Chapter Seven

In the dismal chambers leading off the passages of the Convent of the Annunciation life for Martine in the preceding weeks had become not just a problem but a burden. Almost worse than the beatings in ever stricter bondage were the continual changes of locality imposed on her. The number of cells, windowless vaults, dark closets, crypts and always the interminable corridors linking them, seemed to her limitless, each more terrifying than the preceding one. After a gruelling session in one underground cellarage, she was made to mount and descend flights of worn steps, limping, barely conscious, along dank labyrinths to her next place of punishment - or torture, which Sister Madeleine euphemistically called 'whore-training'.

Day after day and often through the night hours, Martine did her utmost to endure the special treatment reserved for her. Some features, among many, began to dishearten her; the way in which she was kept heavily shackled, cumbrous, weighted chains tugging at her nipple and sex rings, often obliged her to go on all fours, unless whipped to her feet. The nuns seemed to delight in her degradation and misery. When she met other trainees in a passage, the girls backed against the wall to let what they considered an animal, even more contemptible than themselves, pass by under the nuns' whips. And Martine suffered a further ignominy - no one addressed her by name any more, but as 'whore bitch', 'bloated blubber' and the like. She was reduced to receiving curt orders, now to stretch out and masturbate herself against a flogging stake, now to fuck on a bristly phallus bolted to the wall until she climaxed - always under the whip. To her amazement, although the two Dominicans continued unceasingly to make use of her orifices and beat her viciously, they seemed to have abandoned their attempts to make her abjure. They concentrated more on her convulsions than on her conversion.

Far more astounding to Martine than to the Dominicans was the regularity with which she found herself producing orgasm after orgasm when they twisted her clitoris or took her, front and back, after flagellation. The transition had come suddenly, her body responding almost instinctively to the whips and cocks belabouring her. She even found the sight and swish of the cane enough to send her into readiness. The lashes across her crotch did the rest. Despite herself, she was being transformed into whore meat.

"Ahhh!" the cry became invariable, day in, day out, rising in intensity, "please help me... I can't hold on any longer..." The yells delighted the men and also Madeleine, who reported progress daily to her Superior. The 'porky heretic' was yielding prolific orgasms and fast losing weight. Two weeks of beating and sex torture were bearing fruit.

Mother Priscilla increased the calibre of the whips and the number of daily lashes in the hope that the bitch's return to the castle would be hastened, for it seemed the convent was not going to benefit from her sale on the market.

However, in addition to the ceaseless persecution with leather, hemp and metal, another more worrying preoccupation invaded Martine abruptly one night. A further rumour circulating among some of the trainees again inferred that Joanne up at the château had indeed abjured before Dom Anselme and was apparently kneeling at Mass, probably still naked and severely marked, but nevertheless converted... Dismayed again, Martine surrendered herself wholly to slavery and ceased to fight, at least physically; what had hitherto been muttered psalms and prayers dissolved into strident shrieks of pain and orgasm. The heretical body became ordinary whipping flesh. Nothing more nor less. Martine was succumbing to the maelstrom of 'convent' punishment, enveloping her entire being.

She no longer seemed to care what happened to her. Caked with semen and sweat, she crawled, without being ordered, from stake to slab, from overhead chains to floor bolts that stretched the nipple and labia rings for more blubber to be whipped off her.

"The heathen slag's understood at last," the Dominican declared, rejoining Mother Priscilla after a particularly strenuous bout of breast torture after Compline one night.

"It would seem so." The wimpled face gave him a smile thin as a wafer. "Another week or so in the cellars and the Vault of Verification and she'll be ready to return to Lassignac. But then, one whorehouse is very much like another, is that not so, Father?" And Dom Anselme nodded. A whore was a whore, after all. Just sex meat.

Distancing themselves from the thud of leather on Martine's behind that indeed had notably diminished in size over the foregoing week, the two dignitaries retired to dine. The pleasures of the flogging cells beginning to cloy, they turned to politics and Versailles.

That night, Martine was given eighty lashes, back and front, hung by the legs.

It was true, Madeleine agreed, the trollop was making acceptable progress but still needed an appreciable amount of sex and flagellation if she was to pass muster. Wiping the sweat off her scourge in Martine's sodden hair, she made it clear she would see to that and without fail, despite the work she had on hand in other quarters.

And work there was. In abundance. With a dozen whores in residence needing improvement and maturation, the 'convent' continued to receive visits from various brothel keepers from Paris and other centres, anxious to recuperate their wares or purchase reliable new flesh. It was during one such visit that Martine saw to her dismay her only friend, the bald Pauline, depart, hooded, hog-chained and gagged, for a stew near Blois.

Martine then found herself allotted Pauline's former cell that still reeked of the former occupant's stale sweat and emissions. Strangely, the odours comforted her.

By her third week of 'education', the slave had become acquainted with almost all the cellars where invariably she was dealt with alone. The enforced solitude exacerbated the tension, the prolonged periods of silence increasing her anxiety and helplessness while allowing the residual pain after each bout of beating or torture to run its course. Just when she was regaining her strength, the welts darkening and throbbing less viciously, there would come the screech of the key in the lock, the drawing back of bolts, and the massive door would open. Carrying her candle, the grim nun on duty - usually Madeleine but often the pretty, blue-eyed Tertia, or Véronique - would enter and lay her scourge and implements on the side table, prior to disrobing. If it was sister Tertia, whom she dreaded almost more than Madeleine, Martine - even when hooded up - recognised her at once by her custom of hooking the whip haft to the victim's clit ring, where the evil leather snake would be left to dangle while the nun stripped with deliberate languor, a preface that added terror to the flagellation and subsequent cunnilingus.

"Now you wanton scum," the termagant would remark, retrieving her thick length of horsehide brutally from Martine's groin, "you won't forget what I'm about to give your fork of lascivious gluten," - the repulsive leather adder dredged between the palpitating labia, sticky with arousal, and then flicked over the breasts - "and how these jouncing bags of meat are going to flatten." Tertia would strike and strike hard, bringing out hoarse gulps from the larynx, as if the slut was choking on a clotted load of Anselme's sperm.

The regular beatings and 'schooling' of her writhing body reduced Martine to almost normal proportions. But worse than sessions with the nuns was the dismal duty of satisfying the demands of the Dominican himself. Hung from the vault hooks, Martine felt her beliefs, like her sex juice, being drained out of her. Yet, as orgasms emptied her, she managed to retain what was left of her convictions.

