where it had hung waiting, presumably for me!
'You needn't think you're going to use that thing on me!' I affirmed with a fine British confidence I did not feel. She used it on me with great competence and a frightening absence of emotion. To her I was a silly child. I was clothed, so she contented herself with my legs which were bare. I skipped and ran and howled, but she was always there. She slashed away at me until I was reduced to a pleading bundle on the floor. The only way I could think to shield my legs was to sit on them the way a hen sits on her eggs. The woman's name was Lotta. After the whipping of my bare legs I treated her with great respect. I gave instant obedience to her slightest word. I had no idea where I was. The wicker basket had been loaded into a truck and the journey had been long. Between the basket and having my legs whipped I was more than ready and very surprised by the modern bathroom. Lotta stood by watchfully while I made myself very clean. There were oils and perfumes she poured in the water for me. You can guess what was coming. I never did get my western clothes back. With the help of a giggling native girl who looked at me with the most avid speculation in her wise eyes, Lotta bedecked my nakedness with some pretty odds and ends and bangles that made me feel twice as nude as nude! I was then escorted to The Presence. He was old. Hawk faced. Arab. I liked him instantly, there was something paternal about his lined face and bright intelligent eyes. He said, 'Good afternoon, Miss Carstairs.' In perfect English. As I said, I was very young. Instead of returning his greeting I said frostily: 'The police will make a frightful fuss about this, y'know.' He inclined his head, just fractionally. 'You will give me much pleasure, child. You shall have no regrets.' I muffed everything. I said the first thing in my mind: 'But you're old!' Surely grandfathers didn't ravish maidens! His eyes clouded momentarily, but his voice remained even: 'I must ask you to forget escape, the police and the past. None of those things exist for you now. All in my house welcome you.' I was a pompous little pussycat. 'If you let me go now I won't press charges,' I said in the manner of the best fiction.
'Allah has willed that you be a member of my household. Heed his will and mine, child.'
'I'm not your child, and don't bring Allah into this!' I retorted, painting my path to pain with profligate abandon. The old man sighed. He looked at Lotta with only a faint lifting of one eyebrow. He dismissed me briefly with two awful words: 'Twenty lashes.' For me to fight Lotta was nonsense, but I tried, After a silly scuffle she picked me up and carried me from The Presence under one arm. I was kicking and beating my fists against her impassivity like a fractious little girl of nine. This time a quite different room. Large, of stone, punishment implicit in every inch. I quailed at the things I could recognize and at those I could not. Lotta hung me up by my wrists. She was a faithful custodian. She stripped me completely naked and folded my rejected finery neatly. I hung with my toes six inches above the floor, trembling, feeling foolish and shamed. Exposed! Some instinct told me to keep quiet. Without preamble she proceeded to whip me very, very slowly and very, very hard. The cuts of the lash falling from across my shoulders down and down to meet the scarlet and purple on my legs and thighs. Her strokes might have been governed by a metronome. I remember my screams. There were a lot of pleadings here and there, and some promises. They sounded shameful even as I uttered them, so I won't repeat. I had not known such pain existed or that it could be endured by a naked girl. During the first ten strokes I was sure I would die. Twenty was not possible to bear — I knew it wasn't! But the blows fell regularly as I shrieked and kicked. Twelve, fifteen, eighteen… My youth and Lotta's skill deprived me of the drama of demise. I was led back to The Presence, bare naked and shivering. I was made to pose. I was still young and English enough to be afraid of my own nakedness. I had been taught it was shameful and that no man should ever see it except my husband. True, I had taken some of this with a grain of salt. But just the same I had done very little hopping around in the nude, Now I was forced to stand erect with my hands clasped on my head. First with my back to my owner so that he might count my stripes and judge them adequate, then facing him so that he might assess the quality of his most recent acquisition. I also had to stretch my legs far apart and to bend down to expose my bottom. He viewed my enforced performance with a grave regard that might have prompted me to revolt or sarcasm had not Lotta stood to one side with her whip. I wanted no more of that. Then the catechism. I answered his questions respectfully and promptly. I was a changed girl. I stood there with my breasts thrust out as he desired and told him all he wanted to know, I'd have told him anything. It shocks me still to know how easily and how well a girl can be governed by a whip. I was then taken to a very bare room. Its only furnishings were a thin mattress, a slop pail and a collar and chain. The metal collar was locked around my neck, the other end of the chain was made fast to the wail. This tether enabled me to move about in