Chapter Eight

The mists rising from the Tarn river hovered round the uplands of the Mont Lozere like a ghostly skirt as the men set out towards the hamlet of Bellecoste. The march through the bracken, still moonlit with the last glimmers, proved arduous until the sun rose. The posse halted in a gully for morning prayer, sharing the scant provisions of cheese and stale bread; it would be foolhardy to seek more at the Pont-de-Montvert where a company of dragoons was billeted.

The men veered to the south and mounted laboriously east towards Lassignac, its presumptuous turrets still dimly shrouded in mist. By daybreak they had arrived in the dell of gorse bushes just below the walls and rested, arms in hand. Castenet's lieutenant, Lacombe, the locksmith from Mende, leading them, the group offered up a psalm and received a blessing from their accompanying pastor who knew he was jeopardizing his life, if caught. Crossing the outside paddock, Lacombe led his troop to the stable doorway that, as planned, Florence had left on the latch - a risk she had taken with stealth and courage the previous evening, ensuring the castle was abed. Only three lazy guards, she had said, patrolled the battlements, and they would be sodden with drink. All the steps had been taken in line with the Camisards' message sent to Joanne hidden in a loaf of bread, both message and bread being shared with Florence. Thus all was set for daybreak on this, the Sunday of retribution, revenge and rescue.

Passing cautiously through the straw-strewn stalls without raising a neigh from the Marquis's stallion and the mares, the posse stunned a couple of dozing grooms and bound them; soundlessly the Camisards gained the rear courtyard, still shielded from the early rays of the sun by the crenelated battlements. There the men received their first shock.

Hanging naked from the gibbet bar above the yard's platform, the deathly pale female seemed to have frozen. The slavegirl Therèse had in fact spent the night there, following a prolonged flagellation from Bouchard, the major-domo; the whipping had been inflicted in line with Anthea's orders, for the slave's slovenly behaviour during a session of breast torture, for which the wretched nude had been chained to Elodie's bedpost. The Calvinists stared at the body with a mixture of horror and shock, for she was enough to awe and disturb even the chastest parpaillote-in-arms. Silently, at Lacombe's whispered order, one of his men crossed to release her; the bruised body collapsed to the boards with a groan and was covered with a horse blanket from the stables. Few of the men had ever even seen a naked female, let alone one chained, anally impaled and thrashed purple.

The drowsy guards on the ramparts were disarmed expeditiously, one receiving a pitchfork between the ribs, the others being tied fast, without cries or struggle. They were replaced by Camisards from the posse to watch out for the dragoons. Then the courtyard door to the keep was forced, that too left unlocked by the devout Florence.

Silence no longer vital, the sabots and weapons echoed through the tapestried passages as Florence herself appeared from the kitchens to greet Lacombe. After a brief parley with her, the austere Calvinist dispatched his band to various parts of the building. His orders were simple: "Kill in the name of Sion and Gideon only if you must, but bring the rest to..." Florence pointed along the long corridor and helped: "To the great drawing room over there brothers. And take care when you arrest the two louts, Bouchard and the bonehead Coursel. They could be armed. They're in their retreats down there on the left but spare the women with them. They may be of the faith, slaves or innocents." She looked at the leader. "Now is the time for you and a couple of our brethren to mount above and seize the Great Whore of Babylon where she transgresses with her accursed Anthea, that sister of Satan. They're your quarry too. Quick, before they wake."

"And the Marquis, Florence? And our two sisters in God, pardi?" the leader asked bluntly, aware he could risk only a few hours, at most, in the castle. "Where are they?"

The domestic hesitated. "I'm not sure about the Marquis but probably you'll find him with one of our believers in the west wing. The other is suffering in the slave cellar."

"We'll collect them later," the man decided. "But first, the damned Marquise on whose forehead," he quoted aloud, "is the name written, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth. Take me to the room, devoted sister, for me to slaughter her, as Joshua destroyed the inhabitants of Ai. Joshua 8, verse 25," he added.

"Would that be wise, brother?" the woman murmured warily. "Maybe Joanne and even Martine should decide what should be done. After all, it is they who have suffered."

The man hesitated a second. "So be it. But the gorgon - or both of them - shall be whipped naked until they repent." With that, he and three men mounted the stairs with Florence, Lacombe's sabre bared and flashing. He kicked open the door of the bedroom.

Jolted awake, the two dishevelled women shrank back, drawing the silk sheets to their chins. Hauled from the bed, the Marquise had just time to seize a thin nightdress and stagger after her captors; Anthea, reeking with sweat and sexual discharge, had no such chance and was hustled out stark naked. Too alarmed to struggle, both women had their elbows bound behind, one of the Camisards pricking the younger female's buttocks to hurry her down. They stumbled into the great room, horrified to see virtually the whole household prisoner and aligned, kneeling in bondage. Only the Marquis was missing.

