms about here are most pleasing.' Peregrine leered as another pair of hooded and harnessed slaves appeared at the end of the barn, followed by an even younger groom. These two girls were very pale-skinned; evidently their bodies had never been exposed to the elements.

  'These two,' Adam said, noting Peregrine's renewed interest, 'come from the north, probably from the Norse lands. They were purchased cheaply from a Scandinavian sea captain who needed money to affect some urgent repairs to his vessel after a storm forced him to turn into Harrogate two weeks since.'

  'But you'll not be offering them on so cheaply, I'll venture.'

  'Business is business, Sir Peregrine,' Adam smiled at him again. 'Besides, the prices are none of my business. Sir Roderick sees to that side himself.'

  'When he's not got one or another of his little piccaninnies sucking on the end of his cock, that is?' Peregrine sniffed, and then let out a raucous laugh. 'Damned if I can see what he finds so attractive in that pair of black wenches. Not one of them stands any higher than this!' He raised a hand to about the level of his heart. 'Probably only keeps them because nobody else would pay good money for such freaks!'

  Adam refused to be drawn out. Like Sir Peregrine, he found little he considered attractive in the two diminutive African girls, but then he knew that tastes varied, and he was not about to decry those of his employer, who very much enjoyed the doglike devotion and willing mouths of Popsy and Topsy, and would not willingly swap them even for the most alluring white beauty. 'Perhaps you see something you might like to sample yourself? With our compliments, of course,' he suggested, deftly changing the course of the discussion. 'We have several girls now who are suitably broken, and they're all clean enough once we sluice the dust of the day off them. Perhaps I could show you some possibilities and then offer you some refreshments while the lads prepare your choice?'

  Harriet recognised the gaunt figure of Jacob Crawley even in the near darkness of the crypt room into which she had been cast by Jane Handiwell's cohorts, but she knew he would not have recognised her even if the room had been bathed in bright sunlight. The thick leather mask concealed her identity completely, and the barbarous spike from the metal cage that had been locked onto her head over the hood dug viciously into her tongue every time she tried to move it, making intelligible speech completely impossible.

  'Ah, dear little Matilda,' he grunted, stooping over her prone figure and reaching out a bony hand to stroke her naked left breast. 'What a shame to waste such youthful perfection, but the work of the Lord allows little room for personal gratification or preferences.'

  The man was clearly insane. Harriet was sure now of what she had already suspected as she saw the strange light burning deep in his eyes. That he would assume she was Matilda was no surprise, but that he could pretend, let alone evidently believe, his evil actions were even remotely excusable or connected with religion proved to her beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was completely mad. However, mad or not, she was now totally in his power, and judging from what she had heard from the villagers, in imminent danger of her life.

  'I have decided to allow a little more time for that witch, your grandmother, to see sense,' he growled, his fingers moving to her other breast.

  Harriet felt her stomach tighten and her blood turn to ice in her veins, but knew there was little point in risking antagonising this lunatic further by trying to draw away from his touch.

  'The old woman has sent word that she wishes to barter,' Crawley continued, his lip curling back in a grin that revealed misshapen, yellowing teeth. 'I sense she is simply trying to buy time and seeking to trick me. However,' he muttered, 'one of the village men tells me he saw her with the young Calthorpe lad, which may well explain the apparent disappearance of my man, Jed Mardley. The crone is planning something, I can feel it, but if she thinks to outwit me, she'll live to regret it, if only briefly. Jed tells me that dropping you whore-spawn on the end of a rope makes for a painless end, but it also makes for a quick one with no time for intervention. I discovered, many years ago, that even the most cowardly soul may be stirred to action by the sight of a loved one dancing on the end of a gallows rope, but with this new way there is no time. Jed pulls his lever, and bang, down you go.' He snapped his fingers and cackled to himself. 'Just like that, the neck is broken and you're no more than carrion. Not so much as a twitching toe, Matilda, dear.' He moved his other hand up to the side of her neck, fingering the narrow steel band that kept the old scold's bridle from being remov
ed. 'This is even thin enough that it won't interfere with the rope,' he snickered, 'so you'll meet your death with nothing more than a garbled whimper. No witching curses from the scaffold from you, my dear child, no indeed.'

