Chapter 1

Westhorn District. Kingdom of Alba. 1251

The steepness of the gradient and the poor state of the road were attested to by the fact that the carriage had needed two precious horses harnessed in front of the eight toiling slaves to get it up the incline. Magistrate Dunbar scowled out at the rain teeming down from the grey winter sky and listened to the driver's whip hissing in the cold air and then thudding onto slaveflesh. It had better be slaveflesh, he told himself grimly. If any harm came to the horses, he would see to the driver's punishment as personally as he did the women in his district of Westhorn. Slowly the carriage lurched up the incline and presently the welcoming lights of an inn come into view. Urged on by the driver's cries and his ever-present whip the combined slave and horse team steered gratefully into the courtyard.
"My lord, this is an unlooked for pleasure!" The carriage door opened and the bearded, grinning face of the inn keeper peered in.
"Ah, Simon!" Dunbar replied. "Did you not get my message? There is some pestilence abroad north of the river so I thought I would make a sortie over here instead and check all was well on my way to the assize court."
"You're as welcome as always, lord, message or no."
Dunbar climbed down and stretched. Around him the horses were being led away to warm stables and some of Simon Webbley's wives were leading the eight exhausted female slaves into another stall.
"Strip them down and make sure they're warm, then feed them!" Webbley called. Leaving the women to carry out their instructions with the slaves, the men hurried after the horses to make sure they were being tended to properly. 
Only once he was certain that no effort had been spared to dry them and feed them well did he look in on the slaves. Now chained and huddled in coarse blankets and squatting in the straw, the tanned and tousled women were tucking greedily into plates of stew and tearing chunks of warm bread off loaves with their sharp white teeth. Some of the inn keeper's wives were leaning over one wall of the stall and taking full advantage of the opportunity to look down on females of an even lower caste than they were.
"Any of your household want to play with these overnight, they're welcome," the magistrate offered.
"A kind offer my lord! These days a man can hardly cope with the number of 'em that need beating and fucking, so a little relief to keep 'em calm wouldn't go amiss at all." He turned to the gathered women and called across, "You can have your fun with these tonight, my lovelies! Fuck 'em with your strap-ons and have 'em do what you want, but make sure they're fit to pull his lordship's carriage in the morning or I'll flay the lot of you at the post, so help me!"
The women scurried away, giggling but with eyes downcast and Simon turned his attention to the magistrate's slaves. "They're an interesting bunch," he said. "Where did you pick them up?"
"Got 'em at an auction up Salop way. Brought in from the mountains up north so they said. They breed 'em small but tough. We made nearly nine miles today and rested the horses until we got to the bottom of your hill."
Simon raised his eyebrows. Nine miles was good going in a slave-pulled carriage. Of course the driver had had to work hard and every slave's shoulders and upper back was criss crossed with pinkish-red weals. 
"That's a goodly step," he said. "But it's just as well that Sarum is only a mile or two further on in the morning. I've got a spare team, mind, if you'd rather use fresh and I can have this lot delivered to you once you've finished your business."
"No, I thank you, Master Simon. These'll do fine. They squeal a bit for the first few lashes but then they settle down soon enough."

The two men walked through the kitchens where more wives and slaves were busy, basting, roasting and carving for the men whose voices drifted in from the main bar room. At the far end of the huge range, a wheel some eight feet in diameter was being turned by a naked girl, wearily plodding forever onwards. On the axle turned by the wheel, a spitted deer carcass turned. A woman who was plainly in charge ran a finger along the skin and licked it, then unshipped a riding whip from her waist and began to belabour the unfortunate slave in the wheel. 
"Shift your useless arse! You Frankland scum!" she screeched.
The girl yelped but began to step more lively and the carcass turned more rapidly. The woman surveyed it for a moment then turned away, seemingly satisfied.
"It's been a long day, Simon, I look forward to my supper, a good bed and a couple of your best wives or slaves."
