Recap – The Remainderman (Frank Speech)

06-124 Grimm Transformations VIII: Child-Soldier of the Succubae

2025-06-242025-06-23 admin

*1960 06-124 Pen imagines he is searching the secret archive with Chava*

*1962 06-124 The Choking Torture of Anzola Ipato*

PREVIOUSLY: By trickery and deadly threat, eight-year-old Pen has agreed to help the succubae until dawn, as they raid the Venetian capitol late on a storm-torn night of floods, seeking to destroy what the Venetian spy service has learned about the succubae and to release an imprisoned grandfather and a young girl accused of witchraft. Pen has now been geased to compel him and spelled to trust Channah and believe she is by his side. NOW:

Pen, bound as a safety net by a leash attached to a harness, and following Chava’s reasonable suggestions and whispers, crossed the hallowed space, picked the lock (under a minor delusion that he was simply unlocking a difficult lock using several keys at once), opened the door of the archive, and crept inside to access the secret files of Europe’s, and perhaps the world’s, most-extensive and most-advanced spy agency: The Council of Ten of the Serenissima.

Within the windowless archive, with Chava’s guidance and encouragement, Pen found and raided the Venetians’ magic books, written in Latin, the language of religion and science in Western Europe, which Pen read and spoke fluently, along with his aristocratic caste’s language of Norman-influenced French, and his local language of English. He read all their titles for Chava, setting aside for Chava’s review the very, very few Chava didn’t already possess or hadn’t already known of, or that were so rare they would be difficult or impossible for the Venetians to replace. Although the books, collectively, contained many grains of truth, they also contained falsehoods and honest misapprehensions which the Succubae valued, not to keep their own magical primacy over humans, but to help them predict the actions of the humans who hunted them and the other creatures of hell.

Turning to the written records of the Council of Ten, even though they were written in Venetian (rather than Latin), a language Pen had only first been exposed to when his Aunt brought him to Venice earlier in the year, his Latin and French allowed him to read the spines, introductions, and section titles in the books well enough to locate what the succubae wanted most: The records of the interrogation, conviction, and execution of Anzola Ipato, by one Gasparo Orseolo of the Council of Ten, who had been burned at the stake on Wednesday, the 3rd of October, 1515. Morally, exposing an eight-year-old with even partial literacy of Venetian to such material was one of several testaments given during the course of the evening, to Chava’s limitations as a surrogate mother-figure. Technically, the very existence of the record was a testament to the efficacy of the Venetian secret service, which had accomplished something very few humans, human governments, or even human civilizations were ever able to achieve: identifying, capturing, and questioning an actual demon of hell: Tirtzah the succubus. After weeks of agonizing tortures, including especially vile and inhuman tortures methods devised by the Inquisition that were not normally performed by the Venetians (who relied heavily on the strappado), her mortal form, and thus her ability to visit Earth, was destroyed by fire, possibly the most agonizing form of banishment from the Earthly plane.

Chava had persuaded Pen to push, pull, and drag the heavy folio volume back across the church to her position in the Venetian Senate Hall. There, with Pen nestled on her lap, she read and carefully edited the record, using her magical powers and her great manual skills, to alter—as subtly as possible to try and evade any Venetians re-reading it from suspecting it had been changed—the text. As much as she estimated she could get away with, she replaced information learned about the succubae with inaccurate information that would be less helpful, or even self-defeating, the next time the Court of Lust tangled with the Serene Republic. Chava’s focus was on things Tirtzah had said that might hint at or reveal anything the succubae perceived as a potential weakness or exploit. Then she had made Pen reverse the difficult process of moving the volume back into the library. And because Pen lacked the strength to lift the folio-sized hardbound volume over his head back up to the high shelf he had pulled it from, she had him pull down all the nearby volumes and pile them up with the altered volume somewhere in the middle.

Pen also found and recovered for Chava, Tirtzah’s magical ring, which the Venetians had taken from Tirtzah. Ultimately, they had not been able to make much out of it since capturing it. By recovering it, the succubae ensured they never would.

Finally, Chava had tried various ways to help Pen make sense of a section of books written—and even labeled on their spines—with lines and geometric combinations of lines that Chava suspected was a Venetian code. This, neither she, nor any of the succubae, had anticipated: volumes so secret, they were encoded when written and kept within their very fortress and capitol?

In the end, she decided against doing anything with them, at least not tonight. Even if the boy started with the last volume and worked his way backward, dragging every single volume out to her, it might take him hours to bring her the volumes covering 1515. If, indeed, she could even identify which ones those were. And then to repeat her work on the Venetian-language records, she would have to decipher the code well enough not only to make sense of the text, but to try and replace existing words with credible substitutes. The only other option would be to burn the lot; but in addition to being a terrible and unnecessary loss of knowledge—a possibility she loathed on principle—it would be pretty clear to the Venetians someone had been in their secret archive and was trying to destroy at least something the Venetians had learned and hidden there. Chava couldn’t even be sure what the coded—or cuneiform, for that matter—books were, let alone whether they actually recorded anything about Tirtzah, which seemed unlikely. If they did, keeping a copy in Latin would rather tend to defeat the purpose of keeping a copy in code. And because Anzola Ipato’s trial was only two years’ past, thus alerted to an effort to tamper with their institutional memory, they could and probably even would reconstruct much or all of it—accurately—from living memories, which would completely reverse Chava’s efforts to destroy the Venetians’ Latin record of their recently-acquired knowledge of succubae. Destroying a vast knowledge without helping the succubae, and thereby making it unlikely she would destroy the limited knowledge actually harmful to the succubae? That would be the worst of both worlds, and she decided against it.

In the end, Chava—with Pen’s semi-witting help—completed her mission before Channah and Rivqah finished theirs. Instead of risking Pen coming out from under her influence while he was in the secret archive, and thus beyond her physical control, she brought him back to her and, inspired, decided to make the most of the opportunity by influencing Penny to do whatever he could, to save himself. Chava warned him he literally could not escape the succubae until dawn, and must avoid crossing Channah, or if possible even attracting her attention again, in the meantime. But once he saw any part of the sun, he should immediately, or as soon thereafter as possible, slip away when neither Channah, nor Rivqah, nor Miryam was watching him, and run for his very life. When Pen protested that Chava should come with him, or that he wanted to see her again, she promised that if he obeyed her like a good boy, she would visit him again in a week. Finally, still concerned that she had not impressed the danger upon him sufficiently, or persuaded him that a 5,000-year-old succubus didn’t need an eight-year-old boy to protect her, and having already used him to cross the sanctified church and plunder the secret archive, she added the force of compulsion to ensure his commitment.

