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Bdsm scenes in novels that do not deal with the subject.

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redsonja said:
Marianne and the Privateer does indeed contain a torture scene, where the protagonist is tied naked to a bed, raped, and then branded with a ring seal.
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But I like the scene of Angelique and the sultan where she is whipped much more. And if you know of another scene where Marianne has a hard time, could you please point it out to me? Thanks.
 
redsonja said:
Marianne and the Privateer does indeed contain a torture scene, where the protagonist is tied naked to a bed, raped, and then branded with a ring seal.
Click to expand...
I've just found an English ebook version of "Marianne and the Privateer". I can't find the flogging scene I dimly remember from my teenage read decades ago -- that may have been a different Marianne book -- but the scene you describe is indeed there:

She began to undress, first tugging off the head-dress of flame-coloured feathers which was beginning to make her head ache dreadfully and shaking out her hair with both hands so that it tumbled, like a thick, black snake, down to the small of her back. The muslin dress was more difficult to manage and for a moment, driven to distraction by the innumerable hooks, Marianne was on the point of summoning Agathe, but then she remembered that Jason had disliked the dress and with a sudden spurt of anger she tore the fragile stuff away from the fastenings altogether. She was just sitting down in her brief shift tied at the shoulders with narrow white satin ribbon, preparing to take off her shoes, when she had a strange feeling that someone was watching her and looked up quickly. She had been right. A man was standing quite still at the window with his eyes upon her.

With a gasp of indignation, Marianne sprang towards a green silk bed-gown which lay over the back of a chair and hurriedly wrapped it round her. At first, she could see nothing but a gleam of fair hair in the darkness and she thought that Francis must have come back. A closer look, however, told her that the resemblance ended there and, even before he spoke, she knew him. It was Chernychev. Motionless as some dim statue in his severe, dark green uniform, the Tsar's courier stood and devoured her with his eyes. But there was something in those eyes, such a fixed and unnatural brightness that Marianne felt her throat tighten. Clearly, the Russian was not himself. Perhaps he had been drinking? She knew already that he had the capacity to absorb prodigious amounts of alcohol without losing an iota of his dignity.

'Go away,' she said quietly, her voice a little thickened by nervousness. 'How dare you come here!'

Without answering, he took one step forward, then another, turned and snapped the window shut behind him. Seeing him about to close the other, Marianne sprang forward and gripped the casement.

'I told you to go!' she said furiously. 'Are you deaf? If you do not go away this minute I shall scream.'

Still there was no answer, but Chernychev's hand fell heavily on her shoulder, wrenched her away from the window and sent her sprawling on the carpet to fetch up against the leg of a sofa, uttering an instinctive cry of pain. Meanwhile, the Russian calmly shut the window and then turned back to Marianne. His movements were those of an automaton and left a horrified Marianne in no doubt that he was totally drunk. As he came closer, a powerful smell of spirits assailed her nostrils.

She tried to wriggle underneath the sofa to escape him, but already he was upon her. With the same irresistible strength, he picked her up and carried her over to the bed in spite of her frantic struggles. She made an attempt to cry out but instantly a hand was clamped roughly over her mouth while the Russian's slanting green eyes shone like a cat's in the dim light with such an ominous gleam that Marianne felt a chill of real fear creep through her veins.

He released her but only for a second to pull away the gilded cords that held back the bed curtains of heavy, sea-green silk. The curtains swung forward, enveloping the bed in a greenish shade, through which the lamp at the bedside showed like a spot of gold. Before Marianne could make a move to protest, she found her wrists tied, swiftly and efficiently, to the bed-head. She tried to scream but the sound was choked in her throat as a summary hand thrust a rolled-up handkerchief into her mouth.

In spite of her bonds, Marianne continued to twist and turn like a snake in a desperate effort to escape from her tormentor but she only succeeded in making the metallic cords bite deeper into her wrists. She was wasting her time. Immobilizing her legs by the simple method of sitting on them, Chernychev proceeded easily to tie both her ankles to the bedposts. Then, as Marianne lay, spread-eagled and quite unable to move, the Russian stood up and regarded his victim with satisfaction.

'You made a fool of me, Aniushka…' he said, so thickly that the words were barely intelligible. 'But that's all over now. You went too far. It was very foolish of you to prevent me killing the man you love, because I have never yet turned my back on a challenge. You touched my honour when you made my duty a means to save your lover, and for that I have to punish you…'

He spoke slowly and deliberately, each word following the last as monotonously as a child repeating a well-learned lesson.

