RESEARCH

Elizabeth Southwater

  Copyright remains with author

A Free extract from bdsmbooks.com

RESEARCH

          The records are quite good – some go back to the year 1363 – and they show that nobody of any moment has died a violent or neglected death at Beaumaris since 1613. Beaumaris is the massive and quite superb fourteenth-century castle guarding the Island of Anglesey off the coast of Wales, much photographed but for some reason usually only photographed from the outside. It’s a fairly forbidding mass of stone so perhaps there’s just this small disinclination to go in. You can of course; Beaumaris is a part of the National Heritage and is preserved as much as funds allow. It has a Tourist Office which opens in the brief ‘high season’ and a resident guide, a knowledgeable historian who still continues painstaking research into what was after all, a very significant place very long ago.

          A resident guide, William Penny, has three very nice, modernised rooms above the moat, they’re well-furnished but a mite chilly at most times – the walls are twenty-feet thick, hence there are no windows at that level but he has the most up-to-date lighting. Twenty feet isn’t a lot - the foundation walls below are either thirty-feet of solid masonry or cut from solid rock. Nobody except William has calculated or even been interested in the foundations of that corner of Beaumaris or in the three small, cold dark chambers they enclose – the only interest architecturally and historically is in the so-called bare and dismal ‘dungeons’ on the other side of the castle, not that more than three apprehensive tourists visit the dungeons in any one season. There was a very brief view of the underwater-face of the foundation-wall beneath William’s official apartment last summer but it was cursory, the water is turbid and anyway the diver was looking for Angela May, a tourist who’d become lost when wandering in Beaumaris’ passages on her own; they thought she might have fallen into the Great Well in the courtyard because her small backpack was found on its brink.

          The Great Well connects with the moat – or so legend has it – so they checked the moat. After some weeks, with nobody else asking about the whereabouts of Angela May it was assumed she’d just gone off on her holiday, had left her pack by accident and couldn’t remember where she left it. There was only a change of clothes and toiletries in it…

          In fact, Angela May had been nowhere near the Great Well when she fell; she’d just left her pack beside it when she decided to investigate the partly-open studded-oak door in the corner of the courtyard. It was almost the end of the season and there was nobody else exploring the castle with her save for a party of five American tourists, then being talked-at by William about ‘Welsh-Ancestry’ – and they were high on the top of the keep. Not without some trepidation in case it led to some part prohibited to tourists and with a little more trepidation because of the chill menace of the whole place, she peered round the door to be confronted by a small, grey stone space and another partly-open door, decidedly modern. William, in his haste to pursue the Americans and the likelihood of a fat dollar-tip, had left the outer and inner doors to his apartments only partly closed. Angela found herself in a room that was obviously an office of some sort – desks, computer, papers, tourist-leaflets and such and was about to back out when she saw, in a corner and set deeply back in the massive stonework, yet another door, very low, very ancient and intriguing. William had discovered and uncovered that door some nine months earlier. Telling herself that it was ‘all right’ to explore, she tried the rusty iron-ring door-handle, stooping because the door, though wide, was only some four feet high. The oak yielded, she peered in, surprised to find quite bright electric light and a narrow stone stair spiralling down. Cautiously, to try to see round the tight curve of the steps, Angela advanced down the first three…

          The classic way to design a staircase in a major castle six-hundred years ago involved two essentials; first that the staircase spiralled anti-clockwise with a very small turn-radius, putting right-handed invading swordsmen at a serious disadvantage and second that a number of the stone steps, at random, should be of different heights and foot-widths to the rest so that the intruder - concentrating on trying to attack, hampered by the narrow, left-handed turns and probably in the dark - would stumble and fall.  The first two steps that Angela took had a rise of seven inches, the third a rise of eleven so she fell; the tight turn arrested her fall rather than accelerated it for it’d been designed for tumbling armoured men rather than a twenty-first century teenager in jeans but she struck her head on stone and ended up jammed in a heap on the tenth to twelfth stone steps, remaining so until the Americans departed and William came back to his office, found the door to his very private discovery open – and found her ten steps down.

