Leah's Punishment Page 14

  Leah had been taken into a large but very humble room of a wharf-side building. There was a long table set with at least a dozen metal plates and knives, a desk in the nearer corner and a fireplace with a well-filled grate. At the far end was a doorway to a kitchen, to judge by the smells and sounds. Leah was afraid to look directly at the man who had taken charge of her. His gaze was evil, his expression cold. Once the door was closed, he released his grip on her belt.

  'Not what you're used to, up at the merchants' grand retreat, is it? You'll find our ways – my ways – a little different, girl. More direct.' Leah knew nothing of any 'grand retreat' but was afraid to admit it in case that brought deeper trouble. But the man took her anxious silence for insolence.

  Smack! The blow – swift, harsh and unexpected – knocked her to the floor.

  'Get up!'

  She struggled to her feet, the side of her face stinging cruelly, shedding tears of shock and distress. Automatically her hand went to her punished cheek.

  'Put your hands down. Now, Miss Priggery – answer.'

  'I don't –'

  The smack – harder still – knocked her down again. 'That word is not in our language. Now, missy – on your knees. Get your hands down – I shan't tell you again. Put them behind you. Straighten up. Head back. There, nose up in the air; that's just how you like it, isn't it? But we'll fix all that. Now say after me: "Master – how shall I please?" '

  Her tongue clung in fear to the roof of her mouth. Through her tears, she tried to repeat those words. Then she screwed her eyes closed, trembling, waiting for the next cruel blow. It didn't come.

  She heard the door open and glimpsed a workman coming in. Then she saw that the Gangmaster seemed less interested in her. She wanted to wipe her tears but remembered his warning. She could only remain kneeling on the bare boards with her hands behind her and await his next instruction. He spoke to the workman, asking about the firing and the supply of coals, but though they talked of these things, both men kept looking back at Leah. Then the workman said quietly: 'I notice she wears a token – shall you be sending her back?'

  'In time, if she's learnt some manners. But a runaway is free booty, as far as I am concerned. If they want her, they'll come after her. Don't doubt it.'

  The man nodded, still studying her keenly.

  Two other men came in, acknowledged the Gangmaster, stared briefly at Leah, then went to the doorway of the kitchen. The face of a girl, pretty and dark-haired, appeared at the doorway, but when the Gangmaster turned that way she disappeared. Leah took comfort from the possibility that she might have a female companion in this fearful place.

  Over the next few minutes the men were joined by a steady trickle of other workmen who stood chatting before seating themselves at the table. Leah, left kneeling near the door, considered making a run for escape in the dark, but she was scared to the core by the prospect of the Gangmaster's reprisal, should her attempt fail. She remained still but her eyes followed his every move. Dinner was eventually brought out on platters and in pots by the girl, who kept looking at Leah while the men fell noisily to eating, crying: 'Where's the beer?' and 'Get some drink in, sharpish, Denni.'

  The Gangmaster returned to deal with Leah. His tone was calmly calculating. 'Now for your first lesson in manners, girl. Stand up. See that chair by the desk?' Leah nodded apprehensively. It was an open-backed wooden chair. 'Bring it here.' She hurried to comply. 'Now set it facing away from this end of the table. Just there.' He pointed to a spot about five paces from the head of the table. Most of the men had turned to watch; some began to smirk. The girl Denni, casting an anxious backward glance, retreated to the kitchen door. 'Good. Now get on the chair.' In trepidation, Leah prepared to sit down. 'No.' The Gangmaster shook his head. 'How shall my men see you if you sit?' She got up. 'No. Stand on the chair.'

  'Yes, master. If it please . . .,' she whispered uncertainly. Carefully, fearful of the coldness in the master's expression, Leah climbed on to the chair, steadying herself with her hands behind her on the back of the chair. The master was standing a little to one side. Apart from a few muted sniggers from the men, the room was now alarmingly subdued: they were waiting for some spectacle to unfold. She glanced sidelong for approval from the Gangmaster but he was still shaking his head.

  'Please, master?' Leah begged him, then, remembering his warning, added softly: 'How shall I please?'

  The first glimmer of approval crossed that almost unreadable face. He nodded, then said: 'You shall please by standing facing my men.'

