Chapter 4

GLYNIS WOODHAYE

The trunk of the car was hot. The transmission droned with a vicious persistent purpose. The hogtied girl was in pain. Rope bit at her everywhere: wrists, ankles, arms. Her feet doubled back to meet her hands. She was a package on her way to delivery.

The kidnaping of Glynis Woodhaye had been accomplished with demoralizing ease. She saw herself as having been "scooped up" or "collected." Hands and a gag had come from nowhere as she parked her yellow Lancia on the Silver Pheasant's parking lot. She had been dragged into the darkness and bound. When she had been lifted into the back of the car a male voice had asked, "Gag her tighter?"

"No. Take it out. She has to breathe. Let her howl. It doesn't matter."

She had howled. But, even to her own ears, the sound had been absorbed by the motion of the car. When her throat began to hurt she desisted. The dark enclosure in which she was doubled up after the slamming of the lid held her with the close intimacy of the womb.

Whilst feverishly searching for knots with fingers that might soon go numb, her mind raced with swift calculations: cash. Negotiable paper. Bonds...! Her ransom would most certainly be high. For Glynis Woodhaye there would be no bargains. She would not be traded for as cut price merchandise, and the money would have to be her own!

She was pleased with her ability to repulse panic. She would negotiate her release as shrewdly as she could. Tressler at the bank would take over and gather up her price. She supposed her kidnapers would allow her to phone. And she would be safe. The very immensity of her wealth ensured her safety!

Her most immediate concern was the rope. It was unacceptable that a few strands of fiber should change the course of her life. The primitive nature of the control was demeaning. It was also extremely painful. Handcuffs or tape would have been more appropriate for the securing of Glynis Woodhaye. But, no doubt, the pain of cinched elbows and arched back was imposed to make her tractable. She struggled furiously and long against the indignity before relapsing into angry surrender and glumly conceding helplessness. The whining wheels, with their assurance of speeding miles, mocked her impotence.

The blinding cloth over her head was instant with the opening of the trunk. Glynis saw nothing. She was lifted and carried, like a sack of potatoes, for a long way. She picked up changing scents and indistinguishable sounds.

Once she was put down while brutal fingers inserted a rubber ball in her mouth and strapped it tight. The end of her journey came when she was set upon her knees, and hands steadied her to sit back on her heels. The posture was strained and unstable, but she dared not jeopardize it, to fall sideways might be worse. Glynis Woodhaye knelt and waited.

She could understand the kneeling in pain as a softening up prelude to bargaining. She could not, however, identify the sounds. But fumed inwardly in the knowledge that she was observed. She made but one effort to speech. The sound was too shaming to repeat. She knew herself pathetically grateful when fingers fumbled at the cloth which hid her eyes.

But then came the nightmare.

Glynis Woodhaye knelt upon a sturdy table set well to one side of a large, ill-lit room. The tableau that met her startled eyes might have been on stage, with herself as the lonely occupant of a box beyond the footlights. A torch flared and smoked from a bracket on the wall. A fire of logs added its light of flames from the huge stone hearth. Candles, set to one side of the long polished table, gave extra radiance for the ancient man with the quill and parchment who sat, as might a judge, austere and remote. High barred windows added their own pale contribution to a scene from centuries long past.

The girl was panting. There had been a struggle, but now her wrists were bound behind-her back. Her hair was awry so that she made tossing motions with her head to keep it from her face. Her clothes were torn; splendid garments of nobility. Glynis, bemusedly, set their period, and that of the soldiers who held her arms, to be fifteenth century.

"You know my name...?" The captive twisted fretfully against the soldiers' grip. "You cannot do this thing ...!"

""Tis already done, madam." The ancient voice was weary. "And as for thy father's name-'tis not in favor."

"But I am a girl!" Lovely eyes searched the room desperately. "Harming me avails nothing."

"It will loose a stubborn tongue, young woman."

"But I have naught of which to speak."

"We both know better, M'Lady." The assurance was dryly caustic.

"What are you going to do to me?"

The young voice held courage, but also a terrible foreknowledge. Glynis shrank in mute sympathy and a sense of total unreality. Something somewhere had gone terribly wrong. With herself! Or with the world! Or those who had captured her! For the moment she forgot pain and peril, yielding in total involvement to what her eyes beheld.

"The cord has been considered most fitting, M'Lady."

"The cord? What manner of...?"

"Tis also called the strappado, M'Lady." The old tired voice was bored. "Thy body is thus unmarked, a most suitable...."