It was towards the close of her third week that Martine heard Sister Madeleine's soft announcement. "Our indulgent and most gracious Mother superior considers your progress and loss of fat to be satisfactory. This entitles you to be assigned at last to the Vault of Verification prior to your being returned. You will spend three days and nights down there and we trust you will work diligently, slag, to earn your discharge."

Uncertain as to what sort of discharge the woman meant, Martine felt elated at the prospect of leaving the convent. She had done what she could.

Her joy was short-lived.

The already fast dwindling body, blindfold removed, was dragged down to the Vault. The slave's heart almost halted when confronted with the spine-chilling machinery. No previous cellar could possibly compare with the sight. The rows of whips and irons lining the side wall turned her to ice. At the same time there was consolation; she was not alone. Apart from the initial Preparation Cell she had shared with Pauline, she had known only solitary confinement.

Suspended by the wrists, legs fettered wide to iron bolts fixed in the flagstones, a stark-naked female hung gleaming with oil. The head, enveloped in black leather, was chained backwards and from the rectum emerged the summit of a ribbed plug. The prisoner's flesh rippled from armpits to knees with fresh lash welts, shredded with purple scars glinting where pincers and rakes had been applied. On the superb, concave belly a deep brand mark in the form of some cabalistic sign stared out - no doubt that of the prostitute's owner. Although overjoyed to have company once again, Martine was given no time to observe more before her flesh too was consigned to chained bondage.

With the help of the pert, vicious peasant slag, Annika, Sister Madeleine ran a chain down from the stone spandrels of the vault to pass a curved hook through the rings in Martine's manacles. Unlike the female facing her, the new victim's head was left to loll forward before her straining biceps - no doubt to allow her to follow the proceedings, a privilege Martine barely appreciated. Her body, fully tensed by the chains, tottered a pace from the wall. While Annika adjusted a stout rod hinged to the masonry to grate the arse cleft, the senior nun parted Martine's legs wide, tethering the ankles to iron wall staples. As the body distended, Annika drove the penis-shaped shaft past the sphincter and up into the bowels. Martine's already well-disciplined anal muscle relaxed immediately until the stanchion could penetrate no further. The nun slapped the breasts. "That's how a thinned down whore should look, no longer obese like a rotten load of mutton. You filthy whore!"

Well exercised by countless shafts and rigid cocks - the worst being Anselme's - Martine's rear then gripped the ribbed stave. Thus, even if her splayed vulva invited fucking and the usual tortures, her distraught brain told her she was at least safeguarded for once from sodomy. She tautened anxiously, her sex dripping, trusting orgasm was not far off.

Annika verified the position and seemed satisfied; the slut hung rigid and tempting in one of the better postures for punishment. Although the huge bosoms had shrunk to quite agreeable proportions, thanks to continuous bondage and flagellation, they still swung enticingly, even provocatively. Annika passed her hand over the rump; there too the daily beatings had decreased the volume, the skin now drum-tight, without a crease.

"Compared with her state of entry, Sister," she remarked, again ensuring the anal rod was correctly angled from the wall hinge and fully inserted, "the gross drab has certainly slimmed down. The body's almost voluptuous, no?"

Madeleine did not encourage such trite remarks even from someone she slept with regularly, but agreed. "A striking change indeed, but the breasts are still a trifle flaccid." She lifted the globes of whipped flesh by the teat rings and slapped them. "They still need further beating if they are to satisfy connoisseurs. Now, Annika dear, you may go and inform Mother Priscilla and his Holiness that the bitch is ready for her final trial," - her practised hand bored up into the saturated vaginal tube - "and more, seeing her state."

But she was left to quiver in frustration, sheathed in sweat, as the two nuns left, locking the door behind them. Martine knew the cold-blooded woman was right. Bondage, the roving hands, together with the vision of the flagellated slave hanging before her, was edging her to the verge of orgasm. It was futile to try to converse with the gagged, marked beauty; in any event the naked whore had lapsed into unconsciousness.

Martine waited, her wrists starting to ache, the inner thighs strained taut and wet.

It was indeed the long pause rather than the posture that corroded her. But then that she knew formed an intrinsic part of the 'training'. She recalled Pauline one night in the Preparation Cell describing how at her former master's house on the Ile St. Louis in Paris she was left in chains for days, desperate for a grain of attention, longing for the whip and sex; and finally, when it came, how she responded! Like a ravenous animal. Slave owners knew how to deal with lascivious females, she said. "The bastards keep you in abeyance, waiting, waiting, darling, until all you can think of is a lash across your cunt."

Dom Anselme's entry into the Vault of Verification, alongside Christophe and the heartless Annika, came virtually as a relief to Martine; time seemed to have been long since suspended. And her bondage had raised her to such a height of anticipation that she was ready for anything, anything the convent could devise. Even blood.

The trio's appearance made her realise another change in her: what had once been stubborn repudiation of her slave status - destructive, short-sighted hubris Joanne and the others called it - had become compliance and submission, the whip now part of life.

Once again nemesis beckoned. She saw the cassocks bulging over the thrust of the erections, Mother Priscilla having readily offered the two slave bodies in the Vault to her virtuous colleagues to make use of as they wished.

Sister Madeleine, accompanying the two prelates in case of need, gathered up their white habits, admiring, as they stripped, the muscular bodies and stalwart penises. Ignoring the hooded slave opposite, both men advanced on Martine.

The flagellation quickly assumed proportions far beyond anything the parpaillote had ever imagined possible up to that instant. The younger man was offered the slave's rump.

Despite the limited space between buttocks and wall, he managed to slice into the buttock crests and also strike the anal plug. That sufficed to despatch the nude into a crescendo of screams as the stopple jolted in the rectum. A blissful pause followed the first ration of lashes, a breather that allowed her sex to prepare for orgasm. She sensed warm liquid sliding down the curve of the rump to dribble on to the thigh and realised it was not oil or sweat but blood. It oozed from an earlier welt she thought had healed; instead of frightening her, the gash kindled lust in her. Her groans became short, frenzied yelps as the leathers swung again, now into her breasts that were already compacting agreeably.

"Yes... ahh, yes... master!" she moaned, forcing her head against the biceps of one arm to shield her face and give the whip full leeway to pound the udders. "Yes, thrash them... Lash the lust out of my sinful body... Martyr my nipples... Make them shed blood..." The raucous croaks differed from those that had startled Madeleine days before in the Chamber of pleasures. They were cries of crude, wanton lechery. "Scourge them... Split them!"

"That we shall do, heathen slag!" Anselme's retort covered her shrilling.

