The Siblings, part two
by F.E. Campbell


Erdislune slept. The soft warm Irish air from off the Western Sea bathed the 
ancient place in benevolence. It had slept thus for a thousand years, 
opening a sleepy eye from time to watch the brutal frailties of men. The 
pickets Costigan had posted lay with their rifles pointed at an enemy that 
was not there. They, too, were drowsy and inclined to shut an eye from time 
to time. Each, in his own way, believed they kept watch for ghosts. An enemy 
hovered, but they had never seen it. They never would. 

Costigan stood at the window of the room he had made his own. He was angry 
with his vigil. But he would see her for a brief space as she made her 
shameful way to George with his shameful message. He was irritated with the 
girl and with himself. He wished now that he might recall her. But it was 
too late. An order is an order. Generals do not rescind them. The trouble, 
of course, lay with Erdislune itself. How perfect it was! Yet it harbored a 
malignancy that he must excise. The possibility that the threat might not be 
human was an Irish whimsy he refused to countenance. Pensively he watched 
the slight figure of the girl as she passed upon his errand. When she passed 
from sight he shook himself as though to dissolve the ghosts his men 
believed in. But in actuality to thrust aside a dream. What would a 
guerrilla do with a wife! Even as a camp follower or captive she would not 
be safe. He was the leader, but men are men. When death is close a woman 
belongs to who can take her. Gloomily he returned to his desk. 

Clare wondered why she was not angry. Was it sorrow for the man on whose 
errand she obediently set her steps. In spite of his ruthlessness and the 
brutalities of some of his men, there hung about him an aura of sadness that 
was as Irish as the day itself. He was a man who knew his destiny, and this 
is a terrible knowledge! If his men knew theirs, they gave small evidence of 
it. They lived each moment and each day without introspection. 

At times like this Clare always considered escape. Being chained always left 
open that small door. Because her ankles were chained, and because handcuffs 
were on her wrists, no one would consider her a risk. On her present task 
she could not hurry. The links between her feet made a pleasant clinking 
accompaniment to her measured steps. But perhaps this was the time! No one 
would miss her for thirty minutes. How far could a chained girl walk in half 
an hour! And what would they do to her when they caught her! It would be 
something horrible. They were on edge. An escapee would not be popular. 
Escape was a tantalizing temptation. That was all. 

Clare considered that which was about to happen to her. She should be in 
screaming hysterics. But she had grown a protective armor of Irish humor. 
Since Erdislune had been taken, one either laughed or wept. She had an 
intuitive conviction that with these strange moody men it was safer to laugh 
and to make them laugh too. Not easy for a girl in pain. But she would try. 

She clinked her way toward her punishment. 

George was pleased to see her. He was working on the jeep. She spared him 
nothing. "Mr. Costigan requests you give me six strokes with the came." She 
put as much comradely warmth into the words as her cringing skin would 
allow. 

George was electrified. So were his two colleagues who had been watching his 
efforts. For a moment Clare enjoyed a sense of drama. 

"Ohhh, Miss. It's making fun of me, you are." 

"No, George. I think it's an order. You have to cane my bottom. You know, " 
mischief got the best of her, "I bend over and touch my toes and you hit 
it." 

George sought moral support by scratching his hair. "That'll hurt somethin' 
awful, Miss." He offered a profound revelation. 

"Yes, won't it," Clare agreed brightly. 

George was torn. Belatedly he blushed. "Mean you'd really let me, Miss... 
your bottom an' all...?" 

"My bottom and all, George. Aren't you lucky! I think the term is 'six of 
the best'." 

Inspiration dawned. "I don't have a cane, Miss." 

"I know where's a cane!" One of George's companions disappeared with 
alacrity. 

"Clever bastard, ain't 'e." George was miffed. "Ain't never done it before, 
Miss." 

"You don't do it before. You do it behind." His colleague guffawed, then 
added, "I'll cane her arse if you don't want to." 

"It's George's responsibility," Clare said primly. 

George accepted the cane dubiously. But visible evidence of concupiscence 
had appeared. He eyed Clare's nether equipment with heightened, almost 
professional, interest. "Real hard, Miss?" 

"Of course, darling," Clare gushed. "Look, I'll bend over nicely for you. 
See! There's a wonderful target. You can't miss." She suited action to the 
words, and presented those present with what was probably the most beautiful 
and barest derriere they had ever beheld. Events of the past days had worn 
shame and humiliation threadbare. Oddly enough, Clare was aware of 
thankfulness that they were gone. They were excess baggage. 

George's nature was simple and direct. "I'll have to fuck you afterwards... 
You won't mind, Miss?" 

"Get on with the job, George," Clare requested sweetly. 

It was harder and hurt more than expected. She yelped and straightened up, 
massaging her rump. 

"See, I told yer. Knew yer wouldn't like it." 

"You did very well, George." She managed to keep the hurt out of her voice. 
Smiling archly, she temporized. "By all means, make it a little lighter." 

"Oh, I couldn't do that, Miss! You said yourself... " He added with naive 
honesty: " 'Sides I like it." 

Sighing but resigned, the naked girl exposed herself once more before the 
three men. The cane sliced her harder than before. 

Clare had made up her mind to avail herself of whatever latitude George 
would tolerate. But, even if she had made a determined effort to remain 
quiet and still it is doubtful that she could have done so. Her cry of pain 
and the rueful rubbing of the wound gained a respite and actually seemed to 
help. The twins would never have allowed her to behave so. But George was 
easy... She turned apologetic eyes to the three rapt male faces. 

"Let's have a go, George. Me and Len both got a hard-on too." It was a voice 
from the audience. 

"No jolly fear!" George stood up for his rights. "Mr. Costigan sent her to 
me, 'e did." 

"Oh, what a shame I'm only to have six," Clare said sweetly. She bent 
forward again before the argument could get heated. 

She took her six as conversationally as she could. It was easy. The three 
men were as anxious to prolong her caning as she was to get the breathers. 
George hit hard every time. The pain was intense. But Clare felt that, with 
the intermissions, she managed to carry off her whipping with some aplomb. 
Once again she felt the detachment of being the plaything of a force 
carrying her she knew not where. But she did know that she wanted to go 
where she must with a smile or a jest wherever it was possible. "Thank you, 
George," she said brightly when she had finished rubbing for the last time. 

George wasted neither words nor time. Taking a rug from the jeep he spread 
it on the floor. Then looked at the naked girl he had just caned. Clare 
smiled back at him. Their eyes locked. Clare shrugged and, accepting the 
inevitable, did what she was forced to do, sometimes several times a day, 
and arranged her body for his pleasure. When he had grunted his way to a 
sweaty conclusion she was possessed by the other two in turn. She managed to 
smile at each as though they were the only one. But her bottom hurt. 

"At attention. Chest out. Sir!" She had managed a quick toilette on the way 
back. 

"Turn round and let me look." 

Clare obeyed, not knowing whether Costigan was methodical or Qarnal. Her 
striped bottom had had a profound effect on the three males she had left 
behind. 

"Did a damn fine job!" He looked at her quizzically. "Do anything else?" 

"Three of them did something else, sir." She turned and faced him. 

He nodded somberly. "I told you. Fair shares." 

"They wished to share my caning, sir." 

He eyed her shrewdly. "Anything to tell me?" 

She shook her head. "There's nothing to tell, sir." 

"In "that case," he said quietly, "go back down and tell the other two chaps 
to give you six apiece. Wouldn't want 'em to feel cheated, would we!" 

Tears sprung to her eyes. He saw them but did not relent. "Please, sir. If I 
must be caned again I wish you'd do it." 

"Why?" 

She was not sure she knew. She could not answer. But dabbed at her tears 
with her chained hands. He sat quiet, expressionless. Chagrined, she wheeled 
quickly and went to seek her punishment. 

They were overjoyed. Clare did not know whether to feel flattered or 
fearful. In spite of the severity of what she must now endure, and in spite 
of the tears that still dewed her cheeks, her mood was still high. She knew 
it would betray her: or she it. But she would play it to the end. She smiled 
at the two startled oafs lovingly and asked demurely: "Please, darlings, 
will each of you cane my bottom six times the way George did. With Mr. 
Costigan's compliments... " 

"The way you said that you give me another hard-on," George accused. 

"I'm flattered. What about you two?" 

They shuffled. Clare loved the sense of power, brief though it might be. 
"Will you require servicing afterwards?" she inquired outrageously. 

"What's servicing?" Bill was groping. 

"She means fuck, you silly arse," Len reproved. "That's right, ain't it, 
Miss?" 

"You're sweet," Clare cooed wickedly. "Would you like to unchain me?" 

"Ain't got the key, Miss." 

"If you could get it I could be so much nicer to you." 

"This un's kissed the blarney, for sure," Bill declared. "But nix on the 
key. Costigan 'ud flay us. You do better in handcuffs than most girls do 
completely free." 

It was a gratuitous compliment. In spite of incongruity, Clare felt 
flattered. "Thank you, kind sir. Now, how would you two like to cane me? One 
at a time? Or, if one of you is left-handed you could stand on each side and 
lay into me alternately?" 

They looked at her aghast. She knew herself a phenomenon and was glad. She 
would suffer now and in days to come. But she would sing as she writhed. 
Make them wonder. Keep Costigan as off balance as he tried to keep her. Men 
had taken her. She could never deceive Costigan. But his cohorts were 
another matter. She would extract what joy she could from them as they used 
her body. 

"Think we got to stay just on yer bottom, Miss?" Len inquired. 

Clare knew it her least vulnerable spot. "I'm afraid so, darling. Where 
would you like to cane me?" 

"How 'bout them tits?" 

She curled up inside. Men! Always at a girl's nipples or her vagina! 
Animals! 

"How sweet of you to think of them, love." Her look of ardent admiration 
almost withered him where he stood. "But they do mark so. Mr. Costigan 
wouldn't like it. Would you like me to bend over?" Without waiting for an 
answer she took up position. 

"Bloody remarkable, ain't she?" Bill ejaculated. 

"Fair caution, if yer ask me," Len agreed, and struck her naked cheeks with 
savage delight. 

Clare managed to hold still. Perhaps George's infliction had blunted shock. 
"You next, Bill," she invited amiably. 

Bill's thwack across her taut seat brought her upright, rubbing furiously. 
She dared not think of the remaining ten. She could not take them rapidly 
unless tied. She did not want to be tied. Repartee was her only salvation. 

"You both whip a girl so well. I'm sure you've had practice?" 

"How about a few on your cunt?" Len wheedled. 

She pretended to consider. The ten strokes might be difficult at this rate. 
"A girl's cunt isn't usually caned when it's going to be used," she pointed 
out reasonably. "Now do be good boys and give me two nice strokes on my 
bottom." 

Clare absorbed the brutal pain stoically. Eight to go. 

"Heard tell some girls shave their cunts?" Len said. He was evidently 
determined to exploit a rare occasion. 

"Quite a lot do," Clare told him rationally. "Just a matter of taste. I did 
it once. But it's a nuisance. You have to keep shaving it or it looks sort 
of silly." She giggled. "The bristles prick the pricks. So I let mine grow 
again." 

Len shuffled his feet. Amazing how shy a murderer could be! "I say, Miss, 
would you mind if I just pulled a few? Plucking, they call it. Spelt with a 
'P', of course," he added with a flourish of wit. 

The naked girl sighed inwardly. The stronger sex! Good heavens! Well, if 
they were doing that, at least they weren't hurting her in other ways. "What 
a gorgeous idea!" she enthused. "I've never been plucked. I'll watch." She 
spread her legs as wide as her chain would allow, and arched her pudendum 
with its thatch of shining hair into maximum prominence. She bent her head 
and watched. Fascinated in spite of her irritation. 

Len fell to his knees before her in unconscious tribute to the female, the 
eternal woman, before whom all men are prostrate. His eyes glued, in pure 
joy, upon the dark hair from which he had once emerged. Clare watched, 
amused and only faintly apprehensive, as his fingers approached her most 
secret place... 

It hurt more than she supposed. He deliberately chose a single hair and 
pulled it out slowly to give her the maximum suspense and pain. It was quite 
absurd that so small an act should so discomfort a girl. But her cunt hairs 
were well anchored and relinquished their roots with much protest to the 
nerves. She gasped, but smiled reassuringly when he looked up at her 
anxiously. "You should keep them," she told him tenderly. "When you are old 
you can take them out and remember me." 

She knew he worshiped her. She owned him. If only he held the key to her 
chains! She watched as his fingers selected another of the longest members 
of her bush. She held her breath as he pulled. Savoring with him all the 
ecstasy of the simple act. For her, only a small absurd pain. Yet she could 
share with him the glory he found in her female hair. Watching, she became 
the eternal feminine. Mother to all the pathetic race of men! "I think you 
should cane me again," she said gently. 

They caned her naked bottom. Savagely as men must always ravage female 
flesh. Four strokes she took before standing again so that her hands might 
give solace. She was cut in two. She longed for tears. But only four more to 
go. She turned her attention to her slaves. "I think you should all do a 
little plucking," she invited provocatively. "I want you all to keep them 
always." She thrust out her furry mound for their adoration. 

Detached, she watched as they satiated a strange need. George had joined the 
collectors. It was a good thing her hair was abundant, she reflected wryly. 
Stab after stab of pain told her of their assiduous pursuit of some 
quintessence of femininity beyond her ken. Men lived by dreams. If cunt 
hairs-her cunt hairs-gave them solace in their eternal quest she would not 
deny. Again she felt the strange pride in being stronger than they. "I think 
you should cane me again," she told them. It was as though she had told a 
child to wash some dishes. 

It was as though, in their sexual excitation, they must always strike her 
harder and harder. Their canes cut into her and fell away from her punished 
flesh as though reluctant to sever a bond. She moaned and moaned again. 
Knowing her audience, she cast aside inhibitions. They loved her moans and 
her pain compelled motions. They loved to watch her fingers seek her wounds. 
So why deny herself these comforts. They were nature's salve. Eroticism was 
her only weapon. The entrancement of these three men spelled its potency. 
Perhaps if she used it enough she might one day persuade one of these 
bemused louts to loose her chains. Once free of shackles she could run... 

"You sure do know how to hit a girl," she breathed admiringly. "That cane 
really bit into me. Golly, it hurt!" She rubbed her seat as she smiled at 
them. 

"Corker what you can do with a girl, ain't it!" George sounded intrigued by 
the versatility of female flesh. 

"Oh, you poor darling! Did you think we were only good to fuck!" Clare 
purred lovingly. "There's all sorts of deliciously painful things you can 
make us scream with." 

"You're having me on, Miss." 

"She ain't, y'know, George," Bill was patronizing. "You just ain't been 
around." 

"Not even around the other side, I'll bet," Len contributed with deep 
meaning and a snicker. 

Bill laughed knowingly. Clare cringed inwardly. George looked sideways, 
suddenly glimpsing fresh horizons. "You mean, you really can...?" 

"Poor bastard's just discovered the Northwest Passage," Bill guffawed. 

George was intrigued. But he had been well brought up. "They can't help 
being rude, Miss. Don't pay no attention." He paused and scratched his hair, 
groping: "I say, though! Would you mind?" 

"Would I mind what?" 

George was perspiring. "You know... ! I mean-ter-say, not in the usual 
place, like." 

"Oh, you want to use my mouth, darling?" Make him sweat! 

George's explorations into the realms of sex were broadening too rapidly. He 
was in much the position of a thief who, having placed his hand upon the 
Cullinan diamond, finds beside it, also, the Koh-I-noor. An unknown infinity 
of riches... 

"Well, hadn't really thought o' that, Miss." It was obvious that he was now 
thinking about it furiously. 

"My hand perhaps. A girl can do an awful lot with her hand." She made a 
small moue of disparagement. "Even if it is chained." Clare was reveling in 
George's agony. 

"He wants to fuck you up the arse, Miss," Len explained helpfully. 

"He's really sweet, isn't he!" Her audience could not but understand her 
awed discovery of hidden virtue. She beamed impartially. "But it's time I 
was caned again. You hadn't forgotten...?" 

They had not forgotten! Clare had guessed these last two would be bad. But 
they were delivered with such impact that she was driven forward to her 
knees. The pain went deep, all-encompassing, sheathing her buttocks and 
loins in a sickening creeping agony. 

Clare stayed kneeling where the final stroke had driven her. She buried her 
face in her hands and wept. No one had previously struck her with such 
brutality. The pain went beyond the point where she wished to explore it 
with her fingers. She wanted only to be left alone to cope with it and to 
dry her tears when they were done. 

"She's cryin'," George marveled at an extraordinary phenomenon. 

"Watchin' that 'ull give yer a hard-on too," Bill observed clinically. 

"Lovely bit o' stuff, ain't she!" Len's contribution was pure worship. 

Reverently the three men stood and watched a naked girl kneeling, bowed, 
sobbing into the sanctuary of her hands. Her glowing bottom with its scarlet 
and purple stripes a testimonial to their prowess with the cane. Perhaps 
they guessed, within their limited comprehensions, that what they beheld was 
probably the most beautifully touching thing they would ever see. 

They made no blundering gestures of chivalry. After all, she was a prisoner 
of war! Clare was grateful. When she was done with tears and sobbing breath 
she eyed them dubiously over her chained hands. She had had enough. It was 
obvious they had not. 

"I got this lovely hard... " George's statement might have come from Sir 
Francis Drake who, having refitted the Golden Hind, was in need of an 
uncharted ocean to explore. 

"Couple more over here," Bill said encouragingly. 

She quailed. Had Costigan known he was sending her to this! "It's time I 
reported back to the office," she ventured. 

"Won't take us long, Miss," Len offered generously. "It's only old George 
wants it up the back." 

A General faced with defeat cuts losses. Manfully, Clare returned on stage. 

"Oh George, you don't really, do you?" Her voice was dulcet. 

"Sure do, Miss. Bad!" He was eagerly resigned to degeneracy. 

Clare sighed. Had it not been for the rampant bulges beneath three pairs of 
trousers she might have temporized further. But she did not wish to be 
manhandled. Getting to her feet she gave her would-be sodomizer a winning 
smile, spread her feet as wide as her chain would allow, and bent forward to 
touch the floor. 

George watched these maneuvers with surprise. "I already caned your arse," 
he pointed out plaintively. "I want something else now." 

"Isn't this the approved position?" For some reason she did not wish them to 
know it was her first time too. She flushed at the possibility of being 
positioned all wrong. 

"Want us to guide it in for you," Bill suggested helpfully. 

Len had found what looked like vaseline on the work bench. By way of helping 
a comrade through a difficult task he smeared a dab of the stuff over the 
naked girl's anus and rubbed it around. When he inserted a well-greased 
finger where she had no wish to have it, Clare longed to slap his face and 
run. But what was the use! She endured. If other girls had survived, she 
would. 

She knew a familiar guilt that she longed to stand to one side and watch. It 
was absurd, ludicrous, impossible. But it was happening. A three-man 
operation with one caned girl obscenely spread. Len had anointed George's 
weapon with more grease. Bill was kneeling supporting her shoulders in 
anticipation of forward momentum. The star performer moved forward into 
battle. Clare gritted her teeth and clutched determinedly at her ankles... 

* * * 

Standing with her back to his desk, Clare hoped Costigan was shamed by her 
bottom. She knew it was livid and ridged. She had been cruelly caned. 

"Basted you well, didn't they," was his only comment. "What took so long? 
Damn near sent a search party." 

Clare strove to be unemotional. "I have been caned eighteen times on my bare 
skin," she reported evenly. "Endured compulsory copulation five times, and 
been sodomized once." She looked him in the eye. "Will there be anything 
more... Sir?" 

Costigan leaned back in his chair surveying the naked girl who stood stiffly 
to attention before him, her breasts pointedly and arrogantly out-thrust, 
her handcuffed wrists held tight against her tummy. He suspected she was not 
far from tears. 

"Any information yet?" His voice was gruff. "There never was any... Sir." 

He nodded. There was admiration in his glance. "Do you want me to send you 
down to them again?" 

"No sir." She was trembling. "I don't think I could stand another round." 

"Well then?" 

Clare's voice was unsteady. It held pleading. "If you want me tortured more, 
sir, couldn't you take me to the... the room? You must have found it by now. 
It's got all the horrible things to use. But it's private... " 

Costigan laughed in genuine amusement. "Oh, sit down, Clare. You can stop 
sticking your tits out at me, and you can stop calling me sir. For the time 
being, anyway." He poured two generous drinks and handed her one. "Alright. 
So you don't know anything." 

Her chained hands lifted the glass. She gulped gratefully. "Why do you send 
me to others to be hurt?" 

"I told you." His face was enigmatic. 

"You are not in love with me." 

He made a gesture of frustration. "What do you call this thing between a man 
and a woman? You give it a name." 

"George or Bill or Len could give it a name." 

"You know it's not that!" His voice was impatient. 

Clare knew a sudden wave of sympathy for this man. He was lonely. He was 
travelling a desolate road. On impulse she told him of the rapist and the 
arrow that killed him. It would save speculation, and show she wanted to be 
reasonable. 

He listened quietly without surprise. "It makes sense," he nodded. "Why 
didn't you tell me before?" 

She tried to spread her chained hands, but was foiled. "I'm not sure I know. 
We were enemies. When you gave me the drink you were kind." 

He poured another. "Was I kind to send you down there twice to get... what 
you got?" 

"It wasn't really you who did those things to me... " She stumbled with an 
uncertain premise. "I expect some of them were my own fault." She smiled 
ruefully. "I'm afraid I provoked them. I thought I was being amusing, but to 
them it was erotic." 

"Everything's erotic to men away from females," Costigan said amusedly. 
"We're a silly lot of bastards." He gave her one of his shrewd appraisals. 
"If I set you free about this place and relieved you of all chains and such 
like you'd have the whole ruddy lot demoralized in a week." 

"Is that a compliment?" 

"Actually, yes. You affect me powerfully. So I can imagine what you do to 
the rest of the bunch." He considered something in his memory. "Y'know, 
there's an interesting psychological query popped to mind: If I hadn't had 
you... well, punished, you'd never have told me about that man of mine 
getting killed." 

"Does it matter?" 

"Sort of." He made a gesture of helplessness and chuckled. "It's absurd. I 
don't mind in the least seeing you whipped for amusement. But I feel an 
absolute bastard for sending you downstairs this afternoon. But what you 
have just done in telling me justifies the means." 

"You want to rationalize the virtue of torture. Well, I suppose you've done 
it. Congratulations! My bottom hurts in a good cause." 

"You're quite something." He said it as though whatever she might be it made 
him proud. 

"I suppose you are whipping the other girls regularly? Have any luck with 
information?" Clare asked demurely. 

"You can forget the other girls," Costigan told her decisively. "I'll break 
you of being a lesbian even if I have to order you whipped fore and aft 
daily." 

"There you go again!" Clare complained. "Order me whipped! Why the hell 
can't you whip me yourself?" 

Instantly she knew she'd done it once too often. Clare quailed. 

"You actually want me to, don't you, love?" he asked seriously. 

Oh, why must she be chained! She longed to beat her fists on the desk, or 
better still on him! Or to stamp her feet in an expenditure of angry energy 
releasing the turgid emotions she was suddenly afraid to face. She had 
trapped herself unwittingly by a strange passion she had glimpsed too late. 
Tavie and Alethea had built better than they knew. 

"Yes." 

The small lonely word spoke volumes. Costigan nodded understandingly. "Go 
down and get the cane from the boys and bring it back here." 

Clare made the now familiar journey in a daze of shame, guilt, happiness, 
and a terrible excitement. Her third appearance created a sensation. Her 
errand provoked ribaldry. Awkwardly holding the cane with which she was to 
be whipped, she escaped with flaming cheeks. 

He had poured two more big drinks. They sat and sipped in a strange rapport, 
the cane potent between them on the desk. 

"This is really your idea, love." 

"Are you sure?" Clare was not sure herself. "If it is my idea, my bottom is 
going to be very angry with me." 

"Look, sweetheart, enough's enough. That nice little behind of yours doesn't 
need anymore today. I'm not going to cane all those welts you have already." 

She pouted. "You would if I held a secret. You'd send me right back down 
without a qualm." 

"I suppose I would," he admitted meditatively. "Rummy business. Anyway, your 
nice little derriere is quite safe." 

"I have other nice places, sir," she said. 

"I won't use a cane on 'em," he stated firmly. 

"My bottom is still in one piece, y'know," she tantalized. 

"You are a wanton hussy." He capitulated, sharing a smile they both 
understood. "How many do you want?" 

"Six of the best. Sort of de rigueur, aren't they!" 

He poured more drinks. "Here's to a little girl who's either very brave or 
very wicked." 

"I'm both," said Clare with certainty. And raised her glass. 

Each, in their own way, approached the punishment Clare had provoked. He 
with a determination not to relent. But to make her sorry for her 
mischievous baiting. He judged correctly her wantonness to be bequeathed by 
the two girls who were still a mystery to him. 

Clare, for her part, was only concerned with acquitting herself well in his 
eyes. She knew she was pandering to a hot erotic memory of Tavie and 
Alethea. An eroticism unsatisfied by such as George or Len or Bill. But 
Costigan was something different. She knew he held for her, and she for him, 
something of that magic quality impossible to define. There was a current 
between them. Perhaps she had made him whip her to see if the current could 
be dissolved by pain. 

"How would you like me?" she asked sweetly. He told her. She obeyed. 

It was pure hell! But a beautiful golden erotic hell. He planted his six 
upon her in ways and places the men below had not known. He whipped her with 
subtlety. They had been brutal. He was clever and very wise. She marveled. 
Only in the last swishing careless stroke did he cross the wounds inflicted 
by his men. She was consumed in a flaming holocaust of sensual joy. She had 
not moved or screamed. 

"It's all over, love." 

Clare was still bent, drifting in the multicolored world of pure sensation. 
Gently he guided her to the chair, for which he had found a cushion. 

"Satisfied?" 

She nodded thankfully. She had needed him as some sort of cathartic. She 
would never be cured, for she did not wish to be. But, for the moment, she 
was back in his world. 

"Thank you," she said simply. 

"Hurt?" 

"Terribly. I don't mind." 

"Habit-forming?" 

Clare nodded. "Yes. I didn't know till now." 

They sat with their thoughts for a few moments. Then Costigan said briskly: 
"Now that little matter has been dealt with. I want to talk about those two 
girls." 

"What about them?" Clare did not wish to talk to him about the twins. "They 
have killed two of my men." 

She could not share his concern for men who would have used her ill. 
"Neither of us can be sure it was the girls." She pointed out reasonably. 
"No one saw who shot those arrows." 

"Who else shoots arrows!" 

"Go away from here," she pleaded. A sudden prescience gripped her. "Give 
them back their home. I'm afraid... afraid for all of us. This is not like 
other places. Montrilas is different-" 

"Montrilas?" 

"It's the old part. I was chained in the big hall there when George found 
me. It's the original name. Before Erdislune... " 

"Witches and warlocks and noises at night," he jibed. 

"Go away. Take me with you if you want. Not in chains. I'll go willingly if 
you'll give them back what belongs to them." 

"They murdered two of the men who trust me. They have already been 
sentenced." 

Clare looked at him incredulously. 

"To hang." He was deadly intent. "We held court after Rory." 

"Leave this place!" she demanded again. "Please! Please. Take me with you." 

"Have you considered something, love? Both men were killed because they 
threatened you. Maybe those two girls with their bows and arrows aren't all 
that concerned with this old ruin. What they want is you." , "That's easy 
then. Set me free. If I wander off through the park they'll find me." 

"Exactly. That's how we are going to catch them. They want you. You are a 
perpetual bait. Sooner or later they will fall into a trap trying to get at 
you." 

"I'll never help you hurt them." She was angry with him for spoiling a mood, 
and flashed angrily. "I'd escape if I could, and go to them." 

He laughed without rancor. "Why do you think we keep you chained!" 

She wished he was different. How absurd men were with their silly notions of 
politics and honor! What incomprehensible compulsions they carried around 
with them! Forever driven! For he who sat across the desk she could feel at 
that moment only pity and a great sorrow. 

Clare was not returned to the dungeon that night. 

But he did not loose her chains. 

* * * 

How good it felt! How absurd! How very Irish! Clare wanted to sing. The 
whole adventure was exciting and delightful. It was like release from 
prison. Actually that was what it was! An illusory freedom, of course. Her 
left wrist was firmly handcuffed to a ring in the seat of the truck. But her 
right hand was her own. She could raise or lower the window of the cab, and 
even stick her head out into the rush of air as the moor sped by beneath 
their wheels. 

"Aren't you afraid I'll call a policeman?" Clare asked happily. 

George was an intent driver, but more than willing to spare a glance for the 
naked girl chained beside him. "Ain't goin' ter be seein' no coppers," he 
assured her with certainty. 

"Well, somebody who sees us is sure to report a naked girl." 

"Not likely. Irish mind their own business these days." 

"Aren't you embarrassed?" 

"What 'ud I be embarrassed about, Miss?" 

"Me not having any clothes." 

"Yer never do have any, Miss. Boss said you'd be easier to handle naked." 

"I'm surprised you didn't put me in the back with the other two chaps?" 

"Sorta closed in back there. Mr. Costigan wants you to get a bit o' fresh 
air. Sort o' nice fer me too. I can see your tits." 

Clare could feel her floodtide of mischief rising. George was a delightful 
foil for nonsense. Especially erotic nonsense. 

"Do you like my tits, George?" 

"Course I do! Shouldn't talk about 'em like that, Miss." 

"Why not?" 

She watched George flounder. "Well, Miss... you know. I mean to say... " He 
had a flash of inspiration: "Your Ma wouldn't like it." 

"But, George! They're my tits, not hers." 

"Come off it, Miss. You're pullin' me leg." He gave an appreciative sideways 
glance at the items in question. 

"If you ogle them like that I'll hold my hands over them." 

"You couldn't cover no more than one of 'em," he guffawed. "You start 
covering things and I'll fix your other hand too." 

"What shocking crimes are we about to commit? Do I watch, or take part?" 

"It's that little bitch Nancy O'Malley, Miss. High time too. She's a'goin' 
ter get it." 

"What's the poor girl done?" 

"Fucked a British Tommy, that's what she done." 

"Couldn't we go to a movie instead." 

"We got another job beside Nancy," he said darkly. "That's where you come 
in." 

"Do I stand up for Erin or lay down for the I.R.A.?" 

"Shouldn't joke, Miss. It's dead serious." 

"Dead seems the operative word most of the time," Clare reminded him. "Why 
don't you get out of the dreary business?" 

George grunted. "You're a thinkin' 'bout them two pore bastards them girls 
shot with arrers." There was a bitter intensity in his voice. "We'll get 
them bitches, see! And we'll make 'em wish they'd never been born." 

It was always there: the dark undercurrent. One wrong word and you left the 
sunshine. Clare had little doubt she would see things she did not want to 
witness. But she strove valiantly to cling to the lighter mood of which her 
companion was capable so long as it was laced by the erotic. She sought 
compromise. "What do you do to these girls, George?" 

He smiled again. "Bit of a lark really, Miss. Costigan's boys do things 
right." He grinned reminiscently. "Take 'em to a quiet spot, then let 'em 
give us the high-and-mighty bit. You know, threats and so on. What their old 
man's going ter do ter us... Sometimes we strip 'em. Sometimes we make 'em 
take their clothes off themselves. They don't like that! But you ought ter 
see 'em when they catch sight of the rope or the handcuffs or whatever we 
use. That's when they get the wind up. You're the only girl I ever see what 
don't mind a bit o' chain or cord: real corker you are, Miss! Then sometimes 
we fuck 'em before we tie 'em. Or maybe we tie 'em first. When we've screwed 
'em real good we fix 'em so they can't move and shave 'em bald. We got 
clippers we can hook to the battery: leaves 'em bare as a billiard ball. You 
ought ter hear the fuss they make about that...!" 

"I suppose I will, won't I?" Clare asked without enthusiasm. 

"Damn right! Then it's the tar and feathers. We got the whole kit in the 
back. These panel jobs are the real thing for our kind of work." 

"Work?" Clare found it hard not to be caustic. 

"Yes, work!" he retorted belligerently. "We'll get the British out of 
Ireland inside two years." 

"I'm British. Why don't you tar and feather me?" 

George had a literal mind. "Well, yer see, Miss, if you fuck a Tommy it's 
O.K. Sort of like two cats knocking off a chunk. But if a good Irish girl 
lets a Tommy shove his dink into her it's all wrong. Like a cat and a dog 
having a go... See what I mean." 

She saw what he meant. Drop it! 

"I can hardly wait," she breathed ecstatically. 

'I'll fix yer with the handcuffs so you'll get a good look," George promised 
chivalrously. 

"Couldn't you just let me loose?" It was worth a try. 

He looked at her reproachfully. 

"Darling George!" Clare laid in on thick. "Please! Pretty please... ? No 
handcuffs. Let me move around so I can really see... right up close." She 
looked at him adoringly. 

"You're lardin' me up, Miss. Think I don't know." He shifted uncomfortably. 
"You give me a hard-on too. Serve yer right if I tied yer up real tight so 
it hurts and dumped yer in the back." 

"Or we could copulate on the roadside." 

"Shouldn't use dirty words like that, Miss." 

"Or you could pull over to the roadside and whip me for thirty minutes. I'm 
sure you brought a cane?" 

"You bet! Goin' ter slice young Nancy's arse." He gave her a quick new look. 
"That right, Miss, you like gettin' yer backside caned?" 

"Don't be absurd!" 

"I'll do it for yer any time." He oozed magnanimity. "And copulate too, I 
expect." 

"There you go again," said George, miffed. "Always so fucking rude." 

* * * 

Clare reluctantly recognized the neatness of the operation. Costigan's boys 
scooped Nancy O'Malley out of her daily pattern with precision expertise. 
Once within the panel truck the girl was lost. Clare's heart went out to the 
teenager at that first stricken comprehension. When the first male hands 
fell upon her Nancy knew! 

The 'quiet place' was well chosen. Clare could believe that endless 
atrocities might be perpetrated in the bit of woodland with impunity. George 
kept his promise. Her cuff was unlocked from its ring, she was led to a 
tree, her hand lifted above her head, the metal band clicked tight around a 
bough she could never bend. She would stand, one wrist locked securely. No 
hope of escape! How wonderful were handcuffs! she mused bitterly. With them 
a girl could be tethered here or there, this way or that, with the utmost 
facility: every home should have a pair. 

"See, I told yer. Ringside seat yer got," George said proudly. 

It was a strange and terrible tableau. In her fear and foreknowledge the 
captive stood at bay. They had loosed her. But the three men stood close 
enough that she could not dive between. The girl was panting. Assessing her 
plight her features took on the same feral cunning that was on the men. The 
chained spectator caught a momentary glimpse of why nature ejects more 
females than males from the womb. The surplus were intended as casualties 
for men's sport. 

"You let me go... see! I won't say nothin'." 

No man spoke. 

"You mess about wi' me and the army'll get yer, so they will!" Silence. 

The trapped eyes went from one to the other. Then saw Clare. "What yer bin 
doin' ter her?" 

