Chapter Three

Still chained to the iron screen in the darkening chapel, as the nave filled with the entire staff attending vespers, Joanne summoned up what courage remained in her after the beating and sexual attacks on her naked body. Worse than the punishment was to be left exposed to the gaze of the congregation and forced to listen to the service; for the first time since her capture, she felt shame, her welted buttocks in full view as she hung bound on the chancel steps.

The end of vespers seemed never to come. When it did and the faithful had filed out in silence, she felt a gradual change taking place in the cords throttling her breasts and encircling the nipples. A moment later, pain throbbed in her extended labia. Drying under the heat of her burning flesh and that generated by the crowd now leaving the nave, the damp hemp was shrinking. The constriction of the rope was growing in intensity. Striving to keep her panic in check, she stared fixedly at the red glow of the sanctuary oil lamps, as a sharp agony commenced in the strangled extremities. Fright seizing her, she screamed hoarsely, the cries resounding through the empty edifice. "Help me! Please... release me! My flesh's tearing..." Only echoes replied as the contraction built up.

Slowly the grip and tension of the dehydrating hemp became unbearable. The turns round the root of the breasts bit in deeper, causing the bulges to swell even further, surging with thick violet veins, the skin turning dark. Looking nervously through the bars, she saw the nipples had also become purple and twice their normal length. The irrigation was gradually being halted; the terror of necrosis, as Elodie called it, paralysed her.

Her lungs yelled to the flickering lamps, to the altar, to the mute heraldic tombs in the side chapels, begging to be freed, only to sense her labia being drawn ever tauter round their bar. The slave became frantic. She was under a completely new torture.

The voice behind her quivering body was both acerbic and unctuous.

"As you see, procrastinating heretic," the Dominican observed, "this technique of conversion may be unhurried but is also painful. It is but a prelude to more compelling tortures we have in store for your iniquitous flesh. Although to see your rings ripped from your teats would provide me with pleasure, I want you whole, once you have abjured."

The torment mounting with each hateful phrase, the nude became demented until finally the hollow-cheeked face and tonsured skull appeared on the chancel side of the screen. A quill-sharpener slipped in between the cording and skin of the left breast and slit the hemp; then the knife freed the other bloated hunk of flesh, followed by the nipples and outer sex fronds. As the clogged circulation resumed its flow into the mammaries, the shock sent Joanne into a deeper circle of Hell; her cries, like those of a trapped animal, filled the clerestory while she slammed her head against the iron trellis. "You... you damned, unholy, depraved... loathsome... sodomising bastard... of papist offal...!" The howls dumbfounded even Anthea, watching from a bench in the south aisle.

"Control your perfidious tongue whore!" came the response, as the man drew close and dug his nails into a nipple. "Such language offends our household of the faithful."

The pain abating slowly, Joanne saw she was no longer alone with the ghoul. The valet's fetid odour reached her, along with his query, as he slapped the crimson rump.

"Is it yer Holiness's wish to 'ave the whore flogged some more? To the blood?"

"No, my man I am becoming wearied by the trollop's thick-headedness. No, for I believe the time has come to discuss carnal torture with Her Grace, your mistress. Take the fractious thing away from this sacred place. I shall see what measures she merits."

Coursel obeyed, disappointed at being deprived of whore flesh to lash. Apart from the routine morning floggings in the cellar, he had not had a female to beat all day.

He released the exhausted girl and dragged her by the hair out of the chapel.

When allowed to regain her feet. Joanne was led by her cunt chain back to the cellar to join the rest of the slaves. Despite the hours of suffering that had demoralised her, she was overjoyed to rejoin what she supposed were now to be her permanent companions. After a distressing descent, her extended clit still sore from Anthea's knotted whip and the pressure of the iron rods, she collapsed to be chained to her wall ring, surprised by the number of candles shedding an almost welcoming glow over the prison. For once, the light allowed her to discern how the huge cellar was laid out. Beyond the long palisade of bars dividing the space into two unequal parts, she could now study not only the configuration but also its contents; first, there was the area reserved for the row of nude slaves lounging on straw palliasses, each body attached to the rear wall by the usual long length of chain clipped to a ring in the neck strap, allowing some movement.