Literature Section “06-124 Grimm Transformations VIII: Child Laborer or Child Soldier?”—more material available at TheRemainderman.com—Part 124 of Chapter Six, “Le Saccage de la Sale Bête Rouge” (“Rampage of the Dirty Red Beast”)—1264 words—Accompanying Images: 1960-1963—Published 2025-06-24—©2025 The Remainderman. This is a work of fiction, not a book of suggestions. It’s filled with fantasies, idiots, and criminals. Don’t believe them or imitate them.

Recap

06-123 Grimm Transformations VII: The Red Beasts and the Little Boy

2025-06-23 admin

*1956 06-123 Chava tries to shield Pen from Channah*

*1958 06-123 Kill ’em all. Let Channah sort ’em out*

PREVIOUSLY: n/a. When I was kicked off DeviantArt in early March, I was advancing two story lines: The first, adult Penny’s and adult Chastity’s introduction to hard-core succubus sexual and moral domination; and the second, child Pentecost’s very first introduction to the succubae. As best I could tell, images generated in relation to the second story line (not the first one) were what DA’s algorithms decided were unacceptable and caused me to be kicked off DA without any opportunity to defend my work or make it conform to DA’s standards or even be told what DA claimed I was doing wrong. I therefore backed off this second story line until I felt like I had enough distance and perspective to avoid DA’s matrix-agent-like algorithm.

Mind you, I don’t think I have any worry about failing to comply with DA’s policies—I don’t think I actually ever violated them before—but rather, to avoid being summarily and arbitrarily dumped from the platform and having all my work and comments and followers wiped out. The arbitrariness with which this gruesome artistic death sentence is applied is a significant deterrent, and even an overbearing threat, to creativity, artistic integrity, and intellectual honesty. I can’t really say this thread of the story is what it would have been before my previous avatar’s execution; but rather, it’s a similar story I care about enough to tell, even though it is limited and redirected enough to give me some hope I might—might—be able to do the story-line and the subject matter justice without the figurative death penalty from DA. I guess we’ll see.

Here, then, is a summary of the second plotline to date. NOW:

On All Souls’ Eve in 1517 AD, Channah, with three members of her Court (Miryam, Rivqah, and Chava) and a human child swept up with them (Pentecost Argent), are mounting a surreptitious assault on the Doge’s Palace, capitol of the Serenissima—the Serene Republic of Venice.

Venice is drowning: Storms dominating the Adriatic and Central Mediterranean have brought acqua alta (“high water”) to the lagoon city, flooding its streets and basements even as rain and lightning lash its domes and towers and canals.

Queen Channah and her Duchesses, Miryam and Rivqah, all three of them trained and experienced assassins and infiltrators, are spearheading the assault. By contrast, Chava, her Queen of Arms, is a strong, skilled metalsmith and stonecutter with a meticulous personality and a bookish mind, brought along with them for her very specialized knowledge and skills—not her prowess in battle. Chava had come to Venice the night before, on All Hallows’ Eve, an auspicious night of power and disruption, to raid the empty, unconsecrated church of San Zaccaria for precious metals and holy water to use in service of her Queen.

There, she had been surprised by Pen, a neglected English child in the inadequate care of an indifferent Aunt. Like many human children, Pen had some capacity for sensing and perceiving the supernatural. Like a much smaller number of such children, he was ignored and reckless enough to pursue his curiosity about the things he sensed, rather than sensibly ignoring or cowering from them. At San Zaccaria, Chava and Pen had been immediately drawn to one another by their compatible personalities and—much more powerfully—their respective needs to take advantage of their chance encounter to fill the awful, aching holes in their own lives and persons. Pen’s innocence, and Chava’s capacity for empathy, conspired to protect Pen, an altar boy at the church, and allow Chava to complete her mission. She had rocked him to sleep in her warm, dry cloak and then stolen away with her prizes, the most supernaturally-charged relics and ritual items in the church, leaving only the crucifix on the altar as a concession to comfort the boy and assuage his conscience.

Tonight, All Souls’ Eve, he had surprised Chava (again) and Channah as they prepared to assault the Palace. Driven again by feelings deeper than and separate from common sense and conscious reason, desperate for Chava’s attention and care, he had come to return her cloak. By doing so, he had inadvertently brought himself to the attention of probably the wiliest, most-passionate, and most-evil creature to still walk the surface of the Earth. His arrival, discovering them in the storm-filled Piazza San Marco minutes before their secret raid on the Venetian capitol began, had complicated the Queen’s evil plans, to say the least. Too young and innocent to be of proper interest to the succubae in his own right, he was simply a nuisance. Leaving him alive risked his reporting their presence to Venice’s nocturnal guards, the Lords of the Night. But leaving the body of an eight-year-old child on the metaphorical steps of the palace risked raising a general alarm. And by revealing Chava’s tender tendencies to Channah, Pen had unknowingly put Chava at risk of punishment by her Queen, because he was not the first human toward whom Chava had shown what Channah considered an inappropriately undemonic attitude. Indeed, this was not even the first time Channah’s own plans had been inconvenienced by one of Chava’s little pets.

Fortunately for Pen’s life—if not exactly his soul—Channah, always practical, egotistical, and purposeful above all, had seen a way to turn the unexpected complication to her advantage. Because the Venetians had protected their secret archives on the second floor of the palace behind a church that had been properly consecrated, neither the Succubae nor any of their familiars could easily sneak into the archives. At least, not without either risking teleporting into a space they had never seen (possibly to be bisected by a wooden panel, or have their guts or legs or arms scrambled by a pile of books) or undertaking a loud and destructive aerial assault on the archive by flying demons blasting holes in the stone walls of the Venetian capital in the middle of a crowded city. Neither option was really acceptable. And thus, the succubae required a human who would be able to enter hallowed ground: A human neither under their compulsion, nor already marked as the property of hell.

They needed a human either detached enough from humanity or reality, or vulnerable enough to influence and trickery, to do their bidding. And to keep their purposes secret from humanity, they preferred not to hire or recruit humans ahead-of-time. Instead, they had planned to free a teenage girl already known to them, tempted but not yet owned by them, from Venetian custody in exchange for her help, and then use her to raid the archives for them. Having already been labeled a witch by the Venetians, tortured, and thrown in the semi-submerged cells of the Palace known as the Wells because they weren’t quite ready to execute a minor girl, the succubae counted her as well reliable to do what they wanted in exchanged for being spirited away. But if Chava could use the boy to raid the archives while they accomplished their other dark purposes, it would shorten their time in the Palace and thus improve their chances of escaping without the Venetians ever figuring out for certain whether they had raided the secret archives.

