Chapter Four

When the time came for her real trial, Nicola hardly recognised it as such until it was almost over. Milly Soong and her sister revolutionaries paraded in front of the school with their prisoner in their midst. The girls were armed with a variety of home made weapons. Two older girls in front carried big red and black banners and some of the younger ones, bringing up the rear, were banging cymbals, drums and gongs.

Nicola was more skimpily clad than ever. Under hard treatment the black dress had split open to the waist, exposing her breasts half-naked in torn black lace. The black shoulder straps had snapped and been re-knotted, hoisting the hem by an unfortunate inch or two. Round her neck, like a sandwich board, hung large placards painted in large black characters with what were presumably the details of her crimes. They at least provided her with some modesty before the large attendant crowd that competed in noise with the crashing instruments and shrilling voices of the schoolgirls.

As they turned out of the school gates, two miserable male captives were marched past, also half-naked and placarded in the same way as Nicola. That was about as much as Nicola was allowed to see, for the two biggest girls who held her arms then forced her into motion following them in the usual ‘head down’ posture. She had a good view of her breasts almost wobbling out of their shallow confinement at every step and she could feel that her shortened dress hem was drawn so far up that the dangling placard bounced on half bared bottom cheeks. In these circumstances she felt her escort to be a protection, for though she could see very little of them, the swelling roar of the crowd sounded angry and dangerous, reminding her that this was more or less a witch hunt, with herself figuring as the witch.

Their destination was the same school hall, which Nicola knew so well by now. This time the public had evidently been allowed to crowd within, filling the approaches. It made the march across the intervening space all the more terrifying and the escort of schoolgirls a thing to be grateful for. The press and delay about the entrance was equally intimidating, with the implication that Nicola was an insignificant mote in a gigantic upheaval. Slowly they shuffled up the steps and then within, where there seemed only to be standing room and she was packed so closely about by her young captors that she was unable to see anything but trouser legs and a dirty, boot-marked, wood block floor.

There was an interminable wait while a long incomprehensible sing-song of voices went on ahead of them, punctuated by frenzied mass chanting of slogans during which Nicola’s escort slapped and pummelled her in their excitement. Twice the proceedings seemed to reach a crux. The crowd inside the hall fell more or less silent so that the people outside made themselves heard again. Bodies pushed and jostled in a wave of readjustment towards the door. Then there was a hush outside also, sufficient for the crack of a single pistol shot to be heard. A roar of approval and more slogan shouting outside and then back inside the hall it all began again.

At the third resumption it seemed it was Nicola’s turn. She was thrust forward in front of the familiar long desk, just as she had been at the rehearsal. A row of feet beneath it was all she could see of her judges this time as well. In the unhappily familiar ritual the interchange of voices began; Milly Soong’s the most prominent, the tightly packed public ohhhing and ahhhing at intervals just as the audience of schoolgirls had done at the rehearsals, but with infinitely deeper menace. As usual, Nicola’s head was jerked up at intervals to identify exhibits; the silly photos of her naked in the hotel room with Xeng; the pair of black tights she had left behind at the flat; one of the biggest of the bronzes from the truck, an incense burner, massive, ancient and green patina-ed, its white excavation label still dangling from its neck. Automatically Nicola acknowledged each item presented to her, her dazed brain only capable of dwelling upon an agonised terror that a red scooter might be next.

There was a long period then when all went quiet except for occasional massed gasps or waves of nervous giggles all around Nicola. Head down, she could feel the heightening of the hostile atmosphere without knowing what caused it. She had seen Milly Soong open the smart brief case which Nicola had given Xeng in London as a parting gift and pass forward what looked like a video-cassette. Over her bent head the judges and the audience were now watching a grainy record shot by a hidden surveillance camera, of what had passed between Nicola and the two schoolgirls in the shower. Nicola was identifiable on her knees between the two Chinese girls, the one whose thighs her face was buried in looking upwards with an expression between astonishment and ecstasy, clinging to Nicola’s hair with both hands. In growing panic, Nicola twisted her head just in time to see the last of it for herself. Increasingly steam-fogged and water spattered, the screen showed her own face, this time turned upwards towards the camera her expression distorted and mouth gaping open, her hands clutching to her the black haired heads of the two diminutive girls whose faces were out of sight and pressed to the front of her thighs.

“Have you anything further to confess about these crimes?” Milly Soong repeated the key words a second time. Confusion suffused Nicola’s mind fixed upon her secret guilt. The girlish fingers in her hair jerked her head round, away from the now blank screen. A row of round enigmatic faces gazed at her. The one whose harsh words Milly Soong had translated was a middle-aged woman, her voice carrying mature severity.

