Mistress of Night and Dawn (27 page)

His words drifted gently into her consciousness like autumn leaves falling into a stream. It made sense, all of it, in a terribly crazy sort of way. But he spoke with a glum heaviness. A morbid depression seemed to have seized him. Aurelia could feel it in the way that his body was now sitting, all hard lines and stiff angles corresponding with the flat line of his mouth and downward cast of his gaze.

Automatically she sought to comfort him with her touch. She caressed his cheek with her palm and he rested his jaw against her hand and relaxed, as if with that one simple gesture she could absorb the burden of his fears.

They had spent so little time together. And so little of that time had been talking. She knew almost nothing about him, and how much did he really know about her? Until now, they had shared barely a word of their thoughts, their lives or their dreams. And yet all of that melted away when they were skin to skin. As if their physical connection was so strong it surpassed the need for anything else. When they touched, Aurelia felt as though a deep understanding passed between them like an electrical current and it carried with it the weight of all the words that they might ever have shared and made articulating them unnecessary.

And so she knew what had upset him.

‘It won’t be you, will it? Training me.’

‘No,’ he replied, cupping his hand over hers and holding her palm closer to his cheek. ‘It won’t be me.’

Becoming the Mistress of the Ball didn’t feel like a choice for Aurelia. It was who she was, as simple as that. She had no say in the matter at all. She knew she had to accept its consequences, however much they conspired against all the beliefs in love and romance she had held in her previous life, her life before the Ball.

Nonetheless when she arrived at the Network’s headquarters in Seattle, where her training would take place, she could not settle the racing of her heart or the nerves that pumped through her in a frenzy, more like a flock of savage, screaming gulls than delicately fluttering butterflies.

In his role as Protector, Andrei was responsible for advising the Network of Aurelia’s accession to the position of Mistress and agreeing to the general scheme of her training, according to the traditions he himself had inherited. The Network, he had explained, was not the Ball but rather an associated organisation that worked silently behind the scenes, facilitating all of the tedious but essential elements of putting such an event together. For every circus performer, sexual gymnast, artist, wardrobe designer and hedonist who travelled with the Ball, there was an equally open-minded but differently skilled accountant or office manager shifting the administrative cogs behind the scenes like clockwork at the Network’s headquarters.

They were also responsible for selecting and training many of the dancers, aerialists and other performers and ran certain sideline enterprises that were similarly themed but separate to the Ball. The whole operation was highly discreet and secretive, so even Andrei’s knowledge of the Network’s affairs was piecemeal.

He would accompany her to their offices but was unable to provide her with any more details about what would happen next. Andrei had never witnessed the training of a Mistress and as Aurelia’s mother had run away before her training commenced, such an event had not occurred for many years, though he had been told stories of how it had happened in the past.

Learning the history of the Ball, or as much of it as existed, was part of his education as Protector, but he was quick to point out that things had changed and developed over time along with sexual and cultural norms and what former Mistresses had undertaken in the process might not happen to Aurelia.

From the outside, the home of the Network looked like an ordinary office block and from the inside it was just as Aurelia imagined the interior of any corporate headquarters would look, as far removed from the fantastical setting of the Ball as she could imagine.

A middle-aged, dark-haired woman with large round spectacles met them at the front door, took their names and briskly punched numbers into a nearby telephone, alerting other unknown staff to their arrival. She wore a name-tag that simply read ‘Florence’, and might been a secretary in any downtown workplace if it hadn’t been for the tightness of her pencil skirt that restricted the movement of her legs so greatly she was virtually hobbled, and the inward swoop of her waist that curved so sharply it was obvious that she was tightly laced into a corset.

Her shoes were like nothing that Aurelia had ever seen before. They were pitch-black and gleamed like light reflected on water, but had no base at all, so that when she stood she was forced onto her tip-toes like a ballerina. A long, thin heel held her feet almost vertical. Aurelia was amazed that Florence was able to move at all without falling over forwards, but somehow she managed it.

