Chapter Six

Joanne's return to the cohort coincided with preparations of the slaves for the festivities. It was for her a return to routine. The precursory sessions took place before Elodie, Joanne finding herself poised on the balls of her feet, eyes wide with anxiety, not so much over the pain as the fearful possibility of not being able to orgasm - or of coming too hastily - when a guest took her after a whipping. She was not alone with her problems. Even Isabelle worried. Huddled teary-eyed against the wall awaiting a rehearsal, the girl watched the smoke wafting lazily from the brazier into the cellar chimney, the irons reddening by way of warning. Dalinde fretted over her ability to face once more the unequal duel between a naked body chained to a post and the cock-rigid Vicomte de Challes brandishing flesh tongs. Mariette was her usual calm self, even when arched back, writhing and twitching over the wooden tripod after a bracing session with Coursel and the nipple screws; the redhead was like a leaf floating downstream into the rapids of orgasm that Christine de Challes would expect of her. On Joanne, Elodie tried out a slave hood of crimson leather that laced up at the rear and thrust a stout, penis-shaped gag into the gullet, something Joanne feared, for it limited breathing, but at the same time appreciated since it would stifle her screams which she felt discredited her.

Meanwhile, above, matters advanced rapidly. Coursel had had the courtyards cleared of rubbish to allow the guests' coaches to be stationed within easy reach of the keep and the horses led to the nearby stables. Simone checked the linen in each bedroom to ensure it was fresh and ready for the warming pan. Elodie herself inspected the kitchens and chose the wine from the cellars. Finally, the best table linen, cutlery and crystal laid out, she saw to it that her young serving wenches, who were to wait at table naked, apart from the usual painful but attractive pinafore, were well scrubbed of their habitual filth, powdered and wigged. Music was to be provided, at least prior to and during the evening's repasts, by two elderly flautists and a blind harpsichordist, who would leave before the enjoyments began. The Marquis, out hunting stag, was nowhere to be seen.

Strangely abashed and silent since her session in the armoury that remained a bitter and mortifying memory, Anthea was charged with ensuring each guest chamber had the requisite crops, scourges and instruments available and that the dark velvet whipping posts and chains were spotless. It was she also who saw to it that that heavy furniture in the great drawing room was shifted back to allow ample space for the inaugural flagellations by way of an aperitif prior to dinner and the evening proper.

Elodie relied on Bouchard, as her major-domo to oversee everything in detail and, above all, the readiness of the gibbet in the courtyard in the event of a guest, displeased with a slave, demanding immediate punishment. Elodie found her more discriminating guests appreciated such touches of finesse and she did her best to satisfy them.

Furthermore, there was the delicate matter of her visitors' apparel. Even before the preliminary whippings started, Elodie was in the habit of asking her dominants to garb themselves in lace masks and dark cloaks for the evening sessions.

"It is, once again, dear friends," she would announce, "my wish for you to wear high boots or at least cross-gartered sandals, like myself, and body straps and gauntlets when working on a slave, the cloak being discarded. Of course, I do not insist on this but I believe such near-nudity on the part of a guest does add erotic quality to the scenario."

By noon on the Saturday the castle was bustling with activity. In the cellar the slaves were being beautified, greased, nipple-rouged and marked with a roman numeral on the chest below the collarbones to identify them.

While she was being prepared, Joanne saw the Dominican stroll in, accompanied by his handsome acolyte, Brother Christophe. The parpaillote blanched as the lascivious hands extended her breasts by the ripple rings and started to interrogate her. It was Marie-Félice who hurried to inform the Marquise of the situation.

Her appearance seemed to halt the proceedings. "Your presence over a weekend, Dom Anselme, is out of place." Elodie remarked. "This girl's being prepared for sex which is not, as far as I'm aware, your domain. You two are not invited to our ceremonies and I suggest you interest yourselves elsewhere. Perhaps in what I have sent to the convent."

The shaved pates bowed, aware they were not wanted. And departed.

"As our Number Seven," Elodie comforted her new slavegirl, "you will be treated no differently from the others. You should fight this odious man and concentrate on my demands. After all, he has your friend down there in the nunnery and her conversion should suffice him. I regret this incident. You are my slave and no one else's. Now forget him and ready yourself. Lucky I came just in time. The whoresome wretch!"

"Thank you, sweet mistress," Joanne replied, kissing her owner's jewelled hand. "I couldn't have borne another conversion session. I belong to you, mistress, to serve you."

"Well, I trust you will serve me well, Number Seven. I count on you."

The weekend upon them, Coursel came for the slaves as the castle bell sounded. Linking them as a coffle, he led them up into the opulent drawing room. The transit from the darkness below into the late afternoon light slanting across the room took place in total silence, broken only by the pad of bare feet and the soft jangle of genital rings. To Joanne's mind whatever was about to happen would be joyous compared to a minute with the Dominican and she would recompense Elodie and her guests, whoever they might be, with all the gifts she had in her naked body...

The cohort of flesh lined up at the back of the room, facing a semicircle of thrones below the casements with the blue Cevennes beyond. The guests barely noticed the nudes but finally took their seats. Elodie in the centre, scintillating in her high-collared, sepia cloak of embroidered silk. To her right was slumped a slender, middle-aged man; the gap in his robe revealed a long penis, already towering to his navel.

