Chapter 3
Called Under the Carpet
"P-P-P-P-leeeeze!" Mona hopped and shivered, ha diamond-dotted skin shockingly white and blue. "Ret-Rita! It's COLD!"
The shower blasted her with chill water that had slept the night in pipes far under the hills. The girl boogied, honey hair plastered to a drawn face animated by chattering teeth.
"Okay, kidlet." Her cousin stepped back from the bracing mist thrown by the spray. "Out."
Mona hurled herself at the great, fuzzy terry cloth towel. "Ohgodohgodohgodohgod."
She worked the lovely warm thing across her bloodless body parts. "Why do you do this to me, Rita?"
Her naked limbs winked in and out of the towel's enveloping folds. The skin had tightened, raising her breasts. Nipples probed the air in full erection, acorn-hard.
"It builds character and I have an uncontrollable interest in your welfare." Rita smirked at the unhallowed strip-act contortions. Tit and tush wove in and out of view, Sally Rand's clientele never had it so fine. "I thought you told me you were warm all night."
Mona hunkered and chaffed her calves.
"Enough dance of the seven veils minus six." The young woman slapped her open palms together loudly, "Recitation time. Ready, set . . ."
Mona opened her frowning mouth. Silence. Her pale tongue touched paler lips. Nipples quivered and her burnished bush shone in the overhead fixture light. Rita cupped a hand behind her ear. She nodded promptingly. "I'm wai-ting."
"Um." The big eyes with their bruised lilac irises pleaded. "What was I supposed to memorize?"
"Swinburne, lumpkin, dear old Algie Charlie Swinurne, the sadie-masie poet laureate. I tested you on two stanzas last week and you muffed them. So, three fresh ones now-or would you prefer a whole new poem for next week?"
"No! Um, I got it." The girl stood as in a trance, eyes fastened shut. The fluffy towel hung from her shoulders, a white backdrop highlighting her lush figure. She rested her weight on one leg, hip cocked irresistibly.
"Could you hurt me, sweet lips, though I hurt you?
Men touch them and change in a ... a trice The lillies and langors of virtue For the raptures and roses of vice; Those lie where thy foot on the floor is, These crown and caress thee and chain, 0 splendid and sterile Dolores, Our Lady of Pain.
There are sins it may be to discover, There are deeds it may be to delight," Mona paused, puzzled, then gulped an "oh!"
"What new work wilt thou find for thy lover, What new passions for daytime or night?
What new spells that they know not a word of Whose lives are as leaves overblown?
What tortures undreamt of, unheard of, Unwritten, unknown?
Ah beautiful passionate body That never has ached with a heart! On thy mouth though the kisses are bloody Though they sting till it shudder and smart, More kind than the love we adore is, They hurt not the heart or the brain, O bitter and tender Dolores, Our Lady of Pain."
Mona inhaled and exhaled briskly, shifting her weight from hip to hip. "That's icky stuff, Rita."
Her cousin applauded with three handclaps.
"Very good, very good. I think Swinnie is too easy for you, too much the kindred spirit. Next time maybe something rah-rah and less soulful."
She jabbed a fingernail toward the door. "You're nicely dressed for your morning workout-or had you forgotten? No mistakes on the recitation, but it's still naughty nine for your raptures and roses with Ron."
Slightly damp, slightly chill, the woeful coed followed her out to the hassock. A too-familiar rattan cane lay in state.
"Mmmmm. Some festive, fruity hues down amongst the lovegourds." Rita surveyed as the girl knelt. "I especially like those purplish speckles. Tender, are they, even after an icy splash to quiet the circulation?"
Mauve eyes narrowed, the blonde handed back the cane Her pebbled spine arced as she put her weight on the hassock. Her breasts hung freely over the leather's edge.
The velvety, well-upholstered rumpcheeks thrust up and back. Rita slashed the air. The naked bottom goosebumped in sudden fear.
The cane's straight handle had been cork wrapped for grip. Rita took a fencer's stance. She snapped the lithe rattan through a salute, a lunge, return to guard, and furious parrying of phantom thrusts. With a victorious riposte, she hissed the steely cane through a final salute The stick quivered in her hand, zealously alive.
