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PAULA <br>
<br>
ALONE AND VOLUNTARILY CHILLY! <br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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, her harsh
treatment would  continue until she dropped! Poor unjustly
imprisoned Roberta! Paula would give anything to be by her side and
sharing her undeserved misfortunes!<br>
<br>
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 far
more than he cared to admit even to himself, had given her permission
to remain unclothed if she so wished. <br>
<br>
“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.<br>
<br>
Then the King had sent her to her Uncle’s house in the country 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. She had been lined up with all the other members of
the Golden Guard as Roberta was 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 watch. <br>
<br>
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. long before they had finished with her  They had cut
her to the bone a hundred times 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. <br>
<br>
That ordeal had left her unconscious and at death’s door 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. <br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.
After leaving the Palace and the city behind her, Roberta still had
ahead  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, <br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
She had wept to see this once proud Amazon, 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 was more than anybody had thought she would.<br>
<br>
Paula had heard from friends employed 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.   It was not the escorting Guards who had put her
through this. They had honestly thought her a traitor. The true
culprits were those who had so foully blackened her reputation and
robbed her of her good name. Roberta prized honour above all.<br>
<br>
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, admirable in its way, but of no
account. 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. <br>
<br>
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  best 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 taken a knife from the
corpse of one of the assailants and thrown it at the King. But Anna,
moving with incredible speed, had hurled herself in front of him and
taken the knife in her belly. The mortally wounded Anna fatally injured
the evil Rowena before dying.<br>
<br>
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 in itself. 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 sick Uncle.<br>
<br>
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 and most degrading
kind. <br>
<br>
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!<br>
<br>
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, over to the Commandant of the Golden Guard for sentence and
punishment. Both penalty and sentence were foregone conclusions.<br>
<br>
Nobody had believed her when she said that she had gone to her quarters
with her equipment 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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
 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.<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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!<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
“Paula! I came especially to see you! May we come in to your Uncle’s
house. Paula knelt before him.<br>
<br>
“Your Majesty is welcome. Our house is honoured by your presence, Sir!”<br>
<br>
“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!”<br>
<br>
The King, Rosemary, Charlotte and Paula went inside.<br>
<br>
PAULA - BACK AT WORK (AND ON THE JOB)<br>
<br>
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!<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
“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.<br>
<br>
“Except when you pinch it, Your Majesty!” she didn’t say! <br>
<br>
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!<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
“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!”<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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!<br>
<br>
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!<br>
<br>
And if Paula were to find someone else to spank her, the King would
start asking questions again.  By this time he had become very
possessive where Paula and her adorable bum cheeks were concerned,
following their sweetly undulating progress about the Palace and its
environs with increasing appreciativeness. He made it very plain that
he wanted to see no marks whatsoever on this particular posterior -
unless they were of his making! So her bottom, whilst crying out for
more lovely swishing, pain-filled cuts of a lustily wielded and
painfully flexible stick, was forced to cry out in vain! Poor
pain-denied bottom!<br>
<br>
Bertha was less easy to fend off  - a whole lot less easy. Finally
Paula decided to swallow her pride  (and much else besides) and
allow herself to be taken by the ravenous and sexually insatiable
Golden Guard one night in late January, with the wind howling and the
snow falling outside. Paula thought of Roberta, possibly outside in
that awful weather, and told herself that all this was only being done
in order to help her to recover her liberty and her honour. She
dutifully forced her head between those mighty thighs and plunged her
tongue deep into Bertha’s vagina. As she did so, she reminded herself
that she was only doing it for her friend and Mistress‘s liberty.<br>
<br>
As she tasted the succulent juices of Bertha’s incredibly hairy and
phenomenally large cunt for the first time she was forced to admit that
Roberta had had a point when she had once described the experience as a
gourmet’s delight to be ranked right up there among the very best! <br>
<br>
There was at least one thing this useless piece of shit was good at!
