yet mature.' He looked at me keenly. 'It may take five years, Gertrude.'
'Oh God! Why?'
'I cannot divulge the innermost secrets of the Order, my child. But anyway, you will have to be groomed for your great moment. You will come to Spain. The Cardinals themselves will wish to have control of your instruction.'
'When will I go to Spain?'
'The day after tomorrow, Gertrude. You will travel with me.'
I fell on my knees in front of him.
'Oh, thank you! Thank you!'
'You have no need to thank me, Gertrude,' he said quietly. 'It is your destiny.'
Kneeling at his feet, I was suddenly radiantly happy. I looked up at him. 'Whip me, Master!' I whispered huskily.
He smiled.
'A thin cane,' he said. 'Get one from your servant.'
I rang the bell and told Willie to bring a supple cane. He nodded delightedly, but I could see he was disappointed when I told him on his presenting it to me to leave us alone. However, he went.
'Take off your dressing gown.'
I slipped it off and stood naked before him. He looked at me for a long time.
'You are very beautiful, Gertrude,' he said at last. He touched the warm mold of my breasts with his long fingers and then allowed them to fall to the shapely flatness of my belly. 'Beautiful,' he said again. 'The room is alive with you, Gertrude. Your naked flesh radiates a warmth, such a delicate scent.' His fingers brushed my cunt which quivered at his touch. He was smiling gently. 'There is an art in inflicting pain, Gertrude. I have seen women thrashed by men with no more imagination than butchers, big brutes who depended upon the weight of the forearm, on the brutality of the flail itself. I have watched them strike again and again, bruising flesh and breaking bones. All that is not only unnecessary, but stupidly destructive. I have seen a woman unfit to walk for a month and who, after that month, had lost all her poise, all the pride of her carriage. No, that is not the way of the great artist. See, here is the instrument!' He held the thin cane at either extremity and bent it into a bow. 'It is subtle; it will break no bones. I shall strike you three times, Gertrude, with science, with art. With those three strokes you will accomplish your agony. There is no need either to tire myself or to put you through a protracted pain. I want you now to touch your toes. The first stroke is purely introductory, painful enough even though it is delivered on the fat part of the buttocks, but its object is to arouse the sweats of anticipation. After the first stroke you will do a back bend, you know what that is? Your front is then exposed. When you are in that position, quivering from the pair of the first stroke, the other two strokes will be delivered almost together. The first will strike you across the breasts, just below the nipples. You will scream with the acutest agony and no doubt begin to collapse. But at once, before you have collapsed, I shall strike again, this time striking the soft underside of the mound itself, the clitoris, and of course upper thighs. There will be no need for more.'
He was gazing at me gently.
'Are you ready, Gertrude?'
Without replying, my throat filled with lust and my eyes heavy with love for the man who was about to deliver the fatal caress, I drooped at the waist, my long hair falling towards the ground — I could already feel the sweat gathering at my temples — and thrust my haunted buttocks out eagerly as my hands groped for my feet…
The Lost Years
At this point there is a break in the narrative and in the following pages of the notebook there is no further reference to Gertrude Gault. By the time we meet her again, it is December 1921 and the protagonist is called Carmencita de las Lunas.
Under this alias — she is now obviously twenty-five years of age and of striking beauty — she appears to have made a reputation for herself in the tradition of the great courtesans. She was seen often in the fashionable underworlds of both Madrid and Barcelona and always in the company of some rich nobleman or other. There can be no doubt that some of these noblemen belonged to the Order and that some among them were Pain Cardinals within it.
Of the characters whom we met in the first part of the narrative only two, apart from Carmencita herself, are carried over into the latter part: Miguel Maria Hernandez de Cordoba, whose object in making Gertrude wait five years seems to have been a purely selfish one, and Willie, the little Glasgow cobbler who seems to have gone with Gertrude to Spain as her body servant. There is unfortunately no more word of Harry Prentice, who came so near to saving Gertrude from her terrible fate, and in my subsequent inquiries in Glasgow, I found no conclusive evidence in relation to him. There were three possible trails. One led to Indochina, one to Australia, and the other to America. I was not in a position to undertake such an extensive search.
Nor did I ever find Hazel Cooper, although she was well-enough remembered in the Gorbals as Razor King's last mistress.
Of Miguel Maria Hernandez de Cordoba, I think it can be safely said that the man was mad. As far as I can make out — indeed, Carmencita says so herself, although she doesn't appear to hold it against him, but was rather flattered — his sole object in delaying the crucifixion was to wait for his own elevation to the position of Pain. He himself, as Carmencita's somewhat incoherent narrative suggests, wished to drink of her last passion. We can picture the gaunt, bearded face, its lustrous black eyes reflecting the moonlight, thrusting itself voraciously between the soft bleeding thighs of the dying woman, to suck there with his red lips the very slime of her dying. I have no doubt that that is precisely what happened, for the ambiguous Miguel was elected to the Holy Office in December, 1921. Two months later, his position established, he slaked his devilish thirst at the cross.
Of Willie there is little to be said. He seems to have been a loyal ministering angel right up to the last days, a humble shadow moving in the radiant twilight of this woman's mad dreams, always there to aid and abet her, and to dote on her pain-twisted body. There is no evidence that he was present at the crucifixion and I rather think he wasn't. I found no trace of him after the most extensive researches although I was able to locate the cobbler's shop where the two of them had indulged in their terrible lusts. It is no longer a cobbler's shop. The new tenant sells fish and chips.
There is little point in further elaboration. Gertrude's own narrative, although somewhat incoherent in form, is, if read sympathetically, straightforward enough. The years between have been lost. There is no reference to the journey to Spain or to the intervening years up until 1921, none anyway upon which we could hope to build a history. One last point worth mentioning before we present Gertrude's final narrative: pasted in the notebook were a number of cuttings from newspapers of Madrid and Barcelona. They were all in the form of society gossip: 'Prince B was seen in the company of an unknown woman last night. It is hinted that she was Carmencita de las Lunas, the almost legendary queen of the underworld. She was heavily veiled…'
The Road to the Cross
