INTRODUCTION
- Narrator's Note:
The coming of the Lady Jennifer to Mathomdale
and her subsequent enslavement, in the summer of 2003, by the reckoning of the
Gregorian calendar then in use, marks a watershed in the history of the Line of
the Goddess. It was a tumultuous year among those born to the Line; a year that
saw the outbreak of armed conflict, the gathering of the Line, the discovery of
the ultimate challenge of Prophecy One and the foundation of the dynasty which
would dominate the House of Mathom for the rest of the century, and beyond, and
ultimately determine the history of humanity itself. Yet, at the beginning of
that pivotal summer, there was little indication of the momentous events to
come.
The arrival of a very young (she was just
nineteen years old) Jennifer Walstow in the Valley of the Goddess that summer
seems, on the face of things, perhaps a small occurrence to place within the
context of those events that would engulf the Line yet her coming to Mathomdale
was critical. Before her arrival, it was still possible to perceive the world
as defined by the old dynasty of the House of Mathom; still dominated by its
great matriarch but in slow stagnation and decline. With the Lady Jennifer's
arrival, all that began to change. It was not that she changed the world all on
her own, of course, for many other people, we shall meet in these chronicles,
contributed to the regeneration of the Line. Jennifer was the catalyst however;
the pebble that falls in the mountains and initiates the avalanche of change.
This remarkable young woman, by accepting her shackles of slavery in service to
the amethyst, began a process that would forge the future.
This then, the first volume in this
narrative, traces the very earliest beginnings that brought Jennifer to
Mathomdale. Those beginnings may seem innocently naive, but it must be recalled
that the Lady Jennifer was indeed a naive and innocent young woman with, at
this time, no inclination of the nature of Mathomdale or any notion of the part
she was destined to play in its story. This is just the tale of a very young
and troubled girl tentatively stepping into a new and frightening world of her
own sensuality and feeling only the ghost of the chains to be cast about her
ankles.
Chapter
One
The events
that marked Jennifer Walstow's odyssey into slavery can be said to have started
during the long hot summer following her nineteenth birthday. They were events
attributable to her blossoming sexuality. Jennifer was an overly serious girl
but, beneath the conservative persona that she most often displayed to the
world, she was possessed of an intensely charged libido. She was by no means a bad young lady in that
she wished no harm to anybody and possessed not a malicious bone in her body.
It was just that she was cursed with an overpowering sexual desire that, on
occasion, could overcome her reason and threaten to lead her into
indiscretions. That they did not do so was due to the fact that Jennifer was
essentially a shy and timid girl and the indulgences and indiscretions of her
sexual leanings were carried out essentially in her mind.
She was possessed of a vivid imagination which, in her
private moments, she indulged in formulating into lurid fantasy. It only needed
a flirtatious glance from one of the boys or, let it be noted from the start,
girls of her town to capture her imagination and lead to wild day dreams, in
the privacy of her bed room, whilst she stroked herself between the legs and
muffled the cries of her mounting passion in the folds of her pillow case. It
was not that Jennifer was a forward or sluttish girl. Indeed, she was, as
noted, very shy and most of her companions would have been shocked to know of
the maelstrom of sexual tension that lay behind her diffident blushes. She was
intelligent and a fine scholar at school; even considered a bit of a swot by
her colleagues. She was such a pleasant and well-meaning girl, however, that,
despite her reticence, she was popular although few could comprehend the innate
sensuality that ruled her private dream-world. Her best girlfriends could hug
her and kiss her, in the way that girls do, without ever having an inclination
of the furious desire that threatened to overpower her every time one of them
touched her in well-meaning affection.
She was well liked by the boys although she was never
known to grant them sexual favours except within her own fantasy. She was
certainly attractive although a late developer. For much of her school days
she'd been a rather nondescript mousy little girl but, in her late teens, she'd
bloomed into a warm, auburn haired beauty. To see that beauty
it is best to see her, as she herself so often did, stood naked before the wall
mirror in her bedroom as she admired her flowering womanhood. The long thick
tresses of her hair were one of her finer points as they flowed in waves over
her admirably square shoulders and down onto the long, velvet curve of her
back. Her breasts were high and firm, neither too small nor disproportionately
large. Her flat stomach, by now, contained not an ounce of remnant puppy fat as
it arced down to her auburn bush, standing in the vee above her long shapely
legs. Turning to look at her back in the mirror, Jennifer would see a long
curve of spotless firm flesh before it met the full rounded pale swell of her
buttocks giving way to the soft tender reaches of the backs of her thighs. If
she opened her legs somewhat and bent forwards in front of the mirror the pink
bud of her sex would be revealed, already moist and glistening invitingly
between the cheeks of her buttocks. Undoubtedly at this point, the temptation
to slide her fingers into that warm damp centre of desire would become
irresistible and her lovely oval face with its tranquil expression would flush
pink as her arousal increased. The full lips of her generous mouth would open
slightly as her breathing became deeper and the lovely hazel eyes that held
such demure attraction would dilate in pleasure as the probing fingers sought
out her clitoris, stroking herself quickly to orgasm.