"Oh, of course, my lord. This way. You've picked a good night! We're hosting the Province finals of the wifefighting. From bantams to heavyweights! There'll be good sport and some profitable bets for one with as good an eye for a woman as you my lord!"
"Hmm! Well maybe I'll take in a couple of bouts. But I do have to start early tomorrow."
Dunbar settled his large frame at a table in an alcove a little raised above the main floor. Some twenty or so men – a good crowd by the depleted standards of Alba these days were gathered, smiling and drinking around a roped off circle in the centre of the room. This was the wifefighting ring. A wife who could earn money for her husband in the ring was worth money herself and contests were ferocious. A pretty little woman curtsied and laid a plate of meat before him, tucking a stray lock of dark hair back under her mob cap as she made to leave.
"That's a comely one, Simon. I don't recall her from my last visit," Dunbar said.
"No, my lord. I took her in settlement for a bill a few months back, she fucks and works so well I'm thinking of taking her to wife and selling on a couple of the older ones. She was slave to a knight just back from the war. She's Alban stock, he freed her in a raid somewhere. You want her for the night?"
Dunbar studied the woman, she had a pretty, uptilted nose, dark eyes and a full-lipped and well shaped mouth. Beneath the table, he felt his cock unfurl as he surveyed the way her breasts rose and fell with her nervous breathing beneath her thin shift. He could sympathise with Simon wanting to sell on a couple of the older wives out in the kitchen to replace them with this one. There was no limit on how many wives a man could have in law. But there was a limit to how many he could keep clothed and fed, let alone satisfied.
"You know, I think I will, bring me wine girl and then we'll see if that mouth of yours works as well as it looks."
Simon laughed and sent the slave on her way with a smack to her well rounded rump, then he sat down opposite his guest.
"They say the war is going well," he said quietly after a few moments.
Dunbar began to bite into a succulent piece of venison. "They do say so, yes," he replied eventually, eyeing his host carefully.
"Only they took my last horse for the war only three days ago. I'll have to plough with the women again this year and that means I'll be letting two fields go fallow. However hard you whip them, they can't go as fast as horses." Simon shook his head sadly.
"Use oxen then," the magistrate suggested.
"Hah! The price of them! If I sold every woman I own, I couldn't buy a calf!"
"Patience, my friend. His Majesty is a great warrior and he will have the victory."
"He needs to have it quick then, if you ask me. The country's bled dry of men and there's bands of renegade women roaming the country, I hear, with no militiamen left to hunt them down."
The woman returned with a jug of wine and Simon climbed to his feet.
"I'll leave you to it for the present, my lord. But we'll raise a glass or two when the fighting gets under way."
Dunbar waved and then looked at the woman, nervously biting her lower lip. He pushed his chair back from the table a little way.
"Now get under there and don't come up till I tell you," he said. While he tucked into his meal he felt soft little fingers fluttering under his robes and stroking artfully along the insides of his thighs, then there was the tingle of breath across his stirring shaft and finally a hesitant lick from a tongue before the soft caress of female lips engulfed him.
It turned out to be a good night. He won eight sovereigns betting on a woman in the heavyweight division. She was a handsome piece, strong without being fat and was well matched with a woman from Sarum, a large town some miles away. The bout lasted nearly half an hour and provided good entertainment as the women clawed, punched and tore at each other. At any wifefight the contestants all started in their shifts and petticoats and as the contests proceeded, inevitably they stripped each other. The better show they put on the more coins would be tossed into the ring by the men and the more each wife could collect for her husband and perhaps get to keep some. In this case both women were soon fully nude and provided a fine feast of full bodied womanhood. Their breasts shook and shuddered as they struggled, their thighs tensed and their buttocks hollowed. Nails drew deep red lines across pale flesh and punches made the lush flesh ripple. But at last the home grown talent prevailed and she sat astride her victim's face, pulling and twisting her nipples in between raining down blows until the loser's husband threw in the towel.
Magistrate Dunbar was in a good mood as he made his way upstairs with his hand up under the hired slave's skirt.
