“Poor Trudy!” Caroline’s voice was soft, her gaze roved the inquiring group. “I wish you’d do something for her, try and secure her release. She doesn’t deserve to be held prisoner. I’ve tried, but I’m helpless.”
They sloughed the appeal, just as everybody sloughed everything in this hateful place. Trudy wiped away a tear, hating the clink of her chain, hating everything. Hating most of all the next query, it scared her half to death.
“Is it true, Mrs. Dowling, that some sort of dramatic punishment awaits you at the president’s whim?”
“Like what?”
They were uneasy, ashamed. They should have been angry but were not. They felt less than men. “Something barbarous, medieval . . . ! There’s a rumor you are to be publicly whipped?”
“Is that all!”
“There is also talk of branding—”
“My, I am a lucky girl! I thought at least the headsman’s axe.”
“Mrs. Dowling.” The remonstrance was patient.
“Your insistence on jesting robs you of a good deal of sympathy.”
“Sympathy!” Caroline’s exclamation was suddenly bitter. “I haven’t noticed any sympathy to be robbed of. Neither has Trudy. As far as the British Empire and the U.S. of A. are concerned we’re just a pair of call girls without a phone. That ridiculous Consul, I could have kicked his—!”
“Mrs. Dowling, what about, your husband . . . ?” Trudy sighed. It all added up to nothing. She and Caroline were two spicy tidbits for the delectation of the erotically inclined. Undoubtedly, with Caroline, there was something more, a purpose not divulged. It would affect her too. Surely it must! They were kept so close, a shared captivity in which each was thankful for the other. To be wholly and totally alone . . . ! The younger girl shuddered.
It was shortly after the retreat of their countrymen that the soldiers had come for Caroline. It was a frequent enough break in their captivity to be without significance. Caroline was escorted away, and in an hour or a day would be escorted back. The soldiers were more for her protection against the rabble than to inhibit her escape. Her hands were always left chained, but to enable her to walk properly the shackles were unlocked from her ankles. They lay now on the ground in the centre of the barred prison, a mute promise of their wearer’s return. When she came back, she would be wearing a clean fresh flag.
It was nearly seven weeks since her abduction, but the event was still vivid in her mind. She had been walking down Laburnum Lane, minding her own business, when the expensive car had stopped and the two men had neatly lifted her from the sidewalk and placed the potent wad over her mouth and nose. When she returned to consciousness she was face down on some sort of seat and someone was tying her hands behind her back. The cord was cruel, but when she protested a heavy hand thrust down upon her shoulders and a harsh foreign voice said: “Quiet! Keep still.” She had wakened to darkness, tightly blindfolded. She had never been so frightened in her life. It took her a minute to realise she was stark-naked.
Obediently, she kept quiet and kept still. In her blindness she envisioned knives and guns pointed at her defencelessness. When the firm deft fingers moved from her wrists to her elbows she whimpered as the soft rope cut and pinched her flesh as her forearms were forcibly joined and bound as one. It wracked her shoulders terribly and caused her naked breasts to tauten against the fabric on which she lay. The sudden roar of engines and the rumble of a jet aircraft seeking the sky told her all too clearly that she might never walk the flagstones of Laburnum Lane again. It was not until the jets had subsided to a silken purr that they gave her back her eyes.
Trudy Ramsay blinked at the interior of an aircraft, almost empty save for two men and a woman. They were not exactly black, but had she passed them on the street she would have thought of them as ‘niggers.’ She was sure it would not be politic to do so now. They were expensively dressed, their features intelligent. Each was assessing her, as at a package freshly unwrapped. The drone of the jets told her England was receding into limbo. Awkwardly, she sat erect and stared. The cords biting her flesh hurt atrociously.
“A good choice. She’ll serve the purpose excellently.”
The woman was in command. She exuded authority. Incongruously, her English was cultured. She laughed at her captive’s puzzlement. Her information faintly derisive: “Girton, my dear. Then Cambridge. Remarkable what they do with niggers these days.”
“I—I’m kidnapped?” It was the paramount thought in Trudy’s mind, all else was curious but irrelevant. “I—I—can’t move.”
“Yes you can, dear. But not enough to be a nuisance. If you kick we’ll tie your ankles.”
“But—but—!” Trudy was still bemusedly grappling with priorities. “My elbows hurt something awful!”
“That’s to keep you tractable, dear. My name is Rulua. If you prefer you may address me as Miss.” The dark eyes twinkled. “It establishes our social divergence.”
She was handsome. A lithe sensual creature in her thirties. She contrived to make Trudy’s twenty years feel like childhood. Full firm breasts thrust at nipple-indented silk. Dusky fingers felt testingly at Trudy’s own twin girlish cones. “Quite beautiful. Did you know you were beautiful, Miss Ramsay?”
“I hadn’t thought about it,” Trudy lied, then blushed. “I’m—I’m just a girl.”
“I suppose ‘just a girl’ is exactly what we want.”
“But look, I’m naked . . . ! And there’s men . . . ! Someone’s taken my clothes . . . and the way you’ve just tied me—!”
“You have no further need of clothes, dear. Besides, we cannot evaluate you with them on.” Again the flicker of humour. “If it will make you easier I will remove my own?”
“Oh no!” Trudy was shocked. Quickly she returned to her most pressing need. “Please untie me. I don’t understand why I’m tied up like this, it’s terribly painful.”
“I’ll get her a drink.” It was one of the men. Trudy swallowed the strange and potent brandy, coughing and feeling silly that the cup must be held to her lips. “I’d thought perhaps a cup of tea—?”
They laughed at her innocence. “Why not!”
Rulua agreed indulgently. “Let’s all have one.” She winked at a companion. “Assad, d’you mind?”
The captive watched the male depart on his prosaic errand. The brandy was a fire within her veins, it gave her courage. “I could cope a lot better and be less of a nuisance if you’d just untie me—”
It was as far as she got. Rulua rose languidly to her feet and reached up into a luggage compartment. The whip she produced had two leather thongs and was short enough to be used effectively in a restricted space. “If you mention being untied again I’ll use this on some of that pretty skin, dear. England’s gone. Forget it.” She flicked the lash at a taut breast.
Incongruous, incredible, frightening! Trudy Ramsay sipped the hot tea held to her captive lips by a coloured gentleman named Assad. Pain was constant. The woman had been right, hurting like this she could not conceive revolt or argument. She wanted to cry but the circumstances were not quite right for tears. The sting where the thong had pinked her breast was strangely erotic. “What’s going to happen to me?” she inquired politely. The girl, shackled in the cage, jerked herself away from her memories. They had not told her then, or since, what Zindawba held in store. She had come to suppose she had been provided as company for Caroline Dowling. It was Caroline who ‘mattered.’ Trudy Ramsay was part of the scenery, shackled and caged with perfunctory disinterest. Even her punishments were meted out in casual routine.