Chapter One

"No! No! Please! Don't put me down there again! It's dark and there's rats an'....things, luv, please!"

The cries of protest echoed around the house as the girls cowered in the kitchen. They heard the solid meaty thumps which meant that their mistress was getting her lumps from her husband. He made free with his fists when he'd been in his cups. They heard her short screams followed by the crashes of furniture being overturned as she was knocked off her feet.

"Oh, please don't, luv!" they heard her beg and waited for the silence which meant she had been hauled up and her husband was selecting his next target. Despite being drunk, he was a devil for hitting the places where the bruises wouldn't show. He smacked her viciously hard around the ribs, Polly knew, having soothed and salved her mistress on many occasions. The pit of the stomach took a hammering sometimes and even her breasts on occasions. He sometime shouted at her that he might as well knock them about as they weren't ever going to be needed for nursing. That was when it was a really bad time and the knowledge that there would never be a child to carry on the business rankled with him.

"Oh, Bill! Not there, not there! Oww!"

The girls exchanged glances, there was a thump that sounded like a heavy breast punch. They heard a scraping noise which would be the legs of the dining table moving as Mrs Dallgetty fell backwards onto it. Then there was sobbing.

There were several more solid thump noises with only answering whimpers and sobs then there was the sound of a body hitting the floorboards, followed by footsteps and the sound of a door opening and the swishing and sliding sound of something heavy being dragged across the floor and out into the hall.

"Oh! Please don't! You know how I can be good to you!" This last was an attempt to speak softly and seductively but they heard her body being dragged roughly over the stone flags of the scullery passage towards the trapdoor to the cellar steps.

Just half an hour earlier, Mrs Dallgetty had opened the front door to her husband when she heard him fumbling with his keys, she had looked round desperately at the two serving girls and told them to get on in the kitchen before she faced whatever demon had possessed Mr Dallgetty this time.

When Bill Dallgetty was in one of his moods, whatever a woman said to him was water off a duck's back, he was beyond reason and she was just fair game to fulfil whichever appetite required sating on that occasion. The two girls avoided each other's gaze and got on with peeling the vegetables for supper. It didn't do to attract his attention when he was in one of his moods.

They heard Mrs Dallgetty moaning, "No....no....no... " softly, hopelessly as she was dragged onwards, the man's boots clumping loudly ahead of her inert body, which was probably being dragged by one arm if it was the usual scene being played out. Sometimes he put her, or even one of them if his wife had passed out, over his shoulder and threw them down the stairs, but more often than not it was simply a one-arm drag to the trapdoor, the ring was pulled up and the door opened up and to one side, then down into the dark you went, tumbling down the steps, the door slammed above you, all light vanished and you heard the bolt being slammed across. How long you stayed there depended on his mood. More often than not it was just until the booze finally laid him out and once he was asleep, then the other women in the house would come down and set the luckless captive free. But sometimes, if business had been bad, he was mean and stayed mean. Mrs Dallgetty had been down there for three days once. Polly had had to endure two days and Ellen's worst stay had been a full day, but then she had been soundly beaten and used first.

They heard the clink of metal as the ring was pulled up and the thud of the trapdoor hitting the wall behind it.

"No! Listen, Bill, take me upstairs, darling." They could hear the pathetic urgency in her voice, a last ditch attempt to ward off the horror. "You know I'm good in the afternoons, I always do all those things you like....No!" The last was a despairing yell as she was pushed backwards down the steep steps and into the Stygian darkness of the cellar, where there were puddles of unspeakable liquids and rats clambered over you in the absolute dark.

The trapdoor slammed down and Bill Dallgetty's heavy footfalls approached the kitchen. Polly and Ellen worked even faster at peeling and slicing, as if sheer effort would turn aside Dallgetty's drunken wrath. The kitchen door slammed open and Bill Dallgetty stood there. Polly glanced up covertly from her work and assessed the danger. He was a large man with a large belly that strained his shirt and the waistband of his britches. His face was red from drinking and his hair was tousled. He didn't look too clean and Polly remembered that he hadn't come home last night. That didn't bode well. He would have been drinking and whoring all night. But despite that, she knew he was well capable of dipping his wick again. In fact that was the best they could hope for. If he fucked one of them he would most likely go straight to sleep for almost a whole day and they could let Mrs Dallgetty out. If he stayed up and drank more, it could mean a beating before one of them could tempt him into bed and get him to fuck himself into a drunken coma.