In the softness of the feather bed in his room much later, he ploughed the pretty little thing's furrow and only finished between her sweetly rounded buttocks, pumping the last of his sperm into her tight rectum when the night was at its darkest.

The following morning was bright and clear and the magistrate and his host took a stroll outside after breakfast. Three of the innkeeper's wives were hanging up washing and two of them had bellies that swelled ripely, promising that soon they would produce the crop whose seeds their master had sown.
"Well done, Simon," the magistrate said, surveying the women. "Let's hope they produce strapping lads to aid the war effort, eh?"
"I already have three serving my lord, and two learning the longbow in the academy at Cwmbran," Simon replied proudly.
The magistrate was about to reply when there was a commotion from the stableyard and Loscar, the grizzled veteran who oversaw the stables limped into sight holding two more of Simon's wives with one strong hand gripping one of each woman's arms. He stumped out into the garden his wooden leg thumping on the grass.
"Found these two up to their wrists in the slaves' cunts. They were supposed to be harnessing 'em, not frigging 'em!" he called.
"Playtime was last night, you wanton bitches!" Simon berated the two who stood with heads bowed, their fingers nervously playing with their skirts now. But their husband stopped suddenly and turned to his guest. "My lord, you recall I mentioned selling a couple of wives to make room for the pretty one you hired last night?"
"I do indeed and I have an auction to hold tomorrow. If you would care to furnish me with the authority to sell on your behalf, I'd be pleased to include these two."
The two women looked resigned rather than horrified as they walked off to collect their belongings. One husband was probably not going to be much worse than another and indeed, Simon Webbley was known to have a heavy hand with a whip. Besides they would get to keep a proportion of their sale price.
In Simon's office the paperwork was swiftly completed and when they returned to the stableyard, the eight bridled slaves, arranged in two ranks of four abreast, pushing two crossbars off the main shaft, were fidgeting and stamping, the driver sat in his raised seat which gave him a clear sight of the eight backs to be lashed to their work and held the reins tight in his hand. The two wives stood behind the coach with their meagre possessions in tough canvas rolls.
They handed these up to the driver to place on the roof and then prepared themselves for the long run to Sarum; it was not for the likes of them to ride with a magistrate, unless he invited them to and he made no move to do so.
The women unlaced their bodices and stepped out of the long skirts to which they were attached, then they undid their petticoats and stepped out of them as well, leaving them dressed only in their shifts which barely covered their crotches. Magistrate Dunbar surveyed them critically as they stowed their clothes under a seat inside the coach.
"A comely enough pair, Simon. You should do well out of the sale," he commented as he noted the long, shapely thighs, Simon had obviously made them work hard for their keep and both women were trim and smooth skinned.
"Aye, and they are a pair too. They make for a good time in bed and can put on a good show for guests as well. Trouble is they can hardly keep their hands to themselves. They're forever feeling up each other or some of the others."
Dunbar climbed in and waved farewell to his host. "I'll have your percentage sent back Simon!" he called as the whip smacked across the backs of the slaves in a rapid tattoo to force out of them the effort needed to get the coach rolling. Then, rumbling and swaying the vehicle swung out onto the road and the two wives trotted behind it, along with the spare horses, while the eight slaves settled down to another day of sweating under the lash.
Inside, Magistrate Dunbar unrolled the latest scroll from the Slavemaker, who the king had charged with overseeing the discipline and good governance of the majority female population, on behalf of the beleaguered male minority. Magistrates were regularly kept abreast of where the state needed condemned females so that they could tailor sentences accordingly. Of course a woman brought before a magistrate was guilty of something – they all were – it was the magistrate's responsibility to make the punishment as instructive and useful as possible. On that morning he read that galley slaves were required and that the salt mines in the north urgently needed fresh blood. It was the Slavemaker's opinion, furthermore, that the minimum punishment flogging should rise to fifty lashes from forty. The weight and gauge of leather for the whips was specified and Dunbar was pleased to note that his favourite implement conformed perfectly. There were some thirty cases awaiting him on the morrow and he flexed his right arm unconsciously. There would some well-blistered female flesh by the end of the next day.
