Madeleine (2 page)

The room was sparsely furnished, a large, crude oak cupboard, a smaller cupboard, a large chest, a trestle, and a bench, set at a heavy table, but the feature that held her attention was the man sitting on the bench, his boots stretched out towards the fire, a mug of something in his hand, a book on his knee, and a thin leather covered switch by his elbow on the table.
He watched her
enter his sanctum.

He was big and wide, a little fleshy, with wild red hair and beard, dressed in denim jeans tucked into leather boots, and a rather grubby white T-shirt which revealed his muscular neck and arms, the latter covered in a finer version of the red thatch on his head.

“There’s little point in your trying to cover yourself,” he said, as she crossed her arms on her chest, “seeing that I’ve been watching you all morning, and know every crease in your bum and each wrinkle in your nipples, so put your hands by your sides, and stand up straight when I’m talking to you.”

She did: it seemed the natural thing to do, and he went on.

“And your tits and bum are not the only things I saw either.
I saw you stealing fruit from the orchard.”

She opened her mouth to explain and, perhaps, ask forgiveness.

“Shut up!” he roared, “you’ll only speak here when given permission!
Is that clear?” Dumbly she nodded.

“Do you know what this place is?” he asked and, not daring to speak, even though asked a direct question, she shook her head this time.
“It’s called the Isle of Tears or, sometimes, the Isle of weeping women.
The tower was the home of sea brigands, my family’s ancestors they were, and no woman came here as wife or mistress, only as slave.
That’s where they were housed,” he boomed, waving a hairy hand at the row of kennels, “unless they had been taken upstairs to work, or warm someone’s bed.
There’s no upstairs now, so you’ll live in the kennel, when you’re not working.”

“I’m not -” she began, but his bellow stopped her short.

“Shut up!
You’ve been warned once and you’ll pay for that later.
As I was saying you’ll live in a kennel, and you’ll work and toil, like the slave you made yourself, by coming to my island uninvited, and your theft of my fruit.”

It didn’t seem worthwhile protesting. It would obviously make no difference and, anyway, her will to resist had ebbed away in some mysterious manner, leaving her bending to his will.
He was speaking again.

“Before we go any further, you’ll settle your account for speaking out of turn, and learn that it doesn’t pay on my island for a slave to forget her obedience.” He put down his book and his mug and stood, taking up the switch.

“Stand here,” he ordered, pointing to a spot on the flagged floor just in front of him.

Trembling from a mixture of fear and excitement, she obeyed.

“Six of the best, as the Sassenach say,” he pronounced, “bend and touch your toes and don’t get up till I say so, or you’ll regret it.”

Like an automaton, she advanced into the room and bent where the switch had pointed. Her body did as it was ordered, with no conscious effort on her part. She stood with bare toes slightly separated, bent from the waist, put fingers to toes, stretching the pale gold skin of her smoothly rounded buttocks, stayed, taut and obedient, awaiting its fate.
Her mind stood outside and observed her own reactions, wondered at her own submissiveness, speculated about how much it was going to hurt, and if she could take it.

Six of the best with that cruel looking instrument!
She had no idea what it would be like, had never been beaten before, but she was going to find out now.
Schoolboys, and schoolgirls come to that, traditionally got six of the best, and it was meant to be for the good of their souls, though they were reputed to be unable to sit after, for a day or so, so it must hurt and go on being sore for a long while after.
They were not meant to cry out, bad form and all that, and getting up before they’d had their dose would get extra, or even another six.

The air behind her parted with a whirring noise and a lancing flame leapt up in her buttocks.
Mind and body came together again to try and cope with the terrible visitation.
Stay down, stay down, her will commanded, but body squealed in protest, and then groaned, a long drawn out naaaaargh, as the first sharp cutting pain was overtaken by a wave of pure agony that rolled in, washing over her whole consciousness.
Mind won, but it was a close thing, and she waited, bottom halves clenching in fearful anticipation, for the next cut.

She was better prepared for the second, though it was just as fierce, and greeted it with just a gasp of indrawn breath, let out in another groan, as deep and agony filled as the first.
And so for each of the other four, not conceding more than gasps and groans, and twitching, clenching nates.
Yes, she could take it but how much more?
Would a longer thrashing break her and, if so, how much more punishment would it take to make her howl outright, or cause her body to rebel against the submission it still seemed anxious to make?
Far from trying to flee in panic from this awesome chamber, and its stern master, she only felt more firmly set in it, and her captivity more welcome.
What on earth was happening to her?

What was happening right now was a barked command to stand, and keep her hands from her bum.
Her Master, for she’d already conceded that status to him, took a collar of black iron from the cupboard and closed it round her neck where a catch, whose workings she did not observe, clicked to make it fast.
A light chain hung from the collar and he used it to drag her over to the end kennel.
Once she had obeyed his order to crawl in, onto the straw inside, he fastened the chain to a staple by the kennel entrance, and went back to the cupboard.

He must have stored his supplies there, amongst other things, for he produced a bowl of water which he set down by her doorway, and a pan and foodstuffs, which he took to the fire.
She bent to the bowl to suck up water, for to use her hands to lift it seemed somehow inappropriate, and winced as the movement stretched the welts on her throbbing bottom. Then she sat back on her heels, her hands on her thighs, to watch him at work.