"But I have heard of it! The arms are pulled from their sockets...?" Disbelief vied with horror in the maiden appeal.

"Yes."

The terse, dry affirmative filled the room like a thunderclap. The captive girl struggled against the hands and the rope. Uselessly ... like the fluttering of a small bird.

"No! Oh, no! You cannot! 'Tis cruel beyond...."

"Indeed we can, M'Lady."

"But I can tell you naught!"

"Not now perhaps-but soon...!" A bony hand gestured.

The rope and the pulley had been there waiting. It took but moments to attach the tied wrists and to exert the tension by which the captive arms rose behind the captive back and the maiden head bowed forward as though in obeisance to the austere figure of the aged man.

"Expose her. Let us at least observe our work."

The full sleeves of the costly gown were rent, its bodice torn from the strained figure of the gilr about to be questioned. In unconcern, the voluminous folds were allowed to billow from the young hips so that its owner was naked from the wiast. Her arms already wracked unnaturally, the flickering light from candles and from fire illuminating the conical firmness of pert breasts now pointed at the rug.

"This is wrong! Tis wrong! Cover me."

It was a command, a relic of past authority. Glynis could guess no male eye had yet gazed upon the twin femininities now revealed. The girl twisted and turned ineffectually to hide what could not be hid, her slender nudity of breast and belly in strange contrast to the untidy billow of fabrics below.

"Tis right an' we say so, girl."

A panicky denial died on maiden lips, to be replaced by a moan of anguish as the rope inexorably raised her arms.

"You may stop this when you wish, M'Lady."

"I cannot! You know I cannot. Oh-oh-oh, no!"

"In a moment thy feet will leave the floor, girl. Tis a sad plight for such as thee. Come-end it?"

The lovely prisoner cried aloud in a series of moans rising to a crescendo as her toes found only space. Her torn dress rustled as her slenderness turned slowly at rope's end.

"Rid her of that rubbish."

There came fresh and different sounds of protest as the soldier's hands stripped away satin and brocade and silk. Each tug revealed more maiden skin added to maiden pain. Glynis looked in fearful fascination at the nakedness revealed and the grotesque warping of the punished shoulders and arms. The victim hung suspended in a cruel and terrible exposure, the slightest move or touch generated its own slow turn of the pendent beauty.

"Oh, please...! My-my-it must not be seen."

"Thy pubic bush is seen and noted, lady. We have seen many such."

"But I must not be naked! Not thus! Not with men!"

"Ton my soul, Madam, ye treasure thy pubes more than thy arms in their sockets?"

"Yes-oh, yes-not naked!"

"Hoist her."

For Glynis it was nightmare as her eyes followed the slow rise of the grotesquely stretched and distorted maidenhood and her ears were assailed by the cries, the protests, and the moans of female youthfulness wracked beyond endurance. When the searching toes came to rest beyond the level of a man's head, the dry old voice took up its dreary tale.

"When we check thy fall, Lady, thee and thy arms part company. Is that thy wish?"

"No! Oh, oh, oh, mercy! Please, mercy!"

The screams were frightful as it was done. The sudden fall, abruptly snubbed so that arms, shoulders, and body straightened into a vertical straight nudity in which even the breasts were flattened. The pitiful sounds of anguish robbed Glynis of awareness of her own pain and desolation. She had become one with the girl on the end of the rope. The withered hand motioned once more with the quill.

The soldiers were expert. When the tortured nudity was lowered to crumple, sobbing, to the rug, they pulled and thrust to return the torn arms to sundered sockets. Then stood waiting.

"Well?"

The ancient voice sounded more bored than before. The wounded girl raised her head at the sound of it, but nothing more. After long moments of silence she moaned helplessly, "Mercy...? Ye must show mercy-ye must...."

"We can raise thee and let thee fall a hundred times, girl"

"No-No! Don't! Please have mercy."

"Next time ye go higher and drop farther."

"Tis not possible-ye cannot!"

"Hoist her high."

The screams were continuous until the fall. When the young loveliness was once again gravitated into a stretched and unfamiliar semblance of womanhood, the screams stopped, to be replaced by a silence more terrible than sound.

"The lass has fainted, sir."

"Let her to the floor. Replace the joints." It was competently done. But a male hand sought a female breast, and then a female pulse. "The maid is dead, sir!"

The ancient sigh held only irritation. "Aye. It happens. Tis not common, but sometimes the heart...!" He gathered his parchments and his quill. "Shell be buried in hallowed ground. See to it. I'll advise those who need to know." He arose, tiredly, from his trying task.