'He is mad!' Marianne thought, although it required very little imagination to divine the form that Chernychev's punishment was to take. She guessed that he meant to rape her and just then, as though his intoxicated brain were telling him that he had talked enough, the Russian bent and, setting aside the green robe, ripped open her shift from neck to hem and parted the two sides carefully, yet all without laying so much as a fingertip on Marianne's bare skin. This done, he straightened and without another glance at her began to divest himself of his clothes as calmly as if he had been in his own bedchamber.

Half-throttled by the handkerchief which had been rammed so far down her throat that it made her retch, Marianne watched appalled as he revealed a body as white and well-muscled as a Greek god's but approximately as hairy as a red fox. This body descended, without further preliminaries, upon her own and what followed was unbelievably swift and savage and, to Marianne, as unpleasant as it was unexciting. This drunken Cossack made love with the same furious concentration that he might have given to chastising some insubordinate moujik with the knout. Not only did he make no attempt to give the least pleasure to his companion, he seemed to exert himself to cause her the greatest possible discomfort. Fortunately for Marianne, nature came to her rescue and her martyrdom, which she bore without a murmur, was mercifully brief.

Weak and half-stifled, she thought that her release had come at last and that Chernychev would leave her and take the road to Moscow; but her tormentor got up and, far from releasing her, said in the same toneless voice: 'Now I am going to make quite sure that you can never forget me. No other man shall touch you and not know that you belong to me.'

It seemed that he had not finished with her after all. Marianne, watching helplessly, saw him take from his finger a large, gold seal-ring of the kind used for sealing letters, with his arms engraved upon the stone, and hold it to the flame of the lamp. As he did so, his eyes roved over the girl's sweat-streaked body with a calculating expression. But Marianne, guessing his intention, was moaning wildly and writhing against her bonds with such a fierce energy of desperation that the Russian's hand, which was in any case none too steady, missed its aim. He had aimed for the belly but it was on Marianne's hip that the searing hot seal landed…

So excruciating was the pain that, despite the gag, a strangled shriek of agony burst from Marianne's throat. The only response was a chuckle of drunken satisfaction, followed almost immediately by the sound of breaking glass. More dead than alive, Marianne heard the window flung open with a crash and then, as though in a dream, she saw the curtains round the bed dragged away and in their place the dark figure of a man in hussar uniform, his right hand holding a naked sword. As he took in the extraordinary spectacle before him, the newcomer uttered a magnificently comprehensive oath.

'Well, well,' he remarked, in a strong Périgord accent which sounded to Marianne like the sweetest music in all the world. 'I've seen a good deal one way and another, in my time, but nothing quite like this.'

Marianne was in too much pain from her burned hip and had been through too much that night already to be capable of further surprise. Not even the sight of Fortunée Hamelin's favourite lover, the effervescent Fournier-Sarlovèze, standing at the foot of her bed with a drawn sword in his hand had any power to amaze her. In any case, after a curt command to the Russian, who was sitting blinking on the bed, a good deal astonished, to get dressed 'sharpish' and be prepared to answer to him for this, the dashing François turned his attention swiftly to Marianne, removing the handkerchief which was all but suffocating her, cutting the gilded cords and folding the torn clothes modestly over her maltreated person, all of this without interrupting the flow of his conversation.
 
nsur1 said:
I've just found an English ebook version of "Marianne and the Privateer". I can't find the flogging scene I dimly remember from my teenage read decades ago -- that may have been a different Marianne book -- but the scene you describe is indeed there:
Click to expand...
Having now also checked the next volume, "Marianne and the Rebels", I think I found the scene I dimly remembered but it's a bit different from what I thought. Marianne and her maid Agathe are kept captive on a sailing vessel in the Mediterranean, by the roguish pirate captain who is infatuated with her. There is a flogging scene, but it's a black male slave being flogged, shortly followed by a crew mutiny in which Marianne gets tied and gagged and abandoned on her own in a rowing boat at sea, and the maid being raped and kept on board for the crew's entertainment -- I must have in my mind combined this with the male flogging shortly before:

As the afternoon drew on to evening, Marianne waited for O'Flaherty with growing impatience. She prowled about her cabin, unable to sit still, and continually asking Agathe what time it was. Still the lieutenant did not come, and when she tried to send her maid for news, she found that this time she was really a prisoner. Her cabin door was locked on the outside. A fresh period of waiting began, a time of nervous fears that grew worse with every hour that passed.

