Chapter 3

PAULA

ALONE AND VOLUNTARILY CHILLY!

Paula shivered in the November cold. Perhaps it was just her imagination, but Winter seemed to have started early this year! Much earlier than last year. But, of course, last year she had been wearing her warm winter coat. She was standing, breathless, at the top of the hill which overlooked her Uncle's house below and the grim and forbidding shape of Hell's Island Prison for Women, just visible through the dank mists, in the distance. She shivered from more than just the premature winter cold as she stared at that grim piece of rock. And the tears in her eyes were caused by more than just the keen wind.

Her revered and beloved Roberta was over there! She had been on that bleak island since late July, serving a sentence of imprisonment with regular mandatory whippings and ultra hard labour for the remainder of her natural life. If she lived to be eighty, she would still be receiving the same harsh treatment that she was getting at this very minute! Poor unjustly imprisoned Roberta! Paula would give anything to be by her side and sharing her undeserved misfortunes!

Paula still considered herself to be Roberta's servant and thus an auxiliary of the Golden Guard. For this reason she was still naked - hence her extreme discomfort in the cold weather. The King, who had no reason to suspect Paula of any wrongdoing and who still liked her, had given her permission to remain unclothed if she so wished.

"If it makes the poor girl happy, after losing her friend and lover in such a terrible way, then what harm can it do?" he had said.

Then the King had sent her to her Uncle's to recover from the distress of seeing Roberta's formal degradation and huge flogging, which as an auxiliary member of the Guard, she had been obliged to watch, lined up with all the other members of the Golden Guard as Roberta had been brought up from the dungeon, already more dead than alive after being tortured for many hours. They had brought Paula specially back from her uncle's, where she had been at the time, to be made to watch.

As a disgraced Golden Guard, Roberta had been hung upside down, after having her head shaved. She had then been whipped by four other Guards, all aiming at her back from different angles and each giving her a hundred lashes. It was a ghastly ordeal even for Roberta, the toughest of the tough. They had cut her to the bone a hundred times long before they had finished with her and a half demented Roberta had screamed for mercy long before the end. But she had been so weak by that time that no one had heard - not that it would have made any difference if they could.

That ordeal had left her unconscious and hovering between life and death for six days. But, to everyone's surprise, she had recovered strongly thereafter and she had finally been considered fit enough to start her sentence after ten more days. The Commandant had thought that the horrible punishment would surely have killed her, and such had been her intention and fervent hope. But Roberta was strong and had survived - just. Her continuing survival still gave the Commandant sleepless nights, even if she were safely marooned for all time on a barren rock surrounded by swirling tides and fierce currents.

Despite her amazing recovery she was no longer the old Roberta, but a broken and chastened wreck, convinced by her tormentors that she must in some way be guilty even if she had no idea how or why.

Paula was already at her Uncle's house, still sobbing dementedly for hours at a time, when Roberta had been sent off to start her life sentence. She had thus not been there to see her friend escorted out of the Palace, shuffling in clanking chains, naked still, but with her golden hair no more than a stubble after it had been ritually shaved off. After leaving the Palace and the city behind her, Roberta still had ahead of her the ordeal of walking the entire twenty miles to the port from which she was to be embarked. This ordeal was made infinitely worse by the fact that. as a parting gesture from the Golden Guard, Roberta had been badly whipped on the soles of her feet,

Paula had seen her, loaded with chains and hobbling painfully, pass by her Uncle's cottage, escorted by a troop of her former colleagues, a bowed, fallen and tragically shrunken figure compared to the imperious Golden Guard who had run past this very spot a few short months ago.

She had wept to see this once proud figure, surrounded by contemptuous former comrades, being pushed, prodded and struck on all parts of her bruised body as a way of encouraging her to keep moving, stumbling and staggering the last few painful yards to the port. But she made it all the way, which nobody had thought she would.

Paula had heard from friends who worked at the port how Roberta had collapsed as she reached the boat and been unceremoniously thrown into the hold with the cargo. She did not blame the escort for their cruelty. The people who had put her through this were not the escorting Guards, who honestly thought her a traitor, but those who had so foully blackened her reputation and robbed her of her good name, and with it all she held most precious. For Roberta prized honour above all.

Paula refused to believe Roberta to be guilty. She had made it plain to everyone that she still stood by her Mistress, but her words had been dismissed as mere blind loyalty. No one else had ever had the slightest doubt, even though it had chiefly been the dying words of that treacherous maid Rowena that had condemned her to any more than a severe flogging. Roberta would most certainly have got the flogging in any case for the cardinal sin of losing her weapons.