A moment later, Elodie and Anthea were also forced to their knees, a thickset Calvinist threatening the heaving breasts with his billhook. Trembling indignantly, the two glared at their enemies in silence. Time passed as the sun rose, flooding the room.

Having finished collecting the servants - Bouchard, an unclothed Coursel, his huge cock limp for once, a Brissac without his blacksmith's apron, and a naked Marie-Félice, drooling with what had been pumped into her in Bouchard's bunk - Florence conducted the Cevenol officer and a few men along the dim passage leading to the west wing and to what she knew it contained.

Joanne lay luxuriously upon the silken covers, listening to the Marquis, dressed in riding clothes, reading Racine to her. On the side table were the stale remains of the loaf, the scrap of paper it had concealed serving as a marker in the Marquis's book. The domestic composure of the scene left Lacombe dumbfounded; the Marquis seemed to be privy to the sudden violation of his castle. But there indeed was the startlingly alluring maiden from Pressignac, listening placidly to her captor. Only the bluish purple lash marks over the body, together with the manacles and flesh rings, showed she was one of the two slaves the posse had come to retrieve. The young, freckled face greeted the men with a broad smile of welcome as the Marquis closed his book, rose and bowed obsequiously. Gently he helped Joanne to slide off the bed into a fur-lined cloak. Frisking the noble Master of Lassignac for weapons and being about to bind his wrists, Lacombe perceived the girl's shake of the head, and desisted with a shrug. His stare at Florence showed the relationship lay beyond his comprehension.

The strange couple followed the Camisards and the cook into the long corridor.

Once in the drawing room, Joanne was offered Elodie's throne and, after she had spoken to Lacombe, the Marquis was allowed to stand unbound at her side. Open-mouthed, the household - and Elodie - kneeling in obeisance, saw the Marquis take Joanne's hand.

Guided again by Florence, Lacombe then descended into the cellar. The spectacle there alone justified the perilous attack; the candlelight flickered over a row of naked slaves cringing against the wall. Above each hung a hideous length of flogging leather.

"Which of these pitiable creatures is our sister, Florence?" Lacombe asked.

Martine was released and led upstairs, where it was her turn to be amazed, as Joanne signalled her to take the armchair next to her own. Before her stretched the whole herd of her owners, torturers, flunkeys, chamber maids and servants, bound and mute. But more startling still was the figure next to Joanne. Gazing solemnly at the array of kneeling prisoners, the Master of Lassignac appeared unabashed, even congenial. Nonplussed, Martine recalled that awesome initial whipping she had received from him in the holding cellar weeks before, and scowled. Joanne gave her a glance to reassure her.

Now only the Dominicans were missing. The saintly man and his acolyte had long since escaped through the sewers and fled for refuge in the Convent of the Annunciation. Neither was particularly eager to face Martine, Joanne or the Camisards.

"Now they are before you, Joanne," Lacombe announced, leaning on his sword after ordering Martine to be given some covering. The pastor, pained by the nudity displayed in the room, readily offered her a long cloak left by some guest and still hanging on the wall. "We shall abide by your verdict," the Camisard went on, "and that of your sister in the Faith. It is up to you. Whatever you decide shall be done. I've mentioned the scourge but this," he held out his sabre, "would be more expeditive. And appropriate." A series of low groans arose from the line of captives.

If only the dragoons were not so far away, Elodie lamented in silence - massacring burning, scourging, raping, chaining and fettering. And the Pont-de-Montvert lay only an hour or two's march distant... Elodie prayed silently.

Glancing down the row of recumbent forms, Joanne turned matters over in her mind. Events had evolved swiftly enough, as Florence had foreseen. Almost freed, she felt forgiveness welling up within her. About to pardon, she heard her sister-in-faith yell from the chair beside her.

"Let those two hyenas there," Martine's shaking finger stabbed towards the Marquise and her paramour, "those bitches, be whipped! On the gallows, pardi, in the yard! And where are those two priests of Ashtoreth? May heaven damn them. Where are they?"

A sepulchral silence fell over the room, Joanne staring at her companion.

"When we've done here," the dark-haired fury went on, her eyes narrowing like slits left by a whip, "I'll lead you down to the convent, brothers. There I've retribution due. An eye for an eye. Tooth for a tooth. So, brethren?" Bristling, she challenged Lacombe.

The hush became eerie, Joanne avoiding Martine's eyes. She made up her mind and addressed the line of bewildered hostages.

"At the slightest sign of resistance, these men will burn this hell-hole to the ground. We know," - she flashed a look at Elodie - "who devised our imprisonment here..."

"Otherwise you sluts would have gone to the Tour de Constance!" Elodie screamed across the room, "you squalid pagans... to Aigues-Mortes to rot like rats..."