The greater portion of the windowless cavern beyond the barrier extended into the shadows but Joanne was able to distinguish some of its furnishings. As she peered into the chamber, her flesh crawled with horror, her vaginal muscle contracting with a bizarre clutch of dread and excitement as it always did when, masturbating in bed at home after an unsatisfactory copulation with her devoted but inept Jean-Jacques, her erotic dreams conjured up Turkish janissaries approaching her with whips and devices of sexual torment.

Beneath a profusion of heavy chains hanging from the vaulting, each terminating in an evil-looking iron hook, loomed a ponderous wooden cross in the form of an X, bristling with honed spikes, a roughly stitched, leather-bound phallus rearing from its crux. To the right, just visible, stood a tall structure, resembling the frame of an empty doorway mounted on a platform, the crosspieces at its summit and centre equipped with chains and straps - the infamous breast bench her colleagues had mentioned earlier designed to throttle female udders for whipping and worse. Beyond, she discerned a chassis, bolted upright to the whitewashed wall, and again she froze: the horizontal bars were ladened with an array of whips, riding crops, quirts, sagging hoods of leather and bewildering rows of instruments and tackle. The gloom beyond prevented her from distinguishing the rest of the contraptions; each item, she guessed, constituted a further invention destined to inflict pain through flagellation; she could already visualise her slender body writhing helplessly but, she knew, only too willingly under the scourge. Uncontrollably, her sex began again to liquefy and throb, her nipples stiffening under the weight of the rings. Reclining to nurse her whipped buttocks and breasts, she heard the valet's parting remark.

"Thou'll like enough, slut, be called ter that there grand bedchamber anon, along wiv yer lousy yokemate over yonder," Coursel warned her, motioning down the slave line to Martine's curled up body. Joanne saw the useless youngster was shaking with sobs. "So keep yerself awake and wet, see?" Then the gate clanged. The brute locked it and left.

The chatter had subsided at Joanne's entry and all eyes were on her as she felt for traces of blood on her raw buttocks, ensuring they lay clear of the prickling straw. Trying to smile at her new colleagues, she glanced down the line of naked bodies at Martine. Indeed she had reason to blubber; Joanne recalled vividly the handsome Marquis's attack on the abject creature, the deflowering and the accompanying screams. She would not last long if she continued to resist. In one way, Joanne admired her stubborn resistance but what was the point? She would simply have to conform, suffer and, if possible, try to enjoy both whip and sex. Otherwise... Joanne shuddered to think what would happen to her. Life as a parpaillote prisoner in the hellish Tour de Constance for probably years on end could hardly be more pleasant. After all, at this Lassignac place one did get fucked. Somehow the poor youngster had to learn. Joanne noticed she at least had a dildo plugged into her rear, as she herself had endured. That was a start, along with the loss of her virginity. Although Joanne had enough to contend with on her own account, she tried hard to sympathise with her partner-in-heresy. As to the others, destitute prostitutes and starving serfs, they were nothing more than flogging chattel - sex meat, probably by now devoid of faith, religion and hope, if they had ever had known such luxuries. In any event, the bodies lolling there on their palliasses did not look particularly righteous.

Joanne noticed the male chained next to the snivelling wretch. He was not unattractive and maybe could help Martine over the hill into docile acquiescence. Then a redhead, who was no spring chicken, greeted her:

"Heavenly saints above, they've really made a mess of your lovely behind! And so early in the game!" Following Joanne's eyes, she added: "By the way, they've decided to have your little fatty of a friend - she is your friend, isn't she? - comfortably chained up over there, next to Laurent, instead of next to Therèse or Bette, who'll get her to kiss and suck them all night long. Oh, of course, you don't know us, do you? Well, tell us your names and I'll introduce us lot to you, for what we're worth. I'm called Mariette and I've been here nearly a year now. So I'm used to the routine. There are far worse places, you know."

Joanne nodded and thought of the Tour de Constance. Then she gave the group Martine's name and her own and left it at that.

The attractive Mariette, clearly the senior - she said she was thirty but looked a great deal more - gestured to a slender female playing with her sex rings. Joanne had noticed that, apart from the youth, all seemed to have been pierced and encumbered with the same number of flesh rings as Martine and herself. Strangely the fact reassured her.

"That's Isabelle, a favourite of sorts with the Marquise. She doesn't have to wait for a blue moon to be called up to the great bedroom. She comes back in a hell of a mess but just loves it, don't you, Isa? She can take fifty lashes from a guest and still spill her juice four or five times."

