Chapter Ten

She arrived in Pressignac - strangely on the Feast of Sainte Mariette - in early July, having been molested only once on the way. Grieving, not over the lamentably clumsy assault by a couple of thugs who tied her to a tree to use her - she had had worse moments - but later over the ruins of her hamlet. It had been totally razed and lay deserted. Despairing, she walked west in the hot sun, listening to the bees' hum and the rustle of the grass, and stopped abruptly, staring ahead. As if her feet had decided for her Joanne found herself confronted by the turrets of the Château de Lassignac silhouetted on the hill above. A strange thudding of her heart made her pause. There before her lay the path Martine would have recognised only too well, the winding track leading down to the Convent of the Annunciation. She turned her back on the path and without further pondering, began the steep climb through the bracken to the edifice beckoning her on, shimmering in the heat of the afternoon.

And there it was. The massive gateway beyond the drawbridge, the iron portcullis suspended, half-raised, without a soul in sight. Panting from the exertion of the climb and unsure of herself, Joanne entered the main courtyard. There too all seemed deserted and calm as if the mass of stone snored in siesta.

Then she saw Coursel in the shadow of the keep, taking his time, he was hoeing weeds from the cobbles. Sensing he was not alone, he looked up and saw the slim figure outlined against the glare of sunlight beyond the portal. Stunned, he watched the visitor approach and traverse the yard. Turning abruptly, he made for the ornate doorway with its carved coat of arms that Joanne remembered so well. The sweat darkening her torn Genovese gown and trickling down her spine, she stood quite still in the sweltering courtyard, hardly daring to breathe. She waited for her lover's silhouette to appear.

It was Elodie herself who finally emerged, brusquely aroused from rest. Wrapping her silks about her still slender form, the Marquise stared in amazement, her precious rings flashing like so many ancillary eyes. Behind her, equally dumbfounded, came Simone, her hand to her gaping mouth. Still further in the penumbra stood a tousled Anthea in muslin. Joanne's body glazed with goose flesh as she recognized the vampire. But there was a change. Despite the flowing gown, her pregnancy was plain, unquestionable; the usually flat belly already swelling. Could that be Coursel's doing? In any event, the offspring would simply be consigned to a wet nurse or some convent or other. Not that gestation, Joanne thought, would prevent the slut using the whip. Anyway, the presence of Francis-Etienne would be sufficient defence against the bitch. And the others. For Joanne had returned to Lassignac to reclaim her Marquis and no one else.

In golden mules, Elodie halted in the shade to stare at the apparition. The blue eyes' delicately curved lashes had not lost their sapphire virulence.

"And to what do we owe the honour of this visit, may I ask?" The voice was almost unctuous, belying the look but the tone did not hide the astonishment.

"I've come back, mistress. The Marquis said I might. He promised to shelter me. Please tell him I've returned, sweet mistress."

"Tell him? How dare you speak to me like that, you..." her tongue seemed to coil round the words, "...you despicable, impudent... you brazen mongrel of an infidel!" The nostrils flared in fury. "Now, slut let me tell you something. You've come to the wrong place, insolent prostitute that you are. The Marquis, your prick of a paramour..." she mimicked the girl's peasant accent, "is no longer here. No, harlot, his noble lordship graces Versailles in satin and silks." The voice had become knife-like, sharp as a trencher, the woman grotesquely imitating the steps of a gavotte, a courtly minuet. "Go and show the whorl of your arse and that wanton cunt of yours there. And at Fontainebleau. And the Louvre. No doubt he will come running on high heels to fuck you again - as long as his prick's not jammed fast in that bitch Marie-Félice he's taken with him." The tidings hovered over the yard like a hawk spying a field mouse.

Despite the summer heat, an icy sweat crawled from the matted hair of the girl's armpits. Terror froze her as when they used to lead her to the frame for breast torture.

"Oh, no, it's not true," she cried. "It can't be! He promised... he said he wanted me back... he said he loved me." The groans died away as the truth crystallized and Joanne's courage crumbled. "You mean... he's gone? And taken that bitch with him! And me... what shall I do now?" Elodie watched the tears trickle info the golden down of the cheeks. Ventre Saint-Gris, how attractive the slut could look! The Marquise felt a twitch of sensual craving seize her crotch. She remembered the breath-taking sight on that first evening in the great room when Evelyn de Burre-sage had thrashed the young newcomer undulating naked from the beam. The bedroom, the cellar, the ladder - it all came back to her. So did the slag's incredible orgasms under the guests' whips.

"What shalt I do now?" Elodie mimicked her, as the portcullis thudded shut. "I'll tell you what you do now, slut," the voice rasping shriller than the iron grid. "You'll strip that sex-sodden body of yours stark naked, as it always should be in my presence, and get those bubs and greedy quim down to the holding chamber - which you no doubt remember, you strumpet of a parpaillote traitor. And, by all the saints, I'll have that audacious bottom mashed into a mess of potage. How dare you come back here, aping innocence and swaggering those lecherous udders at me, you..." again she groped for words, "...you lecherous trollop." Narrowed eyes blazing, she screamed at Coursel and the funereal Simone. "Take this side of slave gammon down and see the thongs and whips are well soaked." She turned back to the girl. "Remember what you had Bouchard do to me?"

