Beloved bonds

1 Zindawba

Trudy Ramsay hated to be left alone in the cage.

When Caroline was a fellow prisoner the lewd and curious stares were mostly for her. When she was taken away Trudy got them all. There was nothing she could do about it. The cage was circular and stood exposed in the marketplace, its feminine content protected by a vast padlock on its door. Whichever way she turned her breasts could be viewed by someone. She had long ago ceased to cover them with her hands. Besides, the chains joining her wrists were heavy . . .

Trudy was constantly nagged by the belief she should discard the small Union Jack which was her only covering. It just snugly managed to shield her loins with the aid of one safety pin. She had an uneasy conviction that to use her national flag as a covering for her pubic hair must surely rank as lèse-majesté or some form of treason to earn her the disapproval of the reigning monarch and the House of Parliament. But to be totally starkers in a cage in an African republic she had never previously heard of . . . ! It was just too much! She diapered herself with the Union Jack in prideful defiance and a good deal of guilt.

The flags had been caustically provided and were a ‘must.’ Caroline wore her Old Glory with an amused wiggling of hips to cause the stars and stripes to undulate and evoke erotic comment and much laughter. If there was adverse significance in this sex-soiled symbolism, she did not appear to care. The republic of Zindawba seemed to have an adequate stock of the once-prideful rectangles, and provided a change of flags often enough to keep the derrieres of its two captives colourfully patriotic.

Zindawba! Trudy hated the name. It sounded contrived and far from home. But she accorded its ruler and first President, Khalief Abhad, a mixture of awe, erotic curiosity, and pure fear. There was also a touch of pique. Her duties, such as they were, constantly brought her before his attention but he had signally failed to ravish her with the immense codpiece which was now a legend in his land. Not that she wanted him to, of course! But still . . . ! Caroline had all the luck.

It was the same with the press and the guys with the cameras. Their attention was for the woman whose seeming self-immolation had whetted the curiosity of the world. Their questions were always tinged with erotic suggestion and innuendo. They did not exactly snicker in her presence, but Trudy felt certain their articles and film probably did, not that she ever got a chance to see them! Caroline Dowling was news, she was ‘hot.’ That very morning there had been a small group, peering beyond the bars of the cage. One of them, a most earnest journalist impeccably overdressed and perspiring in Zindawba’s heat, had seemed sincere.

“Mrs. Dowling, is it true you are in this cage by your own wish?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, of course not!”

Caroline was always so much in command. Trudy envied her. She contrived to infuse most of her rejoinders with laughter or sly jibes. She had viewed the sweating feature writer with sympathy, as though it was he who was behind the bars. Always she managed to convey the hint that the truth they sought was an elusive intangible, not to be politely mentioned.

“Mrs. Dowling, are those chains, those fetters, on your wrists and ankles, real?”

“Of course. D’you want to feel their weight, they’re quite heavy, you can reach through the bars?”

“But you have a key secreted? You could take them off?”

“No I can’t, nor could you.”

“Is it true that the President is the only person who holds the key?”

A trill of laughter. “That’s hardly likely, is it.”

“Surely the State Department has made representations on your behalf?”

A shrug and a clink of restless chain. “I’m afraid I’m just an embarrassment to them.”

“Would you describe yourself as an activist, Mrs. Dowling?”

Caroline had laughed and wryly held up her hands to display the heavy links joining the metal wristlets. “Does this look like activism?” She kicked with a shackled foot to send her ankle tethers swirling. “Or these . . . ?”

“Mrs. Dowling, your—your—semi-nudity . . . ? Is it . . . ?”

Caroline looked down at her peerless breasts as though noticing them for the first time. She stuck out her chest mischievously. “Oh, I think that’s just what the well-dressed captive wears in Zindawba these days. Don’t hesitate to look.” It had been too much for Trudy. To be ignored was bad enough, but such calm acceptance of enslavement was intolerable. “What are you men nattering about!” she demanded angrily. “Get us out of here. Get us out of this asinine little movie set. If you’d an ounce of chivalry—!”

“You do not share Mrs. Dowling’s whimsey, Miss Ramsay?”

“I’ve been kidnapped, you idiot! And stop ogling my breasts.”

“But ladies, Zindawba insists you have committed crimes against the new republic? Crimes you wish to expiate—?”

“Expiate my—my—my—oh damn!” Trudy was close to tears. “Just get me loose and send me home. Call the army . . . !”

