DEDICATED TO THE GODDESS | vagina bdsm stories

Petronia was being prepared for her initiation. It was a month now since she had been summoned to the Goddess's service by the jewelled vulva she now wore around her neck, the only decoration permitted to Ishtar's priestesses. Now it was her only costume, for she was naked, as they mostly were in Ishtar's temple. She was being washed and purified for her ordeal. It which would finally seal her as a permanent devotee of the Goddess, and not one of the passing brides, or seven-year wives, who came and went with bewildering frequency, staying only for one stint of two hours before being released, sore and swollen in vagina and labia, copiously anointed with male seed, and female secretions.

Since the High Priestess had come to summon her, she had lived with, but apart from, the regular servers of the deity. She had been lectured daily on how Ishtar must be served, and examined in her body to see she was qualified for her post. In particular she had been watched around the clock for signs of her menses and, when the first blood had flowed in her third week, her fate was sealed.

While she waited for that day, she was set to work as servant to the others, bringing them water for their ablutions, helping with their toilettes, treated as the lowest of the low - lower even than the slaves in her old home, for they, at least, were family retainers, and treated as family members in a sense. Here she carried slops, washed soiled cloths from monthly flows, and bathed the inflamed and reeking vulvas when they returned from strenuous service in the Goddess's ivory belly.

Now, though, she was receiving ritual ablution. That afternoon she had been purged top and bottom, front and back, all traces of corruption flushed from her. It had begun with an emetic, a strong salt solution to which bitter herbs and secret minerals from the hills had blended. She had heaved and spasmed, her stomach, already emptied by a Spartan diet, retching on nothing as it tried to expel the noxious mixture. Next she had been made to swallow a bitter draught of evil smelling liquid. Within minutes violent gripes had seized her belly, her bowels opened and she was set on a bucket to evacuate her bowels in a stream of liquid, accompanied by humiliating gaseous discharges. For several days now her diet had been restricted to ritual foods, white bread, honey, milk and fruit, and her guts were softened even before the bitter draught. Now she was more than loose, and emptied herself freely and wetly.

Her attendants were not content with this, however. A pot was fetched with a length of treated sheep-gut fastened to a spigot in its base. The vessel was hung from a hook above her and an ivory nozzle placed in the free end of the tube, the tube itself closed off with a split wooden peg. Into the suspended jar two large measures of hot oil, laced with the juice of small hot green peppers, was placed. Petronia was made to go on her hands and knees on the stone floor, and the ivory nozzle thrust rudely into her shrinking anus.

The split peg was withdrawn, and the hot astringent oil flooded into her rectum. It excited feelings as violent as those arising from the laxative brew she had been given. When the level in the jar had fallen by the equivalent of one measure, the tube was clipped again, and the nozzle withdrawn. The pressure in her belly was insistent, but she was warned she must not let it go until she had been given permission. Instead, she was made to stand and bend repeatedly from the waist, run round the room with a high-steeping gait, like a trotting horse, bend her knees, her thighs wide, her back held straight, repeating this squatting motion a score of times. All these actions excited the most unbearable effects in her belly, which strained to expel its unwelcome load.

At last they let her go, and she fled to the pot again, to repeat her degrading anal cacophony. But if she thought her ordeal was over dismay awaited her, for, on her return, she was made to bend again and receive the second measure of irritant hot oil in her bowel, to hold it while she overcame the cramps and spasms of her belly, to aggravate her own sufferings by going through the same routine of gymnastic movements as before. Her body was trembling and soaked with perspiration by the time she had been released at last.

Now the jar was washed and refilled, but this time with hot scented water.

Three times a measure of cleansing fluid surged through her vagina, until it satisfied the women in whose rigorous charge she lay.

Scoured of all pollution internally, until she felt hollow and drained, it was time to attend to externals. First, she was stretched on a marble slab and her skin worked all over. Strong fingers massaged every part, manipulating the muscles of her neck, her shoulders, her back and thighs, squeezing the calves until she moaned, working each foot and toe, until she sighed with content. Then the fingers returned to grip the swelling nates with both hands, pommelling and parting, then applying a coat of sweet oil all over.

Her back attended to, she was turned over, and the same treatment applied to her front, though there was more of squirming pleasure than discomfort now.