Still the lieutenant did not come. Nerves stretched to breaking point, Marianne could have screamed, banged, clawed, anything to relieve the anger and alarm which threatened to choke her. There was no reason for it that she knew but, like a wild creature, she sensed the approach of some new danger.

What came, at last, when dawn was not very far off, was the sound of the key being turned in the newly-mended lock. John Leighton entered, with a group of seamen at his back amongst whom Marianne recognized Arroyo, carrying a lantern. Contrary to his usual habit, the doctor was armed to the teeth, and an extraordinary expression of triumph, which he seemed unable to hide, shone through his livid countenance, giving it a sinister vitality. Clearly this was the great moment of his life, a moment for which he had been waiting for a long time.

Marianne reacted instantly. Reaching for a wrapper she slid out of bed and faced them.

'Who gave you leave to enter here?' she demanded with dignity. 'Oblige me by getting out at once!'

Ignoring this, Leighton came further into the cabin. The seamen crowded into the doorway, craning their necks eagerly to get a glimpse into the unfamiliar prettiness of the women's cabin.

'I'm desolated to disturb you,' the doctor said, with heavy sarcasm, 'but I fear that it is you who must get out. You must leave this ship at once. A boat awaits you.'

'Leave the ship? In the middle of the night? Are you mad? Where do you expect me to go, may I ask?'

'Where you like. We are in the Mediterranean, not the Atlantic. Land is not far off, and it will soon be dawn. Prepare yourself.'

Marianne folded her arms, hugging her wrap more closely round her, and looked at him, unmoving.

'Fetch the captain,' she said. 'I am not stirring until I hear it from his own lips.'

'Indeed?'

'Yes, indeed! You have no authority, Doctor, which entitles you to give orders on board this ship. Least of all such orders as that.'

Leighton's smile grew, acquiring an added venom.

'I fear,' he said, with horrid smoothness, 'that those are the captain's orders. Unless you wish to be put into the boat by force, you will obey at once. I repeat: make your preparations. Put on a dress, a cloak, what you will, but do it quickly.' He glanced round the cabin. 'You cannot, of course, be permitted to take your trunks, or your jewels. You will not need them at sea and they would only be useless clutter in the boat.'

There was a pause while Marianne digested this astonishing speech. What did it all mean? Was she to be robbed of all her baggage and set adrift on the open sea? It was incredible, horrible and unimaginable, that Jason should have decided suddenly to get rid of her, in the middle of the night, after relieving her of everything she possessed. It was still more inconceivable that he should have chosen Leighton for his messenger. It was so unlike him… it must be so unlike him, surely? Yet even as she asked herself the question, the seeds of doubt were planting themselves in her anguished mind, reminding her of another night, long before, the dreadful night of her wedding to Francis Cranmere, when Jason had left Selton Hall, taking with him every penny of Marianne's fortune.

Seeing that the man before her was showing signs of impatience, she turned her rage on him.

'I thought this vessel was an honest privateer,' she said, with all the scorn at her command. 'I see now that I have fallen among thieves! You are no better than a common pirate, Doctor Leighton, and the worst kind of villain, for you attack defenceless women with force. Well, I'm too weak to oppose you. Pack our things, Agathe. That is, if this gentleman will kindly tell us what we are allowed to take.'

'I did not say,' Leighton countered blandly, 'that you might take your maid. How should you need an abigail in a boat? Any more than you will need your fine dresses? Whereas she may be useful here. You look surprised? Did I omit to tell you that you were to go alone? I must ask your serene highness to forgive me.' Then, with an abrupt change of tone, he added: 'Jump to it, you men. We've wasted too much time already. Take her away!'

'Villain!' Marianne screamed wildly. 'I forbid you to lay hands on me!…Help!…Help!'

But already the men were swarming into the cabin, transforming it in an instant into a miniature hell. Marianne fought bravely, hemmed in by eyes that gleamed like red-hot coals, foul breath that reeked of rum and greedy hands that pawed at her furtively under the guise of dragging her away, but resistance was useless. Yet she redoubled her efforts at the sound of frantic screams from Agathe who was being held down on the bed by two seamen while a third ripped off her nightgown. There was a gleam of plump, white flesh that quickly vanished into the curtained recesses of the bunk, hidden beneath the body of the man who, urged on by his companions, was now energetically raping her.

