Chapter 35 - A Soapy Confession

          “He has been lodged in the castle all this time, your Highness?” asked Raymond incredulously.

“Oh yes,” came Prince Felix’s smug reply. “He’s been mouldering beneath our feet for the past several weeks. Immured in his very own dungeon. There’s a certain aptness to his demise, don’t you think? The impudent Alexander Courcey spends his last miserable days, shivering and alone in the darkness, as hunger and thirst gradually overcome him.”

The two young men – one blond, one dark – stood at the door to the dungeon, Odin and Ulfgar two paces behind them.

“Now, let us take a final look at his stinking corpse!”

The Prince stood to one side and indicated that Odin should unlock the heavy, studded door. The Viking stepped forward and began to fumble through the numerous keys dangling from his belt.

“What’s the matter?” demanded Felix impatiently.

“I – I can’t seem to find the key,” mumbled the shaven-headed villain.

“What did you say?” hissed the Prince. “Are you telling me you’ve lost the damned thing?!”

Odin spread his hands helplessly. “I’m sure it must be somewhere, your Highness.”

“I want to view Courcey’s corpse,” stated the Prince grimly. “Go and fetch an axe and break this door down. At once!”

It was exhausting work, and even with Odin’s considerable strength, he was grunting and sweating by the time he had hacked a hole in the door large enough for a man to step through.

“That will do,” snapped Felix, as he elbowed the Viking out of the way and lifted first one, then the other crimson-hosed leg through the splintered oak. Raymond followed his royal master, sneering in Odin’s face as he did so. After the bright sunlight of the morning, he took a moment to allow his eyes to adjust to the gloom. He clambered down the steps into the stinking cell, eager to see for himself the pitiful sight of the final resting place of the arrogant Alexander Courcey.

But what a surprise! Save for the smattering of straw on the ground, and the sinister, looming shapes of the instruments of torture, the dungeon seemed to be bafflingly empty. Prince Felix was holding an iron manacle in his hand, but the chain attached to it had been neatly sliced through. Even in the darkness, Raymond could see the pale fury writ large on those beautiful royal features. A fearful screech issued forth from Felix’s full, pouting lips:

“What is this meaning of this?!”

Ensconced in the royal bedchamber, Raymond tried, to no avail, to calm the livid Prince. Felix paced the floor, raging and espousing one paranoid theory after another: Odin had betrayed him and decided to free Courcey in an act of defiance – after all it had been Odin’s idea to leave Courcey rather than killing him on the spot; now Ulfgar was the traitor who had been in league with the assassin in the forest; then both his bodyguards were in it together, and far from terrorising the peasants in the surrounding villages, they had been encouraging them in their murderous intentions! His father’s Arabian enemies had freed the treasonous Courcey; the jealous barons were the culprits; Courcey was a wizard in league with the devil himself and had availed himself of some diabolical magic to file through his manacle and flee to safety!

“I entreat your Highness to calm yourself!” pleaded Raymond. “Leave this to me. I will discover how Courcey affected his escape. He must have had some accomplice here in the castle. You may put your faith in me that I will find the loathsome miscreant.”

Prince Felix passed a bejewelled hand across his fevered brow.

“One thing I can assure you, Sire,” Raymond concluded, “Alexander Courcey is no wizard.”

“A wizard indeed! How could we have been so stupid!”

“Stanley! The spell!”

Aching and sore, their arms sagging with fatigue, their leg muscles cramping, and their arseholes blistering from the stinging ginger, the auburn-headed brothers fell to bickering.

“There is no spell, you fucking idiot! How long have we been dangling here now? Six? Seven hours? It must be three in the afternoon. You’ve let us be fooled by some wandering con artist!”

“You mustn’t doubt him! He said it wouldn’t work if we doubted him!”

“So how long do you suggest we hang here from our own rafters, arses glued together, ginger bulbs rammed up our butts, with our legs stuffed in the same pair of oversize tights? Besides, I’ve been desperate to pee for the past hour!”

Arthur sighed heavily, the awful truth finally sinking in, and tainting forever his pure and trusting soul. “What can we do, Stanley?”