The slinky, boyish body turned to offer the newcomer an enticing, lascivious smile between dimpled cheeks. Somewhere in her secret, erotic depths, Joanne felt a jolt of desire; gazing at the yellowing bruises on the girl's small breasts, her own tits almost portentous in comparison, she found her breath shortening. The slave's vulva just visible among the rings looked neat and succulent. After tasting Anthea's unappetising slot, Joanne looked forward to something more inviting. Furthermore this Isabelle had a sensuous mouth that probably could do justice to a newcomer's crotch, still aching from the whip and the Dominican's intrusion. The salacious and probably rash question on the tip of Joanne's tongue - which she wished was already flicking Isa's clit - was altogether too audacious and certainty premature; time would tell who in the cellar sucked whom.

What Joanne wanted to know was what happened in the 'great bedroom', wherever that Promised Land might lie. But, for the moment and as far as the neck chains allowed, the cellar seemed to offer ample scope for lesbian recreation - and there was even a male cock available - this side of the bars; the terrifying area beyond being another matter.

The chance at long last to talk exhilarated Joanne but she did not wish to interrupt Mariette, who went on down the line. "That's Dalinde." Apparently a girl from Ales who, to eke out a living had descended into whoredom when her man had been impressed into the royal forces, given a pair of boots and a cutlass, and marched off to fight the ludicrous battles of the Spanish Succession. She gave Dalinde a friendly smile. She seemed to be the sort of girl who could teach her things.

"And this tart's called Louise," Mariette went on. "Just loves the whip and a good fuck."

A dark-eyed slut of around twenty-five spread out her long legs to show the marks over her inner thighs, just below the ringed sex. Then came Bette, plump and gay as a chaffinch. "I'm the only one who's been branded for disobedience - at least so far!" she informed the newcomer, with a mischievous look and displayed the sombre, purple mark on her whipped buttock; the letter L had been burned firmly into the cambered flesh. Joanne shuddered, horrified by the depth of the scar staring out at her. No doubt L signified Lassignac. The young bitch seemed proud of what her unruly behaviour had earned her.

"Why that?" Joanne murmured, at which the chestnut-haired slut laughed.

"Oh, just because I tried to escape last Lent. I'd had enough of this bloody place. They caught me on the ramparts and flogged me almost to death. Then I got branded by Brissac, the smith, in front of the whole damn place and the bloody guests. I wouldn't try making a getaway, if I were you, poppet, unless you can change into a starling or squeeze into an empty milk churn. Anyway, I was put on the cross and they branded me like a fuckin' heifer. It's the only time I fainted, lovey. An iron really sizzles into your flesh..."

The remark sank deep into Joanne's brain deeper than a brand, She was learning.

No one introduced the youth at the end of the line. "He'll fuck you whenever you're in need, darling," Mariette muttered. "We tend to steer clear of him and anyway we get enough cock as it is."

The sixth prisoner Therèse, the purported lesbian, got scant attention also. She looked exhausted and had turned away from the group. Nevertheless Mariette did pronounce her name. "Oh, yes, that's Therèse over there," she observed. "She's just had a training séance with Bouchard - he's the torturer, by the way. I think he shoved the bodkins through her tits. That's one of his specialities and guests go for breast needling in a big way. She's fairly new you see - like you two - and has to learn. She tends to scream now, even if you touch her. Got chained to the spiked grid, as you'll be one of these nights. That fat parasite friend of yours over there should watch her tits."

"And this Bouchard?" Joanne inquired; hoping she was not over-tasking her new helpful colleagues, "is it true what you said? He really tortures us?"

The beautiful novice felt another thrill ripple through her and, despite the slaves around her she began to ooze. To be tortured naked by someone like this grim Bouchard fellow they were mentioning recalled some of the more unusual fantasies she treated herself to when frigging in bed next to her snoring husband. But that was before her capture.