"That's the Vicomte de Challes," Joanne's neighbour, Dalinde, whispered, "and next to him it's Christine, his ghastly wife or mistress. Dangerous stuff. Over to the left, there's Evelyn, Comtesse de Burre-Sage. Keep your tits clear of her, if you can. See what she's got in her hand? That's the worst length of rawhide around, darling. It can slit an oiled arse open in less than six lashes. And over there, that's Artemis, our depraved Baron de Bessinge, with his vicious whore, as usual. She's a real bitch. Stings like a scorpion. But it won't be she who lashes your tits," Dalinde added to comfort the novice, "because, over there, that's Raymond de Montclamart who thinks of nothing else than a girl's breasts."

Joanne dared not reply. What she had heard sufficed to scare her. While she stood trembling, several serving wenches entered with what looked like glasses of Xeres and mugs of chocolate - the fashionable new beverage imported from the French slave colonies in West Africa. Joanne could see the detail of how the maids were dressed: each wore the small triangle of brocade over her front, the upper fringe pinned directly through the nipples, the vertex below through the shaved pubis. She presumed the lace was meant to add spice to the aperitifs being handed round on silver salvers. Now and then a guest's gloved hand reached out to part the vulva folds of one or other of the domestics and ream into the sex. Invariably, the suede came away glistening. Had it not, Dalinde told Joanne the wretch, come Monday, would be thrashed naked at the gibbet. Juice was essential.

Gradually the conversation dwindled and Anthea came forward, erotically but less scantily clad than usual. She wore the usual riding boots but also, Joanne noticed, a long cape, no doubt to conceal the streaks left by the Marquis's crop, but which did not hide the cones of sparkling metal over the sepia-tinted teats, promising stabbing pain in anyone she happened to embrace. She carried a heavy whip, each lash terminating, to the slaves' consternation, in an unpleasant iron spherule.

As silence fell, the Marquise's announcement sent a tremor of excitement through Joanne who felt even more naked and vulnerable than when chained to the cartwheel. A treat which The Marquis had given her one night, leading her by her clit ring down into the lower corridors and using her half the night mercilessly after lashing her nearly senseless.

"Well, cherished friends, this is what we have to offer you this weekend for your pleasure. These slaves of mine are at your entire disposal, not only here until dinner but, of course later in the cellar, the torture precincts, which all of you know well, and then in your bedchambers. My slaves have been well honed by the whip and are used to sexual torture under the usual range of instruments. You may do what you wish with them and my servants are at your disposal to assist you." She paused, lowering her voice. "Should any slave fall flagrantly short of what you require, please bring the matter to the attention of my major-domo so that punishment can be administered, either forthwith or after your departure." Then she added: "I trust this will not be the case but, as you know, the courtyard whipping gibbet is always ready."

A murmur of appreciation greeted the preamble. The fat Comtesse Evelyn de Burre-Sage heaved herself laboriously out of her chair to waddle over to the line of glistening flesh. In turn and leaving his whore-slag on her knees before his chair to fondle her clit, Artemis de Bessinge joined Evelyn. Slowly, with a critical eye, the two sauntered down the array of nudes, weighing breasts and parting buttocks with their whips. Evelyn paused before the new Slave VII. She lifted Joanne's chin. "You have a very sensual body, child." The woman then turned to her hostess. "It's a shame your novice has been so vigorously thrashed. I would have preferred her, being new, more or less unmarred. But she will do. If you agree, Elodie dear, I'll use her first. And I'd like an hour or so with her later in one of your delightful torture cells or in my bedroom. It's just unfortunate she's been welted to this degree," she repeated. "I'm so partial to turning white flesh into red meat..."

The Mistress of Lassignac silently cursed Francis-Etienne for damaging the new plaything that attracted her preferred guest. "Yes," she admitted, "both my dear husband and I regret her state. But she's ready for more, if she tempts you."

"She does tempt me. Have her strung up while we assess the others."

Joanne's nudity seemed to become the centre of admiration, simply, she thought, because she was a novelty. Other guests rose to examine her and again she easily passed muster, while the plump, arse-branded Bette, the nut-brown Therèse, Dalinde and the slinky, boyish Isabella were passed over without more than a glance. Mariette and Laurent, his cock throbbing, were totally ignored for the moment; all knew the weekend was long and that their turn would come in the cellar or a bedroom. Only the dark-skinned Louise, with her upturned teats and ripe clitoris, found favour and de Bessinge selected her.

At a sign from Elodie, Anthea sashayed across the floor to drag the cream of the bunch forward, making Joanne stand in the centre of the room and ordering Louise to wait close to a heavy wooden device nearby: Joanne found the object so closely resembled that on which she herself had suffered in the chapel that she cringed, murmuring a prayer for her companion. The slender Louise - an unwanted slut purchased by Elodie for ten louies from a starving peasant family some ten months earlier - seemed undisturbed by the grim object to which she had been so casually condemned.

More placid than usual, probably on account of her own recent correction in the armoury, Anthea released Joanne's arms and made her mount a footstool. Looking up for the first time, the slave noticed the chains hanging from the beam overhead. Swiftly, the rings in the wrist straps were hooked to them and a moment later the stool was removed, leaving the naked beauty swinging. The guests gazed at the slender form in lascivious wonder. Rarely had they seen whipping flesh as tempting as this.

