F Campbell - Chain of Jedrah

“But Hamid, how? Perhaps it’s better than I think.”

“It’s probably worse!” He kissed her lightly. “Stop worrying.”

“But how . . . please, I’m curious.”

“Just an open shed, lots of fresh air. The girls sleep on the ground in rows. A chain passes between their legs above their irons. It is locked to concrete at each end. They are not tightly held, but they are quite safe. None has ever escaped.”

She pictured herself among the line of girls, seeking rest on hard ground, the metal heavy on her ankles. She shivered. “I’m lucky! Oh, Hamid, thank you!”

“We are both lucky,” said Hamid Boshan. “Let us hope it lasts.”

In the morning he broke the news. “You will have to watch.”

“Why?” She was uncertain whether she wished to witness the flogging of a girl.

“These things are ceremonial. They are done with a flourish. Everyone must attend and witness her punishment and understand why it is done. It has a salutary effect. Behaviour improves amusingly.”

“But her crime . . . how can you justify?”

Hamid grinned. “That is simplest of all. At the least the girl is guilty of lèse-majesté. We will call it Treason. In Narousse it will be understood.”

Stacie did not argue. It was a force in motion, she could not halt its momentum. She made no protest when two soldiers appeared to escort her.

“It is best,” Hamid assured. “They will return you in good order when all is over. They will even tie your hands.”

“Can’t I be handcuffed?”

“No. The cord they will use is made here. It is coarse and will hurt your wrists. It will be appropriate.”

“What about clothes?”

“As you are. There will be breasts of all colours around you.” Hamid grinned cheerfully. “But none as fine as yours.”

Stacie crossed her wrists behind her back and allowed herself to be tied. Hamid was right, the cord was indeed prickly. It was also very tight, she had best not struggle. She walked between her proud escorts as though she herself was going to the scaffold.

There was a natural slope that was the Grandstand. At its lower centre stood the post. It was stark and grim and cruelly lonely. Stacie shivered.

The audience was conglomerate. It sought the best view it could find. But there was privilege, the front row was strictly reserved. But it appeared she was the most privileged of all. Her escort took assured possession of the front row ccntre, the post was no more than fifteen feet away. She felt foolish in her prominence, her hands bound and her breasts bare for all to see. She was suddenly glad of the two soldiers, there were hostile glances at her white skin and pink tipped breasts.

The Estate was there in force. Ermie marshalled Rannah, Wendy and Suzie to where they would enjoy an unobstructed view. They had been delivered in a jeep. Their heavy irons precluded walking. Their wrists were tied as were her own. They exchanged pathetic glances, but could not wave a hand or exchange a word. All three looked tired and grubby and scared. They wore their prison dresses and straw hats. In that they were far more fully dressed than she.

It was a long wait. Stacie wondered how Jane was facing it. For the victim it was a time of pure terror. She remembered her own journeys to the fatal room in which she had received her pain. The wait ended with the advent of a jeep that came to a jerky halt beside the post. It contained a driver, an officer and Jane.

It all became very official. Jane, stony faced and wide eyed, was made to stand. Her feet were still captive to the irons, but they were her only bond. The elevation of the vehicle placed her in the prominence needful that she be viewed by all. Stacie saw her tense and stiffen at the order to strip herself, but after a moment of hesitation she obeyed and stood white and naked for interested inspection. Her pubic hair was shamingly in evidence as a black patch upon a field of white.

There was then a proclamation and the crime and sentence. The officer read it out in three different languages, none of them English. While this was taking place Ermie made her preparations at the post. The dreaded sjambok was draped in coils from her belt. At sight of it a great sigh billowed through the assemblage. Jane took one quick fearful glance and turned away.

They lifted her down, the jeep was driven away. Jane hobbled to the post and for a moment faced it, savouring the last of what small freedom she possessed. Ermie must have briefed her on what she must do, for without instruction she embraced the pillar as though in love with it, clinging and pressing as though wishing to weld herself to the timber itself. Even her fettered feet were as snug on each side as the length of chain would permit.

Ermie enjoyed herself and took much time, she shared top billing with the naked girl she tied. She looped and tugged with an intent precision worthy of a better cause. At the end of her performance it seemed improbable that the girl to be whipped could even twitch a single muscle. Cords held her at wrist and elbow, at waist and ankle and knee. Her breasts had been thrust inward and flattened against the wood.

Stacie realised, with a thrill of thankfulness, that perhaps there was mercy in the post and the bindings. No matter how terrible the whip it could not wrap around the slim nudity nor could it cut the pert and lovely breasts. Ermie knew what she was doing. No one would thank her for a corpse.

There was now a roll of drums. It was faintly comic, but terrible in its progression toward the act of cruelty. Stacie squelched a desire to giggle. At the staccato sound Jane strained to look back over one shoulder, but quickly she turned her face to the post, pressed one cheek against it hard and closed her eyes. Ermie gathered the soft hair and tucked it down within what was left of the cleft between the captive breasts. She shook out the sjambok so that it fell limply as an extension of her arm.

How describe the sjambok! Or the method of its wielding, or the cries of the slender girl whose back it cut! The sjambok was designed for use on oxen, yet a girl named Jane must receive it and absorb it and perhaps live. The white back was heartbreakingly lonely tied to its post. Jane’s screams did battle with the African day and were lost with all the other agonies of girls on a continent that had known too many such scenes too many times. The word flogging was correct, this was a whip beyond whips, an awfulness apart.

Stacie was thankfully glad her hands were as painfully tied as they were. Had she been free she would have leaped at the swinging arm and held it down. She and the other captives would have fought if given liberty. How strange a condition to be grateful for cord and chain! How wise the centuries had been in using them! Their discipline took command when reason lost control. Deliberately she hurt her wrists by twisting to reaffirm her impotence.

The rhino hide on female flesh had a sound exquisitely its own. It seemed too that the screams were screams apart and different from those other screams by which a girl pays tribute to the thong. They spoke not only of pain but of a life crying farewell to hope.

The watching girl with her bound hands twisting against the rough fibers of Narousse cord judged Ermie to be withholding a part of her great strength. From the first response of blood beneath the lash it had been evident the sjambok could kill. Stacie recalled books in which its lethal capacities had been stressed. Sentences in which the victim’s back had been ‘Cut to ribbons’ recurred often. Now before her eyes was the visual truth. Memory brought cringing fear of how she had brashly and with unconscious bravado stated a preference for Mr. Moghere’s sjambok rather than his bed. It could so easily be she who was tied against that post!