THE SUFFERERS
By Caroline Swift

ISBN: 1-903687-21-7
Copyright Caroline Swift
The Sufferers: The right of Caroline Swift to be identified as the author of this book has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 and 78 of the Copyrights and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved


Also by Caroline Swift in Silver Moon;
Beaucastel
Castle of Torment

ONE
That February night in 1702, the winter of the great snow, was cold enough to split a stone as the little gathering assembled clandestinely in the woods above the village of Pressignac to listen to the visiting pastor and recite psalms. They met secretly since after close on a century of religious freedom, the French Protestants had seen the Edict of Nantes revoked by the arrogant, short-sighted Sun King. Louis XIV. After smouldering a while, the revolt had broken out, bringing fire and the sword to much of the Cevennes.
The dragoons' sudden descent on the prayer meeting that night had afforded the pious congregation of parpaillots - the common appellation for the religious traitors - no chance of escape. It was clear that the royal troops had been aided by local Catholic informers who thereby received the usual monetary compensation and a share of what was in the humble cottages before they were burnt to the ground.

By the light of the moon and the flickering pitchblend torches, the posse had fallen on the group like wolves, separating the men from their women folk and promptly hanging the pastor along with the sentinels caught with arms in hand. The male contingent of prisoners was lined up under the holm oaks for immediate fettering and chaining of the necks and legs in preparation for the long journey south on foot to Ales Ninmes - where they would be formally sentenced in the square - and on to the coast and the galleys moored awaiting them at Sete, Grau du Roi and other ports. There in appalling, inhuman conditions, they would spend years of their life as His Majesty's convicts, rowing uselessly under the thud of the argusin's tawse. Those who failed in the week's journey on foot to reach the coast, were left to expire in local prisons or by the roadside. A fate almost preferable to being chained for years to the galley benches and oars.
The female captives that fateful evening would as usual be transported in tumbrils to the dreaded Tour de Constance at Aigues-Mortes, the royal prison overlooking the sea. Despite the overcrowding in the ghastly tower there was always room for new captives in its dark chambers of suffering: there the conditions and treatment of religious offenders were worse than for others, sufficient to cause them to waste away in despair. Only their prayers and psalms seemed to keep them alive. The whip also helped.
But prior to their conveyance south and in line with the Versailles dictate, the women had to be scourged. Thirty strokes apiece over the bare back, down to the hips.
Joanne and Martine were among the prisoners taken by the marauding dragoons that night. Being among the youngest, they were dealt with first. Stripped to the hips. Martine was dragged to the munition case the troops had unloaded from the baggage mules, bent over, a rough cord encircling the thighs and wrists, her breasts crushed brutally, to receive the lash. The dragoon corporal seemed to derive special pleasure from flogging females: the bulge in his breeches betrayed it. He looked forward to blooding the half-naked women and especially Martine with her well-fleshed body and swarthy skin. Sweeping her long, dark tresses forward to clear the shoulders, he whipped the eighteen-year-old ferociously; the youngster's shrieks echoed through the surrounding woods terrifying those waiting in line, guarded by the muskets and flashing sabres. When her turn came after Martine had been flayed and thrown aside, Joanne was hauled to the flogging block, her woollen smock being ripped from her shoulders. She positioned herself without waiting to be manhandled, descending her skirt well below her hips to the birth of her rear cleft to provide the man with a maximum of skin to mark. The flogger smiled at the gesture. Much would he have enjoyed opening up a naked arse but orders unfortunately confined him to the back and there, as orders prescribed, only down to the birth of the buttock crease.
Practically unattached, Joanne hoped to take the lashes stoically without struggling, stifling her cries; she even turned her drooping head to watch the fellow grease the ox hide - to enhance the pain. Then she gritted her teeth. Although now twenty-two and just married to the austere Jean-Jacques, the weaver, she had throughout her adolescence received the whip regularly from her parents at home for the least breach of discipline and, on those occasions, she was invariably stripped. Those whippings during her maidenhood had given her welts but also a strange pleasure that had her masturbating furiously when sent to bed. The orgasms steered her through waves of lascivious lust into a delirious aftermath as, with one hand, she fingered the imagined ridges of scarlet bruises over her rump and thighs and, with the other, punished her clitoris to bring herself off.
Preparing herself for the whip before countless eyes in the torchlit clearing, she felt her vagina starting to throb, her heartbeat quickening. Her sidelong glance caught sight of the lump in the dragoon's crotch. It was obvious the lout was taking his duties to heart and she was aware she was presenting him with one of the prettiest bodies in the Cevennes - the attendant priest, Father Delpuech admitted as much as he watched - and she found herself almost challenging the young dragoon to commence.
The scourge's fanged extremities bit in deep across the back, striking the swollen teats the flogger had been careful to draw out from under the crush of the thorax. The flagellation seemed endless as Joanne writhed not only in pain but with resentment that her buttocks were not bared for welting. Finally the last lash did curl round the waist close to the sloping rise of the rump but it merely sliced into the thin skirt drawn tight and wet over the trembling cheeks. When she rose unsteadily from her knees, she sensed blood had been drawn from somewhere round the ribs but far more manifest, at least to her, was the warm sex sap oozing from the bloated labia. The clitoris had during the first lashes shuffled off its protective sheath and Joanne knew it was rearing fully erect, begging for attention. Her breath had shortened under the force of the strokes that had crossed each other on the shoulder blades but she was gasping more from trying to control the weird sense of erotic pleasure she was experiencing. If only they had stripped her nude and hung her by the wrists from that nearby oak bough and flogged her back and front... had the young, sweating dragoon with the rigid cock thrown her backwards over the flogging case and ruthlessly slit her skirt, she would willingly have parted her thighs to be fucked and filled. But she was flung headlong to the side to sprawl in the gorse while the next victim was hustled forward. And the horse drawn tumbrils were already arriving to load the heretical - and hysterical - females once the lot had been scourged and chained. Only too soon would the hideous journey south to the Tour de Constance commence; and there endless incarceration awaited the impious Protestant females, even if they recanted.
Joanne tried vainly to catch sight of Jean-Jacques amid the men being manacled and lined up for their long trudge to the sea in the care of the royal guards. At home her man had been a solemn and unimaginative lover, hardly satisfying her sexually but finally agreeing to have his cock sucked in the makeshift bed when the parents had retired. The religiously stalwart weaver had learnt much from Joanne, not only in bed but from her dauntless tenacity in keeping the Genevan faith bright. And now, lost in the torch smoke and commotion, in a moment he would be on his way to the galleys and the whips wielded by the ship's argusin in charge of slaves - just as she and the pathetic, plump Martine along with the other females from Pressignac were doomed to the inferno of Aigues-Mortes and its gloomy cellars. There they would be far beyond the reach of the courageous Cevenol leaders, such as Cavalier, Séguier, Jacques Couderc, Roland operating in the Lower Cevennes, and Mazels, already dominating much of the High Cevennes - men who knew the terrain like the lines on their palms. Papist churches would continue to be burnt. The revolt against Babylon would become a civil war - and that despite the killings, the forced abjurations, 'conversions', and the clandestine emigrations to the safe places of the Refuge - Geneva, Zurich, Brandenburg, the Low Countries... The power of Queen Anne's England seemed ineffectual. And meanwhile the Tour de Constance, with its chains and visiting Jesuits out to proselytise, lay in wait for Joanne, Martine and the dozen other unfortunates huddled in a group, trying to cover their breasts and tensed bellies.

***

Amid the screams and piteous wailing, the prayers, the riveting of iron trammels and shackles and the thud of the ox hide on parpaillote hide, Francis-Etienne, Marquis de Lassignac sat patiently on his roan mare, watching the proceedings. His faithful valet, Coursel, had dismounted to hold the bridle of his master's mount and his own, awaiting the outcome of their mission. He recalled its origin and purpose only too clearly.
A week back, serving at table along with his scurrilous wife, Simone, and two half-naked wenches, he had been privy to the exchange between the Marquise Elodie and the great Marshal over the most sumptuous dinner the Château de Lassignac could provide. Appointed by His Sublime Majesty earlier that year, Claude Louis Hector de Villars, Grand Marshal of France, Prince de Martigues and victor over the Coalition at the recent battle of Friedlingen - only Marlborough was to defeat him - Villars detested his new duties. Being called to crush a rebellion of ragged, illiterate peasants was below his dignity but, as usual, he put all his energy into the task, murdering men by the hundred or despatching them to the galleys, flogging and imprisoning females and putting countless villages to the torch. Replacing his predecessors, de Broglie, the former Intendant of the Cevennes, and the uncompromising Captain Poul who had suspects broken on the wheel at Nimes, he laboured unceasingly towards ridding the realm of infidels. True, a multitude of abjurations, feigned for the most part, had been obtained through terror and torture but Versailles would require a further two full years to suppress the revolt, while France lost thousands of its most enterprising citizens to Protestant havens abroad.
The incident that night in the clearing near Pressignac had constituted one of the Marshal's more local victories compared with his great battles in Germany. His dreaded Cadets in their green tunics, marked with the Cross, fawn breeches and sloping leather boots, had sabred generously and surrounded the whole miserable bunch of parpaillots. The Marquise Elodie was proud to be his hostess at Lassignac, lodging him in luxury while he planned his further skirmishes and wrote reports to Versailles.
"I am sure, Marshal," Elodie had simpered with one of her more winning smiles, "you could see your way, should you fall upon a gathering of these rascals, to releasing one or two female heretics to our keeping." She would prefer pretty, well-built ones but did not say so. "We would welcome the chance to play our part in cleansing our region if you would agree to leaving a young parpaillote or two to us for conversion. Our dear Dom Anselme," she gestured towards the gaunt, tonsured Dominican seated at the end of the table, "would see to it in his own manner that the infidels are persuaded to abjure and of their own accord attend Mass in our chapel. After all, that is the object of your mission and it would contribute to His Majesty's crusade, would it not, Excellency?"
At the outset, Villars had demurred. By virtue of royal decree, all female parpaillote prisoners had to be deported as miscreants to the Tour de Constance, males to the gibbet, the wheel or the oar. On the other hand, he owed much to his hosts; their hospitality had been not only gracious but grandiose. They had gone to great lengths to make him comfortable and the château had been conveniently situated for directing operations. Being finally obliged to move north to organise greater battles, he felt he had to express his and the King's gratitude. After some soul-searching and deliberation and aided by the roast duckling, sweetmeats and Rhone wines, the noble warrior had agreed. A prisoner or two less in one of his conveyances south would barely be noticed. The decision lay in his own hands; after all, he was a Marshal of France. Moreover, a fuck with his hostess Elodie would not have come amiss. But alas, despite her smile, she lay beyond his reach.

***

Hence the Marquis's reminder of the agreement, as they stood amid the torchlit pandemonium of manacling, floggings and shrieks. With the Marshal next to him - they had ridden out together for the attack - Francis-Etienne de Lassignac made his choice without waiting for the conclusion of the beatings. He pointed with his riding crop to the blonde beauty - the same Joanne - and then quickly, reluctant to risk a change of heart in the Marshal, to the well-rounded Martine. Both girls had collapsed into the wet heather, sufficiently flagellated to prove their stamina, at least in the case of the blonde who, he considered, promised well, if not for conversion, at least for Elodie's enjoyment...
"In view of your august consent the other night, Marshal, I would petition the release to us of that fair-haired slut over there and that coarsely fleshed one groaning in the grass. They will do admirably. I assure you we shall have them converted briskly."
The military head nodded gravely, summoning the colonel of dragoons to set the two women aside. Their condition hardly encouraged him to endorse the choice, for neither female seemed worthy of the assiduous attentions of the delicious Marquise; true, one was slender as a lily but the other was loaded with heavy breasts and a distinct over abundance of rump meat. Each in her own way would suit the Marquise admirably.
"If they will suffice, so be it. Thank you again for your gracious hospitality." With that, the Marshal rode off to supervise the departure of the male prisoners. He had avoided debate which he detested, and had contented his hostess; he recalled her impenetrable smile and how she had knelt beside him at Mass, exuding sweet odours of rosemary and tempting flesh. Moreover, the Dominican, Dom Anselme, with his heavy-lidded grey eyes had impressed him. The girls would be in the saintly hands of a staunch converter, certainly equal to those hard-working Jesuits sent to indoctrinate the misguided lodged in the Tour de Constance. Further, the girls had been officially well whipped and thus had received an important part of what Versailles required. "The bitches are yours," he said.


Delighted at his success, the Marquis issued his orders immediately Villars had cantered off. "Get those two sluts bound by the wrists, Coursel, and ready to run. And be quick about it, man. We have to be back before moon set." He watched his lackey plough his way into the mass of sobbing humanity to emerge, dragging the pair of half-clothed females after him by the hair. The Marquis took stock of what he had singled out; the blonde girl had neat, well-sculpted breasts and a slender waist and would certainly meet the Marquise's desiderata. As she approached the horses, he saw her more clearly; tall with long legs and a muscular torso she was surprisingly attractive despite the welts and trickles of blood. If what was visible of the body was anything to go by, Francis-Etienne foresaw the hips leading down to firm, rounded buttocks and powerful thighs, probably capable of withstanding much of the same punishment she had just received. Further, something told him she was no virgin, not that such criteria mattered where she was destined. On the contrary Lassignac was not a place where one met many virgins.
Then he studied the younger heretic. Certainly less erotic, the girl nevertheless presented truly prodigious udders with swollen teats that seemed to have become rigid in permanent erection upon the perfectly smooth areoles; they at least would please Elodie, for most of the slaves she had inveigled into the castle cellars always seemed to boast remarkably buoyant mammaries. And the bigger the better. Further down, the navel in the slope of the belly was profound as an inkwell. Although still clothed under the drenched skirt the arse seemed to match the volume of the breasts; again an asset for Elodie. Francis-Etienne considered he had chosen astutely enough under difficult conditions and given the need to decide with precipitation. Selecting slaves could be a delicate matter.
He encouraged the valet again. "Get them tied up to your saddle, man, and ready to move." The servant led the females to the rear of his gelding and roped their wrists to the long cords attached to his pommel. Both girls were barefoot, having lost their sandals in the chaos of the troops' descent and the whippings. As Francis-Etienne mounted, he saw their backs; the flagellation had indeed been thorough. The weals stood out like purple rods across the taut skin, glistening with sweat. He trusted that Elodie would not disapprove of his choice nor be disenchanted at their having been flagellated, for she much preferred her newcomers to be unblemished on arrival. But then what could a mere Marquis do faced with a Marshal of the Crown? Elodie would just have to accept the damage.
"Yer'd better keep up, whores," Coursel advised the two trembling figures, neither aware why she had been extricated from the group nor what was happening. Joanne even risked a wistful look behind at the colleagues being loaded into the carts and then readied herself for what lay ahead. Quite evidently they were to be towed into the night. barefoot and half-naked. "If yer fall, whores," the valet went on with menace, "yer'll be dragged through th' gorse an' brambles like bleedin' sows till the master says we reins in. An' yer'll get stripped nude an' belted till yer back on yer feet. Got it?" He tapped a black length of horsehide clipped to his belt. Joanne saw it terminated in a metal stub.
The excruciating journey to the castle commenced.
The shock on their wrists jerked the prisoners forward into a trot, their breasts swinging like the papist church bells at Ales. Less agile than Joanna, Martine had to run to keep up with the gelding, the cord tightening without mercy. Even when the soles of her feet began to bleed from the flint stones in the path, she somehow managed, breathless, to keep abreast of her companion who continued to exhort her softly with a prayer. The encouragement helped, for neither lost foothold for nearly a league through the thorns.
Then Martine stumbled over the hem of her drenched and tattered skirt and fell headlong to be dragged on her side until the mounts halted. The Marquis turned in his saddle and motioned to the valet. The man dismounted, approached the weeping girl lying in the snow and slush and used his whip. The half dozen lashes had little effect apart from marking Martine's bottom, denuded of the protecting skirt that had been ripped away in the haul across the stones. The valet tore the bedraggled material off the legs and threw it into the bushes: the winded girl lay naked in the snow, bleeding from the hip.
"On yer feet, whore!" Coursel yelled, flailing the buttocks. "Runnin' nude'll help. Or d'yer want us draggin' thee th'rest of th' way?" Another stroke of the rawhide slammed across the newly bared crotch. Joanne wondered just how much the beefy creature could take of the brute's service whip - the term the Marquis had used earlier in the clearing.
Martine barely succeeded in finding her feet, convulsed with shock and pain. And the trek continued but at walking pace. Again Joanne tried to console the wretched wench with Psalm 51, to no avail. The screaming gathered in force as the girl realised she was totally nude: her courage had ebbed to its limit. It was quite evident to Joanne that the youngster was a complete stranger to the scourge. The dragoon's atrocious strokes over the munition crate and now the valet's blows were probably the first the girl had received in her life; she imagined the trauma the poor thing was suffering.

Midnight had long since passed when the grotesque procession traversed the dark drawbridge of Lassignac and the prisoners crumbled into the slush of the courtyard under the lugubrious flicker of a torch burning in an iron wall bracket amid the ivy.
The snow clouds had cleared but the moon had set; all that remained of the outside world was reduced to a sprinkle of frozen stars and the welts on the girls' backs. In the darkness a baying of bloodhounds greeted the Master of Lassignac and his trophies. As her breathing calmed, Joanne was half prepared to beg for mercy but thought better of it, as the portcullis screeched down behind the cortege. In the glimmer of the flambeau, the valet's whip still glistened with Martine's sweat. Circumstances were already bad enough.
The outline of a thin, cloaked female emerged from the keep, a second figure with a shawl drawn tight over her head following with a lantern held aloft. Having dismounted, the valet bowed while the Marquis - Joanne had by then identified the man from past hearsay at home - met the women and kissed the hand of what, again Joanne guessed, could be none other than Elodie Marguerite Helène, Marquise de Vonnange-Lassignac, about whom so many strange rumours had long circulated in hushed whispers among the peasants of that part of the Cevennes. All Joanne had gathered was that the Marquise should be avoided at all costs. Indeed, when on occasion the woman, smart in her black riding habit, rode through the hamlets with this valet of hers, the locals made themselves scarce, hurrying indoors. The second female was clearly a serving woman and ugly.

Roused from the warmth of her feather bed of Cevenol silk, her nightgown and wrap billowing in the night air like the clouds scudding above the château's turrets, Elodie made no attempt to hide her satisfaction at the sight. After welcoming home her spouse, she studied the shivering, begrimed figures on the cobbles, turning Joanne over with the toe of a golden slipper.
"But, treasure," she exclaimed in a tone of chagrin, "they've both been flogged! Surely, Francis, you could have avoided that. And this one's as thin as a hayfork just skin and bone. True I like them sleek but really..." The blue eyes flashed as they fell upon the sniffling Martine's striated carcass. "And this thing's been beaten raw! What a mess!"
"Well, that's all I could wrest from the Marshal's hold, dearest. It was by no means easy. And every female heretic has to be flogged before transport. You know that. And I could hardly obstruct justice, could I, angel? Believe me," he remonstrated gently, "they were about the best of the bunch and Villars was anxious to get the rest on their way south. I couldn't ask for a dozen or so females to be lined up and stripped for me to evaluate their bodies! Be fair, Elodie. And anyway, this one's not as skinny as you think." In his turn he jabbed a mudded boot into Joanne's belly. "She's really quite attractive for a serf. Then you've got this one to play with too." Martine yelled as the man's spurred heel grazed her thigh, leaving a thin line of rowel marks. "And she'll heal up soon enough."
"Probably," came the grudging agreement with a pout of the lovely lips, as Elodie turned to the shawled figure holding the lantern. "To work, Simone. Get them cleaned up, fitted with the leather straps and shaved in the usual way - armpits, vulva and anal divide, for me to examine them."
"And shear the heads. Madame?"
"If I wanted them bald, I'd say so, woman." her mistress snapped back. "And tomorrow get them crucified out wide by the legs for Anthea to do the piercing and ringing." A white hand halted the maid's objection. "No, Simone. I want Anthea to become proficient at piercing flesh. You'll use the holding cellar for preparing them." The night air was beginning to chill the noble limbs. She drew her silks closer around her resplendent form. "And you, Coursel, take them down below immediately. I don't want any dallying. It's late enough as it is."
The valet bowed. He was only too ready to rid himself of the blighted bodies. And, like his master, was ravenous. He began to release the ropes from the saddle. As he kicked the females to their feet, he sought directions as to bondage.
"Is it yer ladyship's wish to 'ave 'em strung up already by their's ankles?"
"No, you dolt. Once all that filthy mud and blood's been swilled off and they're shaved and manacled - the four limbs and throat, and riveted tight - chain them from the vault rings. They'll sleep well enough like that. I want them rested and attentive for the morrow. Now, shift your lazy arses and get these sluts down to the holding cellar."
"What's about supper, Madame?" the lantern bearer muttered cautiously. "Shall I have Florence prepare something?"
"Of course, wretch." Elodie had almost forgotten the four travellers had to be fed and especially her cherished Francis-Etienne who was probably famished; the valet needed soup too but the newcomers could wait. "Get that slut Florence out of her bag of hay where she's most likely being fucked to a wraith by that lout Brissac, and have her prepare a meal. You should have thought of it before, you idle bitch. That sort of sloth and lack of foresight merits twenty lashes on the trestles for you and that slut of a cook, Florence, and you know it. Move!"
Only too content to let his diligent partner take care of the preparation of the newly arrived slaves (such, they were told, was their ranking at the château), the Marquis looked forward to dining. At long last. Taking Elodie's frozen hand to escort her back to the porch and warmth, he heard Coursel seeking guidance again; he already held the two prisoners by the wrist cords, about to drag them to the cellar entrance at the far end of the yard.
"Is it Ma'me la Marquise's gracial wish," - Versailles French was not the valet's strongest point - "once these be swabbed an' fitted up wi' straps and all, I flog 'em? Like we's done wid t'other whore that come in three weeks back. I'll open up 'er arse meat."
"Thank you, Coursel, but no," his proprietress replied. "They seem to have had enough for one day. Just get them prepared." In point of fact, Elodie had planned to deliver the first whippings herself. Her husband nodded only to add: "He's had a hard evening dearest. Perhaps he could be given that lethargic bitch, Mariette, who's wearing herself out frigging down there in the cellars. It would be a compensation for him. And if I'm not mistaken, she's due anyway for punishment, no?"
"Very well," Elodie retorted, her beautiful, dimpled smile consenting. "Yes, she needs to be taught not to use her clit." She turned to Coursel. "You may use Mariette and give her as many lashes as you want, man. She deserves a hard breast flogging."
The fellow bowed to his considerate mistress; he felt he had earned a spot of pleasure. It was to him immaterial whether it was Mariette, who had graced the Lassignac cellars for a year now, or one of the newcomers. All he needed was a docile piece of sex chattel with swaying breasts and parted thighs for ten minutes. And a good fuck.

After a bath in the copper tub before the fire, Francis-Etienne recounted the foray in some detail. Sheltering the imperious marshal had paid off, as Elodie had believed it would. "Of course," Francis pointed out later, over the truffles, trout and mushrooms, "we'll be forced to let Dom Anselme try his hand at converting our two novices, sweet. We can't do otherwise when he hears they're heretics."
Elodie had to agree. "But I'm really not so passionately interested in their souls and abjuration, Francis, as you know. It's their bodies I'm after. And if these two, like the others down below, take to the whip and sex - even," she emphasised with her silver trencher, "if they do abjure and surrender to our demanding man of God - I'm not going to let them go free. I mean, if they perform as sex slaves should. You agree, of course."
The Marquis concurred. It would be foolhardy to liberate parpaillote slave flesh that had taken time to train up, even if it agreed to attend Mass and confession. Should, however, the new girls fail to meet Elodie's standards - and his own for that matter, equally stringent - one or both could be sent to the local Convent of the Annunciation to undergo special training that was mainly carnal; and then a decision could be made whether to recuperate or dispose of them. "We'll have to discuss the matter with Dom Anselme, of course." After a pause he felt constrained to add a proviso. "Elodie, we must not forget these two are our first parpaillots and requite careful handling."
The Marquise smiled. Her determination was well known; she would bring these two sluts to heel and then decide. "If they're sexually gifted as slaves and even if our sly monk converts them, then I'm damn well going to keep them for our own pleasure and that of the guests. And, Francis our dear guests really deserve some new flesh to work on."
Although some of Elodie's friends from surrounding Catholic strongholds and wealthy mansions were not among the Marquis's preferences, they amused him, played bezique and pinochle well and on occasions rode out hunting with him; apart from naked women writhing in bondage, stag and boar were his cardinal delights and venison at table had contributed to cajoling the valiant and illustrious Marshal to accede to Elodie's entreaty. But there were other guests, younger, highly licentious and devoid of the slightest sexual restraint, who had entered into firm friendship with him; rakes, whose visits to the château Francis enjoyed, for they often came accompanied by their equally debauched wives or mistresses and handsome lackeys with strong cocks, whips and instruments. Recreation.

***

The persecution of Protestants had reached its zenith and Lassignac kept its gates fast shut in fear of a Camisard attack, despite the growing successes of the dragoons and Cadets. To avoid the galleys, the seizure of property, harassment and the enforced billeting on them of the terrible dragoons (thugs who commandeered space, food, beds and women), a growing number of 'infidels' were abjuring. The fear inspired by this military scum was sufficient to drive whole villages into the hands of the priests; conversions, if not obtained under the scourge, were accelerated by the Conversion Fund, set up by Louis - 'God's Lieutenant' - and his servile ministers, whereby converts received cash compensation for abjuring. The edict of 1681, the year of Joanne's birth, had even authorised seven-year old children to opt for conversion, leave their families and claim protection from the Church. The kingdom of France seemed to have become mad.
Joanne, Martine and their strong-willed families had so far steered their perilous way through the persecutions until that fatal night. The girls had staunchly refused the blandishments of the foul black-garbed priest who had attended their flogging, his hideous mumbling continuing up to the last lash. Immediately the man knew they were destined for the château, he despatched a message to his Dominican colleague. Thus the prisoners of Lassignac had a double burden: to contend with the pressure to convert, and to survive the conditions of slavery imposed by the noble household. For her part, the Marquise was not interested in seeking conversion and left that to her hawk-nosed monk; it made little difference to her what beliefs her naked slaves professed in her dungeons as long as they responded readily and erotically to the whip. Joanne learned this on her first day.
The Marquise de Lassignac ruled more or less supreme, standing at the centre of her little universe, dominating and controlling it. What authority her twenty-three year old lesbian lover, Anthea, wielded stemmed directly from her. Yet, in the château's strict hierarchy, Anthea occupied a key position; it was she who discussed with Elodie the detail of forthcoming guest sessions and transmitted orders downward to the domestic level for the valet and his fellow workers to prepare the chambers, paraphernalia and victims for the periodic weekend celebrations, for which Lassignac was justly, if covertly, renowned. Elodie had full confidence in her beautiful, energetic bed companion who knew very precisely what entertained each of the more exigent guests who came for enjoyment; the pillories, the crucifixes in the form of a T or an X, the granite slabs and chairs, the constructions like door frames designed for breast torture, the single and double dildoes and, above all, the whips - Anthea knew them all. Her gift of invention enhanced the sessions to a degree that surprised even Elodie and her visitors. If occasionally the Marquise had to modify the girl's proposals, it was only to safeguard her slaves' well-being. They were not expendable as had been earlier victims Anthea had dealt with, such as the unfortunate case of the young beggar wench Elodie had offered her for her twenty-first birthday. Picked up by the diligent Coursel on a sortie to Ales after curfew, when the castle was running short of female whipping flesh, the prostitute had at first been delighted to be housed in the great castle but quickly changed her mind when Anthea had her to herself in a remote slave cell. "I trust this one's strong body and breasts will amuse you, darling," Elodie had said. "She ought to suffice for the time being."
Delighted, Anthea had stripped the slut naked and ordered special manacles and chains from Brissac, the castle blacksmith. She used her punitively and sexually to such a degree that the whore weakened fast. To Anthea's annoyance, Duby - such, Elodie recalled sadly, was the exhausted trollop's name - had to be consigned to the Convent of the Annunciation for rejuvenation; there, if punishment of whores was no less awesome, at least she would survive. But she never returned to Lassignac; Anthea was upset and became moody, deprived of a slave of her own and obliged to make do with the six resident females and one male in the lower dungeon. Then, like the strolling players arriving at Elsinore to distract the melancholy Hamlet, Joanne and Martine appeared out of the wintery blue to rekindle the young lesbian's enthusiasm.
The taciturn girl drew up her plans carefully, realising she would have to watch her step with the Dominican. Changing her crinolines, silks and powdered peruke for the polished riding boots, thorax strappings and black gauntlets, she decided to go down to the holding chamber to view the two newcomers who were chained stark-naked to the wall.
Discussions with Elodie later on led to the decision to separate the pair, once they had been shaved, flesh ringed and permanently manacled. The blonde Joanne was to remain in the holding cellar for a bout of deportment training under the whip while the heavily-fleshed and less attractive Martine would join the permanent cohort below.
"But first, Anthea, my precious," Elodie insisted, aware of her lover's impatience, "we must have them prepared - the usual seven rings firmly inserted. I don't want them tearing out at the least tug. Oh, by the way, darling, I've changed my mind. I want Simone to do the piercing, after all, but I'll leave you to supervise it. You see, Simone is an expert with the awl so I suggest she deals with this flesh rather than you. But make sure either Coursel or Brissac's present. Slaves tend to become somewhat recalcitrant and unruly when they know they're about to be skewered. We've had problems in the past so see to it the bodies are well chained beforehand."
Anthea gave Elodie a disappointed pout. Thus far she had attended and witnessed only one piercing session, that of the sallow-skinned Dalinde just a month or so ago, and the writhings and screams remained a vivid memory. Secretly, she would have loved to carry out the puncturing herself but agreed it was probably better left to the domestic who was used to it, as to castrating heifers and muzzle-ringing bulls in the castle farm.
The procedure was set for the following afternoon after the neophytes had been scrubbed clean and allowed a moment of rest, prior to the trauma of ringing. Subsequently the inspection by Elodie herself and possibly her husband, if not out hunting, would take place. If they passed scrutiny, the girls would join the contingent for use as sex slaves.

Deservedly, the household had slept soundly until late morning when Simone took up to the bedroom freshly baked bread, honey and hot chocolate (now a popular beverage being imported from the new French possessions in west Africa). The maid was not at all surprised to see that the Marquis, despite the hectic night, had already left for the hunt; her sumptuous mistress lay still asleep in the dishevelled bed, with Anthea lying naked next to her, the hands cupping Elodie's breasts - a charming portrayal of lesbian adoration. Simone drew back the rich Aubusson curtains to flood the chamber with the light of spring, the snow on the battlements beginning to melt at last. Waking leisurely and refreshed, Elodie gave orders for the kitchens, including what was to be fed to the bevy of slaves, now increased by two - they being given hot soup and suet to fortify them. Slave induction tended to be exhausting for novices unaccustomed to piercing and the whip.
"I want the two new ones readied for fitting the straps and rings, Simone, and..."
"Coursel's down there, Madame, preparing for the riveting too," the servant put in with a curtsey. "Both 'ave been scrubbed and strapped down ready for skewerin'. Bressac's sorted out the rings and tools. Does yer Grace wish us to proceed as ordered?"
"Of course woman. See to it Coursel chains the sluts tight over the slab. I want them extended to the full reach of the tendons, to avoid that annoying tussling like the last time. And tell him there's not be any flogging, particularly between the thighs, until the Marquis and I have appraised their bodies and stamina. They'll be on the wall chains in the holding cellar, I suppose?"
The hard-featured servant nodded. "Of course, Madame. By the necks to opposite walls. But soon they'll be spread on the slabs. But the younger bitch keeps moanin'."
"She'll have full reason to moan very soon. You may go."
Elodie turned to her lesbian treasure, admiring the firm breasts. "What a treat to wake up and find you next to me, all wet and sticky. You were simply delicious last night. Pity Francis was too done in to fuck us more than twice. He likes slaves more than us."
Hours later, the remains of the extravagant lunch cleared away, Elodie again kissed the young woman on the lips, cupping a hand over her sex pouch through the silks. "All right. I can see you're dying to get down there to watch the piercings. I know how you like that part of the proceedings. There's no need for you to change into that martial outfit of yours, my sweet. Just go down and enjoy it as you are. You look so pretty in that dress and narrow waist. Being arrayed like that, you won't be able to frig that riotous clit for once will you? So, off you go."
Anthea needed no encouragement. She left in a whisper of silk and perfume.
The spiral stairwell leading into the funereal depths always excited her; the silence reigning amid the guttering tallow seemed even more charged with significance than when the passages rang with the screams of slaves writhing under the leathers and implements. What she was about to watch sent a tremor through her body, causing her nipples to harden. Excited, she entered the stifling cellar. It smelled already of scared female flesh.
What met her eyes was more exciting than she had expected. In the glimmer of the candles positioned round the two slabs of basalt, the totally stretched bodies shimmered with oil and, she guessed, the chill sweat of terror. Coursel stood beyond the superb, elongated length of the blonde bound to the nearest block, checking how much further the prisoner's arms could be bent backwards over the far margin of the stone without luxation. At the other slab, Simone was wrenching Martine's freshly-riveted ankle straps back to lock them to U-bolts halfway along the base of the block. The nude's rump lay crushed over the near edge, the tensed thighs completely parted to reveal the umber slot and pubis, still protected by its swathe of dark curls that was no longer wanted.
Beyond the breathtaking sweep of the hollowed bellies rising to the rib cages, the slaves' breasts rose vertically, the engorged areoles crowned with swollen teats - even Martine's nipples were reacting. The sight made Anthea glance at the crotches, from the blonde one's sex folds the pale tip of what had to be a really stalwart clitoris emerged almost provocatively. But the other slave remained torpid, her sepia labia still glued together. To Anthea's mind the drab needed stimulating - a dozen lashes of the quirt there across the fat vulva; but Simone sought quite the opposite; piercing slave flesh and fitting the rings required docility on the part of the slave. Precisely to that end, the two servants passed broad straps over the chest, belly and thighs of each nude, buckling them tight. If before there had been the risk of a heave or jerk, now the bodies were absolutely rigid.
Simone's depilations of males or females were always flawless, that Anthea knew as she watched the woman working up her lather in the soap mug and daubing the sexes and armpits. Soon each girl's succulent pubic hump bulged enticingly, freed of hair, curving down to the lips of the vulva slit, ready to be perforated, the bodies slick with sweat. Coursel laid the array of open metal circles on each slave's belly for the cunt and nipple rings to be threaded through the flesh and clamped. From the pocket of her greasy leather apron, Simone brought out her saddler's tools, one straight, the other a curved sewing awl which Anthea knew was used for piercing the slippery root of the clitoris.
"Which tits yer want t'do first?" the valet asked, disinfecting the tools and a pair of crimping pliers in his urine. His wife motioned towards Martine. "Better get this drab fixed," she said, "before she 'ollers 'er bloody 'ead off." They used the vernacular together.
"Want me to flog 'er senseless first? Or gag 'er?"
"Won't do no good." The maid turned to Anthea. "That's if Mam'selle don't mind the yells that's comin'."
The onlooker shook her head. "I'm used to it, Simone. Proceed."
Indeed the brawny bitch did howl as Coursel hooked the flat-nosed tongs over the nipple and stretched it. As if jabbing a sow's ear, Simone drove the awl through, widening the aperture with a turn of the wrist. Amid deafening shrieks, the other teat and then the four labia were holed, then he drew out the puny sex button for Simone's curved instrument to perforate what there was of it. She wiped off the beads of blood for her husband to thread the rings through and clamp them solid with the pliers. By the time they had finished with Martine, the girl had passed out, sparing everyone, including Joanne, her demented yelling. Then, with only sharp hisses of pain, Joanna underwent the same ordeal, the torture of her tumescent sexual extremities causing only a litany of sharp cries. Unpredictably, she discovered herself savouring the erotic humiliation that was reducing her to slavery; the weight made her vulva flutter and ooze, as one of her most secret yearnings came true.
Collecting her tools the maid remarked on Joanne's courage. "By all the saints, this one'll make a tidy slave, Coursel. And she's got a great body t' whip and fuck."
Before Coursel had released the bodies, Anthea approached Joanne to finger the sex rings. The cluster gave her, too, an exotic thrill. Burrowing in amid the dangling metal, she thrust her gloved hand up into the vagina; hot, seething with viscid sap, the tube gripped her; feeding her thumb through the clit ring, she felt the metal jerk. It was one of the most extraordinary sensations Anthea had experienced. Circumstances, alas, did not allow her to take matters into her own hands; otherwise she would have whipped the blonde beauty where she lay, straddling the face to be tongued and brought to orgasm. Instead, she walked slowly to the reversed head and made Joanne lick her glistening fingers. But she did not wait to see the shuddering bodies manhandled back to their wall chains to recover from the shock and residual pain throbbing at the seven points. She required relief.
She made for the steps leading down to the lower cellar, feeling her way along the masonry in darkness. After a perilous descent, she entered the dungeon, her crinolines and farthingale hoops rasping against the doorjambs and causing the candles to waver in surprise. But it was Therèse, lounging behind the bars and playing with her sex rings, who received the real surprise. The key grated in the rodded gate and Anthea released the chain from the neck of the startled whore. Her sisters held their breath.
"Out there, scum, and over the torture trestle, arse well up, legs wide!" The voice was strident enough to drain the blood from the cheeks of the perpetually welted brunette, as she scrambled out to obey the summons. Bending over the bar, Therèse watched the slender, evil figure cross to the whip rack and seize a knotted cat-o'-nine-tails; she knew what was coming. In her brief time at Lassignac, she had had it across the thighs, buttocks, belly and once over her breasts - everywhere, from the valet, Elodie and countless guests. But never from the pampered beauty standing there, shaking out the lashes that could either take one to orgasm or reduce one merely to tears. Therèse feared this time it would be a flood of tears. Sex was beyond reach, faced with Anthea.
She spread herself out over the wooden crosspiece, grasping the uprights, her legs parted to their extreme reach with only her toes for purchase. Without a further word, Anthea flogged the rump with a ferocity that cut the victim's breath. Around the tenth lash, Therèse's stamina failed her. Weeping, she begged to be spared. "I've... already had..." Schlack "two flagellations... today, mistress." Schlack "Ahh, God!... And I've... paid for... my faults... too" Schlack! Again, up into the crotch... "out in the... yard. Pleeese!"
"Get that split arse out further, slut! You owe me more than faults. You owe me whatever I want to give you, bitch. It was to be twenty but as you can't hold your tongue until I need it, I'll give you ten extra, you wimp. That's what an arse is for." Schlack!
Anthea took her to well over the usual thirty, desisting only when blood was drawn. Therèse sank to her knees, her breasts sagging, the rump seething. She could not take any more, even if it meant the torture closet...
"Get up, bitch!" came the command, "and on your knees, there." The whip pointed to the terrifying flogging frame, halting the slave's heart. Cumbrously, the flayed nude crawled across the straw-littered flagstones, not daring to touch her bleeding rear, until she was facing the young fury leaning against the frame, her stockinged legs apart, the lace and crinolines lifted in both hands, baring the hot apex of the thighs.
Devoid, as usual, of any trace of knickers (a habit Elodie had tried to correct, along with her depraved lesbian's overindulgence in wearing a 'chastity' belt fitted with an internal dildo and clit rasp), the divinely elegant thighs and auburn-haired crotch stared out at the flagellated slave girl. Therèse knew immediately what the bitch wanted.
"Tongue me, slut. Lick till I come. If you stop, I'll thrash those flabby breasts until you wish you'd never had a pair." The tone had become guttural, hoarse and even more threatening than before. Relieved not to be chained to the frame and breast-whipped, the slave nudged her well-trained tongue into the wet, hirsute slot and flicked hard.
Watched by her nervous companions beyond the bars, she did what she could with the remainder of her energy, straining her head upwards and holding the slim thighs with hands that, strangely, remained free - an unbelievable privilege at Lassignac for a slave in the presence of an owner or a visiting dominant. The tongue lapped, curled and sucked desperately, the girl almost suffocating in the torrid downpour of mucilage.
Anthea's response began as a baying, like that of a dying animal, then mounted into a wild screech that penetrated the far reaches of the dungeon. The watchers behind the grating knew her potency but were surprised. For Therèse's sake they hoped there was not much more in store for their nut-brown teammate.
"Don't stop, you... you whore slag... or I'll..." The breathless, incoherent threat trailed off to join the echoes as the slithering tongue lapped faster, scouring the seething vaginal sheath and clit until the slave could no longer fight the lunges into her face. The convulsing, spasming creature clutched the whore's hair by the handful, almost tearing out tufts as the orgasms exploded, the crotch slamming the face awash with discharge. A volley of three more consecutive gushings submerged Therèse in thick sexual juice that she had barely time to swallow down before she found herself enshrouded within the descent of the perfumed underskirts. Panting and assuaged, Anthea sent the slave sprawling.
"Now, back to your chains, whore." No more than a murmur, the order consoled Therèse; she hoped it was over, for the dreaded whip still dangled dangerously, if irresolutely, from the exquisitely boned hand in the kid glove.
Under the rippling layers of soft silk, the slave girl kissed the embroidered slippers, as a slave had to do, hastening back beyond the bars to clip herself to her slave chain.
The iron gate slammed to, the key rasped and the contented one was gone.


"You must try to contain your lusts a little, darling," Elodie prompted her lover a while later. Her valet reported everything very promptly to his august owner. "But never mind. I want you to stand by in case you're needed to deal with our blonde newcomer, that is it you still have the energy! And this duty is, if I may say, official. You see, I have to allow our dear Dom Anselme have his way once in a while. He insists or trying to get our blonde charmer - the one we've just ringed - to abjure. A noble aspiration. Whether he will succeed is another matter. Anyway, he proposes to do it in the chapel rather than, say in one of the torture closets where he would have more privacy. Now, Anthea, you know," she lowered her voice a shade. "I am not particularly concerned over her religious beliefs but we have to content this sanctimonious chaplain of ours." She paused, hoping Anthea was listening. "I want you, my treasure, to do the honours in the chapel. I'm sure you'll relish it. But just remember, this session is under Anselme's guidance."
"What, pray, am I to do?" Anthea had no affinity with the gaunt Dominican but had to admire his shrewdness. Working with him was no great pleasure although admittedly he flogged and fucked admirably and she had learned much from watching him at work.
"It's very simple," the Marquise went on. "He has chosen to convert the blonde infidel first and then start on the other. Should there be problems - and, Anthea sweet, I'm certain there will be - he intends to flog the girls into the Faith. But he's unwilling to sully his holy hands with whips in chapel. So we've decided that, if necessary, you should do the whipping, prior to vespers, rather than the uncouth Coursel or Simone - although they, as you know, flagellate laudably to the blood when given the chance. So, Coursel will prepare the prie-dieu and the cords and you, with Anselme's concurrence, may choose the whip you think will help the girl to abjure. I have my doubts about the whole affair but it will provide you with useful practice. By the way, I think it would be correct, dearest, not to be too naked. I know you prefer nudity but remember you'll be on holy ground."
Anthea nodded. The prospect delighted her. To whip a slave, whatever her religion, in the chapel of all places, excited her, even if the lugubrious, morbid Dominican was involved. Moreover the duty would excuse her from confession for some weeks and that too pleased her, for a tête-à-tête with Dom Anselme was trying; his bony hands fumbling her nipples, the confessional stall rendering lower contact difficult. Moreover, the man's cock, straining under the cassock, hardly attracted her. Even Coursel's was finer.
"Now, angel, run along," her lover concluded, "and try not to masturbate too much, darling. You'll wear yourself out. A clit needs repose, you know." She caressed the girl tenderly, not far from the spot in question, and gave her a kiss, but only on the mouth.
The beautiful youngster could hardly believe her good fortune as she mounted the stairway leading to the bedrooms. She had been chosen to assist in the questioning of a prisoner! Knowing Dom Anselme, she was sure he would order the whip, whatever the outcome of the interview. The only drawback lay in the place. Anthea would have much preferred the cellar or a secluded precinct; the chapel was so funereal and forbidding.
For a moment she stood by the casement, looking out over the still snow-smudged hills of the Cevennes, wondering when she would be needed in the chapel. If she had understood, Elodie was to inspect the newcomers first. Life was becoming exciting.
She strolled over to the rustic sideboard and took out her personal scourge. Slowly and affectionately, she let the six black thongs run over her glove, feeling the tight knots; the weight, balance and texture pleased her and the colour went with the high boots she would wear. Her cheeks flushed, her vagina swelling again. She stripped off, spread out across the bed and, gasping, brought herself off savagely with the phallus-shaped haft of the whip. It was almost as satisfying as flogging a female slave... Almost? Nonsense - there was nothing to equal flagellation. Nothing. As this newcomer, Joanne, would discover.