She felt her blood pump as she studied Mona's brazenly available bottom. The cane's fattened tip brushed each uncertain hillock, creasing the paddle's painful spoor.
"You have a healthy hindend. Think how much more there'd be to take a touching up if you stayed on those candy binges. Your mother put me in loco parentis for a reason, kiddo."
The sallow rattan sliced the air and struck. Mona's wet hair whipped back in spikey tendrils. The curving wood indented her flesh, driving her against the hassock.
Rita rubbed the punishing wand back and forth, then lifted it. She'd hit high, above the paddle marks.
"You have a Pre-Raphaelite nymph's tail, cousin mine. Not Reuben's class-not yet. Nor Beardsley-gaunt by anyone's imagination. Muscles squeezeably padded with subcutaneous fat."
Rita studied the welt. She particularly favored an English cane for its classic double-ridged mark. A narrow-gauge railway to pain, the twin tracks always ended in a darker, hotter terminus if the tip landed well.
The thickened cane end had caught Mona's right chub perfectly. She resisted the temptation to prod the swollen ridge.
"Algie Swinburne's darling Dolores probably ate like a vixen visiting a chicken house. Victorians worshiped at the altars of hefty, Lillian Russell-style women. I could double your punishment dosages without a qualm if you fed your fundament to classic 19th century specifications."
The rattan sank viciously into the plump, peach-cleft mounds. The wood shivered just above the first weal.
"I'm more concerned with your studies than the way you're feeding your sitzfleisch-or even the slop-and-drop nonchalance you bring to housework."
Rita raised the cane and snapped the third lick between the two welts, welding them into a single band. Her arm thrilled from the impact. The stung buttocks leaped in protest. Mona's feet danced a futile tatoo. Her cleft clenched to a shadowy line.
"Your last year in high was light on solid nutrition. A's and B's you got, but 'Introduction to Contemporary Living,"The Literature of Rock,' and 'Advanced Textile Patterns' do not a Rhodes scholar make. College is a whole new ball of wax."
The cane thwacked solidly across the paddle-sore lower cheeks.
"Or an independent business woman."
The fifth cut seared the tender bruising lower yet. Mora squaled in sow-shrill outrage.
"Or a modern helpmeet, if you prefer the kitchen and kinder route to success."
The sixth whipped into bunched, squeezing mounds. Burgundy corrugations rose, fat with pain. The blonde coed's fists hammered the rug as she grunted.
"Little Cleo had better watch her empire while she's taking the Nile water with Marc Antony. If any pattern develops that puts your scholastic standing in jeopardy ..."
Rita prodded a recoiling buttock with the rattan's blunt tip. "I made you enroll in those intro courses this summer: to let you chew on some real meat under fairly relaxed conditions."
Brick-faced, the bent girl puffed and blew. Wet hair slumped across her eyes. Tears joined the shower's dampness.
"Any hint of brain-drain down the party tube ..."
The woman lashed the innocent upper thighs. Her cousin shrieked again.
"I'll raise the penalty for curfew violation to two licks per quarter-hour increment."
The stick scored both working thighs. The legs churned as Mona arched high over the hassock.
"Plus ..." Rita chuckled. She remembered her stepmother laying down the law, in fire-fleshed doses, during her own school years. "Plus . . .
"Each date. Each assignation. Each appointment away from class or library. Each get-together with boy or girl or inquisitive dog will commence with four low, serious strokes just to remind your tubby tookie that it's here in town to warm a classroom seat, not some hunk's lap.
"All that I promise you if those grades start to wander below the salt."
The steel-cruel rattan lashed true and terrible-right into the ink-pipped undercheeks. Mona flew halfway across the hassock. Her legs threshed in the air as her lips rolled. The buttocky paroxysms put exotic dance to shame. "I've heard seals mate with less noise." Rita enjoyed the whole-hearted girl show immensely.
She stroked the vibrant cane. Her blood soared with energy. She looked forward to the morning's iron-pumping down at the Orinda Build-A-Bod Spa.
