Narrator's Foreword:

 

That the lady Rebecca, Slave of the House of Mathom and beloved of the Goddess, was given as a prize to the Lord Robin, son of Lady Mathom, in the wake of the Prophecy One revelations, is a matter of indisputable historical fact. What is perhaps less understood is the degree to which that offering came with its own conditions and obligations. It was not, as is sometimes considered to be the case, merely that Lady Mathom presented her son with her slave simply as a mate or pleasant diversion. The lady Rebecca was far too significant a figure to be a mere plaything and her offering to the Lord Robin was an instrumental factor in the foundation of the new dynasty of the Mathom Line.

The few days, related here, during which the Lord Robin first enjoyed his gift are illuminating in this respect. Having forced the lady Rebecca into her son's arms, Lady Mathom commanded the pair of them to spend some time together at the enclave of the Line at Bolswick Bay on the North Sea coast, the better to forge their relationship in intimacy. During this brief sojourn it was more a case of the lady Rebecca taking Robin for her own rather than the reverse even if she sacrificed herself in submission to him in order to do so.

No account of those pivotal days in the history of the Mathom dynasty is complete without a full analysis of the lady Rebecca's part within it. This extraordinary woman was one of the most important characters in the formation of the new future. She was still very young and the extant portraits of her, dating from this time, show a remarkably beautiful young woman of long dark hair, olive complexion and deep brown eyes that testified to her depth of character and yet shone with her joy of life.

I offer no apology, therefore, that I leave for a while, the story of the lady Jennifer in Mathomdale, to travel with the lady Rebecca to Bolswick bay to show this remarkable lady in her glory and to introduce those other people she gathered around her luminous presence. This is her story.

 

Chapter One

 

For Robin and Rebecca, the days following Lady Mathom's order that they become lovers and her sending them away to the seaside at Bolswick Bay to strengthen the bond between them, were sweet indeed; an interlude of tranquillity and harmony that forged their loves into bonded steel. Robin had never known such happiness in all his adult days. Only the glowing memories of his youth, around the hills and vales of Mathomdale held anything remotely similar to the journey of exploration. into new realms, that his discovery of love, in the willing arms of his treasured Rebecca, afforded him. She, for her part, wallowed in Robin's love and her own love was inflamed by it and the love she held in promise from Jennifer and Julie, the two young girls they left behind in Mathomdale.

The future could look after itself. For the moment Robin and Rebecca languished in a timeless limbo, enclosed in a universe of their own creation. It was only five days but it felt like a lifetime shared and a paradise in construction. They were living life at a pace that only made sense to enhanced human beings, where a shared smile held a library full of interpretations, a caress contained a sensory explosion of sensations that defied analysis, a kiss was a manual for a bewilderingly complex plethora of future possibilities and every moment of their shared existence contained a mighty tome, too ambitious for this narrator to attempt to place in words.

Robin was bemused to find that Rebecca had brought a wardrobe with her that he would have considered to be more appropriate for a good month's stay away from home. Yet she used them all, changing her clothing as much as five or six times a day, to bewilder his senses continuously with new bombardments of sensuality. He realised early that her clothes were for his enjoyment as much as hers. She had lovely dresses, elegant and softly, shape hugging for their journeys into the village where they'd dine at a tiny but cosy fine restaurant or grace the bar at the Bolswick Bay Hotel with their intimacy. The locals would gaze admiringly at the beautiful and vivacious young woman and older men would perform innumerable small gallantries in her honour, even dusting the couches in the pub with their caps before allowing her to risk sullying her perfection by taking a seat upon them.

For the first time, Robin knew what it meant to be proud of the woman on his arm. She was as gracious as a princess and as merry as a lass running free in the meadows with flowers in her hair. Within five days she held Bolswick Bay in thrall. All its men folk were hopelessly in love with her and all its girls yearned to emulate her and despaired of ever being able to wrest her handsome consort away from the arm of such female loveliness.

For their long walks over the cliff tops Rebecca had light summer dresses that loosely covered her exquisite form and begged to be torn from her in the hollows behind the gorse bushes. When they descended the flight of steps, down the cliffs onto the patch of beach, uncovered by the tide, to bask in the sunshine of that hot summer week, Rebecca would don impossibly light saris over her sequel of tiny string bikinis. If the tide were out at night she'd omit the bikini and lure Robin down to the beach to make love on the cool sand by the light of the moon. Once she forgot to pick her sari up and returned naked to the cottage committing her beachwear to the incoming waters of the North Sea like an offering to Pelutia, the mythological mermaid of the Line.

