Voyage of Terror Page 3

  “Shut your mouth, prisoner!” Mimmie glared menacingly, instantly silencing the girl.

  “And you, my dear?” Labastide turned now towards Solange.

  For a second or so the girl did not reply, but becoming aware of Mimmie’s impatient eyes glaring into hers she stammered finally:

  “I … er ... er …knifed my b-b-boyfriend, Sir.”

  Her voice almost broke with emotion and she quickly averted her gaze shyly from him. Then as if supposing that some greater explanation were required she added dejectedly and almost in a whisper, “He wouldn’t leave the other girls alone, Sir.” Tears brimmed in her eyes.

  “What’s your sentence?” Labastide persisted gently.

  The girl gulped back fresh tears.

  “Ten, Sir. Five years hard labour and five years of paroled-banishment. I’ll never … never be able to t-take it all, Sir. I know I’ll just die …,” she whimpered.

  Then she began to weep so pitifully that even Mimmie stayed silent, not admonishing her and not wanting to intrude upon her girlish grief. However, finally making her face revert to its hardened uncompromising glare of matronly displeasure, she commanded brusquely:

  “Stop blubbing, girl! The captain’s not here to listen to your pathetic pleadings! Stand up to attention when you’re spoken to! Pull yourself together, you snivelling little worm!”

  At that point there was a brief jingling of chain-on-metal and a quiet levelled voice came from the front of the Table of Correction.

  “Ten years DOES seem a very long time for knifing a faithless boyfriend, wouldn’t you say so, Captain?”

  Instantly several pairs of eyes whipped round to stare at the Contesse. Her head was half-turned towards them in the torque, her expression mildly defiant but not disrespectful. With a little grimace she shifted her body so that it strained momentarily against her straps, making the chains rattle again. She was smiling pleasantly, lifting her eyebrows quizzically as if expecting a reply.

  “God, what courage in adversity,” Labastide thought to himself again. Despite the Contesse’s humiliating posture and the dreadful anticipation of her coming thrashing this splendid creature could still look graceful, defiant and composed. Besides which she could even dare to make further dangerous and possibly seditious comments, conversing freely as if engaging in some free forum of discussion. Even Mimmie was taken aback by such recklessness, her face almost shocked but oddly sympathetic. The wardress had clearly never encountered someone like this before amongst her reluctant charges. Mimmie Latour clearly had a heart of sorts, after all, Labastide thought absently.

  Barely three years ago this large domineering-looking woman had been picked out from the other paroled convicts to serve as convict-wardress on the ship, not only because of her imposing thickset stature but also because of her seemingly cold ruthless and emotionless demeanour. Now Labastide was seeing another side to her. He wondered vaguely whether she would wield the martinée on this beautiful enigmatic creature with her usual harsh and skilfully applied delivery. In St Laurent de Maroni she was notorious, her reputation fearsome. Known as ‘Madame La Flagellatrice’ (the whip-lady), those female convicts who had been acquainted with her attentions on the outward voyage-of-misery spoke of her in feared tones. It was said that even during the returning ‘repatriation’ voyages at the end of their sentences some of the freed women – being in a premature state of joyous exuberance and waywardness - still sometimes encountered Mimmie’s discipline, sometimes spending the duration of their homeward passage ‘in tackle and braces’ and with their backsides raw from the final attentions of the judicial regime – or at least Mimmie’s interpretation of it.

  Labastide cast a long penetrating look at the still-turned face of the Contesse.

  “I think it would be best for you, my dear young lady, if you would be mindful of your own affairs and not those of the Republic. The girl …your friend …has been sentenced by a proper court of law and so, I believe, have you …”

  “This high-and-mighty bitch takes the fucking biscuit!” Duval exploded suddenly with blustering indignation. “Give her ten more lashes for impertinence …”

  “THANK you, Mister Duval!” Labastide pinned him with a withering look before turning again to the wardress and gesturing at the two young girls. “Tackle and brace these two and then proceed with the sentence on the Contesse, Madame!” Labastide commanded gruffly.

