enovel The Girl In Chains Unknown [Future Story Codes]

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The Girl In Chains ....(108k)    by F. E. Campbell

CHAPTER ONE -- CAPTURE

They led her without gentleness to where the changing glow of the campfire merged with the trees and the dark of night. The flickering reflections lit and illuminated her bare skin in a mischievous play of light and shadow. Two rough male hands held each of her arms. She was still panting from her resistance when they had stripped her. She stood now in a hostile and frightened acceptance of superior strength.

"We'll make thee a bed, Lady."

It was a sally of wit to invoke complacent chuckles and contributions. Male eyes fed upon female nudity and spurred male tongues to humour.

"Aye, her thighs be ripe for it."

"Mayhap we'll clip her bush to find the place."

"A toothsome twin o' tits fer a man's teeth."

She fought again, she could not hear such talk and stand passive. But the hands tightened and gripped and lifted her so that her flailing legs beat only air. Implacably, they let her exhaust herself once more until she subsided into sobbing impotence.

"If she fucks as good as she fights!"

"Them hips weave a pretty pattern."

"A touch o' the lash and she'd give a man a good gallop."

"She'll not need it. We'll raise her arse high enow'."

Her bed took shape beneath the diligent hands. It was a thing of the Forest, of gathered earth, of moss and leaves. When they draped it with the blanket it became as the mound of a grave, a grave for the death of her virginity.

They went about their task of rendering her securely available with a casual competence that bespoke long practice. The girl had already exhausted her pleas, her threats, her promises. She had no more words with which to counter the supple strips of hide with which she would be bound. The same strong fingers offered her handily for loops upon her wrists and ankles that when drawn tight and knotted left a long trailing length for a purpose self evident when the stakes were sharpened and driven hard and deep. Four stakes! The captive guessed their use.

The girl was young and strong. She would not submit. She knew to what she was doomed, but would show no willingness. They must use force: her honour demanded it. Her lithe muscles fought the hands and were subdued. Four eager males caught the trailing strips of leather and tightened them inch by inch around the stakes until the panting and frantic girl lay upon the mound looking up at them with a wide-eyed appeal that found no mercy; her arms and legs stretched wide toward the stakes to which she was now tautly bound as a naked "X".

They stood around at a distance from the spread-eagled girl and beheld what they had created. For moments there was about them an air of reverence, as though their uncouth minds glimpsed beauty for the first time in the stretched nakedness bound helpless on its mound. The obscenity of its flagrantly exposed and open sex muted in the dim light from the fire.

"Plinlymon u'll be agog by now," a coarse voice chuckled. "Let's hope they're draggin' the moat for her."

"With D'Almaine gone there'll be no wide hunt. She'll be in good hands 'afore the old man searches her passing."

"And Malenfant; think ye he'll approve our loosening her cunt?"

"We've got his gold; and the five o' us u'll not wear it out fer his Lordship."

"Mayhap the horse...."

The unfinished remark evoked general amusement. Aveline, straining at her bonds, made no sense of it. She knew herself lost. When these men were done with her she would be no longer virgin. She wondered if it was true girls died beneath the thrusting male phallus. She had never felt more fearfully or vividly alive than she did at that moment. Instinctively she sensed survival in every nerve and sinew of her being. In their badinage these wandering men-at-arms indicated no intent to harm other than her maidenhead. She would live to seek revenge. The daughter of Plinlymon would not be ravished with impunity.

"Ransom me." Her eyes sought theirs. "You'll get more gold than pays for a night's sport with a girl who must be tied."

"Oh, aye, lady. But thy price is paid, and we're honest men. Mayhap ye'll share our sport. I have heard tell!" Aveline sensed herself more than a prize for a night of lust. There was a purpose hidden. She was about to plead again when an insistent voice demanded:

"Do we draw lots or pluck straws to be first?"

The Leader guffawed. "Let us make a sport on't. Well toss the twigs, lads."

There was general approval. Five twigs were matched for size before the quintet took position. 'The closest toss to her cunt, lads-that's the lucky man. Try fer her bush, 'tis a fine target."

The naked Aveline wondered if there could be an end to shame. A final blunting of a girl's responses to the violation of her maidenhead. Bound and spread wide for the enjoyment of five men, she writhed in scarlet misery, her wrists and ankles already chafed raw by her battle with the withes by which she was rendered helpless. The cheery disposal of her body by these men told her all too clearly the futility of bargaining.

The impact of the twig upon her concave belly was trivial yet felt as might a blow. It settled upon her navel and was cheered as a 'Good try, lad'.

The next struck the target itself but bounced back and to the ground.

"Want us to hold it open fer ye, Gillie, boy?"

"Easy does it, lad."

The third nestled in the crease of her thigh. But the fourth tangled itself within the bound girl's pubic hair and stayed firm.

"Dammit, Hal, ye're too good fer the likes o' us. I'll ne'er best thee."

It was a good try. The tiny scrap fell neatly upon the twig already in possession but slithered slowly down across the shining hairs until it fell to the ground. The privilege of breaking the maidenhead of Aveline D'Almaine was fairly won.

They raped her through the night. At first the five of them took their turn to pierce the maiden cunt, watching sombrely as each coupling took its heaving and panting course to repletion. The girl being raped longed to hide her face. She was well aware the watching eyes cherished every flicker of expression or grimace of pain she was forced to yield to the thrusting organs that sought her womb. She could not turn away, for they circled slowly for full enjoyment of her shame. When they had done with her they left her bound and sought their slumber by the fire.

To Aveline D'Almaine her rape was both a degradation and a miracle. She plumbed the depth of shame and she lived; lived with a panting awareness of herself as a woman seething with sensation, pulsingly sentient. Unwillingly, she saw rape for what it was: a ghostly monster without the power to kill. A threat within the mind that when fulfilled left her with no more than a desire to bathe and cleanse herself of sweat. Intermittently throughout the night one or the other of her captors would stumble to where she lay conveniently bound and possess her again before he returned to place wood upon the fire and resume his rest. Whenever one of them provoked her awakened glands to orgasm before withdrawal Aveline slept.

To the naked girl the real miracle was morning. Awakening to the sun she fought her momentary desolation at being still bound and naked. She was too stiff and hurting to even try to move. Her wrists and ankles protested steadily the compulsion of the rawhide strips which had bound them impotent through the night and held them still. One of her visitors in the dark had draped a blanket across her helpless nudity. Beneath it she shivered.

They were practical men, and she had value. They knotted a thong around her neck, took her to the spring and gave her twenty feet of slack, binding the other end to a handy tree. They left her to her own needs. It was a cold, rough toilette, but she was grateful.

They fed her, taking her within their circle about the fire. The tether remained upon her neck but she was otherwise free. She cherished no illusions about escape. One of them would have her within ten paces. The demeaning leather upon her throat ensured her compliance.

When the bindings were replaced upon her ankles and her wrists, Aveline came near to breaking down in misery. To be spread and bound and ravished through the day! To lie there to be pierced again and again, her sex soaked with their seed, unable to move ... It was too, too cruel! She stood in her dejected nakedness, upright but afraid, the supple leathers trailing from her limbs. She faced her captors seeking words that they might heed.

It was then they brought the horse.

It was a fine beast, and mettlesome. One of them had ridden it the day before. It stood now fresh and ready, held by its halter, yet odd and incomplete. It was neither saddled nor bridled. The waiting girl became aware of a vibrant atmosphere of expectancy, holding them all.

"Ye've got the girth, Rennet?"

"Aye, an' it be a good'un. I'll buckle it fast."

To the tied girl it was like the preparation for a joust. The leather object Rennet proceeded to buckle tight upon and around the withers of the restive horse was just another of the accoutrements in which men took delight. It was no more than a saddle girth on the ends of which were rings. From the rings another girth circled above. When it had been made abundantly tight it formed a secure band. On each side and well below centre the metal ring broke the symmetry of the surcingle.

The binding of Aveline's nakedness upon the horse was accomplished with such dispatch as to forestall protest or demand. It left her breathless in disbelief that a girl could be so positioned and so held. Its very simplicity was its virtue. Her head was upon the animal's mane, her own hair falling over its shoulders. She lay upon her back, insecure, until the leathers on her wrists and ankles had been drawn wickedly tight and knotted to the rings. With her arms this had been simple, but to hold her immovably upon the horse's back it had been necessary to draw her ankles down and back towards the rings on each side with such a degree of tension Aveline believed herself splitting from the stress and division of her thighs. She was blushingly aware that their junction with its black triangle was displayed and open to an extent that made her exposure of the night seem almost decent. She could not move. She hurt.

"'Tis a fine job. Ye must ha' done it 'afore, Rennet lad."

"Oh, aye," Rennet snickered. " 'Twas a Lord I served tied all his women so."

"Malenfant's got more faith in this beast than I'd have."

"'Tis his faith and his horse and his woman, m'boy. We have her price. Stop thy blithering."

"'Tis passing far."

"That concerns us not. Horse and wench have time enow'."

"She'll no get free. By the saints, Rennet, ye fix a woman well. T' lass u'll have the ride o' her life."

"A nimble chap could still have a go at her."

There was laughter. "We'll hold the horse, man an' ye want a try. Fer my wager the wench's arse u'll be a bit low."

Aveline was deathly afraid of the fate to which she was so unconcernedly consigned. Bound helpless on a horse! "Please, don't do this to me! Not like this, not alone-"

The crack of the rope across the horse's rump cut short her pleading cry. Her words were lost in the wind of her steed's startled plunge and the pain of wrist and ankle as they held her nudity to a firm anchorage on the straining back. The tied girl caught one last look at the enraptured faces of the five who had so evilly used her, then the foliage cut them from view as the hooves thundered their passage down the forest path.

It was the strangest of rides, like no other. She would remember it always. Welded immovably upon the sleek back, Aveline shared every strain and motion of the muscled strength taking her she knew not where. Her hair flew in the wind, her breasts shivered and trembled, her unwilling legs and arms held the equine flanks in a strange, inverted embrace, sharing its stress.

Captive to a horse! It was a thing beyond belief, a nightmare. Among the tumult of emotions crowding her mind one need was uppermost: escape! Yet, bound as she was, it was a glorious dream without reality. Aveline could not believe in it. The leather bands tugging her hands and feet down to the rings offered no promise of slack or of loosening. They were taut as bowstrings. Perhaps later when the furious gallop slackened or stopped there might be a chance, not now.

The name of Malenfant nagged. She had heard it once before, remembering it as of ill repute: One of the Barons whose power and ambitions rivaled that of William Rufus himself, then unenthusiastic monarch of a torn and conquered land. It was said that Rufus the Red found more comfort in his Saxon Thanes than in his own Norman Lords. If Malenfant had indeed paid gold for her kidnapping he must have a reason. But she could think of none. There were Saxon wenches a'plenty for a noble's diversion. He would not seek the daughter of Plinlymon for his leman.

She clung to an obvious hope: Rescue! Surely some traveller must see the fleeing animal with its nude burden and give chase. But that would depend on the horse's choice of route. And she was naked! Rescue might be as hazardous as per present plight. Groping in her memory she believed the lands of Malenfant were far distant....

The gallop merged into a jolting trot that made the captive girl thankful for the tightness of her bonds. To have been strictured with less severity would mean a painful and perhaps dangerous instability. Her wrists and ankles suffered but she remained an integral part of the beast on whose back she was firmly tied. Rennet had done well. When the trot gave way to a steady walk Aveline was thankfully able to take stock.

They had left the depth of the Forest. There were stretches of greensward, the grass of which tempted the homing horse to pause and munch with hungry relish. In these brief periods of relative immobility the captive girl explored her bonds with searching fingers and tugging arms. It took but little time and pain to convince her of the hopelessness of freedom by her own efforts. She was craftily and competently tied. She could never get loose. She and her steed would remain inseparable until such time as he delivered her into the hands of men. She noted with a sense of loss that the worn path had dwindled or turned in directions they must not take. They were adrift in a landscape without signs of human hands or feet.

It took no more than an hour or two for the captive to realize her dependence on rescue for food and drink. She was in need of neither yet, but the day was warm and thirst was inevitable. The horse could slake its own in the occasional stream, but she could not. She had little idea of how long her journey was to be. Fearful imagination made time precious. Whenever the animal to which she was bound faltered in its forward march, she clucked at it and urged it on. It responded with the bone shaking trot it found effortless and could maintain for miles. Time and the leagues passed not swiftly, but they fell steadily behind the rhythm of the hooves.

With the hours and the miles came pain and an intensified fear. Aveline knew she could die should the horse's vagrant moods fail to deliver her. It was a frightening thought that she could remain bound thus as the days passed. Even the first night, still hours away, was a frightening spectre of dark and chill and things unknown. Her helplessness was so total she felt like flotsam on a stream. And with it all was pain. The ceaseless attrition of thongs on wrist and ankle and the sundering stretch of her thighs from legs ruthlessly drawn back and down to the girth rings. Moreover, the blatant openness of her loins was a thing ever present in her mind. She longed for rescue, but rescue would demand its price in shame.

It hurt too much to twist in an effort to look ahead. Aveline's view was restricted to either side and to the rear. It came as a shock when the grave male face looked down upon her and its owner's horse fell in step beside her own.

For a moment the naked girl was too startled to speak; it was the man who gave greeting.

"I bid thee welcome, M'Lady."

"Who are you?" It was all she could think to say.

"I am called Adam Godsoule, Madam."

Beyond a general survey of her plight his eyes did not focus unduly upon her exposed sex. The bound girl took heart from the impersonality of his regard. The events of the past twenty-four hours robbed it of much of the shrinking shame she would once have known.

"You know who I am?"

"The Lady Aveline D'Almaine; M'Lady."

There was something wrong. This polite exchange was out of context with her distress. The helpless girl looked up at the unsmiling features in puzzlement. "I am grateful for rescue, messire Godsoule."

"Yes, Madam."

Aveline was overwrought, the noncommittal words turned hope into anger. "Must I beg you to free me?"

"You will not be freed, M'Lady."

It was like a blow. Astonishment and despair held her mute while Godsoule halted their mounts and ran a tether from the halter of her steed to the pommel of his saddle. When they resumed their journey it was at a brisk trot. The tied girl was more than ever aware of the quivering responses of her breasts. Her escort could scarce look at her without observing their beckoning invitation to male interest.

"Where are you taking me?" She was close to tears.

"To Broule, M'Lady."

"And where and what is that?" Her sentence was punctuated by the jar and motion of the trot.

"It is the fortress of the House of Malenfant, M'Lady." The shamed and disappointed girl managed to hold back her tears. Godsoule's casual acceptance of her state was preferable to an errant wandering, bound and helpless, across the wilds of England. But still it was a cruel blow.

"Could'st not at least cover my nakedness?"

"I am ill equipped, Madam. Bear with it. There is none but me to see."

In a spasm of revolt, and perhaps in the faint hope of touching his pity, Aveline tugged and twisted painfully at her bonds. She put all her small store of courage and her greater wealth of outrage into the pathetic bid for freedom, only to be rewarded by Godsoule's appreciative comment: "Thou art well and truly tied, M'Lady."

"like baggage on a donkey," she retorted. "Surely you can treat me more kindly?"

"I am satisfied to have ye thus. Thou art safer and more secure than riding without a saddle and with thy hands tied behind thy back."

Infuriatingly, he was right. Aveline little relished sitting bound astride a barebacked horse. "Why must I be bound?" she demanded petulantly. "Naked and unarmed I can give thee little trouble."

"Fastened as ye are ye can give me none at all." For the first time, he smiled.

It was hopeless. Freedom was not for her. What then of her captivity! "This place called Broule-what awaits me there?"

Was there not pity in his lowered glance? And why not? Her plight was not to be envied. "I cannot tell thee that, M'Lady."

"Because my fate is too awful to speak of?"

His smile was real. "Nay, nay. Me thinks should ye have sane judgement ye might be well pleased."

"I would be well pleased should ye loose me from these bonds, messire Godsoule. Even if I must run behind thy horse on a leash. I hurt."

He did not bother to answer. She probed again.

"This sane judgement? If I do not have it, what then?" This time Aveline was certain of his pity.

"T'would be best ye use good sense, M'Lady."

"My blood is Norman, Godsoule. In King William's England Norman blood is not lightly shed."

"Aye. But thy blood will not be spilt. There be many ways."

Godsoule would say no more. He parried her questions until she tired of them. At a stream he stopped to drink and to hold water to her lips. Resuming their journey he drove the horses hard so that twilight brought weariness to them and despair to the tied girl.

"We must camp the night. Broule is not until the morrow."

It was almost with disbelief that Aveline felt the loosening of the knots which had held her wrists and ankles for so long. A strong arm supported her as she slumped gratefully to the ground. She had read an intent in Godsoule's eyes she sought to counter.

"There is no need to bind me again. I am too tired, and too stiff and too hurt. I shall not run. Please!"

His hesitation was brief. Then he left her to tend the horses. Gratefully she fell asleep. When sometime later he wakened her, it was dark; there was a fire and there was food and drink. Heartened by both, Aveline resumed her questioning.

"Would money buy my freedom, messire Godsoule."

"M'Lord Malenfant has small need of gold, Madam."

"I meant from thee. Take me back to Plinlymon."

"I have a loyalty, M'Lady. It is not to thee."

Godsoule would be a rock. She sensed his strength. It would be best to give him respect. But he was male and he was human.

"Feel ye no pity for me? I am naked and so helpless."

"Aye, that I do, M'Lady. It changes naught."

"Is there no scrap of covering ye can give me?"

"If I may give thee counsel, Madam, it is that ye forget thy nakedness. Ye may know much of it. If I tear a garment I now wear it will cover no more of ye than will make thee thrice naked."

He was right. It would help nothing to add absurdity to shame. If she could not hide she might as well use it. With a wantonness born of lost hope and lost virginity, she asked quietly, "If gold is valueless in my barter, can I offer you myself?"

"You jest, M'Lady?" He was startled.

"Nay, I am but facing what I must: Last eve the men who tied me as ye found me used me through the night. From what ye fail to tell me of Broule I have small doubt I will meet with rape enow' there. Why then should I not offer thee with some small affection that which men so highly prize? My gratitude for freedom would be real."

Godsoule studied her sombrely but with a fresh interest. "You are not a wanton," he said as though in judgement. "Therefore it is courage and shrewdness...." He nodded in faint approval. "I think it likely, M'Lady, you will well survive."

"I have offered you my body. Will you purchase it?" Again the pity in his smile.

"M'Lady, ye forget. Ye are my prisoner. I can do with thee what I will. Ye seek to barter what is already mine."

Aveline blushed in the shame of realisation that he was right. It was hard for a girl, even a captive girl, to accept that the treasure she had been taught to cherish was no longer hers to give or to withhold. Instinctively she glanced down at her pubic hair in wonderment that so much of all of life centred upon the small slit nestling between her legs.

"Last night they staked me down upon a mound. Is that how you will use me?"

He laughed at her earnestness. "Ye will not yield willingly?"

How loveless was this use of her! "I suppose I will," she admitted listlessly. "I have no wish to be tied again. Will you take me now?"

"I take ye not at all, M'Lady. I escort ye in trust."

With relief there was chagrin, and bafflement. Aveline blushed anew at her emotional conflict. She realized with faint shock that there was more to the loss of virginity than the rupture of a membrane. With the treasure gone there was naught to guard. It was a new freedom.

"Your honour leaves me nothing then," she reflected bitterly. "I am but a package for you to deliver."

"A package I must keep safe."

She started, catching the implication. "Do not tie me through the night. I will pledge thee my word."

"A word I would willingly accept, M'Lady. At other times, not now. I would hold ye blameless in breaking it." She eyed the rope he was running through his fingers. Her wrists were chafed and tender from the ride. She traced their red indentations with cringing fingertips, wanting no more.

"I give thee a reasonable span of time," he said gently. "If ye choose to give me trouble I will be harsh."

The naked girl asked not the penalty for disobedience. She was grateful. "Thank you. I promise I will return." She slipped away to the small stream and the slender privacy of a bush. When she came back she felt awkward and shamed by what she had become and that which must be done to her. She was grateful for his charity, and understood his need to make her secure. She wished it otherwise.

"You are certain ye must tie me?"

"Ye are certain yourself, M'Lady." There was a glint of humour in his regard of her. "Both of us are doing what we must."

Aveline wanted sleep and would not argue. "How ... how do you want me?" she asked bashfully, holding out her hands.

Godsoule was large and male beside her slenderness. He turned her about with a gentleness close to a caress and crossed her wounded wrists at the small of her back.

"Must you tie my hands behind me, cannot they be tied in front so that I may better sleep?" she pleaded.

"'Tis a foolish question and ye know it," he chided. "I would as well not tie thee at all. Tied as I am tying thee ye'll have no wish to wander the forest alone and naked. Ye'll share my blanket through the night and be here come sunrise. I'll place enough trust in thy sense not to tie thy feet.

She supposed she owed him gratitude. She stood quietly while he tied her crossed wrists. He tied them tightly, but if she did not struggle there would be no pain. She was weary and did not care. The half of his blanket he tucked around her felt warm on her bare skin in the summer night. Without concern she nestled against his bulk and went to sleep.

In the morning their readying for the resumption of their journey brought them to a confrontation Aveline dreaded. The, horses were ready, there was naught left but to mount. Aveline looked up at her captor piteously. "Please don't tie me as I was tied yesterday."

"Can'st tell a better or safer way, M'Lady?"

She knew she could not. She twisted and flushed awkwardly beneath his gaze. "It hurts so brutally, I dread it. And it shames me so."

Aveline supposed his heavy sigh one of exasperation with her femininity. But he looped rope in each of the girth rings so as to improvise stirrups. "Do you prefer this with thy wrists and elbows bound, M'Lady?"

"Oh, yes! Oh, thank you!" She was naively grateful.

"Are you certain?" he asked dryly. " 'Tis far from pleasant to ride with bound elbows?"

"My elbows-" The thought was new to her. "I know so little. Why tie my elbows as well as my wrists?"

"It makes thee trebly safe. I need not to watch thy every move."

Knowing her day must be without comfort, Aveline was concerned only that it should be without the pain and shame of yesterday. Discarding the agonies of decision she turned and crossed her wrists.

Uncrossing them he placed them palm to palm and tied them securely. His captive stood in her hurt pride and made no complaint. When the hide strips tightened 'round her elbows, pulling back her shoulders and tautening her breasts, she confined her protest to a gasping intake of breath as her flesh met and was joined by the several loops nestling into her maiden skin. If Godsoule believed this must be done to her to keep her safe from temptation of escape she would bear her new bondage with what grace she could. Tightly tied, she turned and smiled up at him playfully.

"You will have to place me, messire Godsoule. I cannot."

He lifted her with frightening ease. It was borne upon the naked girl how helpless she was against such strength. A growing burn from her elbows told her it would be another day without hope of escape. She sought the makeshift stirrups with her bare feet, then met his eyes. "It hurts. You said it would. But I am grateful." She knew she sounded like a small child tendering dutiful thanks.

For Aveline it was a most shaming day. She could ride a horse with the best, but in trot or canter or even at a walk her out-thrust breasts responded erotically to the constantly varied motion. She knew that were she a man, her gaze would seldom leave their inviting quivering. She was constantly looking at herself as though in surprise at the behavior of her twin possessions. But her vexation with her body's responses was as nothing compared to the ever increasing pain of tied elbows and wracked shoulders. Each passing hour made her doubt more and more the wisdom of her inexperienced choice. When they stopped briefly at noon beside a stream she ashamedly made her confession.

"Messire Godsoule ... before you lift me back upon the horse-"

"M,Lady?"

"Please be not angry with me."

"You give me no reason."

"Aye, but I am about to." She looked up into his grave face piteously. "You were right. I have been foolish. The pain is growing more than I can bear ... I did not know."

He nodded, waiting for her capitulation.

"Please tie me as I was-as yesterday. Forgive me."

He was amused, secure in the superiority of the male. He went about the task Aveline had imposed upon him. Slowly and with goodwill he loosened the knots, quietly enjoying her chagrin. When she was free he paused and watched while she gingerly massaged the weals left by his rope. Looking up expectantly she offered:

"Several of those ... those men held me to be tied. I will not struggle, but until I am made fast it would be easy to fall."

"With thy help, M'Lady." Her concern had made him smile.

With an awareness of incongruity and a strange unity of purpose, the naked captive allowed herself to be lifted to face backward on her now familiar perch. She offered her hands, one at a time, for the bands to be made tight upon her wrists. Then looked down as the same service was performed for her ankles. Did ever a mind prepare for a journey with so daunting a ritual! Had ever a captive girl accepted so gratefully! Feeling silly and inadequate, she wriggled and positioned herself as best she could while Godsoule drew her tethers through the rings. It was not until her arms were drawn down and back demandingly enough to impose strain that she felt safe from sliding sideways to the ground. It was she herself who draped her legs an either flank and bent them back to aid the strong male hands in drawing them harshly back to the rings of the girth. When the task was done, she once again reluctantly recognized Rennet's skill. She was safe from a fall and doubly safe from escape. Save for the shame of her exposed sex she was prepared to concede that if a girl must be bound upon a horse, this was the better way.

"You are as comfortable as may be, M'Lady?"

"Yes. Oh, Godsoule, thank you. `Tis hurtful enough, but better than ... the way I was."

With a male gentleness he smoothed her hair and drew it down to one side, then checked his knots and the taut tethers that held his prize. Without further ado they resumed their forward pace. Neither spoke. There was nothing more to say.

It was approaching twilight when she perceived the signs of human activity. Twisting her head as best she could to get the view ahead she beheld Broule. It was a bigger fortress than she had seen, grim and forbidding in the evening light. Before they reached the drawbridge of the moat, Aveline pleaded:

"Messire Godsoule, I am naked and there will be many to see my shame. Cannot the blanket we used in the night be thrown across me until we reach ... wherever I am to be taken?"

"Thy condition is as ordered, M'Lady. Ye will not be covered."

Godsoule's voice was as regretful as it was grim. Aveline was a daughter of her time, and could thus well believe in the will of some unknown, presumably Malenfant, to diminish her courage and her pride for some reason she could not yet divine. Women were chattels. She knew well enough how the Barons used them for their playthings and their pawns. She made no further protest. Adam Godsoule had been kind to her. She gave her concern to avoiding the curious glances bestowed as they entered within the walls.

"A pretty piece, Adam."

The gruff male voice heralded the end of their journey. They had stopped beside a door. The speaker wore a belt with keys along with the coarse, impersonal air of a jailer. Godsoule dismounted.

"The audience?" he asked curtly.

"Nay, 'tis for the morrow. I'll house the wench." Aveline sensed Godsoule's distaste. It showed in his words.

"I'll carry her then. 'Tis a poor sort of walk at journey's end."

"Ye don't trust me wi' the girl, Adam?" the voice sneered.

"Ye've had orders for the care of her?"

"Oh, aye, orders a'plenty." The voice was bitter. "Her cunt's her own fer the nonce. Feed her and keep her safe." The two men worked upon the knots and eased Aveline to the ground. She clutched at Godsoule for support so that he picked her up bodily while the jailer unlocked the door and lit a torch. The steps were stone and led sharply down. The frightened girl held tight to her bearer and tried not to see the cold and cheerless masonry they traversed while following the jailer's smoky illumination.

It could be called naught else but a dungeon. Granite and iron bars past a massive door. By the standards of such places it was clean, but the metal fixtures bedded in the stone bespoke its purpose all too well.

"I've picked good irons fer the lass. She'll carry no heavy load."

"You have to chain the girl?" Godsoule demanded irritably. "Be sensible, Dixon, she'll ne'er break down thy door."

"That's as may be, Adam me lad. But ye know the rules. And this time there's special orders from above; the less wears chains."

Godsoule set his burden on her feet. "I am sorry, M'Lady. There is naught I can do in the manner of your confinement."

"It does not matter." Aveline said the words bravely although her heart was pounding in dread of a fresh shame. Chains were not for such as she. She smiled up at the man who had escorted her, bound, to Broule. "Mayhap I will rest easier than on a horse."

It was a familiar gesture now to hold out her hands and extend a slender ankle. Aveline watched the shackles locked upon her wrists and felt their unaccustomed weight. Her humiliation seemed complete when her ankles were clamped in metal bands joined by a span of links, but Godsoule's disgusted exclamation heralded on more imposition.

"By the saints, Dixon, there's no need to iron her to the wall!"

"And why not, pray! I've got me orders."

"Not by that damn collar on her neck."

"What's wrong wi' it! Wrought special fer ladies o' quality, so it be. I've seen heavier."

"You can find something less onerous than that, man!" The naked captive stood in her chains and watched her jailer make a grumbling search. When he approached her it was with a metal collar noticeably lighter. When it was locked about her throat and its long length of trailing links affixed to a ring in the wall she knew herself hopelessly confined.

"Housed like a lady, so she be," Dixon said with grudging approval.

"Give the girl a blanket."

"Oh, aye, and a feather bed, no doubt." Dixon obviously felt imposed upon. "She gets her blanket come night. That's the word. 'Tis not yet time."

Left alone in near darkness, Aveline stood naked and chained in her stone prison. She was as close to despair as she had ever been. The implacability of her bondage was more befitting a male giant than a slip of a girl. Wonderingly, she toyed with the iron things fastened upon her. Questing fingers sought her neck and its metal circlet. She took tentative hobbled steps until her tether to the wall snubbed her back. It stopped her advancing more than halfway to the door. She was a prisoner without hope of escape. Groping her way to the corner and its pitiful covering of straw, she sank down on the coarse stuff, buried her face in her shackled hands and wept.

CHAPTER TWO -- THE COLLAR AND THE RING

It was strange to be clothed again, and in rich clothes! Aveline had never known such costly raiment. Strange too, the deference and respect of the woman who tended her. She had been bathed, scented and well fed after Dixon had delivered her into female hands.

"'Tis a fine Lady yell make o' her," he had said sourly. "Mayhap ye'll bring her back ere' night to wear my pretty baubles instead o' thine."

Aveline's night had been desolate. There are depths of grief that cancel out all else but a numbness of the mind.

Disposing her chains as best she could the tired and frightened girl had curled into a nude ball and found oblivion in sleep.

Deferential as the serving woman might be she would answer no questions. It was thus, unarmed with knowledge, that the erstwhile captive was led, thrust through the portal by a gentle hand, and the door closed at her back.

It was a large and cheerful room. A fire blazed in the hearth. It was a male room filled with male accoutrements. It was the military figure of a man who rose at her entry. "M'Lady, welcome."

"M'Lord?"

"Malenfant." He added the missing title with a smile. "Broule is honoured by thy presence."

He was darkly handsome, a man beyond youth but without age. Aveline guessed him as one who would find social graces a waste of time. But he appeared civilized to a degree inconsistent with her treatment of the last three days. She sought a clue:

"Am I indebted to you for this ... visit, M'Lord?"

He saw her trap and smiled indulgently. "There have been discomforts; Aveline?"

She flushed at his use of her name and his easy reference to the many shames of her capture. "I have been kidnapped, stripped and bound, M'Lord. It was beyond discomfort."

Aveline was chagrined by his lack of concern, his query was merely a statement of the obvious. "Injury!" she exclaimed indignantly. "I have been robbed of my maidenhead and bound naked on a horse like a sack of corn. Look!" She held up her hands so that her sleeves fell away to reveal her wounded wrists. "Must I thank you for these?"

Malenfant was amused by her vehemence. "Aye, that ye may," he admitted without embarrassment.

Aveline was startled. Her arms fell to her sides like broken weapons. She stared in disbelief. "By your orders I was so ill used?"

"Know ye a better way, Aveline, to gentle such as thee?"

It was preposterous. Malenfant's casual disposal of her agonies was infuriating. She was about to voice her anger when she remembered the dungeon from which she had so recently been taken--remembered nakedness. Even though it confirmed her cynicism she had best tread lightly.

"And what am I gentled for, M'Lord?"

"Marriage."

His single word struck her as might a blow. It was as out of context as all the rest. Her voice was tremulous. "Marriage! To whom, M'Lord?"

"Myself."

"I can think of less brutal courtships."

He waved her words away. "They are not for me, girl. Ye suit my purpose; I have taken thee. 'Tis that simple."

"But there are ways, customs...."

"Bent knees and dowries and blessings! Bah ... nonsense!"

"You prefer chains and a dungeon?"

"I do. Ye're a more sensible wench for having spent the night below."

Aveline was forced to take him seriously and to concede some glimmer of truth in what he said. The dungeon and its chains had conditioned her in ways he would approve but from which she cringed. This man was outrageous, but he was intelligent and to be feared.

"I can scarce feel affection for the man who put me there."