With a combination of artful deceit and deadly threats, Channah had tricked and cowed Pen into agreeing to comply with a geas: not a compulsion, which might keep him from entering the church; and not a contract, which he was too immature to make; but a deadly magical consequence that he understood would befall him if he failed to do what he had said he would do: To do everything he could to help the succubae until dawn, and to obey Chava’s instructions until dawn, insofar as he could do those things without committing any deadly sins. In exchange, Channah had ungenerously promised not to murder him that very night.

With Channah’s plan thus secured, Rivqah scaled St. Mark’s Basilica and from her vantage point atop it, slew the Venetian guards outside the Doge’s Palace. Channah and Chava rushed Pen to the Palace and past the guards too quickly for him to examine them or even properly see them, while Channah lied to him that the guards had simply been knocked unconscious; while Miryam dragged their bodies out of sight and, disguised as a Venetian soldier, took their place guarding the half-finished stairway leading to the planned, “new” entrance to the Palace.

Chava and Pen made their way to the Senate Room, just outside the church, where Chava shrewdly used a trust spell, building on Pen’s natural gullibility as a child and the rapport they had developed the previous night, not to control his actions or decisions, but to persuade him she was by his side rather than talking and appearing to him inside his head. Then she simply guided him, as an adult might guide and influence a good boy like Pentecost Argent, to break into and rob the Venetians’ secret archive, by convincing him they were simply recovering an article stolen from the succubus and taking a peek at the Venetian’s books.

Literature Section “06-123 Grimm Transformations VII: The Red Beast and the Little Boy”—more material available at TheRemainderman.com—Part 123 of Chapter Six, “Le Saccage de la Sale Bête Rouge” (“Rampage of the Dirty Red Beast”)—1237 words—Accompanying Images: 1956-1959—Published 2025-06-23—©2025 The Remainderman. This is a work of fiction, not a book of suggestions. It’s filled with fantasies, idiots, and criminals. Don’t believe them or imitate them.

Recap

06-43 Grimm Transformations VI: Sexual Sorcery (abridged version)

2025-03-272025-04-02 admin

1532 06-43 Channah addressing her mamalik in her Cairo palace

EXPLICIT VERSION AVAILABLE AT https://patreon.com/TheRemainderman

continued from 06-42[X]

Her bridegirls, on their knees before Channah’s elevated throne, had together placed a fine silver chain around her left ankle, symbolizing her power over them, from which she hung the magical keys to their Svadishthana Cages, as they watched from inches away.

Smirking, she had then leaned forward and secured her second rings around their necks: their Vishudhha Collars. They appeared to be very similar to one another: thick straps of soft white leather decorated with brass studs, each having a brass heart-shaped slave tag with their full name—Chastity and Penance, respectively—on the front, and the legend “Property of Countess Anne Batonnoir, Fensmere Manor” on the back. Chas’s was slightly wider than Penny’s, while Penny’s had a gold chain decorating its lower edge. At the ceremony itself Channah had laughingly declined to explain what the collars did, cautioning only that if they didn’t obey her, they would regret it. But afterwards, while holding Penny in an uncomfortable and embarrassing position beneath her, she had explained this much:

“The Byzantine Mural is yours. I made it, so it will always tie you to me, but it’s yours, defiled to you as part of our wedding ceremony like the anklet and ring you gave me. And to the rest of the world, it’s cheap cast-iron. The leather collar, like Chas’s, is also yours, with the usual powers. What looks like a gold chain, however, is something altogether different. But you knew that, didn’t you?” He nodded quietly, having seen—and felt—the great sapphire set in the heavy gold collar stretching from the upper part of his neck to the tops of his shoulders. “The Yoke and Star of Bethlehem are mine. They are always connected to me, and always in my consciousness. When I call to them, they call back; and they burn like the sun to me no matter how far away from me they are. So I can always find them, and I will always be able to find you. I am dressing you up in my property like a lord dressing his servants in his livery, or a pet owner dressing their pet. The Yoke is as much my property as you are. I am merely storing it around your neck, little girl, and letting it provide magical shelter to you, the same as my hamper offers you your bed when I send you to it. Do you understand?”

“Ye—yes, Domina,” she answered, nodding earnestly and nervous lest Channah might suddenly pinch or throttle or otherwise assault her with her hands. “I understand. Thank you, Domina, for lending me your shelter.”

“Good answer, girl. This,” she flicked the brass heart engraved with her name, “Cheap brass, is yours. Entertainment. Obviously not a part of my masterpiece. Like the mural, like all my magic, my collar conceals itself to all but my courtiers. But by my command, the secrecy of the collar goes further. It can only be seen for what it is, by the five of us: me, my two most loyal Duchesses Miryam and Rivqah, the metalsmith who forged it, and you—the person who has the most to lose by revealing its existence to anyone. Others will see it as just another service collar, when they expect to see you collared—probably, when I or one of my servants has you on a leash. And they will see it as a girl’s choker, or even a tight necklace, when they don’t expect you to be collared. Fortunately, your neck is feminine enough there’s no need for it to cover your Adam’s Apple, so I don’t need to worry about that.

“The Yoke will not protect you, or any part of you, from harm by misadventure. You can be hurt or killed like anyone else. If someone outside my Court, or even outside the five of us, were to learn about it or get the idea whatever they see around your neck is valuable, say, from you—can you imagine how quickly they would turn on you for the most-precious stone in Christendom?” She smiled with satisfaction, seeing she had understood the moment she was collared. “And like your chastity, it can’t be removed by natural means or by other people. Only supernatural means, by me.” She shrugged. “Or, since it doesn’t protect you, of course, by anyone on the planet willing to saw your head off. So, I think you understand how very, very vital it is that no one ever get any idea of what you’re wearing?” He nodded urgently, but silently. “Good. If I were you, I would also stay very close to my protectress. The one person powerful enough to protect you if word of what’s around your neck were to get out. The one person who can remove the collar without removing your head, and who actually finds you useful enough to lend her collar to.”

“Yes, Domina, thank you, Domina,” he dared to answer.

“It will prevent aging, and provide you safety from disease, infirmity, and the ravage of time, for as long as you’re useful enough to me to let you keep it. Meaning your clean, tight, hairless skin will remain as vibrant and beautiful in a dozen years, even a hundred if you’re useful enough to me that I want to keep you in it that long, instead of moving it to a more-useful courtier. Meaning you can remain as part of my court on Earth, as long my Ladies’ Maids. Even as long as me. IF you make sure to remain useful. IF you apply yourself to every task I set you, for me. IF you use your skills to serve my court.” She snickered. “So naïve, I can see you’re still as angry with me as you are fearful. Doubtless you’re telling yourself you’d rather be free than immortal. But I’m patient. Sometime—not long from now, even in human terms—you’ll find you’ve become accustomed to the idea of living forever, even as a eunuch who suffers for his Domina. And you won’t ever want to take it off. I know you’ll want to remove the Byzantine Mural—of course, who wouldn’t? But not this. Eventually, you’ll do whatever I say to keep it on. Eventually, you’ll do whatever it takes, no matter how repugnant or vile the task, to keep it. Eventually, my Court and the other denizens of hell will be your only peers, because you will have outlived everyone and everything you know in this world.” He shivered involuntarily at the thought. “And then, little girl, you will be my perfect little pawn. Allll mine.”