  He straightened up, and with an awkward gesture managed to throw his cape from his shoulders, letting it cascade to the floor behind him in a crumpled heap. 'But that is all for later, my precious.' He fumbled with the buckle of his belt. 'Now that most of the devil's work has been scourged from you, it's time again to at least welcome your physical body back into the fold.' He drew the front of his breeches apart and Harriet saw that his shaft was already growing erect. To her horrified astonishment, she saw also that it appeared to be inordinately long, making it appear thinner than she might have expected, like the neck of a rearing serpent. 'Let's see if you still have the strength to wriggle as you did before,' he challenged, leering. 'Up on your feet now, whore girl, and let us dance together!'

  Kitty realised resignedly that she was now even beginning to think of herself by her new name. Miranda Parkes, after all, belonged in a world so different from the one in which she now found herself that she would probably have killed herself rather than submit to the appalling indignities now inflicted upon her with such cold detachment. It was easier to imagine she was indeed Titty Kitty, and that she had lived no other life before this.

  As she trotted dutifully along - wrists bound tightly in the small of her back, waist cinched by the cruel girth strap, her breasts bouncing, their size exaggerated by the thin leather bands that had been drawn tightly around them at their base - the crack-crack of the whip seemed to echo inside her head as if from another world, its sound muffled by the restraining hood encasing her smoothly shaven head. Alongside her trotted a similarly garbed girl, distinguishable from Kitty only by the fact that her breasts were considerably smaller, whilst behind her she could imagine the cool yet interested expression of their groom, the ginger-haired Ross who had taken over her training now that the man Adam seemed to have lost his earlier interest in her.

  Perhaps, she mused, chewing on the wad of leather that served as an immovable gag inside her hood, the fact that Ross himself seemed far more interested in the newly arrived Sarah might mean that she, Kitty, would get an easier time of it for a few days, but she was not pinning any hopes on that. The men who ran this terrible place all seemed to have an insatiable appetite for their charges - they were all so young and undeniably fit, as she had seen immediately - and seemed able to go from one to another with barely a break in between.

  At least, she sighed to herself, they weren't superhuman and she had eventually been allowed to rest when they finally retired to wherever it was they slept, although Ross had reappeared at dawn to stir them from their slumbers and curse and kick them back into consciousness. Kitty risked a covert glance to her left, peering sideways through the vision-restricting slits in her hood, in an effort to see how her companion was faring. There was little to indicate Sarah's state, the leather-masked features betraying nothing, her breathing as laboured through her nostrils as was her own.

  'Eyes front, whore!' The whip cracked out again, but this time the tip caught Kitty exactly between her shoulder blades and she leapt, a sharp squeal of pain forcing its way past her gag. Damn him! she cursed in her head, her eyes burning with tears, for it had only been the briefest of glances and she could have sworn she had not even turned her head, certainly not more than the merest fraction of an inch.

  'Pick it up there now!' Ross snapped. 'Let's see those bubbies bounce. Or shall I get some bells to hang on those teat rings?'

  Kitty blinked to clear her vision and desperately tried to obey, for the thought of anything being hung onto the rings that now adorned her recently pierced nipples was almost too much to bear. Ross had demonstrated the previous evening just how painful even the smallest tug could be, and how by means of even two of the thinnest leather thongs attached to the twin metal circles a man could exert total control over her.

  'That's better!'

  Kitty stifled a sigh of relief. At least for the moment she was to be spared that indignity, though she knew there would be others and that it would not be long before one of the men, even if it were not Ross himself, would take advantage of her helplessness. Both she and Sarah had been brought out without thick dildos strapped into them, and Kitty had discovered this meant only that their sexes were being left that much more available for a human phallus.

  'Left now... left, I say!' Ross flicked the whip in an arc that allowed it to merely kiss both sets of shoulders. 'There!' he cried. 'There, onto that path, you idle sluts. Let's get some blood running in those legs and pussies.' The ground beneath their bare feet began to rise slightly, but even this gentle gradient imposed considerable extra strain upon muscles that were already screaming in protest.