TWO
The two probationers were left a while, still chained to the slabs, to recover from the piercing and the threading of the metal through the flesh. Although throbbing painfully herself, Joanne found her colleague's whimpering hard to bear. The pause in the operations did not last long before Coursel was clamping the rivets in the ankle and wrist leathers; already in place, the bonds required a final hammering to ensure permanency. Each neck was then encircled with the broad iron throat band, replacing the earlier temporary leather strap; there too the rivets were flattened. Writhing in pain, Joanne guessed each restraint carried the same four rings for chaining and bondage, as on her colleagues in the cellar.
The work was done competently enough. Martine moaned and struggled, only to receive a lash across her vast, freshly ringed breasts. "What are you doing to me?" she shrieked. "Heaven will punish you for this. Take them off! Haven't we suffered enough?"
Surprisingly, Simone answered her. "And how d'yer think we're going to lead you sluts around? And hook your whorish body up for the whip, eh? Keep that mouth shut unless you're wanting a strap round that too." Martine's groans softened but continued.
The piercing and bondage completed, the slaves were driven to the wall for the neck and wrists to be tied to an iron ring. The new fittings proved effective and painful.
Facing each other, neither girl wished or even managed to utter a word; each stared at the other's hardware, stunned rigid. Both had ample pain to contend with in the semi-darkness. After the departure of the servants, the hours passed very slowly.
Unlike her suffering companion, Joanne was not unhappy. Despite the throbbing in her sexual extremities, she felt her nakedness enhanced by the metal, the clit ring already giving her a sensation of strange arousal. In her heart she felt little compassion for the poignant figure opposite her; the youngster was deplorably faint-hearted, devoid of the slightest sense of eroticism and dismally obese. If she were to survive, Joanne thought, the girl would have to bestir herself, accept her predicament and conform. Her pious refusal to yield was not only pointless but dangerous for them both as religious heretics. Unless, of course, Martine was determined to act the martyr. For her part, Joanne was finding a certain sensual pleasure in this sexual slavery and nudity. She pitied Martine's naivety.

The abrupt entry of the Marquise, Anthea, more striking than ever in pale taffeta and azure ribbons, and their staff, startled Joanne as the chamber became suffused with the fragrance of perfumes overriding the stench of sweat. Coursel and Simone were accompanied by two other domestics, if such was their rank, Joanne had not encountered before. The young maid was dark and slender, the man powerfully built.
"So, here they are, our little ducklings, all ringed and ready." Elodie hooked a kid-gloved finger through one of Martine's teat rings and tugged on it playfully, bringing a shrill yelp out of the plump nude. Elodie frowned "Oh, my poor ears, this slut must be cured of shrieking at me, Anthea dear!" As if to hasten that process, Simone raised her service whip and slashed the slave's thigh. "Thank you, Simone. Now, you and Marie-Félice," the Marquise went on, calling the sultry domestic forward, "get them checked for size and plugged up behind. I want their rear entries nicely stretched and taught to slacken without having to be told." She smiled at the two men standing apart. "I'm sure you'll both see to that! And prior to our next celebrations. That gives you a clear fortnight, doesn't it?"
Taken aback by the orders, Joanne hoped Martine had not understood what was implied. Indeed, the girl had not; she was too busy sniffling and trying to conceal her sex rings. Then the bewigged Marquise went on: "So, Marie-Félice, get to work while that man of yours sizes up our two newcomers. I'd like your views, Bouchard, on my new slaves."
Joanne recalled the information she had gleaned in the slave cellar: the dark-haired female called Marie-Félice, prettily dressed in a green robe the colour of sage, had to be a senior servant and wife or mistress or this Bouchard, the Lassignac major-domo, gaoler and slave flogger, who stood beside her. She was quite attractive, despite a slight strabismus that gave her a look of immense cruelty. Her man was handsome, stalwart and terrifying. Marie-Félice strode forward and the fittings proceeded forthwith. First, each slave was reversed against the wall by Coursel as the woman opened a cupboard in the far wall to return with two anal stopples, the size of large pine cones with several lengths of chain dangling from the bases. She dealt with Martine first, parting the huge slabs of rump meat to force the bung inwards, disregarding the girl's useless clenchings. The insertion met with hysterical cries as the sphincter was gouged, the tight circle of muscle fighting the dildo. The slender chains were then tightened round the prodigious buttocks, passed under the perineum and clipped to the new sex rings. Martine screamed to high heaven as her rear hole stretched to accommodate the shaft. Then Joanne received the same therapy but without demur. She thrilled as both slaves were told they would wear the thing until further notice when not on call. Marie-Félice then tried out several leather hoods on the girls until the correct sizes were found for future use; again Joanne found the objects exciting and frightening as the straps were buckled round her head and throat, blocking the eyes and ears; a wooden gag, well-dented by other teeth, nearly dislocating her jaws. Finally, leather breast cones, armed with internal spikes, and a similar crotch triangle were tried on. The very volume of Martine's mammaries made the test imperative, Marie-Félice remarking she had never seen such vast breasts on a serf. "A daily run round the courtyard under the horsewhip would thin her down, your Grace." Elodie told her to hold her tongue, for suddenly the Marquis entered, in from hunting. Silence fell amid genuflections. The fine weather-tanned face gazed at Martine's plugged bottom. "And what do we have here, in the name of all the saints? Just what I needed. Hand me a whip," he ordered curtly.
A frown clouded Elodie's exquisite face. She was piqued by the untimely appearance. It threw her off her balance - and that before the household - but she summoned up a welcoming smile. For who, after all, was the master of Lassignac?
The man stripped off his leather jerkin and the broad-collared silk blouse, throwing the garments to Simone as Coursel handed him a coil of platted horsehair. In a sepulchral silence, the bare-chested Marquis walked over to Martine's wealth of arse flesh shuddering against the masonry and shook out the leather snake. Elodie drew Anthea towards her as if marshalling an ally. "Oh, diantre, the slut's not ready for this," she muttered.
Then the Marquis saw the summit of the dildo protruding from the anal cleft and the tensed chains denting the buttocks. "Ah, I see we're making headway with this lump of suet. So much the better." Simone took a step forward as it to wrench the sceptre out. "No, woman, she'll do as she is. The sooner she's stretched the better."
The first lash rasped through the already fetid air of the cellar, extending its length across the space separating the man from his victim. The leather ripped across both buttocks with a heavy thud, followed by a sharp hiss as the extremity curled round the slave's haunch to bury itself in the sex rings. Staggering, slamming her belly into the whitewashed wall, Martine's head craned back as the yell tore through the chamber; a pig being slaughtered in the castle farm barely matched the din.
After several more lashes had welted the ponderous lumps of rump steak, the slave crossed her thighs in a futile attempt to protect the splayed sex. But a dozen more had her jerking like a hooked bream. The screams only drove the wench's flogger to whip harder until he felt she was ready. Unbuttoning the lappet of his breeches and gesturing to Simone to reverse the body, the Marquis brought out his huge erection. Breathing heavily, he gazed at the vast breasts rasped scarlet by the stonework and then hauled the thighs up round his hips. The cock yawed a moment before the distended cleft and then drove in with a single thrust, the man still grasping his whip haft. The girl let out a deafening screech as her hymen was ruptured by the monstrous penis... Joanne watched grieving for the poor virgin and yet somehow envying her. Any energy Martine had left in her sobbing, thrashed carcass abandoned her as the Master of Lassignac fucked her. By the time he was ready to empty into her, the head of dark hair had fallen back to thump against the wall. She had passed out.
A moment later, the body was released to slump against the rough wall, the inner fat of the thighs drenched red from the deflowering. Francis-Etienne wiped his cock on the slave's hip. "Well, that's one virgin the less, Elodie dear, for you to play with," he said.
"Indeed," she agreed, again her normal self. "At least you cheated our Dominican out of that! Now, Simone, get them both back to the cellar and medicate them. I don't want any infection blossoming."
As there was still time before the solemn gong would sound for dinner, the Marquise inveigled her Francis to her soft bed upstairs, along with Anthea. Together, the two women writhed like serpents, feeding the man's cock into each other's body in turn, frigging the clitoris as the shaft sank in, emerged and plunged in again. Both were experts at that. After recovering from her orgasm, Elodie managed to put a question.
"But why, beloved, did you use that frigid one? I mean, there was the blonde beauty dazzling us all with her new rings and superb body. Why didn't you take her?"
"Later, Elodie later." He paused, drawing on his silken blouse. "I happened to learn in the stables from a groom that you've decided to consign her - what's her name, yes, Joanne, and what a body indeed - to Anselme for an attempt at conversion in the chapel. I thought that would be ample for her, directly after ringing." Elodie was amazed at how news got around among the servants. "In any event as you saw, the other bitch - the fat whore - seems to lack sexual vigour and needs rigorous whipping if she's to satisfy you."
"Yes, of course." Elodie agreed. "By the way, Francis, I've agreed to lend Anthea to help Anselme with the conversion." Both nobles smiled at the gorgeous minx as she too arranged her dress and peruke. "I'm sure you would have no objection, Francis. Now, let's go down for dinner. I could eat a whole capon after that. You're really a great lover!"
On the way down, the Marquis reverted to the question of Joanne. "I suppose the blonde slave has to be made over to the Dominican." There was reluctance in the voice.
"I'm afraid so precious. We can hardly decline. After all, she is a parpaillote. But as the questioning is to take place in the chapel, it ought to be mild enough. And Anthea will be there to see that the man behaves himself. In any event, whether the shapely wench recants or not, I'm going to keep her here for good. She has begun to satisfy me."
"Very well. But the other one isn't worth much, Elodie, as you gathered from her behaviour just now under the whip. Anselme's going to have a stiff task with her, no?"
The Marquise nodded. "It seems so, alas. We'll just have to see. Meanwhile she can be kept in the cellar. But at least you deflowered the slut and that's a step forward. When her turn comes, our dour Dominican will need to use all his persuasive ingenuity."
Her husband took the beautiful arm as they entered the dining hall, receiving the obsequious bows of the half-naked maids. "Do you honestly believe they will abjure, Elodie?" he inquired. He had his doubts. Moreover, the new blonde attracted him.
"That's not our affair, Francis. We need good whipping flesh, such as we have already down in the cellar. Frankly, that's all that concerns me. To hell with that tonsured Anselme and his hopes of Vatican promotion." Her antipathy ran deep. In her mind's eye she still saw the worthless Martine being flayed, the gross legs capering as if treading the grapes of wrath in the wine cellar. The slag, parpaillote or not, required educating.
The meal, as usual, proved delicious and welcome. Elodie felt exhausted, the unavoidable presence of Dom Anselme at the table annoying her, as he tried to ferret out what had been taking place in the chamber below. The carpe à la juive, jugged hare and rognons de veau flambés, lifted her spirits. And, to her delight, Francis-Etienne had Therèse brought up afterwards from the cellar to the great bedroom for her to thrash.
The following day, Dom Anselme took great care to ensure the chapel presented as sacrosanct an atmosphere for enforced conversion as possible. Thick candles, like white, supplicating arms, had been lit and the nave was thick with holy, aromatic incense. He had placed the prie-dieu centrally in the nave before the wrought iron rood screen, hemp cords ready, if necessary to help the parpaillote bitch towards her abjuration; the short, thick flogging whip lay upon the chair before the prie-dieu. The sight of that instrument, Anselme believed, could persuade any heretic to abjure; but should defiance ensue, a mere dozen lashes of the six-knotted thongs were enough to make a heifer bellow and confess.
It had been agreed with the somewhat awkward Marquise that the young Anthea should attend: in the event of obstinacy on the part of the heretic, it had been further conceded that the girl should carry out such flagellation as might prove necessary. Elodie persuaded herself it would give her lesbian odalisque, despite her already vicious talents, valuable practice. But only if absolutely necessary.
Dom Anselme had considered using the vestry for the interrogation and, if called for, the ensuing beating, but the room was exiguous and hardly lent itself to serious questioning and less still to efficient bondage and the swing of a whip. Hence, the nave was preferred, in which case the holy friar had reluctantly declined to perform a flogging in full view of the high altar. Again Elodie had consented, although the endeavour to convert a stark naked female with flagellation in the chapel hardly pleased her; after all, there was a magnificently equipped cellar as well as other precincts below ready for use, where massive stone walls stifled screams. But the Dominican had insisted on the nave.
Furthermore, he required that the interrogation be carried out in bondage, using the flesh rings which, if the subject proved recalcitrant, could serve to hold the body for persuasive beating. The arms and legs, he explained, would be roped to the platform of the prie-dieu, cords cinching the waist, others passed through the nipple and outer labial rings to secure the infidel outstretched while the examination proceeded. Elodie felt obliged to consent; in fact, she felt the bondage would provide the girl with a taste of what awaited her at a later date. She had already acquiesced to the slim blonde being examined first, the other, less attractive and more obstreperous sinner being meanwhile chained with the other seven inmates in the cellar, awaiting her call. There at least the stout whore would have the opportunity of learning from the group of more mature slaves; although by no means protestants, the cohort below knew what discipline implied and, should the novice persist in her wrong-headedness, what a lusty six-thong or a session of teat torture could do to a naked slave. Whether this uncouth newcomer could be brought to a series of hysterical orgasms, leave alone recant, Elodie doubted, even if the iron tongs were used directly on the inexperienced clitoris.
For his part, the chaplain contended that neither girl could long resist his methods of proselytism and subsequent conversion. If they did hold out against him, he had other means by which a heretic could be brought to see reason.

Accordingly, on the day following the painful ringing session in the holding cellar, Joanne found herself in a windowless cell where she was flushed out, anally greased, oiled and her areoles, teats and clit brought to full erection by the quiet, sour-faced Simone. Curiously, the preparation gave her a thrill she had not experienced before. Even more unexpected was the need spreading through her loins to be used as Martine had been; her body began to yearn for sex, even at the cost of a flogging. She was ready for both.
"What am I due for now, pray, Madame?" she inquired nervously, as the expansion plug was being extracted from her anus. She risked the query since both slaves had been informed they were free to speak to servants but never to their owners and their guests without express permission - and even there, she was told, speech was restricted to a plea to be thrashed and abused and to an expression of thanks once the session was over.
"Conversion, whore," came the reply. "In the chapel before our most saintly man."
"But I have no intention of being converted..."
"We'll see, filthy infidel. Aren't thou aware of our sublime and mighty Sovereign's dictates?" she pressed on the girl's back. "Lean further over and grasp them ankles so I can grease thy whorish arsehole..." Simone employed what French she had. Having learnt the terms by heart, she used them with assurance; they gave her stature.
In chains, the wrists crossed and linked to the nape, Joanna was led up by the expressionless Coursel to the musty chapel where she was expected to admit to her religious offence and beg to be allowed to embrace the true faith. Her first embracement, however, was that of the prie-dieu under the sullen eyes of Dom Anselme and stink of incense. He sat apart, flanked by the young woman that Joanne had seen in the cellar during Martine's recent beating. If the priest was in his customary white habit, the girl was very different; resplendent in black leather boots reaching to her lissom thighs, flared gauntlets, and a web of straps imprisoning her flat belly and hoisting aloft a pair of incredibly handsome, hard-nippled breasts. The pubic growth was narrow, crowning the neat slot of the pouting vulva. From her sloping belt hung a horrendous bunch of flogging leathers, each of the six strands, Joanne saw with a jolt of excitement, arrayed with knots. Anthea represented cruelty incarnate and seemed to know it. The novice stared at the slim figure and realised how deeply she feared and hated the spoilt bitch. Instinctively, she guessed that conversion was not the sole aim of the chapel session. If she was about to be put before the option of denying her faith - which she would repulse with all her strength - the whip told her what her refusal would entail. If she was to be flagellated, strangely she would prefer to suffer under the hand of a male. And, if possible, by a male in erection, as when the Marquis had whipped the pathetic Martine; a stiff cock implied erotic lust but also a compliment to her famished body. Joanne desired the whip as much as the orgasms that she knew would follow - but not bestowed by a ruthless, lascivious bitch...
Yet it was the complacent, half-naked beauty who gave orders to the valet.
"Rope the apostate belly down over the prie-dieu, Coursel. Breasts hanging free, arms and legs outstretched." The voice seemed to spiral up out of Hell. "Cord the teat and labial rings to the uprights and wrench the head back for her questioning."
Smelling of onions and garlic the valet seemed to know what was wanted, for he went to work unhesitatingly. Slamming Joanne down across the prie-dieu, his hands gripped the dangling breasts to tug the slack flesh downwards. Then like bells, the mammaries were left to swing listlessly, awaiting the tethering. Threading a length of cattle rope through each teat ring, he elongated the udders to their maximum reach, securing the cord to the base of the sculpted uprights. He then did likewise with the labia rings. Joanne whimpered as her ringed folds of vulva flesh, still tender from the piercing, were drawn down and outwards and tied to grommets in the platform. Immediately she realised that a sudden jerk of her body could rip the rings out of the flesh. As ordered, the servile brute then yanked back the head by the hair, passed a further cord over the forehead and fastened it to the neck strap. As a final refinement, the legs were splayed for the ankle straps to be tethered to nearby pillars aligning the aisle; the slave thought her hip joints would dislocate. The chill in the bleak edifice froze her sex and buttock meat. If the whip was to come, her entire cleft was bared and available.
"Now, let us commence." The Dominican's rasping voice reached her as if from another world. "You are a sinner, that you know. And a traitor to our Gracious King and to the Church, you devil-infested whore of a parpaillote, persisting in vile heresy. Recant and all will be well. Resist and you will be chastised to submission. Choose. Do you abjure?"
At first Joanne's throat denied her a voice. Then she managed a hoarse cry: "No. Never! Do what you want with my body. My faith is steadfast. My soul is..."
"Flog the bitch!" was all she heard. The knotted whip hissed and fell. Her whole body burst in an explosion of white pain, the buttocks clenching under the knots. Lash after lash from the half-naked Anthea lacerated the curved rump. She felt the welts swelling but steadfastly dared not risk her sexual extremities by intensifying the murderous drag on them. Each lash cut her breath until the tenth stroke fell and she screamed as never before in her life. The bitch sliced harder into the shuddering rump, ensuring the knotted thongs curled into the open crotch. The cords securing the ringed flesh seemed to tighten frighteningly, inexorably.
Fifteen, twenty and then more slashes catapulted shock waves into her brain, her howls shrilling down the nave. Dom Anselme, cock in hand, watched through slitted eyes. Though inexperienced, the infidel's naked body was responding well.
Again came the grindstone of a voice. "Do you repent? Do you abjure, whore?" The interrogation developed into a frightening torrent of abuse. "Foul she-devil incarnate! Anathema on you! Abjure, vile sow! Does not your strumpet's brain tell you that you are stark naked, spread for blooding? I shall have you flayed raw until you howl out your plea of repentance. Abjure and you will be spared and comforted. Speak!"
"Never!" Through veils of agony Joanne heard her own frantic voice yelling out again the only word she had the force to dredge up out of her lungs.
The Dominican's eyes narrowed further as he nodded to Anthea. The girl moved to the victim's reared head, noticing with pleasure the tears and sweat pouring down the cheeks, the artery in the distended neck pulsing behind the studded collar. With all her might Anthea brought the leathers down along the length of the spine. The blow made the loose circles of slave metal in the cunt jounce as the body heaved, sending fresh wails up into the chapel's clerestory. Somewhere in the crescendo of pain, Joanne sensed she was about to faint. Behind slavering lips, she gritted her teeth.
"It's your last chance, infidel. Do you abjure?" the Dominican yelled. In reply the nude body slumped, inert, no longer conscious of the continued thuddings over her flesh.
"Sc be it," the voice announced resignedly. "Give her ten more, Anthea. In the position we have her, forty lashes will suffice. I shall now give her unction that is neither holy nor extreme and you shall reap your reward. Ram your pretty cunt into her maw."
As the thrashing came to an end the victim found herself reviving, only to feel several things: just able to sense what was happening, she knew the prelate was close to her rear, the coarse habit grazing her thighs as he freed his cock. She even felt the thread of liquid trailing over her scorched buttocks and then the head being lowered as the man mounted the prie-dieu. At the same moment, her tear-dazzled eyes saw Anthea's golden triangle nearing her mouth. But more mortifying was the state of her own vagina - swollen and flooded, bloated from the whipping, the clit unsheathed and pulsing. Instinctively she knew the whipping had aroused her to that summit of readiness only penetration and clogging semen could satisfy. Her body was trembling, ready for orgasm.
No sooner aware of her condition, for which she feared she would probably be further punished, Joanne suddenly tensed. The man's shaft was not seeking her vulva; the huge piston was butting at the puckered anus. With a savage jab, the rod was driven home, the slave uttering a sharp cry as the sphincter stretched and yielded. For once she was grateful for the enlarging the plug had brought about. The erection was like the pestle she used at home for crushing olives and just as firm. As the shaft bored in up to its root, for the first time in her uneventful sexual existence, Joanne realised she was at last being sodomised, a pleasure her Jean-Jacques had denied her. As her mouth, like her anus, opened with amazement, she found her face smothered against Anthea's crotch.
"Tongue me, bitch!" the whip mistress hissed, but all Joanne could do was to grit her teeth again to counter the gouging of her rear. Furious at not being instantly obeyed, the woman reversed her grasp on the scourge and, sideways with the haft, struck the nearer of the extended breasts. The blow made the slave gasp as the nipple stretched, the anal thrusts jerking her forward. Quickly, she licked into the steaming slot, perfunctorily at first and then, driven by further slams across the taut udder, vigorously, lapping up the flood of liquid oozing over the labia and then flicking and sucking the stub of gristle as best she could. Surprised at its dimension, modest compared with her own, she curled her inexperienced tongue round the thing, drawing it out now and then with her teeth when Anthea yelled at her to bite. The odour and slime of the young sex, despite her hatred of its owner, excited Joanne, somehow heightening the new sensation in her anus as the sphincter muscle rippled in and out along the Dominican's penis. Even her whipped sex thrilled as the heavy ball sac slapped against it.
A dozen thrusts into the behind sufficed to bring out of the priest the vilest oaths Joanne had yet heard. A moment later she heard herself being ordered to recite twenty Ave Maria's which, quite apart from being smothered by Anthea's grinding cunt, she had no earthly intention of doing. The refusal brought further retaliation as Anselme urged his partner: "Lash the heretic's udders, Anthea, both of them!" and the young girl used the whip haft again below the roped body. Joanne prayed chaotically and somehow managed to remain whole.
Suddenly the man withdrew, only to lower his cock and plunge in between the vulva fronds, stretched to a prodigious length by the rope. With a groan of relief, the slave, at long last, felt the rod slither sumptuously into her to hammer the cervix; again she almost fainted but with lust this time, as the shaft became aggressive. Joanne let out a muffled cry of despair when the prelate pulled out to ram again into the anus, his preferred site for depositing his sacred seed. Joanne's groans, stifled in the golden fleece flattened on her face, diminished as excitement obliterated the aching residues of the flogging. The cock's return to impale her backside left the clit jerking with need, the impending orgasm fluttering like a kestrel hovering above her, about to swoop out of the skies of the Cevennes into her entrails. But the Dominican continued to ream the butt in silence, admiring the way his partner was wrenching clumps of the slave's hair to keep her head working, threatening her with further lashes if she did not tongue harder than she was pretending to do. Joanne licked and suctioned desperately, not anxious for a renewed onslaught of leather. What, she anguished, was to prevent them turning her over and thrashing her breasts and pubis? What stopped them twisting her nipples until they bled? Nothing. They had her stark naked, at their mercy.
Abruptly, Anselme's fingers groped below the whipped thighs to seize the stiff clit. "Cap de Diou, as I thought," he grunted, "whipping excites our wanton slut!"
Joanne knew he was right. The two of them had brought a sex-starved victim to a point of no return. She was teetering on the verge of crisis. She was about to come. As the man's fingers mauled her clitoris, the gladiators' Morituri te salutant her old pastor had mentioned in a sermon echoed in her. She was about to die. Not by the sword. By orgasm. She felt panic rising in her. Had she the right to spend? And if so, what would they do to her? Torture her? Make her run, jangling, behind a horse as on that ghastly night of capture, but in a circle with the major-domo, valets, servants lashing her?
Cursing her two persecutors and her own lust, she strove to delay the explosion. The exertion proved fatal. The hawk swooped with distended talons on to her and bore her screaming into the cloudy heights. Her yells intermingled with groans: "Yes, yes... whip me... I'm coming! Now...Yes... Oh, yes! Now!" Careering into wild orgasm, the nude body wrenched recklessly on the corded nipple rings. The orgasm tore so suddenly, so utterly through her that the howls of ecstasy and release transpierced the drab walls of the chapel, invading the passages, bedrooms, cellars, stairwells, vaultings... Then Anthea followed suit, spewing her discharge over the slave's face. The females' cries drove the man to lengthen his rectal plunges and, just as abruptly, the thick sperm pumped into the heretic's bowels, Joanne continuing to spasm. Slowly he freed his penis from the grip of the anus and lowered his cassock.
"Comes like a veritable prostitute, Anthea. Yes, as I thought, a sister of sin. As she seems to relish the whip, we must apply other, more appropriate instruments to instigate conversion. But for now, we shall leave her to wallow in the slough of her despicable heresy. I have done my best with the slag. At least for the moment."
"You certainly have, Brother Anselme!" his partner remarked breathlessly. "She came with a vengeance. Where did your fine piston deposit its offering? Front or Back?"
"Always in the dark realms of the bowels, sweet daughter. As a man of principle, I do not wish to trouble this noble castle with my offspring. Now, dear Anthea, kindly call the valet and have the filthy strumpet bound to the rood screen to consider her plight."
Thrilled at having been offered the chance to flagellate a fine pair of whore buttocks and breasts (although she would have preferred a better presentation of the latter), Anthea had enjoyed the pious session. Like the gracious Elodie, she felt no dismay over Dom Anselme's failure to convert the heretic; the object was there to be whipped and used. That was what naked slaves were for at Lassignac. To provide pleasure.
Wiping off her faithful six-thong, she summoned Coursel. The valet, nettled to have been, as usual, left out of the session, had contented himself by solemnly frigging off in the nearby transept, leaving the clots to harden on the paving; it was dirty enough already and the chapel was not in his purview of duties; but flogging was. Yet he had to admit that this spoilt lesbian, Anthea, did wield a whip with force and style. She needed no tuition.
"Chain this stubborn pagan trash to the rood screen, man," Anselme ordered, "while I pray for continued spiritual strength to perform my mission. I shall try again with her anon." The priest's eyes glinted as he observed his cum oozing from the slave's anal bud. Converted or not, the newly arrived blonde at least showed promise in one direction: she took whip and penis admirably enough. As he straightened out his garb, he wondered how, should she persist in refusing conversion, the pretty bitch would react to the Marquise's sessions of sex torture, the breast quirt, pincers, prongs, needles and the rest. Although he was never invited to such ceremonies, it was common knowledge that the other slaves currently domiciled at the château responded well, but then they had been toughened and trained through incessant use by their eminent proprietress and guests. This well-built blonde, he thought, might well outstrip them in competence. In any event, whether she abjured, attended Mass and confession or not, Anselme knew she would remain a prisoner and available to the house for routine use. Thus, his work to achieve abjuration could continue. Like the Marquise, the saintly man felt that conversion lay still some way off but he would strive for it. As to the other parpaillote, the plump newcomer with her enormous breasts and broad arse, he felt fairly certain she would not be tempted by abjuration, whatever was done to her at the outset; hence, she could be counted on to provide him, as well as the rest of the household and visitors, with ready flogging flesh until ultimately she weakened and gave in. Once she had been whipped into grovelling submission, conversion would be merely a matter of sequential steps, for had he not when seconded earlier to accompany the dragoons, made scores of scourged women abjure? Fifty lashes had usually sufficed. Thirty, if hung by the legs to be crotch or breast whipped.
As he watched the flogged, groaning slave being detached from the prie-dieu, Dom Anselme smiled to himself as he thought of the cunning Marquise's preoccupation over the possibility that he, her chaplain, would request the release of the girls, if conversion were achieved. Under no circumstances would he suggest such a thing. The slaves would remain slaves, precisely where they were, imprisoned nipple-naked in the dungeon, like the others, for sexual use. Meanwhile, and Anselme smiled again, the parpaillote bitches would hold out to the limit of what they thought their flesh could stand and then abjure on the promise of release, only to find themselves condemned to permanent slavery within the dark womb of Lassignac.
Again observing how the valet handled the blonde beauty, who had collapsed at the man's feet, Anselme knew he could break the bitch sooner or later and trusted the unpredictable Marquise would act in a spirit of cooperation and not commandeer the new whores completely. One never knew with her. Sometimes he suspected that lust took precedence over her wish to bring about conversion.

Having kicked the wilting nude to her feet, Coursel bowed to the Dominican whom he admired for his faith and for the patience he exhibited in dealing with headstrong transgressors. He would give a finger of his hand to fuck with Anthea but that was beyond imagining; he would have to make do as usual with the cellar slaves during their daily whippings - 'to keep them conditioned' was Elodie's phrase - and, alas, with his appallingly unappetising spouse; his Simone required a great deal of cock to keep her quiet.
As she was dragged towards the high rood screen, Joanne also cast a covert look through her tears at the sanctimonious Dominican fingering his rosary beads as if still rolling her clitoris. How she hated him! But even more virulent was her loathing for the young bitch, Anthea - if that was indeed her name. Legs apart, the beauty stood there imperiously, mopping up on her gauntlet the saliva and come beginning to encrust her sex. She was a heinous invention of nature, even if highly responsive to cunnilingus...
The welted slave girl stumbled up the three chancel steps for whatever was to follow, Coursel crossing himself devoutly as he slammed the debilitated, slaked body against the wrought iron. After stretching the arms aloft and splaying the legs the man chained the four limb straps to the screen. Satisfied with the bondage he then crammed the mammaries through the bars, three rods apart, as Dom Anselme had ordained. Entering the sanctuary with renewed genuflections, he joined the nipple rings and went about the throttling of the breast roots with lengths of wet cord he had brought in a pail. Again in line with the holy instructions received and with an unspeakable viciousness Joanne had begun to recognise as the mark of Lassignac, he wrenched the swollen masses together to join them over the bars. The strangled protuberances, still blazing from what Anthea had inflicted and now pulsing with blue veins, bulged from the tight hemp, the areoles and teats turning into dark magenta lumps. Joanne moaned as the mounds were roped together with a further length of damp rope, the flesh beginning to darken under the stricture. But more was to come. Similarly but using a pair of blacksmith's pincers, the valet seized the outer fronds of the vulva by the rings to stretch the flesh through the bars until the labia met round the central rod of iron. Passing a further length of soaked hemp through each ring he knotted it tightly. The slavegirl felt her slippery discharge gluing her to the bar.
Although assuaged by her orgasms, Joanne began to tremble, wondering in dread how long her corded flesh could endure the bondage. Her terror made her risk uttering a pathetic plea as she waited to learn her further fate.
"I beg of you, noble friar, sweet mistress, spare me... please! Have I not had enough to satisfy your needs? My breasts are aching, my lower lips..."
Her implorings were drowned by Anselme's fury. From halfway down the nave, he seemed to address the rood screen rather than the bound slave girl.
"A heathen whore in the process of conversion remains silent, unless it wishes to be hung head down, instead of its present position. It is against this sanctified screen that a flogged infidel must hang until well after Vespers, so that the miserable heretical body can be viewed by the entire company of our virtuous castle. We shall pray for your soul, misguided sister."
Her face crushed against the bars, Joanne suddenly sensed Anthea close behind her, the strands of the whip straying over the welted buttocks that immediately clenched with alarm.
"By Vespers," the hiss was close to her ear, "your cords will have dried and tightened. Then you can scream with some justification to have your evil body freed. It will be for your distinguished owner, the Marquise Elodie alone, to decide whether to release you or to have you further flagellated."
The whip parted the rear cheeks to drift terrifyingly down the anal furrow.
"As a slave you must inure yourself to suffering. After all, slut, we let you enjoy your foul lust, didn't we?"
Joanne attempted a grateful nod, still trembling at the whip's journey over her.
"Unless," Anthea went on, this time startling Joanne rigid, "the Marquise summons you to the great bed chamber, to discharge special duties."
The prospect and the word 'discharge' were enough to bring a frigid sweat out from the prisoner's brow and armpits; she goosefleshed from head to heels. The phrase discharge special duties, she feared, probably inferred a great deal more than a few mind-splitting orgasms; she could almost see a flogging column, probably sheathed in velvet, and the gleaming instruments. And, worse still, her owner disrobing and strapping on a studded dildo to stimulate her body.

It was by sheer chance that Elodie met her chaplain and Anthea in the long, antler-adorned corridor that led from the chapel to the main building and the drawing room.
"Well, what was the result, dear friends?" Elodie asked pleasantly, her hand upon Anthea's bottom. "I trust it was not too tiresome for you."
"Gracious lady." Anselme reported with a shrug. "A lost cause, at least so far. The profligate requires extremely strenuous whipping and, if I may suggest, a modicum of inquisitional torture, of a sexual nature, of course," - he knew his Marquise well - "to convince the slut of her crass stupidity. And at the same time of the dangers she runs, should she continue in heresy. She does not appear to understand her predicament and the distress she is causing us all. Do not hesitate to call on me noble lady, when further convincing is required. I am at your Grace's service at all times. Night and day." He bowed stiffly with grave obeisance. Although he trusted the beautiful woman no further than he could spit, he admired her and had no wish to be assigned elsewhere by the bishop.
The Marquise guessed what had occurred and what had been applied to the newcomer. In her heart, she was delighted the bigot remained stubborn and recalcitrant; it implied that, as an unrepentant infidel, the slave girl could continue to be used without mercy, which was not quite the case of the others sprawling in the dungeon below who had no treason to expiate. And there was darling Anthea, standing there sweating, to consider; at the dawn of this new, propitious eighteenth century under Louis le Grand, such gifted girls needed practice, just as freshly inducted slaves needed tuition.
"Well, I'm sure you did your best," Elodie purred. "Thank you both. Where, by the way, is the attractive creature now?"
Astonished by the adjective, Anthea told her. "Sexually bound with the soaked cords and chained to the rood screen for further beating - if that's what we have in mind."
"We?" Elodie queried. "Beloved, it is I who decide here. And anyway, I'm not so sure how best to proceed with this one. I'm mulling over certain other ideas. But thank you both for your trouble. I trust it was not too tedious."
"Not at all, dearest Elodie," Anthea assured her. "In fact, it was quite interesting. If you're going to torture her, could I participate? I'd hate to miss that, you know."
"Your attendance at such sessions rather depends on Francis, angel. We'll have to consult him. I promise to bear it in mind. Anyway, I'm so pleased you did well in the chapel. You must have looked delightful, arrayed like that. Now go and tell Simone to heat you a nice hot bath. You're covered with sweat and," she glanced down, "something else."
She gave her slender, almost naked bedmate a congenial smile of complicity.
Without acknowledging the couple's bow and curtsy, Elodie sauntered off to see to the arrangements for the ceremonies three weeks ahead, a particularly important occasion since, among others, the Vicomte de Challens and his mistress had accepted the invitation. Both Xavier de Challens and the obese Christine were demanding guests when it came to nocturnal sessions in the cellar or the drawing room. The woman had, in fact, recently written to Elodie and had even had the Vicomte's major-domo deliver the letter. 'I hear you have two new little redbreasts nesting with you,' the quilled scrawl said, 'Keep them fresh for us, dearest Elodie. You know how partial Xavier and I are to enjoying relatively untrained and unsullied flesh.' A trifle vexed at having her little flock of old-timers considered as tainted amateurs, Elodie nevertheless found the missive challenging. Anyway, she was extremely fond of Christine; she was someone who really enjoyed flogging young slaves; in her residence she wore out three or four peasant girls a year.
The question of whether these dear friends would insist on trying out the hysterical parpaillote Martine, quite apart from the blonde, stalwart Joanne, troubled Elodie. She was quite aware that both the Vicomte and Christine relished bulk and well-fleshed breasts that swung well and responded sensually to the leathers and quirts but, should they ask for Martine to be put to the whip, it could well raise problems. What if the slut began to rant, blaspheme and recite Genevan psalms? Elodie decided the plump novice would just have to be gagged; there was nothing more disconcerting and less erotic than a slave cursing when being beaten. Groans and screams and orgasms were acceptable but not curses.
She decided to discuss the matter with Francis-Etienne in bed that very night. After all, it was he who had chosen the slut out there in the woods and had already, if unexpectedly, flogged and used her in the holding cellar, with adverse results. It could then be decided whether to take the risk of offering her to guests. If he agreed to throw her like an early Christian to the lions, all well and good. But it would be wise to reserve one of the private punishment cells for that. There, without risking a disgrace to the house, they could turn the slut into boiled beetroot, as far as Elodie was concerned; she blessed her stars there were the others and this new Joanne. The obese, sluggish heretic simply did not seem to possess, at least so far, the requisite qualities of a satisfactory sex slave and, after all, the Château de Lassignac prided itself on its reputation for providing reliable, highly potent flesh that took the whip and torture devices well, performed fellatio and cunnilingus competently and orgasmed promptly - when given permission. Such were to her mind the intrinsic qualities of a slave. An overt lack of cooperation on the part of inmates could only lead to disappointment among guests who would then tend to seek satisfaction elsewhere. And there were many abodes, even in the Cevennes and the Vivarais, where responsive slaves could be found. Of course, Elodie reminded herself, persistent shortcomings on the part of a slave could result in terrifying penalties, levelled each Monday on condemned culprits hung naked from the correction gallows in the courtyard, and every Lassignac prisoner knew what that entailed. Yet even that might not necessarily prove conclusive in Martine's case. Perhaps her time with her colleagues was warning her of the penalties and probably the over-fleshed bitch had understood; a session with Xavier de Challens and his paramour, if it was something of an honour, could be rigorous. This parpaillote's breasts, flapping around like over-stuffed saddle-bags, might well attract some or the guests. If not, then there was only one solution - to consign the feckless slut to the conveniently nearby Convent of the Annunciation where strict training, for which Elodie had no time, tamed a tongue and reduced any slave to docile meat.
The Marquise reclined in her high-backed chair in the library and thought.
She found the preparations for a guest weekend always worrying and, above all, demanding, from the point of view of introducing enchanting novelties likely to please her guests as well as Francis-Etienne and herself - and, of course, Anthea, who had produced innovations of her own, some of which Elodie had had to veto.
The same old cellar, the same bodies and the same contrivances tended, she had noticed, to bore some of her more aesthetic and demanding guests. Even if Lassignac lay in the heart of the strife-ridden, parpaillote-infested Cevennes, the guests seemed prepared to run the risk of attending her weekend frivolities, and the austere château had to live up to its renown. Elodie had no wish for her home to be considered merely as a whorehouse or, as one rumour had it, a slave farm; it had to provide what the provincial nobility merited, being deprived of the lascivious extravagances of the capital. Her dear friends deserved good food and wine, comfortable beds and, above all, tempting slave flesh (without dark rings of stress under the eyes) to enjoy. If the remote Cevennes could not pretend to match the debauchery of the specialised salons of Paris and, at another level, the splendour of the new Versailles, at least the local nobility could enjoy themselves in much the same way. It was only natural and kept boredom at bay. But this wretched rising among the unruly Protestants was causing trouble. The more men, Elodie maintained, sent to the galleys, the gallows, the wheel, and females to the Tour de Constance, the better - except her two new girls.
Musing in her chair, Elodie recalled one improvement with pleasure. Some months back, Francis had returned from a visit to Claude-Eugène, their friend and neighbour - although a good half-day's ride away - with an idea gleaned from his whipping rooms (in fact he lodged his slaves, tethered like mares, in his stables for his grooms to use and whip, pending the nude bodies being summoned for use by their owner).
"I noticed, Elodie sweet," her husband reported, "that he has all his females wearing high-heeled mules of sorts. Not slippers but delicately fashioned shoes of white doeskin. They added, I must say, to the length and shape of a leg. Why don't you adopt the same footwear for ours? The girls will still be nude, even it they're shod. But, believe me darling, heels do make a difference. Erotically, I mean."
Elodie knew what he implied. Indeed, on an earlier visit to the Tournelle's castle near Mondragon, where there was a slave for sale, she herself had seen their stark naked serving wenches, all pierced and chained, stepping delicately about on similarly lofty heels. Francis-Etienne's remark encouraged her to adopt the idea and, summoning the same cobbler she had her girls fitted with the same. After riding up from Nîmes and somewhat surprised to be confronted by a bunch of naked females with purple stripes across their bottoms and breasts, the man measured all the girls for the required mules and delivered them promptly enough; he had quite a store of them already in stock, since the style seemed to be all the rage in the more sophisticated, if still parochial, local centres of fashion. Claude-Eugène claimed that very similar models were to be seen in almost any brothel worth its name in Paris, particularly those establishments where slave flagellation and what was euphemistically called 'erotic torture' were practised. "And Claude-Eugène should know," Francis had added, having himself, Elodie suspected, participated.
On the two newcomers joining the throng, the shoemaker had again called to fit them out. Although Martine sulked, Joanne was thrilled, having rarely seen, leave alone worn, anything approaching a heeled shoe before; she saw how admirably they enhanced her and her colleagues' allure and added to their height and swagger. The inmates were disappointed when informed the footwear would only be worn during the ceremonial weekends or when summoned to the bedchamber for whipping and sex.
Gazing out at the clouds drifting over the Cevenol woods, Elodie remembered how pleased she had felt to think she was keeping abreast of Paris. Only Laurent, her male slave (reserved mainly for certain women guests), had to content himself with a pair of cross-gartered sandals. As compensation, Elodie had had Simone pierce his foreskin and clamp in a special ring, embedded firmly enough for the aging Comtesse Evelyn de la Burre-sage - another eager visitor invited for the coming weekend - to use as an anchor when a cock chain was hooked through it and tightened to the opposite wall. Being parallel with the cellar floor, it greatly enhanced Evelyn's enjoyment in whipping the youth's superb rod of stiff meat and, thereafter, having herself fucked, time and again, by the purple-veined, ringed phallus - the main object of her visiting Lassignac. The dangling adjunct chafed and delighted the old trout's vagina, numbed from constant use of a ribbed dildo in the lonely bed amid her sumptuous surroundings up there in the chestnut-dense hills.
Nervous at first, Elodie had had Simone try the novelty out right away in the fitting cellar once the ring had been clamped in place. Spread against the masonry by the four limb straps, his loins arching out to have the harnessed erection chained to the opposite wall, just as the de la Burre woman would want it, the youth jerked magnificently against the haul of the ring-and-chain while the sullen maid brought the cane down on the shaft. Elodie saw that her handsome youth of a slave needed no other stimulation than the successive tugs on the ringed prepuce and a dozen cuts of the slender Malacca rod to bring him off. His glutinous sperm had jetted out in thick ropes across the cell. The demonstration had won over Elodie completely. The appurtenance even seemed to intensify the ejaculation which was, in any event, always potent, especially after a whipping.
"Excellent, Simone. Thank you for helping," she remembered saying and asking the breathless, one and only male prisoner: "Are you pleased, slave?"
The peasant lad had given his owner a broad grin of contentment as Simone freed the shrinking shank. Surrounded by so many metal-encumbered females on stilts, the penis ring clearly endowed him with a new and special status. Moreover, the females loved it.
Still sprawled in her library chair. Elodie also recalled warning her servant. "That will do for now, woman. I don't want him spurting more than necessary. Let him recharge his balls until the Comtesse arrives. And see to it with Coursel that the girls don't play around with him in the cellar, and particularly that ravenous Bette. So chain him well away from them, next, say, to our psalm-reciting parpaillote. She won't dare touch him or let herself be touched. If there's any nonsense between them, use the whip. And talking of her, I don't expect the bitch will be with us much longer. I'm thinking of the convent."
Simone had nodded sagely. "Aye, Madame, that would help. She's stone lazy."
Having done her duty, the faithful servant had bowed her owner out of the holding and fitting cellar, admiring the gait, perfume and the rustle of the brocaded silks.

As now there were only three weeks before the next ceremony, Elodie had scores of preparations to attend to: advance orders had to be issued through Anthea to different levels and areas of the sprawling château. As the date approached the guests' quarters needed to be checked, passages swept, the kitchen fare verified ahead of time and the cellars freshly strewn with straw, the paraphernalia and whips greased. The cells would all need to be wiped clean of sweat, sperm and blood, freshly white-washed and perfumed with stimulating aromas. Candles had to be renewed. Pails of water were needed to revive slaves momentarily overwhelmed by the floggings, bouts of flesh torture and orgasms.
Yet, the Marquise dallied, relishing a further precious moment of peace. There was still time and before stirring herself, Elodie treated herself to one more recollection that had given her pleasure.
Although Francis-Etienne's proposals towards improving procedures were few, one had certainly invigorated life in the second courtyard. Just after New Year, he had instituted the 'punitive whippings'; these were carried out early on the Monday following a ceremonial weekend, when delinquent slaves - and sometimes servants and the castle's serfs - were led out, following condemnation, to be publicly flagellated naked. Sexual lethargy, disobedience, attempts to suborn servants, failure to report menstruation in time were among the crimes expiated at the so-called 'whipping gibbet'. The post stood on a broad timber platform in the centre of the desolate walled yard; it consisted of an iron brace projecting from its summit to which the culprit's arms were extended and chained, the ankles being wrenched back and bound behind the stake from which a thick rod bolted, midway on the upright, thrust deep into the anus, arching the body outwards, the pendant breasts dangling free. Elodie found the posture pleased her more discerning guests who made a point of staying over to watch the ordeals. In addition, the gibbet served also to mete out special punishment for slaves who had failed to satisfy a guest fully during a weekend; in such cases it was left to the visitor to decide on the type of scourge and number of lashes the miscreant merited. It was always Bouchard, the castle major-domo and flogger, who carried out the flagellations. Such cases were relatively rare but the fleshy, rump-branded Bette knew the place well; she had an unfortunate way of vexing guests with her brash look and crude behaviour. The guests had the post used regularly despite Elodie's fear that a slave might develop the ague while hanging naked for hours in the raw morning air. Slaves were becoming hard to replace in these days of revolt and military investment of the Cevennes. Moreover, an increasing number of females were seeking refuge abroad.
Thinking of Protestants, Elodie found herself again reminded of the problematic Martine, this psalm-singing parpaillote sluggard, and wondered if she should not spend an hour or two on the gibbet and be given, say, fifty lashes with the bull's pizzle by Bouchard over those hulking dugs. No, preferably the convent. With that constructive thought, the Marquise roused herself from the cobwebs of reverie. But the slut irritated her with her refusal to cooperate, her wailing to high heaven and fighting like one of those wild cats that roamed the Cevennes. As she was, the slag would hardly tempt a guest. If only Francis-Etienne would take more interest in running the place instead of just hunting, fucking and suddenly deciding, of all things, to whip the useless newcomer.
Languidly, Elodie roused herself from her ponderings and went to discuss with her faithful Bouchard how best to transport the slut to the holy Convent of the Annunciation, should the Mother Superior agree to take her in for training. Bouchard would also know what was happening out in the world at large and how the royal answer to this disturbing Protestant revolt in the Cevennes was progressing. That worried her more than Martine.

