"Then, there are various Nuncios, one of whom you met the other night. They are the private messengers of Pain and hold a kind of honorary position within the hierarchy.
"After that, there are any number of paid retainers. Hazel is one of them. She is a Whipmistress. Theoretically, her services can be dispensed with at any time, but if that decision were taken, it would be necessary to do away with her because she knows too much. Once she had the honor of whipping Sir William L. himself, for example.
"Finally, there is the main body of ordinary members, the Members of Pain. The gentlemen you met here on your first visit were in that category. There are the Novices, and from time to time Men or Women-Elect, as they are called. You became automatically a Woman-Elect after your first visit here. Under normal circumstances you would have become a Novice at the next General Meeting. But before his death, Mr. Oakes set out his reasons carefully and persuasively for recommending you to the Office of Painmistress. Sir William was evidently convinced and got in touch at once with his Pain Cardinal. That's all I know."
He got up and poured himself a drink.
"Would you like one, Gertrude?"
I nodded.
When he handed it to me, he said: "I agreed with Mr. Oakes. I think you are just what is needed to bring discipline back to the Order in this area."
I smiled and thanked him.
"If you have any questions?" he said.
"I have," I said. "Does this house belong to me?"
"As long as you are Painmistress."
"What about money?"
"You needn't worry about expense," he said with a smile. "You have a rich congregation."
"Will they like me?"
"They will obey you."
"Can I chose new retainers if I wish to?"
"Of course."
"I know a man."
"Ah, you have one in mind?"
"My personal Whipmaster," I said. "A Glasgow cobbler. It was he who groomed me to be what I am."
"Excellent! We should employ him at once!"
"Tomorrow I shall fetch him. I'll want you to come with me."
"Gladly, my Lady!"
"I like you, Harry."
"I like you, Gertrude!"
I smiled at him. "Why did you call me 'my Lady?'"
"In public, Gertrude, I shall always call you that in future. We must preserve the dignities of the Order. Mr. Oakes had become too lax. Many suspected it. You, Gertrude, must be a disciplinarian from the beginning."
— 3-
I watched the cars arrive from my private apartment on the top floor of the big house: Rolls Royces, Daimlers, Talbots, and many others. Two uniformed attendants were directing the parking. Harry had already gone downstairs and I assumed he was occupying himself with the more important guests among the Members, for of course I found out at once that our Order, like all earthly orders, admitted of privileges for the rich and powerful. Harry had explained a great deal of this to me. Mr. Oakes had been a millionaire. Sir William L. was a great landowner. How then had I been chosen? In what way could I enrich or bring power to the Order? All Harry could say was that Oakes himself had on more than one occasion referred to this kind of corruption within the Order, to its being spoiled by wealth and privilege, to the possibility of its degenerating into a private club in which the wealthy could indulge in petty obscenities, and it was Harry's opinion that a stricture must have come from the Holy Seat itself both to Sir William L. and, perhaps through him, to Oakes, for at no time, Harry said, had either man impressed him as possessing a holy zeal for the commission of their trust. There was too much amusement, too many gatherings which were merely lascivious, too much hiring of professional exhibitionists from without the Order, couples who would dance in the nude and copulate at the same time, sleek-bodied women of various races and preferably of Lesbian tendencies who would rub and lick each other's sex for the delight of Members; in fact, in Harry's opinion, and that seemed to be borne out by the fact that those Members who actively participated in flagellation were becoming fewer and fewer in number, the big house was in danger of degenerating into a profitable brothel. There, he suspected, was the reason for my election. Indeed, Oakes' last letter to his Grand Painmaster, Sir William L., had hinted at this. New blood was needed in a decadent sect. "More blood," Harry said with a smile, "more blood and less titillation." It seemed that our Congregation had swollen to two hundred members and that not five percent of those members had appeared more than once for flagellation.
All this worried me as I watched the Members arrive in their fine cars. How on earth would I be able to control two hundred idle and lascivious men and women, some of whom, according to Harry, were very prominent in public affairs in this part of the country! What if they refused to obey me? How could I hope in one night to clear away all the corruption which my predecessor had allowed to come to exist during the ten years of his office? What if I was faced with mutiny? Harry had done his best to console me. He would be there at my right hand. Every one of the two hundred had sworn to obey under the penalty of Excommunication, and that, in the Order of Pain, meant death. Again, some Members would be firmly on my side, Mr. Bing for example, and Mr. Duval, and the redoubtable Mr. Coldstream. And I was not to forget that Sir William L. would be present, incognito of course, for none of the Members knew him except as an ordinary Member. No, in Harry's opinion, my Congregation would obey.
But would it?
I had no means of knowing in advance.
"Is everything ready, Willie?" I said.
Willie, who had been reading the evening paper, looked up. "Aye," he said.
The flogging room in the basement had been altered. Willie himself had attended to the installation of the new fixtures. The whipping board had been removed. Metal rings had been sunk into the floor and ceiling. Victims would now be stretched as I had been when I delivered myself over to Willie's doting punishment in the back shop of the boot maker's in Cumberland Street.
New instruments had been provided. No expense had been spared. Somehow Willie's company was a great comfort to me. Here was a Whipmaster of imagination. He was to have his own will with any female member of our organization: to whip, to suck, to dote, to bring religion where religion had not been before. But his loyalty touched me. It was my body which interested him. And it was his. Before all the world, it was his.
For some time now no more cars had arrived. If that meant that everyone had already come, then Harry would soon be sending for me. I pulled up my skirt and lay over a soft leather stool in front of Willie.
"Whip me a little, Willie!" I breathed.
He took a three-pronged leather strap from his pocket and with his full force, gave me six cruel blows across the soft, sweat-smeared surface of my buttocks. And then his nose and tongue were there, nudging, exploring. I raised my palpitating rump so that my slimy cunt came in contact with his darting wet tongue, and to feel it there, at my body's center, strong, hard, and masterful, just that, gave me back the knowledge of my own power, the religious certainty of my commitment.