Excerpt from: The Bondmaid Carnival

 

It was perhaps twenty minutes later that April felt the coach slow down and come to a halt. They could see nothing from within their cages, but they could hear the sounds of voices, the jingle of harness and the snort of horses.

Marvell roused himself and climbed out. The heard him speaking to a few people, then the voice of a young woman said accusingly, 'Really, Pa, I began to worry that you were going to miss the parade!'

'Marian, dear, have I ever? Now just you see what I brought back. Bill, fetch them out...'

Somebody clambered into the carriage. April heard the cage doors being opened and one by one the girls were pulled out and stood upright. Their handler was a wiry middle-aged man dressed in dark trousers, a loose blue smock belted at the waist with a gold sash and a red bandana tied about his neck. As they emerged he linked their choke chains into a coffle with practiced hands and passed them down the steps of the carriage to a beaming Marvell who took charge of the front of the string.

They were in a long tree-lined country lane boarded by the usual bountiful and lush Nethervale fields. Along the length of a broad grass verge was drawn up a procession of at least fifty horse-drawn vehicles of all sizes, from single horse caravans to large high-sided fright wagons the size of a pantechnicon with teams of six. All were brightly painted and carried signs on their sides proclaiming they were part of the bondmaid carnival, including some graphic artwork of the sort April had become familiar with in Nethervale.

The wagons were also decorated with living bondmaids.

They hung naked on chains along the sides, dangled from tailboards and were bound astride lead horses like so many Lady Godiva's at a bondage convention. They had coloured ribbons in their hair and small bells clipped to their noses, ears, nipples and labia. Some had their breasts painted to compliment the decorations of the wagons to which they were fastened. More men in blue smocks, together with men and women in far gaudier costumes, were moving about the caravan making last minutes adjustments to the girls' harnesses and holding buckets between their legs for them to pee in.

April tore her eyes away from this fleshy display to see that a pretty red-haired young woman of about her own age was standing beside Marvell. She was dressed in a costume of a red shako and jacket, heavily decorated with gold braid, black culottes tucked into black riding boots with a coiled whip hooked to her belt. Her eyes were a bright penetrating bottle green.

The coffle was made to kneel down in front of the young woman, which they did gracefully, sitting back on their heels and spreading their legs to display their pussies, arching their supple backs to show off their breasts but bowing their heads and casting their eyes downward submissively. As they took their places April had a chance to see them properly for the first time. Beside herself and Niki there was a blonde, two brunettes and a black-haired girl with a slight oriental look. They were all pretty and moved well. As they displayed themselves there was a subtle tension in their postures that she could also see in herself and Niki. It was an air of alertness and readiness to respond. Was this that elusive "spirit" Marvell had been looking for?

'How much did they cost?' Marian Marvell, as she had to be, demanded of her father.

'They were all excellent value for money,' Marvell said.

'How much?'

'Please, Marian, look them over first...'

Marian Marvell perused the line with a critical, experienced eye, lifting chins to examine faces. As she did so Marvell's face took on an expression of increasing concern. Suddenly he looked less like the ebullient, assured entrepreneur he had in the Abbey and more like a child worried he would be accused of being spendthrift with his pocket money.

Marian finished her inspection. 'Yes,' they look like fine girls, Pa,' she conceded. 'Now how much did they cost?'

'Can you put a price on quality, Marian?' Marvell said evasively. 'Besides, the last few months have been so good we can afford to -'

'How much?' his daughter persisted.

Marvell pointed to April and Niki. 'These two were a bargain!'

'How much?'

'Just a pound for the pair.'

'A pound! We can get four good girls for that.'

'But these are a Flagewell Abbey trained pair. See that ringing? And they're very responsive and they've got plenty of spirit.' Seeing her face darken dangerously he added quickly. 'In truth, they're really a present for you, My Dear.'

Momentarily she appeared taken aback. 'For me?'

'You've got so much work, what with managing the cunniers and keeping the accounts. They can be our housemaids and keep the caravan. You shouldn't have to do the washing and cleaning as well. They'll be something warm to cuddle up with at night. You deserve that.'

Marian Marvell threw up her arms. 'All right, Pa, have it your way. I won't ask about the others. Yes, we'll have these two to keep house - but they'll work the show just like the other girls the rest of the time. We've no room for fripperies on the road.'

'So like your mother,' Marvell said wistfully.

'And they can start now.' She turned to the blue-smocked man. 'Bill, take an empty cage and move it to the back of the line. Pull up the covers and run it as a flogging show with plenty of whack and crack. We'll see how well they can scream and help bring in the punters.'