Clare longed to tell the child to take no comfort from her abundance of hair 
and absence of tar. But deemed silence best. The men remained mutely intent. 

"Alright then!" The Tommy's sweetheart moved up her heavy artillery. "Fuck 
me! That's what you bastards want, bad cess ter you." 

Silence withered her salvo. 

Clare saw their cunning. In desperation the girl would punish herself. She 
was glad it was not her own delinquent nakedness that stood where Nancy 
stood. The male faces were ferocious, no pity, not even concupiscence. 

"Please just fuck me. Don't do... that... that other." The teenager looked 
around piteously. "If you'll let me off I'll be real good to you, so I 
will." Sensing that she had failed to touch them she added a pathetic bonus: 
"I promise I won't see Cyril no more." 

Clare guessed that even had there been hope for clemency the name would have 
erased it. Anything but Cyril... ! 

"Strip." The man George called Cully bit the word off curtly. 

The child was uncertain. Had they accepted her terms! 'I'll do it if her 
promise not ter do nothin' else... You know, them awful things... " Her 
whole being was a question mark. 

"You get the lot, girl," Cully assured her brusquely. "Strip." 

She leaped. They caught her easily. She fought, viciously and frenziedly. 
They subdued her with slaps and small blows, taking their time so that it 
was exhaustion that finally left her crouched on the ground as they resumed 
position. She was sobbing in an acceptance of defeat. 

"Strip." 

Meekly, brushing at her tears, she stood and began a task that few girls 
relish. She was cowed. But it was easy to see that she hated every motion 
that bared her body for them. 

Nancy's outraged pudicity could have been revealed to better advantage. But 
Clare saw she was quite lovely. She saw, too, the girl was endowed with a 
magnificent black pubic brush. It brought instant comment. 

"Look at that there quiff," George said in awe. "Have ter burn it off with a 
taper, like. Ain't got no scissors." 

His captive started in pure horror. Unsure whether to believe so awful a 
threat. "What you want me ter do now?" she-inquired without hope. 

Clare knew the familiar guilt. Should she close her eyes! She left them 
open. Watching the men use their captive she wondered sardonically if what 
she saw was technically rape. Or was the girl's body 'spoils of war' as she 
had been told her own had been. Or was it pure punishment! The latter seemed 
most probable. None of the participants showed joy. The supine splayed open 
nakedness of the child was plowed savagely again and again. Snarling orgasms 
repeated each other until the victim herself gasped in unsought climax. 
Everyone seemed glad when Nancy's first tribulation was done. 

Did hope flash for an instant in the sufferer's eyes when she saw the cane! 
A hope that if she was now whipped it would be the end! Perhaps. But still 
she must plead. 

"You ain't goin' ter use that rotten thing on me, are you?" 

The question was rhetorical, it merited no answer. "Not on me bare skin... 
oh please, let me put me panties on." 

They flattened her against a slender tree trunk, her pert breasts hugging 
the bark on either side. A rope was looped round the narrow waist and tugged 
torturingly tight so that her stomach disappeared and her shoulders and hips 
bent back as in a bow. Savage knots were used, so that even though she could 
reach them with her fingers she could not loose the stricture. Even without 
other bonds it held her helpless. She could kick and wave her arms. But her 
bottom was positioned perfectly for what it was about to receive. No effort 
of hers could move it. 

"It's breakin' me back," Nancy said with conviction. 

"Stops Tommy Atkins a'goin' ter the front," Cully said with relish. 

Clare looked at the round little behind sticking out for its punishment and 
cringed in sympathy. How well she knew the shock of that first lash. Nancy 
was doing her best to look back over her shoulder, her eyes wide with 
apprehension. "You ain't goin' ter do nothin' besides this, not that 
other...?" Thus do the hopeless explore the faintest hope. 

The scarlet stripes sprung up on the soft flesh with an almost clinical 
perfection and metronomic regularity. Clare saw the youthful nudity spring 
tense, shuddering as the cane cut her in its initial impact. Saw the wide 
eyes turn imploringly in disbelief that anything could hurt with such 
cruelty. Heard the moaning cries by which Nancy acknowledged her surrender 
to pain, her realization that these men could feel no pity for such as she. 
Watched as the small hands instinctively sought the wounded flesh and, for 
their trouble, received a full slash across their knuckles that wrung a peal 
of pure anguish from their owner and sent them to the tortured lips for what 
solace they might find, thereafter to hug the tree for what strength they 
might absorb from its unyielding trunk. 

The three men took turns. Not from exhaustion, but to share pleasure. Clare 
could not but sense the carnality of the caned bottom. Stripe on top of 
stripe, a scarlet and purple grid on a girl's skin, the feminine moans from 
the female lips. It was all wickedly erotic. Why, oh why, be born a girl 
when your agony could bestow such delight! In all her life to come, Nancy 
might never again give such sensory joy to man. Utterly hostile, hating 
every stroke, her bottom nonetheless bestowed a joy ineffable on those who 
whipped it. Even Clare felt the traitorous stirring within her loins. The 
caning of Nancy O'Malley was beautiful! 

The girlish legs kicked and bent and shuddered, responding to the cane with 
frenetic motion. The white shoulders were hugged to the tree as though 
momentarily expecting themselves to be lashed. The tear-wet face sought 
succor against the bark, first this side, then that, as though in refuge on 
a maternal bosom. The hair, so soon to be shorn, hung limp and damp or was 
tossed wildly from side to side. When the men loosed the cinching rope the 
punished girl remained clutching her tree as though, sharing her agony, it 
had become a friend. 

Now her arms behind. Tied bitterly tight at wrist and elbow. Once more Clare 
could share the pain. Then her ankles and her knees. She was made to kneel, 
wrists and ankles joined. Nancy could not move save to fall sideways. Cully 
tapped her conical breasts with the cane. "Keep still if you don't want your 
tits mashed," he promised. She looked up at him in desolation. She would not 
move. Clare was sure she would not move. 

The shaving was as efficient as the rest. Clare was shocked. 

George grasped the bound girl's hair and drew her head back as far as it 
would go. Cully denuded the eyebrows above the staring eyes... But not 
before the victim had screamed her protest. 

"Not them! Oh, not my eyebrows! I'll look a sight... ! Oh please, please, 
please... I'll do anything, anything at all! Ohhhh...!" By the time her 
moaning plea was done she had lost one of the silky brows she sought to 
save. 

Cully took much care. He even had two clippers, one coarse, one fine. When 
he was done not even a bristle remained, scarce even a shadow of lost 
loveliness. 

When the grip in her hair was loosed so that it, too, might join her brows 
upon the grass she cringed away from the shears that would make her bald, 
shaking her head in denial. It earned her a stinging cut across her left 
breast, at which she groaned but moved no more as the clippers sang their 
busy song and the long hanks of her tresses fell to the ground before her 
eyes. Soon she was as bald as those mannikins on which a wig is placed. 
Clare shrunk in horror. Without hair or brows the pretty child had become 
grotesque. 

Next they loosed her ankles and knees, dragged the small of her back across 
a big stone and pulled her feet, one to each side until she moaned in 
consternation. 

"You'll split me. Don't, don't! I'll lay still. Don't pull 'em more." 

She lay still. Even if she had fought it would have mattered not. She was 
mastered. Clare guessed the child's elbows would be a scalding fire as she 
lay on them. Her black bush offered itself for attention. There were a good 
many yelps as it was dealt with. Cully's fingers lovingly paved the way for 
his shears, but even so soft folds of female flesh sometimes caught the 
flashing blades. After all, a prisoner of war cannot expect a cosmetic 
depilation. Soon her sex was as naked as her head. The watching girl 
suspected it would impose an even greater shame. 

The precision drill continued. Costigan's boys had thought of everything. 
They freed their captive of all bonds and helped her to her feet. Not from 
chivalry, but so that she might peer at herself in a mirror, thoughtfully, 
and with subtle cruelty, provided. She took one appalled look at the 
caricature of a girl that stared back at her and sobbed into her hands in 
despair. "You rotten bastards," she ejaculated bitterly. "You rotten 
bastards...!" 

George and Bill each grasped one of the shrinking girl's wrists. Cully 
administered the huge can of warm tar. They must have heated it before 
starting out so that it still retained fluidity. With obvious satisfaction 
he began his task. 

They forced her, once more, to her knees. She could not move enough to evade 
the warm black stream that encircled her neck, spread in small tides across 
her white back and down to her hips. Then they pulled her shoulders back so 
that her breasts and belly offered themselves to the viscid muck. No inch of 
her loveliness escaped. Cully took special care to fill her navel and to 
well saturate the sex he had so recently shorn. 

A canvas was spread. On it the feathers were strewn in profusion. Nancy was 
laid upon the mess and her wrists relinquished in exchange for two grips 
upon her ankles which were spread and raised so that her tar-soaked body was 
held immobile on its bed of feathers. Now Cully tarred the out-flung arms, 
the wounded bottom cheeks, the thighs, the legs. As a last indignity he 
poured a blob of the black horror on the bald head. 

"You swine... you filthy swine...!" Nancy sobbed. She had ceased to fight. 

As a final degradation they laid her on her shoulders, legs spread, cunt 
rampant. Cully hugged the nearly empty can with one arm, and with the 
fingers of his other hand opened up the labia of the punished vagina. 

"Don't do it. Oh don't... ohhhh, please... not in there...!" 

She could have saved her breath. The can tilted. A thin stream of black goo 
found its way to the quivering quim and into the gaping slit the strong 
fingers had separated wide. The gaping orifice overflowed before the stream 
was staunched. 

"Nice surprise for Cyril," Cully snickered. 

They positioned the tarred nudity to their satisfaction on the canvas, 
making sure of a proper distribution of feathers. Then they rolled her into 
a straitjacket which they secured with a couple of loops of cord. With this 
final degradation Nancy had lost the will to fight. She let them have their 
way with her without protest. They deposited their neat bundle within the 
rear of the panel truck. 

Once more handcuffed to the ring in the seat, Clare said bitterly: "I 
suppose you're proud of yourself!" 

"'Twas a fine piece o' work, so it was!" George affirmed with conviction. 
"You've messed up her whole life." 

"And why not, Miss!" He was exultant. 

Clare sighed. It was so useless! "Would you like to do those things to me?" 
she asked offhandedly. 

George looked at her doubtfully. "Ain't never sure when you're havin' me on, 
Miss." He considered her query with a flattering concentration. "S'pose I 
would, Miss. I got a hard-on just thinkin' 'bout it." 

"I'm honored." 

"Ain't no use bein' sarcastic, Miss. You give me a hard like nothin' I ever 
knew before." He gave a moment to deep thought. "I'd like to marry you." 

It was pathetic and sad. A boy lost in death and sex. Her heart went out to 
his simplicity. "Thank you, George." Her free right hand reached over and 
touched his. "That was nice of you." Clare fought down an impulse to ask him 
to release her cuffed wrist. He might do it. But it was an unfair advantage 
from which she shrunk. How potently our emotions shape our acts! For a 
single moment she loved him. 

The panel truck stopped in a quiet street on the outskirts of a town. It was 
now dark. Nancy, or that which had been Nancy, was taken from the rear and 
carried to a metal lamppost. The sobbing girl was steadied on her feet and 
the canvas unwrapped. She was an extraordinary sight: grotesque, 
frightening, absurd: above all pathetic. They had saved her face from 
defilement. It made a contrast more vivid, more frightening. In moments she 
had been chained to the massive vertical post. Clare saw that, even in this 
last infliction, Costigan's boys had forgotten nothing. They used rusty 
great lengths of ship's chain to fasten her three times tightly round her 
waist. Each separate. Each with a huge padlock. Whoever tried to loose her 
would have no easy task. Nancy looked at them in dumb misery as they secured 
her. She had no plea. It had all happened to her! The time for mercy was 
past. She would stand, chained tight to the unyielding metal, until chance 
sent someone to whom she might appeal for rescue. A rescue that must 
inevitably carry with it an infinity of shame. They drove away and left her 
there. Clare wondered, nonsensically, if Cyril would take her back. 

"Now we got summat real ter do," said George. 

It was a nice house in a street of nice houses. The incongruity of a naked 
girl with wrists handcuffed behind her back, standing on the front step and 
ringing the bell with chained hands was no more than apposite to the 
Costigan charisma. How could she be suspect! She was not suspect. She was 
sure she had been scrutinized before the door was opened. When it swung wide 
it revealed a handsome woman of perhaps thirty-five. Clare recognized her 
instantly, her innermost being shrinking from the role she had been forced 
to play. Forced! Ashamedly she knew she had allowed George and her own 
instinct for mischief to place her where she stood. 

There was neither time nor need for words. She had served her purpose in 
opening the door. She watched miserably as Corinna Winthrop was bound, 
gagged and thrust into the ever convenient vehicle. She herself was led back 
to the cab by one fettered wrist and her handcuff, once more, clicked tight 
into the ring in the seat. The business of being handcuffed here and there 
now seemed the most natural thing in the world. She would be doubly naked 
without the grip of metal round at least one wrist. 

"What are you going to do to her, George?" 

The driver chuckled. "Don't rightly know, Miss. Mister Costigan, he's got 
somethin' up his sleeve." He guffawed gleefully. "There'll be a fine old 
to-do in the mornin' when she ain't there." 

"I suppose the usual whips and things...?" 

George gave the matter careful thought. "I'd sure like to whip her arse," he 
admitted reflectively. "Proper bitch, she is. All that guff she writes and 
spouts on platforms. Needs a good stiff prick to teach her she's a woman." 

"You'll be a big help to her then." 

He gave his prisoner a sideways glance. "I never know when you're kiddin'," 
he admitted. "But, sure, I'd like to ram it into her, hard! All her pretty 
words proving we are a lot o' bastards. She thinks her shit don't stink. 
She'll know different when a whip curls round her backside." 

"Why didn't you treat her the same as Nancy?" 

"Don't know, Miss. But seein' who she is, Costigan he'll have somethin' 
special." 

Clare felt quite sure there would indeed be something 'special' for the 
unfortunate journalist bound in the back. But why pursue misery. It was 
frightening the way these men could swing from warm humor to cold cruelty. 
They treated their own worse than they treated the hated English. They lived 
on hate. It nourished them. But those who lived by the sword... 

She knew herself privileged. She knew why, and felt the familiar guilt. She 
and Costigan shared a strange communion. In her punishments and usage with 
his men she had deliberately given herself and infused into what she gave 
and what she received a mischievous eroticism they understood. She had 
chosen to be wanton rather than be savaged. She her choice wise. But few 
would condone. Hope of escape was implicit to all she did. How much wiser to 
sit as she was now instead of being chained in a dungeon! If they came to 
trust her enough the moment might come... But would Tavie and Alethea 
understand! That was what mattered. 

Spurred by such thoughts, Clare allowed her right hand to reach across her 
lap and finger the metal band about her left wrist. 

"I'm tired of always being chained, George. Be a sweetie and unlock me for a 
while." 

She knew her request seemed natural to him. 

"I'd just get into a peck o' trouble, Miss," he said defensively. 

"No you won't. No one will know. Unlock me now. When we get to Erdislune 
I'll put my hand down so you can snap the cuff on." She gave her troubled 
companion a shamelessly hungry look. "In fact, love, I'll snap it on tight 
myself for you." 

"You'd jump out the door." Poor George was torn. 

"Don't be silly." 

She knew it a tribute to whatever role she played that, flushed and awkward, 
he handed her the key. 

"Here, you can do it. But first I want that promise thing. What do you call 
it?" 

Clare laughed. He was delightful at times. "My parole! You have it, love. I 
promise. I'll let you handcuff me whenever or however you want. Honest... 
I'll be the best little girl." 

How absurdly easy it was when you had the key. So tiny a piece of metal to 
hold a girl captive. She handed it back and watched an uneasy George tuck it 
safely in a pocket. She raised both hands to the roof of the cab, flexed 
them back and forth and sighed ecstatically. "I suppose it's mostly in the 
mind," she admitted. "But, oh, it feels so good. Thank you. You're sweet. 
Thanks again." 

"What you goin' ter do now?" George asked as though anticipating some Yoga 
gymnastics. 

She bent over and kissed his cheek. "Nothing, darling. Absolutely nothing 
except move my hands up and down and back and forth without hearing clinking 
sounds or being snubbed up short. It's lovely." 

George glowed with magnanimity. To bestow such happiness upon a girl without 
the expenditure of cash loomed as an attractive prerequisite of his 
profession. "I'll do it when I can, Miss. Don't suppose it'll be too often." 

Conscience smote her. She had given her word. Would she betray it and him! 
Could she! Would the twins expect that of her. What would they do. She 
suspected they would never have given their word in the first place. What 
did she owe to the overgrown boy beside her! A killer! But all soldiers were 
killers. A rapist! But not by his own code. He had been kind to her because 
she had been kind to him. Did that reduce her to his level! No, no, no... He 
was what he was. But she would not destroy him. In amused resignation Clare 
recognized that even without the bite of metal or cut of cord she was bound 
as securely as she had ever been. 

When they reached Erdislune she placed her own wrist within the small gaping 
jaws of steel and clasped them shut. The familiar click, click, click seemed 
to mock her pretensions of escape. George reached down with one hand and 
nodded approvingly. She had deliberately closed the cuff an extra notch. 
"Yer a damn good girl, an' all," he said gruffly. "Wish yer weren't no 
prisoner." 

"If I wasn't a prisoner you'd never have known me," she pointed out. 

It was very feminine logic. 

The trial of Corinna Winthrop made no headlines. It was attended by but a 
very small group. The public was represented by four chained and naked 
girls. Three of them wore about their hips the close chain mail that denied 
their sex. The fourth was fastened well apart from them and wore nothing. 
Costigan's boys were the jury. Costigan himself the prosecutor. There was no 
judge. 

Corinna Winthrop had been allowed to keep her clothes, to tidy them and to 
use make-up. She presented her usual svelte image so familiar on TV. She was 
handsome and vital, with an air of authority in no way lessened by having 
her crossed wrists bound behind her back with cord. Clare suspected cord had 
been used as being more painful and demeaning than handcuffs. It is always a 
bad moment for a girl when she must stand passive while a man loops and tugs 
the bands tight. When the knot is tied she knows herself frighteningly 
vulnerable. 

Clare supposed the charade satisfied some conscience that must be appeased 
by rationalization. Had the Winthrop woman's social status been no more than 
Nancy O'Malley's she could have been as casually tarred and feathered 
without a qualm. But, being a pillar of the Establishment, she offered a 
fine mental diversion before her flesh was consigned to agony. Perhaps they 
cherished a wish to make her see their side: some sort of conversion before 
they sentenced her. Shades of the Inquisition! 

Corinna Winthrop fought with words. They were stock in trade. Because of 
words she stood where she was now. Elsewhere she would have been a 
formidable adversary. But not here. Clare watched and saw the slow 
realization grow upon the taut features that she could say nothing to 
appease these men. Each statement she made was countered by the cold 
enunciation of a 'crime'. Costigan was hard and relentless. The prisoner had 
been their bitter enemy. He built around her a cage of accusation from which 
she could never escape. When Cully, acting as foreman of the jury, spoke the 
word "Guilty," it should have ended the heartbreaking farce. But it did not. 
Corinna Winthrop must now be sentenced. 

For a moment the scene held drama. Clare saw the captive straining in an 
instinctive rejection of her bound hands and that which she must now endure. 
Costigan unveiled a surprise. 

"I have told you why you are here," he said soberly to the unwilling 
defendant. "I have told you of why you are guilty in our eyes. I will not 
also be your judge. For that it is more fitting you should face a more 
simple man. A man without pretensions. A man the opposite of what you are or 
what I was: Barney Riodan." 

He was indeed a very ordinary man. Save for the bright hatred of his eyes he 
was nondescript. To the bound women he would be anathema: not so much of the 
people as of the gutter. 

"A traitress, so ye are, and treason ye've done." 

Corinna Winthrop looked at him wearily and with distaste. "Never mind the 
speech. Get on with it, you Belfast rat." 

"The whip for my fine lady, it is." Clare saw her flinch. 

"And too good fer the likes o' us, so ye are. Despise men, so ye do. No 
wedding ring fer one so grand. Well, 'tis a wedding ring we'll be giving ye. 
Out of the kindness of our hearts, an all." 

A wedding ring! Clare was puzzled. So, too, was the prisoner. Corinna 
Winthrop said nothing. But looked at her judge as though he was some 
offensive matter that should be disposed of. Barney Riodan chuckled with 
evil knowledge. 

"Tis a brand ye should be wearin', too, my lovely. A little something to 
remember us by." Corinna Winthrop turned desperately to Costigan. "Will you 
allow this excreta to drool on like this! He's psychopathic." 

Riodan chuckled and resumed his list. No one said him nay. "And ye'll be 
takin' yer clothes off fer us, so ye will, so common stuff like us can see 
yer quality. Tis curious we are that ye might have the same bits and pieces 
as the little girls over there." 

"You are an animal." 

"Aye, I am that. And animals breed, don't they! The boys and I 'ull be 
servicing yer. A rare treat it'll be." 

"The whole lot of you will hang." 

"The saints protect us, Madam. But it's a bit o' hangin' you'll be doin' 
yourself. It's on the list, for sure. Thumbs or toes maybe." 

"You've got a sick mind." 

"Then you'll be wantin' ter know us better. A bit o' psychology stuff. So 
we'll have ye sittin' fer a day where we can all talk ter you. Not the sort 
of seat you're used to, a lady an all, but summat to rest on." 

It went on and on. They played with her. But Clare was sure it was no game. 
Corinna Winthrop would suffer. She was right. It began instantly. 

Clare stood with Costigan and watched. She had no choice. It was an order. 
The other girls had gone, whisked away before they could contaminate her. 
Clare herself had handcuffs on her wrists in front, her feet were chained so 
that she could walk, but never run. It was what she and Costigan jokingly 
referred to as 'Her Uniform'. She wore her shackles with unconscious grace. 

Corinna Winthrop looked scornfully at the circle of rapt male attention. "I 
am not going to strip," she said with finality. 

They stripped her, making a game of it. Tearing her clothes from her bit by 
bit. Naked, she refused to cower or to try and cover what could not be hid. 
She glowered back at them defiantly. "Rape me if you have to. I won't help." 
Her voice was bitter gall. 

They made a game of that too. Boys being boys. Some were wounded by her 
nails and teeth. But they had their will with her. Ireland's leading 
feminist was forced into position after position and held by eager hands as 
her sex was ravaged again and again. No part of her escaped. 

"Do I have to watch?" Clare asked Costigan in disgust. 

"I want you to see us as we are." He turned from the scene and grinned at 
her. "You'd have handled that situation a hell of a lot better than she's 
doing." 

Clare wondered if she should feel pride that she would have emerged from the 
compounded rape with fewer wounds than this woman whose heaving nudity was 
held taut for each successive impalement. 

It takes surprisingly little time for eight males to plant their sperm. Even 
with deviations and repeats. When it was done the woman who had been their 
vessel stood panting, once again the center of their gloating eyes. They 
were in a courtyard, so that Corinna Winthrop's sweating nakedness was 
stained with grass and dirt and the secretions of the male. She stood at 
bay, breasts heaving. Clearly expecting the next assault. She still had 
courage. But it was easy to see she no longer cherished hope. 

They tied her wrists behind her back, then her elbows cruelly tight so that 
they met. They laid her on her back beneath a tree and raised her feet high. 
It was part of her sentence: 'To hang'. Her big toes were looped. By them 
alone she was raised until she rested only with her shoulders on the ground. 
She could look up and see her feet and hips widely spread and tied to a 
bough above. Not only could she see her legs and belly. But she could see, 
most intimately, her naked sex, gaping, open, demanding of attention. Clare 
heard her give a sobbing moan of desolation. The men went away and left her. 

Clare turned to Costigan. He laughed. "O.K. Be tender hearted. I've work to 
do. I'll leave you here. But the way you're handcuffed you could free her. 
Are you going to?" 

She knew he was amused by her dilemma. She faced reality, and could not be 
angry with him. She grinned back. "I promise, I'll be good. She'll hate me." 

She watched him go. A jaunty, solid, determined man with a conviction that 
could lead him to his grave. She wished it otherwise. Ankle chains clinking, 
she walked to the woman being punished and looked down into the imploring 
eyes. 

"Thank God! Let me loose, please." A mixture of humility and authority. 

Clare held up her handcuffed wrists. "I'm a prisoner too." 

"Your hands have enough freedom to get me out of this." There was a 
schoolteacher quality about the woman. 

"My feet are chained too. I can't escape. If I interfere with... with, the 
way you are they'll punish us both terribly." She knew she sounded 
ineffectual. She knew, too, that Corinna Winthrop was in pain. 

"Nonsense, girl! Set me free. I'll look after you." 

Clare wished she had stayed with Costigan. 

"Don't stand there like a dummy. I can't stand much more of this. Can't you 
see what they've done to me! Look at my toes! The absolute swine! And get 
those things off my elbows. They're being cut in two." Corinna Winthrop was 
much absorbed by her own pain. 

"You don't understand. None of us can escape. You can't. These men do what 
they want with us. They'll do all those things to you. Sure, they trust me 
after a fashion. But they always keep me chained. If I shuffled off into the 
park now they'd catch me and hurt me terribly. So I do what I'm told. You 
should too. It's best." 

The tortured woman gave her a look of bitter loathing. "You rotten little 
coward. You deserve chains. It's all you're good for." She turned her head 
away and moaned in despair. 

Clare was absolved from further embarrassment by the appearance of Cully and 
Riodan. Each with a box. They looked like plumbers intent upon repairs. 
Grinning, Cully produced a key and unlocked one cuff of Clare's handcuff. It 
both amused and irritated Clare that her tether had such infinite 
adaptability under the control of everyone except herself. He took her hand 
round one of the victim's raised legs and snapped the cuff round her wrist 
again. She found herself quaintly embracing one of the tortured limbs. Both 
men were vastly entertained by her bafflement. Even Corinna Winthrop 
contrived an interest. Her eyes darting back and forth in fearful 
conjecture. 

"Ringside seat again, Miss," said Cully. 

"Watch out this don't happen ter you!" Riodan winked lecherously. 

As usual, these nondescript men were surprisingly competent. Riodan produced 
a hypodermic and cast a stern eye on the female he had sentenced. "The more 
you struggle the more it hurts," he warned. "Being kind to yer, so we are, 
with this here. Don't want yer fainting on us." 

Clare watched fascinated as, without pause, he inserted a thumb in the 
exposed vagina and, pulling out one labia, thrust home the hypo needle. He 
repeated the action on the other. 

Clare began to guess. Her heart fluttered at the enormity of it. Corinna 
Winthrop looked up speechless. She had not struggled, nor had she divined. 
"If you're thinking of depilation," she said crossly, "go ahead. It's all 
the fashion." 

"Talking about cunt hairs?" Cully inquired solicitously. 

"Ohhhh!" She turned her head away and ignored them. 

Cully produced batteries, wires and a long thin electrode that soon glowed 
red. Standing so that he obscured the Winthrop woman's view, he touched the 
tip of the rod to the insensitized sex. There was no reaction. He nodded, 
satisfied. 

Clare watched this violation of a woman's most private place with interest. 
She could not help herself. She was chained there so she might as well learn 
all she could. She admitted to herself a wanton thrill at Riodan's laughing 
threat. Suppose one day she too... 

Again the finger and thumb lifting the lip of the helpless woman's sex. The 
scarlet needle found its entry under the firm fingers of the man intent upon 
his work. With speed and facility the white hot metal burned its passage 
through the flesh to emerge at the other side. Riodan worked it back and 
forth twice. Then drilled another hole exactly opposite. The orifices were 
not small. 

An open silver ring was produced. Clare gasped. To wear something as big as 
that! It seemed huge. But, of course, it was for punishment. She watched 
intently as it was positioned. Looped through the two fresh wounds in the 
flesh it united the lips from which it would hang. Huge pliers forced its 
divergent ends together, the white hot needle welded them. Corinna 
Winthrop's sex would wear its heavy ring for life unless stout tools were 
used to cut if off. 

"Never uses the damn thing anyway," Cully observed philosophically. They 
moved back. 

It took several moments for the bound woman to digest what she saw. Clare 
could imagine her first unbelief. When she did at last realize that she must 
wear a metal ring through the lips of her sex her eyes sought Riodan. "I'll 
kill you," she said quietly. It was all she deigned to say. Laughing, the 
two men gathered their tools and left. 

"Hey, take me with you," Clare pleaded. She felt sure the woman around whose 
leg she was chained would not be cheerful company. But her plea was waved 
away. "You can move it round and round," Cully chortled. "Make sure it 
settles in right." 

Clare looked down sympathetically. "I'm sorry." 

"Like hell you are! Get away from me." 

"I can't." Clare again demonstrated her handcuffs. 

The prisoner snorted. "Is that bloody thing in me the way I think it is?" 

"Yes." Clare could feel mischief rising. "It's really quite attractive." 

"Why haven't you got one then!" 

"I guess they don't think I'm important enough." She could not resist. "I'd 
like one though." 

"You would! You're the kind. All bloody sex!" She paused, deep in a sudden 
thought. "I say. Can a man... ? I mean... " 

"You mean, can a man fuck you?" Clare asked wickedly. 

"You would put it like that, but yes." 

Clare reached forward and tenderly lifted the bright shining circle. It was 
heavy, but had its own loveliness. So well had the holes been burned that 
she found she could move the ring within its anchorage of flesh. Indubitably 
its positioning denied entry. 

"No, they can't! But here the boys use the other side of a girl too," she 
offered comfortingly. 

"You tell me that now! What d'you think they were doing to me while you and 
that swine Costigan stood and watched." 

"Were you really a virgin?" Clare knew herself incorrigible. 

"None of your business!" There was hesitation, and then, "Well, yes I was. I 
wanted it that way." 

"Must have been a damned interesting experience for you! I wasn't a virgin 
when they got me... But the things they do to a girl! I was amazed... " . 

"I'm sure you enjoyed every minute." How bitter could sarcasm be! 

"Are you a lesbian?" Clare felt she might as well die for a sheep as a lamb. 
She already pictured the headlines: "Rebel girl torments journalist." She 
did not care. Corinna Winthrop was difficult to love. 

"No, I am not a lesbian!" The suffering public figure was loaded with 
negatives. But, once more, there came the thoughtful pause. "I have 
wondered... how d'you go about it...?" 

Clare longed to laugh. "You lick each other's clits. Want me to tongue 
yours?" 

She might hate herself afterwards. But she could not stop now. It was not 
easy with the handcuffs. There was also the ring. It did not help. But the 
tip of her tongue did manage to reach the neglected coral bud. Ireland's 
leading journalist gasped. 

"Like it?" 

"You might try it again. I'm not sure." The coral bud's owner quivered 
mendaciously. 

Obligingly, and loving every moment, Clare skillfully brought Corinna 
Winthrop to orgasm. She watched the changing shadows of emotion on the 
strained features. How little this authoritative virgin had known of life. 
But then... for that matter, how little had Clare Norman known before she 
had become a thrall. 

When the ecstasy had died the prisoner groaned. "The pain's awful. I really 
am grateful. But are you sure you can't...?" 

"I can't untie you," Clare said flatly. "Do you want to see me get a hundred 
lashes with the whip!" 

"Would they do that?" 

"They have already done it. You can see some of the marks." 

"Will they do those other things to me?" 

"Yes." 

George came into view. He was whistling cheerily. The key was ready in his 
hand. "I got a feelin' fer you, love," he declaimed happily as he unlocked 
one cuff. 

Clare looked amusedly at the startled woman who had suddenly become a 
spectator to another's shame. "Watch this," she invited sardonically. Then, 
turning to George, "How d'you want me, love?" 

"Suit yourself, sweetheart." He was in an expansive mood. 

The receptacle of lust arranged herself suitably with widespread legs. 
George plunged to his Waterloo with gusto.. The resultant action was 
prolonged and explosive. George retired whistling "Tipperary." 

"It's disgusting! You should be ashamed." 

Clare got to her feet and brushed off the usual adhering particles. "O.K. So 
I fight and get whipped and knocked around! Which is best?" She looked down 
sadly. "I know it's not easy to take. But the thing is that a girl can get 
pleasure... " She waved away the indignant protest. "It's true! Pleasure! If 
that makes me bad I'm bad." Suddenly Clare felt a great pity for the 
tortured woman who had been made to suffer so much so soon. George had 
linked her wrists again without tethering. She knelt and smoothed the damp 
hair. "I know you think this a madhouse," she said softly. "Perhaps it is. 
But a girl does survive. It can't go on forever. Hold on to that. It's what 
I've had to do." 

Sadly she left the woman she could not help. 

Costigan's boys had sport with the ring. It intrigued them, as did the 
behavior of she who wore it. They contrived a long but light chain lead with 
a snap at each end. The wrists of the lady of the ring were kept tied behind 
her back, so it was a simple matter to snap on to the intimate circlet, lead 
the lady wherever you wished, then snap the other end to any convenient 
object and leave her to consider her plight. Corinna Winthrop displayed an 
abject anxiety to follow where she was led. 

It was cruel by intent. The incision and the insert were fresh. They hurt. 
When the ring was moved or pulled the hurt was doubled and trebled. She dare 
not resist. Obviously hating her submissive role, she nonetheless played it 
with a fearful determination. It was not the most brutal thing done to her. 
But Clare suspected the arrogant female found it the most shaming. To be 
led, to be tethered like a dog, from a ring through the lips of her sex! 

She found her so tethered the following day. Corinna Winthrop was actually 
in tears, standing naked against a rail where her bound hands could not 
reach the snap. 

"The rotten swine," she sobbed vehemently. "Why! Why! Why!" 

Clare dealt with the tears as best she could with her fingers. They were a 
feminine problem of being naked. 

"Actually they are going easy with you," she counseled. 

The older woman had been thinking. "I am actually going to be branded," she 
acknowledged wonderingly. "Costigan talked to me. And all those other things 
they said... they'll do them to me too. They are going to hurt me 
everywhere, even my breasts and nipples." 

"They are the bits of a girl men like best," Clare pointed out. "Tits and 
twat, George calls them. The first time I was whipped here was on my sex. I 
thought I was cut in two." 

"You take it all very calmly." 

"You have to," Clare said with sincerity. "If a girl is forever in revolt 
she'd break." She eyed Corinna speculatively. "You are getting shock after 
shock, aren't you? I bet you have never gone naked before?" 

"Good heavens! Of course not!" 

"Well, you have to understand that in the world these men inhabit-perhaps in 
all men everywhere, there is a gorgeous vividly colored and accented fantasy 
of woman. Us! It's a world filled with sweetly curved breasts, nubile 
nipples, concave tummies, and neat slits either covered with a lovely black 
brush like you had or cleanly shaved as though no hair had ever been there. 
They cup their hands on these treasures. It is their greatest wish. They 
adore our breasts, our nipples and our little triangle at the top of our 
legs. Do you realize how strong this makes us?" 

"Strong! When they can do this to us!" Corinna fluctuated her loins so that 
her ring shone proudly. 

"Yes, strong! It's one of the reasons they particularly have it in for you. 
You have possessed these things they worship for a long time. But you have 
never shared them. Never made a man joyous by letting him suck your nipples 
or put his hand on the cleft you pee through. There's lots of names for it. 
Which do you like to use?" 

