Chapter Four

The miserable Martine had to wait until evening fell the following day before she was lugged out from the cellar where she had received little comfort from her colleagues. Coursel hastened her brutally along with his service whip, driving her up to the main courtyard and across the drawbridge. There Simone stood waiting alongside the horse-drawn farm harrow harnessed slanting to the mare's croup. It was on this iron grid that the slave was to be transported to the virtuous Convent of the Annunciation. With barely a shred of courage left, Martine felt little more than a corpse, bereft of will. But not entirely. When she saw the harrow, she summoned up enough energy to fight the valet and his wife as they bound the hideous, spike-loaded cones over her unwieldy breasts and clamped the brass chastity belt on to the vulva, wrenching vindictively on the straps. With the buckles tightened to the last hole, she was spread-eagled over the rusty gridiron, the rows of teeth spearing her wetted thighs, rump and back; Simone took pleasure in chaining the limbs rigid to the four corners. The slave gazed up through her tears at the darkening sky as the last birds made for their warm nests. She muttered a prayer, only to be silenced with a farewell lash from Simone relieved to see the pigheaded heretic leave. Now it would be for the women in that so-called convent, the subject of so many rumours, to deal with the intractable bitch. And what, incidentally, the convent did not know was that she was unable to take a thrashing, leave alone a cock, decently. They down there would see to ensuring she learnt.

As the valet heaved himself into the saddle, Martine recalled that frightful night of capture and beatings, weeks before. For this second voyage, at least Coursel had not flogged her, seeming content to let her lie nude and neglected under the uncomplaining stars. He knew how the sex shields hurt, Martine quickly discovering it too; yet she endured it. With her sex organs concealed, at least she would not shock the chaste, saintly sisters of mercy to whom she was destined.

The hideous journey commenced with a jerk, driving the iron prongs into her rear. Whatever awaited her at the end of the trail, it could not be worse than the château with its chains and leathers. Martine felt relieved to be out of their reach - at least for a while. Never had she been more mistaken.

In fact, she did recall the Dominican's remark, overheard the previous evening while she was being led blindfolded to have her whipped breasts seen to, following a flagellation after having been taken from the bedchamber. "A short month down there should suffice to bring our beefy slut to heel and possibly conversion, and I shall assist our diligent Mother Priscilla in every way possible."

The thought of being interrogated again, with a view to abjuring, scared Martine more than ever, now that she was helpless on the wrought iron and nearing her limit. Desperately trying to keep one of the sharper spikes from piercing her anus she recalled sadly how at home some months back she had declined to join a little group of the faithful about to set out along the perilous path that led to Geneva. She had preferred to remain with her Cevenol sisters. Now, outstretched naked on a harrow in the gathering cold of night she felt, in retrospect her decision may have been unfortunate, to say the least...

Darkness closed in slowly. Although the Convent lay downhill from Lassignac and much of the snow had begun to melt, the going was hard, particularly when the harrow lurched, spearing flesh that had been congealed by the frigid air. Gradually her courage dwindled, her sobs mounting into the branches of the dwarf oaks, ghostly sentinels along the way. Although there were no dwellings between Lassignac and the nunnery to hear the prayers and wailings, Coursel finally halted the mare with a curse and dismounted.

"Thou'll wake the dead with thy damn clamourin', whore! Save thy breath for the nuns." He took a length of soiled rag from his pocket and thrust it into the gullet, lashing the belly twice with his horsewhip, raising further dark weals. "Thou'll need all the breath in thee when inside them walls So waste not thy wind."

The burden recommenced its descent into the valley in the forest's gloom. The owls' hooting and the jeering of nightjars told the suffering Martine it was growing late. She wandered how much longer she could endure the cold and galling iron teeth in her back without passing out. Worse still, the spikes in the crotch belt had become entangled among the flesh rings and were rasping her labia. Moreover each jolt seemed to tighten the breast cones, urging the barbs to prick a fraction deeper into the taut skin and bulging teats.

The convent walls loomed up very suddenly. From where the grid had halted beyond the last clumps of boxwood, the prisoner could just make out the arched portal rearing in the masonry; its massiveness contrasted ominously with the sprinkling of stars above, brittle and cold. She sensed Coursel releasing her rigid limbs and prising the rag out of the throat. "On thy feet, bitch, and kneel before that there door."

Too exhausted to utter a word, Martine struggled off the grid to have her wrists clipped again to the nape, the lead chain secured to a ring in the neck band, mercifully not to her still concealed clit ring. Shivering on her knees before the ivy-covered lintel, she watched the valet tug on a rod descending alongside the entry. Far away within the edifice a bell pealed lugubriously like a death knell as the two figures waited. "Get thy thighs parted, slut," her gaoler muttered, tapping the frozen rump. "Shove out them milk churns on thy chest. I'll wager they've never seen a mighty load of dug meat like thine."

A barred judas opened in the left-hand door with a grating squeak for a few, terse words exchanged. The key turned in the postern to reveal an elderly coifed nun holding a lantern, the dim glow flickering over the crouching form.

"About time, man." The voice, as frosty as the surrounding grass, sounded callous.

"Bring the slattern in and be off with you. Our gracious Mother Priscilla has been kept waiting for an unconscionable time and is far from content. But better late than never."

The half-frozen body struggled to its feet. Crossing the sacred threshold, Martine heard the door slam to behind her. She had expected the valet to recuperate the lethal flesh shields and slave-leash but he simply handed her over and the nun towed the newcomer along a broad cloister flanking the building itself. Crossing a sinister enclosed quadrangle, Martine glimpsed the nun's candle flame flicker on shards of broken glass and jagged earthenware cemented into the crest of the wall; that put pay to any hope of scaling the stone. And anyway, her arms were chained. Within, the corridors were even more sombre and silent than those at Lassignac, the parsimony of candles coinciding with the lack of dialogue. The only sound came from the nun's sandals scuffing on the flagstones. Halted before an oaken door the girl's heartbeat quickened, a fresh sheath of goose flesh encasing her trembling nakedness.