At mid morning the coach halted to allow for the slaves to be watered and he leaned out of the window to inspect the panting and tousled wives. Both women were mature and handsome enough in any case but their shifts had come unlaced and now their breasts rose and fell invitingly as they gasped for breath. He beckoned to one and helped himself to a handful of soft tit as she stood beside the coach, and when the driver began to ply his whip again and urge his team back onto the road, Dunbar took the girl inside for a while. He had her bend forwards and support herself by her hands on the quilted leather seat while he untied the lacings on his rough woollen trousers and freed his erect cock. The woman's labia were full and plump, the clitoral hood also perfectly defined and already open displaying a sizeable nub of slick flesh. He regretted not being able to whip such an inviting vulva before fucking it but made the best of a bad job by sliding himself into the woman after a cursory exploration with his fingers to ensure she was suitably wet and open. Once inside her to his fullest extent he lifted the woman's shift off her back and leaned forwards to grasp her breasts as they hung beneath her chest. He gripped his fingers harshly into the soft flesh and was pleased that she made no whimper of protest, he was also pleased to note the fading traces of welts across her back. A wife who showed traces of recent discipline usually fetched good money. Dunbar made no move to thrust his way to a climax, instead he allowed the lurch and jolt of the carriage to shift his cock in her sheath and she responded with exceptionally supple swivels of her hips and some enjoyable humping and hollowing of her back. He steadied himself by grabbing her hips as he felt his crisis approach and slammed against her buttocks time and again as he emptied his balls into her.
"Send the other one in," he ordered as he resumed his seat and waved the freshly fucked woman back outside. She tumbled down clumsily from the moving carriage but soon her lover clambered aboard, eager for a rare chance of getting some cock. Dunbar lounged at his ease with his trousers wide open and his slick, flaccid member lolling between his powerful thighs.
"Get your lover's cunt juice off my cock," he ordered and she fell to her knees and set to work hungrily with her tongue, licking him back into erection before taking him respectfully into her mouth and savouring every drop of the emission he soon spurted into her throat.

The auction was held that evening at the Sarum council house. There was a wide variety of women on offer; some wives, some slaves and one or two whores putting themselves up for sale in the hopes of being made a bought slave first of all and then maybe a wife. In any event every woman was desperate to wear a collar of any sort, it was the only security she could aspire to. Dunbar had them parade naked around the small stage, made them bend over as if for punishment and pulled their labia apart to expose their cunt flesh and reamed them with his fingers. If requested to he also drove them into their anuses to test the development of that passage as a fucking hole. Mostly the slaves were assessed for agricultural work and road haulage, this being a country town, but any female had to demonstrate that if she were lucky enough to be offered a cock she would be worth the man's trouble.
Webbley's two wives put on a good show, stripping naked eagerly and playing with each other's cunt while Dunbar gave them his personal recommendation. The whores stripped as seductively as they could and attempted to illustrate how many pleasures they could provide for an owner or a husband and were rewarded by being bought, Dunbar filled in the necessary paperwork afterwards and wondered whether they would cause any displaced wives to end up at his next auction. All in all it was a highly successful evening with all the lots fetching good prices and Dunbar retired for the night well pleased with his commissions.
The assizes were held in the town hall the following morning and only men were allowed to attend. There were plenty of empty seats on the benches these days and a fair scattering of scarred veterans among the able bodied men whose professions exempted them from military service. 
The magistrate sat behind a high and intimidating desk to dole out sentences ranging from a lifetime's slavery to a few hours hung in the frames outside the courthouse. The prisoners were brought before him and were made to stand on a podium while charges were read out. They were allowed to make a statement before sentence was passed but few chose to. 
There was precious little point. 
