If, in an Irish County, you leave the farmlands and mount into the hills there will come a moment when you know fear. Illogical and inexplicable, but you will feel it. Atavistic and elemental it will touch the hairs on the nape of your neck and cause you to take a hasty and reassuring glance at your road map. Yes, you are indeed right here. You have not gone back nine thousand years into another age and another life. There is not something awful lurking beyond the knoll.
There are few paved roads to take you to such elevations. Not because they are high or difficult terrain. They are not. It is their very ordinary contour that emphasizes their solitary loneliness. But few live in them. They are a world apart. Their ghosts roam them undisturbed. Perhaps they are the reason we feel ill at ease when we intrude. We sense but cannot see them.
Clare shivered. She wished she had not come. The high adventure of the plane ferry and the drive from Cork had been whittled away by the distrust and hostility of those who she had asked the way. They had surveyed her with their dark peasant eyes and sent her in wrong directions. None of them claimed to have heard of Erdislune.
Her small car had shivered its way for several miles now over a rutted gravel track that skirted the peat bogs that were still frequent even at this height. She wished she had not stopped to stretch. Standing a few feet from it she saw the car as a precarious link with life. Supposing it would not start, or was damaged by the ruts! The thought of walking alone in this haunted place made her long for the warmth and security of the land she had left behind. She chided herself. Of course it was strange! She had sought change deliberately. She was lonely on these high moors. Even the air was different, soft and moist. Almost tangible. She got back in the car, almost with trepidation. But it started faithfully. One more glance at the hand drawn map. Erdislune should be beyond the next rise.
In the West half of Ireland one should not expect the rational. It was quite in keeping with this precept that no one answered Clare's tug at the bell pull. After several tries she stepped back a few paces and examined the portal. It merited attention. Erdislune was huge, bigger than she had expected. It was old. The stone well weathered. A good deal of ivy. Immediately before her was an anomaly. The massive front door was flanked by what may have started out to be fluted columns. But the sculptor had allowed his imagination to run riot. Perhaps he had dreamed a dream. As though the column itself had given her birth there stood to a woman's normal height a naked girl whose arms were raised, her wrists chained to the stone which again took in its columnar function to the portico as it rose above. The chained girl had been fashioned to a breathtaking perfection. But it was the calm serenity of the lovely face that captured attention. It glowed with happiness, turned slightly to gaze across the doorway to her sister on the other side, each rapt in a vision that only they could see.
Clare took comfort in the pure beauty of the artist's creation. The polished stone made the figures as fresh as yesterday, in sharp contrast to the weathered surfaces around. It was as though the girls possessed a life force that transmitted itself to the stuff of which they made in a perpetual rejuvenation. They were infinitely preferable to the grimacing gargoyles the mood of the moor had prepared her for.
To her right broad steps led to a terrace flanking the house. With a resigned shrug Clare mounted them--Mohamed would go to the mountain...
Erdislune had a Grecian quality oddly out of keeping with the place in which it lay. It was spacious. Gardens spread into the parkland. Long ago someone had planted many trees. Here and there statuary could be discerned. The house was on a slight rise so that the shrubs and trees sloped away. The house adjusted to the terrain by itself falling to a lower level at the end of the terrace. Clare descended more steps to a colonnade. She had traversed half its length, her eyes searching the distances rather than to pry in the blind faces of windows, then a pleasant feminine voice asked casually: "Can I help you?"
Startled, Clare turned abruptly.
It was not the same girl. That would have been too much, even for this ghost ridden spot. But there was little else different. She was naked. She stood against the column in a lazy acceptance of her plight. Her wrists were chained by shining metal to the stone. The same serenity of face was there except that she was viewing the visitor with eyebrow raised curiosity.
Clare flushed. She could think of nothing to say that did not sound ridiculous. She managed only the obvious.
"Shouldn't I be helping you?"
It was as though she had not spoken. The feminine voice continued brightly. "You'll be wanting Miss Sterling... Ursula's having Tea in the rose garden. You'll just be in time. It's at the end of the columns, then turn left. You'll see... "
Even in the West of Ireland you don't walk away and casually leave a naked girl chained to a pillar. Or do you... ! Yesterday Clare would have been certain of the answer. Today she was not.
"I can't leave you like that." She offered lamely. "Let me get those things off your wrists."
The captive actually looked puzzled as though seeking motive for an absurd suggestion. "You can't get them off without the key." She explained reasonably, as to a child. "What on Earth would you want to get them off for?"
"Do you enjoy standing like that?" Clare asked with a touch of acerbity.
"Well, what else can I do?" The logic was irrefutable.
The naked girl stood watching Clare's evident bafflement with an all too obvious amusement. As she leaned back against the stone, her arms languidly raised to the bond that held them high above her head she made a picture of extraordinary grace. Clare suspected her of deliberately posing.
"Are there some tools or something... ? Or some help? Would you like me to get the police?"
The lovely mouth curved into a smile. The eyes sparkled, perhaps with mischief. "Oh no. Nothing like that. I'm really quite happy. You go and have Tea with Ursula in Montrilas."
"Where?" Clare was aghast. Had she found the wrong estate!
"Oh, sorry. Montrilas is the old part, the ruins... It's always been here. The rose garden's a part."
"And just leave you." Clare was certain she was being laughed at.
"Yes please." It was said brightly: gratitude for a kind thought.
Clare shrugged and managed a smile to show she was not too annoyed. She went to find the rose garden. No doubt there would be unicorns grazing...
"No servants, y'know. Frightfully sorry." Ursula Sterling seemed genuinely pleased. "I'm so glad you came." She eyed her guest shrewdly. "Feel like turning back half way?"
"How did you know?" Clare laughed. Tea cured everything.
"It's the general reaction. We are a bit out of things here. Scares you at first. But you come to realize it's Erdislune that's right: The rest of the world lost its way somewhere."
Clare was not sure about this. But there was one thing she wanted disposed of. "There is a naked girl chained to a pillar back beside the house." She said in a firm no nonsense voice.
"Delightful, isn't she." Ursula Sterling agreed absent mindedly. "There is so much to show you. It's lovely here." She poured more tea.
It was more than lovely. Everything blended and merged. It was hard to know where Erdislune began and Montrilas ended. The ruin was in keeping with the untended gardens. It was a riot of growth.
"But there's so much." Clare ventured doubtfully. "Aren't you lost...?"
"Of course not. You see, we have always been here."
She had made the word, always, sound like a very long time. Yet Clare doubted that her hostess was much more than her own twenty-four years.
"Do you always shock your prospective employees with a naked girl?" She demanded. There would remain enough daylight to get her back across the-moor before dark.
The visitor was by no means sure she wanted to stay. The human warmth of her last good hotel seemed a world away. She yearned for it. Yet, Erdislune was hauntingly beautiful. It deserved at least a visit. How silly to feel that if you stayed you would never leave. Just the spell of a strange and ancient place. Cynically she felt sure that when they reached the colonnade the girl would be gone.
The naked slenderness had scarcely moved. The head was back over one shoulder, raised as though seeing something out beyond the trees. When she heard their approach she turned and smiled a greeting. Unabashed, unashamed. More composed than the girl who examined her with such an air of resentment.
There were no introductions. The chatelaine of Erdislune said casually: "Darling, tell our new governess there are no dragons... "
"There really ought to be one though." The chained girl said regretfully. She simulated a shiver of apprehension. "It would make this a wonderful cringe. Can't you just see him coming up out of the trees and getting closer and closer... " She sighed ecstatically. "But then, we would have to have the knight in armour. He'd make such a noise clanking around. Who wants him...!"
Should she laugh or cry. She longed to beat her fists in frustration. She fell back on sarcasm. "You often play charades?" She inquired icily.
They shared something. Clare could tell. Were they laughing at her! Both ignored her petulance.
"I think you should set her free and give her some clothes." She said forthrightly to the older girl. "I'd like to discuss our... our business rationally. I can't do it when I'm disturbed by something as... " She found the next word difficult. "... as absurd as this."
"I don't have her key." Ursula stated turning to the captive. "Who has your key, darling?"
"Tavie took it. Alethea said I'd have to stay here all night."
"And so you shall, darling." Ursula agreed cheerfully.
She took Clare by the arm. "You see. She's quite happy. C'mon, we'll go and look for the girls. Maybe Tavie will give you the key. Then you'll be happy."
Clare allowed herself to be led. The girl in chains winked puckishly as her visitor turned reluctantly away.
"I can't really tell you about the girls." Ursula admitted as they made their way towards the park. "You'll have to put your own name on what they are. Living here they aren't going to be what you are used to. But they have a gift of being what they want to be."
"But French! And English History! Here... Why?"
"It was their idea." Her companion laughed. "Perhaps they wanted company."
"They are not just children?"
"Only when they want to be. But you'll find them immensely intelligent. They scare me sometimes with what they know."
"How old are they?"
"They like to say fifteen. You'll find their development about right for seventeen."
The next question was awkward. But she wanted to ask it. "Are there no male associations with Erdislune?"
"None!" The single word carried an uncalled for vehemence.
They strolled in silence for a moment. It suddenly occurred to Clare that she knew of no good reason for walking like this. It was then that she came to awareness...
They were skilled. Clare had a momentary memory of Fennimore Cooper. It was possible that the small flashes of motion and the diaphanous scraps whisked behind a bole or a bush were contrived like the introduction to a symphony. She was being exhibited and watched. There was one off to each side...
"Let them play." Ursula admonished. "It's their way.
Clare was about to be indignant when she found herself staring at the figure of a girl.
It had materialized from the scenery. She stood as though barring their path. But there was no path. Slender, young, jet black hair. She was Diana of the Greek legend, even to the bow and the quiver and the white something that fell from one shoulder, caressed her body where it pleased and then evaporated when it had served its purpose. She was clothed in mist and magic. But very, very real.
"I'm Tavie. Welcome to Erdislune."
Clare jumped, startled. The voice had come from her rear. She swung round, angry at this play acting... and fearful.
This girl was fair as the other was dark. A silver sheen flickered in the dense mass. In all else she was identical. They were twins. She, too, stood astride their retreat as though the two huntresses had contrived encirclement. But she was smiling, her face lit with a radiance that matched the lights in her hair. With lithe dancing strides she joined them and, with the utter naturalness of a child, kissed Clare warmly on the lips. Her own had a sweetness the stranger had never before known.
Alethea joined them. Smiling slightly she subjected the guest to a top to toe scrutiny. Turning to her twin she said firmly: "Yes. She is beautiful. We should keep her." Then, with real warmth to the guest herself; "I like you. You're nice. I'm glad you came."
Poised: naive: outrageous! Clare could not index. They were a new experience. Erdisland had made them. Some of the eerie atmosphere of the moor hovered. Ursula made small talk as they returned to the house. She sensed that the girl beside her was torn by indecision.
"Tavie. Give me the key please. You know the one."
Grinning mischievously the girl extracted the bit of metal from somewhere within her misty garb. Ursula passed it to Clare.
"There. Put your mind at rest. Set her free."
But when they reached the pillar in the colonnade the chained girl had gone. There was no evidence that she had ever existed.
* * *
Clare wanted to leave. But could not. The sight of her heroic little car in the driveway filled her with nostalgia for the mundane. Again and again she had been within sight of her declaration. But always it was shrewdly diverted. She realized her thoughts and reactions were probably honestly transparent. They knew she wished to go.
The tutorial, for all its normalcy, was the most disturbing. The twins had appeared at breakfast in conventional dress that, oddly, made them seem younger. Conversation had drifted round the table embracing them all. Even some humorous references to her state of mind. They had all shared laughter. No one spoke of the chained girl...
It was a magnificent Library. The furniture had been used with love. The books had been read. Some often. They sat around the big table and explored each other's minds. For Clare the work they sought to inaugurate revealed a shocking discovery. Her pupils knew more than she did.
They were delightful. Charming, helpful. Tremendously involved. They led their tutor to the outer limits of her comprehension and then, themselves, continued on with casual familiarity into realms wherein she had never trod. They acted as a foil to each other. Probing and parrying in a quest that led forever forward. An abacus on which the other computed the unknown. They included Clare until her responses slowed. Then, in an innocent complicity, worked together with the dedication of accountants seeking an elusive balance.
Once more she was angry. What else could she be! On the verge of striding off in search of Ursula Sterling she recalled the statement: "Perhaps they wanted company... "
"Why did you get me here?" She demanded abruptly.
"We knew you'd be beautiful." Alethea said offhandedly.
"You will stay, y'know." Tavie offered brightly.
Neither of them paused in what they were doing.
They were very lovely. On that score alone it was hard to be brutal or to be rude. Their acceptance of her was so natural and complete that Clare felt churlish in her inability to accept them and their whole strange menage. She made excuses at which they smiled knowingly. Then went in search of the older girl. Surely Ursula would understand.
On her way she went down to the car to pick up the correspondence she had left in it. But her small hard working little vehicle had disappeared.
An icy finger of fear touched and held. She was trapped.
Demand an accounting! Thump the desk! Assert herself! She would have to. But, first, there were some outbuildings: perhaps a garage, a converted barn. Don't be righteous until she was more certain. The little car might be safely under cover. True, she had the keys. But evidently keys did not matter here.
She explored. If they didn't like it they could lump it! She did not find her car. But she found something else.
She came to the largest shed last. The others had served obvious utility needs. All were relatively new when compared with the house. It was square. It was in good repair. The considerable expanse of concrete floor had been freshly swept. It was bare and empty except for a single item. Dead center there stood a pair of ancient stocks. They firmly imprisoned a slender pair of feminine ankles. Sitting on the bench, legs spread, feet held, was a naked girl.
Clare's first reaction was impatience. Yesterday chained to a pillar. Today sitting in the stocks. Had the absurd creature nothing better to do! Did they expect her to be confused, curious, intrigued, by these contrived antics! Whatever their intelligence the twins and Ursula Sterling all needed a good swift kick. Probably they were bored in this isolation. But that did not justify making sport with anyone who answered an ad in good faith...
But it was not the same girl. This in itself was disconcerting. Clare had reached the stocks and now saw that which sent her pulse racing in shock. The girl's lovely skin was striped with whipmarks. As if this was not enough she wore upon her head a metal contraption from another century. Names like 'Brank' and 'Scold's bridle' surfaced from fiction and history. It held a bit or ball within the victim's mouth in such a way that speech was impossible. An iron collar round the slender neck held it secure. A padlock completed the ensemble.
Cynically Clare searched the prisoned face for the same insouciance as the chained girl of the day before. It was not there. The appealing eyes showed only hopeless resignation. They searched for a moment, puzzled. Then the bare arms made decisive gestures that told the visitor to go: to go quickly. The mute head shook in frustration. But the hands and arms were eloquent enough. They spelt escape.
With urgent fingers Clare sought to release the captive. She was defeated by two huge padlocks. One on the neck, the other locking the sturdy timbers that clasped the ankles. The hands were free. But they might as well have been bound for all the help they could give their owner.
"Do you know where the keys are?" Clare asked.
The answer was very negative. "Is this... this nonsense against your will?" She watched the pitifully vehement affirmative enacted. Skepticism was routed by the whipmarks. Surely they would not go that far to act out a charade. Half ashamed she wet her finger and tested the striations. They were not cosmetic. In each the flesh was ridged or cut. The girl had been cruelly whipped.
"Did you come here in answer to an ad'... as a tutor?"
The pleading eyes and the nod, nod, nod, cut Clare's world from beneath her feet. This girl today, herself tomorrow. She must escape to save them both. She longed for pencil and paper so that her companion could write whatever message she had to give. But the prisoner was impotent. More and more desperately her hands implored Clare to run, to get away. It occurred to Clare herself that it would be fatal to be found in this place with this girl.
"I'll get you out of here." She vowed. "I'll get away tonight in the dark. I'll get the police." Instinctively she bent and planted a reassuring kiss on the raised forehead. Then fled.
Feverishly she considered her plight. They must not suspect her hostility or her knowledge. A continuation of puzzled innocence was her role. If only she had her car! She judged it unlikely they would tell her where it was hidden. But even without it, if she walked and ran all night across the moor she must surely find succor.
She had left the girls with the clear intent of seeking Ursula. She had better follow through. Be casual.
"I suppose you are right." Ursula Sterling shrugged apologetically. "They have remarkable minds. I don't suppose you can teach them anything. But they do want you. They need company. You'll act as a sort of foil, a sounding board... " She made a vague gesture. "I know it sounds silly. But do you think you could give them that...?"
"But who am I responsible to? You speak as though they own Erdislune."
"They do. It belongs to them. I'm... oh, I don't know what I am. I get the bills paid and work with Hedda--you met her. She's the woman who does most of the work. Between us we manage to keep things from falling apart."
"I can't find my car. There's some things in it I need."
Ursula showed genuine embarrassment. "I'm really ashamed. One of Hedda's girls in the kitchen had a raging tooth ache. Our car had a flat. We let her take yours. We do owe you an apology for not asking."
"You didn't have a key."
Again the vague gesture. "Hedda's good at that sort of thing."
Lies, of course. But don't push! Be plausibly naive. Clare affected a stumbling curiosity.
"It's so lovely here." She said slowly. "I'd like to stay if I can adjust my mind and if the girls still want me after my inadequacy in our little study just now. But--but, don't you understand how very perplexing it all is!" She contrived a burst of candor. "That girl yesterday, chained to that column... She bothers me."
"Lise!" Ursula laughed. "We owe you an apology there too. If Hedda had opened the door when you rang you would never have seen her. It was not planned. Not a joke... "
"But--"
"It's the twins. Some of their amusements are a bit bizarre."
"Do you mind... ! Who's Lise?"
"Lise! Oh, she's always been around somewhere. But, darling, you are taking too much to heart. I know this place is a bit overwhelming at first. But have the girls show you around this afternoon. Explore Montrilas. See a bit of the Park. We'll all have tea in the garden. Enjoy yourselves."
The frightened girl knew she had pushed as far as she dare.
How dark is dark! If there are no clouds there will be visibility. Thus the hour would best be late. Clare waited until after midnight. The size of the place helped. She chose a French door on to the terrace. It was easy to cross the park and find the road. She had chosen a mottled summer dress as camouflage. That and money was all she could salvage. The rest she must leave.
She had run through the park. But she set up a steady stride along the rough track. Her heart was beating with more than exertion. Erdislune lay behind her like a sleeping beast. A beast that might waken and pursue. But the moor held a menace of its own. It offered no sense of escape. It was a place of strange shadows. Each boulder or shrub held its own threat. The occasional wind wracked tree beckoned like ghosts. Clare knew that should she leave the path she would be lost in a world forgotten in time and shunned by man.
To catch her they would have to use a car. She would be warned by the sound and could hide. The terrain was irregular enough to make this possible. Even if they had horses, and she had seen no sign of them, they too would make enough sound to give her time. She clung to these self made reassurances. They were all she had. She was alone and desperately afraid.
She had spent thirty minutes of her freedom before she became aware of the shapes. At first she believed them pale slabs of rock or weathered trunks off where visibility merged into the total darkness. But they moved. She was sure they moved! Replacing rising hysteria with a cold determination to fight, she stopped and searched the shadows with wide eyed speculation. There was nothing, nothing at all.
She ran. Speed and time were her only weapons. Her eyes roved with an awful premonition. She was now certain of flickers of motion in the gloom. She guessed with a sickening certainty what she saw. She remembered yesterday in the Park. The two girls had made themselves visible or invisible at will. Again she stopped dead. Nothing! But if she moved or if she ran the ivory specters kept pace. One off on either side like children of the night.
They were playing with her. Shadows on the wind. They possessed an incredible agility, a grace of motion exquisite and frightening. Huntresses wearing down their prey for the kill. They were closer now. Perhaps wishing her to see them so that she might understand their complete mastery of her pathetic flight.
Clare was close to tears and to panic when she stumbled on the bit of wood. Instinctively she seized it, feeling its heft and size. It was reassuring. Perhaps if there was a danger of broken heads they might think twice. For a moment her courage flared. Standing with her weapon swinging from her hand she shouted: "Stop it! Stop it! Come and talk if you want."
She shivered. Were they flesh and blood. Or had the night endowed them with sorcery. So beautiful to be evil. But the shapes were malevolent. They did not ride the grass for good. They meant her harm.
They materialized from nowhere. Their garb was gone. Their weapons were gone. They were naked save for laced sandals against the flints. Tavie silhouetted before her on the path, silent, waiting. Swinging round the hunted girl knew what she would see: Alethea, poised, ready, holding loosely in one hand slack loops of cord. Seeing them Clare was certain of their intent.
Strange that at such a time she should be aware of their loveliness. Yesterday they had seemed creatures of the woodlands, now they were moon-glow in the dark. Elemental. Belonging only to Erdislune. They were moving closer to her.
"We knew you would run away." Tavie said brightly.
"Leave me alone." Clare demanded. "If you come close I will use this club."
Their laughter was as silver bells, joyous. Alethea's came from closer than she had gauged. A cord used with dexterous skill snapped around the piece of wood and jerked it from her hand. She stood between them, defenseless.
Clare fought savagely but without hope. They were stronger even than she had supposed. A lithe sure strength that could be brutal, but was not. Simply terrifyingly inexorable. They subdued their prey with a pre-rehearsed competence. Glorying in her struggles and their skill. In a few moments they had their quarry face down upon the grass. Tavie dug determined knees into thrusting shoulders. Alethea did the same with squirming hips. Their captive was helpless.
"I'm quite pleased with her." Said Alethea.
"She would only get herself hurt, picking up bits of wood and stones and things." There was both amusement and threat in Alethea's clear voice. "Best take her to Montrilas."
"We will tie her real tight." Tavie said happily. "Tight so it hurts."
"What is it you want?" The prone girl's voice was muffled and miserable. Surely there must be some sense in this nightmare somewhere!
"You, darling. We want you." Alethea's voice was almost reassuring as though it told of love.
"You're beautiful. So we couldn't possibly let you go." Tavie explained as to an uncomprehending child. "When you are naked you'll feel better. You'll be very lovely... "
"We may as well strip her now." Alethea mused casually. "Darling...?" Her fingers, surprisingly gentle, caressed the dusty cheek. "If we let you stand will you throw away these silly clothes?"
"Yes." Clare lied.
Released, she fled. Never before had she thrust at Earth with such panic stricken feet. She had become a wild fugitive from fear. She did not reason. She sought no compromise. She wanted only escape.
It was cruel and it was beautiful. The soft cadences of their laughter was thrilled with pleasure as they kept pace. Each leaping stride of theirs, effortless with latent power, matched two or three of the girl who craved liberty.
"We knew you'd run." Tavie said with a childlike happiness. "It's fun, isn't it!"
They did not grasp her. Clare felt like a ship at sea circled by speedboats. She was running a race she could not win. When she was exhausted they would work their will upon her. They would drag her back to their unholy relic. She had a flashing vision of the girl in the stocks. Her scarred back a mute testimony to Erdislune. But they had not spoken of Erdislune. They had promised Montrilas, more ancient and more evil...
Clare ended it herself. She had to. Her heaving lungs could take no more. She lunged, hoping to catch Tavie off guard. Instead, her wrist was seized. She was swung between them like a doll. Her clothes were plucked from her with strong swift tugs that destroyed them. Once again she was face down, bearing their weight. Her breasts protesting against the coarse grass.
"What about her shoes?" Alethea questioned.
"No. Barefoot. She can walk on the grass." Tavie was decisive.
"I can't! Oh, I can't!" Their captive wailed. She was horrified. Such a distance with bare feet at night. It would be agony. She knew they would not let her move slowly.
Their laughter trilled. Her shoes were scattered with the rags that had been her dress. With them went her last defense. The twins could handle her with ease. Nakedness equated surrender.
Her battles lost, she lay a quivering receptacle for sensation, every faculty straining as they used their cord. She deigned not the indignity of flailing arms when they reached for her wrists.
"Palm to palm behind her back first of all." Alethea decided.
Clare lay, quiescent, while they worked their will upon her nudity. She accepted defeat. They took much time, lingering on their task of love. Their naked subject sensed their intense enjoyment. She had become their plaything. Designed only for their pleasure. Two slender cords circled her wrists. Loving fingers positioned them and drew them snug. A single strand between cinched them cruelly tight so that a choked protest was wrenched from the lips of the prostrate girl. It did no good. The knot was drawn tight and made secure.
It was the first time in her life Clare had been bound. In fiction it had seemed improbably exciting. You always got loose. But now she knew a deep psychological change. A girl with her hands tied behind her back was a very different being from a girl who is free. It was not only the loss of limbs, the loss of a faculty such as an amputee must know. But with the cords came a knowledge of being owned. Of having become a chattel subject to the will of others. She was glad they could not see her tears.
"Now lets do her elbows." Tavie said excitedly. "It hurts terribly and she'll look simply gorgeous. If we use quite a few loops they won't constrict."
Lacking previous experience Clare was shocked at the pain. Strand after strand of cord were gently placed around her elbows. Then, as Alethea compressed the forearms with a viselike strength, Tavie drew steadily at the strictures so that, corset-like, they imposed their will until finally Clare's elbows were joined flesh to flesh. A firm knot denied easement. A leash of cord was placed upon her neck. The hurting knees were lifted. Gentle hands helped her to her feet.
How strange it was! Three girls naked in the night. Two of them vivid with pleasure. The third hurt and in despair. Clare was incredulous at what had been done. The strictures hurt with a bitter unrelenting scald that she knew would get worse and worse. But her most immediate mortification was her wracked shoulders thrusting out her breasts in a wanton demand for attention. Absurdly she knew relief that no man was there to see. But the pain gave her no time for other thoughts. It was demanding. The bonds that imposed it placed upon her nakedness an impotence such as she had never known. Piteously she faced her captors.
"Take it off my elbows... Oh please! I'll promise not to escape. I'll--I'll... give you my parole... " Clare's plea trailed in to silence.
They stood close, pleased, expectant. Longing for her to run so that they might have further sport. But they looked at her with love. Two children newly possessed of a treasured toy.
"It's supposed to hurt." Tavie pointed out reasonably.
Clare fluttered her shoulders in a futile exploration of her helplessness. She knew that when they pulled on her leash she would have to follow. "Why is it supposed to hurt?" She demanded flatly.
The twins exchanged a message with their eyes. Then examined her approvingly. She felt like a child who had asked a silly question.
"We like to hurt you." Alethea explained patiently. "It gives us pleasure." Then added as a sort of bonus: "Besides, it makes you do what we want you to."
"My elbows hurt unbearably. I can't stand it. Please untie them. I'll do whatever you want... Honestly I will...!" Clare pleaded.
"See!" Tavie enthused. "It's just as Allie says."
"Have you ever been tied before?" Alethea inquired with interest.
"Of course not! People don't go around stripping girls naked and tying them up so the pain's just too awful... "
"We do." Was there hurt in Tavie's voice at her lack of sympathy.
