Three Graces of Maidstone

Copyright Oggbashan September 2008

The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

This is a work of fiction. The events described here are imaginary; the settings and characters are fictitious and are not intended to represent specific places or living persons.

I had heard of the Iron Maiden of Nuremburg. I had never heard of the Three Graces of Maidstone until I was researching the impact of the English Civil War in Kent.

I knew that there had been a battle of Maidstone and that one of the regicides had been living in the town at the time. The Three Graces? I found a mention in a contemporary diary in the County Records Office and I couldn't rest until I had found out more. What follows took months of research in locked bookcases in the erotic sections of various libraries.

The Three Graces had been made for Lord Blank. I have omitted his name because I don't want to embarrass his descendants. I'll call him Anthony. That wasn't his name.

Anthony was married. His wife had produced several children but had retreated into an interesting illness and was effectively bedridden. Anthony didn't take the usual courses open to the nobility at that time when their wives were reluctant. He didn't people his estates with bastards, nor did he import an expensive and highly decorative mistress. He commissioned a Venetian maker of automata to design and build the Three Graces.

The normal artistic representation of Zeus' daughters Euphrosyne, Aglaia and Thalia has them standing or dancing together. Anthony's version had them lying on a bed with Aglaia between her sisters. Euphrosyne and Thalia lay on their sides facing inwards.

A large handwheel was fitted behind the headboard of the curtained four-poster bed. Twenty-four turns of the wheel were required to prepare the automatic mechanism ready for use.

Anthony would position himself so that he penetrated Aglaia before pressing a button concealed under her hair at the nape of her neck. She would kiss Anthony and wrap her legs around his while her sisters turned inwards pressing Anthony deeper into Aglaia. The three sisters would move together in apparent ecstasy until Anthony was drained. A further depression of the button would end the actions. Euphrosyne and Thalia would swing back to their original positions, releasing Anthony who had been imprisoned between the Three Graces bodies until now.

Anthony enjoyed the Three Graces several times a week. He felt that he had come to an ideal compromise that satisfied him without impugning his wife's honour. He would retire to the four-poster bed, close the curtains around himself and enjoy the attentions of the Three Graces. He thought that the only people who knew about his solution were the Graces' maker and Anthony's valet. He had forgotten that nothing could be kept a secret from the servants. The maids who cleaned the room and changed the bedding around the Three Graces knew what he did. They had even put the Three Graces into action with one of them taking Anthony's part.

A couple of the younger maids were disappointed that their master hadn't taken the usual course of seducing them. Being the mother of a Lord's bastard could be profitable and set the woman up for life with a choice of husband. The Three Graces were rivals that couldn't be displaced. Soon the whole of Anthony's establishment knew about the Three Graces and exactly what they did.

However, everything went well for Anthony until the Civil War started. Despite his age he took to the field of battle for the King. He sent his wife and children to France, to a small estate he owned near Etaples, so that they would be safe whatever happened.

Anthony was given command of an undisciplined Regiment of Foot that had already distinguished itself by rapine and pillage. As was usual at that time, the Regiment was renamed for its leader and was known as Anthony's. He replaced of some of the officers and disciplined the regiment's troublemakers. However the regiment's reputation continued to be bad and it was detested by soldiers on both sides.

Anthony was wounded in the early skirmishes of the battle that destroyed his regiment. They stood firm to allow the King's forces to retreat in good order but died at their posts. They knew what they faced if they became prisoners. As they were being slaughtered, Anthony's right arm was amputated on a kitchen table some miles away. Unconscious, he was carried away on a farmer's cart.

His valet and servants brought him back to Maidstone. He remained on his estate recovering from his injuries while the King's forces suffered defeat after defeat.

After some weeks Anthony decided that he was fit enough for another encounter with the Three Graces. His valet wound the automata and left. Anthony found it awkward to press the button in Aglaia's neck. It had been designed for right-handed use. He wriggled his left hand around her neck and pressed before returning his arm to his side to help support his weight.