Hands lingered on the rich breasts, pulling on the engorged nipples until they reddened and stood out even harder on their discs of pink areolae. When they passed down to the thicket of hairs at her vulva, and disappeared, oil slicked, into the crevice of her fig, she could not suppress the symptoms of her rising passion - her hips lifted and fell on the slab, her thighs clenching and unclenching as, all the while, low guttural noises in her throat rose more and more urgently. The woman working her fork kept up her frotting of the hard bud that crowned the gaping slit, until Petronia bucked convulsively a dozen times, her cries more screams now, but of passion, not pain. As she slowed the action to a gentle halt, the manipulator looked on her with pity. That would be the last time she enjoyed such erotic play. In an hour that concentrated nub of sexual pleasure would be no more.

But for now there was work to do. Anointed with warm oil in every nook and cranny of her body, she was placed on a tripod, like the seeresses of the Delphic oracle, above a bronze chafing dish, its glowing charcoal strewn with pungent herbs that made her head dizzy. She was naked and oiled under a thick goatskin cloak which enveloped her to the neck, and held the heat and scent of the aromatic vapour to her skin. She sweated freely, the perspiration running in rivulets between her breasts, under her armpits, down her back, to seep stingingly into her buttock crease, and onto her thighs. When the heat and fumes had done their work, cleansing her pores of all the grime and impurity that her month as the lowest of serving women had imposed on her, she was taken down and laid on the slab again, and scraped with an ivory strigila, rasping away the stained and sweat fouled oil.

A bath in warm scented water followed, and now they patted her dry, burnished her hair with vigorous strokes of a silver-backed brush, and put it into a heavy braid that fell down her back. The curls at her fork they trimmed with clippers to form a neat triangle, plucking around the joint of her labia,

above the crease that hid her clitoris. They coated her pouting nipples with rouge, first pinching them cruelly to bring natural colour into them, and cause them to swell even more extravagantly. They painted her lips red, and outlined her eyes with kohl beneath eyebrows plucked to a single line.

Now she was ready, and they brought her to the High Priestess, who awaited her beside a low altar of white marble adorned with heavy silver rings, and two silver vertical bars, their tops formed like stirrups.

"You are fit and ready," the Priestess recited in an age old formula, "and the Goddess has chosen you. Submit yourself to Ishtar."

She had been taught what to do, told what to expect. In fear and trembling she laid her bare body on the cold slab, and lifted her feet into the stirrups.

The action pushed her bent knees back over her belly, and parted them widely, so that her trimmed and perfumed vulva was completely exposed and vulnerable. She raised her hands and joined them above her head. Soft feminine hands held hers, but firmly, and others took her ankles, ensuring she could not withdraw her feet from the loops that held them stretched so far apart.

"Your bud of pleasure is forfeit to the Goddess, for only Ishtar may enjoy the ecstasies of her couplings with her worshippers," the High Priestess recited, coming to stand between Petronia's thighs. A small gleaming sickle of a blade glinted in her fingers, "It must be sacrificed for her use."

Strong fingers took hold of the delicate little stem, drawing it out from where it seemed to cower in the folds of the labia, as if it knew and shrank from its fate. The knife flashed and, in a sea of pain, Petronia's bud was amputated close to its root. The Priestess held the bloody morsel up for all to see, then placed it on a salver held by an acolyte, then turned to stem the flow from the freely bleeding wound.

To one side a brazier of glowing charcoal burnt on a tripod. Its heady scent, disguised with incense, made Petronia's head swim. Now the High Priestess was taking something that glowed brightly from the bed of coals. Now she was approaching to stand between Petronia's open legs again...

"Receive the sacred mark of the Goddess," the High Priestess was saying. A hand on the tormented vulva. Fingers parting the labia...

Pure pain!

Oh the agony of it!

The brand was against the stump of her clitoris, and the soft pink sheathe in which it nestled. For a long minute she fought against the pain, willing herself, for honour's sake, to concede no more than the strangled guttural noises that bubbled in her throat, for it was not a single flash of agony that passed and left her free again, but a long drawn out anguish as the iron burnt into the delicate tissues, eating them away until nothing remained of the pulpy protuberance. All was seared away. Later there would remain only a flat silver scar, in shape a miniature of the vulva itself, set in its peak, the mark of the Goddess.

The iron withdrew, leaving Petronia choking on her sobs.

But her ordeal was not over yet. They had told her she would be made infertile, for the Priestess's knew the secret of how to avoid conception, but they had not told her how it was done. Was it another torture that awaited her?

Did it last for ever, or would she regain her fertility? It hardly mattered for, when she became free again to try and conceive, she would be over forty, and her chances very slight of bearing another child.