Joanne disregarded the shriek. "And why here?" she went on. "To be used as whipping slaves." She turned to Francis-Etienne. "Although you negotiated it with the Marshal and his damned dragoons, presumably you did so to content your evil wife and this debauched whore of hers." Anthea aimed and spat at her. "Moreover, you yourself, Marquis, flogged Martine here when we were suffering in the holding cellar." She paused and, to Martine's astonishment, added: "You used me unceasingly in the west wing. Not that I hold that against you. For reasons of my own. In fact you saved me from much degradation by keeping me to yourself. I do not grudge you that, for I too had pleasure. You whipped me, yes, but also you treated me as... a human being."

Martina was struck dumb, only to see the Marquis bow gracefully. He looked almost elegiac as he replied. "If I may speak, Joanne dear, allow me to say that, in a way, I am also to blame, even if I gleaned great pleasure and shared it with you. I admit enjoying your superb body, as much as you did mine. You attract me as few women have done."

Elodie let out a hoarse cry of fury, only to receive a sharp jab from the billhook.

"As far as I am concerned and under the circumstances," the bearded one went on, "both of you may depart. Your flesh rings will be sawn through and removed. Your manacles also and I'll see to it you're given clothing and footwear to leave with these..." he sought for the word, "...these friends of yours. If you wish use the mounts in the stables. But, in the name of our past joys, spare my house and those whom it shelters."

Elodie could barely believe what she was hearing. Had this devious, pusillanimous husband of hers taken leave of his senses? What was this trash about mutual attraction between her Marquis and an abysmal slut of a slave, about to abscond? Incredible! True, the goings on in the west wing had exasperated her beyond words. Perhaps the man was playing for time, despite his hand fondling that of the blonde bitch. If ever she came out of this mess, she would whip that whore into hell itself. So she had to play for time and detain the lawless posse of peasant louts as long as possible hopefully at least until the company of dragoons at the Pont-de-Montvert got wind of the scurrilous attack. As surely they must, sooner or later - for she noticed the young stable boy, Lucien, was missing from the row of captives and may have escaped. Unless, of course, a hayfork had already stabbed him, screaming, to the planks of the horse stalls...

"We have no need of your help, thank you. Marquis," Lacombe put in. "These girls seek freedom and, par ma foi, we'll see they get it!"

Joanne beckoned to the man to exchange whispers at length, Martine leaning over and gesticulating wildly. A further remark from the Marquis interrupted the parley.

"But, pardi," he urged, dismissing his wife's pleas for help, "let me at least order your slave rings to be extracted. It can be done forthwith by Bouchard and Brissac, the smith. Under your friends' supervision, of course."

"Not that bastard Bouchard!" Martine's cry splintered the silence like glass. "Anyone but that Amalekite swine, that whoremonger from Nineveh! Pour out the vials of wrath!"

Taken aback, Joanne looked at her and then nodded. "Very well, sister. Then Brissac'll do it alone, with Florence's help. In any case, we shall need Bouchard for quite another task - along with Marie-Félice." She had taken her decision.

"As you wish," Francis-Etienne murmured with eloquent reticence. "as long as your henchmen spare my folk and roof. If you will allow him to fetch his tools, Brissac can remove the rings and shackles here and now." Again the blonde nodded and Lacombe despatched a young Camisard to lead the blacksmith out. "But in what way, pray," the Marquis asked, "may my major-domo and Marie-Félice be of help?"

Joanne rose to pace the drawing room. "We have decided as follows. The entire household will descend to the courtyard, line up kneeling against the wall to watch the punishments my virtuous sister here proposes."

The stifling room became laden with menace. "We have decided that the pig Bouchard, shall scourge your lascivious wife while that trollop Marie-Félice, rather than yon bestial Coursel, flogs that hell-kite, Anthea, who had us sliced, shredded, and skinned me with her vile nipple cones, the bitch!" She paused to contain her virulence. "So, the Marquise will be hung head down from the gallows, that vixen there chained to the harrow. Is that what you want, Martine?"

The girl approved with an avid smile. Her maxim was simple: a humiliated slave should treat her tormentor, if given the chance, in the same way as the oppressor treated a slave, and unbelievably that chance had come. The pair of ruthless bitches deserved the whip, if not more, until their bodies and hopefully their malignant souls were cleansed with tongues of fire. And that, Martine added, Bouchard and Marie-Félice could do with the same ferocity as Sister Madeleine and Tertia down at the convent.

"So, I think we can start," Jeanne announced serenely. "And you, Marquis, will watch while it is done. Yes, I consider the penance my righteous sister proposes fully appropriate. It is, alas, regrettable that the two satanic priests have for the moment eluded us and their due punishment. But anon our brothers here will storm that convent of vice, if Heaven gives us time, and the wrath of God shall descend upon it."

