Chapter 20

(In which Clementine becomes a Slave and all live happily ever after - Up to a Point!)

In the next three years the increasingly intimate couple were to meet seven more times in that wood and seven more times Clementine would lie senseless at Amanda's feet after what were always marathon contests, the latest and most bruising of which lasted forty five minutes.

By this time George had been posted back to London and Viola had joined him there three months later. The way Viola's affair with Fox had deepened and Amanda had taken over Clementine had been slow and almost imperceptible at first but remorseless all the same. By the time the situation had resolved itself all concerned saw that it had been inevitable from the time Amanda and Clementine had first faced each other in Abhlovia and Viola had met Fox in England. Amanda's break with Fox came when he finally tired of her reluctance to name the day for their wedding.

A year after her rescue Clementine had said a sad farewell to Viola who promised they would still see each other often (which they did, their bond not having been broken but merely transformed into ordinary friendship). Clemmy bought Viola's cottage and Paris apartment and put the rest of her money into the sports club which soon diversified to become a fashionable upmarket establishment. But the ladies combat side was never ignored.

Clementine and Amanda both fought professionally many times, always victoriously. But they never appeared publicly against each other. Their private matches were all very, very personal and after each of them their relationship grew and deepened, but constant heavy defeats meant that Amanda came to dominate Clementine and exercise a control that others noticed with disapproval but which Clemmy grew, first to accept, and then increasingly to enjoy.

"I am your slave these days, Amanda" she said over a romantic dinner on the night before their eighth fight.

"I know, darling! And you love it, don't you?"

"I'm beginning love it! I wonder if I could live any other way."

Their eighth fight was in high summer and on a glorious cloudless day. They had agreed, in view of the intense heat, to break off for refreshment every five minutes or so. Clementine had managed to keep herself under control and out of trouble for much of the time and after thirty minutes she dared to hope that this might be her first victory. Amanda seemed not to be her usual confident self today.

Maybe it was fear of what a win would do to unbalance their relationship, or perhaps once again she had expended her effort too early on, but Clementine somehow lost the opening that she sensed herself to have. Soon Amanda started to demolish her in that coolly professional way that was a delight for onlookers to watch but sheer hell for her victims. Clemmy felt herself being softened up again and knew Amanda was going to flatten her once more. Five minutes later it was all over. But it had taken Amanda forty five minutes this time, including drinks breaks.

Amanda went down on her knees, her feet tucked under her posterior and raised the semi conscious Clementine's head, cradling it and resting it on her thighs. She stroked that long fair hair as the beaten girl opened her eyes and looked dazedly up into Amanda's lovely face. Clemmy smiled and pushed her head into Amanda's body trying to get it between those sweaty and succulent thighs.

"Mmm!! You smell so good! And you're so sweaty! It's bloody pouring off you!"

"And off you too, Clemmy! Though I am the one that does all the work! You just stand there and let me 'it you!"

Amanda laughed as she said this and ran her hands through Clemmy's golden hair. She leant back and opened her legs, letting Clementine have her sweet reward for being beaten. For over an hour the two lay together in the clearing Amanda part of the time tenderly cleansing the cuts she had just inflicted and part letting Clementine make love to her. She still preferred men, but Clementine had always been very special and she no longer felt any regrets about George, now married to Viola and a proud father.

Amanda looked solemnly down at the girl she had helped rescue and over whom she had come to assert an almost total dominance which was very much to the liking of them both.

"Clemmy, my darling. I think this must stop. It is true that you are getting better and better, but so am I. I am always the one step ahead of you and always you fall victim to my superior technique. It is getting to be so bloody boring always winning and you can't find it so much fun losing. Let's not fight ever again, my angel!"

Clemmy smiled back at her opponent and lover.

"You always say that and I always say I know when I'm beaten. We both of us know we'll fight again! I'm not one to give up, but I acknowledge you will most likely always beat me, Mistress Amanda. And even if I do win one day, you will always be my mistress."

"I will indeed, my beloved Slave Clementine. And now it is time to get inside my cottage! You are better now and the life it is coming back to that so strong body. Carry me back to the cottage my powerful, but too slow to beat me, Slave."

"I thought I owned the cottage now, Amanda. I seem to remember signing the cheque!"

"But it is I who own you, Clemmy. And if I own you, I own the cottage. And don't complain - you love to be owned by the superlative and incomparable Amanda! Carry me home at once!"