The media stood abashed, sweating with more than Zindawba’s heat, exchanging impotence with two chained and nearly naked girls locked in a cage. Around them the marketplace slowly pulsated beneath the tropic sun. Oddly clad citizens paused in passing to behold the wages of sin in Khalief Abhad’s new republic. Their curiosity was less for white breasts and sun-drenched skin than for white reactions. Females who demanded of their lords, angry and argumentative, wearing the chains of Zindawba with disdain. Abhad was right, they merited penitence. Their day was done. Soon they would be sentenced. It was the promise of a president.

“Poor Trudy!” Caroline’s voice was soft, her gaze roved the inquiring group. “I wish you’d do something for her, try and secure her release. She doesn’t deserve to be held prisoner. I’ve tried, but I’m helpless.”

They sloughed the appeal, just as everybody sloughed everything in this hateful place. Trudy wiped away a tear, hating the clink of her chain, hating everything. Hating most of all the next query, it scared her half to death.

“Is it true, Mrs. Dowling, that some sort of dramatic punishment awaits you at the president’s whim?”

“Like what?”

They were uneasy, ashamed. They should have been angry but were not. They felt less than men. “Something barbarous, medieval . . . ! There’s a rumor you are to be publicly whipped?”

“Is that all!”

“There is also talk of branding—”

“My, I am a lucky girl! I thought at least the headsman’s axe.”

“Mrs. Dowling.” The remonstrance was patient.

“Your insistence on jesting robs you of a good deal of sympathy.”

“Sympathy!” Caroline’s exclamation was suddenly bitter. “I haven’t noticed any sympathy to be robbed of. Neither has Trudy. As far as the British Empire and the U.S. of A. are concerned we’re just a pair of call girls without a phone. That ridiculous Consul, I could have kicked his—!”

“Mrs. Dowling, what about, your husband . . . ?” Trudy sighed. It all added up to nothing. She and Caroline were two spicy tidbits for the delectation of the erotically inclined. Undoubtedly, with Caroline, there was something more, a purpose not divulged. It would affect her too. Surely it must! They were kept so close, a shared captivity in which each was thankful for the other. To be wholly and totally alone . . . ! The younger girl shuddered.

It was shortly after the retreat of their countrymen that the soldiers had come for Caroline. It was a frequent enough break in their captivity to be without significance. Caroline was escorted away, and in an hour or a day would be escorted back. The soldiers were more for her protection against the rabble than to inhibit her escape. Her hands were always left chained, but to enable her to walk properly the shackles were unlocked from her ankles. They lay now on the ground in the centre of the barred prison, a mute promise of their wearer’s return. When she came back, she would be wearing a clean fresh flag.

It was nearly seven weeks since her abduction, but the event was still vivid in her mind. She had been walking down Laburnum Lane, minding her own business, when the expensive car had stopped and the two men had neatly lifted her from the sidewalk and placed the potent wad over her mouth and nose. When she returned to consciousness she was face down on some sort of seat and someone was tying her hands behind her back. The cord was cruel, but when she protested a heavy hand thrust down upon her shoulders and a harsh foreign voice said: “Quiet! Keep still.” She had wakened to darkness, tightly blindfolded. She had never been so frightened in her life. It took her a minute to realise she was stark-naked.

Obediently, she kept quiet and kept still. In her blindness she envisioned knives and guns pointed at her defencelessness. When the firm deft fingers moved from her wrists to her elbows she whimpered as the soft rope cut and pinched her flesh as her forearms were forcibly joined and bound as one. It wracked her shoulders terribly and caused her naked breasts to tauten against the fabric on which she lay. The sudden roar of engines and the rumble of a jet aircraft seeking the sky told her all too clearly that she might never walk the flagstones of Laburnum Lane again. It was not until the jets had subsided to a silken purr that they gave her back her eyes.

Trudy Ramsay blinked at the interior of an aircraft, almost empty save for two men and a woman. They were not exactly black, but had she passed them on the street she would have thought of them as ‘niggers.’ She was sure it would not be politic to do so now. They were expensively dressed, their features intelligent. Each was assessing her, as at a package freshly unwrapped. The drone of the jets told her England was receding into limbo. Awkwardly, she sat erect and stared. The cords biting her flesh hurt atrociously.

“A good choice. She’ll serve the purpose excellently.”

The woman was in command. She exuded authority. Incongruously, her English was cultured. She laughed at her captive’s puzzlement. Her information faintly derisive: “Girton, my dear. Then Cambridge. Remarkable what they do with niggers these days.”

“I—I’m kidnapped?” It was the paramount thought in Trudy’s mind, all else was curious but irrelevant. “I—I—can’t move.”

“Yes you can, dear. But not enough to be a nuisance. If you kick we’ll tie your ankles.”

“But—but—!” Trudy was still bemusedly grappling with priorities. “My elbows hurt something awful!”