She thought gratefully that she had two children already, and would not be condemned to childlessness, but would she ever see them again? Not unless that darling female babe was selected to join the priesthood in her twentieth year, when she might just come to serve when Petronia was getting ready to leave. Or perhaps her boy would come to try out his new-found manhood. Oh Gods! She would still have seven years to serve when he came of age. He could even come to test his virility at the temple and sheathe himself in his own mother's vagina!

They were moving again between her splayed thighs. She felt something thrust into her vagina, deep in until it touched the mouth of her womb. Then it was expanding, dragging her open, pulling her vagina apart. It felt as if she would split from top to bottom before the movement stopped and she was left wide open, the air cool on the lining of her moist tube. Above her, the High Priestess left the two silver spatulas braced at their outer ends, and held apart at their mid-points by a short strut, wedging open the stretched vagina

clear up to the cervix. From the metal dish an attendant held, she took a bent silver wire still coated with the pure green olive oil in which it had been submerged.

With her long delicate fingers she probed the soft nose of the womb, seeking the tiny orifice that communicated with the interior of the uterus. She found it with the tip of the curiously shaped wire and pressed it in, ignoring the involuntary buck of Petronia's hips as the intruder forced its painful way into her womb itself. The Priestess thrust harder, drawing a whining mewling sound from the pinioned woman, and forced it all the way home, until only a loop of silk marked where it had been sunk into the spongy organ. As Petronia moaned, she collapsed the stretcher in the sheath, which slowly and gratefully closed again, taking a count of several seconds to effect complete closure. Even then the aperture of the vagina quivered loosely, rather than pressed together tightly, as when usually at rest.

Now at last Petronia was released, and kissed in welcome by each of her sisters. Though sorry for her, for they knew what her fate would be, they were all happy to see her, not only because there would be a replacement for their lost sister, whose absence had had to be made up by extended periods of service for each of them, but because she brought them news from the outside world, their only legitimate means of communication. While she had been on probation, waiting to see if she had conceived before she entered the temple, she had been almost a pariah, forbidden to speak to anyone, other than in the course of her base and humiliating duties. Soon they would be able to learn about the affairs of the fashionable world they had left, several of them many years ago but, before they could satisfy their curiosity, Petronia had to face the ultimate stage in her induction into the Goddess's service, her first appearance in the belly of the Goddess.

She was still very sore, the wound in her vulva, though sealed and dried by the intense heat of the incandescent iron that had been applied to it, throbbed and ached insistently. Like all the servers, whether novices or going to the place of sacrifice for perhaps the three or four thousandth time, she was washed and oiled about her vulva before being lead, naked, to the room behind the Goddess's image.

She was not a stranger to it. Once, years before, like all brides in Pityus, she had come, bloody-backed from her mother in-law's rod, to lose her virginity here, but the trauma of the night had left everything about it blurred and distant in her mind.

The image sat with its back against the dividing wall between the rooms and, on the side away from the public, a low recess, like some fantastic fire place, graced the wall directly behind the Idol, beneath the place where her buttocks would be if she were not hollow behind. At the back of the recess was an oval aperture which corresponded to the belly of the Goddess, and could be covered by the elaborate loincloth that the worshippers lifted to present their rampant penises.

The Duty Priestess bent and backed into the recess until her buttocks contacted the inside of the figure of the deity and thus presented her vulva through the arch of her buttocks and thighs. To support her, a bar was swung across in front of her on which she could rest her upper body, while one, a dozen, a hundred, men used that fixed and freely opened channel to discharge their sexual energies into the Goddess, revitalising her powers of fertility and erotic delights.

Each woman, of course, differed in length of leg, breath of buttock and the length of her upper body, so that each was given a higher or lower step to stand on to bring her vulva squarely into the opening, and a bar set at the optimum height and distance to ensure she was properly supported during her long ordeal, and could maintain herself correctly positioned so that the men could penetrate her fully, and derive full satisfaction from that penetration. Each woman was carefully assessed in position when she first took up her duties, and the correct dimensions for her foot stool and support bar recorded and retrieved each time she came to the work-station.

Since it was essential that the Goddess's service should never be interrupted, but should maintain a continuous sacrifice to her potency, so long as there were men willing to couple with her, delays while one as substituted

for another, and the necessary adjustments made to the settings, would have been unacceptable. The problem had been solved in an ingenious way.

The step on which the woman stood was part of one of a pair of identical trolleys, on small iron castors, that could be wheeled in and out of the recess, and fitted it exactly. The support bar was also fixed to the frame of the trolley and the woman could be mounted, and her necessary personal adjustments made, without disturbing the priestess currently on duty. Only when her relief was mounted on the duplicate trolley, her buttocks raised to exactly the right level to form the Goddess's belly and vulva, supporting herself on the correctly positioned bar in front of her, would the priestess in charge of operations check with the serving devotee how she fared, was there a penis lodged in her, if so was he about to climax, direct her to give the word the second she felt withdrawal commence, something the bent woman, sore and exhausted from anything up to half an hour of continuous copulation, was only too eager to do.