"Oh, Bouchard," the dark-maned Louise answered. "He's rather a peach, with a fine length of hard cock you don't forget! Yes he's the major-domo and in charge of the torture cells. Wait till you're spread and chained over the trestle with him getting the flesh bodkins - they're silver needles - ready for the guests to stick through your really sensitive parts! He's something, believe me! The cells for sex torture, by the way, are down there." She motioned beyond the iron bars towards a carved doorway to the left of the cellar. "Master Bouchard certainly knows the ropes, as they say on the galleys. Someone to be avoided, if you can. But all the same, if a guest wants you down there, you've got to go and then you're under Bouchard's supervision for the night. I suppose," she added encouragingly, "you're used to having needles driven through your tits. If not, you'd better train yourself up. There's a whole heap of bodkins over there in the alcove, if you want us to give you a spot of practice." Mariette gestured to Louise to ease up but the sultry one was in her stride. "When they take you down there and along the long passage, you can hardly walk with your mass of chains, straps and flesh weights. So try to crawl, if they'll let you. They enjoy seeing you act like an animal. Naturally, you're whipped all the way along, to remind you to look as if you've been counting the days waiting for a lesson in needlecraft."

The description raised a titter among the slaves, followed by silence.

The newcomer felt her head swimming. She felt tempted to ask scores of questions about the physical treatment mere novices like herself could expect but confined herself to one. "What's needling like? I've never had anything pushed into my breasts or anywhere else for that matter." Her voice trembled, her hands cupping her swollen breasts.

"Never?" Bette stared incredulously. "Well, you've got a thrill coming. Especially when they shove them straight into the nipple vent of your boobs. Of course, it gets scary when they start on your extended cunt frills. You mean you've never had that?"

Joanne shook her head, feeling very much an amateur. If the prospect both excited and scared her, she shuddered to think how Martine, with her outsized udders, was going to react, were she to be skewered. Fortunately, the youngster was still too busy shedding tears to follow the conversation. "One more thing, if I may," she managed to ask, continuing to use the local dialect rather than her Calvinist French. She made a gesture towards her sniffling colleague. "What happens if, say... one refuses to... cooperate?"

There was an almost embarrassed hush. It was Mariette who came to the rescue. "Well, that's never happened. We've all sort of grown used to life here, if you can call it that, and we try to enjoy it. I mean we're here as slaves to be used, just as you seem to have been. Were you flagellated by Coursel, our cock of the dunghill, or was it Elodie?"

"No, it was Anthea, it that's her name under the Dominican's supervision..."

After a moment of surprise, Mariette sympathised "Oh, you poor thing! That's real bad luck as an introduction to our happy home. You mean that fucking priest was there! Why, in whoredom's name?"

Joanne thought it best to tell them. "Well, we're parpaillots, you see. Calvinists and, since the Edict of Nantes was revoked, we need converting."

No one seemed to grasp the point. "So what?" Mariette protested. "You're just fuckin' sex slaves like us, no?"

"I suppose so but..."

Suddenly Martine let out a yell. "No we're not! We're of the Faith and won't ever abjure. You're all just a band of common whores wallowing in sex and whipping..."

Joanne recoiled at the outburst. But at least the parpaillote cat was out of the bag and the girls did not seem perturbed by the news. Nevertheless, she silently recited a psalm and prayed Martine would calm down. Luckily, both still seemed to be welcome.

"That makes no bloody difference here," Mariette confirmed. "But, Joanne, try and explain to your little friend here how she should play her cards. Because," she lowered her voice, "with a fat body like hers, she hasn't got many to play. She's in for trouble."

Deftly, Louise changed the subject. "Joanne, listen I'm dying to fuck with you, once you're settled in. I like the whorl of your navel and those areoles without even a single pimple on them. Jeez, with such a body, you're going to be in great demand, whether you're a Turk, Jewish or just a parpaillote. You would like me to suck you off, wouldn't you? All this talk bores me. Look, there's enough chain for you to come over to my pallet, without asking to be released. Here, if you want to be freed for sex, you have to ask Simone or Coursel to unhook you, as when you have to go to the latrine there in the alcove. They're fairly generous about releasing us for sex, especially if it's with them. Of course, you get beaten first but that sort of stirs one up, if you see what I mean."

Joanne was not really ready to wrap her thighs round Louise's - or even Isa's - head. "I'm waiting to be called to the bedroom apparently," she announced. "You heard the valet. Maybe we can make love later, when I'm more sure of myself." She reverted to the lofty subject of the ablution alcove. "What else happens there?" she asked, relieved, despite Martine's shriek, that the question of religious orthodoxy and heresy had raised not a single eyebrow among the slaves.