"Kneel and wait," Martine was told, the slave-chain being thrust between her teeth, the jaws still rigid from the gagging. Like an aspen quivering before the onset of a storm she watched the crone knock on the panelling, enter and close the door behind her. After an age of silent terror the figure reappeared to retrieve the links.

"When six paces away from our magnanimous Mother superior," came the hushed order, "you will prostrate yourself before her belly down, face against the tiles. You may not speak unless told to. Now, slut follow me on your knees."

The room stretched into darkness fraught with an unbearable odour of incense and candle wax, that the parpaillote had learnt to loathe. Before her in a pool of light shed by a single candle sat a thin figure in black robes, the wimpled, starched coif winging about the head like a white bird about to settle, the silence broken only by the clicking of rosary beads threading through a thin, blue-veined hand on the lap. Elevated by the dais and high-backed throne, the woman seemed remote as if in another world. The parpaillote froze, this time not from the stone-splitting cold but from fear mingled with revulsion. There was a look of intransigence in the Superior's lidded eyes as Martine, thwarted by her locked wrists, managed to prostrate herself, a cheek against the cold paving, the odious spikes within her harnesses spearing even deeper. The elderly nun retired to the side as the sinister, ethereal figure spoke.

"You are expected in our midst, child. Our neighbour, the most dutiful Marquise de Vonnange-Lassignac - ably advised by her dedicated chaplain Dom Anselme, may the saints fortify him - has assigned you to our loving care since your conduct has fallen short of expectations. This is grave and we shall strive to help you to change your ways. Evidently you either do not understand or do not wish to conform. This is foolish and headstrong. Therefore we shall be obliged to prevail on you to make you regret your obstinacy. Your presence at her ladyship's château, as you may have gathered, has become something of a burden on her and those noble precincts. Hence your transfer to our humble nunnery where we have means to make you obey."

Drained of spirit, the nude shuddered, not daring to look up.

"I see that already you are no stranger to the whip," the sepulchral voice went on, the narrowed eyes scrutinising the welted flesh extended or the tiles. "However, here, if you persist in your perverse attitude - and indeed, I should mention, your heresy - you will have to contend with certain far more austere methods of persuasion than you have so far encountered. That is our duty here." The waxen face under the wimple turned to the nun. "Take the child to the preparation cell, Sister Véronique, and prepare her. Dom Anselme should be here by Compline, together with his young acolyte, Brother Christophe. They will join you for the initial questioning." As Sister Véronique bowed, ordering the newcomer to rise, the majestic reverend Mother added casually: "Remove those ugly iron bindings she's wearing, Sister. The breasts and groin must be free and fully accessible. So, air the crotch for it must be fetid after the journey down. As I believe she is flesh-ringed, see to it she is liberally oiled, the usual extremities well weighted to stimulate the nerves hidden under so much meat. I believe, in view of her corpulence, at least fifty lashes of welcome should suffice, Sister. As to her heresy, Dom Anselme will deal with that. You may proceed."

The nun genuflected again. Rising with difficulty, shaken by the welcome and the reference to her beliefs, Martine was hurried out along further echoing passages to a large whitewashed chamber where she was thrust unceremoniously against the wall to have her breast cups and chastity belt unbuckled and ripped away. The nude whimpered as the flesh was freed of the minute tines, leaving a rash of red specks and a few trickles of blood. As the huge mammaries swung free, the relief was bliss.

"Part the legs to open the vulva," the nun ordered, releasing the wrists. "Arms above the head. Higher than that! Stretch!" Teetering, Martine reached up to have the rear ring in her throat band attached to the masonry, her wrists to an even loftier hook. The robed figure then clipped weighted chains to the outer labial rings, dragging the cunt flesh downwards, similar loads elongating the nipple piercings into long slots. The slave hissed with pain, staring at the woman who merely nodded.

"So you're not used to flesh chains? They ready and excite you for the whip. And you'll be flagellated regularly until you're ready to graduate to the more sophisticated stages of your training. As you are new here, let me add that, if foolishly you resist in any way, you will be taken down the passage to what is know as the Sanctum of Sex Torture. Would you wish me to describe what that entails, child?" The throat tension denied even a shake of the head. Tears began to flow but Martine's vagina was arid, tense as a fist.

As the woman lit the wick of another candle placed on the nearby table, Martine caught her breath at the array of instruments and scourges upon it. Then the door closed behind Sister Véronique and a further shock lay in store for the prisoner. The glimmer revealed she was not alone in her predicament.

Against the far wall, at first barely distinguishable, a second young female stood shackled in very much the same posture. Also nipple-naked, the body was sleek, sensuous and welted with purple lash marks left by what Martine guessed must have been a very recent and thorough thrashing. The girl's sapphire eyes glinted as they wandered slowly over the other's rich reserves of flogging meat. Martine at once noticed differences: not only was the nude devoid of flesh rings and weights but the pubic hump still retained its golden swathe of fleece, even if the head had been shaven clear. Moreover, the girl was bound to the wall with rope encircling the wrists and ankles - no sign of the leather straps as used at Lassignac. Wide-eyed, Martine returned the gaze of the resplendent prisoner, astonished the girl could marshal a smile.

"I'm glad to have company," the bald one said softly. The accent was not local or even Cevenol; it was almost refined. "It's been lonely here. Where are you from?"

Martine was too cautious to answer, the whipped beauty being possibly a member of the sisterhood, a conventual or a postulant for entry into the convent and in any event a potential enemy - she was certainly not an ordinary sex slave. Yet the languid beauty had been well flagellated and shared her cell.

"I'm a victim of my religion," Martine finally decided to admit. "And the convent's meant to try to convert me, Why are you here?" she returned the question.