Such an exquisitely lovely girl was bound to attract the
attentions of young men who regarded her reticence as somewhat of a challenge.
Perhaps also there was a kind of animal instinct within the young gentlemen
that detected the simmering explosion of her sensuality, hidden behind the
lowered eyes and demure blushes with which she fielded their advances. Despite
the obvious attention that Jennifer excited, she never became sexually active
until long after most of her contemporaries. Whilst most of her friends boasted
boyfriends Jennifer remained obstinately virginal almost as if she feared the
release of her latent sexual potency. At school dances
she was the perennial wallflower. Not a tease by any means but too shy to
respond to the predatory young lads who so desired to examine the pristine
young body concealed beneath the stylish, if rather conservative, clothes she
was apt to wear.
In a sense, Jennifer's repressed sexuality was the result
of her relationship with her parents who were, on the face of it, extremely
conservative. Jennifer's father was the vicar of a small parish on the
outskirts of town and, whilst a good and conscientious member of the church,
had a domineering personality that appeared to command all within his
household. He was not a cruel man; indeed he was
capable of great compassion and generosity. It was just that he was strong
willed, of an out spoken nature, with very fixed ideas and he expected
obedience to that will within the walls of his home.
Jennifer did not fear her father. On the contrary, she
loved and respected him enormously but it is difficult to escape the feeling
that the natural submissiveness that pervaded Jennifer's character had its
roots in the dominant role that her father had played in her life. He was a
disciplinarian, to be certain, and there had been occasions, when Jennifer had
been a young child, that he had considered it incumbent upon himself to
chastise her with a spanking after some childish misdemeanour. This of course
had not happened for many a year now. As Jennifer had grown towards womanhood
her father had not dreamt of laying a finger on her.
This, it has to be said, was a matter of the most secret
regret to Jennifer. Here we must enter very deep and intimate basements of
Jennifer's psyche for there is little doubt that, among the highly convoluted
and fantastic realms of her sexual fantasies, her father figured rather too
prominently than may be discerned as healthy. Many young girls have a deeply
hidden secret love of their fathers and in extreme cases may spend much of
their lives seeking out a substitute for them in their male partners. In
Jennifer's case this highly suppressed longing was
tied in with her desire for her father's domination and exacerbated by her
father's relationship with her mother. Jennifer's mother was almost the
opposite extreme to her father. She was apparently entirely ruled by her
husband and would not overtly oppose his wishes in anything. This was, however,
not a submission born of fear since even the most casual observer could see
that Jennifer's mother was in fact the true ruler of the Walstow household. The
serenity with which she accepted her subservient role in the trivialities of
life masked the fact that all major decisions ultimately originated with her.
This quiet and self-effacing woman contained a core of steel. As a female role
model, however, she was hardly the person to encourage a rebellious or
independent streak within her daughter and Jennifer grew up in a household that
fostered the idea of the female as subservient to a dominant male even if it
was but a superficial gloss over a deeper reality. Jennifer's mother was a
powerful human being, enormously self-aware and capable of immense subtlety.
The face that she chose to project to the world concealed a character adamant
in its self-resolution. She was a grand mistress in the game of life, a genius
of manipulation. Her husband was entirely chained to her indomitable will.
Sadly, we know so little about Jennifer's childhood and
often just what the relationship between Jennifer's mother and father was is
somewhat obscure. One event, later described by Jennifer, perhaps sheds a
little illumination on it however. It occurred when Jennifer was the vulnerable
age of sixteen. For some reason Jennifer's mother had extremely annoyed her
father and the result was a great outburst of rage from him. The vicar, looking
very angry, had removed his jacket and ordered Jennifer to her room. Before she
left the living room, Jennifer saw her father stride purposefully to a cupboard
in the corner. Fleeing upstairs to her room, Jenny flung herself to the floor
and, with her ear pressed to the floor boards, tried to hear what was
proceeding downstairs. There came a series of muffled commands and stifled
protests that she could not distinguish the gist of. There was a slight pause
and then, shockingly, there came the loud report of a sharp slapping noise
followed by an anguished wail from her mother. Another pause and then another
crack preceded even louder squeals. Breathlessly Jennifer listened on as one
slap followed another and her mother's howls and shrieks came up through the
floor boards. Eventually the sounds of beating ceased and the cries descended
into muffled sobs followed shortly after by the sound of the front door as
Jennifer's father left the house.