"When you've finished resting, it's clean-up time-then serious study."
Rita fingered the English whipping stick lovingly.
In a parked car hidden among the brown, dry hills east of San Francisco Bay, sophomore Beryl Eisley caressed an upright prong with almost identical motions.
"Kinda big." Her face ducked lower. She critically eyed the taut, ready ballsac. "You sure this fits?"
She dubiously held up the cheerily candy-striped condom.
"Not over the whole thing. Just the end." Ron Ladrone looked impatient. "You're supposed to roll it down as far as it'll go. That's enough."
Beryl sniffed the sperm-heavy cods. "Spicy." The tip of her tongue nudged the skin, rolling a testicle around. "I guess if I can eat sushi ..."
Her fingers fumbled with the narrow latex balloon and the uncircumcised cockhead.
"No, you have to start at the top and roll it down, or it'll bust, maybe."
She glanced down again at his gibbous scrotum. "They're that full? Look, why don't you do this, if you're an open?"
"It's more fun if you ... do everything." Ron's sheepish grin carried markedly less voltage than the one he'd used on Mona just a few night hours before.
"I'll bet." She concentrated on trying to clothe his yearning member with the red and white condom. "Hey, is this thing growing bigger?"
"It's because you've got fingers like silk," he whispered "Mmmmph. It still makes the job harder. Oh, God speaking of harder!" She poked at the bone-rigid length with one chewed fingernail. "Aren't you supposed to be doing something to make this as exciting for me?"
"Sure, I'll get to that in a minute, if you'll finish up. This's supposed to protect both of us, you know."
She worked the barber-striped rubber further down, "Protection I could have used when I met you at Pancake Mike's. Strawberry waffles soften my brain."
The jolly condom finally sheathed his phallus. The floppy reservoir tip lay like a tiny French Revolutionary cap atop the egg-sized head.
Beryl gave a tentative lick. "Hey! It's peppermint flavored."
"Sure. Just like Christmas candy, only sweeter." After Shakespeare, Ron hated himself for such happy talk. He grinned inanely as her tongue swept up and down with enthusiasm.
She grabbed the semen-fat ballsac, kneading it simultaneously. Ron rocked back against the carseat. He gasped "Nah-not YET!"
The condom reservoir bounced to attention as sperm jets flooded it. Beryl studied the geysering critically. "I hope you don't think you're done for the morning."
Ron's confused smile met her accusing glance. He felt the hot, trapped load lave his cocktip. That whole-hog hayroll with Mona had left him too keyed up. "Uh, don't worry . . . I'll still help you get off."
"Help? Help?" She rattled the fleshy barber-pole." did the whole works on this. You'd better finish the job on me yourself."
Her ragged nails nipped into the latex like claws. He swallowed hard. She looked determined. "And no fair using hands, either!"
Gently, he pried her talons off his crowed-out cock. With a sincere heart he repented the itch to be unfaithful to loveable, suggestible Mona.
The toad-squat Arab gentleman dressed in purest prison-governor white, from gleaming leather shoes and suede spats to a spotless Panama hat. He addressed Juliana and Lucretia Sue in their cell.
"For the bitter crime of disrespectful speech to a male person over the age of fourteen, My Lord the Magistrate had determined the Olive Race to be a suitable penance."
His incongruous hat tilted Juliana's way as his eyes narrowed in relish. "That punishment is to be succeeded by administration of 120 lashes, in the warder's punishment room, in remonstrance for willfully performing an unfeminine occupation for gainful hire."
The Englishwoman goggled.
"Ca-ca-" Juliana babbled as two burnoosed guards descended upon her. "Ca-ca-"
"You require relief?" The governor seemed to be genuinely solicitous. "Was there not adequate time for that this morning?"
"Ca-can I-the consul-" She shrieked as the men seized her upper arms and bore her along. "My husband! Richard! I must see-"
"He has been fully informed," the governor informed her fading voice as his guards carried her away down the corridor.
Lucretia Sue felt sincerely awestruck as the squat, absurdly dressed man surveyed her in her bare-assed deshabille.
