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 sa
me. 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.
Chapter 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 Sufferers Page 6