‘Is that her uniform?’ she whispered to Andrei as they waited to be introduced to whomever it was who had been called to come and get them.

‘No,’ he replied. ‘It could be the way she has chosen to dress. Or she may have been instructed to do so by a dominant. But that’s the same thing, really, in a way . . .’

‘Why?’ Aurelia asked. She expected that her training would incorporate these elements of restriction. If she was required to understand these things to be Mistress, her education may as well start now.

‘There’s a certain sort of freedom that accompanies restriction. Sometimes holding on can be another way of letting go,’ he replied.

Aurelia puzzled over his words, but not for long, as it was only a few minutes before they were collected. The two women who came to greet them were as dissimilar from each other as night and day.

One was clad in a grey suit with a skirt that fell all the way to her mid-calf. Her hair was pulled back into a tight bun. She spoke and walked with the natural authority of a school governess and seemed to Aurelia like someone who in another age might have been referred to as ‘ma’am’ in hushed, fearful tones.

The other was dressed in a deep-red velvet gown that hugged the curves of her body as sinuously as a snake’s skin and trailed along the linoleum behind her with each step. Her hair was as black as tar and hung loosely over her shoulders. There was a softness about her that was in stark contrast to the severity of her partner. In her left hand she held a flower pot that contained a delicately pruned miniature tree. The plant was in bloom and sprouting an unusual abundance of white and red blossoms that, in combination, resembled droplets of blood on snow. She extended her right hand towards Aurelia and, when Aurelia took hold of it, she was surprised by both the strength of the woman’s grasp and the warmth that emanated from her palm.

‘Aurelia,’ the red-gowned woman said, in a voice so musical each word was a song. ‘We’re so pleased to meet you. My name is Madame Denoux. We will be overseeing your training.’ She inclined her head towards the grey-suited woman who remained nameless. Both of them nodded towards Andrei, who stood wordlessly alongside Aurelia. It was evident that they had been previously introduced or knew of each other at least by their respective offices of Protector and Trainer, if not personally.

Andrei and Aurelia were then led through a series of seemingly endless monotone passageways that wound through the building like tunnels on a beehive until they reached a pair of wide double doors that opened onto a manicured garden.

The lawn was landscaped in minimalist oriental style with a series of neatly trimmed flora set amongst rock and water features that imbued the area with an aura of peace and precision. Surrounded by the gentle sound of water lapping over smooth stones and bright-green leaves softly swaying in the breeze, Aurelia took a deep breath and her shoulders relaxed involuntarily.

Andrei squeezed her hand. She was unused to the businesslike environment of the Network’s office block, but the garden had a feeling of timeless rightness to it, as if every leaf was resting exactly as it should be. This was a place where she could feel at home.

In the centre of the garden was a large, single-tiered pagoda. It was raised from the ground and accessible by a few short steps to one side and empty of furniture, more like a bandstand or stage than a place to sit under cover and enjoy the surrounding garden.

In the centre of the pagoda was a round room walled entirely with glass, like a fish tank. They followed a stone path across the grass, stepped onto the pagoda and stood behind Madame Denoux and Miss Greysuit as they stopped in front of the wall of glass and each laid a hand flat against a section that did not appear to Aurelia to be any different from the rest. There was a soft ‘shhh’ sound as the sheet of glass moved on an invisible mechanism, sliding back to reveal a doorway. The women beckoned and together they stepped over the threshold.

‘Your father designed this,’ Andrei whispered to Aurelia. She absorbed this information wordlessly, wondering whether considering the nature of what might happen here she would have preferred to remain ignorant of that fact.

They had entered a very sparsely decorated bedroom suite. The bed was a low futon standing in the centre of the room and accessible only by four small, evenly spaced bridges that divided the room into quarters like the dial of a compass and punctuated the circular water feature that ran around the whole room like a moat. Steam rose from the surface of the water and one section contained a raised white bidet and toilet suite so artfully designed that at first glance Aurelia thought it was a sculpture. Light streamed in from all directions.