"That's where you're scrubbed down and prepared for ceremonial weekends, like the one we're heading for now. You know - flushed out clean as a whistle, powdered or oiled, depending on the guests, teats and labia rouged, clit firmed up and so on..."

Then Bette put in a word. "I know you've both been flogged but that sobbing sister of yours over there needs encouragement if she's going to survive. I mean the longer she fights, the worse it'll become. Do you want me to tell you what happens here when you protest as they hang you by the ankles in that shit hole of a drawing room upstairs, and you're surrounded by a gaggle of slobbering guests? Care to hear, you two?"

Joanne declined. She was alarmed by Martine's attitude. Despite the group's vague ripple of sympathy for her and, in a way, for her stubborn co-religionist, she had no wish to let Martine hear too much. Now it was each for herself. Joanne had undergone a violent flogging session, sex and pain at the rood screen as best she could and had stood up to it; Martine had had her share too and would just have to conform, keep the faith, recite her prayers to herself and hope for some miraculous relief, if not from heaven, then perhaps from some roving band of Cevenol brothers - who must surely know they had been carried off, not to the Tour de Constance but to a local stronghold where women were desecrated. Hope springs eternal. And Joanne left Martine to her grief and muttered psalms.

A moment later Mariette reverted to the valet's last remark before he left.

"You know, to be taken up to the Marquise's bedchamber - that's what Coursel said, wasn't it?" - she looked around and received nods - "when you're both still novices, is something! That's damn rare here. Even I've never been up there. Not sexy enough."

"Well, I have!" Therèse put in, coming alive. "And it's rather a privilege you know, Joanne."

The newcomer noticed the ironic grins on the line of faces and asked her to go on.

"Well, since you're new, Elodie examines you - all sorts of weird questions about how you feel when you're being nipple-tortured with tongs, whether you can orgasm without having your clit twisted and more of the same. Then he whips you, tied on her bed, and you make love, as it's called up there. Of course, if Anthea or the Marquis are around, it becomes quite a party. A free-for-all... a fracas. That's all there is to it." Joanne had hoped for a little more detail but the chatter was cut abruptly short by the entry of Coursel and the slatternly Simone. The slave cellar filled with tension.

The gate was thrown open, the two newcomers released and dragged out to have their wrists locked again to the neck band, ankles linked and the anal plug inserted and chained. Then the so-called 'control lead' - Joanne was learning the house vocabulary rapidly - was clipped to each slave's clit ring. Aware that inmates, according to Marlene, were permitted to speak to servants, Joanne summoned up her courage and risked a question. Her pluck astounded the others who, through bitter experience, had found it wiser in the presence of their gaolers, to keep their tongues still on all occasions, except when sucking a cock, licking a vulva or shrieking in pain. Or in the throes of orgasm.

"Where are you taking us, master?" the novice dared to ask, the voice trembling.

"Thou'll find out soon enough. So shut thy gob, scum, an' see thy cunt's runnin'. Now move!" With a wan smile from Joanne to her newfound colleagues and a tearful groan from Martine, the little cohort departed down the dark passage of fate.

The clamber up the spiral stairway proved pure agony, neither slave being yet used to the wicked strain on her clitoris. Since the blonde was first on the chain stretching directly from the man's fist, she received most of the sickening jerks as the prisoners turned sharp corners; the rest of the chain passed down between her cunt lips to hitch on to the younger slave's central ring and the slightest hesitation in the ascent on Martine's part provided both with excruciating pain. Each time she was lugged forward, Martine yelled hysterically as her unfledged, elfin-like stub elongated. It was as if the girl was already being chained and hung nude before masked, whip-wielding torturers... Had she dared, Joanne would have calmed her by confirming they were merely mounting to a noble lady's bedchamber but all she risked were a few warning glances over her shoulder. Finally reaching the hallway, the valet appeared to have had enough of the caterwauling; he turned and lashed Martine's thighs with his service whip until she quietened. Then the upward progression continued, into parts of the château naturally unknown to either, along hallways where they encountered scurrying domestics carrying trays of crockery and piles of bed linen and tablecloths. Going about their appointed duties, the servants paid scant attention to a couple of stark-naked females in chains, being escorted to some routine destination or other; such sights were frequent enough.