THREE
Still chained to the iron screen in the darkening chapel, as the nave filled with the entire staff attending vespers, Joanne summoned up what courage remained in her after the beating and sexual attacks on her naked body. Worse than the punishment was to be left exposed to the gaze of the congregation and forced to listen to the service; for the first time since her capture, she felt shame, her welted buttocks in full view as she hung bound on the chancel steps.
The end of vespers seemed never to come. When it did and the faithful had filed out in silence, she felt a gradual change taking place in the cords throttling her breasts and encircling the nipples. A moment later, pain throbbed in her extended labia. Drying under the heat of her burning flesh and that generated by the crowd now leaving the nave, the damp hemp was shrinking. The constriction of the rope was growing in intensity. Striving to keep her panic in check, she stared fixedly at the red glow of the sanctuary oil lamps, as a sharp agony commenced in the strangled extremities. Fright seizing her, she screamed hoarsely, the cries resounding through the empty edifice. "Help me! Please... release me! My flesh's tearing..." Only echoes replied as the contraction built up.
Slowly the grip and tension of the dehydrating hemp became unbearable. The turns round the root of the breasts bit in deeper, causing the bulges to swell even further, surging with thick violet veins, the skin turning dark. Looking nervously through the bars, she saw the nipples had also become purple and twice their normal length. The irrigation was gradually being halted; the terror of necrosis, as Elodie called it, paralysed her.
Her lungs yelled to the flickering lamps, to the altar, to the mute heraldic tombs in the side chapels, begging to be freed, only to sense her labia being drawn ever tauter round their bar. The slave became frantic. She was under a completely new torture.

The voice behind her quivering body was both acerbic and unctuous.
"As you see, procrastinating heretic," the Dominican observed, "this technique of conversion may be unhurried but is also painful. It is but a prelude to more compelling tortures we have in store for your iniquitous flesh. Although to see your rings ripped from your teats would provide me with pleasure, I want you whole, once you have abjured."
The torment mounting with each hateful phrase, the nude became demented until finally the hollow-cheeked face and tonsured skull appeared on the chancel side of the screen. A quill-sharpener slipped in between the cording and skin of the left breast and slit the hemp; then the knife freed the other bloated hunk of flesh, followed by the nipples and outer sex fronds. As the clogged circulation resumed its flow into the mammaries, the shock sent Joanne into a deeper circle of Hell; her cries, like those of a trapped animal, filled the clerestory while she slammed her head against the iron trellis. "You... you damned, unholy, depraved... loathsome... sodomising bastard... of papist offal...!" The howls dumbfounded even Anthea, watching from a bench in the south aisle.
"Control your perfidious tongue whore!" came the response, as the man drew close and dug his nails into a nipple. "Such language offends our household of the faithful."
The pain abating slowly, Joanne saw she was no longer alone with the ghoul. The valet's fetid odour reached her, along with his query, as he slapped the crimson rump.
"Is it yer Holiness's wish to 'ave the whore flogged some more? To the blood?"
"No, my man I am becoming wearied by the trollop's thick-headedness. No, for I believe the time has come to discuss carnal torture with Her Grace, your mistress. Take the fractious thing away from this sacred place. I shall see what measures she merits."
Coursel obeyed, disappointed at being deprived of whore flesh to lash. Apart from the routine morning floggings in the cellar, he had not had a female to beat all day.
He released the exhausted girl and dragged her by the hair out of the chapel.

When allowed to regain her feet. Joanne was led by her cunt chain back to the cellar to join the rest of the slaves. Despite the hours of suffering that had demoralised her, she was overjoyed to rejoin what she supposed were now to be her permanent companions. After a distressing descent, her extended clit still sore from Anthea's knotted whip and the pressure of the iron rods, she collapsed to be chained to her wall ring, surprised by the number of candles shedding an almost welcoming glow over the prison. For once, the light allowed her to discern how the huge cellar was laid out. Beyond the long palisade of bars dividing the space into two unequal parts, she could now study not only the configuration but also its contents; first, there was the area reserved for the row of nude slaves lounging on straw palliasses, each body attached to the rear wall by the usual long length of chain clipped to a ring in the neck strap, allowing some movement.
The greater portion of the windowless cavern beyond the barrier extended into the shadows but Joanne was able to distinguish some of its furnishings. As she peered into the chamber, her flesh crawled with horror, her vaginal muscle contracting with a bizarre clutch of dread and excitement as it always did when, masturbating in bed at home after an unsatisfactory copulation with her devoted but inept Jean-Jacques, her erotic dreams conjured up Turkish janissaries approaching her with whips and devices of sexual torment.
Beneath a profusion of heavy chains hanging from the vaulting, each terminating in an evil-looking iron hook, loomed a ponderous wooden cross in the form of an X, bristling with honed spikes, a roughly stitched, leather-bound phallus rearing from its crux. To the right, just visible, stood a tall structure, resembling the frame of an empty doorway mounted on a platform, the crosspieces at its summit and centre equipped with chains and straps - the infamous breast bench her colleagues had mentioned earlier designed to throttle female udders for whipping and worse. Beyond, she discerned a chassis, bolted upright to the whitewashed wall, and again she froze: the horizontal bars were ladened with an array of whips, riding crops, quirts, sagging hoods of leather and bewildering rows of instruments and tackle. The gloom beyond prevented her from distinguishing the rest of the contraptions; each item, she guessed, constituted a further invention destined to inflict pain through flagellation; she could already visualise her slender body writhing helplessly but, she knew, only too willingly under the scourge. Uncontrollably, her sex began again to liquefy and throb, her nipples stiffening under the weight of the rings. Reclining to nurse her whipped buttocks and breasts, she heard the valet's parting remark.
"Thou'll like enough, slut, be called ter that there grand bedchamber anon, along wiv yer lousy yokemate over yonder," Coursel warned her, motioning down the slave line to Martine's curled up body. Joanne saw the useless youngster was shaking with sobs. "So keep yerself awake and wet, see?" Then the gate clanged. The brute locked it and left.
The chatter had subsided at Joanne's entry and all eyes were on her as she felt for traces of blood on her raw buttocks, ensuring they lay clear of the prickling straw. Trying to smile at her new colleagues, she glanced down the line of naked bodies at Martine. Indeed she had reason to blubber; Joanne recalled vividly the handsome Marquis's attack on the abject creature, the deflowering and the accompanying screams. She would not last long if she continued to resist. In one way, Joanne admired her stubborn resistance but what was the point? She would simply have to conform, suffer and, if possible, try to enjoy both whip and sex. Otherwise... Joanne shuddered to think what would happen to her. Life as a parpaillote prisoner in the hellish Tour de Constance for probably years on end could hardly be more pleasant. After all, at this Lassignac place one did get fucked. Somehow the poor youngster had to learn. Joanne noticed she at least had a dildo plugged into her rear, as she herself had endured. That was a start, along with the loss of her virginity. Although Joanne had enough to contend with on her own account, she tried hard to sympathise with her partner-in-heresy. As to the others, destitute prostitutes and starving serfs, they were nothing more than flogging chattel - sex meat, probably by now devoid of faith, religion and hope, if they had ever had known such luxuries. In any event, the bodies lolling there on their palliasses did not look particularly righteous.
Joanne noticed the male chained next to the snivelling wretch. He was not unattractive and maybe could help Martine over the hill into docile acquiescence. Then a redhead, who was no spring chicken, greeted her:
"Heavenly saints above, they've really made a mess of your lovely behind! And so early in the game!" Following Joanne's eyes, she added: "By the way, they've decided to have your little fatty of a friend - she is your friend, isn't she? - comfortably chained up over there, next to Laurent, instead of next to Therèse or Bette, who'll get her to kiss and suck them all night long. Oh, of course, you don't know us, do you? Well, tell us your names and I'll introduce us lot to you, for what we're worth. I'm called Mariette and I've been here nearly a year now. So I'm used to the routine. There are far worse places, you know."
Joanne nodded and thought of the Tour de Constance. Then she gave the group Martine's name and her own and left it at that.
The attractive Mariette, clearly the senior - she said she was thirty but looked a great deal more - gestured to a slender female playing with her sex rings. Joanne had noticed that, apart from the youth, all seemed to have been pierced and encumbered with the same number of flesh rings as Martine and herself. Strangely the fact reassured her.
"That's Isabelle, a favourite of sorts with the Marquise. She doesn't have to wait for a blue moon to be called up to the great bedroom. She comes back in a hell of a mess but just loves it, don't you, Isa? She can take fifty lashes from a guest and still spill her juice four or five times."
The slinky, boyish body turned to offer the newcomer an enticing, lascivious smile between dimpled cheeks. Somewhere in her secret, erotic depths, Joanne felt a jolt of desire; gazing at the yellowing bruises on the girl's small breasts, her own tits almost portentous in comparison, she found her breath shortening. The slave's vulva just visible among the rings looked neat and succulent. After tasting Anthea's unappetising slot, Joanne looked forward to something more inviting. Furthermore this Isabelle had a sensuous mouth that probably could do justice to a newcomer's crotch, still aching from the whip and the Dominican's intrusion. The salacious and probably rash question on the tip of Joanne's tongue - which she wished was already flicking Isa's clit - was altogether too audacious and certainty premature; time would tell who in the cellar sucked whom.
What Joanne wanted to know was what happened in the 'great bedroom', wherever that Promised Land might lie. But, for the moment and as far as the neck chains allowed, the cellar seemed to offer ample scope for lesbian recreation - and there was even a male cock available - this side of the bars; the terrifying area beyond being another matter.
The chance at long last to talk exhilarated Joanne but she did not wish to interrupt Mariette, who went on down the line. "That's Dalinde." Apparently a girl from Ales who, to eke out a living had descended into whoredom when her man had been impressed into the royal forces, given a pair of boots and a cutlass, and marched off to fight the ludicrous battles of the Spanish Succession. She gave Dalinde a friendly smile. She seemed to be the sort of girl who could teach her things.
"And this tart's called Louise," Mariette went on. "Just loves the whip and a good fuck."
A dark-eyed slut of around twenty-five spread out her long legs to show the marks over her inner thighs, just below the ringed sex. Then came Bette, plump and gay as a chaffinch. "I'm the only one who's been branded for disobedience - at least so far!" she informed the newcomer, with a mischievous look and displayed the sombre, purple mark on her whipped buttock; the letter L had been burned firmly into the cambered flesh. Joanne shuddered, horrified by the depth of the scar staring out at her. No doubt L signified Lassignac. The young bitch seemed proud of what her unruly behaviour had earned her.
"Why that?" Joanne murmured, at which the chestnut-haired slut laughed.
"Oh, just because I tried to escape last Lent. I'd had enough of this bloody place. They caught me on the ramparts and flogged me almost to death. Then I got branded by Brissac, the smith, in front of the whole damn place and the bloody guests. I wouldn't try making a getaway, if I were you, poppet, unless you can change into a starling or squeeze into an empty milk churn. Anyway, I was put on the cross and they branded me like a fuckin' heifer. It's the only time I fainted, lovey. An iron really sizzles into your flesh..."
The remark sank deep into Joanne's brain deeper than a brand, She was learning.
No one introduced the youth at the end of the line. "He'll fuck you whenever you're in need, darling," Mariette muttered. "We tend to steer clear of him and anyway we get enough cock as it is."
The sixth prisoner Therèse, the purported lesbian, got scant attention also. She looked exhausted and had turned away from the group. Nevertheless Mariette did pronounce her name. "Oh, yes, that's Therèse over there," she observed. "She's just had a training séance with Bouchard - he's the torturer, by the way. I think he shoved the bodkins through her tits. That's one of his specialities and guests go for breast needling in a big way. She's fairly new you see - like you two - and has to learn. She tends to scream now, even if you touch her. Got chained to the spiked grid, as you'll be one of these nights. That fat parasite friend of yours over there should watch her tits."
"And this Bouchard?" Joanne inquired; hoping she was not over-tasking her new helpful colleagues, "is it true what you said? He really tortures us?"
The beautiful novice felt another thrill ripple through her and, despite the slaves around her she began to ooze. To be tortured naked by someone like this grim Bouchard fellow they were mentioning recalled some of the more unusual fantasies she treated herself to when frigging in bed next to her snoring husband. But that was before her capture.
"Oh, Bouchard," the dark-maned Louise answered. "He's rather a peach, with a fine length of hard cock you don't forget! Yes he's the major-domo and in charge of the torture cells. Wait till you're spread and chained over the trestle with him getting the flesh bodkins - they're silver needles - ready for the guests to stick through your really sensitive parts! He's something, believe me! The cells for sex torture, by the way, are down there." She motioned beyond the iron bars towards a carved doorway to the left of the cellar. "Master Bouchard certainly knows the ropes, as they say on the galleys. Someone to be avoided, if you can. But all the same, if a guest wants you down there, you've got to go and then you're under Bouchard's supervision for the night. I suppose," she added encouragingly, "you're used to having needles driven through your tits. If not, you'd better train yourself up. There's a whole heap of bodkins over there in the alcove, if you want us to give you a spot of practice." Mariette gestured to Louise to ease up but the sultry one was in her stride. "When they take you down there and along the long passage, you can hardly walk with your mass of chains, straps and flesh weights. So try to crawl, if they'll let you. They enjoy seeing you act like an animal. Naturally, you're whipped all the way along, to remind you to look as if you've been counting the days waiting for a lesson in needlecraft."
The description raised a titter among the slaves, followed by silence.
The newcomer felt her head swimming. She felt tempted to ask scores of questions about the physical treatment mere novices like herself could expect but confined herself to one. "What's needling like? I've never had anything pushed into my breasts or anywhere else for that matter." Her voice trembled, her hands cupping her swollen breasts.
"Never?" Bette stared incredulously. "Well, you've got a thrill coming. Especially when they shove them straight into the nipple vent of your boobs. Of course, it gets scary when they start on your extended cunt frills. You mean you've never had that?"
Joanne shook her head, feeling very much an amateur. If the prospect both excited and scared her, she shuddered to think how Martine, with her outsized udders, was going to react, were she to be skewered. Fortunately, the youngster was still too busy shedding tears to follow the conversation. "One more thing, if I may," she managed to ask, continuing to use the local dialect rather than her Calvinist French. She made a gesture towards her sniffling colleague. "What happens if, say... one refuses to... cooperate?"
There was an almost embarrassed hush. It was Mariette who came to the rescue. "Well, that's never happened. We've all sort of grown used to life here, if you can call it that, and we try to enjoy it. I mean we're here as slaves to be used, just as you seem to have been. Were you flagellated by Coursel, our cock of the dunghill, or was it Elodie?"
"No, it was Anthea, it that's her name under the Dominican's supervision..."
After a moment of surprise, Mariette sympathised "Oh, you poor thing! That's real bad luck as an introduction to our happy home. You mean that fucking priest was there! Why, in whoredom's name?"
Joanne thought it best to tell them. "Well, we're parpaillots, you see. Calvinists and, since the Edict of Nantes was revoked, we need converting."
No one seemed to grasp the point. "So what?" Mariette protested. "You're just fuckin' sex slaves like us, no?"
"I suppose so but..."
Suddenly Martine let out a yell. "No we're not! We're of the Faith and won't ever abjure. You're all just a band of common whores wallowing in sex and whipping..."
Joanne recoiled at the outburst. But at least the parpaillote cat was out of the bag and the girls did not seem perturbed by the news. Nevertheless, she silently recited a psalm and prayed Martine would calm down. Luckily, both still seemed to be welcome.

"That makes no bloody difference here," Mariette confirmed. "But, Joanne, try and explain to your little friend here how she should play her cards. Because," she lowered her voice, "with a fat body like hers, she hasn't got many to play. She's in for trouble."
Deftly, Louise changed the subject. "Joanne, listen I'm dying to fuck with you, once you're settled in. I like the whorl of your navel and those areoles without even a single pimple on them. Jeez, with such a body, you're going to be in great demand, whether you're a Turk, Jewish or just a parpaillote. You would like me to suck you off, wouldn't you? All this talk bores me. Look, there's enough chain for you to come over to my pallet, without asking to be released. Here, if you want to be freed for sex, you have to ask Simone or Coursel to unhook you, as when you have to go to the latrine there in the alcove. They're fairly generous about releasing us for sex, especially if it's with them. Of course, you get beaten first but that sort of stirs one up, if you see what I mean."
Joanne was not really ready to wrap her thighs round Louise's - or even Isa's - head. "I'm waiting to be called to the bedroom apparently," she announced. "You heard the valet. Maybe we can make love later, when I'm more sure of myself." She reverted to the lofty subject of the ablution alcove. "What else happens there?" she asked, relieved, despite Martine's shriek, that the question of religious orthodoxy and heresy had raised not a single eyebrow among the slaves.
"That's where you're scrubbed down and prepared for ceremonial weekends, like the one we're heading for now. You know - flushed out clean as a whistle, powdered or oiled, depending on the guests, teats and labia rouged, clit firmed up and so on..."
Then Bette put in a word. "I know you've both been flogged but that sobbing sister of yours over there needs encouragement if she's going to survive. I mean the longer she fights, the worse it'll become. Do you want me to tell you what happens here when you protest as they hang you by the ankles in that shit hole of a drawing room upstairs, and you're surrounded by a gaggle of slobbering guests? Care to hear, you two?"
Joanne declined. She was alarmed by Martine's attitude. Despite the group's vague ripple of sympathy for her and, in a way, for her stubborn co-religionist, she had no wish to let Martine hear too much. Now it was each for herself. Joanne had undergone a violent flogging session, sex and pain at the rood screen as best she could and had stood up to it; Martine had had her share too and would just have to conform, keep the faith, recite her prayers to herself and hope for some miraculous relief, if not from heaven, then perhaps from some roving band of Cevenol brothers - who must surely know they had been carried off, not to the Tour de Constance but to a local stronghold where women were desecrated. Hope springs eternal. And Joanne left Martine to her grief and muttered psalms.
A moment later Mariette reverted to the valet's last remark before he left.
"You know, to be taken up to the Marquise's bedchamber - that's what Coursel said, wasn't it?" - she looked around and received nods - "when you're both still novices, is something! That's damn rare here. Even I've never been up there. Not sexy enough."
"Well, I have!" Therèse put in, coming alive. "And it's rather a privilege you know, Joanne."
The newcomer noticed the ironic grins on the line of faces and asked her to go on.
"Well, since you're new, Elodie examines you - all sorts of weird questions about how you feel when you're being nipple-tortured with tongs, whether you can orgasm without having your clit twisted and more of the same. Then he whips you, tied on her bed, and you make love, as it's called up there. Of course, if Anthea or the Marquis are around, it becomes quite a party. A free-for-all... a fracas. That's all there is to it." Joanne had hoped for a little more detail but the chatter was cut abruptly short by the entry of Coursel and the slatternly Simone. The slave cellar filled with tension.
The gate was thrown open, the two newcomers released and dragged out to have their wrists locked again to the neck band, ankles linked and the anal plug inserted and chained. Then the so-called 'control lead' - Joanne was learning the house vocabulary rapidly - was clipped to each slave's clit ring. Aware that inmates, according to Marlene, were permitted to speak to servants, Joanne summoned up her courage and risked a question. Her pluck astounded the others who, through bitter experience, had found it wiser in the presence of their gaolers, to keep their tongues still on all occasions, except when sucking a cock, licking a vulva or shrieking in pain. Or in the throes of orgasm.
"Where are you taking us, master?" the novice dared to ask, the voice trembling.
"Thou'll find out soon enough. So shut thy gob, scum, an' see thy cunt's runnin'. Now move!" With a wan smile from Joanne to her newfound colleagues and a tearful groan from Martine, the little cohort departed down the dark passage of fate.

The clamber up the spiral stairway proved pure agony, neither slave being yet used to the wicked strain on her clitoris. Since the blonde was first on the chain stretching directly from the man's fist, she received most of the sickening jerks as the prisoners turned sharp corners; the rest of the chain passed down between her cunt lips to hitch on to the younger slave's central ring and the slightest hesitation in the ascent on Martine's part provided both with excruciating pain. Each time she was lugged forward, Martine yelled hysterically as her unfledged, elfin-like stub elongated. It was as if the girl was already being chained and hung nude before masked, whip-wielding torturers... Had she dared, Joanne would have calmed her by confirming they were merely mounting to a noble lady's bedchamber but all she risked were a few warning glances over her shoulder. Finally reaching the hallway, the valet appeared to have had enough of the caterwauling; he turned and lashed Martine's thighs with his service whip until she quietened. Then the upward progression continued, into parts of the château naturally unknown to either, along hallways where they encountered scurrying domestics carrying trays of crockery and piles of bed linen and tablecloths. Going about their appointed duties, the servants paid scant attention to a couple of stark-naked females in chains, being escorted to some routine destination or other; such sights were frequent enough.
At one point, the newcomers encountered a startling spectacle, sufficient even to silence Martine. An unconscious nude slavegirl, grasped by the ankles, hung head down over a servant's back. Since the body, lavishly whipped, could not be one of the six down below, Joanne assumed it was that of the wife or mistress of one of Elodie's friends, breaking his journey with an overnight sojourn at the castle and use of its facilities.
Joanne was astonished by the lack of interest Martine's and her own nudity evoked. But she realised they were only slave meat being marched to some special site, most probably for punishment. At least they were not heading towards the grim torture cells.
As they traversed a corridor lined with stag and boar heads, fleetingly Joanne caught a glimpse through the high windows of the sunset over the mauve hills, almost free of snow, stretching down to the Mont Aigoual. Somewhere in these valleys lay the village of St André where her cousins had lived prier to its plunder and destruction by the brutal Cadets of the Cross and dragoons. On the night of the sixth of November, she recalled, nineteen men of the Faith had received life sentences and had been led off to the galleys, while eight women had been flogged and branded with the fleur de lys before being sent to moulder in convents as Repentant Daughters. The pastor had been hanged from an oak. As Joanne gazed sadly over the familiar landscape, she tried to imagine what was happening out there. Even the buzzards wheeled in liberty...
Coursel led them up a magnificent flight of stairs to halt before an ornate doorway. He knocked and drew the pair in after him. There he detached the leads and made the slaves kneel. The vast room - the dreaded bedchamber - had its long velvet curtains drawn to and glimmered in soft candlelight.
"Thighs apart, whores. Breasts out, damn you!" he muttered. The two obeyed. Before them sat the Marquise of Lassignac, regal and awesome. She nodded to the man who backed out, leaving the slaves facing their owner. The woman was superb in her powdered peruke, layers of silk millinery, bared shoulders and a beauty patch above the dimpled cheek. Precious rings flashed on the pale fingers in the wavering light.
In dismay Joanne saw her elegant owner was not alone. In the penumbra behind the throne stood Anthea, fully clothed for once; the revolting Simone, holding a coil of scarlet cords, had stationed herself by the great four-poster bed. The room seemed haunted, Joanne imagining the ghostly presence of bygone slaves shuffling and whispering among the shadows at the arrival of fresh victims.
"The Marquis will be here shortly," the Marquise's silver voice announced, "and together we shall decide on your fate. Meanwhile," Elodie turned to her companions, "it would be well to prepare them. Get the bodies suspended."
Immediately Anthea and Simone strode forward, seized the slaves and released the wrists. A minute later both nudes, a few steps apart, were teetering on tiptoe, their arms straining aloft from chains descending from a beam traversing the chamber. Joanne stared at the canopied bed, noticing the series of bondage rings set in the newels. In the frugal light she could see little else; if there were whipping stakes or trestles to stretch bodies for thrashing, they were lost in the obscurity.
"As you may have gleaned from the endless chatter in your dungeon," the powdered one announced, "we are preparing for the next gathering of our friends. The wait may prove tedious for newcomers like yourselves but the Marquis and I have to decide whether you are suitable to entertain such noble guests. If either or both of you qualify, I shall have you readied along with your colleagues. It not, we'll decide what to do with you."
At that moment the door was flung open and the Marquis entered, sweating from his evening ride and smelling strongly of horse and leather. After kissing his wife's hand, he strolled round Martine's hanging body, tapping the flanks with his crop and extending each breast by its ring, staring at the volume, elasticity and the hold of the metal in the swollen teats. The gloved palm roved slowly over the belly before grasping the rump flesh that bulged between the chains securing the anal plug to the rings in the splayed vulva. With a deprecating shrug, he stooped to probe into the yawning trench of mucous membrane.
Martine let out a shriek, twisting her torso and raising a stolid thigh as high as her ankle links allowed, in an attempt to counter the intrusion. The yell deafening her, Joanne winced at her colleague's rash skirmishing. The utterly miserable youngster began to weep uncontrollably, the huge breasts heaving with sobs. Joanne closed her eyes in despair; the stupid wench was simply jeopardising any hope of advancement to the status of the other slaves below. And also putting Joanne's future, for what it was worth, at stake - in both senses of the term. If only the girl would learn to control her tattered emotions.
The Marquis said nothing and turned to Joanne. The blonde beauty endured the inspection quietly, aware of the effect her sensational taut body was exerting on the handsome bearded man. She noticed how the erection bulged in his riding breeches.
"This one, at least," he remarked, glancing at his glove, wet from her preliminary down-flow, harbinger of the full glut to come, "seems to respond well, Elodie. She's awash already, even before seeing a penis or a whip. Highly promising, I'd say. I like the smooth areoles and rigid teats. She sports a fine clit, too. The navel's deep and deserves a ring. Yes," he mused, "the loins are splendid. A splendid arse, too, by all the saints! Again, Elodie, it's a pity she's been welted and marked like this already, but I suppose the weals will pale in time for your ceremonies. That's the damned Dominican's doing, I presume."
Elodie cast a sidelong glance at Anthea but said nothing. There was no call for comment for the damage was done. In Elodie's view, the lash marks made the beauty all the more erotic, inviting further and far more vicious treatment.
The scrutiny over, Francis-Etienne sat down next to Elodie to comment further.
"Depending on how she stands up to your dear friends' extravagant demands and implements, the blonde will certainly do," he concluded, gazing at the concave sweep of Joanne's belly descending from the jutting rib cage. The slave was truly stunning.
He paused and Joanne sensed what was coming; when it did, she felt both relieved and anguished, as the Marquis pointed to Martine. "Of course, Elodie sweet, you can't possibly risk offering this load of grease even gagged to someone like Evelyn de Burre, although she's even fatter! She'd get her quirt trapped under the slut's flabby dugs and then blame you for serving up an uncooked bloater, and Evelyn hates fish. No, this obese slut's a truly distressing sight. And incompetent too. She needs stiff training and have that blubber whipped off her. An hour's run daily behind Coursel's mare might help, some strict fasting and, let's say, a couple of floggings a day in the courtyard or in the beet field from Marie-Félice, preferably on a long lead so the slag can caper and sweat. That's my opinion. But after all, she's your slave like the others. What d'you think, treasure?"
Elodie smiled sweetly. "But Francis, I agree. Only we just don't have the time for that. The staff have so much on their hands as it is. Remember my suggestion of the other night?" The Marquis shook his head; Elodie was always making suggestions. "Well, I proposed we entrust the bitch to the convent. There, Mother Priscilla will ensure she's thinned down. After all, she's done the like so admirably in the past. You remember that lazy slug, Fenella?"
"Should I, sweet? You know I can't remember their names and you do tend to get through quite a number. But as to this mass of offal, I would agree. Although it's all the same to me. Do what you wish. Send the load of fat down to the convent without more ado. Oh, yes now I do recall Vrenolla or whatever her name was. Yes, they certainly ground down that lethargic tart."
"I'm glad you agree, Francis. I'll have Coursel take the idle slag down tomorrow." Her husband gave a vague nod. His eyes were riveted on Joanne's nakedness and the rise and fall of the magnificently moulded breasts. Although clearly his penis could have done with an airing, he kept it penned up. Again he studied Joanne's chained buttocks.
"This Anselme of ours, you know, has to be curbed, Elodie," he said. "Just because they're heretics doesn't give him a free hand whenever it tempts him. After all, abjuration, conversion or whatever he seeks is not our affair. They're your slaves, not his."
"I'm afraid our holy man did overstep his prerogatives the other day, Francis. Except that our darling Anthea did the actual whipping in the chapel - pity you didn't attend Vespers because you'd have seen the result yourself. Can we prevent him from trying to convert an infidel, my love? I mean, that's his duty."
"Maybe But I don't want any more of it." He turned to the slightly uncomfortable Anthea. "Well you apparently enjoyed yourself. Or am I wrong?"
"Oh, yes, thank you, sire. I did." The reply was frank. "You see, Dom Anselme ordered me to do it. And my, did she yell her head off! She seems to like the whip."
"I see. Well, in future, if that meddling priest gives you an order again, you'll have it confirmed by me or Elodie. I trust that is clear. It's fortunate for you that some of Elodie's guests don't object to being offered welted flesh."
The Marquise was about to object to curtailing Anthea's ready access to pleasure when the girl gave a shrug. She could not care a shoe buckle who gave the orders as long as she could use her six-thong freely. And have the slave lick her off.
For what seemed an eternity, the pair of nude slaves continued to hang before their owners, expecting the riding crop at any moment. Yet nothing happened. Side by side, the two nobles continued to converse in low tones, Francis-Etienne only half-listening as he pondered whether, once the fate of the flabby Martine was settled, to take Elodie to bed or use the insolent Anthea who, despite her lesbian proclivities, sucked cock like a famished vampire. Or preferably, return to the stables to see his mare dressed and fed. He preferred horses to humans. But there was this beautiful blonde slave hanging there and perhaps... No, that would have to wait. "I'm sorry, love, what were you saying?" he apologised, still staring at the gleaming crimson triangles of vaginal flesh chained back on the thighs by the rings and chairs leading to the rear dildo. He rather envied the Dominican who, without leave, had felt those labia slushing up and down his unruly cock.
The Marquise had crossed to the abject Martine to lift the tear-stained face.
"Yes, you useless slut, we've seen quite enough of you. We freed you of your stupid virginity and all you do is sulk. Hopefully, the next time we meet, you'll be a little more appetising." Then she gave the order everyone had anticipated.
"Lower this nauseating lump of obscenity, Simone, and get your Coursel to cart it down to our gracious Mother Superior before nightfall tomorrow. I've already informed her. You can chain the slug to the harrow behind the gelding for the journey." The servant began to lower the sufferer. "And strap those leather cones over those obscene dugs - you know, the ones with internal spikes our resourceful blacksmith made - and use the iron chastity belt. It wouldn't do to shock whichever worthy nun's on duty at the convent portal. And you can leave the stopple in the rear, Simone. It'll serve to keep the nerves alert until our holy and dutiful Mother Priscilla receives heavenly guidance on how best to proceed."
"The Mother Superior will know without guidance, your Grace," came the blunt reply, as Martine's body crumpled, whimpering, to the carpet and the maid tugged on the silken bell cord to summon her husband. For nothing in the world - not even a visit to Versailles - would she care to be in this wretched girl's skin, destined for the Convent of the Annunciation. The slob would not be the first nor the last to shed blood down there.
Having heard the august orders while listening behind the door, the valet promptly dragged the redundant slave out by the legs. It would take little time to prepare for the twilight journey the following evening through the gorse.
Although grieving for her companion of the Faith, Joanne felt strangely relieved she was gone. A further sign from Elodie then brought Joanne in turn to the floor where, instead of being returned to the cellar, she knelt where she was, there in the centre of the candlelit bedchamber amid the sumptuous furnishings and tapestries. Unsure as to what they were about to do to her, she felt her vagina clench with a tremor of excitement.
To her astonishment, she saw Elodie being helped to disrobe by Anthea and Simone, while the Marquis stripped down to his riding breeches, undid his crotch flap and brought out the one cock Joanne genuinely lusted after among the many at hand in the castle. Just as swiftly, Anthea stepped out of her crinolines, watching the Marquise slide naked on to the silken sheets of the great bed to lie back and spread her legs wide. In turn, the deadly lesbian vixen crawled up to the headboard, her back to the room, to straddle the noble head that had lost its wig. Before being smothered, Elodie gave Simone a final, breathless order. "Remove that slave's bung and on to the bed with her, head between my thighs."
Bewildered, sweating with excitement and trepidation, Joanne rose to her feet, bending over for the serving woman to free the chains of the dildo. Blissful reprieve came to her as the ribbed cudgel voided her rectum with a jerk, a scarlet roll of flesh accompanying the extraction. For a moment, the sphincter remained agape before closing as Simone lubricated the hole. Containing her joy, Joanne stared at the Marquis's hard cock.
"Up with you, my beauty, and let's have you crouched before your mistress!" It was now he who was giving the orders, the passing compliment taking Joanne aback, as did the spirited, almost jovial, slap planted on the buttocks. "And get to work on that insatiable twat of hers. Just lick smoothly and then bite into it. You'll see how she comes! Only whipping a hog-tied slave excites her more." A pause. "And relax your arsehole, Joanne."
Noting her name and elated to be rid of the cudgel behind, the slavegirl did as she was told, mounting the bed to bend over her owner's perfumed, auburn slit. For a delirious moment, Joanne believed the Marquis was about to thrash her rounded rump to prepare her for sodomy; but, with a sidelong glance, she saw him slicking his foreskin clear of the purple cock bulb and mounting the bed. As the feather mattress sagged under his weight, she was grateful for the anal greasing. The dildo was about to be substituted by something just as copious, if more thrilling and certainly more humane.
Timidly she splayed Elodie's coral-tinted labia with her freed hands - yet another concession she could hardly believe - and dutifully lapped from the perineum up to Elodie's throbbing clitoris; the prong rivalled her own in size and she could feel it pulsing against her tongue. As she sucked in the peak of pale gristle, Joanne could just see between Anthea's thighs Elodie's mouth opening to receive the bitch's flaccid fronds that recalled only too well the ordeal in the chapel. Leaning towards the bedhead, the lascivious bitch slapped her slimy crotch on to Elodie's face, the trim buttocks parting to disclose her pursed sphincter; strangely, it reminded Joanne of a pink rosebud about to burgeon on the wall of her cottage at home. She often made such analogies when excited. She even pictured her humble dwelling, probably by now, following the arrest, in ruins, razed to the ground by the dragoons... Abruptly, her whole being reverted to where she was, crouching, licking a Marquise's sex and about to be sodomised by a Marquis of France. At long last.
Francis-Etienne prized open her rump cleft with the thumb of one hand, the other guiding the rigid shaft into the anus, that neglected porthole and the uncharted estuary beyond, awaiting discovery. Secretly, she wished the butt had been flogged to ready her as she had hoped, but felt thankful her handsome master did not wrench on the rings in her still sensitive sex or nipples as the foul Dominican had done in the chapel, almost ripping the metal out of the piercings. Compared with Dom Anselme's pillaging, the Marquis's solid shaft, aided by Simone's anal greasing, entered almost deliciously. To Joanne, it was the nearest thing to heaven. If such formed part of sex slavery, she was ready, unlike the obtuse Martine, to be gouged like this morning, noon and night. But not - and there she agreed with her sister captive - at Anselme's price. Abasement, yes. Abjuration, never.
"Reach further forward now and then, Joanne," came the voice behind her, "and tongue our sweet - if selfish - Anthea's rear bud too. She adores that. Elodie will take care of herself meanwhile. She frigs herself expertly. And relax," he repeated, "so that you can be well sodomised, Joanne." The slave could again barely trust her ears; the Marquis was using her name again as mundanely as he was using her anus. "That's it. Slacken on each thrust and tighten on the outward pull. Simone's teat-grease from the milking sheds will help." Joanne agreed. She could readily appreciate the difference between the long, smooth slide of her owner's truncheon in and out of her and the earlier clerical ploughing her reluctant passage had endured. She hoped the piston's ramming into her would never cease as she strove to content the two erotic zones she was privileged to service. Elodie's groans began soon enough as she writhed beneath her, the bitch, Anthea, moaning above.
"Now you can let Elodie fend for herself, Joanne," Francis-Etienne muttered. "She's well launched. Wedge a finger up her anus, a thumb in her vagina and squeeze. Use the other hand on your cunt," Gratefully, she did so, glad to be freed from licking Anthea.
The foursome rocked amid the slushings and sighs, Anthea climaxing first with a yell, convulsing over her mistress's face while Joanne held back, sucking Elodie's rigid stub of clit meat until, biting the thing, she sent its owner off into a private interstellar void.
Suddenly, the slavegirl felt the scalding spunk splatter somewhere high up in her bowels and let herself go. Crushing her stem, she spent prodigiously, daring to fill the silken canopy and then the room itself with bleatings, like a lost ewe on the Cevenol moors. Her timidity gone, she collapsed, panting for breath, over her mistress's juddering body. Never had Joanne come so completely - even when being tortured in her Turkish harem dreams, her teats nailed to a flogging stake. She loved this highborn prick in her.
Only vaguely was she aware of the Marquis milking what remained in his wilting shaft into her glutted behind, and even less clear, as she tried to stall further orgasms mounting in her, was Elodie's sudden slithering off the sheets and leaving the soaking bed.
When the inevitable second spasm destroyed her, Joanne prayed she would be allowed to savour the aftermath in the luxury of the silken heat and not be kicked to floor by Anthea for Simone to haul her back to that ghastly cellar. But Anthea had drifted into another world and the servant seemed to be helping her mistress into a flowing kimono. Then Joanne felt the great bed rise as the Marquis pulled out, leaving her rectum to gape like the mouth of a landed trout. What then took place was almost as thrilling as her climaxes. Anthea's small hand reached down to thread a finger through Joanne's left nipple ring. She drew her up into her arms! The first time since her imprisonment. Anthea's kisses startled her at first, just as did the hot, pointed breasts against her own. Joanne's contented body floated in a glow of pure sexual solace, the sort she had only known when, half-way into sleep at home, she would picture herself chained to a post in a densely crowded square, being flagellated and fucked by that same masked, cock-hard torturer who was always there in her dreams, always using her.
With Anthea's lips on her own Joanne's gorgeous corpse drifted off into slumber.
It was early morning when Joanne awoke, to the cries of the swallows already streaking through the crystal-bright air beyond the casements. The sun had just risen over the Corniche of the Cevennes to brighten the room. Joanne's sex rings clinked as she rose on her elbow in the tangle of sheets, dark with discharges and sweat. Her two owners had left. But, staring at her, Anthea lay reclining on the pillows. She deigned to give the prisoner a thin smile. "You did well for a beginner." The forget-me-not eyes seemed to dismantle the slavegirl's soul - if she still possessed one. Then they flashed with the habitual look of evil. "Down to the yard for your whipping. They're about to commence."
"But why mistress? Have I offended? May I ask if this is an order from the Marquis or Marquise?" Joanne was startled at her own daring as the malefic beauty eyed her.
"Off with you, parpaillote whore!" came the order again. "Who do you think you are, to speak without permission? And with insolence too! You may have passed your test to participate in the coming ceremonies but you're still trash here, a depraved slut of a prisoner, even if we do allow your filthy cunt to spasm. You'll pay for those remarks, you slut! So, to the yard, do you hear me? Down you go, lascivious lickspittle of a peasant!"
Speechless, Joanne had her wrists attached by the ubiquitous Simone who never seemed to sleep. Clipping the lead chain to the clit ring, the servant led her down to the still sunless courtyard where Bouchard was dealing with the day's delinquents. A whey-faced kitchen scullion was being lowered from the punishment gallows, her paltry breasts and belly dark with welts. Crying pitifully, the wretched menial was left at the foot of the platform to recover as Marie-Félice dragged forward a second nude and stripped her for flogging; the begrimed serf from the castle's pig farm wept piteously as in turn she was chained and suspended, arse-plugged, under the bar. No one seemed to know the offender's crime. Nor care. The slut was just flesh that required the scourge.
Abruptly, Joanne realised a third victim standing next to her, was Bette, heavily chained and smirking at her. Joanne might have identified the saucy bitch by the brand mark on the rump but was too tense to notice anything that was not on the platform.
"Did you enjoy your night?" the girl simpered. "Some whores get all the fun."
Joanne looked away from the slut. To find herself at the level of serfs and this cheap, branded whore with a foul mouth appalled her. As she turned, she saw that the doors of the archway on the far side of the yard, leading to the stables, stood open, a rare phenomenon that could well entice a slave to escape, a fatal temptation. (Mariette had recounted to Joanne the only attempt, bar Bette's: a girl named Christelle had been caught after making a dash for the fields beyond and, captured, had been flagellated senseless by Bouchard and sold off to a Toulon brothel where clients paid well to torture young girls.)
Joanne suddenly saw the Marquis. Framed against the sun beyond the archway, he was mounted on his piebald mare, as if about to ride out to hunt boar. The bearded figure spurred his steed back into the courtyard, yelling at the major-domo and Marie-Félice.

"What in the name of Satan's merde is the meaning of this? Who sent that blonde slave here, pray? This'll cost you dearly. Who ordered this? Answer me, you bastards!"
His whip dripping with blood and sweat, Bouchard left it to Marie-Félice to reply. "Mistress Anthea, your Grace. Thirty lashes, sire, over the breasts. For insolence sire."
"For what?" came the roar. "That woman has no damned right to condemn anyone to the whip. Simone, you daughter of dirt," he bellowed, "take that girl back inside."
The drab woman turned ashen with terror, her greasy hand clasped to her mouth. "Where... where to, an' it please yer Grace?" she asked in dialect. "The slave cellar?"
With a sharp tug on the snaffle, the infuriated Marquis made his hunter rear. "What do you mean, the cellar, you papless sow? Take her to the west wing, lock her in the farthest guest chamber and bring me the key." Dismounting he brought his crop across Simone's ear. "And send that Anthea to me in the armoury. You, Bouchard, get rid of these trollops and that branded drab yonder. Away with the blonde! And stable my mare."
"But, your Grace," Bouchard spluttered, "I've still these two sluts to flog and..."
"Get them out of my sight, fellow!" The fury surged anew. "Enough ill for today."
In the uproar, the two pitiful chattel serfs were released. Grasping their discarded rags, they fled to the gate while Simone hauled a bewildered Bette back to the keep.
A while after, equally perplexed, Joanne found herself in a tranquil, well-appointed guest room. The barred lancet gave out over the wind-swept hills and above, over the troubled Cevennes, sailed the beautiful scudding clouds. She considered herself fortunate, for she had gathered from the cellar gossip that Bouchard's scourge could braid a girl's rump and dangling breasts to an extent that rendered her useless for close on a week.
Wondering what would be said in the interview in the armoury, wherever that lay, Joanne could discover no wellspring of sympathy brimming over in her heart for Anthea.
White with rage, the Marquis strode through the south wing towards the armoury.

