A Gentlemen's Agreement (12 page)

Linda stared at Irene in shock.
“Why would you tell him to punish you?”

“It’s complicated. It’s because of
how gentlemen think about slaves. They can see that Lord Snow is favoring me so
they have to know that I’m risking severe punishment if I fail. That convinces
them that I’m giving them my best effort. I can’t let them suspect that Lord
Snow is short-changing them.
Especially when he doesn’t let
me participate in the entertainment.
My ass has to be on the line, one
way
or the other. It also delivers a message to the other
slaves. They’re more cooperative if they know that I’m hanging out in the wind
with them.”

“I hope they like you. Otherwise they
could mess up your entertainment and you‘d have to suffer for it.”

Irene smiled. “That’s a risk that they
won’t take. However much I get punished, if they’re the cause of it, I’ll make
sure that they suffer just as much.”

“You can punish the other slaves?”

“I can ask Lord Snow to punish
them. He will. There are other, more subtle things that I can do to them. I can
design an entertainment that will make the slaves suffer in a way that delights
the guests.”

“Do you do that?”

“I have, but it’s not the norm.
I’d rather stage an entertainment that the slaves enjoy as much as the
gentlemen.”

“Do they? Enjoy the
entertainments?”

“They can. It can be fun.
Lighthearted.”

Linda was silent for a long time.
Irene waited to see what she was going to say.

Finally, she spoke. “Are there
ever other women at the entertainments? Besides slaves?” Suddenly, Linda
couldn’t meet Irene’s eyes. She was looking down at her hands.

“No gentleman wants a whore at an
entertainment,” Irene said. “I would only allow someone else to participate if
she were a lady of quality who was brave enough and daring enough to put
herself in the room. That can’t happen because the gentlemen would recognize
her.”

“But if there were a way…” Linda
let her words trail off.

“It might have happened once,”
Irene said. “Funny enough, it was an entertainment at your manor. It was the
only time that I’d seen an entertainment that was designed by a professional. I
think that was where Lord Snow got the idea to make me his entertainment
director.”

“What happened?”

“The slaves were all blindfolded
and masked. Their tattoos were covered with wide collars. The only way that
they could be distinguished was by brass letters on the masks. They weren’t
allowed to speak, either. None of the men could hope to identify any of the
women by their voice. It was a game. One of the slaves, me, had been a lady
recently and the gentlemen were challenged to discover me. To see if they could
distinguish between a recently-enslaved lady and a long-time slave.”

“Did they?”

“I almost fooled them. There was
another slave who tied with me. Six men thought that she was the lady and six
thought that it was
me
. But I lost the tie-breaking
vote and was punished most cruelly for losing the game. I still shudder when I
think of it. Sometimes I wonder it the final vote was counted correctly. It was
a close call.”

“You mean that you think that a
lady might have snuck into the entertainment in disguise? Someone who was
especially brave and daring?”

“I lost count of the number of
slaves who were at the entertainment. It was hard, being that we were all
blindfolded throughout. I thought that I was the second to last to enter the
room, but sometimes it seemed like there were two slaves behind me instead of
just one.”

“So you think that some lady might
have wanted to enjoy servicing a lot of men, even though she was risking brutal
punishment if she failed to act like a perfect slave?”

“Her punishment might not have
been so brutal. It wasn’t announced ahead of time. When I lost, I was crucified
for half an hour. It was agonizing. But if the lady had lost, her punishment
might have been a lighthearted paddling. It would sting and be humiliating for
her, but wouldn’t have been a true torture.”

“That wouldn’t have been fair.”
Linda looked offended.

“She wouldn’t have known that she
was getting a lighter penalty than the real slave because it wasn’t announced
beforehand.” Irene smiled at her old friend. “I’ve learned that a lot of things
aren’t fair for slaves and ladies, but you have to live on both sides to see
the difference.”