  'Yes, master.' The chair rocked as she turned unsteadily towards that sea of expectant faces. The door opened and two latecomers sneaked in and found vantage points against the walls.

  'Now, one more thing . . . what is it?'

  Leah bit her lip, wondering what he wanted. Then very nervously she took her hands off the back of the chair and put them behind her, immediately casting a sideways look seeking approval from her master. But there were still sniggers from the table and the master was again shaking his head.

  'Just one more thing, young missy – now, what could it be?'

  Lost, Leah was about to shake her head then suddenly remembered not to risk so negative a gesture. And again the Gangmaster had noticed and seemed pleased.

  'Master – how shall I please?' she whispered.

  'Excellent. You shall please by dropping your trousers.'

  Eyes shut, Leah trembled, trying to keep her balance as she fumbled with the belt. She felt the cool rush of air as her trousers dropped to her ankles. A collective gasp filled the room then ebbed to silence, pierced only by the Gangmaster's next instruction: 'Lift your shirt, if you please.' A gasp now greeted her tubular teats. Exposed, on public view before so many strangers, she had never felt so tremblingly naked. Cool wisps of air licked up her belly and curled like icy tongues around her teats. Then she heard the Gangmaster unbuckling his heavy belt.

  'Now the lesson . . . six strokes, for a first time. Provided you stand still and stay straight and keep that shirt up . . . Should you topple from your perch then I fear we must begin anew.' She glimpsed his arm sweeping back very far.

  The force of that first lash – searing across her buttocks – knocked her off the chair and sent her reeling into the table, with the chair skidding after her. The workmen caught her and put her back. The second lash did the same. With her trousers now twisted round her ankles, she could not steady herself. So she kicked them off, and the men cheered. Before anyone could steal them, the girl Denni ran forward and retrieved them, then retreated to a safe distance.

  The next lash struck Leah like a broadsword, still glowing from the forge, being laid across her bottom, the burning pain was so excruciating and prolonged. The chair rocked, not quite toppling. Through her tears, the pain kept coming, burning pain upon shivering pain, then waves of fiery needles, then the next lash and her toes cramped from trying to keep her balance and her arms trembled from trying to hold up her shirt. But Leah knew she must do it, and, although her skin felt as if it were being flayed from her bottom with a burning wire, she somehow managed to keep her balance through six consecutive lashes. Whereupon the master, true to his word, immediately stopped and buckled on his belt. Now the only sounds in that room were Leah's sobs, and the only movements her tremblings from breast to belly to buttocks and thighs. Still she held her shirt up. Her buttocks felt as if they had been scalded.

  'Turn around and show them. Quickly.'

  'Y-yes, M-m-master,' Leah sobbed. She tried to do so unaided, but the Gangmaster helped her. Her buttocks shone livid red, without a single strip of white. They wouldn't stop shivering.

  'Keep your shirt up. Good.' He spread his large hand across her belly to steady her. The hand was hot from his exertions. 'Well, men?' They clapped and cheered and whistled and, though Leah could not stop the waves of violent trembling in her legs and buttocks, she felt glad of this acknowledgement that she had suffered her punishment bravely. But the pain would not lessen. A lump
formed in her throat and suddenly she could not repress the choking sobs and could hardly see through the veil of tears.

  'Denni – come here,' the Gangmaster shouted. Leah heard the girl hurrying across. She seemed more confident now that the Gangmaster's belt had been safely buckled. He took her aside. While he whispered to her, she looked at Leah, then at the table, then nodded.

  A few seconds later, Denni was crouched in front of Leah and was smearing her hand back and forth in a platter bearing the broken carcass of a large roast bird. The Gangmaster pinned Leah's elbows behind her, thrusting her naked belly towards Denni's reaching fingers, now shinily sheathed in grease: the counterpoint to all that pain was about to be administered.

  Once those female fingers had opened Leah and toyed and slipped, and pulled and shaped her outer lips, and squeezed her inner lips and chain, and one by one slipped up inside her sex, then expertly unsheathed its knob and rubbed its shaft as if it were a tiny penis, trying carefully to thin the sensitive root, trying to draw its erection outwards so as to make the tip engorge – with Leah scarcely breathing and all the movements kept slippery and not stopping and the grease now running thinly under Leah's body heat and the girl working attentively by feel alone, for she was watching Leah's face – then, sure enough, Leah felt that first beautiful deep drawing sensation, the signal that her body was yielding all control, and the only thing that mattered now was that the pleasure should continue and deepen, plumbing the depths of her sexual wanting, slaking the craven need.