Clemmy did as she was told. It might be her money which was keeping the two of them, but Amanda always gave the orders and Clemmy liked obeying this woman whose imperiousness got more ludicrous and extreme with the years but never failed to delight her with its outrageousness. On the way, Amanda took her arms from around Clemmy's neck, stretching them out and leaning backwards, trying to make herself as hard to carry as she could and laughing as Clemmy began to sweat with the heat and her arm muscles stood out like ropes as they took the strain.

"Oh, You are so strong! Do you see the trees, Clemmy? Along this path? They need some thinning out. Get an axe and start on them as soon as you have got me home. I may come and watch later after I 'ave 'ad a sleep. I need a rest. It is the very tiring work knocking the shit out of you."

Amanda picked herself up from the ground where Clemmy, tiring for once of her lover's arrogance, had unceremoniously dropped her.

"OK, Clemmy. We BOTH chop a few trees down after we eat. I am just as strong as you in any case!"

"Balls! You get your sleep and I'll do it!"

Back at the cottage, the phone rang. Clemmy was away for a long time and finally came back into the parlour and sat by Amanda.

"It was Alexia, darling! My lover during my imprisonment and the one who kept me sane all those years. She's finally been released. Her brutal husband, whom she put into a coma after he had beaten her, has miraculously recovered. And when he heard his young wife was in prison he forgave her and she is now free. It seems the injury must have done him good because she says he is now a kind and gentle man. They are in Paris for a long weekend. I have invited her to come here for the afternoon. I hope you don't mind."

"Mind! Of course not. Go and get the place ready to receive visitors, Clemmy. It is a tip as usual. I, with much reluctance, put up with your untidy ways but I won't have visitors seeing this mess!"

"You know you're as terrible a slob as me!" laughed Clemmy. "But, as ever, you're right. We can't entertain my former lover with the place looking like this!"

Three hours later the couple heard the sound of a car coming up the drive.

"She is here, Mistress!" said Clemmy.

"Open the door to your guest then, Slave! Don't you think we should dress to receive them!"

With horror Amanda had realised they were still stripped after their fight earlier on and the tree felling which had taken up that part of the afternoon not devoted to tidying the house.

"No. Alexia asked me not too. I am not totally stupid, Amanda!"

At first Alexia seemed unsure how to greet her erstwhile leader and lover, but the atmosphere gradually became relaxed, especially with Amanda being so charming and putting her at her ease.

"You fought Clementine not long before she was released. I remember that well. You had to give up before the end of the fight and you and Clemmy sat and watched me win against Olga. I was so proud that day. She had always beaten me before"

"Amanda only gave up because she had been told to, Alexia. She was employed by our Government to help get me free. And we have had eight matches since, not far from here. She always knocks me out cold. We had our latest today and you might see I am just a bit damaged!"

"I can't believe it, Clemmy! I got so used to you being unbeatable! But Amanda doesn't look as if she got it all her own way, although, I have to admit you DO look a hell of a lot worse that she does. You must be an absolutely brilliant fighter, Amanda, to beat Clementine!"

"I am, cherie! I am!"

Clementine tried to ignore her lover/mistress's cocksure complacency. She really was so unspeakably full of herself after her invariably victorious fights with her battered blonde partner/slave that it threatened to get beyond a joke.

"How are conditions at the prison, Alexia, and how is Rashumba?" She sounded almost like her old authoritative self. She thought she saw Amanda frown at this so she sat submissively on the carpet at her Mistress's feet and Amanda cheered up.

"It got better there after you were rescued, Clemmy. But as soon as the world turned its eyes away, things soon reverted to normal. For a while many of us were given clothes and moved inside. Then, after three months we were all naked again and in the bloody cage, getting whipped as usual. Rashumba, Olga and a few others were never given clothes or let out of the cage. We would see them huddled together at night and being run to and from the quarry.

After being put back in the cage again, I was the head prisoner, after miraculously beating off Olga and easily thrashing Rashumba. I don't know who is in charge now - Olga I guess. Rashumba gets a terrible time, Clemmy. She treated the guards like shit for all the years you were there and they have not forgotten. They work her until she drops and they whip her long and hard for the least little thing, just like it was with you - only worse, if you can believe it! And the other women make her life a non-stop misery which was not a thing you had to worry about. They still remember you, Clementine and how that cow made your life such hell on earth. She won't last much longer, poor woman. If you saw her now, even you would pity her."

"Would you feel sorry for 'er, Clemmy my love?" asked Amanda softly, her arms possessively around Clementine's shoulders and her hand resting on her breast.