"For the affront to nature itself of wearing men's trousers, My Lord the Magistrate has decreed four chukkers of Carpet Polo."
She only blinked, trying to comprehend. Perhaps either he or she had missed a key word somewhere. "Your violation of purity in the seduction of a male person for attempted gain in governmental dealings shall find its due chastisement, he has determined, in the ordeal of Unendurable Pleasure Indefinitely Prolonged."
Lucretia Sue sucked on her lip. She understood. Guerrilla theater had come to Qu'imram while her naked hot-torn had been cooling in this cell. This had to be Ionesco. Maybe Samuel Beckett feeling in a parodistic mood. The metaphor of Life As A Prison explored through Absurdis devices.
Yeah, that made sense. The whimsical li'l imps intended to diddle her funny bone till she convulsed in laughter. Suitable punishment for what were Absurdist crimes, anyway.
"Your atonement for the willful and knowing possession of forbidden beverage abhorant to the Holy Law and destroyer of men's faculties, he so wisely directs, shall be 180 lashes, administered in the place of public penance." "Jesus!" Lucretia Sue clung to her family's heritage of Okefenokee grit. "That'll slice me into jelly!"
The governor frowned a very evil, toad-like frown. "I do not believe blasphemy to be suitable in your situation. Surely even women realize that the Prophet Jesus is loved by the All-Compassionate only below His final prophet, the reverenced Mohammed?
"I am minded to report your impiety to My Lord the Magistrate for delay of deportation and some suitable education in reverence."
"My humblest apologies, your worship, sir, I know you are quite right." Lucretia Sue bent her torso in an attitude of abasement. "My unlucky and ill-mannered upbringing has been my downfall yet again, distinguished sir."
"Mmmmmm ... I shall take this under advisement." His face softened. "Yet I counsel you not to sully the names of Heaven's holy ones further during your just tribulations."
More guards advanced. Hands drew her up and force marched her down the corridor.
Lucky, lucky, Ju'-baby, she thought. A hiding in private while all the world gets to gawk at my fanny and my ruination.
An almost telepathic shout came to her from the Juliana of her memory. "Never say 'fanny' when you mean 'bum.' Someone might take you at your word."
She recalled one of the many unsavory episodes in the campaign to re-educate her speech. After an epic enough tussle, she'd been planted doe-naked on a dorm table. It had seemed more silly than anything else, so she'd let the other inmates at Miss M's have their way.
She'd been required to finger herself in front of the leering, nightgowned girls while stridently reciting: "This is my fanny, and this is my bum. One is for tickling at night with my thumb. The other's for whacking and kissing by scum. Pray don't confuse them and birch my split plum."
As the guards hauled her along, Lucretia Sue hoped that at least one portion of her anatomy would be safe from flogging-whether called picturesquely a "split plum," in British vulgarity a "fanny," or with clinical objectivity a "pudendum."
The Most Royal Princess Yasmine, eldest daughter to the reigning emir, wore her smartest light peach Jackie Kennedy-clone suit.
For the first time, Lucretia Sue saw that dark beauty unveiled. It confused her, since men plainly stood about the huge, vault-ceilinged room.
The mother of all carpets stretched across the floor. It lay in wrinkled folds, easily 200 feet by 300. Perhaps more. Its delicately figured, brilliantly colored pile rose at the center in a peculiar bulge. Something lay under there.
Arab women stood at either end of the rectangular room. Some wore knee-length tennis dress. All had skirts. The Princess Yasmine stood with ladies of her generation, some scarcely twenty years old.
The Exalted Princess Saphira, wife to the emir--but not Yasmine's mother-dominated a contingent of older women on the other side of the carpet.
Lean, pantherish, and officially forty for the past seven! years, the first lady of Qu'imram seemed a hellcat browsing among heffers.
Her entourage boasted multiple chins and poundage traditional to Arab leisured ladies. By contrast, Yasmine's coterie reflected Western-slender concepts of elegance.
Lucretia Sue wondered why all the women held round-bladed battledore paddles. Saphira flexed the whippy palm stalk handle on hers as she talked. Not a net or a shuttlecock seemed in sight.