As the loincloth fell into place, the battered bride of Ishtar would be drawn out on her trolley, from which she could not extricate herself. The new Goddess surrogate would be rolled swiftly into place, her buttocks pressed firmly against the sides of the aperture, still hot from her predecessors flesh.

As often as not, the retiring server would let out a gasp of shock as she left her post for, to protect the women from unauthorised buggery, the jewel that Marcellus had remarked during his visit to the Temple was, in fact, the pommel of an ivory plug, an inch across and five long, that served the dual purpose of sealing the woman's anus and locating her exactly in the belly opening. Its sudden extraction would cause all but the utterly exhausted to register their distress in an audible fashion.

In the fleeting interval that the recess was unfilled, one of the women in attendance would quickly wipe the previous occupant's wastes and secretions from the ivory peg, then pass an oily hand over it to give a minimum of lubrication to assist her to locate its tip in the newly presented anus. Her hand was withdrawn, giving the signal to the other attendants to slam the trolley right home, the butt plug driven equally firmly into the woman's rectum, again driving a shocked cry from her throat.

When the next in line lifted the Goddess's lap covering, to slake his own lust, there would be a fresh vulva winking at him from between clean unmarked thighs, where his predecessor had had to make do with buttocks and thighs bruised and inflamed from the battering they had received, a vulva leaking male seed and female secretions, hot, sticky and swollen.

Now it was the latest recruit's turn to offer herself. She was led to the spare trolley and made to mount the step, placing her feet in rudimentary leather sandals fixed to the timber. Their width could be adjusted to suit the leg length of each woman. In Petronia's case they were set wide apart to cause her thighs to open as widely as someone of lesser height. Now she bent and put her folded arms on the bar in front, taking up as comfortable a position as she could, since she would have to maintain it for some time.

Since her measurements had to be determined on this first real visit to the Goddess, she was wheeled on her stand to where a crude replica of that part of the Goddess's body, including the belly aperture, had been set up. By backing her up against it, her position could be adjusted, opening her legs a little, lowering the height of the footstep a trifle, letting the rest come forward a touch, so that she could lean on it at a better angle.

When she was ready, she was rolled to a position just to one side of the active Priestess, and a little in front. Earlier she had been able to see part of the woman's face, as she had leaned forward from the recess, facing downwards, her body shaking from the violence of the penetration she was suffering from behind, uttering a series of grunts in time to the relentless battering. Now, although she could no longer see her, she could still follow her progress from the rattling gasps and the creaking of the frame.

It sounded as if she was between penises for she was still for a moment, then gasped as something thrust quickly into her. For some seconds she was almost still, seeming to indicate that the man, after the first rush of his entry, was taking it slowly. But soon she began to let her breath out in regular short pants. These quickened and sharpened, until she was once again grunting rhythmically. She confirmed to the priestess in charge that she was well stuck, and the man vigorous and likely to reach climax without undue delay. Petronia

listened to her guttural noises in increasing trepidation. Once they had passed their peak, and dropped to stillness again, the woman would be withdrawn and she would be thrust into her place. The sounds quickened, broke rhythm with two irregular stomach-deep jolting grunts, and it was over.

The woman gave a shocked cry, as she was whipped out of the working bay, the plug dragged rudely from her anus. She must have forgotten its presence after all this time, and it had come as a shock to have been reminded so abruptly.

As the one trolley rumbled away, with its sweat and semen stained burden, Petronia's was pushed into the opening of the recess. There was an instant's pause, as the ivory cylinder was wiped and oiled, and then she felt it touching her own unwilling anus. The hand that held it rubbed across her flank as it was withdrawn and raised to signal that the plug was in position, and her two handlers thrust the trolley on which she was mounted hard into the recess.

In her turn she gave a gasp of protest as the ivory prong was forced deep into her, then felt her bottom cheeks slap solidly against the inner surface of the image, the metal still glowing with the body heat of the last occupant. As her buttocks slammed home she could feel the heavy jewel-encrusted lap cloth resting on them, but not for long. Barely was she in position, than the cloth was raised and she could feel the air on her buttocks and the fat vulva exposed between the widely parted thighs.