Meanwhile, although she kicked and scratched with all her might, Marianne was overpowered and with a gag thrust in her mouth to stifle her cries, was manhandled out on to the deck.

'You see,' Leighton told her piously, 'this is what comes of not being sensible. It is your own fault that we have been obliged to use force. Nevertheless I hope you will do me the justice to admit that I have held my men in check. I might easily have let them deal with you as they have with that girl of yours. These good fellows do not love you, Princess. They blame you for changing their captain into a spineless weakling, but they'd be quite willing to enjoy your dainty person, all the same. So thank me properly, instead of spitting like a wild cat. Away with her, you men!'

If sheer blind rage could kill, the doctor would have dropped dead on the spot, or else Marianne herself might well have died. Driven half out of her mind by the sound of Agathe's shrieks, feebler now but still audible, so beside herself with anger as to be scarcely conscious of what was happening to her, Marianne fought with such fury that they had to tie her hands and feet to carry her to the side. There a rope was slung under her armpits and she was lowered with a bump into the open boat bobbing gently on a line from the ship's side. As she made contact with the wooden thwart, uttering an involuntary cry of pain, someone severed the line. The sea carried the boat away at once and, looking up, Marianne saw, far above her, a row of heads gating down. Leighton's voice sounded mockingly in her ears:

'Happy landings, your highness! You'll have no trouble freeing yourself. The ropes are not too tight. And there are oars in the bottom of the boat, if you can row. You need not worry about your friends and servants – I'll take care of them!'

Sick with fury, with a burning head and a sharp pain in her back, Marianne watched the brig sail past her boat, veer gently and then draw away, still hardly able to realize what had happened to her.

Soon, before her wide, tear-drenched eyes, appeared the graceful, brightly-lit stern windows, surmounted by their three lanterns. Then the vessel went about and altered course. Gradually the tall pyramid of sails receded and was lost in the surrounding darkness, until it was nothing but a vague shape marked by tiny twinkling lights.

Only then did Marianne begin to grasp the fact that she was alone on the wide sea, set adrift without food or water, practically without clothes, and doomed, coldly and deliberately, to die unless a miracle occurred.

There was the ship, hull down on the horizon, taking her only friends with it, the ship that belonged to the man she loved and to whom she had sworn to devote her life, and who not so long ago had vowed that he loved her above all else. Yet he had not been able to forgive her for concealing her misery and shame from him.

As it happens, Marianne gets rescued at the last minute by a passing fisherman. No reunion with Agathe in the rest of the book, but the next volume has a short update on her fate:

One person Marianne had not found. Her maid, Agathe Pinsart, was gone—but not very far away, nor was there anything at all tragic about her going. Against all expectation, the poor girl had not only survived the barbarous and inhuman treatment she had suffered at the hands of Leighton and his mutineers aboard the Sea Witch but had made a conquest of the Turkish captain who had captured the brig and released the prisoners with her caustic charms. And since Agathe, on her side, had been greatly impressed by the young reis, with his dashing presence, his silken garments and his splendid mustaches, their voyage to Constantinople had assumed all the appearance of an amorous idyll, culminating in a proposal of marriage from Achmet to his new sweetheart. Agathe, convinced that she had seen the last of Marianne and strongly tempted by the luxurious life of a Turkish lady, had offered only a token resistance designed merely to enhance the value of her consent, and not many days before her mistress's arrival she had embraced both Achmet and Islam with an equal enthusiasm. She was now officially installed in her husband's handsome house at Eyub, not far from the great mosque recently rebuilt by Mahmoud II to shelter the footprint of the Prophet.
 
I know there is a story by Robert E. Howard, where a girl is brutally whipped while performing a dance in a strange sacrificial ritual, but right now I don't remember the title, but I know that I have it adapted to the comic in Adventures of Conan. If I find both the vignettes and the story, I'll post it.
 
I think everyone in the forum knows the writer John Norman and his novels about the world of Gor, where women are brutally enslaved, although there are also Amazons who give men a hard time; Well, there is a female equivalent in the person of the writer Sharon Green. There are websites where you can download his novels in various formats. Most of them in English, although there are some in German.