“Try bracing yourself, and I’ll see if I can get myself off this fucking plug!”

Arthur planted his legs as firmly as he could, and Stanley tried to pull away from his brother. It was hopeless. Arthur’s stockinged feet could not grip the floorboards, and merely slid helplessly along the floor behind his brother.

“Damn it!” cursed Stanley.

“Maybe we can wriggle free? Maybe the glue will wear off?”

Stanley sighed. “Anything’s worth a try, I suppose.”

And so the two brothers set to writhing and gyrating their muscular asses, gasping with the pain of the stinging ginger root plunged deep within them. The bouncing and jiggling made them feel ridiculous, their cocks bobbing in that massive pair of over-sized tights. Eventually, after ten minutes of fruitless struggling, red-face and panting, they admitted defeat.

“It’s no good,” gasped Arthur. “Our butts are stuck fast.”

“And I need to piss more than ever now.” moaned Stanley.

“Well there’s only one thing we can do,” sighed his older brother. He inhaled a lungful of air. “Help! Help!!!”

“It is not possible to over-state the severity of this situation. We have a Judas in our midst!”

Raymond stood, proud and imperious at the top of the courtyard steps. A soft summer breeze ruffled his dark curls, and his shapely legs, encased in their shimmering silver hose, were planted wide apart; his fists balled at his hips.

He’s loving every minute of this, Will thought to himself.

Raymond continued to address the assembled inhabitants of the castle. “One of you knows something. One of you has given assistance in the schemes of the crown’s most contemptible enemy. If you come forward now, admit your wrong-doing and confess what you know, it will go easier for you. I am determined to discover the truth in this matter, and if you do not confess freely, then I swear to you all, no power on this earth will shield you from the Prince’s wrath!”

They were dismissed with the warning that the miscreant had exactly one hour to identify himself. If this did not occur, Raymond promised more direct ways of winkling out the traitor amongst them. Naturally they all congregated in the kitchen, fevered speculation breaking out in every corner of the room.

Will lingered to one side, dressed once more in his freshly laundered blue tunic and hose. Mistress Olwen, indignant and furious with Raymond due to his impertinent missive, had, in an impulsive moment, stripped Will of his treacle-stained tights and the disgustingly soiled nappy and burned them all. She could do nothing about the cruel steel cage encircling his cock, but, at least, and for the first time in many days, he was not swaddled in a humiliating diaper!

However, that fact was his sole consolation. He’d always known it would only be a matter of time before Alexander’s escape was discovered, and he realised grimly that he alone among his peers knew what on earth Raymond was referring to. Equally, he knew he could not reveal to anyone that he was the guilty party. Whatever mercy Raymond might promise in return for the truth about Alexander’s flight, he knew his words would mean nothing once Raymond learned that his most hated enemy was to blame. Will decided that he must be braver than he had ever been in his life. He resolved to keep his lips firmly shut.

The Prince, feverish and distraught, had retired to bed with a raging headache, so it had been left to Raymond to try and discover the facts behind the former Steward’s mysterious elopement.

The allotted hour passed, and Raymond was honest enough with himself to admit that, frankly, he would have been rather disappointed had the cat among the pigeons come forward and denied him the opportunity of torturing the truth out of the unfortunate servants.

The stunned expressions on the faces of Ulfgar and Odin, combined with Raymond’s certainty that those two buffoons could no more have dissembled sufficiently to conspire against the Prince than they could compose a love sonnet or embroider hosiery, led him to conclude that the Scandinavian ogres were as innocent as they claimed. So it was their brute force that he employed to arrange the castle courtyard to his satisfaction.

Once everything was in place, he summoned the first three of the servants to stand before him. It was, he assured himself, pure coincidence that they happened to be his three former fellow pages: Humphrey, Mortimer and Will.

The young men stared in awed silence as they surveyed the scene in the castle courtyard. Every terrifying instrument of torture that the castle contained had been hefted up the dungeon steps and arranged around the dusty yard. There stood the rack, the thumbscrews, the Iron Maiden, the stocks, alongside numerous other evil apparatus wrought from ironwork at whose purpose the lads could only hazard the wildest of guesses.