At one point, the newcomers encountered a startling spectacle, sufficient even to silence Martine. An unconscious nude slavegirl, grasped by the ankles, hung head down over a servant's back. Since the body, lavishly whipped, could not be one of the six down below, Joanne assumed it was that of the wife or mistress of one of Elodie's friends, breaking his journey with an overnight sojourn at the castle and use of its facilities.

Joanne was astonished by the lack of interest Martine's and her own nudity evoked. But she realised they were only slave meat being marched to some special site, most probably for punishment. At least they were not heading towards the grim torture cells.

As they traversed a corridor lined with stag and boar heads, fleetingly Joanne caught a glimpse through the high windows of the sunset over the mauve hills, almost free of snow, stretching down to the Mont Aigoual. Somewhere in these valleys lay the village of St André where her cousins had lived prier to its plunder and destruction by the brutal Cadets of the Cross and dragoons. On the night of the sixth of November, she recalled, nineteen men of the Faith had received life sentences and had been led off to the galleys, while eight women had been flogged and branded with the fleur de lys before being sent to moulder in convents as Repentant Daughters. The pastor had been hanged from an oak. As Joanne gazed sadly over the familiar landscape, she tried to imagine what was happening out there. Even the buzzards wheeled in liberty...

Coursel led them up a magnificent flight of stairs to halt before an ornate doorway. He knocked and drew the pair in after him. There he detached the leads and made the slaves kneel. The vast room - the dreaded bedchamber - had its long velvet curtains drawn to and glimmered in soft candlelight.

"Thighs apart, whores. Breasts out, damn you!" he muttered. The two obeyed. Before them sat the Marquise of Lassignac, regal and awesome. She nodded to the man who backed out, leaving the slaves facing their owner. The woman was superb in her powdered peruke, layers of silk millinery, bared shoulders and a beauty patch above the dimpled cheek. Precious rings flashed on the pale fingers in the wavering light.

In dismay Joanne saw her elegant owner was not alone. In the penumbra behind the throne stood Anthea, fully clothed for once; the revolting Simone, holding a coil of scarlet cords, had stationed herself by the great four-poster bed. The room seemed haunted, Joanne imagining the ghostly presence of bygone slaves shuffling and whispering among the shadows at the arrival of fresh victims.

"The Marquis will be here shortly," the Marquise's silver voice announced, "and together we shall decide on your fate. Meanwhile," Elodie turned to her companions, "it would be well to prepare them. Get the bodies suspended."

Immediately Anthea and Simone strode forward, seized the slaves and released the wrists. A minute later both nudes, a few steps apart, were teetering on tiptoe, their arms straining aloft from chains descending from a beam traversing the chamber. Joanne stared at the canopied bed, noticing the series of bondage rings set in the newels. In the frugal light she could see little else; if there were whipping stakes or trestles to stretch bodies for thrashing, they were lost in the obscurity.

"As you may have gleaned from the endless chatter in your dungeon," the powdered one announced, "we are preparing for the next gathering of our friends. The wait may prove tedious for newcomers like yourselves but the Marquis and I have to decide whether you are suitable to entertain such noble guests. If either or both of you qualify, I shall have you readied along with your colleagues. It not, we'll decide what to do with you."

At that moment the door was flung open and the Marquis entered, sweating from his evening ride and smelling strongly of horse and leather. After kissing his wife's hand, he strolled round Martine's hanging body, tapping the flanks with his crop and extending each breast by its ring, staring at the volume, elasticity and the hold of the metal in the swollen teats. The gloved palm roved slowly over the belly before grasping the rump flesh that bulged between the chains securing the anal plug to the rings in the splayed vulva. With a deprecating shrug, he stooped to probe into the yawning trench of mucous membrane.

Martine let out a shriek, twisting her torso and raising a stolid thigh as high as her ankle links allowed, in an attempt to counter the intrusion. The yell deafening her, Joanne winced at her colleague's rash skirmishing. The utterly miserable youngster began to weep uncontrollably, the huge breasts heaving with sobs. Joanne closed her eyes in despair; the stupid wench was simply jeopardising any hope of advancement to the status of the other slaves below. And also putting Joanne's future, for what it was worth, at stake - in both senses of the term. If only the girl would learn to control her tattered emotions.

The Marquis said nothing and turned to Joanne. The blonde beauty endured the inspection quietly, aware of the effect her sensational taut body was exerting on the handsome bearded man. She noticed how the erection bulged in his riding breeches.