Linda licked her lips and glanced up
at Irene, not quite meeting her eyes. “Do you think that it could ever happen
again? That a lady could be smuggled into an entertainment where she would be used
like a slave?”

“It could, if the entertainment
were designed to accommodate her.”

“Maybe even two ladies could be
smuggled in?”

“Maybe.”

“It would have to be one of those
light, fun entertainments, though. I don’t think any lady would want to risk
being crucified for the amusement of the gentlemen in the room.”

“Of course,” Irene said. “Like in
the entertainment that I was telling you about, there were no punishments for
the slaves, except for me at the end. It was all just sex.”

“I think I know a lady or two who
might like to try that sometime. If they could be assured that they would never
be identified.”

This was the whole point of the
meeting.
At last.

“I think that I could design an
entertainment that would give a lady or two that rather unique experience.”

“If you can design such an
entertainment, I could guarantee at least one lady would attend. And maybe a
second would come as well. As long as there was no possibility that they could
be unmasked.”

“Of course, the ladies would have
to prepare themselves. They could never refuse to obey a gentleman during the
entertainment. That would reveal them as imposters. A slave would never dare
refuse an order.”

“Of course.”

“And they have to be shaved. No
slave ever has a single pubic hair.”

“I know that.”

“The biggest problem, as you might
imagine, is that the gentlemen sometimes enjoy sodomizing their slaves. Slaves
always take care to keep their sphincters well stretched and constantly
lubricated, especially before an entertainment. They don’t want to suffer any
tears.”

“I understand.” Linda paused. “In
the entertainment that you described, was the other slave – the one that
you thought might be a lady in disguise – was she violated anally?”

“I don’t know. I was blindfolded.”

“If she was, then she must have
prepared herself for that, right? I mean it would have given her away if she
had been torn.”

“I assume that she was told how to
prepare herself. In more ways than that because she didn’t get any more votes
than me and I had been a slave for three months. For a lady who had never been
a slave before, it would have been an impressive performance.”

She glanced at Linda. The lady
couldn’t resist beaming in pride.

“I would consider it a great favor
if you could design a performance that would allow a lady or two to participate
without being discovered,” Linda said.

“My next entertainment will be in
a little over two weeks. What day is today?”

“Wednesday. July fifteenth.”

It took Irene a moment to do the
calculation. “So two Saturdays after next should be the second of August,
right?”

“I think so.”

“I’ll design an entertainment that
could accommodate a lady or two. If you get back to me at the end of the month,
say on the thirty-first, I’ll confirm it and make final arrangements.”

“I will.”

“Make sure that the ladies
understand about stretching their rear orifices. The gentlemen won’t mind
tearing them open – sometimes new slaves don’t know to prepare themselves
– but the ladies really won’t want to suffer that injury. If nothing
else, it would be pretty hard for them to explain why they need a surgeon to
repair their anus.” She smiled. “A lady’s husband might not be satisfied with a
story that is even more outlandish than the truth.”

“Don’t worry,” Linda said. “Slaves
don’t get maimed at entertainments so the ladies will make sure that they
aren’t either.”

Linda returned to her car and her
driver drove away.

A minute later, Irene’s driver
returned to take her back to Lord Snow’s kennel.

Designing the next entertainment had
just become a great deal more challenging. There would be three days of
starvation if she failed to please. But that would be pale in comparison to
what would be done to her if her entertainment went badly for the ladies.

Execution by crucifixion was a
real possibility.

Most annoying, she now had a more
important consideration than making Nickel the center of attention. She would
have to wait to balance the scales of justice by giving the
whiphand
the fate that she deserved.

* * *

After Irene finished giving Nickel her daily orgasm with her
talented mouth, she returned to the kitchen and found Peach sipping a cup of
tea.

When she sat at the table, Peach
raised an eyebrow at her.

“Mind if I join you?”

“It’s a free world.”

Irene thought it was funny that Peach,
of all people, would call the world free. “I was told that you were born into
slavery.”