"You talk like a whore." 

"I didn't when I came here. But I have lived, and been chained, in a world 
of nakedness. I have come to know the sadness of denying what we are. With 
your breasts and your cunny you could enslave a man far more securely than I 
am enslaved." Clare held up her handcuffed wrists. "These will come off with 
a key. But a man can never escape our breasts." 

"He can put a ring through my... " Corinna was not converted. 

"Go a step further, then," Clare reasoned. "They do what they please with 
us. But where does it end! They fuck us! Beastly word, isn't it. But it's 
best to use it sometimes. When they have done that it's the finish, the end. 
They go to sleep, or walk away hot and sweating. But we endure. 

Fucking us weakens them and strengthens us." 

"You're a lesbian!" Corinna had made a discovery. 

"Of course! You're a nothing! Who wants to be a nothing! They fuck me when 
they please. I don't mind. The friction is pleasant. It diminishes them, not 
me." 

"You've been whipped. I can see the marks." 

"A girl did it. I loved her." Clare looked pityingly at her bewildered 
companion. "You don't know the quintessence of love until you have been 
whipped." She felt the tide of mischief rising. "It would give me great 
happiness to have a girl place in me a ring such as yours." 

The tethered beauty looked at her askance. "You are being ridiculous." 

"I'm not. Carnality is about half of life. I'd almost be willing to bet that 
when you become a free woman again you'll leave that ring where it is and 
cherish it. Whenever you uncover your cunt you'll look at it and be glad 
it's there." 

The bearer of the ring looked at Clare with a new respect, a reluctant 
sympathy. "You've come a long way, haven't you! I suppose I seem a big 
spinsterish." She smiled wryly. 

"I've come a long way too." Clare remembered her first haunted journey 
across the moor. "Not long ago I used to hold on to my quim, that's George's 
word, and my breasts and my nipples as though they were the crown jewels." 
She laughed derisively. "If a man had said to me, 'Hey, Clare, show me one 
of your breasts,' I'd have clobbered him. I would not have been willing to 
face the fact that by letting him tickle my nipple I could do what I liked 
with the silly ass." 

"But it's a sort of prostitution." 

"Horseradish!" Clare was making discoveries as she went along. "There's 
something females like you and me have to face. We are like the queen bee. 
We're special. Most girls sag or bulge. We don't. We stick out in all the 
right ways. We are a breed apart. We don't know it, but we have a choice. 
Get impregnated and swell and burst, or fuse with a male or female and 
create a current that fuels a fire. We have our own place in the scheme of 
things." 

"An odalisque!" 

"So what! An odalisque can change a kingdom." 

Corinna Winthrop looked at the vehement girl in wonder. "But men will brand 
me. And whip me. And what else... " 

Under the intoxication of her own thesis Clare took an absurd plunge. "I'll 
go to Costigan and ask that some of the things you fear most be done to me 
instead." 

She walked steadfastly away, under the compulsion of an emotion she did not 
bother to fathom. The woman who wore the ring stared after her in wonder. 

* * * 

"I'm not going to put a ring in your cunt, darlin'," Costigan laughed at 
her. "The boys would murder me." 

"Alright then! Brand me instead of her!" 

"Hell, no! It would prove nothing." 

"Brand me too then." 

He looked at her with his tired, wise eyes. "Still the female thing with 
you, isn't it! The urge to immolate yourself. To crawl up their unsoiled 
cunts. To feel their whips." He gave her a comradely grin. "How'd you like a 
good whipping? Something ritualistic. Tie you up to your figure's best 
advantage and whip the shit out of you?" 

She considered his proposal. Her negative was well considered. Her flesh 
hungered for no male thong upon her flesh. 

Costigan chuckled. He would deal with her stubbornness without resentment. 
He might resent, but he understood the magic touch the siblings had placed 
upon her. "Very well then. You can share an amusing diversion with the dear 
girl." She eyed him with suspicion. "I don't want to share. I want to 
absolve her from some of those awful things... " 

"A victim of nobility," he jibed. "Common at your age. 

Hell no! You want to suffer, do it right! Who d'you think you are anyway, 
giving orders... Damn women! Give 'em an inch... " 

It hurt worse than anything Clare could remember. A quite different hurt 
than anything she had known. Unrelenting, searching her innermost being. 
Punishing her femaleness. Woefully she looked at Corinna Winthrop and saw a 
mirror of herself. Why, oh why, hadn't she had the sense to leave well 
enough alone! 

They sat upon a trestle, a naked girl and a naked woman who was, in many 
ways, younger than the slight figure facing her in agony. It was a very 
ancient punishment, hallowed by the centuries. But neither cared its 
antiquity. They were concerned only with pain. The vertical board of the 
trestle had a sharp edge. They sat upon it. 

Simple, as are all lasting concepts, it was called "The Horse." The naked 
girl in disfavor straddled it, her feet widely spread and tied down so that 
she was held immobile on the cutting edge. Her wrists crossed and bound 
behind her back so that she could not use her hands to support her weight. 
She simply sat and endured. All her weight rested on that small area of 
herself between her sex and the orifice between her bottom cheeks. As the 
minutes, and then the hours, sped by she wished she had not been born a 
girl. She wished, too, with a demoralizing urgency that she had not offended 
the man who had placed her thus. If only... If only... If only... ! 

Clare gasped in agony, and heard the panting breaths of her companion match 
her own. Hours had passed. She was sure it must be hours! The cutting edge 
on which she sat was slicing her sex, her rectum, her whole female being. 
All she could do was sit so that it cut her more and more. She tortured her 
body simply by existing. She had glimpsed, once before, that a girl's 
function was to suffer, that her agony was the bread men ate to live. 

She looked at Corinna Winthrop, the tense muscles, the sweat-soaked nudity, 
the damp lank hair, the white shoulders wracked back by the bound wrists. 
Thus she would look. A terrible beauty quite unique. A tortured girl. There 
is nothing more beautiful than a tortured girl! Her bitter reflection was 
confirmed by George's cheerful comment: "Ain't never seen nothin' as 
beautiful as you two. Not never." 

Clare looked at him through a haze of pain. "Go away, George, unless you are 
going to let us loose." 

"For God's sake, get us off this blasted thing!" Corinna's voice was pure, 
unreasoning agony. 

"Never seen two cunts squashed quite like that," George submitted 
clinically. 

"Go away or let us loose!" Clare reiterated. She did not wish to be examined 
by lewd male eyes. 

"You're goin' ter sit there all day," George said comfortingly. 

"Go away and leave us alone." 

"How T)out if I tickle your tits?" 

"No!" Corinna's voice was desperate. 

Clare grasped at any straw. "You can tickle mine," she offered, certain that 
her fellow sufferer would consign her to the lesser breeds beyond the law. 

George availed himself of the opportunity. Clare could feel her nipples 
hardening under his fingertips. She loved it. But said caustically: "You'll 
have to untie me if you are going to do anything else." 

He chuckled, enjoying his mastery. Wordlessly his finger slid down and 
entered her sex. Soon she was gasping. She dared not look at Corinna. When 
orgasm took her she strained, gasping with a quite new agony and ecstasy 
that made her one with the flaming edge that bit unceasingly into her loins. 

"Take your filthy hands off me," Corinna spat at him. 

Clare watched as her companion on the trestle endured George's carnal 
attentions. If it had not been for her pain she might have smiled. Corinna 
Winthrop went through all the stages of feminine revulsion, examination and 
acceptance. After she had moaned in orgasm George left them alone again with 
one final injunction to Clare: "Damn silly, yer are an all ter be sittin' 
there." It is not easy to talk normally when your being is sundered oh a 
sharp edge. Between clutching breaths Corinna Winthrop asked wonderingly: 
"Why the hell are you sitting there?" 

In spite of wishing to be anywhere than where she was Clare could not 
resist. "I asked for it," she admitted demurely. 

Corinna Winthrop's withering retort was stifled by two male hands circling 
her from the rear and cupping her breasts. "Horsy, horsy," Len said 
enthusiastically. "Ain't it a lovely game." 

Clare was not in a mood for fun. She hurt. On the other hand any diversion 
to take her mind from the process of being slowly cut in two was welcome. 
Her inquiring eye acknowledged a broad wink from the grinning man who had, 
himself, straddled the trestle behind the pain-wracked nakedness of the 
woman whose breasts he was kneading busily. "She hates that," she told him. 
"Do mine instead. Leave her alone." 

"You're a greedy girl, so ye are," Len acknowledged. "This pore soul's been 
neglected, so she has. 'Tis a bit o' attention she'll be deservin'." 

"You can stop anytime," Corinna gasped ungratefully. "Tis lovin' it she is, 
and that's the truth," Len said complacently. His fingers displayed a 
knowing cunning in their play. Clare guessed the unwilling recipient would 
not easily rid herself of them. 

Corinna evidently decided not to demean herself by futile protest. She kept 
a strained silence and endured. But the motion on her twin mounds was enough 
to impart itself to the central focus of her punishment so that the small 
pained sounds that did escape her lips came more from enhanced pain than 
sensual response. Instinctively she had shrunk back from the searching 
digits, but the screaming protest from tortured nerves forced her to relapse 
and to surrender her most cherished secrets without a struggle. 

Clare watched her face, entranced. It was a montage of emotions. Thirty-five 
years of virginity. Now this! Breasts cradled only in bras. Now mauled by 
men. A utilitarian sex now closed and held by a metal ring by which she was 
led... A figure exquisitely clothed, soignee, immaculate. Now naked and 
bound grotesquely... It was all there. All there and more! A woman's breasts 
cannot be delivered into their own separate captivity without their 
suffering or their joy imparting itself to their owner. Len's hands invoked 
disgust, resentment, resignation, and finally arousal. The two separate 
entities that were the breasts of Corinna Winthrop would betray her. That 
yearning breasts and palpitating nipples had delivered woman into slavery 
throughout the centuries would comfort her not at all. 

"I could be nippin' 'em with me teeth, so I could," Len offered. 

His victim did not interrupt her labored breathing to reply. But suddenly 
she screamed. Len was pinching both her nipples with hard cruel thumbs and 
fingers. 

"Twas a kind offer I was makin'. Tis rude, it is, ter be silent." 

Clare looked in wonder at the contortions Corinna could not control. They 
must be causing her a shocking penalty of pain. She saw the struggle on the 
woman's face in her search for the right words to end this new agony. 

"Oh please stop! Ohhhh... no thank you! Ohhh please...!" The absurd jumble 
of rejection ended in a new shrill scream as the relentless pinch held firm. 

"Tis little sense ye're makin, darlin'," Len was enjoying himself. 

"No thank you, sir. I don't want my nipples bitten." The evenly spaced words 
must have exacted an infinity of control. 

"And why not, now, mavourneen?" Len's warm solicitude was deeply personal. 
His pinch upon the buds of flesh did not relax. 

"I... I'm-I'm afraid I don't care for that sort of thing." The polite 
temporizing must have evolved through waves of pain. 

"Tis a sad colleen ye are, ter be sure. Not likin' a chap ter be kind to 
yer. Would ye be tellin' me now what would pleasure ye?" Len's voice oozed 
sorrow at his failure to please. 

"Let me go. Please... ! Not anymore. Please stop pinching my nipples. I 
can't stand the pain... You don't understand how it hurts a woman. Ohhh, 
stop it! I'll do anything, anything at all... ! What d'you want me to say?" 
Corinna screamed again, a long, pealing ululation of desperation. 

Len loosed his grip. The twin buds were scarlet and out of shape. Their 
owner groaned thankfully. 

"That's interesting, to be sure." His hands found employment with her hair, 
her neck, her ears. Clare suspected he would be a competent lover. "Would ye 
be tellin' me in yer own words, now, about this anything. Just ask me nicely 
for all them things 'anything' might be." His fingers drifted down to barely 
touch the waiting nipples. "I'll be holdin' the little darlin's again if 
you've no a ready tongue." 

So great was Corinna Winthrop's revulsion at the task by which she might 
earn relief, that she tugged impotently at her bound hands and fluttered her 
strained shoulders in mute protest. She groaned at the self-inflicted pain. 
Then, slowly, with an agony inspired determination commenced her rogation: 
"Sir, please bite my nipples." She paused, then supplicated: "Please don't 
injure them." Clare could have wept at her fear and her humility. 

"Please sir, whip me." 

"Whip yer breasts, mavourneen?" His voice was tender. 

There was a longish silence while Corinna Winthrop examined the unthinkable. 

"Please whip me wherever you like, sir." She plunged desperately: "On my 
breasts if it would please you." 

"Aye, I will an all." It was like the plighting of a troth. 

"Please fuck me, sir." 

His voice was sad. "You are ringed, lass. Remember?" 

"Please sir, fuck me... befund." Corinna Winthrop was trying hard. 

He allowed her euphemism to pass. "If there's any behind left after today, 
I'll certainly use it," he promised with ringing sincerity. 

What else has a woman to offer a man! The naked woman sitting with obscenely 
spread legs and bound hands was obviously seeking inspiration from a limited 
experience. The thing she said next touched Clare's heart. 

"Please kiss me, sir." 

Perhaps it touched Len's heart too. He bent and kissed the lips that must 
strain against agony to meet his own. The kiss was long. Clare saw the woman 
was kissing him back. How lonely a girl can be while tortured! She wondered 
wryly if the captive's enumeration had been in order of preference. 

When he had gone they sat alone with their pain and their thoughts. They 
hurt too much to talk. There is a degree of pain that demands full homage. 
The edged board on which they were bound exacted it. They exchanged small 
sounds of anguish more eloquent than words. 

Clare saw them first: Cully and Riodan. She guessed their mission and looked 
pityingly at the panting nudity whose pain she shared. Whatever injury 
Corinna Winthrop may have done 'The Cause' she was paying dearly. She, too, 
instantly divined the purpose of the gear their visitors employed. She 
looked in wide-eyed questioning at Clare. Then, once more, struggled 
ineffectually. "Not now," she gasped. "Ohhh, not now!" 

"No better time, dearie," Riodan cheerfully explained. "You won't be runnin' 
away on us." 

Clare recognized some truth in what he said. If a girl was to be branded, 
the position in which she was now bound had obvious advantages: she could 
not move. Was it possible that one agony could counter another! 

"Where we mark her, Barney?" Cully asked briskly as if he did not know. 

"Figured I'd bum her tits off first," Riodan suggested thoughtfully. 

Clare prayed they were teasing. Surely not... ! 

"Is there nothing I can do or say?" the woman whose flesh was to be burned 
asked without hope. 

"Bit late, lady. You done and said too much already," Cully snickered. "What 
we goin' ter do suits yer to a T. 'T fer traitress. You'll have it always." 

A girl to be branded! The stigma never to leave her skin. All her life she 
would see it when unclothed. Others would see it. They would be the ones she 
would least of all wish to know its message. 'T' for traitress! Whether you 
believed it or not it would be there. 

Cully's finger traced the damning letter on the top curve of Corinna 
Winthrop's right breast. "Good as spot as any," he suggested thoughtfully. 

Corinna groaned, raising tortured eyes that pleaded more appealingly than 
lips. "Ohhh, not on my breast! Please, anywhere but there." 

"You ain't never used 'em, lady. Told us so yourself." 

"Oh but, on a woman's breast! It's too awful." 

"Don't matter where a woman's libber gets 'er brand," Cully chuckled. "No 
man ain't never goin' ter get a look at it anyway." 

"She says 'anywhere but there'," Riodan reminded. "There's a good flat spot 
above their cunt. Get a bit of the hair along with it. If she ever changed 
her mind about us men the fellers 'ud get a good look." 

"Stop it!" Clare demanded angrily. "A brand's bad enough. You don't have to 
torture her like this." 

Cully chucked the angry girl under the chin. "Playin' at bein' little 
mother," he chided. "Bit o' a weakness o' your'n. Mayhap you'd still like to 
wear the T instead o' her?" 

"Alright!" Clare demanded defiantly. "Brand me instead." She glared at the 
men with the full conviction of her female fury. "And I don't give a damn 
where you do it!" 

Corinna Winthrop gazed at her uncomprehending. 

"Serve you right if we did," Riodan admonished. "You're a damn silly girl 
ter get yourself into these fixes, so ye are." 

"If you won't brand me instead, then let me loose. I don't want to see." 

Cully chuckled knowingly. "Mr. Costigan told us you'd want them things, so 
he did. Told us not to brand you and not to let you loose either. Looks 
after his little girl proper, does Mr. Costigan." 

"I'm not his little girl." 

"Come off it, love. Don't sleep in the dungeon much now, do yer." 

"I might have known," said Corinna darkly. 

"Well, I'm sitting on this damn board with you, aren't I!" Clair found the 
Winthrop female very hard to love. She was also finding her own fortitude 
increasingly hard to sustain. She had never been more helpless or felt more 
foolish and exposed. Her widely spread legs... Her hours on the trestle 
could go on and on... 

Her attention was caught by Cully's firm grip of Corinna Winthrop's hair. 
The journalist's big moment had arrived. "Just outa the kindness of our 
hearts, you understand?" He tugged the head back brutally. 

In spite of her attestation to the contrary, Clare watched. She watched with 
a fascination of which, as usual, she was ashamed. Riodan had contrived a 
metal 'T' with an electrode. It was about an inch and a half long. It was 
beginning to glow red. He was waiting... 

"Thing is ter get it deep," he said chattily. "Nice and clean and permanent. 
Takes a bit o' time," he added as though time was of small concern to a girl 
against whose flesh a white-hot metal was being pressed. "Like Cully says: 
we're bein' kind." His finger traced a mark upon his helpless victim's 
thigh. 

Clare recognized the plausibility of the place chosen. She knew that, no 
matter how it hurt, she could not move her own thigh at all. Stretched as 
she was, that part of her person was rigid. It would accept a brand with 
only the quivering of the nerves. The upper part of her torso could writhe 
to whatever degree agony might dictate, but the thigh would remain quiescent 
during whatever time the fiery kiss was prolonged. 

She watched, and was frankly glad she was there to watch, as Riodan's 
improvised T became white. Casually and with a firm hand he pressed it 
against the waiting skin. Cully pulled down on his handful of hair. Corinna 
Winthrop screamed and screamed and screamed. 

It smoked. You smelt burnt flesh! Clare watched, wide-eyed, as the metal 
sunk slowly into the white flesh. Unconsciously she counted slowly to five 
before the iron was lifted. It left behind a neat incised initial burned 
black and deep. Its new owner's screams moved into a swift declension to 
inarticulate sounds that told of things too awful to contemplate. Clare felt 
honestly grateful to Costigan that it had not been her flesh so visited. 

Once more they were alone. Between her sex and her rectum a small hell 
burned with an increasing personal venom. 

* * * 

"You asked for it," Costigan pointed out reasonably. 

"You didn't have to keep me split in two all day!" Clare was determined to 
be femininely inconsistent. 

"Keeps you in a proper frame of mind. After all, you are a prisoner of war." 

"Balls!" Clare felt the epithet vulgarly apt. 

"The boys told me you enjoyed every moment." 

"If I was a wife I'd cut you off for two weeks telling you it hurt." 

"You have altogether too much impudence for a prisoner," he laughed. 

"You don't have to be so cruel to that absurd woman." 

"At least you see her for what she is." 

"Why didn't you use her the same as Nancy O'Malley?" 

"Sinks in better with a bit of ritual." 

"I suppose you'll whip her next. Will you let her go then?" 

"Aren't you going to offer to be whipped instead?" he jibed. 

She stuck her tongue out at him. "Ha. Ha!" 

"For that you go back on the horse tomorrow." Clare looked at him for a long 
time, uncertain. A tear gathered and fell. She did not want to go back on 
the horse. "I'm sorry. I apologize." 

"Prisoners can't apologize," Costigan pointed out. "When they earn a penalty 
they get it." 

Clare wept unashamedly. She did not want to go back on the horse. 

"Tears become you," Costigan said with honesty. "If I have to put you on the 
horse to make you cry, I will put you there often." 

She looked at him appealingly. One feminine eye above the shielding hands. 

"I know all your tricks," he assured her. "All day on the horse!" 

Clare believed him. She was captive. She did not want to sit on the horse 
again. "Punish me another way," she pleaded. 

"Would you like to be whipped?" 

"Yes. Whip me." 

"Branded?" 

"If I must! Brand me." 

"You've never been hung by the toes. Would you like that?" 

"Yes. Hang me by the toes." 

He gathered her in his arms. "You are incredibly wonderful," he said. 

All the next day she sat upon the horse. She was a prisoner who had been 
impudent. But she did not spend her nights in the dungeon! 

* * * 

Farce and tragedy. Drama and death. Ireland! The execution of Corinna 
Winthrop was a work of precision. In action Costigan's boys knew what to do. 

The radio had told the story. Confronted with it their captive had been 
triumphant. "A dozen rats snuffed out because of what I published... Good!" 
Unwittingly Corinna Winthrop signed her own death warrant. 

Clare shared Corinna's doubt that it was true. That it could happen. But the 
action flowed with an inevitability that shaped the actions of them all. 

Another court. Identical! Clare chained well away from feminine infection. 
The defendant with wrists and elbows tied so that she must have been in 
agony stood, naked and bewildered, as the charge was read. She listened 
uncomprehending their intent, a sneer of derision on her lips. Twelve of 
their rodent kind had died because of her. She was glad. 

The sentence of death impinged the consciousness of all save she who was 
about to die. Riodan made it solemn. Definite. They were ushered from the 
court to beneath a tree where a life would end. 

Clare said to George: "Take the chain off my legs. I want to see what 
happens. With my wrists chained I can't escape." Thus, women have always 
used their men. Grumbling, he did her bidding. He loved her. But did not 
trust her. Without complaint she suffered him to handcuff her wrists behind 
her back. For her feet to be free was a rare event. She followed meekly 
where he led. 

It couldn't be true! But it was true! It was happening. The ridiculous 
theatrical noose dangled from the bough. Clare remembered a hundred 
'westerns'. John Wayne would walk on at any moment. But he did not walk 
on... 

It was Corinna Winthrop who held the stage. Naked and bewildered she was 
ushered to her 'spot'. Her hands were cruelly bound. She was a body with a 
price to pay. For her volition was gone. 

Clare watched. It was a nightmare that would not end as nightmares end. It 
was real. But she could not believe that it was real. She was not Irish. 

They read it all out in a very official way. Corinna listened without 
seeming to hear. The cord round her elbows would ensure great pain. Perhaps 
that was all she was conscious of. They backed the jeep beneath the bough. 
Corinna was lifted up. She stood, a lonely figure, while they affixed the 
bulky noose around her slender neck. Suddenly she was a little girl with 
mischievous little boys at play. Cully drove the jeep away so that suddenly 
the little girl was hanging by her neck, her toes striving for the ground a 
foot beneath her feet, her hands and arms writhing in a futile effort to be 
free. Every eye was riveted upon the naked woman who was dying. 

All the adjectives zeroed in. Clare recognized their awfulness. A woman was 
being killed before her eyes because of bigotry. Without thinking, without 
reasoning, she turned and fled. 

It was an instinctive act without plan or thought of consequence. She ran in 
blind panic from something her whole nature rejected. Into the park and 
beyond. Somewhere out there were the twins. Surely they would find her. She 
yearned for their femaleness with a terrible hunger. Men! Men were hatred 
and death. There was no joy in men. Clare loathed men with all her being. 

No one saw her go. They were too intent watching the death struggles of a 
female journalist whose body would be found on a Belfast pavement on the 
morrow. She ran, panting with exertion and fear, seeking the road to the 
moor. 

A girl can run when her feet are free. But when her wrists are handcuffed 
behind her back her strides will not be as long nor as sure. She will tire 
more easily. She will know herself cruelly vulnerable. She can run. But she 
cannot fight. Battle is implicit to the flight of any prisoner. 

She thought of surrender. To tug at her chained wrists was to invite defeat. 
She could never free them. If she wandered on the moor for days her wrists 
would inexorably remain chained at her back. If she turned back now she 
might rejoin her captors without query. She did not turn. 

Her feet sped forward. How good it felt that they were not chained! Soon the 
twins might find her. Yet she knew instinctively they would leave her hands 
fettered as they were. It would please them to have her impotent. She would 
not mind. How strange the nature of a girl's adoration. She longed for 
Alethea and Tavie as a child may long for its mother. 

But they were not there. She had found the road. She followed it well to one 
side. It would be a long journey to those who might be of a mind to help. 
Tired of running she slowed to a striding walk. 

They waited for her. Striding over a hill she found them parked. She quailed 
and damned impetuosity. Then walked, erect and proud, to the jeep. "Waiting 
for me, boys?" she asked George and Bill. 

They tied her ankles so it hurt. They meant it to hurt. Then tossed her into 
the back of the jeep like a bag of potatoes. "You tricked me," George 
accused. The hurt in his voice made her wish she had not run. 

"You are the damndest girl to try and be kind to," Costigan said. 

"I know. Whip me," Clare said abjectly. She understood his dilemma. 

"But dammit... to run like that, handcuffed... " 

"You didn't have to murder her." 

He waved his hand in dismissal of the irrelevant. "You turned yourself into 
an escaped prisoner." 

"What you are trying to say is that you'd sooner give me a good talking to 
and chain me more heavily. But that the 'boys' think I should be punished." 

"You put it concisely." 

"Do I get whipped?" 

"Why pick that?" 

"Men seem to get their biggest kick out of seeing a girl whipped," Clare 
said miserably. 

"It's true," Costigan admitted. "But there's something you don't know. When 
the jeep arrived back Bill was dead... The usual arrow." 

Clare readjusted her thoughts. The twins had seen her too late. They had 
exacted their revenge. She looked at Costigan piteously, sensing his 
predicament. 

"Always you," he said solemnly. "When you are threatened my men get killed. 
It centers round you. You are the focus." 

"So I have to be punished?" 

"Yes." 

"Something particularly awful?" She longed to help him. 

He remained silent. Looking at her woefully. 

"You don't mean... ? They want to hang me?" 

He waved the thought aside. "No. They don't blame you personally. But they 
want you punished for running. Can you understand?" 

"Of course!" Clare longed to help this sorrowful man who loved her. "Not to 
worry. I do understand." She knelt before him, clasping his knees and 
looking up into his eyes as millions of women have done through eons of 
time. "I should not have run. It was a silly panic thing. What you did to... 
to the Winthrop woman... I could not face it. You frightened me. But I know 
I have to be punished." She looked up innocently into his eyes. "Don't feel 
badly at what you must order done to me. I'll understand. I know I have to 
suffer. What punishment have they chosen for me?" 

His hand sought her bowed head. His fingers ardent in her hair. Clare was 
happy. "You guessed it," he said heavily. "They want you whipped... Nothing 
casual: full dress. Ritualistic. Out in the garden where those girls can 
see. There will be enough guns to wipe out an army if they get that 
close-which they won't! They are too damn wise. But they have to watch you 
get it for what they did. It will bother them. You'll be whipped and then 
hung up by wrists every day for them to see." 

Clare considered what lay in store. "It's pretty bloody awful," she 
conceded. "Do I have to? I mean, I can understand being whipped. But the 
rest... every day... " She looked up at him with hurt eyes. 

For a little while their communion was through the gentle fingers caressing 
her while he considered. "We are an army. You have to understand that to 
understand us. We live by rules. Without that discipline we wouldn't survive 
a month." He shook his head as though sharing her own perplexity. "In effect 
our army is no different from the British." 

"The British would never whip a girl." 

"No, they'd bung her in some miserable jail to rot." He looked down at her 
searchingly. "Be honest. What would you choose? To be whipped and be done 
with it, or be locked up in some sterile cubicle for two years of your 
life?" 

Even in this she was defeated. The Irish had their own unanswerable logic. 
"You know I'd choose the whip," she admitted, seeing him through a veil of 
tears. "But don't let them hang me up every day like a side of beef." 

"It's those damn girls that bother you, isn't it." Costigan was bitter. "You 
think if they see you hanging there day after day they'll break down and 
make a slip and we'll get 'em." 

"Try and understand that, too!" Clare flashed. "We had a beautiful clean 
world here before you came with your silly army and your war and your hate 
and death, death, death... ! 

"War and death! By the saints, girl! Three of my men killed already. Arrows 
in their backs from a bow we never see." 

Clare sat back on her heels and made a blind gesture with her arms 
consigning the whole sorry business to limbo. The motion was her first 
realization that she was unchained. She wondered, but did not ask. She had a 
greater urgency. "Oh, let's both drop it. Drop it! Please! Tie me tight. 
Throw me in the jeep and drive away. Far away to a port, and then on a ship 
away from this poor sad island we cannot help." She held her arms out to him 
in enticement and surrender. "We can do it so easily. I'll make it easy for 
you... I promise." 

"You don't understand, child," he said wearily. "Women can't understand." He 
grasped her hands and drew her close. 

But Clare knew she understood all too well. 

* * * 

The court was familiar enough to have become silly. The silliness of a 
deadly game in which death had become implicit. Clare herself felt silly 
standing there naked with her wrists and elbows tied to impose the bitter 
pain she bore as a habit. The cynosure of every eye as she listened to her 
formal sentence: Fifty strokes with a whip on her naked body! She wondered 
bitterly why they added those last words. She was-always naked. Always! 

She was desperately afraid. But fear, too, was familiar. A girl in Erdislune 
now carried fear around with her as she carried her shackles. She could 
discard neither. She bore them because she must. To be fastened naked and 
whipped by a man! Clare shivered. It would be a merciless determination to 
break her spirit. They would probably refer to it as "Teaching her a 
lesson." But she would scream and beg and demean herself, and afterwards 
like them all a little less. She remembered Nancy, how the cane had thunked 
into the round bottom with a savagery without finesse. Under the full force 
of a male arm the cane or the whip did not just leave a stripe. It left a 
wound. Fifty strokes! 

The tree with its stout bough was well chosen. No cover in its immediate 
vicinity to hide a girl with a bow. Clare stood meekly as they did their 
will with her. Her eyes sought Costigan's in mute pleading. He did not evade 
them. His own shared her desolation. When the tugging and the hammering was 
done she stood a taut 'X' hands high and wide to the bough above, feet far 
apart tied to stakes driven into the ground. Only her head could move. 
Riodan held the whip. He showed it to her, dangling its tapered length 
before her face, making it tease her nipples. She closed her eyes. 

It cut her in two. She was sure there would be blood. She surged her whole 
strength against her bonds as the only expression possible against so 
terrible a thing to happen to a naked girl. Keeping her eyes closed she let 
her head fall against a raised arm. Panting, she waited for the second 
stroke. 

It did not come. 

Expecting only a deliberate accentuation of suspense she opened her eyes 
timidly and looked around. She was alone. The men had disappeared. Only the 
whip remained. It lay before her on the grass. 

Clare was sure the respite could bode her no good. Having given her a taste 
they had left her to savor it. At that moment she did not believe it 
possible to bear forty-nine more such as the single one. They would kill 
her. Perhaps they intended to. Did Costigan know! Would he allow her to be 
whipped to death! She could not believe it of him. This stroke and this 
loneliness, this stretched inability to move, it was a ploy, a cleverly 
cruel prolongation of her punishment. 

The sound was a whisper in the air until the broad arrow blades sliced the 
cords with a solid bite. Her arms fell to her sides as though weighted. 
Gladness flooded her with fresh vitality. Her free hands sought the knots 
that secured her ankles. They had been craftily tied as though to defeat her 
at this very moment. Angrily and purposefully she tore at them in a frenzy 
of longing. 

The gunfire was deafening in the quiet garden. Clare spared a brief glance. 
Costigan's men were advancing from the house, firing as they came. Shrubs 
and bushes were mowed by their bullets. They cleared a wide perimeter with 
flying lead, moving past her tree and towards the woods. Knowing only that 
she must do her part, Clare fought the knots feverishly and had loosed one 
ankle before a hand was placed gently on her bent shoulder. "It ain't no 
use, love," George said sorrowfully. 

Two things saved her. The first was the wound of the whip itself. It was 
horrendous. She paled when she saw the cut skin and small trickles of her 
blood. The men, seeing it, turned away ashamed. Her second and principal 
salvation was George. He was left to tell her of it himself as he led her 
back to the house. 

"That there whip was Riodan's pickin'. Don't think he realized what it 'ud 
do to a girl. We don't none of us want yer cut ter bits. Fact is, Miss," he 
fumbled in embarrassment, "the boys and me sort of like havin' yer around. 
We got used ter yer, see. Was suggested we chain yer tight in the dungeon. 
But we weren't all that keen on losing sight of yer... " He flushed. "Yer a 
damn pretty girl, an all." 

"You mean I'm not going to be whipped?" Clare was incredulous. 

"Fraid not, Miss." She could have laughed with joy at the apology in his 
voice. "But-they did think a bit o' punishment 'ud do no harm. So now you'll 
wear a heavier chain on your ankles, and most of the time your wrists will 
be handcuffed behind your back." 

It was heaven! Impulsively she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him 
hard. Death and laughter. Torture and teasing. Why analyze! George was 
blushing proudly. He had loosed his firm grip on her arm. "Better come 
along, Miss, and get yer properly chained. Can't have yer runnin' round like 
this, y'know." He sounded like a mother solicitous for her child whose 
toilette was incomplete. 

Her new anklets and connecting links were indeed heavy. She made a little 
moue of resignation as she watched them fastened on her. They would be 
awkward at first. But she would get used to them. Compared to the weight of 
the whip they were swansdown. She made another wry grimace of acceptance as 
she put her hands at the small of her back and felt the familiar bite of the 
steel on her wrists. She reflected ruefully that, at least, these new 
inflictions would keep her out of trouble. 

"Keep yer out o' trouble, Miss," said George running true to form. 

How good to feel mischief rising again. "You'll dry my tears when I cry, 
won't you, George?" She tugged at her handcuffs to illustrate her 
helplessness. 

"Not sure we shouldn't have whipped you after all, Miss," George said 
happily. 

* * * 

Routine reasserted itself. Clare spent one night in the dungeon. She never 
knew whether by accident or design. Then her nights and days reverted to the 
previous pattern. She learned to walk in her heavier chains, from which no 
amount of cajoling could win her release. She adjusted to the loss of her 
hands very easily, for any of the boys were always willing to do for her 
anything she could not do for herself. They liked 'seeing her around'. In 
this knowledge she made herself 'seen' as gracefully and appealingly as she 
could devise. She did not try to escape. 

The big table that made its appearance in the courtyard came as a shock. It 
was not the table itself, but that which was on it that caused Clare to 
catch her breath in consternation. It was a naked Sula chained spreadeagle, 
a Sula whose loveliness was arched as though in the throes of epilepsy. 

Clare approached quietly and stood looking down at the wantonly exposed 
beauty. Ursula was panting as though in some deep distress. Her eyes were 
closed as though she wished to suffer in loneliness. Wondering at the 
strained posture, Clare sank to her knees and caught her breath in sympathy 
at what she saw. Set squarely beneath the small of the slender back was a 
broadly based wooden pyramid. Its peak was already pressing into the white 
flesh so that the sharpness of its top could not be seen. Clare guessed it 
to be blunt, but of small enough dimension to exact agony if the body's 
weight was rested on it. It was evident that Sula was still resisting, but 
weakening fast. The girl on the table had a choice. To rest herself on the 
projection and suffer agony. Or arch herself above it for as long as 
tortured muscles and sinews would endure. 