Grasping the chains to relieve the tension, as Mariette had told her to do, Joanne wondered what was about to take place. In her time at the château, she had known scores of whipping postures and remembered each vividly: chained out on the slab, at the stake, over the cartwheel or flogging trestle; hung by the ankles, the legs split open; crucifixion on the studded cross; on the iron grid with the breasts thrust through and throttled beyond the rods - and so many other stances, each spurring her on to orgasm as the leathers slashed her. But where she found herself in the drawing room, before countless eyes, hanging stark nude in her perfect symmetry or compliance rivalled all other positions. She knew how her breasts with their ever-swollen teats tilting upwards, tempted a flogger and how, as Elodie had told her, she should thrust them out or, when bowed forward, let them swing below the sternum like bells ready to toll under the breast quirt... Slave breasts after all, Elodie maintained, were there to be whipped.

Without warning, a sheet of flame licked Joanne's body, paralysing her brain; the Burre-Sage creature had almost buried four strips of leather in the rump meat. With a gasp, the naked slave wrenched her knees up high in pain. "Keep your body still, please," the comment came. "It needs welting and I cannot do that if you lurch. The tradition here - and may the Marquise Elodie-Helène be thanked - is that a hung slave should remain docile under the whip." She laid on a further ten formidable strokes that brought Joanne to tears and to the limit of her strength. Then the woman changed position to whip the rear of the thighs. Joanne did her utmost to remain still and mute through the flogging.

Somehow, Louise's quiet presence helped Joanne to contend with the flagellation when Burre-Sage again changed position and delivered a dozen murderous lashes over the breasts with the quirt. The Comtesse's huge body put its weight behind the strokes and the slave's cries rebounded from the drawing room walls and windowpanes as if they were wounded birds seeking freedom. Joanne's body began to blossom like a rose.

Grasping her chains and suffering from the force of the initial whipping, she was left to hang in abeyance while the attendants proceeded to bind Louise's slim carcass over the flogging contrivance they had meanwhile dragged forward. Compared with the trestles and other frames in the slave cellar below, the structure appeared relatively prosaic; several wooden beams formed a rectangular base upon which a pair of short uprights rose to a horizontal bar. The solid crosspiece, Joanne saw with horror, bristled with a harvest of short spikes, honed sharp, destined to discourage the victim from contorting while being worked upon. Although the spectacle terrified her, Joanne felt an erotic thrill churning within her vagina - it was such as had accompanied her introductions to the various implements Francis-Etienne had bound her to, prior to her beatings at his adored hands.

It was the whip's hiss and slash on flesh that brought her back to reality. Anthea's service whip - about the most painful at Lassignac - had sliced into Louise's rump along with an order to prostrate herself over the spiked bar that scared the newcomer but clearly not Louise who seemed unperturbed. Almost deferentially, she lowered herself along the crosspiece for the self-assured Marie-Félice to slant back at an angle a thick, hinged dildo. That too disturbed Joanne, for the shaft glinted with studs destined to enhance the pain and, she hoped, some pleasure...

"Get it all the way up into you," Anthea told Louise. "We'll see how you use it after fifty lashes." Again the bitch's heartlessness appalled Joanne. "You've been through this before, haven't you?"

For the first time, Louise spoke, the words devoid of any emotion; if there was fear or despair in her, the voice belied it. "I've been given this at least a dozen times, mistress. It was you who chained me to it last month to drip candle grease over me..." Anthea smiled. "How should I remember? To me slaves are all alike. Get it well into you, slut."

The shaft slid slowly up into the vagina as Louise lowered her pubis and hips on to the array of points. As they penetrated the skin, she bared her teeth and gave a thin hiss of pain. Only too familiar with the posture required, she stretched her torso, extending her thin arms to the extremity of the planks to have each wrist shackled; she then brought forward her knees for them to be similarly chained to the uprights. Marie-Félice wrenched the ankles well apart and fettered them. "See the slug's absolutely taut," Anthea told her. "The Baron likes a body tensed and firm for his sort of thrashing. You've seen it before, so bind these thighs tighter, girl!"

From where she hung, waiting for the session to proceed, Joanne stared spellbound at what was being proffered for beating. She just hoped Louise derived the same erotic thrill from being chained naked and whipped as she did.

The slave's buttocks formed a crest on the bar, the anal trench well parted, disclosing the umber sphincter, bloated from constant use. Never having experienced sex with Louise, Joanne could not rate the anus or cunt, but the latter had to be resilient and slack to accommodate that monstrous dildo.

Abruptly the drawing room came to life. The guest who had chosen Louise, in the same way as the Comtesse de Burre-Sage was already using Joanne, passed a gloved palm over the upraised buttocks. The flesh gave a shudder under the touch.

"I advise you, whore slave," de Bessinge warned Louise, "not to try clenching those callow cheeks. Otherwise I shall have to flay them raw. Surely, Marquise," he addressed his hostess across the room, "a cheap trollop with her experience - for I've had her before, you know - should realise by now how to proffer her arse for a guest's whip!"

Elodie gave him a look that was both a frown and a smile. The remark was unjustified. Slave Five, the devoted, well-trained Louise, never flinched, whatever was perpetrated on her submissive body. In fact, she was one of Lassignac's more mature subjects, staunch under the whip and in a torture precinct. "Well, Artemis," his hostess replied, "give her an extra twenty lashes, if she has upset you. The harder she's flogged, the more ravenously she comes. So, now that our second chicken's ready, I suggest we continue. Evelyn sweet, that lovely blonde slut of mine's going off the boil. You'll have to warm her up again. It's a pity Francis-Etienne isn't here. He considers her rather special but that's because it was he who negotiated her transfer here. Fine, but I prefer to buy or purloin mine! Far simpler." She gave the group a radiant smile. Oh, by all the saints, how she enjoyed these weekends!