Slicking pre-ejaculate over his awesome pestle, the Dominican came forward to take his subordinate's place, raised his quirt and brought the thongs down across the still swaying loads of breast lymph. Martine wailed as the meat flattened and rebounded under the strokes. Again like the convent bells tolling, the mammaries swung across the ribs before being slugged again into the armpits, reddening under Anselme's onslaught. On the point of ordering Madeleine to screw a pair of carpenter's clamps into the roots to proffer and immobilise the throttled bulge of flesh he relished, he changed his mind, roused by the flabby slap of the dugs as they jolted and collided. Baring his teeth, the saintly soul struck directly across the areoles. Martine yowled, presuming her teats were about split open as she had pleaded for.

As his associate had gashed the buttocks, he was not going to be outdone. After punishing the upper area of lubricity, he felt the lower zone needed attention. Zealously, the monster struck upward into the crotch, the thongs flaying and parting the labia to sink succulently into the clammy oval. Two-dozen lashes led Martine to flounder in those eddies that her convent ordeals taught her were about to be submerged in the riptide of orgasm. Only a few more strokes and the surge would drown her. The beast seamed to know precisely how a slave's naked body functioned when bludgeoned between the thighs.

But instead, she was given cock. During the odious pause that followed the last lash she dared to open her tear-blurred eyes to see the prodigious prick approaching. Despite the rumours that abounded regarding the prelate's reluctance to use a vagina, a moment later the blue-veined spigot had entered and broached her, battering the cervix and the anal shaft beyond the membrane. Martine rode the grinding for as long as she could, then wailed, surrendered and, without awaiting authorisation, came violently. After what seemed an age of further hard fucking and yet another cataclysm, she felt the jets of semen siphoning up into her, clogging her entrails. She let out a final bray, orgasmed again and slid into the bottomless abyss that engulfs a slaked female. Sister Madeleine watched the final spasms and the droop of the body in its chains. Clearly, the slave bitch had not only changed corporeally but was making outstanding sexual progress.

"A veritable whore," the Dominican observed, wiping his cock on Martine's thigh to free it of her spume and his last pearls of spunk. Disregarding the slut's audacity in spending without sanction, he motioned Madeleine forward, she preparing her crotch for the still rigid Brother Christophe, only to be cruelly disillusioned.

"Lower the carrion to the appropriate level, Sister, if you would," Anselme said. "We cannot leave our young apprentice here in a state of abeyance." The nun had to agree and was ready to relieve the youth's one-eyed monster of its load. But that too was denied her. Obeisant, she ratcheted down the wrist chain sufficiently for the exhausted slave to reach the paving, the hinged rod torturing the anus as she knelt.

Despite her condition, Martine knew what was required of her. Passing her desiccated tongue over her lips, she made an O of her mouth, her cheeks hollowing as Brother Christophe's shaft rammed into her gullet. He had waited long enough.

Grasping handfuls of the dark, matted hair, he jammed the infidel's head against her still taut arms and pumped while his mentor and a still hopeful Madeleine looked on in admiration. The youth's gluteal arse muscle clenched with each thrust; he was learning fast. What better apprenticeship for a lad, the nun consoled herself, than the throat of a whipped whore-slave? But of course, he had already used every mouth in the convent.

The slave sucked competently enough, descending to the shaft root and, when given the chance, lapping her tongue round the swinging balls. When finally the semen came she choked (rather inelegantly, to Madeleine's mind) but swallowed as if gulping down her ration of morning gruel. More astringent maybe but Mariette had said it was beneficial; screaming did irritate and parch the larynx and pungent sperm helped.

Taking pity finally on Madeleine, the Dominican compensated her. The senior Sister rode the huge shaft with zest, her climaxes exploding violently, threaded with vile oaths.

Vaguely, Martine heard the man addressing the appeased nun. "That is to thank you for your righteous service, Sister. Now, unquestionably, this parpaillote wench can be restored to the care of our dear Marquise. I shall so inform Mother Priscilla." He marked a brief pause "However, having observed this slut's performance - and her difficulty in quaffing sperm - I suggest she merits a farewell favour, one that reminds her of the august Convent of the Annunciation which has expended so much concern on her welfare. I have consulted already with your distinguished Superior and she entirely agrees, should it be helpful, to the foul heretic being branded. Searing her heathen flesh will remind the sow of her status. So, Sister, lug the slave to the chamber of Brimstone and Fire and prepare her. The gracious Prioress has consented to attend. She will bless the Irons."

Having delivered the sentence and watched Sister Madeleine's assistant, Annika, hurry off to escort Mother Priscilla down, Dom Anselme summoned his apprentice to his side. He gestured towards the second chained nude, who had meanwhile come to life.

"Meanwhile, Christophe, my lad, this other load of meretricious whore-meat also needs a further taste of the scourge before she too leaves these holy precincts - in her case for whatever brothel is negotiating her purchase. When you're stiff again which, faced with a nude of that elegance, should be soon enough, ratchet her up a shade so that she hangs free at the paving. And flog the depraved trollop. You may use her in any way you wish thereafter. She has to understand fully why she's being trained." With a wave of the hand, he added: "But, pray, don't waste too much time on the slag since we'll need you to deal with this one." He turned. "I presume, Sister, all is ready next door as usual - the slab, brazier and irons? The brand should be white hot. Waiting only debilitates a whore."

Debilitated also, the fucked nun nodded, hoping the young minx, Annika, would not be too long on her mission, for she required her help in stretching the victim. That was something one could not perform single-handed and the prelates - who always worked without gloves in order to feel the nude's flesh as it welted - could not possibly be expected to soil their chaste hands in merely readying a sweating female for branding.

While the young prelate lashed her colleague's suspended, head-hooded and gagged body, Martine was released and hauled by Madeleine to the neighbouring chamber. Fortunately she had not far to shamble. The unexpected condemnation to the scorching-hot flesh-iron had deprived her of what energy her flagging spirit had managed to conserve. She sensed herself sinking into the slough of despond, trepidation and a sick feeling of injustice chilling her as they had done during the first days at the convent.

Stumbling in chains again, Martine felt her body being greased afresh by the insufferable Annika who had returned with Mother Priscilla (always present for brandings). The slave looked fearfully across at the chains on the dark slab of granite being prepared by Madeleine. Handling her lean body that had shed so much lard, clearly delighted the nuns and the prospect of a heretic being branded intoxicated them. The brazier had not been used for some time.