She certainly knew how to give a girl a good time! Soon she was
enthusiastically throwing  herself into this surprisingly
enjoyable aspect of her role of double agent, becoming yet another
Golden Guard’s toy.<br>
<br>
Despite the increasingly strenuous and guiltily pleasurable activities
in which she and Bertha participated, she kept her eyes and ears open
at all times. She began to see and hear a lot!<br>
<br>
Notwithstanding  Bertha’s astounding proficiency as a lover, Paula
came increasingly to despise her failings as a human being. And she was
ever more amazed at each succeeding demonstration of her incompetence.
Bertha still found herself on the whipping platform with great
regularity, but she never got more that ten or twelve lashes at a time
these days. Roberta would have collected many times that for the things
that useless arsehole Bertha was always being pulled up for. How had
she ever been allowed to enrol in the first place? And why, oh why, had
she not been kicked out on her ear months ago?<br>
<br>
ROBERTA - WORKING EXTREMELY HARD<br>
<br>
The fort at the Island’s summit was where the Royal officials in charge
of the prison lived. None of the prisoners ever got to visit those
luxurious apartments. Roberta soon discovered that the prisoners lived
at night in a prison building on the seaward side of the Island. There
was a yard in the middle of this prison building, overlooked by row
after row of tiny barred windows. Roberta was not put in a cell, but
chained to an iron ring in the yard. Her still naked body was never to
know shelter from the elements.<br>
<br>
The prisoners spent their days in a series of quarries, breaking chunks
of rock away from the hillside and reducing them to rubble. A lot of
the work was dangerous and all of it was arduous. Roberta had all of
the most dangerous jobs, as well as the hardest and most back-breaking.<br>
<br>
At the same time that Paula was looking across from her own vantage
point on the mainland, a still physically formidable but mentally cowed
Roberta brought the heavy hammer down on the rock again. Splinters flew
off in all directions. A crack appeared and she knew her efforts were
being rewarded. Once again she lifted the twenty pound metal-headed
wooden hammer and brought it back down hard on the boulder, which split
neatly in two. This was the twentieth rock she had demolished in this
four hour shift and there were at least thirty more lined up for her
attention. She was dripping with sweat, despite the freezing
temperature.<br>
<br>
She resisted the temptation to pause and wipe the sweat off her face -
that would get her a free whipping! After her appalling near fatal
experiences she had got more than a little tired of being whipped, even
though she had once almost enjoyed it - and she was due to be given one
in a day or two in any case. Once more, for the hundredth time, she
sent the hammer crashing into the rock. When it was reduced to
manageable fragments, her fellow prisoners would have the task of
gathering up the stones and taking them to the harbour, where they were
used for adding to the fortifications.<br>
<br>
Roberta was an ace with the hammer! She went on and on for hours - four
hours at a time - raising it high above her head, her arms as high as
they would go and her muscles standing out like ropes, and bringing it
down hard on the rock. Now that it was November and the days were
shorter, she worked here in the quarry for just under ten hours each
day and it would be even less than that soon, before her days of toil
lengthened again with the new year. Back in  late July when she
had first been put to work after a miraculous recovery from atrocious
torture and a near fatal whipping, she had worked fifteen hours each
day, amazing the overseers by her tireless capacity for hard and
back-breaking work. <br>
<br>
She wanted to do well at her work, as this might make up for some of
the wrong she had done. She was a traitor - so they said. And she had
certainly lost her sword and bow, which was a bad enough offence in all
conscience! She had disgraced herself - just when she had thought she
had turned the corner and become a responsible Golden Guard and future
Commandant. (The King had dropped more than just the odd hint
concerning his hopes for her future!)<br>
<br>
The exact details of what had happened were still hazy in her mind - a
mind still reeling from the knowledge that she must end her days
sweating in this barren hell on earth. There were other women who had
been here for many years now and were still being brutally worked both
hard and long, even though they were old and bent with extreme age. In
this place you worked until you dropped. And she had seen a few old
crones keel over and die in the last few months. But they, like her,
were the King's enemies and deserved no better.<br>
<br>
But she loved her King! She had been brought up to serve him to the
death if need be. Year after year, day in and day out, it had been
dinned into her that her life was hers only to devote to protecting the
King and that she must be glad at any time to sacrifice it for him. All
her training for eight years had been to make her a Golden Guard. How
could she have sunk so low? She lifted the heavy hammer again and
started on another large boulder. Soon that was reduced to tiny
fragments. She was getting good at this! In twenty years she would be
even better, but after that she would most likely tail off!<br>
<br>
When she had actually met her Sovereign Lord the King she had come to
know him as a man and not as some idealised focus of loyalty. And she
had liked him straight away. The more she had seen of him as a flesh
and blood human being, the more utterly devoted to him she had become.