FOUR
The miserable Martine had to wait until evening fell the following day before she was lugged out from the cellar where she had received little comfort from her colleagues. Coursel hastened her brutally along with his service whip, driving her up to the main courtyard and across the drawbridge. There Simone stood waiting alongside the horse-drawn farm harrow harnessed slanting to the mare's croup. It was on this iron grid that the slave was to be transported to the virtuous Convent of the Annunciation. With barely a shred of courage left, Martine felt little more than a corpse, bereft of will. But not entirely. When she saw the harrow, she summoned up enough energy to fight the valet and his wife as they bound the hideous, spike-loaded cones over her unwieldy breasts and clamped the brass chastity belt on to the vulva, wrenching vindictively on the straps. With the buckles tightened to the last hole, she was spread-eagled over the rusty gridiron, the rows of teeth spearing her wetted thighs, rump and back; Simone took pleasure in chaining the limbs rigid to the four corners. The slave gazed up through her tears at the darkening sky as the last birds made for their warm nests. She muttered a prayer, only to be silenced with a farewell lash from Simone relieved to see the pigheaded heretic leave. Now it would be for the women in that so-called convent, the subject of so many rumours, to deal with the intractable bitch. And what, incidentally, the convent did not know was that she was unable to take a thrashing, leave alone a cock, decently. They down there would see to ensuring she learnt.
As the valet heaved himself into the saddle, Martine recalled that frightful night of capture and beatings, weeks before. For this second voyage, at least Coursel had not flogged her, seeming content to let her lie nude and neglected under the uncomplaining stars. He knew how the sex shields hurt, Martine quickly discovering it too; yet she endured it. With her sex organs concealed, at least she would not shock the chaste, saintly sisters of mercy to whom she was destined.
The hideous journey commenced with a jerk, driving the iron prongs into her rear. Whatever awaited her at the end of the trail, it could not be worse than the château with its chains and leathers. Martine felt relieved to be out of their reach - at least for a while. Never had she been more mistaken.
In fact, she did recall the Dominican's remark, overheard the previous evening while she was being led blindfolded to have her whipped breasts seen to, following a flagellation after having been taken from the bedchamber. "A short month down there should suffice to bring our beefy slut to heel and possibly conversion, and I shall assist our diligent Mother Priscilla in every way possible."
The thought of being interrogated again, with a view to abjuring, scared Martine more than ever, now that she was helpless on the wrought iron and nearing her limit. Desperately trying to keep one of the sharper spikes from piercing her anus she recalled sadly how at home some months back she had declined to join a little group of the faithful about to set out along the perilous path that led to Geneva. She had preferred to remain with her Cevenol sisters. Now, outstretched naked on a harrow in the gathering cold of night she felt, in retrospect her decision may have been unfortunate, to say the least...
Darkness closed in slowly. Although the Convent lay downhill from Lassignac and much of the snow had begun to melt, the going was hard, particularly when the harrow lurched, spearing flesh that had been congealed by the frigid air. Gradually her courage dwindled, her sobs mounting into the branches of the dwarf oaks, ghostly sentinels along the way. Although there were no dwellings between Lassignac and the nunnery to hear the prayers and wailings, Coursel finally halted the mare with a curse and dismounted.
"Thou'll wake the dead with thy damn clamourin', whore! Save thy breath for the nuns." He took a length of soiled rag from his pocket and thrust it into the gullet, lashing the belly twice with his horsewhip, raising further dark weals. "Thou'll need all the breath in thee when inside them walls So waste not thy wind."
The burden recommenced its descent into the valley in the forest's gloom. The owls' hooting and the jeering of nightjars told the suffering Martine it was growing late. She wandered how much longer she could endure the cold and galling iron teeth in her back without passing out. Worse still, the spikes in the crotch belt had become entangled among the flesh rings and were rasping her labia. Moreover each jolt seemed to tighten the breast cones, urging the barbs to prick a fraction deeper into the taut skin and bulging teats.
The convent walls loomed up very suddenly. From where the grid had halted beyond the last clumps of boxwood, the prisoner could just make out the arched portal rearing in the masonry; its massiveness contrasted ominously with the sprinkling of stars above, brittle and cold. She sensed Coursel releasing her rigid limbs and prising the rag out of the throat. "On thy feet, bitch, and kneel before that there door."
Too exhausted to utter a word, Martine struggled off the grid to have her wrists clipped again to the nape, the lead chain secured to a ring in the neck band, mercifully not to her still concealed clit ring. Shivering on her knees before the ivy-covered lintel, she watched the valet tug on a rod descending alongside the entry. Far away within the edifice a bell pealed lugubriously like a death knell as the two figures waited. "Get thy thighs parted, slut," her gaoler muttered, tapping the frozen rump. "Shove out them milk churns on thy chest. I'll wager they've never seen a mighty load of dug meat like thine."
A barred judas opened in the left-hand door with a grating squeak for a few, terse words exchanged. The key turned in the postern to reveal an elderly coifed nun holding a lantern, the dim glow flickering over the crouching form.
"About time, man." The voice, as frosty as the surrounding grass, sounded callous.
"Bring the slattern in and be off with you. Our gracious Mother Priscilla has been kept waiting for an unconscionable time and is far from content. But better late than never."
The half-frozen body struggled to its feet. Crossing the sacred threshold, Martine heard the door slam to behind her. She had expected the valet to recuperate the lethal flesh shields and slave-leash but he simply handed her over and the nun towed the newcomer along a broad cloister flanking the building itself. Crossing a sinister enclosed quadrangle, Martine glimpsed the nun's candle flame flicker on shards of broken glass and jagged earthenware cemented into the crest of the wall; that put pay to any hope of scaling the stone. And anyway, her arms were chained. Within, the corridors were even more sombre and silent than those at Lassignac, the parsimony of candles coinciding with the lack of dialogue. The only sound came from the nun's sandals scuffing on the flagstones. Halted before an oaken door the girl's heartbeat quickened, a fresh sheath of goose flesh encasing her trembling nakedness.
"Kneel and wait," Martine was told, the slave-chain being thrust between her teeth, the jaws still rigid from the gagging. Like an aspen quivering before the onset of a storm she watched the crone knock on the panelling, enter and close the door behind her. After an age of silent terror the figure reappeared to retrieve the links.
"When six paces away from our magnanimous Mother superior," came the hushed order, "you will prostrate yourself before her belly down, face against the tiles. You may not speak unless told to. Now, slut follow me on your knees."
The room stretched into darkness fraught with an unbearable odour of incense and candle wax, that the parpaillote had learnt to loathe. Before her in a pool of light shed by a single candle sat a thin figure in black robes, the wimpled, starched coif winging about the head like a white bird about to settle, the silence broken only by the clicking of rosary beads threading through a thin, blue-veined hand on the lap. Elevated by the dais and high-backed throne, the woman seemed remote as if in another world. The parpaillote froze, this time not from the stone-splitting cold but from fear mingled with revulsion. There was a look of intransigence in the Superior's lidded eyes as Martine, thwarted by her locked wrists, managed to prostrate herself, a cheek against the cold paving, the odious spikes within her harnesses spearing even deeper. The elderly nun retired to the side as the sinister, ethereal figure spoke.
"You are expected in our midst, child. Our neighbour, the most dutiful Marquise de Vonnange-Lassignac - ably advised by her dedicated chaplain Dom Anselme, may the saints fortify him - has assigned you to our loving care since your conduct has fallen short of expectations. This is grave and we shall strive to help you to change your ways. Evidently you either do not understand or do not wish to conform. This is foolish and headstrong. Therefore we shall be obliged to prevail on you to make you regret your obstinacy. Your presence at her ladyship's château, as you may have gathered, has become something of a burden on her and those noble precincts. Hence your transfer to our humble nunnery where we have means to make you obey."
Drained of spirit, the nude shuddered, not daring to look up.
"I see that already you are no stranger to the whip," the sepulchral voice went on, the narrowed eyes scrutinising the welted flesh extended or the tiles. "However, here, if you persist in your perverse attitude - and indeed, I should mention, your heresy - you will have to contend with certain far more austere methods of persuasion than you have so far encountered. That is our duty here." The waxen face under the wimple turned to the nun. "Take the child to the preparation cell, Sister Véronique, and prepare her. Dom Anselme should be here by Compline, together with his young acolyte, Brother Christophe. They will join you for the initial questioning." As Sister Véronique bowed, ordering the newcomer to rise, the majestic reverend Mother added casually: "Remove those ugly iron bindings she's wearing, Sister. The breasts and groin must be free and fully accessible. So, air the crotch for it must be fetid after the journey down. As I believe she is flesh-ringed, see to it she is liberally oiled, the usual extremities well weighted to stimulate the nerves hidden under so much meat. I believe, in view of her corpulence, at least fifty lashes of welcome should suffice, Sister. As to her heresy, Dom Anselme will deal with that. You may proceed."
The nun genuflected again. Rising with difficulty, shaken by the welcome and the reference to her beliefs, Martine was hurried out along further echoing passages to a large whitewashed chamber where she was thrust unceremoniously against the wall to have her breast cups and chastity belt unbuckled and ripped away. The nude whimpered as the flesh was freed of the minute tines, leaving a rash of red specks and a few trickles of blood. As the huge mammaries swung free, the relief was bliss.
"Part the legs to open the vulva," the nun ordered, releasing the wrists. "Arms above the head. Higher than that! Stretch!" Teetering, Martine reached up to have the rear ring in her throat band attached to the masonry, her wrists to an even loftier hook. The robed figure then clipped weighted chains to the outer labial rings, dragging the cunt flesh downwards, similar loads elongating the nipple piercings into long slots. The slave hissed with pain, staring at the woman who merely nodded.
"So you're not used to flesh chains? They ready and excite you for the whip. And you'll be flagellated regularly until you're ready to graduate to the more sophisticated stages of your training. As you are new here, let me add that, if foolishly you resist in any way, you will be taken down the passage to what is know as the Sanctum of Sex Torture. Would you wish me to describe what that entails, child?" The throat tension denied even a shake of the head. Tears began to flow but Martine's vagina was arid, tense as a fist.
As the woman lit the wick of another candle placed on the nearby table, Martine caught her breath at the array of instruments and scourges upon it. Then the door closed behind Sister Véronique and a further shock lay in store for the prisoner. The glimmer revealed she was not alone in her predicament.
Against the far wall, at first barely distinguishable, a second young female stood shackled in very much the same posture. Also nipple-naked, the body was sleek, sensuous and welted with purple lash marks left by what Martine guessed must have been a very recent and thorough thrashing. The girl's sapphire eyes glinted as they wandered slowly over the other's rich reserves of flogging meat. Martine at once noticed differences: not only was the nude devoid of flesh rings and weights but the pubic hump still retained its golden swathe of fleece, even if the head had been shaven clear. Moreover, the girl was bound to the wall with rope encircling the wrists and ankles - no sign of the leather straps as used at Lassignac. Wide-eyed, Martine returned the gaze of the resplendent prisoner, astonished the girl could marshal a smile.
"I'm glad to have company," the bald one said softly. The accent was not local or even Cevenol; it was almost refined. "It's been lonely here. Where are you from?"
Martine was too cautious to answer, the whipped beauty being possibly a member of the sisterhood, a conventual or a postulant for entry into the convent and in any event a potential enemy - she was certainly not an ordinary sex slave. Yet the languid beauty had been well flagellated and shared her cell.
"I'm a victim of my religion," Martine finally decided to admit. "And the convent's meant to try to convert me, Why are you here?" she returned the question.
"Oh, me - I'm under forced training here to prepare me for sale to some noble house or other as a special type of concubine. You know, the sort that gets whipped and sexually tormented in stately mansions. But the other night I was caught making love with a junior Sister. There are strict rules here and they pretend not to approve of that, you see. And so, I have to pay for it, once again. Sister Madeleine usually gets away with sleeping with trainees like me, when we're meant to rest. So, she has to spend a day scrubbing the cloisters and I'm here for what they call 'disciplining' - that's different from the normal training whippings." She paused, aware of Martine's astonishment. "Of course, you do realise, don't you, this is not a real convent, as you may have been led to believe. It's nothing more than a disguised penitentiary for training females for very precise duties. They pretend to act as nuns but that's just a cover. But they do it well. You'd never know if you were paying a courtesy visit to the place. It has a great success breaking in females like me - and you, I presume - to serve in exclusive residences all over the kingdom. Once you're taught to take the whip, undergo erotic sex torture - that's what they call it here - with a smile and surrender to every sort of depravity you can imagine, you just hope you'll get sent to a nice place and tolerant owners. The training here lasts a month, more or less, depending on your erotic talent. I'm almost ready for sale."
Open-mouthed, Martine stared at her informant. "You mean it's a place just for disciplining sex slaves. Not a convent! But, in heaven's name, you must be mistaken!"
"What's heaven got to do with it, sweetheart? You'd better make the best of it, unless you prefer sweating and screaming in the punishment cells they have here. So, work hard and enjoy it all. Otherwise they could chain you up in the kennels for the mastiffs to lick you. By the way, talking of licking, I hope you like sucking a juicy twat and having your own eaten. That's if we get a chance when they start again on me. And on you probably. Sex must he uphill work with all that fat of yours and those rings they've stuck into you. But they're rather erotic, I must say. I wouldn't mind having a few put into me. Do you like having them wrenched to send you over the top?"
Martine stared blankly at the girl. "I don't do that sort of thing," she gasped.
"Oh, don't be so coy, cherie. Of course you do. We all do it here. And when the two Dominicans are around, you'll find your crotch is in for a lot more!"
Martine tried to change the subject, scared by the very word 'Dominican'. "My," she remarked, "you've been really whipped! How long have you been here?"
"Nearly three weeks. Now, listen. Flagellation forms a great part of your training here and the sooner you learn to enjoy it and orgasm, the better. At first I hated it but now I come under the whip as one should. Thirty swipes from Sister Therèse, Sister Marie or that gorgon Sister Madeleine and I blast off like a charged musket. Madeleine does most of the whipping, breast torture and that sort of stuff. They all wear huge dildos. I simply melt now when I'm called and told to strip..."
"Strip? But I thought we were always nude as worms. Just as up at the castle."
"I don't know about your castle, whatever that is, but here they give you a sort of coarse cassock to wear when you're not in training. It's just a length of burlap, open down the sides with a hole for your head. You get it in your second week."
"Oh, I see," Martine muttered, adrift. Then, tremulously she reverted to what the girl had said. "So, men officiate here too? I mean..." she hesitated, "men who..."
"Who teach you to fuck, suck and open your arse? Of course! There's our well-hung Dominican and his young acolyte, Brother Christophe - a real treat, you see. Cocks hard as a rock when they flog, torture and use you... But now, tell me your name, treasure."
Martine told her and learnt the noviciate was Pauline, the illegitimate daughter of some ruined noble who had apparently sold her to a Parisian brothel that now wanted her trained up to service special clients - people who flagellated young girls, prior to sex...
Suddenly the cell door screeched open. The Dominican, looming large next to Sister Véronique, was followed in by a young, well-featured monk: just out of the seminary, he was learning the finer points governing the whipping and use of stark-naked females.

"Ah, here she is, our fat goose!" Anselme's grey eyes roamed over Martine's bulk and extremities of distended flesh. Seating himself, he raised his habit to free his stiff cock of foreskin. The other hand held a six-thonged scourge. You may relieve the adipose trollop of her flesh chains and weights, Véronique."
Not too sure as to what adipose meant, the woman hesitated, risking a word. "But Mother Priscilla wants her sexual parts to be stretched and..."
"Take them off, woman. I need this slut's body in more or less its natural state, like the other one over there, whom we shall enjoy later." The nun obeyed, Martine wincing as the nipples and labia retracted. "So, heathen whore of perversity," the guttural voice began, "being finally within these sacred walls, do you abjure? Or must we rephrase the question in terms of leather and blood? Abjure, foul apostate and Satan's concubine!"
"Do what you will with my body," came the reply. "My faith is firm. I refuse."
"Let me put it in another way, slut. If you do not relent, abjure and attend Mass like the others here, then we shall be obliged to consign you to sister Madeleine and her cellar. She has little patience with heretical flesh and deals assiduously with whores of your sort. You will see her strip off her incommodious clothing to allow herself full freedom with the whip and avoid contamination from your heretical flesh. So far, Mother Priscilla is being lenient with you, despite my pleas to have your stubborn carcass thrashed raw."
Martine drew a breath to marshal her tenacity but her face had drained white. "May she be damned, like you, beast of Babylon! You're being watched from on high. Nothing will alter my faith. Nothing May you burn in the brimstone of hell and..."
The Dominican nodded to his young assistant. Brother Christophe drew his white habit over his head and handed it to the nun. In only sandals, the bared body, well-hewn and lily-pale, displayed a flat belly mounting to a broad chest and powerful shoulders. Martine gaped at the sight; it was the first time she had seen an entirely unclothed male and that at close quarters, apart from the young slave, Laurent, at the château. The young friar's blue-veined erection astounded her; the thing pulsed like the bull's pizzle she had glimpsed one day at a local cattle fair. More alarming was what the handsome youth took from Anselme: the scourge consisted of several strands of black hide like baggage straps, gathered to a haft in the shape of a thick penis, corrugated with ridges. Martine realised she was to be thrashed, even if where she stood was termed the preparation cell; if this was preparation, the thought of what might await her along the dank corridors, were she to be handed ever to Madeleine, paralysed her. She wondered how the elegant Pauline could possibly enjoy a whipping. The prisoner blenched as Véronique sought instructions. "Does your Holiness want her erect or stretched supine for the flogging?"
The precise query, in fact, was nothing more than a stock inquiry, for frequently, having had his victim released from the wall hooks, the Dominican ordered the body to be spread out with stretcher bars and secured to the iron floor hasps in the paving, the pelvis curved over a pointed triangle penetrating the anus. Moreover, there were the wrist hooks at the far end of the room and the up-slanting iron phallus, bolted to the wall, ready to impale, back or front, a trainee who merited stiff treatment. But then Véronique recalled the man favoured his victims hung outstretched from chains from the central roof hooks, the legs parted to floor rings; the bitch merited that and Véronique hoped the slut would be left so for her own subsequent beating of the breasts. She enjoyed hefty mammaries.
"No, she will suffer where she is," the man answered finally, the heavy-lidded eyes studying Martine's anatomy. Although any female nude under flagellation invigorated him, he especially relished watching his subordinate lash a succulent, over-fleshed body, such as this parpaillote's as it lurched under the scourge; it was salutary and refreshing, especially when blood was drawn. "I'm sure, Sister," he went on, "in all your time of service here, you've never seen udders such as these! Quite incredible! Now, Brother Christophe, lay into this foul heretic, from neck to knees. The traitorous bitch needs some of that indecent offal taken off her. Flog hard, man, in the name of her redemption!"
"Does your Holiness wish her to be gagged?" Véronique inquired again, helpfully.
"Certainly not," the Dominican retorted. "She must be given the chance to abjure under the lash. You may begin, Christophe. Start on those gross thighs and work up. When you reach her dugs, she will be ready to submit, believe me. Let me bless the whip."
Having received the benediction, the thongs were presented to Martine's lips to be kissed. She spat at the thing, held her breath and screwed up her eyes for the first lash.
The naked flogger brought the leathers hissing down into the beefy thighs. The shlack! reverberated across the cell to Pauline, watching with a licentious look, almost of envy as the newcomer writhed with pain. Lash after lash sliced into the jolting flesh, stippling a fierce ladder of welts up the body, each leather leaving a white streak that promptly darkened into sombre carmine. The blows over the groin and vulva set the sex rings chiming and Martine roaring. Striking the belly, the thongs resounded with hollow thuds, the victim tugging on her neck strap, her yells becoming strangled shrieks. The second dozen strokes worked up the rib cage to reach the prancing jelly of the breasts. There the youth first welted the sloping crests before slashing into the ringed nipples, the whip curling into the sweat of the far armpit. The writhing body blazed under the striations, the screams, interspersed with curses, becoming deafening.
Ten lashes later, intoxicated with the spectacle, Pauline noticed the slavegirl had ceased to yell and struggle. It was only the second time Pauline had seen a comrade-in-chains flagellated; the earlier occasion had involved a young 'Sister', since sold off to a flogging den in Bordeaux. Now, as then, the excitement had her vagina pulsing and running. She watched the dribbles of sweat pouring down the bodies of both the whipper and the whipped, Brother Christophe's oozing phallus swinging and slapping his hip at each stroke. Pauline found herself envying the newcomer but knew her turn would come soon enough.
Dom Anselme finally called a pause to rasp out an order. "Sister, hitch up the slut's colossal breasts. The things stick to the ribs. Free them."
Clearly accustomed to such directives, the elderly Véronique shuffled over to the twitching body, passed a cord through the teat rings to wrench the lush hunks of whipped flesh upwards, stretching the nipples now engorged like ripe damsons; she tethered the twine tightly to the neck band, displaying the pallid, unscathed undersides for punishment. The young enthusiast of a flogger stood back, his free hand rippling up and down his cock. The obese slut of a heretic, he found, flaunted truly tempting substance for the whip. And later, he trusted, for his aching cock. But there was more to be done.
"Now use the riding crop on that flesh the wily whore tries to conceal from us," the Dominican instructed his acolyte who took the plaited braid from Véronique and did just that. The clammy slabs of pale flesh became incandescent, bringing fresh wailing out of the stark-naked martyr now well embarked on her long, slave voyage into pain.
After a dozen cuts across the upended bulges, the devoted flogger was directed to employ the crop elsewhere on the sobbing wretch. He well knew what was intended.
"Strike up into the crotch, Christophe, as you did in the cellar the other day to that sinful whore, Bresilla, now departed hence, alas. Enough to prepare her for what must follow. Yes... that's it, my man! Get into the slit! You're improving, Pardieu!"
Martine gave a sharp, desperate yell as her clitoris was ground under the crop.
Sprawling in his chair, the priest masturbated faster, his voice beginning to slur.
"Now ram that cock into her... clog her man! Rape the heathen bitch. Fill her up!"
Again his associate was only too ready to comply. The deferential nun released the slave's ankles for him to heft the haunches round his hips. Parting the sex rings, the cock slid in up to the root. Martine's cries escalated suddenly. Pauline noticed that pain no longer dominated the nude, for she was thrusting out her pelvis to proffer the full depth of what seemed no longer that of a reluctant vagina. Clearly, Martine was wavering on the brim of orgasm, riding the plunges valiantly. Then, almost charitably the youth's thumb crushed the tiny pulsing clit, the middle finger, encircling his cock, entering her anus. The whipped body stiffened, the breath shortening, as the sex muscles released her first authentic orgasm. The paroxysms towered and gutted her, the climax sending her shrieking into outer space, beyond the confines of the cell, the convent, beyond the dripping woods and valleys. Her discharge was not that of a fledgling, it was massive, ungovernable, raking the man's sperm into her innards. Still rigid, yelling her head off, Martine exploded yet again with all the force the whipping had left to her. Then she slumped in her chains, moaning in the wake of her carnal achievement.
The elegant youth smiled at Dom Anselme. The abrupt outcome confirmed his master's conviction: if properly chained, whipped and fucked, any female could be spurred into deliriums of lust and reduced to a whimpering, jolting carcass. To reap his reward, Christophe lengthened his plunges into the novice's tunnel, battering the cervix in the descent of sex slush to fill her with jets of hallowed sperm, seething and thick as convent porridge. Martine passed out like a snuffed candle.
Dom Anselme watched intently as Sister Véronique knelt before him and frigged his revered cock assiduously, mouthing it now until the sacred spunk came to the boil. The jets arched out to spatter the welted slave, anointing what was, he had to admit, a promising sexual candidate for the tortures he now had in mind, freed of the harangues and harassing confines imposed by the Marquise Elodie. Indeed, he had weeks of entitlement before him without her intrusions. He would grind this parpaillote whore down until she was just flesh and three holes. He would force her to grovel naked, renunciate and abjure.
He watched the slave's body sag, extenuated by the whipping and its first real climaxes since it had been deflowered up at the Château de Lassignac. The infidel, whether she abjured or not, was almost ready to be used regularly and indiscriminately at least in that one hole for the time being - by the males and dildoed females the Marquise invited to her weekends, with the proviso that the slut be first well prepared with the whip. Unlike her religious obstinacy, her erotic progress seemed encouraging.
Hardly conscious of her welts and throat band still hooked to the wall, Martine revived and gave both men a strange look, almost of gratitude. They had shown her into a secret corner of heaven, but a paradise different from that portrayed in her psalms; rather a place where a sex slave realised why she had a slit between her thighs.
What happened to the beautiful naked 'nun' on the other side of the preparation cell escaped Martine. She identified the swish and thud of the whip, the moans and then the shrill, bird-like cries as, in turn, a demented orgasm severed Pauline too from the nunnery and the world. Beyond that, Martine was just aware of being released, of sprawling on the sperm-clotted paving stones and of being allowed to regain her strength, possibly prior to transfer to the torture sanctum proper - that place where, Pauline had told her, the head hoods, tongs, iron breast-clamps and bristled cock rings abounded. Still unconverted, she knew she had passed a test, had crossed over Jordan, ready for whatever ordeals were now to come. With Brother Christophe's tepid sperm seeping down her inner thighs and Anselme's jets over her belly, she curled up on the flagstones and slept as never before.

The following days and nights passed in what Martine considered the grossly misnamed Preparation Cell without more than four trivial flagellations from Véronique.
Then, one evening the newcomer saw Pauline suddenly tense and scramble to her knees, thrusting out her breasts. Unaware of what prompted such haste, Martine adopted the same orthodox posture of submission. Kneeling with the thighs well apart to disclose the ringed vulva, belly indrawn, nipples - fortunately - erect and head bowed, as was the required position, Martine had no time to ready herself fully and presumed her lethargy, if noticed, would probably earn her a stiff punitive whipping at some later date.
The cell door opened to reveal three 'nuns' in their solemn habits, rosaries between the praying hands, their starched coifs fluttering above the bucolic faces. The eldest was tall, slim and not inelegant with her pale complexion and a thin mouth that did not seem often given to smiling but was probably energetic on a hard cock or splayed vulva; half-hooded by the eyelids, the dark pupils augured no good. Moreover, Sister Madeleine, for it was she, carried a leather quirt - which, Martine guessed, was not there to swat flies...
The slave's heart stampeded immediately, again with that mixture of fear and arousal she was becoming accustomed to but could not yet govern as Pauline seemed able to do. But, if terror tightened and parched her throat, puckering her nipples, her vagina had begun to react very differently compared with its stubborn behaviour up at the château; the prospect of being catapulted again into sexual delirium under the lash and cock drove her to a point of no return. She knew a further whipping, quite evidently about to be administered, would transport her into another of her newly discovered orgasms. Weak with lust her cunt liquefied.
The youngest of the nuns, a bright eyed chit of a girl with thick peasant lips, helped the ever-vigilant sister Véronique to drag the table to the centre of the cell. As the scene was being prepared, Martine glanced nervously at Madeleine's quirt. Only a day before, Pauline had described the thing, Martine recalled, and its effects. It was the nun's personal property - an exception to the Order's rule of poverty - crafted for her by an Avignon saddler. It was, at one and the same time, a hideous and beautiful object: a chased silver haft led down to a short length of plaited leather which, beyond a knot, spread out into three broad lashes of rawhide, no longer than a forearm. Another rumour, Pauline had whispered, had it that the thing had been a gift to Sister Madeleine from a grateful prelate of high rank who spent nights behind locked doors grovelling naked at her feet. Not only, she added, did the quirt exert considerable pain when laid on hard but usually constrained victims to remain standing or kneeling for a couple of days after its use, unless being consigned to Madeleine's bunk, where no girl could expect indulgence.
"Sister Maddy's an expert with it," Pauline had explained. "She reserves it almost exclusively for beating a female's corded breasts and the splayed crotch - her favourite sites, you know - once she's got you suspended by the ankles from the irons up there." Her eyes directed Martine's to the long row of hooks along the cell's central beam. "I've no idea what she does to males," she added, "but one can imagine..." Martine could not, but let the conjecture pass, perplexed that men too were subject to 'convent' training; she thought of Laurent up in the relative comfort of the château. Then she wondered how, as a 'trainee', her huge breasts would react to the quirt. Well, she hoped, despite their size.
"Sometimes for routine offences," Pauline added, "the beatings are carried out in the refectory before the others. There we're made to spread our legs and grasp the ankles. They throw your habit over your head to deaden the yelping. Then you get ten lashes and probably have to spend the night in Maddy's bed. And that's something you don't forget, I can assure you! You come out a debilitated wreck, even if you did your utmost for her."
Martine bit her lip at the prospect. Then she thought back. Over the brief time already spent at the convent, she had gathered that plans were being drawn up by the Mother Superior to reduce the volume of her grossly oversized buttocks and breasts. The balcony of dug-offal, as Dom Anselme put it, would undergo tight cording, needling and similar methods of flesh torture. As to the rump, the slimming was to be achieved almost exclusively through prolonged flagellation. Highly self-conscious of her overweight, Martine was scared by the prospect but it also set her pulse racing; the beating of her breasts, which she feared, nevertheless gave her a strange new thrill. Moreover, Pauline had also told her that she would, sooner or later, be strapped to the breast bench in the so-called torture closet or sanctum to have her mammaries flogged and wrenched - something the young conventual admitted she had never experienced, hers being of modest size. "Flogging does get rid of superfluous lymph, you know," Pauline had added helpfully. "And, from what I see, you could do with more than a session or two. They're keen on well-shaped tits here. Heavy breast meat is frowned upon. I'm told breast shrinking can be quite an ordeal. They use the good old breast gallows with its throttling straps and special whips, sweetie. As to your overloaded arse, don't worry. They'll beat that till it's neat, hard and full of muscle. The skin'll tighten as the bulk shrinks, see?"

At the entry of the nuns, Martine presumed her breasts were about to be dealt with. Avid now for attention and more of those unbelievable orgasms that flagellation seemed to detonate in her, she found her corpulent body ignored. Madeleine and the nuns focussed their entire attention on their colleague Pauline, as if the newcomer did not exist. Even more frustrating for Martine was to see her beautiful companion being led to the table. There the two assistants made the nude bend forward to enable them to wind lengths of black cord round the root of each swaying breast. Martine watched how they did it; the younger of the two assistant nuns grasped each bulge in turn and pulled hard for her colleague to wind the line round the base; the youngster then dug her nails into the nipples and tugged for them to be throttled with cobbler's twine close to the areole. Martine gasped as both protuberances bulged, doubly garrotted. Each breast seemed to resemble a cow's udder before milking, bloated and taut. Gradually, the globes turned crimson, the blue veins pulsing sluggishly as the circulation slowed. Yet Pauline hardly moved.
The still raw novice of a prisoner stared with unexpected envy as the condemned Pauline glanced down with lascivious pleasure at what had been done to her. Quite clearly, although her breasts needed no reducing, Pauline was used to such treatment and was being simply readied for a routine whipping, just as other 'nuns' - or rather, sexual trainees received - Martine held her breath as she watched the preparations.
In silence, Pauline was laid backwards over the table while the more spirited of the girls passed ropes over two widely separated ceiling hooks. Running the cords down, she knotted one round each delicate ankle. Martine guessed what was about to take place.
As the rope tightened round the left leg, it bit into the skin, causing the condemned one to give a sudden jerk. "Keep quite still, wench," the officiating sister advised her, "unless you want to be hung in leg-irons. I'll not stand for struggling and disobedience. After all, you've been hung for flogging how many times before, Pauline?"
The novice thought a second. "Seven times, Sister Madeleine. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be awkward." It was the first time she had spoken, other than clandestinely when alone with Martine, who was taken aback. The last thing she would risk, knowing she would probably be crotch whipped for it, was to utter a word. Scream yes, but not speak...
"You know the rules," Madeleine went on, caressing her quirt, "You must remain still when being prepared for punishment. Once you're hung, you can writhe and jerk to your heart's content. Just because you're in constant demand in the dormitories doesn't give you any rights here. I'll have to give you a dozen extra for moving. As they're in addition to the stipulated thirty, you may choose where you'd like them."
"Where it hurts and excites most, Sister." The reply was prompt and Madeleine did not have to be shown but in confirmation she slid the quirt between Pauline's sex lips, as the smiles met in a strange collusion of lust. The two, of course, Martine realised, knew each other not only as inmates but as lesbian sisters. Whipping was part or their delights.
Martine listened to the exchange in wonderment. There was no virulence in it as when the foul priest addressed her. Most probably, Martine thought, her own religious resolve marked the difference in treatment. Well, she was not going to change.
The nuns put the finishing touches to the positioning and awaited the sister's order which came after she had checked that Pauline's sex was appropriately sodden.
"Aloft with her! And see she's at the right height pull hard, you lazy tarts!"
The muscular thighs and superb long legs left the tabletop and rose, followed by the buttocks, back and shoulder blades. With Pauline swinging free, her hand grazing the flagstones, the suspension ropes were tied off at lugs cemented in the side walls. Sister Véronique, still mistress of her domain, removed the table, swabbing off the sweat and other oozings left by Pauline. She wanted her place pristine, for it was in constant use.
It took time for Martine to recover from the shock of seeing her friend's golden sex fully exposed between the legs splayed to opposite sides of the ceiling. The beautiful probationer's cunt folds, swollen like Martine's own with craving, seemed to have glued together with her sticky outpour. Evidently wanting the slot open, Sister Madeleine delicately divided the rolls of umber flesh with the edge of her quirt as if slitting a ripe fig with a knife; the lips peeled apart slowly, the clogged oval cleft opening like a mouth begging for nourishment. From where she knelt, Martine could see the tip of the clitoris, pale and erect like a budding crocus emerging from fertile earth. Hardly able to contain the churnings within her, she stared at the congested, bound breasts standing out from the chest without a sign of downward sag; they darkened through vermilion to deep purple and again she saw the veins, like trapped worms throbbing under the skin, and the strangulated nipples stout as thumbs. As she stared, Martine wondered how a nude bondage could stir such excitement in her own hitherto obdurate nature. One look at Pauline's expression told her that suffering and humiliation had turned into sexual euphoria. The sight of the young nude being readied for flagellation sent again a weird sensation through Martine, her fibres still alive with the residues left by the orgasms the young Christophe had brought out of her body. Furthermore, to her astonishment, she found herself again hankering after the whip across her huge, soft buttocks, a wish that had never dawned up at the grim château. What the sinewy youth had given her, both in terms of lashes and sperm, had opened up an entirely new world where pain and pleasure seemed to meld into ecstasy. She began to understand Joanne's insatiable reactions more clearly as she watched Pauline's sumptuous nudity swinging erotically from the ceiling hooks, awaiting the quirt. Martine would have willingly changed places with her - but, again, not at the price at abjuration. Her sex seemed to be licking its lips under the rings - the metal now exciting her - with a newfound ravenous appetite. Why she asked herself, being a prisoner, had she starved herself of pleasure, so stupidly, so wilfully? How was it she had not understood that the whip could escort her to orgasm? The young Christophe with his huge penis - even if it was papist meat - had liberated her sexuality; she only regretted losing her virginity at Lassignac to the Marquis' cock rather than to his. In any event any penis was preferable to the grim Dominican's - may he roast in Hell eternally.
It was obvious from Pauline's position that she was to be beaten, not only over the choked breasts but primarily across the inner thigh flesh and, what excited Martine most, over the fleecy bulge of the mons and into the sex slit. Martine could hardly wait. For a second, her hands being still unbound, she dared to reach down to her newly awakened clit, throbbing under its steel ring, to ready it for whatever the nuns had in store for her, when her turn came. From where she hung, head down, Pauline caught sight of her companion's fingers fumbling among the metal. With Madeleine out of earshot, greasing her quirt, the bald one risked a piece of sisterly advice. The murmur was just audible.
"I wouldn't do that. They'll only torture you something terrible for frigging without permission. Watch out, cherub!" Martine desisted at once, removing her hand.
"How do you feel, strung up like that?" she whispered in return.
"Glorious, darling!" came the reply. "Don't I look sexy like this? Watch how she wields the quirt, the old bitch. It'll help you later when your turn comes..."
"Silence, Pauline!" Madeleine yelled, coming forward. "Or I'll triple your lashes!"
That too excited Martine as she shrank against the wall to watch.
First, the nun stripped off naked. Martine stared at the lean body arrayed only in coif and wimple; she was well-preserved for her years, even if the breasts sagged, having known better days. The two nude females - dominant and victim - confronted each other's crotch in silence, Madeleine measuring her distance.
Then the corrective flagellation commenced.
The quirt hissed through the chamber's close, fetid air to slam down into the undersides of the strangled mammaries; ten strokes followed, making the orbs bounce but stimulating only a few dull groans from Pauline. Madeleine brought up a mass of welts before turning her attention to the wide V between the girl's legs. Where the quirt struck the thigh tendons, the flesh clenched, blanched and quivered, the marks flaring up in scarlet blotches. After a dozen strokes on the rods or muscle, the quirt suddenly squelched into the gaping cunt. That, at last, extracted a howl from the victim as the entire trunk lurched and reared upward in pain. As she watched, Martine could resist no longer. She twisted and pulled at her clit ring, masturbating without compunction, enjoying the liquid sound of the thuds and Pauline's screams. The howls became interspersed with crazed pleas. "Ahh, yes... yes... Sister! Lash me there... Harder! Yes! Oh, please... whip the clit!"
"Down with those arms, Pauline!" Madeleine ordered brusquely. "You know the rules. Let this be a lesson not to give your whorish slit to others without permission." Then, after a further dozen lashes over the swollen labia, she dragged the quirt across the stiffened sex stalk, drove it into the cunt and then crushed the clit. That despatched her victim.
Pauline's voice suddenly thickened into strange guttural yells, her head thrashing frantically back and forth. The orgasm burst abruptly, weird cries filling the cell. Martine watched the nude's muscles contract, shimmering with sweat. The entire body stiffened, spending again. The sheer beauty of the sight entranced Martine. It was sex at its best.
Satisfied, Sister Madeleine dangled her quirt before Pauline's face to have the sex sap licked off; the agile tongue swept up and down the length of leather devotedly.
"In future, Pauline, you will ask for permission to make love with your seniors. I trust you understand," the nun remarked sternly. "Now, since you have behaved well, you will hang there until you're ready to come again. We're going to exhaust you."
"My breasts are beginning to hurt, Sister," Pauline groaned. "May they be freed?"
"Certainly not," came the reply. "They're good for a long time yet. Grit yourself."
On her side of the cell Martine had progressed to that danger point she had begun to recognise well from her fledgling experience. Since the sister had ceased beating her victim, Martine left her own desperate clit to throb aimlessly, scared to be caught frigging.
But what she suddenly noticed, to her anguish, was the quiet entry of the ogre, Dom Anselme, into the place of punishment. He was followed by his acolyte, the fair Christophe, whose youthful smile portended the whip and a bout of good, wholesome sex.
Sister Madeleine sketched a bow and began to reclothe her thin body.
"No, dear Sister," the gravely voice of sanctity dissuaded her. "Remain as you are. I wish you to assist us in dealing with that gross infidel over there." Ominously the tonsured crown nodded in the direction of Martine who immediately froze as every head, except Pauline's, turned towards her kneeling body. Even the churning mucilage in her vagina congealed with dread as the group moved slowly across the cellar. Whereas she had been ignored until then, the slavegirl's flesh crawled with terror as the figures approached. She had wanted attention and attention she was clearly about to receive.
The usual questions were posed regarding abjuration but curtly, as if her response was of little account. The continuous grillings had begun to exasperate the parpaillote and she showed it. Whatever threatened her, she was determined not to give in. She merely shook her head wearily when interrogated and left it at that. The inquisitor looked pained and desisted after three half-hearted attempts. The cassock bulged below the white cord.
"Let us see how she is progressing in other ways, Sister," the thwarted proselytiser announced and then added sanctimoniously: "Our most holy Mother Priscilla in her wisdom agrees that the intransigent whore should be conveyed to that delightful place down the passage where she can be trained to submit herself to advanced tutelage under, of course," he added with a meagre smile, "your supervision, dear Sister. I may add, Mother Priscilla wholeheartedly agrees she requires vigorous persuasion. Not only to recant but to serve at the château, once the adequate level of endurance has been achieved. But first let us see how the sinner's sexual gifts are maturing. And how the flesh responds to pain."
The priest drew Madeleine to one side, his hand sliding over the sweat coating her somewhat shrunken buttocks. He lowered his voice and the nun nodded to Véronique to detach Martine. Whatever was afoot, the newcomer felt grossly unprepared,
"On your feet slut!" The neck chain was released as Véronique dragged the novice by a nipple ring towards the whipped Pauline who, despite the agony mounting in her corded breasts, was savouring the aftermath of her quirting and devastating orgasms.
"Kneel before the body, slag," Madeleine directed Martine, "and suck this wayward penitent of ours to orgasm again. She's ready for another climax, aren't you, Pauline?"
The suspended head gave a quick nod as Martine edged forwards on her knees to service the flagellated crotch, the vaginal odour and sweet smell of sweat almost overcoming her reeling senses. Spontaneously, the obese beginner passed her arms round Pauline's buttocks, dug her fingers into the flesh and splayed the anal cleft as if readying it to be sodomised. Hesitantly she kissed the bloated, beaten labia. At the same moment she felt Pauline's shaved head close in on her genital rings, the sharp tongue prying and seeking the puny clitoris that was well and truly erect. Martine lurched violently as she felt her button, along with the ring, suctioned into the well-trained lips. Although she was unaccustomed to deflecting sex rings, Pauline was never at a loss when it came to cunnilingus, a gift Sister Madeleine knew only too well from employing the delicious postulant in bed night after night. Madeleine taught her trainees much more than merely how to take a flogging. Moreover, in bed Pauline sucked voraciously after a stiff beating. Cunnilingus constituted a primary item in the sexual curriculum of the so-called convent.
With no option but to obey, Martine went to work, tonguing Pauline with a lust the young conventual found promising in a raw amateur. Despite her inborn terror and lack of sexual experience, Martine's heart pounded with a totally new excitement; she had, of course, rigorously avoided such things up at Lassignac but now she laboured resolutely on the whip-scalded oval. She felt Pauline in turn gripping her arse cheeks, the tongue tip flicking her clit skilfully. Martine could hardly believe what was happening to her; the heat, taste and smell of the welted pudenda drove her into a frenzy of lapping. However, the hallucinating experience of her first cunnilingus - it was Joanne who had taught her the word up at the château after an ordeal with Anthea - was short-lived.
A blast of crimson-white pain detonated in her hindquarters. The shock administered by Sister Madeleine's scourge, now replacing the quirt, made Martine jerk her head back and yell out her pain. Never had she believed that a sheaf of thongs could cut so deep.
Faintly, she heard the terse order pierce the billows of agony as Madeleine allowed the effect to spread through the flesh and brain. "Keep that mouth of yours glued to the crotch, whore, while you're being thrashed. Abandon it once more and I'll have you nailed by those limb straps over the cartwheel for a hundred lashes. And you, Pauline, wrench that clit ring of hers, even if you're not used to metal in your maw." The whip sliced again into the heretic's buttocks like a plough through virgin land, driving her cunt back into Pauline's face, her mouth on to the scourged labia and pulsing clit, coated with come. Amid the lashes, she felt the welts ripening on the vast expanse of her arse and thighs, sapping her strength. Her cries smothered and frothing in Pauline's slot, Martine did what she could while, eager to have her strangled breasts and darkening teats freed, Pauline lapped and suctioned faster to bring herself and the novice to fruition. She bit into the gristle, sending Martine over the threshold into a devastating orgasm. Mercifully, the suspended body went rigid too and spent, the girl's inexhaustible flow of come joining Martine's tears. A final stroke from Madeleine across the coccyx brought Martine quivering to the floor to have her breasts spattered with the nearby Dominican's thick gouts of spunk he directed at her.
Pauline was lowered, screeching as her tits were released, to languish next to Martine on the flagstones where she lapped up the holy sperm off the huge breasts.
"The whoresome slag of a beginner shows promise, wouldn't you say, Sister?" The Dominican's voice grated hoarsely. "I think she's ready now for sex torture. Have her removed to the Chamber of pleasures to await Mother Priscilla's orders. We have discussed the precise nature of the ordeals she must endure. The heathen slut must learn to suffer fully. Take the slag from my sight. And you, dear Sister, may now enjoy your recompense."
As she was hauled out by Véronique, who had clearly enjoyed watching the session, her fingers busy on her own cunt, Martine glimpsed Madeleine's sparse body leaning back over the table to receive Brother Christophe's cock. Then the door slammed behind Martine as she was led, exhausted, along a dismal corridor by the clit ring, the nun's chain extending the organ perilously with each tug. Véronique's lips wore a truculent smile.
The cell was crepuscular, windowless and strewn with straw; in the centre stood a rectangle of stone, over which the slavegirl was spread-eagled, the tension of the bondage almost dislocating her hip and shoulder joints. The place was colder than the last snows of the Cevennes. The starched coif fluttered above her numbed body. "Now your load of blubber's in for the real thing," the nun smirked. "Erotic torture, we call it. At the bell of Compline, they'll really start on your fat." Smiling again, she departed, locking the door.
Deprived of Pauline, deprived of Joanne, alone and chained stark-naked on the torture slab, Martine mumbled what prayers were left in her. Then she tasted the remains of Pauline's sex juice congealed on her lips. She would almost have abjured to suck that girl again. But no! And anyway the nude goddess was already indentured to a distant but elegant whipping brothel in the St Germain quarter of Paris... Hélas, such was whoredom.