Now that the second slave was ready, the Comtesse asked nothing better than to continue the flagellation she had begun.

Waddling to the side of the nude she had selected, she raised the lash and brought it down with refreshed force across Joanne's flat belly. Blinded by the power and shock of the stroke, the newcomer nearly fainted but she gritted her teeth as the milk-pale flesh flared up into purple ridges. Almost at the same instant, de Bessinge slashed across Louise's shoulders.

For what to Joanne seemed like a timeless stretch of pure torment, Evelyn de Burre-Sage's mass of fat and muscle - the latter kept in trim by flogging her serving girls every day at home - slammed into the novice, driving the wind out of her lungs. Lash after lash cut across the thorax and ribs until the whip again reached the breasts, and no one present wanted to miss a mammary beating and a pillaging of the nipples. Evelyn sent the bulges bouncing, now up to the slave number, the black VII, on the chest, now across to the sweating armpits, and then flattening them, driving the teats, areoles and rings into the blue-veined flesh. Everyone knew breast whipping was the Comtesse's predilection.

Again, Evelyn left the welts to mature and Joanne's screams to ease up. Though well accustomed to the whip over her dugs - one of Anthea's terms to describe and denigrate slave breasts - Joanne at one moment thought she was about to pass out. Then she glimpsed Evelyn shifting round to the juddering rear to tap the buttocks and prepare the meat, discarding her quirt for a six-thong of medium length, two of the lashes being plaited to give the slave, now that she was completing her novitiate, something to think about over the coming days... Joanne arched forward as the whip flailed like fire round the hips, raising incandescent paths of dark scarlet, tinged with blue. The blows turned Joanne into a battered marionette, each lash demanding more of her resistance; it seemed to ebb like the sludge leaking from her vulva as she slid further down the slope towards the dark. Ten more and she knew she was done for. And she would sag from the chains, disappointing Elodie, the guests and herself - herself particularly since she revelled in it all - the nudity, the flesh rings, the straps and shackles, and the whips - and yet feared it. She hated and loved it.

The Comtesse slashed the buttocks with unerring precision, using the classical method of first reddening the flesh with her thonged flogger and then using the riding crop to raise the real welts. Yet a rear beating never failed to advance Joanne a step further towards orgasm. Suddenly again the obese monster ceased thrashing the bottom and, mopping her brow under the veil, came into view to ram the penis-shaped haft into her victim's slot. As she expected, it came away coated with gluten.

"Ah, upon my word a gratifying slut, Elodie! The wanton's juicing like a lime. But I need a breather, treasure. I really must lose some weight," at which the Marquise nodded. "You know, Elodie, this blonde beginner of yours has potential. We'll see how she takes the rest of the weekend..." The booted ogress turned to her almost naked neighbour, de Bessinge. "Is your bag of skin and bone responding similarly to your lordship's wishes?"

"It better had or it'll find itself hooked to a beam by the feet later in my room for raking," he replied, short of breath, "and a session under the breast bodkins." He continued to lash the groaning Louise with zest.

Joanne found the abrupt pause distressing. It left the welts to throb mercilessly and left her in limbo, impeding her progress towards orgasm. Through her dazzling tears, she glanced round the room. Stimulated by the floggings, the guests were amusing themselves with the remaining slaves. Isabelle was on her knees servicing the Marquise slumped in her throne, the shapely cross-gartered legs over the armrests to give the slave full access to the crotch. The fiery Mariette was hard at work fellating the Vicomte de Challes, known to lust after her on account of the redhead's unpigmented skin, like cream fresh from the churn. So pale was the epidermis that even Elodie was astonished when she whipped her. The welts were always spectacular, standing out like cooked beetroot crushed on an egg-white cloth. Marietta's pallor drove guests to beat her breasts horrendously, desecrating her without pity, even using the cane on her areoles before leaving her to smoulder. A day or two later when the weals had subsided, the whips would stoke her up again into a scarlet blaze. Many guests chose her also because she bled dramatically - and like Joanne she adored every second of her scourgings.

On the brink of orgasm, Joanne saw Therèse tonguing the Vicomte's wife, the depraved Christine de Challes. The clubfooted Raymond de Montclamart, known for his aversion to vaginas, had laid Bette across his chair and was rigid in her rectum - the infamous L branded on her bottom fascinating him; he had even asked Elodie to be allowed to brand the other cheek, which she had promptly refused. Branding was Bouchard's chore.

Dalinde was licking de Bessinge's odious mistress, Claire, while de Bessinge himself continued to work hard on Louise. Flogging females was his chief occupation in life.

"Enjoying it, whore?" he asked his victim, lashing her rump.

"Yes, master," came the choked response. "Scourge my cleft... like the last time..."

That he was only too ready to do. He enjoyed the splatter of Louise's clammy outpour. For her part, Joanne drifted into a doldrum of erotic pleasure, as in her dreams, with orgasm still eluding her.

Laurent had to content himself with Marie-Félice, the former slave who had graduated to the status of a 'slave handler' and was always ready to enjoy a male or a female or both at once. Looking on superciliously from the panelled wall, Anthea was contemplating revenge for what the Marquis had done to her. She leaned next to the funereal Simone, Bouchard and Coursel, the two men eying her lasciviously but without the slightest hope of using her; in any event, her spiked nipple shields were disconcerting...