approximately half the area of the room. It snubbed me short when I tried to reach the door. I spent an hour or so feeling sorry for myself and pulling uselessly at my collar and chain. I found that tether bitterly humiliating in its simile to the control of dogs. No girl wearing it could fail to realize its superfluity so far as keeping her prisoner went. The massive door and its bolts did that! My chain and collar were locked on me to tell me what I was and to induce a proper submissiveness. They did it very well. I have told you of my induction into slavery in a factual sort of way. But I don't suppose I can portray the psychic shock. It was tremendous: Yesterday, a carefree young female tourist, today, a naked slave in a barren cell and with a chain 'round her neck and her skin well striated by a whip, a whip used in pure utility to teach obedience. When I desolately lay down on the hard little strip of mattress, it was logical enough that I should remember that other time with Miss Hilde… It was my first understanding of the singularity of pain. It can be given and received with love, or it can be inflicted purposefully as Lotta had whipped me. But then it happened! I suppose the friction of the mattress on my nipples, or on my puss as I wriggled to find a comfort that was not there, was what sparked it. But, seeping through my misery, I was astonished to recognize a familiar heat between my legs. It was like meeting an old friend you thought had dropped you. I found an immense comfort, a sort of sanctuary, My eager hand and seeking finger were involuntary. As I drifted off into rainbow fantasies it was not Miss Hilde who exerted her dominion over me. It was Lotta. I slept, of course, You always think you can't, but you do. In the morning I began my new life as a slave. My behavior was meticulously proper. But once, as though I couldn't help myself, I deliberately provoked Lotta into whipping me: nothing dramatic, but enough to fan the embers of my fire. I did not quite understand it, but it was good, something to hold on to. I was not alone. In the same faintly preoccupied manner in which she did everything, Lotta used her authority to make me service her. That is the polite term; isn't it, for having me feed between her legs? It was a minor Sheikdom, and my owner was the venerable Sheik Inman Azzam. He told me, with a rather sweet regret, that he could no longer pierce my loins, but that until a man died he would worship beauty, and that was why I was there: I was beautiful! That was enough. I would be an exquisite plaything who always did his bidding. About the time I was feeling as though I was promoted to Princess, he explained how I would be whipped quite often as the mood took him. He smiled benignly as though bestowing a mark of favour which, in a strange way, he was. Being young I adjusted. Azzam was lovable. In serving him I found a contentment I would not previously have believed possible. He was wise and kind — unless offended. Then he was implacable and cruel. The oddly detached Lotta with her smoldering eyes supplied me with the need Azzam's departed virility could not fill. Satisfied that she had me well broken, Lotta bestowed on me the same beneficence that I daily rendered unto her. I became compliantly happy in a small enchanted world. The fact that I was always, in some intriguing manner chained bothered me not at all. I would have felt unloved without it. Silver shackles completed and enhanced my scanty costumes — no one could call 'em clothes! I was whipped constantly. In the moulding of what is now me, those whippings were important. They never injured but they sure did hurt. As my fire grew I approached them in a trembling dither of lust. But Lotta always ensured that I ended them in tears. Often, afterwards, I was left fastened for the rest of the day. Sometimes when I remained bound in my pose of punishment Azzam would come and talk to me as though nothing had happened. I grew accustomed to nudity before his eyes. The days became weeks and the weeks broadened into months. It was then that Yolanda happened. I was standing naked in the room where I was whipped. My hands were chained above my head. I'd been there a couple of hours and was half asleep in fantasy land when a girl walked in. She stood for several moments staring at me with wide, startled eyes. Then, in an endearing English voice, said: 'Frightfully sorry?' and turned to leave.
'Don't go… please!' She turned back. I could tell she was curious. She came and stood before me, examining my nudity and the tell-tale whipmarks it bore.
'You must have been a very bad girl?' That's Yolanda! Not shocked. Open mind. Curious! Actually she was loving it. I had absolutely no thought of escape, or rescue, or of using her. I fell in love with her on the spot and wanted only to keep her from discreetly leaving. 'I'm afraid I like it,' I told her mischievously. She nodded, eyes shining to match my mood. 'Then why are you chained?'
'Well, it does hurt quite a lot. And besides, I'm a slave girl.'
'I'm sure you deserve every stroke.' It was as though we had known each other always. I was thinking up a cute retort when we were joined by Sheik Inman Azzam. He was unperturbed. 'Miss Harding. Allow me,' as he inclined his head in my direction, 'Miss Euphemia Carstairs.' We were frightfully British and came up with a pair of