Tears started from the captive's eyes. It was hopeless. They would do whatever they liked with her. Nothing she said would make any difference. What were they: sadists! But sadists did not gently dry their victim's cheeks or brush warm lips where the tears had been in the way that Alethea was now doing. Children perhaps. Yet at other times cold clever adults. Amoral! It came as close as any definition. If they tortured you to death they would do so with love because your suffering made them happy and they were grateful. In their lovely naked innocence they were more deadly than any sadist could ever be.
"Look, Allie, she's got the most gorgeous breasts."
Without warning Tavie's lips found a taut nipple and began to tease. She did it with expertise. For one moment Clare relaxed in the warmth of human contact. Then angrily stepped back recoiling her arrogant breasts from the eager lips.
Tavie's hand was a streak of light. A strong finger and thumb closed upon the opposite nipple and squeezed. The resultant agony extracted a cry of anguish from the nipple's owner. She writhed helplessly but dared not struggle or tug.
"Say you are sorry." Once more it was as to a child.
"I'm sorry!" Clare gasped. She had no thought other than compliance.
But the brutal grip continued its pressure.
"Oh please! I said I was sorry... " The sufferer twisted and moaned.
"Now you are being punished for what you did. You have to say you are sorry before the punishment begins to count. You'll always be punished. It's something you have to bear when you rebel."
The rationale ended at the same moment as the finger and thumb loosed their grip. Clare was dazed with pain. She longed to curl up somewhere and cry. Her punished nipple burned fiercely. Appealingly she sought the smiling faces of her captors. "I will try to obey you." She said humbly. "But please help me. It's all so strange... "
They both kissed her. "Open your legs." Alethea ordered.
Concerned only with her pain, Clare obeyed. Standing erect, breasts outthrust by her elbow tie, legs far apart, she tried not to flinch as their fingers explored every inch of her body.
"She's beautiful. Scrumptious!" Tavie breathed. "Feel her triangle. She's got a real handful of a mound and fat lips without a lot of creases. Maybe we'll shave her some day. She'd take a razor well."
"Such aureoles!!" Alethea contributed lovingly. "Aureoles make such a difference with a girl. A nipple isn't much without a good aureole. Hers are almost as good as ours."
The deft hands smoothed back her hair, toyed with her ears, her eyebrows. Tavie at her back tested the cords approvingly. "We made a lovely job of tying her." She said to her sister. "Her elbows are really beautiful. They must be hurting. Let's get her started walking. She'll hate it in bare feet."
Clare had stood, head back, eyes closed as their fingers had played upon her skin. Their hands were extraordinarily soothing. In a small way offsetting the scald of the cords. She could not fathom them or what her fate was to be. She still cherished a tiny hope that it might all be a cruel joke in bad taste. At the other end of her spectrum lay things best not looked at. In the immediate moment she most intensely did not want to walk barefoot back to Erdislune.
When Alethea pulled on the leash there was a moment when the bound girl considered falling down and refusing to move. But her nipple still hurt and the cord round her neck was a slipknot. Abjectly she knew she had no choice. Miserably she followed where they led.
Alethea held the tether. Tavie gathered the shoes and pathetic scraps that once had clothed their captive. They made a very small bundle beneath her arm. With a sensuous enjoyment she wound a hand in Clare's hair and tugged.
"You are going to be a good girl, aren't you, darling?" She asked sweetly.
"Yes." Why temporize! They had her.
"Little tootsies hurt?" Such honeyed sweetness.
"I could talk better with my shoes. This is awful."
"No shoes, darling. And don't be picky. Step out. We are going to run down some of the slopes."
The bitterest moment of her life! Leashed, naked, bound. The cords round her elbows a whole new dimension of pain and degradation. Now her feet! She had never walked barefoot except on sandy beaches. Now every step brought the cut or bite of stones, wiry grass and broken twigs. Her elbows hurt more if she bent forward. But she did so in an effort to detect easement for her tenderness. The twins kept their word. They walked on the grass. But the grass was full of hazards for a girl unshod. It was far to Erdislune. When they reached it, what then?
"Why have you made me prisoner?" She asked, striving to keep her voice steady.
"We just want you. That's all." Again, Alethea's voice was as to a child.
"You are a girl and you are beautiful. We are going to enjoy you so much. Once we had seen you we knew we could never let you go."
"But what are you going to do to me?"
Their laughter was silver bells in the night. "Oh, darling. You know... Don't be silly."
She did know. With an awful certainty she knew. But it could not happen. It just couldn't.!
"How long are you going to keep me?" Clare had a compelling need for something definite.
"Why darling! Always, of course."
"What about the police? People know I came here."
"But you never did come, darling." Tavie cooed. "Poor stupid men in uniforms. They are so easy to send away." She laughed delightedly. "Last time they came we received them in the garden. We had taken off all our clothes and pretended to be sunbathing, Sula too. We were having Tea, so we gave them some and covered up our nice pubics with a serviette. It was such fun. They were so sweaty and red faced. Ugh! Men are ridiculous. They adored our breasts, but kept looking at the trees just so we'd know they were gentlemen."
Yes. A rural policeman would be putty in the hands of creatures like these. She had small hope in that direction. Probably they would run her little car into a river or over a cliff. For them it would be so easy. And such fun...
"But you can't keep me tied up or locked up... always?"
"Why not, darling?" Alethea's question was cool delight.
"Why not! Tears came to Clare's eyes again. Why not! It was so easy for them. Her condition at this moment was answer enough. They could change her from one bondage to another at will. If she resisted they would hurt her more.
"Run darling."
Tavie tugged her hair remindingly. Alethea snapped her leash. Miserably their captive ran. The motion increased the pain at her elbows and the hazard of her steps. But she ran. What else could she do! In their way they were kind. Exertion taxed them not at all. But when her breathing became too labored they slowed again to a walk. But their walk was not slow or careful. Watching them their captive thought of the term 'Walking on air'. It was apt. For Tavie and her sister all motion was effortless. When the bound girl caught her breath she probed. She would probe until they stopped her: "Those two girls, chained in the stocks. Who are they?"
"Lise and Chloe? Just girls, darling. Just girls... " Tavie said airily.
"You got them the way you did me...?"
"We got Chloe like that." Alethea giggled. "We picked Lise up by the water at Kenmare."
"You kidnapped her."
"What a silly word, darling. Men kidnap girls. Girls don't. We just take them."
"Like you are taking me now?"
"Of course!" A confirmation of the obvious.
How counter such sophistry. Erdislune was beyond the law. The siblings made their own.
"But don't you consider our feelings? How cruel we think you?"
"You are worrying, darling. You mustn't." Alethea's words were gentle and sincere. But they held a firm conviction. "You still have the wrong ideas from outside. You are putting such a tremendous value on your pain and your freedom. Really they are just nothing against the beatitude Tavie and I find in your loveliness. You are lovely, you know... "
She was lovely! Clare was angry to be pleased at such a moment. But she was female. If these two girls thought her lovely, she must be lovely indeed. They were by far the most beautiful creatures she herself had ever beheld. She did not feel lovely. She was damp with exertion and from fear. Sweat droplets trickled down her flanks. A primitive pungency emanated from her armpits. She knew her face drawn in pain and apprehension. If it were not for Tavie's caressing fingers her damp hair would be all over the place. Bound as tightly and painfully as she was she could do nothing for herself.
"You do understand, don't you?" Tavie's concern was real.
Clare did understand. She might be happier if she did not. "I understand." She admitted wearily. "But you are wrong--" Her words were bitten off and replaced by an animal cry of protest. Tavie's hand had found her other nipple. The relentless pinch was repeated. She squirmed and moaned incoherently for what seemed an endless time until her nipple was returned to her, burning and livid.
"We are never wrong." Tavie chided gently.
"She doesn't truly understand yet." Alethea suggested. "You see, darling." She said to Clare, "Whatever Tavie and I do is right for us--that includes you. Never use that word again. It doesn't exist in our world."
Totality. The awful finality of their omnipotence. Doubt or the counting of cost did not exist for them. Clare glimpsed that doubt and decision would be taken from her too. She would respond only to the stimuli they invoked. She tried another tack.
"Why are we all naked?" She asked innocently.
Again the laughter, as at a foolish question.
"Wouldn't you be closer to reality to ask why girls like us would wear clothes." Alethea demanded. "Why would we?"
It should have been easy to answer. Yet was not. Certainly not to these two girls. Clare knew she had never seen females less in need of clothes. Would she herself be better off at this moment if they had left her clad! Save for her feet she could not even affirm that. She was warm, not cold. There was no man to see her nakedness. She reflected ruefully that there might never be. Males had no place in the sibling's world.
"Besides... we can't punish you properly if you have clothes on." Once again Tavie's logic was unassailable.
An instrument for punishment! A vessel to brim over with pain! Was that to be her lot! A loveliness from which others would suck the nectar of joy, yet give her none.
"I could love you if you would let me." She said. Then wondered what had prompted the pathetic affirmation. It had been quite involuntary.
"You love us now." Tavie said cheerfully. "You just haven't discovered it yet."
Alethea stopped and turned. Placing her hands gently on her captive's wracked shoulders she leaned forward and kissed the not unwilling lips raised instinctively in a terrible hunger. The kiss was warm and sweet. It lasted a long time. Guiltily Clare longed for her hands and arms that she might embrace the wonder of this Circe who held her leash.
"We love you very much." Alethea said when the kiss was done. "That is why we have taken you."
"That's why we will always keep you, darling." Tavie said happily. The march continued.
* * *
Now she knew what a dungeon was like. Clare reflected without comfort that most people probably wonder. Dungeons figure so prominently in man's history and in fictional imaginings. Now she knew for sure. It was not a happy discovery, even though the twins had sought to make it so.
They did everything with such joy, such surety. She knew that should they end her life her last awareness of sound would be their laughter or their sighs of ecstasy. They had guided her fearful steps through the tomb-like darkness of Montrilas without pause and without light. Either they could see in the blackness or possessed a bat-like familiarity or instinct. The crypts had seemed endless. Their air cold and stagnant. But the dungeon had enveloped their nudity in warmth. An anomaly no greater than any other in this ancient labyrinth. The illumination was another. It was diffused from some indirect source and its intensity controlled outside the massive door.
"It's a lovely dungeon." Tavie enthused. "There isn't any daylight. But we will leave you a little bit, just to keep the ghosts away. You only get total darkness if we are angry with you."
The girls had exclaimed, not with compassion but with ecstasy, as they had peeled off the cords from their captive's elbows. To the captive herself that, too, was agony. The strictures had cut deeply into her flesh. But even with her pain she was so thankful to be rid of the constricting bond that she cared little if Tavie and Alethea found beauty in the wheals the cords had furrowed.
There had been a discussion as to how to confine her. They had told her, with charming innocence, that they would have left the thongs upon her elbows had there been no danger of injury. Now they must choose an alternative.
"Do you have to tie or chain me? I can't possibly get through that door." Their prisoner had pointed out reasonably.
"We'll punish you for remarks like that."
Tavie warned. "But not this first time. Besides, we're all tired."
"My hands are still tied." Clare ventured. Would that be punishable too!"
"We know that, silly." Alethea laughed. "We are going to untie them now. When we do are you going to fight? We don't really mind y'know?"
The captive was asking herself the same question. Save for the tether on her neck she would be free. This was her first confrontation with acquiescence. Could she, from this time forward, meekly offer her limbs and her body in an abject humility to be chained or bound! Or would some instinct of survival or self demand resistance. Tavie must have sensed her qualms, for as the last loop fell away from the cinched wrists, she reminded helpfully.
"Of course, darling, we always punish rebellion. We have to, don't you agree?"
Gratefully massaging her wounds Clare felt utterly weary. She could not fight them. Her feet were wounded too. The dungeon was cruelly daunting. What was the use! They could subdue her easily. They would love to do so. Her captivity was already total. What difference could a chain or a rope make.
"Just tell me what to do." She said dejectedly, "and I'll do it like a good little girl."
With feminine delight as though at an exclusive couturier's, the girls selected their darling's nightwear. When they were done her hands were chained, her feet were chained, a long chain ran from a collar round her neck to the stone wall.
None of the fetters were heavy or demanding. There were plenty of links so that she could move. But she would bear them with certainty. Wearing them she would know herself captive. That was their purpose. They were exquisitely crafted and of modern origin. They fit her like a glove. Contrarily she felt herself sharing some of the twin's delight in their effect. It was as though they had gifted her a glamorous gown.
They kissed and caressed her before they left her alone in her prison and her chains. Kisses warm with affection and their delight in possessing her. The closing of the door had had the finality of a blow. A thud and the sliding clash of bolts. Her chains would not allow her to even get near it. But it was one more barrier between her and the world from which she had been stolen. There had been a moment of panic as the lights dimmed. To be in total darkness in this place would be too awful a thing to bear. But the hand on the switch beyond the door had been kind. The glow was dim. But it spoke of life. It would keep the ghosts at bay.
But ghosts were all it did repulse. The rest of Clare's environment was brutally real. A thin mattress on the stone beneath her neck tether was all her comfort for the night. Her chains were tight and snug. She would not even try slipping out of them. She would only cut herself on the metal. Best to accept. She had only a short range from the ringbolt in the wall. But she had lost little. To walk round and round a dungeon is no great privilege for a naked girl.
She found it surprisingly easy to lay down and go to sleep.
In the Library Clare had to fight down resentment. It was all a charade! A silly charade to amuse two girls. She had spent the night chained naked in a dungeon. Now she was rationally clad, clean and nourished, directing a tutorial. No chain or cord constrained her. She could run. But where! The girls themselves were the final straw. They were neither naked or clothed in gossamer. They were demurely and delightfully attired in the conventional uniform of the English schoolgirl. With page-boy hair-do's they contrived to look no day older than fifteen. They had a chameleon faculty that was disconcerting. They looked at her with doe-eyed adoration: the schoolgirl crush!
The captive of Erdislune did what she must. She taught.
She guessed her pupils' purpose. But was not positive even of that. The girls were actually interested. They had a knack of extracting from her an occasional facet on a subject in which her own scholarship reached further than their own. Such items were rare. But they absorbed them with satisfaction. Their thirst for knowledge was real enough, but Clare knew by their frank enjoyment of looking at her that their appetite for her as a girl transcended their concern for the academic.
As on the previous occasion, it was not long before their roles were reversed. The twins had blithely gone where she could not follow. Clare floundered.
It must have been rehearsed. Alethea went behind a screen and reappeared a moment later in mortarboard and gown. Somehow she had also added many years to her age.
"Oh, teacher, she fluffed it." Tavie giggled.
"I am surprised, Miss Norman. Kindly stand before the class." Even Alethea's voice had aged.
To Clare this absurdity was too much. She suspected that if she was still in the dungeon she would submit. But in this normal surrounding submission seemed utterly wrong. "Sorry, girls," She said decisively. "I'm not playing. Carry on without me."
They quietly watched her, saying nothing. Making no move. A silence gathered and grew. The victim felt as does the small wild creature under the eye of the snake. Whether it runs or stands still it is doomed. At last, in desperation, she burst out: "Please don't make me do this. It degrades us all."
"What do you think you must do?" The gowned woman's voice was coolly curious.
Clare tossed her head angrily. "You intend to humiliate me in some way. I suspect you'll want me to hold my hand out for the cane or bend over and touch my toes ore some such nonsense."
Their laughter was delighted. "My dear, what a charming concept." Alethea trilled. "I suspect you have been reading some of that sweet Victorian pornography. You know: "Miss Floggem's Academy for girls." And "Miss Bircham's College for young ladies."
"We adore them." Tavie vibrantly enthused.
"It is true that in such a story you would now be required to bare some portion of your person for which they would produce some quaint euphemism. Or, as you say, hold out your hand like a small child. You don't expect us to be that trite, do you?" Alethea's voice suddenly became very much alive.
"In this classroom you get your cunt whipped." Tavie said helpfully.
It had happened as she had guessed. Horrifyingly different. But in principle unchanged. She was to be formally and decorously savaged.
"Have you ever been whipped, Miss Norman?" Alethea inquired politely.
"No. Of course not."
Were all things comparative, and thus without meaning! A minute ago she had cringed from the prospect of holding out her hand to be caned. Now she would accept the option with gratitude. Would this fresh shame she was now faced with shade into the trivial in the light of some other atrocity these girls would devise! It was so hard to remember she had become only a body with appendages for their enjoyment.
"You should not say 'of course not' as if it's unthinkable. Probably at this moment, somewhere in the world, there are a thousand girls being whipped. It is quite un-remarkable. You should not feel ill-used that the experience has come your way. It's a quite amazing sensation I can assure you." For all her disclaimer Alethea had become very much a Miss Bircham.
"It's really super on the quim." Tavie agreed as if she enjoyed it daily.
"What do you want me to do?" Clare asked resignedly.
"Bare the area to be punished."
"You mean take my clothes off?"
"Not at all. We are in a classroom. I am sure you can arrange yourself."
Get it over with! How many girls in her plight had said or thought those words! Clare felt stupid, shamed and flushed. How to present herself for such an outrageous infliction. Miserably she took off her dress and stepped out of her briefs. The dark triangle to be whipped became screamingly visible. How now to arrange it for their convenience!
Tavie helped solicitously. It could be said that she helped with love. Love for the girl whose hesitant steps she guided, and love for the shaming thing that was about to happen. She glowed. Clare could not but recall their precept that her pain was their joy and thus was minimized and justifiable.
It was very simple. The girl about to be whipped wondered why she had supposed it awkward. She lay on her back on the carpet. A hassock was thrust under her hips raising her loins so that her labia pouted upward. Her knees were thrust asunder, her legs pulled down and back. She was ready.
The shoes, nylons and bra accentuated her naked center. The posture was more obscene than if she was naked. She viewed everything through the frame of her parted legs and over the plumpness of her sex as it offered itself for sacrifice. Sacrifice for what! Because she was a girl... That was all... ! She was to be whipped because she was a girl. No man would ever find themselves like this.
The girls discussed ways and means. The supine sufferer knew the dialogue was for her benefit.
"A cane? A nice thin cane, Allie?"
"A cane isn't really the best thing on the tummy, darling."
"Spose not. But wouldn't it be super to slice it right between her lips!"
"You wouldn't want to cut her clit off, would you, Tavie?"
"I guess we shouldn't." Tavie giggled. "The poor dear thing is in for enough changes as it is. What about that light strap we sometimes use for their breasts?"
"Silly girl. You know the single thong is best. It cuts beautifully. You can slice her up and down or sideways."
"Yes. If it laps over on her tummy it won't matter. We don't want to injure our little darling now we have her. Just look at that lovely quiff! It's just about standing up and begging.
"She has wonderful fig. I'm so glad we got her."
"How many strokes, darling?"
"I don't think we should tell her. It's harder to bear if she doesn't know. Shall we double it if she breaks the pose?"
"But of course! That's a rule, Allie. She'd be the last one to want us to break it."
"It would be kinder to tie her y'know. First time's not easy for a girl. Remember your first time? You jumped a yard."
"Well, I hadn't been told to hold still. This will be good for her character. Fortitude and all that... Shall we both have a go at her?"
"Take turns, of course." Alethea chuckled amusedly. "Good thing she is not going steady. Be an awful shock for the poor chap."
"A lovely twat like that is wasted on one of those fool creatures." Tavie asserted vehemently. "She is lucky we caught her in time."
They loved it. For them everything must be savored to the full. They had an infinite capacity for ecstasy. Clare longed for an end to the incongruity of lying obscenely exposed while these quaintly attired damsels debated her agony as they might decide the wallpaper for the spare bedroom.
"Please do what you think you have to and get it over with." She pleaded.
Tavie knelt between the spread thighs and fiercely kissed the object of their intent. "Dear little furry spot." She whispered. When her lips withdrew she replaced them with a cupped palm that gently kneaded and stroked. "Look, Allie, isn't it gorgeous! See the mound and the curve. It wants us." She patted the dark hair lovingly. "I think you have been neglected dear little furry spot. But that's all over now. You'll never be lonely with Allie and me. Come and kiss her, darling."
How could a girl deal with such a pair! Clare knew that she could never deal with them. They were quicksilver. Their roles changing from minute to minute or hour to hour. She would always be off balance. Knowing not whether to hate or love. She knew, with an ashamed fury, that their attentions to her sex were inducing sensations she did not want. Their intent voices, their happiness in what they were doing could so easily make her beg for their love. Then they would whip her! She longed for the courage to lash out with her feet and make a dash for the door before her traitor loins made her one with them. But what was the use. She was theirs!
When the tactile sensations gently withdrew, Clare opened heavy lidded eyes and saw Alethea sensuously fingering the slenderness of the leather thong with which they would hurt her. She was still under the opiate of their fingers and their lips. When the lash was playfully drawn back and forth across that part of her being they had chosen for its bite she could not contain an involuntary gasp of pure longing.
"A whip is beautiful, darling." Said the girl who held it.
Clare knew it could not last. This play was the prelude to their symphony. When it was done they would give her pain of a kind and intensity she had never known. She would be whipped. Up to now the term had been academic. In her world-- a world now gone--to be whipped was about as probable as being beheaded. Both belonged to some dark and distant past. She had no idea how she would behave, or could behave. She knew she would not much care about behavior or the stiff upper lip if it was not for the twin's explanation of a double infliction if she moved. Whipped where they would whip her was such control possible!
The flicker of the lash caressed her cunningly.
From simple touch it progressed to light strokes that did no more than implant a promise but which turned her into a joyously quivering entity that counted its life from second to second. So delicious a life! She lived it gratefully, knowing it would end. The searching thong screamed down, parting the waiting lips and spending its length upon her belly, cutting her asunder. Clare screamed. A high keening note of desolation. Without volition she found herself doubled up on her side upon the floor. Both hands clutching her wound.
The siblings looked down upon the moaning trophy of their skill: much as a hunter stands rapt, in awe, at the loveliness his bullet has tumbled from the sky. They said no word.
Clare did not know how long she had been lost in agony. As she groped her way back to awareness she longed to stay crouched there on the carpet. She could not bear confrontation with that which now awaited her. When she finally raised herself to lean on one arm she looked up without hope.
"I'm not much good at this." She confessed weakly. "I could never be heroic. It's too awful. You'll just have to do what you want with me. But I can never, never keep still. I don't think anyone could."
Their eyes glowed with love. They raised her and sat her comfortably, kissed her lingeringly, ran their fingers delightedly up and down the weal upon her skin, then gave her brandy.
"You are so beautiful." They breathed in unison.
Clare looked at them wanly. "Now you are going to whip me twice as much." It was the thing paramount in her mind.
Tavie giggled. "We were going to give you one each, darling. That's all. We do tease a bit y'know. So now we double it, that makes four. You've had one. That leaves three. Feel better?"
Frustratingly she did. To be whipped! Figures of ten, twenty, fifty lashes had filled her mind. If only they had told her! Could she have held firm for the second stroke! She did not know. Could she now accept that awful leather three more times across her most secret part! She did not know that either.
"It's so new to me. Try and understand... " Clare said it with sincerity. The face she turned to them an appeal in itself.
Alethea poured another drink. "We get ideas, Tavie and me. Notions. A 'Thing' if you like. We just have to work it out before we go on to the next. We have this feeling about what you just did. You did it so well up to the end. We want you to pose beautifully for the other three. Will you do that for us?"
The wounded girl looked at the enchanted faces in wonder. If only they were other than they were! She could love them. She realized with astonishment that if she could give them joy by accepting these three strokes where she wanted them least she would cheerfully do her best. She tried to put it into words.
"I'd love to do it for you." She answered simply. "If that was the end, and if I knew I actually could bear the pain without going to pieces. But if I break you'll double it and then double it again. I hate the thought. But it might be better if you tied me."
"Darling, try." Alethea bent and kissed the trembling lips. "We know it's new to you... " Placing a hand on each shoulder she looked deep into the troubled eyes. "Please... Do it for us."
Incredulous at her own passivity, Clare arranged herself upon the floor.
Had it not been for the twins, ardent involvement in their schoolgirl roles Clare might have found it impossible to continue with the tutorial. But when her pain had eased enough she had dressed and, with flaming crotch, commenced another lesson. Desperately she compelled her mind to consider only the subjects of the study so that it would have no chance to adumbrate her future. With these capricious Dianas no moment of her day or night would be safe from pain. Her ordeal just past had been a shocking revelation of the fallibility of female flesh. Yet the day had scarce begun.
There was no insincere simulation of distress or disappointment when, once again, the twins agile minds drove her into a corner from which she could not extricate herself. The girls employed no sophistry. Nor did Clare agonize. It had happened as it had been planned to happen. The girls glowed at their new treasure. Clare cringed.
"Just your right nipple this time, darling." Tavie said brightly.
Clare's head reared. "What are you going to do with it?"
"Well, actually, we need your breast." Alethea amended helpfully. "We are going to whip it. We even have a special whip."
"Just one at a time." Tavie encouraged. "You can even leave the other one covered up if you can manage it."
"What must I do? Just stand with one breast bare?" Clare asked bewildered.
"That's right, darling. But if it's difficult you can stick both of them out. We'll only use one though. You'll look super with one striped and one white." Allie chuckled. "If you really want us to we'll tie your hands and elbows behind your back. That really sticks your tits out and keeps little fingers out of the way."
To have to consider. To even countenance such an outrage! To actually wish to weigh the practicability of asking to be bound! How far along the road to insanity had she travelled. Yet Clare knew she would be wise to make a choice. It was not difficult. She doubted her ability to stand with outthrust nipples and invite the whip on this most tender treasure. Better to be bound, even if it hurt.
"If I elect to be tied, will you loose my elbows after you have whipped me?" She asked in bitter memory of the cord.
"More or less, darling. Careful now, don't bargain! But we won't keep your elbows tied too long after we have whipped that scrumptious firm breast of yours."
"I think I had better be tied, then."
Clare held herself passive as they stripped her, leaving only her step-ins. She tried to co-operate as they looped and tugged. As the familiar scalding pain bit at her elbows drawing them closer and closer until they met, she watched her breasts become arrogant and demanding. Sadly she wondered if her choice was good. Perhaps she had betrayed her own flesh. When they had tied her she stood erect and alone, trembling. The girls backed away and sighed with pleasure at what they saw. "We are so glad we took you, darling." Again, their voices were in unison.
If any whip can be reassuring, this one was. Three slender silken cords about fifteen inches long on a short stock. The girl whose breast was to receive their kiss supposed hopefully they would hurt but not injure. By such small consolations does a captive survive!
"Just five quick ones, darling. Stand very still. Hold your head back. That's right! But after each one we want you to look down at yourself and admire the lovely mark."