FIVE
Events up at Lassignac had taken a strange turn. Although relieved by the departure of Martine, Elodie was doubly disconcerted. Not only had Francis-Etienne expropriated the new slavegirl, Joanne who was showing a certain promise, but without warning had consigned Anthea - of all people - to the armoury. Simone had been ordered by her master to conduct the beauty to the place, which she did with misgivings, aware that trouble lay ahead. And it was Simone who informed the Marquise.
Leaving the Dominican to slaver over Martine's transfer to the convent where he could have easier access to her, Elodie hurried to the armoury to lodge her protest. Vexed over being deprived of Joanne for her own use and that of the occasional visitor she wished to entertain with her new acquisition, she seemed about to be dispossessed of her darling Anthea. After all, she needed the girl in bed where the young tongue performed wonders on her cunt - and to help with the preparations for the approaching weekend.
The sight she encountered beyond the rows of muskets, halberds and hunting guns left her dumbfounded. Anthea's divine body had been stripped naked and bound backwards over the iron bar used for supporting weapons, the ankles wrenched to the rear by chains tightened to wall rings. Bent like one of the nearby archers bows, the slender odalisque of quivering muscle and tendon lay curved completely taut, the gorgeous belly concave below the ribs, the breasts pointing upwards; deprived of its wig, the girl's head swayed between the arms chained to the summit of the posts. Elodie gazed at what she liked best, the auburn swath of sex hair between the parted thighs; it hardly covered the vulva splayed by the tension. Elodie's anger mounted when she saw Francis had removed the jewel, the gift she herself had placed in the navel.
"But Francis," she hissed, "what in the name of sanctity is going on here?"
The Marquis continued to tighten the chains. He knew fully tensed nudity took the whip better and longer than a slack, writhing body.
"You do realise, Francis, don't you, this is my concubine and not a slave? Whatever she may have done to annoy you, I forbid such treatment. Don't we have enough whipping flesh around to satisfy you? First, you selfishly remove that blonde parpaillote from the cellar to some remote room or other and lock her in for your own pleasure. And now it's my lesbian darling, ventre saint-Gris! I really object to this."
Her husband turned to confront the fury. Stripped to his riding breeches and spurred boots, he glared back at Elodie, his stiff cock eying her from the unbuttoned fly.
"This sex-slut of yours requires a lesson. I will not have her taking matters into her own hands here..."
"But what for heaven's sake has she done to deserve being laid out like this? And unclothed too. I agree she's sumptuous when nude but why chain her like that?"
"She has overstepped her prerogatives, Elodie, and must be punished. At long last and most austerely. Something that should have been done long since. Her arrogance tries my patience. As to her being unclothed, as you say, does she not idle away most of her time nude? Between your thighs. So why not now, for my riding crop? She'll probably enjoy it. But whipped she must be. Perhaps you'd prefer Bouchard to flog her, except that he'd rip the nipples off her breasts. Why don't you stay to see whether her undisciplined flesh flares up in the same way as on her victims? Remember the chapel?"
"But, Francis..." Distraught, Elodie failed to find the words. True, undisciplined or not, the girl tended to be a little too free with the whip. Staring at the breathtaking spectacle, she had to admit it was an enticing sight. And Elodie was not one to let a flagellation go by without being present. So, with no alternative, she decided to remain, swallowing her indignation but suspecting the punishment was probably deserved. Her heart pounding, she cleared the armoury table of gun oil and rags for room to perch her arse.
In silence Francis-Etienne, handsome as ever - how Elodie loved that Florentine beard! - ran his riding whip up between the girl's pouting sex lips. To Elodie's relief it came away wet, testifying that Anthea was ready to taste what she had so generously fed to the slaves. Elodie's vagina clutched; she was comforted the girl was not hog-tied as guilty serfs always were, and she hoped the crop would not split those sweet nipples.
The Marquis tapped the sleek belly to ready the nude, raised the weapon high over his shoulder and lashed into the nearest thigh. Waiting for the weal to ripen and the expected cry, he seemed surprised when the girl only groaned. She was not going to gratify him with screams too soon in the game. The other ham received a similar blow. Then, slowly the braided leather mounted to the crotch with its neatly haired mound crowning the slit. The sudden yelp sounded much like that of one of Francis's hunting bitches when whipped back into the pack. With that precision Elodie admired, he laid a series of strokes across the sex delta, the leather loop of the crop slicing into the labia. As he struck the clitoris, Elodie stopped up her ears to avoid her lesbian's screams; yet she saw the pallid stalk had divested itself of its hood to protrude from the crater. At least the brave girl, her darling, was nicely aroused like those experienced slaves down below. Once this stupid session was over Elodie knew she would have to treat her gently and with caution the next time they tangled together in the silk sheets; she would soothe the sex with her come.
The whipping continued, for Francis was far from finished. In fact he had just begun and Elodie was not averse to waiting as he embarked on what she relished watching most - a hearty breast beating. Strangely, she had to remind herself that the shrieking victim was her lover who could bewitch her with just a pout.
The stiff length of horsehide had returned to the deep-navelled belly as if the sound, like that from a dragoon's tensed drum, stirred the man. Then the ribs had their share of purple welts. Suddenly, to Elodie's alarm (and a twitch of lust), the crop buried itself in the taut breasts. Francis-Etienne aimed directly for areole domes and erect teats. Trying to ignore the yells coming from the girl's jolting head, Elodie watched the mammaries her lips knew better than her own, flatten, bulge, flatten again to turn scarlet into mauve. It was then the turn of the sallow undersides to suffer. And suffer they did. The force of the strokes flung the bulges upwards towards the dribbling chin and the mouth shrieking dementedly. Requited, Francis grinned, grasping his cock to smear it for action.
Elodie had to admire her man's talent; maybe he did not whip as flawlessly as Bouchard but it was rigorous all the same. Her hand strayed down to cup her groin through the brocade as she reminded herself of her faithful major-domo's courtyard floggings; he needed only a dozen horizontal lashes to draw blood from a female's nipple, and did so each time she ordered it. But her Francis was no amateur with the crop either, that she admitted, praying he would stop short of blood.
The hoarse howls subsiding, Anthea's head fell back, moaning as she slid into that wind-swept limbo where orgasms begin. The body had become a ladder of scarlet rungs.
"Surely, dear, that ought to suffice, don't you think?" Elodie ventured, scared the girl's teats might suffer damage; in addition, the Marquise's vagina was beginning to create trouble, demanding firmer management than through the embroidered silks. "I beg you to remember, Francis dear, you're not dealing with a slave. Why don't you leave it at that and treat the naughty cherub to a canter on your great cock? She deserves it after that load of lashes, no? Believe me, the darling's ready to spend. I know the signs, Francis. Be generous as well as stern."
"She doesn't merit it." He mopped his brow and slicked back his prepuce. "But I'll give her a fuck all the same. I suppose that beating will teach her not to go whipping slaves without sanction. Especially that new blonde who did so well in bed with us."
Narrowing her eyes, her nostrils flaring, the Marquise recognised the reference to the slut, Joanne. He didn't even recall the bitch's name!
"I'm sure Anthea will behave now, Francis dear," she cajoled. "Give her a nice fuck and let's forget the incident, for goodness sake."
The Marquis in fact truly relished a hot vulva fresh from the whip; long experience at Lassignac and elsewhere had confirmed that a well-beaten female orgasmed more violently than a 'cool cunt', as he expressed it. He bent his monster down and drove into the swollen, purple-blotched fig. The stanchion slid smoothly up into the pith as it took its due. Grabbing the girl's sweating arse cheeks for purchase, he used her with that brutality Elodie adored. Like Joanne, the Marquise often pictured herself, when Francis or even a guest was ramrodding her, as a Christian slave, hung from a ship's boom, being flogged by corsairs on the high seas. Elodie's fantasies were always extreme but then her climaxes were even more extravagant.
Anthea began to lurch in the manner Elodie knew so well. The groans became breathless cries and, after not even a dozen plunges of the cock up into the steaming slush, the whipped nude disintegrated hysterically. The convulsive, white-hot climax surprised even Elodie who thought she knew how the girl crumbled under orgasm... Anthea's muscles seemed to tetanize and lock solid as she spent. Then again. And yet again, the yells echoing into the roof beams like wounded birds, until the gleaming phallus withdrew leaving the cunt spasming and frothing. The Marquis moved slowly round the jolting, flagellated figure to grab the head; that stopped its flailing as he loosened the arms, bent the thorax down and rammed into the throat. Taking his time, he clenched one of the welted breasts and with the other hand clutched the girl's hair to control the rhythm of the fellatio. The girl was almost at the point of suffocation as he pumped his glutinous rope of sperm into the gullet. As Anthea gulped and swallowed, Elodie found herself envying her; in addition, she contended that live sperm was not only a wholesome and nourishing beverage but a tonic for vocal chords strained to the limit by screaming.
"There, Anthea," the Master of Lassignac remarked contentedly, "swallow the lot. I don't want a drop wasted, unless you seek twenty more lashes over those swollen tits. In future you will behave yourself, in the spirit of my noble house. You'll use your whip only when and on whom I tell you. Offend me once again and I'll hand you ever to Bouchard to rip strips off your fine arse. Do you understand?"
The mouth, spluttering sperm, managed a weak "Yes, sire... I'll behave. But in fact... I was ordered to whip the one you speak of. I only..."
"You heard me. I repeat, next time it'll be Bouchard on this end of the whip. And you've seen him flay plenty of naked whores raw. Recall what he did to that young Flora when she tried to escape - breast-hung her out there in the yard. So watch your step."
"Yes, sire... Thank you for whipping me and for letting me come. I... rather enjoyed it all. May I be released? My slit's on fire and my back's breaking Please...!"
"That's up to Elodie. My feeling is that you should remain there to think things over until tomorrow. And meanwhile my virtuous wife might like you to tongue her."
Elodie would not have refused, for the beating and the rest had brought her to an impasse. Instead she looked down over the beautiful creature's welts; they had flared up into purple bars glutted with blood just below the epidermis. A further dozen lashes would have opened her up and she had no wish to see those delicious teats damaged.
"Francis," the Marquise purred, her hand emerging from beneath her petticoats, "now you've disciplined this fractious little cunt-licker of mine, perhaps you would in return be good enough to release that caitiff, Joanne. I need her for further initiation if she's to grace our coming festivities. And passing guests are quizzing me about her whereabouts."
"Very well," the Marquis consented reluctantly. "I'll free this beautiful slave, Joanne." The assent was given warily but it was given, his wife noting the adjective and the slave's name. "I agree to surrender her. Send Simone to collect her on the eve of the next guest session."
Elodie gave him one of her more verdant and triumphant smiles. The blonde slut, Joanne would be back in the cohort and ready for the breast quirt. As to her precious Anthea, the crimson bars of pulp and cascade of orgasms would have prepared her for bed, it not that night, at least a day or so hence.
With a twinge of regret at having relinquished the attractive slave, Francis-Etienne slipped on his silk blouse and left the armoury. What Elodie would now decide to do with Anthea was not his concern. Even if a strictly bound female took infinitely more punishment than one slackly fettered, the girl was less erotic than Joanne; she lacked the elegance of the gifted parpaillote. Moreover, she fellated listlessly with a sort of sublime arrogance. At least she had been well flagellated for once.
Though tempted to visit the distant guest chamber, he decided to return to the stables and have his piebald reshod for the hunt next day. Having given his orders he suddenly changed his mind and made for the west wing. Parpaillote or not, she was too tempting and, alas, he was surrendering her.

In her lonely prison Joanne heard the jangle of silver spurs as her owner-lover approached along the passage. A rush of adrenaline streaked through her, the vagina clenching, the nipples jutting in expectation. Now she knew she would be beaten, and she yearned for him to draw blood so that with it she could pledge a secret troth of dedication and submission. Thrilled, she wondered how she would be chained and what part of her he would whip, which orifice, if not all three, he would use. She readied herself, tidying her hair, and knelt crossing her still miraculously free hands behind the whip-starved buttocks and waited. It had been a while - far too long - since she had been used properly, since she had screamed - as he liked her to do - and since she had lain alongside him on the silken sheets, hearing sweet words... Port after stormy seas.

Joanne held her breath as a key turned in the lock and the door opened.
"I want this to be a rather special evening, Joanne, for both of us," the man said, lounging on the bed. "Normally I take scant notice of the women I use for my pleasure. Apart from my strange wife, females are merely flesh. You are different."
Astounded, Joanne felt at liberty to stare at him. How handsome he could look with his neat Renaissance beard and windswept features! She hoped he would not talk too long although his discourse fascinated her - since she sorely needed the lash to requite her lust and prepare her for orgasms she knew would be cataclysmic, it not almost lethal. Without the kiss of leather she was a wilting lily of the valley. With a shudder she recalled what the repulsive Dominican had inflicted on her body. But her adored owner could do whatever he wished with her. She would respond with love.
"I don't understand master. I'm only a sex slave to be used. If I'm different from the others my religion may account for it or else my..."
"No, it has nothing to do with your beliefs. They are your business. I mean your character, your beauty and your erotic gifts. For a whipping slave, as you're termed here, you're exceptional. You have a body that fascinates me, Joanne, and a personality I like. You're the type of woman I take to heart - and I adore beating you."
The compliment and the use again of her name took her aback. Praise was rare at Lassignac. "But I enjoy the whip, master. I'm proud to be your sex slave and used by you. I love your body, I love your strength. I may say such things, may I not? I've not met a person like you before. The way you take pleasure beating and loving me gives me joy."
"That I know and you will honour me tonight as never before, I assure you. I'm going to make use of your superb body in a way you'll never forget. In a sense it's the culmination of your time in this chamber, for you'll rejoin your colleagues tomorrow..."

The prospect of undergoing something she would not forget excited her submissive nature as a flogging slave. But if the end of her solitary confinement answered one of her prayers, it gave her a shock. Being his private property had thrilled her and restored her confidence and self-esteem. She listened carefully as the Marquis went on.
"I cannot, of course, free you from your duties or from your existence here," the man added. "And I regret what happened to your sister-in-faith. She was not, I fear, the sort ready to adapt to my wife's needs but a short spell of training where she is now consigned may help. As the Marquise told you, we do not hold your religious convictions against you, even if we should, and even if our resident mendicant friar, who is far from irreproachable - and I lament the incident in the chapel - holds that you must be converted. That is not my concern. Here Elodie entertains herself and certain friends with sex flesh. Most of your colleagues would starve were it not for their being here. It's as simple as that. Hence your portly friend - Maryline or Martine, I forget - is misguided not to cooperate with her body. Her beliefs and yours are irrelevant." He paused, looking at the resplendent nude body kneeling as if in penitence. "And this friar, despite his mission, will be kept at bay insofar as that is possible. But you are prisoner here for Elodie's use. You - and your parpaillote sister when or if she returns from training - must live by the rules. You're here to be chained whipped, tortured and used. That's all."
Astonished at the man's frankness, Joanne could not help recalling the merciless whipping he had given Martine following her arrival. But then, she thought, if that was what they sought. What hope was there of prevailing on them to change? The nobility was the nobility, the Church the Church with its corrupt ecclesiastics, and a peasant slavegirl the humblest of all in the chain of power. In any event, although she appreciated his candour, just now the man interested her in other ways. She had three things in mind. First, in view of the bulge in his breeches, the Marquis's leather flap needed unbuttoning to free the cock; second, her vagina and its downpour called for urgent attention; and last, above all she craved to be tied, thrashed and freed from want through orgasm.
Francis-Etienne seemed to read her thoughts.
"So, let us start." He rose from the bed, stripped off and slicked back his foreskin off the purple helmet. A second later Joanne, still kneeling, had to brace herself against the bed as the shaft slid across her palate into the gullet. Her tongue curling round the rigid stock, she worked with all her energy, her sex rings jangling. While his rough hands clasped her head, she grasped the dangling testicles, tugging gently as he had taught her to do. The fellatio did not last long for abruptly the phallus withdrew to stand pulsing before her face. Drooling, she grabbed and milked the rod, using the clear liquid and her own saliva to daub her sphincter in readiness; she knew how her anus always tempted him early on in the proceedings. But she was mistaken and deliciously so. What she desired most was announced peremptorily.
"Go and choose the whip your flesh tells you to take. Fetch the spreader bars and clip them to your ankle straps and one wrist. I shall fasten the other. And then to the tiles, slave, belly up, arms and rod above the head. You'll be hung first by the lower bar and whipped the way you like. I shall then lower you and suspend that splendid body by the wrist rod and flagellate you as never before." Joanne smiled and went for the whip and bars stored in the alcove. That was what she wanted. Handing the plaited thongs to him, she bent down and attached the spreader bar. As she did so, the man walked round her to stare at the bulge of the ringed vulva, noticing the glint of liquid seeping from the shaved slit. The girl was indeed ready. Then he himself completed the wrist bondage, ran down a chain dangling from the ceiling pulley and passed its hook through an eye on the lower rod. Turning the ratchet wheel bolted on the far wall, he cranked her upwards until, the hands clear of the paving, the nude body gyrated slowly.
"That's exciting, master." The flaxen head hung between the arms. "I just hope I don't faint like the last time." The muscles had begun to tighten under sweat.
"Oh, that would displease me, for I would have to stoop to using smelling salts!"
"Then I promise not to. But after the whip, you will use my two other holes, won't you, dear master? My other orifices get jealous if my throat receives too much attention..."
Despite the strain in her pelvis joints and ankles, she tried to remain carefree, knowing how Francis disliked drama. The position and the exposure of her clitoris freed from its sheath, gave him special pleasure as he marvelled at her exhilaration; she was fully aroused and, after a dozen lashes from pubis to those twin dimples bordering the coccyx, he knew she would be frenzied, the suffering changing into delight. She was the dream all floggers dreamt and, like good wine, mature and chambré. Compared with Anthea she exhibited pure whipping flesh as the blue eyes closed, the teeth gritting.
Her master gave her thirty lashes diagonally across the back and arse and then directly into the open groin. The whip sounded sibilant in its descent, but dull and liquid as it buried itself among the rings and cunt slush. Only then did she shriek, unable to lift the ponderous spreader bar to protect her crotch. Once again the man was amazed at her resilience and the sudden thrill she seemed to derive from the strokes across the sex.
The crotch became dark red or garance, as Francis liked to call the hue. She was marking well. Having slit the skin of the left buttock, he lowered the shuddering length of whipped flesh to the tiles. A moment's effort at the ratchet handle sufficed to have her suspended upright from the rod parting the wrists. Discarding the sodden scourge, he took up the lean riding crop he had left on the bed. Tears dazzling her, Joanne saw it curving in the powerful fists and then felt it flicking her teat rings. The nipples hardened with lust.
"Ah, sweet master," she faltered, a faint smile showing she knew what was coming but hoping he would not listen, "have mercy on my tits. They're the only two I have..."
"Fret not, my beauty. I know you and those nipples of yours - they're as sturdy as my own thumbs. Come now, my Joanne, no quailing. Those mammaries are made for the crop and not just the quirt. Tonight, as I said, is special - a farewell flagellation for you to remember the west wing and me..."
The crop fell with a sharp schlack just below both areoles at once, sending the flaccid bulges of lymph upwards towards the collarbones: the flesh slapped back, shuddering, as the welt surged up, first as a white line, then lilac-mauve, to turn to livid violet. Twenty strokes and countless howls later, the globes hung furrowed and bloated, the petal-smooth areoles ablaze, the teats swollen like purple grapes at harvest, jerking with the throb of the slavegirl's heart. Except in her most secret dreams, no one had ever flogged her with such force, the crop burrowing into the underhang of each breast.
"Take me... master!" The mewling became desperate. "Take me to my... orgasm... please! Before... before I faint..." She knew the man, different from Elodie and her guests who forbade such entreaties, enjoyed her cries. Grasping the pelvis bone, Francis-Etienne turned the sweating body round and steadied it. The other hand parted the welted buttocks for the shaft to penetrate the anus. It sank in smoothly to the hilt, a hand reaching round to seize the outer rings quivering in the labia as the sodomy commenced. Her vagina in a state of despair, Joanne's sphincter clenched the penis, as Elodie had tutored her, the bloodstained bottom thrusting into the man's groin, in the hope that the metal circle bouncing in her clitoris would bring her off. Despite her efforts, the longed-for orgasm wavered beyond reach. The ramrod plunged and receded interminably with an occasional grunt from its owner, Joanne believing it would never end. Moreover her wrists were threatening her as the straps linking them to the bar tightened. About to implore mercy - a rashness that, in the cellar, would have merited a night in a torture cell - she suddenly felt the hard phallus withdraw, dragging with it the circle of rectal membrane.
With a curt tribute to her bloodstained buttocks, the Marquis swung the body round again. Grappling the thighs, he stepped into the triangle formed by the spreader bar and splayed leg tendon and, just as suddenly, Joanne's vagina was speared by the one-eyed monster, the celestial sac of testicles slapping her whipped perineum. Starving, she ground her rings into the mass of dark hair and tightened on the cock with all her force, the clit ring riding up and down each thrust into her. The naked suspension and the throbbing of her welts did the rest.
As a well-trained whore slave should, she felt it coming, like the lash of a whip. The spasms began high in her uterus, spreading like unearthly fire through her loins and cut along every nerve of her vagina. The white flame licking the cunt walls, she orgasmed potently, shrieking her lust in what Francis took to be her crudest peasant language. And again she came, yelling for sperm, the leather thongs, breast torture - anything...
The Marquis took his time. Then his guttural groan joined the cries as the viscid rope of semen tethered her again, stark naked, to the stake of his penis.
The Marquis held the body, jerking like a hooked lamprey, in his arms and kissed the quivering lips and tear-stained freckled cheeks on the dimples, and then the whipped breasts. Different from the sexual embraces during cunnilingus in the slave cellar, Joanne felt a male tongue invade her mouth rather than her cunt. She returned the kisses with her last strength and sagged, extinguished like one of those flickering candles the Comtesse de Burre-Sage enjoyed quenching in the sex sap of a slave she had just whipped.

Lowering the inert body, Francis-Etienne released the spreader rods and, as if it were a rag doll, laid the welted corpse on the bed to revive in the ripples of Cevenol silk. As she surfaced, Joanne kissed again the bearded face poised and smiling above her.
The Marquis let her rest, before taking her in all three orifices through what remained of the night until his own strength was milked out of him. And yet, each time she seemed to kindle anew, spending like the splat of a whip until she too was haggard. Exhausted, he conceded she surpassed all the whipping whores available chez his friend, Claude-Eugène, and they were considered to be the best sex available in the Cevennes.
Jolting with spasms, Joanne regained her poise, continuing to kiss the bearded face. The whipping and sex had exceeded anything her erotic dreams had ever envisaged.
"Oh, Francis," - the name slipped out easily - "I've never been loved like that! Do I really have to be returned to that ghastly cellar and those whores? I love you, Francis."
"I'm afraid your flesh belongs to my wife and her guests," was the reply.

When finally she awoke to the sound of larks singing above the sycamores beyond the lancet bars, Joanne found herself alone again. Her body ached. She was drained, lying clothed in welts, sweat and crusts of sperm. Painfully she raised herself to sit and examine the damage. The tumified crotch and breasts hurt more than the rump and she spread spit over the marks. Then, on the pillow, still dented where Francis-Etienne's bearded face had lain and fallen asleep, she saw the bouquet of primrose and honeysuckle. A card, written with the quill that lay or the desk, said simply: I shall cherish you with fondness. Whatever you intend, be cautious. Fr.Et. de L.
Her eyes underscored with fatigue, Joanne stared at the words again. What could he mean? Did he know of her secrets shared with Florence, the cook? Impossible.
Beyond the trees the sun was just rising out of the Cevenol hills.
Gathering her wits together, she sat at the desk but her buttocks and sex proved too painful, so she stood to write. With laborious care she used the same quill pen, addressing the note, as Florence had hinted, to Pastor Dizier, one of the few faithful in hiding who still preached in the woods above Pressignac.
The scrawl was long completed when Florence entered with the food - black bread, cheese and goat's milk. The handsome, sturdy woman in her late thirties had obviously taken a liking to the prisoner in the west wing. Already on Joanne's second day of imprisonment there, the cook told her that she also was a parpaillote but prudently kept the fact from her employers. The disclosure did not really surprise Joanne who felt akin to her even if Florence apparently did sleep with Brissac, the blacksmith, probably under coercion. At Lassignac, even servants were not free to choose; the Marquise chose who would sleep with whom, just as she decreed who would wield the whip on whom.
Joanne had decided to ask Florence to share her risk in transmitting the note to the pastor, somewhere among the hills. She bided her time before broaching the subject.
"Look dear, I've filched some cheese for you," Florence winked, after laying the plate on the bed. "Now, eat while I smear some camomile on those lash marks. He really went for you this time, by my faith!" There was an encouraging absence of violence in the woman and Joanne already knew she came from the same region as herself - equally reassuring. It seemed to justify running the risk with her.
"You told me once, Florence, you're often allowed to go to market and that you know friends of the Faith there."
The woman nodded, smoothing the beautiful belly, as Joanne summoned up a smile. "Well, Florence, I need you to do something important for us, and I include you. But it involves danger. I want you to contact our colleagues, at least those we've got left, and tell them I'm still alive, locked up in this hellhole where I have no intention of spending the rest of my life. Nor does Martine. Nor, I presume, do you."
"What do you want me to do?" Florence's voice had a touch at nervousness in it as Joanne handed her the folded message, showing her the pastor's name on the front. "But I can't read love," the cook murmured, "though I'm learning slowly with a Geneva bible when no one's about in the kitchens. I hide it in the disused oven. So, who's it to?"
Joanne told her and read her the short text. Florence stared at the script and then at the naked girl. "That's mighty dangerous Joanne. Even to tell our friends where you are. You know what'll happen to you if the Marquise gets hold of that, leave alone the Dominican. And to me too!" Joanne could imagine but pressed the letter on her. "Please, Florence! It's a sacred mission."
After a moment of hesitation, the cook nodded and thrust the scrap of paper into her bodice between the weighty peasant breasts that must have shared other secrets.
Joanne had expected questions. Only one was posed: "How did you guess I would do it? Don't you fret. I'll see to it even if has to reach Geneva or that Queen in England." The coarse hands returned to rubbing cream into the whipped crotch, without a glance at the smiling, blue eyes. Jubilant, the slavegirl leaned down and kissed her. Florence rose, taking the dishes and ointment and departed, turning the key.
The clandestine note left just in time, for Coursel arrived soon after to clip Joanne's wrists to her neck strap. Using his cravache liberally - believing a few more welts would be of no consequence - he towed her down to the cellar where the cohort barely greeted her. She sensed her companions were uneasy. How was it that she had been absent so long? Why the privilege of the guest chamber while they remained in the clammy cellar and were misused by Marie-Félice or Coursel to keep them in form? But when they saw the state Joanne was in, the subject was dropped.
Joanne was left to wonder whether her note would elicit any response.
Meanwhile, the preparations for the following guest weekend began in earnest. The slaves were shaved of sprouting sex hair, oiled daily to prepare the skin while Simone massaged the teats and clits to ensure prompt erection.

***

A week later, very different measures were in hand elsewhere. Pastor Dizier, after seeking divine guidance, had passed on the poignant message. Seven leagues above the Roc de Malpertuis, Castenet, the forest ranger and Camisard leader, after considering matters with his lieutenants, detached a posse of men, armed with a few muskets, a sabre or two, pitchforks and psalms, with orders to assault the place called Lassignac and return with two females of the faith. Elated, the little band set out like wolves at night through the bracken towards the castle. Propitiously, the moon was full.

Measure for measure, Castenet declared. An eye for an eye.

SIX
Joanne's return to the cohort coincided with preparations of the slaves for the festivities. It was for her a return to routine. The precursory sessions took place before Elodie, Joanne finding herself poised on the balls of her feet, eyes wide with anxiety, not so much over the pain as the fearful possibility of not being able to orgasm - or of coming too hastily - when a guest took her after a whipping. She was not alone with her problems. Even Isabelle worried. Huddled teary-eyed against the wall awaiting a rehearsal, the girl watched the smoke wafting lazily from the brazier into the cellar chimney, the irons reddening by way of warning. Dalinde fretted over her ability to face once more the unequal duel between a naked body chained to a post and the cock-rigid Vicomte de Challes brandishing flesh tongs. Mariette was her usual calm self, even when arched back, writhing and twitching over the wooden tripod after a bracing session with Coursel and the nipple screws; the redhead was like a leaf floating downstream into the rapids of orgasm that Christine de Challes would expect of her. On Joanne, Elodie tried out a slave hood of crimson leather that laced up at the rear and thrust a stout, penis-shaped gag into the gullet, something Joanne feared, for it limited breathing, but at the same time appreciated since it would stifle her screams which she felt discredited her.
Meanwhile, above, matters advanced rapidly. Coursel had had the courtyards cleared of rubbish to allow the guests' coaches to be stationed within easy reach of the keep and the horses led to the nearby stables. Simone checked the linen in each bedroom to ensure it was fresh and ready for the warming pan. Elodie herself inspected the kitchens and chose the wine from the cellars. Finally, the best table linen, cutlery and crystal laid out, she saw to it that her young serving wenches, who were to wait at table naked, apart from the usual painful but attractive pinafore, were well scrubbed of their habitual filth, powdered and wigged. Music was to be provided, at least prior to and during the evening's repasts, by two elderly flautists and a blind harpsichordist, who would leave before the enjoyments began. The Marquis, out hunting stag, was nowhere to be seen.
Strangely abashed and silent since her session in the armoury that remained a bitter and mortifying memory, Anthea was charged with ensuring each guest chamber had the requisite crops, scourges and instruments available and that the dark velvet whipping posts and chains were spotless. It was she also who saw to it that that heavy furniture in the great drawing room was shifted back to allow ample space for the inaugural flagellations by way of an aperitif prior to dinner and the evening proper.
Elodie relied on Bouchard, as her major-domo to oversee everything in detail and, above all, the readiness of the gibbet in the courtyard in the event of a guest, displeased with a slave, demanding immediate punishment. Elodie found her more discriminating guests appreciated such touches of finesse and she did her best to satisfy them.
Furthermore, there was the delicate matter of her visitors' apparel. Even before the preliminary whippings started, Elodie was in the habit of asking her dominants to garb themselves in lace masks and dark cloaks for the evening sessions.
"It is, once again, dear friends," she would announce, "my wish for you to wear high boots or at least cross-gartered sandals, like myself, and body straps and gauntlets when working on a slave, the cloak being discarded. Of course, I do not insist on this but I believe such near-nudity on the part of a guest does add erotic quality to the scenario."
By noon on the Saturday the castle was bustling with activity. In the cellar the slaves were being beautified, greased, nipple-rouged and marked with a roman numeral on the chest below the collarbones to identify them.
While she was being prepared, Joanne saw the Dominican stroll in, accompanied by his handsome acolyte, Brother Christophe. The parpaillote blanched as the lascivious hands extended her breasts by the ripple rings and started to interrogate her. It was Marie-Félice who hurried to inform the Marquise of the situation.
Her appearance seemed to halt the proceedings. "Your presence over a weekend, Dom Anselme, is out of place." Elodie remarked. "This girl's being prepared for sex which is not, as far as I'm aware, your domain. You two are not invited to our ceremonies and I suggest you interest yourselves elsewhere. Perhaps in what I have sent to the convent."
The shaved pates bowed, aware they were not wanted. And departed.
"As our Number Seven," Elodie comforted her new slavegirl, "you will be treated no differently from the others. You should fight this odious man and concentrate on my demands. After all, he has your friend down there in the nunnery and her conversion should suffice him. I regret this incident. You are my slave and no one else's. Now forget him and ready yourself. Lucky I came just in time. The whoresome wretch!"
"Thank you, sweet mistress," Joanne replied, kissing her owner's jewelled hand. "I couldn't have borne another conversion session. I belong to you, mistress, to serve you."
"Well, I trust you will serve me well, Number Seven. I count on you."

The weekend upon them, Coursel came for the slaves as the castle bell sounded. Linking them as a coffle, he led them up into the opulent drawing room. The transit from the darkness below into the late afternoon light slanting across the room took place in total silence, broken only by the pad of bare feet and the soft jangle of genital rings. To Joanne's mind whatever was about to happen would be joyous compared to a minute with the Dominican and she would recompense Elodie and her guests, whoever they might be, with all the gifts she had in her naked body...
The cohort of flesh lined up at the back of the room, facing a semicircle of thrones below the casements with the blue Cevennes beyond. The guests barely noticed the nudes but finally took their seats. Elodie in the centre, scintillating in her high-collared, sepia cloak of embroidered silk. To her right was slumped a slender, middle-aged man; the gap in his robe revealed a long penis, already towering to his navel.
"That's the Vicomte de Challes," Joanne's neighbour, Dalinde, whispered, "and next to him it's Christine, his ghastly wife or mistress. Dangerous stuff. Over to the left, there's Evelyn, Comtesse de Burre-Sage. Keep your tits clear of her, if you can. See what she's got in her hand? That's the worst length of rawhide around, darling. It can slit an oiled arse open in less than six lashes. And over there, that's Artemis, our depraved Baron de Bessinge, with his vicious whore, as usual. She's a real bitch. Stings like a scorpion. But it won't be she who lashes your tits," Dalinde added to comfort the novice, "because, over there, that's Raymond de Montclamart who thinks of nothing else than a girl's breasts."
Joanne dared not reply. What she had heard sufficed to scare her. While she stood trembling, several serving wenches entered with what looked like glasses of Xeres and mugs of chocolate - the fashionable new beverage imported from the French slave colonies in West Africa. Joanne could see the detail of how the maids were dressed: each wore the small triangle of brocade over her front, the upper fringe pinned directly through the nipples, the vertex below through the shaved pubis. She presumed the lace was meant to add spice to the aperitifs being handed round on silver salvers. Now and then a guest's gloved hand reached out to part the vulva folds of one or other of the domestics and ream into the sex. Invariably, the suede came away glistening. Had it not, Dalinde told Joanne the wretch, come Monday, would be thrashed naked at the gibbet. Juice was essential.
Gradually the conversation dwindled and Anthea came forward, erotically but less scantily clad than usual. She wore the usual riding boots but also, Joanne noticed, a long cape, no doubt to conceal the streaks left by the Marquis's crop, but which did not hide the cones of sparkling metal over the sepia-tinted teats, promising stabbing pain in anyone she happened to embrace. She carried a heavy whip, each lash terminating, to the slaves' consternation, in an unpleasant iron spherule.
As silence fell, the Marquise's announcement sent a tremor of excitement through Joanne who felt even more naked and vulnerable than when chained to the cartwheel. A treat which The Marquis had given her one night, leading her by her clit ring down into the lower corridors and using her half the night mercilessly after lashing her nearly senseless.
"Well, cherished friends, this is what we have to offer you this weekend for your pleasure. These slaves of mine are at your entire disposal, not only here until dinner but, of course later in the cellar, the torture precincts, which all of you know well, and then in your bedchambers. My slaves have been well honed by the whip and are used to sexual torture under the usual range of instruments. You may do what you wish with them and my servants are at your disposal to assist you." She paused, lowering her voice. "Should any slave fall flagrantly short of what you require, please bring the matter to the attention of my major-domo so that punishment can be administered, either forthwith or after your departure." Then she added: "I trust this will not be the case but, as you know, the courtyard whipping gibbet is always ready."
A murmur of appreciation greeted the preamble. The fat Comtesse Evelyn de Burre-Sage heaved herself laboriously out of her chair to waddle over to the line of glistening flesh. In turn and leaving his whore-slag on her knees before his chair to fondle her clit, Artemis de Bessinge joined Evelyn. Slowly, with a critical eye, the two sauntered down the array of nudes, weighing breasts and parting buttocks with their whips. Evelyn paused before the new Slave VII. She lifted Joanne's chin. "You have a very sensual body, child." The woman then turned to her hostess. "It's a shame your novice has been so vigorously thrashed. I would have preferred her, being new, more or less unmarred. But she will do. If you agree, Elodie dear, I'll use her first. And I'd like an hour or so with her later in one of your delightful torture cells or in my bedroom. It's just unfortunate she's been welted to this degree," she repeated. "I'm so partial to turning white flesh into red meat..."
The Mistress of Lassignac silently cursed Francis-Etienne for damaging the new plaything that attracted her preferred guest. "Yes," she admitted, "both my dear husband and I regret her state. But she's ready for more, if she tempts you."
"She does tempt me. Have her strung up while we assess the others."
Joanne's nudity seemed to become the centre of admiration, simply, she thought, because she was a novelty. Other guests rose to examine her and again she easily passed muster, while the plump, arse-branded Bette, the nut-brown Therèse, Dalinde and the slinky, boyish Isabella were passed over without more than a glance. Mariette and Laurent, his cock throbbing, were totally ignored for the moment; all knew the weekend was long and that their turn would come in the cellar or a bedroom. Only the dark-skinned Louise, with her upturned teats and ripe clitoris, found favour and de Bessinge selected her.
At a sign from Elodie, Anthea sashayed across the floor to drag the cream of the bunch forward, making Joanne stand in the centre of the room and ordering Louise to wait close to a heavy wooden device nearby: Joanne found the object so closely resembled that on which she herself had suffered in the chapel that she cringed, murmuring a prayer for her companion. The slender Louise - an unwanted slut purchased by Elodie for ten louies from a starving peasant family some ten months earlier - seemed undisturbed by the grim object to which she had been so casually condemned.
More placid than usual, probably on account of her own recent correction in the armoury, Anthea released Joanne's arms and made her mount a footstool. Looking up for the first time, the slave noticed the chains hanging from the beam overhead. Swiftly, the rings in the wrist straps were hooked to them and a moment later the stool was removed, leaving the naked beauty swinging. The guests gazed at the slender form in lascivious wonder. Rarely had they seen whipping flesh as tempting as this.
Grasping the chains to relieve the tension, as Mariette had told her to do, Joanne wondered what was about to take place. In her time at the château, she had known scores of whipping postures and remembered each vividly: chained out on the slab, at the stake, over the cartwheel or flogging trestle; hung by the ankles, the legs split open; crucifixion on the studded cross; on the iron grid with the breasts thrust through and throttled beyond the rods - and so many other stances, each spurring her on to orgasm as the leathers slashed her. But where she found herself in the drawing room, before countless eyes, hanging stark nude in her perfect symmetry or compliance rivalled all other positions. She knew how her breasts with their ever-swollen teats tilting upwards, tempted a flogger and how, as Elodie had told her, she should thrust them out or, when bowed forward, let them swing below the sternum like bells ready to toll under the breast quirt... Slave breasts after all, Elodie maintained, were there to be whipped.
Without warning, a sheet of flame licked Joanne's body, paralysing her brain; the Burre-Sage creature had almost buried four strips of leather in the rump meat. With a gasp, the naked slave wrenched her knees up high in pain. "Keep your body still, please," the comment came. "It needs welting and I cannot do that if you lurch. The tradition here - and may the Marquise Elodie-Helène be thanked - is that a hung slave should remain docile under the whip." She laid on a further ten formidable strokes that brought Joanne to tears and to the limit of her strength. Then the woman changed position to whip the rear of the thighs. Joanne did her utmost to remain still and mute through the flogging.
Somehow, Louise's quiet presence helped Joanne to contend with the flagellation when Burre-Sage again changed position and delivered a dozen murderous lashes over the breasts with the quirt. The Comtesse's huge body put its weight behind the strokes and the slave's cries rebounded from the drawing room walls and windowpanes as if they were wounded birds seeking freedom. Joanne's body began to blossom like a rose.
Grasping her chains and suffering from the force of the initial whipping, she was left to hang in abeyance while the attendants proceeded to bind Louise's slim carcass over the flogging contrivance they had meanwhile dragged forward. Compared with the trestles and other frames in the slave cellar below, the structure appeared relatively prosaic; several wooden beams formed a rectangular base upon which a pair of short uprights rose to a horizontal bar. The solid crosspiece, Joanne saw with horror, bristled with a harvest of short spikes, honed sharp, destined to discourage the victim from contorting while being worked upon. Although the spectacle terrified her, Joanne felt an erotic thrill churning within her vagina - it was such as had accompanied her introductions to the various implements Francis-Etienne had bound her to, prior to her beatings at his adored hands.
It was the whip's hiss and slash on flesh that brought her back to reality. Anthea's service whip - about the most painful at Lassignac - had sliced into Louise's rump along with an order to prostrate herself over the spiked bar that scared the newcomer but clearly not Louise who seemed unperturbed. Almost deferentially, she lowered herself along the crosspiece for the self-assured Marie-Félice to slant back at an angle a thick, hinged dildo. That too disturbed Joanne, for the shaft glinted with studs destined to enhance the pain and, she hoped, some pleasure...
"Get it all the way up into you," Anthea told Louise. "We'll see how you use it after fifty lashes." Again the bitch's heartlessness appalled Joanne. "You've been through this before, haven't you?"
For the first time, Louise spoke, the words devoid of any emotion; if there was fear or despair in her, the voice belied it. "I've been given this at least a dozen times, mistress. It was you who chained me to it last month to drip candle grease over me..." Anthea smiled. "How should I remember? To me slaves are all alike. Get it well into you, slut."
The shaft slid slowly up into the vagina as Louise lowered her pubis and hips on to the array of points. As they penetrated the skin, she bared her teeth and gave a thin hiss of pain. Only too familiar with the posture required, she stretched her torso, extending her thin arms to the extremity of the planks to have each wrist shackled; she then brought forward her knees for them to be similarly chained to the uprights. Marie-Félice wrenched the ankles well apart and fettered them. "See the slug's absolutely taut," Anthea told her. "The Baron likes a body tensed and firm for his sort of thrashing. You've seen it before, so bind these thighs tighter, girl!"
From where she hung, waiting for the session to proceed, Joanne stared spellbound at what was being proffered for beating. She just hoped Louise derived the same erotic thrill from being chained naked and whipped as she did.
The slave's buttocks formed a crest on the bar, the anal trench well parted, disclosing the umber sphincter, bloated from constant use. Never having experienced sex with Louise, Joanne could not rate the anus or cunt, but the latter had to be resilient and slack to accommodate that monstrous dildo.
Abruptly the drawing room came to life. The guest who had chosen Louise, in the same way as the Comtesse de Burre-Sage was already using Joanne, passed a gloved palm over the upraised buttocks. The flesh gave a shudder under the touch.
"I advise you, whore slave," de Bessinge warned Louise, "not to try clenching those callow cheeks. Otherwise I shall have to flay them raw. Surely, Marquise," he addressed his hostess across the room, "a cheap trollop with her experience - for I've had her before, you know - should realise by now how to proffer her arse for a guest's whip!"
Elodie gave him a look that was both a frown and a smile. The remark was unjustified. Slave Five, the devoted, well-trained Louise, never flinched, whatever was perpetrated on her submissive body. In fact, she was one of Lassignac's more mature subjects, staunch under the whip and in a torture precinct. "Well, Artemis," his hostess replied, "give her an extra twenty lashes, if she has upset you. The harder she's flogged, the more ravenously she comes. So, now that our second chicken's ready, I suggest we continue. Evelyn sweet, that lovely blonde slut of mine's going off the boil. You'll have to warm her up again. It's a pity Francis-Etienne isn't here. He considers her rather special but that's because it was he who negotiated her transfer here. Fine, but I prefer to buy or purloin mine! Far simpler." She gave the group a radiant smile. Oh, by all the saints, how she enjoyed these weekends!
Now that the second slave was ready, the Comtesse asked nothing better than to continue the flagellation she had begun.
Waddling to the side of the nude she had selected, she raised the lash and brought it down with refreshed force across Joanne's flat belly. Blinded by the power and shock of the stroke, the newcomer nearly fainted but she gritted her teeth as the milk-pale flesh flared up into purple ridges. Almost at the same instant, de Bessinge slashed across Louise's shoulders.
For what to Joanne seemed like a timeless stretch of pure torment, Evelyn de Burre-Sage's mass of fat and muscle - the latter kept in trim by flogging her serving girls every day at home - slammed into the novice, driving the wind out of her lungs. Lash after lash cut across the thorax and ribs until the whip again reached the breasts, and no one present wanted to miss a mammary beating and a pillaging of the nipples. Evelyn sent the bulges bouncing, now up to the slave number, the black VII, on the chest, now across to the sweating armpits, and then flattening them, driving the teats, areoles and rings into the blue-veined flesh. Everyone knew breast whipping was the Comtesse's predilection.
Again, Evelyn left the welts to mature and Joanne's screams to ease up. Though well accustomed to the whip over her dugs - one of Anthea's terms to describe and denigrate slave breasts - Joanne at one moment thought she was about to pass out. Then she glimpsed Evelyn shifting round to the juddering rear to tap the buttocks and prepare the meat, discarding her quirt for a six-thong of medium length, two of the lashes being plaited to give the slave, now that she was completing her novitiate, something to think about over the coming days... Joanne arched forward as the whip flailed like fire round the hips, raising incandescent paths of dark scarlet, tinged with blue. The blows turned Joanne into a battered marionette, each lash demanding more of her resistance; it seemed to ebb like the sludge leaking from her vulva as she slid further down the slope towards the dark. Ten more and she knew she was done for. And she would sag from the chains, disappointing Elodie, the guests and herself - herself particularly since she revelled in it all - the nudity, the flesh rings, the straps and shackles, and the whips - and yet feared it. She hated and loved it.
The Comtesse slashed the buttocks with unerring precision, using the classical method of first reddening the flesh with her thonged flogger and then using the riding crop to raise the real welts. Yet a rear beating never failed to advance Joanne a step further towards orgasm. Suddenly again the obese monster ceased thrashing the bottom and, mopping her brow under the veil, came into view to ram the penis-shaped haft into her victim's slot. As she expected, it came away coated with gluten.
"Ah, upon my word a gratifying slut, Elodie! The wanton's juicing like a lime. But I need a breather, treasure. I really must lose some weight," at which the Marquise nodded. "You know, Elodie, this blonde beginner of yours has potential. We'll see how she takes the rest of the weekend..." The booted ogress turned to her almost naked neighbour, de Bessinge. "Is your bag of skin and bone responding similarly to your lordship's wishes?"
"It better had or it'll find itself hooked to a beam by the feet later in my room for raking," he replied, short of breath, "and a session under the breast bodkins." He continued to lash the groaning Louise with zest.
Joanne found the abrupt pause distressing. It left the welts to throb mercilessly and left her in limbo, impeding her progress towards orgasm. Through her dazzling tears, she glanced round the room. Stimulated by the floggings, the guests were amusing themselves with the remaining slaves. Isabelle was on her knees servicing the Marquise slumped in her throne, the shapely cross-gartered legs over the armrests to give the slave full access to the crotch. The fiery Mariette was hard at work fellating the Vicomte de Challes, known to lust after her on account of the redhead's unpigmented skin, like cream fresh from the churn. So pale was the epidermis that even Elodie was astonished when she whipped her. The welts were always spectacular, standing out like cooked beetroot crushed on an egg-white cloth. Marietta's pallor drove guests to beat her breasts horrendously, desecrating her without pity, even using the cane on her areoles before leaving her to smoulder. A day or two later when the weals had subsided, the whips would stoke her up again into a scarlet blaze. Many guests chose her also because she bled dramatically - and like Joanne she adored every second of her scourgings.
On the brink of orgasm, Joanne saw Therèse tonguing the Vicomte's wife, the depraved Christine de Challes. The clubfooted Raymond de Montclamart, known for his aversion to vaginas, had laid Bette across his chair and was rigid in her rectum - the infamous L branded on her bottom fascinating him; he had even asked Elodie to be allowed to brand the other cheek, which she had promptly refused. Branding was Bouchard's chore.
Dalinde was licking de Bessinge's odious mistress, Claire, while de Bessinge himself continued to work hard on Louise. Flogging females was his chief occupation in life.
"Enjoying it, whore?" he asked his victim, lashing her rump.
"Yes, master," came the choked response. "Scourge my cleft... like the last time..."
That he was only too ready to do. He enjoyed the splatter of Louise's clammy outpour. For her part, Joanne drifted into a doldrum of erotic pleasure, as in her dreams, with orgasm still eluding her.
Laurent had to content himself with Marie-Félice, the former slave who had graduated to the status of a 'slave handler' and was always ready to enjoy a male or a female or both at once. Looking on superciliously from the panelled wall, Anthea was contemplating revenge for what the Marquis had done to her. She leaned next to the funereal Simone, Bouchard and Coursel, the two men eying her lasciviously but without the slightest hope of using her; in any event, her spiked nipple shields were disconcerting...
Still awaiting further lashes, her wrists beginning to ache, Joanne saw clearly what Louise was enduring. The entire back, rump and chained thighs, together with the dangling breasts, small as they were, had been ridged with the force of the rawhide. Joanna watched the final moments as the Baron moved round to the moaning head and straddled it to slash directly down into the anal furrow. His scourge buried its length along the trough, the extremities striking the dildo. Louise's groans sharpened as the rod jerked in her vagina. De Bessinge gave the anal crevice a prolonged beating until the slave became frenzied, lurching up and down the wooden stanchion. Satisfied she was on the verge of spending, he strolled back to the flayed buttocks, bent his cock down and bored into the swollen sphincter. Watching, Joanne knew the girl's thin membrane within was straining between the dildo, crammed up her cunt, and the phallus sodomising the rectum. The chained slave began to ride both, rasping her clit on the knurl projecting from the dildo. A silence fell over the room, broken only by her yelps, the slushing and an occasional smack on the arse, as if the man was taking a mare into a canter before the final gallop.
Despite the spikes stabbing her pubis and haunches, Louise pumped vigorously on the dildo. Without warning the head jerked up with a shriek as the body exploded hysterically with not one but several orgasms that laid the whipped beauty waste. The Baron sent half his load into the bowels, spattering the rest over the welted back.
"Better than expected, Elodie dear, in the name of Priapus," he gulped, wiping the sweat from his slave-scourge. "Your whore comes well, as usual. I'll have her again in my room after dinner, if you agree." Then he smiled at Evelyn: "I hope yours does as well and comes as cleanly as this slut. It's really worth the journey to be able to flagellate a slavegirl who empties out so appreciatively, don't you agree? And, by the way, this slag comes just as competently when her clit's snug in the grip of a pair of tongs. Well worth the journey, Evelyn, ma chere," he repeated. Although voided, he was cold as a serpent.
Joanne was envying the exhausted Louise when suddenly the Comtesse slapped her across the rump amid the final bleats from the platform. "Now that I'm refreshed, Number Seven," she said gaily, "and I've given you the chance of watching a well-tutored bitch flagellated to orgasm, let's see what a novice can do under the quirt." Already armed with the thing, Evelyn slashed the hips. "Spread those nice thighs, whore, and keep them wide. Close them just once and I'll have you hung by the legs with milking pails chained to those teat rings," - she struck each nipple with the quirt haft, then generously she purred: "You may spend whenever you're ready."
The legs yawned wide, the probationer quivering with fear and exhilaration - fear, since her vagina was probably oozing too copiously, excitement at the promise of the long-awaited climax. And that before a host of shrewd arbiters.
Evelyn de Burre-Sage liked nothing better than a splayed vulva, bar perhaps an erect penis, and knew how to induce substantial pain with a quirt and, at the same time bring a slave off. Joanne had already experienced the quirt with its plaited grip and the triple lashes that clacked when used on a girl's breasts or sex - its prime targets at Lassignac. She had received it on several occasions but as yet never over her ringed labia. Mariette had told her that probably the vulva would be chained by the rings round the thighs to bare the target and that this would help. The more exposed one was, she claimed, the fiercer the orgasm. Joanne marshalled her courage, regretting her ankles were not shackled wide to prevent her from clenching her thighs.
The Comtesse swept the conjoined tails of tawny leather up into the dripping slot, the slap setting the metal jangling. Joanne managed to weather a dozen perfectly aimed strokes, each dull damp thud jerking the clit ring upwards in a splash of pre-come. Then she yelled. But the cries were not screams of pain as she rocked her blonde head and protruded her crotch, offering all she had. The quirt lashed her from pubis to perineum until she was the colour of dark burgundy wine.
"Aaah, yes, mistress! There... there! On the ring... please!" The cliff edge was in sight, and beyond, the myriad stars beckoning her into space. "Oh, sweet mistress, whip me harder... fuck me with it... Ram it into me, pleeeese!"
Amazingly, Evelyn did just that. The handle of the quirt sank in up to her glove, grinding hard into the pinnacle of engorged, whipped gristle. Joanne came so violently that even Anthea was taken aback. Again the blonde head shrieked as she discharged again. Those orgasms were stronger, more complete than any she had had so far in her life.
Released, the two welted corpses were left sprawling on the polished floor. Louise was then dragged down to the cellar by the legs, while Joanne tried to gather her senses. She saw Evelyn retrieving her cloak and seating herself, the fat thighs rolling apart.
"Now it's my turn," the Comtesse said. "Do your duty, slave. Approach and lick."
Joanne, expecting as much, slithered towards the chair to comply. Faced with the clit in the shaggy crotch, she sucked and tongued with what stamina was left to her. Evelyn made her work hard before bucking and spewing. She came suddenly and thickly.
In her turn, the blonde was hustled out and down the steps to be chained, like Louise and the others, on her palliasse beyond the bars. There Mariette helped them to swallow the bowl of gruel, forcing water down the throats, parched with yelling. Both needed strengthening if they were to outlast the night.
In the castle's lofty, machiolated turrets, the wise owls hooted derisively; they well knew what was to follow, once the guests had dined.