Nicola opened her mouth to make the correct response, but only a squeak emerged. Suddenly it dawned upon her dazed brain that she had left it too late.

She was about to be sentenced by these awful, ignorant people, and she had never been able to explain herself. In confusion she veered wildly away from what she had been taught.

“I didn’t mean it,” she protested, half expecting the cane to descend. “It wasn’t like that!” As her head was thrust down again, she heard Milly Soong coolly translating, or perhaps inventing. Suddenly realising the futility of her protests she tried to shriek as far as that was possible with her head held down level with her

knees. “You beasts! This isn’t a proper court! I want to appeal to a proper court!” What Milly Soong’s translation made of it she had no means of knowing, but even if it had been accurate it would have been unfortunate. There was uproar all about her, angry shouting from the bench, and corresponding indignation from the crowd. The voice of the woman judge prevailed, an angry seesawing denunciation, which produced a buzz of excitement from her hearers.

Nicola suddenly found herself at the centre of a cleared space. Two grinning men hurried forward with a short wooden bench, which they planted before her. The two girls who were holding Nicola thrust her to her knees and so belly-down onto the bench. It was short and her head projected beyond its end. She was completely terrified. What had she been convicted of? She had a sudden vision of an executioner’s sweeping sword coming down to slice through her out-thrust neck.

The placard was torn from her back; a swarm of girls were parting her thighs and fastening her to the bench at the knees with their red scarves; her hair was drawn back and her handcuffed wrists forward until they could be fastened one to the other with a further scarf, pulling her neck back and her head up to face the judges. In the position they fastened her with her rump projected, tautly curved over the end of the bench, it dawned upon her what was to happen. The sight of a man in a khaki uniform rolling up his sleeve to bare a brawny forearm with a long rattan cane in his fist as he measured her with his eyes confirmed the truth. Shame and terror vied for place in Nicola’s mind. She had insulted the court and now she had an inkling of what the penalty was to be! She was to be publicly caned!

She twisted her head this way and that, seeing people crowding round without any order or organisation, gaping and excited, treating it as a spectacle. Some of them were school pupils in uniform, but there were people of all ages, some of them men and many of the women accompanied by young children.

A sudden anticipatory hush from these onlookers was all the warning Nicola received. Straddling the bench with her thighs apart, her skirt had ridden up high and the descending rattan cracked like a whip across taut black silk only an inch or so above the stretched hemline. Nicola shrieked to the roof. She had just felt the difference between a man’s arm and a girl’s. A man’s arm was certainly more effective. The crowd hissed. The thin red wheal the cane had left appeared spanning bare plump flesh as Nicola’s frantic jerk combined with the impact of the cane to lift the edge of her skirt just that fraction higher, displaying the limitations of her knickers.

Swishhh... Crackkk!!! Swishhh... Crackkk!!!

The crowd gasped appreciatively at each stroke and Nicola made the bench creak with her reaction. Her cries were quite incomprehensible to the crowd, but replete with expression nevertheless. Her skirt had ridden right up to her waist with the third stroke and her half-transparent lace knickers had split under the repeated impact of the cane so that all three red stripes ran almost undisguised across naked flesh. She lost her head completely then, forgetting the intention to protest had earned her this punishment and under the stress of the cane repeating the lesson she had learnt to parrot in exactly this fashion.

Intelligently, the policeman who wielded the cane, permitted Nicola just time and breath enough to deliver each sentence, merely using it to prompt and punctuate her hysterical recital, each stinging stroke being followed by her confessional phrase and accompanied by Milly Soong’s translation in a clear and penetrating voice for the benefit of judges and public.

“My name is Nicola Horsham.” Crackkk!!!

“I was sent here by the British government.” Crackkk!!! “I seduced the traitor Xeng.” Crackkk!!!

“I bribed the traitor Xeng by allowing him to fuck me.” Crackkk!!!

“I stole the antiquities, the property of the people.” Crackkk!!! “I destroyed public property.” Crackkk!!!

“I tried to escape the just indignation of the people.” Crackkk!!! “But I was captured by the patriotic students!” Crackkk!!!

Although she had repeated her confession the bamboo continued to fizz down, landing with repeated meaty cracks across flinching female flesh whilst Nicola howled in pain whatever came into her head, “I confess... I confess... I am guilty... imperialist arrogance... despising the people... deserving punishment... ” and overall the triumphant sound of Milly Soong’s translation.