Sula opened her eyes. She managed a wan smile when she saw her visitor. "Oh, 
darling... " It was all she could say. 

Clare was distraught. Who had done this! Why! She thought of seeking 
Costigan. But felt a compulsion to end the agony. Chained as she was it 
would not be easy. But, kneeling, she backed up to the table and managed to 
raise her linked hands and thrust them back to grasp the torturing block of 
wood. Sula summoned her last strength to raise her hips while Clare plucked 
the thing from beneath her. The punished captive relapsed on the now flat 
surface with a sigh of pure ecstasy. Her rescuer sat beside her. "Who did 
that to you?" she demanded. 

Sula's breath was still labored. She looked up guiltily at the chained girl 
to whom she owed surcease. "Oh darling... it's wonderful! I can't tell you 
how wonderful! But you shouldn't have... " 

"But no one can leave you like that." 

"You were supposed to." Sula's face took on a flush of shame. "They told me 
you'd find me, and that when you did I was to give you a message. The 
message was to leave me alone. You could do anything as long as it did not 
affect what... what-they've done to me." 

"O.K. You have delivered the message." 

"But that's not all." A tear made its way down Sula's cheek. "I had to say 
that if you did interfere they'd stretch you out like this too." Tears now 
trickled in earnest. Sula's voice was a wail. "But it was so awful... I 
couldn't have stood it much longer." 

Clare felt less than happy. She most urgently did not wish to lay as Sula 
lay. She looked at the offending object. Its point was not needle-sharp. It 
was rounded. But to rest on it... ! "Not to worry," she admonished 
cheerfully. "We'll manage something." 

Sula's lips were tremulous. "I'm a rotten little coward," she avowed. "Look, 
darling, I've had a nice rest. I'll raise up. Shove it back under before 
someone comes." She arched her slenderness painfully in invitation. Clare, 
who had seen something that the supine girl could not, hastily prodded the 
small pyramid back into place. It was easier to push back than to remove. "I 
saw what yer done," said George reproachfully and cheerfully when he reached 
them. 

Sula moaned in despair. "It was my fault," she told him. "I didn't give her 
the message. Don't punish her. Please." 

"Big girl like her shouldn't need no message," George declaimed. "Thorough 
bad lot, she is." He sounded quite pleased with his judgment. 

Clare was never quite sure about George. She knew he was never deceived when 
she buttered him up. Nonetheless he enjoyed the female tribute to his 
masculinity. He unashamedly wallowed in his power over what was little 
removed from a slave harem. 

"Please don't punish me, George." She arranged herself to look as erotically 
attractive as possible. Her mien was sweetly demure. 

"Proper little hussy, you are," he declared reprovingly. "When Miss 
Sterling's done her stint I'll chain yer in her place myself." 

Clare doubted he would carry out his threat. "George darling, we can't leave 
Sula like this." 

"Why not?" 

"That awful spike thing. It will do her an injury." 

"Not if she don't lay on it." He was deliberately obtuse. 

She stamped a bare foot ineffectually. It just hurt and jangled her chain. 
George laughed. She lashed out at him angrily. 

"Take that beastly thing away!" She looked at him pleadingly. "Please, 
George. Take it away and I'll be nice to you. I'll do anything you want. 
Anything... just think...!" 

"You'll do anything I want anyway," George said imperturbably. 

Clare tore at her handcuffs as she always did when frustrated. "Well, do it 
just to be nice then!" 

"O.K., darlin'." He withdrew the pyramid and laughed at her surprise. "Too 
clever you are, by half." He chuckled. 

"What did she do?" 

"She was a bad girl. So she doesn't get off scot free, see." He picked up a 
squarish chunk of wood and shoved it beneath the slim hips which Sula 
obediently raised at his command. "Ain't exactly torture. But not all that 
comfortable either." He winked at Clare. "You aim ter push it away directly 
I'm gone, don't you?" 

Clare could not answer. He shook her arm good-naturedly. "Give me yer 
promise or I'll fix you proper, so I will." 

"Oh, all right," Clare said petulantly. "I promise." She watched him go 
away, whistling. He had forgotten to use her. She felt sure that was what he 
had come out for in the first place. 

She turned her attention to the bowed loveliness that was Sula. The most 
evident result of the new position was the punished girl's sex. It was 
raised to the sun as in worship. It would be the first thing to greet a 
passerby. It demanded more attention than the flushed features of its owner. 
"Does it hurt, darling?" she asked tentatively. 

"Oh, nothing like that other. Ohhh, sweetheart, how can I thank you! My 
hairy thing's stuck out like a beacon. I suppose they'll all come and look 
at it... I say, darling... it isn't open, is it?" 

"A little," Clare admitted. "But not to worry." She giggled. "I'd close it 
with my fingers if I could. Maybe I can back up between your legs. Want me 
to?" 

"No." The word was vehement. "I don't want you punished." 

"Oh alright. But tell me how you got in this pickle." 

"I'm supposed to have helped Chloe escape. We were chained together. They 
didn't close her shackle tight. It fell open. I told her to run like hell. 
She did. I was chained tight so there was no use her trying to help me. They 
didn't find me all alone for about an hour. They raised an awful fuss. Said 
I should have shouted for help when she got away. Probably just an excuse to 
make me nicely available the way you are. You get screwed all the time, 
don't you?" 

"I'm afraid so. I've become a very obedient little girl," Clare admitted. 

"Is that right, Costigan's taken you for his own special girl?" 

"Yes." Clare did not even blush. "You like him, don't you?" 

"I can't help it. Mostly I feel sorry for him." 

"A bloody murderer." 

Clare shrugged. "Everything's crazy. I've given up trying to make sense." 

Sula was frankly curious. "At night... oh, I know it's none of my business! 
But... does he unchain you?" 

"Yes." Clare laughed mischievously at Sula's interest. "He unchains me. 
Sometimes he chains me again in different ways. Calls me his slave girl: 
really that's what I am." She chuckled reminiscently. "But he has a long 
chain fastened to the floor permanently. With it he shackles me by one ankle 
while we sleep. I don't mind. He couldn't possibly trust me. I can 
understand that. I never, never have any chance to escape." 

Sula gasped and tried to move. She could not. "Don't mind me. I'm just 
making the best of a bad job. I expect it will hurt more and more. But I'll 
try and not be a nuisance." Her voice sank to a confidential murmur. "They 
keep those belts on us so we can't enjoy each other. I don't know if it's 
some moral thing with them. Or if they want us exclusively for male use. 
How's it been with you... ? I mean with me I've found it ugly to be used by 
men. They jibe at me about being a les. I'm all mixed up. These damn chaps 
keep screwing a girl so she can't help getting a bang out of it sometimes. I 
always feel guilty when it happens. But it happens... Even if they cane 
me... sometimes I don't mind. Is it that way with you?" 

"I had the mixed-up bit too," Clare admitted. "But now I just invite the 
whole thing. I try and have fun with them. It's like everything else: if you 
make it easy for them they don't want it... well, not all that often," she 
amended, blushing. 

"You're a proper little tart?" 

"I sometimes think so. But one day I'll escape. Or they will go away. The 
girls are still out there somewhere... " All else fell into limbo: "Wasn't 
it lovely when we belonged to them... " 

Sula tried to wriggle her hips, but failed. "Yes, it was a beautiful, 
gorgeous, wonderful dream." She considered for a while. "Darling... about 
these men. I suppose we were all comparative virgins when we came to 
Erdislune. We were still virgin when they came and captured us. They have 
made me feel... well, as though I'm another sexual entity altogether." She 
looked up at her smiling companion. "I mean-I used to be a woman. The twins 
made me wholly female. But now I'm something else. I'm two tits, two boobs, 
a cunt and an arse. That's what the boys call the parts of us that they see. 
A sort of strict utility: If you can't use it, don't bother. There was some 
sort of a funny story once... " 

Clare nodded understandingly. "It's because they are so close to death. The 
bits of us you've named: they're the urgent bits. They don't have time for 
the rest of us." Clare looked off into some far horizon. "Darling... don't 
you see. We are all they've got. We are their mothers and their sisters and 
the eternal woman. The female thing. Because they are going to die the urge 
to mate compels them to use the parts of us that serve that need. Can't you 
feel sorry for them? They are so terribly vulnerable, so weak. Little boys 
playing dangerous games. It's us who are strong." 

"With me in this fix and you chained so you daren't say boo to a goose!" 

"Oh, I know. But that's a woman's role. They absorb strength from us. Think 
of being fucked! Oh, I know it's a rotten word. But let's use it. In that, 
our most natural fulfillment, we moan and gasp just as we do under their 
whip, or as you are doing now on this lousy table. When they cane my bottom 
I know they are subconsciously trying to create an endless orgasm that goes 
on and on. They resent that little couple of minutes of ecstasy they get 
when they shove their absurd penis into us. They spend themselves in our 
vaginas-O.K., in our cunts! And they're a nothing. When they whip us they 
can make an orgasm last all day." 

* * * 

This time it was Riodan. He had his usual little box. Clare quailed. "Please 
don't hurt her," she asked humbly, all her analyses brought to nothing by 
fear. 

"Ah, tis a lovely thing she is," Riodan said admiringly. His gaze centered 
on the gaping sex. "Are ye comfortable now, me darlin'?" 

"No." It was an easy question for Sula to answer. Her eyes implored him 
apprehensively. 

"Ye have no the pretty belt round your private places," he said with an 
infinity of suggestion. 

"They took it off me when they chained me here," Sula said doubtfully. 

"And nae doubt you are feelin' the lack of it, love?" 

She looked up at him. Knowing he intended to hurt her. "I don't mind." She 
could find no right words. She looked at him appealingly. 

"Don't hurt her anymore," Clare pleaded. "Isn't she suffering enough?" 

"Aye, to be sure." Riodan placed his hand reflectively on the upthrust 
vagina. "Tis this pretty thing I'm concerned with." 

"Oh, go ahead and use it," Sula suggested wearily. 

"Or mine," Clare invited. She was afraid of what was about to happen. 

"Ah, but ye have the wrong idea entirely." His voice was sly. Clare 
miserably knew he was playing with them. "Tis a burden this thing is to a 
pretty girl. Always she must be worrying about it," he smirked at the 
spreadeagled girl on the table. 

"Look, I know you intend to do something rotten," Clare said heatedly. "But 
have a little pity. She's in pain. What more do you want! Be sensible and a 
bit human. Fuck me. You'll feel better." She wondered if she was utterly 
beyond the pale. 

Riodan leered. "Tis a fine girl ye are, mavourneen, by the saints I could 
fuck ye a year and a day, so I could. But tis the little lady here I've 
business with." 

Without inhibition, Riodan fingered Sula's exposed sex. Not with personally 
erotic intent, but clinically. He pinched the labia together to see if they 
would stay shut without the aid of his fingers. He explored depth and 
dimension. His every motion was pregnant with purpose. 

"Please fuck me and be happy," Clare pleaded. 

He did not answer. 

"What are you going to do to me?" Sula asked without hope. 

"Tis a bit o' protection I'm after giving ye," Riodan said cheerfully and 
without sincerity. "This lovely thing stickin' up fer all the world ter see. 
Tis a temptation to all of us, so it is." 

"I'm not sticking it up," Sula protested. "It's that damn bit of wood under 
my hips." 

"Oh, aye," he agreed ambiguously. "Tis a sore trial it is to ye an all. Tis 
a bit of help I'll be giving." 

Clare knew the time had come. Riodan had enjoyed the play of words. Now he 
would do what he had come to do. She ceased to offer her body as ransom. He 
could take her when he wished. It was a waste of breath. She watched, 
fascinated and repelled. 

In his usual business-like way, Riodan opened his box and placed on the 
table a bottle of antiseptic. Clare shivered at the sight of it. Next he 
produced a large safety pin. He chuckled at their surprise at the sight of 
the utilitarian item. "Tis a very simple thing," he acknowledged. He stuck 
the incisive stem of it into the sterilant. 

Clare knew what was to happen, but rejected it. Surely even Riodan would not 
do a thing like this! All her rationalizations must seem childish nonsense 
to Sula at this moment. Men owned them utterly and worked their will upon 
their femaleness. That was all. It was so simple. Clare knew, with a 
frightening impotence, that nothing she could do or say would halt the 
inexorable. All the loveliness of her body could not divert Riodan from his 
cruelty. His mind had found a fantasy no concupiscence could tempt. 

"Please don't do that to me." It was a girl pleading to a man. Its sincerity 
would have halted most male hands. But not Riodan's. 

"Do it to me if you must," Clare pleaded. 

He ignored them both. 

Clare watched as in a nightmare. Satisfied with his preparation, Riodan used 
the fingers of his left hand to close tight the lips that had pouted to 
Sula's shame. Slowly and with infinite concentration he selected the exact 
place whereby her sex should become impotent, and thrust the pointed barb 
into the most tender flesh... 

Sula screamed and screamed. Her body could not respond to her demands. But 
her head weaved from side to side as she cried her protest of this violation 
of her flesh. 

Clare saw the pin make its way slowly through the flesh of the helpless 
girl. She saw the careful guidance of the male fingers as they moved the pin 
from side to side, back and forth, to facilitate its passage through the 
maiden lips. She heard Sula's screams as something quite apart from this 
careful sealing of a girl's cunt. 

Riodan's pressure was steady and persistent. The pin made its way unopposed 
exactly as he wished it. Sula's screams had become an appropriate 
accompaniment to his artistry. After an eternity of agony the point emerged 
from the innocent labia and was thrust into its natural union with the rest 
of the pin. Sula's sex had been sealed. 

He stepped back and admired his work. Clare recognized its macabre appeal. A 
neat and tidy notice to all concerned that this girl was not for use. The 
belt had achieved the same purpose without pain. But Sula was under 
punishment and must be made to suffer. The frightful pin used in so 
frightful a way epitomized the resentment of the male against female love. 
Poor Sula! 

"Now get this straight, little darlin'," Riodan told Clare. "She's ter wear 
it. Understand! You take it out and you'll wear one yerself so damn quick 
you'll wonder what happened." 

The moans of the pierced girl upon the table made a desolating background to 
their speech. Clare looked at him with hatred. "Why no anesthetic?" she 
demanded. 

"Hoity-toity! Bit uppity, aren't we!" He fumbled in his box and came up with 
an identical pin. He held it up for her inspection. "Come here, Miss High 
and Mighty," he ordered. 

Clare was stricken. She knew she had come to rely too much on George's good 
nature and Costigan's authority. She was still a prisoner. Still subject to 
the whim of any of these men who wished to use her. "You don't think I'm 
going to stand still while you stick that thing through me, do you!" Her 
words held more courage than she felt. 

He had seen the fear in her eyes, and laughed, his purpose accomplished. He 
returned the pin to his box. Then, unexpectedly, unlocked the shackles that 
held Sula stretched. "Bit of a poser, I'll be leavin' yer," he cheerfully 
explained. "Ain't sure how you'll handle it. But that there pin stays right 
where it is or it'll be the worse for the two of yer, and don't be 
forgetting that!" He went away chuckling. 

Clare turned her attention to her sobbing companion. She cursed the 
frustrating handcuffs. With her hands chained behind her back she could do 
so little. Tenderly she bent and kissed the trembling lips. "He's gone," she 
said comfortingly. "We're alone." 

Although she was now free of restraints, Sula had not moved. "I'm afraid," 
she moaned. "If I move it hurts worse. Ohhh, darling... it's beastly... 
beastly." She sobbed quietly, her hips still held high by the wood block. 
Her grotesquely ornamented sex still her most prominent feature. Unable to 
use her hands, Clare used her lips instead to give what solace she could to 
the tortured girl. After many minutes she persuaded the sufferer to use both 
hands and feet, now free, to take her weight while she contrived with her 
chained hands to withdraw the block of wood. Sula relaxed gratefully with a 
long sigh of pure relief, but kept her legs well spread. "It hurts so damn 
much," she apologized. 

Costigan's boys came to view the innovation. The owner of the object of 
their interest kept her eyes closed and did not move while they made their 
lewd comments and went their way. When the last of them had gone she looked 
up at Clare pleadingly. "Darling, what am I going to do? Oh darling... ! 
What can I do!" 

Clare had been asking herself the same question. In the minds of both girls 
there was an urgent compulsion. Sula voiced it. "I... I don't know if I'm 
brave enough to stand the pain. But what's to stop me pulling it out and 
running like blazes." 

Slowly and fearfully the new owner of the pin used her hands and arms to 
raise her torso so that she could look down and examine her new possession. 
She studied the bit of steel that was so much a part of her. "It's so tidy 
and neat," she said in surprise. "But it's as though there's a fire burning 
down there, the pain's so awful. I suppose it would be utter agony to pull 
it out... ? I'd have to do it myself. You're chained altogether too tight... 
the bastards!" 

Clare glimpsed the cruelty. Riodan would know how their minds would work. 
They faced a shocking decision. A dilemma that was largely that of the 
wounded girl. Chained as she was, Clare could contribute only words. She was 
helpless to withdraw the pin and helpless to accompany Sula in flight. She 
found herself savoring the full depth of her captivity. 

"Darling, I don't know." She shook her shoulders angrily. "I can't help. I 
can't do anything. I feel so useless. I don't even know what to advise. I 
want you to escape. Think how wonderful that would be for all of us. But we 
always get caught and punished. That's why these heavy chains are on my 
ankles: because I tried to run. If I tell you to... to do what you said, and 
you got caught, I'd feel a bitch." 

"Don't feel badly about that. I expect we'd both get punished," Sula offered 
morosely. She was sitting, propped up by hands and arms, still examining 
with morbid fascination the small object of their quandary. Suddenly, as 
from an instant thought, she turned to Clare. "I'm thinking about Chloe. 
Damn funny there's no commotion going on about her escape. Know what I 
think! Those dirty rotten bastards engineered the whole thing for a bit of 
sport, an excuse to do what they've done to me. I bet they left her shackle 
loose on purpose. I bet they've got her locked up or " chained up somewhere 
right now waiting for some bloody awful punishment. Poor kid! She's so 
sweet." 

"I expect you're right," Clare agreed unhappily. "I'll try and pump George 
when he shows up. But our problem is you. Darling, can you stand up?" 

"What for?" 

Clare made her familiar struggle of defeat. "I know. It's silly. It just 
seems so awful that you're free but can't move. They are bastards. I bet 
they're laughing at us." 

"You notice, we don't either of us consider taking it out," Sula conceded 
glumly. "That threat scared us. Me anyway." Slowly, with infinite 
concentration she began the most painful journey of her life. 

Clare watched, sharing the agony, the gasps, the pauses and fresh starts. 
Sharing, too, the final victory as Sula stood erect. 

"How is it?" 

"I suppose it wasn't any worse than I expected," Sula admitted uncertainly. 
"The real test is going to be to walk. Want to lend me a shoulder?" 

They made two small shuffling steps that covered only inches. "I don't know 
if I can stand it," Sula groaned. "Oh, darling, they've really fixed me. 
Let's try it with my feet further apart." She gave a small bitter laugh. "Us 
girls always end up like that." 

They managed a small circuit. Gingerly and cautiously the pinned girl sat 
back on the table and arranged her legs for whatever easement she could 
find. "For sure I won't try and escape," she conceded woefully. "Darling... 
do you think they will make me wear the damn thing... ? I mean--for always?" 

Clare was absolved from an opinion. 

* * * 

Chloe was led to her punishment by a firm grip on each arm. Cully and George 
were grinning at her futile struggles. Barney Riodan brought up the rear 
with his inevitable box. 

The new arrival had been effectively gagged. Clare could see from the 
distended cheeks that some object had been placed in the girl's mouth. A 
wide strip of adhesive sealed her lips. Her eyes were desperate. Clare 
wondered what she had been promised to evoke such fear. 

"Make way for the next one," George ordered briskly. 

Using Clare's shoulder once more, Sula managed to remove herself from the 
table. The two girls watched as Chloe was spread wide and chained. George 
lifted the slight figure as far as the fastenings would allow. Cully 
unrolled a piece of leather through which a great variety of nails had been 
driven. He slipped it into place and nailed it down. 

"Just in case it happens ter get moved," he assured them sardonically. 

When George released his burden the pinioned girl sank slowly to the sharp 
points and then, with a start of realization, arched her body to avoid them. 
Her eyes were frantic. She could not speak. 

Riodan produced two more safety pins. These were smaller. But still large 
enough. Without a word he held one against Clare's nipple and one against 
Sula. "Just the right size, me little darlins," he enthused. "Ye'll both 
wear 'em if our little lady's gag should just happen ter be missin." He gave 
them a lewd wink and then, ostentatiously, placed a pin on the table, one on 
each side of the taut body and beneath a breast. "I'll leave 'em handy. 
Almost certain to have ter use 'em on one of yer, so I am." 

When the men had gone three pairs of feminine eyes sought each other in 
misery. Those of the girls who could not speak became riveted in horror on 
the metal fastened within the triangle of Sula's sex. For a few moments what 
she saw would divert her mind from her own predicament. Sula painfully 
positioned herself to provide the best possible view of her infliction. 
"Don't worry, sweetheart. This is just for me. They won't do it to you. 
You've got your own troubles," she told the frightened girl, but knew she 
was not believed. 

Clare had never felt more useless or more cruelly aware of her condition. 
Her fetters were the inhibiting hands of Costigan's boys. They would be much 
amused now knowing the agonies of impotence that she and Sula must endure. 
Two girls in agony and she could help neit'ier. One girl with unfettered 
hands and feet who was prohibited from helping her companions: prohibited by 
fear. 

Sula practiced walking. It was slow and painful and deeply shaming. But 
better than standing longing to help someone who could not be helped. But 
when Chloe's panting breath told of the end of her endurance, she had an 
inspiration. Cautiously and with grimaces of pain she positioned herself on 
the table so that, by leaning over the arched slenderness, she could thrust 
a balled fist under each hip. "Relax on my hands, sweetheart," she panted, 
fighting her own suffering. 

Clare watched them through tears. Two naked girls, brutalized by men! Why, 
oh why! The panting form of the girl being tortured had subsided gratefully 
on the clenched fists of another whose pain was greater than her own. But 
how safe was it that this relief be given the sufferer. She wondered if she 
and Sula could abstain from the forbidden acts. For a little while perhaps. 
But what then! Would they all wear the hated pins in labia and nipple before 
the day was done! Would they! Surely Costigan would not sanction such 
treatment for her! She was his chosen girl. Or did she place too great a 
reliance in her carnal eminence. 

How long could Sula hold position! Even without the wound she bore it would 
be tiring. Clare had an inspiration. Ludicrous but worth a try. Sitting on 
the table between Chloe's spread legs she swung her chained feet round so 
that she could push her toes beneath the triangle and with continued 
pressure insert her feet beneath the girl's round bottom. "Try this," she 
invited hopefully. 

It was not perfect, but it helped. Sula thankfully eased back to normal. 
Most of Chloe's weight rested on the proffered feet. Clare's own position 
now was strained and awkward. But she would hold it as long as she could. It 
was then that Sula went berserk. 

She had watched. Her eyes betraying the misery of their plight. She had 
edged to her feet again, controlling her pain. Suddenly she bent and reached 
for the forgotten hammer. Using the claw she tore loose the spiked leather 
from beneath the young nakedness that Clare's feet held off impalement. She 
hurled it from her in disgust, and in the same motion tore the tape from the 
prisoned lips and removed the wad of cloth from the grateful mouth. "I can't 
take it," she vowed furiously. "It's no good. I just can't!" With firm and 
determined fingers she loosed the hated pin and pulled it from her flesh. 
She screamed. But she did what she must do. "Pray for me," she pleaded and 
ran. 

Clare was distraught. Everything was going wrong. Disaster was in the air. 
She was desperately afraid for each of them. Suddenly she had a great 
need... Costigan! In an agony of impatience at her chains she began her 
hobbled pilgrimage. 

Clare flung herself at Costigan's feet and wept. She longed to clasp him, 
but could not. "Please take my handcuffs off. Please... Please... " She 
rubbed her head against him as does a dog. 

Without a word he unlocked the metal from her wrists. Instantly she clung to 
his knees in an agony of terror and need of human warmth. He let her weep, 
his hands playing gently with her hair and caressing her face and neck. She 
moaned in a strange mixture of gratitude and anguish. It was a long while 
before she could look up at him and speak. 

"Don't let them. Oh please don't let them...!" 

"Riodan?" he guessed instantly. 

She told him. "Oh please... please! Not in my nipples! Not anywhere... " He 
listened gravely. She absorbed his strength with a great thankfulness. "That 
will not be done to you," he said with certainty. She wept anew. 

"And the others?" she had to ask. 

He shrugged. "Be satisfied that I can save you." 

"It's too awful. They are only girls." 

"You are only a girl. It seems fearsome. But they won't die. If they did it 
to you, you would not die." 

She sobbed herself into quiescence. Then looked up at him with large hurt 
eyes. "They don't deserve it, y'know. It makes me feel so lousily guilty. 
I'm not hurt. They're tortured... just because... because they're... " 

"Lesbians?" 

"Is that really the reason?" 

"The men don't like it." 

"They liked me, didn't they, because I was wanton. Because I played their 
game." 

"They like you because they sense your sorrow for them. You must have an 
Irish heart." 

"Why can't they just whip us?" 

He gave her his wisest grin. "They don't all love having their bottoms caned 
the way you do." She flushed. "Do I really?" 

"Of course you do, you little humbug. George gets an erection every time he 
thinks of the way you bend over and the things you say." 

How good it was to be back on familiar ground and know that mischief had not 
died. "Why can't they just cane us then! It hurts like billy-o." She looked 
at him witchingly. "I know it gives them erections. But we even look after 
.that for them-at least I do! Why this awful ghastliness?" 

He shook his head sorrowfully. "Just part of the whole dark picture. Try not 
to look at it. Be a good little girl in chains and leave it at that." 

She persisted manfully. "If I offered to bend over and be a good little girl 
for... oh, some truly awful number of strokes with the cane, wouldn't they 
let the girls alone? Put them back wherever it is they keep them? Those 
belts they lock on the poor dears are a bad enough punishment... " she added 
ingenuously. 

"I'm not going to have you cut to bits. You've escaped very well so far 
without me having to make an issue of you. Old George has helped. He's in 
love with you. Besides, you overrate your fortitude. Six of the best on your 
bottom probably does you good. A hundred might kill you." 

He was so strong. He knew everything. Most of all, he knew the innermost 
you: the bit you hid even from yourself. She knew that while they were 
together he gave her the strength and love she had previously found only in 
Tavie and Alethea. "How long are you going to hold Erdis lune?" she asked 
irrelevantly. 

He gestured impatiently. "Never mind. I don't know myself." 

She rested against him, content to hold and to be held. At that moment she 
wished that she would not, one day, have to lose him. Unheroic as he might 
seem, he had the strength of ten. She needed strength. "What must I do now?" 
she asked finally. 

"Go back and act naturally with the boys." 

"Can't I stay here with you until bedtime?" she pleaded wistfully. 

"No." 

Dutifully she got to her feet. Her obedience to him always surprised her. 
Meekly she turned and offered her wrists. She even managed a faintly 
sarcastic thank you when he had clasped the handcuffs back upon them. 

They had caught Sula, of course. She stood panting, arms held by an amused 
George and Cully. 

"Been in fer a quickie?" George inquired ribaldly. 

She stuck her tongue out at him impudently. If only she could keep things 
leavened with a bit of humor! 

"Done everything we told her not to," Cully accused indignantly. 

Clare turned on him. "I know what you want to do... Horrible things! Barney 
and his rotten pins and boxes. Look, we are only girls. We've never hurt 
you. We'll be obedient if you'll give us a chance." She searched her mind 
frantically for rationalizations. "We understand this prisoner of war bit. 
You are men, and luck has made you a present of some girls that you are 
going to enjoy using as a sort of... prerequisite... or spoils of war, or 
whatever term you want to use. We won't complain too much. But why spoil a 
good thing by being so cruel we can't take it, can't play our proper role! 
It's like killing the goose that lays the golden egg." 

"Wish they were all like her," George contributed fervently. 

"Make a good member of the Cause," Cully conceded. 

Clare returned to battle. "Look, boys, we've all got sort of messed up 
today. Us girls sort of know we are for it. But we are lost in this cruelty 
thing. How about caning us instead? You all enjoy caning me. I know you do. 
You all get the damndest hard-on. You can cane us all sorts of ways. Tie us 
or make us stand. Make us ask for it-you know... all the things you enjoy. 
It will hurt like hell. But we'd love you." Her plea hung pregnant in the 
silence. 

"Damned if I ain't got a hard-on already," George sounded surprised. 

"See! What did I tell you! It's much more fun," Clare insisted, feeling like 
a five-dollar whore offering something special for an extra ten. 

"Little bitch got a point," Cully agreed. 

"I got some points meself," Riodan said heavily. 

Clare looked at Barney with deep affection. "You'd like to cane me, Barney, 
wouldn't you?" 

"I'd hurt yer somethin' awful," he warned. 

"But, of course, darling! Us girls expect a bit of pain." 

Riodan considered. He was a man and fallible. "I thought up a nice little 
plan, so I did," he complained. 

"Tell us. We'll love it!" Clare knew herself pure bitch. 

"It ain't bad," Barney admitted modestly. He surveyed his audience with a 
showman's instinct. "Bet you all think this here wench wot run off is going 
ter get safety pins in her twat and her tits and what have you." He chuckled 
portentously. "That's what she thinks too. Look at her. She's scared 
shitless. Had a taste of it already, so she has." He paused with a showman's 
true instinct. "But I've thought o' a better way o' making her squeal, so I 
have. She's earned herself a fine punishment. She's all primed up to bear 
it. So what do we do!" He looked around triumphantly. "We do the thing 
that'll hurt her most. We give her punishment to the little girl down there 
on the table." 

It was masterly. Clare recognized a worthy opponent. The other men were 
already eyeing the shackled figure of Chloe with mounting interest. Sula 
moaned in desolation. 

"Real clever, that is," Cully paid tribute. 

"What yer aimin' ter do?" George inquired. He was neutral. 

"She's earned the lot," Riodan stated factually. "I got three pins." 

Chloe began to cry. 

Sula fought frantically. But was subdued. 

Clare wondered what erotic delight she could offer to offset such an 
entrancing fantasy in the minds of men. Always the male libido would be over 
the hill with some fresh notion. 

"Don't you like my bottom?" she asked wickedly. "Sure do," said George. Good 
old George!!! "We can cane that any time," said Cully. She looked at Riodan. 
"All three will half kill her." 

"She'll live." 

Clare turned to the distraught Sula. "For heaven's sake give me some help." 

The captive girl shook her head as though in waking. "Let go my arms, 
please," she asked innocently. "I won't try anything." 

They loosed her and watched entranced. 

It was as though Sula was under a spell. She knelt beautifully before the 
costive Irishman and asked meekly: "Please cane my bottom. I'll be a very 
good girl and do just what you say." She looked up at him with a sudden 
insight. "When you have caned me all you want, please fuck me. I want you 
to." 

"I got a job ter do." Riodan sounded less certain of the nobility of his 
cause. No one helped him. 

"I have a beautiful bottom," Sula said simply. 

"We're being screwed proper," Riodan was retreating. 

"I'll say thank you after each stroke." 

"I'll ask for the next stroke." Clare upped the ante. 

"We can't give you more'n half a dozen," Barney said wistfully. "You got the 
nicest arse. Orders!" 

"Cane me anywhere," Sula implored. Obviously she was fighting for courage. 
"How about my breasts?" She thrust them out arrogantly. They were very 
beautiful. 

Riodan was conscious of a dwindling moral support. "I got ter do somethin'," 
he affirmed defensively. Sula's breasts were not to be treated lightly. 

"Tell yer what," said Cully as though he had just discovered the law of 
gravity. "Let's have one of them there compromises the British are always 
talkin' about. Let's have half and half. Let the little girl choose which 
she wants: the top or the bottom-hers, that is. Then we'll cane the others' 
arses and we'll all be happy." 

Clare supposed this was how the world's affairs were run. Broken deadlocks. 
She played safe and kept silent. 

Sula said: "It hurts terribly." No one knew whether she was speaking of the 
cane or the pins. 

There was suddenly upon them all a sense of drama. Before their eyes a 
chained, naked girl would make a choice between having the lips of her sex 
pinned together or of having similar pins thrust through each of her 
nipples. Clare realized that, for her, it would be a choice impossible to 
make. Both were unthinkable. 

Chloe defeated them. She had been quietly crying. Her eyes wide in horror 
and disbelief at what she saw and heard. She made no choice. But when every 
eye was upon her she raised her head as much as her bonds would allow and 
said defiantly: "Leave Sula and Clare alone! Why should they be cut up by 
your rotten cane if you are going to stick those beastly pins in me anyway! 
I'm not going to choose. To hell with you! Stick all three pins in me and 
forget the rest!" 

The female capacity to contemplate agony is inexplicable. It left Costigan's 
boys speechless. Clare groaned inwardly. They were back to square one. It 
was George who took them out of it. He spoke directly to Barney Riodan. 

"Summat in what she says. Start out fer a bit o' fun wi' one of 'em and end 
up givin' all three a bad time... It ain't cricket." 

"Fuck cricket!" Riodan felt his fortunes had improved. 

George was the bigger man. He tapped his colleague seriously on the chest. 
"Look at it this way, Barney. I know what's in yer mind. You'd like ter see 
them pins sort of nestlin' in little dolly's tits and twat. Tell the truth, 
so would I. Tis a fancy notion an' all. But I ain't all that keen on them 
screams. Don't think any of us are 'cept you. So be a good chap and use that 
hypo thing yer got. Little girl gets her ornaments and no one gets hurt. 
Sure an' you're a good feller, Barney... We'll all love yer." 

"Tis the Blarney Stone ye've kissed, George." But Riodan was smiling. 
Perhaps he was glad of compromise, too. He turned to his ubiquitous box. 
Chloe said nothing. What was there for her to say! 

Cully thoughtfully handcuffed Sula's wrists behind her back and pushed her 
to where she could view another suffer what she had borne. George raised the 
small hips and pushed the block of wood beneath them so that she who was to 
be hurt and shamed was now arched taut, unable to struggle. Chloe resolutely 
closed her eyes. 

That the punished girl could feel none of the pain of her suturing made the 
whole scene bizarre. Something unspeakable was done with neatness and 
dispatch. Clare's nerves and stomach writhed as she watched the sterilized 
points pierce the maiden flesh and, after an eon of time, emerge on the 
other side to be clipped home. The whole safety pin carefully centered to 
achieve whatever esthetic potential might exist and at the same time scream 
its utter incongruity. When the three utilitarian bits of shaped steel had 
been placed to Riodan's satisfaction, the block was pulled away, the 
shackles unlocked... The heartbroken Chloe was made to stand and to walk 
while the anesthetic still protected her from pain. The flowing freedom of 
motion she was encouraged to exercise revealed her shining appendages to the 
fullest advantage of a strangely erotic contrast. Safety pins in a naked 
girl! 

