Chapter 12

The office was easier to navigate since there was no one in it any longer. The secretary gave her the slip, It now had on it, "Ten strokes," and the signature of the officer.

"You don't happen to have any brandy handy, do you?" Joanna asked, gasping.

"Certainly."

A bottle of Hennessy's was produced from a filing cabinet and Joanna took a swig. Then three swigs. Long ones.

"Here. Let me put something on those."

Joanna said, "Thanks." But when the secretary had painted the weals with substance from a bottle she jumped. "Ouch, that stings."

"Yes, it's pimentade," said the secretary casually, replacing the bottle next to the Hennessy's in her files.

"Cauterizes. No infection. But it burns." She sat down indifferently to her work. Joanna drew on her clothes very cautiously.

"He broke the skin on the right," she said sullenly.

"Um. Idryss always does an excellent job. You'll have a sore bottom for a few days, I'm afraid, Mrs. Swanne. But it will be a good reminder."

Joanna wondered if the girl knew about the other thing. What if she reported the man? She yearned to speak about it to someone.

"I don't think I'm coming to Essbury, as you call it, again. Ever. I don't want another beating like that."

The secretary looked up politely. "Oh yes. I have to caution you. The same offense within a month will be fifteen."

"And after that?"

"Eighteen, though in two doses with an interval of twenty minutes in the Recovery Room. The lady before you had fifteen.'"

"You know it all, don't you?"

"All the rules, yes. Justice must be done, you know."

Joanna walked out, stiff-legged. A new Guard had come on duty on the dais. She handed in her signed slip and received her car keys. The place was empty.

The Guard, a tall, slim, cream-skinned Gladiator, smiled and said, "Enjoy your trip?"

"He needn't have buggered me," Joanna said in a surly tone, after a moment. She regretted it as soon as she had said it.

The Gladiator smiled even more sweetly. "If you're dissatisfied, I can always send you back for more."

"I'm sorry," Joanna stumbled quickly, "I didn't mean...." The girl was unclipping the switch at her waistband. Joanna paled. Her buttocks felt leaden and livid. Even the touch of her garments on them seemed to hurt. "Please, I didn't...."

"Just in case you might have been thinking about being insolent."

"Please...."

"Hold out your hand."

Joanna extended her right. The girl steadied it and extended it on the table. She did not get up. But she brought the whickering switch nicking into the open palm six excruciating times. The tip caught the pad of the thumb each time. Joanna had no idea the hand could be so sensitive and hopped, blowing on her palm and gasping when it was over.

"Now the left," said the still smiling girl.

Joanna's left hand was whipped six times. Once she moved, in her pain, and the tip scored her wrist. She took the cut over.

"Now the right again," said the girl.

"Please," begged Joanna, "please."'

Already the palm was hot and puffy. But the next six on each hand was worse.

"Feeling better?" said the girl as Joanna danced, her hands thrust under her armpits. "Stop hugging yourself for a second, and answer me."

"Yes," said Joanna.

"Good," said the Gladiator Guard, "but we might as well just make sure, mightn't we. Hold out that lovely right hand once again, would you."

Sitting in the travel agency ten minutes later Joanna found she could not write a check. She had to promise payment through the Reddicks. There was a night plane for Cairo in two days' time and she booked a seat on it.

Driving the Lagonda, she was a mass of pain. This had not been shadowy; it had been hard, stark reality. She peered into the quickening twilight. She had been rebuffed, rebuffed by the Territory. Beaten and buggered like, like ... an animal, a thing. The steering wheel even hurt her hands. while as for her bottom ... there was a wetness on her right cheek which she might, any other day, have told herself was perspiration.

Meadows stretched under a pale sky. This was not a part of the throughway she remembered. Darkness fell quickly in this part of the world. It would take her at least another hour to reach the estate. There was nobody else on the road at all, it seemed.

She shifted uneasily in her seat. She was going to have to go, she realized. That brute had filled her full of his beastly filth, pumped it into her deep, it was imperative that she get off the road and relieve herself somewhere. But this was The Territory. She didn't want to risk another shellacking like that. Surely it was somewhere along here that they'd taken that turn-off for the Smith-Peters the day Cynthia had got hers on the roadway.

Joanna peered. This was strange. She hadn't remembered hedgerows. Then suddenly she saw it, with a sigh of relief. She really would have to go quite soon. The lights were on at the cheerful house when she pulled up and got out some minutes later. She was preparing an abrupt, "May I use your john?" when she realized it wasn't the same house at all.

There had been a similar line of trees, a sweep of gravel drive, but this was an elegant little eighteenth-century mansion, the sort of place an aristocrat might have bought for himself in Buckinghamshire or Normandy, centuries ago. Urns flanked the formal steps, and coming down them was a man flanked, in turn, by two elegant setter dogs, a man in white flannels and a turtleneck sweater. That man was Edward Arborough.