  “Very good, Sir! But … er …wouldn’t you wish for one girl to witness the punishment from the lower tier of the Table of Correction?” Her eyes had narrowed slyly.

  “Good idea, Madame. Er … what about the tall one - this one, Solange – to go under the Table?”

  “Yes, Sir!” Mimmie turned briskly towards the girl and pointed at the lower tier of the frame. “You! Strip and go and lie on your back on that!”

  Solange was clearly perplexed, her ever-wider eyes darting nervously between the wardress and the naked strapped form of the Contesse. It seemed bizarre. For a second her eye caught the Contesse’s but she only returned a somewhat wistful smile of resignation, as if reassuring Solange that everything would be all right after all.

  “Go on! Stir yourself, girl! The captain hasn’t got all day!” Mimmie snapped.

  “You m-mean I must lie under … underneath her? On that lower platform thing?”

  “Exactly so, my girl! That way you can observe your lady-friend’s painful ordeal at close quarters. With your face just beneath hers you’ll be able to clearly see how her ladyship’s snooty demeanour will quickly turn to yelps and pleading cries of agony! It’ll be a good lesson to you both. Meanwhile your cute little friend Fleur will have a good view of both of you from her position in what we call ‘Tackle and Brace’, over on the wall rack. Now get going, my dear!”

  Fleur and Solange exchanged fearfully glances. Then together they looked over at the Table of Correction, their eyes once more seeking out the Contesse’s gaze, as if wanting more reassurance.

  “I should do as they tell you, girls. I’m sure it won’t be too bad. Just be obedient and everything will be fine. I’m sorry I got you into this.” Marie-Chantal’s voice came softly across to them in the silence of the chamber.

  “We don’t need to hear a word from you, Contesse,” Mimmie said sharply. “You’ve already got them into enough trouble.”

  Marie-Chantal only gave a winsome little smile before turning her head away to the front again, resigned to her punishment, shifting herself in her bonds so that they gave a little jingling rattle.

  There were so many questions but Solange instinctively realised it was pointless to ask anything more. The big wardress was waiting impatiently, her eyes staring intently at her, willing her to obey. Fleur was lost in her own misery and terror. What did ‘Tackle and Brace’ mean? Whatever it might entail, would her ordeal be any worse than being placed in this perverse looking box-frame contraption and being strapped to it just beneath its other top-tier occupant? Solange had no idea. But at least it seemed that she and Fleur were to escape a flogging. And the very notion of being flogged on her naked posterior – and moreover in front of two lusting men - was altogether too much to contemplate.

  For a moment she thought back to that dreadful night in her small dingy Paris apartment. She had never meant to stab Jean-Claude – not seriously. When he had slumped to her feet, bleeding from his chest, that terrible expression on his face had mirrored her own utter astonishment. She remembered how then the kitchen knife had fallen from her hand, clattering to the floor, and how she had screamed out in anguish, her love at once flooding back to replace that now-forgotten rage. Her attempts to stem the blood had been in vain and it was then that the prospect of the Guillotine had suddenly loomed before her eyes. But later – in the grim Paris prison of St. Lazarre - her lawyer had told her that for a Crime Passionnel she would escape execution. Instead she would face trans
portation to Devil’s Island. Of course that had struck terror in her heart. Every Frenchman and woman knew of the terrible reputation of the penal colony. But not for one moment and not in her worst nightmare had she imagined having to face the prospect of being strapped up to some bizarre punishment frame and being forced to witness the naked flogging of another woman strapped to the same frame - and just above her.

  Yet it was preferable to being in the Contesse’s humbling and debasing position. Solange marvelled at how this extraordinary woman displayed such composure and courage in the face of such wickedness, and whilst waiting so calmly – almost patiently – for her own whipping to begin. Furthermore Solange found it almost thrilling and flattering to be counted as a friend of such a notorious and enigmatic woman as this Contesse Marie-Chantal de Louvois. It had been both a national scandal and a sort of cause célèbre - a welcome source of cynical amusement in countless ordinary households. It fascinated Solange to think that this graceful aristocratic woman had not only been the mistress to men-of-power, but had even managed so cleverly to take them all for a ride. She had also become a near figure of admiration by an adoring proletariat, whilst at the same time having been so hated by the governing establishment. Under any other circumstances Solange would have delighted at all these notions, laughing quietly to herself at the thought of such awesome feminine achievement. But all she could do now was to mumble feebly at the glaring wardress:

  “Yes, Miss.”

