They felt each other’s strokes rather than their own.
Long afterwards they hung. A whipping was a thing of ritual. It had its prelude and its epilogue. The striped and blood flecked bodies of the girls hung from their cords long after the lash was done. Amity left them to their pain and to their thoughts. No doubt custom believed they would vow never to transgress again. They hung, longing for release, willing to make any promise to set themselves free of bonds and free of pain, yet lusting for each other with great hunger. The victory of the whip is in the moment when it beds itself within the cringing flesh.
On the fourth day they were freed of chains and cords. They spent it in paradise and in tracing each others wounds with fingers, filled with love. Their chains had been piled back against the huge chest. No part of them was confined. The dungeon door alone stood between them and the world of sunlight. But it held them captive.
To Dorinda it was a new experience. Confinement within four walls. Imprisonment. Loss of liberty. It had its own piquancy, its own portent and foreboding.. Previously in her captivity on Kyrexos she had always been bound or chained. Now she made the strange discovery that bonds were less frustrating than to be obliged to live within a room because you had no key for the door.
"I told you it was a beastly whip," Terry said plaintively. "Look at us both. We’re all over little cuts where the end of the lash wrapped around. We won’t get rid of all the marks for at least three weeks. I bet Mark will want us both to wear clothes so his conscience won’t bother him. Don’t do it! I’m simply going to flaunt my weals and wounds at him."
"If he wants clothes on me I’ll have to wear them. I’m a slave," Dorinda pointed out.
Her companion examined the premise. "‘Spose you’re right," she admitted. "Damn odd spot for a girl. Gosh, darling, Mark and I are really messing up your life, aren’t we? I’ll never be able to carry off this slave thing the way Mark can." Her eyes sparkled. "Darling, I’ve got a corking idea. If he demands clothes, refuse to wear ‘m. See what happens."
"That’s no corking idea. I’ll just get whipped some more," Dorinda had no doubts about her status and the penalties that went with it. Terry giggled. "I don’t see what’s to stop me whipping you if you disobey the order I just gave you. See, I order you to stay naked." "That hazard occurred to me tight at the start," Dorinda admitted. "I could easily get jockeyed into a contretemps that would entitle both of you to slash away at me."
Terry giggled with delight. "I’ll provoke such a situation just for fun. See what happens. When it comes to the crunch I’ll have to concede of course, or we’d both be getting our tails caned."
"Being a slave girl isn’t easy."
Dorinda’s rueful statement evoked merriment. "Tell me, darling," Terry said earnestly. "If I order you to do something you hate, would you disobey?"
The slave girl gave the question much thought. "Before I can really answer that one I’d have to ask you if you would whip me of I refused."
"Yes, I’d whip you, or ask Mark to."
"Then I’d obey. In that spot a slave girl has to obey. She has no choice. But if I knew you wouldn’t punish me I’d only obey if it was something that gave you much happiness.
"I will whip you, darling. You know that, don’t you?"
"Of course. I want you to. Don’t give me privilege because of this happiness we find together. If you did I think it would make us both disloyal to our master. He is my master, y’know. I have to see him as that. Good heavens, if he wasn’t, what would I be doing in this dungeon?"
"Darling, let me lick your wounds again."
Dorinda disposed herself upon the bench. Terry’s mouth and tongue sought a whip cut, laved it busily and went on the to next. They did this for each other throughout the day. They made factual the old expression of ‘licking one’s wounds’. A whipped girl cannot bathe in a dungeon or find salve for cut skin. They could not lick their own. But they could employ the oldest remedy upon each other. This they did with joy and sensuous delight.
But in the mind of each was a single dominant thought. When would their dungeon door open?
It was on the fifth day they were forgiven and made free.
Terry’s guess had been correct. The slave girl was clothed. The master’s edict had been firm. Dorinda dared not disobey, nor did she wish to. Quaintly enough, Terry had clothed herself expensively in gorgeous scraps. But then, the occasion was a gala one. The first dinner for what Mark now referred to as the ‘ex convicts’. A sort of coming home. A return to grace. Dorinda’s joy was marred by only the one small cloud.
The question inevitably arose. When the three of them were seated round the table Terry impishly asked it.
"Mark, darling, in what awful predicament have you got poor Mabel tucked away?"
Mark looked smug. His eyes twinkled back and forth between them. Making them wait for what was obviously an pronouncement. Dorinda’s pulse quickened.
"Fact is, dear girls, good old Mabel isn’t with us anymore."
He had their complete attention. Dorinda’s small cloud vanished. Mark enjoyed his sensation.
"While you two enemies of society were doing time I saw quite a lot of Mabel. More I saw the girl the more I realised she was very much surplus. Didn’t need her on strength, no place in the ranks as it were. One extra bed and all that. So I put the old intellect to work and came up with a cracking good idea."
He paused and beamed at his rapt audience. "Couldn’t very well drown the dear girl, and I didn’t relish the boat trip to dump her where she could pick up some transportation. But then, I remembered Mike…"
"Mike! Surely Mike…"
"Quiet girl! Don’t interrupt. It’s more subtle than you think." He grinned at Dorinda cheerfully. "I remembered we were about at the time this Mike chappie said he’d return to pick you up. It was a natural. I took Mabel down to the spot where he set you ashore and chained her to a tree. Off to one side where she couldn’t reach it and couldn’t read it I placed a sign. It read: ‘Dorinda’s gone. Take me’. The key to Mabel’s chain was attached."
"Oh Mark, how could you," Terry managed to giggle and be shocked at the same time.
"I’ll admit to a twinge of conscience. But the more I saw of Mabel the more certain I was that Mike might find a lot in common. Besides, it was the chance of a lifetime. Killed two birds with one stone. When I went to check on her comfort the next morning, she was gone." Leaning back in his chair Mark gave his audience a benevolently Macchiavellian smile.
"I’m so glad," said Dorinda. Then blushed at Terry’s knowing wink.
"Champagne, Sir," said Hislop with deep approval.
It was Mabel’s epitaph.
"I’m not going to be a bit nice to you today," Terry warned happily. "Mark monopolised you nearly a week. Today’s mine. You’ll suffer."
"No dungeons, please." Dorinda’s plea was real.
"Oh, all right," the younger girl conceded. "I boobed. I don’t want to get back in there either. We’ll have our day in the sun. Isn’t it lovely to be naked again?"
Dorinda was happy. To be with Terry again was a delight. She was secretly weary of rooms in which she suffered strangely devised discomforts while her skin was given time to heal. Mark was almost Calvinistic in his pre-occupation with her training. She was a much punished girl. If Terry chose to whip her she would bear it cheerfully. It would not be as bad as her other inflictions. They would be together in the glorious sunlight.
"Hands behind your back, darling. Wrists crossed."
"What? No handcuffs?"
"I’m going to be cruel. Cord chafes."
The slave girl stood passive and allowed herself to be bound. The cords that were looped and drawn tight around her wrists were intimate, a part of her. A beloved reminder of she who had tied the knots. They were tight. But she made no demur. She had grown used to handcuffs, they gave a greater latitude than she would now possess. She started and looked back over her shoulder when her neck was encircled.