When they had gone, I addressed those who remained.
'I take it that the twenty Members who have just gone to their punishment were at the center of the corruption of which I spoke. That does not exonerate you. When you felt the wind of corruption in our holy Order, you should have taken a firm stand against it. For this reason you will each during the next three months make a weekly presentation of your flesh for flagellation. Only the dead will be excused. And now, before you go, you will each swear allegiance to me, your Holy Painmistress, by kissing my cunt.'
I came down out of the pulpit and stood, hands on hips, my mound thrust forward, to meet the first of a hundred and eighty doting tongues.
— 4-
In my private apartment I sat naked in front of the fire. From time to time I touched my clitoris and allowed the heat from the glowing embers to strike softly on the wet red amorphousness which lined the interior of my cunt.
To have a cunt!
How wonderful it was to be possessed of this sensitive passage! And yet, as I sat there fingering it, I knew that it would never know the presence of a male member. The office of Painmistress did not require me to be a virgin, nor did any other position in the Holy Hierarchy. I knew that now. But I remembered poor Oakes saying that he hoped I would turn out to be 'our Virgin.' The thought rankled. What had he meant? Was it not enough to be Painmistress? Could I not hope soon to be a Grand Painmistress, even a Pain Cardinal? Why then should I not give myself to Harry when he came up, Harry whose big cock I had sucked innumerable times since I had arrived definitively in the big house, Harry whose balls I had caressed, bringing them gently against my wet, lustful lips? Of all the men I had known, Harry was the most worthy. Why not then? He could sleep with me. I would be his woman. And as a Whipmaster he was excellent. Why not? Why?
I had not bothered to join Harry and Willie in the basement. Lord E. was securely locked in the cellar humorously referred to as the 'death-cell.' His wife was recovering in one of the many antechambers. The twenty proud Members were at present being reduced in the flagellation room to so much whining flesh. I had already sent instructions that they were to be detained for a week's continual treatment. By the time they went back to their ordinary life, they would have signed and re-signed allegiance with their blood.
What was it then that haunted me? Why was I not satisfied with the success of my official inauguration?
Was it that I was not born to be a member of the Hierarchy? What strange lust made me cling to my virginity?
Above the fire was the usual picture representing the Virgin Death.
The Virgin Death?
Had I to die a virgin?
How?
Like her?
Nailed to the cross of wood?
A sweat of lust had gathered about my thighs.
To be crucified?
Was that the ambition that lurked in my heart?
The last dedication?
Life itself?
For the Order?
Why, then, had they elected me? No, not death, not that ultimate leap into nothingness. Pain, yes. Pain and more pain. But where did that lead if not to death? Death, the final pain. And if death, why not the Virgin Death?
Had she ever existed?
Our Virgin, Oakes had said. What did he mean? I lifted the black cross between my fingers. What did it mean? Why had they attached it to me like a price-ticket to a sold object? To whom could I go for advice? To Sir William? The Grand Painmaster! But he was part of the corruption! He was what I had been brought in to destroy. To whom then? Harry? But Harry, for all his intelligence and bodily beauty, was only a functionary. What could he tell me? He was absolutely cut off from the higher echelons of the Order, like Oakes. Like Sir William? Perhaps he, already corrupt, could be persuaded to give me information.
I smiled at the thought.
My own Grandmaster was at present in the cellars undergoing the same punishment as the mutinous Members! And he had not raised his voice in protest. Neither had King, who was also among the twenty, nor Duval, nor Coldstream, but those three were evidently to be trusted. That's to say, in so far as anyone in our Congregation could be trusted.
Try as I would I could not kill the little worm of discontent that wriggled deep within me. Before my election I had, as it were, been innocent, involved entirely in my personal pain and the ecstasy of my flesh. I had had no contact with intrigue, with politics; my religion was pure. I could remember loving St. Francis as a small child, but the worldly machinations of the Popes and Cardinals had held no interest for me. And here now in another Order, an Order similar in structure to that of the Roman one, I was already established within the Hierarchy. Was this, then, to be my life? Perhaps in the distant future to be elected Pain Cardinal and to have a voice in the election of Pain?
I rolled over on my soft belly on the rug and closed my eyes. There was a delicious tiredness at my limbs. It had been a strenuous day. I had emerged victorious. Time enough later to think of the small needle of discontent.
There was a knock at the door.
'Come in!'
It was Harry.
'All over,' he said as he walked across to the fire and sat cross-legged beside me. 'Your Willie did a good job. I'm sure half the women are in love with him already.'
'What about Hazel?'
'They've gone to bed together.'
'Who?'
'Willie and Hazel. They make a good pair!'
I felt a small prick of jealousy, but it soon faded. What did it matter? Those innocent days could never be recaptured.
'Something worrying you?'
Harry had laid his hand on my buttocks and was caressing them gently. I turned over so that my hot hairy mound came against his hand.
'Why don't I give myself to you, Harry?'
He was slightly pale.
'Why don't you?' he said. 'You know I worship you, Gertrude.'
His fingers played gently with my pubic hairs and touched the sensitive skin of my inner thighs. He lifted the black cross and looked at it as he might have looked at a pocket watch.
'You're not happy,' he said, looking at me intensely.
'No.'
My eyes were closed. I felt his warm palm on my belly.
'You want to get away from all this?'
I laughed sadly, opening my eyes to look at him. His face was set. He was not wearing his spectacles.
'Get away?' I said softly. 'What does that mean? You know there is no way out of the Order, Harry.'
