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.
Chapter 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 f
or 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.
The Sufferers Page 9