“I betcha it’s like I said,” Maisie affirmed with conviction. “She’s been taken off on the side to be screwed. Remember, she was with him that time before when she got into that jackpot with Nikola.”
“What about us!” Daphne asked mournfully. “I feel like a pound of coffee on a shelf.”
The coffle was dissolved. The nineteen girls were locked in the warehouse as individual prisoners, their necks relieved of chain. Handcuffs had been moved from back to front, not from humane intent but so they might tend their own needs. They had been fed. From time to time a male or two would enter and move among them thoughtfully, asking ages, looking at teeth, feeling and cupping vulvas with wise and inquisitive hands. The girls were merchandise. Mr. Saud believed in a quick turnover.
“Wonder what he’s asking for us.” Maisie massaged her crotch thoughtfully as though to rid it of the last male hand. “I bet it’s high. D’you notice, we’re white, the bastards maul us more than the rest.” She sighed. “Gosh, what I’d give to have my uniform and my gun!”
“And no handcuffs!” mourned Daphne. She tugged in frustration at her bond. “These damn things on my wrists drive me up the wall—and there’s no getting rid of them.” Her plaint turned into a wail of despair. “We’ll never get rid of them! We’ll always be handcuffed or chained . . . ! Oh, Maisie . . . !”
“You will both follow me, please.”
It was the imperturbable voice of Lilith. She beckoned. “Follow me and stop feeling sorry for yourselves. There are those in this land who would envy you.” She led them through passages to the inevitable door. With her hand on the knob, she turned and said, with unmistakable kindness. “Be sensible and do what you’re told. You can never escape. If you choose to be difficult your punishments will be hard to bear.” She smiled thinly and shrugged. “And it will probably be I who must inflict them.” She pushed the door open for them and announced, as might a formal butler: “Miss Maisie Collins and Miss Daphne Weir.”
“This is Mr. Amtolah,” said Mr. Saud cordially.
“He is considering your purchase.”
He was bland, without age or nationality, heavy. But he smiled and motioned to the bottles and glasses on the desk. “A drink, my dears? I’m sure it would not come amiss.” Taking their startled hesitation for assent, he poured two generous libations. “While you sip these you will stand facing me. An erect posture please, your feet somewhat apart.” He nodded as though sharing with them a pleasurable experience.
They obeyed. They stood. They gulped. They tried not to show their tremblings as two pairs of shrewd male eyes assessed their nudity. Mr. Amtolah refilled their glasses, smiling benignly at the clink of their handcuffs on the crystal. “I operate the finest brothel on the West Coast of Africa. Would you care to join my staff?” he asked with the jovial assurance of a man betting on a certainty.
“Whores!” The ugly word sprang from Daphne’s lips clothed in shocked abhorrence. “Maisie and I aren’t prostitutes.”
“We’d be no good at it,” Maisie contributed cautiously. “We don’t know anything about it.”
“Everybody knows everything about it.” Maisie held up her linked wrists. “Do we really have a choice?”
“I would prefer girls who do not have to be constantly whipped.” Mr. Amtolah shared a conspiratorial wink. “Except, of course, for the pleasure of my clients.”
“You mean men pay money to whip a girl!”
“It is a basic fact of life, my child.” The prospective purchaser smiled at her incredulity. “I notice you have been whipped today.”
“A few cautionary strokes,” said Mr. Saud modestly.
“But nonetheless charming. You find the whipping of their breasts effective?”
“It gets their attention.”
“Ah, yes, I would charge a very large sum for such a privilege.” Mr. Amtolah scrutinised four feminine breasts, each with its own scarlet stripe. He was obviously doing rapid mental arithmetic.
“I don’t think we want to be whores,” Maisie said firmly.
“I would like you to bend over the end of the desk, my dear.” Mr. Amtolah nodded and beamed at Daphne. He turned to his host: “With your permission . . . ?”
“The two girls surveyed the slim length of cane that never seemed far separate from their African lives. They exchanged desolate glances. Mr. Saud laughed at Maisie’s obvious thought. “Your turn will come, girl. Save your nobility.”
“The willingness and ability of a girl to accept the cane is an important determination in her price,” the brothel keeper explained helpfully as he used the cane to tap Daphne’s reluctant rump in the direction he desired. “Come, come, my dear! No maiden modesty. We have all seen a girl’s bottom many times.”
“But I haven’t done anything!” Daphne’s plaint was tearful.
“You are doing something now. You are slow to obey.”
The reluctant brunette put down her glass and bent forward from her hips across Mr. Saud’s desk. She stretched her ironed hands out above her head and hid her face in her arms. There came a great stillness.
“An obedient maiden is above rubies,” said Mr. Amtolah sententiously, and struck the proffered flesh with vigor. Daphne’s world burst into a conflagration of agony. She screamed and came erect, cuffed hands reaching . . .
“Lean down again, my dear.”
“I can’t! Oh, it hurts so—!”
“Down!”
“Stop it! Damn you, leave her alone!”
It was an involuntary female protest. Maisie was appalled by her own temerity. But in the silence of disapproval her courage held. She glared defiantly, her voice bitter: “That’s no way to treat a girl.”
Mr. Saud pressed a buzzer. When Lilith came his words were terse. “Whip them well. In front of the others.”
As they were ushered from the office Mr. Amtolah’s suave voice followed. “Of course, with girls like that their price would have to be extremely low—”
The door closed.
“I was afraid of this,” Lilith said regretfully.
“You haven’t had time to adjust, I’ll have to be unkind to you. Do you want me to get male help or will you obey me?”
They obeyed. After the man Lilith seemed almost a friend.
It was quick, makeshift and painful on their wrists. A rope from their handcuffs to a rafter, pulled tight to stand them on their toes. They beheld each other’s taut nakedness, ten feet apart. The rest of the captive troop clustered in a wide circle, awestruck but fascinated, dusky hands tugging at the tight metal of their bonds.
“They were disobedient and spoke out of turn.”
Lilith’s explanation to the watching eyes sounded like an epitaph. She turned to the half-suspended nudities. “Open your legs and keep them open.”
With impersonal competence, Lilith whipped the inside of their thighs, their groins, the pouting lips of their pudendums. She stepped from one to the other to give them time to stop screaming and catch their breath. As an innovation for them she cut the whip into their strained armpits. “You’ll get enough thrashings on your back and bottoms from men in the future,” she told them casually. “Now I whip you as a woman whips—knowing where . . . !”
Maisie acknowledged Lilith’s skill with screams.
She had promised herself she would remain mute. But after the first blows the vow vanished, erased by agonies etched on female secret places which no whip should know. She howled and kicked, seeing a mirror of herself in Daphne’s similar responses. The watching faces did not matter. If she was disgracing the white race what did it matter! What did anything matter except that the whipping stop and her arms be freed! In one of the pauses in their punishment she choked out brokenly: “We’ll be whores—let us be whores—whores!”
“I’m afraid it’s a bit late for that, girl.” Lilith’s voice was without emotion. She struck again.
The reappearance of the coffle chain was good news and bad. It would chafe their necks shamefully and keep them under control. But it meant none had been sold. They remained a group. Except for the absent Trudy the troop was intact. They stood abjectly as the metal collars were locked upon slender throats. The two white girls with their striated skins, shamed and hurting, made no demur. For them the collar was better than the whip. Once more the handcuffs were switched. The girls marched from the warehouse with wrists locked behind their back, breasts pointing, nakedly available to any man with cash.