"Yes. I would, darling. She doesn't belong there for the next twelve years. If I wrote to the Abhlovians asking for clemency for her, do you think they might take any notice?"

(Clemmy wrote to the Embassy when she was free to do so, saying that she forgave Rashumba for all the wrongs she had done her and asking for her sentence to be reduced and her conditions to be improved. She never had a reply but Viola wrote a few months later to say that the Foreign Office had learned that Rashumba had been moved to another and far less harsh prison. Five years later the African woman, her hair prematurely white and her body stooping and frail was freed on parole. What happened to her after that, neither Clemmy nor Viola was ever to learn.)

Alexia stayed for over two hours and then said she must go. Clementine kissed her good bye and watched her till she was out of sight. Then she went back inside, nervous about Amanda's reaction. She was beginning to realise that her Mistress got very angry indeed if Clemmy reminded her that she had not always been hers. She wondered what little treat might be in store for her. Amanda seemed to be upstairs and she heard her moving about, apparently looking for something. Then she came downstairs. She was carrying a stick, a chain and some handcuffs.

"So you kiss your ex-lover goodbye, eh! I teach you! Bend over that chair! NO. Correction! Bend down and touch the toes. Do not move until I tell you. I am going to cane that bottom and then take you outside and chain you up. And I let you in again one day - maybe. But you better get used to fresh air again and plenty of it!"

Clementine obeyed. Soon the cane was swishing through the air and her buttocks were on fire as Amanda coldly slashed away at them. Amanda might be tired after a morning thrashing her in the wood and an afternoon felling trees, but she gave Clemmy a caning to remember for many weeks after. Then she was told to stand up. Amanda came round and stood with her face an inch away from hers.

"What have you to say now!"

"I am sorry. But we were lovers, Amanda and long before I met you. But I am yours now. You know that!"

"Maybe. But outside you come and I wish it was winter not a warm summer evening!"

Amanda tethered Clementine, in such a way that she could not stand upright, to a ring well fixed in the concrete floor of the front yard. Then she left her. It got dark and after several hours the light went out. Amanda had gone to bed. Clemmy wondered how long this was to go on for. Maybe it was time for her to assert herself! She pulled on the chain, but even her strength could not tear the ring out of its place. She had wondered at the time why Amanda had got her to put this there. Now she knew that this uncomfortable position was to be hers whenever she stepped out of line. That and the caning, whose after effects still made her careful not to bring her rump into contact with the ground. She was used to discomfort, though, and managed to get some sleep. It was light when she woke and the house was still silent. Finally Amanda came out. She had a bowl in her hand which she put in front of Clementine. It contained porridge and looked awful. Amanda went in and came back with a bowl of water.

"How long is this to go on for, Mistress?"

Amanda ignored her and went back inside Clementine decided that she must eat, even if she were to have to do so like a dog. By the time she had finished she had stuff all over her face and the water had partly been spilt.

At nine Amanda came out and got the car out of the garage. She drove away and Clemmy knew she would not see her again until evening. She wondered what reason she would give for her partner's absence. Clemmy had no fights arranged for weeks and was afraid Amanda might keep her here until then. At ten the postman came. He looked at the tethered Clemmy and laughed.

"The games you girls play! What it is to be young!"

Another caller was the gardener and he asked Clementine if she wanted help.

"No, thank you. Please get on with your work. I am here until Amanda decides to release me."

It was three days before Amanda said a word to the chained Clementine. Each morning she would place two bowls in front of her and each evening she would replace them with two more. The weather was still extremely hot and the sun was strong. By the time the evening came Clementine felt only marginally less thirsty that she had in the prison that last summer when they had pegged her out and left her without food and water for two days at a time. She consoled herself with the thought that at least she could move about this time, if only to a limited extent.

Then on the morning of her fourth day, Amanda spoke.

"Are you truly sorry Clemmy to have kissed that Alexia without asking my permission?"

"Yes. I would never want to hurt you. But I would still do it again. I owe her so much, darling."

Amanda snorted.

"I would never look at another human being, let alone kiss one! You are still a very selfish girl, My Slave and it will not do. And now, to the practical details! You need a shower. I don't mind you lying in your own shit, in fact it pleases me a lot, but the smell is getting 'orrible! I will get out the 'osepipe!"

Thirty seconds later she was spluttering under a powerful douche of cold water. Amanda kept it up until her victim was ready to pass out before she turned off the flow. She had felt she might drown, especially when Amanda had turned the hose onto her face and kept it there for long enough to wash away the accumulation of food that had been smeared over it in the last few days.