“You see,” declared Raymond. “Because of the vile deeds of one single miscreant, everybody suffers!”

It was Mortimer who spoke up. “Raymond, can’t you at least tell us what has been done against the Prince? Maybe then we could work out what it is you need to know?”

“You’ll address me as ‘Sir’” said Raymond, in a voice as icy as the North wind. “And the consequences of the villain’s actions must rest upon his own conscience. Now, with whom should we begin?”

Will sighed deeply. They all knew who it would be.

With a barely perceptible nod to his lackeys, Raymond indicated that Odin and Ulfgar should indeed seize the young man. They lifted him up, one hulking henchman under each armpit and carried him as if he weighed nothing at all. Will’s blue hosed legs hung impotently in the air. In spite of the afternoon sun, Will found himself shivering with fear as he was deposited alongside the rack. Odin roughly stripped Will of his blue tunic, leaving him bare-chested - his iridescent tights his sole concession to modesty. Will took some small consolation in the fact that Raymond’s new task had apparently caused him to overlook that he was no longer diapered as per the Steward’s instructions, but back wearing his customary blue uniform.

“This is your last chance, boy,” purred Raymond. “Do you still maintain you have no guilty knowledge staining your conscience?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Will lied.

“Fix him to the rack,” ordered the older youth.

Will was hefted into the air and then dumped face down on the wooden carcass of the torture device. His arms were stretched above his head and firmly secured to the wooden roller. Meanwhile, his tights-clad ankles were spread as wide as they could stretch and were similarly fastened to the cylinder at the end. The metal chastity device bit into his groin as the weight of his body pushed down on the hard wood of the rack.

Will winced in preparation of the anguish to come as Odin hovered by the wooden handle which, when turned, would initiate the agonising process of stretching his vulnerable body and ultimately yank his tortured bones until they broke.

“Wait a moment!” Raymond declared. “I think the worm needs a little extra incentive, just to concentrate his mind on anything he may wish to tell us!”

Will tried to lift his head to see what new and terrible outrage would next be perpetrated on his vulnerable young body. He watched Raymond lift one of the large wooden buckets, commonly used to scrub the castle floors. Warm water swilled inside the pail and Will looked on in fearful anticipation as Raymond plunged his hand into the receptacle and withdrew a large, slippery bar of white soap.

“These innocent lumps of soap have been marinating in warm water till they’re nice and soft and melting. Let’s see just how many of them it will take for you to tell me the truth.”

Will, pinioned to the rack and unable to struggle free, felt Odin’s thick fingers fumbling with the waistband of his blue hose until it was unceremoniously yanked down level with the tops of his thighs. Meanwhile, Raymond took the first soap suppository and began to push it firmly into Will’s much-abused asshole.

All of the penetrations and invasions he had suffered over his months at the castle, none of them prepared him for the tingling, stinging sensation at his orifice as the bar of soap forced its way into his anal passage. On Raymond pushed, until Will’s poor asslips closed around the curved end of the soapy tablet. Immediately, Will felt it worming its way deeper into his bowels as a second bar began to push his reluctant boycunt wide again.

“How many will it take to clean your filthy conscience?” mused Raymond.

Each bar of soap measured a good four or five inches long and felt almost as broad, thought Will, as the second invader lodged successfully within him. It did not take long for the suppositories to begin their heartless tormenting of his guts.

“Your arse lining will be really irritated by all that soap!” said Raymond. “Your body will be desperate to expel it. And we can’t have that happening now, can we?”

Will felt the inevitable pressure of a leather butt plug penetrating his throbbing hole, boring its unwelcome pathway into him, and forcing both bars of soap even deeper into his protesting body: a body that had all too recently been assailed by the equally aggressive milk and molasses enemas.