In exchange for her collars marking them to the world as her owned wives, the girls had knelt before her again and each given her a silver ring—actually a fine chain, soft and accommodating as they were expected to be—and placed it on a toe of their Domina’s left foot, symbolizing her superiority to them.

Their third exchange was in some ways the most intimate: As they continued kneeling before her, heads bowed, each of them offered her a tiny silver-mesh globe like a miniature tea-infuser, as she cut a lock of each of their hair, enclosing it in the silver-mesh globe and hanging each girl’s egg from her waist chain, where they joined 34 others, each given to her by a previous sisterwife, and each of which, by giving her a part of their flesh, gave her the power to ensorcell them at any time or distance. In exchange, she presented them with their Muladhara Twisters, or Intimates: the special tools of behavior- and body-modification unique to them, that only she or—with her permission, as part of their play group—her friends would ever use on them, and that would only ever be used on each of them. The first was a long, wicked, black wooden paddle, the black sticks upon which she had based their human surname. Chas’s was engraved, “Chastity’s Lover Boy,” and Penny’s “Penance’s Bull Daddy,” prompting a round of guffaws and jeering comments from the assembled succubae, incubi, damned, and operatives watching the proceedings. She also produced mysterious, elongated, jewel-encrusted gold ornaments—Chas’s diamond-studded, Penny’s ruby-studded.

For the breaking phase, rather than breaking a glass, while the girls were held down on the floor, Channah trampled them. When Penny passed out from the pain, Channah rolled her eyes with a snort of disgust and sent her bridegirls to bed—that bed being her dirty-clothing hamper, which had to be forced closed by the men who escorted them there, for it be latched shut with the two of them crammed in it on top of her dirty laundry.

Channah and her Court then celebrated together all night long. The next morning, and for most of the remaining two days and nights of the hazing, Channah put her housegifts through the Seven Indignities. These began by familiarizing them quite intimately with their Intimates as she gave each girl a paddling.

By the end, she had reduced them to the most pathetic kinds of broken, simpering sissy sisterwives. And the Star and Yoke of Bethlehem had begun to manifest their power, with intended and side effects alike. Not the least of which, Channah suspected, was how it had permitted her to really feel, for the first time, the submissive joy of releasing all control. And which she blamed for gentle Penny’s sudden, shocking, and thoroughly discombobulating outburst from his knees before her, in the final moments of their ceremony, that he loved her.

PART 6 OF STORY RECAP

Literature Section “06-43[X] Grimm Transformations VI: Sexual Sorcery”—Accompanying Images: 1532-1534. Abridged 1593 words::Explicit 1917 words—©2025 The Remainderman. This is a work of fiction, not a book of suggestions. It’s filled with fantasies, idiots, and criminals. Don’t believe them or imitate them.

Recap

06-42 Grimm Transformations V: Broken Sissies (abridged version)

2025-03-262025-04-02 admin

1519 06-42 Channah’s Vishkanya in Karnata Vijayanagara kneel to their goddess^

EXPLICIT VERSION AVAILABLE AT https://patreon.com/TheRemainderman

The hothouse flowers who did not show themselves suitable, by aptitude or preference, for roles as mamluks, became something else. Those obviously unfit as mamluks, like Chas and Penny, were groomed for something else from the beginning. Those who had been offered, but failed, their test as mamluks, like Frances, were given the opportunity to accept this alternative station, although few of them could bring themselves to accept such a disgraceful alternative.

For six days and nights after Penny’s eighteenth birthday, years of careful preparation and planning were brought to fruition as Penny and Chas were guilted, punished, trained, seduced, subjugated, intimidated, cajoled, drugged, teased, confused, gaslit, sleep-deprived, tormented, and broken to the ultimate will of the succubae. If not perfected—every soul on Earth remained a work in progress as long as it lived, such was the meaning of Earth—the girls were reincarnated, or evolved, into the advanced form the succubae desired them to assume.

In human languages—which were all the succubae had—there were no names for precisely what they were being broken to. And certainly, the girls’ succubus and human minders had avoided suggesting any. Had they been biological females, in England, “second-class wives with a bit of indentured servant thrown in” would not have been too far off the mark. (And some particularly-cynical women might have been heard to respond: “oh, an ordinary wife, then.”) But the truth was, if they behaved themselves after their hazing was complete, Penny and Chas had every chance of being treated better than many wives in England; and would certainly continue to enjoy a higher material standard of living. Indeed, the Countess fully expected and intended to preserve their loyalty without the help of the human secular and religious authorities and traditions that supported husbands and buttressed the institution of marriage against unhappy wives of humans.

In Channah’s most-ancient palace in Cairo, and her primary Western palace in Constantinople, two cities where Channah had spent a plurality of her long life, the hucows had a word for female sex slaves of males that in the time of the Abbasids, correctly described the female operatives in this group: jawari (in the singular, jariya)—slaves for entertainments and pleasures. The succubae, being intrinsically female masters, with overwhelmingly male slaves, extended the term to describe all sex-and-pleasure slaves of all masters. As with the mamluks, her operatives sometimes used local words, especially in cultures outside or resistant to the Muslim world, to label themselves—kunoichi in Japan, vishkanya in India, hetaira, in Greece, with varying degrees of accuracy.

Queen Channah and three of her Ladies of Court—Duchess Miryam (posing in human form as her Lady’s Maid Mary), Duchess Rivqah (her Lady’s Maid Rebecca), and Sultana Mayaam (adopting incubus form as necessary to play the role of Obedience, a model sisterwife to Chas and Penny) took turns and cooperated, with the assistance of all of their retainers at Fensmere Manor, to maintain the unrelenting pressure on Penny and Chas for 144 straight hours. Because the succubae could reach the girls even in their dreams, their only independence in that time was for those few, minimal hours of dreamless sleep they needed to stay alive.