The speech brought another howl of protest out of Elodie and a profanity from Anthea. At the same time, Brissac was booted in, his implements in hand while several Camisards took charge of the two propitiatory victims dragging them down to the now sunlit yard, Elodie being stripped of her nightgown. Her slim body gleamed like sliver. Still she could not believe the barbarian enemy was not only at the gates but within.

As his wife left, the Marquis avoided her glowering eyes. The prospect of the double thrashing to come quickened his pulse but also quelled some of his anxieties. A ration of lashes would not, he felt, go amiss on his insatiable spouse, leave alone on her lesbian whore. How Elodie would take the whip remained to be seen but, recalling the recent beating he had given Anthea in the armoury, he was far from averse to watching that slender body writhe again in all its profligate elegance. By paying for their lust, they would, he hoped, spare the castle from damage and bloodshed - the same could not be said of the countless protestant temples and humble cottages the troops had laid waste nor of the men wasting away in the galleys, the women in the Tour de Constance. Alas, alas.

He wondered further how his major-domo and the pretty slave handler with the strabismus would react to the order. Would they refuse? His doubts were quickly resolved.

Wrists freed, Bouchard and the nude girl seemed to accept their assignment without demur and they too were led out of the room. Anything to avoid those blades of steel.

"Now, down with the domestics," Joanne decreed "Have them facing the gibbet."

As the line filed out, the two girls leaned against the long table and parted their cloaks and thighs for Brissac to smear the slave rings. Florence supervised the task. Ring by ring, the quaking blacksmith sawed through and edged each circle out of the genital flesh and nipples. The shears then slit the five broad, studded straps. As the tackle fell away, the Marquis winced at the purple abrasions left by the leathers that had served, time after time, to stretch the sinews for flagellation, erotic torture and penetrations. Yet, catching Joanne's eye, he showed no regret over the prolonged sessions they had shared in the west wing. Nor, to judge by the girl's sidelong look, did she...

The pastor, who had audaciously accompanied the posse, averted his eyes from the spectacle of female sex organs being distended and freed. He had seen ample already.

The girls could hardly contain their joy as their extremities were relieved of the last tokens of servitude; as the metal fell to the floor, the bodies felt they had been lifted into the clouds scudding above the castle turrets and the mauve hills of the Cevennes.

Once Florence had smeared balsam over the inflamed flesh and closed the capes, the group gathered at the open casement, giving on the radiant courtyard below where Lacombe had taken charge of the proceedings. The sun gave the space an unreal aspect.

Forced to mount the steps of the slave scaffold, Elodie turned to look up at the figures at the window. Her eyes sent daggers at her former slaves. And at her husband.

"I trust you up there know what you're doing. You'll pay for this. I taught you to find faith through suffering and didn't try to convert you." Her fury was laced with venom. "Whores! I should have had you culled like diseased ewes! Or rather, whipped to death..."

With a contrite bow to exculpate himself, Bouchard a second later had her lying on the scaffold. Grasping the loop of rope dangling from the gibbet arm, he passed it over the right ankle and heaved on the slack. Slowly his owner's resplendent body rose aloft.

Joanne could hear Martine's breathing shorten as the nude beauty swung clear of the boards, Bouchard tying the already bound wrists to the nape of the neck above the flowing hair. The free leg was then bent back until the heel dug into the left buttock, a leather thong strapping the shin firmly to the thigh; it was bondage the Marquise herself had taught him. Up at the casement, Martine, with a sharp gasp seized her colleague's hand. "That's what they did to me down at the convent, Joanne," she murmured, "and then used my rings to wrench me open. Then..." Joanne shushed her. Elodie's sodden vulva had unglued, the labia parting above the tufts of golden fleece. Watching the nakedness being steadied for the whip, Joanne felt a jab of envy pierce her own sex. To be displayed thus before so many eyes was an experience and thrill she herself would not have disliked.

The woman's moans reached the casement. Aghast, the household kneeling along the wall saw the sweat trickling down from the crater of the belly, over the rib cage to drip from the teats to the planks. Even there she was elegant. Elodie Marguerite Helene de Vonnange-Lassignac was about to be flagellated by her own indentured servant - a humiliation beyond name.

"Did we look as tempting as that, Joanne?" the younger spectator breathed. "I'll wager you've begun to leak..." But her blonde cousin, indeed clammy between the thighs, was concentrating, unlike her companion, on her arch-enemy, Anthea; Joanne had more cause to loathe the spoilt lesbian slut and felt the bitterness welling up in her.

