by Kim Knight
Joanne felt her heart miss several beats as she recalled the frenzied, ecstatic hours she had spent there with Francis-Etienne - the chains, the whips and, above all, that tireless cock of his filling her three orifices. Indeed, such were the real reasons for her return to Lassignac. What sacrilege to have turned that delicious, distant room, with its oaken beams and lancets giving out over the lush countryside, into a venue of vengeance and torment! As to the former airless dungeon below, seldom did an obstreperous inmate spend more than a night, or possibly two, down there in the depths. But here it seemed, a whole week, being beaten, maltreated and penetrated was normal. To Joanne it amounted to sacrilege. Profanity.
“Since I arrived here last month,” the slender - and talkative - beauty went on, “I’ve only served there once. A fierce redhead who fought the valets had to be brought to heel. It was unbelievably ferocious. Where I worked before, a slave, however unruly, was never treated like that. But here, Dieu seul le sait, what Elodie had Bouchard and the guests inflict on that carrot-haired bitch was beyond description. She must have done something terrible to deserve that - like you.” She paused as though expecting a comment from Joanne, who was trying to recall if there had been a redhead among her past colleagues. “Anyway, Elodie had Bouchard brand the troublemaker’s breasts with the white-hot iron. I think she was then sold off to some schooner captain or other at Toulon.” Again she broke off to pass a hand over Joanne’s teats, the other still holding the nose ring. “And let me tell you, if I heard Elodie aright, you’re in for something similar. But, considering what I’ve heard of you, you’ll probably enjoy the punishment they’ve planned. So now let’s get this silver trinket through your septum - at least that’s what Anthea called it at table. Keep your head still, since I’m not too used to this.” One pair of fingers gripped the tip of the nose and raised it as, with the other hand, she aimed the piercing awl precisely. With a sudden thrust, the point traversed the cartilage between the nostrils.
Joanne let out a stifled cry and then felt the ring easing through the septum and being clamped shut. Though the insertion pained her, secretly she was thrilled to have another ring bedecking her body.
“So now you’re complete, with an extra mooring. Bouchard will probably stretch you up by that for Anthea to use the horsewhip across those lavish masses of rump meat. If so and if you value your pretty snout, be sure not to lurch about when you’re at full reach on your toes. You wouldn’t want to rip the ring out, after all the care I’ve taken with it, now would you? And keep the thighs apart because she likes to lash up into the cunt and hear the metal chiming.” Joanne felt the new lustrous circle grazing her upper lip. The pain was agonizing, but strangely there was no trickle of blood, contrary to what she had expected.
“So, let’s get you strapped up, whore,” Melanie muttered. “After all, there has to be something sturdy to hold you outspread for the bamboo canes, flogging thongs and ... other things.” Watching her collect from the same nearby table a number of restraining leathers, each strop fitted with several iron rings, Joanne was taken aback not only by the new slave mistress’s slim grace but rather by her composure; from somewhere deep within her entrails arose a yearning to bed the suave woman and see her pass out as she was licked through one orgasm after another. Even her curved back was attractive when she kneeled down to buckle, competently enough, the braided straps of bull’s hide round the parted ankles; she plainly enjoyed her work. When it came to encircling the wrists, each arm being released in turn, the cord replaced by similar bands, the naked victim could feel the woman’s studded jerkin rasping the ringed teats. The heavy perfume almost caused Joanne to swoon, so pervading was the odour, as the pliers flattened each rivet.
“Of course, you’ll be hooded up for your torments,” Melanie informed her,” but that will be done once you’re chained and spigotted in the precinct. Now for the throat strap, trollop.”
Expecting the neckband to resemble that which Lassignac had made her endure previously, the sweating penitent recoiled when the collar almost strangled her. “Raise the head, bitch,” she was told brusquely. “This is another of Elodie’s ideas - or maybe Anthea’s. I can’t remember but I do know it was donated by one of the nobles after a journey to the Ottoman lands. It prevents the face falling forward when a slave passes out during a breast caning and risks having her head slashed. Even when you’re masked, it keeps the skull out of harm’s way, and doesn’t hamper you when fellating cock or licking a cunt through the mouth slit. Of course, with your head tilted to the rear, you can’t see much of what’s being done to you...”