Rowena had let seven fellow conspirators into the Queen's apartments. Anna had given the alarm and frantically ordered the King and Queen into a corner where she could the better protect them. In a fierce struggle she had killed four of the intruders. The King, insisting on fighting side by side with Anna, had killed two. The remaining one had fled and was still at large. Rowena had thrown a knife, taken from the corpse of one of the assailants, at the King. But Anna moving with incredible speed had thrown herself in front of him and taken the knife in her belly. The mortally wounded Anna had fatally injured the evil Rowena before dying herself.

When Roberta had been found, she was asleep and her sword, bow and arrows were not with her. Allowing herself to be disarmed was serious enough, of course. That alone would have got her dismissed in disgrace after an upside down flogging. But Rowena, in almost her dying breath, had named Roberta as the Golden Guard who had helped her smuggle her co-conspirators into the Royal Apartments. Paula had been away at the time, having been given leave for a few days to visit her Uncle, who had been unwell.

It was clear that someone in the Golden Guard must have been in league with Rowena. All the signs pointed to Roberta. Even the King, who loved her dearly by this time, had been constrained to agree that she must be punished by perpetual imprisonment of the harshest kind.

During her brutal interrogation and torture immediately after the incident, Roberta had seemed evasive and confused. She had been beaten savagely over her whole body and especially so about the groin area, scorched with hot irons and stretched on the rack until her joints cracked. When they had tired of this, they had secured her hands behind her and hung her from her feet, attached to a mechanism that slowly lowered and as slowly raised her, head first, into a tank of freezing cold water. Her head would be underwater for many long seconds, running into minutes until she was raised, gasping and spluttering, just in time to stop her drowning. She scarcely had time to draw breath before the mechanism sent her back down into the bath again. This went on for hours. The Head Torturer was very proud of this piece of equipment, which had only recently been installed. Roberta's interrogation was his first opportunity to play with his latest toy!

Through all these horrors - and more - she had scarcely seemed to know or care what was happening to her. After twelve hours they had given up on her and had then handed what was left of the poor girl, after their grisly work, over to the Commandant of the Golden Guard to sentence and punish. Both punishment and sentence were foregone conclusions.

Nobody had believed her when she said that she had gone to her quarters with her sword, bow and quiver by her side. The whole excuse that she had mysteriously been robbed was seen as nonsense. She had clearly handed her weapons to be used by one of the conspirators and gone to her room and slept through what she hoped would be her royal master's murder. But Anna had been too good for them - as had the King, who had helped save himself and his wife from certain death.

But Roberta had chosen Anna to be her fellow Personal Guard. Paula, who was going over the entire horrible episode for the millionth time. She found this the strongest objection to the charges against her. Roberta had considered that quiet and devoted girl to have been the most fitted of all the Golden Guard to be her companion. And Anna had been almost superhuman that night, more than justifying the trust Roberta had placed in her! Her family had been richly rewarded and would never be in want as long as they and their descendants lived! If Roberta were a traitor, she would hardly have chosen as her colleague such a skilled fighter, such an epic heroine, as Anna. Because Roberta was a superb judge of her comrades' abilities.

And the idea that Roberta would have handed her prized weapons to anyone else was nonsense. Paula had seen a thousand times, just how highly her Mistress prized them. And they had never been found. Paula had a pretty good idea where to look for them. She had been thinking these events every second of every day for the past five months.

She ran, barefooted and naked, down the hill and back up again three times. For whatever reason, Paula wanted to be ready for anything she might need to do in order to help the toiling and disgraced Roberta. She might not be able to match her friend in terms of size and strength but she wanted to be as fit as the tallest and bravest of the Golden Guard.

Because she was utterly determined that Roberta would not rot on that island for ever. By some means, that innocent girl, still only twenty years old, must be rescued! The very idea was too awful to contemplate that she should not be! She might be home sooner than anyone thought possible! And Paula intended to be the one who got her back from the dead, her honour vindicated and every last one of her enemies punished a hundred times more horribly than Roberta had been.

Another consideration was that all this violent exercise helped warm her up! Roberta and her comrades' bodies had all been well hardened by years of exposure to all weathers, but Paula had enjoyed a normal sheltered upbringing and her first winter without clothes promised to be a very testing time for her. But she was determined to stick it out. Her nudity was her one remaining link with her beloved Roberta.

