Chapter 13: A Surprise For Roberta

As the blindfold was taken off, Roberta was somewhat surprised to see herself back in the clearing where she had been twice whipped, firstly when Celestine and Amy had alternately attacked her back from both sides and secondly by Celestine alone. The shame of her reaction to that second whipping still haunted her.

She had received seventy lashes and wept and screamed for mercy after each of them She, Roberta the bravest of the brave had grovelled and pleaded for mercy. Even seventy long years of ceaseless hard work and pain had not expunged this dreadful memory. She still feared Celestine and obeyed her every command.

Her seventy years as a slave might be over but Roberta was still a slave at heart. Her body might be mightier and stronger than ever, but her spirit was that of a dependant who relied upon her Mistress for guidance and trembled abjectly whenever she as much as frowned.

Roberta looked around the familiar and ill favoured clearing. It was still a horrible place! The same tent was there - or an identical tent was there! For this was a new tent, as new as the one she had been in seventy years ago. The dreaded whipping post, where she had been such a coward, was also where it had been. There was blood on the ground. With nausea she saw hordes of insects devouring the blood and bits of torn flesh. Obviously some poor wretch had recently been put through the same horror that had reduced the once proud Roberta to a compliant serf, afraid of her own shadow.

"Do you wish for your freedom, Slave?" said Celestine, coldly. To think she had been so affectionate to her on the last night!

"Yes, Mistress. I desire to be a free woman. I desire it as I have never wished for anything before. But I await my Mistress's decision."

"I am going to whip you again, Roberta, with all the terrible force of my supernatural strength! If you suffer in silence, rather than whine and howl for mercy as you did last time, I may perhaps free you, and then again I may not. Nothing can be certain where my capricious will is concerned! One thing is certain, though. If you utter as much as a grunt I shall enslave you for ever, but there will be no nights of love for you this time. Pain will be your lot all day and all night for ever. You bore me now, Roberta! I really feel I have totally exhausted all the possibilities where you are concerned."

Roberta obeyed, sick with despair. She knew how impossible were the conditions the diabolical Celestine had set for her freedom. Even after seventy years of being flogged every day and with a skin as thick and desensitised as hers had become, she would not withstand even one lash from the possessed Witch. She was half inclined to tell the witch to take her to whatever place of torment and slavery she wished. The whipping was no more than a formality. But Celestine was set on causing her more pain. All signs of love had vanished from those wicked eyes. If only the sweet Amy had won!

Inside the tent she saw a whip identical to the one Celestine had used on her to such hellish effect so many years ago. There was blood - almost fresh blood - on the business end. It had been used very recently. She wondered if the poor victim had survived. Today it would be used again. She shook with fear at the thought of the horror that was ahead.

Just as she was about to go outside and present the whip to her merciless Mistress a warm, soft hand touched her arm. She looked around and a tear ran down her cheek. It was Amy! She looked everything that her Mistress was not - kind, loving and full of sweetness by day as well as by night. Amy's hand excitedly felt every inch of Roberta's stronger than ever body.

"Darling Roberta! How strong you are! What a wonderful body those seventy years have given you! But I see to my sorrow that your mind and spirit are humbled and broken. Have courage, my darling! With my help you will soon be the Roberta of old and my sister will have no more power over you. Look down, darling at my thighs, and how the sight of you has made the juices flow!"

Roberta obeyed. Seventy years of being silent by day had made it impossible for her to utter a word. She saw that juices were indeed running down Amy's inner thighs. She knelt and her tongue lapped up the sweet liquid.

"Take your fill, my sweet darling Roberta. Savour my offering of love and swallow it all! It will give you the strength you are going to need in a few moments when you face your greatest challenge yet. And speak! Make yourself speak. Speak to me and speak to Celestine. Freedom of speech is everyone's right! How dare she have made you be silent! Just you keep quiet like the brave girl you are and then I'll sort her out good and proper!"

Roberta thirstily licked out the willing Amy, sucking up the love juice as fast as it flowed. When she had finished she spoke, the first time she had opened her mouth during the day for seventy long and wretched years.

"You seem to have been fighting again, Amy! I wish you wouldn't! You're far too lovely to spoil your looks like that! That face is as bad as it was seventy years ago, after that struggle which I so devoutly wish you had won! I hope you won this time, after collecting all those terrible bruises!"