"Oh, me - I'm under forced training here to prepare me for sale to some noble house or other as a special type of concubine. You know, the sort that gets whipped and sexually tormented in stately mansions. But the other night I was caught making love with a junior Sister. There are strict rules here and they pretend not to approve of that, you see. And so, I have to pay for it, once again. Sister Madeleine usually gets away with sleeping with trainees like me, when we're meant to rest. So, she has to spend a day scrubbing the cloisters and I'm here for what they call 'disciplining' - that's different from the normal training whippings." She paused, aware of Martine's astonishment. "Of course, you do realise, don't you, this is not a real convent, as you may have been led to believe. It's nothing more than a disguised penitentiary for training females for very precise duties. They pretend to act as nuns but that's just a cover. But they do it well. You'd never know if you were paying a courtesy visit to the place. It has a great success breaking in females like me - and you, I presume - to serve in exclusive residences all over the kingdom. Once you're taught to take the whip, undergo erotic sex torture - that's what they call it here - with a smile and surrender to every sort of depravity you can imagine, you just hope you'll get sent to a nice place and tolerant owners. The training here lasts a month, more or less, depending on your erotic talent. I'm almost ready for sale."

Open-mouthed, Martine stared at her informant. "You mean it's a place just for disciplining sex slaves. Not a convent! But, in heaven's name, you must be mistaken!"

"What's heaven got to do with it, sweetheart? You'd better make the best of it, unless you prefer sweating and screaming in the punishment cells they have here. So, work hard and enjoy it all. Otherwise they could chain you up in the kennels for the mastiffs to lick you. By the way, talking of licking, I hope you like sucking a juicy twat and having your own eaten. That's if we get a chance when they start again on me. And on you probably. Sex must he uphill work with all that fat of yours and those rings they've stuck into you. But they're rather erotic, I must say. I wouldn't mind having a few put into me. Do you like having them wrenched to send you over the top?"

Martine stared blankly at the girl. "I don't do that sort of thing," she gasped.

"Oh, don't be so coy, cherie. Of course you do. We all do it here. And when the two Dominicans are around, you'll find your crotch is in for a lot more!"

Martine tried to change the subject, scared by the very word 'Dominican'. "My," she remarked, "you've been really whipped! How long have you been here?"

"Nearly three weeks. Now, listen. Flagellation forms a great part of your training here and the sooner you learn to enjoy it and orgasm, the better. At first I hated it but now I come under the whip as one should. Thirty swipes from Sister Therèse, Sister Marie or that gorgon Sister Madeleine and I blast off like a charged musket. Madeleine does most of the whipping, breast torture and that sort of stuff. They all wear huge dildos. I simply melt now when I'm called and told to strip..."

"Strip? But I thought we were always nude as worms. Just as up at the castle."

"I don't know about your castle, whatever that is, but here they give you a sort of coarse cassock to wear when you're not in training. It's just a length of burlap, open down the sides with a hole for your head. You get it in your second week."

"Oh, I see," Martine muttered, adrift. Then, tremulously she reverted to what the girl had said. "So, men officiate here too? I mean..." she hesitated, "men who..."

"Who teach you to fuck, suck and open your arse? Of course! There's our well-hung Dominican and his young acolyte, Brother Christophe - a real treat, you see. Cocks hard as a rock when they flog, torture and use you... But now, tell me your name, treasure."

Martine told her and learnt the noviciate was Pauline, the illegitimate daughter of some ruined noble who had apparently sold her to a Parisian brothel that now wanted her trained up to service special clients - people who flagellated young girls, prior to sex...

Suddenly the cell door screeched open. The Dominican, looming large next to Sister Véronique, was followed in by a young, well-featured monk: just out of the seminary, he was learning the finer points governing the whipping and use of stark-naked females.

"Ah, here she is, our fat goose!" Anselme's grey eyes roamed over Martine's bulk and extremities of distended flesh. Seating himself, he raised his habit to free his stiff cock of foreskin. The other hand held a six-thonged scourge. You may relieve the adipose trollop of her flesh chains and weights, Véronique."

Not too sure as to what adipose meant, the woman hesitated, risking a word. "But Mother Priscilla wants her sexual parts to be stretched and..."

"Take them off, woman. I need this slut's body in more or less its natural state, like the other one over there, whom we shall enjoy later." The nun obeyed, Martine wincing as the nipples and labia retracted. "So, heathen whore of perversity," the guttural voice began, "being finally within these sacred walls, do you abjure? Or must we rephrase the question in terms of leather and blood? Abjure, foul apostate and Satan's concubine!"

"Do what you will with my body," came the reply. "My faith is firm. I refuse."

"Let me put it in another way, slut. If you do not relent, abjure and attend Mass like the others here, then we shall be obliged to consign you to sister Madeleine and her cellar. She has little patience with heretical flesh and deals assiduously with whores of your sort. You will see her strip off her incommodious clothing to allow herself full freedom with the whip and avoid contamination from your heretical flesh. So far, Mother Priscilla is being lenient with you, despite my pleas to have your stubborn carcass thrashed raw."

Martine drew a breath to marshal her tenacity but her face had drained white. "May she be damned, like you, beast of Babylon! You're being watched from on high. Nothing will alter my faith. Nothing May you burn in the brimstone of hell and..."

The Dominican nodded to his young assistant. Brother Christophe drew his white habit over his head and handed it to the nun. In only sandals, the bared body, well-hewn and lily-pale, displayed a flat belly mounting to a broad chest and powerful shoulders. Martine gaped at the sight; it was the first time she had seen an entirely unclothed male and that at close quarters, apart from the young slave, Laurent, at the château. The young friar's blue-veined erection astounded her; the thing pulsed like the bull's pizzle she had glimpsed one day at a local cattle fair. More alarming was what the handsome youth took from Anselme: the scourge consisted of several strands of black hide like baggage straps, gathered to a haft in the shape of a thick penis, corrugated with ridges. Martine realised she was to be thrashed, even if where she stood was termed the preparation cell; if this was preparation, the thought of what might await her along the dank corridors, were she to be handed ever to Madeleine, paralysed her. She wondered how the elegant Pauline could possibly enjoy a whipping. The prisoner blenched as Véronique sought instructions. "Does your Holiness want her erect or stretched supine for the flogging?"