He stayed where he was, swaying slightly, and Polly noticed that there was a damp patch on the front of his britches. He was making no move to go upstairs and this looked like being bad one.

"Gemme drink!" he slurred and lurched towards the scrubbed pine table the two girls were sitting at. They rose and grabbed the food as he slumped down. Polly knew better than to try and reason with him in this state and she reached for the bottle of dark beer on the top shelf of the dresser, uncorked it and poured him a glass. He took it in a hand the size of a ham, but which was wandering as he tried to guide the glass to his lips. He more or less made it and took a deep draught before slamming the glass back down and looking around him with bleary, aggressive eyes. A slow and nasty smile crept across his rough features as he looked around.

"Paid good money f'r you!" he said, his gaze alighting on Polly. "C'm here an' tell me how grateful you are!" His thick tongue came out and licked at his equally thick lips.

Polly sighed inwardly and cast a quick glance at Ellen, hoping Mr Dallgetty was too drunk to notice - a dangerous game - he always seemed capable of more than he appeared to be capable of, when he was in his cups. But fortunately her glance of warning went unnoticed, Ellen's hand had closed on the handle of a large copper pan.

And anyway she couldn't deny the truth of what he said; he had bought her and Ellen with cash. She had been bought first, bought some five years previously when she was just sixteen and her mother had sold her to pay to keep a roof over the head of her new baby. She had lost her virginity bent forwards over a pile of crates outside an inn scarcely half an hour after she had been bought; Mr Dallgetty's way of celebrating her entry into his family. It hadn't hurt too much and her subsequent experiences with his thick, stubby cock had taught her that if she took what charge she could, depending on his mood, she could get some pleasure from it. However, on the occasions he brought friends home and gave her to them, she had also found out that there were many much bigger cocks around. Now she knew that she had to go to him to avoid them all reaping a real storm. Sometimes he just cuddled her or Ellen for a bit, drank some more and fell asleep, sometimes he took them to bed - and sometimes he took his belt to them and then took them to bed.

She had a feeling this was going to be one of those nights. Dallgetty was beckoning her over, waving his arm extravagantly. Polly took a deep breath and went to him.

As soon as she was within his grasp his massive hand reached out and encircled her slender waist, pulling her roughly onto his lap. She went with it, shaking her head in Ellen's direction who was still holding the pan. In England, in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and twenty, a man had rights within his own house and the law did not take kindly to women who had problems with that.

The smells of stale sweat and alcohol almost made her dizzy as she was yanked off her feet and came to rest squashed up against his belly and sitting across his thighs. One hand stayed firmly around her waist while the other went straight to her breasts. His thick, stubby fingers clawed and squeezed the soft flesh through the material of her blouse and dress.

"Paid good money for these!" he slurred. "Good money! Good tits!" He roared with laughter at his own wit. Against the side of one thigh, Polly felt a hardness in his trousers. Any other man would have been long past getting an erection, but Bill Dallgetty's libido seemed to thrive on alcohol and there was no doubt now where she was heading. Suddenly the hand that had been round her waist grabbed her hair and yanked her head back sharply.

"You gonna be good too?" he asked her, his face close to hers and his eyes suddenly sharp and focussed.

"Yes, sir!" she whispered.

He grunted and stood up, hauling her easily to her feet and propelling her towards the stairs. The house was, by the standards of the town, fairly substantial and there were three rooms upstairs, two bedrooms and a bathroom. She and Ellen shared the back bedroom but tonight she was pushed towards the bed in the big front bedroom where Mr and Mrs Dallgetty usually slept. On many nights, Polly and Ellen had huddled together in their bed, stifling giggles as they listened to the bedsprings creaking as Mr Dallgetty rutted in his wife relentlessly. Given the rough use she was frequently put to, Mrs Dallgetty was still a good looking woman, not pinched and drawn, as so many were, but full bodied and still with a glint in her eye. On some Saturday nights, when he wasn't so far gone in his cups, in the kitchen Polly and Ellen had overheard soft, throaty giggles coming from the front room and then they would hear the footsteps ascending the stairs and look up at the ceiling. Sure enough in a few minutes the lamp would start swinging as the bed was tested again.