"This one, at least," he remarked, glancing at his glove, wet from her preliminary down-flow, harbinger of the full glut to come, "seems to respond well, Elodie. She's awash already, even before seeing a penis or a whip. Highly promising, I'd say. I like the smooth areoles and rigid teats. She sports a fine clit, too. The navel's deep and deserves a ring. Yes," he mused, "the loins are splendid. A splendid arse, too, by all the saints! Again, Elodie, it's a pity she's been welted and marked like this already, but I suppose the weals will pale in time for your ceremonies. That's the damned Dominican's doing, I presume."

Elodie cast a sidelong glance at Anthea but said nothing. There was no call for comment for the damage was done. In Elodie's view, the lash marks made the beauty all the more erotic, inviting further and far more vicious treatment.

The scrutiny over, Francis-Etienne sat down next to Elodie to comment further.

"Depending on how she stands up to your dear friends' extravagant demands and implements, the blonde will certainly do," he concluded, gazing at the concave sweep of Joanne's belly descending from the jutting rib cage. The slave was truly stunning.

He paused and Joanne sensed what was coming; when it did, she felt both relieved and anguished, as the Marquis pointed to Martine. "Of course, Elodie sweet, you can't possibly risk offering this load of grease even gagged to someone like Evelyn de Burre, although she's even fatter! She'd get her quirt trapped under the slut's flabby dugs and then blame you for serving up an uncooked bloater, and Evelyn hates fish. No, this obese slut's a truly distressing sight. And incompetent too. She needs stiff training and have that blubber whipped off her. An hour's run daily behind Coursel's mare might help, some strict fasting and, let's say, a couple of floggings a day in the courtyard or in the beet field from Marie-Félice, preferably on a long lead so the slag can caper and sweat. That's my opinion. But after all, she's your slave like the others. What d'you think, treasure?"

Elodie smiled sweetly. "But Francis, I agree. Only we just don't have the time for that. The staff have so much on their hands as it is. Remember my suggestion of the other night?" The Marquis shook his head; Elodie was always making suggestions. "Well, I proposed we entrust the bitch to the convent. There, Mother Priscilla will ensure she's thinned down. After all, she's done the like so admirably in the past. You remember that lazy slug, Fenella?"

"Should I, sweet? You know I can't remember their names and you do tend to get through quite a number. But as to this mass of offal, I would agree. Although it's all the same to me. Do what you wish. Send the load of fat down to the convent without more ado. Oh, yes now I do recall Vrenolla or whatever her name was. Yes, they certainly ground down that lethargic tart."

"I'm glad you agree, Francis. I'll have Coursel take the idle slag down tomorrow." Her husband gave a vague nod. His eyes were riveted on Joanne's nakedness and the rise and fall of the magnificently moulded breasts. Although clearly his penis could have done with an airing, he kept it penned up. Again he studied Joanne's chained buttocks.

"This Anselme of ours, you know, has to be curbed, Elodie," he said. "Just because they're heretics doesn't give him a free hand whenever it tempts him. After all, abjuration, conversion or whatever he seeks is not our affair. They're your slaves, not his."

"I'm afraid our holy man did overstep his prerogatives the other day, Francis. Except that our darling Anthea did the actual whipping in the chapel - pity you didn't attend Vespers because you'd have seen the result yourself. Can we prevent him from trying to convert an infidel, my love? I mean, that's his duty."

"Maybe But I don't want any more of it." He turned to the slightly uncomfortable Anthea. "Well you apparently enjoyed yourself. Or am I wrong?"

"Oh, yes, thank you, sire. I did." The reply was frank. "You see, Dom Anselme ordered me to do it. And my, did she yell her head off! She seems to like the whip."

"I see. Well, in future, if that meddling priest gives you an order again, you'll have it confirmed by me or Elodie. I trust that is clear. It's fortunate for you that some of Elodie's guests don't object to being offered welted flesh."

The Marquise was about to object to curtailing Anthea's ready access to pleasure when the girl gave a shrug. She could not care a shoe buckle who gave the orders as long as she could use her six-thong freely. And have the slave lick her off.