Although prohibited speech, Martine risked a futile plea for mercy. "I don't think, sweet Sisters, I can take any more. And I'm due for release. Please be lenient. I'm at the end of my tether. I did what I could back there. I'm full of semen. Please, let me rest..."

"Nonsense, whore!" came the reply. "And keep your mouth shut unless it's needed for cock or cunt. You heard the Holy Father, so stretch out on the slab, belly upwards."

Crossing the sweltering chamber to be shackled, the slave was almost overcome by the reek of sweat and a lingering odour of seared flesh. Fleetingly, she noticed the brazier smouldering in the far corner, a long branding iron protruding from the incandescence. Remembering Bette up at the château, Martine realised what was about to happen, even if still unaware as to what part of her body was to suffer: someone would seize the iron, tap it free of cinders and advance on her... Clearly, the Dominican sought to ensure that her farewell was memorable and indelibly abiding. For the first time in days, she prayed.

In the Prioress's eyes, this now well-shaped slut by the name of Martine had not abjured and fully merited it. The brand could be planted on the cheek, shoulder blade, breast, rump or pubis; Dom Anselme preferred by far a nicely shaved pubic mound, amply frictioned and oiled, the body bound abnormally tight. A branded pubis attracted users.

In her time Martine had writhed, screaming deliriously, on several other torture slabs the convent had to offer its inmates, but certainly none had been fitted with these outspread iron rods hinged to the stone verges; more unsettling, the bars lay at the level of the breasts and terminated in parallel clamps fitted with screws. As her half-starved body was chained taut by the smirking assistant, the four limbs extended to their fullest extent, Martine tried inwardly to recite a psalm but the sudden reappearance of the two still unclothed prelates, unwilling to miss the shackling, daunted her. Their looks were enough to turn her again into the naked strumpet she had become.

At a sign from the head Sister, the young probationer, Annika, began to crank the windlass until the slave's articulations reached the limit; another turn spelled dislocation and torn ligaments. Then Annika jammed a pawl into the toothed wheel. Amazed at the slave's new slenderness, the onlookers gazed salaciously and in wonder at the extended flesh, admiring the change brought about through flagellation and sex torture.

It was Madeleine who swung the heavy bars on to the chest and, bending over the thorax, slowly tightened the metal screws. Martine let out a hoarse groan - it was all she had left in her - as the iron jaws sank into the breast roots, the flesh belling into scarlet domes. As the areoles and ringed teats bulged, the veins pulsated like trapped worms.

Dom Anselme, his cock stiff again, nodded to his acolyte.

From the far side of the vault came the rap of iron on the brazier's rim as the youth freed the brand of clinker, and the heat approached. The cross of metal sparkling and smoking at the extremity of the rod was the last thing Martine saw. Fully expecting it to descend into the summit of her strangled breasts, she went rigid as the iron seared into the pubic hump. There it hissed and fumed a second, the unearthly yell reaching Mother Priscilla, watching attentively from the shadows. The slave called Martine had passed out. As well she might - they always did under the irons. By Monday's first light the young bitch of an infidel, always risky stuff to have about in a training centre, would be gone, and good riddance. As Prioress, Priscilla much preferred forming brothel merchandise but a good turn done to the nobles up at Lassignac never went unrequited. Moreover, branding a slut brought in revenue. But as it was for the Marquise, Mother Priscilla did it gratis.

Donning their white habits, Anselme and Brother Christophe left, magnanimously escorting the forbidding superior to the door. There the wimpled head turned. "The devout and gracious Marquise de Lassignac, Sister, will send her lackey to collect the heretic at dawn on Monday," And the Dominican put in: "when their weekend revelries are over and which," he added with a touch of offended pride that rankled, "as their chaplain, naturally I do not attend. See the scum's carcass is cleaned and salved before departure."

Madeleine bowed, delegating the task to Annika for her name rhymed with arnica.

In her Spartan quarters, Priscilla allowed the friars to kiss a pallid hand, white as parchment, and offered them a flagon of small beer, which she believed they deserved.

"Well," Anselme announced, "that drab of a slattern should serve the noble Marquise well now. And, pardi it will be one more off your overburdened hands."

"Oui-da," she agreed. "And, by the bye, did the girl abjure while being thrashed and tortured? Just for my information, you understand."

"Overtly, no. But inwardly she has learnt her lesson, I believe. She will assent to anything now, as long as there is a whip around. Conversion will come later."

Martine was hardly aware later of kneeling, thighs well parted, before the Prioress, this time in the refectory. Apart from Madeleine, they were alone.

"You have, I am glad to say, graduated into womanhood," the ethereal voice told her, "and hopefully your horrendous beliefs have been whipped out of you. Your conduct, sexual and otherwise, has improved noticeably since your entry here. I only regret it was necessary to brand you but that is a detail." The woman's eyes descended to the dark purple cross, pitted in the lower belly. "You will now be returned to your noble mistress to serve her with devotion. Should you, by chance, be sent here again for correction, I shall be constrained to have you flogged to the blood, branded again but this time on both breasts, and sent to a field brothel to serve our gallant dragoons who labour so valiantly to rid the kingdom of heresy. Therefore strive to fulfil your calling." She glanced at Madeleine who nodded, the Superior adding: "Come Monday, a château servant will remove you from our sacred confines and return you to where your now more presentably slender body belongs. Meanwhile, you may watch the evening's flesh sale here in the refectory and thereafter, grace my bed. If you fall short of my requirements there - and I warn you I tend to be demanding - I'll have you hung by the legs and thrashed. Now you may go."

Thus, for her final moments at the convent - and doomed to Mother Priscilla's crotch - Martine found herself for once in the company of the other dozen or more inmates assigned to the convent for special training. The females were led in and chained stark naked to rings arrayed along the refectory wall; there they were examined and appraised for value by a small group of beribboned, professional slave dealers who were intermediaries between the Convent of the Annunciation and the more notorious stews in the capital, places known in Paris as fish ponds. There, whores were hooked for good.

The hucksters seemed more vulgar and terrifying than anything Martine had yet seen. Bouchard and even Coursel up at the castle were gentlemen in comparison. For once she felt strangely relieved to be predestined for Lassignac and all its works rather than for the flogging brothels of St Lazare and the Marais in Paris.

The 'convent' was a fashionable watering hole for procurers and flesh-peddlers and, quite naturally, demanded its percentage on transactions. Females up for sale, Martine noticed, were clearly distinguished by metal discs dangling from the neck strap. Some of the nudes were hot from flagellation possibly, she thought, to demonstrate their mettle and carnal resilience, while others stood temptingly unblemished. Staring in disbelief, the heretic found it difficult to understand the distinction since all on sale were certainly destined to places where leather-clad libertines had the whip hand over slave flesh.