***

Evidently not wanted during the weekend at the château, Dom Anselme and the young Christophe mounted their mules at sunset and made their way down to the convent where Mother Priscilla greeted them cordially.
"Ah, there you are at last. We have continued work on the plump parpaillote entrusted to our custody and I must say the profane wench shows more promise than expected. We have, of course, following your earlier visit, put her to further sessions under the whip in the preparation Cell and she now awaits you in the Chamber of Pleasures. You will find her bound over the slab. I am sure you will hasten her training."
A frown darkened the Dominican's pious features. "Training, as you put it, exalted colleague, is your burden. We seek her contrite conversion. But I trust she's orgasming regularly by now. I hope we shall not be disturbed for the rest of the night down there."
"Naturally, your Holiness. I presume you would wish our devoted Sister Madeleine to be present to help. At least, to prepare the implements and help with bondage..."
The bald-pate nodded. With a formal bow, the gaunt figure, followed by Brother Christophe, left the presence to be led down to the so-called Chamber of Pleasures.
The cell glimmered with a single candle, sufficient to display Martine's sobbing body spread, belly up, on the torture slab. The welted breasts lolled sideways from the chest and seemed less massive than the Dominican recalled from earlier beatings and indeed the buttock meat, crushed on the stone, looked firmer and more compact than before. Beyond the throat, strapped to the far verge of the slab, the dark, bedraggled hair hung down, the eyes swathed under a broad strap, the mouth gouged wide with a leather stopple.
"I'll need the throat freed, Sister," the Dominican observed calmly, "if we are to hear the bitch abjure. We may also require fellatio. Kindly remove the bung."
Only too ready to assist, Sister Madeleine prized the object out of the teeth. The customary cajolements began, the man wrenching the head up by the hair. "Do you or do you not recant, you stiff-necked whore? Or must we convince you of your errors by other means? We have the entire night before us. You should know that your blonde accomplice has abjured and she's attending Mass and confession, thus unburdening herself of past mischief. So, do you abjure?"
Martine groaned and spat at the cassock. "Never, offspring of the great whore of Babylon that sitteth on many waters," she yelled. "Thou father of harlots and abomination of the earth. May you be consumed with fire..."
Sister Madeleine recoiled. Never had a trainee uttered such vile words. She knew what was in store, for the Dominican had divested himself of his cassock, the handsome assistant likewise. The two cocks stood upreared as the men retired to the table by the wall. Dom Anselme took his time, running his eye over the range of instruments before selecting his whip. Madeleine's eyes widened still further as Brother Christophe took up a handful of slender bodkins. Fortunately, she thought, the slut could not see the objects.
With fury, the friar lashed the body, first across the flabby breasts and then into the ringed vulva that jangled, in tune with Martine's shrieks. Only when the flesh had become turquoise did Anselme nod to his subordinate and order Sister Madeleine to stretch the breasts upwards by the nipple rings and then the sex labia outwards, the lower extremities splayed by chains cinched tight round the thighs. Executing the orders, the nun had to admit flesh rings were indeed practical adjuncts; they facilitated her duties.
"Now, Christophe, she's yours," the senior murmured, retiring to the side to watch and masturbate at ease. "Thrust them in deep, as I showed you on that other wench last week, until the stubborn animal abjures."
Brother Christophe did as he was directed. Each needle dented the skin to penetrate easily, in places skewering clean through the mammaries and then through the inner labia. Martine hissed, more with terror than pain, as a score of the slender points were inserted. Her entire body sang and throbbed in the aftermath of the flogging, but in her sexual extremities unearthly fires raged as the sharp prick of each bodkin was followed by the equally strange and arousing discomfort of steel moving inside her. In despair she realised that once again, whatever her tongue declared, her body made a liar of her; once again she was going to be driven to orgasm. And then, as if from a great distance she heard the Dominican's snarl: "Renounce your heresy, whore, and you will be released!"
His hated voice rallied her to deny her orgasm to the last possible moment; let them do what they wanted. And in the silence that followed, she heard him sigh. "Very well, then I am forced to convince you by other means. Sister Madeleine, kindly yoke the recalcitrant's legs and ratchet her up for flagellation. The slut is really feather-brained. No, Christophe, the needles can remain where they are while you flay those colossal buttocks. Pray, use the rattan cane and plenty of muscle."
Martine hardly knew what was taking place. She sensed being released, having a wooden frame locked over her parted ankles and hearing a chain clank over some gear or hook above. Then she was swinging free beyond the slab, head down, her thighs wide, her hands grazing the flagstones. Christophe's whipping of the lavish arse sent her into shrill screams and then finally into oblivion. As the feet had begun to turn white, the body was lowered into the straw and then hauled up again, this time by the wrists, for the cane to deal with the upper slope of the still well-fleshed rump. Thirty strokes later and hoarse from yelling, she found herself on her yoked feet, crushed over the sharp corner of the slab; there the needles sank deeper into the breasts and labia, causing havoc and ensuring that she could no longer hold out. Spurred on by the increasingly urgent cries, Anselme used the anus after which the young flogger lunged into the vagina. Under the reaming, the blindfolded nude's clitoris rasped against the stone. Suddenly and savagely Martine climaxed with a frightful shriek.
"At least," Dom Anselme remarked, "the bitch shows progress, if only carnal. Converted or not, she's at last conceding what our friends up at Lassignac seek. We'll continue later after our supper with the august prioress. The night will be hard and long."

Retrieving their cassocks, the papists thanked Madeleine and retired for dinner. The wild fowl and wine were merited even if abjuration had still not been achieved. The session and the slut's orgasm, when reported, gave Mother Priscilla some sense of achievement, even if the fat slug still needed starving, whipping and most likely a good deal of sex torture before confronting the Marquise's ice-blue eyes again. Moreover, Mother Priscilla had her hands full, training at least a dozen whipping slaves destined for other noble houses and specialised brothels in Paris and in the provinces. Demand was heavy.

***

Meanwhile up at the château the guests were finishing Elodie's equally succulent dinner while the slave cohort below swallowed its gruel and water prior to the start of the evening's enjoyments proper. Recovering from the hefty Comtesse's whipping, Joanne observed from behind the cellars barricade the preparations with attention. Not only were Coursel, Simone and Marie-Félice present but also, to Joanne's alarm Bouchard, loitering among the torture appliances that glimmered in the candlelit cellar. At least Anthea was absent, no doubt still at table, displaying her spike-laden tits. Joanne swore to revenge herself on her. How, she did not know but revenge she would wreak. One day.
Gleaming under a sheen of oil, nipples and areoles rouged, the slaves were led out of the enclave to be chained, each assigned to an iron bar separating their area from the cellar proper. Wrists manacled to the nape, a carabinier joined the necks to the rods, exposing the full length of the tensed bodies. Flicking her service whip, the attractive Marie-Félice, practically naked, strode along the line of slave flesh, ensuring the inmates stood rigid, legs parted.
"Thighs open, whores," she ordered. "Suck in those bellies and let's have those teats hard and prominent. You know the orders." Here and there, she jerked on a nipple, spread a vulva or raised a head with her whip haft, arranging a strand of hair that had escaped from the black ribbon behind a head, and checked on the condition of the clitoral erections. When it came to Laurent, her gloved hand tugged on the ball sac and cleared the bulb of foreskin to ensure the thick, pulsing shaft throbbed elegantly aloft.
The cohort waited in silence, the bared armpits sweating. Abruptly the cellar door swung open. To Joanne's dismay, Anthea appeared. Like the well-groomed Marie-Félice but more striking, the vixen was booted, gloved and harnessed over the thorax, the areoles sheathed with the usual barbed cones. But to Joanne's surprise, she wore a delicate, sleeveless jacket of brown suede, belted round the hips, no doubt - for news travelled fast in the confines of Lassignac - to conceal the last vestiges of her correction; however, despite the coat and powdering, the robust thighs showed the fading welts clearly. Nonetheless, she looked more vindictive than ever with her jangling spurs, as she inspected the nudes; Joanne wagered that the presumptuous minx would avenge herself on them. The insolent trollop then unrolled a sheet of parchment to read out the decisions taken at table. "The first session will commence forthwith," she intoned in a colourless voice, "and will involve the following: Slave Number One - you Mariette - to the flogging trestle for Madame la Comtesse de Challes. Slave Number Two, Isabelle, to the torture bench, for the Marquise herself, as you seem to be a sort of favourite." The bitch gave a smirk of jealous disdain. "Slave Three - you, Therèse - to the cartwheel. You'll be thrashed both sides by... let me see, yes, by the Baron de Bessinge. And make sure you respond better than the last time, you lazy slut. If not, we'll have to screw the clamps on your tits."
Therèse moaned at the prospect of the Baron's rawhide, only to receive a sharp lash across the midriff from Coursel, moving along the line as each sentence was read.
"Slave Four, Bette - to the breast bench again, at the Vicomte de Challes' request. Slave Five, Louise - you'll get off lightly this time in view or your earlier service above. You'll be clamped in the stocks and hung for a correction from Mademoiselle Marie-Claire." Louise froze. That was something she could well do without; she loathed de Bessinge's profligate tart who took revenge at Lassignac for what her master did to her at home. "Slave Six, Dalinde, to the crucifix for the breast quirt and needles from me." The former whore from Ales sighed and bit her lip. "Slave Seven, Joanne..." the newcomer held her breath, "our dutiful Marie-Félice will stretch your depraved body to the ladder for Monsieur de Montclamart's attentions, despite your service before dinner."
The sentence meant little to Joanne and there seemed to be little clemency in it. The club-footed Montclamart creature really scared her. The ladder? She peered into the flickering shadows of the vast cellar in an attempt to locate the object, for it had never been mentioned in discussions with her colleagues. Whatever it entailed, she hoped she could bear it and reach orgasm when permitted. At the same time, she felt eager for the ceremonies to start and found her crotch already oozing beyond control.
"Slave Eight, Laurent," Anthea concluded, "to the wall chains for the Comtesse de Burre-Sage. She has a treat for your foul length of cock meat. So, keep it stiff as iron. The first session will close at midnight," the bitch went on, "for our distinguished guests, hosts and senior staff to sup and relax." (And what about us slaves? Joanne wondered...) "The assignments will then be made, you slaves being redistributed, after the usual medications, for further service here in the cellar, in the torture cells or in the privacy of the bedchambers, according to our noble visitors' wishes. As you all know, the courtyard will be torchlit, should any guest, dissatisfied with your erotic response, desire to have you flogged on the gallows." She glanced at Bouchard and received a nod.
Turning on a high, spurred heel, she told her subordinates to proceed. "Take them in, Simone and you others, and ensure the bodies are well chained, ready for use."
Immediately, the three domestics detached the first batch of nudes and led them into the dim, vaulted area, assigning each to the allotted appliance. Apart from the clatter of links and a few groans, the positioning was carried out in silence. From where she still stood against the iron palisade, hardly daring to breathe, Joanne could see little of the shackling until her turn came. As Coursel whipped her and the remaining nudes forward, she stared, stunned by the spectacle. A sudden surge of adrenaline lanced through her.
Mariette lay arched back over the summit of one of the wooden whipping tripods, the parted shanks wrenched down and chained to the forward supports of the structure, the wrists fettered low on the third stay. All that was visible were the tensed legs, the open vulva, hip bones and flat abdomen; the breasts arms and ginger head hung beyond view, the body curved, awaiting flagellation and, the newcomer guessed, much more. Like Joanne, Mariette never failed to climax under the whip.
To the left, Isabelle and Therèse had also been prepared, the Marquise's boyish favourite chained recumbent across the sombre worktable, the four limbs secured to the corner uprights: already a thick scourge drooped ready over her belly. The tawny Therèse, on the other hand, being relatively new to Lassignac, seemed to be having trouble in settling her arse on the torture wheel, an ordinary cartwheel mounted to rotate on its axle cemented in the flagstones. Simone helped the slave with a few lashes while Coursel roped her outstretched; finally the nude was spread, the loins cambered over the hub. To Joanne's relief, the girl's well-haired slot was already expelling bright mucilage, like her own.
Whereas the overseers harried the seasoned victims along into the cellar by chains clipped to the collar rings, Marie-Félice tugged the newcomer forward by a lead hooked to the clit ring, as if still breaking her in. Joanne gasped as the already tumid stump elongated atrociously. Crossing the chamber, she had time to see Dalinde being crucified upon a hulking, wooden cross which, to judge from the glints was ladened with spikes.
The brat Bette, brazen as ever, was also being prepared. The setting made Joanne's heart miss several beats. The girl was on her knees between two jambs, like an empty doorway but traversed by bars; her arms chained to the higher one, the roots of her breasts were being trussed to the lower crosspiece by Bouchard. The man was tightening thongs that seemed to pass through holes in the bar, causing the mammaries to swell into livid congested bulges, ready no doubt for the quirt tongs and the needling that at Lassignac formed part of advanced slave torture. The stout body was held in place also by a hinged ramrod buried up her anus. As the newcomer passed, Bette gave her a pert, encouraging smile - she was used to such evenings and truly loved them.
Then something else came into view and almost paralysed Joanne. In the far corner a charcoal brazier stood smouldering, the smoke curling up into a metal cowl and chimney. Nearby on the wall hung an array of branding irons, one, terminating in an iron L, being that which had gouged its mark in Bette's buttock. Braziers did something to Joanne and figured frequently in her nightly erotic dreams in which she was being sold as sex flesh at a slave market in fabled Constantinople - but never were those pans of coals fuming three paces from her naked body... strangely, she had often envied the mark on the former milkmaid's rump but now shuddered at the thought of being fettered over the block there in the cellar, sensing the heat approach her rump or pubis. Even more disconcerting was her sudden desire to watch a slave branding, particularly if Bouchard, cock in erection, carried it out. She felt relieved that Martine was not there to share the sight of the brazier. She would have collapsed in terror, if not already lost to the world.
Forced onwards by Marie-Félice's whip, Joanne was driven into a far alcove. There her sex fronds fluttered a moment and then froze. Cemented at thigh height in the far wall, the ladder slanted into the straw-strewn paving. It was long, with many rungs. Several coils of hemp rope lay at the foot. Dutifully, the slave dropped to her knees, as was the custom, and shuffled towards her smiling warder. Mercifully, the clit lead was released.
"We'll wait for Coursel," Marie-Félice said. "Meanwhile, tongue me. Lick me."
"Of course, mistress." She bent down and lapped the moist slit. But not for long.
The valet arrived, giving the curved rump a stinging lash. "Right. Got to stretch this naked bitch damn tight 'cos it's 'er first go on them rungs. And wiv bubs like 'ers, god knows 'ow much the slag can take. If I was Monsieur Raymond, I'd 'ave 'er gagged afore startin' to torture them cantaloupes she's got hangin there." Giving the flaccid breasts a slap, the valet freed the wrists, kicking the nude towards the ladder.
"On to the rungs, my beauty." It was Marie-Félice who bound her, Coursel merely watching lecherously. "I've never seen you tortured before," she added, "but I suppose you've already had your tits really heavily punished haven't you?" Her nipples puckering with fear, the nude realised she was about to be breast-tortured. The slave handler's question had set her quivering vagina running. "Well, have you? You can speak with us."
"Not really, mistress." The parched throat could just muster the words. "They've been whipped... And one day, early on in the chapel, I had them strangled and wrenched through the iron chancel bars. It was something hard to forget, mistress... and master."
"Yes, that we saw, poppet - just as we're all aware of what goes on in the west wing with 'we know who'." She gave an icy smile. "Now stretch that much sought-after body, teats up, and raise your arms." Her pulse racing, the slave felt the rungs crushing into her back and buttocks. "Cross the wrists, then the ankles for the ropes. Penned up thighs surprise you, no? I mean, you're so used to having your legs parted rather than together, eh? Yes, that's it... You'll have that insatiable twat jammed tight for a change." The girl bound the extremities, using the ringed straps. "You're quite a cunt-vulture, aren't you, slag? So the Marquise said." The remark startled Joanne enough to prompt a reply.
"It's just that I like the crotch whip, mistress. It sets my clit on fire, you see."
"Too bad, whore, because the guest tonight prefers torturing female tits. So make sure those teats and areoles are gorged for him. I'll probably be allowed to whip them before he starts with the tongs, and maybe needles - it depends on how he feels; you're sure to love it, from what we hear about you. Now I'll strap your neck to that rung... That's perfect! By all the saints, you look really something! What a body! Make sure the ribs stand out from the sweep of the belly. And thrust out those udders. That's what he's after. He'll not go for your sex and anyway it's clenched and hidden."
Joanne's trembling breasts were ready for Raymond de Montclamart.

SEVEN
In the dismal chambers leading off the passages of the Convent of the Annunciation life for Martine in the preceding weeks had become not just a problem but a burden. Almost worse than the beatings in ever stricter bondage were the continual changes of locality imposed on her. The number of cells, windowless vaults, dark closets, crypts and always the interminable corridors linking them, seemed to her limitless, each more terrifying than the preceding one. After a gruelling session in one underground cellarage, she was made to mount and descend flights of worn steps, limping, barely conscious, along dank labyrinths to her next place of punishment - or torture, which Sister Madeleine euphemistically called 'whore-training'.
Day after day and often through the night hours, Martine did her utmost to endure the special treatment reserved for her. Some features, among many, began to dishearten her; the way in which she was kept heavily shackled, cumbrous, weighted chains tugging at her nipple and sex rings, often obliged her to go on all fours, unless whipped to her feet. The nuns seemed to delight in her degradation and misery. When she met other trainees in a passage, the girls backed against the wall to let what they considered an animal, even more contemptible than themselves, pass by under the nuns' whips. And Martine suffered a further ignominy - no one addressed her by name any more, but as 'whore bitch', 'bloated blubber' and the like. She was reduced to receiving curt orders, now to stretch out and masturbate herself against a flogging stake, now to fuck on a bristly phallus bolted to the wall until she climaxed - always under the whip. To her amazement, although the two Dominicans continued unceasingly to make use of her orifices and beat her viciously, they seemed to have abandoned their attempts to make her abjure. They concentrated more on her convulsions than on her conversion.
Far more astounding to Martine than to the Dominicans was the regularity with which she found herself producing orgasm after orgasm when they twisted her clitoris or took her, front and back, after flagellation. The transition had come suddenly, her body responding almost instinctively to the whips and cocks belabouring her. She even found the sight and swish of the cane enough to send her into readiness. The lashes across her crotch did the rest. Despite herself, she was being transformed into whore meat.


"Ahhh!" the cry became invariable, day in, day out, rising in intensity, "please help me... I can't hold on any longer..." The yells delighted the men and also Madeleine, who reported progress daily to her Superior. The 'porky heretic' was yielding prolific orgasms and fast losing weight. Two weeks of beating and sex torture were bearing fruit.
Mother Priscilla increased the calibre of the whips and the number of daily lashes in the hope that the bitch's return to the castle would be hastened, for it seemed the convent was not going to benefit from her sale on the market.
However, in addition to the ceaseless persecution with leather, hemp and metal, another more worrying preoccupation invaded Martine abruptly one night. A further rumour circulating among some of the trainees again inferred that Joanne up at the château had indeed abjured before Dom Anselme and was apparently kneeling at Mass, probably still naked and severely marked, but nevertheless converted... Dismayed again, Martine surrendered herself wholly to slavery and ceased to fight, at least physically; what had hitherto been muttered psalms and prayers dissolved into strident shrieks of pain and orgasm. The heretical body became ordinary whipping flesh. Nothing more nor less. Martine was succumbing to the maelstrom of 'convent' punishment, enveloping her entire being.
She no longer seemed to care what happened to her. Caked with semen and sweat, she crawled, without being ordered, from stake to slab, from overhead chains to floor bolts that stretched the nipple and labia rings for more blubber to be whipped off her.
"The heathen slag's understood at last," the Dominican declared, rejoining Mother Priscilla after a particularly strenuous bout of breast torture after Compline one night.
"It would seem so." The wimpled face gave him a smile thin as a wafer. "Another week or so in the cellars and the Vault of Verification and she'll be ready to return to Lassignac. But then, one whorehouse is very much like another, is that not so, Father?" And Dom Anselme nodded. A whore was a whore, after all. Just sex meat.
Distancing themselves from the thud of leather on Martine's behind that indeed had notably diminished in size over the foregoing week, the two dignitaries retired to dine. The pleasures of the flogging cells beginning to cloy, they turned to politics and Versailles.
That night, Martine was given eighty lashes, back and front, hung by the legs.
It was true, Madeleine agreed, the trollop was making acceptable progress but still needed an appreciable amount of sex and flagellation if she was to pass muster. Wiping the sweat off her scourge in Martine's sodden hair, she made it clear she would see to that and without fail, despite the work she had on hand in other quarters.
And work there was. In abundance. With a dozen whores in residence needing improvement and maturation, the 'convent' continued to receive visits from various brothel keepers from Paris and other centres, anxious to recuperate their wares or purchase reliable new flesh. It was during one such visit that Martine saw to her dismay her only friend, the bald Pauline, depart, hooded, hog-chained and gagged, for a stew near Blois.
Martine then found herself allotted Pauline's former cell that still reeked of the former occupant's stale sweat and emissions. Strangely, the odours comforted her.
By her third week of 'education', the slave had become acquainted with almost all the cellars where invariably she was dealt with alone. The enforced solitude exacerbated the tension, the prolonged periods of silence increasing her anxiety and helplessness while allowing the residual pain after each bout of beating or torture to run its course. Just when she was regaining her strength, the welts darkening and throbbing less viciously, there would come the screech of the key in the lock, the drawing back of bolts, and the massive door would open. Carrying her candle, the grim nun on duty - usually Madeleine but often the pretty, blue-eyed Tertia, or Véronique - would enter and lay her scourge and implements on the side table, prior to disrobing. If it was sister Tertia, whom she dreaded almost more than Madeleine, Martine - even when hooded up - recognised her at once by her custom of hooking the whip haft to the victim's clit ring, where the evil leather snake would be left to dangle while the nun stripped with deliberate languor, a preface that added terror to the flagellation and subsequent cunnilingus.
"Now you wanton scum," the termagant would remark, retrieving her thick length of horsehide brutally from Martine's groin, "you won't forget what I'm about to give your fork of lascivious gluten," - the repulsive leather adder dredged between the palpitating labia, sticky with arousal, and then flicked over the breasts - "and how these jouncing bags of meat are going to flatten." Tertia would strike and strike hard, bringing out hoarse gulps from the larynx, as if the slut was choking on a clotted load of Anselme's sperm.
The regular beatings and 'schooling' of her writhing body reduced Martine to almost normal proportions. But worse than sessions with the nuns was the dismal duty of satisfying the demands of the Dominican himself. Hung from the vault hooks, Martine felt her beliefs, like her sex juice, being drained out of her. Yet, as orgasms emptied her, she managed to retain what was left of her convictions.

It was towards the close of her third week that Martine heard Sister Madeleine's soft announcement. "Our indulgent and most gracious Mother superior considers your progress and loss of fat to be satisfactory. This entitles you to be assigned at last to the Vault of Verification prior to your being returned. You will spend three days and nights down there and we trust you will work diligently, slag, to earn your discharge."
Uncertain as to what sort of discharge the woman meant, Martine felt elated at the prospect of leaving the convent. She had done what she could.
Her joy was short-lived.
The already fast dwindling body, blindfold removed, was dragged down to the Vault. The slave's heart almost halted when confronted with the spine-chilling machinery. No previous cellar could possibly compare with the sight. The rows of whips and irons lining the side wall turned her to ice. At the same time there was consolation; she was not alone. Apart from the initial Preparation Cell she had shared with Pauline, she had known only solitary confinement.
Suspended by the wrists, legs fettered wide to iron bolts fixed in the flagstones, a stark-naked female hung gleaming with oil. The head, enveloped in black leather, was chained backwards and from the rectum emerged the summit of a ribbed plug. The prisoner's flesh rippled from armpits to knees with fresh lash welts, shredded with purple scars glinting where pincers and rakes had been applied. On the superb, concave belly a deep brand mark in the form of some cabalistic sign stared out - no doubt that of the prostitute's owner. Although overjoyed to have company once again, Martine was given no time to observe more before her flesh too was consigned to chained bondage.
With the help of the pert, vicious peasant slag, Annika, Sister Madeleine ran a chain down from the stone spandrels of the vault to pass a curved hook through the rings in Martine's manacles. Unlike the female facing her, the new victim's head was left to loll forward before her straining biceps - no doubt to allow her to follow the proceedings, a privilege Martine barely appreciated. Her body, fully tensed by the chains, tottered a pace from the wall. While Annika adjusted a stout rod hinged to the masonry to grate the arse cleft, the senior nun parted Martine's legs wide, tethering the ankles to iron wall staples. As the body distended, Annika drove the penis-shaped shaft past the sphincter and up into the bowels. Martine's already well-disciplined anal muscle relaxed immediately until the stanchion could penetrate no further. The nun slapped the breasts. "That's how a thinned down whore should look, no longer obese like a rotten load of mutton. You filthy whore!"
Well exercised by countless shafts and rigid cocks - the worst being Anselme's - Martine's rear then gripped the ribbed stave. Thus, even if her splayed vulva invited fucking and the usual tortures, her distraught brain told her she was at least safeguarded for once from sodomy. She tautened anxiously, her sex dripping, trusting orgasm was not far off.
Annika verified the position and seemed satisfied; the slut hung rigid and tempting in one of the better postures for punishment. Although the huge bosoms had shrunk to quite agreeable proportions, thanks to continuous bondage and flagellation, they still swung enticingly, even provocatively. Annika passed her hand over the rump; there too the daily beatings had decreased the volume, the skin now drum-tight, without a crease.
"Compared with her state of entry, Sister," she remarked, again ensuring the anal rod was correctly angled from the wall hinge and fully inserted, "the gross drab has certainly slimmed down. The body's almost voluptuous, no?"
Madeleine did not encourage such trite remarks even from someone she slept with regularly, but agreed. "A striking change indeed, but the breasts are still a trifle flaccid." She lifted the globes of whipped flesh by the teat rings and slapped them. "They still need further beating if they are to satisfy connoisseurs. Now, Annika dear, you may go and inform Mother Priscilla and his Holiness that the bitch is ready for her final trial," - her practised hand bored up into the saturated vaginal tube - "and more, seeing her state."
But she was left to quiver in frustration, sheathed in sweat, as the two nuns left, locking the door behind them. Martine knew the cold-blooded woman was right. Bondage, the roving hands, together with the vision of the flagellated slave hanging before her, was edging her to the verge of orgasm. It was futile to try to converse with the gagged, marked beauty; in any event the naked whore had lapsed into unconsciousness.
Martine waited, her wrists starting to ache, the inner thighs strained taut and wet.
It was indeed the long pause rather than the posture that corroded her. But then that she knew formed an intrinsic part of the 'training'. She recalled Pauline one night in the Preparation Cell describing how at her former master's house on the Ile St. Louis in Paris she was left in chains for days, desperate for a grain of attention, longing for the whip and sex; and finally, when it came, how she responded! Like a ravenous animal. Slave owners knew how to deal with lascivious females, she said. "The bastards keep you in abeyance, waiting, waiting, darling, until all you can think of is a lash across your cunt."

Dom Anselme's entry into the Vault of Verification, alongside Christophe and the heartless Annika, came virtually as a relief to Martine; time seemed to have been long since suspended. And her bondage had raised her to such a height of anticipation that she was ready for anything, anything the convent could devise. Even blood.
The trio's appearance made her realise another change in her: what had once been stubborn repudiation of her slave status - destructive, short-sighted hubris Joanne and the others called it - had become compliance and submission, the whip now part of life.
Once again nemesis beckoned. She saw the cassocks bulging over the thrust of the erections, Mother Priscilla having readily offered the two slave bodies in the Vault to her virtuous colleagues to make use of as they wished.
Sister Madeleine, accompanying the two prelates in case of need, gathered up their white habits, admiring, as they stripped, the muscular bodies and stalwart penises. Ignoring the hooded slave opposite, both men advanced on Martine.
The flagellation quickly assumed proportions far beyond anything the parpaillote had ever imagined possible up to that instant. The younger man was offered the slave's rump.
Despite the limited space between buttocks and wall, he managed to slice into the buttock crests and also strike the anal plug. That sufficed to despatch the nude into a crescendo of screams as the stopple jolted in the rectum. A blissful pause followed the first ration of lashes, a breather that allowed her sex to prepare for orgasm. She sensed warm liquid sliding down the curve of the rump to dribble on to the thigh and realised it was not oil or sweat but blood. It oozed from an earlier welt she thought had healed; instead of frightening her, the gash kindled lust in her. Her groans became short, frenzied yelps as the leathers swung again, now into her breasts that were already compacting agreeably.
"Yes... ahh, yes... master!" she moaned, forcing her head against the biceps of one arm to shield her face and give the whip full leeway to pound the udders. "Yes, thrash them... Lash the lust out of my sinful body... Martyr my nipples... Make them shed blood..." The raucous croaks differed from those that had startled Madeleine days before in the Chamber of pleasures. They were cries of crude, wanton lechery. "Scourge them... Split them!"
"That we shall do, heathen slag!" Anselme's retort covered her shrilling.
Slicking pre-ejaculate over his awesome pestle, the Dominican came forward to take his subordinate's place, raised his quirt and brought the thongs down across the still swaying loads of breast lymph. Martine wailed as the meat flattened and rebounded under the strokes. Again like the convent bells tolling, the mammaries swung across the ribs before being slugged again into the armpits, reddening under Anselme's onslaught. On the point of ordering Madeleine to screw a pair of carpenter's clamps into the roots to proffer and immobilise the throttled bulge of flesh he relished, he changed his mind, roused by the flabby slap of the dugs as they jolted and collided. Baring his teeth, the saintly soul struck directly across the areoles. Martine yowled, presuming her teats were about split open as she had pleaded for.
As his associate had gashed the buttocks, he was not going to be outdone. After punishing the upper area of lubricity, he felt the lower zone needed attention. Zealously, the monster struck upward into the crotch, the thongs flaying and parting the labia to sink succulently into the clammy oval. Two-dozen lashes led Martine to flounder in those eddies that her convent ordeals taught her were about to be submerged in the riptide of orgasm. Only a few more strokes and the surge would drown her. The beast seamed to know precisely how a slave's naked body functioned when bludgeoned between the thighs.
But instead, she was given cock. During the odious pause that followed the last lash she dared to open her tear-blurred eyes to see the prodigious prick approaching. Despite the rumours that abounded regarding the prelate's reluctance to use a vagina, a moment later the blue-veined spigot had entered and broached her, battering the cervix and the anal shaft beyond the membrane. Martine rode the grinding for as long as she could, then wailed, surrendered and, without awaiting authorisation, came violently. After what seemed an age of further hard fucking and yet another cataclysm, she felt the jets of semen siphoning up into her, clogging her entrails. She let out a final bray, orgasmed again and slid into the bottomless abyss that engulfs a slaked female. Sister Madeleine watched the final spasms and the droop of the body in its chains. Clearly, the slave bitch had not only changed corporeally but was making outstanding sexual progress.
"A veritable whore," the Dominican observed, wiping his cock on Martine's thigh to free it of her spume and his last pearls of spunk. Disregarding the slut's audacity in spending without sanction, he motioned Madeleine forward, she preparing her crotch for the still rigid Brother Christophe, only to be cruelly disillusioned.
"Lower the carrion to the appropriate level, Sister, if you would," Anselme said. "We cannot leave our young apprentice here in a state of abeyance." The nun had to agree and was ready to relieve the youth's one-eyed monster of its load. But that too was denied her. Obeisant, she ratcheted down the wrist chain sufficiently for the exhausted slave to reach the paving, the hinged rod torturing the anus as she knelt.
Despite her condition, Martine knew what was required of her. Passing her desiccated tongue over her lips, she made an O of her mouth, her cheeks hollowing as Brother Christophe's shaft rammed into her gullet. He had waited long enough.
Grasping handfuls of the dark, matted hair, he jammed the infidel's head against her still taut arms and pumped while his mentor and a still hopeful Madeleine looked on in admiration. The youth's gluteal arse muscle clenched with each thrust; he was learning fast. What better apprenticeship for a lad, the nun consoled herself, than the throat of a whipped whore-slave? But of course, he had already used every mouth in the convent.
The slave sucked competently enough, descending to the shaft root and, when given the chance, lapping her tongue round the swinging balls. When finally the semen came she choked (rather inelegantly, to Madeleine's mind) but swallowed as if gulping down her ration of morning gruel. More astringent maybe but Mariette had said it was beneficial; screaming did irritate and parch the larynx and pungent sperm helped.
Taking pity finally on Madeleine, the Dominican compensated her. The senior Sister rode the huge shaft with zest, her climaxes exploding violently, threaded with vile oaths.
Vaguely, Martine heard the man addressing the appeased nun. "That is to thank you for your righteous service, Sister. Now, unquestionably, this parpaillote wench can be restored to the care of our dear Marquise. I shall so inform Mother Priscilla." He marked a brief pause "However, having observed this slut's performance - and her difficulty in quaffing sperm - I suggest she merits a farewell favour, one that reminds her of the august Convent of the Annunciation which has expended so much concern on her welfare. I have consulted already with your distinguished Superior and she entirely agrees, should it be helpful, to the foul heretic being branded. Searing her heathen flesh will remind the sow of her status. So, Sister, lug the slave to the chamber of Brimstone and Fire and prepare her. The gracious Prioress has consented to attend. She will bless the Irons."
Having delivered the sentence and watched Sister Madeleine's assistant, Annika, hurry off to escort Mother Priscilla down, Dom Anselme summoned his apprentice to his side. He gestured towards the second chained nude, who had meanwhile come to life.
"Meanwhile, Christophe, my lad, this other load of meretricious whore-meat also needs a further taste of the scourge before she too leaves these holy precincts - in her case for whatever brothel is negotiating her purchase. When you're stiff again which, faced with a nude of that elegance, should be soon enough, ratchet her up a shade so that she hangs free at the paving. And flog the depraved trollop. You may use her in any way you wish thereafter. She has to understand fully why she's being trained." With a wave of the hand, he added: "But, pray, don't waste too much time on the slag since we'll need you to deal with this one." He turned. "I presume, Sister, all is ready next door as usual - the slab, brazier and irons? The brand should be white hot. Waiting only debilitates a whore."
Debilitated also, the fucked nun nodded, hoping the young minx, Annika, would not be too long on her mission, for she required her help in stretching the victim. That was something one could not perform single-handed and the prelates - who always worked without gloves in order to feel the nude's flesh as it welted - could not possibly be expected to soil their chaste hands in merely readying a sweating female for branding.
While the young prelate lashed her colleague's suspended, head-hooded and gagged body, Martine was released and hauled by Madeleine to the neighbouring chamber. Fortunately she had not far to shamble. The unexpected condemnation to the scorching-hot flesh-iron had deprived her of what energy her flagging spirit had managed to conserve. She sensed herself sinking into the slough of despond, trepidation and a sick feeling of injustice chilling her as they had done during the first days at the convent.
Stumbling in chains again, Martine felt her body being greased afresh by the insufferable Annika who had returned with Mother Priscilla (always present for brandings). The slave looked fearfully across at the chains on the dark slab of granite being prepared by Madeleine. Handling her lean body that had shed so much lard, clearly delighted the nuns and the prospect of a heretic being branded intoxicated them. The brazier had not been used for some time.
Although prohibited speech, Martine risked a futile plea for mercy. "I don't think, sweet Sisters, I can take any more. And I'm due for release. Please be lenient. I'm at the end of my tether. I did what I could back there. I'm full of semen. Please, let me rest..."
"Nonsense, whore!" came the reply. "And keep your mouth shut unless it's needed for cock or cunt. You heard the Holy Father, so stretch out on the slab, belly upwards."
Crossing the sweltering chamber to be shackled, the slave was almost overcome by the reek of sweat and a lingering odour of seared flesh. Fleetingly, she noticed the brazier smouldering in the far corner, a long branding iron protruding from the incandescence. Remembering Bette up at the château, Martine realised what was about to happen, even if still unaware as to what part of her body was to suffer: someone would seize the iron, tap it free of cinders and advance on her... Clearly, the Dominican sought to ensure that her farewell was memorable and indelibly abiding. For the first time in days, she prayed.
In the Prioress's eyes, this now well-shaped slut by the name of Martine had not abjured and fully merited it. The brand could be planted on the cheek, shoulder blade, breast, rump or pubis; Dom Anselme preferred by far a nicely shaved pubic mound, amply frictioned and oiled, the body bound abnormally tight. A branded pubis attracted users.
In her time Martine had writhed, screaming deliriously, on several other torture slabs the convent had to offer its inmates, but certainly none had been fitted with these outspread iron rods hinged to the stone verges; more unsettling, the bars lay at the level of the breasts and terminated in parallel clamps fitted with screws. As her half-starved body was chained taut by the smirking assistant, the four limbs extended to their fullest extent, Martine tried inwardly to recite a psalm but the sudden reappearance of the two still unclothed prelates, unwilling to miss the shackling, daunted her. Their looks were enough to turn her again into the naked strumpet she had become.
At a sign from the head Sister, the young probationer, Annika, began to crank the windlass until the slave's articulations reached the limit; another turn spelled dislocation and torn ligaments. Then Annika jammed a pawl into the toothed wheel. Amazed at the slave's new slenderness, the onlookers gazed salaciously and in wonder at the extended flesh, admiring the change brought about through flagellation and sex torture.
It was Madeleine who swung the heavy bars on to the chest and, bending over the thorax, slowly tightened the metal screws. Martine let out a hoarse groan - it was all she had left in her - as the iron jaws sank into the breast roots, the flesh belling into scarlet domes. As the areoles and ringed teats bulged, the veins pulsated like trapped worms.
Dom Anselme, his cock stiff again, nodded to his acolyte.
From the far side of the vault came the rap of iron on the brazier's rim as the youth freed the brand of clinker, and the heat approached. The cross of metal sparkling and smoking at the extremity of the rod was the last thing Martine saw. Fully expecting it to descend into the summit of her strangled breasts, she went rigid as the iron seared into the pubic hump. There it hissed and fumed a second, the unearthly yell reaching Mother Priscilla, watching attentively from the shadows. The slave called Martine had passed out. As well she might - they always did under the irons. By Monday's first light the young bitch of an infidel, always risky stuff to have about in a training centre, would be gone, and good riddance. As Prioress, Priscilla much preferred forming brothel merchandise but a good turn done to the nobles up at Lassignac never went unrequited. Moreover, branding a slut brought in revenue. But as it was for the Marquise, Mother Priscilla did it gratis.
Donning their white habits, Anselme and Brother Christophe left, magnanimously escorting the forbidding superior to the door. There the wimpled head turned. "The devout and gracious Marquise de Lassignac, Sister, will send her lackey to collect the heretic at dawn on Monday," And the Dominican put in: "when their weekend revelries are over and which," he added with a touch of offended pride that rankled, "as their chaplain, naturally I do not attend. See the scum's carcass is cleaned and salved before departure."
Madeleine bowed, delegating the task to Annika for her name rhymed with arnica.
In her Spartan quarters, Priscilla allowed the friars to kiss a pallid hand, white as parchment, and offered them a flagon of small beer, which she believed they deserved.
"Well," Anselme announced, "that drab of a slattern should serve the noble Marquise well now. And, pardi it will be one more off your overburdened hands."
"Oui-da," she agreed. "And, by the bye, did the girl abjure while being thrashed and tortured? Just for my information, you understand."
"Overtly, no. But inwardly she has learnt her lesson, I believe. She will assent to anything now, as long as there is a whip around. Conversion will come later."