“That’s to keep you tractable, dear. My name is Rulua. If you prefer you may address me as Miss.” The dark eyes twinkled. “It establishes our social divergence.”

She was handsome. A lithe sensual creature in her thirties. She contrived to make Trudy’s twenty years feel like childhood. Full firm breasts thrust at nipple-indented silk. Dusky fingers felt testingly at Trudy’s own twin girlish cones. “Quite beautiful. Did you know you were beautiful, Miss Ramsay?”

“I hadn’t thought about it,” Trudy lied, then blushed. “I’m—I’m just a girl.”

“I suppose ‘just a girl’ is exactly what we want.”

“But look, I’m naked . . . ! And there’s men . . . ! Someone’s taken my clothes . . . and the way you’ve just tied me—!”

“You have no further need of clothes, dear. Besides, we cannot evaluate you with them on.” Again the flicker of humour. “If it will make you easier I will remove my own?”

“Oh no!” Trudy was shocked. Quickly she returned to her most pressing need. “Please untie me. I don’t understand why I’m tied up like this, it’s terribly painful.”

“I’ll get her a drink.” It was one of the men. Trudy swallowed the strange and potent brandy, coughing and feeling silly that the cup must be held to her lips. “I’d thought perhaps a cup of tea—?”

They laughed at her innocence. “Why not!”

Rulua agreed indulgently. “Let’s all have one.” She winked at a companion. “Assad, d’you mind?”

The captive watched the male depart on his prosaic errand. The brandy was a fire within her veins, it gave her courage. “I could cope a lot better and be less of a nuisance if you’d just untie me—”

It was as far as she got. Rulua rose languidly to her feet and reached up into a luggage compartment. The whip she produced had two leather thongs and was short enough to be used effectively in a restricted space. “If you mention being untied again I’ll use this on some of that pretty skin, dear. England’s gone. Forget it.” She flicked the lash at a taut breast.

Incongruous, incredible, frightening! Trudy Ramsay sipped the hot tea held to her captive lips by a coloured gentleman named Assad. Pain was constant. The woman had been right, hurting like this she could not conceive revolt or argument. She wanted to cry but the circumstances were not quite right for tears. The sting where the thong had pinked her breast was strangely erotic. “What’s going to happen to me?” she inquired politely. The girl, shackled in the cage, jerked herself away from her memories. They had not told her then, or since, what Zindawba held in store. She had come to suppose she had been provided as company for Caroline Dowling. It was Caroline who ‘mattered.’ Trudy Ramsay was part of the scenery, shackled and caged with perfunctory disinterest. Even her punishments were meted out in casual routine.

The punishments had been a shock. But Trudy Ramsay had come to understand them as implicit to her new condition. She earned them by impertinence and small verbal indignations against her captivity. Once sentenced she was appalled, but after the pain had faded they fell into a perspective no longer horrific.

“Tomorrow, dear. Three strokes on each hand.”

“But, Rulua, I only said—!”

“It was the way you said it, dear: and you have been warned.”

“But, Rulua . . . Miss—Ohh please! I haven’t had my hands caned since I was a child in school! And then, it was only one on each!”

“A nostalgic memory, dear. These will be somewhat more painful. You will receive them in the Market Square.”

“O-h-h . . . N-o-o-o! Oh Miss, not with all those people watching!”

“They’ve all seen you in the cage, Trudy. What’s the difference?”

“But I won’t be able to be heroic, I know I won’t! I’ll cry and make a fuss and you’ll be angry with me!”

“Silly girl! You’ll probably come through splendidly. Your hands will be free, of course, but we’ll keep your feet chained so you can’t be foolish and run.”

“O-h-h-h . . . Oh, Miss Rulua, punish me some other way? P-I-e-a-s-e ? There are other ways, aren’t there?”

“Indeed there are, dear. I am letting you off lightly this first time.”

“Lightly! You call that lightly: three on each hand!”

“It is now four, dear. For all this commotion.” Trudy bit her lip. Rulua was steel, and she knew her transgression. Back in the cage she wept, cradled in Caroline’s arms, knowing the suspenseful wait until the morrow a part of her punishment.

By Zindawba standards it was no big deal. Minor wrongdoing was commonly punished in public. The fact of it being a white girl to receive the strokes generated only a slightly larger circle of the curious than was customary. Trudy suspected that had it been Caroline Dowling to be caned the audience would have been larger.

It was the most demeaning moment of her life.