Towards the end of the room, separated from the merchandise on offer, a bevy of freshly arrived candidates for training or revitalising looked on with bewildered eyes and melancholic expressions of despair, particularly when sister Tertia or Véronique lashed out with the service whip to correct a harlot's stance. Only Martine felt apart, her swollen, cauterised pubis still seething; bearing no disk and hence unpriced; she was ignored by the buyers but she watched each sale being concluded and the purchase being hauled out to be summarily prepared for the arduous ride north to her new abode, being used endlessly on the way. At least Martine reflected, she had only two leagues to cover to Lassignac.

The bartering over, she waited anxiously for her own transport at dawn to be announced. The prospect of rejoining Joanne, whether she had abjured or not, set her heart racing, for her former colleagues would barely recognise her, so slender had she become! Too excited, there was no point in trying to sleep, although she needed it sorely.

Long after the sales were over and the human wares had left the refectory, Sister Tertia came for her and led her to Mother Priscilla's bleak chamber. What happened there between the coarse sheets she would never forget. But she survived.

She would soon be shivering before the convent portal, anxiously waiting for the arrival of Coursel with the mare. And probably the loathsome harrow.

***

Up at the Château de Lassignac, the tension in the castle cellar had risen to a point Joanne found hard to bear. She had been lying extended on the ladder for the better part of an hour and knew how erotic her body must appear to anyone devoted to whipping young women. The position that kept her thighs crossed and clenched sent weird thrills through her entire body.

Roped tight by Marie-Félice, she knew it was reckless but asked the question.

"What happens now, Mistress?" She felt she had the right to know what her first ceremonial weekend entailed.

"Silence, drab!" the assistant hissed, although little pleased her more than to be addressed as 'mistress' by a slave of her own age, bound and awaiting torture. "You heard the sentence, so keep those ringed teats stiff, and wait. The guests will be down shortly - they had venison for dinner," she added cruelly, "including the one who chose you and your delicious body. I trust he'll let me whip you, to get you heated up and ripe."

Although relatively new to her role, the shrewd bitch knew a promising slave when she saw one. She gazed again at the sweating contours she had secured to the rungs. The bunch of metal sex rings lay practically concealed between the clenched thighs; an almost imperceptible line ran from the rib arch over the diaphragm and navel to the sex mound above the sex slit. Parpaillote or not, this one's figure was spicy, made for the whip!

Escorted by the Marquise the visitors entered amid a waft of heady perfumes, to discard their cloaks and select their instruments from the cellar table; those who had brought their own handed them to Simone for greasing. From where she lay, Joanne could just glimpse the group of veiled dominants, now stripped for action, sauntering among the nude offerings and no doubt uttering platitudes before each bound body. In fact, she heard one female voice complimenting the hostess: "Oh, Elodie, what a truly charming spectacle once again. You never fail us! Just how I like a girl to be chained - tight each side of the cunt." Joanne saw the spiked glove caress the links splaying Dalinde's slot.

What surprised and disappointed Joanne was the absence of the Marquis Francis-Etienne. Strange and unsettling. She remembered the smile he had given her in the holding chamber when, weeks before, he had flogged Martine. And she recalled the other, more recent moments of privacy... But why was he so often missing? Out hunting perhaps - for boar or unfeathered game with big breasts. Mariette had often jested that the handsome Marquis could not decide between nocturnal adventures and his castle's homely comforts.

As if by way of compensation for his absence, a powerful figure approached her sweating body, a sturdy erection jerking with each step the man took with what seemed to be a halting, lame gait. While the other guests took their places next to their allotted victims, the man gazed down at Joanne's taut nudity confronting him. For a moment he did not move. Masturbating slowly, he stared almost wistfully, pleased with his choice.

Suddenly Joanne heard Therèse - or was it Bette? - groan as a length of leather slashed into bare flesh. Then other cries and thuds resounded through the vaulting. Joanne's attempts to identify each moan filling the cellar were cut short, very suddenly.

De Montclamart - she recognised him from Marietta's earlier remarks whispered in the drawing room upstairs - addressed her directly while she stared at the pulsing cock and torso above. The terms he used were far from harsh; they sounded almost placid.

"I have selected you because your breasts attract me. The sexual entry to your body, though enticing, I leave to others. I am about to treat your breasts to a session under the quirt and tongs. That should provide ample stimulation for you to climax, should it not, slave? After all, we both seek enjoyment, no?" A gesture brought Marie-Félice's steely beauty forward and suddenly the girl slashed into Joanne's breasts, the broad lappets at the end of the quirt adding fresh marks. Gritting her teeth, Joanne recognised the sound all too well - the hiss through the air, the dull schlack! and her own grunt. And again the hiss, schlack and whine. And again... Joanne could hardly believe such licence was given to a junior slave handler and yet, to be scourged before a guest by a common domestic proved as exhilarating as it was humiliating. After the waiting, the bite of the whip was almost a relief. Joanne bore the punishment well; her superb udders squelching under the blows. The position on the ladder did not vex her. On the contrary.

The beating also pleased de Montclamart. "Oui-da, ma belle! Now whip the teats harder but slower, while I sort out my instruments. There's little I relish more than one female whipping another's saddlebags. The triple-thong always arouses a bitch, diantre!"

The slave managed to restrain her cries as the prancing bulges - or saddlebags - began to bloat again; it was as if somehow she lay outside her body, watching the flagellation. Then the flesh began to numb under the strokes, the crushed vulva leaking.

"I think that should suffice," the clubfoot announced. "Now, rattle down those long chains and haul up the teats by the rings as far as they'll stretch. Yes... Now block the chains. I need the flesh tensed,"

Sweating from her exertion, the dark-haired servant had lowered the links from the pulleys in the vaulted ceiling, passing the hooks through the teat rings; then, pulling hard on the chains, she distended the whipped breasts aloft into straining steeples of taut flesh.

Although week after week of stringent torture had enhanced her stamina, the victim groaned like a beast in labour; the elongation became unbearable. In a forlorn attempt to ease the tension, the slavegirl arched her spine but the higher she raised her thorax, the tighter the bitch hauled. With a nod, the man signalled to her to secure the chain ends to the wall, Joanne clenching her teeth in terror, moaning with pain. She had endured breast torture before but this eclipsed all the earlier ordeals.