Two whores who were accused by the sheriff of having assaulted a wife of whom they were jealous were sentenced to three years chained to an oar aboard one of the king's galleys. A wife who had been indicted by her husband for excessive cruelty to his slaves (who after all did have some financial value) was herself condemned to slavery for ten years and he marked her down for the salt mines. When she was released she would lose her rank of wife and have to return to whoredom and the search for an owner and then a husband. A haulage slave came up on a charge of idleness so persistent that her owner washed his hands of her. She was a strapping lass who still bore across her back and arse the welts of the man's final attempts to beat some work from her. As he was authorised to do, Dunbar offered the man the slave's basic value on behalf of the state and sent her to the galleys for an indeterminate sentence. Idleness was not an option there. The girl accepted everything with bovine indifference.
No fewer than three wives belonging to the same man were indicted for bickering and proved the case against them by quarrelling as they were led in, they were condemned to fifteen years each. One was sent to the mines, one to the galleys and one was sent for auction at a nearby town, in addition all three were sentenced to hang in the frames. The audience applauded the just nature of the sentence.
There was a whole string of whores accused of the usual things; theft, drunkenness, fighting, all the typical crimes of women who couldn't find a man to collar them. Some escaped with a few hours in a frame and a flogging but most of them were sentenced to wear slave collars for between five and fifteen years. Whores were the worst off of all women, they had neither master nor owner and slavery at least meant they were collared and belonged somewhere, an adopted slave rather than a condemned one could hope to aspire to wifehood. Enslavement also meant that they avoided the fate of becoming a renegade. That was the worst that could befall a female. Dunbar told them they should be grateful for the flogging they would get imminently and the useful life they would lead as slaves.
It was a fairly typical range of offenders and by the end of the day the king's mines and galleys were richer by twenty new slaves and the gibbets outside the hall would be full for the following day and all thirty miscreants would be flogged before the crowds. There was only one criminal who stuck in Dunbar's mind. She was a tall, good looking blonde whore who had been charged with refusing to have sex with a man. The man in question had been drunk and had been driving a slave-drawn wagon cross country for a week and so probably was filthy and stinking, but for any woman to turn down a man was an outrageous crime. However the icy, contemptuous stare she had fixed on him as he had begun to sentence her to ten years at an oar had caused him to stop and instead to reduce the sentence to seventy-five lashes and five years, followed by a referral to the Slavemaker. The girl had the look of a potential renegade and only one man could be trusted to cure her of that, and the sooner the better, she would fetch a handsome price once he had finished with her. There had been applause for the sentence but the girl had been unmoved. She had probably dismissed the tales of what the Slavemaker could accomplish as myths designed to cow women into submission. Just how wrong she was, she would find out in due course.

First thing in the morning the gibbets were loaded. Ten women condemned to a day at the mercy of the crowd were paraded in front of the ten frames hanging from the arms of the gibbets and at Dunbar's command whatever clothes they were wearing were cut from them with knives wielded by the sheriff's men and sliced into ribbons, a walk home stark naked was part of the sentence. Then leather hoods blocking eyes, nostrils and ears were pulled over their heads and laced tight at the back, leaving only their mouths free. The crowd needed to hear the screams. The naked and trembling wretches were then roughly pushed forwards and fastened into rectangular frames that stretched them out into X shapes, wrists and ankles fastened at each corner. The sheriff's men availed themselves of the helplessly stretched flesh and the crowd hooted and cheered as breasts were mauled and groped harshly, nipples were pulled till they were twice their normal length and fingers were rammed unceremoniously into cunts. But finally the frames, hanging from a chain at the end of each gibbet arm were hauled up till they hung about five feet above the ground. 