The succubae had been training and enslaving humans—and Queen Channah had been married to her primary (“Di,” or “Great Royal”) husband, Húanglóng—for millennia. He had taken countless humans as his secondary (“Shu,” or “Royal”) sisterwives during his limited time on Earth. Yet in all her time here, more than 250 generations, training tens or even hundreds of thousands of jawari, Channah had taken only 34. Partly because there were few enough reasons to want them besides pregnancy, which held little enough appeal for her. Channah had tried unsuccessfully to conceive with two of her wives, borne 9 children by 9 of the others, and gleefully kept the other 23 of her wives in chastity for the rest of their mortal lives while using and teasing them mercilessly.

As the culmination of their 144-hour hazing, she had taken both of these girls as her wives—Chas as her 35^th, and Penny moments later as her 36^th—in a relationship as thoroughly unequal as its human counterparts, if more explicitly so, and with the biological sexes reversed. By the wedding rites of the succubae, she had yoked them to her will, spiritually and magically, becoming their Domina (head of household), while making them her sisterwives (housegifts). She’d actually never had two sisterwives at the same time before; but the term was used, whether they had sisters or not, to reinforce her greater importance and superiority while diminishing them, suggesting they were fungible, and implying they would be expected to cooperate or bond in any manner she preferred, rather than acting as if they had personal agency or were in competition with one another. Let alone with her husband.

They were married in what had been the Defalaises’ private chapel at Fensmere, now desecrated into a satanikoklus, the hellish analog to a church or temple. In the satanikoklus, the shroud between Earth and Hell was thin and porous. From the moment Penny had been brought there, she had seen, heard, smelled, and felt the hot, humid air and burning red sandscape of the Hell of Lust all around her, recognizing it for what it was, and the succubae and incubi and damned there, for exactly what they were. It was a thing not many living humans could see, her clearer sight a reflection of both her intelligence and her sensitivity.

The succubaean ceremony itself was ancient, its eight elements familiar or at least recognizable to most humans, comprising indenture (betrothal), veiling, invocation, exchange, cursing (blessing), indignity (affirmation), breaking (celebration), and seclusion (honeymoon). Of course, it was the sisterwife who was veiled, and then tested. The vows and rings they had exchanged were unequal, befitting their new positions: Pledging to take her sisterwives in hand and dominate them, Channah had used her deceptively cute fingers and wicked-long fingernails to chastise them with her Svadhishthana Cages, Persian Gate for Chas, Byzantine Mural for Penny.

And as she did so, she had explained, condescendingly and embarrassingly, that as a succubus, she lived primarily off the virility and vitality of men, by drawing it from them and devouring it. Whereas she had chosen them as ideal consorts precisely because they were not virile or manly to start with, and by chastising them she had rendered them as harmless and impotent as empty bladders. “As long as you wear my cage, your virtue is safe.” As she had explained more precisely to their mamluk foster brothers and longtime bullies when they celebrated with her, penetration was the real risk. If they penetrated any part of a succubus’s body, it sapped the man’s vitality. The body had a certain resiliency, of course; and could largely recover from limited contact with a succubus, although even a single encounter could result in feelings of lethargy for hours or even days. But burn the candle any faster than that, and their life would drain away, swiftly and unrecoverably, even as the succubus’s victim thanked his lucky stars for her, one moment of bliss at a time. “Which is why your Svadhishthana Cages will likely never, ever come off during your lifetimes.” She mock-pouted at them: “I have to protect you, my sweet darlings!”

Laughing at how uncomfortable and scared they already looked, she twisted the knife even harder. She had done this to so many biological males, in so many conservative, judgmental societies, they had no chance to avoid her manipulations. Their cages, she noted, would also perform one of the succubae’s favorite tricks, showing their partners whatever sex they expected the girls to have—and helping their partners act in a manner that confirmed and reinforced their expectations into convictions. Giggling at their expressions, now of terror and horror, she explained how important that made it for her to choose pretty, slight, effeminate, and convincing girls like Chas and Penny to train as her jawari in the first place.

“The Mural is a crown of walls, and the Gate is a mountain pass. This ring,” she lied evilly, “is a clever design of my own that destroys the testes slowly. And until they’re completely gone, my victim lives in an agony of arousal.” She chortled, loving their fear and sorrow as her broken males, and let them know in a sing-songy voice ending in a cackle, that that was as much as she was prepared to tell them about the metal devices she had locked around their most-vulnerable and -important boy parts. They would simply have to wait and see what other effects they might have.

Poor Penny had already discovered one power her Byzantine Mural had, that Chas’s Persian Gate apparently did not. It had happened the first time Penny had been used and teased and ignored until she was out of her mind, and every time thereafter she had been brought to that state. The succubae had been doing everything possible to simultaneously shame and excite her while locked. At the crucial moment, it had whisked her joy away and transferred it to Channah and her other partners, multiplying their pleasures and leaving Penny in a state of desperation, longing, sorrow, and misery. As long as the ring was on, her partners—no matter who they were—would enjoy the force of her pleasure on top of their own, while Penny would feel only the bitter disappointment and the eventual ache of losing out on one of the most pleasant experiences in this world. She had cried out and wept, bitter-astringent tears, every time the Mural had taken her joy during the ceremony.

PART 5 OF STORY RECAP

Literature Section “06-42 Grimm Transformations VI: Broken Sissies”—Accompanying Images: 1519, 1521, 1523, 1525, 1527, 1529. Abridged 1619 words::Explicit 1697 words—©2025 The Remainderman. This is a work of fiction, not a book of suggestions. It’s filled with fantasies, idiots, and criminals. Don’t believe them or imitate them.

Recap

06-41 Grimm Transformations IV: Master Killers

2025-03-252025-03-27 admin

1520 06-41 Channah’s Thuggees in Karnata Vijayanagara kneel to their goddess^

The Queen and Her Operatives

Always, she chose her orphans from among the most vulnerable, although the vulnerabilities she valued, like their strengths, varied depending on the purposes she had in mind for them. The most sensitive, the most brutal, the most brutalized, the most desperate, the most desperate to please, the most isolated, the most social, the most insecure, the most self-confident, the most angry, the most calm, the most self-aware, the least self-aware. Every human was endowed with some free will, some bit of conscience, some sliver of the holy ghost that could never be extinguished but only banished from this world by death.

Some of those she chose—bullies and lizards like Cutter, Martin, Isaac, and Eleanor—were already far down the path to hell, as close to being destined for her Queendom as they could be on Earth because they felt nothing for others, couldn’t bear the successes of others, wanted to hurt others, or even wanted to obliterate everything. But such people could only help her so far, with some things.

