Harriet

by Peter Marriner

  Harriet monitored the exchanges with anxiety, though only distinguishing occasional words like ‘sereia.’ The man in the phaeton laughed at that, but the word ‘escravo’ seemed to be more acceptable to him. He turned to the lady who peered across at Harriet, carefully keeping her face shaded by her lace-trimmed parasol. She seemed to give an assent with an air of nervously excitement and her companion, fumbling in a pocket threw a few coins down, glittering gold in the dust at Cecilia’s feet. The fisherman’s wife spat angrily and more coins followed, until at last Cecilia stooped and swiftly gathered them up into her market basket. Harriet began to worry at this point, for she felt sure that such a sum expended meant that more would be expected of her than she could afford. She expected to be invited to follow her ransomer, but the matter was put beyond her voluntary obedience. Cecilia and the two big black footmen, whom she co-opted, seized Harriet, tied her wrists behind her and fastened her halter to the rear of the carriage. She was to run behind like the blacks.

  That night in a bedroom of an opulent country mansion she undressed her new mistress for bed, having apparently been purchased for the purpose of the young lady’s maid. There seemed no likelihood of the two being man and wife, rather Harriet fancied there was a similarity of appearance. Conde seemed to be his title. Her name was Augusta, was she this Conde’s sister, perhaps? Though Harriet had no common language with her mistress, who was lacking in patience and handy with her hairbrush, the duties were obvious enough and the new maid began to congratulate herself upon the fortunate outcome of an ominous beginning. Since her legs were unaccustomed to pedestrian effort and her knees had soon buckled, she had been obliged to follow the phaeton for the remaining distance, jogged haplessly up and down with head and legs dangling, draped over a muscular naked shoulder, passed from one to the other of the running footmen who seemed quite tireless. She arrived in that way at her destination ready just to sink to rest, but was then obliged to help carry inside the several pieces of luggage fastened behind the carriage.

  Harriet was assisting her new mistress, whom she was told to address as Mamselle Augusta, in undressing for bed when, as she crouched by the lady’s side, a glimpse of them both in the large gilt mirror astonished her. Was this some joke of the man’s? She recalled his curious smirk as he looked from one to the other. She and Augusta might almost have been sisters, though the other girl’s attitude was hardly sisterly. Harriet’s ear already stung from a crossly admonitory slap.

  She slept on a palliase at her mistress’s bedroom door and was roused in the cool light of dawn by two stalwart and very ugly black women who took her by the arms and held her aside for the convenient entry into her mistress’s room of their master, followed by another similar pair. They then hustled her down a flight of back stairs to emerge upon a rear veranda amid a clutter of empty wine casks and bundles of firewood. It looked upon a paved yard surrounded by stables and open fronted cart sheds. In the centre space a bonfire blazed, well alight and made up of boxes and trunks, spilling shoes, hats, dresses, all manner of female apparel.

  The owner of the mansion shortly joined them, his two female servants dragging behind him the evidently reluctant figure of the supposed sister. Augusta had been dragged straight from her bed for her dark hair tumbled loose over her shoulders and her feet were bare. As they stood, mistress and maid, staring in bewilderment, two footmen emerged from behind them, one carrying the trunk from the bedroom and the other with an armful of the clothing that Harriet had removed from her mistress the night before. These they hurled onto the fire amid the loud and frightened lamentations of their female owner. As the last of the armfuls went on the fire the Conde called out an abrupt order. The women servants were stolid muscular creatures like those who held Harriet, bare foot and bare breasted, wearing turbans and short loose skirts tucked in at the waist. Hearing his order, Augusta called out in fear and then with even more violent dissent, but her two escorts evidently acting upon the order, brutally ripped the nightdress from her writhing body and cast it too onto the pyre. The naked girl tried to shrink from his eyes in shame and terror, shocked by the violent exhibition of her nakedness and trying to cover herself with her hands. The black women held her firmly, paying no heed to her cries and commands, except to roll their eyes to look for their master’s approbation. Holding her between them, they forcibly bent her almost double. Their master’s eyes gleamed with savage glee and, lifting his rattan cane, he began thrashing the girl’s presented bottom. She kicked and howled from the beginning, at first with a note of disbelief and then at last, wailing for mercy.