He was smiling at her from the entrance.

Joanna was dumfounded.

"I'm sorry," she stammered, "there's some mistake. I thought Mavis Smith-Peters...."

Two lines pleated his teak-tanned brow. "But they live nowhere near here, Joanna."

He waved her in. She entered the marble hallway in confusion. His tawny eyes dropped to her dress, behind. The house inside was elegance personified.

"You've been whipped again?" he asked, smiling.

She felt her dress. "Does it show?" She smiled ruefully. "Look. Do you think I could use your ... toilet? It's rather urgent that I do."

Edward Abroborough moved to a bell-pull. It hung on striped silk and he tugged it gently. An immaculate French maid appeared immediately.

The man nodded and, as if understanding at once, the girl led Joanna off. They went up padded staircases, up, up-surely needlessly high-to an area of attics, where the rooms might have belonged to servants, in the old days. In a long low-ceilinged bare room glowed the embers of a log fire. A woman in riding dress of the old school, complete with black habit, was stretching out her legs to the last of the flames. She did not turn as Joanna entered, nor was her face discernible in the half-light.

"If you care to take off your clothes," the maid was saying.

"Why? What for?"

"I can see to your dress, Madam. Behind."

"Oh, all right."

They were speaking in lowered tones. Still the woman at the far end, in front of the fire, didn't turn. She appeared to be moving her jaws.

Joanna found herself naked. Why had she taken off all her clothes like this? It was true her panties were badly stained, however.

"If you'd step in here," said the maid solicitously. She indicated what to Joanna seemed to be an improvised shower area, raised and curtained. The maid drew back the curtains and, yes, there was steel overhead, taps, water escapes. Presumably Edward Arborough had been thinking of turning the attic up here in some sort of self-sufficient apartment. Joanna stepped into the bath-like affair.

"What are you doing?" she asked suddenly. For the maid had bent and attached her two feet, wide apart, to rings fitted in the flooring of the bath, or shower. It had happened before Joanna had realized.

"Mr. Arborough will be up in a moment, Madam."

Joanna resisted with her hands but with her feet secured apart it wasn't easy. In a second her wrists were handcuffed and drawn high over her head to another fixture in a bar above. The maid went away.

"Hey!" she shouted, realizing. "Let me down. Let me out of this."

She began sobbing.

"You!" she cried desperately.

"Me?" The woman in front of the fire turned. "You wouldn't mean me by any chance, would you?"

She got up and strolled over and suddenly Joanna saw that it was Sally Benson; she heaved a sigh of relief.

"You wouldn't like a sandwich, would you?" said Sally, standing behind Joanna with an unfinished one in her hand.

"Look, Sally, I don't know what Edward thinks he's doing, but for God's sake let me down. There's been some mistake."

"There was no mistake about the way you've just been beaten, darling. That's a really well caned ass. Did it hurt very much?"

"Agony. Now, Sally, please...."

"Hm. I've always wanted to see you whipped. So has Teddy Arborough."

"Well, he did, once. Listen, I've got to go. After that brute beat me he buggered me. I don't know if that's usual in this dump, but it's what happened to me and unless I ... pretty soon...."

"Good Lord, darling, I do believe I can see some good old gism drooling out of your behind, too. How very impolite. Do you think it would taste nice on my salami?"

"Sally! Please."

"You've come a long way, Jo, in The Territory since first I saw you at the Tennis Club."

"Well, I'm leaving it the day after tomorrow...."

"Even though Edward Arborough wants to marry you?"

"Sally ... please ... I'm going to...."

"Let fly," said Sally Benson calmly, and Joanna did. She hung in tears when it was over.

She was aware of Sally picking up some instrument. The instrument was a hose. The offending matter was swilled off down the drain and then Joanna felt the full blast of the icy jet on her back and loins. She gasped as it struck her. But she gasped more loudly when a stiff-bristled brush was rubbed down her skin, all over. Sally might have been swabbing down some chopping board.

"Ouh! Ow! Not there!" Joanna cried as she approached her well-wealed buttocks.

"A skinned hare, that's what you're going to look like, on the right cheek at least," were the comforting words that were returned her. "Heavens, how lovely and pink and rosy and excited you look from behind, my dear. Now let's try in front. I'm sure your nips are in shape for a little...."

"AAAAIEEE!" screamed Joanna lustily. "Not under. . .them ... yeeeooow!"

"Good Lord, what a row," said Edward Arborough calmly, as he came in. A porcelain lamp lit overhead. "Spare my eardrums, dear. You know how sensitive they are."