As ordered, Coursel had braced the harrow against the far wall of the yard and on it Anthea formed a star of taut sinew. The conceited bitch hissed as the bed of prongs drove into her flesh, Marie-Félice - fearing she might be next - dutifully wrenching the limbs to the four corners of the grid. Finally, Martine in turn had to gaze at the harrow blanching as she recalled the atrocious journeys to and from the nunnery; she could almost feel those spikes lacerating Anthea's body.

"Just look at that drab," she rasped. "Nothing but a load of lascivious depravity and thews," - her vocabulary had enriched since her incarceration, "only fit for the whip. Isn't she something, squirming there on the teeth? I just hope a prong's gone up her anus. You don't know the harrow, Joanne," she added, "so you can't know how she's enjoying it."

His eyes desperately trying to avoid the two nude bodies and the thatches raddled with recent discharges in Elodie's bed, Lacombe glanced up at the casement for a gesture from Joanne. When the nod came he ordered Coursel to hand out the whips - the thick horsehide flogger to his colleague, Bouchard and the supple cane to the ruthless girl standing completely naked in the sunlight, impatient to begin. The fact that Marie-Félice was to flagellate nude gave the scene a certain irony, for Joanne had only too often been whipped by a stark-naked Anthea, wearing her double dildo. The irony of justice.

Strangely, no one in the yard, least of all the floggers, seemed particularly disturbed by the rank, high birth and prestige of the victims to be punished; the Lassignac staff unerringly carried out what authority required of them, or, as under the prevailing circumstances, what they were now obliged to do under armed coercion.

Stripped down to the haunches, the major-domo released his crotch flap and brought out his battering ram of a cock. As it always did when he was about to flog a naked woman, the blue-veined shank of fucking meat, already secreting, throbbed prodigiously erect from the shag of sex-hair; the sac of balls swung stolidly below, preparing their load of sperm that Joanne's taste buds could never forget. Speechless for once, Martine stared at the thing, having neither glimpsed nor serviced it in her short-lived sojourn at the château. But Joanne could almost feel the blunt dome splaying her sphincter again as when, a few nights back, Bouchard had nonchalantly sodomised her against the passage wall while she was being led back to the cellar after a vicious session in Elodie's bedroom. Contrary to Dom Anselme's rod - an item Joanne knew almost as well as Martine - the major-domo's organ had filled her with exhilaration, in addition to succulent wads of healthy sperm. How often, indeed, had her three well-trained orifices gaped to encompass that cudgel during those interminable ordeals under the whip? Times without count, and she recalled the bizarre pleasures - and frantic orgasms - that stupendous helm and stock had given her and all her companions. Bette had recounted that once, in the course of a punishment entailing her being hung sideways by an arm and a leg, she had serviced three cocks at the same time - Coursel up her cunt, some masked guest using her throat, Bouchard in her anus - and she always preferred the major-domo; she could accommodate him behind with effortless ease. Or so she said. One rarely believed Bette.

As the whips were being soaked in the pail of brine that always stood at the foot of the gallows, Joanne continued to think back, wondering how she would survive without her colleagues, her sex rings, the whip and, above all, her Marquis. That the abject Elodie might, in the performance about to commence, enjoy the same thrills, nettled Joanne. But the prospect of Marquise's welts perduring for the best part of a week calmed her. Yet the thought of being whipped before the entire Lassignac retinue did excite her. Moreover, Francis-Etienne's hand on her shoulder did not help. Nor did the idea of leaving him.

Marie-Félice, stationed to the side of the grid, was running the tip of her cane over Anthea's triangle of crotch hair, after stimulating the nipples. Martine grasped her friend's hand even tighter enjoying the preparation, for the convent nuns had used the same technique prior to their beatings and torture sessions. Watching Marie-Félice, Joanne realized the juvenile slave handler needed no prompting; the brat knew a fully swollen areole when she saw one and long since had learnt how to rouse a clitoris or a male cock into erection, the mandatory state at Lassignac for slaves about to be flagellated.

"Commence!" The great walls, bereaved of swallows and human kindness, echoed back Joanne's order. Raising their whips, both floggers struck together.

Frigging leisurely, Bouchard laced into the pallid undersides of his exalted owner's jugs. Aware he was as much a prisoner as his mistress, he whipped flawlessly; the breasts flattened, rebounded and then squelched anew, marking magnificently, being callow and unused to leather. Yet, on one occasion, Francis-Etienne had tried them out, mainly to provide his lecherous spouse with an idea of the shock and possibly the pleasure her uncomplaining slaves received when she laid into them. Elodie had understood soon enough and, refusing further ignominy, told her husband to desist. By way of recompense, she had substituted for her own tender flesh a young milkmaid, who had inadvertently upset a beaker of cream, a crime, she felt, meriting thirty lashes over the fat udders and teats.