An instant later, and something hard yet soft, smooth yet textured, probed her split purse behind, parting the plump labia, seeking out the opening of her vagina. She flinched as it missed its mark, and touched the inflamed and seared site of her lost clitoris, then it lifted and found the proper entrance. It thrust in without ceremony, driving another gasp from her.

The silver coil to suppress her fertility had been put into her without too much finesse, once the narrow entrance to her womb had been located. It had been a straight firm drive that had left her sore. The tissues, reacting to the abrasion and the presence of a foreign body in their usually tranquil zone, had become inflamed and swollen. This heavy prick, rooting deep inside her, aggravated their distress and communicated it to her as a sharp twinge each time the massive rod drove home.

She clenched her teeth on her discomfort and tried not to display too much of what she was suffering to her new sisters, who had gathered to see how well she would take her first session as a fully inducted priestess of Ishtar. A good impression now would set the tone for her future here, and she was determined that she would not let herself, or her family, down.

The rutting speeded, then culminated in a series of violent thuds of the man's belly against her backside, accompanied with the feel of his thick creamy jets spurting against her womb. Then he was done. He withdrew from her aching vagina, letting the beaded loin cloth fall onto her buttocks. She could feel the wet trickle of his juices down the inside of one thigh.

The respite lasted less than a minute and then the air was cool on her thighs and vulva again, before being shut off by another hot and heavy male presence. Another fleshy shaft sought out her opening, and rammed home. Once more she suffered the rhythmical battering of her sore tube until he too discharged his thick load inside her and withdrew. Prick after prick sought out her entrance, speared its way inside, and roughly ploughed her aching furrow until the climax came and it made way for yet another in an unending row.

Nominally each Priestess of the twelve should do a two hour stint in the Goddess's belly, but the custom was for them to work in teams of four, covering a total of eight hours in short sessions of only fifteen or twenty minutes each.

But for a new initiate on her first session, she must endure the full two hour stint in one unbroken ordeal, made worse by the soreness of her recent branding, and the inflammation of her newly installed womb protector. It was a hideous experience, and Petronia was in a state of collapse when she was finally drawn from the impaling peg in her rectum, and allowed to rise from the frame on which she had suffered for so long. She could scarcely stand, and had to be helped away, but she had come through.

Come through that night - but it would be repeated the next evening, and the next, in ever repeating succession, only broken by a few days rest when her menses came. It was the beginning of a life of hardship that would last, if not for the rest of her days, at least until she turned forty. Oh Gods! she thought,

more than thirteen years to come, before I can escape a daily pounding by these thrusting pricks. Will I even have a vagina left by then, or will it have turned to leather, or worn so large my anus and vulva will be one!

13 - A PAINFUL REPRIEVE AND SORE ENLISTMENT

While Petronia was being readied for the Goddess's service, Lavinia was recovering from her wounds, and awaiting anxiously for clear proof of whether she had conceived or not at the Barbarian's monstrous pike and its copious floodings of her defenceless womb.

She had been due a week after her return, but there was no show of blood or other symptoms and she waited in trembling apprehension for some sign. Gaius was kept in touch with the situation by the women of the family who tended her in her isolation, for none but one or two of the most close female relatives was allowed any contact with her while the point was undecided.

At five weeks she still had not bled, and was beginning to panic. A week later Gaius consulted his women folk and sent her a dire message, that fuelled her terror into near panic.

"Tomorrow you will be whipped until you miscarry, the flogging to be repeated every day for three days," he had told her. "If you are not cleared by this, you will be sent to the Syrian Quarter to be relieved of your burden."

The next day she was taken to a small deserted court at the rear of the Governor's palace, and hung, naked, by her wrists, from a beam used to train a vine for shade. Heavy weights were tied to her feet to stretch her belly, and a Nubian slave was ordered to beat her with a horrendous black whip, made from the hide of some great thick-skinned African animal. Each blow shocked her through and through. At the thirty third stroke she lost consciousness, and awoke later in her bed, a mass of pain.

An elderly aunt took pity on her, defying orders and giving her a draught of poppy juice, and she slept. When she woke, in the early hours of the morning, another ache had been added to those left by the whip. Her belly cramped and dragged and she became conscious of a wetness of the sheet on which she lay.

Blood from between her thighs, not from her back. She had never thought she would have given thanks for the aches and pains of menstruation, but she did on this occasion at least.

It was another fortnight before she had recovered from this second ordeal, but Gaius visited her daily, expressing his happiness to be able to take her back. He showed his satisfaction by sending many gifts to her room. When she could at last return to his bed, he displayed a height of passion she had not seen since their first years of marriage, and which she returned as uninhibitedly.