For what seemed an eternity, the pair of nude slaves continued to hang before their owners, expecting the riding crop at any moment. Yet nothing happened. Side by side, the two nobles continued to converse in low tones, Francis-Etienne only half-listening as he pondered whether, once the fate of the flabby Martine was settled, to take Elodie to bed or use the insolent Anthea who, despite her lesbian proclivities, sucked cock like a famished vampire. Or preferably, return to the stables to see his mare dressed and fed. He preferred horses to humans. But there was this beautiful blonde slave hanging there and perhaps... No, that would have to wait. "I'm sorry, love, what were you saying?" he apologised, still staring at the gleaming crimson triangles of vaginal flesh chained back on the thighs by the rings and chairs leading to the rear dildo. He rather envied the Dominican who, without leave, had felt those labia slushing up and down his unruly cock.

The Marquise had crossed to the abject Martine to lift the tear-stained face.

"Yes, you useless slut, we've seen quite enough of you. We freed you of your stupid virginity and all you do is sulk. Hopefully, the next time we meet, you'll be a little more appetising." Then she gave the order everyone had anticipated.

"Lower this nauseating lump of obscenity, Simone, and get your Coursel to cart it down to our gracious Mother Superior before nightfall tomorrow. I've already informed her. You can chain the slug to the harrow behind the gelding for the journey." The servant began to lower the sufferer. "And strap those leather cones over those obscene dugs - you know, the ones with internal spikes our resourceful blacksmith made - and use the iron chastity belt. It wouldn't do to shock whichever worthy nun's on duty at the convent portal. And you can leave the stopple in the rear, Simone. It'll serve to keep the nerves alert until our holy and dutiful Mother Priscilla receives heavenly guidance on how best to proceed."

"The Mother Superior will know without guidance, your Grace," came the blunt reply, as Martine's body crumpled, whimpering, to the carpet and the maid tugged on the silken bell cord to summon her husband. For nothing in the world - not even a visit to Versailles - would she care to be in this wretched girl's skin, destined for the Convent of the Annunciation. The slob would not be the first nor the last to shed blood down there.

Having heard the august orders while listening behind the door, the valet promptly dragged the redundant slave out by the legs. It would take little time to prepare for the twilight journey the following evening through the gorse.

Although grieving for her companion of the Faith, Joanne felt strangely relieved she was gone. A further sign from Elodie then brought Joanne in turn to the floor where, instead of being returned to the cellar, she knelt where she was, there in the centre of the candlelit bedchamber amid the sumptuous furnishings and tapestries. Unsure as to what they were about to do to her, she felt her vagina clench with a tremor of excitement.

To her astonishment, she saw Elodie being helped to disrobe by Anthea and Simone, while the Marquis stripped down to his riding breeches, undid his crotch flap and brought out the one cock Joanne genuinely lusted after among the many at hand in the castle. Just as swiftly, Anthea stepped out of her crinolines, watching the Marquise slide naked on to the silken sheets of the great bed to lie back and spread her legs wide. In turn, the deadly lesbian vixen crawled up to the headboard, her back to the room, to straddle the noble head that had lost its wig. Before being smothered, Elodie gave Simone a final, breathless order. "Remove that slave's bung and on to the bed with her, head between my thighs."

Bewildered, sweating with excitement and trepidation, Joanne rose to her feet, bending over for the serving woman to free the chains of the dildo. Blissful reprieve came to her as the ribbed cudgel voided her rectum with a jerk, a scarlet roll of flesh accompanying the extraction. For a moment, the sphincter remained agape before closing as Simone lubricated the hole. Containing her joy, Joanne stared at the Marquis's hard cock.

"Up with you, my beauty, and let's have you crouched before your mistress!" It was now he who was giving the orders, the passing compliment taking Joanne aback, as did the spirited, almost jovial, slap planted on the buttocks. "And get to work on that insatiable twat of hers. Just lick smoothly and then bite into it. You'll see how she comes! Only whipping a hog-tied slave excites her more." A pause. "And relax your arsehole, Joanne."

Noting her name and elated to be rid of the cudgel behind, the slavegirl did as she was told, mounting the bed to bend over her owner's perfumed, auburn slit. For a delirious moment, Joanne believed the Marquis was about to thrash her rounded rump to prepare her for sodomy; but, with a sidelong glance, she saw him slicking his foreskin clear of the purple cock bulb and mounting the bed. As the feather mattress sagged under his weight, she was grateful for the anal greasing. The dildo was about to be substituted by something just as copious, if more thrilling and certainly more humane.

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.