Clare felt her own breath catch, and sensed a quivering awareness in Sula as 
the two of them watched the bemused Chloe walk as she was told to do, then 
stand and peer down at the three most secret portions of herself impaled by 
foreign steel. The punished girl stood long and gazed in wonder at her new 
toys. Tentatively she touched each with a hesitant finger, the barest touch 
to assure herself that they were real, that her nipples and her nether lips 
had indeed been pierced for ornaments she had no wish to wear. Her curiosity 
satisfied, Riodan cuffed her wrists behind her back. Taking her by one arm 
and grabbing Sula in the same way he propelled them forward. 

"Come along, me little darlin's. I'll take ye back where ye belong while ye 
can still talk. Tis a pretty picture ye are, an that's the truth." He led 
the broken spirited girls away. 

"She is a damn pretty picture, an all," Cully said, surprised. 

Pain! Clare shuddered. Yet she knew that, without intending to, Barney 
Riodan had achieved a twisted beauty. 

"Every girl should wear 'em," said George with reverence. 

They stood in silence remembering what they had seen. Two men and a naked 
girl in chains. Clare did not want to remember. She wanted to forget. She 
looked brightly from one to the other of her companions. "You were good to 
us girls," she said softly. "Take me somewhere and let me be good to you." 

"Bloody good idea!" George enthused. "I got the damndest hard-" 

"I noticed it," Clare admitted demurely. 

"What about the cane?" Cully suggested hopefully. 

"Oh, you have to cane me first," Cane agreed warmly. "It's a sort of a hors 
d'oeuvre." 

"There you go bein' rude again," George said approvingly as he picked her up 
and carried her towards her favorite punishment. 

"I'm sorry I'm rationed to six strokes." Clare had no trouble in sounding 
sincerely regretful that Costigan had limited any daily infliction on her 
person to 'six of the best'. "Not much between two of you, is it," she added 
winsomely. 

"You'll know you've had 'em!" George assured her darkly. 

"If you'll take my handcuffs off I won't look so silly when I bend over." 

Cully had the offending metal off her wrists in seconds. She used her newly 
freed hands to pull his head down to be kissed. Playfully, and because she 
wanted to, she kissed George twice. 

"Give me number one now, please, darling. Just to get me in the proper frame 
of mind." 

"You're always in the proper frame of mind," George flexed the slender cane 
happily. "A rare bad lot you are, an all." 

"I'm going to give you a really special bend," Clare told them impudently. 
"Watch how it sticks my bottom out. I can manage it the first time. I'll be 
too scared after that." 

They watched entranced as the girl they were to whip immolated herself for 
their delectation. Knees firm, legs slightly apart, back arched in and down, 
clenched fists instead of fingers on her toes. From her almost upside-down 
position she looked up at them pertly. "Whenever you're ready, gentlemen." 
Strangely she felt happier than she had done all day. 

There was a snickering in the air before the fire lanced her bottom. A 
scalding wave beat against the dyke of her determination. She fought it as 
an enemy that might spoil her impudence. She won. But her lovely pose was 
shattered. The cane had driven her forward. The agony had knifed her erect. 
She was sure she could feel her flesh swelling and bursting into the ridge 
that would mark the passage of the slice. Her seeking hands confirmed its 
rise. Slowly she turned so that her smile should be complete... 

"Ohhh... George!" The exclamation said it all. 

"He's frightfully clever with the cane," she said admiringly to Cully. "I 
expect it's your turn next. Is there any particular position you'd enjoy me 
in?" 

"That comes later," Cully confirmed with heavy humor. He looked her up and 
down with serious consideration of her question. "Y'know, Miss, I like yer 
best a'standin' up straight with yer hands clasped behind yer neck. D'you 
mind." 

Clare did not mind at all. But an imprudent honesty prompted a mischievous 
admission. "I love that way. But I should tell you it doesn't hurt as much." 
She stood as he had asked, taking care to thrust her breasts into maximum 
prominence. She had adopted an axiom: men loved a girl's breasts, so use 
'em! From his indrawn breath she knew she was beautiful. "Like this?" Her 
sideways glance was pure provocation. 

Perhaps Cully hit harder. The pain seemed just as bad. If there was a 
competitive urge between the two men her bottom would rue it. She fought her 
battle and came up smiling. "My poor little bottom," she said with mock 
sorrow. They loved it. What little boys they were! 

She rested her hands on George's shoulders and smiled up at him adoringly. 
"And now Miss Bottom wants to know your wishes for her, darling." 

George glowed. For a moment Clare was sure that by a judicious use of her 
posterior she could own the world. "There's a way, Miss. It's sort of down 
on your knees, but then you get right down with your elbows and forearms and 
your face. Can't rightly explain... " 

"Like this?" Clare knew what he wanted. It would hurt. Her thighs and torso 
hinged together vertically. The posture was pure bottom. She was surprised 
herself at the tight exposure. "Am I doing it right, darling?" 

"You do everything right, mavourneen!" He cut her low down where the hairs 
showed through the wicked crease. She yelped and fell over squirming. 

The two men watched a girl's agony. It was a beautiful agony as she 
stretched and twisted and gasped. She lay there hurting even when she smiled 
lovingly, looking up at he who had whipped her. "Thank you, George. You are 
sweet to me." She rose with a deliberate grace and rubbed her wealed bottom 
tenderly while her eyes acknowledged their gratitude. 

She turned to the other man she served. "Between my legs, Cully? You'd like 
that, wouldn't you?" 

Cully was stunned. "Miss... you ain't really offering that, are you?" 

She enveloped him in sunshine. "I'll howl and wriggle all over the place. 
But if you don't mind...?" 

"Mind!" He was incredulous, and avid. 

"I'll say thank you now," Clare said prettily. "I won't be able to right 
afterwards." She wondered what little devil of whimsey got hold of her at 
such times. She wondered even more fervently as she propped herself up under 
the hips to spread as obscenely as her ankle chains would allow. "I could be 
much nicer for you if my ankles weren't chained," she wheedled. 

In a moment her ankles were free. With a small moue of complicity she parted 
her feet as wide as they would go. 

The cane sliced her in two. She had shut her eyes. She had not dared watch. 
She gave a high keening moan and collapsed on her side, both hands 
feverishly clutching her bruised sex, curled up in a feminine ball of agony. 

Again the two men watched with reverence. 

"Proper little hero, she is," said Cully, awed. 

When she had gathered her forces once more she knelt before them as a slave 
girl kneels. "Two more lovely cuts still," she whispered. "May I serve you 
now, please? It will rest me," she grinned impishly. "I'm sure the last two 
strokes will put you both back in form again." 

"Bloomin' little witch you are, for sure!" George breathed huskily. 

"How, please?" 

They told her how. 

She acquitted herself with great skill. Perhaps with love. 

For the rest she touched her toes and said her pleases and thank you's 
nicely. 

They loved her and rewarded themselves again. 

Then, for what reason, or under what impulse she never knew, they took her 
to the great Hall of Montrilas. They took her there without her chains and 
without her handcuffs. But they locked the heavy shackle round her ankle. 

"Just like when I first found yer," George said romantically. 

They went, without a backward glance, Like men suddenly remembering a 
mission, and left her standing there alone and forlorn. 

Clare was bereft. She wanted no more of the nightmares. No more of the 
morbid wakings and rememberings. She kicked angrily at the chain that would 
keep her there forever if need be. The Great Hall absorbed her into its 
gloom and into its antiquity. 

She, tenderly, lowered herself to the stone and wept. 

* * * 

It felt deliciously wicked there in the long grass of the glade. Clare 
stretched her nakedness in wanton sensuality and looked up through 
half-closed eyes at the intent faces of Tavie and Alethea as each of them 
teased one of her nipples. How beautiful they were! 

"I'll whip you both hard," she promised dreamily. 

"You mean, if we stop?" Alethea giggled. 

Tavie pinched. Clare opened one eye wide. "That hurt." 

"Well, don't promise to punish us then." 

"You know what we are going to do to you?" Alethea asked softly. 

"I don't mind." Clare was floating on a cloud, a lovely sun-kissed cloud. 

"We are going to tie you all spread out and whip you with nettles." 

"But I'm in charge of you. I'll do the whipping." Clare was half asleep. 

"Between your legs as well." 

"I'll tell our Lord Godfrey if you do." She knew she would not. 

"He doesn't whip us as hard as you do. Poor Daddy. He hates to have to hurt 
us." 

"He can put you in the dungeon though." 

Clare realized too late that her nipples were being neglected. Her ankles 
were tied wide apart before she came awake and sat up. "No fair," she 
protested. "I was half asleep." 

"You were talking about putting us in the dungeon." 

"You know it's good for you." 

"This will be good for you, darling Clare. Give us your hands." 

"Take them," Clare said with false petulance. "I can't stop you. Not with my 
feet spread a league apart like this." She tugged ineffectually at one 
prisoned ankle. 

The twins laughed happily as they tied her with arms and legs wide to invite 
their attentions. Clare did not resist. It was a game they played often. 
Tomorrow one of them would be the victim. 

"If we are ever caught we will all be in the dungeon, with chains and other 
grievous things to bear," she warned. It was an idle threat. Part of their 
game. 

They whipped her gently with the nettles, making her plead. She could not 
squirm much, for they had tied her well. But she tugged and strove in ways 
that gave them joy. 

"Methinks Lord Godfrey would be much angered with me if he knew his three 
wards disported themselves shamelessly naked within his woods. I am supposed 
to guide thee aright. Tis me he would punish." 

They laughed at her concern. "Lord Godfrey is busy elsewhere. He comes not 
to this glade. You carp like old Bette in the kitchen. Here, we give thee 
something of more concern." They opened the lips within her hair and dropped 
a nettle leaf therein. 

She could never best them. She did not really want to. But at times their 
mischief was extreme. She moaned with the intimate sting. They watched, 
rapt, as she tore at their bindings. She refused to plead. They would only 
listen in wide-eyed enjoyment. But it helped to struggle. 

"Let us whip her breasts with the nettles, very gently... " 

"No!" Clare was angry that they had found her weakness. She could not bear 
to have her breasts whipped, even if it was only a few nettles. The twins 
knew she could not bear it. So they would do it happily while she writhed 
and moaned. Each would whip one breast, their faces intent watching the 
scarlet rash start up on her white skin. Flicking her nipples teasingly. 
Clare wished she could control her nipples. But she could not. Always they 
stood up and hardened demandingly as though in invitation to the girl's 
attention. But was she any better! She let them have their will with her... 

"They're both nice and red now," Tavie said, and threw her shredded stalks 
away. 

"We can put a fresh one in her cunny," Alethea said as she extracted the 
expended leaf and dropped in another. 

"You wait," Clare threatened. "You'll be sorry." 

They loved her threats as they loved her nakedness. Tavie opened up the soft 
lips and inserted a second leaf. "You threatened us," she accused. "Say 
you're sorry." 

"I'm sorry," Clare said without argument. Then, after a long pause: "Aren't 
you going to take it out?" 

"Who said anything about taking it out?" 

"Well, I said I was sorry." 

Tavie opened up the now angry lips and pushed one more leaf within. "There's 
a lot of room inside," she said thoughtfully. 

"Oh please. I'll be a good girl." Clare always capitulated. The twins always 
won. Outside the castle she never managed to maintain her role of elder 
sister. Maybe she wasn't elder at all. No one seemed to know how old the 
twins were. She did not care. "What do I have to do to get those leaves 
taken out?" she asked humbly. 

"You could ask us, really nicely, to whip your bottom." 

Clare considered. "I think I'll keep the leaves." 

"Of course, darling. Here's another." Nimble fingers did their task. Clare 
wondered unhappily how many leaves she had room for down there. 

The crack of a dry bough underfoot froze them into immobility. There was 
only one male who intruded into their sacred preserve. "Bet that's Kaspar," 
whispered Tavie irritably. 

"Untie me!" Clare's demand was urgent. She had no wish for the pimply-faced 
youth to see her thus. 

"Go away, Fat Face!" Alethea raised her voice peremptorily. "We told you not 
to bother us." 

"I can see your tits," Clare heard the silly male titter that was doubly 
lewd coming from the ineffectual sixteen-year-old. Nobody liked Kaspar. 
Thankfully she felt hands tugging at her bonds. 

"They are a lot nicer to look at than that silly thing you carry around 
between your legs," Tavie retorted hotly. 

Clare sat up. Kaspar devoured her hungrily with his eyes. His lips were 
slack. He was pleased at having caught them at their game. She resisted an 
impulse to snatch at something and cover herself. A plague on him! He'd seen 
them naked often enough, damn him! 

"Run along, Kaspar. Go and play with the boys." She added her admonition to 
Alethea's. 

"It's you that should play with the boys," Kaspar said with dark emphasis. 

"You really want us girls to play with the boys?" Tavie baited her hook. 

"You and me can play games right now." He was suddenly eager. He did not see 
the trap. Kaspar never did see the traps they set for him. Matched against 
the twins he was stupid. He did not even see the flash of understanding that 
passed between them now. 

Before he'd grasped their intent they had him safely pinned. He was no match 
for the three lithe bodies. It took but a minute to truss him to a sapling. 
They laughed delightedly at his red, indignant, bovine face and the 
ineffectual protests they had heard before. 

"I'll tell on you. I will! Let me go!" 

"We told you never to come here again, tattletale!" 

He struggled furiously. No one ever got free from Tavie's knots. He stuck 
his tongue out at them in frustration. "Rotten cunt lickers!" he declaimed 
sulkily. 

"We don't like the way you do it," Alethea stated reasonably. "You probably 
practice on your father's sheep." She giggled at his fury. "Or do your poor 
cousins have to let you have a go?" 

He tugged uselessly. The twins watched him with purposeful intent. Clare 
wondered if one day this absurd creature could cause them trouble. 

"If I tell my Lord Godfrey he'd flay you for what you do here!" 

"Tell on us and we tell on you," Alethea promised equably. 

He moaned youthful obscenities as they bared his sex. Clare watched amused. 
She should stop them. But had no intention of spoiling their sport. It was 
not the first time. Kaspar should have known better. He was of a type for 
whom it is hard to feel sympathy. 

"Don't! Oh don't... You dirty bitches...!" 

The girls were happily whipping his maleness with their nettles. In spite of 
its owner's anguish his penis flourished under their ministrations. The 
harder it got the harder they beat it. "I told you so," said Tavie. "It 
likes what we are doing. It would be unkind to stop." 

Their scarlet-faced victim kept up an incessant chant of distress. 
"Alright!... I'll never come here again. I won't." 

"You said that last time." The nettles lashed without pause. 

"I'll stay with Lise and Sula and Chloe. They like me." 

"They have to like you, poor girls." 

"You could like me too if you wanted to," he whined. "But you're beastly 
selfish. You just like each other. Oh, stop it, stop it! Please...!" He 
looked at Clare. "Make them stop. You're as bad as they are," he moaned in 
shame. 

"Oh look!" Alethea clapped her hands and peered with interest. "All that 
funny stuff that's coming out." She looked up at their gasping captive. 
"Ugh! What girl wants that horrid mess inside her?" 

His paroxysm over, he glowered hatefully. "I'll put it into you at both ends 
one day," he promised bitterly. 

"Isn't he naughty," Tavid said with revulsion. "Let's do it again." 

They amused themselves with Kaspar for an hour. It was an old game. Clare 
wondered why he returned to it. Some male compulsion that resented their 
exclusive happiness with each other! Or perhaps he secretly enjoyed it! But 
he never evinced other than deep loathing for what they did to him. Always 
he left vowing vengeance: in sharp contrast to his supplications while still 
bound. She watched him go now, muttering his imprecations with a voice full 
of tears. 

Clare was happy at Montrilas. She loved the siblings. She loved Lord Godfrey 
who they called father. He had adopted them before the death of his wife. He 
adored them as his own. She sensed his moods, almost as a wife will know the 
temper of her husband. For a week she had felt his disquiet: On the eighth 
day she rode with him on a strange errand. 

"Tis foolish talk of witches," he growled, irritated. "There are no witches. 
Just tales to frighten children. A sad day for my brother that his nieces 
stand accused." He pursed his lips in thought. "I'll be bound it's no more 
than the King's man with his infernal warrant-that bitter misanthrope 
Rearden! He's scoured the whole land for his prey. A week since, the Devil 
take him! He seeks a shortcut through a few trees and sees your cousins at 
some game they play. A game he says links them with Lucifer. Now the marshal 
has them in his keep. I pray we may reach them in time to be of help." 

Clare's heart was ice. Three girls and a game in a woodland glade! She knew 
well what their game might be! There, but for the grace of God... ! It was 
too cruel. 

Because Lord Godfrey was who he was Clare was allowed to visit. The jailer 
pocketed his coin and locked her in. He would return in an hour. 

So winsome they had been. So full of joy. How bitter to see them thus! It 
was as though they had been consigned to some nether world where no sun 
shone. They cried out in gladness as the door slammed behind her. But there 
were no welcoming arms, no hungry lips. All three of them were chained, 
chained deviously and cruelly. Clare kissed and held each of them a long 
time. She wept. 

"The devil in me must be made to tire. So I stand thus." Lise raised her 
chained hands to the collar at her neck. A metal collar joined by but a foot 
of chain to the ring in the wall so that she must stand, and stand... 
without rest. 

"My devil gets the same attention," Sula sighed miserably. She could not 
move her hands, for they were parted wide and chained to the wall above her 
head. She drooped wearily. 

Chloe shrugged without comment. But smiled wanly. She stood in the center of 
the chamber, one wrist shackled above her head by a chain from the ceiling. 
She, too, would find no comfort. 

Clare was shocked. "Your clothes...?" 

"We were stripped and given these bits of sacking." 

"But they are shameful. They scarce cover... what should be covered." Clare 
looked from one to the other and was afraid. 

"We are near naked that we may be easily examined." 

"Examined?" 

"Yes! For witch marks." 

Clare's heart fluttered. "And they found...?" 

"Yes. They found them. Kaspar joins our games and his hand is heavy. We were 
all well striped. We are still." 

"But they are whip marks! Surely...?" 

"It matters not. For M'Lord Rearden any mark suffices." 

"But Kaspar can explain." 

"And be himself accused." Sula moved in her chains and grimaced wryly. "He 
is well striped also. One day we caught him off guard." 

"But he should come forward." Clare clutched at straws. 

"You know our Kaspar better than that. He is trembling in his shoes. But we 
do not think too ill of him! He could not help us." 

Purposefully, Clare went to each in turn, shifting their scanty coverings so 
that she might see. She was not heartened. "His hand must indeed have been 
heavy if these are of a week past." 

"We do not want him in our games," Chloe pouted. "He is cruel, and he always 
wants to stick that horrid thing into us and jerk away with it. But if we 
reject him entirely he threatens us, so then we let him have his way. It 
can't be helped. We hope soon he will find others." 

Her voice drifted away. Then Sula bitterly spoke their single thought: "He 
may soon have to!" 

Lise moaned. "These beastly chains!" She shook her manacles in frustration, 
and looked tearfully at their visitor. "Oh, darling. Remember what fun it 
was to tie each other to a tree! Now look at us! I hate these chains more 
than I have ever hated anything." 

"Can you help us, darling?" Chloe's voice was desperate. 

"My father is with the marshal now, and I will be a witness if need be. Aye, 
and many from Montrilas if t'would help." Clare sensed how little help it 
really was. "Can we not bribe the jailer to remove your chains? Or to place 
easier irons on thy limbs?" 

"That has been tried. Our father and all his friends. None can prevail 
against the Inquisitor: Rearden is the devil. Not some demon in us." 

"But need this... this Rearden know that a jailer gives thee easement?" 

Sula laughed bitterly. "He visits us twice daily. He says to question. But 
he comes to gloat. It tightens his reins to see maidens held as we are held. 
He strips us naked when he asks the questions. He speaks often of torture. 
His eyes glow when he sees us shrink before him. I would spit in his face. 
But I am afraid." 

"Torture!" Clare was aghast. "He loves the word." Chloe's voice held 
loathing. She tugged at a fetter resentfully. "He took us to the chamber 
where... where such things are done. It is a dark and fearsome place. Far 
worse than this dismal prison. We did not understand... The things are so 
ugly and without meaning. But he told us. He told in much detail how we 
would be fastened naked and how the pain would come. There are terrible 
things... " 

"But must he not charge thee? He cannot keep you here in chains." 

"It is because we are high born. He hopes by tiring us like this we will 
confess. Then all will turn against us and he can use us for his pleasure 
before we are burned." 

"Burned! Oh no." Clare had once witnessed a burning at the stake. "Not the 
fire! Not for girls like... like us." 

"The stake, and other things. Perhaps worse. But we are told that by the 
time he leads a girl thither she is glad to die." 

Clare shuddered. A sunlit woodland glade: and now this! How could the two 
conditions exist in one world! "And Rearden? Can he not be bribed?" 

"That has been tried too." 

"If I went to him and offered my body? Would he relent?" 

"He will pay no price to buy you. Why should he! In this dungeon he already 
possesses three naked girls, chained and open to him. We are not ill 
favored. He has bodies enough. Each of us have offered ourself to buy his 
mercy for us all. But he has pretended rage and slapped our cheeks as though 
we were some tavern wench presuming on his nobility. Perhaps if you could 
suffer some torment that was new to him it might spark his interest. He 
deals only in pain. Every night we expect him to come and use one or all of 
us. But he has not done so." Sula's voice was without hope. "Our jailer 
tells us that maidens who reach the dungeons of this place are usually 
violated by any man with the price of a bribe. But not us... " 

"Still will I seek audience," Clare promised. "I must try." 

* * * 

Save for his bright eyes and shrewd features he was ordinary enough. He was 
of no stature. But authority mantled him like armor. He was courteous but 
cold. 

"You have fresh evidence, Mistress?" 

"None save what you know. I ask for mercy. They are but girls who have 
injured none." 

"They are witches." His voice was without emotion. 

"My Lord Rearden, I am but a girl myself. I know little of worldly things. I 
know it possible for such as I to please a man. Perhaps-" 

"Silence!" She could not tell if his anger was real or feigned. But she 
recoiled as from a blow. 

"The daughter of Godfrey a strumpet! Dos't seek the whipping post, girl! A 
day in the pillory would serve thee well." 

She faced him defiantly. She would deal in his own coin. "Would pain upon my 
person soften thee?" 

He examined her with fresh respect. "You would bargain with he who holds the 
King's warrant?" 

"An it save those I love from harm." 

"Even though your pain be grievous?" 

It took all her courage. "Yes, My Lord. For safety to those you hold in your 
dungeon." 

"Have you been whipped, child?" 

"Never as you would have me whipped, M'Lord." 

He considered her answer. She wished he had not asked the question. 

"Or racked?" He had become animated. 

"I fear I know nothing of these things." She spoke truth. 

"Let us test thy resolution," he suggested amiably, but his smile was cold 
and thin, his eyes lambent. "Sit thee in comfort, Mistress, while I draw a 
picture." 

Clare obeyed. She felt a dread cold as she watched him pace thoughtfully and 
slowly before her. 

"You would be taken, Mistress, to a dark and gloomy place and there stripped 
as naked as you have ever been. You would have a choice." Again the thin 
smile. "You could remove your clothes yourself, or they could be stripped 
from you by the men whose attentions you are to receive. They would then 
place you on the rack and amuse themselves with your cries as you were 
stretched. When they loose you it will be but the beginning. They will 
fasten you again and again. They will not hear your screams. They are too 
used to the sounds a maiden makes while under their care." He stood still 
and eyed her curiously. "Do I interest you, my child?" 

"You destroy my courage, Lord." 

"Good! Forget these valorous nobilities." His smile was almost kind. 

"If I want female flesh to torture, I have enough. I have no need for 
yours." He patted her gently on the shoulder. "But had I that need I can 
think of none I would sooner see naked or hear scream. You have a quality... 
Tomorrow you may come and witness my justice. It may comfort you." 

Clare felt she had received the devil's accolade. 

* * * 

The three girls were thoughtfully and exquisitely placed for his attention. 
Now they were naked. Totally available, spaced with hands chained high, feet 
spread and tied to the floor. They gazed at Clare in desolate wonder that 
she should see them in this deep moment of shame and fear. She smiled with a 
reassurance she did not feel. Lord Godfrey had been repulsed at every turn. 
She knew him troubled. He had sanctioned her acceptance of Rearden's 
invitation dubiously. It was to her now that Rearden spoke: "There is doubt 
that I am just. There is doubt of these lovesome creatures being witches. 
Watch carefully, Mistress, that you may give a good report." 

With something of a flourish he produced a needle. Two inches long, set in 
an exquisitely ornamented handle. His tools were no less polished than his 
speech. He was a happy man. He smiled benignly at the three naked girls 
whose eyes were riveted in horror at what they divined, and at Clare who 
stared at the macabre tableau with a fascination she could not hide. 

"A demon has entered them. When I probe the spot with this needle they will 
feel no pain and shed no blood. Tis very simple, Mistress." 

"But should ye not find such a place?" Clare asked sickly. 

"Their responses will be normal. The innocent need fear nothing." 

"The needle will torture them." 

He shrugged indifferently. "But in a worthy cause, Mistress. Would you have 
it otherwise!" 

Clare fell silent. If pain would prove them innocent then perhaps it might 
be borne. She watched the Inquisitor cup Sula's breast in one hand and 
slowly thrust the needle home to the hilt. Saw the naked girl tense and 
writhe in agony and heard her scream. When the needle was withdrawn there 
was a spot of blood. 

"It is a quest that can be long," Rearden explained affably. "But it is time 
I never begrudge." 

He was the. devil himself, going from girl to girl with his needle and his 
quiet voice, evoking their screams and their struggles. Soon their wrists 
were bloodied as they tore savagely at the snug iron fetters that held them. 
Other tiny specks of red marked the passage of his probings. Clare was 
beginning to wonder when and how the agony might end, when suddenly he gave 
an exclamation of triumph and beckoned her to approach. 

"It is always to be found," he declaimed sententiously. 

It was Lise's left buttock. Carefully he held the point at the spot he had 
discovered. "Press it in yourself, Mistress. I want no doubts." 

Unbelieving, Clare obeyed. She cared not for the girl's pain. She would 
press the slender wickedness well home and draw both the scream and the 
blood that would save a life. With care and precision, yet with stomach 
turning at the thought of what her hands performed, she firmly thrust the 
steel in to the hilt. When she withdrew it there was no scream, no blood, no 
mark. The silence that followed was pregnant with awful knowledge. Lise 
moaned. 

Rearden had said the path was long. It was. He traveled it with meticulous 
attention until there were few places, even the most sacred, on the two 
remaining girls that bore no testimony to his dedication. To the watching 
girl it came almost as a relief when their sufferings under the searching 
steel were ended by the discovery of the inevitable 'spot'. In the end all 
three moaned and writhed under the pain that had failed their innocence. 

"They are proven witches," Lord Rearden said softly. 

Clare wept. He led her gently from the room. The witches stayed there in 
their chains. 

* * * 

Lord Godfrey and his child held council. With hope gone only mercy remained. 
"I like it not," her father admitted. "But he has shown thee respect and 
decent kindness. I know him evil. But if he give thee head it is the best 
that can be done. Go to him then and sway him if you can." 

"Surely, child, you speak in jest?" He gave Clare his full interested 
attention. "You would share the witch's dungeon to give them comfort?" 

"Yes, My Lord." 

He studied her curiously. "Would you share their chains and their 
discomforts? Neither they or their demons will rest easy." 

"If it will help them, Lord. Or gain thy mercy," she quailed. But said the 
words bravely. 

He waved away her gesture. "It will not be asked of thee. But consider: were 
you as they are now, would you find comfort in watching a girl who was free, 
who bore no pain, whose body was clothed, who could leave the dungeon and go 
home when she chose? Would it...?" 

"I do not know, My Lord." In truth she did not. 

He shrugged. "It is thy wish. So be it. Go with my blessing." Once more he 
gently patted her shoulder. He was a strangely diverse man. 

"They are about to be whipped, lady. You wish to be present?" The jailer was 
obsequious to one who carried the Inquisitor's sanction. 

Clare's heart fluttered. It would be no whipping such as had been a lovesome 
thing in their play. She would find no joy in it. Nor would the girls wish 
her to witness their shame. But she had been granted a privilege. She had 
best not relinquish it because of queasiness. The man was eyeing her in 
doubt. She would be firm. "I must be with them whatever their inflictions," 
she said determinedly. He was an amiable man. He led the way. 

They were hanging by the wrists. Toes barely above the stone. "So that they 
may kick, Mistress. It disturbs their demon." Clare could not be certain of 
sarcasm or sincerity in his voice. 

They looked at her with love. But made no pleas. The jailer whipped them, 
unemotionally as though he swept the floor. Clare's heart yearned. How 
beautiful they were! As they danced from their tethered wrists they made a 
picture of esthetic loveliness that left the watcher guiltily entranced. In 
such strange ways beauty may be found. 

There was no urgency. He whipped slowly and carefully. Clare suspected he 
would ply his ugly trade with pride. He stopped and turned to her. "Name's 
Dickon, Ma'm." He held out the whip with a friendly smile. "Perhaps ye'd 
best use this, Mistress. Your arm is strong enough to mark them well, I vow. 
But they will feel less shame from a woman's hand." 

Was it kindness! Or a trap! Clare sensed no harm in him. His profession 
would render him impervious to incongruity. Yet she was appalled. Her eyes 
sought Sula's. What she found there made it easy. The girls preferred to 
suffer by her hand. She accepted the whip. 

"You are kind." 

He shrugged. "Tis a small thing. They must bear their pain. It matters 
little who bestows it." He chuckled. "You may be a lady executioner by the 
time all is done." 

Clare whipped the girls she loved. 

They danced their arabesque of agony. 

She stayed with them through the night. She gave Dickon gold. Gave it 
simply. No words. No demand. Perhaps because of it the three condemned 
maidens bore only heavy chains on wrists and ankles. There would be no 
torture through the dark hours. They found each other's arms in ecstasies of 
fulfillment and wild hunger. They slept and knew not that the floor was hard 
and cold. 

They never spoke of death. But because of Clare found a vivid life. All 
closed their minds to the morrow and absorbed from each other the elixir of 
being. They bore their tortures and their pain as best they could. 

Dickon gravely explained the principles of that which confronted them when 
morning came. Clare suspected him of possessing humor. "Tis a simple stocks, 
Mistress. Yet I'd have no wish to sit in 'em. Tis a chamber for their use 
alone. Enough for all there is, and to spare." He bestowed a puckish grin of 
complicity. "I'll be leaving you for a half an hour. See if you can have 
them safely locked, Milady." 

So resilient is the human spirit that they shared a moment's laughter. 
Clare's heart blossomed that she had been permitted to share these days. 
With pixie mischief Lise made the first experiment. 

"These aren't ordinary stocks such as in the Village Square," she 
complained, puzzled. 

"Sit thee squarely on the bench, for I fear I know what must be done," Clare 
adjured the child lovingly. 

Still as though in play Lise did as bid and, happily enough, placed her 
ankles in the slots and watched shiveringly as the bar was lowered upon 
them. The two half circles met and clutched the slender ankles with 
surprising snugness. Lise grinned with less assurance. She had divined her 
plight. 

A second set of bars with their sinister small orifices was set well above 
the first. This one closer to the prisoner on her bench. Clare raised the 
top-hinged section and looked invitingly at she who it would prison. With a 
shrug of resignation Lise bent forward, raised her arms and placed her 
wrists where they belonged. Once more the circlets met with a close bite 
upon the slender flesh. Fastenings were pegged. Lise had found her seat for 
the day. 

Those who were still free examined, uncertainly, the crude object in which 
they, too, would soon be prisoned. At first glance it seemed deceptively 
ordinary. 

Lise was seated on a bench. Her legs were not spread obscenely wide. But 
enough to expose that which is normally hid. In order to position her wrists 
she had been obliged to bend well forward and to raise her arms. By so doing 
she had been robbed of comfort. Seeing their curiosity she gave an impish 
grin and fought to free herself. Almost nothing happened. Her shoulders 
fluttered and swayed. That was all. She looked up at them, suddenly piteous. 

Glumly, Sula and Chloe followed Lise's lead. Clare did what she must do. 
Soon three naked girls were held immovably. As always they were beautiful. 
But it would not be long before pain would extract its toll of their 
strained loveliness. 

"I don't think I can stand this all day," Lise said soberly. 

The rest said nothing. Why tell her what she must already know: that she 
would have no choice? 

On his return Dickon inspected the fastenings and nodded approval. "A pretty 
picture they do make to be sure," he said to Clare. "Tis a pity they'll be 
groaning in an hour." 

Clare knew her sudden impulse absurd. But the words were out before prudence 
could halt them. "Fasten me too," she demanded. 

Dickon looked at her askance, startled beyond speech. 

The die cast, Clare resolutely sat herself upon the bench of another of the 
punishing contraptions and set her wrists and ankles where they should go. 
Instantly she became aware that the device was unsympathetic to the 
impediment of clothes. Disdainfully she rose again and stripped, keeping 
only her shift. But even that clung uncomfortably. So she shed that, too, 
sitting as naked as her cousins. She turned an inquiring, and secretly 
amused, eye upon the astounded jailer. 

"But, Mistress! Tis not proper." 

"If they must suffer, then so must I." 

"But naked! Madam!" 

"If three are naked, what matter a fourth?" 

"But, Mistress, you know not what ye seek. Tis beyond a girl's courage to 
bear." 

"Fasten me." 

"I cannot, Mistress. Nor do I wish to. An' did ye would ne'er thank me. Rest 
assured of that." 

"I will rest assured when I am safely locked." 

Dickon sighed. Perhaps he was a married man and a woman's caprice familiar. 
He beamed with sudden inspiration. Without a word he obeyed Clare's demand. 
He made the fastenings firm. Her nudity was held as was the others. She 
could not escape. 

"The first time ye cry in pain I shall set ye free, like it or no," he told 
her cheerfully. 

He went out and closed the door. 

Clare immediately longed to scratch an itching elbow. 

The four naked girls sitting in their enforced immobility had no track of 
time. But Clare felt certain that the first pangs of unbearable stress 
manifested themselves within the hour. She found a wry humor in that her 
bottom was the first casualty. 

A girl's round bottom would have seemed the last rather than the first place 
to feel distress. But the stocks held her in such a way that nature was 
distorted. Bent forward with her legs straight out changed the padded curves 
of her posterior so that her weight was on bone. Moreover, she could not 
shift. Try as she would, no easement was possible. Her bottom had been 
planted on a hard place and there it would remain. Its disorganized nerves 
becoming more plaintive by the minute. 

Then the small of her back! Beginning as a tiny nag, the pain evolved and 
blossomed. Soon it was joined by aching arms and shoulders. They stifled 
small shamed gasps. But their breathing became heavy. Sometimes one of them 
moaned, uncaring. Since there was aught to speak of but pain they seldom 
spoke. 

