She knew it vital she should not dwell on what had taken place between herself and Mohammad Yasin. She could not understand herself and her motives, nor could she defend them against a reproachful conscience. Her slavery with all its love and its wonder would not withstand the attrition of an endless guilt. She had done what she had done, not from a conscious decision, but because for her there had been no other choice, she embraced slavery because of some deep seated need within her own psyche. She had no doubts now, she would close the door of her mind to any that might come.
Rannah was hanging by her wrists from the bar, only her toes touched the floor. Stacie remembered it as the final pose wherein a girl was whipped. The girl to be punished was still clothed. What she wore was scanty enough and might shred beneath the thong, but it could scarcely fail to offer some small protection to the loveliness it hid. Stacie breathed a sigh of relief, it was not seemly that the daughter of Mohammad Yasin be exposed naked to a torturer’s eyes, it was bad enough that he should search her body with his whip.
“I must watch you whip my Lady Rannah,” she told Yousef softly. “I am to be fastened in such ways as may please you so that I do not interfere. I need not be stripped. This is our Master’s order.”
The Torturer gave her his small bow and his little smile.
What a repository of secrets he must be! How intimate and knowing a part of this household that he served. He indicated a pillar off to one side of the place in which he must swing and curve his whip. “If it please you, Lady.”
Stacie Blair who had become a slave girl obligingly backed against the post. It seemed a natural thing to do. She was unconcerned about herself. If she was to be bound motionless throughout her loved one’s punishment, so be it. She did not care. Automatically she stretched her arms behind the pillar that they be secured.
Yousef tied her tightly: he would! Force of habit or the code of his profession, no doubt. To have simply tied her hands where she had placed them would have been enough to restrain her from mischief. But when the chafed wrists were firmly corded he cinched her waist and her shoulders too. Her chained ankles he left alone, there was nothing she could do with them. Precautionary restraints! Stacie smiled at the notion: when Yousef tied a girl she knew she had been tied. It hurt.
The kurbash was a fearful thing, a sinuous supple strip of hide tapering from its stock. Placed against the softness of a girl’s skin it had a cruelly contrasting wickedness. Yousef picked it up and ran it through his hands. “Our Master will not be present, my Lady?”
“He will not be present. Now that the slave girl is here you may begin my punishment.” There was no tremor in the Arab girl’s voice.
The deferential bow preceded an act that left the watching girl aghast. With deft and brutal clutch and tug the Torturer stripped the Lady Rannah totally naked.
“It is a ritual demanded by ancient custom, child,” the victim explained to her adored.
Yousef stood in reverence before the lovely nakedness he would now whip. “This is not by my wish, my Lady.”
“That is understood, Yousef.”
“I will make the blows as light as custom permits.”
The naked girl flashed him a look of scorn. “You will do no such thing, Yousef. I thank you for the wish, but you have my father’s order. You will whip me as hard as custom may decree. I shall not thank you for mercy.”
How beautiful she was! What courage! Stacie’s heart went out in tenderness and love. She shrank from the ordeal she must watch.
“Do you wish to be gagged, my Lady?”
“No. I will try not to scream, but if I do then let me.”
“It is time then?”
“It is time, Yousef. Whip me.”
Yousef’s bow reminded Stacie of the deference accorded a good customer when it came time to tender an extravagant bill. The girl bound for punishment acknowledged it with a quiet smile. With her eyes she followed him as he took up his stance. When she had seen enough she turned her lovely head away, smiled one last time at her breathless slave girl, and looked straight ahead of her at the wall. Stacie believed she had never seen anything more beautiful.
Yousef whipped his Master’s naked daughter with immense competence. Having received his orders he followed them: no mercy but a modicum of blood. With a kurbash it was no easy line to draw. He whipped Rannah conventionally from her knees to her shoulders, but he allowed the lash to curl so that hip and belly and thigh were scored as was her back. With care and judgement he cut the tied culprit across the level of her breasts: great snapping thwacks of ringing leather that raised their weal but sent no searching tail to cut either of the twin cones with their scarlet nipples: nipples so vivid that the watcher resolved to enquire if they were dyed for the occasion.
The whipped girl swung and shivered beneath the impact of the length of hide, but she did not scream. She catered to the weakness of her flesh only by panting moans to accommodate the gasping breaths evoked by agony, soon she glistened with the sweat of shock, but her gaze remained steadfast on the wall. Stacie knew she was exerting every nerve and sinew of her will not to scream. For the daughter of Mohammad Yasin a scream would be dishonour.
Stacie watched the wounds mount upon her loved one’s flesh. They were terrible to see, here and there was blood. Yasin was less tolerant of fault in his daughter than in others. Rannah was paying a cruel price for failure to obey. Stacie longed to share the cost, then realised with a thrill of fear that her own day had scarce begun, almost certainly something awaited her.
When the twentieth slash had left its carmine wound upon the naked loveliness of the errant Arab girl the torturer who had delivered it circled her slowly to admire his work and to admire the body on which his tracery of stripes had found a worthy canvas for the brush of his kurbash. For Yousef all that he now beheld was wholly beautiful. Lust had left his eyes, he worshipped. After his protracted moments of homage he made his polite bow, set aside his kurbash, inclined his head once more to the girl bound to the pillar, then left the room and closed the door. Stacie and her mistress were alone.
The silence of the pain room seemed all the deeper for the anguished breathing of the whipped girl, it was the only sound. Stacie stood breathless and helpless watching her love. Instinctively she fought her cords. They fought her back with pain and held her tight. She did not move her feet, the rattle of her chain would have seemed a sacrilege. Rannah leaned against her tractioned wrists, her damp hair against a raised arm. She had not lost consciousness, but her eyes were closed as with a child covering its head with the bedclothes to find a sanctuary from demons. Intermittently her breasts rose from an inhalation that became a sigh, drops of sweat formed beneath her arms and trickled down her flanks, the weight her seeking toes could not support hung cruelly from her punished wrists.
It was a long time before she returned to the world where Stacie was. The bound girl watched the suspended nudity slowly tense, the toes accept a greater burden, the head shake itself into awareness. When the dark eyes focused on Stacie’s anguished gaze the red lips twisted into a half smile.
“Calm your fears, slave girl. I still live.”
“Oh, Rannah, you were wonderful! I would have screamed and screamed.”
“I envy you. It must be good to scream. It is a Jedrah thing that we be mute when whipped.”
“Why has Yousef left you tied now your punishment is done?”
“You should know, slave girl. You were tied as I am. It is a ritual that we stand naked and hurting to reflect upon our sins.”
“Oh Rannah! You have no sins. Are Jedrah fathers always so cruel to their daughters?”