Many tasks could only be accomplished with empathy, reason, wisdom, and self-awareness. Those possessing such traits, the hothouse flowers, were the most difficult ones to raise successfully to their purposes. It had taken centuries for the demons of hell to fully appreciate that no matter how much fun it was to wind up and unleash raging, violent sadists, narcissists, lunatics, and golems on the world, they could only advance the cause of reaping souls so far. Faced with obvious threats to their communities, most people tended to come together, care for and protect one another, even sacrifice themselves for others. Bringing out the best in people was the last thing they wanted to do! Those were outcomes that hindered, rather than helped, the demons in their ultimate aims; however much fun it was to cause chaos. What the demons needed were more insidious threats to humanity. They needed threats that people could rationalize away or ignore, until it was too late and they were already being gobbled up by voracious hell.

Rather than creating the savages who worked so well as their kapos in hell, and trying in vain to rely only on them in the more nuanced environment of Earth, the demons realized they would be better served by investing the significant time and empathy required on the front end to raise operatives with the abilities they needed. No matter how challenging a skill it was for a demon to learn. No matter how much patience they had to find. It was something not every demon was capable of. In all the demon realms of hell, it tended to absorb their brightest and most capable, those from their higher ranks. But there were also individual differences within demon castes. So the members of every Court charged with wrangling the hothouse flowers included a mix—a handful of the lower demons, a larger share of the middle, and a heavy dose of the highest ranks.

And so it was that Queen Channah herself was involved with this project, especially when—as in England, in the 1520s—the succubae were establishing a new colony. Partly because founding the cadre that would establish and give the colony its start was a particularly crucial step in setting it on the right path, but also because new colonies were only created when there was a particularly pressing reason for doing so. Cambridgeshire had become her operating base, for now; joining the ancient colonies in Constantinople and Rome, and the medieval colonies in Vienna and Madrid, as the fifth in Europe. Like most colonies, this one began at the outside and worked its way in to the heart of the Kingdom. When it was time, when her agents were deeply embedded, their covers and legends secure, its focal point would move slowly, agent by agent, from Cambridge to the Royal Court in London. But for now, they had only a limited, secondary presence there, which relied on Cambridge for its roots and legend; and behind that, vague stories about coming from the West.

It was the Star of Bethlehem that had decided Channah in favor of England, prioritizing it over Amsterdam, Paris, Lisbon, Stockholm, and the other rising cities of Northern Europe, an area which had never been worthy of organized demonic focus before. Gemstones, like certain other objects, held energy because they focused so much human passion, ambition, interest, and naked greed. Their interaction with people, tending to draw out the worst of humanity, cursed them to become fell instruments of power. The largest, which could become the focus of terrible violence and every kind of sin, were often legendary. Like the Star of Bethlehem, the largest sapphire in the world, that had been “lost” at Bosworth Field in 1485.

Any object could become a magical fetish if humans imbued it with enough of their hopes, fears, ambitions, wants, needs, and desires. But almost none were more likely to do so that large gemstones. Such naturally-occurring fetishes could be the most powerful substrate for deliberate ensorcelling, because if the sorcerer endowed them with a purpose congruent with their energy, it would add to or even—in the case of a deeply-cursed stone like the Star of Bethlehem—multiply the power imparted to it by the caster’s spell.

Revelation and Reckoning

To build their cadre, and later grow their colonies, the Succubae divided—or, they would claim, allowed their operatives to sort themselves by their choices and actions in response to tests (the most-critical of which they never realized they were being given) into two groups, which became formalized into assigned social roles upon their eighteenth birthday when they left childhood behind. The rough boys—including all of the pathological future kapos the demons loved so much, and about half of the hothouse flowers—joined a class that would be identifiable across many human cultures, although only formalized and systematically sanctioned in a few: Mamluks—slave-soldiers groomed for loyalty, command, and the exercise of power on behalf of their masters. Depending on the cultures in which they were raised and operated, they might be called, or call themselves, local terms that were not a close match, but that captured at least some of the more-distinctive features of their caste or at least their skills, like ninja in Japan, Thuggees in India, and Hashshashin in Iran.

The flowers chosen as mamluks (never called “flowers” in front of humans) as cadres to establish Channah’s English bureau included Roger and Eleanor. On their 18^th birthday they either washed out or proved themselves and graduated into their adult role by the ultimate test of violence: homicide. The pathogens, like Martin and Cutter, took the same test, of course; but for them it wasn’t much of a test. The real question was often whether they could contain themselves until they were ordered to kill, or whether—like Isaac—they would distinguish themselves by killing on their own, before anyone suggested them to do so.

PART 4 OF STORY RECAP

Literature Section “06-41 Grimm Transformations IV: Master Killers”—Accompanying Images: 1520, 1522, 1524, 1526, 1528, 1530. 1162 words—©2025 The Remainderman. This is a work of fiction, not a book of suggestions. It’s filled with fantasies, idiots, and criminals. Don’t believe them or imitate them.

Recap

06-36 Grimm Transformations III: The Evil Plan

2025-03-242025-03-27 admin

06-36 1514 This one! (the adoption of Charles)^

The Countess of Warwick

When the Countess married the Earl, and moved to Fensmere, she had brought her own entourage with her. These included those she called nieces (Eleanor, Frances, Jane, Chas, and Penny), nephews (Roger, Cutter, Isaac, and Martin), and staff including her Lady’s Maids (Mary and Rebecca), carpenter Big George, and the children’s governess Sindonie.

Years later, came the day—Penny’s eighteenth birthday—when the Countess found out: That the Defalais sisters knew her nieces were transgendered. That Penny was teaching the girls even when they were being punished. That in addition to Latin and religion, she had been continuing to teach them the subjects their mother had wanted them to learn, but Anne had forbidden to them, like grammar, Greek, Hebrew, rhetoric, philosophy, math, geometry, astronomy, and heretical ideas from Germany about the Church. And that she had even let them dabble in some of the secret subjects Anne Batonnoir taught all her lost boys and girls, like fighting, spy craft, and the principles of magic.

She burst into Hellinore’s closet, finding Mary, Catherine, Beatrice, and Hellinore there.

“Hiding.” she growled.

“With boys!” she raged.

“Of… lower… station,” she spat in contempt.

“Aunt Anne! I’m not a boy!” Chas began, looking stricken and betrayed, almost crying, and completely missing the point, bless her heart.

Penny looked guilty, ashamed, scared, a little relieved, and almost… almost, the tiniest bit proud, apologizing profusely and trying to explain she hadn’t meant to sleight her guardian, but only to help the girls, and pleaded to be allowed to continue. It was a pronouncement as honest, and in its own way as misplaced, as Chas’s.

The sisters mainly looked terrified, as well they might have, although Hellinore, now 11, stoutly volunteered that when she found out Penny was transgender she had threatened to tell the Countess what they knew if Penny wouldn’t keep teaching. It was a quarter-truth, at best, but strayed from the truth for loyalty’s sake, and would have been dead on-point if the Countess had been interested.