Almost choking, she managed to raise her roped neck sufficiently to see through her tears what the guest had placed on her belly; the heavy pair of flesh tongs felt cold, like icicles in a Cevennes winter. Whatever he then laid on the black-numbered chest she could not discern but that further weight turned her to goose flesh. Shivering, she let her head subside again between the rungs as the torment commenced.

Straddling the ladder and body, de Montclamart launched into what Marie-Félice saw was to be a exceptional session, executed slowly, methodically and erotically.

What had been laid on the slave's chest then came into view. The man's gloved grasp sprang ajar the first of the metal crocodile clips. Joanne heard it rasp and recognised the jaws soon enough; she had seen Elodie one night use the clasps on Isabelle's outer sex labia; the staunch girl had taken the pain well as the sharp cusps bit deep into the flesh, only hissing with bitter affliction when an hour later the minx Anthea wrenched off the clips. Mariette had said they were the latest fad in some Paris slave-brothels, replacing the usual screw clamps. A slave just had to accustom herself to them.

"Now, Number Seven, you're going to take real delight in these," the man's voice promised. "They'll help you towards orgasm. And only orgasm will free you from pain." With that the guest leaned forward over the trembling nude and snapped the serrated metal clasp sideways on to each of the distended teats. Amid her moans and writhings, Joanne strangely found herself grateful for the posture the ladder imposed, for it locked her thighs and safeguarded the labial fronds from similar torture. At least thus far...

The breasts fully stretched towards the ceiling by the clenched teats, the limping guest took up the tongs from the belly and set to. Joanne gritted her teeth.

The initial pinchings around the tautened areoles seemed bearable until a blinding, purple streak of lightning stabbed through the slave's brain. The pincers' saw-toothed jaws seized lumps of her mammary lymph, twisting and wrenching the scourged meat then slowly descended to grip the breast roots; there the iron clinched, screwed and ground into the drum-tight flesh. Her shrilling spanned the cellar, adding to the cries and whip thuds issuing from other areas.

Although she had graduated in her time at Lassignac through many forms and degrees of correction - among which had been the other type of clasp Anselme had screwed on to her labia to open up the vagina for reaming, Joanne knew she could not bear much more. Even in her erotic fantasies the pain was always bearable. But on the ladder her strength was ebbing although her sex continued to throb and seep.

Still astride the ladder and his victim, de Montclamart watched the beautiful, sensuous torso writhe, jolt, rear a moment and then slam back against the wooden rungs. He knew the limit to which a young, strapping slavegirl could be taken but, dominating his prey emotionally as well as physically, he paid no heed to the slave's screams; they were part of his enjoyment. At the same time, as the agony spiralled, disintegrating time and place, Joanne was conscious only of three things: first, pain atrocious pain; the tempting cock dribbling over her; and finally blotting all else out, the sense of sharing her colleagues' privilege in exploring the secret groves of sexual slavery. As if participating in a sisterhood, her groans mingled with theirs, as their submissive flesh was mauled, flagellated and driven into orgasm. Joanne had joined the Lassignac weekend frivolities.

A long pause in the proceedings ensued leaving Joanne to wonder what more was to come. To distract her mind from the ladder, she recalled other moments and one in particular: in search of ready flesh, one evening Anthea had seized her in the cellar and, demanding total compliance, had taken her to a punishment cell for a bout of what she called 'the sort of love making that I really enjoy'. Chained spread-eagled on the torture slab, her head over the far edge, Joanne had 'enjoyed' a session of much pain and some pleasure with fortitude. In addition to her spiked nipple cones, Anthea wore the infamous double dildo: the rigid length of stitched leather bobbed at her groin with menace, half of it buried in the bitch's own vagina, the median flange, knurled on both faces with studs, cupping her clit. When fully inserted in Joanne, the artefact (fashioned for Anthea by Brissac, the blacksmith) provided intense orgasms for both fucker and fucked. Laying the full weight of her body on the helpless nude, the minx rammed the dildo in hard, crushing both clits while the atrocious barbs round the teats scarified the victim's breasts No slave was ever the same after one of those interludes, despite the fierce climaxes and even if later Simone did soothe the breasts and crotch with calamine mixed with sperm.

***

Returning to her present predicament, Joanne caught sight of the Marquise strolling round her cellar, monitoring matters. Thrilled, Elodie looked forward to enjoying Anthea - with a spare slavegirl to whip at the bedpost - later between the silken sheets, once the guests had retired with their victims. She could hardly wait.

Delighted with the progress of the evening, although annoyed by Francis-Etienne's absence, she approached that area of the cellar where the ladder was posed with its new vibrant offering. She watched her slave Seven trembling on the rungs in the final throes of torment. De Montclamart bowed, greeting his beautiful hostess.

"Excellent whore flesh... yes, truly responsive." His compliments were lost in the tumult of wailings from the other appliances. "Somewhat turbulent but responsive, dearest Marquise. I congratulate you on your purchase."

"Thank you, Maitre," she smiled, ignoring the term 'purchase'. "I presume you'll wish to continue with her, once she has simmered down." As an important public notary, he was to be treated with unction. "I'm glad she didn't pass out on you. She must learn to remain conscious while being used and to place her sexual gifts ahead of her personal whims. But, by the look of her breasts, she's showing promise."

The guest realised the session was over and clumped off to watch those of his associates still at work. Elodie gestured to her favourite slave handler to release Joanne. As the chains descended and the nipple clamps were removed, the tortured blonde let out a strident scream of pain as blood returned to the teats. Elodie chided her slave. "They'll be fine in a day or two, my beauty. Now, I want you to continue with him, particularly as you've not had an orgasm. But remember, Maitre de Montclamart has a horror of the female genitals so you'll have to fend for yourself. Now, off you go, sunshine, after you've had your gruel and water, and do your best to please him for the rest of the night. And try not to flake out. It lets down the house."

Her muscles stiff and almost incapable of supporting her, Joanne struggled off the ladder, prostrated herself and kissed her owner's thonged sandal. "If you permit it, dear mistress," she pouted, astonished at her own audacity, "I'd rather not continue with... him. He's terribly cruel... I'd rather be whipped and raped..."

"What's all this nonsense, child? No one's raped here. They're fucked. And he's one of our firmest friends, an upstanding man." Remembering the great cock, Joanne found the adjectives appropriate. "And your fine whore body attracts him. Of course, you'll continue with him. In one of the special cells with which you have to become acquainted."