Malenfant surveyed his captive assessingly. He did not vouchsafe a reply. He paced to the window and back in thought. The watching girl stood trembling, knowing herself without a weapon, striving to adjust her mind to the incredible. When her companion halted and turned his attention to her once more he said as though in meditation:

"We do what we must, girl. It serves my purpose to wed thee and to produce sons. There are matters of the Realm which need not concern a woman. I can bed ye by force but my need demands a priest join us." He eyed her evident distress with irritation. "There are those who would consider you fortunate."

"I am not one of them."

"I'll not court thee with flowers."

"Do not court me at all, M'Lord. Send me home." Malenfant's gesture was eloquent of disgust at feminine intransigence.

"Today I leave on a mission. I will be absent for a matter of days. I would fain settle this matter before I leave."

"It will never be settled, Sire."

"It will be settled, girl!" He gazed at her in sombre vexation. "It will be settled as I wish. There are worse fates than being Mistress of Broule. I will give ye time to think of them."

For a moment they stood, each seeking to stare the other down. Then, with a disgusted shake of his head, Malenfant took a parchment from the table and strode purposefully from the chamber.

Aveline stood, puzzled and lost. She looked down at her splendid gown and around her at the rich trappings of nobility. It would be easy to consider that if she was indeed sundered from her past without hope of escape it might be well to accept the wealth and power of Broule. But to be treated as a brood mare by a man so devoid of humanity! It was a fate she would not willingly accept. She wondered miserably if the Holy Church would aid his desire and join her to him legally by force. She knew not if such a travesty of wedlock could be contrived without her consent. She had heard it said that in the Realm of William Rufus the Barons had power to bring about whatsoever they wished.

"M'Lady."

Aveline turned, startled by the female voice. It was the serving woman who stood within the doorway, gazing at her with troubled eyes.

"Yes?"

"My name is Amiot, M'Lady. I must attend thee."

"Thank you. I am glad."

Amiot made a gesture of deprecation. "It is not as we might wish, M'Lady. I am to be thy jailer."

It was in keeping with the rest. Aveline eyed the handsome woman assessingly. Amiot would be strong and lithe, not easy to best in a struggle. She had a look of shrewdness not easy to deceive. As though reading her evaluation, Amiot said softly:

"M'Lady, ye will like not what I must do. I have to tell of help at hand should I call."

"You are telling me I must obey you?"

"Yes, M'Lady."

Aveline smiled bitterly. "I am to be punished then?" Amiot shrugged.

"M'Lord calls it persuaded."

"The whip, the rack, the dungeon?"

"None of them, M'Lady. There is little pain for thee as yet. I need give thee naught but shame."

How sad a choice! To fight and be subdued by force or yield herself passively as might a simpleton. Pride could survive neither. No doubt that was Malenfant's reasoning. Aveline gazed pensively upon Amiot and saw her as a woman she could trust, perhaps a friend.

"I will not struggle, Amiot," she said slowly. "I will suffer the things that ... that you must do to me. But I must ask thee first: Will ye not set me free? There would be much gold for thee at Plinlymon."

"You have asked your question, child." Amiot smiled sadly. "My answer must be no."

"Amiot, call me by name. There is little of the Lady about me now."

"That please me. Aveline is sweet and serves thee well."

"Tell me, Amiot. What must I now do?"

"Come, I will take thee to where you must go. 'Tis less fearsome than ye think."

It was a garden, a pleasant place of flowers and shrubs, pleasantly hot and scent laden in the summer sun within the high enclosing walls. The captive girl sighed in pleasure at the sight of it and looked questioning at hermentor.

"It is called the Garden of Women," Amiot explained. "A place of privacy for the females of the Keep. 'Tis better than the dungeon."

"I do not understand." Aveline looked about her wonderingly.

"You will know soon enough, Aveline. Now, let us use this bench for thy clothes."

The captive tensed. This was the beginning. "You want me-?"

"Yes, child, naked."

"But outdoors-there are men!"

"None here. Look about. There are none to see."

It was true. They stood in a small and lovely world of their own. There was neither entry nor egress save by the door through which they came. Aveline shrugged resignedly and divested herself of the costly things she would fain have worn. As she stripped Amiot folded each thing neatly. Bare, she felt the heat of the sun and remembered the shaming exposures of her journey. This was better.

"'Tis in the centre, Aveline. Come." Amiot held out a hand.

It was a stone paved square, no more than twelve feet across. In its centre was a heavy iron ring, deeply bedded. The naked girl shrank from what she saw.

"It grieves me, Aveline, that it must be thy neck." Aveline knelt and bent her head. It was as though rehearsed without a need of words. Amiot fastened the metal collar upon the submissive neck and locked it to the chain from the ring. Aveline was captive.

"It allows you much freedom, child, but never enough."

Instinctively Aveline's fingers rose to her throat and explored the band of iron which snugly circled it. From there they fingered the chain which tethered her to the ring. Both were heavy but no more than she could bear. She looked up in bafflement. "Is this all?"

Amiot smiled at the naivet'. "Is it not enough!"

The captive gestured with a free arm. "I had expected ... is it no the custom-?"

"To iron thy wrists and ankles?" Amiot laughed at her charge's puzzlement. " 'Tis the custom right enough. But this way ye be cheated of martyrdom."

"You mean I am to be just chained by my neck?"

"Yes. You can stand or sit or walk a pace or two back and forth. Ye can tend thy own needs and can converse."

"But ... but how-?"

"Ah, there's the rub! No one will use a key. The days will pass, as will the nights. But the collar on thy throat will stay, nor will ye break the chain that tethers you."

"In the open ... like this ... always?"

"Until M'Lord's return, and that's uncertain."

"But at night?"

"For the dark there's a blanket. It will be taken away after sunrise."

"Alone, here like this?" Aveline glimpsed terror.

"Nay, 'Tis a public place for women. You'll have company, but it may shame thee to be seen thus."

Aveline comprehended a subtlety at odds with Malenfant's impatience. She would earn no wounds. Should her chained sojourn bear fruit she would approach the altar unscarred. Beholding a vista of shaming days and nights she wondered at her courage. To live as a chained cur had become a daunting prospect.

"And if I cannot change, Amiot, what then?"

"A maid once stayed as ye are now for twenty weeks, Aveline. For most, it takes a lesser time."

"I am not the first?"

"Cans't not see, the chain and the iron ring? They have been there long."

"Does the girl always cease ... to resist?"

Amiot nodded. "The days are long, child, and the nights longer. The collar becomes irksome on the neck. Hope dies."

"Oh, Amiot!" Aveline's stricken gaze besought pity. "You mean a girl is left here-just left, chained?"

"Yes. I will not tell thee differently. It is in my heart to counsel ye to obedience to the wishes of Milord Malenfant. I fear that after many days you will yield. But that is a road which each one chained to the ring travels in their own way. I know not what I myself might do if I were chained as you."

Aveline's mind was besieged by visions and perplexity. "But, Amiot, there are terrible things that may be done to those who do not change their minds, I have been told of them. Why would M'Lord have patience for the ebbing of a maiden's courage here chained to this ring?"

"I do not know, child. M'Lord Malenfant is a strange man who does things in his own ways. Feel thankful the chain is on thy neck here and not elsewhere. There are worse places for a girl than this Garden of Women."

Aveline knew this true. She had much time to reflect upon the fact. It was as strange a situation as all else. She spent most of her first day adjusting her consciousness to the fact she could not walk from where she was joined to the ring. The ring became the focal point of her universe. She could stand nakedly free with arms upraised in worship to the sun, she could sit or lay in any posture she chose, she could even walk a pace or two in any direction. But in the end the chain and the collar controlled her, she must follow the static compulsion of the metal at her throat.

She tried it all, tentatively and feeling foolish. At first, even when the chain snubbed her back from freedom, her mind refused to accept. There would be something she could do! Someone would come with a key! She could work upon her tether and in some magic manner free herself! It all seemed possible in the rationale of the freedom of her arms and legs. But to sit, or to stand, and that was all! It seemed absurd.

The Garden of Women was a pleasant place. This and the turmoil of her thoughts kept boredom at bay for the first hours of her new captivity. She even dozed lazily in the sun. It was in such a relaxation she heard the voice.

"Are you asleep or just pretending?"

It was a girl of her own age, a serving maid of sorts judged by her attire. A gamin face and pixie eyes dancing in amusement at Aveline and the chain. The naked girl sat up, startled. Then, seeing no menace, she said demurely: "What would ye have me do but sleep?"

The mischievous young face lit in a smile of understanding. "My name is Ismay. I was chained like that once."

"And I am Aveline. Why were you punished?"

The dancing eyes considered the question, the ripe lips giggled. "I bit him and ran away."

Aveline was intrigued. For a moment she forgot her chain. "You bit M'Lord Malenfant!"

"Oh, no, I wouldn't dare. It was Miles Hardwin."

"Am I supposed to know the name?"

"He's M'Lord's half brother, or something." Ismay giggled again, "Miles Hardwin can do no wrong in Broule. If he wants to bite thy tit it's best to let him."

Aveline's captive heart warmed to her visitor. She understood how a serving wench could be more informative than Malenfant himself. Perhaps she might learn answers!

"Were you chained here because you bit or because you ran?"

"Mostly because I ran. I was new to Broule and thought I could run back home. I know now it was silly, but I did not know it then." She paused meditatively. "Had I been here longer I would have been whipped and chained in a dungeon to cool my heels, but M'Lord was merciful."

"How long were you kept here, chained I mean?"

Nine days and nine nights." Ismay's eyes sparkled fresh. "The nights would have been most sad had Miles not come comfort me."

Aveline tensed. "A man! I was told none entered here?" Ismay had the grace to blush. "Miles Hardwin goes where he will. Besides, he felt sorry for me and I'm a pretty piece to fuck."

Aveline rapidly rearranged perspectives. "Are you a captive here?"

Her companion considered the question. "If I stray beyond the moat I earn a whipping," she said slowly. "So, in a way, I must be a prisoner. But I had not thought of it that way. Even though I get oft' punished I would not go from Broule."

The philosophy of a serving wench, replete with food and sex. Such a one might be fallible. "Woulds't thou free me, there would be much gold?"

"There would also be much lashing and branding and hanging by my thumbs. None will aid thy escape, none would dare."

"You know who I am?"

"The Lady Aveline D'Almaine of Plinlymon. Milord desires to wed thee before a priest to beget a son." Ismay grinned knowingly. "Ye be chained to the ring to persuade thee to answer yes when the Prior asks for thy response at the altar."

Aveline liked the girl. "Could he not do as well with thee?"

"I am not of noble blood. He would be a laughing stock."

"Why did he not court me; visit my father? He had me kidnapped and brought here naked lashed to a horse."

"He is passing proud. M'Lord takes, he does not ask."

Aveline sighed and ruefully reflected. "He makes hard work of it."

"For thee, but not for him. Ye will think much beside that ring whilst he goes about his affairs."

It was infuriatingly true. She was being conditioned! Aveline's own pride rose in a flood to deny capitulation. She would stay chained by her neck forever rather than yield to such an ungallant courtship. But suppose there were other trials besides the ring! She looked up dolefully. "You spoke of punishments and the whip, Ismay. Has't been so hurt?"

Ismay produced a superior smile of pure pride. Slipping her scant shift off her shoulders she let it fall. She turned her back.

Aveline gasped. The white slenderness of the girlish back and bottom was marked by purple welts horizontally proclaiming themselves like the implacable bars of a cage. There were not many, but they had been shrewdly spaced as though for effect.

"I got them two days ago for smashing a pot and saucing the cook." Ismay sounded as proud as she looked. "Fifteen strokes well laid on. Aren't they lovely!"

"Lovely!" Aveline was aghast, her worst fears confirmed. "You speak as though those awful weals were a gift."

"Well, they are, sort of." Ismay giggled as she shrugged back into her covering. "Fifteen isn't all that bad-even though they were hard. But it makes a difference who holds the whip."

"How ... why?" Aveline was lost.

"Well, when he heard about it, Miles Hardwin decided to whip me," Ismay giggled in a self-satisfied note. "Miles loves whipping a girl. He screws us beautifully after-while we're still hanging by our wrists."

"You mean this happens often?"

"Of course, why not!"

Aveline's adjustment of perspective continued apace. "But you sound as though you like him, you sound proud."

"Well, Miles Hardwin is M'Lord's favourite and he fucks beautifully." Ismay came up with the inevitable giggle. "You'll see when he does it to you."

"He never will."

"He will if he wants to. The first time he did it to me he came down to where I was standing in the stocks waiting to be whipped and played with my tits and my pussy until I was ready to scream. When I was triced up to be whipped I was in such a dither of wanting to be fucked I scarcely felt the whip. I couldn't wait for him to get at me."

"You let him do this?"

"Don't be silly. What else can a girl do but let him when she's standing with her neck and her wrists fastened in the pillory and she's stark naked!"

Ismay was hard to refute. Thought of such a predicament caused the chained captive to blush. The knowledge that Broule contained a second male hazard to Malenfant himself was disquieting. Aveline's mind churned furiously. "This Miles Hardwin ... he would not dare touch me."

Ismay eyed the imprisoned nudity with an appreciative eye. "With thy shape and tits he is certain to," she tittered. "You'll like him."

"But that's preposterous! If Malenfant desires me he would not allow it."

"Malenfant does not desire thee, he desires an heir to Broule."

So simple, so frightening, so absurd!

It was not until Ismay had responded to a peremptory call from the doorway with a scamper of feet and a gay flutter of a hand that Aveline saw the full import of what she had learned. In one fashion or another Broule would have its way with her. She picked up the chain from her collar and weighed it pensively. If only ... if only! She lay back and tried to resume her doze. But sleep had fled. The knowledge that a handsome scion of the nobility who enjoyed whipping naked girls might make an appearance at any time kept her mind awhirl. She tried to picture her plight, chained and unable to flee, and only her hands to cover her nakedness. It was not a vision conducive to slumber.

Her next visitor was the cook, a bulky, no-nonsense dame with a shrewish voice. "What has that little minx, Ismay, been telling thee, lass?"

"I like her," Aveline said defensively. "She just refused to help me escape, that's all."

The cook grunted. "She's a saucy baggage who needs her arse tanned daily. I suppose you'll be sensible when M'Lord returns?"

"No, I won't."

"Humph, dratted girls! All the same, flighty."

"I've been kidnapped. Will you help me to escape?"

The cook eyed the plaintive captive with a disillusioned eye. "Nobody escapes from Broule," she said with conviction. "I should report what you've just said to the seneschal. Milord left him power to whip ye should ye give good cause."

Aveline trembled, malignant retribution was so close! It hovered over every incautious word. "Is it wrong for a girl to wish to go home?" she demanded forthrightly.

"If M'Lord has taken thee, then 'tis wrong and ye can be well striped. Remember it well, lass."

"She-Ismay, she told me of a man named Miles Hardwin?"

"Oh, him!" The cook's exclamation was ambiguous. "A proper one be Miles Hardwin. You're lucky, lass, he's away on the hunt. With thy tits ye'd no be safe."

"Must I be chained here like this day and night? Cannot ye help me?"

"You need no help, girl: What's a collar 'round thy neck! And sit in the sun all day in idleness. Best I leave ye to it afore I warm thy pretty arse."

The bulky figure ambled away, grumbling. Aveline watched her retreat without regret. The captive fingers once more found their way to the band of metal on the captive throat. If only she could get it off! If only she could be once more free! Thoughts of Plinlymon were too much for her. Aveline wept.

In the night she found what comfort she could in the blanket, vouchsafed her grudgingly by a woman impervious to her plea for two. She rolled herself in the single and was grateful that her nakedness be covered, but her dreams were without joy. The scanty covering was wrenched from her in the morning before the sun was high.

She became used to her captivity and supposed grimly that a girl became inured to anything if she was robbed of choice. Her condition was shaming and wickedly frustrating, but without pain other than a chafed neck. She was an object of avid curiosity among the staff, the younger females of which sometimes clustered about her with questions and advice. All of them at sometime or other had been chained to the ring, one for only a day, another for a month, one admitted to thirteen weeks. All claimed to prefer a quick whipping to the long, drawn out punishment of the chain and collar. But Aveline gathered much of their distaste arose from the obloquy they heaped upon each other. It was an accepted sport to torment any unfortunate girl captive to the ring. She could be pelted with anything handy, she could be mocked and teased, her food could be placed a few inches beyond her reach, her blanket might be stolen in the night. She herself was exempt from such attentions only because it would be foolish to arouse the enmity of one who, if she had any sense, could still become the Mistress of Broule.

They thought her stupid. To suffer the ring when she could wed the high and mighty Malenfant! They wished they had the chance and said so. He had used them all in an absent-minded manner to appease a need. Those who had at first been reluctant had sat with her neck chained until she changed her mind. Aveline discovered a week or so had been enough for most. One or two admitted to having been taken within the keep and soundly whipped as an aid to decision. Negatives did not survive. All of them in their talk betrayed their conviction that with Aveline herself it was but a matter of time. They could understand that because she was of noble blood and proud her time might be long.

Most of them had been kidnapped as she had been. Some were bartered from parents desiring Baronial favour. All were resigned to an easy and comfortable captivity within the walls. They accepted the whip upon their back in much the same spirit as they accepted their daily tasks. That none of them were actively unhappy seemed due to an erotic and gigglingly feminine enjoyment in the sporadic attention of Miles Hardwin. They shared Ismay's recipient of the lust generated by the whipping of their bottoms and backs by his skillful hand.

Sitting or standing naked and chained to her ring whilst a circle of feminine chatter enveloped her had at first been hard to endure. Even before female eyes Aveline had longed to cover her breasts and pubic hair, and had done so to the best of her ability until laughed out of countenance. It was hard also to listen to herself discussed and her chances of being given more painful persuasions bandied back and forth. There was general agreement that her physical attributes were of such superlative excellence that she could expect no mercy from the lords of Broule. On one occasion an animated discussion arose as to whether the father of her first child would be Malenfant himself or Miles Hardwin.

Becoming accustomed to her shame, Aveline would join in the chatter. When she protested the bearing of any child of Broule, it was explained that should she prove awkward enough in her rejections she would undoubtedly stand out on the ground or on a bed and be ravished each night until pregnant. None saw the semi-rape as other than to be expected. She told none of her violation by the five men on the night of her seizure. It was a shame she tried not to think of.

When alone, and she was alone most of the time, Aveline's thoughts were sombre enough. She supposed on his return Malenfant would be angry and have her whipped or worse. It was one more fear to set at the back of her mind. The gossip of the girls had placed within her awareness the masculine figure of Miles Hardwin. Sooner or later she would face him in some capacity she would not like-probably naked as she was now. When her mind tired of fears, and the sun was hot, she would lay stretched upon the stone and recover some of the sleep the chill of night denied. It was on the fifth day that, sleeping thus, she was awakened by a new voice. The voice was male.

CHAPTER THREE -- THE ROPE

He sat upon the bench, the bench her chain would not allow Aveline to reach but which was placed for the convenience of anyone of quality who might wish to converse with a captive of the ring. He was dressed in the leather of the hunt. He was darkly handsome in a way that Malenfant was not, and he was smiling in sardonic amusement at the naked girl, unashamedly enjoying what he saw.

"Lovely black bush," he commented conversationally. They were the words that wrested Aveline from sleep. She sat up in pure horror and immediately did the things she had vowed she would never do again. A hand and elbow covered her breasts while her other hand hid the object of his remark.

"If you cross your legs you can use both hands on your tits." He was laughing at her but his voice was casually helpful.

Aveline was certain her blush was vivid, and was angered by his frank appraisal. "Don't look at me like that!" she commanded. "I don't want you to see me like this."

"Why not?" He sounded genuinely interested.

"The Lord Malenfant would not wish it."

"Corne, come. The Lady Aveline D'Almaine knows better than that. I'll wager the kitchen wenches have briefed ye well enow'."

There was a way with him that made it hard for a young woman to stand upon her dignity. He was not the kind to be frozen by a glance. With a conscious effort that made her writhe inwardly the naked girl took her hands elsewhere. "They told me of you, messire. I suppose you are Miles Hardwin?"

He gave her a friendly grin. "Miles the Rapist, eh!"

"The least of your endeavours, so I'm told." Her voice was ice.

"The girls are biased," he assured her earnestly. "They're apt to praise me because of small favours."

"Raping and whipping them?"

"Nay, it's t'other way 'round. I whip 'em first."

The chained girl tossed her hair in outrage at his bland acceptance of outrageous guilt. The links of her chain clinked in response. "You should be ashamed," she retorted haughtily, knowing it sounded silly but unable to think of anything else.

"I'm not, y'know. Be glad to do the same for you."

"You're impossible!" She was trying hard not to share his laughter. She was angry with herself at being so vulnerable to his charm. She glared at him in dudgeon. "If you must stare at me mayhap you'll give me something to wear?"

"The little angels love it, y'know. So would you." It was as though she had not spoken.

"You're insufferable. If you wish to talk, then unlock this collar."

"Bit inconsistent that, wouldn't ye say! And I lack the key."

"I am sure you can get it."

"Mayhap, but I won't. You're a haughty bit of female. A week or two more on that ring's bound to make an improvement."

"If you won't help me, then go away."

"You don't really want me to."

He was right! Aveline was furious with herself. She did not want him to go away and leave her alone with her chain. But that he should know! She felt like a precocious child whose postures failed to impress. She contented herself with a sniff and tart retort.

"Would you want to sit here alone day and night with your neck tethered to a ring!"

"I'm flattered, I relieve your tedium."

"Ye need not be. I think you're a spoiled brat."

For a moment Aveline knew fear. She had seen the flash of anger in his eyes. This was the man who whipped girls for amusement. When Miles Hardwin rose slowly to his feet she cringed.

"I'll be leaving ye then." His grin was ruefully regretful. "Sorry I failed to please."

It was like an eclipse of the sun. Aveline's response was involuntary. "No! Please, don't go."

He turned and looked down at her in mock surprise. "By all the saints, our chained damsel is human after all!"

"All right, so I'm lonely! And I'm sick unto death of being chained like a dog. And I'm frightened." Her eyes brimmed.

He nodded quietly at her distress. "Of course. Why not!" He retired into silence to give her time, then asked, "Frightened of me?"

"Yes," she sniffed.

"That I'll whip and rape you?"

"I suppose so." She was past caring.

"Best get it done, eh? Get it over with?"

It was as though he was speaking of a household task. Aveline gazed at him, horrified by his nonchalance. He grinned back at her with such insouciance as to provoke her to forget caution.

"As ye wish," she declaimed with feigned indifference. "Take me to where I must be whipped."

"'Tis well enough done where ye are, M'Lady Aveline." She stood and faced him, holding her chain tether in one hand to ease its weight upon her throat. She was a picture of naked defiance but her voice was tremulous. "Here, in the open for all to see!"

"Is it the whip or the fuck for which ye want privacy?" he inquired pleasantly.

"Must you shame me? Is that part of your pleasure?"

"I do not have a key but I have a whip," Miles pointed out reasonably. "Ye'll run to the length of your chain and then accept thy stripes.

The captive twisted in frustration. "And after?"

"After what?" He was teasing.

"After you have whipped me."

"Why, then I'll pleasure ye-a fair exchange."

"Here, in the garden? On the stone?" She was aghast.

"Ye'll not be the first damsel to lay on hard bed."

She was being played with, and wished she could hate him for it. But the girls had been right; Miles Hardwin had a way with him. She shook her chain wrathfully so that the links rattled through her fingers. "It is not me who says yes, it is this. If it satisfies you to have sport with a chained girl, then' have it."

Miles gazed upon her pride with frank approval. "So ye accept my whip with goodwill?"

"I suppose so ... Yes."

"And what comes after?"

Once more she shook her tether at him. "It is this that accepts that. Pretend not that I have decision."

They faced each other: the smiling man and the naked girl. Aveline stood defiantly but her heart was pounding. Miles Hardwin was impossible to assess. He was a contradiction. When he gave her a slight and sardonic bow and a careless salute with a negligent hand, she watched him walk away from her and knew only that she wished he would not go. She almost called to him to stay, but bit back her cry. She had said enough, perhaps too much. He would return soon enough, and be carrying a whip.

It was a long wait. Aveline stood beside her ring playing nervously with the metal links that held her captive. She faced a new and terrifying experience: to be whipped ... naked ... on her bare skin! To be unable to flee beyond the pitiful length of her chain! She had no idea of how she might behave, whether she would stand contemptuously or grovel in anguish. And then while her weals were fresh and scalding, to lay them on the stone and invite his manhood, she had little idea of that either. The five who had staked her down and ravished her had taught her nothing. But perhaps she would be bound this time too and thus be exempt from response. She almost hoped it would be so.

When a dawning realization that Miles Hardwin would not return seeped into her awareness, Aveline was furious, first with him and then with herself that she had been vulnerable enough to be so touched. She tried to close her mind to a vision of herself clasped in his arms, her own around his neck. For a moment he had dispeled her loneliness and her fear. She wanted him and felt wanton in her need.

"Is it not tiring to stand and hold thy chain, Mistress?" Ismay laughed at Aveline's sudden start and flustered look. "So Miles Hardwin came to look upon thy breasts and bush, M'Lady. I'll warrant he found them to his taste."

"He promised to whip me," Aveline acknowledged bitterly.

Ismay trilled merriment. " 'Tis a good sign. He does not whip Gudron the cook."

"How can you talk so!" Aveline was irritated with the world. "The manner of his way with us is despicable." Ismay's eyes sparkled.

"Yet ye loved it."

"I did not! And even if I did, what good would it do! He walks away and leaves me chained."

"M'Lord Malenfant has the key to thy chains and M'Lord Miles the key to thy heart," Ismay giggled delightedly.

"Don't be a stupid girl. I've seen him but once."

"That's all any of us saw him-the first time!" Ismay's giggled broke out afresh.

"Is it true that only thy Lord Malenfant can free me?"

"'Tis true, Lady. Honestly 'tis true! It has been so with all of us. It pleasures him to be far distant and know we must stay chained to his ring." Ismay sighed. "It is the way of nobles that we serve their whims."

"So if ill befall him in some far corner of the Realm I must stay thus for life!"

Ismay was intrigued by the plaint. "Doubtless someone would then summon the smith with his tools to cut thee loose. It would take no less."

Aveline sniffed disdainfully and felt doubly captive. "Has he gone back to his hunt?"

"Miles Hardwin? Nay, he busies himself with M'Lord's affairs." Ismay twinkled mischief. "I'll wager he makes ye wait. When you believe yourself forgotten he'll come striding in with his whip." She pretended to give the matter thought. "After the noontime would be my guess."

But Ismay's guess was wrong.

It was Amiot who brought back the clothes and produced the key. She held it for the chained girl to behold. Her expression was uncertain as though release from the ring might be no boon.

"M'Lord Malenfant is back, child."

"Can I not bathe, Amiot? I have been here long."

"We will take the time, Aveline." Amiot smiled. "Carry thy garments. Here, hold them and bend thy pretty neck." It was a moment the captive girl would long remember. Her collar and its chain fell to the stone with a clatter. Seeing the coil of links and the opened circlet they looked so innocent, it seemed a purely whimsical thought that they could hold a girl forever.

It was the same man in the same room. Aveline wore the same garb and the same emotions. Nothing had changed. "Well?"

"I am well, Lord. And thee?"

Malenfant gestured angrily. "By heavens, girl, are we to bandy pleasantries! Has't nothing more purposeful to say?"

"No, Lord."

He stood, glaring. "I've not been harsh with thee."

"The ring was not a happy place, Lord."

"Mayhap it will be less so come winter."

Aveline caught her breath. He was capable of making good such a threat even though it meant her death. She said nothing.

"I want no bride scarred by the lash." Malenfant surveyed her irritably. "Any sane man would suppose thy time on the ring enough. Did'st do no thinking at all?"

"Only in sorrow at my plight."

He scowled in vexation. "Do ye want the whip?"

"No, Lord."

"Ye seek to shame me, girl. 'Tis a female ploy. But I'll have it not. If thy back must bear stripes it shall bear them." Malenfant gave her a quick, shrewd glance. "I suppose young Miles gave ye a visit?"

"He, too, spoke of the whip, Lord."

"Aye, he would! And the clucking pullets, what was their counsel?"

"That I wed thee."

"But ye heed them not. Would ye deign to bear a son for Miles Hardwin?"

"I want no sons or daughters, Lord."

A glimmer of amusement flickered across the Norman features. "Ye'll gain one or t'other, girl, if your Miles has his way with thee. There's no virgins in Broule."

"If ye did not keep me chained, Lord, I might promise it would not happen."

Malenfant laughed outright. "A wench has few bonds besides the Ring, but as far as I've heard there's none that failed to spread their legs."

"They are serving girls, Lord, lonely in their collar and grateful for the honour."

"You're telling me thy cunt is never moist?"

Aveline knew his vulgarity deliberate. He was seeking flaws in the armour of her maidenhood. Again she kept silent.

"What think ye of Holy Church?"

The question seemed out of character. Aveline parried it: "I have no inclination to a nunnery, M'Lord."

"Humph! I'd stretch thee on the rack first. But if a priest bid thee wed, would'st thou obey?"

"Such a one would be false. I would heed him not."

"'Pon my soul, girl, I have a liking for thee. You're vexing enow', but there's a spirit I'd fain not break. I've a notion to let young Miles whip and bed ye to his heart's content-or till thy belly swells. A maid carrying a whelp welcomes the altar."

Aveline's heart skipped a beat. Malenfant knew a maiden's vulnerability. No matter how high her courage, it would fall before the compulsions of impregnation. She would welcome the whip rather than the sprouting seed within. In a pathetic burst of honesty she pleaded.

"M'Lord, I know this can be done to me. Every girl knows. It is a nightmare we live with till we wed. Even then, I think there are those who live in fear of it. Perhaps I am one. I ask of you: punish me as you must or as you wish, but do not do ... that other."

"Damn me, ye'd take torture first?"

"Yes, Lord."

The Baron gazed at her quizzically, half amused by her obstinacy. "Have ye ever been whipped or tortured, lass?"

"Of course not!" Aveline angrily repudiated the implied stigma. "But I am sure you are right, my courage might prove less than I would hope. It is a thing I cannot know until it happens."

"Then we should make it happen?"

"No! Oh, please, Lord, no!"

He viewed her with patient exasperation. "Come, M'Lady Aveline, we have a problem. What would ye have me do?"

"Send me home, Lord. Forget this ... this wedding and making me with child. Please send me back to Plinlymon. I would honour thee for it always."

"Aye, no doubt." He rubbed his chin in a perplexity she was sure he did not feel. "I'll send ye on a journey but 'Tis not the one ye'd choose."

It was Adam Godsoule who answered the summons. His eye lit appreciatively at sight of Aveline and her fine raiment. She was little like the naked girl he had bound upon the horse.

"Ye know what to do, Adam," Malenfant said heavily. "And the fewer who know or see the better. Use the cart." He turned to the fearful girl. "When ye wish to return here ye have but to say-and to promise."

"Her clothes, Sire?" Godsoule was embarrassed.

The Master of Broule eyed his property. "Aye, ye're right. They're no befitting. Deal with it."

Godsoule took his captive to Amiot who nodded understandingly. "I get thy clothes again, M'Lady," she said with wry humour.

Aveline stripped. It was becoming a familiar exercise. Her days chained to the ring had robbed her of shyness. When she was nude she held out her hands and asked dryly, "No doubt you'll want these?"

"Behind your back, lass."

The captive girl stood erect and turned as-directed. When her palms were pressed together she came close to protesting that there was no need to tie her so painfully, but it could only vex her companions and would serve her naught. She bit her lip as her wrists were tightly bound, and then her elbows joined. It was painful and shaming but seemed the customary method of ensuring a girl did not wriggle from her tie. She refrained from comment.

"Ye have a rug, Amiot?"

"Aye, and I'll have it back."

They wrapped it carefully around her nakedness so that she was hidden within its folds from toe to the top of her hair. A cord went around the middle to keep it secure. Godsoule picked her up and threw his burden over a sturdy shoulder. "Be as kind to her as ye can, Adam," Amiot said wistfully.

It was Broule's only farewell.

Aveline, bound and naked and uncomfortable, could guess their passing. She could see nothing. When she was laid gently upon straw she knew it for a cart. With his customary concern for his Master's interests Adam Godsoule slipped a noose around one of the slender ankles within the rug and tied its other end to a stanchion of the clumsy vehicle. His captive grinned ruefully in the knowledge she would not stray.

It was a miserable ride. Before it was finished Aveline thought longingly of the horse. With her elbows on fire and a rope around her ankle she wasted no single wish upon escape.

CHAPTER FOUR -- THE PILLORY

The Abbot of Aubyn was a connoisseur. He believed in a divine dispensation of the perquisites of his office and enjoyed them all. He sat now savouring a quality mead that had found its way to the Abbey in lieu of tithe. As he sipped, he admired the view.