  She took a few faltering steps towards the frame.

  “I said strip! You too, Fleur! Now!”

  “Yes, hurry yourselves, you pair of bitches!” Duval snarled hoarsely, the lust already making his face glisten with sweat.

  There was the briefest of pauses before both girls slowly began to lift their shapeless baggy smocks over their heads. Simultaneously both garments fell to the floor and the two girls stood there stark-naked, their faces bowed demurely and crimson with their shame - cowed under the impure gaze of the two ship’s officers and the impatiently waiting wardress.

  Mimmie moved briskly forward and took Solange roughly by the arm, propelling her to the rear of the contraption. For a second the girl looked down onto the Contesse’s gaping rear cheeks, noting how their tautened scarps seemed to descend so smoothly into the soft abyss of their valley. It was only the thin chain that ran so tightly against the bed of its fissure that concealed the velvet sump underneath. It was the first time that Solange had ever observed such a strangely exotic vista of intimate feminine flesh. Despite the tremor of her own fear that gripped her she found her whole body at once overcome by a momentary little frisson - neither quite of lust, nor yet of shame, but of some unknown feeling of illicit kinship that her mind was unable to define.

  “You’ll have plenty of time to gawp at your lady-friend’s anatomy once you’re strapped in beneath her!” Mimmie sneered, watching the girl’s eyes. “Now, crawl onto the platform and look lively, girl!” she commanded, pushing the girl down onto the lower tier.

  Chapter Two

  Once Solange had squeezed herself under the top-tier of the perverse Table of Correction, her shaking limbs moving in a mechanical and ungainly shifting fashion, the wardress made her turn over and lie there on her back on the metal grid. In such a cramped narrow space it was difficult to turn herself, having to do so by holding onto the top side-beams of the frame and then by struggling to get her knees and legs round and her bottom onto the centre of the mesh. Almost at once she felt a heavy belt being passed over her belly and secured at either side of her. Then her wrists were pinioned and strapped, one at a time, suspending her arms to the upper-front beam of the contraption.

  At that stage her legs were still thrusting out from the rear end of the frame. But it was not long before she felt Mimmie’s hands grasping her right ankle and forcing her leg to bend backwards. Her foot was placed sole-down onto the rear-end of the lower platform and then her ankle was strapped to the side of the frame. This same procedure was repeated for her left foot. Then, by way of added refinement, Mimmie took a separate strap and placed it just under the girl’s left knee and - suddenly pulling the strap tight - she wrapped the leather around the upright leg of the frame before quickly fastening the buckle. Without a moment’s delay Mimmie went round to the other side and secured her left knee in the same manner so that now both her knees were strapped securely up against the frame, leaving her toes half-peeping over and half-gripping the edge of the lower tier. With her pelvic flush now so irreverently exposed - gaping outwards in unwanted abandon - she lay there upside down, knees pulled back and spread to the sides and her wrists strapped above her on either side. As there was no spare room on the tier to rest the back of her head it was therefore left jutting out uncomfortably beyond the front edge, her beautiful auburn hair sprawling out over the dirty metal floor.

  It took her several moments to adjust to this new ungainly posture. When finally she had the courage to open her eyes she immediately found that the Contesse was looking down at her from above with a rather wistful little smile. Then she winked at her and this instantly quelled the surge of fear and shame that had risen up inside her. Despite her misery she managed to return a faint trace of a smile, marvelling again at the Contesse’s cool composure and feeling that same illicit emotion of kinship as if acknowledging the mutual comradely adversity of their cruelly postured bodies.