Still awaiting further lashes, her wrists beginning to ache, Joanne saw clearly what Louise was enduring. The entire back, rump and chained thighs, together with the dangling breasts, small as they were, had been ridged with the force of the rawhide. Joanna watched the final moments as the Baron moved round to the moaning head and straddled it to slash directly down into the anal furrow. His scourge buried its length along the trough, the extremities striking the dildo. Louise's groans sharpened as the rod jerked in her vagina. De Bessinge gave the anal crevice a prolonged beating until the slave became frenzied, lurching up and down the wooden stanchion. Satisfied she was on the verge of spending, he strolled back to the flayed buttocks, bent his cock down and bored into the swollen sphincter. Watching, Joanne knew the girl's thin membrane within was straining between the dildo, crammed up her cunt, and the phallus sodomising the rectum. The chained slave began to ride both, rasping her clit on the knurl projecting from the dildo. A silence fell over the room, broken only by her yelps, the slushing and an occasional smack on the arse, as if the man was taking a mare into a canter before the final gallop.

Despite the spikes stabbing her pubis and haunches, Louise pumped vigorously on the dildo. Without warning the head jerked up with a shriek as the body exploded hysterically with not one but several orgasms that laid the whipped beauty waste. The Baron sent half his load into the bowels, spattering the rest over the welted back.

"Better than expected, Elodie dear, in the name of Priapus," he gulped, wiping the sweat from his slave-scourge. "Your whore comes well, as usual. I'll have her again in my room after dinner, if you agree." Then he smiled at Evelyn: "I hope yours does as well and comes as cleanly as this slut. It's really worth the journey to be able to flagellate a slavegirl who empties out so appreciatively, don't you agree? And, by the way, this slag comes just as competently when her clit's snug in the grip of a pair of tongs. Well worth the journey, Evelyn, ma chere," he repeated. Although voided, he was cold as a serpent.

Joanne was envying the exhausted Louise when suddenly the Comtesse slapped her across the rump amid the final bleats from the platform. "Now that I'm refreshed, Number Seven," she said gaily, "and I've given you the chance of watching a well-tutored bitch flagellated to orgasm, let's see what a novice can do under the quirt." Already armed with the thing, Evelyn slashed the hips. "Spread those nice thighs, whore, and keep them wide. Close them just once and I'll have you hung by the legs with milking pails chained to those teat rings," - she struck each nipple with the quirt haft, then generously she purred: "You may spend whenever you're ready."

The legs yawned wide, the probationer quivering with fear and exhilaration - fear, since her vagina was probably oozing too copiously, excitement at the promise of the long-awaited climax. And that before a host of shrewd arbiters.

Evelyn de Burre-Sage liked nothing better than a splayed vulva, bar perhaps an erect penis, and knew how to induce substantial pain with a quirt and, at the same time bring a slave off. Joanne had already experienced the quirt with its plaited grip and the triple lashes that clacked when used on a girl's breasts or sex - its prime targets at Lassignac. She had received it on several occasions but as yet never over her ringed labia. Mariette had told her that probably the vulva would be chained by the rings round the thighs to bare the target and that this would help. The more exposed one was, she claimed, the fiercer the orgasm. Joanne marshalled her courage, regretting her ankles were not shackled wide to prevent her from clenching her thighs.

The Comtesse swept the conjoined tails of tawny leather up into the dripping slot, the slap setting the metal jangling. Joanne managed to weather a dozen perfectly aimed strokes, each dull damp thud jerking the clit ring upwards in a splash of pre-come. Then she yelled. But the cries were not screams of pain as she rocked her blonde head and protruded her crotch, offering all she had. The quirt lashed her from pubis to perineum until she was the colour of dark burgundy wine.

"Aaah, yes, mistress! There... there! On the ring... please!" The cliff edge was in sight, and beyond, the myriad stars beckoning her into space. "Oh, sweet mistress, whip me harder... fuck me with it... Ram it into me, pleeeese!"

Amazingly, Evelyn did just that. The handle of the quirt sank in up to her glove, grinding hard into the pinnacle of engorged, whipped gristle. Joanne came so violently that even Anthea was taken aback. Again the blonde head shrieked as she discharged again. Those orgasms were stronger, more complete than any she had had so far in her life.

Released, the two welted corpses were left sprawling on the polished floor. Louise was then dragged down to the cellar by the legs, while Joanne tried to gather her senses. She saw Evelyn retrieving her cloak and seating herself, the fat thighs rolling apart.

"Now it's my turn," the Comtesse said. "Do your duty, slave. Approach and lick."

Joanne, expecting as much, slithered towards the chair to comply. Faced with the clit in the shaggy crotch, she sucked and tongued with what stamina was left to her. Evelyn made her work hard before bucking and spewing. She came suddenly and thickly.

In her turn, the blonde was hustled out and down the steps to be chained, like Louise and the others, on her palliasse beyond the bars. There Mariette helped them to swallow the bowl of gruel, forcing water down the throats, parched with yelling. Both needed strengthening if they were to outlast the night.

In the castle's lofty, machiolated turrets, the wise owls hooted derisively; they well knew what was to follow, once the guests had dined.

***

Evidently not wanted during the weekend at the château, Dom Anselme and the young Christophe mounted their mules at sunset and made their way down to the convent where Mother Priscilla greeted them cordially.

"Ah, there you are at last. We have continued work on the plump parpaillote entrusted to our custody and I must say the profane wench shows more promise than expected. We have, of course, following your earlier visit, put her to further sessions under the whip in the preparation Cell and she now awaits you in the Chamber of Pleasures. You will find her bound over the slab. I am sure you will hasten her training."