The view which shared his approval was specific but not wide. It consisted of the reverse facade of a pillory from which protruded, minus head and hands, the remarkably beautiful figure of a naked girl which, since the pillory was low, presented as its salient feature a neat curved bottom.

Since the girl was compelled to bend, she must also spread her legs. From between her separated thighs a perky frond of black hair peeped mischievously back.

It was a situation the Abbot approved. It had about it a quality of the delicious. He had ensured the girl be placed thus without knowledge of him. She had been locked within the stocks and left alone. He had come with his cup and his jug and sat himself upon his stool as soundlessly as possible, but he had observed the tensioning of muscles spelling the girl's awareness of a presence and chuckled inwardly. The sweet creature would be wondering. He would let her wonder. It was part of his pleasure.

The Abbot surveyed the curves and planes of taut stomach and narrow waist, the fleshly enticement of nubile thighs and straining breasts and found them good. His enjoyment was enhanced by the small movements the nude girl was forced to make in seeking easement: a raised foot stretching and seeking, the sway of hips revolting against the immobility enforced by the snug clasp of the heavy timber on wrists and neck. The cameo of loveliness could only be improved by scarlet lines etched upon the virgin maiden skin with a limber sliver of ash or willow. He sighed in pure happiness at an ecstasy still to come.

The good Abbot Gabelot allowed his beneficence to drift in the direction of the neighbouring Convent of Saint Agnes. A mutually advantageous reciprocity dictated his sharing of this quivering morsel with his feminine counterpart, the Abbess Cissota. The still youngish Mother Superior of the adjoining community of nuns was as appreciative of the finer perceptions as himself. Her skills in softening feminine obduracy evoked both his envy and admiration. He nodded thoughtfully. Most certainly he would enlist her aid. But not yet! Today this luscious gift of providence should be his alone.

Gabelot sipped his mead and savoured the prisoned girl's unease. Undoubtedly she was bothered by an intuition that she was not as alone as she had originally supposed. It must be disturbing to have one's person divided by the stocks and know her divorced femaleness denied to her own view was flaunted and vulnerable to eyes unseen. Her mind would be busy with visions, painful and erotic, of hostile intent hovering where she could not turn to look.

"I think someone is there. Please speak to me."

The girlish plea was heartbreakingly pathetic. It should have melted any heart. The Abbot accepted it as a gratifying reinforcement of a growing erection. He kept a prudent silence. There might be more!

"It's terrible to have to stand like this. Please come where I can see you."

Gabelot took a hearty gulp of mead, used with judgement it could maintain both sobriety and concupiscence in proper balance.

"I'm frightened. That's what you want, isn't it! Please don't be so cruel to me."

The child was exquisite. The Abbot saw the sweetness of her appeal as proof of Norman blood and good family. Daughters of the nobility had always yielded him pleasure beyond the norm.

"I know I'm going to be punished...." There was a hint of tears. "But to stand like this! Please speak ... What must I suffer?"

The silence framed the young and fearful nudity to perfection. It was a perfect backdrop for the maiden's pitiful appeals to a being who might or might not exist. Lewd eyes watched the play of prisoned elbows and twist of shoulders against captivity.

"If I have offended, I ask forgiveness...."

It was too much. The Abbot knew himself human and demandingly tumescent. To sit and ogle and to listen was more than he could bear. Action was required to prolong such joy. His eye roved and noted with satisfaction the short whip hanging where its victim could not see. He knew he could in no wise forebear the cruel but harmless pleasantry in which he was about to indulge. Setting aside his cup, he possessed himself of the beautifully fashioned instrument of punishment he most favoured. It was a short handled flagellum whose single thong of solid hide was supple beyond belief, its length sufficient only to span and lap a maiden buttock or maiden back.

Gabelot was certain she had not guessed. No manifestation had changed, no protest broke the silence. The sweet damsel was about to receive the shock of her life. Smiling beatifically, the Abbot of Aubyn positioned himself with care and swept back his loaded arm.

To Aveline the frightful blow slicing across the ripest curve of her bottom was so sudden and so awful in the flashing intensity of its pain that for a moment she was stunned. Then she screamed a scream in which shock and outrage, fear and agony were nicely blended to the Abbot's satisfaction; he could not have asked for more. The bending knees and jerking hips were nectar and ambrosia to his grateful being.

It was Aveline D'Almaine's first time. A beginning, an awfulness, a fearful vista of knowledge hitherto unknown. She had never in her life been whipped, or previously believed it possible. Her flesh was virgin and unmarked. The Abbot's shrewd cut had delivered her into the depths of a hellish pain she was certain she could never survive. Its unexpected shock had driven her against the wooden monster in which she was firmly locked and left her struggling helplessly against its grasp. Retreating from the peak of her peal of anguish she sobbingly panted:

"Oh, no! Ohhhh ... no! Not again ... no more."

The Abbot with a perfect nicety of timing lashed the quivering bottom a second time, cutting it an inch below the first. He conceded that he had never beheld female flesh spring more responsively into scalding life.

Aveline choked back her second scream into shaming sounds she could not name. In a tortured need of expression she fought the pillory with all her youthful strength and desperation. It absorbed her thrusts and tugs as though it was solid rock. When she lifted stricken eyes she beheld a round and shining countenance above the belted habit of a monk. It was surveying her distress with unqualified approval.

"You are a very beautiful young woman," said the Abbot Gabelot.

Aveline was not naive enough to believe all who wore a habit were pillars of virtue. She was aware that custom had bestowed upon both monk and nun certain authorities most painful to those on whom they were imposed. Her situation, therefore, was not without precedent. Recalcitrant daughters of both the nobility and the poor were often sent to the holy father or the holy mother for guidance and correction; such instruction was expected to be painful. Whilst it was easy to deduce that the disappointed Baron had placed her within the confines of a religious order whose inclinations to mercy might be dubious, Aveline thought she should at least try. Fear and agony spurred her plea.

"Reverend Father-oh, thank heaven! Please release me."

She was all he could have asked. Her voice and the manner of her speech! The Abbot was enthralled. Here was a prize indeed! She would be wasted on M'Lord Malenfant. Gabelot raised a quizzical eyebrow.

"Release thee!" It was as though she had uttered an obscenity. "Beloved child ... why?" His cynical query told all. But hope dies hard.

"I am frightened, Reverend Father. And I am naked and should be covered in thy presence. And ... and I have been dealt most frightful pain."

"Thou art in good hands, daughter. Ye have naught to fear."

"But someone...." Aveline met his gaze beseechingly. "Someone has just whipped me most grievously."

"T'was I, my daughter, for the good of thy soul."

"But, Reverend Father, the pain ... it was great."

"The scourge cleanses all, dear child."

She longed to kick him, to erase his sanctimonious smirk with clawing hands. But she was helpless and she was naked. To anger him would be folly, but how could she placate him when there was nothing to placate!

"Have I sinned, Father-to be so punished?"

"We are all sinners, Aveline."

He was quicksilver, sliding through the fingers of truth. At the moment, the pilloried girl had one consuming need: to learn the extent of the pain she must endure and to seek to modify it. She turned to him a most piteous appeal.

"Have I been punished, Father, is it ended?"

The worthy Abbot professed a pained surprise. "But, my dear child, we have but started on thy penance."

"I know not of what I must feel penitence for. Oh, please!"

How delightful her distress! Gabelot glowed with the joy of possession. His mind was busy with expedients by which Holy Church might divert this treasure to itself. Flickering through his mind were alluring visions of a weekly whipping in the Nunnery of Saint Agnes. Between the attentions of himself and the Abbess Cissota the soul of this delectable girl would be most surely shriven:

"Perhaps there be thy sin, child; that ye do not know."

"Please do not whip me more."

"Consider not my labour, child. 'Tis a duty I perform, and gladly."

"But, Reverend Father, the pain is too great to bear. It is such as I have never known. Are there ... are there no other ways?"

The Abbot was overjoyed. Guilt added so much to a maiden's confusion. He pounced. "Ye think to appease me with thy flesh, girl?" His simulated shock bore the sound of thunder and the flash of lightning. " 'Tis a carnal sin to even think of such."

Aveline moaned, knowing him false. "Noooo! Oh, no! I did not mean-"

Desolation gripped the naked girl as the Abbot sadly shook his head at female frailty. When he passed from sight to where the pillory extruded her person for his convenience she knew herself lost.

Gabelot was a gourmet not only of food and wine but of maiden anguish. For him there could be no brutal lashing of bare buttocks; his cruelties were exquisite and prolonged. He was prepared to devote all his subtleties to this mouth watering maiden within his pillory. Thus having passed from her vision, he quietly sat upon his stool, poured another cup of mead, and tumescently enjoyed the beauty of Aveline's bottom. The dear girl could wait helplessly for the stroke that did not come ... yet!

The Abbot had never etched, nor seen, two more perfect ridges of inflamed female flesh than he now beheld. Whilst engaged at the front his masterpiece had ripened at the rear. The stripes his whip had painted were now in their full glory of purple and crimson. No doubt it was his fervid imagining which caused them to seem to pulse and throb with past pain and the expectation of more to come. He took a heartening gulp and debated whether number three should cut her above or below its fellows, or whether he should demoralize the maid further by a lusty stripe across the width of her bowed shoulders. He sighed happily at such a plethora of riches.

Aveline with neck and wrists clamped firmly in the stocks knew only a stomach curling fear, a shrinking dread of the next blow of the whip. She knew she was in the power of a force which, since it had all it desired, could be neither bribed nor threatened. The Abbot would work his will on her without pity, relishing her screams. In each passing moment the pillory offered her nakedness to him as a maiden sacrifice. So great was her suspense as the minutes passed that she found herself on the verge of pleading that he whip her and have done.

It was then it happened.

It is to be supposed that if an Abbot is a holy man, his hand is holy too: If it raises itself between warm, moist thighs to cup and fondle a damp and engorged female labia, who is to say its intent is other than to comfort and to bless! Aveline's gasp of horror and disbelief was tempered by a naive ignorance of erotic stimulation. The five who had raped her had wasted no time in such niceties of feminine arousal, piercing her with the lusty thrusts that were all they knew of love. Perhaps a father of the Church was allowed such liberties, and perhaps she should feel grateful for them! She stood very still, trembling.

"Thou art in abundant flood, dear child." Father Gabelot sounded pleased.

The captive knew not what to say so kept a prudent silence, allowing her feet to be kicked further apart to promote the pious probe of her pudicity. When new and strange sensations pervaded her loins she supposed the kindled flame to be no more than was to be expected from such a hallowed source. By the time both the Abbot's hands rose to sanctify her breasts Aveline was panting in the grip of emotions both terrifying and transcendent. As her nipples became hard and enlarged under the ministrations of ecclesiastic fingers, her faith in monkish beneficence revived. When the ardent frictioning ceased and the holy hands withdrew, she continued on in a panting sublimation of awareness of her body. The vicious scald of the whip in the crease of thigh and seat was one more disillusioning shock. It extracted from her an anguished peal of pure pain. With the solid immobility of the Church itself the Pillory absorbed her surging heaving struggles to escape.

Aveline D'Almaine was in capable hands. Gabelot correctly gauged her gasps, her heaving breasts, her weaving, helpless hips. At precisely the right moment his hand once more intruded within the sweating thighs and brought their owner to an orgasm of such intensity as to provoke him to separate her cheeks and find his own release within his victim's unwilling flesh. Because of his excitation the union was brief. When it was consummated he thoughtfully retrieved his whip and carefully slashed a new stripe high upon the now well-punished bottom.

To the pilloried girl it was all nightmare without beginning or end or purpose. She understood neither herself nor the man who whipped her. The incredible montage of pain, pleasure and fear rendered her unsure of anything, even of herself. She felt a great need to plead, but knew not the words to use on this supposedly holy man. She had a fear that death awaited her at the terminus of endless pain. The pain of the Abbot's whip was of an intensity which no past experience had inured her to cope with or accept. The sensory pleasure invoked by the manipulation of her sex had transported her to wonder and to hope soon excised by the lash. Now she stood in cringing apprehension to await the next infliction of her traducer on her expectant flesh. "Please, Father, I beg of you, whip me no more."

The Abbot sat, gently sipping and watching the last mark placed on the girlish flesh become proud with its suffusion of blood and assume its royal glory of coloration. He was well pleased. The captive was responding magnificently and vocalizing in a manner deeply satisfying. The Abbot had always found maiden speech and feminine pleadings an enhancing adjunct to maiden agony. One complemented the other for an effect excruciatingly exquisite.

"Patience, Aveline my dear, thou art in good hands," he intoned whilst his eyes devoured the glistening sweat of her pain and fear.

"Please, Reverend Father, may I be freed-even for a few moments? I am in much distress."

How sweet the girlish hope of clemency! The Abbot noted the constantly changing stance of the bare feet seeking, by changing weight, to counter the pillory's relentless grip. The little dear would be cramped from her enforced stoop, and would want to rub her bottom. What relish to deny, to fail to answer, to keep her on the qui vivre.

"I will be obedient to thy will."

She sounded anxious. The Abbot sighed and sipped. It was undoubtedly time to place another mark upon the tender skin. Soundlessly, he picked his target with care and struck Aveline so that the whip's thong spanned the breadth of her naked back below her exposed armpits. Resuming his seat he leant a critical but pleased ear to her vocal dismay and watched the twisting torso expend its pain in futile revolt against the stocks. Each cry and motion of this nubile girl would be a jewel within his crown of memories.

Enjoying Aveline's unconscious artistry, the Abbot's mind reviewed the performance of other novitiates: some sent for his personal attention by trustful parents, others recruited to become nuns of Saint Agnes under the appreciative scourge of the Abbess Cissota. His visits to the adjacent convent were almost daily to attend the spiritual and fleshly needs of its worshipping sisters. His memories of doe eyes and anguished pleas were treasured gems: a long procession of young female nudity hung by their wrists or clamped within the stocks, each with their own repertoire of cries and contortions beneath his whip. Yet each one pathetically grateful for his indoctrination into grace. Mead was good but girls were better.

The Reverend Mother Cissota was prudently generous in sharing with her male confrere a pleasant duty that was unfailingly cock raising for the Abbot and twat teasing for herself: It was the shaving of the novitiate's head. They also shaved her pubic hair as a tasty dessert after the feast of her flogging. The Bishop had never been consulted regarding this special indulgence; he might not have approved. The denuded damsels were unaware of extra curricular privilege, and between a tender bottom and back and bald pate were little disposed to argue. The Abbot's penetration of their hopefully virgin vaginas was accepted by the youngsters in much the same spirit as a sprinkling of holy water.

Feeling it time to relieve any possibility of boredom for his Pillory's tenant, the Abbot absented himself briefly and returned with a large and amiable collie. He went to some trouble to parade the beast in full view of Aveline's apprehensive gaze, pointing out its better features and emphasizing that since it wore a crucifix about its neck, it must assuredly possess some canine virtue denied to most. Patting it thoughtfully he directed it to sit while he himself retired to his stool, his cup, and out of sight of the captive girl. With care and consideration for dumb animals he then looped a noose upon each of Aveline's big toes and, using rings provided in the floor, exerted sufficient tension to ensure the wide separation of her feet. That her thighs were also well divided by his kindly act may or may not have been coincidental. Resuming his seat he waited patiently. He was a man of faith.

Aveline sensed trouble, yet was innocent enough to fail to understand the portent of the collie and the bite of the thin cord around her toes. She knew only that her posture was now more shaming than before and felt more than ever divorced from those portions of herself she could not see. The dog and she exchanged a curious regard, and if she saw within his canine eyes a wisdom beyond her own, its nature was beyond her ken.

The dog had the air of one well in command of a situation. No doubt the Abbot had employed him previously. He eyed the lovely head protruding from the stocks with a proprietary anticipation in the manner of canines surveying their bone in a quaint detachment before gnawing it. Aveline returned his regard without affection. When he negligently got to his feet and ambled back beyond her range of vision she suspected the worst. She wanted no living thing to see or to touch her nakedness which the Pillory made available to all.

Having prepared his stage with its simple but effective props, the Abbot sat in quiet contemplation of Aveline's wealed bottom and the tantalizing tufts of pubic hair the divided thighs offered to view. When the collie entered from the wings the holy man sighed in bliss.

The dog approached its consecrated task with a genteel diffidence, first sniffing the extended toes so that they tugged at the cord tying their largest member and caused their fair owner to gasp in a natural reflex to a fresh source of shame. Having completed its preliminary reconnaissance and smelt no justification to pee it moved forward to take up position for the piece de resistance. Its snout rose to scent the waiting cunt.

Gabelot felt the pride of perfection. Vicariously he shared the tremors of Aveline's shrinking flesh as her helpless nudity tensed within its wooden imprisonment. Her gasps were plainly audible as she tugged frantically against her captive toes in an unsuccessful effort to close her legs. The Abbot felt sure of her frustration at finding herself spread open by so trifling a tether. His eyes glowed as he beheld the lifted foot pull and twist against the cord, only to fall back defeated by the pain of its effort. One foot and then the other, the little dear was realizing the full import of what portended. When the cold, wet nose gave precedence to the strong, pink tongue it was to the watching man as though cymbals and trumpets had crescendoed in a fortissimo of triumph.

Aveline screamed.

To the pilloried girl it was one more entry into the impossible, the unthinkable, the outrageous. As the eager canine tongue lapped her most female place and sought its easy entry therein she convulsed in a spasm of revulsion so great that for a moment every particle of her being and her strength was exerted against the pillory and the cords. Both held her with an implacability that mocked her helplessness. Her scream was unconscious and instinctive, a maiden cry for the intercession of Holy Church. It was inconceivable to her that the Abbot would permit this animal violation of her sex. She pictured the cowled figure busy with its prayers and unaware of the thrust and rasp of the canine tongue. It seemed to the shamed maiden most proper and right that she should acquaint the worthy man of the dog's indiscretion.

"Father ... most Reverend Father ... the dog!"

The Abbot's voice was unctuous. "Yes, dear child?"

"The dog-oh, Father, please ... stop him!"

"What is he doing, my dear?" Gabelot inquired happily.

"Father, cannot you see! He-"

"Yes, child? Come, speak up."

"He is ... he is-he's licking me."

"A dog's devotion is a lesson to us all, Aveline."

"But he's licking my-oh, Father, cannot you see!"

"I perceive perfectly, dear girl; a chivalrous beast."

"But not there! Oh, Father, not there. He mustn't."

"He anoints thy sweet flesh in innocence, dear child. Let us not gainsay his gift of affection."

"But it's wrong. It's ... it's not decent. He shames me."

"But, my dear, ye have yet to name that spot upon thyself where his attentions offend thee."

Aveline knew the names but could utter none of them. They had always seemed to her as obscene as this thing being done to her now. Her voice faltered into a despairing wail. "He's licking my ... my-oh, Father, my private place."

"Call this thy confessional, Aveline. 'Tis the only privacy Holy Church condones. Come, tell me where the dog offends."

Aveline guessed what he sought. If it would end this lapping shame she would give it to him. Hating herself and him she uttered the loathsome name: "He licks my cunt, Reverend Father."

"Ah ha! He smells thy lust! Perhaps the lash should leaven thy lubricity, sweet Aveline."

She scarcely heard his pious insincerity. Throughout their thrust and parry the avid tongue had found its range and was busy frictioning her most sensitive tenderness. The captive girl was astounded to discover a similarity of sensation to that invoked by the Abbot's holy hand. A fire rose steadily within her loins, fed and inflamed by a tongue no longer content with pubic hair but nuzzling its stroking probes well inside the maiden orifice spread for its delectation. When the fire consumed her utterly rising and burning with a fierce heat of passion so that she was an animate and sweating female held fast in the stocks despite her surging, heaving orgasm, then and at that precise moment, the Abbot planted his thong deep within the flesh of her bottom on virgin skin as yet unmarked. The slashing cut had behind it all the excitation of his own rejuvenated rut. The dog lapped, unconcerned, enjoying Aveline's flavour with avid appetite.

Abbot Gabelot knew his dog; he also understood the responses of female flesh. He was well aware that after orgasm a further frictioning of a ravished sex must only result in its owner's excruciating distress. There would be a period in which Aveline's orgiastic excess would provide a fresh nuance of entertainment. Gratefully, he sat down to enjoy it.

There could be no doubt that, between the orgasm and the lash, the girl held fast in the stocks had experienced a new and devastating series of sensations. Pain, fear, and bewilderment were manifest in her twists and turns and tugging toes. As the happy tongue continued to inexorably find the chafed clitoris the nude jerks and convulsions provided the watching eyes with an entertainment par excellence. The contortions were provided with an accompaniment of maiden gasps and cries exquisitely in keeping with the occasion. The Abbot refilled his cup.

"Please, you must stop him, you must!"

"Another lash, child?"

"No, Father, not that! No ... please. But take the dog from me. He is ... he is-"

"Yes, Aveline?"

"I don't understand---I don't." The girlish voice wailed its desolation. "It is all so ... so--oh, Father, have I sinned?"

"Thou art a most lustful girl."

"I do not know-oh, Father, I am not, I am not!"

"The scourge shall cleanse thee."

"Please don't whip me more. Oh, please! And this terrible dog-take him away."

"He is but a guide and portent to thy malaise, Aveline." It was all so plausible, and she was young. For all she knew the busy dog may indeed have revealed some wicked flaw in her being. Certainly the play of its tongue was bringing an awareness of inclinations and responses new and strange. They were intense and devastating enough to be the work of Satan. At the moment Aveline was tied up in a knot of protesting nerves demanding cessation of the questing tongue. She was prey to the unknown.

"Father, I cannot bear more. It is passing awful. Please take the dog from me. I ... I'm ... I am fearful."

"Ye have my permission to plead for the scourge, Aveline."

It was as unreal as all the rest. To plead to be whipped! And to what purpose! The helpless girl choked brokenly: "I cannot, I cannot bear the pain."

"He is a most noble hound."

"He is killing me. Oh, Father...."

The Abbot imbibed cheerfully. Every word the dear child uttered was quite perfect; she was a gem. Yet even without her maiden vocals he was able to interpret every sensation she tried so pridefully to subdue. Muscles and tendons, sinews and nerves, all conspired to his benefit. The hapless girl in the pillory was wholly his; she could do or say nothing but that it might be used to mortify her flesh. His erection seemed endowed with ears, so great was his wish to hear the sweet voice plead for her whipping. It would be her ultimate response to the litany they shared. "Thou art most lustfully alive, girl."

She knew it true, and moaned in despair. Innocence was fleeing, raped and routed by a dog. Its retreat was precipitated by a resurgence of her sexual conflagration and the sudden entry within her person of the hard phallus the Abbot could no longer deny. After the resulting explosions and moaning ecstasies the punished girl could well believe that sin was hard at work. But whose it was or where the guilt she did not know. But she knew most abundantly that the rasping tongue was as assiduous as ever within her pussy.

"Father, release me. Oh, bring an end."

The Abbot watched the writhing hips. He noted with satisfaction that, even though the child must know it useless, she continued to raise one or the other of her feet and tug in futile and painful protest at the cord snaring her big toe. He could well imagine how infuriating it must be to find oneself so tenuously controlled.

"Thou art captive to thy own lust, dear girl."

"Father, what must I do? Oh, anything to end this!"

"I have told thee."

It was too cruel; she could not do it. But the words formed themselves and escaped her lips: "Father, I beg of you! Scourge away my sin."

Gabelot's maleness stirred again on hearing the innocence of the maiden plea. Aveline's longing for release was demandingly erotic. "And how would'st have me do this, girl?" he asked gently.

"Whip me."

It was as though the two words had stopped his world. They were the ineffable, the quintessence of his deepest need. Taking one last sip he put down his cup and picked up the whip. With care and finesse he cut up under the leg and into the softness of the white thigh.

Aveline shrieked.

It was the newest and worst of all her agonies. The pain was so intense she feared to sink into the darkness. She was certain her toe was cut where the cord had bitten at her involuntary pull. She was in such a maze of agony she forgot to plead. With ambidextrous skill the Abbot sliced her other thigh to invoke a matching wound.

"Not there...." The protest surfaced through the moans. "No, no, it is not right. Not there upon a girl-"

"And where else, child! 'Tis closest to thy sin."

"I have not sinned. Oh, Father, whip me not between my legs. Mercy, I beg you."

Gabelot hit her again in such fashion as to cause his thong to curl around a thigh above her knee. After her screams had subsided, Aveline moaned despairingly: "My back ... Please, Father, whip my back."

How sweet she was! "And where else, child?" Gabelot asked gently.

"My bottom. On my bottom."

The Abbot of Aubyn flogged the naked Aveline D'Almain for the pleasantest five minutes of his life.

CHAPTER FIVE -- THE CAGE

The cage was cruel. Its stout bars were close enough that she could do no more than thrust an arm or a leg between them. They curved inward above her head to an apex as in a cage for birds. It was of no great dimension but large enough to hold a girl. It stood in one corner of the huge chamber wherein stood the pillory. Aveline could peer from her small prison and behold the instrument of her martyrdom in whose firm clutch she had first been whipped. It was a view that fascinated and repelled, especially since the intimations that she might once again be compelled to place her neck and her wrists within its embrace.

She was shamed by being kept naked. The lay brother who tended her necessities wore a permanent blush while in her presence. Brother Anselm was one of the few bright spots in Aveline's caged existence. Since she had no choice but to be nude she teased him with her body and her speech. Being a prisoner in a cage made her feel doubly naked; she could hide nothing, and her condition was made doubly trying by the chains shackled to wrists and ankles and joined by their terminus in a ring just above the level of her knees. Standing, they made her wickedly helpless. Sitting or squatting enabled her fingers to reach her face and hair. In having them locked upon her limbs, Father Gabelot had emphasized their chastening affect on the recalcitrant spirit and assured her solemnly she wore them for her own good. Aveline had longed to make a tart rejoinder, but a naked girl locked within a cage becomes wary of what she says.

"Why must I be naked, brother Anselm?" she had asked mischievously.

"That thy flesh be mortified, M'Lady." It sounded like a quotation.

"But, Anselm, I've been terribly whipped. Isn't that enough?"

"Virtue is worth any sacrifice."

"I'm no more virtuous now than before."

"No doubt the holy Abbot will whip thee again," Brother Anselm offered helpfully as he strove with the problem of examining Aveline's breasts without appearing to do so.

"Do you like my breasts, Anselm? I can't cover them, y'know. My hands are chained so I can't lift them above my hairy spot."

"Ye should not say such things, M'Lady. 'Tis Satan who prompts thee. 'Tis my duty to report thy sin that ye may be scourged."

"But you won't, will you, brother Anselm? Would you like me to get closer to the bars so you can see my cunt?"

"You make sport of me, M'Lady," Anselm complained without noticeable concern. For the first time, he dropped subterfuge and stared fixedly at the captive girl's pubic hair. The pillory and Father Gabelot had taught Aveline much of men and of herself. She cast aside hypocrisy and knew her body potent as a weapon. Fresh shames as they occurred made her aware of nakedness, but mostly she ignored it. She now wore nudity as unconsciously as she had once worn clothes.

"Anselm, be a kind man and unlock my chains?"

"No!" The young lay brother was deeply shocked.

Aveline realized she had overtaxed his tolerance. Unhappily she viewed the collar and chain and the key to her cage. "Oh, Anselm; don't do that to me. Oh, please! I'm terribly sorry. Couldn't I say a prayer or something?"

"'Tis too late, M'Lady. This I do for thine own good." Ruefully, the caged maiden reflected that the platitude covered most ecclesiastical impositions. Dolorously she watched the lay brother depart. Her pixie humour seemed likely to earn her an uncomfortable day. Her chains were taut with her desire to finger the metal collar on her neck and the chain from it to the top of her cage. But she could touch nothing, and must now stand helplessly in the centre of her small prison, unable to rest or to sit down. It was evident brother Anselm must be treated with more respect. Aveline sighed in wistful longing that she could unsay what she had said. She stamped a bare chained foot and emitted a hearty. "Damn!"

Several days had passed since her time in the pillory. Caged and chained she had wept at the indignity of the cage and her memory of the whip. She had twisted and turned to try and see her weals. Some were visible but most were not. Those she could behold and those upon her thighs which she could touch were frightening in their tenderness and multi-colouration. It had been made abundantly clear to her that she could be scourged again at any time. The Abbot and the Baron Malenfant found no problem in rationalizing her as a delinquent child.

Aveline recalled the first time she had stepped into the cage and turned awkwardly in her chains to behold the Abbot close the door and snap the lock. Her sense of confinement had been claustrophobic, her nudity an invitation to peer through the bars in lewd enjoyment of her plight. The Abbot stepped back and did just that.

"Our naughty little bird will not fly away."

Aveline hurt from the whipping and her tractioned toes. She was shamed and frightened. The Abbot seemed an unpredictable malignancy. "Reverend Father, if I promise to be good is there need to chain and cage me thus?"

"Rail not against thy fortunes, child, less worse befall."

"What is to become of me, Father?"

"A change of heart perhaps." He gave her a sly wink. "I understand certain matters at Broule...."

"I can be free if I agree to marry the Baron, is that it?" Gabelot raised his eyebrows in holy horror. "Let us not deal in temporal matters in this holy place."

"But that is the reason I am imprisoned and punished, isn't it?"

The Abbot shrugged. "Reports of thy progress will be sent to Broule," he admitted guardedly. "Should'st thou have a special message for M'Lord Malenfant I would ensure it reached his hand."

"I will be punished until I write that missive, will I not?"

"We but strive to return ye into grace."

"He wants me only to breed sons. Must I do this, Father?"

For a moment Gabelot was silent in thought, then cocked a quizzical eyebrow and intoned, "They would also be the sons of Holy Church." He allowed the silence to fall again before suggesting softly: "Yet I have considered another and nobler path for thee to follow."

Could good come from this man! The chained girl doubted it. Despite her doubt, hope flared anew. "Please, Father, tell me."

"The holy convent of Saint Agnes adjoins our abbey, Aveline."

To be a nun! Her whole being recoiled. "I ... I am not worthy, Reverend Father. I ... I have been soiled. I cannot take the vows."

"Ye may take them, girl, rest assured of that. The Revered Abbess Cissota would welcome thee, 'Tis the only way I know to end M'Lord's interest in thy flesh."

"M'Lord Malenfant would never sanction it."

Gabelot smiled in wisdom. "If ye choose of thine own will to embrace holy orders, and if I and the Abbess hold thy person safe, M'Lord Malenfant will relinquish ye. He will not take thee by force from Holy Church."

Aveline sighed in memory, and wriggled fretfully against brother Anselm's collar. The Abbot had left her alternatives. They were clear and precise. She wanted neither. But rejection had gained her nothing but to sit or stand, naked and chained, within the small barred prison from which she now saw no hope of escape. She could be locked thus forever.

It was tiring and dispiriting to have to stand uselessly in the centre of her cage, unable to raise her fettered hands, unable to reach the bars to lean on them and rest. Aveline tried, but the collar 'round her neck and its punitive chain snapped her back into punishment no matter where she turned. She would have to stand listlessly and hope the lay brother would feel pity for his naked charge and remove the metal band from her throat before night when he came with the blanket he would take from her again with the new day.

Aveline realized her incarceration went beyond imprisonment. It was more than the simple loss of liberty. She would be kept in some degree of shame and discomfort as a process of attrition to bend her will without breaking the beauty of her body. Woefully she understood how well designed the treatment was for a girl such as she. Each day in the cage increased her longing to get out of it. Each hour chained told her clearly the intent of her shackles; they were to punish. Actually, it mattered not at all that she was chained. She could do nothing, go nowhere. The chains robbed her of nothing save dignity and comfort. Their clinking response to her every move kept her constantly aware of what she was.

It was natural to think of capitulation. Wryly she wondered what would be done with her should she agree forthrightly to Malenfant's demand. She could not envisage either freedom or kindness. She would probably be delivered back to Broule as tightly bound as when she had left it. They would take no chances with her. Then she would share the Baron's bed, opening her thighs to the thrusts of his phallus until the day her belly began to swell with the fruit of his seed. She shuddered at the prospect.

The convent of Saint Agnes would be even worse. Nuns were prisoners, held by bars as well as vows. Aveline had heard stories of convents and what went on behind their walls. Her belly might be in as much hazard of protrusion as at Broule. And to be shaved! She had a momentary vision of being held fast by many holy hands while some beldame shaved her pate to make her bald. She shuddered.

A naked girl, chained and caged as was Aveline, must seek solace in her thoughts or become hysterical. She had no pleasant prospects on which to dwell, so turned her mind in feminine curiosity to Miles Hardwin. She knew herself as much prey to his charm as was Ismay or the other girls. It mattered not, she might never see him again. But for a girl in prison he was an exciting memory. It was better to think of his laughing masculinity than to reflect on Plinlymon and shed the tears her fettered hands could not reach up to dry.

"A penny for thy thoughts, girl."