Bouchard's thongs worked steadily up the thorax and then slashed the soft belly. Screaming oaths already - something she allowed none of her slaves to do - Elodie arched backwards, her body gyrating on the single rope. The front well striated up to the broad haunches, the major-domo attended to the lean arse cheeks which the man had always maintained could do with welting; and that he administered with his customary force. Although it belonged to his gracious owner, he saw to it that the bottom reddened well. He knew every arse in the castle, at least those that lay within his purview of authority. But this one was new to him and his mistress's wild shrieks and writhings truly surprised him, for when beating cellar slaves, the girls did little more than shudder and groan. But then they were used to the lash; that was why they existed.

Having welted most of the body amid the woman's shrill shrieks, Bouchard paused to glance up at the window. It was Martine who gave him the signal without waiting for Joanne to concur. Bouchard nodded and brought the thongs down across the crotch.

Taken aback at the suddenness of the stroke and Elodie's howl, Joanne winced.

"I didn't really mean to go that far, love," she murmured hesitatingly.

"Then why hang the bitch up like that?" Martine answered. "Let her have a taste of what's served up at the convent. And you know what Bouchard always says, nothing drives a woman to orgasm faster than rawhide over a clit."

"But I don't want her to come," Joanne protested. Yet she let the whip continue, recalling what the burly monster, Evelyn de Burre-Sage, had done to her in the drawing room. But then, poor Martine had suffered a great deal more than she.

The thongs slammed and splashed into the flaxen-haired bush, a feature the slaves were deprived of. And it was a change to see a neophyte - if that was what the Marquise could be termed - learn the hard way. Oh, yes, the dissipated bitch had much to learn.

The screeching reached a new level of intensity, mingling with cries of repentance, dissembled or not, that no one heeded, apart from the uneasy husband.

"Listen, Joanne," he voiced his anxiety strangely. "My wife may be guilty of some transgressions, that I do not dispute but she's relatively inexperienced, you know..."

His remark also went unnoticed. Bouchard steadied the jerking carcass and whipped from the mons to the anal cleft, his preferred target for the major lashes - a target every slave at Lassignac 'should learn to relish with gratitude and sexual pleasure', he frequently claimed. Joanne had had it twice and, although she had orgasmed smoothly, she felt she could well do without a third visitation down there where sensitivity was at its highest. But, for his part, little satisfied the major-domo more than a yawning vulva, ringed, haired or shaved, so long as the clit had shed its protective sheath. Otherwise it was wasted leather and energy. A female had to learn to spend under the scourge.

Elodie reacted as all crotch-whipped women always did, her elegant torso rearing upwards in a fruitless attempt to protect the most salacious, lustful zone of her entire being - maybe, Joanne mused, apart from her mouth when Anthea kissed her or that pale clitoris the older woman gave her to flick and suck.

But the cries were to no avail. The bitch was too traumatized to orgasm and the major-domo well knew the thin line that divided pain from sexual pleasure; he had been told to punish not please, just as his mistress demanded of him when disciplining a pert, insubordinate slut who did not deserve a climax. So he continued to beat the vulva.

Ablaze with magenta welts, Elodie gave up the fight. The body slumped, streaming with sweat, as its owner petered out into that void where whipped females hover when beyond the reach of orgasm.

One, at least, of the Lassignac sorceresses, Joanne judged, had paid her due.

The major-domo lowered the body until the head and breasts lay flat on the planks and let his cock browse on the scorched vulva like a stoat sensing prey. Veering his stiff shaft downwards, he plunged into the bloated slot. Indifferent as to his owner's condition, he clutched the buttocks he had welted and used the inanimate creature ruthlessly, as he always did, whatever the state of the victim. With satisfied grunts, he fucked as he thought his captors wished him to do. Whatever their intention, he felt he deserved his usual recompense. When finally the discharge shot into the sufferer, Francis-Etienne looked at Joanne but said nothing. In the event, there was precious little he could say...

Martine, on the other hand, did comment. Her timbre was husky with exultation. "If that doesn't satisfy you Joanne darling, I don't know, by my faith, what will!"

Both perturbed by what had been set in motion and yet pleased with Bouchard's cooperation, the elder girl remained silent like the Marquis. She looked across the yard. The rays of sunlight had reached Anthea's writhing, caned body; the spectacle of the nude - that Joanne loathed with all her being - receiving the cane from another equally naked minx led the blonde onlooker to within a hairbreadth of orgasm; her clit needed only a touch of the finger to trigger the spasm. The loathsome lesbian had been beaten from armpits to thighs. Saliva trickled from the bitch's maw as Marie-Félice continued to ensure the pliant length of bamboo bit deep into the sex pad and slot. The hoarse yells seemed to delight the girl but, as Bouchard with Elodie, she took great care to deprive her victim of any chance of climaxing. Joanne knew through Mariette that the former slavegirl owed her adroitness to the cold-blooded Anthea herself who had taught her to hand over a slave, once well welted between the thighs and shuddering on the brink of orgasm, for a guest to flog or torment into fruition. Joanne recalled the ladder episode.