“That’s what they say. Personally,
I don’t remember being born. That was a long time ago.”

“I’d like to know what it was like
to grow up as a slave.”

“I’d like to know what it was like
to grow up as a lady, but I’m never going to have a chance to find out.”

Irene thought about that for a
minute. “It was good. I was happier growing up than I was after I was married. There
was a lot to do when I was young but married life was the same boring stuff
every day.”

“So you sold yourself into slavery
because you thought that would be more exciting?”

“It seemed so at the time.” Irene
looked around the kitchen. “Of course, I thought that men would be using my sex
a lot. And I thought that I’d get to serve in the manor and be sent on errands.
It’s not so nice being stuck in a kennel all the time and being forced into
celibacy. This wasn’t supposed to be the deal.”

“The deal is that an owner does
whatever he wants with his property. Even a lady had to know that much. Surely
you didn’t think that you were going to get to tell your owners what they could
and couldn’t do with you.”

“No. But I didn’t think that
they’d pay a fortune for a slave and then not use her.”

“Lord Snow uses you to organize
his entertainments. He seems to think that he’s getting his money’s worth out
of you.”

“If he doesn’t, then I’m going to
starve in my cell for three days. That would be a misery.”

“If you do fuck up and get fasted,
I hope they bring you out during meals and make you watch the rest of us eat.”

Irene thought that was an
unnecessary sentiment. “If the entertainment failed because you didn’t follow
instructions, you’ll be eating no dinners for me to watch because we’ll be
fasting together.”

Peach stared hard at Irene. “You
wouldn’t dare make us fast, too.”

“I’ll be absolutely fair. If it’s
my fault, I’ll suck it up and fast alone. But any slave who fucks up and ruins
my entertainment will be fasting along with me.”

Peach smiled. “Like Nickel did.”

“Nickel got what Nickel earned. No
more and no less.”

“Oh, I think she earned quite a
bit more than a three-day fast. If I had my way, I’d lock her in there until
she ate her own hands off. Then she’d never tenderize another cunt.”

Irene shrugged.

“You, though? You’re in there
every day, licking her cunt like a bitch in heat, giving her the best time of
her life.”

“I do what I’m ordered. Slaves
don’t get to choose their service. I don’t like it, but I signed up for slavery
so I do the job.”

Peach bristled. “Don’t you lecture
me about what a slave does, Lady Irene. I’ve lived through more slavery than
you’ll ever know.”

“So tell me.”

“Tell you what? What it was like
to go to a labor auction when I was nine years old and see my worn-out,
broken-down mother get bought by a farmer? See her get taken away to pick
lettuce for sixteen hours a day until she died of exhaustion? To see her so
beaten down that she didn’t even look at me as they led her off? Hear about my
owner telling me that he took me along to make sure that I understood what
happened to slaves who weren’t useful any more. It was a lesson
well-learned
. I’ve made sure that I was useful ever since.

“Or do you want to know what it
was like to watch my mother give birth to a baby boy when I was five and hear
the owner tell her to get rid of it. She was ordered to kill her own baby
because he didn’t feel like doing it himself. It was an unpleasant task and
slaves are expected to take care of unpleasant tasks. I learned that lesson
pretty well, too. Especially when it was repeated a year later when my mother
was unlucky enough to have another boy.
It’s
just
business. A boy isn’t worth the money it would cost to raise it for the labor
market. Slaves are property so their issue is property. That’s the law. You
must know about the law. It’s fine, noble people like you who run the
government and make the laws.” Her voice dripped with bitter sarcasm.

“I didn’t know about those laws,”
Irene said. “Ladies are never told about the laws that govern slavery. I don’t
know if my husband or his friends are experts about all of it, either.”

“Ignorance is bliss. Sorry that
I’m making you feel a little less blissful now.”

“I’m feeling a little less
ignorant now. What else don’t I know about slavery?”

“How in hell would I know?”