The female voice struck the dreaming captive like a blow. It was a strong and vibrant voice, but an amused one. Startled, Aveline gazed through the bars to behold a nun.

"I am called Cissota, Aveline." The deep, dark eyes that were still young twinkled at the prisoned girl's surprise. "Or the Mother Superior of Saint Agnes."

Despite qualms, Aveline was overjoyed to be in the company of her own sex. Her instant reaction was natural. "Thank Heaven! Oh, Reverend Mother, can'st thou please release me?"

"I suppose that could be arranged," the Abbess conceded without interest. "I suppose that idiot Gabelot bedecked thee with irons enough for a brace of felons?"

"He and brother Anselm. I am being punished, Reverend Mother."

"So it would seem," the Abbess said dryly. "And I've a suspicion of the motive. Turn ye 'round, girl, and let me see thy back."

Aveline felt foolish as she swivelled her collar and shuffled her chained feet to obey. She knew herself un-likely to run counter to the demands of this vivid personality. The Mother Superior was youngish for her eminence and had a way with her. The exclamation that greeted the display of whip marks on the maiden back and bottom was not the one the shamed girl expected.

"The damned old rascal! And he never invited me! Gabelot's going to get a piece of my mind." Cissota sounded more amused than angry. "Was it thy first whipping, child?"

"Yes, madam, I thought I would die."

"He had ye in the pillory, eh?"

"Yes. I am held close captive."

"I'd hold thee close captive too, child, an' I had thee. Turn around again. I'd loose ye if I had the key."

Aveline turned and faced the woman in whom she saw fresh hope. The Abbess of Saint Agnes was a far cry from the girl's envisioning. She radiated a force the Abbot lacked. "Please help me," she begged piteously.

"Does thou wish to become a nun?"

"No."

"Hmmmm, a pity! I'd make a pretty postulant out of you."

"I am not a religieuse, Reverend Mother."

"Who is, girl! I'm not, nor is the Abbot. I'd let thee scourge a novice now and then."

It was borne on Aveline that she was being bribed, and with a stranger coin than she had ever known. Her face betrayed her bewilderment.

"But, Reverend Mother, I do not understand. Why?"

"You know perfectly well, girl, and don't pretend. Our noble Abbot did not whip thee for the good of thy soul. I'll wager the old rogue got a rampant prick and used it."

Aveline flushed. She had learned much in the pillory. She seemed likely to learn more now. "It was most shaming and hurtful, madam."

"Oh, aye, I'm sure it was. I just wish I'd been there-damned old hypocrite! I suppose he got a wet hand?"

It was a puzzle finally at last into place. The chained girl blushed anew. Perhaps her manually invoked sensations were not from Heaven after all! Her wish to get free of the Abbot became stronger than ever. She strove for compromise. "Reverend Mother, I would be happy if ye would take me hence. 'Tis so wrong I be kept here naked among men-and chained so that I can cover nothing." She looked wistfully through the bars. "But in honesty I must tell that I have no wish to be a nun."

"Want your cake and eat it too, eh!" The Abbess eyed her shrewdly. "I have a cage like this at St. Agnes, d'you wish to enter it?"

Absurd and incomprehensible! But still...."Gladly, if ye can take me from here," Aveline ventured uncertainly. "Mayhap I'll whip thee more than the Abbott and brother Anselm put together?"

The chained girl twisted in confusion so that her links bespoke her distress. "But, Reverend Mother, to be whipped ... it is so awful and I have done no wrong!"

"Don't you really understand ... honestly?" Once again the Abbess' glance was sharp.

"Nay." Aveline looked beseechingly through the bars. "Oh, Mother Superior, I am so lost. I thought I was a woman but it seems I am a child."

The Abbess nodded. She knew innocence when she saw it. " 'Tis best ye know, girl, so I tell it as it is." She gave the captive a commdely but sardonic grin. "For Gabelot and I-and a few more here and there-the most exquisite joy we can be vouchsafed is to whip a girl such as thee. In thy writhings and thy screams we find a thousand ecstasies."

She had guessed it but failed to believe. Aveline's first comprehension was a quick memory of Miles Hardwin. He and the castle girls had made light of it. But surely Ismay and her friends could never have been whipped as cruelly as the Abbot had whipped her! Dealing in a currency she had never before known, Aveline's voice was hesitant.

"If it must be, Reverend Mother, so be it. I must strive to understand. If it gives thee joy to whip me, take me hence. Leave me not caged here in Aubyn. Messire the Abbot deceives me."

"What are you two hens clucking about?" The voice sounded irritable as the Abbot came striding into his captive's vision.

"About thee, who else!" the Abbess rejoined tartly. " 'Tis a pretty kettle of fish I find: a sweet young filly well striped and me told not a word of it! Gabelot, ye're an old fraud."

"Come now, Cissota, ye'd not be here now if I'd wished to hide M'Lady Aveline."

"I'd not be here if I'd not smelt a rat and come searching. You're a lucky dog. I'd have thought Malenfant would have whipped the lass into submission himself," the Abbess laughed shortly, "Or given her to young Miles to rope and rape."

"M'Lord Malenfant wishes the blessings of Holy Church upon his union. He relishes no arguments of bastardy with his heirs." Gabelot thoughtfully surveyed the caged girl. "I had thought to return him a gratefully agreeable damsel within a week. But now I have my doubts."

"Her distaste for Malenfant's babes be stronger than thy right arm, man?"

"Nay, I can break her well enough; she is but a girl."

"Well, then?"

The Abbot gave his colleague a cynical leer. "Would we not be simpletons to part with such a pretty piece?"

"Indeed we would," the Abbess Cissota agreed heartily. "What had ye in mind?"

"Surely you can think of something?" said the Abbot petulantly.

"Mayhap I could." The strong female mouth tightened. "Providing 'tis I who gets the girl."

"I could scourge her weekly?"

"We can take turns. For full possession I'll exchange thee a douce little novice that arrives next Thursday. She'll be grateful for thy whip; she thinks she harbours a demon-at least her parents do."

"Is she of the quality of Lady Aveline?"

"I have never seen a maid of the quality of what you've got in that cage," the Abbess admitted forthrightly. "I lust for her. Couldn't we take her out and give her a few stripes? I'd like to hear her scream."

"She screams superlatively well, Cissota," Gabelot assured proudly. "But I'd as lief give her timse to heal a bit before we mark her afresh."

Aveline had no choice but to listen to the cynical discussion of her disposal. But she listened in dismay. Her chains now weighed twice as much and the bars had doubled in size. It appeared she had little to look forward to. But she knew that if she must be the prisoner of one of these two bickering cynics she preferred the woman to the man."

"Please, may I go to the convent?" she asked plaintively.

"For heaven's sake, man, take that absurd collar and chain off the girl. It does no good to keep her standing there like that," the Abbess demanded crossly.

"I will not countermand authority," Gabelot said stiffly.

"Horse turds!" the Abbess snapped impatiently. "If she must be uncomfortable put a crotch cord between her legs or tie her elbows or something. I've told you before: Anselm's a fool."

"Anselm has a high regard for the maid."

"I'm sure he has. The poor boy probably had to manhandle his cock thrice daily to find relief from such loveliness. I'm a woman and she's got me sopping. How the devil can you stand it?"

"'Tis a sad tax on celibacy," the Abbot admitted cheerfully.

"It would be if ye practiced it," Cissota retorted tartly. "Come now, can I take the girl home with me?"

"Please, Reverend Father, let me be taken to where there are women to keep me," Aveline pleaded.

"Thy ripe little arse will get warmed more in St. Agnes' than it will here, my girl," the Abbot warned darkly. Aveline subsided into a baffled silence and listened to their discussion of ways and means. It became evident that young women were traded back and forth between them in the manner of domestic animals. They were still preoccupied with pros and cons when they drifted from the chamber, their voices echoing back until silence once more enveloped the forgotten nudity in the cage. The chain and the collar were still upon Aveline's neck. She stood, weary and without hope, while a tear found its way down her cheek. She tried to brush it away, but no matter how she fought her chains or contorted her limbs she could not achieve the small pathetic task.

There was a guilty look about brother Anselm when he removed her collar. No doubt he had received a reprimand. Aveline sank thankfully to the floor of her cage but exploited a possible advantage.

"Dear brother Anselm, please unlock my chains too. I am most weary."

"Prisoners must be chained at all times, M'Lady," Anselm declaimed stiffly.

She had naught to lose, why not be wanton! "But I am not a prisoner, brother Anselm, I am just a girl being punished," she pointed out sweetly.

"Thy chains are punishment."

"But I mustn't be punished all the time. Even bad girls need a rest."

"Thy chains are not onerous, M'Lady."

"Please call me Aveline. May I be let out of the cage so as to walk around? Oh, please let me! Chained like this I can't possible give you any trouble. I can only shuffle."

"The Abbot would not approve."

"Yes, he would. He and the Mother Superior were talking about such things. They did not like that collar you locked on my neck. It was cruel to make me stand all day."

"You were impertinent."

"I'm terribly sorry, you can whip me sometime for it. But if you let me out of here now I could stand very close to you. It would be nice."

Brother Anselm's breath visibly quickened. He swallowed a prominent Adam's apple and looked longingly at Aveline's breasts. "Would you get back in the cage when I told you?" he inquired doubtfully.

"Of course I would!" Aveline rattled her links. "Chained the way I am I can't possibly not obey you. Besides, I'd be grateful."

Brother Anselm unlocked the cage door.

It was half wonderful and half infuriating. She was free of the cage, but the equally hated chains limited her to short, noisy steps and hands primly joined below her navel. She made a hobbled circuit of the big room and came to stand before the brown habit and the nondescript male within. She looked up into worshipping eyes.

"Dear brother Anselm, you are so kind to me. I would that I could repay thee."

"Charity comes from above." Brother Anselm sounded a bit uncertain of his declaration. He raised a quaking hand and touched a nipple as though to make sure it was real. "Thou art most lovely, M'Lady."

"I am, aren't I!" Aveline agreedingenuously. "Touch my other one too, please. And while you're at it, rub my nose. I can't reach the way you've got me chained."

Brother Anselm did as requested. He did not do it well. He was trembling.

"If you sort of rub both of them gently they'll get hard and stick out more," his captive informed helpfully.

"A woman is most wondrous." This time the brother's exclamation did not sound like a quotation.

"If you'll take these chains off me I can put my arms around your neck. I think that would be nice. I've been so lonely in that cage."

Brother Anselm was very young. He was visibly affected. It occurred to him, unexpectedly, that he had been very lonely too. It had been his family's idea that he become a monk, not his own. The naked girl's musk was enveloping him in potent waves. Aveline rattled her chains as though striving for a bliss denied.

"Perhaps your hands," said brother Anselm.

It was as though he was asking her permission. He was in a daze of apprehension and lust. Aveline's heart leaped. To have her hands returned to her would be a boon indeed. But with her ankles joined she would still be helpless.

"You are so thoughtful," she whispered. Backing away a step, she offered her fettered hands as best she could. Brother Anselm unlocked the metal bands from the slender wrists so that they and their chains and ring fell with a clatter at her feet. He was in a dither of awareness at the girl's nudity.

"Thank you, oh, thank you!" Aveline's gratitude was genuine. Knowing her feet still captive, she advanced brother Anselm's demoralisation one more step. She clasped her arms about his neck, nestled her head on his shoulder, and thrust her pelvis hard against his. Even through the coarse folds of the monk's habit she could feel the man's erection that was her most potent ally. "You're such a wonderful man," she breathed ardently.

The monkish neophyte was floundering in a sea of sensations similar to those Aveline herself had suffered in the pillory days before. For the moment he was living on faith alone; faith that in some way this warm and vibrant female thing and himself would become resolved. He grasped her right breast and patted her left buttock as samples of advancing bliss.

In the full blush of female power, Aveline took a verbal step that, a month previous, would have been unthinkable and impossible. "Would you like to feel my cunt, dear brother Anselm?" she asked demurely.

She felt him tense, his hands stopped their play, inarticulate sounds fought within his larynx. Gently, she took his willing hand from her bottom and thrust it between her legs. When he had cupped and kneaded the moist lips long enough, she asked winningly, "Would thee not like my legs apart? Without the chain I could spread them wide."

"I dare not loose thee, M'Lady."

"'Tis easy done." She kissed his neck. "I would not run away."

"But, the Abbot! If he should come!"

"He would not be pleased--even as I now am. Come, Anselm, a girl's legs have uses as well as her arms."

"Thou art not cozening me?"

"I am yours to do with as ye wish, Anselm. Take me." Aveline looked down at the unimpressive head and fumbling hands. Her heart was thumping painfully as she watched the freeing of her ankles. Her battle was half won, but there remained the doors and walls of Aubyn.

She allowed the panting lay brother to play with her body to his heart's content. She shrewdly guessed him virgin and fearful of the taking of a girl. When he began to fumble with his clothes she held his hand. "Not here in Aubyn, dear Anselm, not in this holy place."

"Then where?" He was once more tense.

"Get me hence. We will flee together. A man such as thee should ne'er be a monk. Take me away."

He was an easy prey to sure allure. He had found the habit and the Abbey little to his liking. Away from it, and with this glorious girl! His mind reeled at the possibilities. A wet and thrusting Venus mound aided decision. Yet brother Anselm was not entirely lost to caution.

"I will have to bind thee."

Inwardly Aveline cried desperately: No! No, no, no. She wanted no more of bonds. But she kept her peace and asked diffidently: "What on earth for?"

"I ... I scarce know thee. 'Tis asking much."

"Ye do not trust me?" Her question oozed reproach.

"I ... I-'Tis not that," he floundered, seeking plausibility. "Yet I would fain have thee secure. Bear with my wish."

The almost free girl understood his wish well enough, but his prudence was not her profit. "You see!" she said accusingly. "Ye trust me not. Oh, Anselm!" She pretended to sob into his rough wool. "Oh, dear, dear Anselm, do not tie me." She rallied her pelvis to her cause.

Anselm had found an inspiration, one not without truth. Holding the naked girl at arm's length, he said urgently: "But I must! Does't not understand! If I am to take thee from Aubyn it must be as a prisoner in the eyes of those who will witness our passing. I can say I deliver thee to the Abbess at Saint Agnes."

Aveline's heart sank. His logic was hard to refute. It was a perfect cover for escape. None but the Abbot himself would question their mission. Being so close to freedom she loathed the thought of being again rendered helpless. To have walked to St. Agnes in chains would have been impractical--but bound! It was perfect. Reluctantly she capitulated.

"Can I be covered?"

"Prisoners are never covered, M'Lady."

That looked after that! She looked at him coyly: "Call me Aveline."

"Aveline." He savoured her name on his tongue as his eyes adored. "I will find rope."

The big chamber had everything. When Anselm found what he required, his wanton captive held out her hands in meek surrender.

"Behind thy back." He flushed awkwardly. "'Tis custom."

Masking her irritation with a smile, Aveline turned and crossed her wrists. "There," she said with mock cheerfulness. "I told thee I'd be obedient."

His hands were male and felt strong to her as he grasped her own and placed them palm to palm.

"No! Not like that." She turned to face him. "That way means you're going to tie my elbows too, doesn't it?" Brother Anselm's features became uncertain. She sensed how easily he could panic. He nodded, unhappy at her revolt. "Please," he implored earnestly. "It is always done. I want no questions."

"But if you tie my wrists I'll be helpless enough!"

"Perhaps. But ye are a prisoner in transit. Such are always made doubly secure. Please ... Aveline."

His use of her name touched her. She was fearful, too, that his courage might fade with his erection and she find herself back in the cage. With a wry moue of resignation she once more turned her back. This time she placed her hands palm to palm herself.

It was hard to stand passive and be bound. The ropes being tightly knotted into her flesh by unexpectedly competent fingers seemed a negation. But brother Anselm was her only hope, she had best accept him with good grace. To be surly or resentful now might turn him back to a jailer. "Ye tie a girl with skill, Anselm," she said admiringly.

"What is worth doing is worth doing well," intoned the lay brother reverting to type.

His absurd predictability made her wish to giggle and sustained her patience while he bound her elbows. He was far from gentle, as though he indeed did not trust her. When he made them meet and pulled tight the several bands of rope she winced and choked back the vexatious words it would be best not to utter. He had her now. It would be best to behave.

"You're so clever, Anselm," Aveline looked up with worshipful eyes that obviously had impact on her companion's morale. She wriggled painfully. "I can't possibly get loose, I just know I can't."

He seemed pleased, and again dampened his hand upon her sex, seeking courage. "Look at no one," he cautioned. "And try and look sad and without hope."

Aveline rubbed her head against the shoulder of her rescuer. It was all she could do: There remained a single concern. "Anselm, when we go beyond the walls I must not be naked. On the road t'would draw attention."

Impatiently, he found the blanket she had used of nights, folding it over his arm, he said curtly: "Come."

The still captive girl found herself actually grateful for the ropes within her flesh, and for her nudity, and for the guiding hand and voice of brother Anselm. They passed enough questioning eyes for her to know she could never have reached the small door in the wall of Aubyn alone. Brother Anselm even had the key.

It was like the non-logic of a dream. Brother Anselm stepped through the narrow portal, there came a solid thump and he disappeared to one side. Stepping out herself she beheld him upon the ground. A startled masculine oath was uttered at her back before she was picked up bodily and thrown across the withers of a horse. A strong hand steadied her as the animal leaped forward beneath the rider and his female prize. The male voice that laughed down at the bound girl had a familiar ring.

"'Tis fate ordained, M'Lady." It was Miles Hardwin.

CHAPTER SIX -- THE WILLOW SWITCH

It was pleasant in the sun. Miles Hardwin knew an unusual content. He lay resting on one elbow, looking at the naked girl sleeping on the grass. He found her more beautiful than his memory of her chained to the ring at Broule. Even with her hands tied behind her back she slept gracefully in an innocence of her own.

His amused survey followed the trailing rope from where it was knotted around the girl's left ankle to the tree a few feet distant where other knots ensured she would not roam while he slept. She had been too weary to complain of bonds. When he had taken the rope from her elbows and laid her down she had fallen instantly asleep. Brother Anselm's punishment through the day and the furious ride through the night into her new captivity had left her exhausted.

Miles knew himself possessed of infinite riches. There was a quality about the girl he had been unable to forget. She had occupied his thoughts to the point where he had determined to take her from Aubyn by stealth. He had been in the act of dealing with the postern door when brother Anselm's gullibility had delivered her into his hands. To ride with her to this place with the small hut close by, had taken most of the night. But here they would be undisturbed, the girl would be his alone. Perhaps when he tired of her he could deliver her back to Broule and his half-brother's nuptials. But this was with the gods. He would make no plans.

He was sure her nobility would make her a delicious subject. She would oppose him verbally and physically, yielding herself to his whip and to his arms inch by rebellious inch. She would be a joy to tame. She would not accept his pleasures with the plebeian giggles and plaints of the serving wenches with whom he was beginning to feel bored. In the roster of nobility she was his equal, and thus her shame made manifold. Idly he flipped a twig to strike her hip.

To awaken into bondage was no longer a new experience for Aveline D'Almaine. Bonds seemed implicit to her captivities. Yet, in emerging from sleep there were unfailingly those moments of incomprehension that some portions of herself failed to respond to her command. It was so now. She stretched luxuriantly in the heat of the sun and sought to bring her hands to arrange her hair, but they would not come, disobediently they remained behind her back. With her eyes still closed against a new captivity she twisted and pulled until the cords hurt, then abandoned her arms as lost. It was nothing new. Experimentally, she tried her legs.

When her ankle snubbed against its tether she reluctantly opened her eyes to a fresh captivity and sat up.

"Good afternoon, fair maid."

It was one more outrageous adjustment to have to make. Brother Anselm was gone, Miles Hardwin had taken his place. That her heart sang in thankfulness for the exchange was something she must not betray. Instinctively her arms heaved against the cords upon her wrists.

"Want to cover your breasts, love?" Miles inquired solicitously.

Aveline blushed. Naked before this man she would have no secrets. He was too well versed in feminine reactions. He would read her mind as he read her muscular responses. She made no answer, let him divulge her fate! She contented herself with an indignant glare.

"An idyll among the trees, poppet. Me thought a pleasant change for thee."

She kept her silence, but ostentatiously jerked her foot against its tether and wriggled her body against her tied wrists, then roved her gaze across the woodland scent. "Need to pee, love?"

He was impossible and beyond the pale. Why, oh why, were girls never angry with him, even she!

"I might let you loose if you asked me nicely."

Her interest was instant, as was her unthinking response: "Please, kind sir, release me?" She simulated a winning grin.

"You're up to mischief, y'know."

Aveline tossed her head haughtily. "It was your offer. I accepted it. I suppose you want me to beg?"

Miles untied her. He contrived it with injured reproach. Then sat back and amusedly watched his captive cope with freedom.

Aveline was aware of the incongruity of feeling strange because she was without restraint. She had been chained or bound for so long that the freedom of her limbs had become an abstract improbability. Keeping a wary eye on Miles Hardwin she massaged her rope burns and inquired:

"I hope you'll have the decency to give me something to wear."

Miles shrugged. "May be a few pieces in the hut. You'll get 'em by good behavior."

"You mean if I crawl?"

"Suit yourself. Don't you have a job to do?"

She blushed again. He was insufferable. But he was also right. Tartly, she asked: "Am I to be trusted?"

"Run along," he told her laughingly. "Before I change my mind."

Aveline went. Her freedom felt like floating on a cloud. Her blood raced with an excitement she could not quench. She chose a bush some forty paces distant and sought its privacy. When its purpose had been served she leaped into the trees and ran.

Her flight was instinctive. She knew that if she stopped to weigh pros and cons she might meekly walk back to her new master. But she was intoxicated by her freedom. Hope and a longing for Plinlymon overrode judgement. Using such shelter as she found she could remain out of Miles' sight for long enough to gain a lead, somewhere she might find a hiding place for time enough that he would lose contact. The naked fugitive put every ounce of her courage and her strength into her speeding feet. It was heaven to be free. Her heart soared.

By the time Aveline's breathing was becoming laboured and her alert ear had failed to detect sound of pursuit, she was forced to recognize an unexpected and aggravating disappointment. That Miles should simply let her escape piqued her feminine sense of what was proper. She wanted to best him in a battle of wits and flying feet, not be carelessly relinquished without concern. It was borne upon her also that she had no idea in which direction she fled.

The little path was a relief. Faint as it was, it would double speed and render it noiseless. Thankfully, she took fresh heart. It was not until she had run fifty paces that she became aware of footsteps other than her own. From out of nowhere they were suddenly close.

"Been waiting for you on the path," Miles said comfortably. "Guessed you'd come this way."

She longed to beat and strike at his cocksure masculinity, but instead redoubled her efforts. She had nothing to lose now.

"The exercise will do you good. I hear old Gabelot kept you in a cage." Miles' voice betrayed no breathlessness. He spoke as though they were standing still.

"Nothing like a good run to get the blood going." Aveline could have screamed in frustration. He was playing with her, keeping a few paces to the rear with effortless ease.

"Of course, I wouldn't call this being a really good girl, y'know."

It was useless, humiliating, demeaning. She was being made a fool of. Furiously she stopped running and turned to face the man she could not best. She was close to tears.

"Here, have a good cry, love." Miles handed her a slip of cambric.

Aveline stamped in fury, but her bare foot landed on a pebble so that the effect was less than she desired. She threw the small square of fabric back at his smile.

"You're a brute." She flung the words at him between sobs, then wept in earnest. He returned the handkerchief to her and sat against a tree while she expended her surfeit of emotions.

When the storm had subsided into indignant and accusing sniffs he offered casually, "There'll be a penalty, y'know."

"I'm sure there will be." She made her voice frosty. "Wouldn't be right to encourage escapes, would it now!"

"I suppose not."

Aveline did her best to sound distant and unconcerned. "A good flogging, or do you have a dungeon around somewhere?"

"Sorry, love, you'll have to be content with the flogging. Bit short of dungeons out here."

She caught his eye and had to stifle an impulse to laugh-not because she felt freed of the threat of punishment, but because he had that effect upon a girl. She felt certain that innumerable maidens had approached the first stroke of his whip in merriment.

"Well?" Aveline looked at Miles and then up the path. "What am I supposed to do now? Run again so you can catch me?"

"Let's walk slowly back to the hut."

"Where, no doubt, I'll get my flogging?"

Miles grinned at her spirit. "We'll do that after you've broken your fast."

"I'm not hungry."

"You will be by the time we get there."

She was hungry now, but would not say so. She sniffed disdainfully and asked coldly, "Do I ... just walk? Or do you want to hold on to a bit of me---so I can't run?"

"Damned unchivalrous not to hold on to something, eh!"

Miles languidly got to his feet and grasped her arm above the elbow. "How's that, poppet? Feel safe?"

She could not tell him she was melting inside, that her world had vanished save for his hand that scorched her with a flame she wanted never to be extinguished. She tugged fretfully at her prisoned member and, with her cheeks mounting a rising pink, marched beside him back to whatever fate he planned for her.

"I suppose it's useless to ask you to take me back to Plinlymon?"

"Quite useless, love. I know a good thing when I've got her."

"After you've ... you've ... done what you want with me, will you take me then?"

"I don't know. And stop nagging. Females always want something."

"'Tis no fault of ours men govern us."

"You love it. You little darlings are all hypocrites."

"You actually suppose I'll love being flogged when we get back?"

"That's not until we've broken bread," he chided. "And don't call it flogging. I'm only going to whip your bottom." Aveline knew relief, and was again angry with her own responses. To have to be thankful that it was only her bottom to be whipped! Her world was upside down. The only reality was the wonderfully strong male hand upon her arm.

"Are you going to keep me tied all the time?" she asked with a genuine curiosity. Being constantly bound was something to be concerned about.

"Silly question, eh?" Miles shook her arm and grinned down at her earnest face. "I mean, after this little escapade?"

"That was your fault. You wanted me to run so you'd have the fun of catching me. I should have had more sense. You won't tempt me again."

"All right, no more temptation," he agreed equably. "I'll keep you tied tight. Any particular way you favour?"

She gave him another feminine sniff of disapproval. "Well, if you have to tie me, I suppose the most practical way is my hands behind my back," she acknowledged slowly. "But please, oh please, don't tie my elbows. Everybody ties my elbows and it's awful."

"Damned effective."

"I suppose so-if you want a girl in tears."

"Makes your tits stick out."

"That's all men think about, isn't it? A girl's breasts and down between her legs."

"Nice bits and pieces, love. But I do have other interests, y'know. How about whipping your bottom and that other little exercise we've both been politely silent about?"

Aveline knew what he meant. It had been in the back of' her mind from the moment she had awakened to find herself his captive. The hated word was now hovering. "I suppose I can't stop you doing it to me," she admitted. "But do you have to?"

"That's a silly question. And what are you talking about anyway?"

"You know."

"Mayhap I don't. Tell me."

"Don't be unkind. I don't want to say it-or talk about it."

"You must, love. It's an order."

"Very well then." Aveline braced herself as though for shock. "Please don't fuck me."

Miles was vastly amused by her distaste for the graphic word. "You don't expect me not to?"

"I suppose not." Her admission was grudging. "You're actually longing for me to do it to you."

His male conceit and the fact he spoke the truth was more than she could bear. She turned into a fury of arms and legs and teeth seeking escape from masculine complacency. She managed a few trifling wounds before being subdued by overwhelming strength. When she pantingly surrendered he shook her admonishingly by her captive arm and threatened, "I'd fuck you now, you haughty little snippet, but remember: the whip comes first. And what's more, you're going to ask me for it."

Aveline made the rest of their journey in a haughty silence aided by the fact she was sadly out of breath. Her mind was full of visions. She wished they did not excite her, but they did. The hand on her arm was warmly comforting.

They ate outside the hut, but within it were the things Miles had thoughtfully provided for their planned idyll. Some of them his captive eyed with joy, others with a trembling distaste. Seated with her master on the grass she ate hungrily, disproving her denial of appetite. She could well believe that with Miles she would always be in the wrong.

He had once again knotted the rope upon her ankle. She dared not touch the knots. He had warned her of punishment if she did. It was a strange and tantalizing bond.

About twenty feet of rope trailed away across the grass, a tether tied to nothing.

"Next time you run I'll pull on the rope and you'll have the finest tumble of your life," Miles promised genially.

It was as demeaning and demoralizing as it was meant to be. Wherever Aveline went or whatever she did the rope followed her like a snake slithering in the grass, its small weight on her ankle magnified into a hundredweight of shame. It made her feel like a slave. With the last mouthfuls of their meal Miles approached the inevitable in his own insouciant way.

"Nice willow bush over there."

Aveline could see the bush, but no significance. "Willow's much the best. You can have the job of cutting and trimming them."

She guessed! The time had come, and it was to be done to her in ways most shameful. She looked at Miles and pleaded, "Please don't make me do that."

"Why not, love? It's you they'll be used on."

"I know that," she squirmed unhappily. "But please don't make me cut the switches with which I'm to be beaten. It's ... it's ... oh, it's too ... too-I don't want to."

"Too proud? Naughty, naughty!"

"You've only thought of it to humiliate me."

"Methinks there's naught wrong with that. Ye need a little."

"I'm naked ... and tethered. Isn't that enough?"

"You're so used to being naked ye scarce notice it, love. As for the tether, 'tis a mere nothing for the nonce."

She flashed at him apprehensively: "You mean you're going to tie me again?"

"I doubt you'd stand still while I wear out the switches on that pretty hide."

Aveline had a vision of herself writhing and contorting on the grass, and knew defeat. A girl actually needed to be tied if she was to be whipped. Perhaps she would wish to be. "How will you tie me?" she asked dismally.

"To a tree. Handy things, trees."

"Aren't you ashamed? I'm only a girl. You're so strong, there's no victory in subduing me."

"I can't be shamed, poppet. Other damsels, at about this same juncture, have tried. I'm heartlessly immune to chivalry."

"This business of whipping girls," she eyed him, puzzled. "Do you always contrive a justification the way you've done with me-I mean letting me try to escape?"

"I think you're just delaying the evil moment, love, but I don't mind, you're too delicious. The answer's 'no'. If there's a good reason, I'm grateful. I feel a glow of virtue in striping a guilty rump. But if there's no motive beyond mine own pleasure I enjoy it just as much."

"You enjoy inflicting pain."

"Only on pretty girls, poppet. It warms us both for joys to come."

Aveline was lost. It was one more maze of feeling she would no doubt be forced to explore. Miles' boyish enthusiasm was infectious; there was excitement in her fear. "Are you going to whip your wife when you get one?"

"Of course, love. Shame to deny the poor girl. And now, the matter of those switches?"

"What happens to me if I refuse?"

"I intend to wear out five of them on thy pert rump. If I have to cut them myself I'll make it ten."

Aveline sighed hopelessly. She was trapped. There was no escape from this happy man or what he intended to do to her. Again she glimpsed how easily a girl could become reconciled to his erotic cruelty and casual captivity. When there was no escape what else was there but acceptance! Yet to meekly go and prepare the withes for her own whipping was something from which she shrank with all her pride.

"I know little of the whip, save that once with the Abbot," she said hesitantly. "He hurt me too terribly to speak of." She looked at Miles pleadingly. "This first time ... with us. For this once, please don't make me cut the willow switches?"

"Cut them, Aveline. Now!"

Aveline knew herself grateful for the sharp command. She needed it. Unconsciously she had provoked it to absolve herself from the shame of servility. Beneath its compulsion she would be no kitchen wench cutting the switches with which her bottom would be flayed-some small pride might survive the shameful task. The realisation was one more complexity she barely understood. She wondered if Miles understood. She had little doubt he did. Cheeks burning, she picked up the knife he had provided and went to the willow he had chosen. Behind her the rope tether trailed upon the grass.

The naked girl deemed it the strangest work she had ever done. She selected and cut withes of the size and length he had described. She peeled and trimmed them with much care. Wryly she conceded that each imperfection she left upon their surface would likely leave a corresponding mark upon herself. It was unbelievable but it was true.

"I hope they please thee, Miles Hardwin."

She knew her voice not without bitterness as she proffered the five examples of her work and threw the knife back where she had found it. Looking at the switches, she shivered. They were cruel.

"Ye do good work, girl. I'll have you cut more another time," Miles approved jovially. "Now, tell me their use."

"For you to whip my bottom."

"Well-l-l-l-l!" His long drawn out exclamation was in genuine surprise. "We are coming along nicely, aren't we! I thought I'd have to drag that out of you by force."

"It's what you wanted!" she flung at him. "So I gave it." She glared her humiliation. "Anything else I can do for you?"

He was enraptured by her angry shame. "Why, yes indeed, love. Ask me nicely to switch your bottom."

How good it would be to turn and run! Or to strike him. Or to spit in his face. To, in some way, touch that adorable grin! Aveline's breasts heaved with more emotions than she could comfortably contain, but she had already voiced acceptance of what was about to be done to her. Why invite anything worse because of pique! She tried hard to keep her voice steady.