"I lost! I shall tell you the story, which will astound you! You have so much to learn, Roberta, and in such a short time! Soon I shall fight her again and this time I shall win. My undying and passionate love for you and my contempt for her will see me through to a glorious victory! Just you wait and see! You must play your part, my angel girl! First you must take Celestine's furious whipping in silence and after that I must fight and beat her. From then on you and I will be together, in equal and loving happiness to bear life's burdens and share its joys in loving harmony. No Slave and no Mistress but a devoted and caring couple. Be brave, my sweet!"

"Can't you stop Celestine hurting me again, Amy?" Roberta was trembling with fear and there was pleading in her voice.

"Yes, I could. I could easily rescue you from the whipping that is to come. But I won't and you wouldn't thank me if I did - not afterwards. Not when you'd had time to think about it! And the true Roberta would never ask such a question. Would she?"

"No. Already I feel her contempt for the writhing cowardly worm I have become! You are right. I shall think of you and our life together as my back feels the terrible weight of your sister's fury. You have given me strength of mind again to match that of my body, Amy! My darling Amy!"

Roberta stepped outside the tent, leaving Amy inside. Soon she was tied up again and as had happened seventy years ago, the whip hissed angrily through the air and on to her stretched back. She felt her lungs burst as the hellish agony sliced through her whole body, and not only her body but her entire being. She remained silent, even though the effort to suppress a shriek of pain seemed to have sapped most of her strength. Would she be able to withstand another sixty nine strokes like that? She must. There was no choice. The cowardice of seventy years ago must be redeemed and the old Roberta reborn in the same crucible of pain that had once destroyed and humbled her.

An enraged Celestine increased her efforts when after thirty lashes her Slave was still obstinately refusing to cry out. She knew that she was causing Roberta far more agony even than seventy years ago and still she kept quiet, even as the flesh was ripped off her body, piece by piece. She reached the seventieth lash and was ready to go on, killing her victim rather than see her gain her freedom, when her sister's voice rang out across the clearing. Damn that Amy!

"Enough, you evil woman! I am ashamed to call you a sister! Leave her be and fight me again. This time I shall beat you and Roberta and I will be together."

"So you can enslave the cow as well? Fat chance of that, little sister! She is mine, Amy! Either that or she is nobody's!"

"I only want her to be free, Celestine. If she will have me then I would like to live with her, but the only thing that really matters to me is releasing her from a foul bondage so that she may once more be the proud woman that destiny has intended her to be. Prepare to fight me again!"

"If you want another hiding, that suits me fine! But we'll have no referee this time!" laughed Celestine. "I think that the poor whipped Roberta needs a rest! The bitch is more than half dead already after the going over I gave her! She can stay here, and when I have seen to you and left you stretched out on the ground where you belong, I either make the miserable piece of shit cry for mercy or she dies!"

Roberta saw both young witches go inside the tent and when they came out, both bodies were glistening with oil and both pairs of hands were protected with what looked to the shocked Roberta, still in great pain from her flogging, to be strips of metal. They would cause each other terrible harm if they fought wearing those!

"Don't wear those awful things, girls! " she cried.

Despite her weakness she forced herself to speak. "Wear leather like you did last time. Be reasonable! You did enough damage to each other with that - remember!"

"Who told you to speak, Slave!" raged Celestine. Her lovely face was twisted into ugliness with her fury.

But Amy respected Roberta's judgment in these matters.

"If Roberta thinks we should wear something else, she is the trained warrior around here! She is the expert."

"She is a Slave. And if she talks again, I shall kill her for sure!"

Then the aged Mother Felicity appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. Actually she had been hovering around for some time, in the guise of a falcon, but the two daughters had been to preoccupied to see her.

"Release Roberta!" she ordered Celestine. "Let her sleep. When she is awake again, she shall referee this fight as she did the one before. Do as I say, Celestine and make it snappy! I am very disappointed in you!"

Celestine, looking like a naughty little girl rather than Roberta's imperious Mistress, untied Roberta and Felicity led her to a couch inside the tent. She lay down surrounded by rows of lethal whips and lines of bottles, all containing various differently coloured liquids. Felicity took down three bottles and poured out some liquid from each into a shallow bowl. Roberta then fell asleep. Her last sensation was of Mother Felicity rubbing the mixture into her shredded back.

When she came round her back had ceased to hurt and she knew that it was healed and smooth, and that as long as she lived it must never be scarred again. Walking outside she saw the two young witches, one who had been her Mistress, tormentor and nocturnal lover and the other, who only wanted selfless love between equals. The sinister Celestine looked in far better shape than her sister, who still bore the marks of a recent fight in which she had been beaten. Amy didn't look like much of a champion, thought Roberta.