He was dressed like some hussar of old. Released, Joanna stood before him, dripping and penitent and wet, aware only of her body. The handcuffs still held her arms behind her back.

"You kneel," said Sally Benson tenderly, "when your lord and master enters."

Joanna knelt.

A thin whip was coiled over Edward's right shoulder. She knew only one thing. She couldn't stand another touch on her right buttock.

She knelt.

As in a dream, Sally Benson bent her curled red head and spat into Joanna's face. Joanna did not move. Sally collected her saliva and spat again. A gob hit the right eyeball, but Joanna only blinked.

"A slave must know her place. Lick my shoes, Joanna."

Joanna licked her shoes. The boots were imperiously high-heeled, the soles caked in straw and muck.

"I've just been cleaning out the stables, dear, so get a good taste. Come on, we want to see real slave slobber there, get to work."

"Good," said Edward Arborough tenderly, "very good."

When Joanna straightened, Sally spat. This time she spat on the boarding of the floor.

"Lick it up," she said politely.

Joanna stiffened. Her gorge rose. They were pushing her too far.

"You'll beg to before we're finished with you," said Sally Benson calmly.

She went to the fireplace again and picked up a cigarette. "Watch," she commanded. Still kneeling, Joanna watched, her arms behind her.

Edward Arborough uncoiled his whip. There was a feathering motion of his right arm, a sibilance of air overhead, and a sudden, popping snap. The cigarette in Sally Benson's mouth was alight, and she drew on it gratefully.

"Thanks, old timer," she said.

Joanna shivered. She stood up.

"This has gone far enough. I don't know what you two are trying to prove...."

The air whispered behind her and there came a crack like a pistol shot. She jumped. But the whip-tip had merely smacked the air inches to her right. Edward snapped the snake-like thing again, inches from her left.

Joanna hesitated fractionally, then ran. There was another snide murmur in the air and suddenly she realized that she was being held at the waist, as if by a dancer. She froze as she realized it was the whip. It curled itself gracefully round her waist, once, twice, thrice, and then as she stared, sickened and disbelieving, the braided tail ripped a furrow by her navel. Before the true pain came she had time to stare at the theatrically scarlet dye that encarmined her there, and then she was running again. This time she was screaming.

Edward wrapped the whip round her left ankle. Joanna experienced another mighty jerk and, upended, went crashing to the floor. She lay on her belly, panting and terrified, until the whip flecked at the flesh of her bare right bottom. Before she realized what had happened it had bit at her left. With a yell she shot her hands back. Only to catch them off in terror as the tail fell across her right, bloodying the knuckles. She fell back breathless, gaping in panic. As if hypnotized, she saw the whip curl again, tried to squirm to avoid it, only to find it following her. The tail plucked agonizingly across her back, jerking her onto her belly.

In that position he flecked her twice again. Crazed with pain (all she knew was that she couldn't feel another!), she rolled over and tried to crawl away. The whip slashed down a thigh.

"Nooooo!" she screamed.

"We thought you'd see reason, and realize your true position eventually," Sally said in a comforting tone of voice, when Joanna was once more installed, kneeling, before her. And she spat hard on the floor.

"Lick it up."

This time Joanna panted to obey, her tongue rasping the worn boards. She was frenzied with fear.

"Maybe you would like the last of this sandwich, after all," said Sally Benson in the same kindly tone, "only flavored first."

She reached under her apron in front, and rubbed there a moment. When she produced the remains of the sandwich a second later, Joanna though she was going to be given it to eat, and held her mouth wide open, ready. Instead, Sally Benson put it lethargically into her own mouth and chewed, reflectively. After which she spat it on the floor.

This time Joanna didn't have to be told. She threw herself on the gobby morsels, as if famished.

"Nice," said Edward Arborough, "very nice."

"Mustn't litter, must we," said Sally Benson, thoughtfully. "You know, there's one thing. I've always wanted to see Joanna whipped. I mean really punished, as she will be in one of those Gladiator Camps if she elects to stay, but then of course she isn't going to stay, is she?"

Joanna gave a massive shudder. "Please, please."

"She was apparently buggered."

"A tight circlet, I don't doubt," said Edward Arborough ironically.

"A very viscous flower, Teddy dear. An anxious moment, no doubt. Why don't you plumb the depths?"

"Please," said Joanna, "please."

"Is it married?" asked Sally, musing.

"Evidently not. It got a divorce."

"Would it like to sit on the bar for a while, maybe, while that thin rail of yours digs into its well-fashioned quim?"

"Or some electrical treatment, perhaps?"

"Impalement on that nice fat dildo of yours, Edward, with the pencil spurs to dig in if it doesn't keep erect. I tell you what, my dear."

"What?"

"Let's see how well it can do a slave kiss, shall we?"