The slave winced. The prospect of hours in a private cell with him dismayed her.

Having decided, the sumptuous Marquise moved on, leaving the blonde to Simone and Marie-Félice who immediately secured the wrists to the neck strap and whipped her across the almost empty cellar towards the slave pen, next to which reared the fateful arch leading down to the cells. The very thought of that dark underworld froze Joanne.

As she hobbled forward Joanne caught sight of Laurent, still chained to the vaulting by the wrists, his ankles drawn back to wall rings. The youth's erect cock throbbed crimson; it was extended to the far wall by a chain through the ring pierced through the underseam of skin. The paving glistened with semen the lad had already discharged and Evelyn de Burre-Sage was engaged in wiping off her penis whip. But a more disconcerting scene was being enacted further afield: the fury that Anthea exerted in flogging Isabella under Elodie's admirative eye made Joanne halt. Hung by the ankles, the legs wide, the slim body swung slowly as the booted female used a braided flogger on the crotch and buttock crease, the pale undersides of the breasts awaiting their turn. The sleek Isabelle struggled weakly under the lashes. 'Oh heaven,' Joanne prayed, 'save me from that gorgon.' Then an impatient Simone drove her into the slave precinct to swallow the bowl of gruel.

Hardly refreshed by the cold pottage, she was then led towards the arch and stone steps. Beyond lay the cells that she had not so far frequented. Although terrified, she found her ringed sex flooding again. She knew she was being conducted into hell.

Weirdly, as she stumbled down the worn steps, Joanne suddenly wondered what had befallen Martine. In a way, she was relieved her headstrong sister-in-faith was not present to grace the so-called ceremonial weekend for, if it was providing Joanne with a certain fulfilment of her frantic erotic dreams, Martine would have fought like one of those wild cats that haunted the Cevennes. She just trusted the plump dumpling was in safe hands down there at the convent where no doubt there were understanding souls...

Having negotiated the treacherous steps Joanne found herself thrust into a cubicle hewn out of the bedrock where, to her surprise, Marie-Félice awaited her and Simone. Again the organisation astonished the slavegirl as she was directed to stand against the stonework and spread her legs to be groomed. Briskly the two women soused her body, scouring the flesh with a grooming-brush, fingers purging the anal and vaginal vents.

"You've got to be prinked up, gorgeous," the slave handler smiled. "Even if he abhors those unctuous cavities down there. But one never can tell with guests."

The cleansing over, the group passed several massive, iron-braced doors and halted the slave before a further entry emblazoned with a frightening heraldic escutcheon depicting a pair of crossed whips surmounted by an erect penis and pendulous balls. The chamber beyond was bleak and ominous as Simone lit a candle from her lantern.

"Against the wall, whore," the drab servant ordered. "Pull in that belly and wait."

The slave was chained by the neck strap to a wall ring. The two servants positioned themselves outside the doorway to await the clubfooted guest - who had an aversion to a female's lower orifices, pristine or not.

Nervously Joanne stared at the sombre block of granite looming in the centre of the cell. The far wall was festooned with scourges and perplexing articles of flesh torture; Joanne recognised some but not others. More disturbing to the newcomer but at the same time exhilarating, matching her secret phantasms, were the hasps set into the sides of the frigid altar. From them hung chains and shackles awaiting their quarry.

Time dragged by in the eerie silence. Not a sound permeated from the adjoining dungeons - not that screams, shrieks or the slam of leather could pass through the massive masonry. Joanne was alone in the underworld of Lassignac, waiting.

The drag and scrape of de Montclamart's feet startled her and she froze.

When the crippled ghoul appeared, handing his velvet cape to Simone, the object he held in his left fist cut the slave's breath: of braided horsehide, each lash terminated in a metal lug. The naked girl gaped at the weapon.

"You may leave, woman, and you too, Marie-Félice," the grim notary announced. Both females bowed, Simone sketching a curtsy which was more of a shrug. She had more pressing chores to attend to than watch a slave beating. In any case, this Number Seven was docile and would stretch out compliantly enough over the whipping slab. Marie-Félice, or the other hand, regretted the dismissal, giving the tortured breasts a final glance. Another session on those, she judged, and Lassignac could well have a problem on its hands. And the staff had enough to deal with as it was.

Then Joanne noticed the other item the illustrious guest held. He leaned heavily on the polished walking cane, a gloved palm cupping the chased silver pommel - which, to her dismay, was fashioned to resemble an erect penis and a hefty one at that. Inwardly she prayed it was not destined to gouge her rear orifice. Its size alone perturbed her.

"Did you enjoy the ladder, my beauty?" came the question, to which no slave in her right mind would ever have dared respond. Yet Joanne did so, courageously.

"Yes, distinguished master. But, deprived of orgasm, I suffer and..."

"But as a whore slave you exist solely to please me. And you did. Fully. Flesh such as yours requires inventive punishment. But your gluttonous lust will now be satisfied."

The blonde victim felt her vulva swell but reverted to caution and silence.

Laying the terrifying whip on the slab, the man released her from the wall. "On to our altar of sacrifice, slut. Mount it crosswise, belly up, head over the side."

Joanne was quite certain she was to be beaten not only with the scourge but with the cane and shuddered; only her buttocks, at most, could withstand that tapering length of briarwood; but luckily they would be flattened on the stone. Instantly she laid herself out as ordered and waited for the four limbs to be chained, her corn-blonde hair tumbling down the granite's flank. She felt her wrist manacles being attached to the corners of the block but, to her bewilderment, the splayed legs were left to dangle free over the edge, her sex leaking dangerously. After carefully adjusting her posture the macabre cripple, to her consternation, retrieved the scourge and retired behind the lolling head. The slave stared up at the prick and balls swaying before her face. The massive penis scared her.

Very abruptly, the leather thongs rose, hissed and carved into the crotch with a force that deprived her of breath; the splat over the wet orifice echoed round the cell as did the further half-dozen lashes, the metal spheres fortunately striking only the stones. Somehow Joanne managed to control her cries through the first blows and then screamed with force, the sex rings jangling like a yearling's bridle. Abruptly she was silenced as the man's erection rammed into the yelling gullet, her head thudding against the slab's side. Frantically, she suctioned and tongued with all her sexual talent, a gift gained through constant servicing of her Francis-Etienne - heavens, how she missed those dark eyes, the hirsute loins and that phallus - in the erotic seclusion of the west wing...

Ablaze with bittersweet pain, she felt her smouldering clit take over control of her entire body. Smitten by the thongs, the stub of gristle seemed to cry out for far more direct manipulation if it was to gratify its owner.