The menials seized the wretch who seemed so attached to Lassignac as to dare return! Indeed, they would bind her more severely than she had ever known. Elodie continued to yell. "And get Brissac..." - so he was still around, even if Marie-Félice was not - "to brand our letter L on that seditious pubis of hers. Branded, you hear? So the strumpet knows, once and for all where she belongs."

"Then we's ter put them same rings back in 'er?" Counsel asked, receiving an impatient nod of the noble head that now looked grotesque without its peruke.

As Joanne was being stripped naked, Elodie said one more thing. "Ah yes, slut. I shall introduce you, once you're presentable and ringed, to our dedicated Father Antoine. He's a Jesuit, a stickler for discipline. He has replaced Dom Anselme who, you may be interested to learn, has been called to Rome on a new assignment. He at least escaped the sacrilege at the defiling hands of your filthy, heathen louts. May the saints protect him!"

The few coverings of homespun ripped off her, Joanne tried to avoid thinking what was now in store for her by imagining some of Anselme's nocturnal pastimes he would combine with his mission in Rome. As to this Antoine, whoever he was, maybe he would prove less violent and more tolerant, despite her continued adamant refusal to abjure.

Hardly, alas, could her ingenuous mind have been more mistaken.

Nipple-naked - as Elodie termed her whore-slaves' state of total nudity - Joanne was hustled down the worn steps she recognized so well. A hour later, chained over the slab, she knew that all traces of hair she possessed had disappeared; bald and scraped raw by Simone's razor, she was ringed anew, blessing the former holes in her flesh that spared her a second session under the saddler's awl. But suddenly her terrified eyes caught sight of an eighth ring glinting in the crone's fingers. Peeling back a nostril, the shrew pierced through the septum with a swift jab, threaded the metal through the cartilage and clamped hard. Like frozen mucus on a cold day, the circle dangled before the curve of the upper lip. In tears, Joanne recalled the sows' snouts in the castle farm - they were used to it.

"That's what Mistress Anthea ordered." Simone's remark was colourless, vapid, as she quietened the writhing body with a jab of her awl into the ribs.

The nude was then chained tighter over the margin of the block for Brissac to grease the pubic mound for branding. Joanne had already glimpsed the horrendous brazier in the corner of the cell. She clenched her jaws. All notion of time and place vanished.

The scalding iron descended into the mons, the man holding it there firmly. With a shriek the prisoner surged in her chains to slap back on to the stone amid the stench of charred flesh.

When she came to, she found her head had been hooded tight under a helmet of clammy chamois, reeking of slave sweat. Simone wrenched on the buckles until the leather hugged the skull, outlining the neat contours of the face. It was like a second skin. Moaning, she was hauled to her feet and dragged to the hideous oubliette - where so many Lassignac slaves had learned the meaning of real pain - to be chained head down by her ankle straps hooked wide to the ceiling, and left to consider her crass folly. There, as the nut-brown Therèse used to say, a slavegirl could also reflect on the disadvantages of being a sexually attractive female. Ah, Therese with her stories... the slinky Isabelle, the plump little milkmaid, Bette, also branded - where were they? Were they still about? Although on the way down Joanne had traversed the slave cellar, the dark, the haste and whips had prevented her seeing a thing. Mariette if still there, would have blown her a quick kiss.

After the evening whipping across the downturned breasts, the thong over her mouth was slackened for her to be fed slops through a leather funnel - an item that was new to her. The retching earned her ten lashes of the quirt across the crotch and brand.

Towards the close of the terrible week in the dank hole - which no slave ever forgot but where many were forgotten - Elodie came to look her captive over. Her remarks seemed to hiss out of a nest of vipers. Revenge could indeed be sweet.

"After such a time," she commented, "of being severed from the whip and the delicious devices we have here, some of which you know already, naturally you'll need intensive retraining, won't you, whore? You remember what you ordered to have done to me and my adorable Anthea? Well, pardi, I never expected to be able to retaliate. But the designs of heaven move in mysterious ways. And here you are, ready to make amends!"

In the morning room, the Marquise readily accepted the offer of help put forward by her devoted Father Antoine. She found her new confessor infinitely more amenable than the heavy-handed Dominican who insisted on trying to convert every Calvinist within reach. Her Jesuit, on the contrary, squandered no time and energy on such quests, being rather of the opinion that any female, preferably young, pretty, well-made and whatever her religious views, was all the better after a bout of flagellation or prolonged erotic torture. Moreover, he used the scourge as competently and indefatigably as he handled casuistry. And, having learned of the blonde whore's role in the recent disaster caused by the Camisards at the expense of the Marquise and her poor, innocent Anthea, he charitably undertook to prepare the slender homecomer for Anthea's imminent vengeance.

