The punishments had been a shock. But Trudy Ramsay had come to understand them as implicit to her new condition. She earned them by impertinence and small verbal indignations against her captivity. Once sentenced she was appalled, but after the pain had faded they fell into a perspective no longer horrific.
“Tomorrow, dear. Three strokes on each hand.”
“But, Rulua, I only said—!”
“It was the way you said it, dear: and you have been warned.”
“But, Rulua . . . Miss—Ohh please! I haven’t had my hands caned since I was a child in school! And then, it was only one on each!”
“A nostalgic memory, dear. These will be somewhat more painful. You will receive them in the Market Square.”
“O-h-h . . . N-o-o-o! Oh Miss, not with all those people watching!”
“They’ve all seen you in the cage, Trudy. What’s the difference?”
“But I won’t be able to be heroic, I know I won’t! I’ll cry and make a fuss and you’ll be angry with me!”
“Silly girl! You’ll probably come through splendidly. Your hands will be free, of course, but we’ll keep your feet chained so you can’t be foolish and run.”
“O-h-h-h . . . Oh, Miss Rulua, punish me some other way? P-I-e-a-s-e ? There are other ways, aren’t there?”
“Indeed there are, dear. I am letting you off lightly this first time.”
“Lightly! You call that lightly: three on each hand!”
“It is now four, dear. For all this commotion.” Trudy bit her lip. Rulua was steel, and she knew her transgression. Back in the cage she wept, cradled in Caroline’s arms, knowing the suspenseful wait until the morrow a part of her punishment.
By Zindawba standards it was no big deal. Minor wrongdoing was commonly punished in public. The fact of it being a white girl to receive the strokes generated only a slightly larger circle of the curious than was customary. Trudy suspected that had it been Caroline Dowling to be caned the audience would have been larger.
It was the most demeaning moment of her life.
Four soldiers kept guard and controlled the spectators. A street vendor hawked sweetmeats for small sums. In the centre of the Square stood Rulua with the hateful cane, a limber length putting to shame Trudy’s memories of her schooldays. The palpitating delinquent clinked her shackled steps to where she must stand to receive her pain. Exchanging a glance of total understanding with her Mistress, Trudy Ramsay held out her hand.
It was not until the cane rapped demandingly upon her bent elbow for the second blow that the punished girl fully realised her reaction to the first. The pain had driven her to her knees, clutching her hurt palm within the haven of a damp armpit, sobbing in shock.
“Ups-a-daisy, dear. The first is always difficult. On your feet!”
Trudy looked around. The crowd was enjoying her shame, the soldiers smirked. She hated them all. She was white and they loved to see her knees in the dust, her Union Jack soiled . . . Bitterly, she scrambled erect and thrust out a sacrificial arm. The cane whirred joyously.
She stood firm, unbelieving what she could will herself to do. The pain was sickening, but she stood docilely with hurt hands passive at her side until the dreaded command. When it came she looked only at the sky as she proffered an already wounded palm.
“You did wonderfully, dear. I knew you would.” Rulua’s tribute was sincere. She too had made herself bare from the waist up. Her skin glistened. She was a magnificent creature.
The caning was over. Her hands had each received their four strokes. Trudy was fighting down the waves of nausea and a compulsion to hug herself in agony. Her eye was apprehensively upon a length of cord in Rulua’s hand. “Miss . . . oh Miss, what now?” her voice quavered.
“Your hands are to be tied behind your back. It is part of the punishment.”
It was indeed! But the caned girl had no will to demur. Dolefully, she turned and arranged her wrists for the cord’s convenience. Then bit her lip at a fresh but familiar pain. Walking her shackled way back to the cage she knew herself trebly naked for being robbed of hands. She had not thought of her breasts during her caning, but now their nippled tips seemed to fill the horizon for all. She felt certain the crowd’s remarks were ribald. The Mistress’s grip upon her arm was firm but gentle. It was hard to believe it the same hand that had dealt the blows . . Back in the cage, Caroline had been warned not to loose her companion’s bonds. It was an order they both knew she had best obey. The delinquent wrists remained firmly corded for two days and nights. It was the two girls’ first lesson in Zindawba discipline.
Trudy, alone in the cage, separated her chained hands as far as the links allowed and examined her palms. They should have been scarred for life, but they were not! That too was a lesson, a girl could be punished and punished and punished . . . Girls healed their hurts with a daunting rapidity, leaving them again virgin for infliction. Lonely, her thoughts drifted to Caroline, wondering what was done to her in these unexplained absences, about which she had been warned to ask no questions, and which Caroline herself was firmly unwilling to discuss. At first she had suspected torture or some sort of coercion. But Caroline was a far too happy prisoner for this to be. The wife of Robert Dowling was an enigma to the world. Robbed of news, Trudy could not know the degree in which the fate and behavior of this white woman in darkest Africa had intrigued all and sundry in a speculation as to her motives and eventual destiny. If the State Department knew aught of either they divulged it not. Robert Dowling spoke curtly of divorce, otherwise he was silent. Robbed of certain facts, the media luxuriated in erotic fantasies of illicit love and defection to an unfriendly State. There was also the theory that this woman, often judged the most beautiful in the world, had taken upon herself the guilt of all the whites and was expiating their sins by debasing herself in captivity to a black ruler whose politics were still in doubt. Cautious reference was made to the vigor and quality of Khalief Abhad’s male genitals.
Trudy Ramsay’s puzzlement was compounded by the fact that her companion in captivity, privileged though she might be, was also punished. Caroline’s mischievous tongue, plus a taste of arrogance, had more than once provoked Rulua into handing out a sentence. The penalty was always the same, and Trudy could imagine why: the whipping of the delinquent’s feet. It was a punishment the younger girl dreaded and hoped never to suffer. It seemed too, too awful, and would indeed have been so had not the Mistress held her hand and levied strokes upon the upturned soles of Caroline’s feet light enough to be borne without injury, but usually eliciting a satisfactory modicum of screams. The moral to be drawn was that Caroline Dowling must not be marked: at least not where eyes might search her skin! And Caroline was always tightly bound for her punishment. She did not go to it or endure it with joy.
The captive reverie was disturbed by the voice of a grubby girl child against the bars. “Missie, why you in there?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know.”
The child nodded sagely as though accustomed to being fobbed off with disclaimers. “Why you got them chain things?”
“To keep me from running away.”
“You can’t run! You locked in.”
“Well then, it’s to make me behave.”
“Hmmmmm, you know you get big whipping one day?”
“I’ve heard about it.” Trudy fought down the fear always ready to pounce. “Do you, know what day it’s going to happen?”
“No. But I goin’ ter watch. Big fun ter see yo’ get whip’.”
Trudy’s angry retort was cut short by Rulua’s curt dismissal in the dialect. The child skipped away, laughing. “Fiendish little devils, aren’t they!” the Mistress commented lightly. “How’d you like to get out of that cage?”
“Oh, Rulua . . . free?” Trudy was breathless.
“Well, not really, you’ll still wear a chain.”