"Please, Miles, use these five switches to whip my bottom."

She was tense, alert for signs. His face was inscrutable. He wanted more, more, more! She gave it!

"I want you to whip me."

His sigh encompassed all the beneficence in the world. He looked at the anxious nudity in adoration of its excellence. "You did that remarkably well, poppet," he conceded, restraining his praise.

"Thank you, Miles." She was now only waiting.

"Undo the rope on your ankle. Then fetch me the shorter lengths. You know where they are."

Aveline knew. She obeyed as in a dream. Unable to believe in what she had become, or in what she did. Handing him the ropes with which she would be bound, their eyes met and held. There passed between them an understanding terrible and frightening, yet to be treasured. Miles pointed to a tree. "That one."

She walked to it and looked at him inquiringly. Absurdly the thought crossed her mind that she had never been thus tied or thus whipped or been subject to the purpose gripping them now.

"A hand on each side of the trunk-shoulder level." Aveline obeyed. The trunk was slender enough, but no struggle she could exert would bend it. It would hold her as securely as a century old monarch of the forest. She watched with a strangely detached interest as Miles tied her wrists with band after band of rope so that she would have no choice but to stand as she now was, at arm's length exposed and positioned well for what was to be done to her.

"Want your feet tied too, love?"

Only Miles would ask a girl such a question. She sensed his enjoyment of her quandary to answer it, and if so what to say. "Why ask me that?" she demanded. "I don't know enough of these things to tell what I want."

"If I tie your ankles you can't kick," he explained helpfully. "Some girls like to kick, it eases their feelings and gives the little dears something to do while they're being whipped. On the other hand, it's damned undignified, and if you kick wide enough the willow's apt to sneak in where you least want it. Matter of temperament, I suppose."

"I'm tied enough," Aveline said primly. "No more, thanks."

Miles was in his element. She was a perfect subject. "'There's also the matter of a gag," he said blandly.

Aveline tensed. Thought of a gag in her mouth terrified. She looked at her smiling tormentor in mute question. "Much the same proposition, really," he continued kindly. "Most girls like to scream. They tell me it helps. On the other hand, the pretty maidens do have a tendency to say and ask things they're a bit embarrassed about afterwards."

"Like what?"

"Usually they ask me to fuck them quick and stop the whip."

Aveline flushed. She should have known better than to ask the question. She made her voice severe, "And what do you do?"

"Keep right on whipping them, of course." He sounded surprised at her obtuseness. "I've already explained: your fuck comes after."

"I don't want to be gagged. I think it's horrible."

"Ever been gagged?"

"Of course not! Don't be silly."

"Whoa, love! Who's silly?"

More shame. She would have to apologize. Aveline twisted uselessly at the wrist ropes. "I'm sorry, Miles," she said quietly, striving to keep the loathing from her voice. She had never felt more abject.

"So you're going to scream?"

"How do I know! I expect I will. What you're doing to me is all new. I've no experience. But I'm frightened of being gagged. I don't know why, I just am."

"Want me to start now, poppet?"

"Oh, Miles!" Her exclamation was one she could not control. He was deliberately taxing her patience and compelling her to recognize what she was to him. "Must you! Must you shame me?"

"Of course! We both enjoy the suspense. Come now, I'm waiting for your answer. Don't be backward."

The helpless girl took a deep breath. She needed it. She was helpless and already deep in shame. What mattered a bit more! As casually as she could contrive, she requested: "Please start whipping my bottom."

"Good girl! Stick it out a bit. You can."

She discovered that she could. It surprised her. It meant that tied as she was, she would probably contort shamefully under pain. She protruded her bottom as far as she was able."

The willow had a pain all its own, a very personal agony upon her flesh as though the fact she had cut and trimmed it herself gave it a special right. It scalded her horribly, but she stood still and she did not scream while each of her nerves picked up the awful message. She saw it as a silly pride, but she longed to make a stoic stand before this man who was like no other she had known. She would scream and stamp her feet beneath the Abbot's lash, but not here. Oh, please, she prayed, not here! She looked back across a captive shoulder, her eyes wide in supplication. But she said no word. Miles smiled and bestowed an approving nod. He then struck her again.

It was different from the pillory. There the blows had come without warning, and from a hand unseen. But here tied to the tree she could, if she so desired, look back and see the arm and the willow that would wound her. Only the sight of impact itself was denied. She beheld it now in fascinated disbelief until the stroke was slicing the air in its swift passage to her flesh. But then unable to bear more she turned back to the tree to which she was bound as though she found in the slender trunk a friend and comforter in stress.

Aveline was not stoic. True, the willows were actually less awful than the Abbot's thong, but there were more of them. To wear out five of them upon her skin meant an eventual agony she viewed with dread. As the second and third cuts found her she whimpered and began to twist her hips in motions she could not control.

When the first switch shredded and was cast aside there came a brief pause while number two was selected. The whipped girl watched the exchange over a bare shoulder; she was panting and wondering, terribly bewildered by this punishment from a man she longed most ardently to like. Miles' voice took her back into reality.

"You're quite superb, y'know. You should be whipped daily."

The tribute was small solace to a naked girl with a bottom that seemed on fire. Aveline dealt with it with what she hoped was sweet reason.

"But how can I be whipped daily! To be punished like this each day would kill me."

"It wouldn't, love, even though it may feel like it. Ismay cut me thirty switches in a week once."

Tied to the tree as she was, it was difficult to twist to look at the man whose pleasure was her pain. She used his name with a deeper feeling than she had used yet. "Miles, please don't whip me any more. I beg of you."

He was quite unpredictable. Carrying the switch, he, moved close and ordered: "Open your legs."

Her terrified exclamation was involuntary. "Oh, Miles! Oh, no ... no, don't whip me there. Oh, please ... Isn't there enough other-"

His amused chuckle cut her short. "Don't be silly, love. Open those pretty legs."

Crestfallen and hesitant, Aveline obeyed. She was like a child in his hands, totally at his mercy, uncertain that mercy was a part of him. The ropes on her wrists made her his plaything. She gasped and bit her lip as he cupped her sex and played with it. When he lifted his hand she saw it was wet with her secretions. She longed to die of shame.

"And you talk of dying, poppet. That sweet little slit of yours adores the whip."

"It's not the whip, it's you!"

Aveline had no sooner uttered the words than she would have given everything to recall them. She flamed scarlet at his delighted laughter. Tugging at her bound hands in mortification, she exclaimed in deep chagrin, "I didn't mean what you're thinking."

"What am I thinking, love?"

"That I get wet like that because you've whipped me-like Ismay."

"All girls are like Ismay, sweets."

"I think it's awful. I mean, it's all your fault."

"What's my fault?"

"Everything! Look at me tied like this-and whipped. If I get the way ... the way you discovered ... it has to be your fault. It's certainly not mine."

"Who's talking about faults, poppet! You're perfect."

"You didn't need to do that-with your hands!"

"It's hard to find out-the other way, when you're tied to a tree."

"You don't have to find out at all."

"Oh, but I do, sweets! Bakers open oven doors to make sure the bread's on the rise."

Aveline sniffed in dudgeon and dismay. Whatever the cause of her moist sex she was betrayed-betrayed by her own plight in being female. Miles would read whatever conclusion he desired from the condition between her legs. Her real dismay came from her realisation she herself was unsure of what or whom to blame. She feared herself wanton. "Well, I hope you're enjoying yourself," she said in indignant hauteur.

"Oh, I am indeed, poppet. Ready for the next switch?"

"Miles, I asked you not to whip me any more. I ask you again ... Please!"

"You're really enjoying this whole adventure, y'know!"

"I'm not! Oh, you're ... you're-!"

"Adorable, lovable, sweet, kind?" Miles offered helpfully.

"Words like that when you're torturing me!" Aveline was aghast with feminine fury, a fury she was finding it hard to sustain against an undeniably erotic fire within her loins and a wish that Miles would kiss her and stop talking nonsense. By some strange magic the acute agonies the frayed switch had worked upon her bottom had disappeared.

Miles pulled her head back hard by tugging at her hair, then bent and kissed her ready mouth with a fine, masculine competence. It was as though he had read her mind-perhaps he had! His lips left her breathless and disorganised. "A small tribute to a red, round rump," he explained happily.

Aveline was lost! She knew herself lost and added to the long list of this male creature's triumphs. She did not care. But she wanted her hands, a compelling urgency demanded she clasp them around his neck. "Untie me," she gasped. "Oh, Miles, set me free!"

"You wish to be fucked, poppet?"

Aveline absorbed his solicitous query without being too badly disillusioned. It was typical Miles Hardwin and she'd have to put up with it. But as to replying in the affirmative she was too bewildered by the demands of her body and the countering dictates of her mind to do more than cling to the safety of integrity. "Of course I don't," she said with fine vexation. "And I wish you'd stop using that beastly word."

"What word would you like, sweets?"

"We don't need a word. Leave it alone! Oh, Miles! Please let me loose?"

"Well, beloved, if we don't fuck, we whip."

Only Miles could have made the outrageous premise sound undeniable. Only he could have made it seems as though the choice was hers. Aveline feared to answer him with sulky silence, but could devise no devastating retort. She chose martyrdom.

"I am not your beloved, and we don't do that horrible thing you said. Since it gives you so much pleasure and you don't even care about my feelings, you might as well continue whipping me." To give emphasis to her disdain she stuck out her bottom at him in petulant provocation.

Miles struck it with cruelty and precision. His naked victim yelped and writhed. Aveline was certain this second switch was worse than the first-or did a girl so easily forget! The pain was quite unbearable although she was quite obviously bearing it. When the next stroke lapped the first it was only feminine logic that since Miles would fuck her at the end of the fifth switch whether she liked it or not, she might as well accept the inevitable now with good grace and save the remaining switches for another day. She whimpered in the desolation of decision when another shrewd cut found her twisting tenderness. "Oh, stop!" she pleaded desperately. "Miles, stop it!"

"Something on your mind, poppet?"

How could she tell him! How does a girl say such a thing! All the precepts of her childhood fought for purity. "You're doing nicely, y'know. Pity you can't see yourself."

"Oh, Miles, it's awful. I can't stand it."

"Is that all you stopped me for? We discussed it before. I'll work up on your back for a change if you'd like me to." He sounded genuinely concerned for her preference. "But I do believe your bottom's much the best place for these willows. Resilient, y'know."

"Please untie me. I ... I want you to."

"Trying to tell me something?"

"I suppose so ... Oh, yes! You don't help me. Oh why!"

"You'd like to be fucked now, poppet. I can tell the signs."

"You're outrageous! I ... I-oh, I just won't!" She tried to turn and face him. "You may as well go on whipping me."

As the second switch wore down her courage and itself, Aveline stood helplessly and fumed, both at what was being done to her tied nudity and her inability to stop it. Rectitude born of early guidance seemed likely to provide her with a flayed bottom without profit. To be ravished also because of her failure to speak a word was an injustice that caused her to twist angrily at the ropes binding her wrists to the tree even though she knew the effort painful and useless. When Miles cast aside number two and picked up number three the smarting girl could bear her plight no longer.

"Please, Miles, not any more. I'll behave."

Toying with the new willow withe, he moved to where she could more easily see him. "Behave?" He cocked an enquiring eye. "How?"

Ashamed, she twisted irritably at her confinement. She knew he was teasing. "You know. I'll do what you want. You don't have to keep hitting me with those beastly switches."

He pretended to study her proposition. "But, sweetheart, I'm switching your bottom for the good of your soul and my own enjoyment. Can't very well bargain about it, can we?"

Aveline stamped a bare foot in exasperation. "You're trying to make me say that awful word, and I won't say it, I won't! Oh, why must you be so...."

"Helpful, considerate, affectionate...." Miles allowed the outrageous questions to hover around the naked girl tugging in vexation at her bound wrists. His smile was beneficent. "Or do you just want to ask me to fuck you?"

"Yes."

For the tied girl, her single uncompromising word was enough. Surely Miles could be satisfied with such a surrender! But supposing he was not! Supposing he intended to extract every ounce of shame she could provide! She bleakly considered the remaining three willow switches to be shredded on her person. Having already borne the infliction of two of them she grudgingly conceded their innocence as compared to the Abbot Gabelot's whip. They inflamed scaldingly and imparted a momentary hurt most hard to bear; but bear them she could and would rather than demean herself beyond conscience. She gazed at her tormentor appealingly.

"Yes, what, beloved?"

"That thing you said. I'll do it. Oh, Miles, don't tease me so!"

"You are offering me your virtue, dear girl?"

"I ... I suppose so ... yes."

"But I'm going to take it after the fifth switch anyway."

"I know that, and I don't mind." She wished she could suppress the rising tide of pink to her cheeks. "If we're going to do that together, must you ... must you-Oh, please, don't whip me any more! It hurts terribly ... terribly!"

"You're loving every stroke."

"I'm not! I'm not!"

Even as she made the fervid declaration she doubted its truth. Ismay and the girls had been right. Miles and his willows possessed a magic a girl was powerless against. It was shaming and humbling, but it was also wicked and exciting. Aveline wondered what her feelings would be at this moment if she had not been raped by the first men who had taken from her far more than a pierced hymen. She supposed it wrong to feel so little fear of Miles, but she could not help it.

Miles kissed her. It was a long kiss during which his roving fingers reduced her utterly. She longed for her tied hands but compensated for them with willing lips. If she was wanton then she was wanton. She did not care. "One more switch; love?"

"Yes, oh yes!" She would have agreed to anything. "Stick your bottom out and writhe nicely."

"Of course. Oh, Miles!"

Aveline wantonly protruded her rear. The act had become on a par with offering her lips to be kissed. The switch licked at her instantly, but it was not until it had bit into her bottom several times that the full bitterness of its pain competed with the panting eroticism of her awareness of Miles the Male. Even when the stinging waves of smarting distress went on and on beyond an easy tolerance, she continued to hold her provocative pose in which her pert cheeks seemed to invite the blows they wanted not at all. Nor did she forget her Master's demand that she writhe. It was an easy command to obey. In a palpitating welter of emotions she contrived to chafe her tied wrists with her lascivious motions for the delectation of he who whipped her. When the third willow was split and thrown away Aveline's heart was thumping in a paean of triumph.

She watched him strip. He was magnificent! Here was strength and maleness enough for a dozen girls! As he cast aside his clothes in leisurely motions of assured purpose he met her eyes and smiled his promise, mocking her eagerness and her longing that she must await his pleasure. When the moment came it was in no ways such as she had supposed.

It was typical of him, of course, that he should cast away her moorings and embark her on a journey that, at first, filled her with nothing but dismay. She was very innocent and little versed in love. When Miles inserted his muscularity beneath her tied arm and between herself and the tree she failed to comprehend.

"My hands, Miles? My hands are tied to the tree."

It was as though she supposed he had forgotten the manner in which she was bound. It was imperative he be reminded. How could she love him without her hands! She was about to utter other gentle hints of her helplessness when she saw the quiet smile upon his face and felt his arms tighten as he lifted her effortlessly. When she was impaled and held secure she forgot her bonds, forgot all else save wonderment and worship. Her legs needed but small guidance to their appointed place, her breasts were crushed against his chest, her lips glued to his. That his fingers were splayed out across the burning flesh of her buttocks, a hand beneath each cheek, seemed the most natural clasp of all. The agony of her whipped skin transmuted to a flame of bliss. Aveline D'Almaine found her Master and her love in explosion after explosion of ardent fire. The five men of long ago were forgotten as was all else.

When he took his clothes and went away, Aveline knew it right that she be left limp and breathless and still tied to her tree. Miles was her lord, she was but a girl who had thought to best him, she must be taught her lesson. Her Master might seek the slumber of repletion while she stood out a lonely vigil in helpless homage to her strictured wrists. She eyed the bands of rope longingly but had long since proved her inability to free herself. Wryly, she conceded she no longer wanted to. If Miles wanted his latest conquest safely tied to a tree she was content enough to be so held.

In happy wonderment she relived the heat and wonder of their coupling. She felt certain no other girl had ever known such glory. She was still in this maze of fervid re-enactment when a hand clasped her mouth and a familiar voice commanded: "Quiet, M'Lady, not a sound."

It was Adam Godsoule.

CHAPTER SEVEN -- THE RAZOR'S EDGE

The gag was a torment. Not so much for what it was, but because it prevented her from speech and the questions demandingly on her tongue. Yet Aveline bore Adam Godsoule no malice for the wet wad of cloth that filled her cheeks. Certain it was that to take her silently while Miles slept she must be robbed of speech. Adam had performed the task with the same competence he displayed in binding her upon the horse. His had been the only words spoken, and they were hushed.

"I am sorry, M'Lady, but I needs must."

The gag had followed, and the binding of her feet. She knew he would take no chances with her, just as she surely knew that, given an opportunity, she would run and scream and seek her Master's arms. She was sick with dismay at what was being done to her. Godsoule was but doing his duty, though for her his duty spelt disaster and a broken heart.

"'Tis best to bind thee so, M'Lady. 'Tis a way familiar." He had come prepared. Aveline eyed the extra horse and Rennet's ringed girth with distaste. Once fastened to it she would never escape its shaming exhibition of her femaleness. She looked at Adam in mute appeal, shaking her head in negation.

"'Tis not as far this time, M'Lady. Forgive me for what I must do."

Aveline fought. But she was naked and a girl and her feet were tied: When her wrists were loosened from the tree she had a moment's hope. But Adam had come fully prepared, and his binding of her ankles robbed her of much of her defense as she was thrown upon the horse and her wrists tied down in the manner she knew all too well. Never once had she been able to touch the gag. When her ankles were freed so that they might be tied back down to the rings she did not even try to resist. It was too late, she was already helpless. Everything was too late, and hopeless. She felt only a total desolation as she lay along the horse's back and felt the ropes on wrists and ankles again and again until she became part of the animal itself, unable to move. As her mount was led into the trees she was vouchsafed a final glance at the tree and the discarded rope; beyond was the open door of the small hut wherein slept the man who had come to mean more to her than life itself. Her cry of anguish to him was silent behind the gag.

To be splayed open and exposed was as bad as the bonds that held her thus. Aveline could have wept in shame before the grave, regretful eyes of her captor. But frustration, anger, and fear took her beyond tears. She was envisioning a world without Miles, a world without love. She could well imagine the reception to which she was being conveyed. The Abbot would be ready with his tortures and his insincerities. The best she could hope for was the pillory and the cage. She would most certainly be whipped. She was sure no one would believe her guiltless. She was, herself, uncertain of innocence. Suppose Adam could perceive telltale evidence between her legs!

The bound girl judged it a couple of miles before Adam reached down and plucked the gag from betwixt her lips. She fought back a useless scream and looked up at the unsmiling face in anxious query.

"Where does't ye take me, Adam?"

"Back from where ye fled, M'Lady. I serve M'Lord Malenfant."

"I wish ye served me, Adam. Is M'Lord wroth?"

She was rewarded with a faint smile. "The Baron Malenfant has a great love for he who took ye, madam. He will bear no malice. 'Tis hard to be angry with Miles Hardwin. This be but one more of his escapades. Knowing him, I was certain where to search."

"I suppose I'll be whipped because of this?"

"I do not know, M'Lady."

"That means I will be. Doubtless the Abbot is most angry?"

"He is indeed, as is one brother Anselm."

"Will the Baron punish me himself this time?"

"Ye have done naught to be punished for, M'Lady."

"No one will believe that, you know they won't. What awaits me, a dungeon and heavy chains?"

Again the faint smile. "I cannot tell what the Convent of Saint Agnes holds for thee. Mayhap they have a dungeon but ye should not be put in it."

Shock tugged at her ropes. Aveline turned frantic eyes to the man riding beside her. "Oh, Adam! To make me a nun?"

"Nay, M'Lady, nay. They can make no nun of thee unless ye seek the vows."

"If they whip me enough I may seek them."

"'Tis no wise as ye think. Since the Abbot let ye slip through his fingers, the Abbess Cissota petitioned Milord for thy custody and got it. She expects to bring thee to his bed with greater felicity than did Gabelot. I could wish, M'Lady, ye were less stubborn."

"And bear brats instead of stripes!"

Adam flushed and fell silent. She feared she had offended him. She cried out in desolation: "Oh, Adam, deliver me not to all these schemes and cruelties. Set me free. Say ye found me not."

"I cannot do that, M'Lady. Ye know I cannot."

"But what will become of me, Adam, if I do not yield?"

"Perhaps ye may find a friend in the Abbess. She is said to possess humour. I hear she finds a piquancy in besting Gabelot and becoming thy keeper."

"All they talked of when I was in the Abbot's cage was of torture and the whip. I think it hurts me no less if she be laughing."

Aveline's captor made a weary gesture of frustration. He spurred his horse into urgent speed. He knew he had no answers the bound girl would wish to hear. It was better not to utter any.

They rode in silence back to Broule.

Behind them Miles would be sleeping, unaware. Aveline wept. The Abbess of Saint Agnes was as much a connoisseur of the finer things of life as was her conferee, the Abbot of Aubyn. Entering the room in which Aveline D'Almaine hung naked by her thumbs, she paused in ecstatic wonder at the pure beauty of the stretched nudity that was, as yet, unaware of her presence. Its head had fallen forward in weariness and it moved no whit save for the audible respirations of agony.

The Abbess had been present and had directed the noosing of the slender thumbs and the hoisting of the pleading girl to where she now hung with her feet well above the floor. There had been motion enough then as the full enormity of what had been done to her invaded the consciousness of the maiden whose struggles had proved futile against the strong hands of the good sisters who carried out their Mother Superior's instructions in the firm conviction of ultimate good to the unwilling recipient of benevolence. But now the motion was gone. Aveline had discovered it best to simply hang. Anything she did hurt, and she had pain enow'. She had become limp and pathetically helpless. In doing so she was unaware of beauty.

Cissota knew the deep satisfaction of possession. This exquisite girl had become her own. M'Lady Aveline D'Almaine would never again know freedom, there would be a chain on her always. Girls had escaped often enough from St. Agnes. The Abbess no longer took chances with even the most docile of her charges, a stout chain or length of cord was far better than pursuits and apologies. If bondage made the little dears more beautiful it was an added bonus. She chuckled inwardly at thought of Gabelot's loss, the old fool would be fuming. Well, let him fume! She'd allow him only a partial participation in the taming of this new treasure.

The Abbess took note of the faint whip marks on the ivory back and the livid evidence of Miles' willows on the curved bottom. At the latter she smiled in approval. She understood Miles Hardwin and bore him no ill will for his use of a renewable resource. She did a swift mental computation of the number of times this lovely girl could be whipped now before her skin must be given time to heal and other more subtle ways of inflicting pain resorted to. The Abbess sighed in happiness.

The suspended nakedness stirred quiveringly. Aveline had become aware of a presence. The tired head raised itself alert. "Please, oh please let me down." She tried to turn but forbore because of pain. Her voice was husky. "I beg of you ... the pain is too great!"

"Thou art most beautiful, child."

Cissota moved forward and found the chair provided for such occasions. Seating herself comfortably she surveyed her handiwork with a glowing approval that did nothing to bolster Aveline's fading store of courage. The girl's next words sent a fire flaming through mature loins.

"What have I done? Oh, please, tell me how I have sinned to deserve this ... this!"

"'Tis but a mild correction, child, to help thee to humility. I did not order thee scourged as well."

"'Tis passing awful. I have never known such. Please, Reverend Mother, please help me."

"How would'st have me help thee, Aveline?"

"To place my feet upon the floor. Oh, please, punish me in other ways than this."

"They shall come, girl, in their own time."

Aveline moaned in a hopeless abandonment of pride. "Let me do something ... Is there naught I can say or offer?"

"None, child. But take heart that ye give me much pleasure."

"What is to become of me, Reverend Mother?"

"Thou shalt become mine own darling child, Aveline."

"I understand thee not. Oh, please, how long must I hang thus?"

"As long as it may please me, Aveline. Be chary of compliant, I like them not. They are like to earn thee stripes."

"Is there naught for me now in life but punishment?"

The eyes of the older woman sparkled. "I can promise thee pleasure too, dear child, but not today. I would fain tell thee of the loveliness of thy breasts; they are as none other. And thy cunt ... come, I must feel it."

The suspended girl widened her legs to admit the questing hand. She wanted no tussle. Her tortured and wracked shoulders demanded compliance. She hung passively while the female hands followed the same paths that male hands had explored the day before. How different they were! She longed for Miles with every fibre of her being. She supposed she would never see him again. No man save the Abbot would ever intrude within a convent wall, and she herself would never escape this place of women that was her prison. Aveline sensed within this woman whose hands were busy with her body a determination and a purpose to keep her captive. No doubt she would learn the motive soon enough!

It took several minutes of their strange communion for the play of the wise fingers to cause the tractioned girl to quicken her breathing and become aware of sensations that surely could have no part of being tortured! Aveline moved her head restlessly in an instinctive revolt against feminine hands encroaching on a prerogative she believed exclusively male. It should be Miles' fingers on her flesh, not those of the Abbess of St. Agnes! She moaned in manifold distress.

"'Tis good, child. Tell me 'tis good."

"No. You must not. You should not-"

"Ye prefer the whip, Aveline?"

"No. Oh, no! I'm sorry. Forgive me. I will obey."

"That's better. Hang quietly now while I rouse thy flesh."

What else could she do but hang! Aveline closed her eyes in shame, but the darkness divorced no part of her from the questing fingers. She found herself quivering in response to their knowledge.

"Tell me, child, is the pain of thy thumbs less?"

"Oh, please! I do not ... I do not know ... Ooooo!"

"A woman's hands are magic. Did'st not know?"

"No, oh no. Oh, set me free. I will obey you."

The Abbess smiled. How sweet was this child in her distress! How charmingly innocent. With the memory of Miles Hardwin excised from her girlish dreams she would become most malleable, an erotic slave to spur the pulse. With this choice tit-bit she'd show Gabelot a thing or two. T'would be pleasurable to watch his envy.

"Thy thumbs, child? They hurt thee not?"

"No, oh please! Ohhhh!"

The fingers stopped. Pain reclaimed the suspended girl, her thumbs screamed agony. Aveline's eyes beseeched the woman who had the power to set her free.

"Our noble Miles Hardwin, child? Tell me of him."

"He is ... he is very kind." Aveline sensed a trap.

"Did'st find joy in being fucked by him?"

The hated word! It dogged her everywhere. And how did a girl answer such a question! "Please, Reverend Mother, ask not such things of me," she pleaded brokenly.

"But he did fuck thee?"

"Yes."

"Tell me 'ont?"

The naked girl blushed and squirmed painfully. Her memory was vivid but she would never speak of it. "There is naught to tell, Reverend Mother." Her voice had become husky.

"It gave ye pleasure?"

"Yes."

"How many times, child?"

"Once."

"Oh, ho! Come, girl, does't expect me to believe that?"

"'Tis true, Reverend Mother. He had me but a little while."

"Long enough to mark thy pretty arse. Tell me of that."

Aveline glimpsed motives. The Abbess was enjoying the interrogation. The helpless girl deemed words less painful than stripes. "He made me cut and trim willow switches with which to beat me."

"A rare one is Miles! I'll wager thy cunt flowed richly in thy task?"

"Yes, madam."

"Did'st stand for thy beating or did our noble Hardwin fasten thee?"

"He tied my wrists to a tree, Revered Mother."

The Abbess chortled approval. "So thou had'st no choice but to stand and get thy bottom sliced?"

"Yes, Reverend Mother, I stood and was whipped."

"And longed to be fucked I, suppose?"

"Please, madam, we should not be talking thus. That word...."

"Oh, ho, my dear! 'Tis thee who orders me what to say? Perhaps a weight on each of thy pretty ankles would make thee less squeamish?"

"Forgive me ... Oh, please don't torture me more! 'Tis all so new to me, I know not how to speak."

"Stop thy maidenly nonsense and answer what I ask. An' ye find it hard, your thumbs will answer for thee. Come now, tell me, were thy loins on fire while he striped thee?"

"Afterwards, Reverend Mother. The pain was very great."

"Worse than ye suffer now?"

"'Twas most different."

"Would it pleasure thee to whip my bottom, child?"

The suggestion was so outrageous that the captive's mind refused to accept the absurd premise of a convent's Mother Superior having stripes placed on her seat by a mere girl. "You jest-oh, Reverend Mother, do not mock me so." Aveline looked up at her tied thumbs in an infinite longing to have done with the whole silly and agonizing business.

"Nay. 'Tis a pleasure I will allow thee in good time."

"But thou art a Mother of Holy Church!"

"And I have a cunt wherein a fire can burn." The Abbess laughed sardonically at her prisoner's consternation. In a voice cleansed of cynicism she reflected aloud. "We are a sorry lot, we nuns. We carry our hungry cunts back and forth to vespers and to mass, and there is none to assuage our need except each of us to the other, or mayhap old Gabelot when he can whip a bottom to spur his cock to stand."

It was sacrilege, a profaning of all the tortured girl had ever learned. She gazed at the Abbess Cissota in horror. "But, madam, I cannot believe-oh no, no, no!"

Whatever else Aveline might have said was cut short by a startling interruption. With considerable commotion a youngish girl of perhaps seventeen was hauled into view by a stern and irritated sister of the order who clutched a youthful ear with determined fingers that paid scant heed to clutching hands and pleading lips.

"What now, Sister Unity?" the Abbess demanded testily. " 'Tis Nest, Revered Mother. The little bitch refuses to be shaved."

Cissota turned forbidding eyes upon the whimpering girl. "Come, Nest, what nonsense have we this time?"

"I do not want to be a nun. I won't be shaved-I won't!" Nest was twisting painfully against the grip on her ear, her face was flushed with exertion and fear, her regard was hostile and rebellious. Her clothes were in disarray, they were not the habit of St. Agnes. Aveline noted the wide eyes and full lips. In different circumstances the girl would be a beauty.

"You will do as you are told."

"I won't, I won't! I want to go home."

To emphasize her feelings, Nest stamped heavily on Sister Unity's foot, but since her own was bare it made small impression and earned her only a vicious shaking of her captive ear that caused her to yelp in pain.

"You are a foolish girl. Do ye want the whip?"

"I've been whipped already. You're always whipping me."

"There are worse things than whips, child."

The delinquent's eyes had focused in dismay upon Aveline's suspended nudity. "What's she done?" Nest demanded belligerently. "You're cruel and wicked ... all of you." The Abbess ignored the outburst and spoke to Unity alone. "Take the little bitch back and I'll join ye. We'll teach her a lesson." She chuckled at her inspiration. "Might not be amiss to bring M'Lady here along too. Get thee gone, we'll follow."

To Aveline the box thrust beneath her feet was better than a throne, a boon ineffable. Standing on it, her thumbs cried out their gratitude and her wracked shoulders found surcease. She looked down thankfully at the woman who, by so small a gesture, had ended her torture.

"Thank you, Reverend Mother, oh thank you!"

"Humph! Sooner than I intended. But we've a mission. Mayhap ye'll find a profit. Loosen thyself and step down."

Aveline looked up at her still captive thumbs. They were noosed at each end of a bar to keep her arms spread. One could not reach the other. She was not free. "I cannot, Reverend Mother, I am still tied helpless."

"Serve ye right if I left thee there," Cissota said sourly. "But I suppose, if I must." She stood on the box and swiftly loosened the bands from the small tortured thumbs. "There, you're free."

For a moment the naked girl believed it worth the travail to know the beatitude of being given back her arms and to be able to massage the cruel red indentations of her thumbs. To be free of bonds, even for the briefest time, had become for her an experience in felicity. To step down from the box to the solidity of the floor was to pace into Paradise. Her first thought was natural enough.

"Reverend Mother, may I have clothing?"

The Abbess had been rummaging in a chest, she now held cord and was regarding her captive's efforts with amusement. "For what purpose, child?"

"'Tis but proper." Aveline felt inadequate and was eyeing the cord unhappily. "The girl, Nest, has clothes. I thought-"

"I want thee naked, girl," Cissota said with decision. "Ye've as much need of clothes as a cat of feathers. As for Nest, I'll bare that little baggage anon-or have her naked beneath a habit."

"But I am a girl-"

"Aye, so I notice." Cissota was once more enjoying herself. "There's them as one might wonder, but you're nay one of 'em. Come here so I can tie thy hands."

Instinctively, the naked girl's hands flew out of sight. "Please, Reverend Mother, do not tie me.. There is no need."

"Of course there's a need. Can't have girls running loose before they take their vows. Come, cross thy wrists at thy back. It takes but a moment."

An endless vista of bound limbs stretched before Aveline's apprehensive eyes. If only she could break this inevitable sequence of cords and ropes and leather bands. "I offer thee my word. I will be docile and obedient. I will not break it. Please...."

"Nonsense! I know what is meet. Come now, thy hands."