Martine was hardly aware later of kneeling, thighs well parted, before the Prioress, this time in the refectory. Apart from Madeleine, they were alone.
"You have, I am glad to say, graduated into womanhood," the ethereal voice told her, "and hopefully your horrendous beliefs have been whipped out of you. Your conduct, sexual and otherwise, has improved noticeably since your entry here. I only regret it was necessary to brand you but that is a detail." The woman's eyes descended to the dark purple cross, pitted in the lower belly. "You will now be returned to your noble mistress to serve her with devotion. Should you, by chance, be sent here again for correction, I shall be constrained to have you flogged to the blood, branded again but this time on both breasts, and sent to a field brothel to serve our gallant dragoons who labour so valiantly to rid the kingdom of heresy. Therefore strive to fulfil your calling." She glanced at Madeleine who nodded, the Superior adding: "Come Monday, a château servant will remove you from our sacred confines and return you to where your now more presentably slender body belongs. Meanwhile, you may watch the evening's flesh sale here in the refectory and thereafter, grace my bed. If you fall short of my requirements there - and I warn you I tend to be demanding - I'll have you hung by the legs and thrashed. Now you may go."
Thus, for her final moments at the convent - and doomed to Mother Priscilla's crotch - Martine found herself for once in the company of the other dozen or more inmates assigned to the convent for special training. The females were led in and chained stark naked to rings arrayed along the refectory wall; there they were examined and appraised for value by a small group of beribboned, professional slave dealers who were intermediaries between the Convent of the Annunciation and the more notorious stews in the capital, places known in Paris as fish ponds. There, whores were hooked for good.
The hucksters seemed more vulgar and terrifying than anything Martine had yet seen. Bouchard and even Coursel up at the castle were gentlemen in comparison. For once she felt strangely relieved to be predestined for Lassignac and all its works rather than for the flogging brothels of St Lazare and the Marais in Paris.
The 'convent' was a fashionable watering hole for procurers and flesh-peddlers and, quite naturally, demanded its percentage on transactions. Females up for sale, Martine noticed, were clearly distinguished by metal discs dangling from the neck strap. Some of the nudes were hot from flagellation possibly, she thought, to demonstrate their mettle and carnal resilience, while others stood temptingly unblemished. Staring in disbelief, the heretic found it difficult to understand the distinction since all on sale were certainly destined to places where leather-clad libertines had the whip hand over slave flesh.
Towards the end of the room, separated from the merchandise on offer, a bevy of freshly arrived candidates for training or revitalising looked on with bewildered eyes and melancholic expressions of despair, particularly when sister Tertia or Véronique lashed out with the service whip to correct a harlot's stance. Only Martine felt apart, her swollen, cauterised pubis still seething; bearing no disk and hence unpriced; she was ignored by the buyers but she watched each sale being concluded and the purchase being hauled out to be summarily prepared for the arduous ride north to her new abode, being used endlessly on the way. At least Martine reflected, she had only two leagues to cover to Lassignac.
The bartering over, she waited anxiously for her own transport at dawn to be announced. The prospect of rejoining Joanne, whether she had abjured or not, set her heart racing, for her former colleagues would barely recognise her, so slender had she become! Too excited, there was no point in trying to sleep, although she needed it sorely.
Long after the sales were over and the human wares had left the refectory, Sister Tertia came for her and led her to Mother Priscilla's bleak chamber. What happened there between the coarse sheets she would never forget. But she survived.

She would soon be shivering before the convent portal, anxiously waiting for the arrival of Coursel with the mare. And probably the loathsome harrow.

***

Up at the Château de Lassignac, the tension in the castle cellar had risen to a point Joanne found hard to bear. She had been lying extended on the ladder for the better part of an hour and knew how erotic her body must appear to anyone devoted to whipping young women. The position that kept her thighs crossed and clenched sent weird thrills through her entire body.
Roped tight by Marie-Félice, she knew it was reckless but asked the question.
"What happens now, Mistress?" She felt she had the right to know what her first ceremonial weekend entailed.
"Silence, drab!" the assistant hissed, although little pleased her more than to be addressed as 'mistress' by a slave of her own age, bound and awaiting torture. "You heard the sentence, so keep those ringed teats stiff, and wait. The guests will be down shortly - they had venison for dinner," she added cruelly, "including the one who chose you and your delicious body. I trust he'll let me whip you, to get you heated up and ripe."
Although relatively new to her role, the shrewd bitch knew a promising slave when she saw one. She gazed again at the sweating contours she had secured to the rungs. The bunch of metal sex rings lay practically concealed between the clenched thighs; an almost imperceptible line ran from the rib arch over the diaphragm and navel to the sex mound above the sex slit. Parpaillote or not, this one's figure was spicy, made for the whip!
Escorted by the Marquise the visitors entered amid a waft of heady perfumes, to discard their cloaks and select their instruments from the cellar table; those who had brought their own handed them to Simone for greasing. From where she lay, Joanne could just glimpse the group of veiled dominants, now stripped for action, sauntering among the nude offerings and no doubt uttering platitudes before each bound body. In fact, she heard one female voice complimenting the hostess: "Oh, Elodie, what a truly charming spectacle once again. You never fail us! Just how I like a girl to be chained - tight each side of the cunt." Joanne saw the spiked glove caress the links splaying Dalinde's slot.
What surprised and disappointed Joanne was the absence of the Marquis Francis-Etienne. Strange and unsettling. She remembered the smile he had given her in the holding chamber when, weeks before, he had flogged Martine. And she recalled the other, more recent moments of privacy... But why was he so often missing? Out hunting perhaps - for boar or unfeathered game with big breasts. Mariette had often jested that the handsome Marquis could not decide between nocturnal adventures and his castle's homely comforts.
As if by way of compensation for his absence, a powerful figure approached her sweating body, a sturdy erection jerking with each step the man took with what seemed to be a halting, lame gait. While the other guests took their places next to their allotted victims, the man gazed down at Joanne's taut nudity confronting him. For a moment he did not move. Masturbating slowly, he stared almost wistfully, pleased with his choice.
Suddenly Joanne heard Therèse - or was it Bette? - groan as a length of leather slashed into bare flesh. Then other cries and thuds resounded through the vaulting. Joanne's attempts to identify each moan filling the cellar were cut short, very suddenly.
De Montclamart - she recognised him from Marietta's earlier remarks whispered in the drawing room upstairs - addressed her directly while she stared at the pulsing cock and torso above. The terms he used were far from harsh; they sounded almost placid.
"I have selected you because your breasts attract me. The sexual entry to your body, though enticing, I leave to others. I am about to treat your breasts to a session under the quirt and tongs. That should provide ample stimulation for you to climax, should it not, slave? After all, we both seek enjoyment, no?" A gesture brought Marie-Félice's steely beauty forward and suddenly the girl slashed into Joanne's breasts, the broad lappets at the end of the quirt adding fresh marks. Gritting her teeth, Joanne recognised the sound all too well - the hiss through the air, the dull schlack! and her own grunt. And again the hiss, schlack and whine. And again... Joanne could hardly believe such licence was given to a junior slave handler and yet, to be scourged before a guest by a common domestic proved as exhilarating as it was humiliating. After the waiting, the bite of the whip was almost a relief. Joanne bore the punishment well; her superb udders squelching under the blows. The position on the ladder did not vex her. On the contrary.
The beating also pleased de Montclamart. "Oui-da, ma belle! Now whip the teats harder but slower, while I sort out my instruments. There's little I relish more than one female whipping another's saddlebags. The triple-thong always arouses a bitch, diantre!"
The slave managed to restrain her cries as the prancing bulges - or saddlebags - began to bloat again; it was as if somehow she lay outside her body, watching the flagellation. Then the flesh began to numb under the strokes, the crushed vulva leaking.
"I think that should suffice," the clubfoot announced. "Now, rattle down those long chains and haul up the teats by the rings as far as they'll stretch. Yes... Now block the chains. I need the flesh tensed,"
Sweating from her exertion, the dark-haired servant had lowered the links from the pulleys in the vaulted ceiling, passing the hooks through the teat rings; then, pulling hard on the chains, she distended the whipped breasts aloft into straining steeples of taut flesh.
Although week after week of stringent torture had enhanced her stamina, the victim groaned like a beast in labour; the elongation became unbearable. In a forlorn attempt to ease the tension, the slavegirl arched her spine but the higher she raised her thorax, the tighter the bitch hauled. With a nod, the man signalled to her to secure the chain ends to the wall, Joanne clenching her teeth in terror, moaning with pain. She had endured breast torture before but this eclipsed all the earlier ordeals.
Almost choking, she managed to raise her roped neck sufficiently to see through her tears what the guest had placed on her belly; the heavy pair of flesh tongs felt cold, like icicles in a Cevennes winter. Whatever he then laid on the black-numbered chest she could not discern but that further weight turned her to goose flesh. Shivering, she let her head subside again between the rungs as the torment commenced.
Straddling the ladder and body, de Montclamart launched into what Marie-Félice saw was to be a exceptional session, executed slowly, methodically and erotically.
What had been laid on the slave's chest then came into view. The man's gloved grasp sprang ajar the first of the metal crocodile clips. Joanne heard it rasp and recognised the jaws soon enough; she had seen Elodie one night use the clasps on Isabelle's outer sex labia; the staunch girl had taken the pain well as the sharp cusps bit deep into the flesh, only hissing with bitter affliction when an hour later the minx Anthea wrenched off the clips. Mariette had said they were the latest fad in some Paris slave-brothels, replacing the usual screw clamps. A slave just had to accustom herself to them.
"Now, Number Seven, you're going to take real delight in these," the man's voice promised. "They'll help you towards orgasm. And only orgasm will free you from pain." With that the guest leaned forward over the trembling nude and snapped the serrated metal clasp sideways on to each of the distended teats. Amid her moans and writhings, Joanne strangely found herself grateful for the posture the ladder imposed, for it locked her thighs and safeguarded the labial fronds from similar torture. At least thus far...
The breasts fully stretched towards the ceiling by the clenched teats, the limping guest took up the tongs from the belly and set to. Joanne gritted her teeth.
The initial pinchings around the tautened areoles seemed bearable until a blinding, purple streak of lightning stabbed through the slave's brain. The pincers' saw-toothed jaws seized lumps of her mammary lymph, twisting and wrenching the scourged meat then slowly descended to grip the breast roots; there the iron clinched, screwed and ground into the drum-tight flesh. Her shrilling spanned the cellar, adding to the cries and whip thuds issuing from other areas.
Although she had graduated in her time at Lassignac through many forms and degrees of correction - among which had been the other type of clasp Anselme had screwed on to her labia to open up the vagina for reaming, Joanne knew she could not bear much more. Even in her erotic fantasies the pain was always bearable. But on the ladder her strength was ebbing although her sex continued to throb and seep.
Still astride the ladder and his victim, de Montclamart watched the beautiful, sensuous torso writhe, jolt, rear a moment and then slam back against the wooden rungs. He knew the limit to which a young, strapping slavegirl could be taken but, dominating his prey emotionally as well as physically, he paid no heed to the slave's screams; they were part of his enjoyment. At the same time, as the agony spiralled, disintegrating time and place, Joanne was conscious only of three things: first, pain atrocious pain; the tempting cock dribbling over her; and finally blotting all else out, the sense of sharing her colleagues' privilege in exploring the secret groves of sexual slavery. As if participating in a sisterhood, her groans mingled with theirs, as their submissive flesh was mauled, flagellated and driven into orgasm. Joanne had joined the Lassignac weekend frivolities.
A long pause in the proceedings ensued leaving Joanne to wonder what more was to come. To distract her mind from the ladder, she recalled other moments and one in particular: in search of ready flesh, one evening Anthea had seized her in the cellar and, demanding total compliance, had taken her to a punishment cell for a bout of what she called 'the sort of love making that I really enjoy'. Chained spread-eagled on the torture slab, her head over the far edge, Joanne had 'enjoyed' a session of much pain and some pleasure with fortitude. In addition to her spiked nipple cones, Anthea wore the infamous double dildo: the rigid length of stitched leather bobbed at her groin with menace, half of it buried in the bitch's own vagina, the median flange, knurled on both faces with studs, cupping her clit. When fully inserted in Joanne, the artefact (fashioned for Anthea by Brissac, the blacksmith) provided intense orgasms for both fucker and fucked. Laying the full weight of her body on the helpless nude, the minx rammed the dildo in hard, crushing both clits while the atrocious barbs round the teats scarified the victim's breasts No slave was ever the same after one of those interludes, despite the fierce climaxes and even if later Simone did soothe the breasts and crotch with calamine mixed with sperm.

***

Returning to her present predicament, Joanne caught sight of the Marquise strolling round her cellar, monitoring matters. Thrilled, Elodie looked forward to enjoying Anthea - with a spare slavegirl to whip at the bedpost - later between the silken sheets, once the guests had retired with their victims. She could hardly wait.
Delighted with the progress of the evening, although annoyed by Francis-Etienne's absence, she approached that area of the cellar where the ladder was posed with its new vibrant offering. She watched her slave Seven trembling on the rungs in the final throes of torment. De Montclamart bowed, greeting his beautiful hostess.
"Excellent whore flesh... yes, truly responsive." His compliments were lost in the tumult of wailings from the other appliances. "Somewhat turbulent but responsive, dearest Marquise. I congratulate you on your purchase."
"Thank you, Maitre," she smiled, ignoring the term 'purchase'. "I presume you'll wish to continue with her, once she has simmered down." As an important public notary, he was to be treated with unction. "I'm glad she didn't pass out on you. She must learn to remain conscious while being used and to place her sexual gifts ahead of her personal whims. But, by the look of her breasts, she's showing promise."
The guest realised the session was over and clumped off to watch those of his associates still at work. Elodie gestured to her favourite slave handler to release Joanne. As the chains descended and the nipple clamps were removed, the tortured blonde let out a strident scream of pain as blood returned to the teats. Elodie chided her slave. "They'll be fine in a day or two, my beauty. Now, I want you to continue with him, particularly as you've not had an orgasm. But remember, Maitre de Montclamart has a horror of the female genitals so you'll have to fend for yourself. Now, off you go, sunshine, after you've had your gruel and water, and do your best to please him for the rest of the night. And try not to flake out. It lets down the house."
Her muscles stiff and almost incapable of supporting her, Joanne struggled off the ladder, prostrated herself and kissed her owner's thonged sandal. "If you permit it, dear mistress," she pouted, astonished at her own audacity, "I'd rather not continue with... him. He's terribly cruel... I'd rather be whipped and raped..."
"What's all this nonsense, child? No one's raped here. They're fucked. And he's one of our firmest friends, an upstanding man." Remembering the great cock, Joanne found the adjectives appropriate. "And your fine whore body attracts him. Of course, you'll continue with him. In one of the special cells with which you have to become acquainted."
The slave winced. The prospect of hours in a private cell with him dismayed her.
Having decided, the sumptuous Marquise moved on, leaving the blonde to Simone and Marie-Félice who immediately secured the wrists to the neck strap and whipped her across the almost empty cellar towards the slave pen, next to which reared the fateful arch leading down to the cells. The very thought of that dark underworld froze Joanne.
As she hobbled forward Joanne caught sight of Laurent, still chained to the vaulting by the wrists, his ankles drawn back to wall rings. The youth's erect cock throbbed crimson; it was extended to the far wall by a chain through the ring pierced through the underseam of skin. The paving glistened with semen the lad had already discharged and Evelyn de Burre-Sage was engaged in wiping off her penis whip. But a more disconcerting scene was being enacted further afield: the fury that Anthea exerted in flogging Isabella under Elodie's admirative eye made Joanne halt. Hung by the ankles, the legs wide, the slim body swung slowly as the booted female used a braided flogger on the crotch and buttock crease, the pale undersides of the breasts awaiting their turn. The sleek Isabelle struggled weakly under the lashes. 'Oh heaven,' Joanne prayed, 'save me from that gorgon.' Then an impatient Simone drove her into the slave precinct to swallow the bowl of gruel.
Hardly refreshed by the cold pottage, she was then led towards the arch and stone steps. Beyond lay the cells that she had not so far frequented. Although terrified, she found her ringed sex flooding again. She knew she was being conducted into hell.
Weirdly, as she stumbled down the worn steps, Joanne suddenly wondered what had befallen Martine. In a way, she was relieved her headstrong sister-in-faith was not present to grace the so-called ceremonial weekend for, if it was providing Joanne with a certain fulfilment of her frantic erotic dreams, Martine would have fought like one of those wild cats that haunted the Cevennes. She just trusted the plump dumpling was in safe hands down there at the convent where no doubt there were understanding souls...

Having negotiated the treacherous steps Joanne found herself thrust into a cubicle hewn out of the bedrock where, to her surprise, Marie-Félice awaited her and Simone. Again the organisation astonished the slavegirl as she was directed to stand against the stonework and spread her legs to be groomed. Briskly the two women soused her body, scouring the flesh with a grooming-brush, fingers purging the anal and vaginal vents.
"You've got to be prinked up, gorgeous," the slave handler smiled. "Even if he abhors those unctuous cavities down there. But one never can tell with guests."
The cleansing over, the group passed several massive, iron-braced doors and halted the slave before a further entry emblazoned with a frightening heraldic escutcheon depicting a pair of crossed whips surmounted by an erect penis and pendulous balls. The chamber beyond was bleak and ominous as Simone lit a candle from her lantern.
"Against the wall, whore," the drab servant ordered. "Pull in that belly and wait."
The slave was chained by the neck strap to a wall ring. The two servants positioned themselves outside the doorway to await the clubfooted guest - who had an aversion to a female's lower orifices, pristine or not.
Nervously Joanne stared at the sombre block of granite looming in the centre of the cell. The far wall was festooned with scourges and perplexing articles of flesh torture; Joanne recognised some but not others. More disturbing to the newcomer but at the same time exhilarating, matching her secret phantasms, were the hasps set into the sides of the frigid altar. From them hung chains and shackles awaiting their quarry.
Time dragged by in the eerie silence. Not a sound permeated from the adjoining dungeons - not that screams, shrieks or the slam of leather could pass through the massive masonry. Joanne was alone in the underworld of Lassignac, waiting.
The drag and scrape of de Montclamart's feet startled her and she froze.
When the crippled ghoul appeared, handing his velvet cape to Simone, the object he held in his left fist cut the slave's breath: of braided horsehide, each lash terminated in a metal lug. The naked girl gaped at the weapon.
"You may leave, woman, and you too, Marie-Félice," the grim notary announced. Both females bowed, Simone sketching a curtsy which was more of a shrug. She had more pressing chores to attend to than watch a slave beating. In any case, this Number Seven was docile and would stretch out compliantly enough over the whipping slab. Marie-Félice, or the other hand, regretted the dismissal, giving the tortured breasts a final glance. Another session on those, she judged, and Lassignac could well have a problem on its hands. And the staff had enough to deal with as it was.
Then Joanne noticed the other item the illustrious guest held. He leaned heavily on the polished walking cane, a gloved palm cupping the chased silver pommel - which, to her dismay, was fashioned to resemble an erect penis and a hefty one at that. Inwardly she prayed it was not destined to gouge her rear orifice. Its size alone perturbed her.
"Did you enjoy the ladder, my beauty?" came the question, to which no slave in her right mind would ever have dared respond. Yet Joanne did so, courageously.
"Yes, distinguished master. But, deprived of orgasm, I suffer and..."
"But as a whore slave you exist solely to please me. And you did. Fully. Flesh such as yours requires inventive punishment. But your gluttonous lust will now be satisfied."
The blonde victim felt her vulva swell but reverted to caution and silence.
Laying the terrifying whip on the slab, the man released her from the wall. "On to our altar of sacrifice, slut. Mount it crosswise, belly up, head over the side."
Joanne was quite certain she was to be beaten not only with the scourge but with the cane and shuddered; only her buttocks, at most, could withstand that tapering length of briarwood; but luckily they would be flattened on the stone. Instantly she laid herself out as ordered and waited for the four limbs to be chained, her corn-blonde hair tumbling down the granite's flank. She felt her wrist manacles being attached to the corners of the block but, to her bewilderment, the splayed legs were left to dangle free over the edge, her sex leaking dangerously. After carefully adjusting her posture the macabre cripple, to her consternation, retrieved the scourge and retired behind the lolling head. The slave stared up at the prick and balls swaying before her face. The massive penis scared her.
Very abruptly, the leather thongs rose, hissed and carved into the crotch with a force that deprived her of breath; the splat over the wet orifice echoed round the cell as did the further half-dozen lashes, the metal spheres fortunately striking only the stones. Somehow Joanne managed to control her cries through the first blows and then screamed with force, the sex rings jangling like a yearling's bridle. Abruptly she was silenced as the man's erection rammed into the yelling gullet, her head thudding against the slab's side. Frantically, she suctioned and tongued with all her sexual talent, a gift gained through constant servicing of her Francis-Etienne - heavens, how she missed those dark eyes, the hirsute loins and that phallus - in the erotic seclusion of the west wing...
Ablaze with bittersweet pain, she felt her smouldering clit take over control of her entire body. Smitten by the thongs, the stub of gristle seemed to cry out for far more direct manipulation if it was to gratify its owner.
The man's curt command sounded incongruous amid the lashes.
"Up with the legs, bitch! Ankles on my shoulders. And continue to suck."
She obeyed at once. The cripple stared at the swollen fig in the crotch rising towards him; he dropped the scourge and, to Joanne's terror seized the walking stick. Instead of rising, it bore down, the silver pommel plunging in among the rings and went deep into the cunt, glutted with slush. Joanne sucked the penis in tune with the thrusts, feeling the crimson folds of vaginal meat being dredged in and out until, suddenly, the rod slanted back to scour the whipped clitoris. Before her mouth could draw semen, she found herself careering towards her climax with uncontrollable violence. The frictioning of the flayed stump brought her off prodigiously, more savagely than she had yet known, even after a beating. She let spasm after spasm explode like discharges from a royal cannon. Then, without more warning than a harsh grunt, the notary spurted and spurted richly, choking her. Joanne swallowed what she could, the residue frothing from her nostrils.
Leaving her jerking, still chained over the slab, her mercifully free thighs clenching and squelching, the guest used the flaxen mop of bobbed hair to wipe her spume off his cock and then from the briar. Half-conscious, she heard the comment: "You suck well for a filthy parpaillote and come viciously. Most edifying, whore, I must say. If I can retain you for the rest of the night and again tomorrow, I shall flog you to orgasm without burying a pommel in you. And may your misguided faith guard you if you fail, slut!" Still convulsing, Joanne vaguely heard the cell door creak on its rusty hinges and she was alone, traumatised but fully appeased. The session had elated her and fire licked her crotch as if melting the rings.
It was Simone who led her back to the slave pen where she collapsed on her straw pallet, quite alone, the others still servicing the guests. Spent in every sense, Joanne slept.
But not for long. The iron gate grated. Florence in her kitchen apron entered on feline feet and kneeling next to the smouldering body, spread balm over the throbbing sex.
"I've delivered the message, Joanne, and things are afoot. Keep alert. I'll tell you when the men are about to attack." She hushed the girl's question with a finger on the swollen lips. "Not a word, even to me. Orders from the Camisards. Just follow me."
The cook released the neck chain and silently led the somnolent girl to the west wing and laid her gently between the cool, silken sheets Joanne knew so well. As she covered up the body, the Marquis de Lassignac stepped silently out of the shadows.
"Thank you, Florence. Now let her rest." The man's murmur was too subdued for the blonde one to hear but he leaned forward to kiss the honey-freckled cheek. Drawing the cook out with him, he questioned her: "Now, what news do you have from your friends?"
Florence told him and they left Joanne to sleep. Only the jackdaws in the castle turrets seemed aware that all was not well in the wooded vicinity of Lassignac. But then, daws and owls, however wise, are just birds and humans rarely listen to their warnings.

***

Installed anew in his castle quarters, the weekend ceremonies over, it was Dom Anselme himself who informed Elodie of Martine's imminent release from the nunnery.
"Knowing your needs, gracious lady," he announced, pleased to be in office again, "Mother Priscilla and I - if I may include my own initiatives - have reduced your slave to the state you seek. She is, I am glad to say, now fit to re-occupy her place in your august cellar to do penance, naked under the whip. And the whore has changed..."
"Without conversion?" The Marquise raised a quizzical eyebrow, suspecting the probable answer which barely interested her, being fresh - or rather, prostrate - from a hectic session in bed with Anthea and the long-suffering Isabelle, the latter having been chained taut across the black sheets of the four-poster and used relentlessly. "I knew the convent would oblige," Elodie smiled, "and I hope she has been relieved of some of that obnoxious fat. I'll send Coursel for her anon. Thank you, Dom Anselme, for your patience, for I am sure you advised judiciously on the slut's training. We shall whip her soundly."
Just before daybreak the following day, Coursel covered the few leagues grudgingly with the mare and harrow, arriving at the convent amid the first chirping of birds. He was astounded by the change in the dark-haired slut shivering naked in chains before the pastern; it was not the abundance of welts and sombre contusions over the body that surprised him but rather the slave's sleek, diminished contours. If indeed she was Martine she was hardly the same slave he had hauled down three weeks before. Spreading her again upon the spikes of the same rusty farm harrow, he hesitated to fuck her but, once up in the sycamore grove, he dismounted and filled her.
Remarkably, the girl seemed to moan with pleasure. Could this be the same whore?
Soon after the body arrived before the portcullis of Lassignac and a moment later what had become almost a lissom beauty was back in the slave compound among her colleagues, they too, and Joanne especially, astonished at the transformation. Once on her pallet Martine kissed her parpaillote soul mate fondly. Then Joanne noticed the girl's body.
"Mon Dieu, they really slimmed and lashed you! Did you keep the faith, sister?"
Martine nodded. "And you? You're in a fine state too! They said you'd recanted."
Joanne stared at her and laughed. "Me? Have they whipped the sense out of you, sweet dunce? I'm still true and bright as the star of Bethlehem." She lowered her voice. "Florence told me you were due back and just as well because - and listen carefully - we're going to leave this prison and, if all goes well, this very week. Keep close to me, whatever happens. Just stay very close. And not a word."
Martine's eyes widened. Glancing at the other nudes chained alongside her, she saw that no one seemed interested in their murmurings; the return of a slave after a bout of training was a triviality, even if the body, for better or worse, had undergone a change.
Joanne took Martine into her arms and whispered what she had to impart. Bridling temptation, she spread spittle over her friend's welts and her own.

***

Beyond the massive walls of the castle, the odour of honeysuckle and boxwood wafted through the spring air, alive with the homely grating of the cicadas. The hills of the Cevennes rolled away into the distance under fleecy clouds that seemed to lie motionless, expectant in the sky. Time had halted as if surprised by a posse of men, several leagues away, gathered in the woods for prayer and briefing. The man on horseback went by the name of Lacombe, delegated by Castenet to lead the attack. The Protestant leader studied again the scrap of paper and Joanne's hurried scrawl. The bearded lieutenant called his posse of men, in their leather jerkins and clogs, around him and repeated the tactics for the coming Sunday's onslaught on Lassignac, when the castle would still be asleep. He chose the moment astutely allowing only a few hours to free and avenge their two abducted sisters. Each one of the group had been himself harassed by vile persecution, suffered forced billeting of dragoons on his household, seen his woman raped on the kitchen table, the cottages, temples burnt... The grapes of wrath were ripe.

EIGHT
The mists rising from the Tarn river hovered round the uplands of the Mont Lozere like a ghostly skirt as the men set out towards the hamlet of Bellecoste. The march through the bracken, still moonlit with the last glimmers, proved arduous until the sun rose. The posse halted in a gully for morning prayer, sharing the scant provisions of cheese and stale bread; it would be foolhardy to seek more at the Pont-de-Montvert where a company of dragoons was billeted.
The men veered to the south and mounted laboriously east towards Lassignac, its presumptuous turrets still dimly shrouded in mist. By daybreak they had arrived in the dell of gorse bushes just below the walls and rested, arms in hand. Castenet's lieutenant, Lacombe, the locksmith from Mende, leading them, the group offered up a psalm and received a blessing from their accompanying pastor who knew he was jeopardizing his life, if caught. Crossing the outside paddock, Lacombe led his troop to the stable doorway that, as planned, Florence had left on the latch - a risk she had taken with stealth and courage the previous evening, ensuring the castle was abed. Only three lazy guards, she had said, patrolled the battlements, and they would be sodden with drink. All the steps had been taken in line with the Camisards' message sent to Joanne hidden in a loaf of bread, both message and bread being shared with Florence. Thus all was set for daybreak on this, the Sunday of retribution, revenge and rescue.
Passing cautiously through the straw-strewn stalls without raising a neigh from the Marquis's stallion and the mares, the posse stunned a couple of dozing grooms and bound them; soundlessly the Camisards gained the rear courtyard, still shielded from the early rays of the sun by the crenelated battlements. There the men received their first shock.
Hanging naked from the gibbet bar above the yard's platform, the deathly pale female seemed to have frozen. The slavegirl Therèse had in fact spent the night there, following a prolonged flagellation from Bouchard, the major-domo; the whipping had been inflicted in line with Anthea's orders, for the slave's slovenly behaviour during a session of breast torture, for which the wretched nude had been chained to Elodie's bedpost. The Calvinists stared at the body with a mixture of horror and shock, for she was enough to awe and disturb even the chastest parpaillote-in-arms. Silently, at Lacombe's whispered order, one of his men crossed to release her; the bruised body collapsed to the boards with a groan and was covered with a horse blanket from the stables. Few of the men had ever even seen a naked female, let alone one chained, anally impaled and thrashed purple.
The drowsy guards on the ramparts were disarmed expeditiously, one receiving a pitchfork between the ribs, the others being tied fast, without cries or struggle. They were replaced by Camisards from the posse to watch out for the dragoons. Then the courtyard door to the keep was forced, that too left unlocked by the devout Florence.
Silence no longer vital, the sabots and weapons echoed through the tapestried passages as Florence herself appeared from the kitchens to greet Lacombe. After a brief parley with her, the austere Calvinist dispatched his band to various parts of the building. His orders were simple: "Kill in the name of Sion and Gideon only if you must, but bring the rest to..." Florence pointed along the long corridor and helped: "To the great drawing room over there brothers. And take care when you arrest the two louts, Bouchard and the bonehead Coursel. They could be armed. They're in their retreats down there on the left but spare the women with them. They may be of the faith, slaves or innocents." She looked at the leader. "Now is the time for you and a couple of our brethren to mount above and seize the Great Whore of Babylon where she transgresses with her accursed Anthea, that sister of Satan. They're your quarry too. Quick, before they wake."
"And the Marquis, Florence? And our two sisters in God, pardi?" the leader asked bluntly, aware he could risk only a few hours, at most, in the castle. "Where are they?"
The domestic hesitated. "I'm not sure about the Marquis but probably you'll find him with one of our believers in the west wing. The other is suffering in the slave cellar."
"We'll collect them later," the man decided. "But first, the damned Marquise on whose forehead," he quoted aloud, "is the name written, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth. Take me to the room, devoted sister, for me to slaughter her, as Joshua destroyed the inhabitants of Ai. Joshua 8, verse 25," he added.
"Would that be wise, brother?" the woman murmured warily. "Maybe Joanne and even Martine should decide what should be done. After all, it is they who have suffered."
The man hesitated a second. "So be it. But the gorgon - or both of them - shall be whipped naked until they repent." With that, he and three men mounted the stairs with Florence, Lacombe's sabre bared and flashing. He kicked open the door of the bedroom.
Jolted awake, the two dishevelled women shrank back, drawing the silk sheets to their chins. Hauled from the bed, the Marquise had just time to seize a thin nightdress and stagger after her captors; Anthea, reeking with sweat and sexual discharge, had no such chance and was hustled out stark naked. Too alarmed to struggle, both women had their elbows bound behind, one of the Camisards pricking the younger female's buttocks to hurry her down. They stumbled into the great room, horrified to see virtually the whole household prisoner and aligned, kneeling in bondage. Only the Marquis was missing.
A moment later, Elodie and Anthea were also forced to their knees, a thickset Calvinist threatening the heaving breasts with his billhook. Trembling indignantly, the two glared at their enemies in silence. Time passed as the sun rose, flooding the room.
Having finished collecting the servants - Bouchard, an unclothed Coursel, his huge cock limp for once, a Brissac without his blacksmith's apron, and a naked Marie-Félice, drooling with what had been pumped into her in Bouchard's bunk - Florence conducted the Cevenol officer and a few men along the dim passage leading to the west wing and to what she knew it contained.
Joanne lay luxuriously upon the silken covers, listening to the Marquis, dressed in riding clothes, reading Racine to her. On the side table were the stale remains of the loaf, the scrap of paper it had concealed serving as a marker in the Marquis's book. The domestic composure of the scene left Lacombe dumbfounded; the Marquis seemed to be privy to the sudden violation of his castle. But there indeed was the startlingly alluring maiden from Pressignac, listening placidly to her captor. Only the bluish purple lash marks over the body, together with the manacles and flesh rings, showed she was one of the two slaves the posse had come to retrieve. The young, freckled face greeted the men with a broad smile of welcome as the Marquis closed his book, rose and bowed obsequiously. Gently he helped Joanne to slide off the bed into a fur-lined cloak. Frisking the noble Master of Lassignac for weapons and being about to bind his wrists, Lacombe perceived the girl's shake of the head, and desisted with a shrug. His stare at Florence showed the relationship lay beyond his comprehension.
The strange couple followed the Camisards and the cook into the long corridor.
Once in the drawing room, Joanne was offered Elodie's throne and, after she had spoken to Lacombe, the Marquis was allowed to stand unbound at her side. Open-mouthed, the household - and Elodie - kneeling in obeisance, saw the Marquis take Joanne's hand.
Guided again by Florence, Lacombe then descended into the cellar. The spectacle there alone justified the perilous attack; the candlelight flickered over a row of naked slaves cringing against the wall. Above each hung a hideous length of flogging leather.
"Which of these pitiable creatures is our sister, Florence?" Lacombe asked.
Martine was released and led upstairs, where it was her turn to be amazed, as Joanne signalled her to take the armchair next to her own. Before her stretched the whole herd of her owners, torturers, flunkeys, chamber maids and servants, bound and mute. But more startling still was the figure next to Joanne. Gazing solemnly at the array of kneeling prisoners, the Master of Lassignac appeared unabashed, even congenial. Nonplussed, Martine recalled that awesome initial whipping she had received from him in the holding cellar weeks before, and scowled. Joanne gave her a glance to reassure her.
Now only the Dominicans were missing. The saintly man and his acolyte had long since escaped through the sewers and fled for refuge in the Convent of the Annunciation. Neither was particularly eager to face Martine, Joanne or the Camisards.
"Now they are before you, Joanne," Lacombe announced, leaning on his sword after ordering Martine to be given some covering. The pastor, pained by the nudity displayed in the room, readily offered her a long cloak left by some guest and still hanging on the wall. "We shall abide by your verdict," the Camisard went on, "and that of your sister in the Faith. It is up to you. Whatever you decide shall be done. I've mentioned the scourge but this," he held out his sabre, "would be more expeditive. And appropriate." A series of low groans arose from the line of captives.
If only the dragoons were not so far away, Elodie lamented in silence - massacring burning, scourging, raping, chaining and fettering. And the Pont-de-Montvert lay only an hour or two's march distant... Elodie prayed silently.
Glancing down the row of recumbent forms, Joanne turned matters over in her mind. Events had evolved swiftly enough, as Florence had foreseen. Almost freed, she felt forgiveness welling up within her. About to pardon, she heard her sister-in-faith yell from the chair beside her.
"Let those two hyenas there," Martine's shaking finger stabbed towards the Marquise and her paramour, "those bitches, be whipped! On the gallows, pardi, in the yard! And where are those two priests of Ashtoreth? May heaven damn them. Where are they?"
A sepulchral silence fell over the room, Joanne staring at her companion.
"When we've done here," the dark-haired fury went on, her eyes narrowing like slits left by a whip, "I'll lead you down to the convent, brothers. There I've retribution due. An eye for an eye. Tooth for a tooth. So, brethren?" Bristling, she challenged Lacombe.
The hush became eerie, Joanne avoiding Martine's eyes. She made up her mind and addressed the line of bewildered hostages.
"At the slightest sign of resistance, these men will burn this hell-hole to the ground. We know," - she flashed a look at Elodie - "who devised our imprisonment here..."
"Otherwise you sluts would have gone to the Tour de Constance!" Elodie screamed across the room, "you squalid pagans... to Aigues-Mortes to rot like rats..."
Joanne disregarded the shriek. "And why here?" she went on. "To be used as whipping slaves." She turned to Francis-Etienne. "Although you negotiated it with the Marshal and his damned dragoons, presumably you did so to content your evil wife and this debauched whore of hers." Anthea aimed and spat at her. "Moreover, you yourself, Marquis, flogged Martine here when we were suffering in the holding cellar." She paused and, to Martine's astonishment, added: "You used me unceasingly in the west wing. Not that I hold that against you. For reasons of my own. In fact you saved me from much degradation by keeping me to yourself. I do not grudge you that, for I too had pleasure. You whipped me, yes, but also you treated me as... a human being."
Martina was struck dumb, only to see the Marquis bow gracefully. He looked almost elegiac as he replied. "If I may speak, Joanne dear, allow me to say that, in a way, I am also to blame, even if I gleaned great pleasure and shared it with you. I admit enjoying your superb body, as much as you did mine. You attract me as few women have done."
Elodie let out a hoarse cry of fury, only to receive a sharp jab from the billhook.
"As far as I am concerned and under the circumstances," the bearded one went on, "both of you may depart. Your flesh rings will be sawn through and removed. Your manacles also and I'll see to it you're given clothing and footwear to leave with these..." he sought for the word, "...these friends of yours. If you wish use the mounts in the stables. But, in the name of our past joys, spare my house and those whom it shelters."
Elodie could barely believe what she was hearing. Had this devious, pusillanimous husband of hers taken leave of his senses? What was this trash about mutual attraction between her Marquis and an abysmal slut of a slave, about to abscond? Incredible! True, the goings on in the west wing had exasperated her beyond words. Perhaps the man was playing for time, despite his hand fondling that of the blonde bitch. If ever she came out of this mess, she would whip that whore into hell itself. So she had to play for time and detain the lawless posse of peasant louts as long as possible hopefully at least until the company of dragoons at the Pont-de-Montvert got wind of the scurrilous attack. As surely they must, sooner or later - for she noticed the young stable boy, Lucien, was missing from the row of captives and may have escaped. Unless, of course, a hayfork had already stabbed him, screaming, to the planks of the horse stalls...
"We have no need of your help, thank you. Marquis," Lacombe put in. "These girls seek freedom and, par ma foi, we'll see they get it!"
Joanne beckoned to the man to exchange whispers at length, Martine leaning over and gesticulating wildly. A further remark from the Marquis interrupted the parley.
"But, pardi," he urged, dismissing his wife's pleas for help, "let me at least order your slave rings to be extracted. It can be done forthwith by Bouchard and Brissac, the smith. Under your friends' supervision, of course."
"Not that bastard Bouchard!" Martine's cry splintered the silence like glass. "Anyone but that Amalekite swine, that whoremonger from Nineveh! Pour out the vials of wrath!"
Taken aback, Joanne looked at her and then nodded. "Very well, sister. Then Brissac'll do it alone, with Florence's help. In any case, we shall need Bouchard for quite another task - along with Marie-Félice." She had taken her decision.
"As you wish," Francis-Etienne murmured with eloquent reticence. "as long as your henchmen spare my folk and roof. If you will allow him to fetch his tools, Brissac can remove the rings and shackles here and now." Again the blonde nodded and Lacombe despatched a young Camisard to lead the blacksmith out. "But in what way, pray," the Marquis asked, "may my major-domo and Marie-Félice be of help?"
Joanne rose to pace the drawing room. "We have decided as follows. The entire household will descend to the courtyard, line up kneeling against the wall to watch the punishments my virtuous sister here proposes."
The stifling room became laden with menace. "We have decided that the pig Bouchard, shall scourge your lascivious wife while that trollop Marie-Félice, rather than yon bestial Coursel, flogs that hell-kite, Anthea, who had us sliced, shredded, and skinned me with her vile nipple cones, the bitch!" She paused to contain her virulence. "So, the Marquise will be hung head down from the gallows, that vixen there chained to the harrow. Is that what you want, Martine?"
The girl approved with an avid smile. Her maxim was simple: a humiliated slave should treat her tormentor, if given the chance, in the same way as the oppressor treated a slave, and unbelievably that chance had come. The pair of ruthless bitches deserved the whip, if not more, until their bodies and hopefully their malignant souls were cleansed with tongues of fire. And that, Martine added, Bouchard and Marie-Félice could do with the same ferocity as Sister Madeleine and Tertia down at the convent.
"So, I think we can start," Jeanne announced serenely. "And you, Marquis, will watch while it is done. Yes, I consider the penance my righteous sister proposes fully appropriate. It is, alas, regrettable that the two satanic priests have for the moment eluded us and their due punishment. But anon our brothers here will storm that convent of vice, if Heaven gives us time, and the wrath of God shall descend upon it."
The speech brought another howl of protest out of Elodie and a profanity from Anthea. At the same time, Brissac was booted in, his implements in hand while several Camisards took charge of the two propitiatory victims dragging them down to the now sunlit yard, Elodie being stripped of her nightgown. Her slim body gleamed like sliver. Still she could not believe the barbarian enemy was not only at the gates but within.
As his wife left, the Marquis avoided her glowering eyes. The prospect of the double thrashing to come quickened his pulse but also quelled some of his anxieties. A ration of lashes would not, he felt, go amiss on his insatiable spouse, leave alone on her lesbian whore. How Elodie would take the whip remained to be seen but, recalling the recent beating he had given Anthea in the armoury, he was far from averse to watching that slender body writhe again in all its profligate elegance. By paying for their lust, they would, he hoped, spare the castle from damage and bloodshed - the same could not be said of the countless protestant temples and humble cottages the troops had laid waste nor of the men wasting away in the galleys, the women in the Tour de Constance. Alas, alas.
He wondered further how his major-domo and the pretty slave handler with the strabismus would react to the order. Would they refuse? His doubts were quickly resolved.
Wrists freed, Bouchard and the nude girl seemed to accept their assignment without demur and they too were led out of the room. Anything to avoid those blades of steel.
"Now, down with the domestics," Joanne decreed "Have them facing the gibbet."
As the line filed out, the two girls leaned against the long table and parted their cloaks and thighs for Brissac to smear the slave rings. Florence supervised the task. Ring by ring, the quaking blacksmith sawed through and edged each circle out of the genital flesh and nipples. The shears then slit the five broad, studded straps. As the tackle fell away, the Marquis winced at the purple abrasions left by the leathers that had served, time after time, to stretch the sinews for flagellation, erotic torture and penetrations. Yet, catching Joanne's eye, he showed no regret over the prolonged sessions they had shared in the west wing. Nor, to judge by the girl's sidelong look, did she...
The pastor, who had audaciously accompanied the posse, averted his eyes from the spectacle of female sex organs being distended and freed. He had seen ample already.
The girls could hardly contain their joy as their extremities were relieved of the last tokens of servitude; as the metal fell to the floor, the bodies felt they had been lifted into the clouds scudding above the castle turrets and the mauve hills of the Cevennes.
Once Florence had smeared balsam over the inflamed flesh and closed the capes, the group gathered at the open casement, giving on the radiant courtyard below where Lacombe had taken charge of the proceedings. The sun gave the space an unreal aspect.
Forced to mount the steps of the slave scaffold, Elodie turned to look up at the figures at the window. Her eyes sent daggers at her former slaves. And at her husband.
"I trust you up there know what you're doing. You'll pay for this. I taught you to find faith through suffering and didn't try to convert you." Her fury was laced with venom. "Whores! I should have had you culled like diseased ewes! Or rather, whipped to death..."
With a contrite bow to exculpate himself, Bouchard a second later had her lying on the scaffold. Grasping the loop of rope dangling from the gibbet arm, he passed it over the right ankle and heaved on the slack. Slowly his owner's resplendent body rose aloft.
Joanne could hear Martine's breathing shorten as the nude beauty swung clear of the boards, Bouchard tying the already bound wrists to the nape of the neck above the flowing hair. The free leg was then bent back until the heel dug into the left buttock, a leather thong strapping the shin firmly to the thigh; it was bondage the Marquise herself had taught him. Up at the casement, Martine, with a sharp gasp seized her colleague's hand. "That's what they did to me down at the convent, Joanne," she murmured, "and then used my rings to wrench me open. Then..." Joanne shushed her. Elodie's sodden vulva had unglued, the labia parting above the tufts of golden fleece. Watching the nakedness being steadied for the whip, Joanne felt a jab of envy pierce her own sex. To be displayed thus before so many eyes was an experience and thrill she herself would not have disliked.
The woman's moans reached the casement. Aghast, the household kneeling along the wall saw the sweat trickling down from the crater of the belly, over the rib cage to drip from the teats to the planks. Even there she was elegant. Elodie Marguerite Helene de Vonnange-Lassignac was about to be flagellated by her own indentured servant - a humiliation beyond name.
"Did we look as tempting as that, Joanne?" the younger spectator breathed. "I'll wager you've begun to leak..." But her blonde cousin, indeed clammy between the thighs, was concentrating, unlike her companion, on her arch-enemy, Anthea; Joanne had more cause to loathe the spoilt lesbian slut and felt the bitterness welling up in her.
As ordered, Coursel had braced the harrow against the far wall of the yard and on it Anthea formed a star of taut sinew. The conceited bitch hissed as the bed of prongs drove into her flesh, Marie-Félice - fearing she might be next - dutifully wrenching the limbs to the four corners of the grid. Finally, Martine in turn had to gaze at the harrow blanching as she recalled the atrocious journeys to and from the nunnery; she could almost feel those spikes lacerating Anthea's body.
"Just look at that drab," she rasped. "Nothing but a load of lascivious depravity and thews," - her vocabulary had enriched since her incarceration, "only fit for the whip. Isn't she something, squirming there on the teeth? I just hope a prong's gone up her anus. You don't know the harrow, Joanne," she added, "so you can't know how she's enjoying it."
His eyes desperately trying to avoid the two nude bodies and the thatches raddled with recent discharges in Elodie's bed, Lacombe glanced up at the casement for a gesture from Joanne. When the nod came he ordered Coursel to hand out the whips - the thick horsehide flogger to his colleague, Bouchard and the supple cane to the ruthless girl standing completely naked in the sunlight, impatient to begin. The fact that Marie-Félice was to flagellate nude gave the scene a certain irony, for Joanne had only too often been whipped by a stark-naked Anthea, wearing her double dildo. The irony of justice.
Strangely, no one in the yard, least of all the floggers, seemed particularly disturbed by the rank, high birth and prestige of the victims to be punished; the Lassignac staff unerringly carried out what authority required of them, or, as under the prevailing circumstances, what they were now obliged to do under armed coercion.
Stripped down to the haunches, the major-domo released his crotch flap and brought out his battering ram of a cock. As it always did when he was about to flog a naked woman, the blue-veined shank of fucking meat, already secreting, throbbed prodigiously erect from the shag of sex-hair; the sac of balls swung stolidly below, preparing their load of sperm that Joanne's taste buds could never forget. Speechless for once, Martine stared at the thing, having neither glimpsed nor serviced it in her short-lived sojourn at the château. But Joanne could almost feel the blunt dome splaying her sphincter again as when, a few nights back, Bouchard had nonchalantly sodomised her against the passage wall while she was being led back to the cellar after a vicious session in Elodie's bedroom. Contrary to Dom Anselme's rod - an item Joanne knew almost as well as Martine - the major-domo's organ had filled her with exhilaration, in addition to succulent wads of healthy sperm. How often, indeed, had her three well-trained orifices gaped to encompass that cudgel during those interminable ordeals under the whip? Times without count, and she recalled the bizarre pleasures - and frantic orgasms - that stupendous helm and stock had given her and all her companions. Bette had recounted that once, in the course of a punishment entailing her being hung sideways by an arm and a leg, she had serviced three cocks at the same time - Coursel up her cunt, some masked guest using her throat, Bouchard in her anus - and she always preferred the major-domo; she could accommodate him behind with effortless ease. Or so she said. One rarely believed Bette.
As the whips were being soaked in the pail of brine that always stood at the foot of the gallows, Joanne continued to think back, wondering how she would survive without her colleagues, her sex rings, the whip and, above all, her Marquis. That the abject Elodie might, in the performance about to commence, enjoy the same thrills, nettled Joanne. But the prospect of Marquise's welts perduring for the best part of a week calmed her. Yet the thought of being whipped before the entire Lassignac retinue did excite her. Moreover, Francis-Etienne's hand on her shoulder did not help. Nor did the idea of leaving him.
Marie-Félice, stationed to the side of the grid, was running the tip of her cane over Anthea's triangle of crotch hair, after stimulating the nipples. Martine grasped her friend's hand even tighter enjoying the preparation, for the convent nuns had used the same technique prior to their beatings and torture sessions. Watching Marie-Félice, Joanne realized the juvenile slave handler needed no prompting; the brat knew a fully swollen areole when she saw one and long since had learnt how to rouse a clitoris or a male cock into erection, the mandatory state at Lassignac for slaves about to be flagellated.
"Commence!" The great walls, bereaved of swallows and human kindness, echoed back Joanne's order. Raising their whips, both floggers struck together.
Frigging leisurely, Bouchard laced into the pallid undersides of his exalted owner's jugs. Aware he was as much a prisoner as his mistress, he whipped flawlessly; the breasts flattened, rebounded and then squelched anew, marking magnificently, being callow and unused to leather. Yet, on one occasion, Francis-Etienne had tried them out, mainly to provide his lecherous spouse with an idea of the shock and possibly the pleasure her uncomplaining slaves received when she laid into them. Elodie had understood soon enough and, refusing further ignominy, told her husband to desist. By way of recompense, she had substituted for her own tender flesh a young milkmaid, who had inadvertently upset a beaker of cream, a crime, she felt, meriting thirty lashes over the fat udders and teats.
Bouchard's thongs worked steadily up the thorax and then slashed the soft belly. Screaming oaths already - something she allowed none of her slaves to do - Elodie arched backwards, her body gyrating on the single rope. The front well striated up to the broad haunches, the major-domo attended to the lean arse cheeks which the man had always maintained could do with welting; and that he administered with his customary force. Although it belonged to his gracious owner, he saw to it that the bottom reddened well. He knew every arse in the castle, at least those that lay within his purview of authority. But this one was new to him and his mistress's wild shrieks and writhings truly surprised him, for when beating cellar slaves, the girls did little more than shudder and groan. But then they were used to the lash; that was why they existed.
Having welted most of the body amid the woman's shrill shrieks, Bouchard paused to glance up at the window. It was Martine who gave him the signal without waiting for Joanne to concur. Bouchard nodded and brought the thongs down across the crotch.
Taken aback at the suddenness of the stroke and Elodie's howl, Joanne winced.
"I didn't really mean to go that far, love," she murmured hesitatingly.
"Then why hang the bitch up like that?" Martine answered. "Let her have a taste of what's served up at the convent. And you know what Bouchard always says, nothing drives a woman to orgasm faster than rawhide over a clit."
"But I don't want her to come," Joanne protested. Yet she let the whip continue, recalling what the burly monster, Evelyn de Burre-Sage, had done to her in the drawing room. But then, poor Martine had suffered a great deal more than she.
The thongs slammed and splashed into the flaxen-haired bush, a feature the slaves were deprived of. And it was a change to see a neophyte - if that was what the Marquise could be termed - learn the hard way. Oh, yes, the dissipated bitch had much to learn.
The screeching reached a new level of intensity, mingling with cries of repentance, dissembled or not, that no one heeded, apart from the uneasy husband.
"Listen, Joanne," he voiced his anxiety strangely. "My wife may be guilty of some transgressions, that I do not dispute but she's relatively inexperienced, you know..."
His remark also went unnoticed. Bouchard steadied the jerking carcass and whipped from the mons to the anal cleft, his preferred target for the major lashes - a target every slave at Lassignac 'should learn to relish with gratitude and sexual pleasure', he frequently claimed. Joanne had had it twice and, although she had orgasmed smoothly, she felt she could well do without a third visitation down there where sensitivity was at its highest. But, for his part, little satisfied the major-domo more than a yawning vulva, ringed, haired or shaved, so long as the clit had shed its protective sheath. Otherwise it was wasted leather and energy. A female had to learn to spend under the scourge.
Elodie reacted as all crotch-whipped women always did, her elegant torso rearing upwards in a fruitless attempt to protect the most salacious, lustful zone of her entire being - maybe, Joanne mused, apart from her mouth when Anthea kissed her or that pale clitoris the older woman gave her to flick and suck.
But the cries were to no avail. The bitch was too traumatized to orgasm and the major-domo well knew the thin line that divided pain from sexual pleasure; he had been told to punish not please, just as his mistress demanded of him when disciplining a pert, insubordinate slut who did not deserve a climax. So he continued to beat the vulva.
Ablaze with magenta welts, Elodie gave up the fight. The body slumped, streaming with sweat, as its owner petered out into that void where whipped females hover when beyond the reach of orgasm.
One, at least, of the Lassignac sorceresses, Joanne judged, had paid her due.
The major-domo lowered the body until the head and breasts lay flat on the planks and let his cock browse on the scorched vulva like a stoat sensing prey. Veering his stiff shaft downwards, he plunged into the bloated slot. Indifferent as to his owner's condition, he clutched the buttocks he had welted and used the inanimate creature ruthlessly, as he always did, whatever the state of the victim. With satisfied grunts, he fucked as he thought his captors wished him to do. Whatever their intention, he felt he deserved his usual recompense. When finally the discharge shot into the sufferer, Francis-Etienne looked at Joanne but said nothing. In the event, there was precious little he could say...
Martine, on the other hand, did comment. Her timbre was husky with exultation. "If that doesn't satisfy you Joanne darling, I don't know, by my faith, what will!"
Both perturbed by what had been set in motion and yet pleased with Bouchard's cooperation, the elder girl remained silent like the Marquis. She looked across the yard. The rays of sunlight had reached Anthea's writhing, caned body; the spectacle of the nude - that Joanne loathed with all her being - receiving the cane from another equally naked minx led the blonde onlooker to within a hairbreadth of orgasm; her clit needed only a touch of the finger to trigger the spasm. The loathsome lesbian had been beaten from armpits to thighs. Saliva trickled from the bitch's maw as Marie-Félice continued to ensure the pliant length of bamboo bit deep into the sex pad and slot. The hoarse yells seemed to delight the girl but, as Bouchard with Elodie, she took great care to deprive her victim of any chance of climaxing. Joanne knew through Mariette that the former slavegirl owed her adroitness to the cold-blooded Anthea herself who had taught her to hand over a slave, once well welted between the thighs and shuddering on the brink of orgasm, for a guest to flog or torment into fruition. Joanne recalled the ladder episode.
Having delivered her final stroke, the squint-eyed drab jammed the haft of her rattan cane into the vagina and left it there to throb. Preening with self-approval she stepped back, mopping her brow and soused cleft. She had done her utmost to satisfy the demands of the riffraff marauding the castle. And she had thoroughly enjoyed it.
"Yes, I think that will do," Joanne announced to the courtyard. "Leave the two daughters of Satan where they are, to consider their sins and ungodliness. It is time, dear brother Lacombe and friends, for us to leave this lair of iniquity and desolation."
With Martine pleading to have both victims' breasts throttled and skewered, as her own had been at the convent, Joanne shook her head and guided her down the stairs to join the Camisards who were becoming restless over a stay that was lasting too long for safety. Leaving the bodies where they were, Lacombe led his band of faithful out into the paddock. Adequately clothed and shod, the two girls joined the posse taking Florence with them, Joanne having just time to wave to the Marquis who had meantime mounted the battlements to do likewise to the only one - he claimed - he had ever admired. As he did so, he scrutinized the horizon of oaks and broom for signs of the possible descent of the dragoons. He shuddered to think what Elodie would have the sex-starved troops do to the two parpaillotes were they caught. He could almost see their chained bodies bleeding.
Pausing at the armoury for the men to grab additional weapons before heading for the nunnery, Joanne glanced back again. Coursel was withdrawing the cane from Anthea's vagina to replace it with his rigid cock. It was something he, as a lowly, indentured valet, had contemplated over many months. It was his own private revenge on the vain, insolent lesbian who despised him and treated him as a pile of horse droppings. Her being there, bound and barely conscious on the harrow, was a rare chance to avenge himself. He used her brutally and filled her where she lay, scorning whatever retribution might ensue when she regained her former status. He would say he had been forced to fuck her. Sufficient unto the day was the evil thereof... If he had fertilized her, so much the better. Later it would keep her at bay for a while.