Roberta knew that her regard was returned by her royal master and that,
but for him, her whippings would have been far more horrific even than
those she had endured. And finally, in an effort to help her avoid
further pain and straighten her out, he had given her Paula to live
with and love. But she had still let him down and, thanks to her
negligence, Anna, that finest and noblest of young women, was dead. She
wished she could join Anna! <br>
<br>
However much Roberta might despair and however much she might desire to
die, there was something inside her that told her she might still have
something to offer her King. Despite being here for all her days there
might, even in this desolation, be an opportunity for her to redeem
herself. So she slaved away all day and every day, setting herself and
achieving more and more awesome targets.<br>
<br>
When it became too dark to work outside she would be taken back, loaded
with chains, to the prison yard. There, with flaming torches lighting
the grim rectangle, she would be placed chained to a treadmill and made
to work it for five hours until finally allowed to sleep, still
chained, for seven hours. Before dawn she would be fed and watered and
made to work on the mill until light. Then back in chains to the quarry.<br>
<br>
At the quarry her manacles would be removed and she would be handed
whatever implement was to be hers for the day. Whatever it was , it
would be heavy and she would wield it as though it were no lighter than
the proverbial feather. She would work hard for four hours and get a
two minute break to eat and drink. Then four more hours hard work. It
was cold now, but Roberta still sweated all day. At night she was too
dog tired to notice the cold!<br>
<br>
If she had thought of escape, not that there was anywhere to escape to,
the day period was her only chance. But there were never less than five
guards, all armed with bows and all watching her closely every second.
And her taskmaster stood close to her, his whip always ready to punish
any real or imagined slackness. There had never been any real, but
plenty of imagined slackness. For the taskmaster had a vivid
imagination! Some days she collected as many as thirty slashes across
her strong shoulders. For a girl who had shrugged off hundreds of
lashes, laid on far better than this man could even begin to lay them
on, this was no more than a fleabite!<br>
<br>
Once every three months she was flogged in front of all the other
prisoners. This was something that had been decreed at the time she was
sentenced, still confused and bewildered by the sudden horror of all
that was going on around her. She was to receive fifty lashes, plus any
awards that had been incurred as a result of offences against prison
rules since her last flogging. So far she had received flogging number
one and no extra lashes had been added. Because she was a woman her
lashes were given to her by a woman prisoner. This lady would be full
of hate for Roberta (for reasons that will become clear later) but had
no skill and no strength. The woman hardly managed to break her tough
skin, even when nearing the end of the punishment.<br>
<br>
Her next public flogging was due for the day after next and she
welcomed the break from the deadly monotony! The procedure was
different these days. No longer was Roberta trusted to remain still
without being secured. Each foot was tied to a rail, parallel to the
ground and her arms tied to a cross beam at the top of the whipping
frame so that the victim was spread eagled. She was suspended from the
ground until the ordeal was over. But she didn’t suffer such grievous
pain as she had when a proud Golden Guard. Poor Roberta would give a
great deal to return to her former proud status - mammoth whippings and
all.<br>
<br>
Soon the light began to fail. Her legs were manacled and her hands
chained behind her back. Slowly and awkwardly she shuffled the mile
back to the yard where she was to spend the night. A few jeers and
hoots of derision came from the cell windows as the other woman, free
from work until daybreak, saw the despised Roberta, still naked,
chained to the treadmill to begin her long hours of hard labour. She
slept like a log when they finally fed her and left her for a few
precious and all too brief hours sleep.  Sadly she reflected that
she could take maybe forty more years of this before succumbing.