Aveline was not unduly disappointed. She had felt small hope. But she felt sure that in her captivity she must forever strive for a denied freedom, no chance need be too small. She shrugged and forced a smile. Turning before the unpredictable Abbess she crossed her wrists above her striated bottom and stood meekly while they were tightly and skillfully bound.

"Oh no, oh please-not that!"

The band of rope had circled her neck without warning. It drew snug, and from it a length trailed to the Abbess' hand as a leash. The naked girl loathed it instantly and protested its uselessness.

"I will not run. Don't leash me like a dog."

"Aye, ye will not run," Cissota said dourly. "Come, follow me."

The injunction was superfluous, the captive had no choice. Feeling once more shamed, her bare feet padded behind the energetic figure of the strange woman who now possessed her. When in the corridors they passed any of the sisters, her cheeks flamed anew. Nest stood in a corner of the room like a wild creature at bay. She gazed at them with both curiosity and fear. She was as much a contradiction in this bleak place as Aveline herself. She watched in silence while Aveline's tether was tied to a ring so that she must perforce stand as an audience of one, bound.

"Off with thy clothes, Nest."

"Nay, please strip me not again." Nest looked wildly around as though seeking escape.

The Abbess wasted no words. She went to a rack and selected a whip, the single leather thong of which was heavy with a promise of pain.

"Thy clothes, Nest. Off with 'em!"

"Art thou going to whip me?" Nest still had courage.

"An' if I were-'Tis no affair of thine."

"'Tis me who'll bear the pain. Why must I be naked?" Nest was sullenly yielding as little ground as possible.

"For the same reason the Lady Aveline D'Almaine here be naked. If 'tis good for her 'tis good for thee."

Nest's eyes widened at the title. She, looked at her bound companion in distress with fresh interest. Aveline bestowed a smile of encouragement, though to what she might encourage the fearful girl did not know.

"She did not choose it, nor do I," Nest argued.

Cissota sighed and held up the whip. "Ye have earned no stripes as yet, but hearken now. This lash be worse than any used on ye before. T'will leave far better marks on thy fair hide than those ye bear. Our Sister Unity will count to thirty slowly. Be ye not naked then, 'tis thirty stripes ye'll get-like it or not."

Aveline found it a strange tableau: pathetic, absurd, laughable and frightening. The count came like pronouncements of doom from the thin lips. Nest allowed nine of them to pass before she frantically but rebelliously tore at her clothes. Before the final figure she was nude.

"The chair, Nest. Sit in the chair."

It was a sturdy thing with arms, menacing. The freshly stripped girl stood looking at it with dismay. For her it held a message she did not like. Aveline watched the slender nakedness tense, and beheld upon it a goodly evidence of the whip: no cut skin but stripes enow'.

"Please, Mother, do not make me. Oh, please, I want not to be shaven." Nest's plea was heartbroken.

"Nonsense, girl, sit thee down so Unity may bind thee."

"Oh, no!" The youngster recoiled as from a blow. "If I am tied in that chair ye'll do as ye please with me. I beg mercy. Tie me not."

"Sit down!"

Nest leaped for the door. Cissota tripped her neatly. With dismaying ease the two holy women tied the struggling girl to the oaken seat she so deeply feared.

Aveline watched in fearful fascination, knowing how easily it might be she herself who struggled and was bound. Instinctively and unconsciously, she twisted and tugged at the cords upon her own wrists as though in hope of offering aid to the distressed youngster who was no match for the competent convent hands. The rope leash was heavy on her neck.

It could not be said that Nest used judgement in her speech. Her despairing struggles were vividly interspersed with pleas, threats and imprecations. Aveline admired her spirit and felt guilty at her own lack of belligerence in what was done to her. And yet ... what was the use! In the end the girl would always be bound or chained as her captor desired. There was no hope for naked captive girls; they had best obey.

When they were done with her, Nest sat as though in state upon a throne. Her ankles were roped to the legs, her concave tummy banded and girthed to the back, her wrists and elbows neatly tied to the arms. She sat there, a naked maid, with tears streaming down her cheeks but glaring defiance at those who had so treated her. Sister Unity dabbed at a bitten wrist with portentous animosity.

"You will be whipped afterwards, Nest," said the Mother Superior affably. "Such behavior!"

"She bit me," Sister Unity affirmed with venom.

"She will be whipped for that too."

"That's all you think about-whipping me!" Nest contributed between sobs and sniffles.

"At the moment we have something else in mind," Cissota pointed out with obvious enjoyment.

Nest wailed in desolation. "You're going to shave me-I know you are!" Her voice trailed away into a fresh burst of tears.

"All sisters of the church are shaved, dear child."

"You aren't!" Nest bit out the savage accusation exultantly. "I saw once when you thought I was not looking."

"You will be whipped for that too, dear girl," the Abbess promised undismayed as though bestowing beneficence.

"But I am not a nun. I will not take the vows."

"Hush, child, cease thy dithering. Yell be proud of thy shaven pate once ye have it. Come, Sister Unity, prepare her."

The simple efficiency told the watching girl that what she now beheld happened often enough at St. Agnes. The chair came into its own, absorbing the naked girl unto itself in a manner most fearful to see. Aveline writhed in her helplessness. Supposing it was she who was bound there instead of Nest! It could so easily be. Perhaps....

The back of the chair was high enough that the small half circle accepted the back of the youthful neck with snug perfection. When Sister Unity pressed home the small yoke upon the helpless throat, the two halves meshed to provide a firm circlet of wood beneath Nest's chin so that her head was held immovably, her lovely hair flowing over the heavy wooden imprisonment of its owner's neck. Sister Unity left the room.

"There, child, so much fuss for nothing." Cissota smiled benignly.

"Please, not my hair?" Nest could do naught but plead.

"Think of thy whipping, Nest. T'will take thy mind from the other."

"Forgive me. Whatever I have done, I beg forgiveness. Do not shave my head."

"Tut, child, thy hair will grow again should there be need. But thou art a novice, placed here by thy parents."

"They would not have me shaved. I was sent for instruction. Oh, please! Take this horrid thing from my neck. I cannot move."

"'Tis a miraculous chair, Nest, designed for such as thee."

"I beg of you, do not do this thing." The words escaped Aveline's lips in pure horror at what she was forced to watch. Her heart bled for the girl who was little more than a child and so without defense. "Have mercy on her, she is so young."

The Abbess cocked a sardonic eyebrow. "You wish to take her place?"

Aveline was close to tears of impotence. She was bound, she was naked, she was tethered. No matter how great her sympathy for a punished sister no girl could make such a sacrifice. It was beyond any feminine tolerance to ask that she be made bald. She shuddered at the prospect.

"I have not the courage," she admitted. "But I ask mercy."

"Poor little pigeons!" Cissota laughed merrily. "So much heartbreak over a handful of hair. One would think-" The sentence was cut by the return of Sister Unity with the simple things both girls eyed with loathing. Hot water, soap, a brush and a razor. They might have been instruments of torture-perhaps they were. Sight of them demolished whatever prudence Nest might possess.

"No, you mustn't! It's wicked. Take them away."

"Hush, child."

"I won't hush! You're a wicked old bitch."

"Silence!"

"You will do all the wicked things. You even feel my cunt. It's ye who should be whipped and shaved, ye belong to Satan."

There was a shocked silence. Even Nest knew she had gone too far, but the words had been uttered. Anguished eyes dwelt upon the intrigued features of the Mother Superior. Cissota was smiling, but her smile was a thing to fear.

"Cunts and Satan, child! These words be over bold. And ye want me whipped and shaved! Well, well, we shall see who gets the thong and the blade. What say thee, Sister Unity; perhaps for a maiden such as this a shaven pate is not enough?"

"Thou art most right, Reverend Mother." Unity's voice gloated.

"The head is not alone...." Cissota's voice was dream-like.

It could not possibly be! It was too monstrous. Aveline looked in shock at the child held so totally by the chair, and saw upon her face a certainty beyond her own. Nest knew. Nest had no doubt of the penalty she had earned. It was upon Aveline's lips to denounce, to demand, to plead that this obscenity be not perpetrated in this holy place. But it was borne upon her that it was also a place of women and of female punishments. Perhaps ... Perhaps the shaving of a maiden's pubic hair was a common enough thing in St. Agnes. Perhaps it was not evil, but only a punishment for unbridled tongues. Perhaps it could be done to her! She guessed it all too probable that she could pay for impetuous speech with the loss of her own black bush from betwixt her legs. She felt guilt but she held her tongue.

Nest kept silent. She had lost hope. Perhaps she was resigned and frightened to earn more punishment than she must already suffer. She watched with agonized eyes as Sister Unity mixed the lather and the Mother Superior fetched shears from a cupboard.

Two girls wept and could not dry their tears. Aveline knew a vicarious sorrow so that salt drops streaked across her cheeks and she wrenched futilely at her tied wrists. It was the same with the younger maiden bound in the chair, her fingers worked and her muscles bulged against the ropes as the shears did their cruel task and the golden silk of Saxon hair was snipped and the severed beauty laid reverently aside to mock its former owner, the lovely creature whose scalp had nourished it. But it was when the shears were laid aside and the lather generously applied to the prisoned head that the full desolation of loss was viewed and felt.

Nest could not move. The yoke that held her neck and raised her chin was snug and wide, its compulsion was total. Save for the misery of her features her girlish innocence gave the illusion of compliance. She sat staring at grim visions of ugliness while the keen blade scraped and the intent fingers lathered and shaved. Little by little, loveliness was stolen by the steel to be replaced by what, to Aveline's anguished eyes, was pure horror. The sweet, small head had its own innocence, its own beauty, but she saw it not. When the head was bald the yoke was removed so that the nape of the neck could be made as bare as the rest. Nest endured this final denuding in a hopeless acceptance of the inevitable.

"'Tis a holy head thou has't now, child," Cissota purred. "She'll sin less for the loss," Unity added piously.

They freed Nest and stood back to view their creation. The shaven headed child rose slowly to her feet, meeting the eyes of none in her shame. Hesitantly, but compulsively, her hands rose to where her hair had been. In a dazed exploration, in disbelief her fingers traced the unfamiliar contours with which she now must live. It was easy to see that she was reluctant to believe their message. "Our work is well begun," said Unity with ominous unction.

"'Tis a noble task to mould so sweet a child," the Abbess confirmed with equal hypocrisy. "What now of thy cunt, dear girl?"

Nest's hands flew from her shaven head down to her last treasured hair. The motion was instinctive and without hope. Aveline had observed the maiden growth of pubic fronds. They were not as abundant as her own, but they were spun gold and innocently adorned the maiden slit they did not hide. Thought of a steel blade seeking and denuding such intimacy was a thing to send shudders down a female spine. Holding her pubes in cupped hands, the girl being punished made another plea.

"I will be your slave, but do not touch me there."

"Ye have been sentenced, Nest. There's naught else to say."

In a pathetic need to save the treasure as yet unravished, the shaven girl held out her hands, abandoning her secret place in an effort to placate convent wrath. "Tie my hands," she pleaded. "I will not cause thee more trouble. Then whip me for my wrong."

With others it might have bought mercy, but not with the Abbess of St. Agnes, and most certainly not with Sister Unity. Each enjoyed the strangely erotic stimulus of Nest's meek submission to the full, allowing her to stand nude with proffered wrists until she tired and sensed defeat. Listlessly the small hands fell limp at her sides, seeking to cover nothing in despair.

They tied her wrists, not as Nest had offered them but behind her back, tightly and viciously so that she winced but made no cry. In blank misery she obeyed the curt directive.

"Lay here, Nest, on thy back upon the floor close by the wall."

With arms bound at her back it was awkward, but the slender girl managed it without complaint. Her legs were closed, protecting her treasure to the last. Sister Unity ran a noose from a defenseless ankle to a ring in the floor and pulled until her victim was drawn sideways with her leg drawn far to one side. Another noose on the ankle's twin was threaded to a ring well up in the wall. When it too was tractioned, the girl whose pubic hair was to be taken from her lay upon her back with legs grotesquely divided, one up to the wall, the other taut to the floor ring far distant. Nest's bottom scarce rested on the floor, her sex was stretched and spread and offered to the blade.

"'Tis an easy tie and serves us well enow'," Unity proclaimed.

"Wiggle thy cunt, dear child," the Mother Superior ordered gently.

Nest fought her bonds. Perhaps from an instinctive wish of her own rather than compliance. She contrived motion, raising herself on her helpless arms and swaying her twisted shoulders in visible struggles that ended at her hips. Her inmost being which she sought to shield moved not at all, her parted legs were rigid with stress, the ropes 'round her ankles biting deep. For brief moments she raised her head high enough to look down and behold her pubic hair awaiting its fate, a fate she could do nothing to counter. It was as though she saw the vagina of another girl pubescently pleading. When she fell back exhausted, it was with a moan of desolation tearing at Aveline's heart.

"'Tis a neat slit she has," Sister Unity conceded clinically.

The Abbess glowed. "Tell me, Nest dear, has thy maiden cunt ne'er been whipped?"

Both naked girls tensed. For each, the calm question was a new dimension of horror as devastating as the thought of the lather and the steel upon their sex. Nest looked up at the Mother Superior in stark disbelief.

"No. Oh, noooo! Never. How could-"

"I assure you it is a most practical correction, child. We employ it often." Cissota's voice was bland.

Aveline's flesh cringed. If such an obscene cruelty was practiced in St. Agnes she could not hope to escape. She wondered if it hurt more or less if a girl was shaved between her legs. She shuddered.

"Please not that too!" Nest struggled once again.

"Perhaps not today, dear, though in truth ye are well spread for it. We have a special whip of many slender thongs that splats well on shaven skin. Thou art most fortunate."

Aveline longed to kick and claw at the Abbess' calm and carnal enjoyment of girlish pain. It was demeaning to be as helpless as her tied hands and tethered neck compelled. At the moment she was an audience of one to witness the shame and agony of a girl as impotent as herself, but tomorrow it could well be her own skin crying in distress beneath the lash! She writhed against her ropes in mute misery.

The soapy lather heavily daubed upon Nest's sundered sex was an obscenity, its pallid flocculence a punishment in itself. Driven by a fearful fascination she could not control, Nest once again raised herself to gaze in sickened dismay at her plastered loins ready and waiting for the razor's edge. When Sister Unity picked up the wicked bit of metal the girl whose secret hair it would steal fell back in bound hopelessness and closed her eyes.

Aveline was ashamed of her need to watch. She was sure she should have shown her disapproval by turning to face the wall, but she was human and the act performed before her eyes must be seen to be truly believed. Unity's practiced fingers swept back and forth upon the pouting lips and the surrounding skin from navel down to the smaller orifice below. Each fold was lovingly made flat for the flowing caress of the seeking edge. Nest flinched and moaned at each invasion, her shaven head turning from side to side in persistent negation of what was being done to her. When Sister Unity finally took the wet cloth and laved the shaven parts it was as though no single hair had ever graced their symmetry. Stark and indecent as their state might be, it lacked the pure horror of the balded head. The women of St. Agnes stood and surveyed their work. Obviously they found it good. It was also evident that Unity felt the occasion one too good to miss.

"Perhaps a few strokes, Reverend Mother?"

"Mmmmm! She is indeed well placed."

"We can whip from each side above the thigh."

The familiar word roused the newly shaved girl to awareness of a fresh horror. She gazed back and forth between her tormentors and struggled to raise her head. "I don't want to be whipped there! Oh, please don't do that to me."

"A worthy chastisement of a sinful place, dear girl."

"But it's ... it's so ... wrong! Oh, why can't you whip me properly! Please whip me in the proper way. Not on my ... my cunt."

"And why should thy pussy not be punished, Nest?"

"It has done naught. I've been good-I have, I have! 'Tis my back and my bottom ye should whip, 'tis proper."

"And what has't thy back and bottom done that thy puss has not?"

It was all cruel, a gloating baiting of maiden innocence. Through the haze of her own indignation Aveline could not but acknowledge the demanding lubricity of the teenage nakedness writhing in futile protest against its impositions. Nest exuded wave after wave of sexual arousal so powerful as to be almost tangible. There emanated from her breasts and armpits and her denuded loins a pungency of musk that touched them all.

"They have not sinned, Reverend Mother." Nest was groping for suitable words to serve her need. "But 'tis on those parts a girl is whipped."

"So ye tell us where to whip ye, eh!"

"No, oh no! I'm sorry. Oh, please!"

"Three from each side, Unity. T'will be a pretty christening for our little dove."

"Noooo! Oh, nooo-arrragh!"

It was indeed a lovely whip, its fashioning bespoke its purpose. For maiden breast or maiden bush it would shrewdly bite and cut in loving intimacy as it had now done in the well aimed slash between Nest's wide-spread legs. Aveline observed the inflamed pink response come into being where pubic hair would once have hidden maiden skin.

"Quite beautiful," breathed the Abbess.

"Not hard enough," said Sister Unity.

"Arrrrh! Ohhhh! Don't, oh don't!"

The second stroke was indeed visibly more severe, and delivered impartially from the opposite side. As though under a power beyond herself, the tied girl rose up on her elbows to behold her wounds. Whilst Nest was gazing in disbelief, the flailing thongs again bedded themselves within her scarlet flesh with an audible impact that flamed fresh scarlet and set Aveline trembling in sympathy. Nest herself screamed and fell back moaning, her legs and loins held motionless in further invitation to the slender thongs.

It is to be supposed that even Nest herself understood the whipping of her vagina a thing of shame rather than an infliction of agony. The pain of the six blows spread and inflamed but did not wound or last. They left her sore and smarting and deeply mortified, that was all. When the holy women freed her ankles and her wrists she gingerly stood and clasped her swollen cunt and wept. They stood and watched, enraptured.

The captive Aveline was glimpsing a new world, a world of women, of female lusts and female punishments. The world of Miles Hardwin was gone; that lovely heart throbbing masculine world of strong hands and lusty vigour she had known for so brief a time. Now she was a plaything for the Abbess. Cissota would use her flesh as Miles had done but it could never be the same ... never! Her bottom bore the scarlet and purple of Miles' willow switches, marks she cherished now and longed to bear forever. Yet they would heal and be replaced by worse from whips wielded by holy female hands. She looked at the forlorn nudity of the girl clutching her sex in anguished hands, and herself knew a sudden surge of salacity in the pure eroticism of the unconscious pose.

"I'll wager ye'd welcome a fine male cock, child?" the Abbess inquired jocosely.

Nest shook her head in misery. "No. Oh, no."

"A fine tongue then?"

The shaven head denied with desolate shakes, the words were husky with despair. "Oh, no ... no! I beg you, punish me properly."

"Come, child, I offer thee my tongue-and Sister Unity's."

"No!"

"Would'st thou take the tongue of M'Lady Aveline D'Almaine?"

Nest stood erect, bewildered, her hands fell away from that part of her too late to protect. Her gaze roved upon those who watched. "You must not ... Oh, no! It is impossible."

"It is most easy, dear child."

Aveline was frightened. Here was an abyss, a chasm long known as a dark and fearsome possibility. But not for her! Never for her!

"Come, Nest, we must tie thee for thy whipping."

It was as though the cruel demand was a promise of joy. Nest visibly brightened. To be tied and whipped in the manner she understood came as a relief. Awful as she knew it would be, it was at least a charted sea, not an ocean of obscenities. Almost eagerly the younger girl stepped to where the bar hung from the ceiling. She held out her hands as though for gifts.

They lowered the bar and bound the girlish wrists one to each end. When it was raised again by its rope and pulley the slender nudity stood almost on her toes. Aveline could tell the ordeal was not new. Nest had stood thus before and was accustomed to the pose. She made no complaint.

"Art thou well secured for thy whipping, Nest?"

"Yes, Reverend Mother, I am helpless. I can do naught but kick."

Cissota chuckled. "'Tis a thing I like to see, a youngster such as thee disporting her legs beneath the lash."

"Should I spread her legs to the rings, Reverend Mother?" Unity asked hopefully.

"But then she cannot kick! But, yes, I see thy point. By all means make her open," the Abbess approved warmly. Aveline watched unhappily; she sensed an import. Unity once again looped the small ankles and drew them far apart to rings provided in the floor. So widely were Nest's feet separated that they now scarcely touched the floor at all, most of her weight was suspended from her bound wrists. Her sweet youthfulness was arched with concave belly and taut protruding breasts. The hair in her exposed armpits contrasting oddly with her bare head and bare sex.

When the leash on Aveline's neck was taken from the wall and she was led to where it could be tied to one of the rings that held Nest's ankle she guessed the worst. Angry and frightened denunciations rose to her lips but she choked them back. It was best to wait.

"Have ye guessed thy task, beloved girl?"

She had divined it all too well, but she could not say the words. To do so seemed an admission of complicity. "I know not of what ye speak, Reverend Mother," she temporised.

"Nonsense, ye know as well as I do. Get to thy knees." Aveline fell to her knees where she stood, and received a searing cut across her back for her pains.

"Play no pretty tricks with me, young woman," the Abbess warned. "Ye know as well as I 'tis not for prayers ye kneel."

Aveline did know. She wracked her brains for delay by subterfuge but could think of none. Dolefully, yet fascinated, she looked at the opened and proffered vaginal lips of the girl fastened to be whipped.

"Madam, I cannot. It is not meet. I have never-"

The whip sliced her shoulders so that she cried aloud with the pain of it, her protest obliterated by agony. She bowed down beneath the blow, wrenching at her tied hands.

"Ye prefer the whip to a female kiss?" Cissota's voice was hard.

The kneeling girl kept a frightened silence. She knew not what to say; she scarcely knew what to do. She could imagine the technique of the female tongue, but it was guessing! The lash found her again, burning her shoulders with a fiery caress. She moaned and sank to the floor. Unable to bear the pain, unable to perform the task.

Cissota whipped the writhing nakedness with pleasure and with skill. In seeking to evade the lash Aveline exposed fresh vistas of her flesh upon which the Abbess splatted her whip with a keen and sporting relish. A writhing girl not bound to post or ring offered challenges acceptable to the practiced hand of a Mother Superior who knew much of naked girls and their reactions. She was pleased with Aveline's intransigence. Being of the Church it was always desirable to have justifications for striping maiden skin.

Between the leash upon her neck and her tied wrists, Aveline was near to helpless. Yet she was amazed at her own agility. She was shamed by her own contortions and frightened by the pain they earned. She was lost in indecision when Nest's pleading voice came to her rescue.

"Please, oh Aveline, no! Give in. Do it. Ye must."

The blows stopped. Cissota's voice was almost loving. "The dear child speaks wisdom, Aveline. She has a love for thy flesh that ye have not. Come, let us see the measure of thy tongue."

Aveline struggled to her knees. When a girl was bound everything became difficult. She shook the hair from her eyes and looked appealingly up at the woman with the whip. She smarted everywhere.

"Please show us mercy. I am ... I-"

What was there to say-or to do! With stricken eyes she watched the Abbess go to the spread nudity of Nest and run her fingers lovingly across the maiden breasts not yet full grown.

"Exquisite, are they not!" It was as though she thought aloud.

Aveline's heart missed a beat. Evil was close! She saw a fresh cloud of fear cross Nest's face.

"Supposing I was to whip them?" The Abbess directed her gaze full upon the girl who knelt in an agony of indecision.

Nest gasped and moaned. She had guessed right. To Aveline it was one more horror placed atop the rest. But there was no escape for either of them.

"I will use the kinder whip so these sweet tits be not sliced away," Cissota mused aloud.

"No!"

The word had burst from Aveline's lips in an explosion of horror. That anything as lovely as Nest's young curved breasts should bear the imprint of the thong seemed sacrilege. She would want no whipping of her own.

"And why not, beloved Avline?" the Abbess mocked. "Because I will do it-what you want."

"Ah!" The Abbess shook her head sadly. "The wonder of the whip! I never cease to marvel. Without it girls would be as nothing."

It was a short journey to Nest's cunt. Aveline made it painfully upon her knees. Her audience watched, enraptured and enthralled. When Aveline came to rest between the straddled legs she realized that she had never in her life been this close to a maiden slit, not even her own. It stared her in the eye and regaled her nostrils with a female fragrance all its own. It seemed impossible that she could do what she was about to essay. It seemed impossible for anyone. But she knew it was possible indeed and that she was by no means the first to lift her lips to pouting labia as inviting as her own. She had expected to be repelled by the shaven flesh, but she found thereon an unexpected beauty. She found too a guilty thrill of eroticism in her closeness to the whipped whiteness on which the scarlet proclaimed itself in the same flaunting as she could feel upon herself where the Abbess' whip had left its recent mark.

"Do it. Do it to me." Nest's voice was a tense whisper. Aveline raised her head and shuffled close. In an exploratory diffidence she split wide the pungent cunt lips with her nose, thrusting it within and up as though preparing the path for what must follow. In genuine love and sweet sympathy she kissed the swollen flesh where hair had been, then kissed again and found it sweet. In an abandonment of emotion she kissed avidly everywhere upon the tumescent loins and finally deep within the scented orifice of the cunt. Of its own volition her tongue sought and found that for which it must give joy. With a moan of pure surrender Aveline thrust hard against the bound sex and sucked avidly in a bliss suddenly insatiable.

"Girls never cease to surprise me," said the Abbess.

CHAPTER EIGHT -- THE NAKED NUN

When it was done, Aveline was limp with exhausted emotions and Nest hung from her wrists replete and uncaring of the pain. Both girls had travelled a path to places more distant than they had ever known or believed in. Their enforced coupling had prolonged itself far beyond any original intent. Even the Abbess and Sister Unity were awed by its intensity. It was as though the captive girls had found escape within each other from their bondage.

Aveline was brought back to reality by Unity's freeing of Nest's feet. The wide spread legs united again and the toes found footing to ease the hurt wrists.

"On thy feet, girl."

She was still helpless, tied and tethered, but she stood erect and waited obediently. Aveline found it a thing of wonder that she had scarcely missed her lost hands during her fleshly task. Her captivity was taking on fresh depths and widths utterly bizarre. She and Nest were possessed by an authority, as strange as it was merciless. She followed meekly to be tethered anew where she could view in its entirety the whipping about to be administered to her companion in distress.

"What is to be done to thee, dear Nest?" the Abbess inquired conversationally.

"I am to be whipped, Reverend Mother."

"Does't agree thy striping be just, child?"

"Yes, Reverend Mother."

"Does't wish to scream or to be gagged?"

"I would scream an' it be permitted."

"It is permitted. Thy screams be passing sweet. Do ye recall the nature of the whip, Nest?"

"Only that it was promised to be worse than I have known."

Aveline listened in awe. Nest's responses to the Abbess' erotic play with words were calm and assured. Faced with a punishment she understood, the young girl had an immense courage. Coming on top of all else she had endured the whipping to be given her now should be daunting. Yet the watching girl realized she herself had so far suffered more pain from the Abbess' lash than Nest had received from the six strokes upon her pubes, and the shaving was an agony only of the spirit. Nest's anguish of the flesh was still to come.

"So ye thought to invite me, eh! And about time too!"

Startled, Aveline turned to behold the Abbot Gabelot. He was surveying the assemblage with his own cynical interest. His look at her was both penetrating and speculative.

"You're a witch, Cissota. Ye've stolen my prize." His accusation was devoid of malice.

"We share enough with thee, ye ancient heathen," the Abbess told him firmly. "Be ye thankful for what ye are about to receive."

"This is the one to be whipped, I take it." Gabelot bestowed an approving scrutiny on Nest's nakedness.

"Aye, ye'll enjoy her. She whips well."

"And Malenfant's wench? I see she bears fresh marks?"

"A few she invited by the way. Ye speak of Milord Malenfant; what news is there of his quarrel?"

"He lays siege to Coudraye, the last I heard. A bloody piece of foolishness that's like to profit no one." He chuckled sardonically, "Save perhaps thyself. If his war lasts long enough he may forget the maid. If ye share her with me I'll not remind him."

"I'll think 'ont. For now, does't wish to strike the first blow?"

"That I will!" Gabelot agreed heartily. "Hand me the scourge. Ah ha! It has a fine feel and supple thong. T'will make our pretty maid sing."

"You're an erotic old lecher."

"Look who's talking!" Gabelot leered at all present, then turned his attention to the bound and waiting Nest whose eyes had been riveted on him in pure horror since his arrival. "Well, my girl, art thou prepared to have thy pretty hide well striped?"

"Yes...." choked Nest in her bewilderment.

"Ye may call me Father, my child," the Abbot offered generously. "Ye may forget about the reverend."

"With good reason," the Abbess interjected dryly.

"Yes, Father, I am ready to be whipped." Nest was anxious to please and was taking no chances.

"And where would you like me to whip you, my dear?" His outrageous query simulated a pure benevolence.

"Wherever it may please thee, Father. I cannot move from where I stand." Nest gazed in awed appeal. "Please ... not my breasts ... not my breasts."

Gabelot was intrigued. Watching, Aveline realized again how, potent to the loins was maiden submission and maiden pleas. It was evident, too, that he enjoyed the words by which maiden anguish and suspense might be prolonged and savoured to the full.

"So thy breasts are thy treasure, child!" Gabelot went to the bound nudity and fingered the taut cones long enough to cause the inverted nipples to declare themselves. Then he backed away and looked below with professional discernment. "But I see thy little cunt did not escape. Thou art nicely inflamed between thy legs."

"Yes, Father, thank you."

"And thy name?"

"It is Nest, Father. Please do not whip me too hard."

"Does't understand that all girls ask that of me?"

"The whip hurts girls most terribly, Father." Nest twisted unhappily against her tied wrists. The subject was not a happy one.

"Get on with the job, man, before ye rouse thyself an erection with such chatter," Cissota adjourned irritably.

The Abbot wrapped his whip around the pert small bottom. Nest screamed lustily and without inhibition. Her legs flailed against the invisible enemy.

"She's nice, isn't she?" Cissota commented chattily.

"Please don't whip her any more," Aveline pleaded with more courage than she felt. "She's so young."

All eyes turned. "And who asked your opinion, pray?" the Abbess asked icily.

"She's had so much. You've been so cruel."

The Abbot leered at his hostess. "Is this the way ye train a damsel?" he asked affably. "Methinks there's a fine rump there for a bit of basting."

"It's been dealt with already. Leave her alone."

The Abbot turned Aveline about and examined her inflamed seat. "I'll lay a crown or two that's Miles Hardwin's work. I'd know it anywhere."

"So! I'm letting it heal. I've got plans for it myself."

Gabelot patted one of the punished cheeks, then as an afterthought cupped Aveline's sex. "Just as I thought," he said, pleased, "She's more than ready. Wouldn't like to leave the room for half an hour, would you?"

"You're supposed to be whipping the other one," the Abbess pointed out reasonably. "The poor child feels neglected. She'll think ye love her not."

The Abbot left Aveline with obvious regret. She wished she could feel flattered by his preference. Forgetting the whip, he performed the same service for Nest. His hand, when he raised it, was glistening wet. "How about this one?" he asked hopefully. "Nothing like a good shave to get 'em flowing."

"Whip her, man! She's not for fucking."

Gabelot returned the whip to its owner. "Here, you do it. The child's a bit young for my taste. Now if it was the other one...."

"Could I be of service, Father?" Sister Unity asked hopefully.

"Humph!" The Abbot gazed at the dutiful member of his flock without enthusiasm. Sister Unity was not old, but she was no beauty. "T'would take a goodly number of stripes upon thy arse to get it hard." He obviously judged from former experience.

Sister Unity wasted few words. She was always grateful. Bending over, she flipped up her habit to reveal a posterior of more inviting contours than her features. It was evident that beneath her single garb she was naked.

"I'd forgotten it was that good," the Abbot observed pensively. "I'm going to make it hurt, y'know."

"Oh, thank you, Father! You are so kind." Sister Unity looked back past her stiff legs with a smile so radiant she was transformed.

Once more Aveline was aghast. Two members of Holy Church doing this! That was bad enough, but she was disturbed too by the good sister's all too evident gratitude for the pain she was about to receive. There had been no mention of penance; Unity was doing this because it gave her happiness. The tethered girl wondered if it was she and Nest who were odd ones in an insane world.

"'Tis a truly fine rump," the Abbot exulted as his hands followed its curves and planes. The willing legs parted slightly to allow his hand entry to a well proportioned quim. "Ye don't shave down here, do ye now!" The Reverend Father chuckled as he playfully tugged back into hind view a couple of dark and curly fronds.

"Should it please ye, Father, I will do so." The stern Unity was suddenly a small girl anxious to please.

"I'll do it for ye, but another time," the Abbot promised. "But now I'd best lay a few across these noble cheeks. Would'st not wish to be tied, I'll strike thee hard?"

"No, Father, I wish to set a good example of these two girls." Sister Unity was both pious and panting.

"Oh, aye, I'm sure ye will. But I'll wager crown I'll make ye squeal."