That same evening the accommodating Jesuit paid her his first visit. The lashing she received was harsh and pitiless, reviving the marks left by Simone's earlier strokes in the oubliette. Invariably, the confessor treated all nude females to a whip of seven knotted thongs, the tips tastefully adorned with metal slugs. Amid her writhings, Joanne could visualize it welting her rump that had lost its resilience through months of underexposure to leather, the scourge's extremities leaving ripe purple blotches. Ignoring - or more probably relishing - her shrieks and clutching his cock, the distinguished cleric delivered the punishment in a distant, almost impersonal, manner - so different from the way her loquacious Francis-Etienne always flogged her, extolling her grace with tributes to her curves - 'Yes, my nude beauty, out with those ringed mammaries' and 'Bend those knees, jewel, so that the thong can enter your slit...' and similar fond encouragements.

Joanne groaned, not so much from Father Antoine's slashes but from the thought that her Francis was now probably whipping Marie-Félice's sleek body, watched by others.

When finally the Jesuit's erection - in girth a sturdy one even by Lassignac standards - rammed into her, Joanne's yells subsided into her former hoarse groans of gathering pleasure. Miracle! For the first time in months, she found herself spending luxuriously, despite - or on account of? - her rings and brand mark. Having climaxed as she used to do, she slumped, more or less content.

The twice-daily thrashing sessions, spread over the week, concluded her so-called 're-adaptation'. Many of the early floggings really hurt but by the later ones she had retrieved her capacity to thread her way through the vales of pain out into the pastures of ecstasy. Or, as Martine used to say after a breast and crotch beating, 'into the land of milk and honey'. But then, Martine knew her Bible far better than did Joanne.

***

Dining with the Marquise some days later, Father Antoine announced that he considered the felon sufficiently ripe to be bequeathed to the murderous Anthea, in line with Elodie's decision, taken the same evening of the slut's unexpected appearance.

"Thanks, dear friend, for your devotion to the cause," Elodie purred, her jewelled fingers brushing the hand that had wielded the lash so promptly and considerately. Caressing Anthea, Elodie listened to what her kind and cooperative chaplain was saying.

"The bitch, if you will pardon the term, your Grace, is clearly endowed with exceptional physical attributes and erotic potency. They were manifest throughout my thrashings and particularly thereafter, for she spends - how shall I say? - vehemently and repeatedly. Like the animal she is. Moreover she's a heretic, may heaven protect these sacred dwellings!" He paused. "Hence, if I may be allowed the remark, dear lady, I think she should be disallowed - yes, forbidden - orgasm from now on. Deprivation of the sort would increase her suffering and penance, if that is what you seek. But I leave that to you. In my view, it is immaterial whether a female under the lash comes or not, as long as she pleasures her flogger and benefits from our gifts, spiritual and otherwise. What does your Grace think?" His smile resembled a placid lake, serene, smooth and liquid.

"Oh, I'd rather leave the question to Anthea, Father," Elodie replied. "She knows how to handle a guilty - and insatiable - wench, don't you, treasure? Now, Anthea, my dear, the harlot's all yours. And for as long as you wish. Don't forget you'll be punishing a mutinous parpaillote who mortified us, made me lose face and you, quite a of blood. So flog her on my behalf, not just your own. It's just a pity we don't have the other hag here as well. I'd have those teats of hers corkscrewed with the pincers and..."

"Let this one pay for both, your Grace," her confessor calmed her. "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, no?" At that, the Marquise gave him one of her most winsome, looks, wondering what the fellow was like in bed, for that too was looming.

Anthea began work on Joanne the next evening. Clad anew in spurred boots up to her shapely thighs, she pulled on her scarlet gauntlets spangled with honed barbs, completing her image of a sublime dominant with the usual spiked nipple cones that never failed to play havoc when she embraced a slave. Elodie attended each session, perceiving that, around the sixth evening, the prisoner's attempts to satisfy her captors, leave alone herself, were waning, the slut needing all her strength for self-preservation. She began to wilt like a shrinking violet under the heat of Anthea's vengeance.

Scream as Joanne did for help, her distant Francis-Etienne, Marquis de Lassignac, had other activities - in addition to Marie-Félice's breasts - in hand: attending the King's parties at Versailles, hunting stag with the court in the royal Forest of Fontainebleau, gambling with debauched rakes and, pardi, there was this squint-eyed profligate Marie-Félice who needed whipping and sodomising after dinner, before sharing her with others.

***

Holding Joanne to be not only heretically contagious but traitorous, Elodie avenged herself by having her located apart from the cellar slaves, condemning her to one of the most secluded parts of the castle - the farthest bedchamber in the west wing. On being taken there, the slave had difficulty in recognizing the room. Anthea had had the servants turn it into a remarkably well-appointed torture precinct, the window being cemented up. If an ingeniously cruel fate for Joanne, at least it brought back erotic memories. On the other hand, being separated from whomever remained in the cellar, she realized she would only meet them at the ceremonial guest festivities that continued to dignify Lassignac.

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.