Ten naked and helpless figures faced the gleeful spite of the townspeople, the majority of whom were female inevitably, and as Dunbar gave the word and stood back to avoid the barrage of rotten food, mud, eggs and worse that was hurled at the women he was once again filled with admiration for the state he served. It had turned every woman against every other woman. It had made the collar – in days gone by a symbol of shame – into the most longed for thing in a woman's life; preferably the lighter collar of wifehood, but even the thick collar of a slave was better than the semi nomadic and shiftless life of a whore. Women condemned for the most trivial of crimes were enthusiastically pelted by crowds of their own sisters who would ecstatically count the lashes of the later floggings.
The state ensured that however downtrodden the majority of women were, there was always another woman worse off than themselves and on whom they could look down.
There was an extra loud cheer as the sheriff passed along behind the frames once the first barrage had been exhausted and set the frames spinning. This made the sport more challenging as choice targets appeared and disappeared as the bodies spun.
Assize days were holidays. Even while the frames provided plenty of fun, up on the scaffold the whipping of those condemned to slavery began.
Leaving the frames with their naked occupants twisting and flinching blindly as missiles thudded home, Magistrate Dunbar climbed up onto the scaffold, pulled off his short tunic and bared his sizeable torso to an excited female cheer. The sheriff fastened the first of the slaves to the backward-sloping and sinister X shaped whipping cross and to a gasp of indrawn breath from the excited crowd below, he uncoiled his favourite whip. It was a braided length of hide about five feet long. About one foot from its end the braiding ceased and it became a single heavy blade of leather finished off by tassels that concealed small weights. It was the perfect implement to introduce condemned slaves to the rigours of the life ahead of them and for those condemned merely to flogging, it was far worse than most husbands and owners used. But then, a public punishment by a magistrate had to send out messages to the watching crowd.
By lunchtime, fifteen of the condemned women had groaned and screamed their way through their floggings. The crowd had counted every lash of each sentence and laughed as Dunbar had paused now and again to rest and to prod the pulsing welts with the whip handle to induce a sharper pain and get a sagging body to straighten up for the next few lashes. Frequently he would pause and auction off a few moments for any man in the crowd to step up and enjoy a public fuck. There was never a shortage of men willing to stand on the scaffold and display their wares to the cheering women before leaning against a well-flogged back, grabbing two handfuls of breast and slipping themselves up into a vagina which had been stirred almost to a froth by the severity of the flogging. 
The blonde whore destined for the Slavemaker had taken some time to deal with. She had put up a struggle and it had taken two of the sheriff's men to bind her to the X and then there had been constant clamourings from the crowd for a chance to screw her. Dunbar had had to stop the beating no fewer than five times and it had taken each man some considerable time, fumbling inside her with his fingers to lubricate her enough for comfortable penetration. However, she had weathered her punishment without a sob escaping her, even when he had played his usual game of pretending to lose count of the lashes administered. The crowd would yell out numbers and he would pick one that seemed to him to suit the way the woman was bearing up. The blonde ended up taking over a hundred. 
After lunch the magistrate handed whipping duties over to the sheriff for a while and took advantage of what every town referred to as the 'Magistrate's Tip'. As pretty a whore as the town could find would be made available to ensure that the magistrate was able to relieve himself of the inevitable stimulation his duties caused him. In this case the town clerk brought forwards a buxom, black haired girl with enchantingly big, dark eyes and bee stung lips. She wore a simple green gown which she had evidently been wearing for some time, for although it was clean, it struggled to contain the swelling breasts and rounded hips she had developed despite the hardships of a whore's life. She unlaced it and slipped it off with no demur when he commanded her to and laid herself back on the cleared dining table, leaving her legs dangling over the edge. Dunbar stood between them and rummaged his fingers inside the flooding, tight little channel of her vagina. Sarum had indeed found a gem of a magistrate's tip. How she hadn't been snapped up yet mystified him and he told the town clerk as much.
"She's just blown in a few days ago, been staying over the baker's and he's filed to take her to wife but the mayor said you was to have first refusal."
