Simple and direct. Rannah had the laugh on all of them. How helpless they were in their bondage! Robbed even of speech! Following her mistress, Stacie longed to speak but was still gagged. She ceased to care about the tears that trickled down her cheeks.
“You think I am terribly cruel, don’t you, slave girl. So now I keep the other half of my bargain. Those three very beautiful girls will be nurtured and trained to become houris for the delight of any man. When Mohammad Yasin desires a favour in high places, favours that money cannot buy, he will use them as a bribe. So cease to worry about them. They will receive pain only in such measure as is needful to make them amenable to their new status.”
Rannah looked back and laughed at what she saw.
“Allright, I take it off. I love your chatter and your screams. I do not want you silent.” Deftly, but with care she took the wet ball from her slave girl’s mouth. “There! You can talk. Is your bottom ready for its stripes?”
“Yes, my lady.”
“But you do not really relish them!”
“No, my lady.”
Rannah laughed gaily. “So woebegone, so sad! Perhaps I will forgive you the stripes and give you something worse. The day is still young, we have much time. Would you like that?”
“If it pleases you, my lady.”
“Poor child! So cautious! But I would be cautious too, were I in your shoes.”
The slave girl had a sad feeling it was not going to be a good day. She was glad to be forgiven the caning—if in truth she was! But Rannah was in a pixie mood. The ‘something worse’ might indeed be just that. She strained tentatively at her handcuffs as was her instinctive habit when in stress. She looked around the familiar room they had just entered and wondered which of its terrors she would meet.
“Lay face down, slave girl, so your ankles fit in these.” ‘These’ comprised an anchored metal clamp, the half circles of which were raised a few inches from the stone. Their intent was all too evident. Sighing, Stacie lowered herself to the floor, her locked hands helping her not at all. Looking over one shoulder she disposed her feet as ordered and watched Rannah flip over the top section and immovably prison her ankles. Her helplessness was now frightening. “I’m not naked,” she said irrelevantly as though hoping to start afresh.
“You’re not, are you! Never mind. What you’ve got on won’t matter for this one.”
When Rannah knelt beside her and began to plait her hair Stacie was both scared and intrigued. The plait was long, twined within it was solidly anchored a knotted cord.
“On your knees, slave girl, erect.”
It was not easy, Rannah had to help. Possibilities began to loom, to kneel on the stone all day would not be pleasant. But the preparations were not yet done. A couple of feet before her was a square hole in the stone, into it Rannah inserted and pushed home a solid four by four that had the appearance of much use. The handcuffs were unlocked and discarded.
“A hand on each side, Stacie.”
Her wrists were tied to the post with much care so that the slave knelt upright, her hands slightly raised above the level of her chin.
“Comfy?”
“No, my lady.”
Not the braid! Its cord was pulled back and tethered to a ring behind her feet. It was gently tested and gently pulled. When it was knotted Stacie could not bend or lean forward, she could not even look down. Her head was held very erect indeed. Her pinioned arms prevented her leaning back to ease the strain. She had perforce to kneel as she had been positioned, she had no other choice. She could move little and that without effect. She longed to slump back upon her heels, but her corded wrists denied her wish. It was not a routine day.
Rannah circled her appraisingly. “You look delicious, slave girl,” she approved. “I will leave you soon, but there is one more thing . . .”
Stacie saw her torture only as it approached. Once positioned, her taut braid would prohibit examination. She divined its purpose instantly, and looked up at the Arab girl in mute and agonized appeal.
It was very simple: a block of wood three feet long. Six inches at the base, tapering to a faintly curved smooth edge an inch wide. Straddling the helpless girl, Rannah managed to raise her from the floor long enough to slip the balk of timber into its appointed place beneath the victim’s knees. A kick here and there aligned it to her satisfaction before she went away and left the kneeling girl alone. Neither girl had spoken. Each had seen the condition as immutable.
Stacie knew it would get worse, probably much worse. But even at the beginning it was frightening enough to make her clench her teeth in silence while the door closed and Rannah went beyond the sound of a voice in agony. Throughout the preparations she had longed to plead. Now it was too late, there was none to hear. It was awful, it was frightening, but it was best. That was why the dark-eyed girl had sped away.
Coping with the waves of pain from her tortured knees, Stacie tried to assess the limits of her suffering. More urgently she sought easement. There was none. Her braided hair was wicked, without it she could have leant forward and perhaps taken some weight with her prisoned wrists, but erect as she was forced to stay, her arms were thrust straight forward and took none of her weight at all, her knees got it all. If she wanted to lean her weight on one she could ease the other. She tried it, but relapsed in gasping anguish. Stacie bitterly realized she would stay kneeling and upright as she was, her knees indented on their narrow ledge, until such time as her mistress decided to release her. Even if she fainted, her hands tied to the post would keep her from falling. Between her wrists and her braided hair she could do naught else but endure what she must.
Torture was always the same in its ‘if only’. The phrase was Stacie’s. Looking along the bare while columns of her arms so securely bound to the post she was impelled to think that if only she could free one hand, even one finger. If only she could so lean back and toss her head that the braid would come undone. If only she had been vouchsafed the leverage to thrust aside the chunk of wood on which her knees were punished so that she could kneel upon the flat stone instead of the cunning edge designed for the endless messages of pain that shot up her thighs and enveloped her whole being. If only . . . If only . . . !
She moaned quietly. Her pain was such a lovely thing. She needed someone to share it, to hear her scream, to reprove or to console, it mattered little which so long as they were a human presence who might eventually feel pity and set her free. Free! How distant the word seemed now! But it was always thus with torture. When she was whipped the horror of the first stroke told her she could never survive until the last, it would not come in time! Then and now she would succumb and die long before the strokes or the hours or the centuries rolled by. She thought of those who had held their secrets no matter what the torturer did to them, but deemed herself not of these. She felt certain she would blurt out what was required of her at the first shock of awfulness. More probably, now she knew the limitless nature of pain she would tell all when they stripped her and bound her at the start.
This was the real thing. There would be no visitors to distract her from her pain. The pain was an end in itself, so none need witness it. The hidden cameras would record it with fidelity for her father’s eyes. How incredible that he should see her thus! Perhaps at this moment she had moved enough to find favour on the film. Would the pictures show her as grotesque or beautiful! It still mattered, she was female.
For a little while she moaned and screamed. She did it with conscious intent as though the sound placed a barrier between herself and agony. It tired her so that she moved closer to the dazed acceptance as the pain burrowed and fought its way into her, the acceptance of something that could not be escaped. You moaned constantly to placate that which could not be assuaged, perhaps you sobbed. If you were a girl you cried.