A frown darkened the Dominican's pious features. "Training, as you put it, exalted colleague, is your burden. We seek her contrite conversion. But I trust she's orgasming regularly by now. I hope we shall not be disturbed for the rest of the night down there."

"Naturally, your Holiness. I presume you would wish our devoted Sister Madeleine to be present to help. At least, to prepare the implements and help with bondage..."

The bald-pate nodded. With a formal bow, the gaunt figure, followed by Brother Christophe, left the presence to be led down to the so-called Chamber of Pleasures.

The cell glimmered with a single candle, sufficient to display Martine's sobbing body spread, belly up, on the torture slab. The welted breasts lolled sideways from the chest and seemed less massive than the Dominican recalled from earlier beatings and indeed the buttock meat, crushed on the stone, looked firmer and more compact than before. Beyond the throat, strapped to the far verge of the slab, the dark, bedraggled hair hung down, the eyes swathed under a broad strap, the mouth gouged wide with a leather stopple.

"I'll need the throat freed, Sister," the Dominican observed calmly, "if we are to hear the bitch abjure. We may also require fellatio. Kindly remove the bung."

Only too ready to assist, Sister Madeleine prized the object out of the teeth. The customary cajolements began, the man wrenching the head up by the hair. "Do you or do you not recant, you stiff-necked whore? Or must we convince you of your errors by other means? We have the entire night before us. You should know that your blonde accomplice has abjured and she's attending Mass and confession, thus unburdening herself of past mischief. So, do you abjure?"

Martine groaned and spat at the cassock. "Never, offspring of the great whore of Babylon that sitteth on many waters," she yelled. "Thou father of harlots and abomination of the earth. May you be consumed with fire..."

Sister Madeleine recoiled. Never had a trainee uttered such vile words. She knew what was in store, for the Dominican had divested himself of his cassock, the handsome assistant likewise. The two cocks stood upreared as the men retired to the table by the wall. Dom Anselme took his time, running his eye over the range of instruments before selecting his whip. Madeleine's eyes widened still further as Brother Christophe took up a handful of slender bodkins. Fortunately, she thought, the slut could not see the objects.

With fury, the friar lashed the body, first across the flabby breasts and then into the ringed vulva that jangled, in tune with Martine's shrieks. Only when the flesh had become turquoise did Anselme nod to his subordinate and order Sister Madeleine to stretch the breasts upwards by the nipple rings and then the sex labia outwards, the lower extremities splayed by chains cinched tight round the thighs. Executing the orders, the nun had to admit flesh rings were indeed practical adjuncts; they facilitated her duties.

"Now, Christophe, she's yours," the senior murmured, retiring to the side to watch and masturbate at ease. "Thrust them in deep, as I showed you on that other wench last week, until the stubborn animal abjures."

Brother Christophe did as he was directed. Each needle dented the skin to penetrate easily, in places skewering clean through the mammaries and then through the inner labia. Martine hissed, more with terror than pain, as a score of the slender points were inserted. Her entire body sang and throbbed in the aftermath of the flogging, but in her sexual extremities unearthly fires raged as the sharp prick of each bodkin was followed by the equally strange and arousing discomfort of steel moving inside her. In despair she realised that once again, whatever her tongue declared, her body made a liar of her; once again she was going to be driven to orgasm. And then, as if from a great distance she heard the Dominican's snarl: "Renounce your heresy, whore, and you will be released!"

His hated voice rallied her to deny her orgasm to the last possible moment; let them do what they wanted. And in the silence that followed, she heard him sigh. "Very well, then I am forced to convince you by other means. Sister Madeleine, kindly yoke the recalcitrant's legs and ratchet her up for flagellation. The slut is really feather-brained. No, Christophe, the needles can remain where they are while you flay those colossal buttocks. Pray, use the rattan cane and plenty of muscle."

Martine hardly knew what was taking place. She sensed being released, having a wooden frame locked over her parted ankles and hearing a chain clank over some gear or hook above. Then she was swinging free beyond the slab, head down, her thighs wide, her hands grazing the flagstones. Christophe's whipping of the lavish arse sent her into shrill screams and then finally into oblivion. As the feet had begun to turn white, the body was lowered into the straw and then hauled up again, this time by the wrists, for the cane to deal with the upper slope of the still well-fleshed rump. Thirty strokes later and hoarse from yelling, she found herself on her yoked feet, crushed over the sharp corner of the slab; there the needles sank deeper into the breasts and labia, causing havoc and ensuring that she could no longer hold out. Spurred on by the increasingly urgent cries, Anselme used the anus after which the young flogger lunged into the vagina. Under the reaming, the blindfolded nude's clitoris rasped against the stone. Suddenly and savagely Martine climaxed with a frightful shriek.

"At least," Dom Anselme remarked, "the bitch shows progress, if only carnal. Converted or not, she's at last conceding what our friends up at Lassignac seek. We'll continue later after our supper with the august prioress. The night will be hard and long."

Retrieving their cassocks, the papists thanked Madeleine and retired for dinner. The wild fowl and wine were merited even if abjuration had still not been achieved. The session and the slut's orgasm, when reported, gave Mother Priscilla some sense of achievement, even if the fat slug still needed starving, whipping and most likely a good deal of sex torture before confronting the Marquise's ice-blue eyes again. Moreover, Mother Priscilla had her hands full, training at least a dozen whipping slaves destined for other noble houses and specialised brothels in Paris and in the provinces. Demand was heavy.