  All the while, the master kept her elbows pinned back with one hand, his other hand kneading her hot burned buttocks, working them, bruising. When his thumb, dry and rough and harsh, thrust up Leah's tightly squeezed bottom, her climax triggered – delicious and merciless and deep – and she swooned against the master, his thumb still reaming her bottom, her belly thrust out for Denni's cruel sweet slippery fingertips, plucking persistent beats of excruciating pleasure from the distended head of her clitoral knob.

  Then the Gangmaster calmly lowered Leah's limp body from the chair. 'She can share with you, Denni. Show her the ropes; she can attend to the night shift with the firemen.'

  'Denni – what did the Gangmaster mean?' Leah was lying in only her shirt on the little bed in Denni's quarters.

  'About what?' Denni's countenance was bright; she was young – about Leah's age; her eyes were a beautiful shade of green and her hair was almost black.

  'The ropes and the firemen,' said Leah.

  ' "Showing the ropes" means I have to show you how things work around here and what you have to do.' Denni was slender but not tall; with almost no breasts and her short-cropped hair, she might be taken for an underfed boy. But her scent was that of a girl.

  'And the firemen?' Leah whispered.

  'They stoke and tend the furnaces. But they are just men – they think they know what they want – though they're stronger and blunter than most.'

  Denni wore a sleeveless shirt and her neck was bare. 'You don't wear a token, like I do?' Leah said.

  'That's because I'm a freeman, like the others.'

  Leah smiled inwardly at Denni's choice of words. 'Yet you still take their orders?'

  'Only the Gangmaster's.' She looked away, then added faintly: 'I can leave or stay, as I wish.'

  'But I cannot?' Leah ventured.

  'You said yourself: you wear the token. You've already been punished for stowing away. How can you leave without getting into more trouble?'

  'You could help me.'

  'Why would I want to?'

  'Because you like me.'

  Denni did not smile, as Leah had meant her to do; she went quiet and her bright gaze slipped self-consciously away. 'I liked it when you touched me,' Leah continued in a whisper, touching Denni's slender naked arm. She raised herself on one arm and kissed the girl on the lips. Then she winced because, through stretching, the skin of her bottom burned from the effects of the Gangmaster's lashing.

  'Let me look at you,' Denni whispered, her self-confidence returning and strengthening as Leah embraced the role of the timid submissive.

  Denni bathed Leah's stinging buttocks gently with a soft cloth soaked in freezing perfumed water. 'It's cold,' Leah murmured. 'Where do you get water so cold?'

  'There is a spring inside the hill; it's supposed to be a secret. The firemen showed me. I've perfumed the water with flowers.' She made gentle arcs with the moistened cloth, working outwards and downwards from the small of Leah's back, in alternating sweeps across each cheek.

  'He has not cut you; the bruising will go in a few days,' Denni whispered.

  The cloth kept returning to the sensitive hollow at the base of Leah's spine, causing feelings both reassuring and deeply pleasurable.

  'There – is that relaxing?' Denni whispered. The cloth was now replaced by Denni's cool, manipulating fingers.

  'Mmm . . .,' Leah answered.

  'Has the Gangmaster cut girls before?' Leah asked.

  'I don't know. You're the first runner I've seen. I've only been here a week.'

  'What? But then how do you know so much?'

  'There's not that much to know. I have my duties and I don't need to worry about much else. But lie still, now. He has been harsh with you.' Then her voice went quieter. 'Though the harshness did not seem to stem the pleasure . . .'

  Leah twisted round. 'That came through you,' she said, caressing Denni's hand, 'these beautiful fingertips – so expert and knowing.'

  'Then I must have retrieved something from the ashes of my former employment,' Denni murmured wistfully.

  Leah stared at her anxiously. 'Was there a fire there?' Denni shook her head. 'Then what?' Leah asked.