Having delivered her final stroke, the squint-eyed drab jammed the haft of her rattan cane into the vagina and left it there to throb. Preening with self-approval she stepped back, mopping her brow and soused cleft. She had done her utmost to satisfy the demands of the riffraff marauding the castle. And she had thoroughly enjoyed it.

"Yes, I think that will do," Joanne announced to the courtyard. "Leave the two daughters of Satan where they are, to consider their sins and ungodliness. It is time, dear brother Lacombe and friends, for us to leave this lair of iniquity and desolation."

With Martine pleading to have both victims' breasts throttled and skewered, as her own had been at the convent, Joanne shook her head and guided her down the stairs to join the Camisards who were becoming restless over a stay that was lasting too long for safety. Leaving the bodies where they were, Lacombe led his band of faithful out into the paddock. Adequately clothed and shod, the two girls joined the posse taking Florence with them, Joanne having just time to wave to the Marquis who had meantime mounted the battlements to do likewise to the only one - he claimed - he had ever admired. As he did so, he scrutinized the horizon of oaks and broom for signs of the possible descent of the dragoons. He shuddered to think what Elodie would have the sex-starved troops do to the two parpaillotes were they caught. He could almost see their chained bodies bleeding.

Pausing at the armoury for the men to grab additional weapons before heading for the nunnery, Joanne glanced back again. Coursel was withdrawing the cane from Anthea's vagina to replace it with his rigid cock. It was something he, as a lowly, indentured valet, had contemplated over many months. It was his own private revenge on the vain, insolent lesbian who despised him and treated him as a pile of horse droppings. Her being there, bound and barely conscious on the harrow, was a rare chance to avenge himself. He used her brutally and filled her where she lay, scorning whatever retribution might ensue when she regained her former status. He would say he had been forced to fuck her. Sufficient unto the day was the evil thereof... If he had fertilized her, so much the better. Later it would keep her at bay for a while.

The Camisards slithered down the hill towards the convent, the baleful Château de Lassignac dwindling behind the crest of the wooded hills. No one bewailed leaving it, even if Joanne regretted not having kissed her Marquis Francis-Etienne in the haste of departure, for, quite apart from the chains and the scathing lash, she had received from him a certain sort of affection. But few, leave alone Martine, would understand that.

The descent took time, the two girls dawdling, overawed by the sweet air of spring and freedom, the chaffinches greeting them from wayside branches and under the clear sky the Cevennes spread far away. It was unbelievably wonderful. Yet Joanne's thoughts went back to the desolate team of slaves still in the depths of the castle. They had no faithful friends to redeem them, even if indeed they wanted freedom and, with a twinge of grief, she imagined the reprisals Elodie and Anthea would now visit on them.

The lofty walls of the Convent of the Annunciation loomed up and Martine let out the cry Joanne half-expected. "Now comes my revenge!" The yell was sharp and shrill.

Mother Priscilla's fortified purgatory proved impregnable. Without ladders, grapnels, ropes, battering ram or an ally like Florence within, the walls defied the posse. The portal resisted firmly and Lacombe refused further risks. He sensed the dragoons or the dreaded Cadets of the Cross, now alerted by riders from Lassignac, would soon be upon them.

"Into the woods, brethren," he ordered. "Make for Marcillac." After reciting psalm 63, the posse vanished into the bracken to rejoin Castanet and the rest of the faithful.

Later, in the shelter of a secluded cavern, the girls lay down, exhausted, to rest, Joanne wondering how the venomous Anthea felt. She doubted that the bitch would be in a fit state that night to grace the bed of her equally distraught Marquise, and for once she cursed them with biblical vehemence. Too tired even to frot herself and lulled by Florence snoring nearby, Joanne took Martine in her arms and kissed her drowsily. Then the sleep of the just and righteous overwhelmed them.

***

Following the abrupt departure of the Camisards and their three liberated females, the atmosphere in the castle became even tenser. Released and tended to by the loyal Simone, The Marquise and Anthea vented their fury on Francis-Etienne; they considered him a cynical, vain and perfidious fornicator who had betrayed them after slaking his lust on a cheap whore of a parpaillote. To wreak revenge, the women fell upon the senior servants and Marie-Félice, accusing them of treason. The Marquis lay beyond their reach.

A stalemate installed itself between Elodie and her husband, who merely smiled as the Marquise fumed. Finally she ignored him, waiting for him to come to his senses and apologize. But he merely had his horse saddled and rode off for an afternoon of hunting.