***

Meanwhile up at the château the guests were finishing Elodie's equally succulent dinner while the slave cohort below swallowed its gruel and water prior to the start of the evening's enjoyments proper. Recovering from the hefty Comtesse's whipping, Joanne observed from behind the cellars barricade the preparations with attention. Not only were Coursel, Simone and Marie-Félice present but also, to Joanne's alarm Bouchard, loitering among the torture appliances that glimmered in the candlelit cellar. At least Anthea was absent, no doubt still at table, displaying her spike-laden tits. Joanne swore to revenge herself on her. How, she did not know but revenge she would wreak. One day.

Gleaming under a sheen of oil, nipples and areoles rouged, the slaves were led out of the enclave to be chained, each assigned to an iron bar separating their area from the cellar proper. Wrists manacled to the nape, a carabinier joined the necks to the rods, exposing the full length of the tensed bodies. Flicking her service whip, the attractive Marie-Félice, practically naked, strode along the line of slave flesh, ensuring the inmates stood rigid, legs parted.

"Thighs open, whores," she ordered. "Suck in those bellies and let's have those teats hard and prominent. You know the orders." Here and there, she jerked on a nipple, spread a vulva or raised a head with her whip haft, arranging a strand of hair that had escaped from the black ribbon behind a head, and checked on the condition of the clitoral erections. When it came to Laurent, her gloved hand tugged on the ball sac and cleared the bulb of foreskin to ensure the thick, pulsing shaft throbbed elegantly aloft.

The cohort waited in silence, the bared armpits sweating. Abruptly the cellar door swung open. To Joanne's dismay, Anthea appeared. Like the well-groomed Marie-Félice but more striking, the vixen was booted, gloved and harnessed over the thorax, the areoles sheathed with the usual barbed cones. But to Joanne's surprise, she wore a delicate, sleeveless jacket of brown suede, belted round the hips, no doubt - for news travelled fast in the confines of Lassignac - to conceal the last vestiges of her correction; however, despite the coat and powdering, the robust thighs showed the fading welts clearly. Nonetheless, she looked more vindictive than ever with her jangling spurs, as she inspected the nudes; Joanne wagered that the presumptuous minx would avenge herself on them. The insolent trollop then unrolled a sheet of parchment to read out the decisions taken at table. "The first session will commence forthwith," she intoned in a colourless voice, "and will involve the following: Slave Number One - you Mariette - to the flogging trestle for Madame la Comtesse de Challes. Slave Number Two, Isabelle, to the torture bench, for the Marquise herself, as you seem to be a sort of favourite." The bitch gave a smirk of jealous disdain. "Slave Three - you, Therèse - to the cartwheel. You'll be thrashed both sides by... let me see, yes, by the Baron de Bessinge. And make sure you respond better than the last time, you lazy slut. If not, we'll have to screw the clamps on your tits."

Therèse moaned at the prospect of the Baron's rawhide, only to receive a sharp lash across the midriff from Coursel, moving along the line as each sentence was read.

"Slave Four, Bette - to the breast bench again, at the Vicomte de Challes' request. Slave Five, Louise - you'll get off lightly this time in view or your earlier service above. You'll be clamped in the stocks and hung for a correction from Mademoiselle Marie-Claire." Louise froze. That was something she could well do without; she loathed de Bessinge's profligate tart who took revenge at Lassignac for what her master did to her at home. "Slave Six, Dalinde, to the crucifix for the breast quirt and needles from me." The former whore from Ales sighed and bit her lip. "Slave Seven, Joanne..." the newcomer held her breath, "our dutiful Marie-Félice will stretch your depraved body to the ladder for Monsieur de Montclamart's attentions, despite your service before dinner."

The sentence meant little to Joanne and there seemed to be little clemency in it. The club-footed Montclamart creature really scared her. The ladder? She peered into the flickering shadows of the vast cellar in an attempt to locate the object, for it had never been mentioned in discussions with her colleagues. Whatever it entailed, she hoped she could bear it and reach orgasm when permitted. At the same time, she felt eager for the ceremonies to start and found her crotch already oozing beyond control.

"Slave Eight, Laurent," Anthea concluded, "to the wall chains for the Comtesse de Burre-Sage. She has a treat for your foul length of cock meat. So, keep it stiff as iron. The first session will close at midnight," the bitch went on, "for our distinguished guests, hosts and senior staff to sup and relax." (And what about us slaves? Joanne wondered...) "The assignments will then be made, you slaves being redistributed, after the usual medications, for further service here in the cellar, in the torture cells or in the privacy of the bedchambers, according to our noble visitors' wishes. As you all know, the courtyard will be torchlit, should any guest, dissatisfied with your erotic response, desire to have you flogged on the gallows." She glanced at Bouchard and received a nod.

Turning on a high, spurred heel, she told her subordinates to proceed. "Take them in, Simone and you others, and ensure the bodies are well chained, ready for use."

Immediately, the three domestics detached the first batch of nudes and led them into the dim, vaulted area, assigning each to the allotted appliance. Apart from the clatter of links and a few groans, the positioning was carried out in silence. From where she still stood against the iron palisade, hardly daring to breathe, Joanne could see little of the shackling until her turn came. As Coursel whipped her and the remaining nudes forward, she stared, stunned by the spectacle. A sudden surge of adrenaline lanced through her.

Mariette lay arched back over the summit of one of the wooden whipping tripods, the parted shanks wrenched down and chained to the forward supports of the structure, the wrists fettered low on the third stay. All that was visible were the tensed legs, the open vulva, hip bones and flat abdomen; the breasts arms and ginger head hung beyond view, the body curved, awaiting flagellation and, the newcomer guessed, much more. Like Joanne, Mariette never failed to climax under the whip.