It was a quite different pain. Did each part of a girl possess its own gradation of suffering! Quite possibly it did. Soon she would be experienced in such bitterly acquired knowledge. Obediently she lowered her gaze to her punished curve. The scarlet stripes were pure beauty on her white flesh. She tilted back her head for the next. Vehemently she clenched mind and muscle in the vow: Not ten... not ten!
The girls discarded their classroom pageant as quickly as they had picked it up. Clare stood with her scarlet and smarting breast thankful that Tavie's fingers were busy at her elbows. But suddenly they paused.
"Tell you what, darlings. Let's go hunting."
The still bound girl watched clothes fly in all directions. "Do you want to come?" A gloriously naked Alethea demanded.
"Have to keep the cords on your elbows though." Tavie cooed teasingly.
How good the sunshine and the air after the dungeon and the dismal punishments from which she still burned. But always there would be a penalty.
"Why must I be tied?" She asked as meekly as she could.
"Naughty, naughty!"
"Yes I'd like very much to go." Clare capitulated. "Thank you for letting me. I won't run away."
"Not with your elbows joined behind your back, darling." Tavie giggled.
Three naked girls in a park. Two with bows and quiver. The third with hands and arms rigidly secured at her back. One breast a glowing pink and red, the other a virgin alabaster. Her loins striated by raised weals from the whip. All of them happy.
Despite the nagging ache from her elbows Clare was indeed happy. The grass and the trees and the soft moist air were a benediction. Reclining finally upon the sward she saw her companions no longer as obstreperous adolescents, but as women: young, lovely! Possessing some magic vitality all their own. On impulse she asked shyly.
"How old are you?"
They were very still as though her question had cast a spell or touched a nerve.
"We don't know." Allie said.
"It doesn't matter." Tavie added.
Clare knew a moment of fear. Not of the girls, but of the emotion her question had touched in them. She had opened a Pandora's box and allowed something unseen to scamper away across the slope. She wished she had kept quiet.
"How often have you let men stick that beastly thing of theirs into you?" Tavie inquired without preamble.
Why pretend to be a virgin! If she did they would probably explore and disprove. She felt the blush mantle her. "I don't have statistics." She said simply.
"But you have let them?"
Clare's laughter was unaffected. "Yes, of course. I think most girls my age have."
"What's it like?" Allie was interested.
"Mostly it's a let down."
"They pump, pump, pump, and then squirt their beastly secretion into you." Tavie exclaimed with nausea. "How could you, darling!"
"Mostly curiosity." Clare admitted. "Like the first cigarette. You have to find out."
"It's not possible, of course, but if I knew a man did it to you now I'd whip you close to death." Tavie's vehemence was startling. "If a man came near me I'd castrate him!"
No man! Ever! She would not see one or feel his touch or hear his voice! The realization swept over Clare for the first time. It opened a new facet of her captivity. For two days now she had thought of the male only as a possible instrument of escape. Now, to have the male image erased from her existence made her more than ever possessed. It was hard to imagine a man between Tavie and Alethea. He would be less than they. They would have no need of him. Lesbians! If they were they would compel her. How would she fight that.
"Quiet." Allie's hand admonished. Both girls tensed, ears alert, eyes roving. Clare herself believed she heard a vibration of voice or sound in the distance.
"It's them." Allie's voice was hushed. Sparkling eyes exchanged a message. Both girls were excited.
Huntresses! The role fit them like a glove. Yet it was not a role. Their lithe nakedness had become deadly. Obeying motions of their hands Clare followed silently.
About twelve years old, gangling, rustic. A boy and a girl. The boy with a catapult, seeking rabbits. They seemed very innocent.
"Stay behind this bush. When we have them, join us." Tavie whispered. Then added mischievously. "You're not going to be silly and run?"
Clare watched, fascinated. The bite of the cord on her elbows inhibited notions of escape. It was cruelly potent. The thought of roaming the moor in pain and impotence was absurd. Besides they would catch her easily. She wanted to warn the two children. But their fate was sealed. The siblings could outrun them.
Their usual strategy. One behind. The other appearing suddenly in front. For an instant the children froze. Then ran. The girl screaming. Within a hundred paces they were caught, tripped on their faces, pinned down with the cruel thrusting knee, an arm bent and twisted at their back to compel obedience. When Clare reached the scene their sobbing pleading made it clear the trespassers knew into whose hands they had fallen and how little pity they might expect.
"Please, Miss, we ain't done nothin'." The boy whimpered. The girl was too submerged in tears and sobbing to contribute anything.
"You know you have to be punished, don't you?" Alethea asked happily.
"Oh, Miss, you don't have to. Let us off please." His voice had become a hopeless wail. "We won't never come nigh the park again."
"You said that last time. Remember what we promised?"
He struggled vainly. Then relapsed into the same whimpering hopelessness as his sister. Tavie beckoned. Clare knelt beside her and thankfully positioned herself so that the cord could be taken from her arms, leaving her wrists still tied. How good it felt. But she still had no thought of escape.
Deftly, Tavie used an arrow blade to divide the length of cord, tossing half to her sister. "Look now, you little urchins. We are going to let you stand. Then you strip naked. Understand?"
The boy heaved furiously under Alethea's knee. "It ain't decent, Miss." The girl wailed, spurred into protest.
"Don't be silly, Jenny. You and Liam have seen each other. Don't tell me you haven't. Up's-a-daisy. Strip."
"Father Rattigan says we mustn't." Jenny was a tryer.
"You tell Father Rattigan to come and get his bottom whipped instead of yours, ducky." Tavie was enjoying herself.
Liam ran. He had speed, but Allie caught him easily. She cuffed him back to the others with hard shrewd blows that hurt and set him again to sobbing and sniffing. Contemptuously she left him standing while she went to a nearby bush. His snivels ceased when she returned with several limber withes she had broken off and stripped.
"You wouldn't be using them on me and Jenny, Miss?" He quavered.
She threw the sinister wands on the grass. Jenny's eyes riveted on them with dismay. "Strip." She demanded premonitorily. "If you don't I'll tear your clothes off. Do you want to creep home holding a few rags in one hand?"
Brother and sister exchanged a glance of shared resignation. They fumbled with buttons and emerged boney and pale in the sunlight.
"Mother'll skin me if she finds out." Jenny accused.
"Good! Don't tell her then." Tavie suggested approvingly. "Come here. Hands behind your back."
While Jenny's hands were being neatly tied with only a couple of loops of cord, the child's eye rested on the watching Clare. "Please, Miss. Make them stop. You aren't one of 'em. I know."
Their fellow prisoner shrugged and returned a wry smile as she turned her back and fluttered her own bound wrists.
"They got you too, missy." The child groaned.
"They be a'goin' ter do summat' horrible to us. Ain't right, it ain't."
Alethea backed the boy Liam against a sapling and with a dexterous economy of twine tied his wrists behind the trunk. He stood, red faced, awkward and helpless. His eyes flickering back and forth between the four females in fearful conjecture.
"Tell the constable, I will." He threatened without conviction.
As yet no one had been hurt. Clare found herself watching the play with both amusement and sympathy. Freed of the cord at her elbows she felt reborn. Her heart went out to the boy. It seemed probable that he was a stranger to nakedness. He was making ineffectual efforts to hide his genitals by lifting his legs and squirming. As a result all four pairs of feminine eyes focused on that which he sought to conceal. Becoming burningly aware of attention the flaccid member began to take shape and form. Blushingly he strove to fight down its turgidity. But to no avail. Both brother and sister were obviously ashamed of its excellent performance.
"Let's cut it off." Suggested Tavie with enthusiasm.
"You leave it alone!" Jenny was indignant. "He needs it to pee through."
"You don't have one, and you can pee alright." Tavie pointed out reasonably.
Seemingly for the first time the girl showed consciousness of her own sex. "It's different with girls." She said defiantly, tugging at her fettered wrists in an instinctive need to cover herself.
"We don't have a knife here." Tavie said regretfully. "Tell you what, Jenny, you go and bite it off instead."
"Oh Miss, you're joking. I couldn't... "
Tavie thoughtfully picked up one of the willow withes. "Yes you can, ducky. Pay no attention if he howls a bit." She swished the switch viciously through the air achieving a sound before which both children visibly quailed. Together with the conversation it caused the erection under discussion to effect a quick return to its former insignificance. Both children seemed relieved by its discretion.
"Well look at that!" Tavie declaimed indignantly. "Males!!!"
Clare repressed a desire to laugh. Tavie turned to her and ordered: "Go and stand close in front of the, ugh!, creature, darling."
Why not! The switch was probably as much for her as it was for Liam and Jenny. Clare placed her nudity in front of the shame-faced boy. Tavie distastefully prodded the shrinking object with her switch in much the manner of testing a doubtfully dead rodent.
"Get that ridiculous thing up again." She demanded.
"Its owner looked at her beseechingly, obviously longing to disassociate himself from culpability with so temperamental an appendage.
"See this naked girl standing in front of you?" Tavie asked.
"Yes Miss."
"You'd like to stick that silly thing into her, wouldn't you?"
Perhaps for the first time Liam seriously examined Clare. It was an easy task. She stood within a yard. Suddenly it was she who felt the shame. To stand wantonly naked in front of a boy who had never previously seen a woman unclothed. Her breasts and loins burned under his increasingly interested scrutiny. She was alluring mating material. Once more nature endowed the boy with the weapon to implant his seed. Throwing caution to the winds Liam muttered vehemently: "Corse I would! Wouldn't any chap! You goin' ter let me?"
Tavie brushed Clare to one side and motioned to the gaping Jenny. "There. Do it now." She wrapped the willow cuttingly round the narrow hips. Jenny cried out in shock and took an involuntary step toward her ordeal. "I can't bite it off, Miss. Not even if you kill me." She quavered uncertainly.
Tavie knew what she wanted. There would be no denying her. "Stand in front of him. Bend forward from your hips and take all of that male ugliness into your mouth. Never mind the biting. I was joking about that. But suck and use your tongue. You will swallow anything that comes into your mouth. But you will not stop sucking until I tell you, nor will you let the thing out of your lips. If you disobey in the slightest I shall thrash you like this." Once again the withe bit deeply into the girlish bottom so that Jenny moaned, yelped and moved even closer to her task. Tavie's voice was crisp and decisive as though she too, in this, was under compulsion.
The helpless Jenny, decorated now with two puffy weals, stared in pure horror at the rampant thing she was to devour. Pathetically she turned to each intent watching face of the three older girls, seeking pity. She found it only in one. Clare longed to comfort the child. She tugged dramatically at her bound wrists to demonstrate her impotence. Then, half ashamed of her cowardice, advised: "Best do it, child. It's not the end of the world. You'll be whipped until you do."
"Like this." Allie said grimly as she gave Clare a cutting slash across her seat. "That's for interference, darling. Remember? Tavie and I do things our way."
Sight of the older girl sharing the whip robbed the hesitating child of hope and courage. Avoiding her brother's shocked eyes she bent over as directed and with but a single momentary pause of revulsion engulfed his organ within her pert mouth and put lips and tongue busily to work. Tavie thoughtfully tied her victim's ankles to the tree.
Clare viewed the absurd tableau with a mixture of distaste and amusement. Liam's features were a study. Obviously it was his first experience with the bizarre. His sister, having resigned herself to the inevitable, worked with a will. No doubt the striations across her bottom influenced her industry. It was not long before the boy's eyes began to stare and glaze, his mouth fell slack. Clare turned from the sight. The vacuity of orgasm was a private thing without beauty.
She guessed Tavie's intent. Both girls were watching their little play with delighted absorption. To them a male was an excrescence beyond the law, expendable. To be exploited without pity. As the inevitable climax approached Tavie stood with lash half raised. "Bite him if you have to." She warned. "He'll try and get out of your mouth. Don't let him."
When Liam went wild, Clare watched Jenny. Her brother's orgasm was the child's first crisis. It was easy to gauge the moment of her surrender, that moment when the thing required of her was more than she was prepared to give. Tavie timed it perfectly and savagely slashed the bent over bottom for the third time. Jenny swayed and swung her hips in distress. But the willow had been more potent than words. As though to give the assurance her lips could not utter she continued her attentions to what soon became an unwilling and agonized recipient.
Having spent himself, the boy held rigid for a moment. Then twisted in his bonds and demanded urgently: "Stop it, Jen'! Oh stop! I can't bear it." He squirmed and thrust in a futile effort to escape his sister's busy mouth. He screeched a strange moaning sound and turned dilated eyes upon the girl who held the whip. "Oh please, Miss. Make her stop. P,l,e,a,s,e...!" His voice was a rising crescendo. He tore frantically at Tavie's cords. They held him tight.
The girl sensed her brother's agony. Both were involved in a new and frightening physical experience, the end of which was unknown to them, therefore to be feared. Once more at a psychological moment Tavie used her lash. Jenny forgot her brother's urgent appeal in her concern for the violation of her own bottom. Already, in her ordeal, she had contrived a vigorous technique. She employed it.
The twins were enjoying themselves hugely. Clare shared the children's shame, but knew that she must watch. If she turned her back she would feel the lash. The small cruel scene worked its way to its finale.
They untied Liam when his cries and pleas had dwindled and his head fallen slack in sexual exhaustion so that no more pleasure was to be extracted from his ravaged nerves and glands. His sister was almost equally exhausted and stood up thankfully, eyes shamed and evasive. But their respite was short. Within a minute their hands had been hoisted behind their backs and secured to the low branch of a tree with sufficient tension to raise them on their toes and protrude their small bottoms. Alethea unexpectedly untied Clare's wrists and handed her a switch. "Use this, darling."
Their eyes met in challenge. Clare was free. She could fight. She could run. Or she could use the whip as ordered. She did the thing that came most naturally. Tossing the willow to the grass she turned and crossed her wrists. Her rejection was accepted without comment. But a minute later she bent beside Jenny and Liam, her arms raised high, her bottom an open invitation. She had no decisions now.
Pathetically the children were indignant. "We done like you said." Jenny complained. "This ain't fair."
"They'll put you in prison." Liam threatened undramatically.
Tavie was happy. "Get some switches, darling." She requested her sister. "They start shredding after about six strokes."
The children again began to cry. Clare clenched her teeth and closed her eyes. She felt as young and vulnerable as Jenny. When the twins went up and down the line swinging their weapons with verve and vigor she soon began to add her own gasping cries to those of her youthful companions in distress. Before the end she added her tears...
Nothing was ever rational or as expected. Clare stood, burning and smarting as Alethea and Tavie laughingly watched the receding figures of the children flee over the slope. Still naked they clutched their garments in their hands, only too anxious to escape when the cords had fallen free and they had been told to run. When they had passed out of sight the captive who remained sulkily allowed herself to be tied once more wrist and elbow. "Pity to waste this lovely cord." Allie suggested mischievously.
Clare hurt. She was also puzzled. "Why won't their parents go to the police?" She asked.
"Because we own their farm, darling." Tavie explained sweetly. "Muldoon values his tenancy. Those kids probably won't even tell him. After all, they were trespassing." Capriciously she kissed the pinioned girl. "There, darling. We do love you, y'know. And get that little notion out of your mind. I can see it flickering. If you do manage to escape and get to Muldoon's farm he'll just return you to us like a lost kitten."
Allie laughed at Clare's incredulity. "We let Chloe escape once, on purpose. Just for fun and to test them both." She chuckled at the memory. "Know what he did! Hitched up his little donkey cart, tied her wrists to the tailgate and delivered her back to us. He was proud as punch. He's the only farmer in the hills so it sort of limits your escape route." She too tilted the captive's chin and kissed the pouting lips. "If you like, sweetheart, we'll set you free to test his hospitality."
They did as they pleased. Princesses of the moor. There was no one to deny them. They had totally freed her of cords she had neither fought or run. It was an admission. An acceptance. It seemed natural enough, as they walked back to Erdislune, that the siblings, exuberant after their small diversion with the Muldoon children, should casually discuss her disposition. They did this pleasurably and in detail. She knew it was done to make her cringe. Their final decision was shocking in its simplicity.
"We'll take her to Montrilas." Tavie decided. "She can spend the night in the big hall."
The sisters had exchanged knowing glances of complicity. "This is a harmless little thing they used to do with a girl who was a witch." Tavie explained. "It doesn't hurt. But the poor dear didn't get much sleep. The idea being that if she couldn't sleep then the wicked demon inside her couldn't sleep either. Sort of killed two birds with one stone...
The hall of Montrilas was immense. Even in daylight it was gloomy. Most of it was in decay but not in ruin. Its vaulted stonework and flagstone floor was daunting to the spirit of a naked girl. Clare felt infinitesimal in the ancient space.
"Kneel down, darling. Close to the wall."
Seeing the heavy ring and that which was attached to it she understood. She would blame herself later. But she allowed the moment of protest to slip by. Obediently she knelt and allowed the girls to lock the metal collar round her neck. The chain that led from it to the ring was six inches long. Truly she would not sleep that night! She could not stand. She could not sit. She must kneel on the hard cold stone beside the ring in the wall. That was all. So very simple. So very cruel!
They kissed her. Always they would disarm. Forever rob her of defense. In a premonition of what was in store she clung to them, cherishing their warmth, their love. Seeking to hold them against her loneliness, against the night.
"Don't leave me like this."
The simplest words. Her whole being was in them. She did not want them to go. She would gladly choose the whip rather than kneel chained with the ghosts of this grim antiquity. But gently and lovingly they disengaged themselves and went away. At the door they turned and waved to the prisoner they left behind. Clare waved back to them. Save for the metal on her neck she was completely free.
Perhaps that was the cruelest thing of all: to be free. All of her free except her neck. The locked collar and its compellingly short tether made her captive to the ring. It held her close.
She experimented as a prisoner always does, as though seeking to discredit reason. Once the degree of helplessness is established there is a faint comfort in resignation. She could not stand. True, she could get upon her feet. But her head must remain bowed down as though she was touching her toes. She could not sit. No contortion could contrive comfort. Even to kneel back upon her heels meant a taut tether that punished her neck. She was meant to kneel upright against the wall. It was her only practical position. Already her knees hurt upon the stone.
Sometimes she grasped the chain or the ring to ease her weight. Expedients could slightly ease, and thus long prolong, the eventual agony of her plight.
Her loneliness was utter. She was a microcosm of warm female flesh crouched against the stone in the vast stagnation of the place that had been dead a thousand years. Ancient eyes she could not see feasted upon her nudity. She wept.
If only she could understand it would help. Why must she kneel naked and hurt like this to please them! Did they have a motive beyond caprice. Ardently she yearned to see a motive that would enable her to endure and still love. She could not forget their lips. Never previously had she experienced such an exchange of emotion through the touch of flesh. Clare yearned for the girls who tortured her. She was angry with what she saw only as her own weakness. But she could not deny it.
She knew she must face the darkness. She thrust the knowledge from her mind. But it returned. To kneel thus, hour after hour. Her knees a screaming protest, every nerve and sinew weary so that she would do anything, promise anything to earn the remission that would mean sleep. To kneel upright through the night. First the gloom, then the Stygian darkness with its fears of that which was not there and could not be seen. She might tug at her chain again and again in agony or in terror, but she would not get free of it. Probably there would be rats.
It was so empty. Why had they chosen this place in which she was no more than a scrap of palpitating femininity. It must once have been vivid with life. Did they then, centuries ago, chain a delinquent girl in this same spot to kneel in shame before lascivious or mocking eyes! Certainly not with these same chains that clasped her now. These, like those in the dungeon, were finely crafted and new. She noted bitterly that ten feet from her was another chain and another ring. This one much longer, its shackle probably designed to prison an ankle. She wondered miserably what other grim fixtures a search might reveal.
With darkness came panic. But a naked girl chained by her neck cannot panic except within her mind. She screamed loud for help. But her voice was lost, bringing her only echoes. She hid her face in her hands. Her eyes could find too many shadows that had life. She was defenseless against her mind's imaginings. Offered naked for all the ghosts of Montrilas.
The lantern brought pure fear. Replaced instantly by a flood of joyous hope. Walking within the circle of yellow light Tavie and Alethea brought life to a place of death. Gratefully Clare gulped the glass of warm milk, incongruous in this place, but, oh, so welcome! When the collar was taken from her neck her tears were of thankfulness and gratitude. Each girl held her for a little while, kissing away the salt drops. Their prisoner clung in a great need. For a little time there were murmured endearments and the tracery of fingers on cool skin. Then the waiting shackle was locked upon her right ankle and Clare was once more a prisoner and alone.
But now she could move. Stand or sit. The ankle chain would hold her to the wall, but would not punish. So marvelous was it to stretch out flat in total relaxation that she scarcely noticed the cold stone that was her bed.
* * *
The old Earl's face was terrible to see. The talk had stilled. Up and down the long table eyes focused on the granite-like warrior who had risen angrily to his feet. Eyes which spoke fear or joy. Amusement or distaste. Caution or ribaldry. But all expectant.
"You who were my daughter will stand." His voice was controlled fury.
The Lady Clare stood. Those who turned to her saw the scarlet cheeks, the blazing eyes. She was the daughter of an Earl. He had bequeathed her his own anger.
"Have you aught to say?"
"No."
Perhaps pleading or tears might soften him. She scorned them. Perhaps denial. He would know it false. But it would save face. That, too, she spurned. Father and daughter faced each other down half the length of the huge board and above the cautious eyes that masked diverse emotions. The Lord of Montrilas was not a man to oppose.
"You have sought dishonor. You have brought it to this house and to our name. Now you shall know a depth of it such as you have never dreamed."
He raised his hand. Guards stood on each side, dwarfing the slender loveliness of the defiant girl.
"Take her."
Head high, mouth scornful. The Lady Clare walked between them to she knew not what.
She smiled at her serving girls with love. Their faces were woebegone in distress.
"Grieve not at what you must do." She assured them with a cheerfulness she did not feel.
"It shames us all, My Lady."
"It is my father's wish."
"But in the tower room. Stripped and in chains!"
"I suspect that is not the limit of My Lord's wrath." She would make it easy for them. Nothing would be easy for her.
"Alas, M'lady, it is but the beginning. On the morrow you spend the day at the public whipping post to receive more stripes than I dare tell."
The Lady Clare caught her breath. She had hoped for less. "The whip?" She asked bleakly. "Is it the knotted scourge metal shod?"
"No, M'lady, the saints be praised! He has had that mercy. But 'tis little enough."
"There is more that I must bear?" It was best to know.
"Perhaps the worst of all. Our Lord is exceeding cruel in his anger. He loved you much, His heart is riven. Tomorrow is not the end. After the whip you are to feel the weight of chains and be caged in prison for the term of his displeasure... " The sorrowful voice trailed into silence, bereft.
"Yes?" The Lady Clare could guess. An icy hand was clutching at her courage.
"It has been said... " The maid gazed at her beloved mistress with stricken eyes. "It has been said our Lord's displeasure will last his life."
Her father's judgement! A slender girl. So young! Yet after tomorrow's shame that all would witness, everything would stop. Laughter and youth and love: she would know none of them again.
"But it is we who will attend you, mistress. Not the men. The order on that is strict. We will ease your lot as best we can with love." The troubled girl paused and added sadly. "Even this charity is because you must be kept stripped in total shame. It is not fitting that an Earl's daughter be exposed to men."
Tenderly she embraced them. They were her only shield against the old Earl's fury. She felt pity for their shame in what they must do to her. In the knowledge of their love she found comfort. The Lady Clare managed to place laughter in her voice.
"Come," She said. "Let us to the tower room that I may test my chains."
In the morning they clothed her in a single sheet of penitent white that she would wear but briefly. Her maidens, with gentle hands upon her arms, led her to the portal. Delivered to the waiting guards she knew a great loneliness. A white shrouded maiden in a world of soldiers. Beyond the armed men a thrusting crowd hungry to see her body and her pain.
It was so grim, so stark, so utterly alone. The rough low platform and the post. Waiting. Waiting to hold and to display the nakedness of The Lady Clare so that all might witness the lash curl around her loveliness and hear her cry of agony. Shaking off the awkward hands of men still fearful of her quality she strode erect to the place where she would suffer the greatest humiliation a girl could know.
The hooded man emerged from the crowd. The Earl's daughter tore her eyes away from the post to coldly examine the whip he threaded through his hands. She guessed instinctively there would be pain enough in the supple leather thong. He took her by the hair in a grip she could not dispute and pushed her up the steps. The guards took positions below. The platform was to be exclusive for the whipper and the whipped.
The executioner had his own sense of the dramatic. After all, it was his livelihood. For the soldiers and the peasants he was Stage Master to the only theater they would ever know. With studied effect he placed his Master's daughter where all could see and took from her the strip of white that was her only covering.
A great sigh of awe reached her from beyond the ranks. It told her she was lovely. The cool morning air embraced her as did the thousand eyes. She had schooled herself for this moment. The Lady Clare would not use her hands in obscene and ludicrous defenses of her womanhood. They would look their fill during her day at the post. So let them feast their lust. She stood proudly, arms at her sides gazing far away above their heads. She met the eyes of none.
The torturer extracted the ultimate response from his innocent prelude. Satisfied he thrust her to the post and strapped her wrists, one on each side at shoulder height so that she must stand totally defenseless. Her body free enough, yet unable to embrace the wood to which she was secured. She must stand separate. Inviting his whip.
A girl may steel herself against nakedness. In spite of prudery and prohibitions nudity is implicit in being female. But how may she school herself to accept the whip! To trollops who earned it the whip was a fact of their existence. But the Lady Clare had never been naked before the herd. She had never known the lash upon her skin.
Throughout the night, restless in her chains, she had lived this moment aware that without foreknowledge her flesh might betray her courage. She yearned to treat the lash as she had treated the baring of her body. To endure with contempt. But she had seen men and women whipped often enough to know that bodies stronger than her own had wilted and cried out in supplication. She made no proud boasts within herself. She would stand sure and serene for as long as she could. But if her lips must scream and her body writhe, then so be it. She was female. No longer her father's daughter. He had delivered her to the post and the hooded man. She owed him no fortitude.
She looked back over her shoulder at he who held the whip. There was a bond between them. Each knew it. At that moment there were none among the multitude who shared so close an affinity. By pain he would reduce her to quivering protesting flesh. But in the end she would be the victor for his loins would drive him with a compelling need to rape the girl he had flogged. But her body would be denied to him. Ironically she reflected that he would be the last man to have even this degree of intimacy with her. The last male... !
So lost was she in desuetude that she provoked him. What had she to lose! After this agony there would be no more life.
"Where will you whip me?"
He was startled. Pleading... Or a stubborn silence: He was used to these. But conversation... ! "Your back to begin with, madam."
"And then?"
"I shall whip you from your neck to your thighs."
"No remissions?" When all is lost it is easy to gamble.
"Your father's orders are without dubiety, madam.
"I had heard a girl might ease her stripes if she made promises?"
He was in agony. She could tell. "I wish it was so M'lady. It might be thus with lesser flesh. But even though you do me honor, and even though my hunger for you is great, I cannot bargain."