"Let me acquaint you with the rules, Miss Merydith." An insidious voice made her flinch. She turned.
A sour-faced young man wore the loose linen trousers and shapeless jacket of a warder. Slight, clean-shaven, he inclined his brow in a minute bow. A sardonic glean infected his eye.
He reminded her of a brown-skinned Cedric Hardwicke, whose sarcastic portrayal of Death she fondly recalled from the Lionel Barrymore chestnut On Borrowed Time.
"You will find the play simple." He hand waved from one group of women to the other. "The court ladies compose two teams with six players each. The teams compete to achieve the placement of that beach ball-" He pointed to the bulge under the carpet.
"--through the appointed goal markers." He indicated stubby posts set six feet apart at the ends of the carpet near the groups of women.
"I don't guess they tap the ball along with those paddles.' "Most acute." His head waggled, amusedly. "Twelve female prisoners, like yourself sentenced by the court, or remanded by the governor for reasons of internal prison discipline, compete beneath the carpet to stir the ball."
"Sounds like a mad scramble down below."
"Most precisely. The one who completely frees the ball and herself through the goal markers may leave the play."
"The royal ladies have some influence in this game, I begin to suspect."
"Soundly reasoned. Each player beneath acts for herself, seeking to liberate the ball and her body from the play. Each player below is guided by a player above, who influences the direction of . . .
"Here we employ polo terminology for its metaphoric simplicity and call the one beneath the carpet a 'mount.' "
"I suppose the gal on top is her rider," Lucretia Sue offered.
"You grasp the essentials with admirable speed." He chuckled. "Actual straddling of the mount by the rider has proved hazardous, in memorable instances. The rider does encourage haste and effort, guides direction, and maps out the greater strategy of the game. The battledore assists her in communicating with her mount.
"Each placement of the ball through the goal advances one team's score. Yet, if the rider permits her mount to achieve freedom by following the ball, her team declines in strength."
Oho. The Georgian got the idea very, very clearly. She and her rider would have very different objectives right at the moment she scooted the beach ball out of play.
"You have a clever mind. Some say this game resembles the simplicity of life." He gazed with a peculiar bitterness at the Princess Saphira and her retinue of older ladies.
"Below, our actions seem random," he continued. "We seem frantic prisoners of unseen forces, always trying to pursue our self-ad vantage, yet often inexplicably thwarted.
"Above, the opposing forces engage in a formal trial of their captains' wisdom. The great picture becomes clear and orderly.
"Below, the fully successful finish their efforts and receive blessed rest in the kingdom above, once their bodies pass through life's goal.
"Above, the judicious player must curtail the zeal of a successful and enthusiastic individual in order to avoid losing her skill. A single victory too early in the contest can spell ruin if a valuable mount escapes to her reward."
"I'll bet that curtailing smarts." Lucretia Sue studied the battledores. Quaint little 19th Century anachronisms. Yeah. Sting like holy hell.
"Sometimes zeal must be tempered with seeming cruelty to serve the far-sighted strategy of the game," the young man agreed. "The great compassion of the captains and the riders must extend to the whole play, not just a moment of victory and the desire to reward a mount who has contested well."
"Downright Manichean in its simplicity-if you sympathize with that religious pursuasion." Lucretia Sue wondered what ingenious brute had developed the rules.
"I've seen Portugese bull fighting," she remarked. "Blindfolded horses get ridden in the ring against some pretty angry bulls."
"An apt comparison. You appreciate the subtleties of the game. Shortly, the women from the prison will arrive, regular prisoners from the common cells. At that time you shall strip yourself naked and enter beneath the carpet."
"Uh-huh. We start off mother-naked, like life."
He nodded. "Nor shall you know which side has chosen you. When I blow my whistle, the action shall commence for fifteen minutes. We employ the double-chukker. When I sound the whistle again, three minutes of rest follow.
"Absolute immobility is required," he stressed. "Violations result in rather strict punishment."
The American figured as much. Something puzzled her even more than before. "We're all going to be naked as unborn chicks. The court women are all unveiled. Yet, here you men are, looking right at them. Nobody with even one of those token hankies you folks put such store by, much less one of those full-scale marketplace veils."