To the left, Isabelle and Therèse had also been prepared, the Marquise's boyish favourite chained recumbent across the sombre worktable, the four limbs secured to the corner uprights: already a thick scourge drooped ready over her belly. The tawny Therèse, on the other hand, being relatively new to Lassignac, seemed to be having trouble in settling her arse on the torture wheel, an ordinary cartwheel mounted to rotate on its axle cemented in the flagstones. Simone helped the slave with a few lashes while Coursel roped her outstretched; finally the nude was spread, the loins cambered over the hub. To Joanne's relief, the girl's well-haired slot was already expelling bright mucilage, like her own.

Whereas the overseers harried the seasoned victims along into the cellar by chains clipped to the collar rings, Marie-Félice tugged the newcomer forward by a lead hooked to the clit ring, as if still breaking her in. Joanne gasped as the already tumid stump elongated atrociously. Crossing the chamber, she had time to see Dalinde being crucified upon a hulking, wooden cross which, to judge from the glints was ladened with spikes.

The brat Bette, brazen as ever, was also being prepared. The setting made Joanne's heart miss several beats. The girl was on her knees between two jambs, like an empty doorway but traversed by bars; her arms chained to the higher one, the roots of her breasts were being trussed to the lower crosspiece by Bouchard. The man was tightening thongs that seemed to pass through holes in the bar, causing the mammaries to swell into livid congested bulges, ready no doubt for the quirt tongs and the needling that at Lassignac formed part of advanced slave torture. The stout body was held in place also by a hinged ramrod buried up her anus. As the newcomer passed, Bette gave her a pert, encouraging smile - she was used to such evenings and truly loved them.

Then something else came into view and almost paralysed Joanne. In the far corner a charcoal brazier stood smouldering, the smoke curling up into a metal cowl and chimney. Nearby on the wall hung an array of branding irons, one, terminating in an iron L, being that which had gouged its mark in Bette's buttock. Braziers did something to Joanne and figured frequently in her nightly erotic dreams in which she was being sold as sex flesh at a slave market in fabled Constantinople - but never were those pans of coals fuming three paces from her naked body... strangely, she had often envied the mark on the former milkmaid's rump but now shuddered at the thought of being fettered over the block there in the cellar, sensing the heat approach her rump or pubis. Even more disconcerting was her sudden desire to watch a slave branding, particularly if Bouchard, cock in erection, carried it out. She felt relieved that Martine was not there to share the sight of the brazier. She would have collapsed in terror, if not already lost to the world.

Forced onwards by Marie-Félice's whip, Joanne was driven into a far alcove. There her sex fronds fluttered a moment and then froze. Cemented at thigh height in the far wall, the ladder slanted into the straw-strewn paving. It was long, with many rungs. Several coils of hemp rope lay at the foot. Dutifully, the slave dropped to her knees, as was the custom, and shuffled towards her smiling warder. Mercifully, the clit lead was released.

"We'll wait for Coursel," Marie-Félice said. "Meanwhile, tongue me. Lick me."

"Of course, mistress." She bent down and lapped the moist slit. But not for long.

The valet arrived, giving the curved rump a stinging lash. "Right. Got to stretch this naked bitch damn tight 'cos it's 'er first go on them rungs. And wiv bubs like 'ers, god knows 'ow much the slag can take. If I was Monsieur Raymond, I'd 'ave 'er gagged afore startin' to torture them cantaloupes she's got hangin there." Giving the flaccid breasts a slap, the valet freed the wrists, kicking the nude towards the ladder.

"On to the rungs, my beauty." It was Marie-Félice who bound her, Coursel merely watching lecherously. "I've never seen you tortured before," she added, "but I suppose you've already had your tits really heavily punished haven't you?" Her nipples puckering with fear, the nude realised she was about to be breast-tortured. The slave handler's question had set her quivering vagina running. "Well, have you? You can speak with us."

"Not really, mistress." The parched throat could just muster the words. "They've been whipped... And one day, early on in the chapel, I had them strangled and wrenched through the iron chancel bars. It was something hard to forget, mistress... and master."

"Yes, that we saw, poppet - just as we're all aware of what goes on in the west wing with 'we know who'." She gave an icy smile. "Now stretch that much sought-after body, teats up, and raise your arms." Her pulse racing, the slave felt the rungs crushing into her back and buttocks. "Cross the wrists, then the ankles for the ropes. Penned up thighs surprise you, no? I mean, you're so used to having your legs parted rather than together, eh? Yes, that's it... You'll have that insatiable twat jammed tight for a change." The girl bound the extremities, using the ringed straps. "You're quite a cunt-vulture, aren't you, slag? So the Marquise said." The remark startled Joanne enough to prompt a reply.

"It's just that I like the crotch whip, mistress. It sets my clit on fire, you see."

"Too bad, whore, because the guest tonight prefers torturing female tits. So make sure those teats and areoles are gorged for him. I'll probably be allowed to whip them before he starts with the tongs, and maybe needles - it depends on how he feels; you're sure to love it, from what we hear about you. Now I'll strap your neck to that rung... That's perfect! By all the saints, you look really something! What a body! Make sure the ribs stand out from the sweep of the belly. And thrust out those udders. That's what he's after. He'll not go for your sex and anyway it's clenched and hidden."

Joanne's trembling breasts were ready for Raymond de Montclamart.