That was a mistake. Euphrosyne swung inwards and trapped his left arm. He was unbalanced without his right arm. Thalia pressed his right shoulder further down than before. Once he had ejaculated into Aglaia he tried to reach the button to stop the Three Graces coupling around him. He couldn't. They continued to hug him tightly, forcing him to comply with their movements. His tool was clamped tightly within Aglaia and sorely abraded until the mechanism driving the Three Graces ran down. He was still helplessly trapped between them. Even if he could reach the button, with the spring driving the automata completely unwound, nothing would happen.

Anthony stayed clasped in the Three Graces' embrace until Hesta, a maid, entered the room early in the morning to make up the fire. He managed to croak a request for 'Help!'. Hesta drew the curtains and found her master helplessly trapped between his mechanical mistresses. Anthony had to tell her how to wind the mechanism and how to press the button that would release him. Hesta did this efficiently before pulling him to the side of the bed and covering him with a quilt.

Anthony was in a quandary. He wanted to continue to enjoy the Three Graces but he couldn't stop their action once they had started. He needed help. Hesta now knew about what he did with the Three Graces. Anthony didn't know that all his servants knew. He asked Hesta if she would help him for a remuneration.

Hesta played Anthony like a hooked fish until he agreed that he would make love to Hesta, the real woman, for every time that he used the Three Graces. If he did, Hesta would remain in the room outside the closed curtains of the bed until he asked her to stop the Three Graces' action. She would reach through the curtains, press the button Aglaia's neck and then leave.

Of course Hesta didn't play fair. If Anthony didn't make love effectively, or came too soon, or fell asleep before she was satisfied, then the next time he used the Three Graces Hesta would wait until the mechanism was almost wholly run down, or even after it had stopped before releasing Anthony. If his offence was severe Hesta would leave him trapped all night. Anthony soon learned exactly how to please Hesta. She was his mistress in all but the name.

The Royalist cause was losing. Even Anthony began to appreciate that he would have to flee the country but he wouldn't leave the Three Graces behind. The massive structure was dismantled and placed on carts. Anthony hoped to sail from the South Coast of Kent or Sussex. That meant a long journey across the Weald. Anthony sent many of his servants to subsidiary properties but kept the main ones, including Hesta. The large group hadn't travelled more than a dozen miles to the South of Maidstone before they were captured by a troop of Parliamentary cavalry and forced to return to Maidstone, now in Parliamentary hands.

Back in Maidstone Anthony was dragged before a military court charged with the crimes committed by his regiment. Normally, because he was no longer a combatant, he should have been tried in a civil court, but his regiment was so hated that this was overruled. He was assigned a Parliamentary officer as his friend for the defence.

Anthony's defence was simple. He hadn't been in command when the first crimes were committed and he had been incapacitated when the later crimes were committed. During his command of the regiment it had acted within the limits of acceptable military codes of practice.

The judges listened carefully. A couple of Anthony's former soldiers gave evidence about the times that Anthony was in command. The friend produced a parliamentary soldier who had surrendered, with others, to Anthony's regiment and had been treated reasonably, his wounds dressed and eventually the prisoners had been exchanged for royalist troops held by the Parliamentary army. There was almost no case to answer except that of being in arms against Parliament. Then someone mentioned the Three Graces. The judges adjourned the court to examine the automata. Why? Natural curiosity was likely but the result was unfortunate for Anthony.

When the court reassembled the judges conferred and announced their verdicts. They cleared Anthony of all charges relating to his regiment but announced that he was convicted of being in arms against Parliament. They offered him free passage for himself and his servants IF Anthony would demonstrate the Three Graces in use. If not, he would be imprisoned in Maidstone Jail until the war was ended. Anthony was given an hour to decide.

Hesta persuaded him that embarrassment was preferable to an almost certain death from Gaol Fever. She insisted that she would operate the Three Graces as the only servant competent to do it.