Joanne groaned as the upslanting, rigid verge of thick leather forced her head back, leaving her to stare directly at the arched ceiling above. The new fitment was truly perturbing, for even when the macabre, suffocating slave hood, that Lassignac usually employed to mask a slave, was buckled over the head, the victim, in the past, had at least been allowed to observe what was being perpetrated on her flesh.
It was then that she felt a chain being linked loosely to the ankle straps and the wrists crossed over the rear of the collar, to be clipped to a solid ring set in the leather bondage; such bondage, Joanne knew, was customary at the château when slaves were being shifted from one place to another - for instance, from the holding cellar to the outside yard for the morning floggings or for labour in the fields - and allowed the body to be heavily lashed to hasten its progress. (A stumble or fall, she recalled, earned thirty larrups, delivered over the breasts there and then or alternatively added to the routine morning thrashings.)
“Now you’re arrayed according to the new house rules of chattel slavery, we can descend to the punishment precinct,” the slender one announced, seeming pleased with her labours. Supposing she was to be led down by a lead fixed to the atrocious neckband, Joanne swallowed hard what she had of saliva when a plaited dog-leash was hooked to the nipple rings. At the slave mistress’s first wrench on the tether, the teats joined and lengthened in grotesque pain - but at the same time provided the submissive with a familiar erotic thrill she had almost forgotten since her escape. Little pleased her more than being treated as what she was - a helpless, naked victim of her own innermost desires. Pensively and already leaking down her thigh tendons, she wondered if what was about to befall her did not constitute the true reason for her return to the château. All the same, the Marquis’s unforeseen absence did continue to distress her mightily.
The humiliating transfer, by the glimmer of a guttering lanthorn Melodie had taken up in her free hand, then commenced. Joanne used what she supposed would be her body’s last moments of composure, prior to the inevitable flagellations, to murmur a breathless prayer. The thought of confronting the Marquise, her niece and Bouchard gathered in avenging alliance almost made her forget the sacred words.
At each bend in the upward stairway, Melanie looked back to ensure her charge was keeping up and not risking unnecessary damage to the teats. At the same time, Joanne wondered whether the new recruit wielded the knotted scourge as ferociously as the venomous, departed python, Marie-Félice, used to do. In any event, as the major-domo’s assistant - and probably his current concubine, she would not have ascended to that rank without demonstrating her talent when horse-whipping a female body. A further furtive glance allowed the slave to take stock again of the woman’s slender build and long gaitered legs; unless the regulations governing the use of slave flesh at the château had changed, the chance of licking that neatly shaved cunt might be possible. She tried to imagine what this Melanie’s vaginal mucus would taste like...
As to the savage Anthea, the further a Lassignac slave kept from her and her six-thong, the longer would the inmate survive. Memories of the niece striding into the holding cellar reminded Joanne how the staunchest captives used to blanch, their breasts turning into petrified slabs of frozen meat... The week’s victim preferred to concentrate on the worn steps she was negotiating rather than picture Anthea g
racing the renovated precinct that lay ahead.
To safeguard her nipples, Joanne had to quicken her tread up the stairwell that the neck flange prevented her seeing clearly. Moreover, the process of preparation, ringing and oiling had lasted such an unconscionable time that it had sapped some of her energy; even the prospect of the whippings to come, of which she had been starved for nearly three months, hardly encouraged her to keep up with Melanie. A brisk jerk on the leash, however, hastened her on. “Falter once more, shiftless trollop,” - the woman’s voice hissed under the mildewed vaulting, her features suddenly hardening, as the service thong was released from the belt - “and I’ll flay your rump. I haven’t all day to get you strung up in yon precinct, laggard! Elodie must have finished dining by now and she detests being kept waiting by an idling bitch of a whore.” The change in the slave mistress truly unnerved the faltering submissive.