"Yes, I see the noble ladies unveiled. At times, I see them in extreme disarray." He fingered his silver whistle. "To serve a far-seeing strategy, I have myself been-- tempered. I am a eunuch. All you see here as men have that honored limitation."
The edge in his voice made the skin above her coccyx angle.
A far door opened. Blocky, hard men hauled in a bevy of nude women. The men had none of the soft, petulant appearance of a Hollywood stereotype harem attendant.
The females carried solid meat on their bones, in the classic mold favored in Eastern lands. Lucretia Sue could see that squabbling with them over a silly beach ball would be hell.
She felt grateful for her rough-and-tumble years in the Okefenokee. Those looked to be tough broads to handle. The hockey field scraps at Miss Maelstrom's had put an edge on her style, too.
"How do we breathe down there?"
"The floor is ventilated through many holes. The air is forced and quite brisk. Alas, the flooring causes much abrasion-although it must be preferred to smothering."
"I know. Also like life."
"You should remove your garment now."
"One question left." She unbuttoned the shirt. "How hard do they use those battledores?"
Both Saphira's and Yasmine's troops flourished their long-handled paddles as they giggled maliciously at the nude prison women.
"Miss Merydith, as in life, we are in a prison. Need you ask?" His light, biting laugh continued until he raised the whistle.
She set her heaped shirt back from the carpet's edge. Fortunately, she hadn't been wearing a bra when Fa'ud had interrupted her seminar. The other prisoners had begun to ease themselves under the carpet.
"I suggest you enter now." The unsexed warder surveyed the increasingly restive court ladies. "The riders are eager for the play."
She hunkered on all fours. She fingered the vast textile's bound edge. Soft, exquisitely woven, the carpet had a nape like velvet.
She could imagine a conventional length of the same material being drawn through a bride's wedding ring, as authorities claimed one could do with the finest rugs.
Still, the great, inert bulk of it would get mighty heavy mighty fast. She crawled under the edge. The clinging wool passed over her shoulders. It tickled her waist. As her buttocks waggled under, Lucretia Sue felt a claustrophobic oppression.
Her breath caught. The air seemed dead, as stiffling as breathing through a sweater. She moved on resolutely.
Needles of fresh, cool air exploded up against her face She closed her eyes as they drove up at breasts and belly She shook her head and lifted her lids.
Her eyes began to adjust to the light percolating down through the carpet weave. If she blinked enough, the tickling jets didn't bother her that much.
The floor vibrated as women tramped above, checking out the "mounts." The flat blade of someone's battledore whacked her smartly across the right hindcheek.
She arched her back, hissing indignantly. She relaxed as footfalls moved away.
A round paddle tapped her backside lightly, over the gluteal divide. It didn't go away. She guessed she'd been chosen.
She knew her orientation to the big bulge. She could scramble dead toward the ball. Who she'd meet when she got there was another matter.
A hard, piercing whistle stabbled through the carpet.
She tried to gallop full tilt on hands and knees. The battledore barely grazed her retreating rump. As she struggled forward, the carpet caught savagely at her long hair It tried to rip the carroty growth from her scalp.
She slowed and tucked her head way down. Feet caught up with her. A paddle delivered an encouraging splat. She scampered onward, head low. The carpet rasped along be neck and shoulders.
She heard shrill, wailing cries ahead and leaped for the fray. Suddenly she realized the only way to actually move the ball would be to butt it, head-on while she used her arms and legs to force it against the carpet's drag. And any fleshly obstacles.
She felt the material rise ahead of her at the ball's bulge. Contact!
The battledore sang into her behind. She hoped it signaled a right turn. She changed direction and found the ball--alone, thank heaven.
She braced herself against the ball and began to ram it. Grudgingly, it began to roll.
No! A punishing whap to the lip redirected her. Signals, damn it, we need to agree on signals, she thought as she shifted to the left of her original direction.
Also like life, she reflected-devotees of astrology, kismet, determinism, and Friday night sports bar mud wrestling all try to interpret the hard knocks they endure.