          Research being everything, after a few moments of panic he decided that ‘down’ was a far better idea than ‘up’ as far as the girl on the stair was concerned, so he closed the office, closed the long-hidden staircase-door and took her down to his ‘discovery rooms’. Most of what was down there was still completely rusted-up but he had, over the months, managed to free-up, photograph and write up some items, one being the four-foot-square, four foot high iron cage that jutted over a pit. Best place.

          The pit, six hundred years ago, had been both a privy for any occupant of the cage and a place where unwanted stuff – body-parts for instance – could be flung. It was of course dried out and empty now but once he had Angela May’s clothes off and had got her into the cage, she could pee and whatever through the floor-bars into the pit. He dropped her cut-off clothes there too… She was coming round and he had some anxiety about any possible screaming – not that he needed to be anxious, the masonry being so thick – but a trot up and down the stair to the office would yield enough wide plastic tape to cover her mouth until the 4pm closing time. A quick trip then into Llangefni-town would, because it catered for tourists and had at least one suitable shop, provide a gag of the ‘sex-toy’ genre, which is exactly what William procured…

          For the remaining half-dozen days of the season he fed her in the mornings; in the evenings he fed her again but then continued refurbishing and studying the ancient items with which the ancient, low rooms were furnished. She watched from her cage, naked, gagged and hysterical. He’d had a problem at first over feeding her; getting the rubber penis-gag out was extremely difficult because of the difficult access through the cage’s bars and because of her terror – putting it back in after she’d been fed was almost impossible – but he’d hit on the simple idea that if she didn’t offer her face to the bars when he told her to he wouldn’t feed or water her. He told her that of course but it was only after she’d been without water for four days that she co-operated. Even she knew – or found out – that about forty hours is the most you can do without water. By the time the castle closed to the public he had the feeding business down to a fine-art, he had most of the ancient and rusty stuff cleaned-up and apparently functional, had set up proper lights and two cameras and was ready for the delights months of Academic Research. Four days after ‘Closing’ day he began…

                    He let her out of the cage and drove her, with nothing more complicated than a length of old fan-belt from the car, naked, filthy, stumbling and weeping, into the great iron treadmill. He had in mind an hour a day of treadmill because she had to be exercised and it was also easier to sluice her with water– pleasantly warmed of course – to clean her up.  While the grille-floor of the cage and the pit facilitated her toilet-needs, urinating and defecating while she crouched in the confined space was somewhat hit-and-miss, so the cage itself became somewhat unclean. The cage-pit set-up was in the far corner of the room but even then the smell tended to spread itself about. As with taking-out and replacing her own gag, she had to be induced to operate the treadmill; the original method of encouraging steady walking had been by red-heated iron bars thrust at the back of the walker’s legs so he found a suitable bar, brought-down a blow-torch to heat its end and merely had to threaten her with it, catching her left thigh slightly only once. After that, during treadmill-sessions, if she slowed or stopped he merely had to light the blowtorch, nothing more. He always made meticulous observation-records in his laptop whenever he was using her for research in any way.

                    The ‘Research Programme’ itself proved mind-bendingly difficult to schedule. Clearly he couldn’t use such things as the Rack or the Boot at an early stage, for their intended effects might cause negative-impacts on the other Tests; even apparently simple things might be a problem: one couldn’t, for example, force a heated, mailed, spiked Glove onto a hand already mangled by the absolutely-basic Thumbscrews and Finger-cramps.  He wasn’t a medieval practitioner who could send out for fresh testees – he only had the one. However, there were some experiments which, if carefully handled and with the right post-treatment – antibiotics, ‘first-aid’ and so forth, might actually prove advantageous. The Tongue Iron was a case in point. William did his best, labelled ‘Tongue Iron’ as ‘Girl 001’ in his data base and, having secured her to the wall by means of the ‘Wall Shackles (restraint only?)’ ad-libbed by using the heated iron-rod to make her open her mouth and scream, made a bit of a shambles of catching her tongue but eventually managed to close the long handles and cut it off. The mess was frightful – used they to wear leather aprons or some such? She fainted, naturally, and he recorded ‘much effusion of blood, some choking, then immediately unconscious. ?Much pain?’