Striving desperately for the next stair, the upturned eyes fixed anxiously for guidance on the arched stonework above, the nude body suddenly doubled up as the lash embedded its knotted length into the rear of the thighs. The blow was followed by two further, full-blooded strokes across the shuddering buttocks. Joanne stifled a cry, catching her breath as she felt the loads of arse meat blossom into purple ridges. Vexingly, the scourge traversed the fading welts fomented by Coursel when he had tied her to the wagon wheel on the recent journey north. Blindly, the slave felt for the remaining steps ahead.
Halting the sweating corpulence before a doorway arrayed with iron brackets and rows of studs, the lissom one tempered her fury. “Now, on your knees, strumpet, thighs fully parted and let’s have that pair of hulking breasts bulging well out. That’s the posture you ought to know if, as you claim, you’ve been here before.” Taking up the slack of the lead as her victim fell to her knees, the woman jabbed the whip haft into each breast in turn, crushing both teat and ring deep into the soft lymph. “And keep these beefy knobs you have for nipples fully erect, so that the rings hang clear.” The slave winced and groaned as the lead was ripped out of the metal insertions but adopted the prescribed position. “You will wait here,” she was ordered, “stock-still, till you’re given permission to enter your week’s residence of penance.” To Joanne it seemed as though the woman - resembling now a menacing witch rather than the attractive slave handler she had appeared to be - truly enjoyed humiliating her, reducing the sufferer to the level of an animal about to be butchered.
Buttocks swaying, Melanie heaved the bossed portal ajar and, lanthorn in hand, entered the chamber. Sensing a waft of torrid air emerge from within, the slave was left alone, trembling in the dark.
Well over half an hour later, it was not Melanie but another female who finally came out to take charge of the kneeling figure; the light from the doorway seemed sufficient for the well-fleshed woman to look the slave over and, to Joanne’s perturbation, hook a chain to the clit ring. “On your feet, slut,” the order resounded hoarsely under the vaulting, “and follow me.” Taking hold of the links, what appeared to the returnee to be also a newcomer to the staff led the naked body into the chamber where earlier in the year Joanne had lost her heart to the handsome and, in more senses than one, ravishing Marquis de Lassignac.
Considerably more solidly built than either Melanie or Marie-Félice, now luckily absent, the woman wore a veil of dark gauze over her face, scarlet-dyed gauntlets and high boots but otherwise was naked. If not a subordinate assistant to Bouchard, she had to be fairly junior in the hierarchy, for she had no scourge attached to the loin belt nor were the areoles encompassed with metal spikes. Hence she ranked low but was hardly congenial as she accused Joanne of being late.
“At long last,” she complained, giving the clit a harrowing jerk. “You’ve certainly taken your time to present yourself, slag, but luckily the Marquise had not arrived as yet. It is I, along with the valet Deljoux, whom anon you’ll get to know, or at least his cock, who’ll act as your direct supervisors during your confinement here in the precinct. And apparently you are already acquainted with the place, no?” Such at least was what Joanne understood her to say, feeling more apprehensive than in the past when a mere servant had the insolence of addressing her so. She saw no point in agreeing, since Melanie had already mentioned the changes made to the chamber. What difference could it make whether she knew it or not? Again, silence was clearly the best policy.
“Deljoux and I,” the slattern went on, “are in charge of the chamber’s equipment and appliances. You will address me as Mademoiselle Sandrine but that’s by the way, as from now on you’ll not be able to speak, since I’m about to mask and, possibly, gag you. Have you anything to say, whore slut, before being put to the whip, instruments, cock and studded dildos?” Had Bouchard been present, her presumptuous air and itemized litany, Joanne felt, could in the past have earned her a cautionary flogging, relieved of those ostentatious boots and veil. But maybe she frequented Elodie’s bed, thereby being exempt from reprimand.