The game constituted a complete education in itself. Tiny holes bit at her elbows and knees as she scrabbled over the flooring.
A freight train load of vibrations thundered toward her. Avid, wildly trilling Arab women rushed at her. She'd wondered where the rest of the pack had been keeping itself. Setting her muscles, she continued to drive the ball forward.
The young eunuch watched the female confusion roil beneath the carpet. Battledores flashed. The wooden blades rang like pistol cracks across the recoiling bulges. The court ladies leaped agilely to avoid being tumbled as the carpet stuff shifted and yanked about under them.
He smiled sardonically when they failed. The overfed riders on Her Blessed Solemnity Saphira's team landed the most comically. Just now, all the court women circled, shrilling their discontent and encouragement as mounts tangled.
Princess Yasmine had the advantage. She'd set the ball in motion. The experienced prisoners had been reluctant to race to action. Lucretia Sue Merydith had moved like an arrow.
Her Ladyship Saphira found the battle under the carpet not going in her favor. The tigerish woman abandoned her mount to the cat-fight. She ran to where a fat confederate waited. She'd hung back from the press, keeping clear.
The princess appropriated the idle mount and smack-paddled the prisoner into a rapid scramble. She plainly intended to lie in wait in front of Yasmine's goal. A simple strategy. The eunuch had seen it before.
One of Yasmine's ladies tried to pull her mount out of the fray. She beat a lump of carpet free from the melee and sent it crawling to engage Saphira. Her battledore swung in a bottom-burning fury.
All the while, the ball twitched back and forth. Amid beaten flesh, vile language, and gutteral shrieks it seemed no one's clear possession.
Yet, Saphira had been correct. When the ball at last began to move purposefully, Yasmine had command of that mount. It mattered not if it was the same woman she'd started with. Whoever directed the ball through her own team's goal markers scored.
She drove her ball-butting mount gently. Her ladies fell into formation as outriders, their crawling prisoners warding off marauders as the bulge progressed.
The eunuch checked the time. Ah. Three minutes had passed.
Lucretia Sue's rear felt branded. Her hair choked her. She couldn't stop long enough to pull it from her face and mouth. Her skull bonged like a gong as she battered the ball ahead-ahead-ever ahead.
At least whoever rode her wasn't paddle-happy. Her wind came hard and her limbs ached, yet she kept i constant speed. She knew she had to pace herself to keep energy for a final scurry. She intended to butt the ball out and go for the goal like a greased gator.
She felt competition coming from behind, four o'clock low. The fresh, scampering woman rammed full-tilt into the beach ball, knocking if off course.
Lucretia Sue threw her best elbow, followed by a breast clawing and a hip-bruising body block. A thigh-slamming kick sent the other woman rolling away in pain.
The Georgian regained the ball. A heavy battledore blow tried to catch her shoulder. The carpet, tented around the ball, deflected the whack.
Arabic railed above her, then English.
"Damn you!" Her rider ranted. "Let this one spell you!"
"Oh! . . . Oh!" Lucretia Sue fell back. Another prisoner came in from the side and began to butt the ball forward. Her hot body sweated as it forged on ahead.
Lucretia Sue wondered if she could be stinking as powerfully as that other woman in so short a time. She kept up with the ball's motion. She had an inkling that the bitch riding her might try to pull her back, letting the other woman score.
Right, sister, just try it . . .
Grateful as she was for the respite, she intended to be through the goal herself, leaving only a trail of ozone.
The eunuch enjoyed the girl-fights as Yasmine's outriders repelled raiders trying to redirect the ball. The skirmishes allowed the ball to roll on, battling prisoners in its wake.
Ah-ah-ah! He saw the stir behind the bulge as it neared the goal. Neither woman could directly perceive the fat posts she had to crawl through to gain freedom. Yet, both knew they had to be near. He perceived conflict over who would drive the ball to attempted victory.
Saphira's marauders fell in like hyenas. They formed a blocking line ahead of the sphere as Yasmine disciplined ger ball-movers with furious spankings. Her battledore supplemented her tongue, pouring forth vulgar Arabic and quite common English alike.