Soon the delicious smell of bacon, chops and tomatoes wafted across the room, and brought her to awareness of an empty belly and ravening appetite.
She hadn’t eaten since her modest breakfast and it must be well past mid-day, though she’d no means of knowing, having deliberately come to the island not only naked, but with no possessions of any kind.
Since breakfast, she’d swum a quarter mile, explored the island, thought till her mind reeled about the central problem of her life and, last but very far from least, expended a month’s worth of emotional energy in something under a minute, while he had welted her maiden bottom with ‘six of the best’ from that cruelly biting switch.
Her mouth watered as she thought of the succulent food sizzling in the pan.

But it was not for her.
When it was cooked to his satisfaction, he served it onto a plate and then reached for a blackened pot standing beside the fireplace.
Crossing the room, he slapped a soggy pile of sticky grey substance into her bowl.

“Eat up, woman,” he ordered, “it’s good healthy porridge and you’re going to need all your strength here.”

Stifling her disappointment, she obediently bent her head and ate as best she could, her face soon sticky, and the ends of her auburn mane also, where they had fallen into the glutinous mess.
From time to time he threw her scraps, some bacon rind, tomato skins, a piece of gristle.
When he offered her a chop bone with the remains of meat on it, she took it gently in her mouth, but immediately laid it in her bowl, so that she could suck clean the greasy fingers he extended to her.
After he’d cleared his plate he took a large green apple, streaked with red, and proceeded to peel it carefully, giving her the long, continuous spiral he had cut and, later, the core.
He poured beer for himself and refilled her water bowl.

The meal over, he unclipped her chain from her collar and ordered her to follow.
Crawling from her kennel, she rose stiffly to her feet, her sore buttocks reminding her again of their striated condition, and walked after him, up the spiral stair to the sunlit courtyard.
Here he pointed out an old iron pump in the corner, and a sink hollowed from a block of stone.
Under his direction, she pumped water from some underground cistern into a bucket, which she carried downstairs, where she was set to work, scrubbing the floor on her hands and knees.
Time and again he pointed out deficiencies in her coverage, which he emphasised with cuts of the switch, which never left his hands.

When at last he declared himself satisfied, the pain in her hinds went far beyond the mere ‘sixer’ she had thought a severe punishment, and it began to dawn on her that her life with this red-headed Master would be a litany of toil and suffering, but, standing outside her own body again, she marvelled that, far from feeling resentment and fear, she felt a great sensation of relief, as if coming home, or discovering a welcome harbour.
Oh, yes, it hurt like hell, and she had to bite her lip to keep from screaming, and the work was degrading and onerous, but when she was not actually fighting the pain at the point where it was inflicted, her whole being was fired by it, and submission to her task-master brought a definite feeling of satisfaction.

And that satisfaction was not over with the scrubbing of the floor.
The pans had to be cleaned, including the glutinous porridge pot, scraping and rinsing with only cold water and a stick.
Each time it
failed his inspection, and it failed many times, she had to bend, she felt so much more exposed to the whip, touching her toes out there, under the open sky, and the switch cut into the tumified flesh, just below the widest part of her swelling haunches.
He was cutting short, so that the tip burrowed into the right cheek, rather than wrapping round her flank. The throbbing ache told her that its repeated bite was raising a solid mass of bruised flesh, though she did not dare to put her hand behind her to feel, much though she might wish to.

The pans washed, it was time for his laundry.
He produced a plastic sack of soiled socks, underpants and T-shirts, their odour not improved by confinement in polythene, and she was sent to wash them, as serving women through the ages had done, beating them one a stone in the loch margin, and spreading them on bushes in the sun.
While they dried, she was set to gather driftwood for his fire, the harsh bundles digging into her tender shoulders as she staggered along on sore feet, carrying load after load, driven on by the inexorable bite of that asp-like switch, as he slashed it into her now cringing hinds, to the accompaniment of cries she was too exhausted to suppress.

As the sun began to sink lower, she was allowed to gather up the washing, though she earned two particularly vicious cuts for a pair of socks, whose welts had been folded under and were not quite crispy dry, and return to the security of her chain and kennel where she lay, worn out and sore, on her bed of straw.
But not for long.
Called to heel, she crossed the floor on hands and knees, dragging her chain behind her, and was set to cook his supper, a steak grilled over the fire, some vegetables, stir-fried in the pan, and potatoes, boiled in the pot.
Again the delicious scent of the food set her salivating after her exhausting toil in the sun all afternoon, but her portion was only a share of the boiled potatoes, put in her bowl on the floor, though he fed her some trimmings from his steak.

Supper over, she was released from her chain temporarily, and sent to wash the dishes under the pump.
He did not go with her, to see her secure, and seemed to have sensed her acceptance of her serfdom, nor did it occur to her to swim back to freedom.

On her return, she had to put oats to soak in the pot for tomorrow’s porridge.
While she did that, he took an inflatable mattress from the capacious cupboard, and she was set to pump it up, ready for his use.
When this task was complete he had her kneel in front of him, sitting on her heels with her hands crossed behind her, while he told her how, as a slave, still new to the life, she would be disciplined each night, after serving her Master and before retiring to her kennel for the night.
A sixer if her performance had been satisfactory, a dozen if not.

So now she knew.
It had seemed pretty certain from the start that a naked woman, enslaved and beaten, could expect to be sexually used as well, but his behaviour all day had been so lacking in anything that might have been construed as sexual interest, as opposed to subduing and working her, that the possibility had slipped to the back of her mind, but now it had sprung to the fore.
Though she feared what this callous man might do to her, she made no attempt to protest, but passively awaited her fate.
He looked at her a moment, then stood and pulled the clothes from his large coarse body, revealing a slightly fleshy torso, adorned with more of the red tufts the showed on his arms, an incipient belly, already displaying folds of fat, and a large, flaccid penis, partly shrouded by the rampant growth between his thighs.