The precise query, in fact, was nothing more than a stock inquiry, for frequently, having had his victim released from the wall hooks, the Dominican ordered the body to be spread out with stretcher bars and secured to the iron floor hasps in the paving, the pelvis curved over a pointed triangle penetrating the anus. Moreover, there were the wrist hooks at the far end of the room and the up-slanting iron phallus, bolted to the wall, ready to impale, back or front, a trainee who merited stiff treatment. But then Véronique recalled the man favoured his victims hung outstretched from chains from the central roof hooks, the legs parted to floor rings; the bitch merited that and Véronique hoped the slut would be left so for her own subsequent beating of the breasts. She enjoyed hefty mammaries.

"No, she will suffer where she is," the man answered finally, the heavy-lidded eyes studying Martine's anatomy. Although any female nude under flagellation invigorated him, he especially relished watching his subordinate lash a succulent, over-fleshed body, such as this parpaillote's as it lurched under the scourge; it was salutary and refreshing, especially when blood was drawn. "I'm sure, Sister," he went on, "in all your time of service here, you've never seen udders such as these! Quite incredible! Now, Brother Christophe, lay into this foul heretic, from neck to knees. The traitorous bitch needs some of that indecent offal taken off her. Flog hard, man, in the name of her redemption!"

"Does your Holiness wish her to be gagged?" Véronique inquired again, helpfully.

"Certainly not," the Dominican retorted. "She must be given the chance to abjure under the lash. You may begin, Christophe. Start on those gross thighs and work up. When you reach her dugs, she will be ready to submit, believe me. Let me bless the whip."

Having received the benediction, the thongs were presented to Martine's lips to be kissed. She spat at the thing, held her breath and screwed up her eyes for the first lash.

The naked flogger brought the leathers hissing down into the beefy thighs. The shlack! reverberated across the cell to Pauline, watching with a licentious look, almost of envy as the newcomer writhed with pain. Lash after lash sliced into the jolting flesh, stippling a fierce ladder of welts up the body, each leather leaving a white streak that promptly darkened into sombre carmine. The blows over the groin and vulva set the sex rings chiming and Martine roaring. Striking the belly, the thongs resounded with hollow thuds, the victim tugging on her neck strap, her yells becoming strangled shrieks. The second dozen strokes worked up the rib cage to reach the prancing jelly of the breasts. There the youth first welted the sloping crests before slashing into the ringed nipples, the whip curling into the sweat of the far armpit. The writhing body blazed under the striations, the screams, interspersed with curses, becoming deafening.

Ten lashes later, intoxicated with the spectacle, Pauline noticed the slavegirl had ceased to yell and struggle. It was only the second time Pauline had seen a comrade-in-chains flagellated; the earlier occasion had involved a young 'Sister', since sold off to a flogging den in Bordeaux. Now, as then, the excitement had her vagina pulsing and running. She watched the dribbles of sweat pouring down the bodies of both the whipper and the whipped, Brother Christophe's oozing phallus swinging and slapping his hip at each stroke. Pauline found herself envying the newcomer but knew her turn would come soon enough.

Dom Anselme finally called a pause to rasp out an order. "Sister, hitch up the slut's colossal breasts. The things stick to the ribs. Free them."

Clearly accustomed to such directives, the elderly Véronique shuffled over to the twitching body, passed a cord through the teat rings to wrench the lush hunks of whipped flesh upwards, stretching the nipples now engorged like ripe damsons; she tethered the twine tightly to the neck band, displaying the pallid, unscathed undersides for punishment. The young enthusiast of a flogger stood back, his free hand rippling up and down his cock. The obese slut of a heretic, he found, flaunted truly tempting substance for the whip. And later, he trusted, for his aching cock. But there was more to be done.

"Now use the riding crop on that flesh the wily whore tries to conceal from us," the Dominican instructed his acolyte who took the plaited braid from Véronique and did just that. The clammy slabs of pale flesh became incandescent, bringing fresh wailing out of the stark-naked martyr now well embarked on her long, slave voyage into pain.

After a dozen cuts across the upended bulges, the devoted flogger was directed to employ the crop elsewhere on the sobbing wretch. He well knew what was intended.

"Strike up into the crotch, Christophe, as you did in the cellar the other day to that sinful whore, Bresilla, now departed hence, alas. Enough to prepare her for what must follow. Yes... that's it, my man! Get into the slit! You're improving, Pardieu!"

Martine gave a sharp, desperate yell as her clitoris was ground under the crop.

Sprawling in his chair, the priest masturbated faster, his voice beginning to slur.

"Now ram that cock into her... clog her man! Rape the heathen bitch. Fill her up!"

Again his associate was only too ready to comply. The deferential nun released the slave's ankles for him to heft the haunches round his hips. Parting the sex rings, the cock slid in up to the root. Martine's cries escalated suddenly. Pauline noticed that pain no longer dominated the nude, for she was thrusting out her pelvis to proffer the full depth of what seemed no longer that of a reluctant vagina. Clearly, Martine was wavering on the brim of orgasm, riding the plunges valiantly. Then, almost charitably the youth's thumb crushed the tiny pulsing clit, the middle finger, encircling his cock, entering her anus. The whipped body stiffened, the breath shortening, as the sex muscles released her first authentic orgasm. The paroxysms towered and gutted her, the climax sending her shrieking into outer space, beyond the confines of the cell, the convent, beyond the dripping woods and valleys. Her discharge was not that of a fledgling, it was massive, ungovernable, raking the man's sperm into her innards. Still rigid, yelling her head off, Martine exploded yet again with all the force the whipping had left to her. Then she slumped in her chains, moaning in the wake of her carnal achievement.

