softly.
“Did he request my presence?” Lara asked them.
“No, but she is being so aggressive,” Felda fretted.
“If he has not asked for me, I shall not go. Magnus Hauk can well take care of himself,” Lara replied as Uma angrily burst into the gardens.
“I will not be parceled off like some heifer cow,” she shrieked. “I will sell pleasures in the streets first! I will pledge myself to the Daughters of the Great Creator, and never offer my body to a man again!”
“If you choose such a fate rather than accept a husband, then that is your decision, isn’t it? And a very poor decision, too, I think,” Lara said quietly.
“You!” Uma turned her anger directly toward Lara. “This is all your fault, faerie woman! Until you came the Dominus was content with us. Now suddenly we must be sent away from the castle.” Her eyes narrowed, and suddenly she flung herself at Lara.
Lara raised a single hand, her palm up, and facing Uma. “Come no farther!” she warned the angry woman.
Uma stopped, confused.
“Do you want me to call the Punishment Mistress?” Sirvat said.
Alcippe and Felda grew pale at her words.
Uma whirled now to face Sirvat. “My lord Dominus would not permit such a thing,” she sneered.
“In this part of the castle,” Sirvat said, “my word is law, Uma. Never forget that. Now I will ask you again. Do you want me to call the Punishment Mistress?”
“Go ahead!” Uma challenged Sirvat.
The Dominus’s sister did not hesitate a moment. Clapping her hands she called a female servant to her. “Bring the Punishment Mistress here at once.”
Wide-eyed, the servant bowed and hurried off. The garden became deathly silent as they waited. And then suddenly the Dominus appeared.
“Sirvat has called for the Punishment Mistress?” he said to Lara.
“It is Uma. She is angry and defies your sister’s authority, my lord Dominus.”
“I cannot have that,” he said quietly. “I will handle this myself.”
The Punishment Mistress arrived. She was a large, tall woman accompanied by two great dogs. Seeing the Dominus she bowed servilely. “I was told it was the Lady Sirvat who called for me,” she said.
“I did,” Sirvat said. “But my brother wishes to manage the situation. Please remain, however. He will need your aid.”
The Punishment Mistress bowed. “Yes, my lady Sirvat. You have but to instruct me, and I obey.”
Uma threw herself at the Dominus’s feet and looked piteously up at him.
Magnus Hauk smiled down at her coldly. Then his glance flicked to his sister.
“Tell this brazen creature her wiles will not move me,” he said coldly. “And tell the Punishment Mistress I want the wide leather strap with the knotted fingers.”
Alcippe and Felda had grown pale with fright. This was a side of the Dominus rarely seen. They did not like Uma, but they could not help but feel sorry for her.
“Must you?” Lara said softly to him as Sirvat spoke with the Punishment Mistress. “She fancies herself in love with you, and your favorite.”
“I cannot let it be said that I am weak, even with a woman,” Magnus Hauk replied. “Her behavior tonight is already being bruited about the castle. I must punish her so that no others follow her unfortunate example.”
“Other women?” Lara asked him quietly.
“Men or women,” he answered her. “Tomorrow you will begin to see the vastness of the Dominion, Lara. And I am its master. I must never be seen as vacillating or insecure in my rule. This is what it is to be the Dominus of Terah.”
She understood him perhaps better than any of the others. “Yes, my lord Dominus,” she responded with a bow. The faintest of smiles touched his lips. The moment was so brief she was not certain that she had actually seen it.
“Strip her and bend her!” Magnus Hauk said in a cold voice. He watched impassively as Uma, once again spitting defiance, was pulled to her feet, her gown drawn off, and then bent facedown, her shoulders beneath the brawny arm of the Punishment Mistress who held the woman steady. Though Uma struggled, the large woman’s grip was like iron. “Felda, Alcippe, go to your chambers,” the Dominus said. “You need not remain. I see the distress and fear in your lovely eyes, but you have always been obedient to my will. You need not fear me.”
Each girl kissed his hand in turn and fled.
The Dominus turned to his sister and Lara. “Will you remain?” he asked them.
The two women nodded silently.
Magnus Hauk now took the wide leather strap in his hand. One end of it had been divided into eight long fingers, which had been knotted several times. The strap would burn, but the knotted fingers would sting cruelly. “You will receive ten strokes of the strap, Uma,” he told her. Then raising his hand he brought the leather down on the woman’s full buttocks. Uma’s lips pressed tightly together, but by the third blow she was shrieking and begging Sirvat to ask for mercy.
The Dominus could not hear Uma’s cries, of course. All he heard was the snap of the leather and the crack it made when it hit the woman’s plump buttocks. The dogs barked furiously and strained at their tethers. He saw the scarlet marks of the whip on her flesh, and knew from her struggled, and the concerned looks on Lara and Sirvat’s faces, the burning pain the knotted leather fingers at the end of his strap were causing Uma. But he would not be defied by this creature. He plied the last three blows harder to make his point.
Sirvat remained silent throughout Uma’s ordeal. She was not a cruel girl, but Uma had been rude and overbearing ever since she had been brought to the castle. And because Uma was one of her brother’s women, Sirvat had not felt she had the right to punish her severely. She was not unhappy to see the bold woman now getting what she considered a just chastisement. And as by the fifth blow Uma was cursing her, Sirvat felt quite justified in her silence.
Lara watched the discipline being administered impassively. She understood quite well the reasoning behind Magnus Hauk’s actions. But she also remembered long ago, when she was to be sold as a Pleasure Woman by Gaius Prospero, the slave woman Tania telling her of those who gained pleasure from giving pain. Yet that did not seem to be the case here. The Dominus was severe of face, and did not look as though he was enjoying himself at all. Still she was relieved, and she could see Sirvat was, too, as the final blow fell. By this time Uma was sobbing piteously.
Magnus Hauk laid the leather strap aside, saying tersely, “Attend to her.” Then without another word, he departed.
Uma’s back and buttocks were covered in narrow red weals.
“I will care for her,” the Punishment Mistress said in her gravelly voice. She loosed her hold on Uma but a moment, catching the woman up in her arms. “Where is her chamber?” she asked Sirvat.
“This way,” Sirvat said, leading the Punishment Mistress and her dogs off.
Lara remained behind in the garden, her eyes upon the sky. There were two moons above, each in a different quarter. The other two moons would soon rise. In Terah, as in the Outlands, the moons were silvery white. She wondered why only the moons of Hetar rose in brilliant color.
Sirvat returned, and sat beside Lara. “Uma is being attended to, but to hear her cries almost brought me to tears. The Punishment Mistress is dressing her wounds with a special ointment to numb the soreness. Uma must remain on her face for the next few days until her welts are less swollen and painful. Why did you remain? I had to, as head of my brother’s household, but why did you?”
“The Dominus needed reliable witnesses. Had we not stayed, I am quite certain Uma would have lied to any who would listen, and told them that she cajoled him from his purpose with her female wiles. She cannot say that now. Several people have viewed her punishment. Not just you and I, but servants watching from behind the pillars. Undoubtedly she has mistreated them, and they were glad to see her being chastised,” Lara said. “If she had plied him with her charms and we were not here to observe what transpired, they would have not dared to speak. But now the servants will tell their tale with great relish.”
“I will have to find a strong man to husband her,” Sirvat said. “It will not be easy, but her dower will entice, and her beauty is well-known. And to be given one of my brother’s women for a wife is considered quite an honor.”