"'Tis wrong to wager." Unity positively giggled.

"I'll take the bet," said the Abbess. "But make it two." She turned a stern eye upon her subordinate. "Now keep thy mouth shut or ye'll have me to reckon with after."

"That's not fair," protested Gabelot.

"I'll up the odds," the Abbess offered dourly. "If Unity howls you can have a go at mine." She considered thoughtfully. "Let's say five of your best."

"Done!" said the Abbot with alacrity. "I've been waiting to have a go at you for a long time. Ye've a fine shape 'neath that bolt o' cloth ye wear." He turned a warning eye upon the beaming sister. "There's much at stake here, my girl, you're going to sing and loud."

The Abbot enjoyed every preliminary, the tapping of the bared bottom, the measuring of distance. It was very plain to see that Sister Unity shared his enjoyment. Her eyes sparkled and she deliberately imparted unnecessary motions to her hips. Aveline watched in amazement the transformation of a nun into a woman, a woman carnal and without shame.

The blow was cruel. Gabelot swung on the ball of his foot and delivered every ounce of his strength to the sweeping lash. It curled around the tight cheeks as though embracing them forever. It drove Sister Unity to her knees, but without a sound she stiffly resumed her shameful bend and, looking back, said a dutiful, "Thank you, Father."

"The silver's as good as mine," said the Abbess. "You can't hit her harder than that. Unity, I'm pleased with thee."

"I can but try," Gabelot affirmed. "Any wench can take a single."

Aveline watched the sister's flesh rise in a ridge of pain and turn slowly purple. As though by magic a second wound sprang into living colour as Gabelot plied his whip with cunning. Unity gasped and grimaced but returned to her grateful smile. In the third stroke the Abbot excelled himself and Sister Unity yelped in agony and fell to her knees. Save for her panting breaths there was a shocked silence.

"Five of my best, I think you said, madam?" The Abbot turned a triumphant smile upon a dismayed Abbess.

"You let me down, Unity." Cissota's voice held infinite promise.

"Oh, Reverend Mother, I am so ashamed! I ... I could not forbear. Oh, please let me continue."

"No point to it now," the Abbess said acidly. "I'll attend to you another time, and you'll wish ye'd bit thy tongue."

Sister Unity straightened up and arranged her habit. Her eyes brimmed. She seemed strangely human. Guiltily she stood to one side.

"All right, you old satyr, how d'you want me?" The Abbess was a woman of her word.

"Bare arsed and bending, madam."

With a bitter glare of pure animosity, Cissota flipped up her covering and bent as Unity had done. She too wore naught but the cloth of St. Agnes.

"A superlative bottom, madam."

"Of course it is, idiot! You've seen it before."

"But never from this perspective, my dear. I feel most privileged."

"Don't gloat, you old bastard. I'm but paying a debt-there's nothing personal in this little scene. And, yes, my cunt shows up behind when I bend as I am. Kindly have the grace not to strike it."

"How could I be so lost to shame!" the Abbot exclaimed piously. " 'Tis a most fulsome joy to see. Perhaps with the tip of one stroke...."

"No! You hit my slit and the bet's off."

The Abbot sighed and made a mental reservation to slice the plump cunt only on the fifth stroke. "I reverence thy fortitude, dear lady."

"Damn my fortitude! Whip my arse and have done. I'm not posing for a statue."

"I will give of my best." The Abbot's voice was vibrant with feeling.

"And you can dispense with tapping it first and the feel up, you old rogue. I'm not susceptible to suspense."

The cut made Aveline gasp in pity. The Abbess yawned. "Perhaps this one." The Abbot struck viciously. He was miffed.

"It's supposed rain later in the day," Cissota to remarked casually.

"Ye'd get thyself less pain if ye acted like a woman," said the Abbot, disgruntled. "Try this one, down low." Aveline positively winced. Sound of the fleshly impact filled the room. The glowing weal was horrendous.

"We should really do something about that couch grass in the courtyard," the Abbess mused thoughtfully. "You're doing it on purpose," Gabelot accused morosely. "Being cocky, just to annoy me."

"How's thy erection?"

The Abbot swung again but his heart was no longer in the blow. The fifth and last he delivered without hope. He even forgot his resolve to cut the mature cunt that mocked him from between the heroic legs. "Ye've got the arse of an old mare," he affirmed disgustedly.

Cissota straightened up and patted herself into tidiness, seemingly unperturbed by pain. There was a glint in her eye. Aveline found herself incredulous of such fortitude; but perhaps the ecclesiastic bottom possessed immunities not vouchsafed to common folk! Smiling serenely, Cissota patted the Abbot's cheek as one might that of a child.

"There, there, poor man! We females are a sad trial to thee. I pray thine cock has not proved fickle?"

The Abbot scowled. "T'would be no fault of thine if it was," he growled. "Ye're a cock crinkler if I ever saw one." The Abbess bestowed her most winning smile. "Ye had a piece of carnal knowledge in mind, as I recall?"

"I would be most grateful, Father," said Unity from the wings.

"Since I lost the bet, I suppose mine own virtue is also forfeit," the Abbess suggested coyly.

Aveline wanted to giggle. The look Gabelot bestowed upon his female counterpart was withering.

"I'd not fuck ye with a cucumber," he avowed angrily. "After that bare arsed performance ye don't deserve it."

"I don't see what you're so huffy about," the Abbess sniffed. "It's me that's got the marks," she sniffed even more eloquently. "As for your apology for a prick, you may recall last time. It just made a mess on the sheet."

For a moment, the watching girl feared violence. The Abbot's complexion stopped short of purple only by virtue of Unity's dulcet interjection. "I am most ready, Reverend Father." Her voice held anxiety, she was well aware of the debilitating effect of acerbity on the male organ. It was not every day she snared an Abbot!

Gabelot brightened. Sister Unity's worship stiffened his cock, his morale and his decision. "Come, beloved sister," he said benignly as he took her hand. "Thou showest a proper respect for a Father of Holy Church:" He led her from the room and did not look back.

"Have the old hypocrite say a mass for thine ass, woman," the Abbess called after them. "I can promise ye'll need it."

There was no answer from the passage. Aveline giggled. "What's so damn funny?" the Abbess demanded.

"I but laughed at thy wit, Reverend Mother."

"Humph! Mayhap ye did. On the other hand-" Cissota's eyes lit on the bound, strained nudity of Nest. "Great Heaven, child, you're supposed to get a whipping!"

"Yes, Revered Mother. Thank you."

"I was going to have Sister Unity scourge thee well, but I expect she's busy either getting it up or getting it down. I'll have to do the job myself-don't suppose you mind?"

"No. Reverend Mother. Thank you."

Always unreality! Aveline knew herself witness to a masque in which absurdity, lust and cruelty were intertwined. She cringed at Nest's pathetic meekness. The poor child was frightened, her bound wrists were obviously hurting, naked and helpless she was pitifully vulnerable. Having been compelled to watch the appalling whippings the two nuns had absorbed with such sangfroid, her mind must be a welter of conjecture as to whether she could acquit herself as well and if such fortitude was expected of maiden flesh unsanctified by vows.

"Please, Reverend Mother, do not whip Nest too hard. She has suffered much and is passing weary. I beg mercy of thee."

Even as Aveline uttered the words she sensed their pathetic inadequacy. Naked, bound, tethered to the wall, she could strike no bargain, offer no bribe. Yet sight of Nest's nakedness standing on tip-toe awaiting its promised pain was more than she could bear in silence. She stood trembling.

It was to be understood that the bottom of the Abbess of St. Agnes was hurting; she had also been scorned in the offer of her person, and by a man she despised. These recent humiliations could not be conducive to bonhomie. No doubt the sight of Nest's slim nudity suspended by its wrists for the sole purpose of assuaging her own carnality was at the moment her only comfort. She turned upon the leashed Aveline a jaundiced eye.

"And since when did ye start to give an Abbess her orders?"

"Oooooh, Reverend Mother!" Aveline's voice was almost a wail. "T'was no order. I but beg mercy for us both-we are so helpless."

"And so ye should be! Impertinent baggages! Mayhap ye'd like to take half her strokes for her?"

"Yes! Oh, yes. Please let me."

"Bah! The nobility of maidens, it sickens me. Such ardent flesh seeking the rampant prick-and if there's no male cock ye seek the whip to still thy conscience!"

Aveline blushed. Was it true? Did the lash and her love for Nest play surrogate for Miles? She was lost in her own complexities. She guiltily recognized that if it was Miles who yielded the scourge she would endure its bite with primitive joy, but from the hand of the Abbess she would hate and loathe each stroke. Witnessing the whipping of the nuns had left her with questions and strange puzzlements.

"We are in thy power, Reverend Mother. Ye must do what ye will with us. But 'tis no fault to beg thy mercy."

"Humph! Ye're a crafty wench as well as bold. I'll have thee meek enough in time." Cissota ran the whip through thoughtful fingers. "But I've our pretty little baldpate waiting, and there's Sister Unity! Enough's enough for a day."

It was like a striking snake. Without preamble the Abbess pivoted and swung, a perfect weal sprang into being across the youthful skin. Nest screamed.

Only Nest moved. She writhed in torment, legs flailing at the air. The bar to which her wrists were tied shook and quivered against her struggles. Cissota and Aveline stood in rapt contemplation of pure beauty.

"Oh, Mother Superior, I did not know ... I did not know! 'Tis too awful, I cannot bear-" Nest's gasps were piteous.

The Abbess struck again; another stigmata on the pale skin; another scream! Without realizing, Aveline was writhing against her own bound wrists in a mindless need to give succour to the child who was being dealt pain too great to bear.

Nest was inarticulate in distress. "No, oh Mother, no! Don't, oh don't. Ohhhhhh ... Arrrragh!"

The Abbess of St. Agnes whipped the naked girl methodically and with precision: The weals blossomed like flowers of the flesh. Nest's responses varied with the strokes. Cissota savoured each. The captive girl leashed to the wall wept in frustration.

The return of Unity ended Nest's torture. The features of the sister in disgrace were a quaint blend of satisfaction and suspense. It seemed probable that the Abbot had acquitted himself with competence.

"Well fucked, I suppose?" Cissota was still disgruntled.

"Yes, Reverend Mother." There was a pride in the calm admission.

"The old fool taken it home to wash it?"

"I bathed it for him before he left, Reverend Mother." Had Unity been feline she would have purred.

"Well, ye've had thy fun; now ye can pay for it."

"I am ready, Reverend Mother." The assured voice had lost some of its vibrancy.

"Well, get this weeping youngster down and fasten her. Ye can take her place."

Unity was a subordinate jewel. She commenced the preparations for her own agony with dispatch. When the sore and sobbing girl was released from the bar she was taken to the wall from where hung gyves, one was locked upon each of her wrists to cause her to stand with arms out stretched as a captive audience for what must follow. To Aveline, and perhaps to the older women too, she looked ineffably sweet.

"Shed thy habit, Sister." Cissota's voice was grim.

With an almost eager innocence Sister Unity doffed the garment which was her only badge of servitude. Aveline gasped at sight of the cascade of silken hair that tumbled from the coif. It would seem that neither of these two women of an unconventional order practiced what they preached. But it was not the hair alone; the body of Sister Unity belied the ugly cloak she had shed. It was beautiful! Naked, she was transformed from an ascetic celibate into a glowing Eve. The attentions of Father Gabelot had softened away the severities of thin lips and cold eyes. Unity's features had taken on the same female loveliness her body flaunted. Fear flickered faintly in her eyes but she held it well in check. Aveline judged this woman to be no more than ten years older than herself.

The Abbess looked testily around and picked up the discarded rope. "Work, work, work," she grumbled. "There's none else to tie thee, so I'll do it myself."

"There is no need, Reverend Mother. I will clasp my hands behind my neck and stand to receive my stripes."

"Ye believe that now, Unity, but ye know as well as I no woman's like to stand still for what I'll do to thee."

"I will willingly try. I am sad to have displeased thee."

"Put thy wrists on the bar, Unity."

Aveline winced in sympathy as the passive wrists were bound fast. For a moment then, as the nuns stood close and face to face, and with the delinquent wrists tied tight so that their owner was prisoner as were the younger girls, there passed between the woman named Cissota and the woman named Unity an unspoken message, a communion of eyes and spirit tangible and visible to those who watched in wonder. The moment passed as Unity's arms rose in response to the pulley's demand. Soon she stood with hands high and well apart, a breathing sacrifice to the Mother Superior's anger-if anger indeed it was! Aveline was inclined to believe it simply a lust for flogging female flesh.

"Cissota, be not wroth with me. Whip me in love."

The plea was startling. Startling in the use of the Christian name and its frank admission of motives. The naked nun had shed more than her clothes.

The Abbess' only response was to take more rope and bind Unity's ankles to the rings as Nest's had been bound for shameful purpose. She tugged hard so that the lovely legs straddled more and more and the black bush sought attention. When the new captive was stretched to stand only on her toes she broke her compliant silence gaspingly. "Cissota, tie me not thus. Ye know I hate it."

"'Tis why I do it, Unity."

"It frightens me. I cannot bear to be whipped between my legs."

"Can ye struggle?"

Unity obediently fought her bonds. "No. See, I cannot move."

"Good! Perhaps ye'll quiver when the leather laps thy cunt."

"Cissota, no! Whip me properly. I don't deserve the other."

"Do ye not!" The Abbess raised a caustic eyebrow. " 'Tis for me to decide and for thee to scream. I'll ask no silence of thee now."

"Cissota, dearest one, be not cruel to me. Whip me so that I may love thee."

Aveline realized the two women had forgotten them. They had entered a world of their own, and not for the first time. She smiled across the chamber to the chained Nest who nodded that she too understood this magic ritual of women for whom men had become only an abstraction. The child's arms were taut against her shackles as she watched, enthralled.

The whipping of Sister Unity's nakedness was a thing Aveline would always remember. It was a punishment; it was a paean of joy; it was an exultation of femaleness, an affirmation of the feminine. The lovely body undulated beneath the lash in waves of pure eroticism. Tied as it was it could move but little, yet nourished by pain it found a new and separate life demonstrated by taut tensionings and writhing muscles and tendons. There were screams aplenty, but they came closer to being cries of savage fulfilment rather than acknowledgements of agony. There was a rhythm, a oneness between the whipper and the whipped.

When the sister's nudity was abundantly striped from breast to buttock the Mother Superior bethought herself of her revenge. The whipping thus far had been a strange, shared ecstasy; now it was to become a punishment. Viciously she flashed the thong to snap upon the open thighs.

Unity screamed. There could be no doubting it a scream of agony and fear. "Cissota, no! Oh, no! I begged of you. Whip me not there."

"I will adore thy pleadings, beloved, but I will heed them not." Cissota struck again and again into the most tender flesh.

"No-anything-the rack...."

"I'll not break thy bones, foolish one. Bear thy pain as ye bear thy joy."

"I cannot, I cannot! It destroys me."

Cissota laughed. "Howbeit I lash thy cunt an hour 'til ye come to love it?"

"No, oh darling, no! Forgive me that and I'll do anything. `Silly girl, you'll always do anything I demand. Set thy mind to rest from foolish hope. I'll scourge thy tender thighs and plump cunt for as long as it pleases me."

"I'll faint. I'll die."

"What nonsense you do talk! I'm ashamed of thee. Ready thyself now for a proper warming of thy hair and slit. You must thank me properly."

"Oh, I do, I do!" Sister Unity could not affirm fast enough, but as the searching cuts snapped upon her sex she screamed in strange, contorted sounds of desolation. Between the fearful, almost animal sounds, she managed to moan: "Oh, thank you, Cissota. Thank you, darling."

"Thank me for what, Unity?"

The naked sister saw the trap but entered it. "Thank you for whipping my cunt, darling."

"Ah, so you enjoy it!" The Abbess was up to her favourite trick.

"No, no! Oh, no."

The whip snapped anew with bitter aim. The naked nun jerked and screamed, her breasts vibrating with her struggles.

"It's in your mind," Cissota assured her blandly. "I do believe you're actually enjoying it."

"You know I don't-oh, I hate it, it's beastly. It hurts me so much there, and I'm so tender for so long afterwards. Please, darling, stop whipping me there."

Smiling beatifically the Abbess flicked a flushed and rampant nipple. "You would prefer I striped these instead?"

"Yes-oh, no! Oh, Cissota, why must you be so cruel! Whip my back and my bottom. Surely that's enough!"

"But I've already whipped them."

"Whip them some more. Please...."

"Because you enjoy that?"

"Oh, no! Cissota, stop teasing me. You're being cruel."

"I strive but for thy good."

"That isn't it at all. You're thoroughly enjoying thyself because I was foolish enough to let you tie me helpless. Now all I can do is beg like our maidens who are watching my shame with such wide eyes. I should have had more sense."

"For thy binding I could have called help."

"Oh, all right, I suppose you could." Unity eyed her Mother Superior winningly. "Please, darling, let me loose. I've been beautifully punished."

"But I've scarcely begun!" Cissota sounded shocked. Unity moaned. In the frustration of helplessness she jerked her head from side to side against her pinioned arms. "No more," she begged. "No more. Make me not cease to love thee."

"That sounds like a threat," said Cissota, delighted.

It was cruel yet beautiful. Aveline cringed and winced as the carefully aimed slashes of the thong found and indented themselves within the secret flesh of the naked nun. As the red wounds mounted and multiplied upon the thighs and loins the cries of their owner rose and fell in an endless pleading for surcease. The watching maiden wondered if it was her fancy that their tone had changed, that perhaps the Abbess' outrageous prediction was coming to pass. The lips of Unity's cunt had become swollen and, inflamed, yet in their agony seemed more demanding than before. It went on and on until Unity orgasmed again and again without shame and without cessation of her cries. When her head fell forward on her breast, Cissota cast aside the whip and held water to the mute, parched lips.

Aveline sensed an end and a beginning. The Abbess was obviously weary of her sport, her mind was elsewhere. In perfunctory inattention she freed Unity's chafed wrists and eased her whipped sister to the floor where she sat listlessly, her legs wide and still bound to the rings.

"Ye can loose thyself, beloved, thy punishment is done. Ye know what to do with our little pigeons. I'll attend them later."

The Abbess of St. Agnes was gone. Three naked females watched her going, each with a reaction of her own. All three were still bound. Two of them helplessly, the third too hurt and shamed to seek her freedom. Sister Unity sat and morosely examined her punished loins, her sex, her striated thighs, still wide apart from the ropes upon her prisoned ankles. Finally, without urgency, she reached toward her bound feet and found them almost beyond her reach. Pathetically she twisted and strained until her fingers could find a knot. Even then it took her painful and shaming minutes to free one ankle. It was easy then to free the other. Wearily she stood, her loveliness shamefully striped in red and purple, her sex a flaming tribute to the Abbess' venom. Both girls watched her, fascinated.

"I'll warrant ye'd have had her whip me more."

The naked sister surveyed her charges without animosity. There was a faint twist of humour to her lips. She made no attempt to recover her habit. This was a quite different Sister Unity than they had first known. She sighed in faint exasperation at work to be done and found leg irons with which a maid might be hobbled.

"I must needs free thee both, I'm too weary for fights and flight."

They made no protest. Both had become reconciled to such routine confinements. They knew themselves worse than slaves. They would never be given even a hope of escape. Each held out her ankle as required and felt the weight of metal and heard the snap of locks.

"I suppose you know where you're going?"

"You're going to put us in a dungeon," Nest stated with sullen conviction.

Aveline was puzzled. "Sister, you've forgotten thy habit."

Unity's grimace was sardonic. "In St. Agnes a nun wears naught for a day and a night after she's been whipped. Thus we share each other's stripes and learn our lessons."

It felt good to be freed of ropes. Aveline reflected on the small, sad joys of captivity. She massaged her wrists and neck while she took the mincing, hobbled steps the shackles on her ankles permitted. Thought of exploiting this small freedom did not enter her mind.

"Why must a dungeon be so sad and dark?" Aveline asked as she surveyed their new prison. "We could be as safely confined in kinder places."

Unity chuckled. "Ye know the answer. A day or two in here and you're amenable. In sunlight ye'd stay rebellious."

"Oh, Unity, not those chains!" Aveline gazed in dismay at the rings in the stone from which drooped links and metal bands.

"Don't be silly. You know you have to be chained. Get thee against the wall."

It was a woman's dungeon and the chains were light. But there were so many! When each girl's neck and wrists had been locked in their fetters they discovered the chain from it was separate to the wall. Links fell away from them everywhere, yet they had lost no freedom. They could move as they wished, but they could walk no more than a few brief paces from where their chains were welded to the wall. Unity then removed the irons from their feet, replacing them with other fetters such as those they were already locked in. Every motion they made brought music from their links.

"Ye make a pretty pair," Unity conceded.

"Please, Unity, must we bear so many? The one on our neck alone would keep us captive enough."

"Don't complain. They could be heavier and more of them. And the Abbess will inspect thee before we sleep. If she finds thee less heavily ironed I'd be like to join thee here."

"Would she do that-to thee!"

"Oh, aye." The sister mused quietly for a moment. "Mayhap ye'll see me sooner than ye think." She left them in the gloom and shot the bolts beyond the door with an unnecessary emphasis.

For a moment they stood uncertainly, feeling the unaccustomed weight of their chains. Then with a moan of wanting they clasped each other and sank to the stone that was their bed. Hungry lips found hungry lips and eager tongues explored. Together they made a small, pathetic heap of palpitating female flesh grotesquely intertwined with the cold, cruel metal of the links.

CHAPTER NINE -- MALENFANT'S WHIP

It was uncomfortable and frightening upon the horse. Aveline's ankles were roped and cinched beneath the withers. Her wrists were tied behind her back and once more the hated bands of rope circled her elbows and drew them tight. She would have preferred the manner of her binding when Adam Godsoule had taken her. This was cruelly painful and without dignity. They had covered her, a crude sacking thrown over her shoulders and tied to keep away the night chill. She sensed a value placed upon her, but not of love.

There were two of them, soldiers. They would speak to her only to command, they answered no questions. They had paid Unity with a purse of silver. Aveline wondered wryly what her price had been.

It had been a shock, a surging mixture of hope and joy when Unity, now clothed, had used the key and whispered an apology for the rope: "I must bind thy hands at thy back, Aveline."

She had cared naught for the binding. It was a small thing compared to the weight of metal from which she had been freed. The two captives had exchanged bewildered glances as they were led from the Abbey in the dark of night by the sister whom the Abbess had so cruelly whipped. But with thought of escape riotous in their minds they questioned not. That she alone was bound while Nest was free was an anomaly Aveline ignored. To be in the open air beyond the convent walls was magic enough without quibbling about a pair of tied wrists. Quite probably Unity was only being cautious.

The men awaited them in the trees. Two soldiers and an extra horse. Aveline was scrutinised like a bad penny but accepted. The purse changed hands. When she had secreted it, Unity held tight the girl whose hands were tied and kissed her sadly. "Forgive me," she had whispered. "Forgive me, Aveline, thy fate may be no worse." The errant sister had clasped Nest's hand and said urgently: "Come, child, we find thy parents." The two of them had diminished into the dark.

It was cruel to be tied. Free, she might have made a run for it. But the cords were tight upon her crossed wrists. There would be no fleeing in the dark for Aveline D'Almaine. She had been sold. Tears of disappointment were heavy in her eyes.

"She's naked, Piers, let's fuck her."

Shock had driven back the tears. "No, no! Ye must not!" She had surged away from the hands upon her arms. "Why not, Will! Would'st be folly not to used a tied cunt. She's as neat a package as I've seen. Ye'd like a good diddling, wouldn't ye, girl? I'll promise something better than a convent tongue."

They had taken her with ease, remarking on the beneficial effect of her bound arms. She lay painfully and helpless while it was done to her. The pounding thrusts between her spread legs filling her with sperm and disgust.

After they were satiated with their unusual good fortune they bound her elbows in the hated way she knew so well. "You don't need to do that to me," she had begged. "My wrists are tied tight. I can't escape."

"Better safe than sorry," she had been told. "You wenches have a way with ropes. Ye wriggle all too well."

"Where do ye take me?"

They had laughed at their own knowledge and her lack of it. " 'Tis where ye'll do a better service than in a convent," they assured her genially. "Give us no trouble and we'll give ye none either."

"Don't you call raping me trouble?"

"'Tis but a man's way with a maid. If ye like it not now, ye'll learn."

"Give me a saddled horse so I can ride sensibly. Tied like this I'm helpless enough. Don't tie me to its back."

They had laughed at that too and hoisted her astride and girthed her ankles so that she was cruelly helpless. Leading her mount they set off into the darkness at a steady pace, she knew not where.

They had ridden far from the convent and from Broule before they deigned to ask her questions. Dawn was breaking in the East and Aveline was dreaming hopeless dreams of Miles and of Plinlymon.

"Did Milord Malenfant fuck thee, lass?"

"No, he did not! And don't talk like that."

"Hoity-toity. I'll wager a crown or two Miles Hardwin got inside thee?"

"Wager what ye like." She looked haughtily ahead.

"She liked Hardwin's cock. 'Tis easy to tell."

They laughed at her blush. Then, in the growing light, discussed her physical attributes. "Wonder what she'd say if I bit her tits off."

"Let's put flame to her bush and watch it burn. I've never seen the like. Damn near got lost in it."

"She's a lovely cunt, tight and juicy. Ever noticed, Piers, a tied girl is never dry. Being helpless makes 'em think of rape and gets their sap flowing."

"Hey, lass, were ye like to wed with the Baron o' Broule?"

"I certainly was not!"

Her answer concerned them. They seemed surprised. "Ye mean to tell us, girl, you were in that convent as a prisoner, and not for instruction on thy wedding?"

"I was there for the amusement of those who rule the Abbey. They cared not for my wedding."

"Who striped thee?"

"The Abbess." She could not speak of Miles.

"Naughty girl, eh?"

"I suppose so. Is there something sensible you want to know?"

"She's got Norman blood for sure. Haughty little bitch. Coudraye will be pleased enough with her. Poor chap could do with a bit o' tail."

When the sun grew warm they took away her covering and enjoyed her nudity. "What say we whip her arse when we stop at noon?"

"Nay, be not so rough on the lass. Her arse is purple enough and she's got to ride. There's other places."

Aveline hated the tear that stole down her cheek. It was a tear of shame and anger and of frustration. They beheld it with pleasure.

"Got a gentle nature, she has. She's crying."

"Weeping for another good poke, like as not. What say ye, lass?"

"Shut up your stupid talk," Aveline demanded angrily. "Is that all you think of; raping a tied girl?"

"Don't know a better sport, girl."

"Set me free and I'll get thee gold."

"Getting uppity, she is. Needs a good whipping." Aveline let her tears flow freely. What was the use! Everything was lost and hopeless and absurd. Her elbows were aflame, the bands on her ankles cut deep. She longed to scream.

They ceased to bait her. Whatever she had said had given them food for thought. They spurred forward at a steady gait. At noon she was not whipped, at night she was not raped. They staked her out upon the grass, but loosely so that she could reach neither herself or the stakes. They covered her with the sack. She slept, cherishing a small, faint hope.

As they rode through the day there fell upon the two men an air of purpose, a preoccupation with their thoughts. Aveline sensed tension. She spoke little, since to do so only provoked coarse references to her breasts, her nipples and her pubic hair. She was kidnapped, and for a reason, but from her kidnapers she could elicit nothing.

They came to Coudraye in the dark of night. The castle lay in a valley. At a distance there were tents and horses and the fires of a camp. The scene might have been peaceful once; it was not now.

"There's naught but the quick gallop for the drawbridge, Piers. They promised to be watching 'round the clock."

"Aye, Will. 'Tis a do or die thing, to be sure. But we'll deliver the maid and get our gold. The men of Broule are watching Coudraye, not the slope we'll cross."

"The girl, think she's secure?"

They tested her bindings. To Aveline it seemed absurd. She was helpless, roped to the horse to become a part of it, her elbows numb from their bond. While she was made doubly secure, she peered through the trees at their destination. Coudraye was under siege, but for reasons of its own it wanted her.

"Best gag her, Will."

Aveline made no protest as her mouth was stuffed and tied. She could understand their urgency and need for caution. They would have no patience with feminine foibles. She found a wry amusement in her female revulsion to her condition: trussed, covered with a bit of sack, her mouth wadded with cloth, a bit of rope binding her cheeks. She was reduced to an appendage of the horse, untidy and unfeminine. Whoever she was being delivered to must surely receive a poor impression of her quality.

A leaping gallop is an exhilaration no matter what its end. The bound captive shared it with her captors, even to the point of a painful suspense in watching for the drawbridge to fall across the moat. If it failed their need, the men of Malenfant would most surely take them. She had a quick vision of Adam Godsoule leading her back to Broule tied fast upon his horse and destined for a dungeon and more chains.

The drawbridge fell. They clattered across it well ahead of the hue and cry from the camp and its sentries. It rose behind them with a clanking racket of windlass and metal that told the captive girl she was once more hostage in a strange place, and for reasons that might be stranger still.

They were expected. Her escort, the horses and herself were dealt with in rapid precision. She was carried far within the castle walls by strong and ready arms. In the small stone chamber high in a tower there was a cot, a blanket, a pair of buckets and the inevitable chain and shackle which was immediately locked upon her ankle. The sacking was whisked away, leaving her nude, the ropes were cut from her elbows and her wrists. No word was said. She was left alone in her small, clean prison. The sounds of the locking of the door told her there would be no escape.

Aveline did the things that prisoned girls do; they are instinctive. She tested her chain and her shackle. They were firm upon her ankle and within the stone of the wall; she could bear them and forget them. She went to the window, it was large and well barred but would make the cell a cheerful place by day. To grip the bars and peer through them she was obliged to stand on one foot, her chained ankle snubbed well back so she could advance no further. The same was true of the door, she could not reach it. She tried the cot, it was almost luxury. Draping herself in the blanket she lay down and slept.

Awakening was another step into unreality, one more excursion into disbelief. The woman who quietly stood and smiled down at her was verging on middle age, her features pleasantly domestic, faintly maternal. But she was richly garbed and carried the aura of authority.

"Welcome to Coudraye, Aveline D'Almaine." The voice was soft.

The captive sat up, blinking in the sunlight of late morning. She clutched the blanket; nakedness seemed wrong in such a presence.

"We let thee sleep. T'was a weary journey. Now ye shall be bathed and given food and raiment."

"Why-where ... Why am I brought here?" Aveline was lost.

The quiet smile deepened. "We will attend my husband, the Lord of Coudraye, when thy needs are met. He will tell thee what ye need to know. Fear not. Today ye are safe."

"But I am a prisoner?"

"Aye, a prisoner." The smile was shadowed. "But between thee and me let us call thee guest. Call me Emma and I will name ye Avline."

"Ye are at war with Broule?"

"A stupid business." The Lady of Coudraye waved an impatient hand. "You will hear enough of it." She beckoned to a servitor waiting in the passage. "Remove her shackle. She will bear the lightest chains. See to it."

Emma of Coudraye led her bemused captive into a world of magic, of comfort, of wealth and luxury. Despite her fears, Aveline's spirits soared. To be bathed with deference, to be fed and clothed with courtesy! She could scarcely believe her fortune. To be done with nakedness was a miracle. The clothes that covered her were richer than she had ever worn. Even the arrival of the armourer with the chains dampened her joy no whit.

"It grieves me that ye must be chained, Aveline, but 'tis the custom. It is expected. Please bear with them. They are as light as may be, and fashioned well for such as thee."

They were chains such as Aveline had never worn nor ever seen. They were light enough to be no great burden, the connecting links were many, giving her much freedom. Yet wearing them she would not escape. They forbid her feet to turn and her fists to fight. She knew a strange pleasure as they were locked upon her wrists and ankles. They were exquisitely crafted to enhance the loveliness of the woman they contained. She looked at Emma with gratitude and said with sincerity, "Thank you. They're beautiful."

"Ye do not mind?"

The captive laughed. "After being bound and chained as I have been, these give me pleasure. I forgot about escapes long since."

They ate a belated breakfast, the Chatelaine of Coudraye finding amusement in her guest's dexterity in bondage. Aveline took pride in the shining metal that moved as she moved and clinked cheerfully each time she moved a dish or plied a fork.

"Yet ye must long for freedom, my dear. I wish I could grant it thee. Perhaps when-" Emma left her thought unspoken.

"Am I to be whipped or punished?"

"Great Heaven, no!" Emma's shock was genuine. "Was that the hospitality of Broule?"

Aveline's reply was cut short by the advent of a serving maid who eyed the chained girl with furtive curiosity and announced that M'Lord Coudraye awaited them in his room. His Lady made no comment, confining her concern to matching her steps with those of her hobbled companion. Humane as her fetters might be, Aveline still found them an impediment. She walked with caution and much sound.