The hood, once more, fell over Glynis' face.

"You look ravishing, darling." Rolfe Campys raised his glass. "A toast to sweet humility."

Glynis Woodhaye could not reply. She was still gagged. Her mind was working overtime to keep sanity in perspective. The contrast between the dark stone chamber with its tortured girl and his luxurious modern lounge demanded a difficult adjustment. To find herself bound and gagged and kneeling in enforced humility before Rolfe Campys took another. Nothing made sense. She made her small, sad sounds against the rubber ball in her mouth, and shook her head angrily against the strap which held it there.

"Chivalry demands I release you, beloved, or at least take out your gag." Rolfe sipped appreciatively. "Prudence, however, suggests I should say my piece while you can't say anything. You have a nasty way of cutting a man off.

The famous Woodhaye freeze."

Glynis fought for control. She had come this far on a journey unsought. It would be foolish to go to pieces before Rolfe Campys' bufoonery. She longed for speech, but contented herself with the knowledge her time must come. It must-it must! But to kneel like this...! In pain and silence! Passionately she longed to do him violence.

"By now, dear heart, you will have deduced you have been kidnaped. But you are not sure why." Rolfe smiled expansively at the bound and disheveled beauty kneeling to await his pleasure. "Let me end your suspense. I have had you kidnaped so that I may fuck you to my heart's content."

The bound girl tensed, her eyes betraying a fresh agony. Rolfe might be fooling-but! She shook her head in unconscious negation.

He held up an admonitary hand, as though she possessed the power to interrupt. "True, poppet, true ... you would have eventually fallen victim to my charm and, as a tremendous concession, opened your legs. But I got to thinking about that, and I asked myself why the hell I should kiss your ass to fuck your cunt.. You're the most icy bitch in the state and you need a lesson."

This time the shake of her head was conscious. She wriggled her wrenched shoulders at him to indicate pain. Surely...?

Rolfe failed to notice. He was in full stride. "Remember, Glynis, when you said you'd sooner be beaten than bedded? Well, now you have the best of both worlds. You'll get both." He mused quietly for a minute, then continued crisply. "And if you're wondering about rescue and a big hooha in the press, forget it. You'll be signing a power of attorney and I've got a marvelous accountant...." He bestowed his most charming grin. "I could keep you forever, sweetheart."

Glynis refused to contemplate his threat. Pain, humiliation, and the terrible thing she had seen were more immediate. She twisted as best she could against the ropes, frustrated, impotent, closer to tears than she cared to admit. Victim of her own revolt, she fell over sideways and lay helpless. The ropes burned more cruelly than ever.

"My, my!" He laughed delightedly. "Our Miss Glynis Woodhaye flopping on the floor like a gaffed fish! Here, I'll put you back up. And since I'm too tender hearted for my own good, I'll let you talk."

The surge of gratitude she felt told Glynis how far indeed she had been humbled. Striving with tongue and lips to bring her mouth back to normal she fought for caution. She was still helpless, and Rolfe Campys was unpredictable. "Thank you," she ventured quietly. And then: "These ropes are hurting me terribly."

"Is that an invitation to untie you?"

He would play cat and mouse with her. She knew him too well to plead. He would enjoy her pleading. Instead, she spoke of the horror.

"Rolfe, I've seen a girl killed."

"Traffic accident, poppet?"

"Of course not! Somewhere close here. She was young and lovely and they were tortuing her. The pain was too much-she died."

"Sure you weren't dreaming, dear girl?"

"No. I was there." Glynis shook her head in frustration. "I know nothing's making sense but I was there. I was tied this same way-I've been tied so long...! A strange half underground place and fifteenth century clothes....They tortured her and she died."

Rolfe Campys shrugged, his voice held no concern. "A loss of inventory, eh! Most trades call it 'shrinkage.'"

"Rolfe, what are you saying!"

"Wasn't me, actually. It was you." He smiled down at her. "Hallucination, I expect. You've had yourself quite a time."

"Rolfe, why was I shown that-that awfulness?"

"I suppose someone must have thought it would be good for you. If you weren't dreaming."

She sensed something best left alone. Her own pain and her own plight was urgent enough. She played her cards cautiously. "Rolfe, I'm not being hysterical. Cue me in on what this is all about."

"Say please."

"Please."

It was the hardest single word she had ever uttered. Looking up at him she strove to keep her face serene. Hiding the bitter shame on which she choked.