Two months after her return from her disastrous escapade, Lavinia returned to her salon, and her circle of friends.

Claudia was not among them. While Lavinia was away, the period of grace allowed all immigrants had expired. Marcellus had come to her room one day and reminded her of her duty, and her obligation not to sully the family honour by trying to evade service.

"But Marcellus, you can't do this to me. I'm your sister."

"Exactly! I'm your bother and you owe me obedience."

"But to be treated like a slave. To work naked under the sun, puling barges, whipped by overseers while I struggle to shift rock in the quarry. You can't do that to a noblewoman."

"It's done every day here, in the name of the State, and the State requires it for its survival. You know what's happening in Rome where they've gone soft. Besides, back in the golden age of the Republic, women knew their duty, were subservient to men and laboured for the common good. As to treating a noblewoman that way, you know very well that it's done every day. Livia is related to the Emperor, that is if he still exists, and she's served on the gangs at least half a dozen times now, and still holds her head up high."

"But we - where we come from -"

He was not to be moved.

"No, sister dear," he said firmly, "I am sending you on the next mustering. We've been here six months now, and our welcome as visitors is outstayed. Either we try our luck with the pirates on the inland sea, or you become a citizen and do your duty, as every citizeness should. Frankly you haven't any real choice. The pirates will rape you and enslave you permanently.

At least on the gangs you know it's only for six months, and no one can touch you during that time, not if he wants to keep his balls, and most of us are very attached to those necessary appendages."

Seeing she had ceased to protest, he softened his tone.

"Frankly, my dear, I believe it will be the making of you. In the days of the Republic, women were always obedient to some man, who had absolute power of life or death over them. The laws were never changed, but we've grown lax, and the behaviour of women has been one of the worst expressions of that laxity.

Women have no respect for their men, so how can the men respect themselves. You were even impertinent to our father, I remember, thinking you could twist him round your little finger and, although we've been friends, and I still love you dearly, your attitude is one of being owed support and care without yourself owing any duty at all. Here things are different. They've had to be to keep the barbarian out, and it's a pity that Rome herself forgot the lesson. Here you'll obey me, and serve the state. Cheer up. I'll buy you the finest nose ring the goldsmiths have on offer, and take you to the most skilled and gentle wise-woman to have it put in."

In the end, she had to acknowledge he was right. There was no real choice.

Ten days later Marcellus took her to the mustering, a thick ring of pure gleaming gold in her nose.

Hundreds of women of all shapes and ages had come to the forum, where clerks sat at desks to register them, and lines had been set up to process them to join the labour gangs.

Finding a relatively quiet spot to one side, though still subject to dozens of curious eyes, both male and female, Claudia began to strip herself, for women joined in the same state of nakedness in which they laboured, reducing all to absolute equality, regardless of rank.

She removed her rich robe and folded it for Marcellus to carry. Beneath she wore only two long narrow strips of silk. One was wound, bandage like, below her breasts. The custom had arisen with the women athletes of ancient Greece, who bound their breasts to compete more comfortably in the games. The prudish matrons of the puritan republic had adopted it in the name of modesty, binding their breasts to flatten them, lest their figures aroused men's lust. Later Roman women, in less modest days, moved the binding to just below the breasts, to give the opposite effect, helping to reduce any incipient sagging and thrusting them out into greater prominence.

Like other ladies of fashion. Claudia wore a matched pair of bandages, each embroidered in similar style, with the free end terminating in a beaded fringe. The one about her breasts was tucked through the band between them and hung decoratively just below. The bandage around her hips had its free end tucked through the band behind and drawn up through her legs to cover her vulva, thus amplifying, by concealing, the charms of her pudenda. The free end then passing under the band where it crossed her belly and dangling down to brush her upper thighs, a delightful sight for a lover who was permitted to penetrate thus far, and a constantly arousing reminder of her own secret body as it caressed her thighs with every movement she made.

She removed the top band first, hardly adding to her exposure as her nipples, and most of her breast, was already on view above the wrapped silk. She rolling it loosely to present to Marcellus, then put her right hand on her brother's shoulder, to balance while she removed the gold sandal from her left foot. She changed hands and removed the other, handing them to him, and feeling very conscious of her nudity as her bare feet touched the cool paving of the market place.

Now all that was left to her was the band about her hips and vulva. She drew in her breath to steady herself for this final unveiling before the eyes of so many strangers, and unwound it. Suddenly shamed at the moist stain where it had rested on her vulva, she folded it quickly to conceal this evidence of her passionate nature, and gave it also to Marcellus, keeping her chin up proudly all the while.