When Dickon returned he set upon the floor a black mongrel dog. "He's part 
of this punishment," he apologized gruffly. "I've got no choice but to leave 
him here with you. It is believed that a dog will lick a witch's cunt. Tis a 
further testimony that he scents her demon." 

"You don't believe that nonsense?" Clare demanded. 

"Whether I do or not, Mistress, I have to leave him here." 

"He'll lick us all. You know what dogs are!" 

"I'll leave it to you, Mistress, to give me an honest report on him." Dickon 
seemed glad to be gone. 

Four pairs of suffering female eyes centered on the sniffing dog. The 
inevitable followed. He found their sex as a magnet finds metal. He lapped 
busily. They were powerless to stop him. None cared enough to try. They 
endured in silence. To a tortured girl there are worse things than a dog's 
tongue. It was while she was receiving the animal's attention that Clare 
realized Dickon had come and gone without giving her a chance to seek 
release. When the others wept she made no effort to restrain her tears. 

Dickon was adamant. He would not punish her again. 

She had proved her love, he said. For the little time left she should be 
free. Clare was guiltily glad. She used her freedom with her hands and her 
lips to give what pleasure there was left... 

'She knew it was The Day when, in early morning, Dickon took her to Lord 
Rearden. He greeted her gravely, asking no questions of her days with the 
condemned. "There is a serving woman to attend thee," he told her 
courteously. "When you are refreshed I will escort you." 

"It is the end?" Clare knew the answer. 

"It is the end," he said without emotion. 

"Grant me a small boon," Rearden asked when she returned. He held up a 
length of cord. "Allow me to tie your hands." 

"What have I done wrong, M'Lord?" 

He smiled charmingly at her consternation. "You have done naught that 
displeases me," he assured her. "Quite the contrary. As I told you once, you 
have a quality. Because I would have you keep that quality I will tie your 
hands. By your own wish you are about to witness that which no maiden such 
as you should ever see. Distress may prompt unseemliness." Again his thin 
smile. "Dignity, once lost, is not easily regained. To me dignity is 
precious. I hope it is to you." 

Clare nodded. She understood. Strangely she trusted him. She found herself 
glad to be tied. For her, then, there would be no decisions. As he had said: 
no unseemliness! She turned her back to him and crossed her wrists. The cord 
bit purposefully. She would not escape from it. 

She wondered afterwards if what came then was, for her, the end of girlhood. 
The end of innocence. The end of simple faith. Certainly in the time itself 
it was an end to all things. 

Rearden positioned her against a pillar and, with a courtly apology, passed 
a cord beneath her arms and bound her shoulders back so that she must needs 
stand still, no matter what her wish. For this, too, she was glad. Her 
courage was ebbing fast. Lord Rearden himself took position to one side. It 
was the hooded men who occupied the stage. There were three of them. After 
her first shudder at the ominous hoods, Clare spared them scarce a glance. 
Her eyes were riveted on what she had feared to see. 

Three posts, a few feet apart in a row. Vertical, sharpened to tapering 
sword-like points. Thrusting up. Waiting. Clare knew what they were waiting 
for and was glad that she was bound. 

They brought in Sula first. Beautiful, desirable Sula! Her wrists and elbows 
were tied, cruelly. There had been no thought to circulation or injury. It 
would not matter! The cords bit deep. The white shoulders were dragged back, 
the breasts demanding. A bandage was tight about her eyes. 

How strange a man was Lord Rearden! To choose so great a cruelty, yet deny 
himself the supreme moment when the girl would see how she was to die. Blind 
she would know nothing until she was pierced. No doubt he would be richly 
rewarded then... ! Sula was quite naked. She had walked meekly where she was 
led. 

Two of them lifted her, great hands beneath thigh and arm. The third guided 
and positioned. His care and concern told that, even in this, there was a 
skill and an art. Clare watched their practical movements in mute horror. 
Stealing a glance at the Inquisitor she saw his face rapt, his eyes glowing. 
He was as much spectator as herself. 

THE END was sudden. A grunt from the third man. Then three pairs of male 
hands tugged down on Sula's loveliness. A scream so piercing that Clare 
would hear it forever filled the chamber. Fingers tore away the blindfold. 
The hooded men moved respectfully away so as not to obscure the view. 

Impalement is not death. It is only the beginning of death. It is not the 
end of consciousness. Shockingly it is the beginning of an awareness all the 
more acute in the knowledge that it will end in death. In that time the mind 
goes on unhindered in its thoughts. Speech is unimpaired. Thus was Sula! 

Clare did not know these things. Her first reaction was relief. Sula was 
still beautiful. The lovely nudity impaled upon the stake was frozen in its 
own pose of erotic enhancement. The legs separated, hanging free on each 
side and slightly to the fore of the post. The body erect, the breasts as 
arrogant as they had ever been. There was no blood. It was all neat and 
tidy. Clare understood Rearden's sense of the esthetic in his choice of the 
manner in which her loved ones were to die. 

Sula herself was shocked into immobility. Her first instinctive motions told 
her she must not move. She would never move again until she slumped in 
death. Agony would not matter then. Until that time agony was a constant to 
be reckoned with. She was in a haze of incomprehension: A girl executed, yet 
still alive. She moaned without cessation. A rise and fall of sound that ate 
into the heart. When she saw Lise lifted as she had been, she pleaded: "Oh 
no... ! Not them too... ! Just me... Please, just me." She watched 
trance-like as Lise, too, was impaled upon her stake. Then turned her eyes 
to Clare in a suffering too great to bear. When the three girls began their 
lonely wait for death, Rearden released Clare from her bonds and supported 
her with a strong and gentle hand. Before they turned to go they faced, for 
one last look, the loveliness that still was Sula, Chloe and Lise. "Do you 
not see?" he whispered, "the quintessence of beauty that it is?" 

For a single moment Clare saw it through his eyes. She nodded, unable to 
speak. The beauty she had seen had placed a lump inside her throat. 

They went away. 

For two days Tavie and Alethea fought her nightmares. She never spoke to 
them of what she had seen. They did not ask. Perhaps, from some wisdom of 
their own, they knew. She absorbed their love with a great need. Lord 
Godfrey was an angry man, troubled and saddened. He, too, would speak not of 
what he knew. 

Time heals. 

The magic of The Glade was, for Clare, the greatest healer of all. There the 
girls who were her very life had their way with her. They led their loved 
one into their own enchanted world. Happily forgetting the authority of her 
supposed seniority she surrendered to them utterly and indulged their erotic 
fancies without inhibition. 

"What shall we do with her?" Tavie asked on the ninth day. 

"The nettles?" Alethea suggested brightly. 

"We've used them, silly. But let's tie her first." 

"I won't let you," Clare said lazily. She lay naked in the hot sun. As 
always they had shed their clothes with their inhibitions. A great lassitude 
possessed her. It was delightful. She knew she would let them do anything 
they wanted. 

"Tie her how?" 

Their favorite tree had a trunk that just exactly accommodated Clare's arms. 
They crossed her wrists behind it and bound them tight. It was a game. But 
they played it intently, joyfully extracting every possible sensation. They 
gloried in their sensuality. Clare pushed her back against her tree, 
savoring still the sun imposed sleepiness from which they had stolen her. 
She smiled quietly to herself when they did what she knew they would, 
separated her feet and bound one on each side. They never allowed her 
modesty. She would have felt slighted if they had. 

They went away and whispered, keeping her in gorgeous suspense. When they 
returned and their fingertips and their tongues sought her nipples she 
sighed in happiness and closed her eyes. But, having achieved an objective, 
the erotic play was short-lived. 

"Mine's hard and sticking out beautifully," Alethea giggled. 

"So's mine. Hurry." 

Clare opened her eyes, interested at the innovation. Each twin held a 
trinket. Small charms their father had given them. A goat's head and a 
cockerel. They had removed them and threaded them anew with fine twine so 
that they hung from a brief loop leaving two long loose ends. Clare guessed 
their use. She looked down amusedly and watched her own nipples being 
decorated by busy nimble fingers. Each hard bud at the peak of her breasts 
was circled twice with twine drawn as tight as might be wise and tied with a 
neat bow over which much care was taken. Her breasts each now proudly bore a 
shining ornamentation of which she was instantly inordinately proud. She 
wriggled them in pure enjoyment. The twins stood back to admire. 

"Think her tits will shrink so they'll fall off?" 

"Not while we are around," Tavie giggled with conviction. 

Again the fingers and the tongues. "They'll stay hard for a week," Clare 
gasped, laughing at their determination. 

"You are going to wear these for a week," Alethea promised. "Before we let 
you loose we are going to undo the bows and then knot the twine really tight 
and cut the ends off. You'll need our help to get them off. You can't do it 
yourself. You can wear them under your clothes. No one but us will know." 
She chuckled delightedly. "I bet your nipples stay hard like that just 
because of what we've done. Oh... darling, you do look sweet." 

Tavie clapped her hands. "Do it now. Come on. It's a wonderful idea. Every 
time we look at her we'll know she's wearing our little charms on her 
nipples. She can't get them off. I want to see how long they'll stay there." 

Suiting action to words, she undid her own bow and tied a shrewd little knot 
and drew it tight. Not too tight, but a small embrace of love on a secret 
place. Clare herself was intrigued. She watched the knife slice away the 
loose ends. There was nothing left for her fingers to work upon. She 
wondered amusedly if, in her sleep, the nipples might not invert themselves 
so that in the morn the trinkets would be on the sheet. They would see. 

"The darling hasn't been properly whipped for a long time," Alethea 
suggested. 

"I'm tied the wrong way round," Clare said comfortably. 

"You know perfectly well there's no such thing for a girl as the wrong way 
round," Tavie admonished. 

Clare knew this very well. Her pulse quickened. 

"What whips have we got? Or shall I cut a switch?" 

"We'll cut a switch later. It makes its own special mark. But I brought the 
light little one thong. It's just right for her pussy. You first." 

Clare watched Alethea measure distance. The lovely little tapered strip of 
leather dangling from its short handle. She could almost feel her sex burn 
from the calculating eyes that assessed the possibilities of striping it. It 
was awful to have to watch. It was understood that she must never close her 
eyes. They punished her quite cruelly when she did. Clare felt better about 
being whipped when she was tied facing the tree with her curved bottom stuck 
out for their attentions. But the choice was never hers. 

"Do you think we can get at her little quim properly the way she's tied?" 

Clare knew they loved her quivering suspense in these verbal preliminaries. 
She could never hide it from them. 

"If we get to one side and back so as to curl it down over her hip," Tavie 
offered judicially. 

"Couldn't you just tickle me with a feather or something?" They loved her to 
temporize. 

"Another time, darling. We want to whip your cunny now. You won't mind if it 
sort of laps round here and there, will you!" 

"Couldn't I whip you for a change?" Clare pleaded in her best little girl 
voice. Alethea's play with the wicked little thong was sending the 
butterflies fluttering in her tummy. 

"Don't be a silly girl. You are much nicer to whip than we are. I think for 
making all this fuss you should ask us to give your furry spot a really bad 
time." 

"Oh no, please!" Clare tried to keep laughter out of her voice. She could 
never get over being shy when she must ask them to punish her. And, also, 
she did not want her hairy triangle to be given a 'bad time'. The twins' 
'bad time' often made her squeal. "Please, don't make me ask. I'll be a very 
good girl and not say another thing." 

With an air of grave consideration, Tavie drew her finger across the lower 
curve of the bound girl's left breast. "A really hard one right across there 
to teach her to be good," she indicated brightly. 

Clare shivered as they intended she should. They were quite capable of 
giving her the stroke. They imposed an amazing authority upon her by such 
unpredictable flashes of cruelty. She plunged into abject obedience. 

"Darlings." She looked from one to the other of them with her most kittenish 
smile, a heart-melting appeal with the eyes. "Please whip my cunny." She 
paused, quivering. Then exploded the thing she had no wish to ask. "Please 
give my dear little cunny a bad time." 

"She's trying to get us to relent. She's a real little minx." Tavie could 
never be deceived. "Dear little cunny indeed!" Laughing, she kissed their 
captive. "Alright, Miss Clever Puss, we'll forgive you the one on the 
breast. But this little thing down here is going to get so hot it'll burst 
into flames." She patted the 'dear little cunny' lovingly with a knowing 
hand and backed away. 

They whipped her with great skill, with care and with love. Taking turns, 
they discussed with each other and with their panting victim the best 
positions and effect of their strokes. Clare could never refrain from 
tearing at her bonds at such a time. She moaned for her own easement and 
because she knew the sound of maiden anguish gave the girls who whipped her 
great happiness. The heat in her loins grew and grew... 

There came a sound: another. 

"Oh, not Kaspar again!" Alethea wailed. 

But the single sound had become many until they were surrounded by the noise 
of heavy feet. 

It was Kaspar. But a very different Kaspar. His hands were bound. His cheeks 
were smudged and tearful. He was dragged on a tether by a mounted man at 
arms. Suddenly there was a ring of steel around the glade. Men were 
everywhere. Magic fled. 

There came a silence. No one moved. The men smirked and exchanged glances, 
no more. Kaspar stood panting and disheveled. 

Lord Rearden dismounted. Slowly and without speaking he examined the glade 
and the three naked girls. Two of them struck still as statues in dismay. 
The third, tied to her tree, watching his advance with anguished eyes. 

He stood in front of her and surveyed the taut nudity Clare was impotent to 
hide. Nodding, as with some secret knowledge confirmed, he scrutinized the 
fresh pink and scarlet stripes across her loins. His eyes lifted and saw the 
trinkets tied to her nipples. He fingered them with interest. Finally his 
eyes sought hers. 

"I knew I would have you." His voice was vibrant and warm as never before. 

Clare said nothing. She, too, had known. 

* * * 

It became, then, a kaleidoscope of vivid cameos of action, hate, fear and 
death that etched themselves on Clare's consciousness. 

It took many men a long time to subdue the siblings. The watching girl, tied 
to the tree, had never had occasion to know their strength. Now she shared 
awe. There was a stir, almost of fear, among the soldiers as man after man 
was sent sprawling or clubbed senseless by a stolen sword. The two girls 
fought grimly and with a terrible purpose. Standing back to back they thrust 
and parried and struck. Before they were brutally bound at wrist and elbow 
and their necks snubbed with cord, two men had died and several bore wounds. 
The siblings stood panting, their eyes glowing hate. The Inquisitor, 
unperturbed by the carnage, viewed them with an intent curiosity. 

The feral pleadings of the perfidious Kaspar. That having delivered 'The 
Witches' into M'Lord Rearden's authority he be now freed with his thirty 
pieces of silver. Watching him loosed and soundly booted from sight. 

Herself untied by the Lord Inquisitor himself. His arm waving aside those 
who would have performed the task. Then being bound again by him as Tavie 
and Alethea were bound. His fingers strangely strong and strangely kind. His 
whispered words for her alone: "I love thee, child," as he tied the last 
knot. He kissed her gently on her forehead as he passed the tether from her 
neck to a gaping man-at-arms. 

Lord Godfrey's shock at sight of his beloved daughters bound and naked and 
ashamed. His mighty oath of fury as he drew his sword and plunged at the man 
he had come to hate. The thuds as the arrows struck from a dozen bows. Sight 
of his crumpled figure, strangely shrunken on the ground, as they were led 
away. 

The dungeon and the chains. 

Then The Room. 

It was a rich room. Those who lined its walls and filled its benches were 
rich. Peers come to judge! Men driven by lust, or curiosity, or fear, or 
hate... The three girls, their arms bound in constant pain, standing as an 
incongruous contrast with their bits of sackcloth in the solemn place. 

The Inquisitor! He owned them all. 

The questions and the answers... Or the silences! 

Kaspar of the beady eyes. Lusting for their flesh. Damning them with his 
testimony. Witch... Witch... Witch! 

"On a previous occasion you stated formally that you had never been 
whipped?" Lord Rearden's voice was low, yet filled the room. 

"True, My Lord." Clare knew herself already sentenced. 

"Yes, My Lord." 

"You lied?" 

"Yes." 

"You disport yourselves naked in the woods. Why?" 

"Tis but a summer game we play." She would never tell him. 

"You can be made to tell, girl." His voice was sad. "Because we love-that's 
why!" Tavie's words bit at him like a dagger. 

He turned and bowed to the interloper. He was grateful. "You give your body 
to be bound and whipped by your familiars?" 

"By my sisters, yes." 

"Why?" 

"Because I love them." 

"They are not your sisters?" 

"No." 

"You are adopted children. Is it not true your familiars were found by their 
deceased father wandering in the forest at an uncertain age?" 

"My sisters were found as you describe." 

"What is their age?" It was not a casual question. 

She temporized. "No one knows, M'Lord." 

"Is it not true they are ageless?" 

She looked at him piteously. "I do not understand... " 

"I think you do." 

"We are without age," Alethea dealt with the question. Her eyes burned into 
the Inquisitor with a light such as Clare had never seen. 

Again his courteous acknowledgment of help. 

"You bear Satanic symbols upon your person?" 

"I, My Lord!" Suddenly she realized. The innocent plaything the twins had 
fastened on her nipples! 

"Upon your breasts." 

Her eyes implored. She had been unable to release the charms. She still bore 
them. Her errant nipples had given her no aid. Perhaps she would wear them 
until she died. 

"Come here, girl." 

Clare stood in the brightest spot in the big room. Sunlight found and 
betrayed her. Submissive she held herself erect while he thrust the 
sackcloth down to her waist and stepped back. 

She did not know how beautiful she was. So lovely that she gathered all the 
light of the somber place upon her white skin. All present gasped in their 
individual reactions. The goat's head and the cockerel sparkled on her 
nipples. On another day, the needle. He would not be cheated of this most 
intimate joy! The three of them, bound so that they could scarce quiver. 
Alone with him and the sliver of steel by which he would make them his own. 
He sent for two witnesses. Grave men who watched in reverence. They quietly 
left when the flesh of each naked girl had betrayed her. The twins accepting 
the probings in an eerie silence. Save for blood the needle might never have 
touched them. Their eyes were closed as though they were in some distant 
place. Even the denouement of his discovery of the fatal 'spot' on each 
brought no response save his own exclamation of triumph. Clare screamed and 
shared with him a strange communion of pain. The small charms on her nipples 
dancing with her gasping breaths. When the door had closed on the departing 
witnesses, Rearden came close, his eyes soft with fulfillment. He held the 
needle for her to see, twisted the base of the handle, then plunged the 
point into her shoulder. Nothing happened. There was no pain. For a moment 
the bound girl thought that indeed she was a witch. But, smiling his thin 
smile, he plunged the steel again and again against his hand. She saw the 
needle retract into its handle. It was an exquisitely fabricated trick! He 
smiled at her understanding. Clare smiled too. It did not matter... 

My Lord Rearden was a little boy playing his favorite game! 

The small lonely cell and the light fetters. Clare knew that he would come. 
The time now would be very close. She waited. 

He loved her. Yet he was a rock. Unassailable. 

"Let them go free, M'Lord. Do what you wish with me." 

He fed hungrily on her nakedness. 

"Can I offer my person for more tortures, Lord?" 

She held her chained hands high that he might see the wounds of the 
implements that had been used upon her. 

"To buy their lives there is nothing I would not give or do or be." 

She had nothing he did not already own. 

"They are witches, child." 

"I am not a witch." 

"You are no witch," he acknowledged. 

"Yet we must all die?" 

For the first time she saw him at a loss. He gestured hopelessly. "I do not 
understand anymore than you." 

"For you it will be an exquisite beauty when you see us impaled upon the 
stakes?" 

"Yes." 

"Do you wish to see my body impaled there upon its sword?." 

"Yours more than any other." 

"You will find a quintessence of beauty and feeling when you watch us die? 
It transcends all else?" He nodded. 

"It justifies losing me?" 

"That grieves me sorely, but yes." 

"Let us live. Chain Alethea and Tavie in your dungeons. Torture me daily. We 
can live forever." 

He shook his head sadly. "The flesh is too weak." 

"Love me then! Instead of torture, love me! I will love you as no man has 
ever been loved. I will love you in a thousand ways!" 

He took a deep breath. His soul sighed. 

Deliberately she posed. She knew her strength. She knew the lure of her 
breasts, of her belly, of her cunt. She knew herself woman! She was all the 
woman who had ever lived. "I love you!" She knew not why or how she could 
say it. But she could! "Come." She held out her chained hands. "Take me. I 
will arrange the chains. They shall not hinder us." 

He took her fiercely. 

When it was over, he whispered into her neck: "It is the first time. The 
first time... " But she knew she had failed. "When is it to be?" 

"On the morrow." 

"Upon the stakes?" 

"You prefer to be placed to die like that?" 

"How can I know, Lord?" 

"You will die by fire." His eyes were lambent. He still hungered. 

"It is an awful way to die." 

"The stake is beautiful. I want it for you. But death comes too slowly. 
Sometimes several days. That I could not bear. The fire is terrible. But it 
is quick." He sighed. "I fear, too, that the rabble must be regaled. It is 
the custom... " 

"Love me." 

He loved her cruelly and beautifully through the night. 

* * * 

In the bright light of morning the posts stood stark in the public place 
where three naked girls would die. A strange detachment was upon Clare as 
they bound her very tightly, yet in such ways that her loveliness would be 
enhanced. Rearden would save her beautiful until that last moment when the 
flames would rise. She stood straight, clamped against the wood, and watched 
with bitter amusement when they brought the heavy chain. 

"Am I not safe enough? I cannot move!" 

"Witches have strange powers, Mistress. Should thy demon slip into ropes he 
will not easily loose this." 

They circled her waist, a man on each side tugging her back against the post 
so that she was near cut in two by the heavy iron. The ends were joined and 
hammered shut by a brawny smith. Looking down at her slenderness she knew 
that even without the ropes the chain alone would hold her to stand 
immovably until she died. 

Tavie and Alethea fought. They had tricked their guards by feigning debility 
from their torture. But close to the waiting stakes they flung themselves 
into a frenzied battle for life. Clare watched incredulously as man after 
man went down. For a few moments her heart beat high that their fury might 
earn freedom. But in the end she saw them bound as she was bound. An extra 
chain pulling back their shoulders as testimony to their guard's respect. 

There was a long wait while the fagots were piled high. The crowd enjoyed 
it. This was their day. Three naked girls to ogle and then watch burn. 
Whether they be witches or not mattered little to the spectacle. 

Once again the Lord Inquisitor stood to one side, a quiet black figure 
intent upon the sculpture he had wrought. Those in charge watched him. Clare 
watched too. She knew that it would be his signal that would light the 
fires. She knew him insane with a strange lunacy. How bitter a thing was it 
for a girl to die as tribute to a madman's estheticism! From the comer of an 
eye she saw the torches lit and held ready. 

From a distant place there came sounds. A commotion. Heads turned. Clare was 
bound too tightly to turn and look. Rearden himself paid no heed. Slowly he 
raised his arm and let it fall. The blazing torches were thrust into the 
tinder dry wood. A blow struck her and a voice cried in her ear. She sank 
into a dark, dark well. 

* * * 

Clare came up out of the darkness to see Lord Godfrey's face. She shook 
herself dazedly and saw not Godfrey at all, but George: Good old George! He 
was shaking her arm, his face lit with a great excitement. 

"A fine sleep ye've had, an all. Thought I'd never wake yer." 

She sat up and touched his face, seeking a tangible reality to cling to. The 
great Hall of Montrilas was bright with day. Impulsively she threw her arms 
around the startled George. "Hold me," she pleaded. "Just for a little 
while. I've been frightened." 

"Nightmares, Miss?" He seemed to understand. 

"Horrible things!" She gripped him very tight. "Oh, George... " 

"Twas a terrible look on yer face ye had when I come, Miss. Scared me proper 
it did when I couldn't wake yer." Clare felt better. George was solid and 
real. She was still bound to the stake and the fire was rising, but the 
dream was fading. She would fight as for her life before she would be 
chained in that haunted spot again. 

"Take me away, George." She had a sudden great need to be gone. She started 
for the door and tripped on her ankle chain. They both laughed as he 
unlocked her shackle. How good it felt to laugh and know normalcy. It was 
with true happiness that she turned her back and crossed her wrists and 
heard him chuckle as he snapped the handcuffs tight. 

"I was forgetting," he admitted. "Don't know where I'd be without yer." He 
suddenly remembered. "Proper surprise I got fer you, Miss. That I have." 

"Nice one, George?" 

He looked at her oddly. "There's some as thinks so." Jauntily he led her 
from the hall. 

* * * 

Clare crouched on the rug at his feet. It was her favorite pose when they 
were alone. She twinkled at him and pleaded as a child pleads for candy: 
"Handcuffs...?" 

"I spoil you," he said indulgently as he removed them. "I'm going to start 
saying no." 

She clasped his knees happily and comfortably. "George says you have a nice 
surprise for me?" 

Costigan shook his head. "You won't like it, love." 

Clare knew instantly! 

"We caught them last night." 

"How?" 

"A truck had come with... with-" he gestured irritably. "With supplies. We 
unloaded it. When we went out later in the dark... the whole lot of us, they 
were in the van. Curiosity I suppose. Or perhaps they wanted to steal a case 
for themselves. They jumped into our arms." He shook his head ruefully. "I 
want to know more about those two. 

We could hardly handle them. Their strength isn't natural. We damn near lost 
them a couple of times-" He saw her consternation. "Don't worry, love. They 
are not hurt. Not yet anyway. We have 'em safe in a dungeon with enough 
chains to wear to hold about three horses. With those two, chains aren't for 
either ornament or punishment. They need to be chained! We tied 'em first 
with a bit of cord to bring 'em in the house and have a good look. But damn 
me if they didn't snake out of that inside ten seconds." 

"Can I go to them?" 

His negative was vehement. 

"Please darling!" 

"You are not going to dive into that pickle again," he said sourly. 

"But you'll let me see them?" 

"Oh, I suppose so." He smiled down at her tenderly, his fingers in her hair. 
"When?" 

He shook his head in disapproval of her eagerness. "Anytime." He added a 
stern admonition that she knew he meant: "None of us trust you where they 
are concerned. You'll be watched, and fastened so you can't do much, and 
searched if need be." 

"Searched!" She laughed at him. "A naked girl searched?" 

He nodded soberly. "Yes. Searched. Think a bit...!" 

She blushed. Then asked the question nearest her heart. "What will you do 
with them?" 

"That's not for you to know, sweetheart. Not yet anyway. The first thing 
those hellcats are going to do is answer some questions." 

"They won't. You know they won't!" 

"I don't know that at all. You know 'em better than I do. But there is one 
thing we want to put our finger on. A reliable source tells us there has 
been a small but steady trickle of gold come into the market. Amounts that 
would be about right to keep this place going. We want that gold. Our claim 
to it is probably as good as theirs. They probably dug it up in the old 
ruin. Or, more likely still, they are a pair of witches." 

He detected her shudder. 

"You believe it too, don't you?" 

"No! No, no!" She beat her fists on his knees. The dream flooded back. But 
she dared not tell him. She would tell no one. Tears entered her voice. 
"Please... They are girls. Two wonderful and incredible girls whose home you 
have stolen." 

"We stole you." He chuckled. "But you haven't killed any of my men." 

"Please don't hurt them." 

"How else do you suppose we can get them to talk?" 

Her face lit up. "Let me talk to them first. Let me tell them what you 
want." 

"Dammit, that's a thought!" He considered briefly. "O.K., love. Proper 
little treasure you are. No sooner said than done. Hands behind your back 
now." 

It was not an intentional cruelty. But, for the three of them, nonetheless 
heartbreaking. The handcuffed Clare had been chained to the wall by one 
ankle so that she had no hope of touching those she loved. Tavie and Alethea 
themselves were chained to the opposite wall of the dismal chamber. Wrist 
and ankle, waist and neck. They were frighteningly shackled so that their 
visitor was close to tears at the sight of their helplessness. But they 
themselves still contrived to move with grace as though their irons were 
weightless. 

When they had said to each other all that was meaningful to them, she told 
of Costigan's demand. "We must kill him," Tavie said simply. "We must kill 
them all," said Alethea. "Men are vermin. 

"They will torture you," Clare explained miserably. "Hot irons and the rack 
and such-like," Tavie said indifferently. 

"I expect we'll live." Alethea spoke as of some minor discomfort. 

"But darlings... I can't see you tortured... not you." 

"Can you stop them?" Tavie's voice was bitter. "Can you help us escape?" 

Clare felt shamed by her impotence. "I'm always chained," she wailed 
unhappily. "I'm not allowed near anything that matters. Now I've been warned 
that I'll be watched and doubly chained." She looked at them yearningly. "Oh 
darlings, I want you so much!" 

They spoke of their love and forgot all else. 

When they heard the bolts in the door withdrawn, Clare blurted out her most 
fearsome thing. 

"They think you are witches." 

Tavie laughed with pure joy. "But, of course, darling! What else!" 

Allie said, irrelevantly: "When the time comes, go toward the road and 
scream." The door opened. 

Clare wished she had not been chained in the great hall of Montrilas. It was 
like possessing foreknowledge. 

The heavy chains were back on her ankles. She stood with the men and 
surveyed their work. 

The siblings had fought their chains uselessly. Now they stood quiet against 
the wall of the courtyard, fastened to the metal rings set in the stone, 
hands high and wide. The Inquisitor, who was now Riodan, held out the stub 
of the thong that would slice their flesh. "You whip them, little darlin'." 

It was absurd. The whole thing began to take on the imprint of the dream. "I 
cannot," Clare said flatly. "I am handcuffed." Her evasion was inadequate. 
He unlocked the metal on her wrists and again proffered the whip. 

"No. If you must use it, then use it on me." 

Riodan laughed. "Always nobility. Always the little mother!" he sneered. 
"Actually it's an easy way out." 

"Darling!" It was Tavie's voice. "Whip us. We want you to." 

Clare's mind computed possibilities. Her world was insane. She computed it 
as such. She took the ugly weapon in her hand and, fearful of second 
thoughts, sent its thong slicing across Tavie's back. 

Tavie did not scream. 

With breaking heart, she slashed the white loveliness with deliberate 
cruelty. She herself would have screamed under it. 

Tavie sighed rapturously, shifting her weight from one foot to another, a 
small sensuous ripple of exquisite joy. 

It struck Clare like a blow, an' envelopment of erotic heat. It was passed 
from Tavie to her as by a hand invisible, a passionate communion of deep, 
deep female love. The siblings owned her. They would always own her. She was 
their "little Thrall." 

For a moment, as Clare stood with her whip facing the scarlet traceries she 
had painted on Tavie's back, she was confronted by guilt. Guilt in the 
sudden raging desire to whip the girls she loved so that the whole of their 
loveliness would be striped by the frenzy of her passion. To mark them as 
they had loved to mark her. Not in revenge, but in love. A love such as only 
they could know. Her knowledge of an unalterable conviction to whip them 
with a transcending joy until she could whip no more sent guilt tumbling 
into oblivion. 

She moved from one to the other alternately. Her hobbled steps contrasting 
strangely to the authority of her arm. The wonder and glory of those first 
lashing coils encompassing the chained slenderness made her oblivious of her 
audience. She and the siblings had, for a brief time, retreated into their 
own world as though they were once more alone at Erdislune. 

The watching men were hushed in something deeper than astonishment. They 
could never know what they watched. But they sensed a current beneath the 
surface. A deep mystic current they did not try to understand. Two naked 
girls were to be whipped until they spoke. That the third girl should whip 
them with such verve and dedication was remarkable. Perhaps she feared to be 
whipped herself if she failed to please. Or perhaps she desired to please 
Costigan by loosening tongues. It is un-likely that they analyzed. 

As, gradually, the beautiful stripes upon sibling skin mounted, Clare could 
not but share her audience's enthrallment with the sinuous, scarcely 
perceptible writhings by which Alethea and her sister acknowledged the 
kisses of the thong. It was as though some inward fluidity responded 
turgidly. Not in pain, but in deep content. 

Clare whipped her loves with an intent involvement. The fire in her loins 
glowing more demandingly with each stroke. But soon she spared a glance at 
the men she served. George's face was rapt, the bulge in his trousers 
tumescent. Riodan was a man worshipping at a shrine. She found an ironical 
amusement in their belief she was torturing the twins so that they would 
soon cry out their willingness to tell... and tell. 

The chained girls were far enough apart that, as she whipped one, the other 
would turn enough to impart a glance of smoldering complicity from an 
adoring eye. 

No man knew he beheld an act of love. 

It was Riodan who put an end. 

"The bitches like it!" he exclaimed angrily. 

He walked to his captives. Seizing a handful of their hair he shook them. 
"Well?" he demanded, his face close. 

Both spat into his glaring eyes. 

"Bloody witches!" He turned and faced his fellows. "That's what they are, 
boys! Have ye any doubts?" 

Cully had a shrewd thought. "Let's string our little wench up and whip her 
until they sing." 

Clare's heart went cold. She could never bear it as they had done. "I got a 
better idea," said Riodan. 

They watched him walk away. 

He returned carrying Lise. She was tightly bound at ankles, wrist and elbow. 
He stood her against the wall so that the chained pair had a good view of 
his intention. Leaving his burden standing erect against the stone he backed 
away and drew a revolver. 

"You have a minute to speak," he told Tavie and Alethea. "Then I kill her." 

There was a shocked silence. 

"There's nothing to tell, you fool!" Clare cried in fury. "Can't you 
understand!" 

"Shut up!" He would waste no time with her. 

"Look here, Barney," George interposed heavily. "Goin' a bit far, ain't 
yer!" 

The chained girls could not see, but Clare saw, the sardonic wink by which 
Riodan told George to keep quiet and see if the threat worked. George 
returned the wink and subsided. 

"You winked at each other," Alethea told them dispassionately. "Do you take 
us for idiots?" 

"Witch!" In the peak of his fury Riodan fired. Lise fell. 

For a bare second the awful tableau held. Then Clare leaped towards the 
still figure in the grass, only to be felled by the ankle shackles she had 
forgotten. George let out a mighty oath of anger and dismay. The siblings 
were galvanized into a frenzy of tugging and dragging at the chains that 
held them captive. 

"You bloody fool!" George straightened up from his examination. "The girl's 
dead!" He looked for Riodan. But Riodan was gone. 

For Clare it was another kaleidoscopic nightmare. Picking herself up, she 
now hobbled towards Tavie, but was intercepted by Cully's rough grasp on her 
arm. "Stay away from 'em," he warned. He pulled her back with him to join 
the rest, shifting and muttering in a disorganization Clare had never seen 
in them. They could not meet her eyes. 

The twins had abandoned their hopeless battle against their chains. They 
leant against the stone gazing at each other in desolation. They were 
silently weeping. Clare had never seen them cry before. 

George carried a limp burden towards the house. 

Riodan returned. 

This time he carried Chloe. Bound as Lise had been. Once more he placed the 
naked girl to his satisfaction and stepped away. 

"Oh, come off it, Barney!" Remonstrances came thick and fast. 

Riodan allowed them to expend their protest. Then spoke: "You silly 
bastards. Look at 'em! Cryin', so they are. Got 'em on the run, we have. 
Never seen 'em cry before, have yer!'" Cully stepped forward. "We don't 
think much o' what yer just done. That girl never done us no harm." 

