Chapter 4: In cages

10 July, 1686 Afternoon

Claire's auction was even more rowdy. Now everybody wanted a white slave. Like her sister she was also clothed in a dress principally designed to display her female figure and feminine assets to there fullest and thereby increase bidding, in dark blue with a sexy, tight fitting halter bodice, fully accentuating Claire's curves and then gently flowing into romantic wisps of sculptured uneven chiffon.

She was made to walk up and down the plat—form several times.

Most of the crowd fell strangely silent as they gazed at her. Each was apparently lost in his own world, with his own thoughts of what they would like to do with her...

"Look at this one, just look at her! Take her home with you and you can bugger her to your hearts' content, gentlemen!"

Many dreamed of that, but only one was to see his dream come true. Claire too, just like Constance was sold to her uncle, and for the same price as her sister.

The girls were taken where they were told to change out of the auction dresses and back into their torn and scanty remains of the dresses they had been abducted in, and then chained together by the neck, their wrists tied behind their backs with wire, they were directed to a cart that would carry them to their uncle's temporary home in Port Royal before they traveled via his schooner, to his permanent residence on the mainland.

Carmen, Isabel and Miss Bjorn were also traveling in the same cart. It turned out that the Norwegian estate— owner was a neighbor of Blanchart's, her also owning a temporary home in Port Royal as well.

The sisters gasped in horror when they climbed onto the wagon. The young Spanish girl, Isabel was lying on her side, with each wrist tied back to the corresponding ankle and each elbow tied back to her knee's forcing her thighs tight against her breasts. Isabel whimpered continually in obvious pain at being teetered so tightly and in such an awkward posture.

Without saying a word, Miss Bjorn slapped Isabel across the mouth and then she used a rag which she stuffed into the girl's mouth to gag her. She then tied the rag with a thin strip of leather pressed tight between the girl's teeth and then knotted behind the neck, under her hair.

"Get used to your Mistress's demands, slave!" she hissed while sitting down on a bench next to Lucien.

The sisters looked at each other in silence. Isabel had not been so lucky after all.

A day later, the two Blanchart sisters sat shaking with fright in the presence of their un—cle. They had been shut in two tiny cages, hardly a meter square, in a dark cellar full of blood chilling instruments of torture. They tried to cover their private parts as best they could. Claire brought her leg across covering the front of her. Lucien admired the thigh. He would ad—mire the rest later. All in good time!

"A brace of nieces, by God!" he said, "More meat on them than pheasants, and more expen—sive too! Twenty thousand doubloons! D'you know how much I paid for that little half Spanish bitch Carmen? Have a guess," he asked, hitting the cage with a whip. Claire was panic-stricken and could not reply.

"Answer your master!" he shouted, hitting the cage again.

"I... I... don't know... uncle!"

"CRAAAACK", on the cage, panic in the eyes. Claire was thinking how terrible that whip would feel on her own skin.

"Three thousand doubloons! A bargain to be sure. And I assure you she probably pleasures me as well as you two could!"

"And do you know why I was willing to pay so much for you two?"

The girls lowered their eyes. Blanchart smiled.

"You, Constance, will be a gift. I'm going to give you to the English Governor of St George's."

The girl looked at him in astonishment. What kind of gift could she possibly be, to a man who was already destined to become her husband?

"I'm a slave trader. I sell human flesh to the English, French and Spanish. I've had some problems recently with the English. I have to look after them. They're my best customers. The ten thousand doubloons I paid for you will be a good invest—ment. The Governor will be grateful to me for a long, long time."

He saw a look of relief cross Constance's beautiful face.

"Do not get your hopes up. The Governor only buys the best. He has a fine collection of girls already, most of them white. But he hasn't got a blonde with blue eyes..."

"You're a liar!" shouted Constance, "A filthy liar. The Governor is an English gentleman!" But she didn't have much faith in her own words. Her uncle was now the second man to tell her that the Governor kept female slaves."

He just smiled at her outburst.

He left the most valuable slave merchandise he had ever purchased sobbing in two small cages, in total darkness...