The ball surged on suddenly.
The eunuch checked the time. Quite enough left for a brutal encounter. He knew the spoiled, idle court ladies loved every wench-battling instant of it. At least the periodic violence gave the prisoners a release from incarceration's tensions. Some were hardened desert women, some harder city predators.
The young warder stiffled a yawn. He much preferred administering Unendurable Pleasure Indefinitely Prolonged. He hoped the Merydith whore would be in viable shape for that ordeal.
Someone, somewhere among the hot, acrid woman-bodies was peeing. Lucretia Sue knew someone had unloaded Number One. The rushing forced air vaporized it and scattered droplets among them all. The damned girl-wee invaded her panting mouth and flaring nostrils, as it infiltrated her eyes and ears.
She had abandoned the ball to lend a hand at clearing out the female barricade ahead. The hens above the carpel had a jolly time during the free-rolling bitch-brawl below, Now Lucretia Sue sidewindered back, between stray feet when possible. When not . . . she tumbled a regal lady onto her gold-plated ass without any regard for team loyalties.
She reached the driving side of the ball and added her thrust to the other woman still pumping forward steadily.
Commming thrroough, giiiirls!
The ball slammed against the hooting, cursing tangle of femininity ahead. The opposition had been thinned. Yasmine's crew parted it effectively. The sphere rammed on, full-tilt.
Hands caught at her pushing legs. The naked body beside her tried to elbow her away.
Ha! Lucretia Sue indelicately kicked the wind out of her partner-way out. Clawing hands still clung to her other leg. She rolled, lashing a heel kick backwards. The fingers let loose.
She rammed the ball full force. It exploded free of the carpet, rocketing against the wall.
Someone leaped to sit on her before she could exit herself. Arching into a furious knot, she let the court rider straddle her for a full second.
Then she uncoiled like a rattler, shooting under the carpet's edge after the ball.
A heavy thump from behind gave her hope a royal tookie had gotten purpled for the evening. She panted gratefully, blinded in the full light. Cooler, freer air washed over her sweat-drenched body.
She turned to see Princess Yasmine pick herself up, her mouth viciously twisted. Lucretia Sue grinned. "Hurrah for our side, honey. I made it this time. Your turn next."
The young eunuch ambled along in her direction. Others retrieved the ball and began to roll it under the carpet toward the center.
Yasmine engaged the young warder in a passionate, evidently well-spiced tirade which he opposed with only downcast eyes and patient shrugs.
Finally she stormed back toward the huddled carpet lumps of the imprisoned women. Her battledore carved the air before her.
"Her Beneficent Serenity contended that your sentence had included a full four chukkers of play. I but replied that having observed the rules, your further participation is rightfully on the sidelines, and no word of His Lord the Magistrate set aside any customary provision of the game."
He smiled bitterly. "She is not pleased. You handled yourself amazingly for a novice. You must enter the play again some day."
"Thank God for deportation, honey chile, or that brass-souled . . . uh, dear lady would see to it, I'm sure."
"The princess may be able to delay your exit. Her influence with her father is considerable." He appraised her. "You appear rather chipper, I must say, for all of your exertions."
"We Merydiths dote on a good ol' skull-creasin', face- arrangin' free-for-all. Usually the menfolks try to hog it for themselves, but we rarely let 'em." A whistle sounded. With screams and rude paddle smacks, the play resumed.
"You're not officiating?"
"We now proceed to your next punishment. Any time to be served on the sidelines can, by logical extension, be expiated in other rooms." His eyes seemed bright with unkind anticipation.
Her joints and muscles protested as she stood. "Ow. I don't think a li'l of spanking would hurt a bit right now."
"We shall indulge in the other first, anyway."
She followed him to the door she'd entered through. Looking back, she saw the bizarre carpet lumps battling for possession of the greater bulge. Yasmine seemed dedicated to breaking her battledore over someone's crupper.
Lucretia Sue hoped the victim was the broad with the clutching hand at the end. She rather pitied the one she'd had to boot out of action, after all the good ball-driving she'd done.