I put one as an example.
 

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In the end I decided to post the crux-centered first chapter of the licenced Doctor Who novel Byzantium! to the Crucified Males thread. Here's a link.

https://www.cruxforums.com/xf/threads/crucified-males.158/post-739564

However, the interesting content in the book does not end there, not at all. The second chapter covers two scenes. The first, a meeting between Tribune Marcus Lanilla and General Gaius Calaphilus, involves a fair bit of mention of executions both actual and potential - Gaius feels cruxing a handful of Zealots will only embolden them and they should "string them up mercilessly, in the hundreds" as a show of strength, while Marcus goes farther and suggests that the Jews, a race of "syphilitic scum", should be wiped from the face of the earth - but nothing worth writing it out in detail IMO.

The second scene, on the other hand, takes place at Marcus's villa afterwards. His first words after arriving are:

"I am starved. Wine!" he bellowed to a nearby serving girl as he splashed water onto his sunburned face and deeply inhaled the smell of jasmine. "And make it quick or I shall have some hast beaten into you."

The girl is indeed prompt in filling his goblet - unfortunately for her, it's not to his liking.

"Cartethus" he roared. The tall and slightly stooping figure of the head of the household appeared instantly at Marcus's side, his face a passive mask. "This wine is rank" Marcus bellowed, throwing the goblet to the floor where the wine spilled onto the marbled tiles leaving an ugly red stain.

Cartethus bowed and then grabbed the wrist of the serving girl, twisting it and making her cry out in pain. "Yes, Excellency" he noted. "A most unfortunate error. I shall deal with this incident personally" he continued, dragging the slave with him through the doors.

Marcus's wife Agrinella then tastes the wine, says it seems perfectly fine and scolds her husband for impetuousness, to which he responds by implying the slave girl's chastisement was for "arrant insolence" (no sign of which was shown in the text). This then proceeds towards sex between them and so their friend and fellow conspirator leaves, though not before suggesting that what they are up to could see them "dragged though the streets in chains and beheaded like common criminals".



(More to come!)
 
KageKamen said:
In the end I decided to post the crux-centered first chapter of the licenced Doctor Who novel Byzantium! to the Crucified Males thread. Here's a link.

https://www.cruxforums.com/xf/threads/crucified-males.158/post-739564

However, the interesting content in the book does not end there, not at all. The second chapter covers two scenes. The first, a meeting between Tribune Marcus Lanilla and General Gaius Calaphilus, involves a fair bit of mention of executions both actual and potential - Gaius feels cruxing a handful of Zealots will only embolden them and they should "string them up mercilessly, in the hundreds" as a show of strength, while Marcus goes farther and suggests that the Jews, a race of "syphilitic scum", should be wiped from the face of the earth - but nothing worth writing it out in detail IMO.

The second scene, on the other hand, takes place at Marcus's villa afterwards. His first words after arriving are:

"I am starved. Wine!" he bellowed to a nearby serving girl as he splashed water onto his sunburned face and deeply inhaled the smell of jasmine. "And make it quick or I shall have some hast beaten into you."

The girl is indeed prompt in filling his goblet - unfortunately for her, it's not to his liking.

"Cartethus" he roared. The tall and slightly stooping figure of the head of the household appeared instantly at Marcus's side, his face a passive mask. "This wine is rank" Marcus bellowed, throwing the goblet to the floor where the wine spilled onto the marbled tiles leaving an ugly red stain.

Cartethus bowed and then grabbed the wrist of the serving girl, twisting it and making her cry out in pain. "Yes, Excellency" he noted. "A most unfortunate error. I shall deal with this incident personally" he continued, dragging the slave with him through the doors.

Marcus's wife Agrinella then tastes the wine, says it seems perfectly fine and scolds her husband for impetuousness, to which he responds by implying the slave girl's chastisement was for "arrant insolence" (no sign of which was shown in the text). This then proceeds towards sex between them and so their friend and fellow conspirator leaves, though not before suggesting that what they are up to could see them "dragged though the streets in chains and beheaded like common criminals".



(More to come!)
Click to expand...
I remember the New Adventures of Doctor Who from the 90s. One had a topless Babylonian slave girl. Another started a chapter with the classic line:

"Ace awoke with the taste of semen in her mouth."
 