"I could be very warm in your arms."
He made a gesture of regret. "M'lady, I will tell you now. You must have transgressed greatly. I am instructed to whip you as a common whore."
Her stomach constricted. Were there degrees and formulas by which a girl was whipped. "And what is that, good sir?" She made her voice casual.
"When I have whipped you sorely you must then spread wide your legs so that I may place the lash where you would least desire."
She shook her head in disdain. "And if I refuse?"
"Then, M'lady, I must needs tie you. If I do they'll be well apart."
She was to be spared nothing.
"Were I to faint and fall my wrists will break in these bonds."
"You will not faint, M'lady. You are not of that breed. But I will watch. If I see you, in honesty, falter I will spread the lash. The longer we take the happier the crowd will be."
"How many strokes must I bear?"
"I am forbidden to tell you that, madam. It is not few."
"Let us start then." The Lady Clare said regally. "I will scream when I must." She gave him an arch look of questioning. "Or will I then be gagged?"
"There are no orders to gag you, madam. I suggest you scream lustily. 'Tis said it makes the whip easier to endure."
She turned and stared fixedly at the post to which she was bound. Her heart thumped so that she feared all might hear.
It was worse, much worse! Too awful to fully comprehend at the moment of impact. A sickening soul curling horror that burned across her naked back and into her bones. Shock stilled her tongue. Her head reared wildly. The second lash, biting below the first and around her ribs, broke the spell. She screamed.
The Lady Clare screamed for a long time. She made no count. She was lost in a world of flame that found her flesh in spite of every contortion she could make. The hooded man kept his word. From her neck to her knees. To kick or heave or twist was but to invite a slash on a part of her not other-wise exposed. When, after an eternity of pain, the blows ceased she stood limp, bathed in sweat, panting.
"'Tis time for that most grievous thing that I would fain not do." His words reached through the mists of desolation.
"It was not done! It was not over! She sobbed with a new abandon. Perhaps it would never end until she hung lifeless! To be expected to spread her legs obscenely and be doubly naked before gloating eyes. It was too much!
"I will not so debase myself." She told him dully. "Tie me. I will it."
His deftness spoke of long practice. His cords were ready. She let him tug and pull at her as he wished. In this, too, he more than kept his word. She was cruelly distended. Her legs were so widely separated that she was forced to pull down on her bound hands and to lean forward so that she was slightly bowed. Her cleft buttocks striated with purple and flecks of blood demanded fresh attention from leering eyes and searching whip. Those who stood before the platform looked up avidly at the pink invitation of her open sex. Even in this new extremity she blushed. What she was intended to suffer went beyond the whip! She was totally delivered to shame.
A mug was held to her lips. The hooded man stank of sweat but his wine was sweet. She gulped it greedily. Perhaps, beneath his hood, he was a simple man capable of kindness. Or did he strengthen her only to sustain more torture!
In her new bondage she could no longer move. But she screamed and screamed again each time he sent the seeking thong to curl and snap upon thigh or groin. Half the strokes were cunningly powered to rise between the inverted V of her nether limbs and cut with an audible impact upon the open labia and taut concave belly. She fought but could not best the cords and the straps. She was held. Open! Delivered to the lash. It was the most desolate moment of her life.
The crowd took long to disperse. It was not every day that the daughter of an Earl was placed naked for their delectation. Even in her fatigue she was very beautiful. For most the tracery of weals upon her nudity was an erotic bonus to an exciting morning.
She moaned thankfully when he loosed her feet. She was condemned to stand the day. But now she could do so naturally. To be allowed to close her legs was to don an unseen cloak of modesty.
The Lady Glare was alone. He who had whipped her left a tribute. "Few men could have done as well, M'lady. Be not ashamed that you screamed. There are none would not. Had he been present this day our liege Lord would have felt pride. I go now. You will be untouched. They will look. But that is all." He had tortured her. But she was sorry he was gone. How strange a communion in which to find comfort!
So her father had not deigned to see her whipped! She had been sent to the post like a common whore, and lashed as they were lashed. Was it that he could not bear to watch. Or had he erased her from his life! She might never know. As the immediate agony receded she stood upright. She even scanned the thinning circle of faces. But hastily withdrew from a meeting of eyes. To do that was to invite a carnal message all too easily read. She had no desire to spend her day mantled in a blush. It would excite them more.
It was no small punishment simply to stand as she must perforce do through the long afternoon. The hours were long and slow to pass. When her tired eyes were not upon the post or seeking the clouds she rested one cheek against an outstretched arm, wishing to sleep. But on that day there was neither rest nor shelter for the Lady Clare.
The guards were not rough. They gave her the strip of white stuff to cheat those who stood too close. Then took her to the smith.
Here again she found a showman who was obviously relishing the task chance had thrust his way. To chain a legend of beauty! Female flesh normally never seen, or glimpsed at a distance in passing, and then clothed in consequence. Now she stood naked at his forge.
"'Tis some fine jewelry I have for thee, Madam." He leered.
"Give it me then." She was curt.
"Sit here, M'lady, and rest thy pretty ankle on the anvil."
He was odious. He set her flimsy scrap of white aside so that he could view what he wished. She did not gainsay him, nor did she challenge his eyes. She watched only that which he did to her. He must have worked through the day. Her ugly ornaments were ready. The band of iron he hammered round the slenderness of her ankle would have withstood the stress of teams of horses, so heavy was it and so wide. He had skill. It was well shaped and would clasp her tight. The watching maiden winced as he drove the rivets home and flattened their heads with true and lusty blows. Obediently she placed her other leg within the waiting circlet of metal. When that, too, was pounded fast and tight her feet were joined by fifteen inches of heavy links that only he or someone like him could ever take from her. He grinned knowingly. "'Tis told, missy, that this be thy last sight of man. Wouldst' wish me to give thee a pleasant memory? The chains need not hinder us." He chuckled. "There has been many a chained wench I have pleasured upon this floor."
She eyed him levelly. "You hold no joy for me. Do what you must do and have done." Her words dripped contempt.
"Thou art a lovesome thing to be in prison."
She did not answer. But knelt and placed her wrists upon the anvil so that he might now iron them as he had done her ankles. Rising awkwardly she wondered at the weight of that which was fastened upon her. Was this coarse man adding to her tribulation out of spite! Probably not. He had had them ready before she came. So thus it was her father's wish that she be so heavily fettered. She knelt again and bowed her head to receive the lighter collar about her neck. It bore no chain, only a ring. A convenience by which to fasten her as desired. It was as heavy upon her throat as were the other irons upon her limbs. The Lady Clare knew herself debased and without hope.
Her maidens helped her to the tower room where she would spend her days. It was the longest and most shaming journey of her life. She who had been one with the wind now shuffled clanking through the stone passages and on the stone stairs. To wear these new chains was as to carry a burden. They would sear her spirit long after the wounds of the whip had healed. For every moment of her days they would speak of punishment.
When, finally, she stood within the four walls that would enclose her, she looked at the barred space that separated her from the sun. She looked at the brutal door with its bolts and locks. She sank upon the wooden bench that was the cell's only furnishing. She turned stricken eyes upon the serving maids who loved her.
"Go to my father." She ordered them, "And tell him his daughter repents. I will obey him in everything."
With gladness they locked her in and went upon her errand. It did not take long. When they re-entered her prison their message was plainly writ upon their features.
"M'lady. Our Lord the Earl says he has no daughter."
They shared her grief in tears.
* * *
The naked girl could not be sure which of the siblings she loved the most. They were so beautiful. She adored them. When she looked at Tavie it was Tavie whom she loved utterly. When she gazed upon Alethea it was Allie she desired to distraction. It was not confusing. Clare was glad it was thus. She wanted all of them and to give them all of herself.
She waited happily in the great hall playing with the shackle on her ankle. The shackle prevented her from going in search of the unpredictable maidens who possessed her. She did not mind. She tested its strength and the snugness of its clasp upon her. There would be no escaping it. She was glad of this too. She sat pensive and patient.
"Darling." Tavie exclaimed. "We have never been to Montrilas. We don't know why, but Allie and me can't go there. Tell us."
Clare thought it funny they should treat it as a dream. But if they wanted to she did not mind that either. It hadn't been a dream, of course. But she was glad it was over. It had been so sad. She told them of the hooded man and the smith...
"Where are your whip marks?" Allie asked mischievously.
They were gone! The only marks upon her skin were those placed there by the two girls surveying her with such absorption.
"It did happen, you know." Tavie said anxiously, as though to reassure.
Clare shook her head. It was all a bit puzzling. But she was sure it would all work out. They had just finished breakfast on the terrace. It was only at this moment she realized how wrong it was... Having a quick look at herself to make quite sure, she said: "Darlings! I'm not tied or chained or anything...?"
They laughed delightedly at her confusion.
"Should you be?"
"You're teasing." She accused happily. She loved them when they teased. "Of course I should be. I always am, you know." She added as though they needed reminding.
Allie professed deep thought. "Shall we tie you to a tree? Or chain you to a pillar? How about the dungeon?"
"We can tie your elbows together?" Tavie suggested slyly.
They weren't taking her seriously. They had been in a pixie mood ever since unlocking her ankle shackle in the big Hall.
"I think you should do it properly." She said seriously. "I'm really not supposed to run around loose. I might run away." She knew she would not run away. But it sounded amusing to say so.
"For a minute, darling, you were toying with a need to give us a title, weren't you?" Allie said amusedly.
Clare nodded brightly. "How did you know? Yes. It was funny. All of a sudden I wanted to call you Mistress. But a girl can't have two Mistresses, can she."
"You will always call us by our names or by a term of endearment." Tavie ordered as though this was a very important point.
Clare thought this was nice. Tavie and Alethea. How darling they were! "How about me?" She asked thoughtfully. "I'm something. But what am I?" Suddenly this question seemed of the utmost import.
"You are our most beloved thrall." Alethea told her gently.
"Not your slave girl? I'd love to be your slave."
"Slaves are slaves because of chains or because of whips." Tavie said slowly as though seeking a very clear definition. "But a thrall belongs completely. You belong completely, don't you, darling?"
"Of course." Clare breathed. She wondered why the girls made such a thing of it... "Let's put her in the stocks." Allie giggled.
"And leave her alone all day."
"She'll cry."
"If she's in the head stocks she won't be able to dry her eyes."
"Which would you like, darling? To stand with your sweet neck and wrists locked. Or sit on the bench with your tootsies safely clamped."
"Come along, little thrall." Alethea commanded with shining eyes. "Remember, you asked for it."
They made such fun of it. Clare adored their quips and their fingers on her skin. It was such a delicious moment when Tavie lifted the upper section and she was told to bend her neck into the center aperture and place her wrists one on each side in the holes that seemed so very small. But first she had to gather up her hair and bring it down by one cheek. Then she was ready and they lowered the neatly fitting section upon her so that she was prisoner. They made a very big show of the hasp and the padlock. She could look sideways and see them. It was a wickedly shivery feeling when she heard the final snap of the lock and they stood back to admire her. No girl could ever get free from one of these things.
They played with her and teased. It was gorgeously goosey because she could do nothing. They threatened to tie her ankles if she kicked. So she did not kick, even though she wanted to just for fun and to know there was a little bit of her that could still move. But she was scared to get her feet tied. It might be scary. Besides she loved their hands. She did not mind what they did with them or what part of her they explored.
She was soon writhing with pleasure and wishing she was not imprisoned within the grasping wood. It was then they went away and left her, loins afire with desire and nipples erect and pleading. She supposed she had to be left alone. But was not sure why...
It was very tantalizing. Fun, of course because they had put her there. But still exasperating. Everything was so near and yet so far. But the stocks denied her everything. They held her. She suspected they laughed at her struggles. It was a little like the whipping post back in Montrilas. But not grim as that had been. Besides she had been fastened in these stocks by laughing girls. Girls who loved her and called her their little thrall. That made all the difference...
Thrall! She savored the word upon her tongue. She was a thrall... Gorgeous! She wriggled ineffectually and happily. If the stocks had loosed her then she would have wept.
Afternoon brought the siblings.
"You are going to love us." Tavie said. Her eyes were lambent fire.
Of course she loved them. It felt so good when they lifted the bar. She embraced them both and was glad they were naked. The fire in her loins began to burn again. She was their thrall.
It seemed so natural. She could not remember doing it before. But she must have done! They did not tell her or guide her. She knew! Every craft and subtlety and provocation. She knew them with surety and wicked delight. She even positioned them, molding their nakedness to make them most accessible. Gripping them in strange new ways. Holding against their writhings and their moans of fulfillment. Taking each in turn, the other watching with glowing eyes and full moist lips. Their nipples scarlet and their thighs damp. How lovely they were. How exquisite to her tongue! How delectable the taste and savor of them. How sweet their sweat and their perfume. They emanated a dizzying eroticism that made her own fire burn more demandingly. She could tell from the flaring of their seeking nostrils that her own pungency was matching theirs. She feasted and feasted. Going from one to the other without pause in a hunger that grew and grew so that each appeasement gave it renewal. Her avid lips and predatory tongue burrowing within the warm and scented nests that held a nectar only she could know.
At the end she demanded wildly. "Love me! Oh, darlings, love me too." She was tortured by her need.
They kissed her tenderly. Kissed her everywhere but the one secret place. "Our little thrall." They said. "Our darling little thrall... "
Then they locked her once more in the stocks.
She was in a daze of longing. She stood and remembered them. A happy dream in which she forgot her prisoned state and relived again and again her new felicity. She struggled back to Earth and comprehension when she heard the voice.
"So you didn't escape after all."
The girl stood but a few feet away. An amused smile on her face. Her eyes curious. It was natural that she be naked and that her hands be hidden behind her back.
"Remember me?"
Clare was annoyed. Her perfumed dream was being dissolved by this very flesh and blood vision who had appeared from nowhere. It was wafted away entirely when she recognized Chloe.
"You've been to Montrilas." The girl was laughing at her. "I know the signs."
"Get me out of this thing!" Clare heard her own voice utter the words. But knew not why. It had been an involuntary exclamation. She felt lost. She fought to adjust her mind to the fresh presence.
Chloe shrugged, gave a wry grin and turned. She was tied tight at wrist and elbow. The prisoner in the stocks knew she should have seen from the wracked shoulders. Chloe would be in bitter pain. She felt guilt at the absurdity of her demand.
"I ran that night." She explained. "They caught me. I'll never be able to escape now." Then asked, puzzled: "Don't your elbows hurt?"
"Of course they do, silly! But we can't go around moaning and groaning all the time. You get sort of used to it. Or maybe it's just that you don't expect anything else. I think that when we give up hoping it hurts less. Hope is supposed to be good. But it wears you out."
"Do they just let you walk around... the way you are?"
There was a touch of cynicism in Chloe's laugh. "It amuses them. Sometimes they even set you completely free. They love us to escape. It's such fun for them to catch us and bring us back. I used to run every chance I got. But the punishments hurt so much I decided not to any more. If I'm a good little girl and do what I'm told Erdislune isn't all that bad... "
"How long have you been here?"
"Since they 'Took me', I love that term! Oh, month and months. I really don't know. I don't think there is any time here. The moor and Erdislune just sort of float in space."
With the dissipation of the misty dream Clare became aware of discomfort. She was cruelly held. The stocks imposed their own implacability. She envied this cheerful girl her relative freedom. The bite of cord on elbow suddenly seemed preferable to the timber slabs that gripped her helpless.
"But what's going to happen to us?" Clare found Chloe's acceptance strangely frightening. She wished the girl had stayed away. She groped for expression. "Our lives have been stolen. We aren't us any more. I've just gone through sensations I don't understand. There's a sort of dream... "
"I know. I could tell when I came in. I can't explain it. I thought at first they had hypnotized me. Then I thought of drugs. Sometimes I believe it's just this place. Perhaps when we came here we did slip through some rift in the fabric... "
They looked at each other in a sudden glimpse of desuetude. Two girls, young, naked, locked. Their world aeons lost.
"You love them, don't you?" Chloe's voice held envy.
"Yes." Clare did not have to think. Her affirmative was there.
"You are lucky. They love you very much. They have some special sort of feeling about you... " Chloe grinned apologetically. "You see, they talk sometimes. I'm just a plaything that happens to be around so it doesn't matter if I listen. Since they 'took' you I've had the feeling they'd let Lise or me go if they could. But of course they can't do that. Once they have 'taken' a girl they can never let her go."
"But, this loving...?" Clare was still searching. "I can't help it. Should I feel guilty?"
"Of course not, dear. It's wonderful! They're so glorious. Tavie and Alethea are everything a girl ever wanted to be. If they were planted in Girton or Vassar every female in the place would have a crush on them." She laughed delightedly. "Can't you just picture the line up of heated little femmes waiting to service their inamorata."
A tangle of vivid impressions! Could Chloe help sort them! "Where does Ursula fit in?" She asked.
"Honestly, I don't know. I thought at first she was some sort of relative. But she's not like the twins. I mean, she has not got their almost super human qualities. She can't run any faster than we can. Her mind isn't a flashing computer. You could call her a housekeeper. But I'm sure she's more than that. Baffling thing is she lets them punish her--"
"Sula!" Clare was getting in deeper.
"Yes. Sula. She was standing right where you are now only yesterday. I've always had a feeling it's a fun thing with her, too, just like the girls. This place isn't real. If they want to torture you we all smile and help with the preparations. I've done it myself. I can't tell you why."
The girl in the stocks shook her head as though trying to clear it of bewilderment. "Why do they talk about Montrilas as though it's somewhere else?"
"Well, in a way it is. They chained your ankle in the big Hall, didn't they?"
"Yes. Just my ankle. Left me to sleep on the stone."
"It's always like that. You dreamed. Was it terrible?"
"Yes. It was cruel and sad. But I'm not sure it was a dream. It was too real. Some part of me stayed... "
"And the girls questioned you?"
"Yes. As though they believed it was real."
"To them it is. They seem to be searching for something. Something they can't find out for themselves. They have to look for it through us."
"But this feminine world they control: how did it happen?"
Chloe tossed her hair. It was the only gesture of bafflement she could make. "I tried to find out. They punish you for asking. But, goodness knows, they have no need of men. Hedda's as good as a man about the place so far as work goes. And for very sure Tavie and Alethea don't want a man for the usual reason. I begin to suspect that if they keep us here long enough we won't want one either."
Chloe tensed. Her head raised listening. Suddenly she was in flight. Her joined elbows making a strange but oddly beautiful motion as she ran. She was gone as inexplicably as she had appeared.
It was Ursula Sterling.
"You look delightful, darling." There was no doubt she meant it. "You make a most appealing damsel in distress." She laughed gaily. "I suppose we could say you have found your true vocation."
"Please, Sula, let me loose."
"You know perfectly well I can't do that. I think you're playing foxy."
"Just for a few minutes?"
"I'll go away and leave you alone if you persist."
Clare felt safe with Ursula. She shot an arrow in the dark. "Scared the girls will make you stand here too?"
The visitor stiffened and bent her head quizzically. "There was someone in here, wasn't there! Chloe! The little gossip! I'll get the girls to give her a good caning on that tight little derriere of hers."
"Oh no! Please! It was me who asked all the questions. She's nice."
"But she did tell you! What?"
Clare visibly squirmed. She even managed a faint blush. "Just that you and the twins have fun. That you stood in these things yesterday. Oh please, don't have her punished for that."
Sula grinned companionably. "Alright darling. Keep your shirt on. I won't tell." Her eyes assessed the pinioned girl. "Shook you a bit though, eh?"
"I'm puzzled." Clare admitted. "But then, the whole picture leaves me dithering. I don't even know why I'm standing here like this."
"To amuse the girls. In Erdislune that's reason enough."
"Sula." Clare's voice was pleading. "Please tell me something... Or order me to shut up."
Ursula Sterling considered. "Damn funny," She admitted thoughtfully. "The girls wouldn't mind me telling you things. But when I come to start I realize I don't know much more than you do."
"Who are you?"
"That's easy, darling." Sula's voice was warm with amusement. "I was a tutor. Just like you were."
Perhaps had it not been for the indignity of the stocks Clare would have laughed too. Looked at one way it was all so absurd! From other aspects it became more than ever frightening.
The prisoner looked at her visitor, wide eyed. "You mean, you couldn't beat 'em, so you joined 'em?"
"It's crude. But it'll do." Sula acknowledged ruefully. "You'll think me a coward. But it's not that. The girls are magic: you've found that out. This place is pure magic. Tavie and Alethea live in an enchanted world. I fell in love with it and with them. I think I'd die rather than be sent away."
"Were you a lesbian when you came?"
"All women are lesbians, darling. Only a few of us find out."
"Were you the first... tutor?"
"I don't know that for sure. But I've been here four years."
Clare did a bit of obvious arithmetic. "That would make the twins eleven years old. Sort of young, wasn't it?"
A bull's-eye had been scored. Sula looked embarrassed. "I could sluff that one." She admitted. "But, what the Hell! I'm as far at sea as you are. Those girls looked exactly the same then as they do now."
They looked at each other. Eyes filled with unspoken conjecture. The older girl shrugged. "End of debate, darling. I just refuse to talk about it. What's the term I've seen used... It's loaded."
Surprisingly, Clare found she did not want to pursue the enigma herself. To do so might place her steps upon a path she would fear to tread. When you love you do not destroy.
Sula read her thoughts. "You love them?"
"Yes."
"Even when they are cruel to you?"
"I can't help it. It's a sort of hunger."
Sula made a gesture of wry acceptance. "You see! They can do what they like with us." She darted a quick demanding glance. "If you could escape: would you?"
The girl in the stocks stubbed her toe again and again in perplexity. "I can't find a sensible answer. I can only tell you that, yes, I'd run like blazes because I thought it was the right thing to do. But I'd be secretly hoping they caught me."
"They'd punish you terribly."
"I wouldn't mind. That's the strange part of it. I'd almost welcome what they did."
"But your little suburban conscience would be bothered?
The prisoner shook her head angrily. It was a very restricted motion. "I'd like to wring the neck of that little suburban conscience! Why won't it let me enter Lotus Land."
"You are already there, darling. You just haven't closed the door behind you. I entered Lotus Land long ago. Chloe's prolonging the thrills of peeping through the door. Lise just drifts."
"But Sula, in the last twenty-four hours I have been through the most inconsistent contradictions of emotion... of experience! Even while I have been locked in these stocks my feelings... my attitudes have flitted around so I'm almost ashamed of, well, vacillation... "
The captive features implored appealingly. "Darling, Was I drugged?"
"I went through that bit." Sula admitted. "But I've been looking after details here for a long time. I've never found any evidence that any of us get slipped anything."
The two girls fell into a reverie of their own thoughts. Clare stifled her urgent wish to plead for freedom. It would be unkind to place Sula in such a quandary. Their silence was broken by Tavie's enchanted voice.
"Sula dear! How nice. Have you come to whip our little thrall?"
They played with her delightedly as with a kitten. It was excruciating. It was bliss. Their fingers and their lips erased the doubts and the questions. Captive as she was, Clare could see nothing. Her sight was divorced from her body by the stocks. But that which she could feel but might not see instantly re-kindled the flame. Desire scorched and burned. She longed for them to assuage it. But was sure they would not. This need of them was an invisible chain by which she would always be bound.
"We'll let you cane her bottom, Sula dear." Alethea enthused.
The older girl returned to Clare's field of vision. Now she was holding a long thin yellow cane. She bent and kissed the captive lips and asked mischievously: "Will you mind terribly, darling! I want to so much."
Clare did not mind. It suddenly seemed so right. The scald of the cutting strokes told, as with words, the joy of the girl who swung the cane. Provocatively the pinioned girl swayed her hips and protruded her round cheeks in flagrant invitation. The gorgeous agony within her loins mounted with each stroke to meet and match the searing pain. Bemusedly she remembered the hooded man such a little time ago. For him she had screamed. But now, with love, she raised one foot and then the other as a mute message of her suffering, arched her back and produced a wanton display of restrained motion in unspoken gratitude for what she bore.
At the end of ten strokes Sula kissed her again and again. She was glowing with happiness. "Thank you, thank you, you absolute darling. You were wonderful."
Clare knew with wonder that she was back where she belonged. The need of her innermost being came unconsciously to her lips. "Allie. I want you and Tavie to cane me too. I've been so mixed up. I've been... oh, sort of unfaithful to you in my mind. I ought to be punished. Please.
They adored her! She could feel it in the air. It radiated a glow of happiness that made the stocks a shrine of love, and that girl's flesh that the stocks so closely held a willing sacrifice on the altar of her own desire.
Passionately and of their own volition her loins writhed and shivered in their own ecstasy as they were whipped. Agony drove the desire up and down, fanning the flame and quenching it. Constantly she rejected orgasm. It would not match, and had no place, in this sublimation of sensation. She remembered from other times and distant places how traitorous a betrayal it could be.
"Isn't she delicious!" Tavie breathed. "She's lost her shame. Those pelvic motions are wanton. And how beautifully she marks! Watch: I'll cut her low so that she'll make some more of those cringing little moans. Then see the scarlet line spring up after the white."
Clare was glad she marked pleasingly. She would ask for the privilege of a mirror so that she might see. And they loved her moans! Well, that was easy! She used the thunk of the cane upon her flesh to punctuate the ululation of her gasps and small cries of pain and pleasure. She wanted only to give them joy.
"We shouldn't use up her bottom too much today." Allie said thoughtfully. "It's so much more lovely when the lines are all clearly defined instead of one big bruise. She's really beautiful now. I hate to stop. I want to go into a frenzy of whipping her. So what do you say we take her out of the stocks and put Sula in her place and whip her for a little while?"
"Would you like to have your bottom caned, Sula dear?" Tavie asked with pixie humor.
The caned captive was never to know what might have happened had Sula produced a negative. But she did not. The older girl emitted a deep long drawn sigh. Perhaps of resignation, perhaps of fulfillment...
How good it felt to be free! Before rubbing her striped bottom the released prisoner stretched erect, her arms flung to the sky in a grateful salute for the glory of life. A moment later she was enveloped in warm arms and seeking lips...
"Haven't you forgotten something, Sula dear." Allie asked archly.
What had Sula forgotten! Clare found herself free of bonds. Privileged, now, to watch and to enjoy instead of suffer. For a moment Sula was as puzzled by the question as she herself. Then it dawned.
"Would you like the full motions of a strip. Or do I just toss 'em off?" Sula asked. Her eyes held mischief.
"You know perfectly well. That'll mean a few extra."
Unperturbed, and with obvious enjoyment, the girl who wore clothes began to shed them. She traversed the path to nudity slowly with finesse and pride.
"You're an absolute harlot, darling." Tavie encouraged approvingly. "You'd make those hideous appendages of men simply turgid."
"I don't leave you quite untouched either, do I darling?" Evidently Sula was allowed a wide latitude of repartee.