  But there was other activity now behind the Table of Correction. Mimmie had gone to one of the wall-racks and from amongst the paraphernalia hanging there she was selecting various sinister-looking objects, including some sort of flat steel bar; a number of combinations of chains and straps; a pair of something that looked as if they were a cross between leg-irons and handcuffs; a collar or torque similar to the one already worn by the Contesse and a strange-looking looped coil of rounded, stitched leather with an outer sleeve containing a number of pointed metal teeth. There was also an array of other smaller devices. But strangest of all was something resembling a metal brassiere, only it consisted of two small conical-shaped slatted cages like twinned skeletal cups. Each comprised three or four concentric circles of metal strips welded together, each cup joined to the other at the bottom rim by two separate short pieces of leather, linked at the centre by a metal ring. The width of this central linkage could be adjusted by two small buckles, one set on either side of the inner rims of the cups. On the outer side of each cage was a length of leather strap, one containing a buckle at the end. But that was not all there was to the two skeletal-like domes of the brassiere.

  On the inside of each cup was what appeared to be a number of small pointed studs set into each cross-section of metal, facing inwards. However, the topmost circular slat of each breast-cage was fashioned in such a way as to leave an open hole at the very extremity of the cage so that the twin peaks of the wearer’s flesh would be able to protrude - like ripened buds of pain - through the open tops of the cups.

  Taking the bizarre assortment carefully down from their places on the racks Mimmie dumped the objects unceremoniously into a sprawling heap on the ground with a resounding clatter of metal. She grunted, beckoning the girl.

  “Come over here, Fleur. Now, face the wall and stand still.”

  The girl was by now trembling with fear - her face still crimson and downcast, hands placed one on top of the other in front of her pubis. She obeyed meekly, trying to keep her front shyly away from the gaze of the two officers. Bewildered, she glanced nervously down at the array of objects, her eyes like little slits of misery, unable to comprehend the manner of her punishment. Standing behind her the wardress first picked up the torque and placed it around Fleur’s slender neck.

  “Stand up straight, girl! Head up!” Mimmie grunted again as she fastened the ends of the metal collar under Fleur’s chin by means of a hasp.

  Next she picked up the flat steel bar, which was about two feet in length and contained several slots at intervals
along it. Mimmie stepped round in front of the girl and taking the bar she attached one end to the neck-torque and let the other end hang down so that now the bar lay vertically down the middle of Fleur’s torso - between her breasts and as far down as to her pubis.

  “Take your hands away from down there! Stand at attention, arms at your sides!”

  Picking up what appeared to be two equal lengths of leather-strapping - each connected by several chain-links in between - Mimmie selected one of the three bottommost slots in the bar – just in front of where they nudged against the girl’s crotch. She attached the middle link of the chain to the bar with a clasp, snapping it shut with an audible click. Now, with the middle link of the chain fastened to the bottom end of the bar, she let the twin leather straps hang down to the ground. With the skilful eye of someone familiar with this procedure she had correctly calculated the height of the selected slot so that now it lay just opposite the lower extremity of the girl’s exposed crotch - a raised link nestling against her pubic coppice.

  “All right. Relax your body now. Stand with your neck bent forward a bit and your chin down slightly. And don’t puff your chest out so much.”

  Mimmie had softened her tone now, murmuring quietly in Fleur’s ear almost affectionately. It was clear that the girl was on the verge of tears again.

  “It’s not going to hurt. It’ll just be uncomfortable … and that’s your punishment. Nobody’s going to whip you. I want you to stand now with your legs apart. Yes, good girl. Like that.”

  Now Mimmie came round to the back of her again. Stooping down she reached between the girl’s legs and took hold of the trailing leather straps before bringing them back and up underneath her bottom and then pulling them tight up into its crease. Then holding them both there just above the base of her spine with her other hand, she fed first one then the other strap back round to the girl’s front again until both straps hugged the girl’s flanks, winding round forward again and back to the bar. Stitched into the tail-end of each strap was a hook-clasp. Mimmie clipped each of these in turn into one of the slots near the centre of the bar at the front – just about at the height of the girl’s neat little belly-button. For a few seconds Mimmie studied her work critically before adjusting one of the leather straps, hitching it tighter and then refastening the clasp again.