Maia

"Oh-er-I dropped it," replied Occula after a moment. "It was only thin pottery, so that was that. No great loss, really, was it? Come on now, bahzi, come and gild my eyelids, will you? And then you can do my nipples as well. We've got to get all polished up to attend that wretched girl's whippin'. And we know what Piggy's goin' to want after that, doan' we?"

"Blackberries I reckon those are, not strawberries," giggled Maia, searching along the shelf for the little jar of cosmetic gilt. "You got a knife or a coin or something? Only this lid's jammed on that tight."

The punishment referred to by Terebinthia and Occula as "whipping" was in actuality seldom or never inflicted with a whip, for the bodies of slave-girls of the quality owned by the High Counselor were far too valuable to be scarred or lacerated. Terebinthia's normal practice-of which he, as a connoisseur', approved, finding it fully as enjoyable as whipping-was to administer a sound smacking on the rump with a broad strip of leather about twenty inches long and perhaps an eighth of an inch thick. As an amusing adjunct to this spectacle Sencho, whose natural pruriency delighted above all in seeing women indecently degraded, had himself designed and had made a special block for the culprit. This consisted of a life-sized figure, carved in black wood, of a naked, grinning savage reclining on its back, the two hands cupped in front of the face to form a kind of perch or saddle. The girl to be punished, having been stripped, was compelled to crouch astride this

figure, facing its feet, her buttocks elevated and her groin supported on its hands. In this position, and effectively gagged-for the figure was realistically complete in its semblance of carnal arousal-she presented a charming and elegant spectacle of humiliation which never failed to afford Sencho the keenest enjoyment.

During the smacking of Meris, which Terebinthia, herself stripped to the waist for greater freedom, carried out with brisk and pleasing vigor, the High Counselor, his couch placed close beside the girl, lay watching in blissful silence. From time to time, signing to Terebinthia to pause, he would stretch out a fat arm to caress Metis's thighs, himself trembling with frissons of delicate, cultured pleasure. Indeed, so intense was his delight that he could scarcely bring himself to tell Terebinthia to desist, consenting at length only when the saiyett had respectfully pointed out that the girl was, after all, very valuable. For some time after Meris had been carried out he lay, with closed eyes, in a kind of transport, emitting sighs of satisfaction or sudden, quick groans of reminiscent delight. At length, coming to himself and growing once more aware of the four women waiting to learn his further wishes, he instructed Terebinthia first to undress Maia, whom he wished to remain with him, and then herself retire with Occula and Dyphna.

In the event Maia did not leave the High Counselor until the following morning.

Her own reactions to the whipping had been startlingly unexpected, and might have puzzled her if she had been in the habit of dwelling upon her own feelings: but such was not her nature. At first she had been filled only with revulsion at the sight of the grotesque, carved face leering up between Meris's legs, at her haunches quivering as Terebinthia struck her, and at the yet more grotesque figure of the High Counselor quivering ecstatically in harmony. Then, suddenly and entirely without volition, she felt in herself, with a rush of spontaneous excitement, that same pleasure which she knew to be Sencho's. Like a swimmer ceasing to struggle against a current; like a desert traveler gulping down the water that was supposed to last two days; like an enraged soldier who cannot restrain in himself the impulse to strike a superior-so Maia, whether she would or no, was swept away by a surging, headlong exhilaration. Ah! Ah! Meris shuddering, Meris writhing. Sencho pant-

ing, Meris uncontrollably pissing in the black man's face ha ha, Terebinthia's big deldas swinging as she wielded the thick, pliant leather smack, oh no it wasn't Meris smack it was that sneering nobleman who had dared to shout at Lady Maia from his boat smack, it was filthy Genshed with his knife smack, oh yes, it was Zuno lolling under his awning harder, harder! while she and Occula trudged in the hot smack sun it was Perdan who had thrown her against the cart on the road oo yes it was smack grubby little Nala threatening to sneak on her and Tharrin oh smackl it was Morca Morca Morca morel