The man's curt command sounded incongruous amid the lashes.

"Up with the legs, bitch! Ankles on my shoulders. And continue to suck."

She obeyed at once. The cripple stared at the swollen fig in the crotch rising towards him; he dropped the scourge and, to Joanne's terror seized the walking stick. Instead of rising, it bore down, the silver pommel plunging in among the rings and went deep into the cunt, glutted with slush. Joanne sucked the penis in tune with the thrusts, feeling the crimson folds of vaginal meat being dredged in and out until, suddenly, the rod slanted back to scour the whipped clitoris. Before her mouth could draw semen, she found herself careering towards her climax with uncontrollable violence. The frictioning of the flayed stump brought her off prodigiously, more savagely than she had yet known, even after a beating. She let spasm after spasm explode like discharges from a royal cannon. Then, without more warning than a harsh grunt, the notary spurted and spurted richly, choking her. Joanne swallowed what she could, the residue frothing from her nostrils.

Leaving her jerking, still chained over the slab, her mercifully free thighs clenching and squelching, the guest used the flaxen mop of bobbed hair to wipe her spume off his cock and then from the briar. Half-conscious, she heard the comment: "You suck well for a filthy parpaillote and come viciously. Most edifying, whore, I must say. If I can retain you for the rest of the night and again tomorrow, I shall flog you to orgasm without burying a pommel in you. And may your misguided faith guard you if you fail, slut!" Still convulsing, Joanne vaguely heard the cell door creak on its rusty hinges and she was alone, traumatised but fully appeased. The session had elated her and fire licked her crotch as if melting the rings.

It was Simone who led her back to the slave pen where she collapsed on her straw pallet, quite alone, the others still servicing the guests. Spent in every sense, Joanne slept.

But not for long. The iron gate grated. Florence in her kitchen apron entered on feline feet and kneeling next to the smouldering body, spread balm over the throbbing sex.

"I've delivered the message, Joanne, and things are afoot. Keep alert. I'll tell you when the men are about to attack." She hushed the girl's question with a finger on the swollen lips. "Not a word, even to me. Orders from the Camisards. Just follow me."

The cook released the neck chain and silently led the somnolent girl to the west wing and laid her gently between the cool, silken sheets Joanne knew so well. As she covered up the body, the Marquis de Lassignac stepped silently out of the shadows.

"Thank you, Florence. Now let her rest." The man's murmur was too subdued for the blonde one to hear but he leaned forward to kiss the honey-freckled cheek. Drawing the cook out with him, he questioned her: "Now, what news do you have from your friends?"

Florence told him and they left Joanne to sleep. Only the jackdaws in the castle turrets seemed aware that all was not well in the wooded vicinity of Lassignac. But then, daws and owls, however wise, are just birds and humans rarely listen to their warnings.

***

Installed anew in his castle quarters, the weekend ceremonies over, it was Dom Anselme himself who informed Elodie of Martine's imminent release from the nunnery.

"Knowing your needs, gracious lady," he announced, pleased to be in office again, "Mother Priscilla and I - if I may include my own initiatives - have reduced your slave to the state you seek. She is, I am glad to say, now fit to re-occupy her place in your august cellar to do penance, naked under the whip. And the whore has changed..."

"Without conversion?" The Marquise raised a quizzical eyebrow, suspecting the probable answer which barely interested her, being fresh - or rather, prostrate - from a hectic session in bed with Anthea and the long-suffering Isabelle, the latter having been chained taut across the black sheets of the four-poster and used relentlessly. "I knew the convent would oblige," Elodie smiled, "and I hope she has been relieved of some of that obnoxious fat. I'll send Coursel for her anon. Thank you, Dom Anselme, for your patience, for I am sure you advised judiciously on the slut's training. We shall whip her soundly."

Just before daybreak the following day, Coursel covered the few leagues grudgingly with the mare and harrow, arriving at the convent amid the first chirping of birds. He was astounded by the change in the dark-haired slut shivering naked in chains before the pastern; it was not the abundance of welts and sombre contusions over the body that surprised him but rather the slave's sleek, diminished contours. If indeed she was Martine she was hardly the same slave he had hauled down three weeks before. Spreading her again upon the spikes of the same rusty farm harrow, he hesitated to fuck her but, once up in the sycamore grove, he dismounted and filled her.

Remarkably, the girl seemed to moan with pleasure. Could this be the same whore?

Soon after the body arrived before the portcullis of Lassignac and a moment later what had become almost a lissom beauty was back in the slave compound among her colleagues, they too, and Joanne especially, astonished at the transformation. Once on her pallet Martine kissed her parpaillote soul mate fondly. Then Joanne noticed the girl's body.

"Mon Dieu, they really slimmed and lashed you! Did you keep the faith, sister?"

Martine nodded. "And you? You're in a fine state too! They said you'd recanted."

Joanne stared at her and laughed. "Me? Have they whipped the sense out of you, sweet dunce? I'm still true and bright as the star of Bethlehem." She lowered her voice. "Florence told me you were due back and just as well because - and listen carefully - we're going to leave this prison and, if all goes well, this very week. Keep close to me, whatever happens. Just stay very close. And not a word."

Martine's eyes widened. Glancing at the other nudes chained alongside her, she saw that no one seemed interested in their murmurings; the return of a slave after a bout of training was a triviality, even if the body, for better or worse, had undergone a change.

Joanne took Martine into her arms and whispered what she had to impart. Bridling temptation, she spread spittle over her friend's welts and her own.

***

Beyond the massive walls of the castle, the odour of honeysuckle and boxwood wafted through the spring air, alive with the homely grating of the cicadas. The hills of the Cevennes rolled away into the distance under fleecy clouds that seemed to lie motionless, expectant in the sky. Time had halted as if surprised by a posse of men, several leagues away, gathered in the woods for prayer and briefing. The man on horseback went by the name of Lacombe, delegated by Castenet to lead the attack. The Protestant leader studied again the scrap of paper and Joanne's hurried scrawl. The bearded lieutenant called his posse of men, in their leather jerkins and clogs, around him and repeated the tactics for the coming Sunday's onslaught on Lassignac, when the castle would still be asleep. He chose the moment astutely allowing only a few hours to free and avenge their two abducted sisters. Each one of the group had been himself harassed by vile persecution, suffered forced billeting of dragoons on his household, seen his woman raped on the kitchen table, the cottages, temples burnt... The grapes of wrath were ripe.