Memories of Midnight . Elegant and beautiful Jane Seymour.

Simone stood trembling in the centre of the bedroom. She had just had her bathroom privileges, for which the mouth harness and gag had been removed. And she still wore the short black slip. Douglas was cutting bed sheets into broad strips and a sizeable number already lay in a heap on the floor. His mistress lounged in a chair near the door, the inevitable cigarette in its holder dangling from her tapered fingers. She had broken the severe black of her previous costume and now wore dark slacks and a black and while jacket over a white bustier. Her hair, formerly tied in a severe bun, now framed her neck and shoulders, black and glossy.

‘P-please ...’ began Simone, but she was silenced by a brusque gesture from Madame with her freehand.

‘Tsk tsk. You should know the rule by now, Dear. No speaking unless we give our permission.’ Simone hung her head. ‘That’s better. You’re learning, but a little too slowly. Now let me see ... Remove that slip I think.’

Simone hesitated.

Do it!’

Blushing furiously, Simone had to obey.

‘Hand it over to Dougie ... Dougie, cut it into strips please, a mite less wide than those sheets you’ve done such a magnificent job with.’

Simone watched aghast as the beautiful garment, though creased from overnight wear, was reduced to rags of varying length and width. Madame took a large square piece and tossed it to Simone.

‘Roll it up and put it in your mouth.’

Simone quickly obeyed. Though she hated the stale taste, she was frightened by what Madame might do, and remembered the slap on the breast she received earlier.

‘Take it all in your mouth and close your lips over it. You should be getting used to being gagged this way. Dougie, bind her hands with one of the longer strips, that one with the lace edging.’

Douglas moved behind Simone who presented her arms to him, shuddering at the expected touch of his fingers. In his usual way, he bound her wrists methodically in a neat crossed pattern, stopping and making tight double knots every couple of turns so that the lace became embedded in her flesh. It was abrasive and felt like rough twine. The pain discouraged struggling.

As he stepped away, Douglas gave her a stinging, very familiar slap on the bottom. Naked and with her hands tied behind her back, Simone felt more vulnerable than she had been when lying on the bed the night before in the short slip. The way both Douglas and Madame looked at her made everything worse. With her hands tied, she could do nothing to save her modesty.

Madame tossed another strip of silk to the man. ‘Her ankles too, Dougie.’

Simone fought to retain balance while Douglas tied her ankles together with another of the longer strips of silk, cinching the result between them.

‘Help her kneel.’

Cupping his hand over one of Simone’s breasts and taking her round the waist, Douglas lowered the young woman to her knees.

Madame rose and walked to the suitcase that contained the selection of garments and returned to the kneeling girl with a large white silk scarf in her hands. Simone closed her eyes and turned her head away. Without a word, Madame bound the fine material around the young woman’s face, drawing it as tight as she could so that it clung over Simone’s lips and mouth in a seemingly immovable band. Simone knew that if she tried to budge the gag it would be made tighter. At least there were only a few layers of thin silk between her lips and the cloth trapped inside her mouth.

Simone remained kneeling while Douglas slowly wrapped her upper body in the wide strips of bed sheet. The man began at her waist and worked up, imprisoning her arms behind her and paying special attention to her full breasts, tying the broad sheeting in such a way that they were uplifted and made prominent and not flattened as a different sort of winding would have done. At Madame’s insistence, he stopped at her shoulders so that her neck and upper chest remained uncovered, revealing a hint of decolletage.

‘If we mummify her too completely, her body will overheat and she’ll be in danger over the long journey.’

At the words, ‘a long journey,’ Simone’s heart began to pound and she tossed her head from side to side and whimpered through the gag.

‘Shut her up please, Dougie. She really must learn that when we require her to be silent, silent she must be.’

Douglas took up another lace-edged remnant from the silk slip, tied a small knot in its centre, and pressed the knot between Simone’s teeth over the wide white scarf already covering her mouth. As he tightened the strip at the back of her neck, Simone’s mouth was forced open so that part of the covering silk slipped between her lips.

‘Muffle her in some of that thick stuff too.’

One of the strips of bed sheet was torn in half, folded into a bandage about three inches wide and bound very tightly around Simone’s face below her nose. There was enough left for Douglas to apply an additional layer around her mouth. When it was knotted at the back of her neck, her jaw was almost entirely frozen in place. She was unable to close her mouth, and the attempt to stretch her jaws wider met with resistance from the bed linen that cupped over her chin. Simone’s nostrils flared with the effort to breathe and she soon fell into the pattern of soft breathing through her nose. My god, she asked herself, I wonder if I’m getting used to some of this?

Simone was next propped standing against a wall and Douglas completed the wrapping operation while Madame held her in place. The man worked downwards now from Simone’s waist, passing the bands of linen tight across her hips, covering her sex - which made Simone feel a little easier in her mind - and encasing the girl’s legs from her thighs to her ankles.

‘Let her feet remain unwrapped,’ said Madame. ‘The head, neck and feet are the main places for balancing body temperature. Unfortunately the base of her spine will have to stay covered.’

When Simone was securely wrapped from shoulders to ankles, Dougie and Madame between them lowered their helpless bundle to the floor and arranged her neatly on her back. Simone lifted her head and looked fearfully up at her two tormentors. She could scarcely move, was as well mummified as she ever cared to be. Madame returned her gaze steadily, tapping the ash from her cigarette into one of the ashtrays that were set at intervals around the apartment.

‘You’re absolutely frightened, yet you’re a feisty young woman at the same time,’ observed Madame with something like grudging admiration creeping into her voice. ‘Many other women would be totally hysterical and disoriented at this moment, or at quite a few moments earlier if it comes to that.’