The One with the Semen had a cyberpunk setting. Ace hooked up with a guy and the chapter ended just as it got interesting, and picked up the next day. I can't remember the name, sorry.

The topless girl was from the very first New Adventure: "Timewyrm: Genesys" by John Peel from Virgin Publishing in 1991. I think the writer was having fun with a naked girl running around that could never be shown in the show!

"The Doctor studied her costume. 'Isn't it draughty for you, undressed like that?'
En-Gula blinked, trying to follow his speech. She glanced down at her bare breasts and looked puzzled. 'All the priestesses of Ishtar dress like this, stranger. Did you not know that?'
 
In this novel almost at the end, the brave heroine and some friends are tortured by the Romans. She is beaten and subjected to other humiliations. I have not been able to download the text in question. If one day I find it, I will post it, and if anyone knows where to download it, even in English, please let me know. Thank you.

 

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nsur1 said:
Having now also checked the next volume, "Marianne and the Rebels", I think I found the scene I dimly remembered but it's a bit different from what I thought. Marianne and her maid Agathe are kept captive on a sailing vessel in the Mediterranean, by the roguish pirate captain who is infatuated with her. There is a flogging scene, but it's a black male slave being flogged, shortly followed by a crew mutiny in which Marianne gets tied and gagged and abandoned on her own in a rowing boat at sea, and the maid being raped and kept on board for the crew's entertainment -- I must have in my mind combined this with the male flogging shortly before:

As the afternoon drew on to evening, Marianne waited for O'Flaherty with growing impatience. She prowled about her cabin, unable to sit still, and continually asking Agathe what time it was. Still the lieutenant did not come, and when she tried to send her maid for news, she found that this time she was really a prisoner. Her cabin door was locked on the outside. A fresh period of waiting began, a time of nervous fears that grew worse with every hour that passed.

Still the lieutenant did not come. Nerves stretched to breaking point, Marianne could have screamed, banged, clawed, anything to relieve the anger and alarm which threatened to choke her. There was no reason for it that she knew but, like a wild creature, she sensed the approach of some new danger.

What came, at last, when dawn was not very far off, was the sound of the key being turned in the newly-mended lock. John Leighton entered, with a group of seamen at his back amongst whom Marianne recognized Arroyo, carrying a lantern. Contrary to his usual habit, the doctor was armed to the teeth, and an extraordinary expression of triumph, which he seemed unable to hide, shone through his livid countenance, giving it a sinister vitality. Clearly this was the great moment of his life, a moment for which he had been waiting for a long time.

Marianne reacted instantly. Reaching for a wrapper she slid out of bed and faced them.

'Who gave you leave to enter here?' she demanded with dignity. 'Oblige me by getting out at once!'

Ignoring this, Leighton came further into the cabin. The seamen crowded into the doorway, craning their necks eagerly to get a glimpse into the unfamiliar prettiness of the women's cabin.

'I'm desolated to disturb you,' the doctor said, with heavy sarcasm, 'but I fear that it is you who must get out. You must leave this ship at once. A boat awaits you.'

'Leave the ship? In the middle of the night? Are you mad? Where do you expect me to go, may I ask?'

'Where you like. We are in the Mediterranean, not the Atlantic. Land is not far off, and it will soon be dawn. Prepare yourself.'

Marianne folded her arms, hugging her wrap more closely round her, and looked at him, unmoving.

'Fetch the captain,' she said. 'I am not stirring until I hear it from his own lips.'

'Indeed?'

'Yes, indeed! You have no authority, Doctor, which entitles you to give orders on board this ship. Least of all such orders as that.'

Leighton's smile grew, acquiring an added venom.

'I fear,' he said, with horrid smoothness, 'that those are the captain's orders. Unless you wish to be put into the boat by force, you will obey at once. I repeat: make your preparations. Put on a dress, a cloak, what you will, but do it quickly.' He glanced round the cabin. 'You cannot, of course, be permitted to take your trunks, or your jewels. You will not need them at sea and they would only be useless clutter in the boat.'

There was a pause while Marianne digested this astonishing speech. What did it all mean? Was she to be robbed of all her baggage and set adrift on the open sea? It was incredible, horrible and unimaginable, that Jason should have decided suddenly to get rid of her, in the middle of the night, after relieving her of everything she possessed. It was still more inconceivable that he should have chosen Leighton for his messenger. It was so unlike him… it must be so unlike him, surely? Yet even as she asked herself the question, the seeds of doubt were planting themselves in her anguished mind, reminding her of another night, long before, the dreadful night of her wedding to Francis Cranmere, when Jason had left Selton Hall, taking with him every penny of Marianne's fortune.