The elegant youth smiled at Dom Anselme. The abrupt outcome confirmed his master's conviction: if properly chained, whipped and fucked, any female could be spurred into deliriums of lust and reduced to a whimpering, jolting carcass. To reap his reward, Christophe lengthened his plunges into the novice's tunnel, battering the cervix in the descent of sex slush to fill her with jets of hallowed sperm, seething and thick as convent porridge. Martine passed out like a snuffed candle.

Dom Anselme watched intently as Sister Véronique knelt before him and frigged his revered cock assiduously, mouthing it now until the sacred spunk came to the boil. The jets arched out to spatter the welted slave, anointing what was, he had to admit, a promising sexual candidate for the tortures he now had in mind, freed of the harangues and harassing confines imposed by the Marquise Elodie. Indeed, he had weeks of entitlement before him without her intrusions. He would grind this parpaillote whore down until she was just flesh and three holes. He would force her to grovel naked, renunciate and abjure.

He watched the slave's body sag, extenuated by the whipping and its first real climaxes since it had been deflowered up at the Château de Lassignac. The infidel, whether she abjured or not, was almost ready to be used regularly and indiscriminately at least in that one hole for the time being - by the males and dildoed females the Marquise invited to her weekends, with the proviso that the slut be first well prepared with the whip. Unlike her religious obstinacy, her erotic progress seemed encouraging.

Hardly conscious of her welts and throat band still hooked to the wall, Martine revived and gave both men a strange look, almost of gratitude. They had shown her into a secret corner of heaven, but a paradise different from that portrayed in her psalms; rather a place where a sex slave realised why she had a slit between her thighs.

What happened to the beautiful naked 'nun' on the other side of the preparation cell escaped Martine. She identified the swish and thud of the whip, the moans and then the shrill, bird-like cries as, in turn, a demented orgasm severed Pauline too from the nunnery and the world. Beyond that, Martine was just aware of being released, of sprawling on the sperm-clotted paving stones and of being allowed to regain her strength, possibly prior to transfer to the torture sanctum proper - that place where, Pauline had told her, the head hoods, tongs, iron breast-clamps and bristled cock rings abounded. Still unconverted, she knew she had passed a test, had crossed over Jordan, ready for whatever ordeals were now to come. With Brother Christophe's tepid sperm seeping down her inner thighs and Anselme's jets over her belly, she curled up on the flagstones and slept as never before.

The following days and nights passed in what Martine considered the grossly misnamed Preparation Cell without more than four trivial flagellations from Véronique.

Then, one evening the newcomer saw Pauline suddenly tense and scramble to her knees, thrusting out her breasts. Unaware of what prompted such haste, Martine adopted the same orthodox posture of submission. Kneeling with the thighs well apart to disclose the ringed vulva, belly indrawn, nipples - fortunately - erect and head bowed, as was the required position, Martine had no time to ready herself fully and presumed her lethargy, if noticed, would probably earn her a stiff punitive whipping at some later date.

The cell door opened to reveal three 'nuns' in their solemn habits, rosaries between the praying hands, their starched coifs fluttering above the bucolic faces. The eldest was tall, slim and not inelegant with her pale complexion and a thin mouth that did not seem often given to smiling but was probably energetic on a hard cock or splayed vulva; half-hooded by the eyelids, the dark pupils augured no good. Moreover, Sister Madeleine, for it was she, carried a leather quirt - which, Martine guessed, was not there to swat flies...

The slave's heart stampeded immediately, again with that mixture of fear and arousal she was becoming accustomed to but could not yet govern as Pauline seemed able to do. But, if terror tightened and parched her throat, puckering her nipples, her vagina had begun to react very differently compared with its stubborn behaviour up at the château; the prospect of being catapulted again into sexual delirium under the lash and cock drove her to a point of no return. She knew a further whipping, quite evidently about to be administered, would transport her into another of her newly discovered orgasms. Weak with lust her cunt liquefied.

The youngest of the nuns, a bright eyed chit of a girl with thick peasant lips, helped the ever-vigilant sister Véronique to drag the table to the centre of the cell. As the scene was being prepared, Martine glanced nervously at Madeleine's quirt. Only a day before, Pauline had described the thing, Martine recalled, and its effects. It was the nun's personal property - an exception to the Order's rule of poverty - crafted for her by an Avignon saddler. It was, at one and the same time, a hideous and beautiful object: a chased silver haft led down to a short length of plaited leather which, beyond a knot, spread out into three broad lashes of rawhide, no longer than a forearm. Another rumour, Pauline had whispered, had it that the thing had been a gift to Sister Madeleine from a grateful prelate of high rank who spent nights behind locked doors grovelling naked at her feet. Not only, she added, did the quirt exert considerable pain when laid on hard but usually constrained victims to remain standing or kneeling for a couple of days after its use, unless being consigned to Madeleine's bunk, where no girl could expect indulgence.

"Sister Maddy's an expert with it," Pauline had explained. "She reserves it almost exclusively for beating a female's corded breasts and the splayed crotch - her favourite sites, you know - once she's got you suspended by the ankles from the irons up there." Her eyes directed Martine's to the long row of hooks along the cell's central beam. "I've no idea what she does to males," she added, "but one can imagine..." Martine could not, but let the conjecture pass, perplexed that men too were subject to 'convent' training; she thought of Laurent up in the relative comfort of the château. Then she wondered how, as a 'trainee', her huge breasts would react to the quirt. Well, she hoped, despite their size.

"Sometimes for routine offences," Pauline added, "the beatings are carried out in the refectory before the others. There we're made to spread our legs and grasp the ankles. They throw your habit over your head to deaden the yelping. Then you get ten lashes and probably have to spend the night in Maddy's bed. And that's something you don't forget, I can assure you! You come out a debilitated wreck, even if you did your utmost for her."