"Just a rotten les." 

"Be that as it may, we all used her, so we did." 

"Yer ain't goin' short, be yer, Cully!" Riodan sneered. 

"We damn well could, an' all, the way you're goin'!" Cully flared. "We got a 
good thing here. You ain't a'goin' ter kill 'em all off." 

Riodan motioned towards Clare. "As long as we got little Trixie here we 
ain't goin' ter suffer." 

Clare wondered, numbly, if it was a compliment. She was sure her mother 
would not have thought so. 

"Little Trixie's got her hands full. Ain't entirely public property, 
y'know," Cully pointed out. 

At that moment it occurred to Clare that 'little Trixie' could be doing 
something more helpful than standing in despair. Determinedly she began her 
hobbled journey to Costigan. 

"Where d'you think yer off to?" Riodan demanded. "I'm not public property, 
y'know," she mimicked. Cully laughed. They let her go. 

It was not until she was halfway to Costigan's office that the obvious 
struck her like a blinding light. She was not expected. Costigan had no need 
of her. She had been dismissed by the rest. For some indefinite space of 
time she was in limbo. As though sleepwalking and almost without volition 
she sped her chained feet towards the garden. No matter what the penalty it 
was worth a try. For her to find a rational human being was the twins' only 
hope of life. Her chain clinked merrily and snubbed each urgent step. 

It has happened to all of us that embarking on impulse on an unplanned and 
unexpected venture we make our first motions with dubiety. Yet as 
realization of sound decision clears our mind of irrelevance our course 
becomes clear, conviction hardens. An excited acceleration spurs our pace. 
Thus it was with Clare. 

With the twins captive there were no lookouts. The men were absorbed with 
Riodan and his arguments. Even chained it should be possible to get out of 
sight of the house. After that it would be chance that she might find the 
Muldoon farm or someone connected with it. She did not even know in which 
direction it lay. But it was a link with the world. It was out there 
somewhere. People might come and go to it. A slender chance! But it was all 
she had. 

In the first openness of the garden the naked girl knew a heart-clutching 
panic. She was in clear view. Totally exposed. She cursed her chains. If 
only she could run! She had alluring mental pictures of leaping across the 
sward on feet unfettered. How glorious it would be! Without the handicap of 
hobbled feet she might even reach the world beyond the moor. As it was she 
could do no more than contrive a sort of twinkletoe marathon in which her 
ankles were snubbed short at every step so that she knew eventually she must 
have wounds beneath the metal bands of her anklets. The linked steps of 
chained captivity were the crudest frustration she had ever known. 

Her only salvation was that her ankle chains had been designed to prevent 
her from kicking or running. They permitted a mincing walk. Erdislune was 
huge. A ten-inch tether would have made her missions about the premises only 
ludicrous. Even with the length of chain now joining her feet she would 
never have essayed escape. The chances of success were too slight. The 
penalty she would pay when captured too severe. She did not know what it 
would be, she dared not think about it. But it would be fearsome! Her feet 
shuttled back and forth eagerly and painfully within the limit of her chain. 
Today was not as other days. The end would justify the means. 

The foliage welcomed her like a cloak. It was like pulling the blankets over 
your head in bed. You were suddenly in a warm and friendly world. Relieved 
of the anxieties of exposure Clare strove to perfect a gait that would cover 
the most ground without stumbling. She had already fallen twice. It was a 
constant hazard. Beyond the garden she must needs watch where she trod and 
keep a roving eye for any sign of life. 

It took a long time. But perhaps no more than a mile and a half in space 
before she found it. Her heart gave no sudden leap of joy, for it was in a 
form she distrusted. Liam and Jenny Muldoon sat on a fallen tree and watched 
her measured progress with rapt attention. They sat silent and still, making 
no move to come and meet her. Their watchful immobility sat strangely upon 
children. Clare remembered that previous time when she and they had been 
fellow sufferers. But it had not endeared her. To them she was a stranger 
and perhaps an enemy. Had her feet not been chained she would have ignored 
them and sped on by. But, hobbled, they might be her only chance. She 
clinked her way to them, smiling. 

"What you wearin' them things on yer feet for?" Liam demanded. 

"It's wicked to go bare naked," Jenny reproved. "You ought ter be put in 
prison." 

It was not an auspicious beginning. But Clare put all the warmth and urgency 
she could muster into her voice: "I need help. Something terrible has 
happened. Please take me to the police." She had a sudden memory: "Or to 
Father Rattigan." 

"Don't have nothin' ter do with narks. Ain't one closer nor Limfoyle, and 
that's fifteen mile afar. Father Rattigan visits once a month, that's where 
he's from too." Liam casually shattered two of Clare's hopes. 

"Could you take me home please?" She made the words authoritative. "I'd like 
to talk to your parents." 

"What about, Miss?" Jenny was curious, "Something terrible has happened. We 
need help." 

"Bout up at the big house, you mean?" The boy's voice was a sneer. "We know 
bout that. My dad ain't doin' no informin' on Costigan." 

"But lives are in danger. Please!" 

"Costigan put them" things on yer feet?" He ignored her plea. 

"Yes, he did. But-" she broke off. If these were Costigan's allies! 

"He don't want yer runnin' orf, then," Jenny deduced. 

Hope dwindled. Clare could almost feel the whip curling round her body when 
she was dragged back to Erdislune. The limited and biased comprehension of 
these children made them hard to deal with. "Stop this chatter and take me 
to your mother and father immediately," she demanded. "This is no time to 
quibble." 

They watched her with intent bright eyes behind which inimical visions were 
racing. "We're goin' ter take yer back t'farm alright," Jenny said 
reservedly. 

"But not afore we gets even wi' yer!" Liam's words were vicious. 

"But I've never harmed you," Clare wailed. 

"You and them other two did," the boy affirmed vehemently. "Them strange 
ones. Mother says they're witches." 

"They're wicked too," Jenny contributed. "All naked... " 

Clare was uncertain just what the "getting even" might entail. But fearful 
suspicions easily painted pictures on the canvas of her fear. "Couldn't we 
leave that until after I've talked to your mother?" 

"Clever, ain't yer!" This time the sneer was unmistakable. "Take us fer a 
pair o' ninnies 'cause we're kids, don't yer! Can yer walk with yer feet 
chained like that?" 

Clare shifted unhappily. These disagreeable children held all the 
initiative. "You saw how I could walk. It's quite slow." 

"Can yer run or kick?" 

"Of course I can't!" 

Brother looked at sister. "Let's tie her hands behind her back ter start 
with... " 

So that was it! Clare instinctively turned to flee, but stopped. She could 
not outrun two children. It would also be an admission of weakness. "You 
needn't think I'm going to let you tie my hands," she said firmly. "You'll 
be in trouble if you don't do as I ask. Stop this nonsense." 

They were upon her like a pair of swarming monkeys, hands and feet and 
teeth. Had Clare's feet been free she might have coped. But the chain 
between her ankles delivered her into their hands. Jenny managed a firm grip 
on her hair and pulled her head back without mercy. When the victim of 
assault reached back at the wrenching hands, Liam grasped both her nipples 
in vicious fingers. Clare screamed and tried to knee him, but was snubbed by 
her chain. Grasping his wrists her effort only increased the strain upon her 
already tortured nipples, on to which he held with a grim tenacity that 
bespoke knowledge of their tender vulnerability. Jenny tugged back 
dangerously on the bent neck. They had her! 

With team-like competence they turned her face down upon the grass. Hard 
knees dug into the small of her back. Her chained legs threshed fruitlessly 
as did her arms. She could reach nothing that mattered. The backward tension 
on her neck was alarming. She ceased to struggle. 

"Good thing I got that string in me pocket," Liam panted. 

"Cross them hands behind yer back," Jenny ordered. "If yer don't, I'll pull 
yer head back somethin' crool." Another tug held authority. 

It came close to being the most hateful thing she had ever done. To 
surrender her person to these children who possessed none of the endearments 
of childhood. But, miserably, Clare crossed her wrists behind her back and 
lay still while the thin strands were wound round and round and pulled snug 
and tight with a cunning that told her plainly she would never free them. 
The thin stuff, too, would cut her skin far worse than what she was 
accustomed to being tied with. She was in a daze of frustrated anger. To be 
diverted like this at such a time! But there was still a glimmer of hope. 
Perhaps in the end they would guide her to the farm. 

"Goin' ter fuck her, Liam?" 

They allowed her to struggle to her knees. With her hands bound as they were 
she was totally at their mercy. They could do what they wished with her, and 
they knew it. Clare could neither fight nor run. "You can't do that to me 
with my feet chained." She hoped they would not know how false the statement 
was. 

"I don't mind," the boy said triumphantly. "I liked that other thing like 
last time." He paused and grinned. "Leastways I liked it first go." He 
grinned at their kneeling captive. "You willin' ter do it proper, or we got 
ter whip you?" 

"Let's whip her anyway," Jenny enthused. "Give me your knife, Liam." 

The kneeling girl and the male child watched the sister cut the limber 
willow withes. He in delight. She desolate. She tried to reach him: "People 
are dying...?" 

He ignored the inference. "That hurt when I grabbed your tits, eh?" 

"Terribly! You don't have to whip me. I'll do what you want." 

"I'm goin' ter suck yer tits afterwards." 

"If you want." She was thankful he did not know how small his threat. 

His sister trimmed the wands and selected one. She gave him back his knife. 
"While you're doin' it to him," she directed Clare seriously. "I'm goin' ter 
be right behind you. If you do somethin' wrong I'll whip your arse. You 
gotta keep yer hands well up, see, so I can hit it proper. Understand?" 

"I understand." She understood it all better than they knew! 

Liam stood, feet apart, in front of the kneeling Clare. He unbuttoned his 
flies. "You do it right, now," he warned. Jenny emphasized his admonition by 
a cut of the willow that made their captive cry out in appeal. She did it 
right. 

Two savage cuts punctuated involuntary pauses in her task. She tried hard to 
please. 

"Now you do it to her," Liam announced grandly after his time had come and 
gone. 

Jenny giggled. "Oh, Liam, you're awful! I couldn't." 

"Corse yer could. Works same with a girl, only different," he assured her 
expansively. 

"Sure you know what you're talking about?" Clare inquired acidly. 

Without a word he carefully selected a willow. Clare's gaze followed his 
movements with loathing. "I'm sorry," she said humbly. "Please forgive me." 

He struck her twice. Once across her bottom. Once over her shoulders above 
her bound arms. She fell sideways with a cry of hurt and despair. She knew 
now that, for her, these children were without mercy. She lay on the grass, 
sobbing. "Get up. You go to do Jenny." 

"Ain't sure I want to, Liam." Jenny was nervous. "You got to," he warned. "I 
want ter see. Bet she knows all about it. Hold yer skirt up high so I get a 
good look." 

Clare struggled to her knees. Neither of them helped. She looked without joy 
at the downy small slit revealed by the lifting of the dirty skirt. She 
wondered how many fingers or tongues may have preceded her on this 
exploration. From the look on the girl child's face she suspected few. 
Perhaps none. She proceeded with the ritual of ecstasy. 

"Either one of yer what stops gets it proper. You too, Jenn," Liam warned. 
He cut the air with his wand for emphasis. 

The dismal union worked its way to an inconclusive end. The prurient watcher 
got bored with the mechanically sucking mouth, and with his sister's pink 
cheeks and glazed eyes. The girls were glad to stop, if only from 
exhaustion. 

"She's a bit young," Big Brother conceded. "Now we're going to have a look 
at your cunt." 

Clare longed to kill them. But the bite of his string cutting into her 
crossed wrists invoked obedience. "How do you want me for that?" she asked 
without hope. 

They debated her posture for this quaint new sport. Then demanded she lay on 
her back. "I can't with my hands tied like this," she said untruthfully. 

"Do it anyway. We don't mind if it hurts." 

When she obeyed, Liam pushed a small piece of rotting log beneath her hips 
to obtain maximum exposure for her sex. "We always wanted to see where 
babies come from," he said lewdly. "Your cunt's a lot better for looking 
than Jenny's." He laughed knowingly. "Bet Costigan's boys all been havin' a 
good go at you. Should be well stretched." 

Clare lay mute, helpless and shamed while they probed and hurt her. There 
was nothing good in what was happening. It was not long before an inevitable 
realization dawned. "You said I couldn't fuck you with yer feet chained," 
the boy accused. 

"Well, it's not good," Clare offered lamely. 

Liam whipped her breasts, carefully, accurately and cruelly. A bitter slash 
across each. "Say yer sorry fer lyin'." 

Bound as she was, Clare had not managed to move. She had squealed and moaned 
and arched her back in agony. She looked up into the avid grin and saw no 
kindness. Jenny, too, was looking down at her with vivid curiosity. Her own 
breasts were not yet developed. "I'm sorry I lied to you," Clare obeyed 
abjectly. Then, spurred by a wish to end this sorry play by acceptance of 
the inevitable, she added, in as winsome a tone as she could muster, "Please 
fuck me now." 

Liam coupled with her. Because he had already climaxed the act was not a 
thing of moments. His penis explored her sheath slowly and with intent to 
discover. From time to time he bit a nipple fiercely so that the girl 
beneath him arched and thrust in agony. Clare's hopeless eyes beheld Jenny's 
rapt expression as she watched her brother possess an enemy of Ireland. 

It should have been over then. But it was not. Clare's breasts remained an 
unexplored delight. "Fancy havin' these bobbing about under yer chin," liam 
admired as he kneaded and pinched. "Don't they feel funny? Like they was 
sort of stuck on yer?" 

"Yes. That's why girls wear bras." Clare tried to aid his clinical interest. 

"Let me have a go," Jenny pleaded. "I expect I'll get two like that in a few 
years. I want to feel." 

Her brother laughed in brotherly scorn. "You'll never grow two like she's 
got. You ain't hardly started." 

"Oh, Miss?" Jenny pleaded. "Could I grow two like yours? Please tell me." 

"You could grow two like mine, Jenny. Don't worry," Clare sought an ally. 

"Does it hurt very terrible to have them whipped, Miss?" Jenny asked, as 
though uncertain of future benefits. 

"It's a girl's most tender spot," Clare assured her as she writhed under 
liam's teeth and fingers. "You can see now how liam's hurting me." 

"I want to have a go at her," Jenny demanded excitedly. 

Liam reluctantly relinquished his place upon their captive to his sister. 
"Make her squirm," he advised in adult pretense. "It's easy. I wish yours 
were like that." 

Clare bore with the nipping teeth and the cruel fingers. In this juvenile 
encounter her nipples were not instruments of joy. They were only erect 
receptacles of pain. Why, oh why, must they stick out as they did under 
torture! Now was their time for inversion. But they betrayed a girl. It was 
as though they welcomed pain. 

"Let's take her back to Mum," Liam said suddenly with typical male 
selfishness. His lusts were satisfied. 

Jenny was enjoying Clare's nipples with her lips. Her hands caressed the 
bound girl's breasts. Both would willingly have prolonged the moment. But 
the single male presence ruled them both. Clare got eagerly to her feet. 
Perhaps at least... ! 

It was a long and dreary walk with the fettered girl. Liam tired of the slow 
pace, and went on ahead, leaving his sister with a supple willow with which 
to encourage any hesitancy in their captive. Clare wanted only to reach 
their destination. She stumbled forward as fast as her chained ankles would 
permit. 

Netty Muldoon was typical of a place and of a time. Uneducated, married too 
soon, superstitiously religious, politically prejudiced, she worked out a 
lonely life with a man as bereft of joy as she herself. That he was absent 
for the week was pure chance. Muldoon was visiting relatives who did not 
like his wife. The advent of Clare into the ken of this bitter woman was a 
mischance of Fate. Liam briefed her. The two of them waited in the barnyard 
for Jenny and the captive girl who Netty already saw as the whore of 
Babylon. 

"Harlot!" said Netty in friendly greeting. 

Clare recoiled at the incongruity. Were harlots chained and tied! Weren't 
they supposed to offer themselves without let or hindrance! "Please untie 
me," she pleaded. "I don't think the children understand." 

"They understand the likes of ye all too well: the saints be praised," 
Nettie assured her passionately. 

The captive Clare poured out her story, pleading for the lives of those she 
loved. The dark-haired, dark-eyed pillar of virtue heard her out with 
contempt. 

"You'll get no help from me." 

"Then please untie me, and help me get these things off my ankles. Please! 
Oh please...!" 

She was laughed to scorn. "The Lord has delivered you into proper hands," 
Netty Muldoon declared. "You'll no betray Costigan and his darlin' boys. Tis 
a lesson you'll be learnin' with me." She looked at her wide-eyed offspring. 
"Seducing the innocent, so ye did. Shameless ye are. Look at ye! Naked! I'll 
learn ye a lesson." 

The captive of stupidity wept. Wept shamelessly and heartbrokenly. Her 
escape had come to nothing. To worse than nothing! There was no pity for her 
anywhere, nor for those whose lives she sought to save. She was in a land 
and in a time with people who believed in witches and warlocks and bitter 
hate. The awful frustration of her tied hands and chained ankles were 
desolating in their finality. Helpless like this she belonged to anyone who 
laid a hand on her. She could not resist. Whatever awfulness Nettie Muldoon 
intended to inflict upon her she would have to bear. 

"Have you not considered mercy?" she pleaded. 

"Did you have mercy on my children?" 

The captive knew herself defeated. "Please punish me as you deem fitting. I 
will be cleansed. Then set me free." She strove for a biblical tone. 

"There's no freedom for the likes of you." 

She tried again. "Surely there must be some way I can make amends. Something 
I can do...?" 

"You are whoring. Offering your body." 

"To a woman!" 

"Oh aye! You think I don't know!" There was a sudden change in the 
atmosphere. "You have the skill, haven't you?" 

"I have the skill." 

Nettie Muldoon turned on her watching family. "Get you gone. You've work to 
do. I'll see no more of ye till supper. Make certain of it." The children 
vanished as though by magic. A minute later Nettie Muldoon was stark naked. 

Clare sighed. Always it came to this. That her tongue or her nether lips 
must appease hunger. Yet the hunger, once appeased, showed no gratitude. It 
was the bindings on her wrists and the chains upon her ankles that made it 
so. No matter how willingly she gave herself to the lust of others, she 
could gain no credit and no thanks so long as she was bound. A naked girl 
bound can gainsay no one: thus she earns no favors and no love. "Set me free 
that I may pleasure you," Clare pleaded. 

A stinging slap upon her cheek was the first answer. "What need have you of 
hands!" The reeking sex was thrust against her face. Hard fingers fastened 
in her hair. "Do it to me. Do it well. Show me this devil's work you do so 
well in Erdislune." 

Clare showed her. It was one more step to a destination she could only fear. 

For a little while Nettie Muldoon seemed at a loss. She stood vibrant and 
surprisingly lovely without her soiled clothes. The bound girl kneeling 
submissively waited with a faint hope of sympathy. She deemed silence her 
best ally. 

"Tis a devil's trick." Nettie Muldoon pronounced. "Too good to be right, it 
is. I'll not be seduced. Tis a good flogging you'll be needin'." 

"Oh no!" The cry of anguish broke from the captive throat with all the 
desolation of the world. "Don't whip me. It won't prove anything. Rid 
yourself of responsibility by setting me free. What happens then will be 
beyond your will or mine. Please! There are lives at stake. Lives in your 
hands... Surely you don't want that burden on your conscience? Set me free." 

"You've escaped from Costigan, haven't ye?" 

"How can I escape! Look at my chained feet. Your children found me and 
brought me here." 

"Aye, after you'd worked your scarlet will with them." 

"But how could I! It was your son who tied my hands. 

Look, it was his string." 

"And well indeed it was. The blessed lad knew evil when he saw it." 

"He treated me brutally. Look at the marks of the switch he used on my 
breasts." 

"Keepin' the devil at bay, he was. The brave lad." 

Clare moaned in despair and tore at the strands that held her wrists. They 
bled but did not yield. "If you think it right to hurt me, then do it and be 
done. Your conscience will be clear. I will have been punished. You can set 
me free." 

The naked Nettie laughed in derision. "There's no freedom for ye, girl. 
Understand that. Righteousness has thee. You'll suffer for yer soul's sake." 

"Do you want money? I can get you money... " 

"Money!" Nettie Muldoon laughed in scorn. "What money has a naked whore like 
thee got! D'you want me to search inside yer slit to find what's not there! 
You've no other place to put good cash." 

"Then take me back to Costigan!" Clare flared. 

"An why would I be doin' that?" 

"You make a great pretense of admiring him. Return his whore." 

"So that's the way of it! Oh, I'll return thee, never fear. But not without 
stripes." 

"He'll whip me for this long absence, never fear. You are making it longer 
all the time. It's not fair for you to whip me and then him to whip me too 
because your children made me captive. Please take me back to Costigan or 
free me." 

"I can't free you of those chains. They need a key." 

"Yes you can. A farmer has tools." 

"You have a devil's answer to everything. You'll sing a different tune under 
the whip." 

"I've never hurt you. I've never hurt your children. I've never hurt 
Costigan. Why do you want to whip me?" 

They glared at each other. Two naked females, each driven by their own 
compulsions. But one was bound. 

"Please, let me pleasure you again. I know you are lonely and sore at heart. 
But, honestly, I'll make you happy. Then let me go," Clare pleaded. "Then 
there can be no guilt." 

For a minute they stared. Each pledged to a conviction. "Come, mavourneen." 
Nettie wound her fingers in the bound girl's hair. Her voice was suddenly 
kind. "It is whipped you must be for ye soul's sake. I'll do the job for ye 
gladly. You're a winsome lass." 

"You'll get pleasure from whipping me, won't you?" Clare accused. "Indeed I 
will, my love," said Nettie Muldoon as she dragged upon the captive hair. 

It was a shed. A storage place for tools. There was a work bench and odds 
and ends. It was perfect for Nettie's need. "Will ye fight while I tie ye? 
Or will ye yield?" 

"How can I fight?" 

"That's answer enough. You'd fight if ye got the chance. I'll no be givin' 
it to ye." 

A minute later Clare stood on tiptoe, her arms cruelly wracked high behind 
her back, her head bent down to ease the strain, her back and buttocks 
beautifully exposed for that which was to be done to them. 

"Please don't whip me." 

"And why not, pray? You're a whore." 

"Not by wish. Only by force." 

"You expect me to believe that?" 

"I'm chained, aren't I! Whores aren't chained." 

"Ye have a glib tongue." 

"I've been kept a prisoner. I'm always tied or chained. I'm made to do 
things, just as you are making me do things now. Tied the way I am you can 
do whatever you want with me. Can't you see! I'm innocent. Everybody does 
whatever they want with me." 

Clare's eyes followed the handsome Muldoon nakedness. Nettie had selected 
the whip from several. She struggled and found herself beautifully 
positioned and helpless for the thong. "Please don't whip me," she pleaded. 
"Please...!" 

Nettie whipped her with surprising skill and knowledge. She knew where the 
lash hurt most. Perhaps she herself had known the bite of the leather. Clare 
screamed and pleaded. She swung this way and that upon her tether. But the 
whip found her lovingly. There was no escape. Nettie Muldoon had tied her 
well and followed the gyrating nudity, taking swift advantage of each unwary 
motion of leg or hip to plant another bleeding cut upon the tender skin. 
Clare screamed steadily. She was not captive to religion, but only of a 
woman's lust. 

Nettie stopped the thrashing at the fifteenth stroke. "You feel chastened?" 
she inquired pleasantly. 

Clare was gasping and moaning in pain. But she managed a coherent "Yes... 
oh, thank you! Oh yes... " 

"It is only the beginning," Nettie Muldoon said happily. She had found what 
she had always sought. The pinioned Clare suffused her being with an 
ineffable contentment. 

Clare herself was badly frightened. The pain, her utter helplessness, the 
ugly death menacing Tavie and Alethea, and now this primitive superstitious 
creature who cared for nothing but her own bitter convictions and desires. 
She could not even struggle to vent her frustration. It hurt too much. She 
was possessed totally. "What are you going to do with me?" she moaned. 

"Scourge you as a whore." 

"But I'm not a whore. I was taken by force." 

"You were part of Erdislune and them strange creatures what owns it." 

"I was kidnapped." 

"A likely tale, so it is! I'll teach ye a lesson you'll not be forgetting. 
Tis too bad indeed I don't have them others strung up beside ye." 

"Please, Mrs. Muldoon. You have taught me a lesson. I hurt. I won't forget. 
Please don't whip me anymore." 

The lash, from a new angle, flew beneath her anguished eyes to cut across 
her bent loins. Again the shock, the agony, the scream. "Tell me what to do 
and I'll do it," Clare sobbed. 

"Buy me with your body, you slut! That's your game." This time the stroke 
curled round Clare's thighs so that her foot dragged piteously at its chain. 

"You'll kill me," Clare sobbed. "Oh please, don't kill me. You mustn't! I 
can't stand being whipped like this." 

"Ye've no choice, mavoureen." 

"Then let me rest. Let me gain a little strength to bear more," Clare used 
her lips as her only weapon. 

The thought appealed. Nettie Muldoon was in no hurry. She was in a Nirvana 
of her own. The sight of Clare's bent strained nakedness was nectar. She was 
in no hurry to flog it into unconsciousness. "I'll give ye a rest, harlot. 
But only while I get ye fixed better to me likin'." 

Clare woefully watched her ankles tightly bound with rope. Then her knees. 
This woman was not underrating her need to escape. Then a loop round her 
neck and thrown over a rafter. 

"I'll not hang ye, girl. Tis just so you'll play no tricks." 

Tricks! What tricks could she play! Clare mused bitterly as her hands were 
lowered and freed and the rope round her neck tightened so that she clutched 
it in fear. 

The two women stood thus gauging each other's intent. "Yer hands be free, 
slut. Fight," Nettie mocked. 

It was a cruel plight. Probably intentionally designed to tantalize. Clare's 
hands were indeed free. But to what avail! 

Her lower limbs were tied so that she could not even hop. The noose round 
her neck was too tight to pull loose. She stood there, a naked girl whose 
free hands and arms were no more than a frustration emphasizing her 
impotence. "I don't want to fight you," she said sadly, making a virtue of 
necessity. "Why don't you tie my hands, then let me give you pleasure?" She 
held out her hands and crossed her wrists invitingly. 

Few men could have withstood so tempting and appealing a sight. The 
whip-marked body of a naked girl offering herself, willing to be bound as 
slave to someone's flesh. Nettie Muldoon's eyes glowed as she sought rope. 

But it was not the crossed wrists she wanted. Contemptuously she knocked 
them apart and looped each singly. Soon Clare stood on her toes, her arms 
strained up toward a truss bar. The noose was taken from her neck. It was 
the crudest exposure. The whip could find her every secret. 

"Tis a beautiful sight you be, and that's a fact," Nettie Muldoon conceded 
grudgingly. "I'll be takin' the ropes from your legs, so I will. I'll be 
whippin' ye there, too, I've no doubt." She bent to her task. 

"It's you that's beautiful." Clare's affirmation was not entirely flattery. 
The Muldoon woman had a barbaric splendor all her own. "Please, set me free. 
I want to love you." What other weapon had she! 

"You and yer love!" The voice held scorn. But there was desire there too. 
Clare sensed it. If only she could fan it to a flame. True it might not 
spell freedom. But it would take her closer to it than she now was. 
Suspended like this she had no hope at all. 

"You can keep me tied in some way while we do it," she wheedled sweetly. "I 
won't be able to get away." 

"You'd like to though. Think I don't know!" 

"It doesn't matter what I like. It's what you like that counts. I'm your 
prisoner. You can't blame me for wanting to be a good prisoner. 

Nettie Muldoon considered. The situation of dominance in which she held 
herself appealed. To have this lovely pleading creature tied for her 
personal enjoyment was alluring. But, at the moment, the taut nudity's 
invitation to the whip was too compelling. The other could wait. "I'm going 
to whip you," she said with relish. "All the way from your pretty toes to 
your pretty neck." 

For Clare it was suspended animation. She could think of no fresh plea, no 
new inducement. She knew herself in the grip of a force she could not 
control. She was in the throes of an icy fear that this woman might not know 
or understand the awfulness of the whip she wielded. If the fifteen strokes 
already delivered upon her innocent flesh was but a beginning, she could 
easily hang there dead before Nettie Muldoon realized her lack of judgment. 
Dazedly she watched the arm and the thong slide back, then flash like 
lightning towards her nudity. 

Nettie Muldoon was transfixed by the effect of her blow. The tied girl, 
around whose waist it had cut a vivid belt of scarlet, went wild. The lovely 
body jerked, arched and tossed against the pinioned wrists. Scream after 
scream filled the shed with the sound of agony. She stood breathless, 
watching. 

The whipped girl was frantic. Through the depth of the Valley of Pain she 
still saw her loved ones held for death. Saw the possibility of what was 
happening to her going on and on. Somehow she must break this sequence of 
senseless punishment. She could think of nothing but the preposterous. But 
perhaps that was what it took... 

"I... I have an idea... May I tell it to you?" Her sobbing voice was weak 
and broken. 

"Go ahead." The whip snaked idly back and forth. 

"If you could punish me with something so awful, it would last all my 
life... Something that everyone would recognize, telling my shame. Something 
that hurt me beyond anything else... Would you then let me go free?" 

"I might," Nettie sneered. "What devil's brew have ye hashed up?" 

"But, if you saw it as punishment enough, and if you did it to me, would you 
let me go?" 

"I suppose so. Yes." The admission was grudging, but curious. 

"Brand me." 

The two words filled the shed like a thunderclap. The silence that followed 
was alive. Clare prayed. 

"The blessed Saints have inspired ye," Nettie Muldoon pronounced the words 
as though she believed them. It was as though she believed them. It was 
obvious the barbaric horror of the act held, for her primitive superstition, 
a lightness. A symbolic propriety... "I'll mark ye with the cross," she 
breathed reverently. 

"Then set me free?" 

"Ye'll never be free. Not bearing The Mark," Nettie sighed ecstatically. 
"But yes, I'll untie you afterwards and try and get those things from your 
feet. You can go your way." There was something almost biblical in her 
pronouncement. 

Clare had won a battle. But at what a cost! She hung against her ropes not 
caring. The thing that mattered now was time. To pay her penalty and go. How 
long would Nettie take! 

The cross was the easiest thing of all. They abound in Ireland. This one was 
metal about four inches long. Nettie found long-handled pincers with which 
to hold it. Next the fire. The tool shed held a primitive forge in one 
corner. There was an anvil and many tools. It was sight of these things that 
had sparked Clare's hope of ridding her ankles of their chains. She watched 
in cringing anticipation as the woman who was to brand her raked among dead 
coals and experimentally turned the handle of the whirring fan. 

"Don't take long ter get it red hot once I get this here fire started," 
Nettie said encouragingly. 

She kindled a tiny blaze, raked fresh coal around it and gently turned the 
fan. Even from a distance Clare could see the magic of the blast of air 
expediting the hunger of the flame. The coal soon glowed. 

The captive was now beset with a new anxiety. She had asked for the brand. 
It was evident her flesh would receive it. But where! Then too she knew 
herself incapable of standing as she now was while a glowing iron made an 
imprint in her skin. The whip had caused her to writhe madly, what would the 
iron do! It was a strange dilemma. She had no wish to be bound more tightly 
or helplessly than she was. But, hanging by her wrists, she could envision 
herself getting half a dozen botched-up burns while Nettie strove to place 
the iron against her plunging nakedness. Better to be held immovable. It 
would hurt less, and the brand itself would be a better and cleaner mark for 
her to carry through her life. 

" She need not have worried. With mutterings of annoyance at the trouble and 
precautions, Nettie bound her captive to one of the uprights supporting the 
roof. Bound her with a savage tightness in which she could only quiver 
inwardly. Bound with her feet separated by the post, revealing her thighs. 
"That's where ye'll wear it, lass. Where the devil can see the holy cross 
when he comes to enter yer sinfulness." Going back to the forge she dropped 
the metal cross upon the coals and turned the handle of the fan. 

It is a terrible thing to have to watch the heating of the iron that will 
brand your flesh. Clare tried to look elsewhere, but could not. The busily 
glowing radiance held her fascinated. From it would come the greatest pain 
she had ever known. But from it, too, would come a key to freedom. To be 
able to run with leaping strides across the moor! It was a dream that made 
anything worthwhile. 

Nettie Muldoon took the pincers and picked up the glowing cross. It was as 
red as need be. Greater heat might damage it. In righteous purpose she 
advanced towards the naked girl, bound and waiting. 

"And what the devil might you be playin' at, woman?" 

The deep male voice preceded the vision of the dark visaged, heavy-footed 
farmer. Shock caused Nettie's grip upon the pincers to slacken. The hot iron 
dropped to the dirt floor where it smoked and spluttered. Nettie herself 
stood as though turned to stone. "Rory! Tis early fer yer to be comin' 
home." 

"And well I came, by the look of things!" 

"Please help me!" Clare pleaded. 

"She's a witch!" Nettie affirmed triumphantly. 

Muldoon laughed coarsely. "Cast a spell on you then! You're as naked as she. 
And don't think I'm not knowing why. Get your clothes back on and cover that 
achin' cunt you've had her lick." 

Nettie feared this man who was her husband. She dived for her clothes. But 
he stopped her with a laughing command. "Hold on, woman. Perhaps ye're best 
as ye are for a spell. Just struck me: there's a little job I need to do." 

"Mr. Muldoon! Please help me. I'm desperate," Clare shot the words at him in 
a frantic need that this family antic should not keep her any longer 
captive. 

Muldoon spared her but an irritated glance. "You from Erdislune?" He looked 
knowingly at her chains. 

"Yes. I'm from Erdislune. I need-" 

"Then shut up!" He ended her plea with the brutal command, and turned his 
attention to his quaking wife. 

"Take the holy cross off the ground." 

She obeyed in silence. Her movements urgent. 

"Now the fire. Douse it." 

She sped upon the errand. Keeping one eye on him. 

"Now come here, you naked trollop!" 

He had found rope. Clare watched him tie his wife's hands together in front 
of her, throw the rope over the same support from which she too had hung, 
then pull. Nettie stood on her toes, stretched. Not satisfied, he lifted her 
with a huge arm beneath her hips, his other hand taking up the slack. When 
he tied the knot the naked woman hung swaying. Her toes six inches above the 
floor. 

He stood back and eyed his work appreciatively. There was remarkably little 
lust in his gaze. Clare wondered. He seemed more irritated, faced with a job 
that had best be disposed of, rather than angry. Occasionally he spared a 
glance her way, but it was with an unflattering lack of interest. He picked 
up the whip his wife had used with such skill. "Know what I'm goin' ter do 
wi' this?" he asked jovially. 

"You're going ter whip me." A simple acceptance of fact. "Why?" 

"I ain't sure, Rory. She's only a whore... " Nettie was reaching for the 
ground with straining toes. 

"Whatever she be ain't fer the likes o' you ter judge. You silly bitch, 
don't you understand she either belongs to them as owns Erdislune or to 
Costigan. Either way, we ain't meddlin'." He laughed raucously. "Costigan 
'ud be right pleased, so he would, ter get her back with a cross burned into 
her arse." 