  Evidently satisfied, the Conde suspended her thrashing and issued further orders in a harshly triumphant tone. Harriet in her turn was seized and stripped by the two women who held her. A pair of stays were produced and fastened about Harriet’s middle, very brief and made of stiff black leather with many gleaming buckles attached in strange positions. Alongside her, the other two had brought out a similar set of stays and, with much more trouble, fitted out Augusta in the same way. The girl constantly attempted to renew her pleas but she was silenced each time she began by the effective threat of having even more weals added to the startling display left by the cane. Harriet’s frightened compliance was frequently pointed at as if for an example until at last the other was brought to order. Her naked body seemed no darker than Harriet’s sun-bronzed one, their hair matched in colour and length and both were brown-eyed. Naked, the pair, mistress and maid, made a similar pair now apparently equal in humiliation.

  The two attendants tightened the stay-laces until Harriet had a flat belly and wasp waist, but was still able to breathe easily, for her breasts were only lifted and presented by a strip of leather with moulded half cups that squeezed them into jostling contact, thrusting them forward with the nipples prominently exposed. They drew long leather gloves onto her arms or rather something more like leather stockings, for they had neither fingers nor thumbs at the closed end, only a metal loop. There was a strap at the wrist which threaded through the loop and when drawn close curled her fingers tight into her palm, rendering them quite useless to her. Her wrists were fastened to each side of the stays at the level of her waist and her arms were then drawn back behind her to be connected at the elbows by a short strap. This forced her shoulder blades together and helped thrust her breasts forward, wobbling like liquid globes on the stiff leather balcony. As usual the pair of servants, comprehending nothing of what she said, ignored her occasional attempts at protest as indifferently as if they were harnessing a whinnying horse.

  This similarity was enhanced when one of the women gripped Harriet by her ear while her colleague deftly threw an apparent tangle of narrow straps over the English girl’s head. A thick wooden bit that was part of this forced Harriet’s lips back over white teeth and pressed firmly down upon her tongue, making further speech impossible. The black women fussed with her hair, smoothing the long glossy length out in their hands with admiring murmurs, calling out to their colleagues who were doing the same to Augusta. It was fed through some opening in the crown of the bridle so that it fell in a great sweep like a pony’s tail. Yet another narrow strap was clipped to the base of the tail and drawn down to the top of the stays, forcing Harriet to keep her head erect, though even without the strap, the deep studded collar would have made it difficult to bow her head.

  The sound of wheels now drew the captives’ attention as a bright yellow phaeton drew into the yard, drawn by a team of six naked young black women who came trotting up at a fast pace. At a word and the crack of a long whip from their driver, a diminutive creature mounted on the high seat, they slowed instantly to a trot, prancing with knees thrown up high and heads erect in the manner of horses, the nodding red and white feather plumes on their heads making them seem even taller. Six females matching in every part, they pranced exactly in step, the plumes nodding prettily together amid a tiny tinkling of bells. Only the foremost pair had reins connected to their bits, the o
thers apparently taking their cue from the leaders as they were drawn to a halt before the little group and their well-trussed prisoners. The cool air of morning stiffened Harriet’s nipples and she noticed with some alarm how the early sunlight glinted from little gold rings inserted into those of the six black ponies as their out-thrust breasts quivered and subsided into immobility. Their features being half hidden by leather blinkers fastened to the cheek straps of their bridles, the six stared straight forward without a waver of expression. Like Harriet and her ex-mistress, they wore tight stays and harnessing straps that kept their heads erect and their breasts thrusting forward. Waist to waist they were linked by a light silver chain and by a stouter chain from the backs of their harnesses to the long light single pole by which they drew the carriage. Below their naked bellies and the shaven pubis there was a flash of gold chain with silver bells dangling in the interval of their thighs from which the tinkling sound had come, operated by the up and down motion of the prance.