Anthony was surrounded by the judges and a few senior officers. He had difficulty achieving an erection until Hesta asked that she should join him on the bed, with the curtains drawn, until she could start the Three Graces. Then she would leave the bed, pull back the curtains, and the judges could see the Three Graces at work. That offer was accepted. Anthony was dragged into the Three Graces' embrace and demonstrated exactly how the machinery worked. Hesta switched the Three Graces off as soon as she could.

Anthony, Hesta and the other servants left for France. Once there, Hesta became Anthony's mistress in name as well as fact. She substituted for the Three Graces that had been left in Parliamentary hands in Maidstone. Anthony, his wife and Hesta eventually returned to Maidstone after the Restoration but no trace was found of the Three Graces. They had disappeared and now had an evil reputation. Anthony tried to find them and recorded his failure in the family's papers.

The Parliamentary judges had been impressed by the action of the Three Graces. They had intended to use it as propaganda to show how depraved the Royalists were. It didn't work. Even the most extreme Parliamentarians couldn't believe that such a machine was possible or that anyone would use such a thing.

After that failure they arranged for a local master clockmaker to modify the automatic machinery and add a few variations so that the Three Graces could be used to interrogate prisoners.

The clockmaker modified the mechanism so that Euphrosyne and Thalia pressed the victim underneath them and moved the operating button to behind the headboard. Aglaia's kiss was changed so that her tongue filled the victim's mouth stifling any outcry. All three Graces were equipped with stiletto blades in their breasts and upper thighs. These stilettos would be demonstrated to the prisoner before he was strapped into the Three Graces' embrace. He was told that if he did not talk the Three Graces' blades would kill him while Aglaia was draining him. Of course, with his mouth full of Aglaia's tongue, he couldn't talk anyway. His torturers impressed upon him that he had to talk before the climax or he would die. Those watching apparently found the victim's ineffectual struggles to free himself to talk quite amusing. When the mechanism was temporarily halted the victim's wish to talk usually overrode any previous hesitation.

The Three Graces were not used to kill prisoners, except once, when a serial rapist admitted killing and dismembering several women. The Three Graces had been used to discover where he had buried the remains. When the bodies had been recovered the rapist was stabbed to death by the Three Graces' stilettos.

After the death of Oliver Cromwell the local parliamentary rulers decided that the Three Graces might be evidence against them if there were to be a restoration of the monarchy. They hid the Three Graces so effectively that they were never found. Local tradition insisted that the Three Graces had not been destroyed but concealed and would eventually be found again.

I had reached a dead end in my researches. I knew as much as anyone about the Three Graces, how they were made, how they worked originally and how they had been modified into an interrogation and killing machine. I thought I might be able to make instructions on how to construct a replica but that wouldn't be the real Three Graces.

For years, night after night, I dreamed of being Anthony and submitting to the Three Graces' embrace, surrendering myself to the passionate love of three artificial women. On good nights I imagined myself with two arms and able to end the embrace at a time of my choosing. On bad nights I had no right arm and the Three Graces continued long after my desire had ended. Once or twice the dream turned into a nightmare. Aglaia's tongue gagged me into silence as the three women, with sharp stilettos poised to strike, confined me in their inescapable embrace. Once I awoke sweating with fear as I felt the stilettos' tips begin to pierce my skin.

My obsession with the Three Graces affected my personal life. My girlfriend Amy was another amateur archaeologist and historian. We had met on a rescue excavation near Maidstone while examining a site that would be obliterated by the new Channel Tunnel Rail link. She took her archaeology more seriously than I did. She could become excited by the discovery of the traces of a Saxon post hole. If she found anything significant it acted on her like an aphrodisiac and we would spend the night wrapped in passionate activity.

Amy couldn't understand my fixation about the Three Graces. She was more interested in older artefacts and passionate about making new discoveries. After a first attempt to interest her I gave up. She told me that she knew that the automaton had been used as a torture and interrogation device but said she didn't want to know about the original use of the Three Graces. We drifted apart as I spent more and more time trying to trace the Three Graces. Amy was sometimes jealous that I had been more successful in making interesting archaeological discoveries. She wanted the fame and more importantly the funding that followed success.