‘Yers. Yer right, Mod-arm,’ said Douglas. ‘We an’t goin’ t’really hurt her, are we?’

Madame shook her head. ‘No, Dougie, that was never my intention. You don’t need to worry about copping a murder rap. Kidnapping and "deprivation of liberty" are all we’ll get if we’re caught. Oh, and grand theft of course!’ She gave a short ironic laugh. ‘You hear that, Dear? You’re safe, remember. Very uncomfortable, but safe.’

Simone nodded, tears glistening in her eyes.

‘Ah. You feel a little sorry for yourself? The beautiful heroine caught in our plans and rendered helpless. A true melodrama!’

‘She is beautiful too.’

‘Dougie, I rather thought you noticed.’ There was a pause. Madame glanced at her watch.

‘Is it time yet Mod-arm?’

The Lady in Black-and-white looked up. ‘I guess so. We move out quietly and unobtrusively with our cargo of valuable fashion goods, and a rather sweet young prisoner. Better bring in that box we used before.’

Simone watched for Douglas’s return in an agony of suspense and growing panic. Thoughts of being immured in the silk-padded ‘coffin’ filled her head and she felt very close to the hysteria that Madame believed she wouldn’t show. It was not the padded box however, and Simone felt immense relief for that mercy, but it was the long dress box that Douglas wheeled in on a trolley, in which she had been first packed away with the satin and tulle.

Tight-lipped and in a hurry, Madame had Douglas spread a cushioning layer of satin dresses in the box and Simone was summarily laid out on it.

Madame paused, then said, ‘I think we’ll put her on her side. She’ll be in agony if she has to travel for over four hours on her back with her arms under her.’

With more than usual care, Madame and Douglas arranged Simone on her side with a small pillow under her head to support her neck. The lid was fastened down. Once again Simone was in oppressive, terrifying darkness. The movement of her narrow prison told her that they were immediately on their way to the unknown destination.

Oh no ... four hours! I can’t bear it! Simone stretched her body and strained uselessly within the tight wrappings. There was nothing she could do about it. She let her head sink to the pillow and closed her eyes, trying hard to ignore the insistent suffocating pressure of the gagging cloths that filled her mouth and bound her face. The wad of silk that packed her mouth was already sodden with saliva and, with her mouth fixed open, she drooled helplessly into the silk and linen bindings around her face.

Simone’s body rocked gently as the long box was moved and lifted. Her shoulder from time to time came into contact with the lid to remind her that she was boxed up, locked in a dark and narrow space. Not for the first time, she wondered whether the experience was curing her of her claustrophobia or only making it worse. She loathed it. Yet she was finding that she could cope. She had not yet gone over the edge. Perhaps Madame was right and she had resources of inner strength of which she was unaware up to now.

As the box continued to move, it tilted so that Simone slid down an inch or two, her feet resting, almost standing, against one end. This suggested that they were going downstairs and that Douglas had momentarily propped the box up on one end. And then two surprising things happened. A soft gust of air played about her eyes and forehead, cooling and refreshing her strained face. And the darkness was not so stygian. Light was filtering in from somewhere. It registered against her closed eyelids and, when she opened them, she found herself staring wonderingly through a small cluster of round holes in the side of the box. They were each about half an inch in diameter. The neat and apparently meticulous way in which they had been drilled and spaced was evidence of Douglas’s handiwork. Simone’s nostrils flared as she breathed in the fresh air gratefully. Dougie, bless the man, she thought woozily as she closed her eyes and allowed herself to succumb to the exhausted sleep that she so much needed.

But sleep was elusive, and was often broken as the long journey continued through the afternoon. Light did not always penetrate easily into Simone’s narrow prison after the box was packed into the van. But there was a sort of twilight in the vehicle and she clung to it. The linen bands in which she was wrapped so tightly kept her warm. That and the closeness of the box made sweat bead on her forehead and across her neck and exposed shoulders. The pain of her bound wrists was almost unendurable with the sharp edges of lace cutting into their soft flesh. Her fingers and hands lay flat and loose at her back, held tightly against her body by the linen wrappings that trapped her arms. Over time her hands became numb. Under the tight gag her face also felt numb.

The intense discomfort proved to be another blessing. Simone slipped into the semi-consciousness of shock, as she had done before, and so the long journey, that in the end took five hours for Madame and Douglas, passed relatively quickly for their prisoner.

Simone was scarcely aware of her wrappings falling away and the bonds being cut from her wrists and ankles. As Douglas massaged life back into the deep impressions left in the girl’s wrists by the silk strips, Madame unfastened the cruelly tight gagging arrangement. Simone coughed and a dribble of saliva ran down her chin, but she did not awaken.

‘She’s a brave girl,’ mused Madame. ‘Don’t despair, my dear,’ she added turning to Simone, ‘You will be freed, eventually, when we are well away from this county and are living with greater security than we can boast right now.’

‘What shall we do with the Lady Simone? Shall I bind her again?’

‘Yes, Dougie. But not fiercely this time.’

‘I’ll wrap her wrists in some o’ this gauze bandage an’ tape them. An’ her ankles too. That should be enough till morning.’

‘Yes, that will do adequately. Leave her on the mattress and put a blanket over her. The state she’s in, she won’t be going far. And gag her lightly, to remind her of my rule.’

Dougie bound a broad strip of torn sheet around Simone’s face, covering the young woman’s mouth in such a way as to muffle any cries she might attempt.

And so it was that, between them, Madame and Douglas established conditions that offered Simone the chance to make a bid for freedom.