She then turned to deal with the renegade Bouchard, Coursel and the two-faced Marie-Félice, Brissac's part in the drama being condoned. The major-domo found himself temporarily demoted and assigned to shovelling dung in the stables, replacing the lad who had perished in the horrendous attack. The varlet Coursel fell foul of Anthea's rage and was assigned to tilling the field beyond the portal, a penalty he found mild, given the pleasure he had enjoyed in availing himself of the conceited bitch offered on the harrow.

A very different fate awaited Marie-Félice. Audaciously she refused to repent, claiming she had been forced to obey and use the cane under threat of the Camisards' weapons. After slapping the girl's face, Anthea suppressed their initial instinct to have the slag thrown into the well; instead she persuaded Elodie to reduce the nude reprobate to her former state of slavery. Promptly, Brissac refitted her with flesh rings and the five bondage straps and then helped Simone to chain and impale the frantic body, more erotic than ever, on the gibbet. Using the crude argot of mistress to slave, Anthea told her what was to happen. She had no intention of letting the drudge off lightly.

"I'm going to flay you here in the yard and when Dom Anselme is back in our midst, he and I will deal with you in the oubliette over the next week. From now on you'll take the place of those two bitches who got away. And, pardieu, will you suffer!"

Smarting badly and still feeling the prongs stabbing her back, Anthea felt a visceral urge to torture the slut. Elodie consented readily but felt too exhausted to do much else than sip the remedial Schaffhausen water Simone had prepared for her. After distributing the various sentences the Marquise was helped back to her bedroom and its cool sheets.

Demoralized, the former slave handler found herself hanging from the gibbet bar, her thews taut, as Simone fed the anal rod into the star between the muscled buttocks. When the legs had been chained to the upright, the sullen maid was ordered to haul the head back so that the cane - the same she had used to scourge Anthea - had unimpeded access to the dangling breasts. Overjoyed to be back in service and, along with Coursel, not to have been penalized during the Camisards' assault, the hag pulled on the victim's sweat-drenched hair to jam the haft of Bouchard's scourge behind the biceps and across in front the mouth. Still unclothed, Anthea refused the mantle she was offered to cover her welts, instructing the domestic to suspend weights from the victim's sexual extremities. After fumbling among the gyves and irons beneath the platform, Simone extracted a series of metal lugs and hooked them, one by one, to chains hanging from each newly implanted flesh ring. Marie-Félice had forgotten how the ghastly traction could punish the teats and cunt labia. And she valued her sexual pinnacles like her eyes. Her moans, though stifled by the leather whip handle, told Anthea the body was ready for its long trek into pain. Barely audible, the sacrificial scapegoat attempted a final, almost inaudible, plea; she had only obeyed an order given under armed threat. And Bouchard, she spluttered, had done the same.

"Maybe," came Anthea's hiss, "but he's our flogger. You could have refused."

The girl saw no point in arguing with a closed mind bent on revenge. Bouchard was too valuable to Lassignac to be more than mildly rebuked and would be back in office soon enough, she was a mere menial and now a sex slave again. She knew she could now be whipped and even branded for causing Anthea to lose face before the entire household. As a slave again, she could easily be replaced by another whore - from the convent or by some parpaillote from some nearby ruined village. Her cunt flooding, she bit hard into the plaited leather gouging her jaws and waited.

Anthea lashed out with fiendish spite. The thrumming cane struck the base of the lavish bottom where the flesh was devoid of muscle. A streak of fire seared her brain, the flesh, until then white as candle wax, rising into a purple welt, thick as the crop itself. The slut bore it and the following twenty strokes with groans but also with her former courage, learnt in the cellar. But when the rattan sliced into the sagging udders, the bleats became shrieks. Anthea flogged the breasts as the bitch had flogged her far more elegant ones.

Up in her bedchamber, the Marquise heard the swish and thuds with deep delight but felt too weak to hobble to the lancet and watch the punishment. Once the bitch was in the oubliette, chained by the ankles and later, knowing Anthea's predilections, by the roots of the breasts, then it would be worth watching the odious squinting wench suffer.

Yes, Bouchard had to be pardoned and reinstated, for Elodie needed that muscular arm and authority. Nothing, not even the daunting invasion of the château, should affect plans for the subsequent weekends of pleasure. Her guests counted on her and she counted on her guests. It was outright sedition that those blasphemous Protestant villains had had the gall to attack a noble residence. They would pay for it. As to the Marquis - well, he would come to heel sooner or later. And she would ensure there would be no more sexual romances under her roof.

Whipped turquoise, the girl was released from the gibbet for Simone to drag down to the oubliette for the young she-wolf of a lesbian to use until the bitch repented - if she had a voice left.

In the cellar, the slaves were bewildered by the commotion above, the sudden abduction of Martine by armed men, and then Marie-Félice, fresh from the whip, passing by on her way to the lower regions. Such things had never happened before.