  The four stablewomen set about unharnessing the two black human ponies nearest the carriage and then refastening Harriet and her companion as a pair in their place, smacking them familiarly into position behind the remaining quartet. When the dwarfish coachman gathered up the reins at the Conde’s order and gave a crack of his whip, these four experienced black beauties responded as if to habit, instantly energised and springing quivering into action, bare feet pattering as they took the step or two necessary to throw their weight against the chain traces. The two replacement ponies were right under the driver’s eye and the cracking whip had heralded a flick across both naked bottoms that drove them forward in imitation of that action. Harriet was conscious of her companion’s doe-eyed terror mirroring her own feelings, yelping simultaneously as the whip snapped at their bottoms and then by instinct surging in unison. Dragging a little upon the experienced leaders in their initial confusion, a smarter double flick served to stimulate the two novices into a properly energetic emulation of the black girls’ response.

  Harriet and Augusta ran and walked in harness in the vicinity of the mansion all the hot tropical morning, forced to accept their beast-like part, learning to be one unit in an already disciplined team. They could find no alternative but to copy the other girl-ponies, for even if they escaped the whip themselves, they heard and felt with instant sympathy and a corresponding spurt of effort, every flick that stung the labouring hindquarters of a team-sister. Throughout that time they were halted to rest at frequent intervals and each time were watered by the boy from a long-spouted container like a watering can, its stream aimed at their lips, splashing down between their breasts and dribbling down their bellies as much as down their parched throats. Slowly as they paced, trotted and cantered, performing each alteration to the crack of the whip, Harriet became conscious of the pressing need for the relief of her bladder to the point where she was sure that the next touch of the whip would have her wetting herself. Shame and panic rose and she could hear her companion whimper alongside her.

  Thankfully, their driver and trainer seemed to recognize the need. The team of panting females came to a halt from a desperately extended canter. Sweat trickled down naked curves, breasts heaved and trembled, eyelashes lay wet upon cheeks. The stripes of punishment earned were delineated across their six rumps, most conspicuously upon the trembling bottoms and quivering thighs of the two paler skinned novices. As the front four thrust back their prominent ebony-skinned bottoms, Harriet could see that they carried the mark of a sharply peaked crown, the same crest she had seen on the Conde’s carriage door, seared with a branding iron upon the upper curve where a driver would see it most clearly. She saw too, what that backwards thrust was actually intended for. Feeling her face flush red, she nevertheless bent to the humiliating necessity herself; she spread her legs wide and thrust back her rump like them, hearing the hiss and splash around her feet and then the sound of the girl alongside her, groaning in humiliation, but doing the same, sending a steady stream of hot piss of her own arcing onto the dry ground.

  During the heat of mid afternoon they were detached from the carriage and allowed a longer rest in the welcome shade of a tree. They remained harnessed as a team and the black girls subsided with the ease of long practice, lying with their heads on each other’s thighs, mumbling sub-vocally from behind their bits. Harriet and Augusta copied them but having no common language, with the others or one another, were forced to contemplate their fate in silence. Presently, attending to a grunting sound behind her, Harriet turned to see that one of the lead pony girls had rolled over onto her front and levered herself up to her knees with her prominent bottom stuck up in the air. The squat driver had swaggered over to take up a position behind his charge and, as if passing an idle moment in a customary pastime, was driving his man-sized cock into her one unobstructed opening.

  They had never been out of sight of the mansion so far, but when the day had cooled enough to resume, they were driven, running, trotting, or walking, in among the fields of the plantation itself, tails swishing and plumes nodding, the bright sound of the little bells advertising the pace of their progress. The rhythmic flap and patter of hardened feminine soles changed in tone from dry crunching gravel to easier hard-packed dirt or softly squelching mud on the plantation tracks. They began to pass lines of black male slaves working in the fields or plodding single file along the roads in chains with shouldered tools, followed by women slaves carrying empty baskets, who glanced up at them with only fleeting interest. Once they passed through a whole village of huts built of mud and thatch, either side of the road, where slave women nursed babies at the doors and older children ran in naked emulation alongside the trotting team. From these, the combination of four jet-black and two cream-coloured prancers drew more attention, the two new wheelers with their lighter skin being pointed out. On the up-grades Harriet and Augusta groaned together as they felt the weight of carriage and driver, legs thrusting with straining muscles, dirt encrusted toes forced to splay without regard to stick or stone underfoot, drawing the whip from their inability to match the four black beauties, Augusta’s feet, less hardened than Harriet’s, earned her frequent admonishment when she stumbled. Downhill they quickly learnt to lean back, digging in their heels and feeling the un-braked weight thrusting at their waist rings.

