The Dungeon Keeper – Part 1: The Cellar

The castle was real, or real enough: a thirteenth-century keep restored in the nineteen-nineties, with a portcullis that did not rise any more, a great hall with a long oak table, a spiral stair and, beneath the north tower, a vaulted cellar the guidebook called the dungeon. It hired out for weddings. Tonight it hired out for something else.

Brunhilde stood at the head of the stair with a lantern. She was forty-one, a theatre costumier, tall and broad-shouldered, in a long black gown cut by her own hand, with a heavy ring of iron keys at her belt. Lucian was thirty-six, her partner of five years, a literary agent, soft-spoken and witty, who had told her on a long train journey that he secretly yearned to be a prisoner in a story and to be kept.

They had done the careful part at the long oak table in the hall, with candles lit and a flagon of cider between them. She had written the rules on a sheet of rolled paper. The Articles of the Keep. His limits and hers: no marks, nothing painful, no real humiliation, nothing beyond the castle, no one else. The cell door had a modern fire-exit bar on the inside, hidden by a wooden panel, and she had shown him exactly where it was. The word was Daylight.

"Say it."

"Daylight."

"If you say it, the Keeper puts down her lantern. I am Brunhilde. We eat cheese and drink the cider."

"I understand."

"And at every bell of the tower clock, I will ask whether you wish to continue. You answer truly."

"Yes, Keeper."

"Not yet." She slipped a long hooded cloak over her gown and lifted her chin. Her voice dropped, deep, slow and absolutely sure. "Sir Lucian. You were taken at the gate with a forged letter."

"I am innocent, Keeper."

"They all are." She almost smiled. "Down."

He went down the worn stone stair with her lantern throwing his shadow before him, into a low, cold, vaulted room with a straw-strewn floor and a heavy wooden door set into a niche. She pushed it open. It groaned with ancient menace.

"In."

He went in. The cell was small and chill and smelled of stone and straw. The door swung shut behind him, thick and black, with a dull iron boom that rolled round the vault, and for a moment, in the pitch dark, his heart hammered. Then his hand found the hidden bar, and pressed it a fraction, and felt it give. Safe.

"Are you content, prisoner?" came her voice, through the grille.

"Content, Keeper."

"Good. The night is long."

Continue the story: Part 2 – Daylight.