Four soldiers kept guard and controlled the spectators. A street vendor hawked sweetmeats for small sums. In the centre of the Square stood Rulua with the hateful cane, a limber length putting to shame Trudy’s memories of her schooldays. The palpitating delinquent clinked her shackled steps to where she must stand to receive her pain. Exchanging a glance of total understanding with her Mistress, Trudy Ramsay held out her hand.

It was not until the cane rapped demandingly upon her bent elbow for the second blow that the punished girl fully realised her reaction to the first. The pain had driven her to her knees, clutching her hurt palm within the haven of a damp armpit, sobbing in shock.

“Ups-a-daisy, dear. The first is always difficult. On your feet!”

Trudy looked around. The crowd was enjoying her shame, the soldiers smirked. She hated them all. She was white and they loved to see her knees in the dust, her Union Jack soiled . . . Bitterly, she scrambled erect and thrust out a sacrificial arm. The cane whirred joyously.

She stood firm, unbelieving what she could will herself to do. The pain was sickening, but she stood docilely with hurt hands passive at her side until the dreaded command. When it came she looked only at the sky as she proffered an already wounded palm.

“You did wonderfully, dear. I knew you would.” Rulua’s tribute was sincere. She too had made herself bare from the waist up. Her skin glistened. She was a magnificent creature.

The caning was over. Her hands had each received their four strokes. Trudy was fighting down the waves of nausea and a compulsion to hug herself in agony. Her eye was apprehensively upon a length of cord in Rulua’s hand. “Miss . . . oh Miss, what now?” her voice quavered.

“Your hands are to be tied behind your back. It is part of the punishment.”

It was indeed! But the caned girl had no will to demur. Dolefully, she turned and arranged her wrists for the cord’s convenience. Then bit her lip at a fresh but familiar pain. Walking her shackled way back to the cage she knew herself trebly naked for being robbed of hands. She had not thought of her breasts during her caning, but now their nippled tips seemed to fill the horizon for all. She felt certain the crowd’s remarks were ribald. The Mistress’s grip upon her arm was firm but gentle. It was hard to believe it the same hand that had dealt the blows . . Back in the cage, Caroline had been warned not to loose her companion’s bonds. It was an order they both knew she had best obey. The delinquent wrists remained firmly corded for two days and nights. It was the two girls’ first lesson in Zindawba discipline.

Trudy, alone in the cage, separated her chained hands as far as the links allowed and examined her palms. They should have been scarred for life, but they were not! That too was a lesson, a girl could be punished and punished and punished . . . Girls healed their hurts with a daunting rapidity, leaving them again virgin for infliction. Lonely, her thoughts drifted to Caroline, wondering what was done to her in these unexplained absences, about which she had been warned to ask no questions, and which Caroline herself was firmly unwilling to discuss. At first she had suspected torture or some sort of coercion. But Caroline was a far too happy prisoner for this to be. The wife of Robert Dowling was an enigma to the world. Robbed of news, Trudy could not know the degree in which the fate and behavior of this white woman in darkest Africa had intrigued all and sundry in a speculation as to her motives and eventual destiny. If the State Department knew aught of either they divulged it not. Robert Dowling spoke curtly of divorce, otherwise he was silent. Robbed of certain facts, the media luxuriated in erotic fantasies of illicit love and defection to an unfriendly State. There was also the theory that this woman, often judged the most beautiful in the world, had taken upon herself the guilt of all the whites and was expiating their sins by debasing herself in captivity to a black ruler whose politics were still in doubt. Cautious reference was made to the vigor and quality of Khalief Abhad’s male genitals.

Trudy Ramsay’s puzzlement was compounded by the fact that her companion in captivity, privileged though she might be, was also punished. Caroline’s mischievous tongue, plus a taste of arrogance, had more than once provoked Rulua into handing out a sentence. The penalty was always the same, and Trudy could imagine why: the whipping of the delinquent’s feet. It was a punishment the younger girl dreaded and hoped never to suffer. It seemed too, too awful, and would indeed have been so had not the Mistress held her hand and levied strokes upon the upturned soles of Caroline’s feet light enough to be borne without injury, but usually eliciting a satisfactory modicum of screams. The moral to be drawn was that Caroline Dowling must not be marked: at least not where eyes might search her skin! And Caroline was always tightly bound for her punishment. She did not go to it or endure it with joy.

The captive reverie was disturbed by the voice of a grubby girl child against the bars. “Missie, why you in there?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know.”

The child nodded sagely as though accustomed to being fobbed off with disclaimers. “Why you got them chain things?”

“To keep me from running away.”

“You can’t run! You locked in.”

“Well then, it’s to make me behave.”

“Hmmmmm, you know you get big whipping one day?”