The Camisards slithered down the hill towards the convent, the baleful Château de Lassignac dwindling behind the crest of the wooded hills. No one bewailed leaving it, even if Joanne regretted not having kissed her Marquis Francis-Etienne in the haste of departure, for, quite apart from the chains and the scathing lash, she had received from him a certain sort of affection. But few, leave alone Martine, would understand that.
The descent took time, the two girls dawdling, overawed by the sweet air of spring and freedom, the chaffinches greeting them from wayside branches and under the clear sky the Cevennes spread far away. It was unbelievably wonderful. Yet Joanne's thoughts went back to the desolate team of slaves still in the depths of the castle. They had no faithful friends to redeem them, even if indeed they wanted freedom and, with a twinge of grief, she imagined the reprisals Elodie and Anthea would now visit on them.
The lofty walls of the Convent of the Annunciation loomed up and Martine let out the cry Joanne half-expected. "Now comes my revenge!" The yell was sharp and shrill.
Mother Priscilla's fortified purgatory proved impregnable. Without ladders, grapnels, ropes, battering ram or an ally like Florence within, the walls defied the posse. The portal resisted firmly and Lacombe refused further risks. He sensed the dragoons or the dreaded Cadets of the Cross, now alerted by riders from Lassignac, would soon be upon them.
"Into the woods, brethren," he ordered. "Make for Marcillac." After reciting psalm 63, the posse vanished into the bracken to rejoin Castanet and the rest of the faithful.

Later, in the shelter of a secluded cavern, the girls lay down, exhausted, to rest, Joanne wondering how the venomous Anthea felt. She doubted that the bitch would be in a fit state that night to grace the bed of her equally distraught Marquise, and for once she cursed them with biblical vehemence. Too tired even to frot herself and lulled by Florence snoring nearby, Joanne took Martine in her arms and kissed her drowsily. Then the sleep of the just and righteous overwhelmed them.

***

Following the abrupt departure of the Camisards and their three liberated females, the atmosphere in the castle became even tenser. Released and tended to by the loyal Simone, The Marquise and Anthea vented their fury on Francis-Etienne; they considered him a cynical, vain and perfidious fornicator who had betrayed them after slaking his lust on a cheap whore of a parpaillote. To wreak revenge, the women fell upon the senior servants and Marie-Félice, accusing them of treason. The Marquis lay beyond their reach.
A stalemate installed itself between Elodie and her husband, who merely smiled as the Marquise fumed. Finally she ignored him, waiting for him to come to his senses and apologize. But he merely had his horse saddled and rode off for an afternoon of hunting.
She then turned to deal with the renegade Bouchard, Coursel and the two-faced Marie-Félice, Brissac's part in the drama being condoned. The major-domo found himself temporarily demoted and assigned to shovelling dung in the stables, replacing the lad who had perished in the horrendous attack. The varlet Coursel fell foul of Anthea's rage and was assigned to tilling the field beyond the portal, a penalty he found mild, given the pleasure he had enjoyed in availing himself of the conceited bitch offered on the harrow.
A very different fate awaited Marie-Félice. Audaciously she refused to repent, claiming she had been forced to obey and use the cane under threat of the Camisards' weapons. After slapping the girl's face, Anthea suppressed their initial instinct to have the slag thrown into the well; instead she persuaded Elodie to reduce the nude reprobate to her former state of slavery. Promptly, Brissac refitted her with flesh rings and the five bondage straps and then helped Simone to chain and impale the frantic body, more erotic than ever, on the gibbet. Using the crude argot of mistress to slave, Anthea told her what was to happen. She had no intention of letting the drudge off lightly.
"I'm going to flay you here in the yard and when Dom Anselme is back in our midst, he and I will deal with you in the oubliette over the next week. From now on you'll take the place of those two bitches who got away. And, pardieu, will you suffer!"
Smarting badly and still feeling the prongs stabbing her back, Anthea felt a visceral urge to torture the slut. Elodie consented readily but felt too exhausted to do much else than sip the remedial Schaffhausen water Simone had prepared for her. After distributing the various sentences the Marquise was helped back to her bedroom and its cool sheets.
Demoralized, the former slave handler found herself hanging from the gibbet bar, her thews taut, as Simone fed the anal rod into the star between the muscled buttocks. When the legs had been chained to the upright, the sullen maid was ordered to haul the head back so that the cane - the same she had used to scourge Anthea - had unimpeded access to the dangling breasts. Overjoyed to be back in service and, along with Coursel, not to have been penalized during the Camisards' assault, the hag pulled on the victim's sweat-drenched hair to jam the haft of Bouchard's scourge behind the biceps and across in front the mouth. Still unclothed, Anthea refused the mantle she was offered to cover her welts, instructing the domestic to suspend weights from the victim's sexual extremities. After fumbling among the gyves and irons beneath the platform, Simone extracted a series of metal lugs and hooked them, one by one, to chains hanging from each newly implanted flesh ring. Marie-Félice had forgotten how the ghastly traction could punish the teats and cunt labia. And she valued her sexual pinnacles like her eyes. Her moans, though stifled by the leather whip handle, told Anthea the body was ready for its long trek into pain. Barely audible, the sacrificial scapegoat attempted a final, almost inaudible, plea; she had only obeyed an order given under armed threat. And Bouchard, she spluttered, had done the same.
"Maybe," came Anthea's hiss, "but he's our flogger. You could have refused."
The girl saw no point in arguing with a closed mind bent on revenge. Bouchard was too valuable to Lassignac to be more than mildly rebuked and would be back in office soon enough, she was a mere menial and now a sex slave again. She knew she could now be whipped and even branded for causing Anthea to lose face before the entire household. As a slave again, she could easily be replaced by another whore - from the convent or by some parpaillote from some nearby ruined village. Her cunt flooding, she bit hard into the plaited leather gouging her jaws and waited.
Anthea lashed out with fiendish spite. The thrumming cane struck the base of the lavish bottom where the flesh was devoid of muscle. A streak of fire seared her brain, the flesh, until then white as candle wax, rising into a purple welt, thick as the crop itself. The slut bore it and the following twenty strokes with groans but also with her former courage, learnt in the cellar. But when the rattan sliced into the sagging udders, the bleats became shrieks. Anthea flogged the breasts as the bitch had flogged her far more elegant ones.
Up in her bedchamber, the Marquise heard the swish and thuds with deep delight but felt too weak to hobble to the lancet and watch the punishment. Once the bitch was in the oubliette, chained by the ankles and later, knowing Anthea's predilections, by the roots of the breasts, then it would be worth watching the odious squinting wench suffer.
Yes, Bouchard had to be pardoned and reinstated, for Elodie needed that muscular arm and authority. Nothing, not even the daunting invasion of the château, should affect plans for the subsequent weekends of pleasure. Her guests counted on her and she counted on her guests. It was outright sedition that those blasphemous Protestant villains had had the gall to attack a noble residence. They would pay for it. As to the Marquis - well, he would come to heel sooner or later. And she would ensure there would be no more sexual romances under her roof.
Whipped turquoise, the girl was released from the gibbet for Simone to drag down to the oubliette for the young she-wolf of a lesbian to use until the bitch repented - if she had a voice left.
In the cellar, the slaves were bewildered by the commotion above, the sudden abduction of Martine by armed men, and then Marie-Félice, fresh from the whip, passing by on her way to the lower regions. Such things had never happened before.

NINE
The week under the protection of the Camisards in the woods brought the girls and Florence news of the Cevenol revolt and the repression. The royal forces were devastating the highlands, burning villages, destroying temples, breaking leaders on the wheel, hanging pastors and sending males to the galleys, women to the prisons of Nimes and AiguesMortes. Joanne learnt that a timid approach of English men o' war before Sete had created a sudden panic diverting the troops to the coast only to see the enemy sail off. Whereupon the dragoons returned to the Cevennes to continue the war and pillage. Every Protestant parish in the diocese of Mende had been laid waste without quarter. For once the area round Pressignac was spared, most of the population having been condemned, dispersed or, like Joanne and Martine, otherwise disposed of. The sheep and stores - and such young women as remained - had been requisitioned by the dragoons.
Thus, civil war spread throughout the Cevennes, diverting regular troops Versailles and the Sun King could barely spare, the French forces being heavily engaged elsewhere.

By chance Joanne heard that her weaver husband, Jean-Jacques, had been freed from the galleys and enrolled by force into some regiment embroiled in the absurd war of the so-called Spanish Succession. But he had deserted along with others, been picked up near Perpignan on his way north and condemned again as a galley slave. The horrendous news made her listen more attentively to Martine who was obsessed with the idea of reaching the sanctuary of Protestant Geneva, the distant City of Refuge. Encouraged by several Camisards, Joanne finally agreed to risk the perilous journey with her, along with Florence and three others. In peasant clothes and clogs, the group set out with a guide up the wild paths of the Ardeche towards the Rhone valley where the escape route bore east into the kingdom of Savoy; being ruled from Turin, the mountainous area was considered relatively safe. At least, Geneva was nearer than the Netherlands, leave alone far-off England or Brandenburg, where other refugees had fled and prospered, despite the weird languages.
The going was hard, fraught with danger but goading on the other members of the group Martine's determination burned like a beacon. Only once, before the Savoyard border, did terror freeze the émigrés - near Tain l'Hermitage a roving company of armed Cadets of the Cross halted them. If discovered, being devoid of exit papers, Joanne knew the journey was at its end with the whip, rape and the Tour de Constance in its stead. After a search and finding no Calvinist bibles or Psalters, the troops reluctantly let the travellers move on. The scare had served to teach the group - and the guide - to keep to pathways and sheep tracks. Joanne had not liked how the booted militia had thrust into Martine's bodice to grasp her breasts, still bulging temptingly despite the convent's whips and scanty diet. As her welts had waned, the men found no valid cause to detain her.
The group trudged on, avoiding villages and even hamlets, sleeping in dells among the ferns, the guide encouraging them to move faster. Soon they would be over the frontier. But when they reached it, joy turned into alarm, for the guide left after indicating the route towards Aiguebelette and the Granier Pass. Extenuated and starved, they skirted the lake at Aix three days later, awed by the heights of the Grand Colombier towering above; there Joanne nearly gave up, only to hear her colleagues spur her on in the name of Gideon, Joshua and, for the first time, Calvin. Finally they crossed the Mont-Sion and at long last the hump of the Saleve lay ahead, Martine assuring them the spires of Geneva's cathedral would be soon visible. How she knew astonished Joanne. And on they plodded.

Just in time before the Forte de Neuve, on the Treille, closed its gates at sundown, the group entered the promised haven, the Protestant Rome. Once on the cobbles of Geneva, Martine fell to her knees and led the group in prayer before a crowd of virtuous Genovese taking the evening air and staring at this further group of bedraggled refugees.
The temporary lodgings were meagre but for the two girls paradise after Elodie's cellar. Joanne was amazed at the pluck Martine had shown on the way; she seemed to have exorcised the ghosts of Lassignac and the convent. The past resolutely behind her, those dark eyes seemed to be fixed on a Calvinist future. The long journey had been miraculous, even if Huguenots did not believe in miracles, and they were safe at last. What would have pleased them even more, had they known it, was that Cavalier and his Camisards had that very day defeated the royal forces - or Moabites and Philistines, as he called them - at Devois de Martignargues. But that was far away, in another land.
The following morning the newcomers, dressed in borrowed garments of solemn grey, gave thanks in the cathedral of St Pierre, Joanne offering up a prayer for her Jean-Jacques in galley chains. The thought of chains suddenly called to mind Francis-Etienne; he kept wandering in and out of her mind. It was ludicrous but she began to miss him...

***

The days searching for work went by in dreary succession; the stifling nights on her pallet next to a serenely contented and suddenly celibate Martine began to weigh on Joanne. Lying half-awake in the taper's flicker, strange reminiscences troubled her.
Francis-Etienne's pointed beard seemed to be grazing her breasts... while she hung naked, chained from that well-used beam in the west wing. The straps were wrenching her ankles outwards... locking her to those massive floor rings. Yes, she was moaning in pain and ecstasy after the initial whipping, the man's tributes trickling over her freckled skin. He was calling her his 'angel of an Aphrodite' - whoever that was - and his 'exquisite sex slave' with, so he said, 'the most tempting body I've ever lashed, naked as a candle'. Heavens, how she loved those honeyed words, now distant echoes of a vanished past...
In the sombre Geneva lodgings Joanne began to look haggard and distressed. Every night her fantasies became more vivid - the Marquis's handsome ghost, smelling of stables and leather, seemed to be sucking and tugging on her whip-swollen teats... the beard was edging down her belly to the scrolls of cunt frond fluttering like limed birds... Then, yes then, he would draw her erect stalk into his mouth along with the metal circle. 'Ahh, yes, master,' she remembered moaning, 'leave your teeth marks there, as you did in my tits... Bite sire, bite it hard! Or whip it... please, master..." And she would shift her neglected buttocks higher on the lodging's mattress parting her thighs for the phantom whiplash...
Cautious not to wake the sleeping Martine, Joanne held her breath, her trembling fingers spreading her wet vulva under the sheets, feeling the holes left by the slave rings. And in her imagination she would feel the chains splaying her open for the Lassignac guests to torture the liquid trench of vermilion membrane before wrenching her clit... in the penumbra of the shabby boarding house, it was not the same. Yet she frigged hard, there next to the torpid Martine, and careered rudderless into the eye of the cyclone as the orgasm towered, crested and devastated her - wave after wave crashing over a foundering wreck. And every night, as she spent, the tangled images merged into one; it was Francis who was filling her with spume, still holding his leather scourge, soaked in her sweat.
Somehow she managed not to wake Martine or Florence as she churned her ringless gristle and teats. Then she would turn over to sleep, blowing out the candle - for which she had other uses apart from illumination - and try to lay her dreams of Lassignac to rest. She realized her plight; it was well over a month since she had been thrashed and fucked in chains - an unconscionable time for a forlorn former sex slave to be deprived of what she needed most. Some solution had to be found, somewhere, somehow. It was unfortunate also that Martine in the bed next to hers had turned frigid... Even if the huge phallus of that tonsured swine, Dom Anselme, had appeared there in the lodgings, she would have encircled it with her lips, on condition that he beat her. Even Anthea... But no, not her.
Yet Joanne slept soundly until her neighbour's morning prayers wakened her, Martine giving her the customary three kisses of the Huguenots.

***

The days and then the weeks dragged bleakly by, stretching into exasperating emptiness. Existence beside the now austere, chaste Martine, already learning to read and training as a deaconess at St Gervais, had worn Joanne down into moody spells of despondency. What employment she had found as housemaid to a staid Genovese family on the Rue des Oranges, had begun to pall. Hounded by the lady of the house and deprived of any respite from work, life in the imperious shadow of the nearby cathedral was stifling; and she was without hope of sex. Moreover, the solemn bells of St Pierre adjacent chilled and inhibited her. She missed her bleating ewes and the breeze in the chestnuts and larches at home. Still deeper within her she yearned desperately for something else, something that she found was conjured up by the mere sight of a leather belt or even a length of cart rope.

It was on one Thursday in late June that Joanne made up her mind and decided to return to her treasured - and devastated - Cevennes. The Geneva summer with its plane trees and neat rows of privet numbed her. Down in the Cevennes the acacias, golden broom and honeysuckle would be in full flower and the grass loud with the tireless grating of the cicadas in the midday sun. And she would be nearer to the galley ports and poor Jean-Jacques - whether he was there for desertion or for his faith, or both, she could not guess, and anyway there was little she could do for him now.
Yet it was not only her native Pressignac, probably in ruins that coaxed her south where civil war still raged, but something more occult and secret. In the tiny attic room above the Rue des Oranges, Lassignac continued to visit her dreams, the sinister château beckoning her back. She would close her eyes and see Simone in her black garb; the archway and steep steps leading down to those mephitic, windowless cells; her former inmates - or what was left of them - oiled, their chests numbered, naked and submissive under Marie-Félice's sharp eye, if that shrew was still of this world. Joanne saw them lined up against the iron bars, their rings clinking as they awaited the guests, the sentencing, the whip and the iron flesh tongs.
On the Sunday long before the first bells pealed, she quietly left the house, dispensing with farewells, thrust some provisions into her satchel and, as the town gates opened, hurried through the Porte de Neuve. She followed the Arve river until the heights of the Saleve lay behind her. The peregrines hovering above the lush pastures greeted her casually, for she was not the sort of prey they had in mind. But the more sagacious rooks peered down from the elms with an air of surprise; it was rare to see a young female trudging south alone so early on a Sunday. They assumed the seductive blonde knew where she was heading and what she was doing outside the city walls while the faithful were being called to worship.
Oui-da, that she knew and a lot better than they. She was going home.

The great bell, known as the Clemence, boomed in the cathedral tower with its deep note of bidding but gradually its telling became faint, fading out of earshot as Joanne hurried over the frontier at Carouge. She just hoped she would not later encounter the dragoons again. She was in no mood to be raped. At least not yet.

TEN
She arrived in Pressignac - strangely on the Feast of Sainte Mariette - in early July, having been molested only once on the way. Grieving, not over the lamentably clumsy assault by a couple of thugs who tied her to a tree to use her - she had had worse moments - but later over the ruins of her hamlet. It had been totally razed and lay deserted. Despairing, she walked west in the hot sun, listening to the bees' hum and the rustle of the grass, and stopped abruptly, staring ahead. As if her feet had decided for her Joanne found herself confronted by the turrets of the Château de Lassignac silhouetted on the hill above. A strange thudding of her heart made her pause. There before her lay the path Martine would have recognised only too well, the winding track leading down to the Convent of the Annunciation. She turned her back on the path and without further pondering, began the steep climb through the bracken to the edifice beckoning her on, shimmering in the heat of the afternoon.
And there it was. The massive gateway beyond the drawbridge, the iron portcullis suspended, half-raised, without a soul in sight. Panting from the exertion of the climb and unsure of herself, Joanne entered the main courtyard. There too all seemed deserted and calm as if the mass of stone snored in siesta.
Then she saw Coursel in the shadow of the keep, taking his time, he was hoeing weeds from the cobbles. Sensing he was not alone, he looked up and saw the slim figure outlined against the glare of sunlight beyond the portal. Stunned, he watched the visitor approach and traverse the yard. Turning abruptly, he made for the ornate doorway with its carved coat of arms that Joanne remembered so well. The sweat darkening her torn Genovese gown and trickling down her spine, she stood quite still in the sweltering courtyard, hardly daring to breathe. She waited for her lover's silhouette to appear.
It was Elodie herself who finally emerged, brusquely aroused from rest. Wrapping her silks about her still slender form, the Marquise stared in amazement, her precious rings flashing like so many ancillary eyes. Behind her, equally dumbfounded, came Simone, her hand to her gaping mouth. Still further in the penumbra stood a tousled Anthea in muslin. Joanne's body glazed with goose flesh as she recognized the vampire. But there was a change. Despite the flowing gown, her pregnancy was plain, unquestionable; the usually flat belly already swelling. Could that be Coursel's doing? In any event, the offspring would simply be consigned to a wet nurse or some convent or other. Not that gestation, Joanne thought, would prevent the slut using the whip. Anyway, the presence of Francis-Etienne would be sufficient defence against the bitch. And the others. For Joanne had returned to Lassignac to reclaim her Marquis and no one else.
In golden mules, Elodie halted in the shade to stare at the apparition. The blue eyes' delicately curved lashes had not lost their sapphire virulence.
"And to what do we owe the honour of this visit, may I ask?" The voice was almost unctuous, belying the look but the tone did not hide the astonishment.
"I've come back, mistress. The Marquis said I might. He promised to shelter me. Please tell him I've returned, sweet mistress."
"Tell him? How dare you speak to me like that, you..." her tongue seemed to coil round the words, "...you despicable, impudent... you brazen mongrel of an infidel!" The nostrils flared in fury. "Now, slut let me tell you something. You've come to the wrong place, insolent prostitute that you are. The Marquis, your prick of a paramour..." she mimicked the girl's peasant accent, "is no longer here. No, harlot, his noble lordship graces Versailles in satin and silks." The voice had become knife-like, sharp as a trencher, the woman grotesquely imitating the steps of a gavotte, a courtly minuet. "Go and show the whorl of your arse and that wanton cunt of yours there. And at Fontainebleau. And the Louvre. No doubt he will come running on high heels to fuck you again - as long as his prick's not jammed fast in that bitch Marie-Félice he's taken with him." The tidings hovered over the yard like a hawk spying a field mouse.
Despite the summer heat, an icy sweat crawled from the matted hair of the girl's armpits. Terror froze her as when they used to lead her to the frame for breast torture.
"Oh, no, it's not true," she cried. "It can't be! He promised... he said he wanted me back... he said he loved me." The groans died away as the truth crystallized and Joanne's courage crumbled. "You mean... he's gone? And taken that bitch with him! And me... what shall I do now?" Elodie watched the tears trickle info the golden down of the cheeks. Ventre Saint-Gris, how attractive the slut could look! The Marquise felt a twitch of sensual craving seize her crotch. She remembered the breath-taking sight on that first evening in the great room when Evelyn de Burre-sage had thrashed the young newcomer undulating naked from the beam. The bedroom, the cellar, the ladder - it all came back to her. So did the slag's incredible orgasms under the guests' whips.
"What shalt I do now?" Elodie mimicked her, as the portcullis thudded shut. "I'll tell you what you do now, slut," the voice rasping shriller than the iron grid. "You'll strip that sex-sodden body of yours stark naked, as it always should be in my presence, and get those bubs and greedy quim down to the holding chamber - which you no doubt remember, you strumpet of a parpaillote traitor. And, by all the saints, I'll have that audacious bottom mashed into a mess of potage. How dare you come back here, aping innocence and swaggering those lecherous udders at me, you..." again she groped for words, "...you lecherous trollop." Narrowed eyes blazing, she screamed at Coursel and the funereal Simone. "Take this side of slave gammon down and see the thongs and whips are well soaked." She turned back to the girl. "Remember what you had Bouchard do to me?"
The menials seized the wretch who seemed so attached to Lassignac as to dare return! Indeed, they would bind her more severely than she had ever known. Elodie continued to yell. "And get Brissac..." - so he was still around, even if Marie-Félice was not - "to brand our letter L on that seditious pubis of hers. Branded, you hear? So the strumpet knows, once and for all where she belongs."
"Then we's ter put them same rings back in 'er?" Counsel asked, receiving an impatient nod of the noble head that now looked grotesque without its peruke.
As Joanne was being stripped naked, Elodie said one more thing. "Ah yes, slut. I shall introduce you, once you're presentable and ringed, to our dedicated Father Antoine. He's a Jesuit, a stickler for discipline. He has replaced Dom Anselme who, you may be interested to learn, has been called to Rome on a new assignment. He at least escaped the sacrilege at the defiling hands of your filthy, heathen louts. May the saints protect him!"
The few coverings of homespun ripped off her, Joanne tried to avoid thinking what was now in store for her by imagining some of Anselme's nocturnal pastimes he would combine with his mission in Rome. As to this Antoine, whoever he was, maybe he would prove less violent and more tolerant, despite her continued adamant refusal to abjure.
Hardly, alas, could her ingenuous mind have been more mistaken.

Nipple-naked - as Elodie termed her whore-slaves' state of total nudity - Joanne was hustled down the worn steps she recognized so well. A hour later, chained over the slab, she knew that all traces of hair she possessed had disappeared; bald and scraped raw by Simone's razor, she was ringed anew, blessing the former holes in her flesh that spared her a second session under the saddler's awl. But suddenly her terrified eyes caught sight of an eighth ring glinting in the crone's fingers. Peeling back a nostril, the shrew pierced through the septum with a swift jab, threaded the metal through the cartilage and clamped hard. Like frozen mucus on a cold day, the circle dangled before the curve of the upper lip. In tears, Joanne recalled the sows' snouts in the castle farm - they were used to it.
"That's what Mistress Anthea ordered." Simone's remark was colourless, vapid, as she quietened the writhing body with a jab of her awl into the ribs.
The nude was then chained tighter over the margin of the block for Brissac to grease the pubic mound for branding. Joanne had already glimpsed the horrendous brazier in the corner of the cell. She clenched her jaws. All notion of time and place vanished.
The scalding iron descended into the mons, the man holding it there firmly. With a shriek the prisoner surged in her chains to slap back on to the stone amid the stench of charred flesh.
When she came to, she found her head had been hooded tight under a helmet of clammy chamois, reeking of slave sweat. Simone wrenched on the buckles until the leather hugged the skull, outlining the neat contours of the face. It was like a second skin. Moaning, she was hauled to her feet and dragged to the hideous oubliette - where so many Lassignac slaves had learned the meaning of real pain - to be chained head down by her ankle straps hooked wide to the ceiling, and left to consider her crass folly. There, as the nut-brown Therèse used to say, a slavegirl could also reflect on the disadvantages of being a sexually attractive female. Ah, Therese with her stories... the slinky Isabelle, the plump little milkmaid, Bette, also branded - where were they? Were they still about? Although on the way down Joanne had traversed the slave cellar, the dark, the haste and whips had prevented her seeing a thing. Mariette if still there, would have blown her a quick kiss.
After the evening whipping across the downturned breasts, the thong over her mouth was slackened for her to be fed slops through a leather funnel - an item that was new to her. The retching earned her ten lashes of the quirt across the crotch and brand.
Towards the close of the terrible week in the dank hole - which no slave ever forgot but where many were forgotten - Elodie came to look her captive over. Her remarks seemed to hiss out of a nest of vipers. Revenge could indeed be sweet.
"After such a time," she commented, "of being severed from the whip and the delicious devices we have here, some of which you know already, naturally you'll need intensive retraining, won't you, whore? You remember what you ordered to have done to me and my adorable Anthea? Well, pardi, I never expected to be able to retaliate. But the designs of heaven move in mysterious ways. And here you are, ready to make amends!"

In the morning room, the Marquise readily accepted the offer of help put forward by her devoted Father Antoine. She found her new confessor infinitely more amenable than the heavy-handed Dominican who insisted on trying to convert every Calvinist within reach. Her Jesuit, on the contrary, squandered no time and energy on such quests, being rather of the opinion that any female, preferably young, pretty, well-made and whatever her religious views, was all the better after a bout of flagellation or prolonged erotic torture. Moreover, he used the scourge as competently and indefatigably as he handled casuistry. And, having learned of the blonde whore's role in the recent disaster caused by the Camisards at the expense of the Marquise and her poor, innocent Anthea, he charitably undertook to prepare the slender homecomer for Anthea's imminent vengeance.
That same evening the accommodating Jesuit paid her his first visit. The lashing she received was harsh and pitiless, reviving the marks left by Simone's earlier strokes in the oubliette. Invariably, the confessor treated all nude females to a whip of seven knotted thongs, the tips tastefully adorned with metal slugs. Amid her writhings, Joanne could visualize it welting her rump that had lost its resilience through months of underexposure to leather, the scourge's extremities leaving ripe purple blotches. Ignoring - or more probably relishing - her shrieks and clutching his cock, the distinguished cleric delivered the punishment in a distant, almost impersonal, manner - so different from the way her loquacious Francis-Etienne always flogged her, extolling her grace with tributes to her curves - 'Yes, my nude beauty, out with those ringed mammaries' and 'Bend those knees, jewel, so that the thong can enter your slit...' and similar fond encouragements.
Joanne groaned, not so much from Father Antoine's slashes but from the thought that her Francis was now probably whipping Marie-Félice's sleek body, watched by others.
When finally the Jesuit's erection - in girth a sturdy one even by Lassignac standards - rammed into her, Joanne's yells subsided into her former hoarse groans of gathering pleasure. Miracle! For the first time in months, she found herself spending luxuriously, despite - or on account of? - her rings and brand mark. Having climaxed as she used to do, she slumped, more or less content.
The twice-daily thrashing sessions, spread over the week, concluded her so-called 're-adaptation'. Many of the early floggings really hurt but by the later ones she had retrieved her capacity to thread her way through the vales of pain out into the pastures of ecstasy. Or, as Martine used to say after a breast and crotch beating, 'into the land of milk and honey'. But then, Martine knew her Bible far better than did Joanne.

***

Dining with the Marquise some days later, Father Antoine announced that he considered the felon sufficiently ripe to be bequeathed to the murderous Anthea, in line with Elodie's decision, taken the same evening of the slut's unexpected appearance.
"Thanks, dear friend, for your devotion to the cause," Elodie purred, her jewelled fingers brushing the hand that had wielded the lash so promptly and considerately. Caressing Anthea, Elodie listened to what her kind and cooperative chaplain was saying.
"The bitch, if you will pardon the term, your Grace, is clearly endowed with exceptional physical attributes and erotic potency. They were manifest throughout my thrashings and particularly thereafter, for she spends - how shall I say? - vehemently and repeatedly. Like the animal she is. Moreover she's a heretic, may heaven protect these sacred dwellings!" He paused. "Hence, if I may be allowed the remark, dear lady, I think she should be disallowed - yes, forbidden - orgasm from now on. Deprivation of the sort would increase her suffering and penance, if that is what you seek. But I leave that to you. In my view, it is immaterial whether a female under the lash comes or not, as long as she pleasures her flogger and benefits from our gifts, spiritual and otherwise. What does your Grace think?" His smile resembled a placid lake, serene, smooth and liquid.
"Oh, I'd rather leave the question to Anthea, Father," Elodie replied. "She knows how to handle a guilty - and insatiable - wench, don't you, treasure? Now, Anthea, my dear, the harlot's all yours. And for as long as you wish. Don't forget you'll be punishing a mutinous parpaillote who mortified us, made me lose face and you, quite a of blood. So flog her on my behalf, not just your own. It's just a pity we don't have the other hag here as well. I'd have those teats of hers corkscrewed with the pincers and..."
"Let this one pay for both, your Grace," her confessor calmed her. "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, no?" At that, the Marquise gave him one of her most winsome, looks, wondering what the fellow was like in bed, for that too was looming.

Anthea began work on Joanne the next evening. Clad anew in spurred boots up to her shapely thighs, she pulled on her scarlet gauntlets spangled with honed barbs, completing her image of a sublime dominant with the usual spiked nipple cones that never failed to play havoc when she embraced a slave. Elodie attended each session, perceiving that, around the sixth evening, the prisoner's attempts to satisfy her captors, leave alone herself, were waning, the slut needing all her strength for self-preservation. She began to wilt like a shrinking violet under the heat of Anthea's vengeance.
Scream as Joanne did for help, her distant Francis-Etienne, Marquis de Lassignac, had other activities - in addition to Marie-Félice's breasts - in hand: attending the King's parties at Versailles, hunting stag with the court in the royal Forest of Fontainebleau, gambling with debauched rakes and, pardi, there was this squint-eyed profligate Marie-Félice who needed whipping and sodomising after dinner, before sharing her with others.

***

Holding Joanne to be not only heretically contagious but traitorous, Elodie avenged herself by having her located apart from the cellar slaves, condemning her to one of the most secluded parts of the castle - the farthest bedchamber in the west wing. On being taken there, the slave had difficulty in recognizing the room. Anthea had had the servants turn it into a remarkably well-appointed torture precinct, the window being cemented up. If an ingeniously cruel fate for Joanne, at least it brought back erotic memories. On the other hand, being separated from whomever remained in the cellar, she realized she would only meet them at the ceremonial guest festivities that continued to dignify Lassignac.
What went on in the newly-named 'retribution sanctum' in the west wing could only be described by someone who had spent an undisturbed hour or two there, either handling the whip and instruments or enduring them. But Anthea always began by having the heretic's nipple rings removed and using the holes to pin her to the whipping post.

Little else is of great interest as far as Lassignac is concerned, though two facts can be mentioned. Hearsay had it that, one night, a young fair-skinned girl was seen being hauled down from the château to the convent on a harrow drawn by a grey mare. And months later some poachers in the autumnal woods had spied a similar figure on a cart leaving the nunnery, hog-tied and hooded, and destined - so they gathered - for a famous whipping brothel, frequented by nobles. The girl, they learnt, had pleaded to be sold to the stew in Paris in the vain hope of finding a former lover. But then, the real lie is not what one tells others but what one tells oneself. She knew she had been abandoned.