"Good man," Dunbar murmured as his thick fingers, swirling and clenching in the girl's innards while his thumb ground her clitoris roughly against her mound, fetched pretty moans from her mouth and hungry sucking noises from her cunt, its pinkly flushed lips stretching wide around his big hand. With his other hand he unlaced his trousers and guided his rampant prick home, steering the huge dome to spear her deliciously tight opening and disappear slowly inside her. He leaned over her and savoured the salacious grip she took on him inside her as he began to grope and torment her breasts, spreading his hands over the soft mounds and pressing them cruelly against her chest, then grinding the nipples under his palms. She arched up to meet his cruelty eagerly, her hands fluttering, unsure of where and how she could touch him. He thrust himself hard into her, making her body jerk on the table. She shouted in surprised pleasure and Dunbar gazed down at her softening face shrewdly, but could see nothing except genuine excitement. He pulled both nipples and twisted them hard. They were of a length and thickness that would take ringing exceptionally well. She covered his hands with hers, encouraging him to torment her tits even further.
"Do you want to be taken on as a wife? Is that your game?" he asked as he rammed into her again.
"Yes, yes, of course, lord!" she gasped as he jerked her again with the force of his penetration.
"I keep six of them and have them whipped each day, even while I'm away," he growled.
The girl's eyes softened as she spiralled up towards orgasm but she managed to control herself for a few seconds.
"A woman belongs under her husband's lash, my lord! Oh!" A series of spasms shook her slight frame and the magistrate himself passed the point of no return and began to ram her in earnest as he pumped thick strings of sperm deep into her. 
He pulled clear after a few moments and looked at her, panting and undone on the table. Whores seldom gave such passionately enthusiastic service. She seemed quite genuine. He smiled, it had been a long time since he had had a natural in his household. Whereas all women were schooled to the lash to some extent or other and could find pleasure in any male attention they were lucky enough to get, a natural would welcome – sometimes demand – cruelty from her master and worship him for dispensing it.
As the girl peeled her sweating body off the wood of the table and regained her feet, Dunbar laced his trousers up and opened the purse he kept at his belt, tossing a few coins onto the tabletop.
"Go along to the saddler's, tell him to fit you with a collar with my initials on it and then pick out a horse whip. A slender and whippy one. Then come back here and wait in my chambers till I have time to thrash you."
The girl looked at him with bright, grateful eyes, then spread her legs and began to scoop up his emission as it trickled out of her and lick her fingers. 
Dunbar made his way back outside, beginning to be mightily pleased with his journey. The crowd was becoming more boisterous as jugs of wine were passed around and whores worked the men present. Occasionally there were scuffles as wives and whores clashed but it was all part of a punishment holiday. Up on the scaffold it was the turn of the ten hapless frame victims to take their lashes. They had been sluiced down with buckets of cold water to wash off the worst of the filth that had been thrown at them and now the third of them was shivering at the cross waiting for her beating. The sheriff was glad of the rest but helped himself to a quick fuck before he left the scaffold. The woman took some fingering before she was open enough for him and provoked some ribald comments from the crowd about her being a 'tightarse' in any case.
There was applause once the sheriff had finished with her, he was a big man and took her to a raucous if reluctant orgasm before he pulled out and spurted his come up her back. Then the magistrate stepped forwards and shook out his lash and the crowd settled expectantly.
"Give her plenty across her arse! She only sits on it all day!" a woman shouted.
The condemned woman, now unhooded, craned her head round. "I'll punch your tits in for that, Flora Bethany! See if I don't!" she yelled.
Dunbar didn't let the exchange distract him and scythed in his first lash which reduced the woman at the cross to yelling of a more incoherent kind. The crowd counted the lash and shouted encouragement to the flogger. After thirty lashes he took a short break, the woman was tough, her body had shaken at the force of each lash, she was laced thoroughly from shoulders to waist, her ribs and the sides of her breasts were scored by dark red slashes where the ends of the lash had dug in, her chest was heaving for breath but no noise had escaped her clenched teeth after the first lash. Dunbar moved close and dug his fingers into some of the welts forcing grunts of protest at last. Then he delved down between her legs and found her groin a hot, damp mass of sweat, sap, semen and untrimmed pubic hair. He slid his fingers into her and she sighed in resignation as he discovered her wanton state. She had a capacious vagina and was easily fisted. Dunbar told the crowd this as he worked his entire hand inside her.