About to go into her Uncle's house, she saw the same sight as in late February, half an age ago. The King's carriage, with its escort of naked blonde beauties was coming her way. It must be that His Majesty was on his way to the hunting lodge.

Paula was surprised. Rebel activity was at one of its periodic high points just lately and that Lodge was terribly hard to protect. There were a hundred places a sniper might use for cover. It had taken Roberta all her best efforts to stop the King being attacked the last time he had been there. Without his best Guard he was taking a very serious risk!

The carriage drew nearer and nearer. Once again she saw the magnificent team of horses and the eighteen running Guards, all of whom she knew and liked by this time. They were all her friends except for two.

She hated that despicable and incompetent Bertha. And she didn't trust the Commandant. Paula had never understood the respect Roberta had had for that woman. She understood that the King wanted her out and Roberta put in her place.

This would be the first glimpse Paula had had of His Majesty since she had seen him looking from a window at Roberta's degradation and near fatal flogging. The look on his face on that day had almost made Paula forgive him for what he was allowing to be done. He had been weeping and had turned away, unable to look at what they were doing to Roberta.

To Paula's surprise the carriage slowed down as it neared her house. Finally it stopped and the King climbed down, helped out by two Guards, Rosemary and Charlotte. Paula guessed that these were His Majesty's replacements for Roberta and poor dead, heroic Anna. Not a bad choice! Next to the original pair, they were the ones Paula would have chosen.

"Paula! I came especially to see you! May we come in to your Uncle's house. Paula knelt before him.

"Your Majesty is welcome. Our house is honoured by your presence, Sir!"

"Get up, please, my dear! We're old friends, you and I! No need to kneel! Get those pretty knees off those sharp stones at once! Let's go inside!"

The King, Rosemary, Charlotte and Paula went inside.

PAULA - BACK AT WORK (AND ON THE JOB)

An hour later Paula was on her way back to the Palace. She asked to be allowed to run beside the carriage and surprised everyone by keeping up with the other Golden Guards all the way back!

The King had reinstated her as an active assistant to the Guard. She was told once again that she need not fear ever being flogged on her back. But there was always the remote possibility of the very occasional caning.

"But you are so good, Paula and so capable, that you need have no fears about that sweet bottom ever being made red!" said the King.

"Except when you pinch it, Your Majesty!" she didn't say!

But she guessed, rightly, that he would not be able to keep his hands off those sweet rounded buttocks for long! She only hoped she'd be able to fend off Bertha and the Commandant, both of whom were becoming more predatory and insatiable by the day!

It was all in a good cause, though. Now that she was back in the Palace and the Golden Guard's quarters, she could try to work out exactly what had happened and just precisely how Roberta had been framed.

It proved easy enough to rebuff the Commandant, who had long lusted after her, and had come to be beside herself with desire once petite Paula's exciting buttocks had become bare for all to see. She had gnashed her teeth in a horrible paroxysm of blind and primitive rage night after night when the King had sanctioned her affair with Roberta.

"What a shame that you and I cannot be lovers, Madam Commandant!" said Paula the first time that the Chief Golden Guard's hot and clammy hand had stroked her flawless posterior's delectable hemispheres! "But we are too much apart in rank and it would ruin your career if anything ever came out about us!"

The Commandant had taken to heart this far from subtle hint that Paula would make sure any impropriety got to reach the King's ears. So from that day on her lust had turned to hate. Despite the King's solemn assurance to the contrary, Paula was up before the Commandant on a succession of petty charges and her sweet little buttocks were blistered and made extremely red many times, thanks to the Commandant being on her back day in and day out.

But Paula, like Roberta before her, pretty soon found that the pain was not only bearable, but actually almost pleasant. A special caning frame was erected especially for Paula and a few other auxiliaries recruited by other Guards anxious for pretty assistants and lovers. She was bent almost double with her bottom high in the air and ready to receive the swishy cane. She came to love the sound of it whooshing down upon her! Many were the delightful orgasms Paula experienced as the cane swished through the air and landed with a satisfying cracking sound on her bare arse!

Three months into her resumed service, Paula noticed, with some regret, that her punishments were getting fewer and lesser. After four months they ceased altogether. The King had finally tired of the Commandant's sexual sadism and ordered her to leave the little girl alone - or else! Paula knew His Majesty meant well and was grateful up to a point - but she still wished that he would mind his own business and get on with running the country, as if that wasn't enough for him to be doing in these difficult times!