'Right you are, Miss M,' Bill said cheerfully.

Bill took the lead chain in the coffle line. The girls scrambled to their feet and were led off, leaving Marian Marvell telling her father to move his carriage up to the front of his line and put on his other hat.

They passed wagons hung with gaudy boards advertising various individual diversions, some of which April could only guess at. The principle behind "PENNY IN THE SLOT" was graphically illustrated but what was "SENIOR SERAPHIC'S FAMOUS GIRL-O-PHONIUM"? The "PONYGIRL RACETRACK" was fairly self-explanatory, as was "BOWL THE MAIDS OVER", but what about "PUNCH AND BONDMAID JUDY"?

Every few wagons along were girls fastened on longer collar chains, allowing them to walk beside the vehicles. They all carried some sort of simple musical instrument chained to their wrists, such as cymbals, tambourines and triangles. At one point there were two girls linked together. The first was bent forward with a large drum strapped to her back. A rod from a dildo plugged into her anus ran back to another dildo locked inside the vagina of the girl behind her who held the drumsticks.

They reached the rear of the caravan and came upon a large cage on wheels such as wild animals might be transported in, with painted canvas covers rolled down over its bars. As April had not seen any sign of real animals so far she presumed this was where some of the girls currently on display were housed. It did not shock her. In Nethervale bondmaids and animals were treated very much alike.

'Horace!' Bill called up to the driver, who was perched on the seat reading a battered book. 'Change of plan: the Boss's bought half a dozen new cunnies back. Miss M says to put them in your cage for a flogging show. She wants them to sing out good and proper.'

'I thought I'd be cutting through the town straight to the pitch,' Horace grumbled, putting away his book and clambering down.

'Well now you're in the parade. Give me a hand...'

They rolled up the covers up revealing a hay-lined cage open on three sides and hung with chains and cuffs. The cage sides were a diamond latticework of metal strips riveted together where they crossed.

Bill and Horace unlocked the back gate, flipped down a step and the girls were marched up inside. There was just enough headroom to stand upright. In one corner clear of hay was a lidded hole in the floorboards for a squat toilet with a waste bucket hung underneath. A wooden partition wall separated the cage from the driver's seat. On it hung tin mugs, a water flask, several blankets on hooks and a rack of spanking paddles, straps and beaters.

Working quickly the men separated the coffle and positioned them standing, facing outward and spreadeagled, pressed up against the insides of the bars, three down each side of the cage. The lattice bars were just open enough for them to squeeze their heads through, while their breasts jutted out of the adjacent diamonds below them. As Bill clamped heavy metal cuffs about their wrists and ankles, Horace went round the outside of the cage with a box of bells strung on short chains. The ends of these he screw-clamped to their nipples, so the bells hung freely between them on the outside of the bars.

Shouts were running down the line of vehicles. Twisting her head round April could see people waving and climbing aboard their wagons. The caravan was about to set off for the parade.

Horace went back to his seat behind the horses while Bill stayed in the cage. Taking something down from the rack of punishment devices he swished it through the air so that it hit the wooden panel at the front of the cage with an alarming crack that made them all flinch and jerk at their cuffs.

'Now, we haven't got much time to practice, so you'd better listen real hard,' he said earnestly. 'This is how Marvell maids perform in a parade...'

***

The signpost said: Cocklesford One Mile.

Turning her head within the diamond frame of the cage bars April looked at Niki, whose head and bell-hung breasts jutted through the bars at her side. The sight of her was so uplifting that she found herself smiling foolishly. Niki raised her eyebrows as though in amused resignation at their fate and grinned back. They might be caught up in more Nethervale madness, but at least it was of a more playful kind than the obsessive atmosphere of the Abbey.

Twisting her head round to look ahead once more April could see the rooftops of a sizable town rising from beyond the trees and hedgerows. From the front of the caravan the music started up with the thump of a drum. The proudly marching girls flanking the wagons down the line picked up on it. Thump, thump, jingle, crash! It was not a tune so much as a merry discord designed to make people take notice. It worked.

Workers in their gardens stopped and stared, carts pulled over and windows were flung open. April saw colourful posters advertising the carnival on gates and lampposts. Evidently the parade was expected.