"I suppose that's really what it's about," he admitted reflectively. "Having you on your knees and hearing you say please. It's been a thing with me for some time now."

"All right. So you want me humbled. If this is it, how about letting me clean up and taking me out to dine?"

"No."

Glynis accepted the negative as implicit to the scene. She hid fear and a bitter resentment behind a cool rationale. "I suppose we can both think of all the things I should say now," she said slowly, thinking her way into a dark unknown. "There are stock exclamations and corny cliches. I don't want to make them. Can we consider them said?"

Rolfe Campys glinted admiration. "Of couise we can, dear heart. I said you were the coolest cunt in the state."

Glynis flinched at a word she had always loathed. Under the impulse of pain she made a plea. "Rolfe, can I get rid of the rope on my elbows? You've no idea how it hurts."

"No."

"But I'd still be helpless. My elbows don't need to be tied."

"Yes, they do, poppet. Look down at your tits, they're justification enough."

She did not look down, but her cheeks flamed. She had been all too well aware of her nipples thrusting at the thin stuff of her dress. Swallowing chagrin, she continued, "Look, Rolfe, I'm in a spot. I have to adjust. I don't want to provoke-I-I don't want to. ... "

"Get your ass whipped?"

"Rolfe, don't be disagreeable. What's expected of me? Surely I'm humbled enough like this?"

He refilled his glass and looked down at her with amusement. "I should be a bastard and sip this while you watch." He bent down and held it to her lips. "Here, drink the lot. You'll need it."

"Thanks." Glynis gasped from the excess and gazed up at her captor apprehensively. "Rolfe, tell me. Please!"

"You're one for the book," he chuckled. "D'you realize that, bound and helpless and kneeling at my feet, it's you who assumes the initiative!"

"I'm only asking civil questions while in great pain."

"But still Miss High and Mighty."

"I'm not!" Glynis was indignant. "D'you want me to cry? I expect I could. I'm miserable enough."

"I'd like to see you cry, sweets." There could be no doubting his sincerity. "Please start."

She sniffed disdainfully. "You've killed it." She wriggled uncomfortably and contrived to look forlorn. "You've read about this," she accused. "So have I. It's been done in fiction a good many times. A girl says no, so she's made to crawl. Is this doing something for you?"

"Yes."

"All right! What do I have to do?"

"If I untie you, will you strip? Prettily, of course."

"No."

"Modesty?"

"Only part. It's a childish thing for a man like you to want. You must have seen and handled a hundred naked girls."

"But not you."

"That's an admission it's just a thing in your mind."

"See what I mean!" There was amused triumph in his voice. "Come hell or high water you're going to put a man down. Keep him in his place."

Glynis sniffed again. "Can I help it if men never grow up? The look on your faces makes me feel like buying you a baseball and bat."

"How about a whip?"

"Rolfe, at least try and be original."

"Sorry, beloved, I'm pure corn. If I untie you will you spread your legs nicely for me?"

"No, I won't! You're just pandering to your own ego. There's no reason why I should too."

"Would thrashing you provide a reason?"

"Not one either of us would be proud of."

"Honeypot, can you glimpse in which direction we're drifting?"

"Yes. Confrontation. You're going to do something beastly to me. You've maneuvered yourself into a position where you almost have to."

Rolfe's grin was shadowed. "Shows the hazards of intellect and sweet reason," he mused ruefully. "I should simply have beaten you into submission, fucked you well and truly, then locked you up ready for next time, and gone about my affairs. We'd both be better off."

Glynis recognized truth, a knowledge inherent in all women. The Male was still the physical fact. The Strength. His compulsion to plant his seed in female wombs was the motive force for most of life. Through connivance to gain her ends, Woman had become the stronger. But in the recurring act and the brief moments of his glory he would always best her. To cling to virginity was as un-likely an achievement today as it had ever been. Prompted by a feminine mischief she could not control, Glynis asked coldly, "I thought that's what you were going to do?"

Rolfe shook his head in mock sorrow. "Okay," he conceded, "I'll admit defeat." He bent down and reached for the knot that secured the elbows of the kneeling girl.

Glynis tensed. The vibes were wrong. This new Rolfe Campys was a force. She gasped in pain as the deeply bedded strands were peeled from her flesh. But the feeling was good, good, good! "Thanks, Rolfe."

"You're welcome."

The silly exchange of courtesy was like the deployment of hostile troops. The still captive girl contrived to awkwardly rest on one hip in order to extend her legs for her captor's attention. She winced again in painful gratitude as loops fell away from ankles and knees. When she was hoisted to stand erect she was cruelly stiff. Everything hurt. But the hurt was good.