Seeing that the man before her was showing signs of impatience, she turned her rage on him.

'I thought this vessel was an honest privateer,' she said, with all the scorn at her command. 'I see now that I have fallen among thieves! You are no better than a common pirate, Doctor Leighton, and the worst kind of villain, for you attack defenceless women with force. Well, I'm too weak to oppose you. Pack our things, Agathe. That is, if this gentleman will kindly tell us what we are allowed to take.'

'I did not say,' Leighton countered blandly, 'that you might take your maid. How should you need an abigail in a boat? Any more than you will need your fine dresses? Whereas she may be useful here. You look surprised? Did I omit to tell you that you were to go alone? I must ask your serene highness to forgive me.' Then, with an abrupt change of tone, he added: 'Jump to it, you men. We've wasted too much time already. Take her away!'

'Villain!' Marianne screamed wildly. 'I forbid you to lay hands on me!…Help!…Help!'

But already the men were swarming into the cabin, transforming it in an instant into a miniature hell. Marianne fought bravely, hemmed in by eyes that gleamed like red-hot coals, foul breath that reeked of rum and greedy hands that pawed at her furtively under the guise of dragging her away, but resistance was useless. Yet she redoubled her efforts at the sound of frantic screams from Agathe who was being held down on the bed by two seamen while a third ripped off her nightgown. There was a gleam of plump, white flesh that quickly vanished into the curtained recesses of the bunk, hidden beneath the body of the man who, urged on by his companions, was now energetically raping her.

Meanwhile, although she kicked and scratched with all her might, Marianne was overpowered and with a gag thrust in her mouth to stifle her cries, was manhandled out on to the deck.

'You see,' Leighton told her piously, 'this is what comes of not being sensible. It is your own fault that we have been obliged to use force. Nevertheless I hope you will do me the justice to admit that I have held my men in check. I might easily have let them deal with you as they have with that girl of yours. These good fellows do not love you, Princess. They blame you for changing their captain into a spineless weakling, but they'd be quite willing to enjoy your dainty person, all the same. So thank me properly, instead of spitting like a wild cat. Away with her, you men!'

If sheer blind rage could kill, the doctor would have dropped dead on the spot, or else Marianne herself might well have died. Driven half out of her mind by the sound of Agathe's shrieks, feebler now but still audible, so beside herself with anger as to be scarcely conscious of what was happening to her, Marianne fought with such fury that they had to tie her hands and feet to carry her to the side. There a rope was slung under her armpits and she was lowered with a bump into the open boat bobbing gently on a line from the ship's side. As she made contact with the wooden thwart, uttering an involuntary cry of pain, someone severed the line. The sea carried the boat away at once and, looking up, Marianne saw, far above her, a row of heads gating down. Leighton's voice sounded mockingly in her ears:

'Happy landings, your highness! You'll have no trouble freeing yourself. The ropes are not too tight. And there are oars in the bottom of the boat, if you can row. You need not worry about your friends and servants – I'll take care of them!'

Sick with fury, with a burning head and a sharp pain in her back, Marianne watched the brig sail past her boat, veer gently and then draw away, still hardly able to realize what had happened to her.

Soon, before her wide, tear-drenched eyes, appeared the graceful, brightly-lit stern windows, surmounted by their three lanterns. Then the vessel went about and altered course. Gradually the tall pyramid of sails receded and was lost in the surrounding darkness, until it was nothing but a vague shape marked by tiny twinkling lights.

Only then did Marianne begin to grasp the fact that she was alone on the wide sea, set adrift without food or water, practically without clothes, and doomed, coldly and deliberately, to die unless a miracle occurred.

There was the ship, hull down on the horizon, taking her only friends with it, the ship that belonged to the man she loved and to whom she had sworn to devote her life, and who not so long ago had vowed that he loved her above all else. Yet he had not been able to forgive her for concealing her misery and shame from him.