"You do add them up, sweetheart." Allie chided. "You're going to have the most beautiful sunset of a bottom."
It was to see herself as others saw her. Clare stood back and admired the whole effect. It was quite charming. It was a game: a ritual: a play! Whatever it was the three participants enacted their roles with sensuous enjoyment. At the last moment of her freedom Sula turned and sent the watching girl an amused gesture of mock resignation. Then, gracefully, placed her neck and her wrists in their appointed places, circles still warm from the girl they had previously held. The yoke was lowered, the hair arranged, the padlock snapped shut.
Sula was lovely. Clare wondered why the older girl bothered with clothes since the rest of them were always bare. Perhaps it was her badge of office. Conceivably there might sometimes be callers.
"We haven't caned you for a long time, darling." Tavie's fingers and eyes were exploring the exposed bottom. It was quite void of marks. But the watcher saw, with a thrill, that the white back had been whipped within the past month. The marks were there.
"I hate to trouble you now." Sula said sarcastically.
"Would you sooner stay here all night, sweetheart? It could be arranged." Alethea cooed menacingly.
The lovely figure in the stocks visibly wilted. Evidently it was possible for her to transgress. Fervently she sought to regain lost ground.
"Please cane my bottom really hard, darlings." She requested humbly.
"I think we should let our little thrall have first go." Tavie suggested warmly. She turned to Clare. "Have you ever whipped a naked girl, darling?"
"Good Heaven's, no! I've never whipped one with clothes on either." Clare could feel the ground once more slipping away from beneath her feet.
"It's gorgeous! Want to try?"
Why be a hypocrite! At that moment there was nothing she longed to do more than to cane that lovely female bottom held so enticingly for the purpose.
"I'd love to." She admitted honestly.
How strange a sensation to hold the cane, warm and moist from Tavie's hand. Looking at the naked girl in the pillory she felt a strange humility in the power she now held. Could she make Sula scream. Would she be expected to extract the normal responses to cruelty from that naked body, waiting! Could she acquit herself well! She would be shamed by laughter.
"Try and not lap over, sweetheart. Just her bottom." Allie encouraged.
A fresh voice came from beyond the stocks, Sula's. "Don't be shy, darling. It's all there waiting for you. I can't move it. Hit it as hard as you like. I'll still love you afterwards."
Was ever a girl so privileged! Clare took a deep breath, swung back upon her toes, and struck with all the strength of her naked arm. The result was pure artistry.
There came a shocked gasp from the recipient. A leg rose and kicked. The hips weaved. Across the round peaks of the naked flesh a white bar proclaimed the accuracy of the stroke. The girl who had wielded the cane watched fascinated as the white gave way to pink, then red, then scarlet."
"You don't need encouragement, darling, do you!" Sula's voice strove for insouciance against an uncertain quaver.
Clare's immediate concern was whether her accuracy was due to natural skill or to chance. She did not wish to strike twice on the same wound. "Stick your bottom out a bit more." She requested impudently.
She heard the twins chuckle as her arm flashed. Thankfully she beheld the fresh stripe flame out an inch above the first. The siblings squealed delightedly. Sula prudently said nothing. Once more Clare's arm crept back, she raised upon her toes.
They allowed her four. When Allie re-possessed the cane she was panting. But not from exertion. She had never felt such naked lust. She could understand why they wanted to go on and on... She now knew why girls were whipped. Thankfully she knew comprehension as to why her own bottom was laced with weals. What greater function might a girl perform than to present her naked bottom to the cane that others might experience such transcending joy. Pure logic!
"You have a natural gift, darling." Tavie assured. "Now watch."
Clare would have preferred to continue caning the striped skin. It had been the most exhilarating physical thing she had ever done. She knew that remorse and guilt would creep back later. But for the moment she was flushed and radiant. She watched as Tavie and Alethea found their own happiness.
She had been as Sula now was. It was good to see how she had stood and how nakedly helpless she had been and how easily and wickedly the cane found a girl so exposed. She could watch as another girl's body absorbed the strokes. Watch the moment of impact, the recoil, the scarlet acknowledgement. She could hear the sounds from lips that sought not to utter them at all, but through which bruised flesh must find some expression of its pain. Watch with bated breath the shining eyes and flashing bodies of the girls who flogged, handing the cane back and forth to each other in a joyous sharing. She was glad she had been caned first. It made it more... fair! From time to time her fingers, wondering, smoothed back and forth across her own ridged stripes.
Her bottom was as radiant as her face.
Breakfast was on the terrace. Sula joined them, clothed. Yesterday was gone. At Erdislune each day was new and special. When Hedda had cleared the dishes they examined, with varying degrees of interest, the finely crafted object on the table. Ursula's comprehension was one of cynical amusement. She looked at Clare and winked.
"How'd you like a run in the Park, darling?" Tavie asked.
"Jogging?" With the twins one was never quite sure.
"No, silly. We thought you might like a walk all on your own. You know: go naked into the sunlight and do just what pleases you."
"How would I be fastened?" Clare felt ungrateful. But there had to be a catch in it somewhere.
"Nothing! Free as air." Allie assured her expansively. "Except for this... "
All eyes returned to the thing on the table. "It locks around your ankle." Tavie explained. "Inside is a beeper--you know, a tracking device. If you go beyond the park the beep will get fainter and we'll go and bring you back. Or if you deliberately break it so the beep stops we'll come and get you too. We are not going to lose our lovely thrall."
Three amused sets of eyes watched. Clare squirmed. It appealed. To be alone. To be free-- even a limited freedom such as they offered. The thing they would lock upon her was neat and attractive, little more demanding of her ankle than a watch upon a wrist. She returned their smiles dubiously, guilty at her suspicion.
"You're testing me." She accused without resentment. "I'll go and do something and then I'll be in trouble...?"
They enjoyed her quandary. "It's alright." They urged. "Ask Sula. She's worn it."
"That's right." Ursula laughed. "It's simple.
Trouble is that you feel so damn unrestricted and sure of yourself that when you get to the outskirts something takes hold and you find yourself running like a deer with a do or die conviction. By then you have such a fine start you kid yourself you really have a chance... "
She interpreted the query in Clare's eyes. "Oh sure! For the rest of the day I got my breasts whipped. Honest! I deserved it. I knew better." She grinned confidingly. "Do it. You know you want to. You don't have to be a silly ass like I was the first time."
"As much of the morning as you want. Be back for lunch. We are going to take you to the torture chamber this afternoon." Tavie said casually.
Again they enjoyed her alarm. "You won't be injured, darling," Allie consoled. "But we do love to experiment. It's such fun! You are such a gorgeous thrall to practice on. You won't mind?"
"I won't mind a bit." Clare said, matching Tavie's casualness. Shutting the afternoon from her mind she placed her foot upon the table.
It fit beautifully and locked with a most definite click. The girl who wore it paced back and forth delightedly. "It's really a clever idea." She acknowledged. "Thank you, darlings... "
They hugged her as though she was going on a journey.
It was a quiet place, conducive to refreshment of the spirit. A place in which to reflect. Clare found herself happy. Not much concerned with yesterday or tomorrow. She did not want to think. But after she had rambled a mile or two she came face to face with the question that she must soon answer: To which world did she now belong? Erdisland? Or that other--now infinitely distant.
She sat upon the grass and looked around. To own all this! Except that it was growing wild it was more impressive than Powerscourt or the great Park at Blenheim. How rich the siblings were! How understandable that Ursula had chosen to be a part of it. Was her own choice already made. Did she simply fear to face it! Idly she fingered the metal locked upon her ankle. It held her as an invisible chain. Yet she did not find it irksome. She did not resent it. The question was, would she sit thus if it was not there. In the end the answer would lie not in freedom, but in the deep emotion by which Tavie and Alethea held her in thrall.
She must be back for lunch and to be tortured in the afternoon. What an incongruity! What state of mind was she in not to feel either foolish or afraid. She felt neither. Only an amused anticipation. The girls would be delightful children, playing with her. She could be sure it would hurt. But because it was them she would not mind.
She knew herself possessed. A glowing eroticism pervaded her constantly. When she was with the twins she was aflame with it. She had become sensual to a degree that once would have shamed her. Her loins were forever demanding. Her greatest surcease now was in those times when, between their scented thighs, she was allowed to bury her face, her lips and her tongue deep within the flesh of the girls she loved.
She remembered yesterday with a sigh of heart's content, the older girl was left pinioned in the pillory while Tavie and Alethea had yielded themselves to their thrall. How joyfully had she done their bidding! How unexpectedly had bliss been granted. How avidly she had sated her deepest need. None cared that the prisoned girl must stand and watch the things they did.
It was typical of Tavie that, when at last they paused, she should see the pillory and the forlorn female it held and, catching Clare's eye, given her sanction. A moment later Clare was clutching the striated flesh and feasting upon the whipped girl as she stood still in her punishment. Sula had gone wild within her confinement, thrusting and crying out in an intensity of fulfillment.
The twins had sat and watched approvingly.
Clare pondered, but refused to worry. She was in the grip of something that would run its course. Perhaps no decision of hers could affect the final outcome. No decision was demanded of her, so why care! Her mind turned to her immediate situation.
Were they testing her! Probably. More probably giving her an opportunity to test herself. True thralldom was not to fear escape, but in the actual rejection of escape. To not desire it. She wondered with amusement if, when all the questions had been stilled, the siblings would keep her chained and bound with cord and locked in her dungeon, or whether she would be free as Sula was. The question was academic since she cared not what the answer might be.
It was then she became aware of the man.
He had been watching her for a long time, only half hidden. Not really caring if he was seen. Clare froze. In terror? Or in hope? Cautiously she got to her feet as he approached. Long afterwards she was to know that she should have run for her life.
"And a fine good marnin' to yer."
His Irish brogue was false. His eyes were busy.
So accustomed had she become to being without clothes that it was not until that moment she remembered her nakedness. Standing thus before a man was a new experience she did not relish. But the die was cast. He had already seen as much of her as he could ever see. Fighting down the shaming instinct to cover her sex, she said casually.
"Aren't you trespassing?"
"Aye, I may be that and all. I'm a bit lost, like."
"Please don't be embarrassed by my lack of attire. I hadn't expected... trespassers."
"'Tis a pleasure, and that's the truth. If ye're not fazed, I'll not be shy. But beggin' yer pardon just the same."
What now! Instinct told her to walk away and leave him. Yet he was a man in a manless world. A link with a life she had not yet entirely renounced. She was also female: intrigued and curious. Spurred by mischief.
"Sit down for a moment." She suggested, "Before you leave."
He was not unprepossessing. Untidy, a bit shifty of eye, about thirty. Not rustic. She judged him of the City. His frankly admiring gaze pleased her. Erdisland had exorcised her modesty.
"Where are you from?" She asked politely.
"And I was about to ask ye the same thing." He retorted heartily. "For me, I'm lost, and no matter. But 'tis you I'm thinking of. There's a house about here somewheres?"
"Just Erdisland." She stated the obvious. But saw the name meant nothing to him. "A big house, like?"
"Yes. It's big."
He considered. He had a busy mind. She wished she had not started this.
"A man 'ud not be likin' ye ter run around like that?" He insinuated slyly.
She saw the trap and avoided it with silence. "'Tis a sore tax ye put upon the likes of us."
She saw it then: the bulge beneath his coat. Impetuously she asked.
"Shot any of Cromwell's men lately?"
"'Tis makin' sport of me ye are."
"That's a gun under your arm."
"And what if it is!" He was suddenly fierce.
"Why must you?" Her tone matched his.
He shrugged and gave her a sly grin.
"And why not? 'Tis a goodly life. Better than the mills or the docks."
"Killing people?"
"Not people: Englishmen!"
He was of no value for any purpose. His blatant admissions touched her with a cold hand. How did he come to be so far afield. Most likely a fugitive.
"I think you had better go." She strained emotion from her voice. "I have to get back myself."
His eyes and his voice had become frankly lascivious.
"Good-bye." She rose to her feet and turned-- He was on her like a pouncing cat. Clare had no chance to run. He used the same technique as the girls had done. A knee in the small of her back, her arm twisted and raised, her face in the grass.
"Feel a bit more friendly, like, to a poor lad far from home?"
She did not answer. Savagely he levered on her arm so that she gasped and pleaded.
"Don't! You need not hurt me. I can't get up."
"Answer me then."
"I don't want to be raped. And I don't go around giving it away, if that's what you mean. Let me up. This is silly."
"And have ye run! What d'you take me for!"
She heard him fumble. Turning a fearful eye she saw he was tugging at his tie. In panic she heaved and thrust. If he bound her she was lost. Furiously she fought. But pain and exhaustion had their way. He had all the advantage. Finally, miserable and in tears, she lay limp while he tied her wrists behind her back. He did it expertly and brutally. She would not loose them.
"I'm lettin' ye sit up now, yer silly bitch. Run, and I'll hurt ye bad. Understand?"
She nodded. Why, oh why, had she let this happen!
He leered, watching with amusement as his prize struggled to her knees and sat back on her heels. He wagged an admonitory finger. "No la-de-da nonsense, lady. You be goin' ter give me the best piece o' tail and the best blow job an Irish boy ever had. Would ye be understanding that, now?"
Within his feral gaze she felt as far from Erdislune now as she had previously felt from that other world she had left. The best she could hope for was to go back soiled and filthy to the girls she loved... when he had done with her. But would he let her go! The bands round her wrists had a wickedly permanent grip.
"I understand." She said wearily. "With my hands tied like this I can't fight. You can make me do anything... I suppose."
"And don't ye be forgetting that, me fine lady. But first it's a bit of talk I'll be wantin'."
He produced a pocket knife and laughed at her dilated eyes. "Sure, an' I could be usin' it on ye. Mebbie I will an' all. But there's a little persuader I'll be usin' first. You'll be keepin' still now, mind."
He walked to the nearest willow. Watching, she remembered Tavie had done the same thing for the same reason. Thought of Tavie and her sister flashed an inspiration. Could she before he caught her... ! Even then it would need to be convincing.
It was ten leaps to the tree. His hand was in her hair on the ninth. She swung her foot wildly, missing everything except her target. The metal band locked upon her ankle struck the trunk with a solid thunk. She screamed and kicked backward to divert him. Then ceased to struggle. With her hands pinioned there was no more she could do.
Keeping his grip on her hair he led her to his task. She watched unhappily while he cut the switches with which he would beat her. She had no illusions as to his intent. If only her hands were free! She could have wept with the frustration of them being bound. A girl whose hands have been tied behind her back is reduced to a non-person. She becomes the property of whoever had bound her. She writhed in vexation. A man's sleazy tie robbed her of liberty... !
She had expected to be cuffed, brutalized. But her captor was in high humor, enjoying his mastery of a naked girl. She sensed that what he would do to her would be less crude and more painful. Once more Clare was thrust to her knees where they had sat previously. He threw his switches on the grass, selected one and trimmed it. "Ye'll no get off scot free." He assured her cheerfully.
It was almost with cheerfulness that, under his direction, she bent forward until her face and shoulders were in the grass. Better he whip her behind than some other part of her. But having achieved the shaming position she instantly realized the inevitable...
He whistled in surprise. "By all the saints! That's a well whipped bum if ever I saw one." He studied the beautifully striped posterior tilted for his attention for a minute in silence. Then thrust roughly with his foot so that the crouching girl fell sideways.
"Sit up, lady. Who's had a go at ye ahead o' me?"
She struggled up. He did not help. Clare's mind sought frantically for a convincing lie. He would never believe the truth. Nor would she tell him.
She offered a rueful grin. "My sister and I made a bet. I lost."
He sneered. "Try again, lady. No sister belted into you like that."
"And why not!" Clare demanded angrily. "Think I put the marks there myself! Why should you care...?"
"Hoity-toity. No need to snap." She had not dented his cheerfulness. "Ye'll be tellin' me about the big house then...?"
"What's there to tell." She made her voice tired and disgusted. "It's a house. People live in it. That's all."
He sighed. She could believe it was with happiness. "I'll be askin' ye to be gettin' back in position then."
Clare was desperate. If she had succeeded in smashing the beeper against the tree the girls would find her. But when. If the device was still functioning she was lost. He would do what he willed with her. Time was of the essence. Steal what she could...
"What do you want? Money? Help? Shelter?"
He laughed scornfully. "From a naked girl?"
"Alright! I live there with my sisters and a housekeeper and the servants. There's a farm attached. His name's Muldoon. He's got a family."
"None of you married?" He had perceived a flaw.
"Just me." She lied. Better to have a man in the picture.
He moved behind her and fingered her hands.
"No ring." He accused.
"And no clothes." She mocked. "They are both in the same place."
"Over you go." He cut the air with the willow and watched her wince.
"But why?" She wailed. "What have I done?"
"Two reasons, me little darlin'. First ye're English. Second t'will loosen your tongue. And I'll be enjoying it. If I had a razor I'd be shaving your head... that I would an' all."
She could not best him. Miserably she buried her face and shoulders in the grass, rearing her bottom so that it was totally uplifted for his enjoyment. Even being whipped would take time. She hoped he would go about the job slowly.
In her other concerns Clare had forgotten pain. He brought it back to her. He had no concern for niceties, but lashed her with a full cutting stroke that wrapped around both cheeks and hips. She squealed and swayed. It hurt atrociously. He allowed only enough time for her to steady before he struck again. At the fourth stroke she fell sideways, moaning.
"I can't. I can't!" She sobbed tremulously.
"You must have done to get the other marks." He pointed out curtly.
"I was tied."
"Were ye now!" He exclaimed delightedly. "'Tis a strange house ye keep."
In the depth of her distress Clare had made a discovery. Had it been Tavie who used the willow she could have borne it. But it was not within the tolerance of either her spirit or her flesh to endure it from this man: from any man! If he continued to lash her so brutally she would dissolve into screams and incoherencies. She could see her own blood where he had cut into her hip. She was cringingly afraid.
"What do you want?" She asked brokenly. "I'll do anything... "
She could not win. The sadistic satisfaction on his face gave way to lust. Her last words had trigged the shift. She wondered if she had been wise to utter them. But she was helpless. Perhaps it would be best if he extracted sexual satiety from her. The thought was nauseating, but if she gave a good performance he might quietly go and leave her. If only she had not been naked! He was flaming with lust.
"OK. I can always whip you. Let's have a bit o' fun." He looked down at her without pity. "On your back, bitch. Spread your legs."
Meekly she obeyed. It was awkward, bound as she was. "I could make it better for you if you'd untie my hands." She offered.
"Ye'll do fine as ye are."
He tossed his coat aside. He could not take his eyes from her nakedness. Grinning lasciviously he examined every inch of her femininity as he stripped. She fought to hide her disgust at sight of his rampant maleness, keeping her attention on his face. As though affirming his domination he stretched, flexing his biceps. Holding the pose that she might savor her coming ravishment before he pounced...
It was like a movie. A slow motion horror film. Clare saw his features freeze in a grimace of lust. His whole body flex. The sudden appearance of the arrow head protruding from his chest was instant with the thud of the impact in his back. As he fell towards her she screamed and flung herself to the side so that his dead body hit the earth only inches from her.
She scrambled to her feet and looked down at the thing that would have raped her. The arrow was deeply bedded in the center of the back. It had erased the ugly life cleanly and neatly.
Clare looked about. Which of the girls had notched the shaft and drawn the bow! There was no one in sight. The scene was as deserted as it had been when she had first come. There was no sound. Frantically she called. Her cry sounding eerie in the quiet place. There was no answer. Nothing! She stood, naked and alone, beside the dead man. Why didn't the girls come! Why, oh why! In panic she tore at her bound wrists. How awful it was to be tied! A girl could do nothing robbed of her hands. She struggled and tugged. It was useless. He had tied her viciously tight. Again she stood still and listened, her eyes roving. Someone had loosed the arrow that had saved her. But they were not to be seen.
In a terrible need for human warmth, for the touch of love and the feel of lips she began to run. Soon she sped as fast as her feet would leap. Her shoulders swayed by her bound hands, awkwardly... She wanted the girls... only the girls... !
At Erdislune.
Clare was sobbing with thankfulness, seeking their arms as a child finds sanctuary within the folds of its mother's dress. The twins had seen her stumbling return and had hastened across the grass to meet her. Lovingly they cradled their distraught thrall and sought to make sense of her gasping fear and need. She had but one thought and managed to articulate it again and again into their hair and the hollows of their necks and their breasts, wherever she could place her head and her lips.
"Don't let me go... never, never, never!"
The siblings joined eyes in understanding. But also in wonder.
"Oh, darlings, I couldn't stand it again... Never with a man...!"
Nestled in the haven of their arms she managed to tell them what had happened. They listened quietly, asking but few questions. Their faces graver than she had ever known. Then let her lay quietly until her sobbing subsided. It was typical of them that they did not loose her wrists, but smoothed away her tears and tidied her hair themselves. Their love enveloped her with a warmth such as she had never known.
Alethea unlocked the metal circlet upon the frightened girl's ankle and went away. When she returned with the shining object Clare looked at it and said: "Thank God I was able to break it. You'd never have known...!"
"It isn't broken." Allie said quietly. "It's still beeping."
A silence lengthened. Clare looked from one to the other. Her mind busy with implications. "But then... who...?"
They had no answer. Allie looked at her sister.
It was suddenly vital to Clare that this intimate man thing be taken from her. She wrenched her arms and pleaded. "Darlings, please untie the beastly thing. It's, ugh! It's his."
Tavie loosed the knots. "A man's tie." She said. "Slightly soiled." Her eyes sought Clare's. "Men are filth!" The words were uttered with bitter vehemence.
"One of them lies dead out there... an arrow?" She looked at them beseechingly.
"Darling, you're worrying. We'll all go. You can show us where." Allie's voice was placating as to a troubled child.
"Let's." Tavie's exclamation was again bright with her usual enthusiasm. It even held mischief. "But I want to tie her hands. She's had too much freedom. Turn round, little thrall."
Clare recoiled with an instinctive revulsion: almost with terror. "Please no, Tavie. Not with that... that, thing!" She eyed the gaudily striped object with loathing.
Tavie laughed, pleased. "Take it to the house, darling. Burn it. Bring back some cord."
The troubled girl sped upon her errand, happy that her reaction had pleased the twin. Happy with the small thrust. Without question Hedda dropped the male remnant into the kitchen fire and, with a knowing smile, provided cord.
While she stood meekly to be bound Clare strove to analyze the deep sense of peace and wellbeing that the touch of Tavie's hands and the caress of her cords now always infused in her. She did not yet want to admit that she longed to be tied by either of the twins. But she could discover no counter wish within herself not to be. To have her wrists crossed and fastened behind her back now seemed the most natural thing in the world. Obeying a purely sensual impulse she pleaded.
"I behaved stupidly. Punish me, darling. Tie my elbows."
They laughed delightedly and kissed her at great length. "We do the punishing, darling." Tavie assured her. "You look good enough to eat just as you are. But I'll take the rest of the cord just in case."
Perhaps it was the cord. Perhaps it was the twins! Clare felt almost back to normal as they tripped across the grass and into the park. It was not until they had traversed half the distance that the conviction fell upon her as to what they would find. Reaching the trampled spot of bitter memory, the conviction was confirmed. There was no body, no clothes, no feathered shaft. Even the switches were gone.
The twins were unconcerned. She felt certain they knew something that she did not. Obliging but slightly bored they found the scuffed bark where she had kicked the anklet against the tree. In her need to demonstrate, their captive had an inspiration. Running to the willow bush she pointed triumphantly with her toe to the fresh wounds of the half dozen stalks he had sliced with his knife to obtain the instruments with which to whip her. She then thrust her hips back and forth to display the cut skin of their infliction.
"You see." She insisted vehemently. "It's just...
They enjoyed her. She felt pique at their lack of concern. But this was washed away by a flood of relief. If they were not worried, she would not worry. This absence of all evidence of death was somehow reassuring. Thoughts of murder and the police and all such worldly things now seemed absurd in this quiet and lovely spot. Only a little while ago she had chosen it as a pleasant place to sit.
Alethea patted her cheek. "We came so that you wouldn't worry. So that you wouldn't be thinking of him lying here. Promise now, he's gone--out of your mind. We don't talk about it."
Clare would never speak of it again if that was their wish. Joyfully she merged her mood with theirs. They made everything right. They coped. They knew. Already they had dissolved the miasma of ugliness from her mind. Expunged the lingering scent of the male. In a pendulum swing of reaction she suggested impudently. "Wouldn't you like to sit on the grass?"
"She's adorable." Tavie said to her sister. "Untie her hands. She uses them so beautifully."
The little thrall used her hands, and her lips, and her tongue busily and joyously for a very long time...
They tied her again. "You're a cheeky monkey." Tavie admonished affectionately. "So now you get what you asked for." The cord drew the captive wrists together bitingly, hands palm to palm. Clare knew what that meant. But stood passive and helpful. The fire within her that only these girls could kindle was burning fiercely. It would do much to assuage the pain. She smiled happily at the amused eyes of the watching Alethea as Tavie laced and tugged so that her shoulders bent back and back, her breasts proclaimed themselves, and her elbows met and joined.
"It hurts like Hell, darlings." She admitted when they asked. She made a deprecating grimace. But I did ask for it, and I do deserve it."
The siblings were in a benign mood. They set her free for lunch.
"She's had a bad morning. Should we be kind to her this afternoon?" Alethea asked as though Clare was not present.
"Maybe just the dungeon?" Tavie suggested, matching the mood.
"We had been going to take her to the torture chamber. Remember? But maybe something less strenuous." Allie's eyes sparkled.
"Don't talk about me like that!" Clare laughed. She would play their game. "And please don't leave me alone this afternoon. I need to be near you. I don't want that... that, thing to creep back in my mind."
"Being close to us is usually painful, darling." Tavie warned.
"Well, I don't care! I just don't want to be alone. I want; you to be near me: even if it hurts." Emotion made her vehement. "You had something planned. You told me. I think you should go ahead with it." She blushed and made a pretty gesture of frustration. "You know what it is! But I can't possibly ask you to take me there. It sounds too absolutely preposterous... for me to ask, I mean."
Alethea placed her hands on the naked shoulders. "It will hurt, sweetheart." She warned. "But you know that." She kissed the willing lips. "Come along to the torture chamber, little thrall."
They led her by the hand. Clare wondered if any trio had ever walked such a journey before. But why analyze! They walked it happily.
"We don't use it much." Tavie chatted. "They didn't have much sense of the aesthetic. Half the time I want to giggle."
She was right. Clare thought it looked like a large untidy blacksmith's shop. Had it not been for the name she would have failed to associate most of what she saw with human suffering. It was grim. It was crude. It was blackened by smoke.