“Ugh, ugh, no!” he wailed as his nubile young muscles strained and tensed in their bonds, his thighs bunching in their blue hose. Then he emitted a scream of pain as the plug passed its widest point, his smarting sphincter snapped shut around its stem, and the thick flared base protruded between his cheeks for all to see. Raymond prodded the base of the plug deeper, pushing the tallowy bars up, up, inside him to further torment Will’s vulnerable arse lining.

Finally, Raymond pulled the waistband of Will’s tights back up to cover his ass. Will knew that the tight, constricting fabric would keep that hateful plug pushed deep inside him and render it well-nigh impossible for him to expel it.

He panted as once more his guts churned for Raymond’s entertainment. Then, into his line of vision, appeared Ulfgar, running a long leather whip through the palm of his vast hand with pointed deliberation. The tail of the whip began to caress Will’s naked back, delicately at first, and then with firmer strokes.

“Turn the handle,” Raymond told Odin.

The henchman obeyed, and Will started to feel an uncomfortable tugging sensation at his wrists. He was suddenly acutely aware of his body: the tightness in his limbs, the painful cramping in his stomach, the cold steel pressing against his cock, the bubbling lather beginning to seep from his stinging arse, the reassuring sheerness of his tights clinging to his thighs and calves and bum. Then, he screamed in pain as the first stroke of the whip lashed across his upper back.

“Confess, bitch,” murmured Raymond persuasively. “It was you, wasn’t it? His favourite pet. You were the one who smuggled Alexander Courcey out of the castle!”

Will gritted his teeth as Raymond indicated that a further turn on the rack was required. Sharp pain seared through his arm sockets, and the ropes at his ankles started to cut through the delicate fabric of his hose and burn his legs. The whip cracked down again, this time on the meaty flesh of his thighs. Will howled in agony.

“Tell me what happened and this will all be over,” Raymond promised him. “I’ll order the whipping and the racking to cease, I’ll pull that nasty plug out of your hole and let you evacuate those bars of soap as well. Maybe I’ll even take off your chastity cage and let you come…”

Will thought of Alexander, his master, out there somewhere and fleeing for his life, and remained firm. His reward was a further twist on the rack and another lash of the whip – this time on his round buttocks. He imagined the reddening flesh of his bubble-shaped bum through the thin covering of the hose. His arms and legs were stretched to their maximum capacity now: surely one more ratchet of the wheel would dislocate something?!

“Aaaaaagh!” he yelled as the soap suppositories shifted within him. Seemingly with a mind of their own, they were determined to escape the velvety confines of his guts. But the cruel leather dong rammed up his bum thwarted their most assiduous efforts.

“You can’t keep this up much longer,” cooed Raymond. “You stole the key to the dungeon, didn’t you? Tell me the truth, you little fucker. Tell me where the key is that proves you betrayed your prince! So help me, if you don’t, every last person in this castle will be tortured on this rack! And they’ll curse your hateful little arse that you put them through it just to save a piece of shit like Alexander Courcey!”

“Stop! Raymond, stop!”

The dark-haired young Steward did as he was bidden, incredulity written across his handsome face. He turned to where the voice had come from, only to see Humphrey, the fat page boy, cringing in the corner of the courtyard.

“Don’t be angry with me,” whimpered Humphrey, “but did you say something about a key?”

Raymond narrowed his eyes. “I may have done.”

“Well if you did, then I might have seen something you might want to know about. I may be able to help.”

“That’s an awful lot of mights and maybes,” said Raymond, a dark threat in his voice.

“It was only yesterday afternoon,” Humphrey informed him. “I thought it was a bit odd at the time.”

“Humphrey! Please! Hold your tongue!” Will pleaded desperately.

“I’m sorry, Will,” mumbled the fat boy, wringing his hands in distress. “But if it means I won’t get tortured like you, I’ll squeal and tell Raymond whatever he wants to know.”

“Clearly your wisdom is as considerable as your belly,” remarked Raymond sardonically. “Now, I’m becoming impatient. Quickly – tell me what you saw.”

“It was a large iron key. Will had it hidden in his bedding. He took it out and dropped it in there.” Humphrey gestured to the centre of the courtyard. “Right in the middle of the well!”