The Countess’s retribution was terrible and swift. The five girls were birched in the Great Chamber, out of line of sight from the upstairs kitchen but in hearing range of half the house proper, to humiliate them as much as possible without allowing any of the servants ideas or feelings above their stations. Of course, every decent or sensible servant but one fled the house the instant the birchings began, but the point was made, the girls embarrassed, and the stories spread. Only the Countess’s carpenter, Big George, remained in the house, installing locks on all the girls’ closet doors, securing them against escape even while imperiling them from any fire or other calamity should one overtake the manor. Then she locked her stepdaughters in their closets for days, having her lady’s maids supervise the servants who brought them food and water and changed out their chamber pots, to prevent them from showing the girls any additional or emotional kindnesses.

While the Countess herself, focused on attending to those she regarded as her own. As always, the lowest in rank suffered the worst. Even though, in this case, “lowest” was a relative term—at least as importantly, the three remaining offenders were from the Countess’s household, utterly beholden to her, with no other sources of support or care, nothing else to turn to, nowhere else to go. They were all members of the gentry, the lowest rank of the English nobility, as far below the Defalaises as they were above the rest of the population. But she had facilitated Sindonie’s escape, kept Chas from the orphanage, and bought Penny outright.

From the sisters’ perspective, they disappeared for days; and when they finally reappeared, the girls, at least, were subdued, almost timid, and in some kind of shock, more distant from everyone and everything around them, than they had been before. If it had been secretly suspected in certain quarters on the manor estate before, that Penny and Chas were not quite what they appeared, it now became more or less an open secret that Penny and the tutor occasionally seen slipping to and from the manor to Cambridge—which did not allow women—were one and the same person.

Around the same time, the residents of the manor learned the King was planning to visit, a fairly rare event this far East. Perhaps it was the stories of the progressive home built by three generations of Defalaises that attracted him. But more likely, according to rumors that eventually even reached the older sisters’ ears, were that something else might have lured him here. The same thing that had so impressed and befuddled the Earl and most of the young men in the county.

The Queen of Lust

Chas and Penny had been carefully selected for their respective adoption and purchase by Channah, the Succubus Queen of the Hell of Lust, who in her human guise had lately adopted the name Anne Batonnoir, married the Earl of Warwick, and now was slowly draining his wits and life away. Since acquiring her wards, she and her vassals and collaborators and minions had worked together, like an orchestra, to mold and condition and train the boys—now girls—for the special purpose for which they had been recruited. It was the same with all the thousands of the Queen’s wards, nephews and nieces alike, here in Cambridge today, and in innumerable other cities and villages and campsites scattered across the world since humanity had begun.

The succubae and their incubi had started the game with… certain advantages. Reading and manipulating humans wasn’t just something they did, it was what they were. And with every round of the game, every human soul they worked on, every human lifetime of experience they gained, they had continued to pull further ahead of their human prospects. They could, literally, seduce and drain humans of their very life without even waking up. How much more were they capable of wide awake in the flesh?

Before they even set hands on the children—or occasionally adults—they wanted, the ancient, eldritch Queen and her Court had used their powers to discern things in their hearts and minds that neither the children nor any adult caretakers understood. She did not adopt babies, but young children. They were not just raw material like clay, indifferently mined from acres of the same ore to be given form by the succubae. They were raw puppets, picked out from shelves stuffed to the brim with the world’s unfortunates, already animated by birth, already endowed by early childhood with the basic shapes Hell required. All she and her servants had to do was to finish them, polish them, and set them on their paths.

PART 3 OF STORY RECAP

Literature Section “06-36 Grimm Transformations III: The Evil Plan”—Accompanying Images: 1514-1519. 1115 words—©2025 The Remainderman. This is a work of fiction, not a book of suggestions. It’s filled with fantasies, idiots, and criminals. Don’t believe them or imitate them.

adventuresofradicalprovocateurs tudor england renaissance venice operative spy espionage succubus orphan adoption prisoner escape rescue fugitive escape smuggling street troll guardian ward olivertwist dickensian

Recap

06-35 Grimm Transformations II: The Long Fall

2025-03-232025-03-27 admin

The Earl’s daughters were already starving for love and support after losing their mother. But as sometimes happened, fascination with their stepmother seemed to eclipse Lord Robert’s interest in his own children. The new Countess, famous for her work with orphans, was as interested in the girls as their father was disinterested. But her interest—contrary to her reputation—was punitive and vindictive. She seemed to go out of her way to magnify the disruptions in their life, communicating as forcefully as possible how unwelcome they were in their own home. Although she could be a harsh, even vindictive disciplinarian to her own nieces and nephews, she also showed a warmth and fondness toward them completely at odds with her unrelenting, frosty hostility towards her stepchildren.

Talk of the remaining Defalais girls’ weddings, and even betrothals, soon sputtered into silence, replaced with dark hints and suggestions of futures in the nunnery. It was decided that unlike their stepmother and stepsisters, the girls already had plenty of dresses and gowns to last them indefinitely, however they might compare with debutantes of lower standing—or even girls of lower classes. Their education—something their mother had fought for and encouraged them in, something that made them identify with her even as it helped define their identities—was deemed wasteful for girls.

The girls’ governess—a close friend of their mother’s, who had been governess of all the sisters since Margaret the Younger had outgrown her nanny—was sacked for laxness, literally chased off across the front lawn with a broom by the Countess, huffing and gasping and staggering away as fast as she could while her former charges wept and pleaded uselessly on her behalf. She was summarily replaced by Sindonie Manning, the longtime governess of her own wards, who at least showed them the same kindness she showed their stepsiblings.

The prestigious tutors also disappeared, their duties to be fulfilled as well as possible by Penance, one of their new stepsisters. Not only had their stepmother decided she would be perfectly adequate to cover the subjects she considered appropriate for young ladies, but she thought it inappropriate for young ladies of their social standard to be socializing with men, especially younger men born into more vulgar classes of society. Since a young student from Cambridge was seen visiting the house, even after the tutors were fired, the girls—and their governess—suspected he was teaching Penny what she was supposed to teach them.

Fortunately for the sisters, Penny was as dedicated to her students as she was conscientious about her duties. Although she was the same age as Catherine, the middlemost of the seven sisters, Penny became a bright spot in their lives, a way for them to feel connected with their mother, and a source of encouragement and support in the face of their father’s lack of interest and their stepmother’s unremitting hostility.