“I’ve heard about it.” Trudy fought down the fear always ready to pounce. “Do you, know what day it’s going to happen?”

“No. But I goin’ ter watch. Big fun ter see yo’ get whip’.”

Trudy’s angry retort was cut short by Rulua’s curt dismissal in the dialect. The child skipped away, laughing. “Fiendish little devils, aren’t they!” the Mistress commented lightly. “How’d you like to get out of that cage?”

“Oh, Rulua . . . free?” Trudy was breathless.

“Well, not really, you’ll still wear a chain.”

“I don’t mind. It’s so nice to get out without being punished.”

“Hands through the bars, love.”

Trudy knew the drill. She was never given a chance to be difficult. The Mistress played it safe. The heavy wristlets were unlocked, the clanking shackle tossed back into the cage and replaced by handcuffs.

“Got you a new pair, dear. All black metal. More prettily made, and damned expensive. I’ll use ’em on you for dress occasions.”

The captive heart beat faster. ‘Dress’! It was a magic word. She examined the black circlets snug on her wrists. Compared with what she usually wore they were a thing of beauty. She was absorbed with her admiration while Rulua entered the cage and unlocked the metal from her ankles. The two sets of irons lay open on the ground like a malign promise for her return.

Trudy had been there before. The residence of Khalief Abhad was as magnificently extravagant as was to be expected, so was the bath, the perfume, the careful attention to her hair by a couple of young and dusky maidens whose sole vocabulary appeared to be giggles.

“Pay no attention to them,” Rulua advised sardonically. “They think because you’re getting a cleanup you’re also getting the President’s penis.”

Trudy flushed. “You mean, I’m going to—that he wants to—?”

“Don’t get your hopes up, dear. You get to serve the drinks. Here, put this on. Oops, sorry! Forgot the handcuffs! Let me . . .”

‘This’ was an apron to comfortably cover Trudy’s pubic hair. It left her bottom pertly bare, adorned only by a disproportionate bow which the Mistress took some pains to perfect.

“Is that all I get to wear?”

“It covers your bush, dear, that’s enough.”

“Not even as much as my Union Jack.”

“The President will accept you naked if you prefer?”

“Oh all right, I’m sorry! But it’s such a suggestive trifle. Anyone can lift it and look.”

“Of course!” Rulua’s agreement was coolly pragmatic. “If he wants to, let him. You’ve done this before. Remember, be seen and not heard. Serve him prettily—” She chuckled drily. “I mean with the Scotch and soda. He’s not likely to honour you with the other today.”

Trudy had played the serving wench before.

That time she had been stark-naked and bedecked with chains, collars, armbands, and a shameful ring clipped into her nose as though she was pierced. It hung over her upper lip as a badge of servitude. ‘Slave Girl,’ that’s what she had become. The uncrowned monarch of Zindawba had been entertaining the British Consul, and there was little doubt in Trudy’s mind she had been ‘laid on’ in nudity and chains as one more opportunity to rub the Empire’s nose in the dust. The Consul had been careful to avoid her reproachful eyes.

Khalief Abhad was versatile. His sense of humour was often Puckish. Like most of his breed, expensively educated, he could devastate his visitor with the impeccable accent of Oxford or the husky vowel sounds of his negro origins. With the Consul he had worn nothing but a loincloth, flaunting his colour in an offensive diplomacy of his own. But today he was the moneyed man of leisure. Bond Street and Paris had joined forces to clothe him casually in silken elegance. He lolled negligently with one knee bent over the arm of his chair. In one hand an empty glass. His greeting was cordial: “Yo’ come to git yo’ ass whipped, honeychile?”

He would always be disconcerting, there was so much of him! He radiated power but was not gross. ‘Khalief the Magnificent’ was a title drumming in Trudy’s mind as she spanned the vast rug to sink on her knees before her lord and bow her head in obeisance. Her “If it please you, sir,” was a husky whisper. She reached out her ebony-fettered hands for his depleted glass.

“Nice handcuffs, I like’ em.” The royal voice was now British and crisp. “Where’d you get them, girl?”

“Mistress Rulua, Sir. She recently acquired them.” She looked up shyly. “I like them too.”

His mood was benign. “Do you, now!” He chuckled expansively. “And d’you like my country and your cage?”

Holding the glass he had surrendered, Trudy searched for tact. Her dilemma was cut short by a familiar voice.

“Don’t tease the darling, Khalief. You know perfectly well she wants to go home.”

Trudy Ramsay pivoted on her knees to gaze in awe at the exquisitely gowned figure of a woman who had sat hidden in the recess of a huge wing chair. A woman who smiled and gestured with a welcoming hand.

It was Caroline Dowling.