Martine bit her lip at the prospect. Then she thought back. Over the brief time already spent at the convent, she had gathered that plans were being drawn up by the Mother Superior to reduce the volume of her grossly oversized buttocks and breasts. The balcony of dug-offal, as Dom Anselme put it, would undergo tight cording, needling and similar methods of flesh torture. As to the rump, the slimming was to be achieved almost exclusively through prolonged flagellation. Highly self-conscious of her overweight, Martine was scared by the prospect but it also set her pulse racing; the beating of her breasts, which she feared, nevertheless gave her a strange new thrill. Moreover, Pauline had also told her that she would, sooner or later, be strapped to the breast bench in the so-called torture closet or sanctum to have her mammaries flogged and wrenched - something the young conventual admitted she had never experienced, hers being of modest size. "Flogging does get rid of superfluous lymph, you know," Pauline had added helpfully. "And, from what I see, you could do with more than a session or two. They're keen on well-shaped tits here. Heavy breast meat is frowned upon. I'm told breast shrinking can be quite an ordeal. They use the good old breast gallows with its throttling straps and special whips, sweetie. As to your overloaded arse, don't worry. They'll beat that till it's neat, hard and full of muscle. The skin'll tighten as the bulk shrinks, see?"

At the entry of the nuns, Martine presumed her breasts were about to be dealt with. Avid now for attention and more of those unbelievable orgasms that flagellation seemed to detonate in her, she found her corpulent body ignored. Madeleine and the nuns focussed their entire attention on their colleague Pauline, as if the newcomer did not exist. Even more frustrating for Martine was to see her beautiful companion being led to the table. There the two assistants made the nude bend forward to enable them to wind lengths of black cord round the root of each swaying breast. Martine watched how they did it; the younger of the two assistant nuns grasped each bulge in turn and pulled hard for her colleague to wind the line round the base; the youngster then dug her nails into the nipples and tugged for them to be throttled with cobbler's twine close to the areole. Martine gasped as both protuberances bulged, doubly garrotted. Each breast seemed to resemble a cow's udder before milking, bloated and taut. Gradually, the globes turned crimson, the blue veins pulsing sluggishly as the circulation slowed. Yet Pauline hardly moved.

The still raw novice of a prisoner stared with unexpected envy as the condemned Pauline glanced down with lascivious pleasure at what had been done to her. Quite clearly, although her breasts needed no reducing, Pauline was used to such treatment and was being simply readied for a routine whipping, just as other 'nuns' - or rather, sexual trainees received - Martine held her breath as she watched the preparations.

In silence, Pauline was laid backwards over the table while the more spirited of the girls passed ropes over two widely separated ceiling hooks. Running the cords down, she knotted one round each delicate ankle. Martine guessed what was about to take place.

As the rope tightened round the left leg, it bit into the skin, causing the condemned one to give a sudden jerk. "Keep quite still, wench," the officiating sister advised her, "unless you want to be hung in leg-irons. I'll not stand for struggling and disobedience. After all, you've been hung for flogging how many times before, Pauline?"

The novice thought a second. "Seven times, Sister Madeleine. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be awkward." It was the first time she had spoken, other than clandestinely when alone with Martine, who was taken aback. The last thing she would risk, knowing she would probably be crotch whipped for it, was to utter a word. Scream yes, but not speak...

"You know the rules," Madeleine went on, caressing her quirt, "You must remain still when being prepared for punishment. Once you're hung, you can writhe and jerk to your heart's content. Just because you're in constant demand in the dormitories doesn't give you any rights here. I'll have to give you a dozen extra for moving. As they're in addition to the stipulated thirty, you may choose where you'd like them."

"Where it hurts and excites most, Sister." The reply was prompt and Madeleine did not have to be shown but in confirmation she slid the quirt between Pauline's sex lips, as the smiles met in a strange collusion of lust. The two, of course, Martine realised, knew each other not only as inmates but as lesbian sisters. Whipping was part or their delights.

Martine listened to the exchange in wonderment. There was no virulence in it as when the foul priest addressed her. Most probably, Martine thought, her own religious resolve marked the difference in treatment. Well, she was not going to change.

The nuns put the finishing touches to the positioning and awaited the sister's order which came after she had checked that Pauline's sex was appropriately sodden.

"Aloft with her! And see she's at the right height pull hard, you lazy tarts!"

The muscular thighs and superb long legs left the tabletop and rose, followed by the buttocks, back and shoulder blades. With Pauline swinging free, her hand grazing the flagstones, the suspension ropes were tied off at lugs cemented in the side walls. Sister Véronique, still mistress of her domain, removed the table, swabbing off the sweat and other oozings left by Pauline. She wanted her place pristine, for it was in constant use.

It took time for Martine to recover from the shock of seeing her friend's golden sex fully exposed between the legs splayed to opposite sides of the ceiling. The beautiful probationer's cunt folds, swollen like Martine's own with craving, seemed to have glued together with her sticky outpour. Evidently wanting the slot open, Sister Madeleine delicately divided the rolls of umber flesh with the edge of her quirt as if slitting a ripe fig with a knife; the lips peeled apart slowly, the clogged oval cleft opening like a mouth begging for nourishment. From where she knelt, Martine could see the tip of the clitoris, pale and erect like a budding crocus emerging from fertile earth. Hardly able to contain the churnings within her, she stared at the congested, bound breasts standing out from the chest without a sign of downward sag; they darkened through vermilion to deep purple and again she saw the veins, like trapped worms throbbing under the skin, and the strangulated nipples stout as thumbs. As she stared, Martine wondered how a nude bondage could stir such excitement in her own hitherto obdurate nature. One look at Pauline's expression told her that suffering and humiliation had turned into sexual euphoria. The sight of the young nude being readied for flagellation sent again a weird sensation through Martine, her fibres still alive with the residues left by the orgasms the young Christophe had brought out of her body. Furthermore, to her astonishment, she found herself again hankering after the whip across her huge, soft buttocks, a wish that had never dawned up at the grim château. What the sinewy youth had given her, both in terms of lashes and sperm, had opened up an entirely new world where pain and pleasure seemed to meld into ecstasy. She began to understand Joanne's insatiable reactions more clearly as she watched Pauline's sumptuous nudity swinging erotically from the ceiling hooks, awaiting the quirt. Martine would have willingly changed places with her - but, again, not at the price at abjuration. Her sex seemed to be licking its lips under the rings - the metal now exciting her - with a newfound ravenous appetite. Why she asked herself, being a prisoner, had she starved herself of pleasure, so stupidly, so wilfully? How was it she had not understood that the whip could escort her to orgasm? The young Christophe with his huge penis - even if it was papist meat - had liberated her sexuality; she only regretted losing her virginity at Lassignac to the Marquis' cock rather than to his. In any event any penis was preferable to the grim Dominican's - may he roast in Hell eternally.