In a tide of glitter, paint and bare flesh the parade wound its way into the town. Ordinary traffic came to a halt and the pavements filled with people. In typical Nethervale fashion the men mostly wore variations on the frock coat with tall hats, while the women were dressed in long straight ankle-length dresses with high waists and puffy sleeves, while their heads were covered by a variety of bonnets. In Nethervale fashion many were leading naked bondmaid slaves about with them as one might dogs on leashes. Collared, cuffed and bridled the girls followed after their masters and mistresses, some with baskets filled with shopping strapped to their backs.

Yet the blaring passage of the carnival caravan with is fleshy temptations still appeared to enthral the local inhabitants. Even the local slavegirls goggled in fascination. In a world without radio, television, or cinemas, April realized, this sort of event must seem hugely exciting and colourful.

As the parade entered the high street gibbet like arms swung out from the sides of the larger wagons, each with a girl dangling from the end. They were suspended from spreader bars, with their wrists cuffed above their heads and legs splayed wide and ankles fastened to the bar ends by short chains. The bars were suspended by swivel rings that spun the girls over the heads of the crowd as if they were performing aerial splits, with their naked pouting perfumed groins gaping wide. Thin slips of coloured card could be seen protruding from their pussy clefts.

'Free tickets for the lucky few!' the carnival barkers began to call out. 'Catch them if you can!'

People began to spring up and down and make wild lunges in an attempt to snatch the tickets from their intimate pockets. A few began to run along the pavements after the elusive prizes as they swung and twirled by. Even respectable men and women seemed to be caught up in the fun, laughing at their frustrated efforts. Others simply reached up to playfully slap or pinch the bottoms of the exposed girls as they passed overhead.

As the tail of the caravan entered the high street there was a warning crack as Bill smacked his spanking paddle on the floor of the cage. 'Let me hear you sing out good and loud now!' he said. Then began to beat them.

Left and right, up and down the double row of backsides he went. April felt a stinging smack and let out a pitiful yelp into the upturned faced of the onlookers. With every blow their bodies jerked against the bars, making their breasts heave and jiggle and setting their nipple bells swinging and jingling. Smack... yelp! Smack...yelp! After a few blows their bottoms were burning and their eyes were sparkling with tears and the rise and fall of their cries rivalled the noise of the girl band.

'See us suffer for your entertainment,' their cries seemed to say. 'However bad you feel there are always those worse off. Bring a tear to a pretty girl's eye and a smile to your lips...'

The crowd pointed laughed at the row of woebegone faces and jumping breasts, and quite right to. It was a bondmaid's place to serve and suffer. Everybody knew they had to be disciplined regularly. They enjoyed it, really, as could be seen by the wetness of their pubic lips framed within the second diamond of cage bars down from that which held their heads. Judging by the distress on their faces and the sound of the swish and crack of the beater the man in the cage was using, the carnival girls were getting a sound thrashing.

Except in good showbusiness tradition things were not quite what they seemed...

The beater Bill was wielding was made of two flat springy blades. When the first hit it delivered a stinging blow that brought a healthy blush to their bottoms and encourage tears but did not cut or bruise their skin. The second blade then slapped into the back of the first and produced the alarmingly loud sharp crack that so amused the crowd. That way the showmen gave the punters what they wanted but did not damage their most valuable assets.

However, April thought the most perverse thing was that being chained and beaten in front of all those eyes really was turning her on. It was sick, shameful, degrading, and yet also somehow desperately arousing.

The grand parade wound its way triumphantly through Cocklesford and out the other side towards the hired field on the outskirts of the town where the carnival was to be set up. As they passed beyond the last of the houses the music faded away and Bill rested his arm.

'Good girls,' he said, moving round the cage and patting and stroking their sore and simmering bottoms. 'That show raised a few cocks and dampened some drawers. They'll be along to see more of you, like as not...'

Then April heard a rustle of fabric and from the far side of the cage the sudden gasp of a girl being penetrated, accompanied by the jingle of her nipple-bell as she was ground against the bars. There was a few seconds of this, then a pause, then the gasp of another girl. Bill was making the rounds of the cage giving each a quick shafting.

He came to April last, pulling out of Niki and grasping her hips with the urgency of a man close to climax. His hard cock slid between April's buttock cheeks, parted the ring of her greased anus and rammed deep into her rectum. Her nipple bell jingled as he sodomized her with hard, masterful thrusts, making her grunt and whimper. Nevertheless, after the pain of her beating it felt good to be plugged by a stiff shaft. Her own pussy was running with delight. It was the natural reward for her efforts, like an initiation into an exclusive society.

With a final grunt his hot sperm spouted inside her.

'Now you're proper carnival girls,' he said.