  'I was dismissed because my mistress thought me her rival for the attentions of a boy I had not even kissed. I was chambermaid; she hired him because he was young and handsome and she planned to seduce him. She was already bedding her equerry. What she didn't know was that he was also bedding me. I wanted to learn and he was more than happy to teach me in the time that she left him spare.'

  'So you weren't interested in the boy?'

  'Oh, yes,' Denni whispered. 'I used to talk with him sometimes; in fact he was the one who told me about this place. I really liked him; I still do.' Denni stared wistfully into space.

  'But what about the other one – the one who –'

  'The one who was fucking me? That's what it was, Leah – that's all it was. He used me but I invited it and I enjoyed it.' Seeing Leah's frown, she added: 'Have you never sought pleasure with a person you don't really care for?'

  Leah remained silent.

  'Well?'

  'I've never sought it, no.' Then she knew she had lied on that count. 'Yes, I have . . .,' she finally whispered.

  Denni nodded. 'And my equerry was good to me in ways that matter. After the first time I became frightened that I would be pregnant. So he set off in the night, through the rain, to the apothecary and brought me a preparation that saw me right again.'

  Leah nodded in approval. She saw parallels, for Merek did the same sort of thing for her.

  'After that, the fear was taken away but there was still the pleasure and the secrecy,' Denni continued. 'I used to practise on him in the kitchen with goose grease on my fingers. I was seeking the pleasure, not the man, but he was experienced and took care of me. Then Ean appeared on the scene.'

  Leah's jaw dropped; her mind raced. 'What was your lover's name?' she whispered in dread anticipation.

  'Kapler.' The reply came like a rapier of ice pushed through Leah's vitals. She didn't hear any more of what Denni said, so Denni repeated: 'What was your lover called? The one you didn't love but simply wanted?'

  Gradually Leah's attention refocused. 'He was called Asgal,' she finally whispered miserably and felt physically sick. She laid herself down on the bed.

  'Come on – tell me. I want to hear it,' Denni said, stroking Leah's back.

  Leah had never confessed this to Merek; in fact she had never told anybody an
d the guilty secret was gnawing into her. She now had the opportunity to unburden her guilt to this sympathetic girl, who knew neither of the other parties. So she told her.

  'Asgal was the steersman aboard my master's boat,' Leah began. 'In the early days I did not take to him: I found him too inquisitive about my master's comings and goings, and with me his manner always seemed aloof. How I wish it had remained so.'

  'You mean, he made unwelcome advances?'

  'No. When I told Merek – my master – about my concerns he suggested I just pass Asgal a friendly word, now and then, to break the ice. I think he spoke to Asgal too, because after that Asgal's manner changed. He became helpful and interested in my concerns. It got to the point where I felt I could confide in him, and I would sometimes sit with him at the back of the boat and we would talk. There was never any impropriety; he always behaved properly.'

  'But your master became jealous?'

  Leah turned round. 'Oh, no. Merek can be a very jealous master but he trusted Asgal. It was his trust in me that was misplaced. It all started with a stupid row over my chain – my virgin's chain that was put there by the monks and nuns in the Abbey. My master had always resented that, when I came to him, my chain was already broken. One day in temper he suggested that I had connived with the cruel men who broke it – who callously broke me open. I was stung by such heartless insinuations from the man who was supposed to be my protector and my lover. Then he just went off on some errand of business for three days, leaving Asgal and me in charge of the boat.

  'Nothing happened that first day, but Asgal knew I was upset and in the end I confided in him about the row. He said: "I wish I could have known you first; I might have fixed your chain for you." It was a kind sentiment. I may have held his hand, but only briefly. It's true, I had the desire to be loved, to be held, but I could wait and hope that all of that would come from my master on his return. I hardly slept that night. Then next morning there was a strange incident. An unusual boat passed while we were still tied at the wharf. It had an unfamiliar design: it was longer and broader-bellied than normal and the prow carried a carving of a young woman with long flowing hair.' Leah looked at Denni, who simply shrugged, so she carried on: 'All the crew were women: they looked like soldiers or guards. The hold of the boat was open to the air and there were perhaps twenty slaves standing in it, all naked, all of them young men. They had some kind of thin harness round their waists and between their legs; it must have been put there to keep them permanently erect, for that was the effect.'