Around the lovely old cottage Rebecca dressed in a variety of seductive negligees and fine underclothing, tempting Robin through gossamer wisps of inviting fog. Rebecca was delighting in her incessant seduction of Robin. She had never had such a fresh blank slate of a lover to work with and every new concession that she managed to extract from him was a triumph. One morning she pretended to be working at the kitchen sink dressed solely in a short slip that barely covered her bottom. When Robin had entered in his boxer shorts to inquire about the availability of breakfast she had murmured an endearment and leant over the sink invitingly, pretending to be otherwise engaged, daring him to take her like that, there and then. She'd gloried in her success when he had succumbed to the temptation, congratulating herself on his increased confidence in his manhood that he thought it proper to exercise his right over her by possessing her in such a fashion. She'd even vindicated his masculinity by protesting, feebly and falsely, before allowing herself to succumb to his ministrations and cry out in pleasure at his taking of her.

For Robin was changing daily. He was in love and putty in the hands of the siren that owned him. Even his clothes were changing for the better. He'd always had a poor dress sense and his mother had long despaired of ever improving it. Rebecca had no such willingness to accept such failure and, on their second day in the Bay, she insisted on taking the red car through to Saltersea to do some shopping. In the winding cobbled streets of the lovely old town she found enough shops to suit her purpose and, over Robin's petulant objections, she outfitted him with an entire new wardrobe of smart but casual clothes that suited him well, for she had a connoisseur's eye for fine clothing.

She even went as far as choosing his underwear, for she fancied to dress him in silky boxer shorts and sleek designer underpants. Robin blushed deeply as she stood in the shop stroking the material of potential underclothing for him. No woman had performed this chore for him since he was a child. His resistance was overwhelmed however and he found himself not only the possessor of a whole drawer full of new underwear but of a couple of pairs of masculine cut satin pyjamas and a man's silk kimono to boot! Rebecca was not a girl to waste the opportunity of shopping on the unlimited expense account afforded by access to the Mathom Hall credit line! So complete was Rebecca's triumph that she was able to dump an old pair of his slacks, that he'd owned for years, in a bin on the streets of Saltersea. She set the seal on her victory by persuading him to let her drive back and terrified Robin by giving the red convertible its head on the way back to Bolswick Bay.

In fact, Robin liked his new look. The clothes were not only well fitting but comfortable and indubitably in better taste than his usual wear. In a mirror he was bound to concede that he looked far smarter and more handsome. This was an unavoidable conclusion to arrive at as well, because Rebecca constantly told him so! She encouraged his new-found pride in his appearance by never failing to compliment him on it if it met her approval. If he looked particularly fine she purred with satisfaction and rewarded him with sexual favours, telling him that he was so good looking that she couldn't wait, and push him into the back alleys of the darkened village to grope at the fastenings on his pants in unseemly haste.

In such a way one was obliged to train one's man, Rebecca knew, and she was pleased to see his positive response to her coaching. Now he would ask her approval of his appearance before they went down into the village for dinner and she fussed over him possessively, straightening his tie and teasing his wayward hair back into some semblance of obedience. Once she refused to allow him to appear in public before he had changed his shoes, for the ones he wore were scuffed. He grumbled but obeyed, telling himself that he was only doing it to oblige her, scarcely realising the shortness of the leash he was being kept upon.

Rebecca was well contented with her new man. He was kind and gentle and she delighted in the quickness of his mercurially intelligent mind. He was, she found, an absolute fount of information regarding the natural world and moreover could convey his enthusiasm for it in an entertainingly diverting fashion. They would wander over the rock pools along the tide line and he'd delve into them and bring up some extraordinary creature and explain its lifestyle and habits to her, fascinating her with his profound knowledge of the vastly intricate ecosystem along the sea shore. Rebecca had a powerful intellect herself and was attracted to a mind the equal of her own. She found Robin's childlike enthusiasm for his subject irresistible. Once he unearthed a large crab and chased her with it, as she ran squealing across the beach before she allowed him to trap her in a secluded corner under the cliff, divest her of her bikini, and exercise the prerogative of his awakened manhood on her. He was definitely making progress, she thought, as she clung to his neck and wrapped her legs behind him, impaled on his erection, with the rough shale of the cliff face scratching her back as he forced her against it.