"I'm ready," she said, "lead on."

Marcellus conducted her to one of the tables where a clerk sat ready.

"Name, age and station?" he demanded.

"The lady Claudia, 19 years, Noblewoman."

"And who presents her?"

"Marcellus Gaius Travina, brother."

The clerk made some entries, them applied a seal to a piece of papyrus.

"Third line from the right," he said, handing the papyrus to Marcellus.

"Your receipt, to be presented in six months, when you may claim her back," he explained. "Next!"

Marcellus walked her to a line of women, all as naked as she, who were forming up near to where a long chain, fitted with pairs of steel bands at intervals of six feet or so, was lying along the ground.

"This is where I leave you, Sister," he said. "Be obedient and submit to your new condition. You owe the State a duty and, besides, I believe you will become a better woman for the experience."

"I'm frightened, Marcellus," she said in a small voice. It was her first and only expression of weakness. "The life will be very hard for me."

"Indeed, it is designed to be, for your own good, as well as that of the State. Submit yourself to the discipline, and honour both of us, and our family."

He stooped slightly to kiss her on the forehead. She tilted us her face, putting her hands to his cheeks to kiss him on the mouth.

"I won't disgrace you, brother," she promised. "Tell me your love goes with me."

"Always, and I shall be waiting when you have served your time."

She dropped her hands, lifted her head, and walked with pride to join the other women standing in line astride the chain.

Those reporting for service were lined up naked, each with her wrists fastened behind her back in steel manacles, the chain leading forward between her legs to meet the wrists of the woman in front. The chain was reeled in, forcing the line to progress until the leading woman mounted a narrow ramp, rising a couple of feet above the ground, and bringing their crotches to a level where a man might work on them without stooping unduly.

Along this production line the women would be processed. Claudia had been warned what that process would be by members of Lavinia's circle, who had endured it many times themselves. A hot iron would first be applied to their vulva, searing the entrance to the vagina, and further on, the lips would be sewn with silver wire, and the State seal applied. When they healed, they would have a new and tougher virginity. While in State service they were to be kept inviolate, and returned to their husbands, fathers, or brothers in the state they arrived in.

Any woman not already fitted with a nose ring would also have her septum pierced and, unless she had brought her own ring, a cheap cooper device would be inserted - a source of shame and potential discomfort that was avoided by all who could afford to do so. Finally, these rings would be sealed also, so that they would provide a tamper-proof means of leading or securing the women when required. Last of all, their hair would be cut back to the scalp, and the valuable material saved for military purposes.

They were to be given a day to recover from the burning, then dispersed among the various tasks of galley slave, barge women, quarry workers, farm labourers, road builders, and other heavy labour on State works.

Claudia was next in line now from the first processing station. The woman in front of her straddled two low parallel bars, mounted on the walkway, opening up her fork. The efficient crew at the work station sprang into action. Two threw loops of rope round her thighs and the rails, twisting the ends tight and holding firmly, so that she was fixed virtually immobile in the wide-legged stance. Another thrust a roll of leather between her teeth, for her to bite on.

Screaming would bring disgrace on herself, or her family. The fourth took a fresh iron from the boy who tended the forge-bed, keeping the coals and their content up to incandescence with steady strokes of his bellows.

The woman went rigid as the iron burnt the edges of her vaginal entrance, a strangled gurgling expressing her hurt, then staggered onwards, as the restraining loops were removed, and a hand reached up to pull the leather bit

from her mouth. Her onward movement drew Claudia forward in her turn, the vee shape divergence of the rails forcing her legs apart, until she stood where the previous woman's feet had left damp patches of sweat on the gangplank, her fork just as widely presented. The ropes looped her thighs and drew tight, fingers pulled at her jaw, thrusting the soft saliva soaked leather roll in to protect her teeth if she clenched her jaw when the iron touched. She braced herself, biting down hard on the leather to try and ensure she didn't bring shame on Marcellus and herself by shrieking at the branding, then felt it, as the man dexterously flipped her labia clear with the fingers of one hand, and pressed the glowing iron into the entrance to her vagina with the other.

The pain was atrocious, and lasted for a count of five, five seconds that seemed as many years, then the iron withdrew and, though the pain continued to gnaw into her belly, its bite seemed less instantly. She had regained control of herself by the time the gag was pulled from her jaws, then the restraints fell away from her thighs, and she was propelled forward by the pull on her chain, in turn dragging the woman behind her into place for the burning of her vagina.

