Trudy gasped in shock. The ropes had become enemies indeed, biting at her wherever they touched. She understood now the circles round her tummy beneath her ribs, they were supporting the greater part of her weight. Her bare armpits and her female secret took the rest. Woodenly and without protest she exclaimed in bitter understanding: “Oh, Galla ! Galla—!” She looked at Rulua regretfully “You tried to tell me—you tried!”
They separated her feet, then placed one on each side of the post and bound them there, next, her knees. The separation of her legs displayed her black muff as a feminine challenge to the world. “Is my little do-funny wide open?” she asked woefully. “It feels like it.”
They assured her it was not. Its lips were puffed but chastely closed, within them there was no strand of rope to cut. Trudy said “Thank you” politely, then started to cry. Her superior officers stood on the boxes and dried her tears as they fell. When she stopped sobbing they put the boxes in the Jeep and drove away. The fact they had kissed her first was their captive’s only comfort.
Twenty-four hours! The sentence throbbed in the mind of the bound girl. She was already vibrant with pain. It would get worse. She could not know if after hanging thus for many hours she would become numb and inured to her punishment or if the nagging bite’ of the cords was progressively awful. Either way she was stuck with a penance she must pay to a concept of Justice, and affection for those who had bound her. She supposed the time must eventually pass. She looked about her world with dreary disinterest.
Warrant Officer Ringbolt was doing what he considered the ‘right thing.’ Had one of his girls been hospitalised he would have visited with flowers and said appropriate things. He visited his one delinquent damsel now, minus the carnations. Trudy was grateful but embarrassed to be so starkly naked in his presence. The W.O. had a habit of beetling his brows in a focus on her most female parts. She might easily have thought of him as a dirty old man, but his scrutiny was always such as to convey surprise that any human being could be so quaintly endowed.
“Sorry about this, m’gel.” He frowned at her right breast. “Bit uncomfortable, eh!”
“Thank you, sir. Yes, it hurts.”
“Uncivilised lot here.” He transferred his attention to her crotch. “The white man’s burden, and all that rot.” He guffawed. “In your case, the white woman’s, eh!”
“I expect so, sir.”
Trudy always felt sorry for Warrant Officer Ringbolt. His world had been male, no mark of matrimony had marred his record. He was a veteran of sundry wars and skirmishes, a relic of the British Raj in India and the days of District Commissioners in Africa. He was no longer quite real. Yet, considering what he had done with the Troop, who could say that the passing of his breed was not a loss! He was a solid bulwark of faith in something. That the something had slowly dissolved beneath his feet through half a lifetime diluted his faith no whit.
Inevitably he was a ‘father figure’. Ageless as the rock, he could well have been a grandfather. In their sexual encounters she had felt a child beneath his flinty eyes and granite features. Seeing almost as incestuous their fleshly couplings: and herself as a naughty little girl when he caned her bottom or her hands. But in none of the pain he bestowed upon her skin had he seemed a sadist. He was a lonely man seeking a communion he had never found. She was immovably bound but she longed to give him comfort.
“Wogs give you any trouble? I mean . . . can’t, move, can you! Any of ’em—do things—?”
There had been the girl child who had promised to return in the darkness and suck “that nice hairy cunny.” There had been small boys fingering her breasts and tentatively pinching her nipples. They had been enraptured by the discovery that manipulation could enlarge the pink and defenceless buds and make them hard. They had poked at her with bits of stick, then gone away, bored: Too young to value the treasure on the ‘T’.
“Not really, sir. Just children. The adults just look at me and make remarks I don’t understand.”
“Just as well, I expect!”
“But I think it’s working! I mean, sir, I’m here to prove a point, and the way I’m fixed gets it across to them.”
The W.O. nodded absently, allowing his regard to rove from breasts to parted legs, from belly to armpits. His voice was diffident: “Ever feel like going home—the Old Country? Making a run for it?”
“Yes, sir. But it’s not possible, is it?”
“Looked at in terms of ‘escape’?”
“Yes sir—escape! What would be done if I was caught?”
“Humph, see your point! Bit like Nelson’s sailors and Wellington’s army. Once they’d taken the King’s shilling they’d had it. Least you could expect would be a flogging and a spell of that prison you’re so skittish about.” He shrugged apologetically. “They’d have to make an example of you, see what I mean?”
“Yes, sir, I’ve seen all along. But the Troop’s made a life for me. I don’t know what I’d do without the Troop.”
He gave her a fumbling father’s kiss before he left.
“But, Khalief, the poor darling will be suffering terribly!”
The President of Zindawba chuckled at the vehemence in his Mistress’s anxiety. “Don’t agonise, love. She’ll survive.”
“I won’t sleep a wink all night thinking about her—out there tied the way Rulua told me.”
“Get me a drink and stop the emoting or I’ll beat your bottom.” Abhad gazed tenderly at his most prized possession. “I suppose they can put up another post and tie you to it the same way if you want to keep her company?”
“Oh, Khalief, don’t tease! And anyway, that wouldn’t do her any good at all. How about letting me take her place after a few hours?”
“I’ve been waiting for that. You’d do it too!”
“Please let me? Khalief, I’m serious.”
“No!”
The emphatic negative meant Khalief would punish her if she importuned again. She twisted irritably on the rug at his feet, searching for an approach.
“Caroline.” His use of her name was ominous. “You’re in a mood I don’t trust. Get handcuffs.”
Caroline obeyed her lord, but listlessly, her mind still racing. When she knelt and proffered both the chrome circlets and her wrists she bestowed her most winsome smile. “Forgive me, lord. I am but a foolish female.”
“Craft and designing. You should be beaten daily.” He slowly tightened the bands upon her, emphasising each click of the cuff. “I wouldn’t put it past you to do something really foolish for that girl.”
“Thank you, lord.” Caroline repossessed her hands and admired the shining metal now joining them. “Would you like me to fetch a cane?”
“No. Unless I’m brutal you enjoy it.”
“You are never brutal with me, lord.”
“You know damn well I am. You’d ride over me roughshod if I wasn’t.”
“You are too sweet to me, lord. Please be brutal now. Tie me for a while in Trudy’s place? It will teach me a lesson.”
The President of Zindawba shook his head sadly.
“Very well.” It was as though he was conceding a defeat. “You may go and fetch me the cane you like the least.”
Caroline Dowling knew herself privileged. She had become Mistress of the Residency as well as Mistress of the man who ruled Zindawba. That she was frequently demoted to the most humble of slaves bothered her not at all. The Residency staff was forced to make frequent adjustments to her unstable status, viewing her in costly raiment or nude in chains with equal aplomb. Their impersonal acceptance of her in any condition simplified her life enormously. Even when she was sent to Mr. Assad to be whipped he performed the delightful task with exceeding charm, marking her skin with an artist’s skill. They were the best of friends. The handcuffs did not matter. They would not stop her. She knew they had been locked on her wrists as a symbol, a warning. She felt guilty in abusing the trust they actually implied. Khalief often clasped them on her wrists, knowing she adored wearing them. For Caroline too they had a symbolism all her own. Within their confinement she had perfected a remarkable dexterity.