He was learning manners too. She was subtly teaching him the respect and consideration due to a lady and a lady of the Line at that. The first time that he got out of the car and darted around to hold the passenger door open for her to climb demurely out she rewarded him with a dazzling smile. He was expected to always give way to her upon entering a building, never to seat himself until she had been seated, always expected to command the drinks or food for her. If the night was cool and she was obliged to wear a coat or wrap she expected to be able to let it fall from her shoulders confident that he was there to catch it and hang it up for her. She would not allow him to use vulgarity in public since that would demean her status as a lady although she was tolerant of it in small doses in private. He was always expected to be polite and deferential to her wishes when in public as well and call her Rebecca in the company of strangers. Becky or an endearing nickname was reserved for private intimacies in their own company or that of beloved friends. She would allow small gestures of affection in public places as long as they stayed within the bounds of good taste. He pleased her mightily one day by thanking her for some small concession by taking her hand and kissing it. She found this gallantry touching and let him know that it delighted her so that he would make a habit of it.

Rebecca had never been a woman that had believed in the equality of the sexes. As far as she was concerned she belonged to the superior sex and saw no reason to concede that superiority by allowing a male to forget his place. A man was supposed to acknowledge that superiority. It was biologically fundamental to the human race. "Women and children first" wasn't an archaic insult to women, it was an imperative of survival for humans. Men were lovely, dear things but, in the final analysis, they were expendable whereas women and their young offspring were not. Men could lose themselves in millions in war, risk their lives down coal mines or at sea but you couldn't risk women, the vital requirements of the species, in such endeavours. Men were designed by nature to defend and provide for the female and if the female condescended to reward them with her favours for doing a good job of it, then that was all to the good. It made them all the more willing to accept their subservient role by giving them an illusion of superiority occasionally.

Rebecca was an anthropologist and keenly aware of the balance struck between the male and female of the species, forged over millions of years of surviving against the odds in the raw battle of survival. You always had to allow the male some slackening of the chain now and again of course, allow him a bit of male bonding, let him go drinking with his friends or watch football or something, but once you allowed him to think that a woman was anything other than his true purpose in life then you were dangerously weakening the links that kept the human species in civilised control.

Rebecca despised the "Ladette" culture then prevailing in her country. The idea that women could descend to the level of hard drinking, vulgar sub-males was, to her, the sickness of a moribund society. Rebecca considered it the duty of any sensible girl to mould her man according to her requirements. A man was, after all, just so much raw material. Without the influence of a woman he ran the risk of descending to an animal level of indulgence. His violence must be tamed, his excesses must be channelled. Properly trained he was a considerable asset and the source of endless amusement and pleasure but you did neither yourself nor him any favours by neglecting that training. She, after all, had spent a considerable amount of time training her femininity and much of that training had been in the field of learning to control the male. An uncontrolled man was very dangerous. This was the reason that you made him open the door for you and not swear in your presence. This was how you reminded him of his place and tightened the leash upon him. You made him respect you and with that respect he worshipped you. To a girl of Mathom Hall, love came with chains attached and she had learned early that chains only hurt when you fight against them.

Robin also had the one, absolutely, obligatory requirement of any male to be even considered by a woman of Rebecca's calibre. He was possessed of a witty, often self-deprecating, sense of humour. If a man was unable to make Rebecca laugh then he simply wasn't in the starting field in her opinion. Robin could make her laugh. He especially managed that feat with his daily growing confidence. With Rebecca continuously validating his masculinity, Robin was discovering hitherto unexplored realms of his personality. The awkwardness and clumsy lack of social graces, that had so characterised him previously, were slowly being eradicated by Rebecca's constant vigilance. There was no reason, she thought, why a man could not be as graceful in his own way as a well-defined woman. She cultivated his stance and posture, slapping him with a frown if she found him slouching in ugly fashion in public. She aimed for a casualness of easy confidence in his demeanour that stopped short of arrogance but, nevertheless, indicated a man possessed of belief in himself and able to hold his head proudly. Robin's ingrained shyness she teased out, not to eliminate it but to allow it freedom since it was, after all, simply an expression of his sensitivity and she found it rather endearing.

She adored his somewhat old-fashioned views of sexual morality since it afforded her such amusement to shock them. In this respect, she knew that she could never so utterly corrupt his views that they would cease to be shocked by her assaults on them. Rebecca had described herself as a slut to Robin but she considered herself a lady and, to her, the two terms were not incompatible. It was this combination of dignified female refinement with the coals of explosive sensuality smouldering just beneath that so attracted Robin. Her sexuality could be outrageously unpredictable and she could be endlessly inventive in its expression. To Rebecca sex was as necessary an accompaniment to life as food and drink.