"What happens if Celestine beats Amy?" she asked Felicity.

"Then she has you back. I hate what she has become, but she is of age now and there is little I can do. Amy will do her best, Roberta. She loves you very much. How should my daughters cover their hands for the fight, Warrior Woman Roberta?"

"I suggest they wrap them in leather strips like last time, Mother Felicity. Metal would cause dreadful harm. I can't imagine what they were thinking of. Celestine took weeks to heal last time, when she had been bruised only by leather bound fists."

Mother Felicity ordered her two daughters to do as Roberta had decreed. They came out of the tent with their hands once again wrapped in soft leather strips. Their bodies were both oiled by now and glistening, but Amy's entire body from the waist upwards was still covered with many bruises from her recent losing fight. Roberta wondered what had been the cause of it.

As soon as Roberta gave the order, the pair started on each other. Amy made the first strike and sent Celestine reeling backwards. For a bruised and tired girl, she was showing amazing energy today! She followed this up with another hard right handed blow which knocked her sister to the ground. Roberta started counting. It had been agreed that if she counted up to twenty and the felled fighter was still not on her feet, the fight was over. Roberta had no power to stop the contest in any other circumstances.

Celestine made it to her feet at the count of seventeen and looked shaken. Amy was a different girl today! The fight resumed and Celestine managed a bit of a come back, hitting Amy's already bruised face several hard blows and making her nose, which Roberta guessed to be already broken from the previous contest, bleed copiously.

But Amy was not to be denied another knock down for long! In the third minute after her first decking Celestine, she felled her sister again and this time Roberta's tormentor was still lying on her back as Roberta reached twenty. Amy had won - and in only a few minutes!

"Congratulate the victor, Roberta!" ordered Mother Felicity. "She has given you back all that Celestine had taken from you. Love her and protect her, Roberta, and she will make you very happy for the rest of your life."

Roberta embraced Amy, who responded happily. She kissed her, trying her best not to touch that tender and very likely broken little nose.

"Thank you for rescuing me, darling! Now that we are together, I fear nothing in this strange new world where all my old friends are either long since dead or very old!"

"Thank you for being so brave under Celestine's flogging. It was that amazing courage than inspired me to win. Without your brave example I should have failed yet again!"

Amy took her rescued lover's hand and led Roberta away from the clearing, with its tent full of instruments of torture, and the whipping post with the bloodstained grass around it. Roberta looked round and saw that Celestine still lay flat on her back. When Mother Felicity threw cold water over her she stirred a little but showed no other sign of life. It had been a terrific punch of Amy's - right on the button, and sending her straight into dreamland for quite some time!

In a few hours of leisurely strolling, hand in had all the way, they were back at the lake, with the island a few hundred yards off shore. A boat, identical to that which had carried Roberta and Celestine seventy years ago, was moored on the shore and the two lovers got in. Roberta rowed the couple over to the island. Amy looked terribly tired, as well she might after all her recent exertions, and Roberta was happy to do all the hard work!

"The Palace looks the same as ever!" exclaimed Roberta as soon as the two young lovers, hand in hand and pausing frequently to kiss, had reached the topmost point. Look! The Golden Guard still exist! The defaulters are being led out for their evening whipping! How I wish I were there!

I cannot be a Guard, though. You have to be enrolled as a girl of twelve. Even with my enormous strength, they would not take me at my age. What is my age, Amy?"

"You are just over twenty one, Roberta! And those Guards are your former lover Bertha, who is being punished for the second time in a week and Natalie and Celia, who are both known to you and getting ten lashes apiece!

Roberta almost fainted! As soon as she could speak she stammered her amazement to the laughing Amy.

"How can this be, sweetheart? How can it be?"

"We are witches, Roberta and can play tricks with time that you mortals cannot. You did indeed spend seventy years as Celestine's slave and sexual plaything. But for me and the rest of the world, it all took place over one night! Never fear! I shall play no more tricks with you and you are mine now! And I am yours!"

"Celestine told me that the real culprits had been put to death, but I see that she lied. For Bertha is one of the guilty ones and she still lives, the miserable traitor!"

Roberta looked at Amy's battered face.

"So your face was still bruised today after the fight with Celestine! And the whip I took from the tent for Celestine to use on me was stained with my own only half dried blood!"