"Actually we should have brought you here fully dressed and made you strip in the middle of all this bric-a-brac. That's what really got the patrons in a proper frame of mind." Alethea explained. "As far as we have been able to discover it was very rarely they had to be dragged here by force. The stiff upper lip thing seems to have been standard right up to the time it really began to hurt."
"They wouldn't get me in here without a battle." Tavie declared. "I'd kick and bite as long as I could move. Ugh! Fancy men handling you and making you hurt."
They made a tour. "We don't even know how to use some of this stuff." Allie admitted. "But mostly it's crude and self explanatory. Sorry you came?"
"I'll try and show a polite interest." Clare said.
The atmosphere was daunting.
"This Iron Maiden was just a waste of a good girl." Tavie judged. "You popped her in and closed the door. Fini! No fun at all. And all these pinchers and things... Who wants a girl without her nipples! Really, y'know, it's much more fun to whip you."
"What about the Rack?" Clare asked brightly. She felt she should contribute something.
"Here it is, darling, we've been saving it 'specially for you."
It was recognizable. Clare wished she had chosen to be tied to a tree.
"You lay on the narrow plank down the middle."
She looked from one to the other. Grinning ruefully Clare positioned her nudity on the narrow strip.
"We had these cuffs made." Allie explained. "Silly to break wrists and ankles the way they used to do."
They buckled very tight. The revolving drums were turned so that the naked victim was spread exactly between the two. As her legs spread and her own arms pulled back Clare realized the horror of her plight. She had passed the point of no return.
"Hurt, sweetheart?"
"Not yet." She grinned cheerfully at Allie at her feet. It was hard to look back and see Tavie.
A wheel turned. There was a click. The ropes had become taut.
"You look simply gorgeous, darling." Tavie said rapturously and gave the wheel one more cog.
Their spread victim wished ardently to acquit herself well. It would be easy to panic and scream too soon. She supposed, doubtfully, that screaming would be in order later. She could not move. But there was no actual pain.
It came with the next turn. Not so much pain as an intense helplessness, a shocking exposure. Momentarily she thought of Tavie's bete noir. To have men looking at you like this... !
The next move of the wheel took her over the brink. The cuffs and their ropes imposed a demand only the actual stretching of flesh and sinew could satisfy. Clare gasped and knew herself divorced from reality. Here was a new dimension.
The plank on which she lay was lowered. She hung in air. Suspended from wrist and ankle. She quailed at the knowledge that, with the support gone, she had not sagged. Her body was as taut and straight as though it was still sustained.
"That's all for the moment, darling." Tavie was at her side looking down in pure fascination.
"I wish you could see yourself." Alethea's voice was reverent.
"I wish I could too." Clare said in a small scared voice. Breathing was no longer easy. "Wouldn't like to let me up, would you?"
"We'll keep you there for simply hours. It's no use you complaining. Tavie was enjoying herself. She giggled. "Even your slit's stretched The whole effect's lovely, except it makes you a little like a boy. You know, straight lines."
Clare could guess. She would be surprised if she had a curve left. She could glimpse how her breasts had flattened with the pull. "You aren't going to stretch me more, are you? I--I think, I couldn't take any more... "
"Just another notch or two after awhile--"
"Oh, Tavie, don't be a tease." Allie exclaimed. "Our poor little thrall is scared to death and trying not to show it. Aren't you sweetheart?"
"Yes." Clare said the one word with fervor.
"So let's play with her a little. She's quite delicious like that."
They played. Cruelly, wonderfully, ecstatically, wickedly, and with knowing skill. Had Clare been able to move she would have been writhing. But not even a muscle would twitch. Her responses came in gasping moans. They played upon her stretched nakedness as upon a finely tuned organ. Their eyes intent upon her as their fingers roved. She absorbed them utterly. All three participants were living in a vivid world of sensation and sensuality.
Under their hands the tortured girl lost her fear. She ceased to consider the awfulness of her predicament. She was loved. The hands and the eyes told her she was dearly loved. It was enough. If their love placed her where she was, then she would be content. Her need of these two girls who worked their will with her was so great that it was all encompassing. If they had produced a headsman's block and asked her to lay her head upon it she would have done so gladly. She had ceased to ask herself why this was so. If it was irrational she did not care. It was so. It was the magic of Erdislune. Or perhaps of Montrilas...
That night they took her to the Great Hall and chained her ankle to the ring.
* * *
Guymon was angry. He had enough work without carrying the soldier's booty for them. The wench was heavy, and had struggled before he slapped her cheeks. Without concern for her person he dumped his burden on the rough bench in the kitchen.
"Here's another slut for ye, Brigit. Pretty little piece she is. Best keep her hid. If M'lord gets a look, it'll be up the stairs she'll go." He tramped away, grumbling.
With difficulty his baggage twisted herself to sit upright. Her hands were bound behind her back, her ankles corded so that the blood flowed. Her cheeks were tear stained and grimy, her hair awry.
"A pretty piece indeed." Old Brigit muttered. "What's your name, girl?"
"Clare." The voice was soft, afraid.
"They took you in the raid across the River?"
"From my father's Castle. He was gone with our men. We were but few. Please set me free. You will be well rewarded."
Brigit cackled sarcastically. "With a cut throat I'd have little need for gold." She gave the captive a searching glance. "Stand up."
"I am sorely bound, madam."
"And you'll stay trussed until I know ye better. Up!"
The girl managed to stand. The effort was obviously painful. "What will be done with me?" She asked cautiously.
"Too many watching to rape ye on the way hither, no doubt. Well, my fancy wench, I need a girl F the kitchen. After a few stripes ye'll be no worse than the other sluts I get."
"I am no serving maid."
"And are ye not, now! Would ye be liking to go and give the troops a bit of pleasure then?"
The bound girl paled and shrank. Old Brigit laughed. "You'll behave! But don't think ye can't service twenty men a night if I say the word. Al-way keen to oblige, soldiers are: so long as it's a pretty bit o' flesh." She examined her prize shrewdly. "If I free ye will ye fight?"
"No. I promise. Please untie me. It's agony."
Free, the girl Clare massaged her cut and swollen skin. "Thank you, madam. I am gateful."
"Let's have a look at ye then."
The girl faced her, puzzled.
"Off with your shift, girl. Don't be coy with me."
"They caught us at night, madam. I have but one garment."
"Makes it easy for you then." Brigit's tone was caustic. "Off!"
After a quick frightened look for prying eyes beyond the candlelight, Clare loosed the tape and let the garment drop to the floor. Straight and white she stood for Brigit's assessment of her quality.
"No man has seen me naked, madam." It was more than a statement.
"And 'twill be best for both of us that none do."
Brigit was as good a judge of girl flesh as any. There would be no holding on to the wench should any man beyond Guymon see what she was seeing now. The girl was a beauty. Perhaps a bit of gold might change hands after all!
"You know what I want of ye?"
"No madam."
"A civil tongue, a ready hand. You'll scour and clean and cook."
"I am no scullion!" Distaste was in every word.
Brigit sighed with pleasure. Amazing how true to form these damsels were. Well, she shrugged, it was a labor of love.
"Put your hands up against the post." She ordered without preamble.
Clare bent to don her shift, but dropped it, startled, at the older woman's, "Let be." She looked uncertainly at the post. Then divined its import. Brigit used it often enough that she had persuaded Guymon to permanently fix the buckles, one on either side. They stood out from the column in mute testimony to much female anguish.
"Men are within call." Brigit suggested casually.
It was enough! Like some frightened creature of the forest the naked girl went where she was bid and, after but a slight hesitation and backward glance, raised her arms and fitted her hands within the looped straps. Unprotesting she watched Brigit tug and fasten each buckle so that she now stood helpless as well as nude. She flinched as the last strap was made secure, and thought how cruel it was to be a girl.
"I meant no disrespect, madam."
"Perhaps not, young lady, but that scours no pots." Brigit said patiently. She produced her whip from its drawer. A fine tapered thong that, in her practiced hands, could be made as light or as severe, as kind or as cruel as she wished.
Clare's eyes were piteous. Her cheeks wan. "If you deem I deserve to be whipped, madam, I will try to be grateful for your good intent. But it is new to me. I have never felt the lash. I pray it is within my power to bear. I fear to cry out."
A pretty piece, and glib of tongue. Brigit felt no animosity. But she had been bamboozled often enough. A sound whipping and you could start believing some of what they so eagerly babbled. A good whip was a cook's best friend.
The naked girl at the post looked back over her shoulder, her scared face appealing in the candlelight. Perhaps she hoped for mercy or a reprieve earned by her obedience. When she saw that neither would come her way she turned back to the post to which she was bound, bit her lip and waited.
Brigit flicked first at the slender waist, taut and erect in its helplessness. The blows not severe, but curling the lash so that the little vixen would feel it. She was pleased with the slowly increasing motions of the girl's hips and the gasps, as much of terror as of pain, that the captive lips could not control. Adding weight to her blows she sliced the tops of the thighs. Instantly a leg rose in agony, and instantly the practiced thong snapped home in an upward slash at the hidden maidenhood. The girl screamed.
"Remind you you're a female?" Brigit asked pleasantly.
"Oh madam!" Again the imploring glance back across the raised arm. "Please tell me what to say. I will do what you ask."
Brigit grinned companionably. "Ye said you were no scullion, M'lady. What more's there to say."
"Nor am I indeed!" The avowal slipped out. The trapped eyes acknowledged the fault. But the words had been said. "Please... mercy... " She turned hopelessly back to the post.
Brigit was not truly cruel. To her this was an essential exercise for them both. She would hurt the little bitch enough to gain compliance. But not in her favorite places. She would save those for another time. There would be many whippings before this one truly knew her place. She was polite. But there would be steel beneath the fine words. No scullion indeed... !
The creamy bottom took the leather well. It marked most pleasingly. Fine ridges of flesh that soon turned scarlet and purple. This was a tender one for sure! No whip had found its ripeness. Well, tonight it would be well christened. Brigit added more weight to her blows than she had intended.
The little bitch was trying hard. Brigit conceded admiration. The girl stood as passively as she could while the thong cut at her. A well brought up little piece without doubt. She'd believe it wrong to demonstrate pain or fear, even though her eyes and her flesh might betray her stoicism. Probably the silly child was wanting her father to be proud of her this night. And him not even knowing... ! Brigit gave an extra twist of her wrist in annoyance with the gentry.
The nude body bent and twisted. The hurt voice tried once more. "Please madam! Oh please... anything!"
"Pots?"
"Oh, yes!"
"Platters?"
"Yes. Truly I will."
"Scrubbing the floors?"
The slender nakedness twisted as though struck. The tremulous voice in retreat. "Oh, madam, must I?"
Brigit held not her hand for the three bitter strokes that she made quite sure would curl and bite the now writhing nudity. No doubt the fine lady contained her loudest screams for fear of the men. When she paused, she said flatly: "Floors don't clean themselves."
"I will clean them." The girlish voice was low but clear in its acceptance of final defeat.
Brigit was amused. It always ended thus. Little bitches! Clutching at their prides and their virginities. When it hurt enough they became human. She tugged at the straps and let the wounded wrists fall.
"'Tis late and morning comes early." She led the weeping girl to the wall and locked a metal collar round the slender neck. The chain tether was but five feet. Brigit kicked a rug within reach. "Sleep well." She adjourned cheerfully.
"You'll need it." She picked up the candle and was gone.
Clare stood naked, chained to the stone. She let her tears flow. Why quench them! There was none to see. She had nothing to be brave about. She hurt. Her hands sought her wounds. They were many. She had never imagined that a whip could impose such awful pain. She was delivered into servitude indeed! She fingered the thing about her neck. With its lock and its chain it was heavy. For her there would be no escape. She was safely held in this dismal place. She was also naked. Brigit had forgotten to toss her the discarded shift. Desperately she tried to reach it in the dark. Using her feet and every expedient she could devise she still fell a yard short of where the thing mocked her. She was governed by her chain. She could do only that which its metal links would allow. She sank slowly to the dirty rug. Desolate.
Life for the kitchen wench, Clare, was governed by three factors: Work, punishment, hope. The first two were grievous. The third faint. The other girls accepted her without curiosity. She was but another thrall with a striped skin. They all bore the marks of Brigit's displeasure. Their Kitchen Mother dealt out discipline with the same efficient dispatch with which she sliced an onion or a ham. Nor was her ingenuity confined to the whip.
On the first morning Clare found herself concerned with the plight of a companion who erred no more than to spill a bowl of milk. Watching, she learned the quality of Brigit's authority. No one paused. The delinquent cleaned the mess she had made. Then stood upon a box Brigit had kicked into position. The older woman directed the operation with no more than motions of head or thumb. The forlorn culprit knew the exercise and did her part without demur. Her eyes implored mercy, but she said no word. Reaching up she placed her hand through a small loop at the end of a rope from the ceiling. She drew the noose tight so that her wrist was held. Brigit kicked away the box. That was all! It was enough. The girl could stand; not firmly but well enough to sustain her weight. Her body was twisted and strained from the single arm held high. Her free hand was helpless to aid. It could not reach the rope. This was her punishment.
The Kitchen bustle was unaffected. Nothing paused. No reference was made. The suspended girl wept softly without hope, flicking away her tears as though fearful they could give offence. Surreptitious glances were sent her way often enough, but ostensibly she was ignored. A graphic lesson to all.
The kitchen was warm. Its wenches wore but a single shift which could instantly be raised or discarded to make their persons available for punishment. They cringed from the nudity Brigit often imposed. True the precinct was out of bounds for the soldiery, but old Guymon enjoyed undisputed access in the course of his duties to provide fuel and carry supplies. He was not so ancient that he failed to ogle or offer crude comment on any naked torso and limbs on display. Brigit was simply amused by their distaste of his male interest. That, too, would teach them to behave.
Clare found her own first correction particularly shaming. Brigit made it so because of her quality. It was designed to degrade.
Her misdemeanor was slight: a broken spoon. But, from watching others she was instantly attuned to penalty. It came swiftly. Smirking at some private amusement of her own, Brigit placed a pair of stools three feet apart. "Off with your shift, girl." She demanded cheerfully.
It came not easily to part with the single defense of her femininity. Even though the watching eyes were female there were a number of them. But, obediently, she loosed the cloth and set it aside. "Ye're a lovely piece alright." Brigit approved. "So we'll have a look at yer. Up on them stools."
Miserably Clare glimpsed what might be in store. It was not easy to obey. But she managed. The stools were heavy and not too high so they took, well enough, the weight and thrust of her widely separated feet. In a sudden realization of her cruel exposure she asked hopefully: "Did you wish me to face the wall, madam?"
Brigit cackled. "You know better than that. Stand as you are. You can hide behind that fine bush. Now! Clasp your hands behind your neck."
Clare did as she was told. She had never known nakedness such as this. It screamed aloud. It proclaimed itself. It demanded attention. It was wholly wanton and shameful. It was also uncomfortably insecure. The wide stretch that offered her sex for all to see would become increasingly tiring. She felt certain that to fall would earn a worse infliction.
Still chuckling, Brigit placed a box between the parted feet, and thereupon a candle which she now lit with a taper from the cooking fire. Standing back she surveyed her creation with much the same air as an artist who has just placed his last brush stroke up on the canvas of his inspiration.
"Just a reminder. Don't let me be smelling burnt hair." She adjured obscenely before returning to her ovens.
The naked girl knew herself clothed in one vast blush. She fought back tears. They would be unbearable. She would not dare use her hands to deal with them. The room seemed full of eyes. Indeed her body and its pose were invoking admiring and jealous attention. Having resigned herself to that inevitability Clare's concern centered on the candle. Surely Brigit had not placed it there only for effect!
The candle was a refinement for Brigit's own amusement. She had long since determined the distance at which it would not burn the flesh. She had also discovered that, whilst it offered no true impediment to the victim falling or stepping from her perch, it did actually deter. The girls feared it. It had a further dual effect inasmuch as its heat was potent enough to keep the straddled legs constantly apprehensive and the strained loins sensitive to a progressive concupiscence.
Clare found herself rapidly subject to all the sensitivities the older woman desired. She began to ache. She began to burn. Several times she was on the verge of leaping away from the flame. But she came to realize that the burn was, in some measure, mental. There was more heat than she would have chosen. But it would not blister. Her preoccupation soon turned to the more insidious penetration of her maiden sex by a degree of localized warmth generating responses with which she was not unfamiliar, but which seemed shamingly inappropriate to her present circumstances. She fought the rising tide. It must not happen. It would shame her in front of all. She would be deemed a trollop. But nature had its way with her and, within an hour, she fell moaning to the floor in the involuntary throes of orgasm.
Brigit was immensely gratified, and whipped her soundly.
Rurik was a robber Baron. Being, within his code, honest, he might not have contested the title. It would have amused him. He was a big man. A successful man. It was strange that one of his greatest prizes should have been so long in his possession before discovery. His discovery of Clare was, contrarily enough, Brigit's fault.
Clare had failed to scrub the vast expanse of stone floor to the satisfaction of her mistress. "Too much space for ye, eh!" Brigit had commented sourly. "Mayhap we can find thee less to complain of." Selecting a length of cord she led the way into the yard.
"But madam, the men...?"
"Gone on a hunt. M'lord with 'em." Brigit was intent on her purpose. She enjoyed innovations that kept the girls off balance and allowed their tender skins time to heal.
It was a small dismal shed. A poor place in which to spend the day. Clare had become used to the chain upon her neck at night beside the kitchen wall, but felt repugnance against imprisonment here.
It was worse: much worse. Like most Baronial premises it was also a farm. Swine are moved from place to place. This is done by a latticed crate. The boar heaved into its confinement and then carried with convenience as desired. Such a crate stood there now. Seeing it, Clare guessed.
"Off with your shift, my pretty."
"Oh please! Don't make me naked... not here." A deep fear of the men had been instilled into the captive girl.
"What matter? There are none to see. Strip if ye know what's good for you."
Clare stripped. But eyed the cord fearfully. "Must I be tied? It leaves me helpless."
"And so it should! Turn round and cease your plaints."
Always behind her back. Never in front where she might use them to shield her breast or her pubes. She stood docile and mute while the cords bit at her wrists crossed above the curve of her rump.
"Get in there." Brigit raised the crude flap.
The shivering captive sent the older woman an imploring look that found no relenting. Obediently, but with infinite distaste she knelt and shuffled into the small cage. It barely held her.
"No space in there to bother you." Brigit said cheerfully as she let the flap fall and secured it with rough rope which she brought to the upper end and tied with a bow. "There." She pointed out jocularly, "Just a pretty bow for you to undo. Now you know why your hands are tied." She stood back with satisfaction. "Ye make a right pretty sow." She said coarsely. "No doubt ye'll do a bit o' gruntin' 'afore the day be done. I'll bring 'e water by midday." She picked up the discarded shift and was gone.
There was no comfort to be had. Clare spent a painful half hour struggling with her bound wrists before she conceded Brigit's knots as hopeless. Her plight would have been miserable enough free. But with her hands tied behind her back the tribulation doubled. Certainly she might have untied the fastening rope had she the use of her fingers. But fear of the whip would have prohibited such temerity.
She feared the crate would tip to its side under her struggles. But after much painful squirming she managed to attain a sitting position, her face almost buried in her hunched knees. It was the best her small prison could offer. A poor way to spend a day.
She wondered about escape. Could a naked girl ever escape! Always she was bound or chained or working under a watchful eye. What a wonderful chance it would be now if she could but get out of this cage! The men gone. Brigit unsuspecting. But it was wishful thinking. How hateful and how bitter to know that her freedom was denied by a bit of cord round her wrists. Just a bit of cord, savagely knotted by a knowing hand. How potent it was. Furiously she tugged again. Even if it chafed her wrists raw she would not stop striving...
It came faintly, light footsteps, a girl humming a tune. A few moments later a pair of feminine eyes were examining the captive in the cage with an amused curiosity. A pert child of perhaps fifteen whose unconscious air of assurance marked her as one of Rurik's household.
"You're one of Brigit's girls." She giggled. "What did you do to get put in there?"
Clare told her. She found it good to speak to someone not of the kitchen. Hope was reborn.
"I'm Lena." The name was uttered as being both introduction and explanation. "You don't talk like a kitchen wench. From whence were you taken?"
Clare could easily sense the child's interest. Gratefully she answered interjected questions. Then, with her best smile, asked coaxingly: "Please set me free, Lena... We could play."
"I think you are pretty." The bright eyes betokened an active intelligence. "I want to look at you."
Clare's heart soared as busy fingers tore away Brigit's rope. But optimism was tempered when that same rope was competently knotted round her left ankle as she awkwardly backed out of her crate. It was even further modified when Lena tethered her to a stanchion and made a probing inspection of her bound wrists without any offer to untie them. She backed away and examined her naked prisoner with speculative gaze.
"Don't be silly. You know I won't." Lena dismissed so preposterous a suggestion with a haughty toss of her head. "D'ost take the daughter of Rurik for a simpleton! I know thee. Thou art old Baldwin's whelp. My Lord Rurik will find joy in thee this way." She laughed unaffectedly. "Mayhap some gift may come my way."
Desperation displaced hope. "Loose me." Clare implored. "Surely you feel pity. We are both girls. I have never harmed thee."
"That thou art of the house of Baldwin be harm enough."
"My father must be sick at heart for word of me." Clare stroke to reach this girl who now seemed less and less of a child. She knew a sickening frustration that this precocious brat should stand between her and freedom. Even the absurd rope upon her ankle was a defeat. "To give me freedom would be a charity surely to be blest. Please!"
"It would be a charity that would get me soundly whipped."
"Who would know but us! Brigit would deem I had wriggled free of her knots."
Lena sneered. "Know this, foolish one. I would have sport with thy fair body. My father will surely let me use a whip on't. Your tears would please me."
Clare knew defeat. Better Brigit's kitchen than this! Watching Lena repossess the tether, she seized a forlorn chance and leaped for the door. Perhaps her momentum would drag the rope from the teen-ager's hand: Perhaps even with bound hands she might manage to get lost in the woods! A moment later she was flat on the floor, hurt and breathless. Her ankle dragged brutally back.
"It's much the best on the ankle." Lena cheerfully commented. "I know. I've tried it before. Get up now and come along. I'll have the women make you presentable for Daddy." She laughed provocatively. "Thou art in sorry state. Perchance he would bed thee... "
The bath, the scented things, the pretty clothes would, under happier circumstances, have placed the forlorn captive in a seventh heaven. But Lena's critical supervision of her rehabilitation never for a moment allowed her to forget her new peril. If Lena was her father's daughter Rurik would be fearsome. The girl herself was a capricious blend of laughing mischief and cold cruelty. It became speedily evident there would be neither escape or mercy from her. She was excited with her discovery and would extract from Baldwin's daughter as many tears and as much anguish as Rurik would sanction.
Clare knew it not. But it was a measure of her value that the Baron received her alone. When she was led, trembling, by Lena's eager hand to the great Hall the man in whose hands her life now lay stood solitary, a menacing and massive figure silhouetted against the blazing logs. The younger girl drew her determinedly forward to stand ten feet before his intent gaze. She then stood to one side leaving Clare, a slender loveliness, proud but palpitating under the male scrutiny.
They took each other's measure as the moments sped. Then Rurik slapped his thigh and with vast good humor ejaculated: "By the Gods, old Baldwin sired a pretty bit o' flesh. He'll mourn to lose thee, girl."
"He will ransom me, sire."
"Nay! There'll be no talk of ransom." His voice had become steel. "The old dog shall pay dearly for his whelp. But not in gold."
"And your demand?" Clare could not hide the bitterness in her voice.
He laughed at her as one does at the pretences of a child. "Oh aye... my demands!" Again he indulged in the hilarity of some secret joke. "They're reasonable enough an I have you. I'll take the house of Baldwin and all it holds, and as a touch o' sauce to flavor such a dish I'll keep thee for my pleasure... " Aware of a motion to his left he added jovially, "And for the plaything of my pride: she who brought thee hence. I shall enjoy your fair skin no less for such marks as she may place upon it."
Clare's horror at her fate, so clearly defined, was countered by puzzlement.
"I am but a single girl. I have sisters, a brother and a mother. My father can not, in any conscience, barter them and his stronghold because of me. If I am lost, then I am lost, and that's an end. You will have robbed my father of a daughter and gained yourself a thrall. That is all you can make me be."
Rurik nodded condescendingly. "You reason well, girl. I'll not quarrel with it. But you shall be more than a bit of sport for mistress Lena and for me. You'll be a key... " He took a deep breath of infinite satisfaction. "A key, my beauty, to the old dog's house."
Clare stood silent. He would tell her what he chose. No more, no less. The man was rock. Her certainty of impending peril to those she loved made the awfulness of her own plight seem less. Knowledge that she could not barter her body for their safety was bitter indeed. There was a surety about Rurik that blunted courage, daunted hope. She knew herself held in a vise.
"Strip."
His brutal command struck her like a blow. But what else could she expect. Brigit had inured her to nakedness. Without emphasis she disrobed. Masking her shame she stool erect, staring him down.
Nodding in confirmation he said more softly. "Thou art indeed fair to see. An it were not for thy hate ye could be more than thrall... " He sighed and turned to his eager child. "An you would place your stripes above Brigit's on this lovesome piece, my dear?" He asked indulgently.
"Please father! May I?"
He nodded generously. Proud of his daughter's desire. "Of a surety, child. Tonight I will use her. Tomorrow she is yours. The following day we use her as our key within a lock. She will not lack diversion... "
"May I use her as I will: in any way?" Lena was radiant.
"And what is in that busy little mind of yours?" He laughed.
"I want to whip her... in front of all who wish to see. Then I would brand her."
His eyebrows rose, not in horror but amused. "T'would not affect her value." He conceded. "If it would pleasure thee: That and aught else... " He shook his head in mock censure, "I spoil you wickedly." He turned to Clare, "D'ost think I indulge her beyond prudence?"
She eyed him levelly. "If I am no more than thrall what matter."
His gaze glinted humor. "Perhaps after tomorrow to be a thrall may not seem enough...?"
She bit back the angry words and ignored the inference. That which lay in store defeated reason. She scarce dared contemplate the morn. Before it came she would suffer bitter loss. Why tell him she was virgin! It would but whet his lust! Perhaps in the darkness there might be hope.
"Dress." He said almost kindly. "Three of us will sup before two of us find... " He paused and grinned at Clare defiantly, "whatever it may be that is to be found... "
Lena knew her mind. She was at once a winsome child and a woman lusting for a girl's screams. Her demand was considered and unambiguous. "You will do my bidding in all things or I call the men who will be always close. I will ask things you would deny. But you must obey. Agreed?"
"I will do thy will." Clare said tersely. She had lost hope of mercy or escape. Better the small hands of Lena than the coarse hands of men.