After a while Jennifer plucked up the courage to creep
downstairs. She found her mother sitting quietly, with her composure regained,
on the sofa. Her face was stained with tears but the look of tranquillity, that
was part of her acceptance of life, was back in her demeanour. Jennifer
noticed, with a thrill, that her mother was sitting rather uncomfortably as if
sore in her nether regions.
"Are you all right mummy?" She inquired anxiously.
"Yes of course I am darling."
"I was so afraid"
"There is no need to be Jenny dear. Your father's ill
humour is quite forgotten now and, when he returns home, all will be forgiven."
"But... but what did he do to you?"
Jennifer's mother sighed and beckoned her over, taking
her in her arms and hugging her closely. "Jenny my dear I did something that
could have disturbed the harmony of our family and your father quite rightly
punished me. Now that I have been punished, all is forgotten and there will be
peace in our house now. Nothing terrible has happened; only that my sins have
been corrected. One day you will be married too and then you will learn that
there must be obedience within the house according to the rules agreed upon by
its inhabitants and, should you transgress them, then it is necessary to accept
your chastisement. You must try to be a good and obedient wife and endure
whatever punishment it is necessary to inflict upon you. Get along with you to
bed now and don't worry about me."
To say this incident left an impact upon Jennifer is to
put it mildly. She lay there in bed that night and relived every sound of her
mother's punishment through the floor boards with something approaching a storm
of conflicting thoughts. When her mother retired to bed, Jennifer crept
stealthily down the stairs. In the living room, terrified that her father would
come home and discover her, she opened the mysterious cupboard and, peeping in,
saw a thick leather strap hanging from a hook there. Back up into her room, she
lay upon her bed and felt uncontrollable urges of sexual excitement descending
on her. Time after time she imagined that leather belt lashing across her
mother's buttocks. The vision was hopelessly erotic and she found that her right
hand had slid beneath the waist band of her knickers almost of its own
volition. Stroking herself to satisfaction she experienced an emotion that she
had never before encountered in respect to her mother. It was jealousy.
This small incident is only a tiny indicator but, it is
clear, that, by her late teens, Jennifer was experiencing a crisis of
sexuality. We know of course the physiological reasons behind the psychological
upheavals that brought Jennifer to Mathomdale. They are familiar to anybody who
has had the responsibility of raising a child of the Goddess to maturity. What
seems baffling, however, is that Jennifer's mother, who was perfectly aware of
the physical and emotional changes of the onset of Alpha Sensual
characteristics, never addressed those changes in her beloved daughter more
directly. She never, as far as we can discern, told Jennifer exactly what kind
of person she was. Jennifer grew up in virtually total ignorance of her own
nature, and that of her inheritance, until she was confronted with it in
Mathomdale. It seems incredible that Jennifer's mother never took her daughter
to one side and sensitively explained to her the nature of the Alpha Sensual
syndrome. Some historians have argued that this was the result of her deeply
hidden role as an apparently devoted member of the church. Whatever the reason,
Katherine Walstow deliberately concealed the Goddess within the walls of her
house; so completely in fact, that she even buried it out of sight from her
daughter.
It was curious however. Katherine was a deeply
compassionate woman and she must have known how cruel it would be to let
Jennifer face the rigours of her Alpha maturation in complete ignorance of what
was happening to her. Perhaps it was that Katherine was undergoing a protracted
crisis of her own in the years of Jennifer's upbringing; a crisis that made her
temporarily incapable of attending to the looming one in her daughter. It is
well documented that Katherine had abandoned her former family and had spent
nearly two decades in denial of it. When she was finally confronted with the
onset of Jennifer's crisis years, she ultimately turned to her first, true,
family and manipulated events to place Jennifer squarely within reach of that
family, handing over the responsibility of her troubled daughter to those
people she considered better suited to exercising that responsibility. It
suggests that Katherine Walstow was in a deep personal crisis and, at the
crunch, found herself wanting. With a love she could
only feel but not act upon herself, she sold her daughter to Mathom Hall.
This following tale outlines the story of that
significant sale; of how Jennifer was manoeuvred onto the playing field of
Mathomdale and towards her slavery within the walls of Mathom Hall. This is how
the first of her chains were shackled to her in a process that would eventually
see her assume the onerous burden of servitude that would make her Mistress of
the Line of the Goddess. Yet, through the mists of time, it is still possible
to discern that young Jennifer; the beautiful and ever so serious young girl
holding out her slender wrists in great solemnity for her manacles in full
knowledge that she was enslaved forever. Those who have followed her can take
comfort in their own chains and love her for the sacrifice she made.