She hobbled along the walkway, half crouched over her aching cunt, until the line stopped again, each woman another station forward along the process of being turned into a sealed and marked servant of the State. In first her fear and then her pain, she had not noticed what was happening in front, but now she waited one space back, while the girl in front straddled a similar pair of bars to those that had restrained her while her vulva was seared with iron. Thighs spread and secured as before, deft hands worked on the blackened lips, the woman moaning at the infliction. When the line moved forward again, it was Claudia's own splayed fork that was offered, cringing as she felt fingers at the seared opening of her vagina, and something small and hollow pushed inside. It was a piece of reed to provide a passage for natural secretions and her menstrual discharge, though she was not aware of it at the time. and then she was moaning in her turn as she felt a needle jabbed through the wounded flesh of her vaginal orifice.

Four times the sharp steel pierced her from side to side, followed by a dragging pain as silver wire was drawn through the holes to stitch her up and close the aperture. A slight tug as the seal was crimped in place, and she was secured in the name of the State. A lead disc, the size of a silver denarius, adorned her wire bound entrance, one face bearing the figure of a naked woman bearing a great burden on her back, a sort of female Atlas and symbol of her servitude, the other a whip, the symbol of the discipline to which she was subject.

Woe betide any man that tried to force her now. The State was jealous of its property and a man could have a testicle crushed for a first attempt at rape. A second try, and the other would be squashed to jelly in a steel vice, before the remnants of both were excised, leaving him only half a man. But not lost to the State, which went to great lengths to avoid wastage of manpower by capital punishment, when the enemy made such a drain on their blood. No, he could still be used for labour, like the women, even if his fighting spirit had been somewhat curbed.

Two more forward movements of the chain, and she had reached the last main station. Here the women were pierced through the septum, if they had not already had the operation performed, and their rings were sealed by applying heat to the pre-tinned ends with heated pincers.

The man at this station knew his job well. It was not the intention to hurt the women for the sake of it, merely not to flinch from inflicting pain if it was necessary for the operations in hand. He carefully moved the ring she already wore in Claudia's nose, until the over-lapping joint was towards him. He gestured to the lad who worked the bellows to give the coals a final burst of oxygen then, in one swift movement, seized the white hot pincers in one hand, placed a leather gloved thumb and forefinger on the ring, and applied the hot irons to the joint, seemingly losing not a fraction of the heat in the transfer.

He held the iron tightly clamped on the joint, his eyes fixed on Claudia's own. As he saw the first lines of pain crease her eyes, he whipped the still glowing pincers away. Claudia's eyes watered at the new pain set between them, but it did not rise above the extremely unpleasant to actually become totally unbearable, and quickly cooled. She wished she could say the same for the

soreness between her legs, but that still nagged like a crabs claws gripping her pudenda, reaching inwards to her womb.

She wondered if it ever became possible to endure the sealing ceremony without flinching. Some of these women would have been resealed in this way ten or a dozen times. Indeed, between puberty and menopause, one's service might quite possibly come round as many as sixteen or seventeen times. The more experienced women had seemed just as apprehensive as the youngsters. Perhaps it was even worse for knowing so well what was to be done to one.

Afterwards, when all in the line had passed through the processing, and bore rings and seals, they were split into gangs of five, but still kept chained, with their hands behind them to prevent them from touching vaginas or noses as they healed, and spoiling the work, or infecting the wounds.

Now it was the turn of the barbers. It was the nearest Claudia came to weeping, or outright rebellion, as she took her turn on a hard bench, while the rich locks of which she was so proud were shorn with the clippers used to shear the sheep. The thick tresses dropped one by one into the baskets in which this precious munition of war was collected. Well, she consoled herself, in a year it would have grown to lie down her back again, but in two she'd have to serve again, and then they'd shear her once more, like some fleece bearing animal. If the state survived that long, that is. The way their enemies hedged them round, survival until next year was always a question, two years doubly uncertain. For the men and the State anyway. Most of the women would survive, come what may.

Men could die in battle, or be slaughtered by a conqueror when the last defeat arrived, but most victors saved the women they captured for their own use. So women merely exchanged one regime for another, probably harsher, one, although Juno knows, this one is harsh enough, she thought, as the throbbing ache in her vulva rose to a crescendo as she squirmed on the barber's bench.

When the shearing was over the five chastened and subdued women could at last find rest in the temporary barracks set aside for the intake, where they could lie and try to control their groans and sighs at the pain still afflicting their groins and the shaming stubble on their once proud heads. After twenty four hours, the gangs were declared fit to move, and were marched off, still limping a little in most cases, to join the units in which they would serve their terms of labour.

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