"Good idea."

This time the whip shivered lazily over her spine, seemed to hang there a second, while she waited its bite in helpless despair and abandon, then it dug like an asp, plucking up the very base of her flaccid right cheek. She screamed and twisted.

"Very musical," pronounced Sally Benson. "Now give me the slave kiss, if you please."

Joanna stumbled on her knees to obey as if her life depended on it. She thrust her head under the apron in front. The whip sang again.

"EEEEE!"

"Idiot! The slave kiss, moron." Sally Benson showed her back. Suddenly Joanna saw that under the black apron skirt she wore no usual breeches. She glued her cheeks to the two warm, overhanging cheeks before her, gathering her saliva as she did so. "The tongue right up or we'll ... yes, that's very good indeed ... make it stiff and push!"

Joanna's breath rushed harshly through flared nostrils, as if mad, beside herself. Mouth open, she heard her own snuffling and breathing and then, as if from an eon away, a dulcet voice declaiming, "You've heard of a brown nose, my dear. Well now, let's see one."

How it ended, she never knew. She had sucked his smug cock, or had she? She was driving hell for leather along the last of the deserted throughway (let them try and punish her now!) and when she reached the estate she was unconscious, oblivious and blank.

Putting the car away in the garage, she came to herself. Had she indeed been mad? What horrible thing had ever possessed her, then? This night, as' she walked to the main house, was common and ordinary. So what was this life that she felt? Was she alive?

Cynthia and Alec were having a pre-dinner drink in the living-room.

Joanna said, "I got a Guarder. Do you mind if I take a stiff one?"

She went to the drinks tray.

"Bad luck, you," said Cynthia. She was her usual warm self.

Joanna wanted to reach out yearningly, absolutely.

Carrying the glass to her lips she said, "Yes, and that wasn't the worst of it all. After I'd been beaten, and, and buggered, I stopped off on the road to ... relieve myself at Mavis' place. But I must have mistaken the route, 'cos I never did find it, though I'm sure I took the right turning, and I ended up at Edward Arborough's."

"Well?" she said, in the aware silence that ensued.

"But," said Alec in a gentle voice, "Teddy lives nowhere in that direction at all. You must have made a mistake, Joanna."

"No mistake," she said grimly. "He whipped me all too well."

One hand went to the spot on her belly where the whip had woven round. She rubbed it ruminatively. All at once she realized there was no weal there at all. At the same moment she knew that her skirt still hung moist on her buttocks on the right. So the maid ... she looked down quickly at her left ankle, where he had wrapped his whip like ... there was no sign there at all!

Hastily she added, "Look, you. Don't try to give me that. I tell you Sally Benson was with him. She even egged him on."

Both of them stared at her steadily.

"Darling," said Cynthia in a consoling tone of voice at last, "Roy and Sally were killed in an auto accident this morning. She could hardly ... I mean, you must have been dreaming...."

"Announcing the departure of Flight 023 for Nairobi, Cairo, Athens, Rome...."

"Goodbye, love," said Cynthia pushing up her peerless face for the ritual airport peck. Joanna kissed it passionately.

"I hate to say," said Alec, holding out his hand.

She managed a "brave" smile. "You knew best," she admitted. "Goodbye, you both, and bless you. Thank you-God bless you-for everything you have done to me."

Her heart was gone, she had no more spirit. She turned miserably to the tote-bag she had brought with her on arrival. A few settlers were seeing their relatives off, dressed in bush shirts and shorts against the heat. Joanna's feet faltered. There was no turning back. At least not now. Nothing had been solved, after all.

"Goodbye, good people," was what she said.

She stumbled from them, in the silly line that led to an airport official. A tall woman dressed in boots and tight white breeches. Suddenly, preparing her papers, Joanna recognized her. And she knew Joanna.

"How you like your beating, Mrs. Swanne?" she said good-naturedly.

"I never knew it could hurt so much on the hands," said Joanna, smiling bravely.

Then she was crossing the scalding tarmac. Perhaps she had received a compass. Now she could find her way. The road to the great mass of metal called an airplane was narrow and winding, it led through dark meadows, and past soulful lakes. But it would rise to high summits at last, for every pleasure, as St. Peter knew, was answered by its pain.

Perhaps that was why, counting her blessings, she was suddenly turning, running for all she was worth, as it from the devil of orthodoxy herself, pelting down the melting tarmac, past the slackly lounging officials, the gunless girls in their tight white breeches, into the hot little oven of the tiny Shaftesbury airport, crying, "Please, please."

Alec and Cynthia had already gone, but there was another figure standing there, seasoned and tanned, his tawny eyes a-flicker, his mouth querulously sarcastic. She knew he had come to see her off.

She flung herself into the arms of Edward Arborough.