"Gosh, that feels better! I really am grateful!"

Glynis looked back over her shoulder and smiled. She thrust back her bound hands for his convenience....

Nothing happened. The tied girl had bent forward helpfully. Slowly she straightened and looked questioningly at the man who had sauntered from behind and was now regarding her with what she mentally labeled as smug satisfaction.

"My hands are still tied."

"Tied but not forgotten, beloved."

"Please untie them, Rolfe?"

"That 'please' is noted and recorded, sweetheart."

It went against the grain. But Glynis gave him her best sweet little girl smile and tried again. "Please untie my hands, Rolfe. The way they are, I'm so helpless."

"Delightful."

She tried not to sag in defeat. She must not admit the bitter disappointment. Rolfe Campys was playing with her-cat and mouse!

"Very well, what now?"

"Negotiations, sweetness."

"Am I allowed a point of view?"

"By all means, beloved. I wish to hear." Rolfe smiled winningly. "Your sentiments on certain questions are vital. For instance, the matter of your clothes...."

"I have already told you. I will not strip."

"But I wish to examine your tits and pubic hair."

"Phone a call-girl. They come fully equipped."

"Hmmmmm, we'll pass that one for the moment. Now! I wish to fuck you. Will you help?"

"No."

"How about a blow job?"

"Don't be disgusting."

His gaze and his voice were both level. "Glynis, how seriously are you listening to what I say? Do you believe I'm fooling?"

She twisted strained shoulders against her tied wrists. "I have to pay attention. Have you any idea how helpless I feel-having my hands tied behind my back?"

He shrugged. "Being helpless like that is a reality you can't ignore. How d'you suppose you can brush off the other?"

"I can't. I'm relying on the decencies. Rolfe, where am I? What's this all about?"

"You're at the Seigneury. Hadn't you guessed?"

"And there are no decencies here? I suppose this explains that awful thing I was forced to watch?" She paused, breathless. "Rolfe, are you going to throw me into something like that?"

Silently he turned to the mantle and took therefrom the thing he had laid in readiness. Glynis' eyes widend in dismay. Purposefully he flexed the long length of plastic, bending it double.

"New improved version of the old willow switch or a cane," he explained casually. "Your legs and your arms are bare. It will hurt quite indecently."

"You expect me to just stand ...?"

"No. I expect you'll leap around a bit. I'll just follow along and let the switch fall where it may."

It was like slow motion. In dazed disbelief, Glynis watched his motions, the swift, decisive motions to hurt her. Exclamations crowded her lips but she uttered none of them. They were only words-and there was no time!

"Sorry, poppet...."

Her scream was of anger and outrage as her leg was lanced by fire, a beastly kind of pain against which she had no defense. She tugged desperately at her tied hands, twisting helplessly in travail. When she saw the switch begin another curve she backed away.

"No! No-Rolfe, don't! Oh, don't!"

Because of her retreat, the blow cut across her shins, a sickening stomach turning agony. Driven by instinct she fell to the rug and curled her legs as best she could beneath her skirt. But before she could mount defense the next blow cut at her arms, wealing both. Another followed, and another...! With a wail of anguish, Glynis struggled to her feet, mourning her bound hands, uncertain and distraught. The withe followed her as she leaped away.

"Probably hurts more than you supposed, sweetheart?" The inquiry was casually polite.

Glynis faced him, panting and at bay, like the pictures of wild animals-trapped. The pain of her wounds was atrocious. Reason had fled. She could only gasp, brokenly, "Rolfe-oh, Rolfe-!"

"Yes, beloved?"

"What's happening to us? Why?" She could find no adequate words, only a cry of anguish.

"You are being beaten, dear heart, to persuade you to ask me to untie your hands so that you may become a woman instead of an iceburg."

"Rolfe, not like this-I won't-I won't! I can't!"

The blows continued. Even in the refuge of a corner the short, sharp slashes impacted where she least desired, so that she again fled seeking a sanctuary the room could not provide. Her whole being cried out against the binding of her wrists and the resultant helplessness. With her hands she might have stood some chance. But tied...! Her moans and cries were of agonies beyond the demeaning pain. When a slash missed her arm and impacted on her breast the pain was frightening, scarcely modified by the thin stuff of her dress. In blind panic she again fell to the floor, curling into a pathetic ball of punished femininity, and sobbed, "Kill me-Kill me then! Kill me...."