‘This will be your living quarters,’ Madame Denoux said to Aurelia.

There were no curtains, Aurelia observed. Whatever occurred in here would be visible to anyone who chose to linger in the garden outside or stare out of the windows that peppered the surrounding buildings. She was not to be afforded any privacy at all, she realised. Even while undressing or using the bathroom she would be on display.

‘For how long?’ Aurelia enquired.

‘For as long as it takes,’ Madame Denoux replied.

What it was that they would be waiting for or working towards remained a mystery, but as Miss Greysuit read a list of rules and instructions from a clipboard it became apparent that for as long as she remained in the Network building, Aurelia’s body and her mind would not be her own but rather she would be the property of whomever was appointed to train her on any given day.

She would not be blindfolded, but she would be expected to keep her eyes closed to ensure the anonymity of her trainers and additionally because blindness would help to heighten her other senses and thereby render certain parts of her training more effective.

Aurelia was growing rather sick and tired of having her sight restricted, but she acquiesced to that item on the agenda along with everything else. It was made clear to her that at any time she could simply press a small white button that was fixed to the underside of the bed frame and a staff member would be alerted to the fact that she wished to cease her training forthwith and leave the premises and someone would be by her side in moments to escort her, unharmed, to the exit. If she was engaged in a training exercise and wished it to end then she could either say ‘stop’ or, if she was unable to speak, grunt three times and she would be immediately released.

She almost withdrew her consent there and then when she was advised of the conditions under which Andrei would be permitted to visit her. The Ball had required few full-time Protectors in the past, as bar current circumstances and a few other unusual and temporary periods of time, it had always had a Mistress.

Thus, no specific regulation prohibited the Protector from forming a relationship with the Mistress or Mistress-in-Waiting, but all those on the Network board of trustees agreed that such a thing was unexpected and highly irregular. More importantly, certain powerful members of the Network hierarchy had suggested that Andrei’s presence would alter the tenor of Aurelia’s training.

She might become too attached to him and unable to give herself fully to her trainers. As a result the process might be slowed or simply impossible, and they could not risk losing another Mistress. It was not said aloud, but insinuated, that Aurelia was after all her mother’s daughter and running from destiny might be in her blood.

Aurelia would never know what Andrei offered the Ball committee in order to secure their agreement, or to what lengths he had debated the matter with them. She was advised that his presence would be guaranteed at certain training sessions and that he would be allowed to spend the night with her on occasion, but no more than once a week.

However, in exchange, she must agree to allow any other visitors to enter her sleeping quarters at any time of the night and no matter who entered her room or what took place she must keep her eyes firmly closed from the time that she retired to bed at night through to dawn.

Andrei stood alongside her as Madame Denoux imparted this news.

Aurelia drew her eyebrows together. ‘Do you mean that Andrei will only be allowed to make love to me if other men also can? And I will never know them?’

‘Other lovers. Not just men,’ Madame Denoux corrected, whilst nodding her head to confirm that the rest was true. Aurelia felt Andrei’s hand tighten around her own like a vice, but he did not utter a word in protest.

Aurelia knew she had no choice in the matter but determined right there and then that no one would be allowed to steal her heart as Andrei already had done, even if they took possession of her body. Other lovers would not, could not, affect her feelings for Andrei.

They were granted the rest of the late afternoon and early evening together and they spent it curled up in each other’s arms on the futon bed with the sliding door left wide open and the fragrant scent of the gardens wafting over them.

Not a word was exchanged until the moment came for Andrei’s departure and they slowly rose from the bed and embraced again by the door in the manner of two people who could not bear to be parted.

He stroked her face gently and then, as he pressed his mouth to hers, he surrounded her throat with his hands as if he were marking her as his property and no one else’s, no matter what the Network required.