"It's where the robbing cow hides the money she steals!" the same woman called up.
The victim craned her head round again. "You wait….till his lordship's finished…..with the whip!" she snarled as best she could with Dunbar's hand wreaking havoc in her cunt. "I'll be down to sort you out!"
Dunbar joined in the laughter. It was not unknown for some excellent fights to erupt around a punishment and he set about finishing her sentence by welting her backside and thighs at a more rapid rate as, down below, odds were called and an impromptu ring was made by the husbands of the two women pushing the crowd back to give the combatants room to work. 
The final floggings were carried out as the fight raged at the foot of the scaffold. Despite her welts and cuts, the naked woman held her own surprisingly well and as the final victim was taken down. Dunbar looked down to see that the heckler had been partially stripped and the flogged woman had a handful of her breast and was using the nipple to lead her around by.
"Not so cheeky now, are you?" she shouted at her victim as she struggled to loosen the grip on her nipple, then the flogged woman launched a round house punch to the other breast that downed the unfortunate heckler. As Dunbar made his way back into the courthouse he saw the heckler rolling on the ground trying to stop the shreds of her skirt being torn off by the naked and triumphant harridan who seemed to have shaken off her beating almost completely. Dunbar made a mental note to keep an eye on her in case her husband decided to get rid. She was good whipping stock.
A tall, cadaverous man was waiting for him in the courthouse, already enjoying a mug of ale.
"Sejanus? What brings you to Sarum?" Dunbar asked.
In reply the man drew a scroll from a satchel he had beside him on the bench and placed it carefully before Dunbar as he settled himself with a goblet of wine. Dunbar looked at the man, he didn't like him particularly but as reeve to the major estate in the area he was someone he had to deal with. He had day to day control over the running of the estate and its tenants, theoretically he ran it with Lady Tamara, but everyone knew her tastes lay in other directions. The man smiled, exposing large, discoloured teeth.
"Take a look there, magistrate."
Dunbar did look more closely at the scroll now and saw the seal on it. It was the royal seal of the island kingdom of Alba, the crown above waves. But it looked too fresh to have come all the way from Frankland where the king was fighting the unending war, it must have come from Tamesbury, the capital city and therefore from the queen.
Nervously he opened it and scanned the contents.
"An audit?" he asked aghast. "A royal audit of the estate accounts?"
"I had no choice but to report Sir William's fraud once I stumbled across it," Sejanus said with ill-disguised glee. "The trap is laid for the traitor and now we must wait for our quarry. As you know, Sir William is away at the war but he will return shortly and must face justice. You will of course be required to judge certain aspects of the case and Her Majesty expects your whole hearted loyalty, magistrate."
Dunbar's throat went dry, he was a good friend of Sir William but Sejanus was making it clear that he would be watched in case he made any attempt to warn him.
"I cannot believe that Sir William is guilty of any disloyalty!" he said as steadily as he could then raised his glass. "However, I am sure you have done your duty as you saw fit. Her Majesty's good health."
Sejanus smiled again, clearly aware of Dunbar's diplomatic choice of toast, took a drink and relaxed. Outside there was a roar from the crowd as the fight was plainly reaching a satisfactory and probably bloody conclusion. The townspeople had had a good day.
"Of course, once the case is proved against him, Sir William will be stripped of everything he owns. It is unfortunate but….."
The man's smugness was intolerable and Dunbar gripped his goblet fiercely. He could read his salacious grin. If Sir William was found guilty of the charges against him, all his possessions would be forfeit. And that included his wife and slaves.
Lady Tamara was famous for the quality and quantity of her pleasure slaves. Dunbar wondered how many of them Sejanus already had marked down for his possession.

End of Chapter One