Although far from clear, her Breton French riled Joanne, who answered briefly. “As a tutored sex slave and of the Faith, I do not converse with Jezebels of your variety.” It was daring perhaps, but well worth the risk. The remark was met by a stony silence, indicating possibly the wench was out of her depth.
By way of reply, the fleshy Sandrine wrenched on the chain and dragged the victim into the room where, in those early summer days, Joanne had become enamoured of Francis-Etienne, Marquis de Vonnange-Lassignac - he who now served in the dazzling splendour of the royal court, far, far away...
How significantly indeed had the formerly sparse-furnished chamber changed! In the flickering glow of several candles - the sort that Bouchard had only too often doused in her vagina - Joanne found the place somehow reduced to half its former dimensions; the space was crowded with threatening structures, bolted or sunk into the paving. Even the window lancets had been walled up, a threatening brazier smouldering beneath a canopied chimney. Quite evidently, meticulously planned pain, probably precluding any trace of pleasure, awaited her; for if the familiar suspension chains were still there, dangling from the upper beams, the new posts, wooden benches, a nail-infested crucifix and the racks of whips and implements were certainly not sweet-smelling beds of roses nor ornaments... All resemblance to the simple room where the Marquis had provided himself and her with such pleasure in camera, had vanished; the place had become a dungeon of duress, a candlelit tenement of torture. Lugged brusquely towards the chains, Joanne felt sorry for herself and a little sick at heart.
As the wrists were freed from the nape, the valet’s remarks and Sandrine’s retorts regarding the wealth of meat the slave’s breasts and buttocks displayed, deeply distressed her; never had the Marquis uttered a single disparaging remark concerning her body, not even on the length of her ringed labial lappets, items he liked to elongate still further with metal weights, before whipping and ploughing into the cunt.
The position Joanne was made to take up hardly differed from that Melanie had used for readying the body - except that the leather, rather than rope, limb bondage allowed the stark-naked length of flesh and muscle to be stretched to its utmost reach, the arms taut above, the thighs wrenched apart in their sockets for the legs to be chained to iron hasps in the straw-strewn flagstones. Never before had the spread of the lower limbs and traction on the biceps scared her so, as she silently implored her shoulder and hip joints not to fail her by dislocating. With a week of penance ahead, they, like the rest of her frame, had a long way to go.
Then came what Joanne had always disliked but to which finally she had reconciled herself: the sedulous Deljoux, evidently relishing his work (probably following a night session, wherever it took place and if he was on duty, when he was allowed to drag a slave to his quarters and add to the damage by using her as he wished), approached Joanne. After tinkering with the flesh rings and wrenching them outward to uncover the vagina, glittering with downflow, he passed the chains over t
he groins and round the summit of the thighs, joining each linkage firmly below the perineum. This and his following duty were carried out under the fastidious supervision of Melanie, who had made her reappearance, now veiled and doffed of her jacket, in order to emphasize the latent power of her torso.
“Make speed, man,” she urged, “the others will be here shortly. The slave must be ready to hear the verdict and sentence. And you, woman,” - this to Sandrine - “see to it the bitch’s hooded up tight.”
To Joanne’s dismay, being familiar with the sound from times past, the valet could be heard cranking down, from a hinge on the rear wall behind the sweating nude, the thick length of the ribbed dildo. While the leather helmet was being strapped over the slave’s head by the burly female assistant, the slave felt the leather-sheathed knob of the impalement shaft parting her buttocks as it descended down the cleavage to nuzzle into the anal sphincter. With a further adjustment of the rod, the valet eased the greased, lifelike phallic dome into the rectum that fortunately had been slackened through incessant use by cocks, dildos and whip handles. The smooth entry prompted him to comment approvingly.
“This wench has some hole! Hollow as hell. Could take a cannon barrel, mon Dieu! It’s like a...”
“Shut your maw, fellow,” the slave mistress warned him, “unless you want the same up yours.”