But on nights like these, which were becoming more and more frequent, there was no love. There was just the belt and the cock.

Polly got both that night.

He flung her onto the bed without giving her a chance to undress and put one knee on the bed behind her while he flung her skirts up her back. She knew that the quicker she submitted, the quicker he would sleep and they could release Mrs Dallgetty, but that night she couldn't help seeing again Ellen's desperate face as she clasped the heavy pan. And again she heard her mistress' despairing scream as she was dispatched down into the noisome dark of the cellar where all you could do was squat on the steps, crammed up against the trapdoor, trying to keep out of the way of the rats and keep them from getting under your skirts.

And Ellen, poor Ellen. She was a pretty girl who had been sold because of some terrible, dark secret in her family. Polly suspected that she knew what it was but kept it to herself, and every time Mr Dallgetty came home like this, Polly could see the nightmares begin behind Ellen's eyes.

"No!" she shouted suddenly and kicked her legs, twisted around and swung her hand backwards. It connected with Bill Dallgetty's cheek. He stopped in his tracks, shocked beyond words. No woman in his house had ever fought back. For a split second neither of them moved, but then he scowled in fury and hit her.

It was a full-blooded punch that caught her just below her right eye. She was knocked back and knocked nearly unconscious. He clambered further onto the bed and knelt astride her waist.

"Bitch!" he spat and using his open hands he slapped her face from side to side. Lights flashed behind Polly's eyes and she felt numb from the punch and then stinging heat from the slaps. She tried to raise her arms to protect herself but they were swept away and then she felt Dallgetty's big hands tearing the shoulders of her dress and wrenching down the bodice so that he could rip open the blouse beneath. She felt cool air on her breasts for a second before he was crushing and mauling them, twisting the nipples so savagely that the pain cleared her head and she yelled in pain. Then his mouth was on them, biting and pulling so hard she thought he would tear them from her body. Weakly she tried to plead but he merely flipped her over and carried on ripping her clothes to shreds, tearing open the back of her dress, wrenching it down over her hips and then clear of her feet. Her slip followed easily and then as her senses returned she rolled onto her back in time to see him removing the belt from his trousers. Before she could roll back over onto her face he had doubled it and slashed it down onto her defenceless, naked body. It caught her diagonally from above her left breast, right across the nipple and down across her stomach. It was her breast which caught the worst of it and she screeched and twisted onto her face to escape another lash. It fell diagonally down from her right shoulder and then the blazes of pain burst all across her back as he wielded the belt back and forth. In a frenzy he belaboured her all down her back and then really laid into her buttocks. Polly grabbed a bit of the eiderdown and rammed it into her mouth to stop her screams as she felt her cheeks flatten and rebound under the savage lashing they were getting. He had never beaten her this hard before and her buttocks were scorched in the heat of the lashes. Desperately she wriggled and twisted her legs and that must have been the saving of her because suddenly the beating stopped and his thick fingers had jammed themselves between her thighs and were fumbling for her entrance, one finger finding it at last and jabbing painfully up into her dry depths. Her thrashing legs must have revealed the lips of her sex and re-ignited his lust. She cried out and he laughed in delight at her pain and she felt his weight leave the bed. She craned her head round and saw he was undressing clumsily. His cock sprang forth as he drew down his trousers, thicker and harder than it had any right to be, Polly thought, after what he had probably taken overnight. She had learned enough to know that the best thing she could do was to start frotting her little button - as she thought of it. She spread her legs and began to rub it hard as he struggled out of the last of his clothes and then threw himself down onto her. His weight and the stench of his breath nearly took her breath away but she managed to spread herself enough so that he landed mainly between her legs and not on top of her. Then, while he sought out her nipples with his lips and his big hands, she reached down in between their bodies and found his cock.

"Ah, you're good girl!" he said in between hard sucks at her nipples as he felt her little fingers close around him.

"Yes, sir!" she breathed as she struggled to guide him into her. She hoped that her brief masturbation would have at least made her moist enough to let him in without too much of a struggle. She knew he would go back to beating her if there was.