Roberta had been built to last!<br>
<br>
The next day passed much as usual and then it was time for the
flogging! When she woke up on this day, there was almost a sort of joy
in her heart. It was as if she were back in the Golden Guards and
preparing to pay the penalty for yet another of her idiotic escapades
courtesy of Senior Guardswoman Felicity. Then she remembered where she
was, and why. Gloom and shame returned.<br>
<br>
As she had expected, there were no lashes to add to her fifty. The
broken spirited Roberta was a very good girl these days. The other
women were herded into the yard, gratefully released from their duties
to see a disgraced enemy of the King being given part of her continuing
punishment. The female they chose this time was better than the one who
had seen to her three months ago - but not a lot! Even the most bitter
of Roberta’s enemies conceded that she was a very brave young woman as
her back was criss-crossed with red marks and she kept totally still.
They had all been punished this way themselves  and not one could
have taken fifty lashes without moving and crying out well before the
end.<br>
<br>
 If only they had known how much worse she had endured earlier in
the year, and would willingly endure again if she had the chance to go
back!<br>
<br>
She prayed for the chance to be given the task of whipping a defaulter
herself one day. She’d show them how it ought to be done! And she
despised them as much as they all hated her. Then it was over, too soon
for all concerned, including Roberta, and all went back to work. <br>
<br>
November gave way to December and December to January. January saw the
first serious snowfall and the quarry was closed, not out of
consideration for the naked Roberta and the other prisoners, but
because the prison staff disliked the discomfort. Roberta operated her
treadmill all day and surprised everybody except herself  by still
being alive each frosty morning.<br>
<br>
February was a rainy month and  also the time for her third fifty
lash flogging. She hardly felt a thing. Roberta’s long hair, now that
it had grown back again, was perpetually soaked. At least it was clean
when it rained! In the height of Summer when it hardly rained for
months on end, her hair was indescribably dirty what with all the dust.<br>
<br>
March came and went and her day lengthened. The treadmill began to give
way to the quarry. The winter frosts had opened up many cracks on the
quarry face and Roberta was sent up the dangerously unstable cliff face
to hammer away at the surface, sending huge boulders crashing down to
the quarry floor. Her wish to be swept away in a landslide was not
granted. It seemed that she had some sort of charmed life.<br>
<br>
Except that Roberta would have called herself cursed. Doomed to live
like this for maybe another fifty years, becoming bent and withered
like so many of the older women. And, frail and withered or not, she’d
still get her quarterly  whippings!<br>
<br>
May came with flogging number four, which was given by the strongest of
the women and stung a lot more than the first three. As ever there were
cheers as she was secured to the frame and fresh cheers every time the
whip struck her. When this woman started drawing blood from Roberta‘s
broad back, and in appreciable quantities after the thirtieth lash, the
result was near hysteria! The flogger took a bow at the end and walked
off to tumultuous applause.<br>
<br>
May, a dry and hot month, finally gave way to June which was hotter
still.  Roberta was toiling for eighteen hours a day in the
pitiless heat.<br>
<br>
At night she was allowed to sleep in a hut near the quarry. Since there
was nowhere to run, Roberta was allowed to sleep unchained and
unsupervised. She was so docile these days that one of the guards,
Raymond, had dubbed her “The Gentle Giant“.<br>
<br>
Other prisoners, if they were near enough, would throw stones at her,
often hitting her and making her bleed, but she carried on working as
though nothing had happened.  Those who had known the fearsome
warrior of a year ago would scarcely be able to recognise her in this
cowed and obedient prisoner. They might have noticed, though, that her
body was as incredible as ever! She was still a muscle goddess!<br>
<br>
Then one day as she had finally finished her work and was eating her
disgusting meal, she saw a familiar small figure being led towards her
in the fading light. Like her, the newcomer was nude. Unlike her she
was small and dark haired. And she was not chained! And the guard
escorting her seemed to be treating her with some respect and
consideration, pointing out the best way to avoid tripping up over the
rough ground.<br>
<br>
It was Paula! Her darling Paula.<br>
<br>
<br>
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<br>
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