Coudraye was a handsome man whose smile might have matched his wife's had he been not troubled. His spouse, having delivered her captive, bade them a bright au revoir and made good her absence, leaving her lord and the fettered maiden facing each other alone.

"Be seated, M'Lady. Let us speak in comfort." His voice was as courtly as his manners. "Wine? I'll drink a goblet with ye."

Aveline accepted the potation and settled herself as bid. Her chains were an incongruity her host seemed not to notice. She waited in polite attention.

"Malenfant weds thee, so I'm told?"

"He wishes to. I do not."

Coudraye digested her statement soberly. "And the convent? Was that of thy choice?"

"I was sent there to be whipped into compliance. M'Lord of Broule found the task not to his liking."

"Ye jest, M'Lady?"

"Nay. I bear the stripes."

He cupped his chin in thought. His captive sensed disquiet. "There's gossip goes the rounds-" he said slowly. Then, in sudden accusation: "What of Miles Hardwin?"

Her heightened colour answered him.

"Ah ha! And did not the much loved Hardwin wish a bride?"

"I do not know, M'Lord. I would much doubt it."

"I suppose he used ye?"

"I will not lie about it. He used me."

Coudraye laughed. It was neither in bitterness or in glee, but in deprecation. "I judge ye tell me truth," he acknowledged. "But 'tis a truth I thought not to hear. It makes a fool of me."

It was very simple. Aveline suddenly understood. "Ye brought me here as hostage?"

This time his laugh was real enough. "Aye-or worse! I thought to use thee to end Malenfant's lust for blood. I've men enow' to fight him, but I want no war. I thought to wager thee. Thy life could save a hundred good men."

"My life!" Aveline trembled.

Coudraye nodded sombrely. "Aye, if need be. A man does what he must. I'd hoped to barter thee so that the hothead might take ye back to Broule in honour and leave Coudraye in peace."

"And now I am of small value?"

"From what ye say." He examined her shrewdly. "Hast aught to say of Malenfant?"

Aveline lifted her shackled wrists and looked at them musingly. Others might win or barter her, but she still wore chains! "And if I am left upon thy hands unwanted? What then?"

Coudraye made a gesture of frustration. "Then Malenfant will have his battle. At the end of it he'll take ye back to Broule in chains or I'll set ye free. I love the Lady Emma, I'll make no talk of using thee. Thou art high born and Norman. If William Rufus thought of other than the hunt he'd have ended thy slavery long since."

"Milord Coudraye;" Aveline struggled for the right words. "Within thy purpose your lady and thyself have been kind to me. I wish thee well." Again she lifted her chained wrists as though they were a symbol. "It would seem ye must offer me to Broule; then if rejected fight. I do not wish to be taken back to Malenfant, tied upon a horse. Thus my fortunes are with thee. If ye fight and prevail I have my dearest wish, to be free. Freedom has been so distant ... my heart desires it."

"At the price of half my men and half of Malenfant's?" Aveline fingered the links of her chain as she might a rosary. She was more than just a pawn in this game between two warriors. "What would ye have me do, Sire?"

"Ye can offer to wed Malenfant as the price of peace between us."

She had seen it coming. It was a cruel decision for a girl. "An' if I do, and he refuses?"

"Then we must fight."

"When ye speak of a hundred lives ye leave me no choice," Aveline said bitterly. "How can I offer myself to Malenfant as his brood mare?"

"Ye can follow a flag of truce from hence. Ye and Malenfant are Norman and will honour a pledge."

It was a grotesque wooing. "My pledge? What will it be?"

"That if he rejects thee you'll return within these walls of thine own will."

"For what purpose would I return to this captivity?" She used her fettered hands as her question mark. Coudraye made a gesture of deprecation. "I cling to straws and what advantages I may lay my hand on. Until the battle's done I cannot judge the loss. I have a thought for thee-" He grinned wryly at some vision of his own. "Consider well: Come ye not back to Coudraye 'tis scarce like Malenfant to set thee free. Ye've hurt his pride and you'll bruise it more. He'll take thee as a slave."

She had a sudden vision of the ring and the collar on her neck. What Coudraye said made sense. She wondered where Miles was in this welter of conflict. She dared not mention him. "Does't send me on thy mission chained or do I walk free?"

They took her chains. Before she followed the man at arms with his flag of truce across the drawbridge, Coudraye took her hands and kissed her lightly. She knew him troubled, and could not hate him for what he made her do. Had Malenfant been such as he her choice would have been easier. "Ye have my promise," she told him simply. "Should he want me not upon thy terms I will return and wear thy chains." For a moment they found communion with their eyes before she turned away.

She was free! Yet never had she been more surely bound! Upon her slender shoulders was a great weight. How good it would be to run across the sward into the forest and on to liberty. But she had pledged her word. Lives hung on it. Steadfastly she turned her face towards the tents and arms of Broule. The white flag fluttered gently to and fro.

"Coudraye has a magic." Malenfant eyed her dourly and without favour. "What has he more potent than the Abbey's whips and dungeon?"

Aveline stood before him in his tent. Around them were strewn the accoutrements of battle. It was a brutal male atmosphere from which she shrank. It made her presumptuous bargain seem trivial. "The lives of many, M'Lord. I am a small price to pay for them."

"Ye are indeed." His eyes were cold. "A maid who prefers the lash to his embrace is no bargain for any man." It was true! Aveline saw its truth. She felt no tears, for in her heart she wished her mission to fail. To be bedded nightly in nuptial submission to this hard, dark, visaged man was a prospect she loathed. But she must play her role. "I offer thee my person and my loyalty as thy wife," she told him simply.

"If I strike camp and spill no Coudraye blood!"

She could feel his outrage. Injured pride seeped from him in tangible waves of anger. "Ye wanted me enough to steal me from my home," she pointed out reasonably "Ye wooed me with ropes and rapes and chains-and then with whips."

"Your stubbornness demands them all."

"Even as thy wife?"

He sneered. "And why not! I've no time for roses and pretty words. I want sons."

She could feel sorrow for this man who knew so much of war and so little of love. His conviction of rightness was fearful. It placed him behind a wall of male savagery in which she had no place. He saw her body as a reproduction facility, her Norman nobility as a legal convenience. Yet, giving none himself, he still demanded love-or a simulated simile. She tried again. "I will mould myself as you desire."

"Damn, girl! You promise now! Why not before?" Aveline motioned with hands strangely free.

"I am but a girl, Sire. I make no claim to wisdom."

For a moment she thought she had him. But the moment passed. "I've been too concerned with usage and with ritual and thy feelings," he told her gruffly. "I should have wed thee and bed thee at the start, even if I took thee tied to the altar. I could do it now. Does't not realize that, M'Lady, I could do it now."

"Yes, lord."

"But I'll not be foxed by a wench, nor by Coudraye's guile. I'll bring his walls tumbling about his ears and slay whatever force he may possess. And in the end I'll take thee. I'll take ye for nowt and no bargains. Does't understand?"

"Yes, lord."

He glowered. Aveline trembled at the import of his vow. Could Coudraye best this brutal man? She knew not. But in Coudraye's victory lay her only hope of life.

"I will take thy message back within the walls, lord."

"Aye. You're free. I'll respect the truce. But there's a lesson I'll have ye taught. Mayhap Coudraye can learn it too."

He went to the tent flap and called. To the two soldiers who responded he ordered curtly: "Take this silly bitch hence. Strip those Coudraye clothes from her back, leave her no stitch of his costly finery. Then tie her to a tree and flog her well." He paused, considering, "But not so well she cannot walk back behind her flag."

It was a horror she had not foreseen. Yet it was typical of Broule. Coudraye could not have imagined it. Only to Malenfant or the Abbot or Cissota could it have logic. No doubt the men-at-arms were bored and would welcome the diversion of watching a young noblewoman stripped and lashed.

"Please, lord, do not do this. It demeans thee."

He laughed shortly at her plea. "Rest assured, madam, it will demean ye more. Maybe t'will spur Coudraye's manhood when he beholds thy weals. I'll send ye back naked:" He motioned with his head at his men. "Take her!"

Aveline reflected bitterly that what was happening to her now was nothing new, save that her audience would be larger and less to her liking. To be whipped naked before an army, with no other woman in sight! She quivered in bitter shame and pure fear in the grip of the two soldiers who led her to the tree.

They tied her first. The act told clearly her raiment's doom. The tree was small enough that it was easy to place a forearm on each side so that it touched the bark from elbow to fingertips. Then they tied her wrists, tight and hard so that she must stand as a suppliant to the trunk. That was all. It was very simple and very cruel. It left her body deliciously feminine for the scourge.

They took her clothes. Aveline sensed something ritualistic in their manner of tearing Coudraye's rich loveliness from her body. She jerked and winced under their tugging insistence, pulled this way and that as the cloth fought for survival. It did not take long. Her shoes were last so that she stood barefoot to accept the pain to come.

"Someone's had a go at her already. Look at those stripes and her arse."

"Mayhap she likes it. That right, lass, it warms thy cunt?"

"Lay it on proper and she'll sing us a song."

"We should have fucked her first, but she's a lady."

It bespoke their rough thoughts. Aveline could no longer be touched by male vulgarity. She heard but cared not. But her whole being was vivid with fear of the whip. These men were strong and would lash her cruelly. Passionately she longed not to scream before them. To scream in pain brought her to the level of a kitchen wench. But perhaps that was the common gauge of all female flesh! She pressed her forehead against the coolness of the bark.

They flogged the Lady Aveline D'Almaine well. The weals mounted up across her back. She tugged and heaved at the ropes on her wrists at the level of her eyes. It was a shrewd way to bind a naked girl to be flogged. She could twist and weave her hips enough to delight the military, but she could do little else but kick at an enemy that was not there.

She could not keep silent. Aveline made what sounds she must. She was sure her moans and gasping cries met with approval and were to be expected. When her back was aflame so that each fresh scald took her into a sudden awfulness too great to bear, she began to scream-not always with each blow, but only when she could not help it.

"Takes it like a lady, so she does!"

"She'd make a lovely screw."

"Look at that arse wave!"

Aveline, beneath the whip, experienced one of those fleeting moments in which her femaleness knew a great and frightening power over men. Even though it was she being flogged, they were all slaves to her body and its responses. Any motion she cared to make as the lash scored her skin would agonize their loins. The intensity of their massed desire filled her with wonder and with awe.

Pain drove the reflection from her mind. She screamed afresh as they whipped her thighs. In between the extremities of agony she wondered if Malenfant was among those who watched. She would not turn to see. She would not turn at all to meet the avid eyes, but kept her head fast against the tree and the ropes that bound her hands. It seemed impossible the bands about her wrists could make her stand thus and accept her pain. But their compulsion was total, and doubly mocking in their proximity to her teeth. Left alone she might gnaw on them, but not before a hundred hungry eyes.

When it was done and she was freed they held her upright, suddenly solicitous. Perhaps it took fine judgement to know the number of lashes between a maiden's life and death! She was panting and bemused and glad of their support. Her back and ribs were a burning agony. With a skill she recognized with gratitude they had left her breasts inviolate. All else of her nudity was aflame.

"'Tis a loss we cannot keep the lass."

"Oh, aye. Fuck her by night and flog her by day."

"How's a man to fight with a hard on! She keeps me rigid."

"Every camp should have one."

When one of them picked up the rope, she pulled away. "No! No more. I beg of you, no more."

"Her cunt can't stand it any more than my prick" said a ribald voice.

"Why?" Aveline demanded desperately. "There's no need to bind me. I am to return to Coudraye."

"Aye, so ye are. But Milord wants thee proper naked. So 'tis best your pretty hand be tied behind thy back to cover nothing."

Captivity and nakedness spawn strange values. Aveline found herself glad enough to be tied. At the end of her shaming walk she would face kindly folk before whom her nudity would be trebly bare so that she would be striving to cover pubes and breasts and navel with hands inadequate. It was in this pathetic fluttering of maiden modesty that true shame lay. But with hands bound tight behind her back she could walk erect and face whatever eyes she must. Bound she needed no apologies for breast or buttock, nipple or cunt. She crossed her wrists and stood quietly while they were firmly tied above her scarlet rump.

Her escort with the flag of truce dared not look below her chain as they traversed their path of humiliation back to Coudraye. There was no need of speech, so neither contrived it. But their crossing of the lowered drawbridge brought Aveline face to face with the blushing confrontation she could not evade. None thought to cover her as she was guided to the room where Coudraye awaited the verdict of Broule.

They stood as they had stood before. But now Aveline was nude and bound and it was Coudraye who waited on her word. Suddenly presented with her naked loveliness he was bereft of speech.

"I am sorry, lord. I did not choose it thus."

"For the love of heaven, girl, what befell?"

She could afford a demure smile. "I was rejected, lord. I was also stripped and flogged as some sort of lesson to us both."

"Lesson!"

"M'Lord Malenfant saw my striping as such."

"Ye mean 'Tis his way of scorning us?"

"He says he will destroy thee and take me by force."

"He is mad ... insane."

"Nay. He values me but little and is sure he can have me for naught. It is thee he desires ... desires thy death and the destruction of thy keep." Her face crumpled. "I am sorry, lord, I did my best."

Her tears unlocked his awareness of her condition. With an oath, he sliced away the cords upon her wrists and found her a cover and a rag. "Sit, M'Lady. In a minute Emma can attend thy needs. But let us first talk of this ... this-"

"Of this, M'Lord." Aveline got back upon her feet and turned, allowing her cover to fall away and reveal her wounds. "Talk of this, lord. What ye behold is all of Milord Malenfant's reply."

She stood naked long enough to hear his breath gusting in anger, then covered herself again and resumed her seat. "He warrants death," Coudraye said heavily. "To do that to a girl!" He gazed at her in sorrow. "I would not have sent thee had I known. At least ye did me service. If I fought not before, I'll fight him now."

"Not because of me, lord?"

"Because of him," Coudraye motioned angrily. "The man's a mad boar running wild. I'll have his tusks."

She knew a maid's desuetude beside a man avowed to war. They were beyond sympathy in a male world to which a woman had no key. Coudraye was changed from the man she had first known. Before Aveline went wearily to the Lady Emma's chamber, they talked but changed nothing.

"I have never seen a maid so whipped!" Emma exclaimed incredulously as she bathed the sweat and dust stained nakedness of her returned captive. "He must hate thee sorely."

It was strange to feel a superiority over the older woman's innocence. Amused, Aveline thought to tell her of the whips of Aubyn and of St. Agnes but held her tongue. Of Miles and his willow wands she would never speak. Emma would be happier if she did not know of such things. "I fear for what must now happen."

Aveline understood Emma's disquiet. Her man was going to war. 'Twas no glad prospect. In her own weariness with it all she took the gentle hand and kissed it with tenderness. "Ye have troubles enough without me," she said softly. "There are things ye wish to do. Put me safe where I need not be entertained...." she smiled ruefully, "or watched."

"You mean...?"

"Yes. Be not shocked at my wish. I am weary from the whip-and all else. Chain me and go thy way. I will sleep." The small stone room was bright with afternoon. It was a prison without gloom. "I will be safe and happy enough here," Aveline told her distraught companion. She placed her bare foot upon the cot. "Come, lock the shackle on my ankle so that I have no foolish thoughts."

"But, my dear, I must get thee clothes."

"No. I am so used to ... being as I am. And, chained, I cannot take them off to sleep. I am content."

In wonder, and perhaps with love, the Chatelaine picked up the metal gyve and locked it fast upon the slender ankle. Looking doubtfully at the now chained captive she said: "I wish I had thy courage. I will pray that after the battle it is not Malenfant who opens this door and finds thee thus."

"It will not be Milord Malenfant," said Aveline with conviction. "It will be only you. None other."

They were both wrong.

CHAPTER TEN -- THE PRETTY PRISON

It was the thunder of hooves that woke her in the morning. The cavalcade of Coudraye's men pounded across the drawbridge to route their enemy. With a back-stretched leg tugging at its chain, Aveline, contrived to clutch the bars and behold the clash of armour as the power of Malenfant met them in midfield. No element of surprise was there on either side. None was possible. They would smite each other to the bloody conclusion Coudraye had sought to avoid.

To the captive girl behind the bars it was both horrible and fascinating. Her mind was alive with the vivid awareness that the outcome of the carnage held as great a portent for her as for any other. She might watch the approach of freedom, a glorious liberty to return to Plinlymon, or she might find herself delivered into a repugnant slavery. Malenfant was like to be merciless with her.

Most battles are frustratingly indecisive. This was no exception. Men fell and horses fled without their rider. There was much sound and confusion. The pikemen followed the cavalry, axes flashed and swords thrust. In helpless consternation the chained maiden in her tower room realized the tussle could go on and on. She could behold advantage to neither side, save for one thing: Malenfant possessed the larger force.

From time to time Aveline returned to her cot. It was tiring to stand on one foot while the other tugged at a chain. But her stake in the battle was compulsive. It returned her inevitably to the window and to anxiety. As the morning lengthened she saw with sinking heart the melee creep closer and closer to the gateway of Coudraye.

She recognized the two men as servitors of the man whose shackle she wore. They entered the small chamber without warning, paused momentarily at sight of her nakedness, then made their apology.

"It is our orders, M'Lady, this thing that we must do." Aveline trembled. "The fight goes ill for us?"

"Aye. Hold forth thy hands."

In futile defense, she put her hands behind her back and out of sight, eyeing the cord with loathing.

"Why would you tie me? I am well chained."

"'Tis not as ye think, lady. We'll loose thy shackle. Come, hold out thy hands, we've little time."

They exuded an urgency she could not ignore. The men of Coudraye were as close to friends as she now possessed. Hesitantly she held out her chafed wrists and watched them tied with a care and precision out of keeping with the tension in the air.

"What must ye do with me?"

"'Tis best ye do not know, M'Lady."

"Why so many strands upon my wrists, and why in front instead of at my back?"

She saw them smile, but got no answer. They unlocked the gyve from her ankle and led her from the room.

The battlements were deserted, the castle was not besieged. Save for the three of them the defenders were in the field. Aveline looked about her in wonder at the implements of war as she was taken to the embrasures above the drawbridge and the moat. It was while long lengths of rope were being tied to her ankles and another looped 'round the cords upon her wrists that she noticed the timber protruding out beyond the last stone rim.

She divined its use and Coudraye's desperate gamble at the same time. Ironically the cause she championed would now treat her ill, and she would not complain. She viewed what was about to happen with fear and misgiving, but if it served its cause she would bear it with what fortitude she could muster.

"'Tis well thee are without clothes, madam. Such is our order."

She shrugged and baffled them with a smile. "Get it over with," she demanded without rancour.

At the end of the stout timber there was a pulley; threaded through it was the rope to her hands. With a muttered "Forgive me, M'lady", one of her guards picked her up bodily and lowered her over the battlements while his companion controlled the rope by which she would hang. At the last moment primitive fear caused her to struggle, but it was too late: She swung out into nothing.

It was a tribute to Coudraye's strategy that as the naked girl swung from her rope the sounds of strife were muted by astonishment. Whilst by no means close, her helpless predicament was clear to behold by all who fought. Despite the pain of her wrists and her fear of the space beneath her feet Aveline did for a few brief moments feel hope that this clearly defined threat to her life would be heeded and that Malenfant, determined to possess her alive, would yield to Coudraye's terms. If the rope by which she was suspended was cut she would be dead in seconds.

But her exposure was not yet complete. She felt herself being lowered to where anyone below would get a shaming view as she hovered somewhere between earth and sky. From narrow slits on either hand a hook slid out to snare the ropes upon her ankles and draw them in out of sight. Tension slowly drew apart her roped feet as the ropes were carefully and cruelly pulled until she was spread obscenely wide to flaunt her pubic bush like a badge of defiance. She hung motionless. With her feet so tractioned she could not move.

They left her thus. Or at least she had no knowledge of their presence. The Lady Aveline D'Almaine hung naked from the battlements of Coudraye for all to see, to live or to die according to the temper of the Lord Malenfant of Broule. A sad, cruel plight for a maiden whose only enemy was her own loveliness.

To hang by their wrists is a thing done to men and to women for a punishment. By some it is called torture. Aveline knew that had it not been for the care taken in the binding of her hands it would be torture indeed. As it was it was a misery hard to endure. Her need of fortitude multiplied as the battle was joined once more in the full fury of men who would hang helplessly in pain and the shame of her spread legs while more blood was shed towards an issue still far from determined.

In her miserable condition Aveline weighed her chances and found small comfort. A total victory for Coudraye was her one real hope, but as far as her unskilled eye could detect it was a hope slowly diminishing. Victory for Malenfant spelt the dungeon chains of Broule. Unless! She examined the frightening alternative that, faced with defeat, Coudraye would cut the rope and let her die as a final cheating of his enemy. It was terrifying to know a man might stand above her with a knife at the ready.

Yet hanging naked in a void, she found some reassurance in her knowledge of Emma and her lord. She was positive they were not cruel. His words about her use as hostage had been dour enough, but she strove toward a conviction that he would use her as a threat-an outrageous bluff as one last hope of reason with the foe. He would never have his man use his knife upon the rope-surely he would not! Surely.....

She accepted, with a wry amusement, that with the drawbridge down it was possible for the staff of Coudraye to step out upon it and look up to behold a most unusual sight. With her feet drawn back by the ropes on her ankles she was able to look down without straining and observe the wide mouthed, furtive faces taking stock of her sex. They came and went; sometimes they were children. She had little doubt that for many it was their first good look at a secret most girls kept hidden: A full frontal view of her was obligingly vouchsafed. She hoped they enjoyed it. The other possibilities of her fate made their prurience seem trivial.

It matters not at what exact time Aveline became aware of change. Her preoccupation with pain and exposure blunted perception after an hour or two of vulnerability. But her pulse quickened and her eyes once more focused on the fight as the sounds of it diminished with an unmistakable significance. Even at a distance it was easy to see it had become a desultory affair of individual contests absorbed in their urgency of kill or be killed. Men were walking among the soldiers, giving orders and pounding on the back the ones who would not heed. Gradually the turmoil stilled. Here and there men sat upon the riled sward and tended wounds. Others dismounted and shed some armour. It was obvious to the anxious hostage that someone had called a halt to the carnage. Her eyes roved in search of Malenfant but found him not. It was hard to distinguish faces at such a distance, but she knew that had he been there she would have detected him.

They separated from the stragglers, two figures welded close as one, and made a slow and weary progress toward the entry over which she hung suspended. At first she could not be sure, but as they narrowed the gap her heart began to thump and her pulse to quicken. What she saw was incredible and beyond her wildest hope. When it became certain, she closed her eyes and said a small, brief prayer of thankfulness. One of the men was Coudraye; he was wounded and limping, supported by the stalwart figure of the man who filled her dreams. It was Miles Hardwin.

If asked what she had expected of this meeting she could have given no coherent answer. Her knowledge of him and the time in which he had held her captive was so bizarre and beyond the norm it had left her only with an illogical desire to be his forever. She knew others would call her hunger for this laughing man an aberration, a girlish infatuation. She could think of names for it herself. But soon she would face him, hung naked in an obscenity of captivity she longed to hide. As usual she was helpless, and took what comfort she could from his previous familiarity with every inch of her. When the slowly moving pair reached the drawbridge and gazed up, Aveline blushingly reflected that from this man she had nothing to hide.

"Learning how to fly, poppet?" Miles inquired amiably. "Oh; Miles ... please!" She was sure she sounded silly. "Naughty, naughty! You ought to cover that thing up."

"I can't. You know I can't. Oh, Miles!"

"You said that before. Something on your mind?"

"Miles! Stop teasing. Get me down-or up! Or something!"

"Sorry, sweetheart, I've got an invalid to tend. Another hour or two up there and you'll grow the nicest wings." She adored him! She was absurd! He was outrageous! She laughed and wept in a pure hysteria of relief. She understood nothing except that she was saved. Miles was there and all was well. If it pleased his pixie humour to leave her where she was for all to see she would have to put up with it. So long as at the end of it she was safe within the haven of his arms. She knew herself intoxicated with her infatuation for him. Girls in love were silly creatures, she knew this and did not care. Rainbows lit her sky in all directions.

She could not be lonely, not even in her remote detachment of altitude. Men were drifting back to the castle from the field of battle. Some walked, some rode, others limped or were carried. Few of them failed to raise their eyes as they passed beneath, but it was testimony to their fatigue that few paused to ogle her wanton charms. Such remarks as she could hear were guarded. After all, she was not their captive but the captive of their Lord. She wished ardently someone would draw her back to safety and release, or at least loosen the ropes so she might close her legs. After awhile she had to recognise she was being teased or tormented or perhaps punished for a fault she knew not of. She allowed herself the luxury of tears, and laughed hysterically at the distance they must fall.

"I speak no ill of the dead," Coudraye said heavily. "Thy half brother was a strange man. Our dispute is done. It is ended." He looked up from his seat beside the great hearth, his wounded leg stretched out straight before him. "Miles Hardwin, I know little of thee either." He allowed himself a smile. "Save by repute and the gossip of maids. But I owe ye much. Had ye not come at the moment of Malenfant's death we might be fighting still."

"I loved him. He was always kind to me." Miles shrugged. "How can we judge these things! Loyalties seem predestined." He sighed. "I was upon a quest or I would have been here sooner. But I could not have swayed him. It seems wrong now, but I would have fought beside him."

"And ye are Lord of Broule?"

"Aye. He had no other heirs. He wanted sons, but his way of getting them was passing strange." He grinned sardonically. "I've hunted with Rufus enough my claim will hold."

Coudraye nodded. "This England has no King; only a huntsman and his Saxon thanes. We Normans destroy each other."

"My mother was Saxon, messire."

"Aye, it shows. Thou art more than handsome. If half the stories of thee are true ye've had more conquests than our William. I envy thee."

Miles Hardwin chuckled. "Ye think on the wenches, M'Lord. Yet I envy thee thy Lady. Maidens offer us but two gifts, a hairy slit to pierce, and a rump to heat with the rod. Vapid creatures mostly, forever demanding love and cock as though the two were twain."

"May I intrude, M'Lords?" Dame Emma swept imperiously into the chamber. She eyed her spouse with love, and their blond and powerful guest in speculation. "It seems I must remind ye both of a sad maid bound below our battlements."

"Great Heaven, that ye may-" Coudraye exclaimed in chagrin. "I've been more concerned-"

Miles Hardwin's inclination of the head was only slightly mocking. "The fault is mine, madam. I ordered her left as ye placed her."

"And why, pray! 'Tis no pretty plight."

"I want no fanfare so that the Lady Aveline thinks the battle waged for her. She's of high mettle that needs humility."

"The poor child has had enough of that these past hours!" The Lady Emma's breasts heaved in indignation.

"No doubt ye're right, madam. Restore her to us. Give the order." He grinned companionably. "But leave her without raiment for the nonce."

"M'Lord, you jest! The maid should be covered."

"In good time, M'Lady. But I have spoken of humility. She will know it the sooner for being bare."

Lady Emma knew enough of men to win her battles piece by piece. She contented herself with a disapproving sniff and left on her errand of mercy.

"Hast' a feeling for this damsel, M'Lord?" Coudraye was curious.

Miles Hardwin made a wry grimace. "I wish I knew. She is bothersome within the mind and in the loins. 'Twas she I sought fruitlessly whilst my brother embarked on this sad venture. She was stolen from my care" He chuckled. "I doubt there is a maiden in the Realm more prone to kidnaping than she."

Suddenly there was a flash of youthful curves, of flying female hair and thrusting breasts. Miles Hardwin's observations were smothered by a leaping embrace that felt him cupping a bare bottom and a bare back while their owner's feet were off the floor and her arms tight around his neck. He was bereft of speech by a pair of warm, moist lips more ardent than his own. He dealt with the occasion unperturbed.

"Oh, Miles! Oh, Miles!" Aveline cradled her head against the comforting shoulder and clung tight. She was ecstatically happy.

"I take it ye have a passing acquaintance," said Dame Emma sarcastically after a span of minutes.

"Yes ... oh, yes!" Aveline could deal only in exclamations.

"We have met briefly, madam," Miles acknowledged with equal mordancy.

"The maid should be clothed," Emma said firmly.

"No doubt ye're right, M'ady." Miles patted a naked bottom. "D'you want to be dressed, poppet?"

Aveline surfaced only momentarily. "Eh? Oh, no, it doesn't matter."

"Our hostess feels ye may catch cold."

"No, I won't! I'm wonderful. Oh, Miles, I'm so happy!"

"Would ye not like to go to bed and rest?"

"What on earth for!" To Aveline the suggestion seemed absurd. To relinquish the god-like male now she had him! "I'm not tired. Kiss me again."

"There are others present, young lady," Coudraye reminded dryly. He was intrigued but knew his wife was not.

"Oh!"

The enormity of her abandonment to joy suddenly encompassed the nude maiden in an awareness of shame. Her cheeks flamed. Her eyes were contrite as she scanned her audience. Sinking to her knees, she took the strong male hand and kissed it gently. "Forgive me, Lord. And my thanks for rescue."

Without reply, Aveline now knelt before the bewildered gaze of the Lady Emma. Again she sought a hand and held it to her cheek. "M'Lady, I have been wanton in thy house. Please think no ill of me. I have been so ... so ... lost."

Before Coudraye, she cradled his hand upon his knee, then touched it with her lips. "M'Lord Coudraye, ye have been kind to me."

"Nay, lass, I've treated thee most ill."

She shook her head and smiled in retrospect. "I did not mind-that which ye had done with me. 'Twas in a most good cause." She looked up at the strong, kind features, her eyes warm. "Let us say that I was glad to serve."

"Glad to hang there for a couple of hours while men chattered?" The Lady Emma remembered the heat of youth and was regarding the nude girl with amused tolerance.

"I did not mind that either," Aveline conceded with only partial truth. She stole a glance at Miles. "No doubt I was thought to benefit."

"Let us now get thee clad as befits our guest," Emma said gaily. "Despite our loss this is a most happy day." She held out her hands to the kneeling girl.

"M'Lady, if I may presume?" Miles turned his full charm upon the chatelaine. "Ye have a place of confinement for this girl?"

Emma looked at him askance. "But the Lady Aveline is no longer captive, she is our honoured guest. There is much for which we must make amends!"

"She is captive to me, M'Lady. Broule's title predates thine."

Coudraye laughed. "He's right, y'know?"

Lady Emma was no fool. She knew maiden infatuation when she saw it. But she wanted only kindness for this glowing child for whom she felt affection. "Aveline, my dear, we promised ye freedom. It is yours. What wish ye to do with it?"

For a maid to know herself outrageous and without shame is a thing for which to blush. Aveline knew herself mantled in scarlet. Her eyes were downcast, too embarrassed to meet any in the room. Her voice was tremulous only with joy: "I am the prisoner of Broule, Lady Emma. Please yield my person to my Lord Miles. I wish it so."

The Lord and the Lady of Coudraye exchanged glances and laughed. Emma handed Miles two keys. "I am sure our besotted maid can lead thee to where these may be used. She knows the way."

It was the turn of Miles to be abashed. He took the keys, but said awkwardly, "There is much to do for all of us. `Tis best the Lady Aveline be kept safe while we dispose our duties."

"She'd be safe enough with me," Emma avowed. "But if a prison for her please ye both, so be it." She cupped Aveline's head in loving hands and kissed the ripe lips. "Go with him, child, to thy captivity. I fear I envy thee."

To be picked up and carried by this magnificent creature was heaven. Aveline savoured every moment. Her mind reviewed the distresses of the past and knew herself infinitely blest. Freedom and Miles! That she was about to lose that freedom was a contradiction she refused to consider. She clung. Had she been feline she would have purred.

"A pretty little prison," Miles approved after much kissing. "Think you'll ever get out of it?"

"When it pleases ye to free me" She was wickedly demure.

"There's naught but a dungeon at Broule."

Her heart missed a beat. Broule and the Abbey was a too recent memory for comfort. But Miles would always tease her, it was his nature. Perhaps it was why she loved him! "So long as ye visit me in it, Miles?"

"I'll fuck thee daily. 'Twill brighten thy gloom."

"Thank you, kind sir."

"That shackle and chain; I suppose ye wear it?"

She placed her foot upon the cot. "It locks on this ankle."

Miles closed the metal band snugly upon her. The chain rattled as she returned it to the floor. " 'Tis a child's confinement," he said, dissatisfied. "Ye'll wear more than that. But after I've fucked ye."

"Miles!" She was as shocked as when he had first used the word.

"Lay and spread thy legs, sweetness."

"Miles, no! Not here. You can't!"

"And why not!" He was enjoying her disarray.

"In this prison-and both of us guests!"

Miles picked her up and laid her down. He even performed the knightly service of separating her legs against only slight resistance. He treated her protests as conversation; they soon died. The stars and the moon and the sun exploded about them on their journey.

THE END
The Girl In Chains ....(108k)    by F. E. Campbell





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