  As the sun went down the equipage drew into a small stone-flagged yard with a large coach house on one side and two other sides formed by single storey buildings whitewashed and pantiled. One row was composed of small loose boxes with iron-grilled doors, behind some of which forms moved that were not horses. Harriet and Augusta were released from the team, unharnessed and de-bitted and chained up together in one of these straw-filled cells, like ponies in a stable stall. Their legs were rubbery beneath them and they were too exhausted to attempt communication. They collapsed into the straw, groaning, and fell asleep almost instantly.

  Three days went by in this exercise and then what seemed at first to be a rest day. Presently, however, the stablewomen led the two trembling wide-eyed girls, bridled and bitted, across to the other range, the one composed of open-fronted sheds. Evidently one was a forge, for within it a fire of coals glowed and sprang with fitful blue and yellow flames. Here the girls were set astride two wooden trestles, their legs firmly fastened to the frames and a strap fastened to the two belt rings passed under the trestle ridge, keeping their torsos horizontal. The leading rein from their bits, looped tightly to the end of the trestle, kept them head down and facing forward. The Conde lounged near at hand and a bald man, wearing little more than a leather apron and a leather gauntlet on one hand, busied himself raking in the glowing charcoal with a long metal rod. Rendered dumb and securely restrained in their submissive posture, the two girls watched the other participants by turns, sideways with widened eyes, in a state of despair and suspense, seeking for a clue as to their imminent fate. Harriet could see nothing of her young erstwhile mistress and all that Augusta could see of her transitory m
aidservant were wide-splayed legs and an up-thrust bottom, but from both females came apprehensive moans as each took to heart the suggestiveness of their pose.

  Examining the pair from all angles with an air of relishing a prospect, the Conde then gave a sharp order to the man in the leather apron. Firelight reflected from the man’s big teeth as he drew the rod from the fire by its wooden handle, the head dazzlingly bright and a few sparks falling from it. In the other hand he displayed a scrap of leather as thick and stiff as a piece of board and, approaching it with the iron, pressed the glowing head to its surface. There was an audible sizzle and a wisp of black smoke curled from the leather. He thrust the dimmed iron back into the fiery heart of the charcoal and presented the piece of leather for his master’s inspection, who nodded approval, his lip curling.

  The man returned to the branding iron resting in the brazier and raked it among the coals for a few more minutes, while the Conde licked his lips in anticipation. Once again the iron was withdrawn, restored in the brightness of its glow, and this time the smith advanced upon the prostrate figure of Harriet, presented to him, rump uppermost, on the nearer trestle. The iron was now a bright orange colour. After a last glance in his master’s direction, the man bent and planted the glowing head with a firm and unerring aim, smack on the centre of Harriet’s plump right-side bottom cheek. Harriet wrenched her fastenings at either end, with a bubbling shriek that forced its way past her gagging bit. She twisted and squirmed, sobbing wildly, her eyes starting in disbelief and then panic, but quite unable to unseat the iron. She shrieked again as the smith, after returning the rod to the fire, stooped to seize a pail of water and dashed the contents abruptly over her wounded rump. For a moment it took away the worst of the pain but as the swift initial cooling effect passed her right cheek began to throb as deeply as if the iron still lay solidly implanted. The physical presence of the emblematic brand, now seared so irremovably deeply into her tender flesh, seemed to impress as deeply upon her brain an irrevocable relegation to a mere piece of property.