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.
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The Sufferers Page 24