She became particularly important as an anchor for the youngest daughter, Hellinore. Hellinore, although studious and accomplished, had tried even her parents’ patience, earning the nickname “the Hellion.” With the Countess… from practically the moment the two were introduced, sparks had more than flown—they had exploded! Anne Batonnoir didn’t spare anyone under her control the fury of her punishments; and the daughters had to suffer their detentions in their closets. Hellinore, in particular, seemed to spend half her existence with a bottom nearly as angry as she was, memorizing every little detail of her closet, until Penny, feeling sorry for her and guilty, started bringing her books and candles and even teaching classes there instead of the nearby schoolroom, so that she could be included. Her sisters took the change in venue with remarkably little complaining, knowing all of them shared a common enemy, and the only difference among their punishments was of degree. In truth, her older sisters might secretly have been relieved Hellinore acted as such a lightning rod for their evil stepmother’s attentions.

She seemed to be able to take it, for one thing—unlike Adelais, who wilted and shattered when she drew the Countess’s ire. One night, Adelais never came to bed, caught in the clutches of their stepmother. Whatever Adelais had experienced, she refused to say; but she was never quite as bright or gay as she had been before. While Adelais curled up and shrank, Mary became careful and neutral; Beatrice insistently cheerful and helpful; Catherine sneaky and resentful; and Hellinore… Hellinore became a terror to anyone small enough or—a category encompassing most everyone on the Manor—lower-ranking and weak enough she could bully.

Like his daughters, the Earl failed to thrive and bloom in his new wife’s garden. Instead, he appeared increasingly listless and withdrawn; even prematurely aged. Some joked, carefully, that it was his new wife’s energy; but most attributed it to vinegar and tragedy. In some corners, surely far from Fensmere, jokes were made about someone called the “Earl of Quickjack,” but this one, at least, didn’t show the same signs of vigor that had been so loudly proclaimed at his wedding.

PART 2 OF STORY RECAP

Literature Section “06-35 Grimm Transformations II: The Long Fall”—Accompanying Images: 1508-1512. 846 words—©2025 The Remainderman. This is a work of fiction, not a book of suggestions. It’s filled with fantasies, idiots, and criminals. Don’t believe them or imitate them.

Recap

06-34 Grimm Transformations I: Shattered Fairy Tale

2025-03-222025-03-27 admin

1501 06-34i Robert and Margaret’s Fairytale Wedding^

Everything began the autumn of the haunting.

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, fortune beamed on the Defalais family with a generous light reserved only for the luckiest. Lord Robert, the Earl of Warwick, was one of the most powerful and prominent men in England, politically astute and well-esteemed by King Henry VIII. Lady Margaret Mordaunt’s grace, charm, and beauty had been celebrated even before her debut at court, and even before tragedy and piety had cleared a path through her six older sisters to her marriage. Her family’s title had gone to her younger half-brother; but she had brought estates of her own to join those of her husband’s. Both families had joined the Tudor pretender at the Battle of Bosworth Field, and been richly rewarded with the plunder despoiled from those who had kept their oath.

The couple’s courtship had been the talk of the court; their wedding, the event of the season; and their affection manifest, in the form of seven accomplished and (mostly) proper daughters: Margaret, Elizabeth, Mary, Catherine, Adelais, Beatrice, and Hellinore. The eldest were well-wed, the middle children hopeful, and the youngest naïve. They enjoyed the best tutors their mother could arrange from among the faculty of nearby Cambridge University.

The family dwelt in splendor at Fensmere Manor, a newly-built seat ahead of its time, more luxurious and pleasant country estate, than drafty fortress for hiding in. Blessed with health, wealth, education, position, strength, and even family, which all considered their birthright, their destiny was to blossom and grow, crowding out the needs and ambitions of lesser bloods.

Or so it appeared, until a tragic fall robbed the Countess of her life, the family of its joy, and England of one of its most precious gems. The daughters lost their role model, their most ardent advocate, their fiercest defender, and their loving, attentive mother. The Earl was distraught, distant, and thoughtless in his own grief, practically a second parent lost to them even as he lost his own way, leaving his daughters in the capable but uninspired hands of his servants.

Then SHE appeared: Anne Batonnoir, a Lady of obscure family origins but great charity somewhere far to the West—Devon, Cornwall, or even the Pale. Her brother Jerome was a Herald of Arms in service to the King, and she was well-respected throughout the English clergy as a charitable woman who helped them care for orphans of quality and piety. Jerome had slowly achieved some minor influence at the royal court, and now she quickly achieved even greater influence at the Earl’s.

None could deny her extraordinary beauty, magnetic charisma, or easy self-assurance. Her spirit, body, and manner were indisputable evidence of her gentle birth and high prospects. And men not inclined towards the counsel of their mothers pursued her with as much focus and intensity as their mothers displayed in trying to steer them towards more-eligible, less-interesting women like the Earl’s daughters.

Her first appearance in Cambridgeshire, like Lady Margaret’s final tragedy, coincided with an autumn of ill winds, momentous storms, and inexplicable losses. As the weather grew colder, crops wilted; cattle were mutilated; people disappeared; and rumors spread, of fires spied and chants heard deep in the woods. Of remote dances and orgies on the darkest nights, and unholy ceremonies when the full moon was in zenith. Tales of demons and witchcraft rattled the unsteady and inflamed the superstitious. And some—among them, it must be said, the most jealous and least charitable of women—whispered that Robert’s alacritous courtship of Anne was more than unseemly: it was unnatural.

Still, less-suspicious women, and virtually all men, took one look at Lady Batonnoir and dismissed supernatural explanations. Not that the men were likely to share those thoughts with their wives, but they did with one another.

If Lord Robert’s first wedding was a fairy tale, his second was a delicious scandal; and definitely the subject of as much gossip as his first. Soon after they took their leave of the celebration, the guests near the stairs to the Great Chamber became excited, drawing other guests to them.

From above came the unmistakable sounds of a very passionate woman, being aroused and then, in turn, bitterly disappointed by her groom. Within ten minutes the gentry of the whole county, and those few of their peers from elsewhere who had been able to attend the quick ceremony, learned not only that the new Countess was as expressive and hard-working as she was attractive, but also that the Earl was a quickjack who had already been accommodated twice today by his energetic new wife before their marriage was thirty minutes’ old.

As best the attentive crowd could gather, he had attempted to defile her just before the ceremony, only sparing her wedding dress by ruining his own breeches before he could get them off. Even so, he had just barely and technically managed to consummate the marriage by penetrating her (ineptly and painfully, it seemed) before spending himself. The guests, embarrassed, scattered to report their news to everyone they might come across, carefully avoiding the Earl’s mortified older daughters who were struggling to maintain their dignity in the presence of their father’s vassals.

Category: Recap

The Queen and Her Operatives

Revelation and Reckoning

The Countess of Warwick

The Queen of Lust