          He’d acquired a ponderous and serious tome, ‘Emergency First-Aid for Field-Surgeons’, so knew what to do but doing-it proved a steep learning-curve in itself. Once she was quiet; shuddering and jerking but quiet and no longer with blood running over her chin and naked breasts he did what the book advised and left her ‘for observation’ while he hared into town for rubber aprons, elbow-length gloves and boots. How on earth had his thirteenth or fourteenth century predecessors managed?

          Also, he’d possibly made a mistake in taking her tongue out so early in the programme; his predecessors doubtless hadn’t bothered but he was faced with the girl with her mouth jacked-wide over a modern, stainless ratchet-gag and a stub of tongue bulky with dressings. The whole Research Programme could take six months or more; almost four days were lost while she gurgled and choked and writhed in the shackles under his initially clumsy attempts at nasal-feeding. It wasn’t going to work – he’d need more time re-instating her for the next experiment than he would be able to spend on the experiments themselves.

                    So he wrote five pages about the apparent impossibility of serious experimentation and research with the medieval equipment he had; serious experimentation and research under twenty-first-century conditions that is. Reviewed his options, took her down and Racked her. He racked her on the Crab, which pulls the arms and legs out in an X-pattern, not just longitudinally as with the smaller, lighter iron Rack. He racked her on the Crab with her head in the heavier of the two Scold Cages, the tongue-dressings and ratchet-gag removed so that the heavy bar of the cage could properly fill her mouth.  He must have done something wrong for as soon as he began to wind her arms and legs out and apart she was able to scream despite the Scold Cage. Scream and shake and writhe – or at least writhe until the extension of her legs and arms prevented any such thing. Being always meticulous and making assumptions about the spare-time activities of his ancient predecessors – purely for research of course – he deliberately crouched when he went between her legs and fucked her like that, people being much shorter in those far-off days. 

          ‘Penetrated G sexually whilst she was fully extended on Crab. Endeavoured to simulate a Penetrator of five-foot stature. Not entirely successful but (4 attempts) established that female-orgasm entirely possible. Five turns of the winches only (2 of these) as more indicated possibly a) dislocation of hips/shoulders b) possible skin-ruptures and bleeding at armpits/groin’.

          Off the Crab – he had to carry her – he put her straight onto the Tower. The Tower isn’t a tower at all, merely a tallish stool-like thing fabricated from the inevitable heavy blacksmithery, designed so that the user can be shackled face-down in a convenient position to have the buttocks whipped or for work with the Searcher. William opted for the Searcher first, that being the slightly-more complicated procedure.

          First a heavily-greased iron tube some inch-and-a-half in diameter has to be worked deep into the rectum; the tube has two loose iron-rings at its outer end. Then an inch-diameter rod with six-inches of its end covered in sharp spikes is thrust into the tube. It was clearly important that the Girl should see how the thing operated so he demonstrated tube and rod in front of her face before he began. Then, once the spiked rod was deep in the tube, simply withdraw the tube slowly from around the rod. ‘Visible attempts by G to prevent anus closing on spikes as tube was withdrawn (?any actual internal muscle-structures to make such intentional-cramping of the rectum possible?). Note: tube cannot be re-inserted. Much damage to rectum/sphincter unavoidable (observed) on withdrawing the spiked-rod. Much screaming. Without present day surgery/antibiotics etc original subjects would quickly suffer from terminally-infected internal damage. Textbook unhelpful but attempted some action by pumping in major broad-spectrum antibiotic paste (used (sterilised) hand-pump grease-gun)’.

          As she was still shackled over the Tower, he then saved time by going straight to ‘#9B – flogging, version A – buttocks, Variant 3 – strap, leather’ timing the strokes with a metronome. A mere eleven strokes produced unconsciousness, although that very small number may have been due to the previous use of the Searcher (q.v.). He Racked her after that, just the conventional straight-rack. Every new Test was becoming more and more unsatisfactory though, the heated Iron Boot producing such violent movement that she was badly lacerated by her heavy iron restraints – and such tongueless-screaming that he was seriously distracted from Observation…