It was to be worse than she had feared. They walked hand in hand like sisters. Incongruous! She clad in all the gladsome garb she had been given. Fed and clean. Unbound. But it was not to the public square. Instead it was to the barracks of the Baron's men that she was led by an impudent and excited teen age girl who was obviously adored and held in awe by the idle and waiting soldiery who greeted their entry into the central hall with murmurs of their own excitation.
Clare did not look at them. She could not bear to meet eyes that would strip her naked and know her for what she had become. She had no hope of enduring the day in dignity. What she must suffer would debase her to total shame. They would feast upon her cries and her pleas and her writhings under the whip. Each, in his mind, would couple with her in his own way. The day was Lena's. Her body and her limbs belonged to the girl who held her hand.
There was a platform. Always a platform! But with so many to see... At Lena's command she stripped herself naked. Even though she closed her eyes the manifold gaze scorched. She knew her breasts, her bushy triangle, every curve and plane was being savored by a hundred hungry men. She supposed, bitterly, she should feel gratitude that she was not being tossed to them now that the droit de seignior had been resolved.
Eagerly the men helped their young mistress. Ropes fell from the rafters. In a few moments Clare stood triced. Her arms wide and high. Lena had chosen the most revealing posture possible. A subdued applause rose from the ranks. Evidently it was expected that their behavior be circumspect.
She had been spared nothing. The night. Nakedness. Now this. She wished she could remain apathetic. But she was vividly aware. She watched, with bitter interest, as Lena was handed a whip from one of the men. She suspected, without gratitude, that she owed it to Rurik that it was a simple thing. Cruel enough. But without knots or metal. Unless Lena went into a frenzy she would not be cut to pieces.
She waited, passive, for the lash. She was not suspended. But had to stand on her toes, thus was taut, ready. Dully she wished her feet were bound. Under the thong they would find a life of their own that would shame her. No doubt they had been left free with intent.
Lena was skilled. Undoubtedly experienced. She drew appreciative responses from her audience by her preliminary strokings with the whip and with its stock. Clare tried desperately not to respond to the subtle suspenseful contact. But some of the thrusts were too intimate. Her flesh reacted though she did not. Shame made her doubly naked.
To be whipped is to be whipped. There is no heroism in it, no glory, no triumph. The whip wins! Though she had been whipped grievously and often by Brigit Clare had discovered that each time the horror was as potent, the pain as acute, the same sickening sense of the unbearable still present. Only by the cords that bound you did a girl endure. One owed much to the cords that cut at you with their own infliction. Without them she would be pitiful and ludicrous staggering hither and thither to escape the excoriating wounds. Bound she would writhe, but would remain exposed for the convenience of the leather.
Clare screamed only when she had to. Lena varied her strokes so that the naked girl never knew where they would fall or how hard their impact. She made certain that many curled their way around hip and furred sex. These unfailingly evoked a responsive cry. But she felt the breasts inviolate. The hurt girl suppose this, too, due to Rurik. Her firm taut breasts had given him much delight. She had no illusion he would be done with them.
As the whip bit and licked at her skin she kept her consciousness from the watching eyes by memory of the night. She would always remember it. What girl would not! She wondered how vastly different it might be from a wedding bed. She had not fought. She would be hurt enough without cuffs and blows. Nor did she wish to be bound. She had heard of unwilling damsels tied obscenely so that they could not move. Hopelessly she had allowed Rurik to possess her body and her limbs in such ways as he might choose. He had taken her again and again. After the first times and the first agony she had known a shameful pleasure. He had extracted it from her with amused joy in his skill. She wished she could now feel Lena's whip as her just punishment for being wanton. But she could not. It hurt too much.
Gossip and maiden whispers in the dark had given her hints. But the Baron's prowess and versatility had taken her into an unexplored experience that left her both shocked and intrigued. She had submitted to Lena's torture today with a mind mazed, puzzled, and fearful of herself as well of those whose thrall she had become.
It is terrible not to know the number of the strokes. Sometimes Brigit had sentenced her to three or five or a dozen. They hurt no less, but sometimes you could grit your teeth and take them in silence because you knew when they would end. But now with this exuberant girl! Rurik had given her the day. Surely not whipped all day! She would die. No female flesh could take it and survive. Yet it was but a prelude to the worst thing of all. She was to be branded! It was inconceivable that a child should wish to be so cruel. But Lena would brand her with the same insouciance with which she would use a skipping rope or strum the mandolin.
It went on and on. No count no time. Her body was striped everywhere. It was hard now even to scream. She fell back upon moans. Nor did she fail to plead. Lena had left her no pride. Now she gave no mercy. But told her victim joyously how good it was to wield the whip and how she never, never wanted to stop. She even demanded screams, and got them by cruel and searching blows.
But it did end! Her whipping ended. But not her shame. She was left to stand for all to see. Lena came and went. The soldiers went about their affairs or simply lounged and stared. No maiden modesty had ever been more violated. Her nakedness was common property. The shame of the whipmarks suffused her with a beauty of their own. She was clothed in weals, a garment of scarlet and purple.
By the end of the day she was almost glad when they brought the brazier and positioned it carefully where she could see it best and note the protruding stem of iron buried in the coals. A soldier used bellows while Lena bound Clare's ankles to rings set so far apart that she was obscenely stretched. But, more importantly for the matter in hand, could not move at all. Her most anguished struggle could produce no more than the quiver of a muscle. Wherever the heated iron might seek her flesh she would be quiescent to receive its kiss.
No nuance of awfulness or terror was denied. Without need Lena, from time to time, withdrew the iron and offered the glowing letter 'R' for its recipient's inspection, holding it close enough that the cringing girl could feel its heat. Clare pleaded with her eyes, but got back only a gamin smile of pure happiness. An agonized glance about the hall told that the men were there in force to witness this piece de resistance of her torment. If there were those whose faces held pity she could not see them.
When it happened it was very sudden. It could have been one more preliminary pass to mount her suspense. But this time the red metal found the top of her right thigh and pressed home hard. She screamed again and again as the intent girl held the iron firmly in place to achieve the deeply etched mark that would last a life. She smelt the smoke and the savor of her burnt flesh. She heard her voice shrieking out somewhere beyond the unutterable agony as she lapsed into total darkness.
In the morning Lena made Clare strip. Then tied her crossed wrists behind her back. They walked out into the cool air to where Rurik sat his horse at the head of his troops. Every eye was on them as the naked girl was lifted into the saddle where she must ride helpless while her horse's lead was passed to the hand of he who now doubly owned her. Lena stood back and watched them go. For the first time her face showed regret. Astride her horse Clare looked down at the wound burnt so deeply within her that it blazoned her master's initial for all to see. It proclaimed a nakedness all its own. She had never felt so bare and without defense.
They began their march to her father's house.
It was very simple. Clare could see its logic. Rurik took zest in the telling as they rode. Approaching the castle his men would separate left and right to take up positions unseen in the trees whilst he and a bare dozen followers planted the stake to which she would be bound. It would be beyond the range of any bow. But in clear view of those watching from the battlements. When Old Baldwin and his men rode out to her rescue and the annihilation of so small a force Rurik's horsemen would close from either side...
Had ever maiden known such desolation! She would watch helplessly whilst all she held dear was destroyed. A naked girl tied to a post: impotent. She sat the horse now, an unwilling participant. Naked, bound, branded. Her steed guided and led by the hand of another. By the hand of a man who, when all was over, would keep her and use her as his thrall...
How easy it was. They had come prepared. In so short a time the stake was firmly planted before the battlements and she, in total nakedness, was tied to it. Tied so that she could not move and so that her feet on each side of the wood opened her in shame for her kin to see.
There came now a heartrending horror. Bundles of faggots were unloaded from a cart and piled at her feet and to above her knees. A great pile of dried sticks that would generate a heat to reduce her to a cinder. She was to be burned! Tied to a stake and consumed by fire! Her whole being cried in protest. She did not want to die!
In mute terror she watched the herald go forth and heard his voice. Total surrender or she would be burned.
She had been bound high on the stake. She looked piteously down at Rurik's smiling face.
"Lord, will you truly burn me?"
He laughed at her fear and said contemptuously: "Two nights of a woman in enough. They are easy to come by."
She put her heart into the words. She did not want to die. Not to burn...
"You took me. But in the end it was I who gave. I can still give."
She had touched him. His look had become intent. "I ravish you by night. My little one whips you by day. Is that your desire?"
"That is my desire, Lord."
He was about to answer when a shout caused him to wheel toward his horse. The great gates had swung open. The Old Dog and his men were riding forth to save and slay. Rurik triumphantly signaled his handful of followers and led them in a galloping retreat that would lure the pursuers neatly into his trap.
As from a great distance the naked girl bound to the stake heard her own voice cry in anguish.
"No! No! Go back. Go back. Go back... "
Her voice was lost in the thunder of the hooves.
* * *
Clare was cold when she awoke. The great hall was pale in the light of early morning. She was a white ghost chained against the wall. Her body had warmed the stone on which she lay. But it had imparted its own chill to her. She kicked her foot. The shackle was still safely locked round her ankle. She could not leave her tethering place. She would have to await the coming of those who held the key. She curled herself into a ball of warmth and let her thoughts rove.
Again she was reluctant to call it a dream. What else could it be! It had none of the contrary inconsistencies of a dream. It remained an experience clearly and logically etched in her mind with a signal clarity. She felt quite certain she herself had cried those last poignant words. But there were none to hear. So she would never know.
Had she been drugged! No, she was sure she had not. In fact did it matter. She had known a vivid and terrifying dream or regression into the past. But it was done. She was safe in Montrilas. In a little while the girls would find her and give her comfort. The thing that occupied her attention most was the same compulsion that had been an aftermath of her previous excursion when chained as she was now. An overpowering inordinate longing for the two girls who had chained her there. A passionate turning toward them. A hunger for their flesh. A spiritual need of their laughter and their use of her and their love. Tavie and Alethea had not been present in either harrowing adventure but her first thought on waking was of them, her first need the touch of their hands. She remembered the seeming contradiction that first time. She would have passionately fought for liberty, for flight from Erdislune before being chained and left in the Great Hall. But afterwards Montrilas--or perhaps it was the girls--had claimed her. The Great Hall with its visions had garnered her into its womb and given her a new life. She had become as much a part of Erdisland as were the girls themselves. She was their 'Little thrall'. Tavie's title sounded so very right.
Happily she returned to sleep.
She would never know about the girls! Always they would be quicksilver in her fingers, slipping into roles and moods she could not foresee. Why now the dungeon! Why Chloe! Why the chains! Not that it really mattered... whatever they did to her was always so right.
They had asked their eager questions. She had loved to tell of what had befallen the girl Clare in that other time. But, as previously, she sensed their disappointment that they had not been a question, and at the end the somber meeting of their eyes in some understanding she could not share.
But it had also been a morning of love. Clare had fed upon their scented flesh until gorged. A homecoming from a far land. They had played happily with their little thrall, and when satisfied with their joy had locked the girdle upon her loins.
"A perfect fit, darling." Tavie cooed. "Doesn't hurt, does it?"
Clare had blushed. It did not hurt. But its intent was all too obvious. It was a thing of beauty. Silver mesh hugging her hips and her sex, locked at waist and thigh. It was very tight. But she could not say it hurt.
"Why?" She looked with puzzlement into their laughing eyes. "There are no men... "
"There are women." Alethea had said softly.
They chained her in the dungeon.
Chloe was entranced. With shining eyes she watched as the silver fetters were locked on wrist and ankle in the same way that she herself was confined. She remained mute but curious until they were alone.
"What's that lovely thing they've put on you?" She demanded.
Clare was surprised. Chloe's dark triangle was as bare as her own had been an hour before. Why should it be her nether lips that were prisoned alone.
"I suppose it's a chastity belt." She admitted ruefully. "But I don't know why."
"I know." Her companion asserted cheerfully.
"You mean something special to Tavie and Alethea. Sula thinks so too. It's all part of this place, part of the mystique. You must represent a virgin something or other they don't want sullied by common lips like mine."
"But they don't even touch me with their own... not there." Clare said plaintively.
Chloe contrived to look both carnal and coy. "I say, dear. Do you have the hots?" Seeing the hesitation on her companion's face, she added hastily, "I mean, I have it all the time. I'm ashamed of myself. I was never like this until I came here. If Tavie and Alethea and the other girls weren't at me all the time I think I'd burst."
Clare nodded, half ashamed. "Same with me. 'Cept I don't get help."
The two erstwhile tutors looked at each other, intrigued yet concerned.
"I'm remembering the first time I saw you." Clare said musingly. "You know, in the stocks with that awful thing locked in your mouth. It's not all that long ago. But we have changed. We have become a couple of... well, sexpots. I live in sensuality and love it. It's as though the twins have wrapped me up in a cocoon of pure lust." She held up her fettered wrists, "They put these chains on me, and I'm sure that door is locked and bolted. But I wouldn't run if I could. They know this." She hesitated, groping, "We love each other... "
Chloe made a wry grimace. "I'd do something for you if they hadn't locked that delightful piece of jewelry over your quim--but then, I suppose that's why it's there. Just to keep my wicked little tongue away." She paused, an elfin grin forming. "Y'know, poppet, I'm getting a real sympathy for men. I 'spose this is the way they are: that damn thing they have hotter than blazes and nagging at them all the time. It explains those clutching hands... "
"But do you want a man?" Clare knew her own answer all too well.
"No!" Chloe's negative was adamant. "But that's the Hell of it. I never was a lesbian! Guess I'd have been angry at the suggestion. But now... " She turned imploring eyes to her fellow captive. "I'm damned if I'm going to say it! Why label myself a les'." She made a gesture of frustration that sent her chains to clinking. "We are into something more than that. For Tavie and Alethea alternatives don't exist. Men just aren't! They are like those legends of the Amazons and the Sabine women. They don't need men. Men aren't in their scheme of things." Again her wide eyes with their big question. "We don't need 'em either, do we? Not any more. We've been sort of... well, purified."
Clare nodded agreement. "I try and think of a word for them." She admitted. "You know: something like immaculate, or virginal, or fresh and shining. They don't wear clothes, they genuinely don't need them. But if they did I'd picture them in pure white: not much even of that. But the whitest white... "
A clinking of metal links accompanied Chloe's gesture of bafflement. She flushed. "How do you feel about these?" She raised her fettered hands in a pose of uncontrived beauty.
"The same as you." Clare acknowledged happily. "I've given up asking why just as I have quit feeling silly or guilty. Both of us ought to be working like mad to get free of our chains. But we don't want to. We love 'em. Let's be honest about it. I get the most shockingly erotic thrill out of having my wrists and ankles shackled as they are right now." She paused to examine the band round her right wrist, "I'll admit they are exquisite, almost like jewelry, and I'm female. But the knowledge that, no matter how I try, I can never get them off is terribly potent. Just talking about it like this and I get hotter than ever under this bit of chain mail I have to wear."
"They are pure beauty." Chloe agreed absently, her fingers engrossed with the links and the metal bands. "They are such a perfect fit--have you noticed that? It's as though they had been poured on and set solid to every contour. I can't move mine at all. They don't hurt. But they are so tight I can't move them up or down or even twist them."
"Same with mine. It's as though the girls were holding me." Clare glimpsed another angle. She flushed again as at a confessed delinquency. "But it's the same with the cords. The first time they tied my elbows it was torture. I thought how cruel they were. Now I don't mind. Oh Hell! Let's be honest. I love it! Have we gone round some sort of bend?"
"Yes we have." Chloe's voice was serious. "It's a bend that's let us into some perfumed garden; some wonderland the girls control. We haven't slipped a cog. We aren't candidates for a shrink.
We've been taken into a secret place. The girls use that word, too, don't they! 'Taken'. It's some sort of magic. It has to be. Even when they whip us or play some of their other cruel games we still love them. I make an awful fuss sometimes when they cane my bottom or hang me up by the thumbs, but when it's over I adore them for it." Chloe stopped at a sudden memory. Then asked hesitantly: "I say, darling. Have you noticed... the big main door...?"
Clare knew instantly. It was a missing link that had nagged within her consciousness for days. Chloe's faltering question clicked it into place. Her eyes widened in a sudden confrontation. Of course...
Chloe grinned, relieved that another had seen what she had seen. "Those statues within the columns: It's Tavie and Alethea. Perfect as though they posed for the sculptor yesterday.
A silence fell. Wonder merged with that eerie fear of the inexplicable which lies, forever waiting, beneath the surface of our lives. Clare made a purposeful effort to thrust it aside. She did not wish to spoil a mood.
"But they, the statues I mean, they're chained. It's out of character. I can never imagine the twins allowing themselves... "
"A girl doesn't always allow herself... Sometimes she doesn't have much to say about it." Chloe commented dryly. "Anyway, I asked them about the amazing likeness." She grinned ruefully. "They gave me the damndest whipping. They said it was for impertinence. But, actually, it's something they don't want to discuss. Know what I think! It's tied in with their probing into the dreams. They're searching, trying to put some pieces together."
Clare shivered. Again the unknown had chilled the air. "I wonder if it's right for us to pry." She mused pensively. "I don't really want to. I like us as we are."
Chloe rattled her chains as though to break a spell. "O.K. Enough ponderous probings. Probably we are seeing things that aren't there." She gave her fellow prisoner an arch look. "Y'know, love, there's something I've been wanting to do ever since they tossed you in here to keep me company. I want to have a go at that delightful tidbit round your hips. See if I can get it off. Or if I can find a chink in the armour. May I try...?"
Clare was thankful to push the shadows away and get back in the sunlight. Chloe had a way with her. How vastly she had changed! Had she herself become so much a different girl! Probably she had. She laughed gaily and returned to happiness. Standing, she braced her feet as far apart as the chains would allow, lifted her hands and the chain that joined them and clasped them behind her neck. "I'm all yours." She invited provocatively.
With a small gurgle of pleasure the other chained maiden flew to her task. Busy fingers tugged and probed. Clare stood, quietly smiling, not caring about the outcome. But enjoying the attention as her companion explored the locks and searched for slack in the skin tight metal. There was none. With a small moue of disappointment but a knowing smile she confidently grasped the flexible mesh at the juncture where it shielded the forbidden sex. "This won't be special." She giggled, "But it's better than nothing."
Clare yelped and almost fell. Chloe backed away in consternation, eyes wide. The captive's chained hands reached down and tenderly explored the sacred spot. She lifted hurt but amused eyes.
"It's no use." She explained. "The darlings are too clever... There's little needles or spikes or something go to work there when you push." She laughed outright. "When they say chastity, they mean it." Seeing Chloe's crestfallen features she impulsively knelt and drew the other girls hips within the embrace of her widely chained hands and buried her lips in a sanctuary unguarded by locks or links.
They were left in the dungeon several days. On the last of them they were chained by the neck to opposite walls. Their tethers too short for communion.
"Just to be tantalizing." Alethea assured them impishly. "You've had a really wonderful time together. A little abstinence will build character."
When they were alone again Chloe uttered an emphatic "Damn!" and tugged irritably at the chain that linked her to the ring in the wall.
After that it wasn't half as much fun.
In her acceptance of Erdislune Clare constantly faced the query of how total her involvement actually was. It was hard to forget what she had once been. It was hard to rationalize the abrupt and inconsistent transformation of her whole being from a slightly conservative young woman to a naked wanton glorying in her body and in the strange loveliness of Tavie and Alethea. Yet when she was in their company all else vanished as though it had never been. Suppose: just suppose she returned, or could return, to her former existence. Would she revert! Could she! Her only certainty was that she did not want to.
"We want to torture you, darling. What would you suggest?" At that moment Tavie was fifteen. A puckish hoyden intent on mischief.
"It would be nice in the Park. You've been in the dungeon so long." Alethea contributed.
She would match their mood. The now familiar heat was rising in her loins. "Something erotic, darlings. Or just old fashioned pain?" She asked jauntily.
"It's always erotic when we do it to you." Tavie admitted pensively. "That's why we know you're the one... " Her eyes glowed with love. "So, you see, it doesn't really matter."
Clare pretended to consider. "You could tie me to a tree, or hang me by my thumbs, or send me for a ride on a horse like poor Mazeppa--that's always intrigued me! Or you could send me for a walk out there with just the beeper on my ankle... " She grinned reminiscently. "But with that last you'd better lock on my chastity belt."
"Honestly, now. You'd love to be raped, wouldn't you?" Tavie teased.
"We know how you feel down there between your legs." Alethea added demurely. "Wouldn't you like a man?"
"No!" Clare was astonished by her own vehemence. "You know what I want. I want you."
"Is that a whippable impertinence?" Tavie asked of her sister.
"Oh, why must you tease me! It's awful!" Clare stamped her naked foot ineffectually. "It's like a fire burning all the time, and you two put it there. I don't care if you do whip me."
"Of course the little darling must be whipped." Alethea agreed. "But we are all going to school tomorrow, so she'll probably get well caned there. I'd thought of something else today." She turned loving eyes on their erstwhile tutor who stood flushed and imploring, her breasts rising and falling with an excitement she could not control. "Darling, would you like to tie me up and cane my derriere?"
The flood of desire that enveloped her was so intense that Clare was speechless. The simple question had evoked a picture of such unutterable delight that she trembled with a hunger hitherto unknown. A hunger frightening in its urgency. The girls were unpredictable. She would never cope with them. Always they would do as they wished with her. It was like the night when she had fled in the dark and seen their pale limbs in the blackness as they circled her at will, reveling in their omnipotence over she who was to be their thrall. Because she loved them and did not care what they might to do her she said, with an almost pathetic simplicity, "It would give me great happiness." She gave Alethea a grin of complicity. "I don't really believe you'll let me. But I wish you would."
"Would you cane me very hard?"
"As hard as I could." Clare sensed their pleasure in both the raillery and her temerity. Would they really whip her!
Suddenly she was held in passionate arms. Her lips possessed by other's as demanding as her own. A searching hand slid down and cupped her aching sex to grasp its message. Alethea stepped back and told her sister, "She's ready."
"Apollyon?" The single word was a confirmation between them.
"Yes, Apollyon. He'll be ready too." Alethea agreed.
He stood in an open space in a part of the garden not previously explored. The sculptor had eschewed classicism to create a vivid maleness, rampant and splendid. As radiantly alive as the statues gracing the portals of Erdislune. The same hand had worked its magic. Apollyon! The explicit male image stirred within Clare's being both erotic admiration and fear.
"He's waited for you a long time, darling." Tavie's voice held scorn for the demanding male need.
"He's almost alive, even though he is only a man thing. You'll be surprised, darling." Allie enthused.
It was the same polished stone. The same appearance of something new yet infinitely old. Its perfection was marred by an anomaly that rendered its cogency satyr-like in an obvious eroticism. It was sticking out its tongue in a thrusting arrogance. But it was not a tongue. It was a second phallus. Not as long as the erect weapon below, but endowed with a bulging glans, the intent of which Clare shockingly suspected.
"I suppose, darling, you are really a very lucky girl." Tavie suggested unconvincingly, but with evident amusement.
Clare was shamed by excitation. She wished the three of them might go away from this place and leave the polished stone to its eternal vigil, its endless rut. It was too real, part of the ancient menace of Montrilas. Yet she made no demur, but held her arms stiff, elbows bent as the twins lifted her...
To be loved by a reliquiae of stone! To clasp him in your arms and feel yourself impaled upon the rigidity of his sex. To feel his being deep and warm within her flesh! Warm! It could not be! Yet it was so. Either by heat of sun, or magic, or of things not evident to her eye, Apollyon was warm as life.
The fire within her loins raged. Clare moaned, and moaned again as the tender hands spread her and lowered her on that which had waited so many centuries to penetrate her womb. That it might not be more than she could bear her arms instinctively encircled the waiting neck and shoulders of the god, drawing herself tight against his chest and supporting the weight that her limp and straddled legs were impotent to carry. So, the cords found her and bound her tight at ankle, knee, waist and thigh. Her wrists were circled by the loops and fastened tight where they themselves had found their natural resting place. Apollyon held her. But her own nakedness clung to him in a totality of giving. Her final bestowal was without protest as Tavie's gentle hands clasped her cheeks and guided her mouth to its destiny. Almost with gladness her lips opened, moist and inviting, to envelop and engorge the stone penis that joined Apollyon's mouth with her own. Cords circled her neck and his drawing them close in an eternal kiss. So firmly was she held that she could not withdraw. Her mouth was filled so that she could not speak. The ancient god and the living girl were welded as one.
As always, Clare knew a shame tingled guilt at her reactions to what the twins did to her. It was ephemeral, yielding to an excitement not entirely erotic. She burned with a savage desire that must inevitably lead to an explosive climax. She tried, wantonly, to guide and precipitate by pelvic thrusts, but was denied by the biting cords that flattened her belly against the stone. She knew that Alethea and Tavie watched. She did not care. She closed her eyes and surrendered to a roseate mist of pure sensation in which she drifted sensuously, held tight against the body of a god who had died millenniums ago. Unconsciously her tongue and her lips fed lusciously on the maleness within her mouth.
Not until long afterwards did she perceive the impossible and know its consummation. Without warning, that which was within her mouth gushed forth its seed in so copious an ejaculation that she was compelled to swallow frantically to cope with the flood of warm and briny essence. No sooner had her tongue salved the last heavy moisture from the immense glans than the huge and rigid weapon on which she was perched and bound jetted its own hot gouts deep within her loins so that, with a cry of ecstasy fighting the fullness within her mouth, her whole being blossomed in an orgasm such as she had never known, a quintessence of sexual joy in which her every nerve and sinew leaped against the binding cords holding her immovably as spasm after spasm of ecstasy fought for the fulfillment of thrust against thrust.
Afterwards, for a long time, she hung limp and motionless, still drifting in that lovely place to which Apollyon held the key. With surety she knew that, left within his arms, he would take her there again and again. The fire had blazed. But it still burned. Her lips were quiescent upon the thing they prisoned, but they would not long deny their need. Both she and the god were hot and wet with sweat. Hers! No! Surely her femininity alone could not so lave them both... ! As from another place she heard Alethea's voice.
"Poor little thrall... He is a man. Because you have coupled with him and found joy you must be whipped. Do you understand?"
Dimly Clare understood. They had created, for her, an inevitability. Now they would cleanse her body with the scourge. They would see it as an exorcism. As best the cords would allow she made small affirmative motions with her head. She understood. She wished it otherwise. The whip would hurt so bitterly! But she was their thrall. They owned her love.
Clare knew herself whipped slowly and carefully. Not brutally, but with shrewd slashing cuts that scaldingly kissed her most tender exposures as she was tied. From the first the frightening pain dampened desire, diminished Apollyon's male sorcery. She longed to scream. But her mouth was full. She longed to writhe. But the cords inhibited the orgasm of the whip as they had done her orgasm of the flesh. She longed to plead for pity and for release. But the god and the strictures held her naked and impaled. Each of them in their own way: Apollyon and the whip, would work their will upon her femaleness. She had no will. She was a thrall.