As it happens, Marianne gets rescued at the last minute by a passing fisherman. No reunion with Agathe in the rest of the book, but the next volume has a short update on her fate:

One person Marianne had not found. Her maid, Agathe Pinsart, was gone—but not very far away, nor was there anything at all tragic about her going. Against all expectation, the poor girl had not only survived the barbarous and inhuman treatment she had suffered at the hands of Leighton and his mutineers aboard the Sea Witch but had made a conquest of the Turkish captain who had captured the brig and released the prisoners with her caustic charms. And since Agathe, on her side, had been greatly impressed by the young reis, with his dashing presence, his silken garments and his splendid mustaches, their voyage to Constantinople had assumed all the appearance of an amorous idyll, culminating in a proposal of marriage from Achmet to his new sweetheart. Agathe, convinced that she had seen the last of Marianne and strongly tempted by the luxurious life of a Turkish lady, had offered only a token resistance designed merely to enhance the value of her consent, and not many days before her mistress's arrival she had embraced both Achmet and Islam with an equal enthusiasm. She was now officially installed in her husband's handsome house at Eyub, not far from the great mosque recently rebuilt by Mahmoud II to shelter the footprint of the Prophet.
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Any whipping scenes in these novels, and in what books? Thank you.
 
Hey folks!

I've been away for a couple of years. Not sure I'll get too active again, but I discovered a book recently that I'm enjoying very much and know some of you will as well. I made use of the search box above to see if the book (or its real life heroine) has been discussed on the forum before, and it appears it has not.

The book is titled "The Rose and the Whip" by Jae Hodges. Naturally the title is enough to draw the attention of readers with a certain interest. It's in the historic fiction genre, loosely based on a real event that took place in Newberry, Massachusetts, in the late 1600s. A woman named Lydia Wardell protested mistreatment of the Quakers by walking into a church service naked (don't you love her already?). For this crime, she was soon sent to the whipping post. She was stripped to the waist and suffered a lashing on her bare back. And yes, this was a PUBLIC spectacle. You can read a little about it here: https://salemwitchmuseum.com/locations/lydia-wardell-protest-or-the-naked-quaker/

The book is not overtly aimed at bdsm enthusiasts. However, I can't help wondering if the author is secretly one of us. The whipping scene is very long, richly detailed, and beautifully written (generally). The whipping is described from the point of view of the condemned woman, and little hints are dropped here and there that she is masochistic - hints that thrilled me to no end. If you look at what some reviewers have noted, you'll see some say the writing almost makes you feel what is must have been like to be whipped, and I could not agree more. The annoying thing about it is that the whipping scene is spread out and interspersed with other (less interesting) aspects of the story. I myself have copied the many fragments of the scene and weaved them together into a document for my personal pleasure.

The whipping is VERY SEVERE, leaving her back very bloody by the end.

I highly, highly, recommend this book if you appreciate an intense, well written whipping scene. Here are some snippets....


"As he busied himself with tying my hands, I examined the short handle of the whip pushed into his belt, the ends of cowhide falling away as the lengths of each thong worn smooth and shining in the morning sun swished about in rhythm to his movements. The cat-o'-nine tails would soon extend his reach, connect his hand to my back, yet without the closeness to feel my skin or even hear as the flesh tore. I pictured a loop on the opposite end and this instrument hanging as innocent from a nail by a door as the winter cloak beside it."

-------------------​

"My face and naked breast were pressed against the rough wood. Splinters were already invading the delicate skin.....The post was not quite wide enough for both breasts to rest against it, rather it fit with discomfort in the space separating them, pushing them aside, stretching the skin to the begging wood."

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".....I heard his step, his foot twist in the dirt as he raised his arm, and then thrust himself forward with all his might to release the whip again. His most vicious strike yet. The conflagration upon my back seared the already damaged skin. The rage in him thrust the lengths of raw leather deeper into the caverns left by the lashes before it, crossing them and pulling skin away at the same time. The blood flowed as a river not yet charted...... twisting its way down my back."

"I told myself I deserved this, and worse, for the things I had done."

"In my anguish, my vow of silence was all but forgotten.....the cry escaping my throat was dry and harsh. The sound coming to my ears was so full of agony I felt the betrayal as well as heard it. I could not stop. For some seconds.....the wail filled the space around me..."

"When I finally stopped, spent, I felt one leg was wrapped around the pole, tangled in my skirt, clutching it. I wanted to burrow my way into the wood, escape my surroundings and myself. "


There is SO MUCH MORE!!
 
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