Sometimes I regretted Amy's wholesale lovemaking but the Three Graces had become my only interest. Amy and I parted with some regret but I thought with no rancour. If I found the Three Graces I might involve her but I wanted the credit for their discovery myself.

Eventually I found a document in an obscure archive in London. I was looking for something else but a reference to 'the devilish machine of three abandoned ladies' caught my eye. The document was fifty years later than the Restoration but mentioned the much earlier trial of one of the Parliamentary judges. He had offered to reveal the hiding place of the devilish machine but his offer had been refused as being frivolous. Until then I hadn't known which of the judges knew of the hiding place and their papers in the National Archives were extensive. Now I had the name of the one judge who knew and if his papers were available to search I might have a chance.

It took me months of work. Every night I had dreams or nightmares about being trapped in the inescapable embrace of the Three Graces. Sometimes Amy's face and clutching legs replaced Aglaia's. Once, sleeping after a drunken Stag Party, I believed that three versions of Amy were surrounding me. If only I could find where the Three Graces were hidden and see if the reality was anything like my dreams.

Eventually I found a reference to some building work at a time when the Parliamentary supporters should have been busy with military preparations. Repairing a cellar was not an urgent matter when their lives were in danger. I traced the repairs to 'the cellars under the municipal stables'.

Perhaps they had transferred the Three Graces to an old unused cellar underneath the municipal stable block and walled off the end of the cellar with old stonework. Eventually the Three Graces' location would have been forgotten.

All I had to do was find where the municipal stables had been and what was on that site in the 21st century.

Back in Maidstone I studied old maps until I found where the stables had been. The first large scale ordnance survey had placed 'ruinous masonry' roughly where the stables would have been. Working forward through the years I found that the site had been built on in the 1850s. A row of farmworkers' cottages had been erected. Now those cottages were very close to the town's old hospital and redevelopment of the hospital site might mean that some or all of the cottages would have to be demolished.

Early one Sunday morning I walked past the cottages. As far as I could see all of them were unoccupied and in a poor state of repair. The end cottage, furthest from the hospital, had a faded 'For Sale' sign from a local estate agent. When that estate agent opened I was on their doorstep. They gave me the key with a warning that the cottage was in poor repair and I should watch my step.

The cottage was just about habitable. The roof and windows were intact but the interior needed complete modernisation. I looked for a cellar. I couldn't see one. Checking with a photocopy of part of the ordnance survey map I realised that IF the old cellars still existed they would be under the back yards of the cottages and not under the cottages themselves. I would have to dig...

I went out into the back yard. Immediately I saw chunks of old masonry used as markers for the edges of what had been flower borders. I looked closely. The masonry would be about the right age. I couldn't do any more without tools and time, lots of time.

I went back to the estate agents and asked about the cottage and the others in the row. The cottage I had looked at and its immediate neighbour would be the only ones left standing when the road was widened as part of the redevelopment of the hospital site. They would be unattractive as dwellings as traffic would be passing within a few feet of the front doors.

I explained that I wasn't as interested in the cottages themselves as what might lie underneath their back yards. I would like to do some amateur archaeology before the demolition. Could I rent the cottages, all of them, not to live in, but to give me time to make preliminary excavations to see if a more detailed dig would be necessary before the road was built? The estate agent agreed to contact the owner, who owned the whole row. Since I didn't want to live in them they would remain unoccupied and therefore not liable for local taxes. The owner would have income that he wouldn't normally get.

The estate agent rang me on Monday afternoon. I could have the cottages for six months, with the option to renew monthly thereafter, until the road construction started. The rent for the whole row was less than I would normally pay for a one bedroom flatlet. However I needed a second person to be a joint tenant because the landlord doubted I could actually afford the rent. I could but my income from self-employment was erratic. I had to beg Amy to be the co-tenant. She didn't believe I was looking in the right place but she knew I could afford the rent even if I couldn't prove it to a bank.