"Get up under her arm and under her thighs: the poor darling." Tavie said judicially.
Clare wished the god to whom she was bound could feel her pain. The searching thong Alethea used so skillfully sent her into its own misty world of agony as it bit below her breasts whose nipples were crushed against his chest. Pathetically she sought his eyes. Perhaps it was her pain or the fever of her loins that she found life in them. But not pity. They were malely triumphant in their possession and in the suffering her flesh must bear because of it. She allowed her lids to fall. She bit savagely upon the thing between her lips. The whip cut a ridged weal on the soft underside of her thigh. Her nostrils flared. She moaned against her gag.
Suddenly they were kissing her. She could not respond. Nor could she bare to their lips those parts of herself she most ardently longed to give. But their lips and their fingers searched and wrought their magic so that she was once more suffused with the familiar warmth. The smart and scald of the lash a benediction to cherish. A thine past.
"She's beautiful." Allie breathed. "How ready she will be when this is done."
"We are going to leave you, little thrall," Tavie said gently. "We must leave you a long time alone with Him. For each time he brings you to his beastly male climax you will be whipped. We will not be here to see. But you will keep the tally, and you will tell us truly when we return. You may be very terribly punished indeed if you give yourself to him utterly: if you do not fight him and those silly man things thrust deep within you. Good-bye most beloved girl... "
Two sets of lips brushed her cheeks. Two pairs of teeth nipped her ears to send almost intolerable waves of pleasure down her spine. There came the whisper of bare feet in the grass. Clare knew herself alone.
Alone! Sardonically she laughed within her mind. She was no more alone than any bride upon her marriage bed. She was mated to a god. Bound to him helplessly and inexorably with cord by cunning female hands that knew best how to place her limps and fasten them. The two concave bellies, hers and his, cinched cruelly together in a union more crushing than the bonds of wedlock. Impaled upon his erect and turgid sex forever rampant and inexhaustible thrust deep within her belly so that with every breath her female blood responded, the petals of her sex opening wide to invite the predator.
The bound and naked girl strove to rationalize. Her plight was simple in condition, but not in solution. Her body was a prize between old enemies. Apollyon would take her again and again uncaring for her penalties or her pain. Thus the male ravishes his bride or his captive oblivious of her tearing agonies when she bore his child. It had always been like that. If he glimpsed the crop of anguish she would garner from the seed he so arrogantly planted within her womb it would do no more than nourish his absurd ego. A girl was a vessel gloriously designed for pain. It was her destiny. When the god was done with her the girls whose love was for the innocence of her flesh would punish her for its betrayal. Thus does woman forever suffer for her love.
Clare knew that behind her upon the grass the whip would lay, its wicked thong coiled in a question mark. If only she could cause it to stay there! If only she could defeat its waiting intent! She could not bear its pain. But she would have no choice, for, already, the mounting tide told her she was female in the power of a rutting man. The things within the orifices of her body would override her fear, beat down with waves of passion her will to resist. She would be raped again and again, and always her flesh would greet his with its secretions and its palpitating joy. Afterwards she would be whipped as had a million virgins been whipped through the ages for a ravishment they had not sought. A fleshy penalty for being born a girl.
She supposed it a sublimation born of lust when tumescence stirred the two things by which she was impaled. It could not be! They were of stone. Yet she felt them swell and probe. Without volition her lips and tongue responded in the age old worship of the phallus. When the flood came, a flood that surely could not have been triggered by her homage, she gulped it gladly as a foretaste of the fulfillment about to be delivered within her sex. When that, too, burst upon her she surrendered uncaring for aught else. Pain and punishment had vanished in the wonderland of the creature to whom she was so cruelly bound.
The spirit and the mind endure. They tire not as the flesh. Inevitably the time came when the naked girl, bound obscenely upon the impalement of her phallic perch, thought only of the whip, regretting angrily and bitterly the repetitious responses by which she had built up a score it would tally on her skin. The fire had become a flickering flame she could control. Apollyon held her body by the cords, but he had lost his dominion over her will. She longed to be free of him. To eject his eternally rigid members from within her sex and her mouth. But she could not move. She must accept his lodgment within her body until the twins chose to bring her strange coupling to an end. He still forced awareness upon her. But she fought him back. He had become again a thing of stone bathed in the sweat of her concupiscence. He had made her woman to his man. But it was she alone who would bear the stripes in payment for his pleasure.
Was Apollyon, too, part of the incomprehensibility of Montrilas! Had he truly spent his sperm within her mouth and within her loins! Had he! Or was it some trick, some mechanical ingenuity of the girls. Her passion had been fevered enough to give it birth within her mind. But this she did not believe. Perhaps she would never know. It did not matter. Nothing mattered save that the girls take back their own. She remembered her revulsion against the male marauder from whose rape someone's arrow had saved her. She felt it again now. Had she been able to shed her captivity she would have cast aside her bonds and fled from the stone satyr, never to return. Never, never, never... !
She wept in love and thankfulness when Tavie and Alethea loosed the cords and lifted her from the thing she had come to loathe. She clung to them. They held her close, murmuring words of love and of pity. Without subterfuge or thought of falsity she confessed the times she had yielded ecstasy to the stone god. Demurely she asked how she should position herself for punishment.
"We'll do it now and get it over with, darling." Alethea announced cheerfully. "This tree here, it's not too big."
"Could we go away from here?" Their thrall asked wistfully. "I hate this place."
"Sorry sweetheart. We want you to look at him while you are being whipped. See what comfort he will offer you." Tavie's voice held no cynicism. It was serious. For all three of them the thing about to happen would be meaningful.
Clare was suddenly impelled by a great wish to show herself willing. Fearful as the whip might be, she longed to offer her body for whatever they wished to do with it. A voluntary immolation to their love. "How would you like me to stand?" She asked softly.
"Back to the trunk. Face Apollyon."
Dazedly she obeyed. It was no more than she had feared. How terrible for a girl whose back has been whipped to now turn and face the lash, her hands taken from her, nakedly defenseless.
Always their hands were loving. They tied her wrists behind the slender trunk. They cinched back her shoulders and her waist. Separating her legs they bound her ankles firmly, one on each side of the tree so that her dark triangle was well exposed. She smiled at them bravely, willing herself not to scream or to plead. Alethea picked up the whip.
They took turns and much time. Clare wept. They approved her tears. She moaned, gasping, with each blow. Sometimes she screamed. Only her breasts were inviolate. Her nipples safe from the lash. But the thong found all the rest of her that was immovably held for it in open invitation. In a desire to punish her weakness Clare kept her eyes upon the stone image. Because of him and his absurd phallus she was bound thus and the whip was biting at her belly and the lips that had offered him warmth. Again and again the leather cut between her legs as though to emphasize the fallibility of female flesh. Clare struggled and was glad she could not move. She thrust and thrust impotently in an unconscious need to offer herself for punishment.
She would never get used to the whip. No girl could! It would only be afterwards she would know pride in her wounds and gladness that she bore them. She loved the hands that whipped her. But still she must weep with pain, cry out in agony when the thong found and bit into some secret place where she had hoped for sanctuary.
She was a thrall. A loving thrall. A thrall much loved... The whip licked and cut at her inexorably.
When it was over they found joy in each other. There upon the grass, forgetting her pain, Clare for a little while did as she pleased with the loveliness of those who possessed her. Holding them. Spreading them. Feeding upon them hungrily as though starved for that which they so freely gave she sucked their nectar again and again in honeyed wonder at their beauty until all three of them lay replete and satiated on the ground.
It felt strange to wear clothes. Clare had demurred, preferring only the adornment of her stripes. But the twins had insisted. Her role called for clothes. She must wear them. All three of them were amusedly aware of the ridiculous shame she would feel when compelled to strip them off.
Lise was there. Clare had been sure of a surprise. So this was it. The girl, of whom she had seen so little, had been cast by the twins in a role that must assuredly end in pain. But Lise had the same insouciant air she had displayed that first time Clare had seen her chained to her pillar. She was not naked. She wore a schoolgirl's uniform with which she seemed inordinately pleased. Poor girl. Surely she must guess what lay in store!
How easy to fall back into routine. To become the tutor. To find the twins still avid to learn. Lise was charming, almost the shy child her dress betokened. Her eyes were bright with anticipation. It soon became evident she was far from educated. Clare had no hope of avoiding pain, either for herself or the girl who sat adoringly complaisant. A girl who had been kidnapped on an Irish beach and was happy in her servitude. The tutor made her demands as simple as she could contrive without actually telling the twins she was favoring Lise so that she might not slip. She wished they could make a fun thing of the game: for that was what it was. A game to amuse two girls who held a strange power...
When Lise finally muffed a palpably simple test Clare paused, baffled. What should she do now! She need not have worried.
"I think the cane." Suggested Alethea helpfully.
"On her hands, of course." Tavie added brightly. "She's just a child."
Clare looked from one to the other. If only they wouldn't play these tricks! Her dilemma was resolved when Allie handed her the slender yellow wand. "Three on each hand." She said sweetly.
Clare had no choice but to accept the hated object. She would gladly have broken it in two. But, instead, looked beseechingly at the eager face of Lise who seemed quite unaware of what awaited her.
"I think you had better come to the front of the class and hold out your hand." She said, feeling more foolish than she had ever done since coming to Erdislune.
Lise seemed both surprised and curious as though she had never previously heard of the ritual in which she was about to become the star performer. Slowly and happily she rose and made her way to where an agonized Clare stood equipped for a task for which she had no relish.
"Do you really want me to hold my hand out so you can hit it with that cane?" Lise asked interestedly as though questioning something of doubtful logic.
"Yes dear. If you please. Palm up, fingers straight." Clare felt like a middle aged spinster.
"But, Miss Norman, won't it hurt?" Lise still seemed innocently curious.
"It will hurt very much. It's your punishment for failing to answer a question." Clare told her firmly. Surely no girl could be this naive!
Smiling cheerfully as though about to embark on an amusing experiment, Lise extended an arm with its hand invitingly taut and open.
Having achieved her first objective, Clare now found herself confronted by incongruity. This girl she was about to cane was near her own stature and probably her own age. The schoolgirl dress failed to make valid the schoolgirl pose. Clare found resistance within herself to even trying to inflict the humiliating schoolgirl punishment. Distastefully she rapped down the culprit's arm to where the cane might find it to advantage. Then, praying for accuracy, slashed the yellow horror down across the girl's open palm.
Lise gasped. Her eyes widened in surprise. She uttered a long drawn out "C,o,o,o,o!" and flicked her injured hand up and down as though seeking to rid it of the pain. "I say, Miss Norman, that really hurt, y'know." She said without rancor.
The small tableau was erotic. Clare felt angry that she sensed its appeal. The hurt girl with her innocence. The thunk of the cane upon the unresisting hand. The knowledge that the infliction must be repeated five more times. But, worst of all, her carnal wish to wield the cane. There had been something deeply satisfying in the way it had bedded itself in the small female hand. Resolutely she turned her back on something frightening. Holding out the offending weapon to Tavie, she said firmly. "Please darling, I don't think I should do this."
The girls knew! Clare sensed their knowledge of her discovery. They were looking at her like greedy kittens with a bowl of cream. Loving her. Loving the situation they had created. Erotically curious of its outcome.
"But darling, you're the tutor." Tavie did not accept the cane.
"I don't think she likes hurting me." Lise vouchsafed timidly.
Alethea provided an arch smile addressing Lise alone. "Well then, darling, how would you like to give her six real stingers on her hands instead?"
Lise gave the cheerful proposition the same naive attention she bestowed on all. Her eyes dubiously sought Clare's: "I say, Miss Norman, would you mind? I mean, would you mind frightfully if I caned you instead?"
Clare cringed. How the girls must be loving this! She was hoist by her own petard. How, honorably, to extricate herself! She looked at the twins pathetically. "Do you want me to?" She asked.
"Entirely your decision, darling." Allie assured her airily. "After all, you are the tutor." Her eyes brimmed laughter.
Clare wished she could be angry with them. But instead found herself wanting to share their merriment. She had got herself into a pickle. She must now ask herself which act would hurt less. The physical agony of the strokes upon her hand, or a stricken conscience over the hurt she would give another! Only once at school had she been so punished, and then it had been a strap that hurt less than the shame. This cane in her hand, if forcefully used, might send her into writhings more humiliating than the whip. She was not a child. She shrank from the juvenile quality of the punishment. She did not want it either for herself or for Lise. But one of them must bear it. Her Protestant conscience told her who. She handed the wicked slender thing to the wide eyed girl with the injured hand. "No." She lied. "I don't mind. Please cane me instead."
She even felt guilty at her noble renunciation.
Lise took the implement of punishment as though it was something infinitely precious. She weighed it, flexed it and found wonder in its possession. Her eyes lit up delightedly.
"That's awfully sporting, Miss Norman. Are you sure you don't mind?"
"Actually I do mind." Clare admitted tartly. "But I seem to feel wrong about doing it to you. So that only leaves you to do it to me." She held out her hand to what she knew was its most vulnerable position, and ordered, with a hopeful plea for approbation from the watching twins: "You had better cane me quite hard. I don't think it will be acceptable otherwise."
She watched in mute and cringing misery as her erstwhile victim measured distance. She held her hand firm through the demeaning business of having it rapped by preliminary taps. How shameful it was! To a child it was shaming. To her now it was doubly so. She found herself not wanting to show to poor advantage before the girls she loved: not even before Lise who would probably enjoy a few contortions and a moan or two. She watched the cane rise in its backward arc...
It would be wrong to say that Clare had become accustomed to pain. No girl does. But she was inured to that first awful shock in which one faces the unfaceable and bears the unbearable. She did so now. It was a new fresh agony, quite different from the searing stripes of the previous day. This was a numbing horror in which she was sure injury must have been done. Her hand was isolated, crying out its own distress. The cane had bitten into her palm with its own peculiar savage intimacy. A girl's hand is a fragile thing to be so punished.
It took all of her will to do what she most wanted. She lifted the fiery member and examined it with the same sort of curiosity Lise might have shown. A scarlet ridge bisected it. Her whole arm throbbed in a manner new and fearful. "Thank you, Lise." She managed to keep her voice even. "You did that beautifully. I just can't tell you how terribly it hurts."
A strange tableau: An uncertain Lise. A wounded Clare. The twins watching, intent for what would happen next.
Clare was human. She cursed herself for stupidity. She was sure she could not control instinct five more times. But still, vivaciously, she asked: "Are you ready to cane my other hand, darling?"
There had been some sort of illogical hope with the first. There was none now. She offered her left hand as she had done her right. An inexplicable stubbornness denied that she close her eyes. She watched it happen.
It was too much, of course! She imagined the crush of bone. Her hand flamed and screamed its demand for surcease. Clare abandoned pride. She did what others had always done: clasped her wounded hands beneath her arm-pits and hugged gasping and in tears. She bent forward and sank to one nylon covered knee. Outraged nature demanded motion, any motion, that she be not hurt again.
Four more! On flesh and bone already bruised! Clare looked piteously at Alethea and Tavie, her eyes frankly pleading for reprieve. But they loved her tears: they always loved her tears! They returned her only shining glances of affectionate approval.
Despondently she proffered her right hand.
How tell her misery! What verbs or nouns or adjectives can tell the soul sickening despair of knowing you can bear no more. That you must admit defeat even though it bear fresh penalties. Clare's hands were torment. Her capitulation to whatever the twins might do to a defaulter was interrupted by the unexpected.
"The poor dear can't stand it. I'm not going to hit her again." Lise declared without defiance."
Clare was desolate. Now they would both be for it.
"Would you call this mutiny?" Tavie inquired of no-one in particular.
"Take your clothes off, girls." Alethea ordered matter-of-factly.
The delinquents sought each other's eyes in a wry grimace. They divested themselves of garments scarcely warm from so brief a contact with their skin. They stood in their familiar nudity.
"The darlings are terribly weak." Tavie said consolingly.
"They need something to lean on." Allie agreed warmly. "Come along girls, I know just the thing. You'll love it."
Clare doubted the optimism of the last sentence. But followed obediently where she was led.
The greatest concepts are simple. This was! Two rails. One six inches from the floor, the other waist high. It was a bare frame perhaps ten feet long. Clare had a shocking memory of girls being fastened so that they straddled such a thing and being made to sit and sit and sit... She had read it somewhere. She was almost relieved when she and her companion in distress were positioned so that they stood side by side, feet wide apart, the top rail at the small of their backs. Tavie and Alethea busied themselves trussing two pairs of slender ankles to the lower rail. It was then that Clare realized it was set three or four inches further back so that she and Lise had to grasp the bar behind them for support. Wristlets were buckled tight. Slender ropes dangled. Behind them were rings set in the floor.
Even when their penalty became manifest neither girl could estimate its degree. Behind their backs the twins slipped the tethering ropes from the wristlets through the rings and pulled gently, then with a steadily increasing tension. Clare and Lise found their arms dragged back and spread as widely as were their legs. They were compelled to bend back, the rigid bar biting into their narrow waist above the hips, their bellies taut as, inch by inch, their shoulders were drawn back and down until Tavie and Allie were content with their reversely bowed nudity. Then the knots were tied.
They could move only their heads. Nothing more. Their naked bodies and limbs were taut as bow strings. They were hopelessly pinioned. The rail over which they were bent would be the instrument of their torture. Already it possessed them cruelly.
"You look delightful, darlings." Tavie enthused. The twins, their task completed, now stood surveying the two naked girls stretched in punishment for their failures. With them Clare knew no shame. But their amused glances told her plainly what she herself could feel but could not see: She was stretched wide, her sex gaping, thrust into an unnatural prominence by the offset of the two rails.
"Should we cane their dear little quims?" Alethea asked happily.
"I think we should leave the little dears alone for awhile." Tavie said judicially. "They can talk and compare notes and sort of get the feel of that lovely bar they are leaning on. We can visit from time to time and maybe pull them back another inch or so. And yes, of course, we'll cane their nice furry spots... Look at the way the darlings are pouting at us down there." They went away.
As always, it was worse than expected. Their eyes met in an awful realization.
"I think I've been silly." Lise was contrite. "I should have finished caning you."
"For sure one of us should have used that damn cane." Clare admitted bitterly. "Now we'll both get it and have to lean back on this beastly rail as well."
"They are a pair, aren't they!" Lise exclaimed as though speaking of a couple of cabinet ministers. "I say, Miss Norman, do you think they meant it? I mean... will they really cane our... you know what's?"
Clare bit back a tart retort. For a girl to be coy in their present predicament was too much. "I'm quite sure our quiffs, quims, or you know what's will be whipped." She rejoined unconsolingly. Then added: "Look, since we are going to suffer together don't let's be shy about our bits and pieces."
"Oh, I don't mind a bit calling it a cunt, Miss Norman." Lise apologized. "I just thought... " She trailed off into a tangent. "I'm beginning to hurt something awful."
"It will get steadily worse." Clare assured her. "And there's nothing we can do." She took a quick glance at her companion in distress. "They must have done things like this to you before, surely?"
"Mostly they just tie me up or chain me and leave me standing around somewhere." Lise sounded regretfully aware of a junior status.
Pain was gnawing pitilessly at her back. Clare fought it with words. "Lise dear... do you like being here, the things they do to you?"
Her strained sideways gaze beheld Lise's face light up with a momentary happiness. "They're so wonderful, Miss Norman. So terribly, terribly beautiful! Of course I love what they do to me. Not this today--if you weren't with me I'd be afraid. They have never punished me like this before. But when they tie me or whip me just a little it's gorgeous... !'.' A shade of puzzlement entered her voice, "Isn't it gorgeous for you?"
"Ever hear of masochism?" Clare asked sarcastically.
The girl bent beside her considered. "Oh that!" Lise's tone clearly consigned the term to outer darkness. "I think that sort of thing's nasty. What I feel is simply thrilling, and it's lovely." She giggled deprecatingly. "It makes me go all hot down, you know where. I mean, it makes my cunt twitch in the nicest way. It's super... " Hastily she qualified. "You did tell me, y'know... about words."
"If you could escape, would you?"
"Oh no!" Lise sounded shocked.
"How did they kidnap you?"
The Irish girl giggled. "You'll think me an awful silly. I was walking on the sand dunes when here the two of them were boiling a kettle for tea over a little fire. They invited me to stay for a cup. I fell in love with them at first sight. So, of course, I stayed. Afterwards they got to joking. Allie made a fun bet that she could tie Tavie's hands so she couldn't get loose. Tavie let her." Lise's voice became reverent. "It was so... so beautiful. The twitching I, I told you about started. I couldn't take my eyes off Tavie as she stood there with her hands tied behind her back and tugged and twisted. When Allie asked me if I wanted to try my luck I couldn't stand up and get into position soon enough. I just leaped, and then stood like a lamb while she twisted and knotted the cord around my wrists." She laughed reminiscently. "I remember how surprised I was when, once I was safely tied, Tavie slipped out of her cords and used them to tie my ankles together. It was not until they lifted me into their car I realized I'd actually helped them abduct me."
Lise's last word ended in a choking gasp. "Oh! I say, Miss Norman, that was awful. Do you get, sort of sudden shooting pains? I'm afraid I'm not going to be very brave."
"Howl if you want to. I probably will." Clare offered morosely.
"I've been wondering." Lise began, slowly and hesitant. "Have you noticed--the way we are tied? Our breasts, I mean. They are stuck out as bad as our cunts. Think they'll whip them too. They did mine once. It hurts awful...?"
"Don't talk about it. The last thing the girls need is ideas. Don't let's even think about it!" Clare admonished. "I'm not going to." But she knew she would. Once the thought was planted she became very aware of the four nipple tipped curves invitingly displayed. She changed subject. Have they ever chained you by the ankle in that great hall in the old part?"
"Oh that! It's rather fun if they didn't leave you all night. It gets spooky, and I couldn't sleep much. The stone was so cold and hard. They seemed to think I ought to have slept and had dreams. They were terribly disappointed about something. So they left me there another night. But it was just the same. They were so annoyed they whipped me quite hard. You know... just because they were annoyed. They are adorable. I love them. You do too, don't you. I'm sure they love you ever so. I can tell."
"But Lise, dear. You don't want to be a prisoner here always, surely? Think about us. One day we'll get old... "
Lise gasped and tried, without avail, to move. She looked sideways with eyes Clare could not fathom. Eyes that showed brightly the tears of pain, but which glimpsed something else besides. "Haven't you ever thought, Miss Norman... Oh, I know this sounds silly. But hasn't it occurred to you too! I don't think anything at Erdislune ever gets old--" Speech died. Suddenly the twins were looking down at their captives with love.
"We are going to use a nice thin whippy cane, darlings." Tavie told them zestfully. "See!" She held up a sliver of wickedness that made Clare cringe. "It won't bruise. I'm sure your quims will lap it up. Ask for it nicely, now."
"Please whip my naughty quim." Lise asked instantly and delightedly as though requesting an honor.
Clare envied the other girl's obliviousness of all that was not of the moment that is now. Lise was in the throes of an erotic excitation she could not match. Thought of the slender vicious-ness cutting at her most secret place brought no joy. She looked, woefully, at the girls she loved. But could not speak.
They knew. They always knew! Tavie circled the rail and tenderly sought Clare's lips with her own, her fingers straying...
No words were said. Clare needed none. Their touch would always be enough. Under their lips or hands she dissolved into an instrument of longing. Self vanished. Doubt resolved. Pain no longer mattered. She was glad. Mischief responded to their evocation.
"Darlings, please whip my cunt." She used the word she knew would shock them. "I've been a bad girl, so please whip it very hard across the lips. Make a nice 'X' mark I'll be able to love when you set me free."
Their eyes shone with joy in their thrall. "We aren't going to set you free." Alethea whispered tenderly.
What did it matter! So long as they were close nothing mattered. Yet the cut that followed instantly was unbearable. It broke through her ecstasies into her very core, marking her accurately as her words had wished. She moaned. But could not move.
Again the lips repulsing the tides of agony and fear. They fed upon her and she upon them as the cane rose and fell slicing between her spread legs and across her belly. Clare was torn between joy and anguish. Her whole being rent as never before. Tavie and Alethea were magic. Only by magic could she remain conscious and sane through this sickening violation of her most secret flesh.
When the cane had used her, and the lips were gone, Clare let her head fall back, eyes closed, striving to stay in the pulsating world of scented femaleness to which only the twins could grant her entry. She was panting and wet with sweat, but vividly alive. She could not move. The rail was reasserting its dominion over her. As from another place, she listened with pleasure to Lise's alternate screams and gasping gratitude as the yellow withe whipped her cunt from one angle to another. She felt the rail beneath her back tremble as her fellow captive fought her bonds jerking and heaving frantically in her suffering. She was glad. She knew that, afterwards, Lise would be glad too.
The bound and naked girls lay quietly absorbing their hurt. Sometimes a flaring breath or a small desolate moan broke the silence. A head turned. That was all. Lise finally voiced a pale optimism. "At least they didn't tighten us back over the rail any more."
Clare was tired and hurt. She did not wish to think of such things. "Do you still love them?" She asked aimlessly.
"Of course!!' Lise was reproachful. "I know you think I'm a bit:--whatever that word was you used! But if Allie and Tavie love to hurt me. Or if I have to be punished for something I've done, the least I can do is try and bear it. It hasn't anything to do with loving or being loved. I want to please them because I adore them. So if they want to whip my bottom I'll always bend over and touch my toes."
"They wanted you to cane me, but you refused." Clare pointed out.
"But there was a difference." Lise affirmed earnestly. "It wasn't just me and them. You were in the picture. You were hurting so much I--I just stopped. I sort of hoped they wouldn't mind... " She mused for a moment. "But they always go through with whatever they sentence you to. Have you noticed?"
Clare wryly reflected that under happier circumstances her companion's naivete might be a joy. She provoked it now only to divert her mind from the agony of the rail. "If they freed you now, but not me. Then told you to whip my breasts. Would you?"
"Oh yes!" The conviction was vehement. "I'd never mess things up the way I did before. You see! They do teach us lessons. About obedience, I mean... "
"Would you enjoy whipping my breasts?"
"Yes. I'm sure I would." Lise spoke the words slowly. "We don't know ourselves really, do we. I could sense that you suddenly realized you enjoyed caning my hands. It shocked you. I know it did. That's the real reason you refused."
Clare squirmed inwardly at the Irish girl's perception. So she hadn't been humanitarian after all! It was true. "So you think it's alright and rational for us to whip and hurt each other the way it is at Erdislune?" She queried slyly.
Humiliation and pain! Clare shrugged. As good weapons as any, she supposed. At the thought she turned. "Why would you whip me?"
"Because I'm in love with you." she said pensively.
In Ireland it could be true. The siblings and their magic had become a dream. Perhaps that was all they'd ever been. Happily enough Clare went turned to sleep.