It was obvious from Pauline's position that she was to be beaten, not only over the choked breasts but primarily across the inner thigh flesh and, what excited Martine most, over the fleecy bulge of the mons and into the sex slit. Martine could hardly wait. For a second, her hands being still unbound, she dared to reach down to her newly awakened clit, throbbing under its steel ring, to ready it for whatever the nuns had in store for her, when her turn came. From where she hung, head down, Pauline caught sight of her companion's fingers fumbling among the metal. With Madeleine out of earshot, greasing her quirt, the bald one risked a piece of sisterly advice. The murmur was just audible.

"I wouldn't do that. They'll only torture you something terrible for frigging without permission. Watch out, cherub!" Martine desisted at once, removing her hand.

"How do you feel, strung up like that?" she whispered in return.

"Glorious, darling!" came the reply. "Don't I look sexy like this? Watch how she wields the quirt, the old bitch. It'll help you later when your turn comes..."

"Silence, Pauline!" Madeleine yelled, coming forward. "Or I'll triple your lashes!"

That too excited Martine as she shrank against the wall to watch.

First, the nun stripped off naked. Martine stared at the lean body arrayed only in coif and wimple; she was well-preserved for her years, even if the breasts sagged, having known better days. The two nude females - dominant and victim - confronted each other's crotch in silence, Madeleine measuring her distance.

Then the corrective flagellation commenced.

The quirt hissed through the chamber's close, fetid air to slam down into the undersides of the strangled mammaries; ten strokes followed, making the orbs bounce but stimulating only a few dull groans from Pauline. Madeleine brought up a mass of welts before turning her attention to the wide V between the girl's legs. Where the quirt struck the thigh tendons, the flesh clenched, blanched and quivered, the marks flaring up in scarlet blotches. After a dozen strokes on the rods or muscle, the quirt suddenly squelched into the gaping cunt. That, at last, extracted a howl from the victim as the entire trunk lurched and reared upward in pain. As she watched, Martine could resist no longer. She twisted and pulled at her clit ring, masturbating without compunction, enjoying the liquid sound of the thuds and Pauline's screams. The howls became interspersed with crazed pleas. "Ahh, yes... yes... Sister! Lash me there... Harder! Yes! Oh, please... whip the clit!"

"Down with those arms, Pauline!" Madeleine ordered brusquely. "You know the rules. Let this be a lesson not to give your whorish slit to others without permission." Then, after a further dozen lashes over the swollen labia, she dragged the quirt across the stiffened sex stalk, drove it into the cunt and then crushed the clit. That despatched her victim.

Pauline's voice suddenly thickened into strange guttural yells, her head thrashing frantically back and forth. The orgasm burst abruptly, weird cries filling the cell. Martine watched the nude's muscles contract, shimmering with sweat. The entire body stiffened, spending again. The sheer beauty of the sight entranced Martine. It was sex at its best.

Satisfied, Sister Madeleine dangled her quirt before Pauline's face to have the sex sap licked off; the agile tongue swept up and down the length of leather devotedly.

"In future, Pauline, you will ask for permission to make love with your seniors. I trust you understand," the nun remarked sternly. "Now, since you have behaved well, you will hang there until you're ready to come again. We're going to exhaust you."

"My breasts are beginning to hurt, Sister," Pauline groaned. "May they be freed?"

"Certainly not," came the reply. "They're good for a long time yet. Grit yourself."

On her side of the cell Martine had progressed to that danger point she had begun to recognise well from her fledgling experience. Since the sister had ceased beating her victim, Martine left her own desperate clit to throb aimlessly, scared to be caught frigging.

But what she suddenly noticed, to her anguish, was the quiet entry of the ogre, Dom Anselme, into the place of punishment. He was followed by his acolyte, the fair Christophe, whose youthful smile portended the whip and a bout of good, wholesome sex.

Sister Madeleine sketched a bow and began to reclothe her thin body.

"No, dear Sister," the gravely voice of sanctity dissuaded her. "Remain as you are. I wish you to assist us in dealing with that gross infidel over there." Ominously the tonsured crown nodded in the direction of Martine who immediately froze as every head, except Pauline's, turned towards her kneeling body. Even the churning mucilage in her vagina congealed with dread as the group moved slowly across the cellar. Whereas she had been ignored until then, the slavegirl's flesh crawled with terror as the figures approached. She had wanted attention and attention she was clearly about to receive.

The usual questions were posed regarding abjuration but curtly, as if her response was of little account. The continuous grillings had begun to exasperate the parpaillote and she showed it. Whatever threatened her, she was determined not to give in. She merely shook her head wearily when interrogated and left it at that. The inquisitor looked pained and desisted after three half-hearted attempts. The cassock bulged below the white cord.