  This way, Kitty now knew, lay two smaller barns which the grooms used to house their charges on some nights when the main barn was particularly crowded, or when they decided it was time to impose some particularly wicked discipline on certain of their charges. Both buildings had been equipped with a bewildering array of punishment and torture devices, ranging from simple trestles - upon which a girl could be painfully mounted - to stocks and pillories that must have tested the ingenuity of their designers, and which could be employed to secure a victim in almost any position of pain, degradation and availability for either punishment or sexual gratification.

  She sucked in as deep a breath as the constricting girth would permit and ground her teeth into her gag. At least, she tried to console herself, whatever indignity their coldly efficient trainer decided to inflict upon them, it could be no worse than this constant trotting uphill with lungs already threatening to burst and sweat now pouring from every pore of their bodies. Also, she had discovered almost immediately upon her arrival, the pain and indignity would eventually become partially assuaged by the waves of pleasure even such inhuman treatment somehow managed to generate in her treacherous body.

  Jacob Crawley gripped the writhing girl's buttocks hard with his bony fingers, delighting in the way her body squirmed helplessly against his own, and in the deep heat gripping his throbbing member as she hung impaled upon it, her bare toes inches off the stone floor, her legs kicking helplessly as she strove to free herself; a fruitless struggle, for he had her firmly and would not release her until he had sated himself.

  'Bitch... whore...' he hissed. 'Try to seduce the Lord's appointed hand with your lewdness, would you?' He barely suppressed a chuckle, for even his warped mind knew well enough that Matilda's desperate twisting and turning was no attempt to stir his lust but merely the instinctive struggling of a trapped creature, the way a fly might twitch and twist in the helpless grip of a spider's web.

  He moved one hand up, pressing against the small of her back so her naked breasts were crushed against his own bare chest. The smell of her was overpowering; sweat, fear, and yes, even that smell of lust. These ungodly sluts simply could not help themselves. Weakness, the weakness that was woman incarnate, the same weakness that had led Eve to sample the forbidden fruit, and all at the behest of a serpent. Now another serpent was summoning this Eve's whore, the stiff serpent that sprang up from his loins and upon which she was now so totally impaled, repenting and repaying the treachery of her sex to the Lord God their maker. Crawley ground his broken teeth hard together, feeling the first waves of his own surrender beginning to build, knowing he must soon spurt his seed deep into her faithless womb and yet wishing to prolong the moment of deep, agonising ecstasy for both of them.

  'Bitch...' he groaned, butting his head against the leather covering of her cheek, forgetting the steel band that crossed it and yet oblivious to the pain as his forehead slammed into it. 'Bitch!' he roared again, and holding her writhing body even tighter, exploded a torrent of semen into her with a ferocity that threatened to buckle his own legs beneath their combined weight.

  Very dimly, Sarah Merridew was aware that something had happened ins
ide her head, something she could not explain and yet something for which, in a curious way, she was grateful.

  It was as if some part of her brain had simply shut down by refusing to accept that any of this could actually be happening to her. Now she found herself blessed with the ability to experience everything as if it was happening to someone else, as if she was viewing it all dispassionately through a smeared and smoky glass. It was not as if she could do anything about it anyway. These terrible people, whoever they were, had seen to it that she was kept in a state of total helplessness ever since they seized her, wasting no time in reducing her to a condition that was at best animalistic, and at worst...

  She peered down through the eye slits in her hood at her breasts, which bobbed up and down as she trotted dutifully along, the early morning sun occasionally glinting on the metal rings that now hung from just below each of her nipples. They really did look quite pretty, she mused, and then castigated herself fiercely for entertaining such a thought. It was one thing to accept a certain inevitability about her situation, but quite another to consider it anything but terrible. And for a young lady to even enjoy the sight of her bared bosom, especially one that had been handled in such a crude and summary fashion, had to be a sin on a level no Christian woman could begin to contemplate.

  So why did her nipples tingle so pleasantly in the fresh, warm breeze? Why did she continue to feel that heat deep inside her groin, the same heat the brutal Ross had kindled and which refused to cool even though she had since managed a few hours of very uncomfortable sleep? Why did she, knowing that Ross would soon be thrusting into her again, not view the prospect with terror and abhorrence? Why, she was forced to ask herself, did she feel almost as if she were looking forward to it?