"I'm sorry, Rory. Don't whip me." Her voice lacked optimism. 

He slashed the leather round the taut center of the suspended nudity and 
watched it turn, twist and plunge, the unfettered legs beating a mad tattoo 
in space. "Think you're ever goin' ter learn sense?" he inquired 
conversationally. 

"I will learn, Rory! I will. I promise. Don't whip me no more. Not on 
account of her. She ain't worth it... " 

The whip sang again and again. After each stroke there came a casual 
question, answered by the fevered acquiescence of the punished wife. It went 
on and on. Muldoon was in no hurry. 

But Clare was in a hurry. She groaned inwardly at what she was forced to 
watch. It was all so sad, and so useless. True, this man had saved her from 
the brand. But she could see no hope of freedom in him. In that sense she 
was worse off than ever. She dared not plead or remonstrate. She sensed his 
mood. He would only turn the whip on her too. But time was speeding. For her 
to be bound to a post watching a farmer discipline his wife helped the twins 
no whit. "I'll get you money. A lot of-" Her sentence was abruptly cut off 
by a pantherish move and swing of Muldoon's arm. The whip, diverted from his 
wife, cut Clare squarely across both breasts. She howled in shock and pain. 

"Think that 'ull help yer ter keep yer gob shut?" he asked pleasantly. 

She nodded mutely. She did not trust her voice. She was dazed with agony. 
She would not dare cross him. The blazing wounds across her breasts would 
silence her as effectively as a gag. 

Clare thought it would never end. It was not until Nettie Muldoon's writhing 
under the whip and the responses of her voice weakened that her husband set 
aside the thong and lowered her to the ground. She stood sobbing, her tied 
hands dabbing at her cheeks. Muldoon's interest in her was over. "Get yer 
hands loose yerself. Use yer teeth if yer have to," he jeered. He turned his 
attention to Clare. 

She dared not speak while he untied her. When the last rope fell away, she 
stood naked before him, linked ankles precluding thought of flight. He 
studied her slenderness. "More nor we Muldoons whipped yer, I can see," he 
observed thoughtfully. "Get it often up at the big house?" 

"Quite often." Her voice was husky. "Like it?" 

"Oh no! No... " 

He laughed. "I'll take that with a grain o' salt. Not that it matters ter 
me." He eyed her shrewdly. "Yer know what I'm goin' ter do with yer, eh?" 

"Yes, I know." Her voice was listless. Without hope. 

"S'pose you'll get 'bout what Nettie got, fer a welcome, eh?" 

"That or worse." Her eyes pleaded the question she dared not ask. 

He shrugged resignedly. "No use talkin'. Can't do but one thing." As though 
regretting the necessity he picked up the rope. 

It was the little donkey cart that is one of the commonest sights in the 
west of Ireland. Muldoon must have returned in it. The long-eared little 
animal with its bony hips and prominent ribs stood tired and waiting in the 
shafts. Clare remembered the story of Chloe, and knew it would be repeated 
now with her. Like a piano teacher placing a novice's hands upon the 
keyboard, Muldoon set Clare's wrists upon the tailgate of the cart. Spacing 
them well separated, he tied them there. Wherever the cart went, she must 
follow. She recalled how, in history, women had been whipped like this at 
the cart's tail through the streets of London. 

"But my feet are chained!" She feared he had forgotten. 

He laughed at her concern. "Ye haven't a care," he assured her. "Old Nellie 
here don't move an inch faster nor what you can." He climbed into the 
driver's seat. The donkey's ears fell dejectedly. The Prisoners' March 
began. 

He could have let her ride. But he obviously saw something fitting in her 
abasement. No doubt those who would welcome her would see it too. Clare 
stumbled fearfully Behind the rickety vehicle, feet flashing in her chains, 
hard put to keep pace with even Old Nellie's lack of ambition, gasping in 
pain as her feet found stones she could not see. It was a demeaning and 
relentless journey. Muldoon spared scarcely a glance at her frightened face, 
but kept his eyes upon the road ahead. 

Thus Clare returned to Erdislune. She knew a cringing shame from the 
laughing eyes, the cheerful quips, the lewd remarks that was her greeting. 
As they clattered over the cobbles of the courtyard men gathered from 
nowhere to witness the return of the delinquent. She knew the good-natured 
banter in no way precluded her eventual punishment. 

"Been doin' a bit o' farming, eh!" 

"Bin' practicin' fer Sports Day. That's what she's bin doin'." 

"What yer have ter pay for the moke and cart, love?" 

"Bring us a few more like this, Rory lad! You'll be takin' a little nip wi' 
us, to be sure!" 

It was George who untied her wrists. "Twas a foolish thing to do, lass." 

She met the sympathy in his eyes and wanted to cry. "I had to try... " It 
was as though she owed him the explanation. "You know I had to try and save 
them. You'd have done it... " 

He nodded somberly. "Costigan wants you. I'll come along." He took her arm. 

"You mean I'm not to be trusted now?" she asked bitterly. 

"Are you, love?" His voice was sad. 

"No, I suppose I'm not to be trusted," she admitted. "But with these damn 
chains on my ankles you could trust me anywhere. You owe it to them that I'm 
here. If my feet hadn't been chained I'd have escaped." 

"Well, love, why else d'you think you're wearin' em?" 

George asked sensibly. 

It was all so hopeless! Defeated by a few bits of metal on her feet'. It was 
too cruel! And the metal was still there! They would never trust her now. 
How could they! She would be punished, probably quite terribly, then become 
a helpless spectator to horror. And after that, what! To be Costigan's girl, 
shared by his band. A sort of camp follower along with the other captives. 
She remembered the day she had driven her little car across the moor. How 
could she have known... 

Having delivered her, George discreetly withdrew. 

Once more she stood before the desk of judgment. The naked captive in her 
chains. Once more the sad wise Irish eyes drank in her loveliness. They 
gazed at each other in silence, a silence that lengthened because, between 
the two of them, there was no need of words. Neither wished to voice what 
must be said. At last, angry with a situation he had not controlled, 
Costigan struck the desk with the flat of his hand. "What do we do now?" he 
demanded without heat. 

Clare shrugged. She longed to free this strong and vital man from his bonds 
of loyalty and death. But always his dream would defeat her and hold him a 
captive without chains. A dream that perhaps neither he or his men properly 
understood. A dream that led them inevitably to an oblivion that they seemed 
to accept with a strange and fearful prescience. 

"Is there a decision?" She smiled at him with tenderness. "Won't the army 
make those for us! I attempted to escape. I have been recaptured. Now I will 
be punished. Isn't that about the drill?" 

He made a gesture of frustration. "That's the drill, and there's precious 
little I can do about it." 

"You could get in the jeep with me and drive away from here. You need to 
escape just as much as I do. I don't know anymore what's at stake for me. 
But for you it's your life." 

He dismissed her words as though unheard. "I try and shield you... " 

"I had to take the chance. I can't let them die. Had my feet not been 
chained I would have got away." 

"But they were chained: that's the point. You never had a chance. You'd have 
gone further, but half the men are still out there looking for you. They'd 
have picked you up." 

"Alright, so I was foolish. Compared with all else it's no big thing." 

"The boys don't see it that way." 

It was borne upon her by his voice and by his hurt eyes that her 
transgression was greater than she supposed. She looked at him, puzzled. 

"Don't you understand. You weren't just a girl running away from a strange 
captivity. Your escape would have meant that by now this place would be 
ringed by guns. Every one of us would have died." 

"Oh, you and your death!" She was close to tears. "You could surrender, 
disperse, give it up." 

"For us, surrender is death. You know that." 

"No one seemed angry with me when Muldoon brought me back." 

"That's the Irish, love. Deep down they think you betrayed them." 

"Surely they don't think I'm happy and joined the ranks?" 

"No one will analyze. They've simply become fond of you. You've been a damn 
good sport about a lot of things that would have sent other females up the 
wall. I suppose they see you as a mascot. Or they did... " 

"Little Trixie who's handy to fuck!" she said bitterly. 

"More than that." He ignored the ugliness. "George worships you. He's going 
to be heartbroken." 

It registered slowly. But suddenly she understood Costigan's disquiet. "You 
mean... you mean, they are going to kill me?" 

"Execute." Even his voice was cynical over the word. Clare's world 
shattered. She was about to die! "I won't let it happen," Costigan said 
quietly. "Can you stop them?" Her mind was in turmoil. "Yes, by killing 
Riodan." 

"You'd do that! For me...?" 

"If I must, I will." 

He came around the desk and took her gently in his arms. She clung to him in 
a surging need of his strength, of his maleness, of his love. How good not 
to be handcuffed! She made the fullest use of her free hands and arms. No 
man had ever been clasped as she clasped him now. For brief moments they 
forgot all else save themselves. When he gently took her arms from about his 
neck, he dragged up a chair. "Sit down, my dear. There's no standing at 
attention today. That's for tomorrow." 

"Is there anything to talk about?" Clare sniffed and used Costigan's 
handkerchief. It was nice to sit down. It was comforting to know that she 
belonged to this quiet man. But she was still faced with terror. 

"Tomorrow there will be a trial... " He waved away her ready outburst. 
"Sure, sure, love. I know! Tis a farce and a mockery and all else you want 
to call it. But with you as the prisoner let's give 'em all a chance to blow 
off steam. Riodan's the enemy. But they may quash him with words better than 
I can with a gun." 

Clare looked bleakly into the morrow. "What's the best I can hope for?" she 
asked forlornly. 

"To be whipped." His voice dripped distaste. 

"I've just been whipped!" Clare passionately declaimed. "Look at me! I'm 
covered with fresh whip marks. Those damn Muldoons!" Her tears flowed 
afresh. "I'm always being whipped." She sobbed into his square of good Irish 
linen. "Whip, whip, whip! That's my life. Whip little Trixie, then fuck 
little Trixie, then whip little Trixie again... " Once more Costigan made 
the journey round the desk. Once more Clare found comfort in his arms. "Oh 
alright." She sniffed against his shoulder. "I suppose I should be thankful. 
Better be whipped than killed. When it's all over maybe I'll feel better... 
I hope! It'll be bad though, won't it?" 

"It will be bad." 

"In the meantime what's for me, the dungeon?" 

"I want you." 

"I want you!" 

"That's settled then. You spend the night with me." He grinned. "Just the 
usual precautions." 

"But now? Mustn't I be locked up?" 

Costigan chuckled. "I think the boys would sooner see you around the 
premises. Go out and around as though nothing had happened. Play your little 
game of repartee with them." 

"Like this?" Clare flung wide her unchained hands. "They'll expect me to run 
away again." 

"O.K. I suppose we have to make a concession, love. You've been a bad lass." 
Ruefully Costigan produced handcuffs and handed them to the astonished girl. 
"Here, take these. Go and clean yourself up and do whatever you want. When 
you're ready to face the world lock these on your wrists at your back. 
You'll find it's quite easy. But be sure they're tight. No slack at all. 
Understand?" 

She kissed him and dangled the handcuffs in his face. "For you, darling, 
I'll make them very tight indeed." 

At the door she turned. "I suppose I'm not allowed to visit them?" 

"It's better if you don't," he said gruffly. 

Clare did not argue. 

It was Cully she met first. "Well, well! Little wings been clipped a bit, 
eh." He turned her round and examined the handcuffs. "Didn't mean you to get 
out o' them, did he!" He grinned. "Don't they hurt?" 

"I think they are supposed to," Clare acknowledged impishly. She looked 
demure. "I've been a bad girl." 

"That you have, an' all," he agreed heartily. 

"But I'm a very hungry bad girl. Would you like to feed me?" She wriggled 
her lost arms. "I can't feed myself." 

He took her to the garage where the boys were engaged on their eternal task 
of working on jeeps. There from sundry dishes and cans and from sundry 
spoons they took turns at spooning tidbits into her mouth. They seemed glad 
to have their little Trixie home again. 

"Half the boys are still out lookin' fer you." Someone laughed. "Riodan was 
bound he'd be the one. Lucky for you he wasn't. He took a whip along." 

Clare took note of their faces. She had made herself beautiful in the time 
Costigan had granted. They were desiring her. She laughed lightly between 
mouthfuls. "S'pose I was a naughty girl," she admitted coyly. "Maybe after 
you've fed me you ought to punish me." 

It never failed! Speak of a girl being punished and men instantly got 
erections. She had noticed it before: a sort of conditioned reflex. One or 
two of them were shifting awkwardly. The air was electric. 

"Would you like to cane my bottom?" 

They sighed in unison. One pointed heavenward. "He tell you we orter?" 

"Mr. Costigan felt we could use our own judgment," she giggled to ease the 
tension. 

"How many strokes?" The voice clearly felt this too good to be true. 

She kept the tone insouciant. "I'm sure I can trust you." 

"Don't know him like we do then!" There was general laughter. 

Clare prayed their lust might blind them to her intent to suborn. The closer 
she could touch these men today the more kindly they might treat her on the 
morrow. A sore bottom would be a small price to pay for tolerance. She knew 
from previous experience how much the male loved to cane the feminine 
posterior. 

"Are you going to draw lots for me?" She eyed them brightly. 

"You keep on like this and you're goin' ter have the horniest lot of boys 
south of the Shannon," George warned. 

Clare had been well aware of what, in her own mind, she thought of as an 
occupational hazard. She had bowed to the inevitable before, she could do it 
again. "Poor darlings," she cooed. "I can't expect you to be in agony just 
on my account, can I! So why don't you make up your minds whether you'd like 
relief after each of you have had a go with the cane, or all wait till 
after?" She managed to look joyously expectant. 

"You got any preference, Miss? After all, it's you wot gets it." 

She pretended to consider. "I think it would be nice if each of you fucked 
me after you've caned my bottom. I mean, one at a time. That way you'd sort 
of go away satisfied and I'd have a lovely time in between canings." Her 
vibrancy implied that each would be endowed with vigor, potency and charm, 
of all of which she would be the blessed recipient. 

"She's a bloody wonder," said George reverently. 

"You've already had a pretty good goin' over, Miss," said a sympathetic 
voice. 

"I have, haven't I," Clare agreed. "That was the Muldoon family. Everyone 
enjoys whipping me." 

"I heard somethin' once," Cully contributed doubtfully, "that if yer was to 
give her arse a good greasin' with vaseline or oil or somethin' it wouldn't 
mark up so bad. You know, get the sting but not the friction." He guffawed 
in embarrassment. 

There was an awkward pause. The suggested intimacy provoked a couple of pink 
faces. 

"Want yer arse oiled, Miss?" 

Clare refused to be shamed. In for a penny, in for a pound. For all she knew 
lubricant might be beneficial. "I'm willing to try," she agreed cheerfully. 
"It's nice of you to offer. Which one of you's going to rub it on?" 

Another awkward silence. Obviously it was not an honor to be shared by all. 

"Tell you what, boys!" Clare took advantage of the occasion. "Why don't you 
take these handcuffs off me. Then I'll oil my own bottom while you watch and 
make rude remarks. But, better still, I'll be able to touch my toes 
properly. I feel silly bending over to be caned with my hands behind my 
back." 

The new silence was pure embarrassment. 

"Oh boys!" Clare said scornfully. "You don't think I'm going to escape, do 
you? Just because no handcuffs? You can put 'em back on me first thing 
afterwards. Besides," she added thoughtfully, "I can lay on my back a lot 
better without them." 

"I got a key!" said a helpful voice. 

Clare oiled with gusto. She hoped it would do no harm: it might do good. But 
she found herself blushing under the combined male interest. What a 
situation! A naked girl oiling her bottom in front of a group of men! Oiling 
it to be caned. She wondered, absurdly, what her mother would have thought. 

She did a trial bend, suddenly realizing that her selfinvited pain was about 
to start. She gave them good measure. Rising to her toes she stretched, then 
bent forward and down. It was a graceful motion deserving of a happier 
purpose. 

The cane splatted with what seemed to be a louder sound than usual. The pain 
was no less. Fighting to absorb it without disgrace she heard the ribald 
comment. 

"Might say ter lass's got a buttered bun." 

She almost managed to laugh. 

* * * 

Much later when she went to join her master, she found herself almost 
limping. Her bottom was very sore indeed. She had given of herself many 
times. She felt soiled. Her first words to the man who awaited her were: 
"The handcuffs, darling. Please... ? I need a bath." 

Good-naturedly he freed her hands, laughing at the oil. "You're a ninny," he 
told her. "Didn't hurt any less, did it?" 

"I'm not sure it didn't hurt more," she confessed. She backed up to the 
mirror. "Scarlet and purple as usual... well, anyway it amused them. They 
seemed happy... " 

Costigan unlocked her ankle chains on her return from the bath. She moaned 
in ecstasy and kicked her feet as high as she could get them. Then extended 
one foot for the anklet and chain that would insure her fidelity through the 
hours of the night. She offered her wrists for the handcuffs, but he thrust 
them away. "Tomorrow is soon enough," he said tersely and took her in his 
arms. 

"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow... " The quotation monopolized her 
consciousness when she finally drifted into sleep. 

No one, not even George, managed to bring the casual bonhomie of every day 
into the courtroom for Clare's trial. Clare herself could manage only a wan 
smile for any eye she met. She was frightened and terribly alone. Her wrists 
handcuffed behind her back set her apart. She was the defendant. She was the 
prisoner. She was some sort of felon... Her ankles were heavily chained. She 
should have no doubt of her status. 

The army took over in the grand impersonal way that armies have. Positions 
were taken, names were called. Clare longed to scream that they were silly 
boys playing games. 

Riodan demanded death. She quailed under his venom. 

"Don't be an arsehole," George advised him amiably. 

Riodan poured out his poison with clarity and emphasis. 

"Would yer settle fer a good fuck, Barney?" Cully inquired helpfully. 

"She's bought the lot of you with a piece o' tail," Riodan accused. 

"Try it, Barney. You'd like it." 

"A traitress with a wet slit!" 

"Warm the cockles of yer heart, lad!" 

"Informing whore!" 

"She don't charge nothin', Barney." 

Little by little it became evident to Clare that she was not to die. 
Costigan gave her a brief nod of approval and took his hand out of his 
pocket. 

"What yer goin' ter do with the bitch then, kiss her arse?" Riodan mocked 
them savagely. 

He was not without support. "She's got to be punished." Several voices were 
emphatic. 

Riodan switched to diplomacy. "Alright, so I grant you have a point. It's 
nice ter have the bitch shufflin' around where anyone can lay her handily. 
But she needs a lesson. Make an example. Do her good and the others too." 

"How about a good spanking?" The voice came from the opposition. 

"Would yer still say that jerkin' from a rope's end?" Riodan was savage in 
his purpose. Clare recalled that he had never used her body. 

"Alright then! How 'bout a good whippin'?" 

"She's covered in whip marks already." 

"Always room for one more!" 

"If her back's well basted, how about her front?" 

Riodan silenced them with a raised hand. "I like the last suggestion. That's 
where a whore should be whipped. Whipped on those devil's curves she uses on 
you. But there's something better." He paused for effect. Then delivered his 
salvo. "Brand the bitch." 

Riodan and Nettie Muldoon! Clare could understand that they would share 
something in common. The same black bitterness was in them both. She 
wondered miserably just how terrible the hurt of a hot iron on a girl's 
flesh really was. 

The silence that fell upon the room was not one of assent. This naked girl 
had laughed with them. To see her flesh smoke and smell it burn had no 
appeal. 

"We're damn well not going to give her a lollipop," Riodan warned. "If any 
of you think she's going to walk out of here wiggling her little arse at us 
you'd best think again." He paused and waited for the jeers that did not 
come. There were none present save Costigan and George who did not either 
want or expect that the runaway girl should be disciplined. The prisoner 
herself had no such hope. 

"So I'll suggest something where the punishment fits the crime." Riodan 
shook an admonitory finger at all present. "The girl runs away to betray us. 
And what does the little bitch run on!" He looked around in triumph. 

"She run on the grass, Barney. Didn't have no carpet!" The opposition scored 
again. 

Riodan scowled and regained the floor. "She ran on her feet, that what she 
run on," he stated emphatically. "And that's the place to punish her. You've 
heard of the bastinado. Simple! Whip the soles of her feet." 

Clare cringed. Her feet, her innocent chained feet! Why did he hate her so! 
She was close to tears. To stand naked and chained to listen to the 
punishments out of a book of torture that someone wished to inflict upon 
her. It was frightening. Frightening because one of the punishments would be 
chosen and she would have to bear it. She tugged at the handcuffs in her 
familiar gesture of revolt. 

Barney Riodan looked from one to the other of them with a sardonic grin. 
"There's a better way, but you'll no have the guts fer it. Cut the tendons 
in her legs. Then she'll neither walk nor run." He laughed sourly. "Wouldn't 
hinder her laying on her back." 

They shouted. They jeered. They laughed and made their jokes. Some spoke of 
cruelties beyond imagining. To Clare it all merged into a bedlam in which 
only the face of Costigan remained rational and sane. Finally he rose and 
rapped for order. His voice was quiet. But very firm. "I am going to make a 
proposal," he said. "But I want the prisoner out of the room while it is 
debated." 

It was really an order. 

No man gainsayed it. 

George led the chained captive from the court. His hand was heavy on her 
arm. 

The unused gateway to a field was ideal for their purpose. Its posts were 
joined and braced by a heavy bridge of timber ten feet above the ground. It 
could be a goal post or a gallows. Led toward it, Clare assumed the latter. 
But her faltering step was reassured by a cheerful: "Nah, nah, lass. Tis not 
the hangin' we'll be doin' ter yer, at all, at all." 

It was not an occasion. Clare was grateful to the men for not wishing to 
witness what must happen to her. She was escorted by a trio whose main 
concern was to get a job over and done with. When they were finished with 
her they turned and walked swiftly back to the house. They left the culprit 
hanging from her wrists. Her toes a yard above the soil, her ankle chains 
dangling uselessly. The time was eleven A.M. 

Clare was a beautiful picture. It was as though the naked slenderness had 
been placed with an eye to form and composition. She was suspended evenly 
between the posts, her wrists tied separately, arms well apart. She was 
framed by that to which she was secured. Her nudity was marred by no other 
bindings than those upon her wrists and the chain that joined her ankles. 
She could look about her at the peace and loveliness of Erdislune. 

Someone had been kind. If kindness is applicable to a condition such as 
hers. The slender wrists had been bound tight in strips of cloth. To these 
the ropes that held her were fastened. There would be no stricture of the 
blood. But the thoughtful act told another message: She was meant to hang 
thus for a long, long time. To a girl fastened in such fashion an hour is 
unthinkable, a day eternity and death. 

Clare looked up the columns of her arms. How beautifully she was tied! There 
would be no struggling and no escape. As so often in her captivity it was 
her wrists, her poor small wrists, that bore the brunt of her suffering. How 
often had she been tied by them! How often had they been cut and bled from 
her struggles! Today there would be no struggle. It would be useless. It 
only hurt. 

Should she feel gratitude! Perhaps. Was it better to hang like this than to 
be whipped with the fifty or a hundred strokes her prosecution had demanded. 
She supposed it was. But she was not sure. She had hung from her wrists 
before and knew it for a deceptively simple horror. There was no motion of 
her body or limbs, no breath or sigh, no moment of time that did not exact 
its toll of pain. The whip struck with pauses in between. But there were no 
intermissions for a girl hanging by her wrists. Nothing would get better, 
only worse. 

It was better than the whip upon the soles of her feet. 

She was sure it must be better. It had to be! Costigan must have been sure 
too. Or the cutting of her tendons or the brand. Clare wondered about the 
brand. If she was left as she was for hours she might see the quick cruel 
burn of the brand as preferable. But Costigan had chosen her punishment. 
Chosen it, no doubt, because it would leave no mark upon her loveliness. It 
would not damage her. Yet would be severe enough that his followers would be 
satisfied that she had been adequately punished for her transgression. She 
must not enlarge upon her plight, must not see in her condition more than 
need be seen. She was no more than a naked girl who had been bad and now was 
expiating her sin. 

Riodan came in midafternoon. The captive's half-closed eyes open wide at his 
solitary approach. She had no interest in him and no hope. He had come to 
gloat or to threaten. 

"You are very beautiful." 

The simple words brought her to life as no ugliness would have done. She 
stared at him in wonder. 

"It is that I want you too much, lass." 

She did not speak. It was more of his cruelty. 

"Your punishment is to hang through the night. I'll bring a jeep, cut you 
down, and we'll go away together." His eyes burned with a fierce intensity. 

His words scarcely registered. They were too incongruous. That morning he 
had sought her death. Now he sought her body. Spurred by a curiosity she 
could not contain, she asked, "You would keep me chained?" 

For answer he rummaged a key from his pocket and unlocked the metal anklets 
from her legs. He backed away and stood staring up at the naked girl he 
hungered for. A nondescript man, the dangling chains held in his hand an 
incongruity. 

"No," she said the word with utter finality. He stood and looked for a long 
time. Looked at beauty such as few men ever saw. Looked with longing and 
with hate. For Riodan the two emotions were synonymous. Then he locked the 
irons back upon her feet and went away. 

The night was very long. They gave her water. Nothing more. She pleaded, but 
they gave no heed. They left her hanging from the bar. From time to time she 
wept. She had no faith in the morning. It might never come. All she knew was 
an agony that did not end. A helplessness so utter it took her from the 
realm of the living. She hung there, a decoration like a picture on a wall. 

When they cut her down she crumpled on the dirt. With gentleness they picked 
her up and carried her to the familiar office and the familiar desk, and the 
honor of a chair. This time it was Costigan who knelt. He took her numbed 
hands and caressed them continuously with his lips. Then he gave her food 
and watched her eat. 

"Is my punishment over?" She was not even sure of that. 

"It is over. Was it... was it-" 

"It was bearable," she lied. "Thank you, darling." 

She sensed his disquiet. His fingers played upon her with love. "Let us both 
give up everything and go far away," she pleaded. 

His brief "Humph!" dismissed her plea as an innocent childish notion. 

Clare poured out her heart. He listened quietly. When she was done he gazed 
down at her with love. "I should put your handcuffs on," he said 
irrelevantly. 

She smiled into his eyes, rose and held out her hands. He got the shining 
steel things and locked them on her wrists. Now she sat upon the floor, her 
head on his knees. 

"Why is your life tied to them?" he asked sadly. 

"What will be done with them?" 

"There will be a trial." 

"That nonsense! They'll be killed, won't they?" Costigan waved his hand 
wearily. "It's war. We can't split hairs." 

"You should execute Riodan." 

"I would if I could," he admitted with a surprising candor. "But the 
bastard's the best soldier I've got." 

"The best murderer." 

Again his gesture of a great fatigue. "It will be tomorrow," he told her 
simply. 

No chances were taken with Tavie and Alethea. A great weight of chains had 
been fastened on them. For the first time they accepted impotence. They did 
not try to break their shackles. They took no more interest in their trial 
than they had in that other centuries ago in Clare's dream. They showed no 
fear. Only a bitter loathing. 

"We don't mind being called witches," Alethea told them quietly. "By your 
standards and beliefs I expect we are." She turned to her sister. "Are we 
witches, Tavie?" 

"Of course we are, darling," Tavie proclaimed equably. "They wouldn't treat 
us any kinder if we said we weren't." 

They were told that on the following day they would be taken out into the 
park and burned. 

They paid no attention, either to their sentence or the promise of its 
remission if they talked. They had retreated into a world of their own, a 
world into which these crass men who held them could never follow. 

Clare pleaded and stormed. But Costigan was adamant. She understood his 
loose authority and that the burning was not his wish. But she won a small 
victory. 

"I don't understand these girls," Costigan admitted. "They are not ordinary. 
This witch talk has to be nonsense. But if I believed in it I'd say that's 
what they are. There are some damned queer legends about a place called 
Montrilas... " 

She watched him hopefully, the night shackle heavy on her ankle. 

"They know things. I'm sure they do," Costigan continued soberly. "There has 
to be a way to get at 'em, to touch them. I think they are harboring some 
faint hope of escape, or that we are running a bluff." He paused and 
considered. "So here's what I am going to have done: Tomorrow they are going 
to be fastened to the stakes where they will be burned. We'll have every 
chain on 'em that there's room for. Take no chances of escape, and it may 
sober 'em up a bit. They're so damn insouciant. Then we leave them like that 
all night knowing what is going to happen in the morning. Maybe they will 
get a bit of sense standing there in the dark." He looked at her with a 
small smile. "Sorry, love. It's the best I can do." 

Costigan's boys made a magnificent job of the stakes. Massive and solidly 
planted they stood alone. There was an atmosphere of drama as the two girls 
were fastened where they must die. Clare watched helplessly as the chains 
were hammered and riveted and locked. Less chance than ever now of escape. 

There was a small kindness. They faced each other. They could talk. Perhaps 
Costigan hoped that, in communion, they might decide to tell him what he 
believed they knew. The stakes were ten feet apart. How bitter to be so 
close through the night and to know they could never feel each other's hands 
or lips again. 

They were mourners at a funeral. When it was done they left the two naked 
girls to their vigil and their loneliness, and trailed back to Erdislune, a 
ragged group of nondescript men bowed in thought, subdued by their 
individual involvement in what must happen, and a naked girl. Costigan had 
cuffed her right wrist to his left. She knew she was not to be trusted. 

It began to rain. The soft warm Irish rain from out the west. It seemed 
somehow fitting. The siblings would not mind. They had always run naked in 
the rain. To them it would be a caress. 

"Bring 'em to their senses," said Costigan without conviction. 

"Got a truckload o' dry wood in the barn," said George to no one in 
particular. 

Clare could have sworn she saw the flutter of a woman's skirt beside a 
distant bush. How absurd! 

The rain fell gently. 

Had it been any other night they would have found happiness in Costigan's 
teasing. Or was he teasing! Clare was not quite sure. 

"The boys want you in a dungeon tonight, well chained, and with the door 
well barred and locked," he told her. 

"Shouldn't present any problem," Clare retorted acidly. 

"I don't want to sleep alone. I've got used to you." 

"Come and sleep in the dungeon with me then." 

"Alright. No dungeon. Just special precautions." 

"Like what?" Clare asked frigidly. She was beginning to enjoy herself. 

Costigan produced a metal collar, a long chain and a padlock. She could tell 
he felt sheepish. 

She kicked her foot so that the heavy ankle chain rattled. "Look, I'm 
already chained. I could never get this off." 

He held out the collar. "This is nicer than being handcuffed, love." 

"Have I got to be handcuffed, too?" she asked with real distaste. "Yes." 

"Front or back?" She could always hope. 

"Behind your back." 

"Bastard!" 

"I won't do it until last thing," he wheedled. 

"You don't have to do it at all," Clare said with mock petulance. "Anyone 
would think I was Houdini." She did not really mind. She had become so used 
to chains that she could sleep in almost any combination of them. But she 
liked to tease too. She scored points if she made him feel guilty. "Is it 
you that's chaining me up like a sideshow or that creature Riodan?" 

He visibly squirmed. "Say it's for your own good, love. No temptations." 

"Last thing?" she bargained. 

"The collar now." 

She knelt submissively before him and bent her head. She knew submission 
affected him potently. Good! It would take their minds away from the other 
for a little while. The metal was cool on her skin, the band snug on her 
throat. Locks clicked. Keys were hung on a nail far from where she could 
ever reach them. 

She would not roam Erdislune in the night. 

Clare got into bed and stuck her tongue out at him in provocation. By 
morning the rain had drifted into a misty luminescence. It would clear by 
noon. Rakes of mist clung and wafted in the still air that smelt so fresh, 
adding a new dimension to sight and sound. It should have been chill. But, 
with Irish inconsistency, was warm. 

"Must I?" Clare asked. 

Costigan nodded. "You know you must. The boys expect it." 

"Teach me a lesson," she reasoned bitterly. "Something like that. Sula and 
Chloe will be there too. Same reason." 

He locked her handcuffs in front. She watched the steel bands click snugly 
round her wrists. He was being kind. But it did not matter. She would still 
be helpless. Amusedly he picked up the chain from her collar. "You can wear 
that on your neck. It's not uncomfortable." 

"No hobbles?" she inquired, genuinely surprised. 

He chuckled and tugged her tether. "It's a long way to walk, and this neat 
little arrangement will keep you out of trouble." 

Clare followed her master like a puppy dog. 

They were going to burn two witches. 

The same nondescript group straggled upon their mission with no more 
enthusiasm than they had retreated with the evening before. Clare noted the 
other girls were bound at wrist and elbow with cord. If they hurt they would 
remember to behave! Their feet, too, were free. They were guided by male 
hands in their hair, more helpless than she herself. But then: she was 
Costigan's girl! After today she would be more than ever his! 

The mist played tricks. They had reached the ugly stakes before anyone 
realized that Tavie and Alethea were no longer chained to them. The chains 
were draped, as though in mockery, around the posts. But the girls they had 
held were gone! 

The thud of the arrows came instantly. Clare's tether fell at her feet. The 
arrow through Costigan's neck had killed him instantly. He gave her no last 
look of love or recognition from his dead eyes as he slumped inert. Clare 
remembered Cedric in the dream... 

She turned fearfully. Uncertain. Three more men were down. Arrows 
proclaiming their end. The rest scattered. They had only revolvers. They 
fired at random as they ran, seeing no enemy. 

But Riodan stood his ground. His face was a study in hate. Gun at the ready, 
his eyes roved. Nothing! In a sudden insane fury he swung and fired. Chloe 
fell. Sula screamed and leaped sideways. Riodan sighted at her carefully. 
But the arrow was quicker than his finger on the trigger. He died. Sula was 
running frantically into the mist. Clare found herself alone. She picked up 
her chain and coiled it in her hand while she looked somberly at the 
lifeless hulk of the man who had fastened it on her. 

There was no silence. The crack of pistol shots was constant, but more and 
more spaced out. 

Suddenly she remembered Alethea's injunction: run for the road. Scream. She 
could do no good where she was. Her feet sped. How good it was to run again! 
Even with chained hands and a collar round her neck... ! 

She found the road. What now! The firing had died. She screamed. Then 
listened. Nothing! If the twins remained hidden that meant men were still 
alive. Uncertain of what she should do, she began the walk back to 
Erdislune, stopping from time to time to scream and listen. There were no 
more shots. 

How had the twins escaped! But she remembered what she had seen the previous 
night. It had not been illusion. There had been someone in the park. She 
suddenly realized: everyone had forgotten Hedda. Hedda had the strength of a 
man, and much competence. Hedda loved her mistresses with something close to 
worship.. 

Clare was frightened. She began to run. Shouting as she went. 

It was George. He had been forgotten. Left behind to come later with the 
truck and the dry timbers and kindling that would spell the witches' end. He 
ran towards her now. His red face concerned... 

Her frantic cry to stop him, to turn him back came too late. The arrow took 
him in the chest. He died with the same surprised look with which he had 
observed her most outrageous behavior. 

She felt sure he was the last. 

Silence! Her eyes roved. She knew what she would see. 

The drifting mist was a silvery curtain. But it had rolled back enough for 
her to look up the gentle rise and see the two slender figures of the girls. 
They raised their hands in love. 

Clare ran towards them in the mist. 


THE END