"Let us see how she is progressing in other ways, Sister," the thwarted proselytiser announced and then added sanctimoniously: "Our most holy Mother Priscilla in her wisdom agrees that the intransigent whore should be conveyed to that delightful place down the passage where she can be trained to submit herself to advanced tutelage under, of course," he added with a meagre smile, "your supervision, dear Sister. I may add, Mother Priscilla wholeheartedly agrees she requires vigorous persuasion. Not only to recant but to serve at the château, once the adequate level of endurance has been achieved. But first let us see how the sinner's sexual gifts are maturing. And how the flesh responds to pain."

The priest drew Madeleine to one side, his hand sliding over the sweat coating her somewhat shrunken buttocks. He lowered his voice and the nun nodded to Véronique to detach Martine. Whatever was afoot, the newcomer felt grossly unprepared,

"On your feet slut!" The neck chain was released as Véronique dragged the novice by a nipple ring towards the whipped Pauline who, despite the agony mounting in her corded breasts, was savouring the aftermath of her quirting and devastating orgasms.

"Kneel before the body, slag," Madeleine directed Martine, "and suck this wayward penitent of ours to orgasm again. She's ready for another climax, aren't you, Pauline?"

The suspended head gave a quick nod as Martine edged forwards on her knees to service the flagellated crotch, the vaginal odour and sweet smell of sweat almost overcoming her reeling senses. Spontaneously, the obese beginner passed her arms round Pauline's buttocks, dug her fingers into the flesh and splayed the anal cleft as if readying it to be sodomised. Hesitantly she kissed the bloated, beaten labia. At the same moment she felt Pauline's shaved head close in on her genital rings, the sharp tongue prying and seeking the puny clitoris that was well and truly erect. Martine lurched violently as she felt her button, along with the ring, suctioned into the well-trained lips. Although she was unaccustomed to deflecting sex rings, Pauline was never at a loss when it came to cunnilingus, a gift Sister Madeleine knew only too well from employing the delicious postulant in bed night after night. Madeleine taught her trainees much more than merely how to take a flogging. Moreover, in bed Pauline sucked voraciously after a stiff beating. Cunnilingus constituted a primary item in the sexual curriculum of the so-called convent.

With no option but to obey, Martine went to work, tonguing Pauline with a lust the young conventual found promising in a raw amateur. Despite her inborn terror and lack of sexual experience, Martine's heart pounded with a totally new excitement; she had, of course, rigorously avoided such things up at Lassignac but now she laboured resolutely on the whip-scalded oval. She felt Pauline in turn gripping her arse cheeks, the tongue tip flicking her clit skilfully. Martine could hardly believe what was happening to her; the heat, taste and smell of the welted pudenda drove her into a frenzy of lapping. However, the hallucinating experience of her first cunnilingus - it was Joanne who had taught her the word up at the château after an ordeal with Anthea - was short-lived.

A blast of crimson-white pain detonated in her hindquarters. The shock administered by Sister Madeleine's scourge, now replacing the quirt, made Martine jerk her head back and yell out her pain. Never had she believed that a sheaf of thongs could cut so deep.

Faintly, she heard the terse order pierce the billows of agony as Madeleine allowed the effect to spread through the flesh and brain. "Keep that mouth of yours glued to the crotch, whore, while you're being thrashed. Abandon it once more and I'll have you nailed by those limb straps over the cartwheel for a hundred lashes. And you, Pauline, wrench that clit ring of hers, even if you're not used to metal in your maw." The whip sliced again into the heretic's buttocks like a plough through virgin land, driving her cunt back into Pauline's face, her mouth on to the scourged labia and pulsing clit, coated with come. Amid the lashes, she felt the welts ripening on the vast expanse of her arse and thighs, sapping her strength. Her cries smothered and frothing in Pauline's slot, Martine did what she could while, eager to have her strangled breasts and darkening teats freed, Pauline lapped and suctioned faster to bring herself and the novice to fruition. She bit into the gristle, sending Martine over the threshold into a devastating orgasm. Mercifully, the suspended body went rigid too and spent, the girl's inexhaustible flow of come joining Martine's tears. A final stroke from Madeleine across the coccyx brought Martine quivering to the floor to have her breasts spattered with the nearby Dominican's thick gouts of spunk he directed at her.

Pauline was lowered, screeching as her tits were released, to languish next to Martine on the flagstones where she lapped up the holy sperm off the huge breasts.

"The whoresome slag of a beginner shows promise, wouldn't you say, Sister?" The Dominican's voice grated hoarsely. "I think she's ready now for sex torture. Have her removed to the Chamber of pleasures to await Mother Priscilla's orders. We have discussed the precise nature of the ordeals she must endure. The heathen slut must learn to suffer fully. Take the slag from my sight. And you, dear Sister, may now enjoy your recompense."

As she was hauled out by Véronique, who had clearly enjoyed watching the session, her fingers busy on her own cunt, Martine glimpsed Madeleine's sparse body leaning back over the table to receive Brother Christophe's cock. Then the door slammed behind Martine as she was led, exhausted, along a dismal corridor by the clit ring, the nun's chain extending the organ perilously with each tug. Véronique's lips wore a truculent smile.

The cell was crepuscular, windowless and strewn with straw; in the centre stood a rectangle of stone, over which the slavegirl was spread-eagled, the tension of the bondage almost dislocating her hip and shoulder joints. The place was colder than the last snows of the Cevennes. The starched coif fluttered above her numbed body. "Now your load of blubber's in for the real thing," the nun smirked. "Erotic torture, we call it. At the bell of Compline, they'll really start on your fat." Smiling again, she departed, locking the door.

Deprived of Pauline, deprived of Joanne, alone and chained stark-naked on the torture slab, Martine mumbled what prayers were left in her. Then she tasted the remains of Pauline's sex juice congealed on her lips. She would almost have abjured to suck that girl again. But no! And anyway the nude goddess was already indentured to a distant but elegant whipping brothel in the St Germain quarter of Paris... Hélas, such was whoredom.