A carpet had been spread out right before them. There was the small wine table with its circle of goblets, the scattered cushions. The barren cross was to Tristan's right, directly before the fig tree. The blood thundered in my head when I saw it.

The Master at once gave a series of orders. But his voice was soft. There was no anger in it. I was picked up, turned upside down, and taken to the cross. And immediately, I felt my ankles being tethered to the ends of the crossbar, my head dangling just above the ground, my c**k bumping the smooth wood.

I saw the upside-down garden spread before me, servants mere blurs of color moving through the greenery.

As soon as I was secure, my arms were lifted up away from the ground and my wrists tied to the brass hooks that held the thighs of the other slaves. And then I felt my c**k being bent back and straight up above my inverted body, and it was tied in place between my legs by leather thongs that went round my thighs, holding it firmly. It did not hurt in this unnaturally bent position. But it was on display, and it could touch nothing.

All the bonds were made doubly secure, leather thongs pulled tight, and then one more good loop of leather was bound round my chest and the cross, to steady me and render me completely immobile.

In sum, I was upside down, bound firmly with legs apart and arms apart and my c**k pointing upwards. The blood was roaring in my ears, and thudding in my cock.

I felt the blindfold going round my face--it was furlined and very cool--and buckled tight on the back of my head. Pure blackness. And all of the noises of the garden suddenly magnified.

Footsteps in the grass. Then the heightened feel of hands rubbing oil into my backside; massaging it well and deep between my legs. The distant sounds of pots and pans, the smell of cooking fires.

I tried to move. I felt an irresistible urge to test the bonds. I struggled. It produced no effect, except that I realized it had been easier because I was blindfolded. Unable to gauge the visual effect, I let myself tremble all over, and feel the cross vibrate slightly under me, as the Punishment Cress had done in the village.

But there was a terrible ignominy to being upside dawn, a terrible ignominy to the blindfold.

Then I felt the first lash of the strap across my bottom. It came again very quickly, and then again, with a loud cracking noise, more leather than flesh being smacked, and then again, stinging this time remarkably. I felt myself wriggling all over. I felt grateful that it was happening at last, yet afraid of what I would feel moments from now. And it was bitter to me that I didn't know whether or not Lexius was doing the whipping. Was it he or one of those little grooms?

Whatever the case, it was good, the whipping. It was the thick leather strap that I had craved ever since we left the village, the sound, punishing strap that I needed. It was the beating I had dreamed of every time those delicate thongs teased my c**k or the soles of my feet. And the walloping was splendid, coming fast as it did. And with a rush of sublime relief, I lost all resistance.

Even on the village Punishment Cross I had not been so totally given over. That had come only with the increase of pain. Now, as I hung blindfolded and helpless, it happened instantly. My c**k was thumping and moving under its tight binding, and the strap was lashing me hard across both bu**ocks at the same time, and coming so fast that there seemed little or no interval between blows, just unbroken punishment with a sound that seemed nearly deafening to me.

I wondered what the other slaves thought as they heard it--whether they craved it as I might have, or feared it. Whether they knew it was a disgrace to be whipped like this, the sound disrupting the peace and the quiet of the garden.

But the thrashing was going on. The strap was being swung harder and harder. And when a cry broke from me, I realized for the first time that I wasn't gagged. I was bound and blindfolded but not gagged.

Well, that little oversight was immediately remedied. A roll of soft leather was shoved well between my teeth, as the blows from the strap continued. And the gag was pulled well back into my mouth by ties that were then knotted behind my head, holding the gag firmly.

I don't know why it so thoroughly undid me. It was perhaps the last restraint needed, and under all these restraints I went wild, bucking and struggling under the pounding strap and crying aloud against the gag as I hung in darkness. The inside of the soft fur-lined blindfold was moist and hot with my tears. And my cries were muffled, but loud. And I began to struggle in rhythmic motions. I could raise my entire body a few inches, then drop down. And I realized I was rising to reach the blazing hot wallops of the strap, and then dropping away from them and coming up again.

"Yes," I thought, "do it. Do it harder. Whip me soundly for what I've done. Let the blaze of pain grow brighter, hotter." But it was not this coherent, what I thought. It was like a song in my head, made up of the rhythms--the strap, my cries, the creak of the wood.

And at some point as it continued, I realized it was going on longer than any beating I'd ever received before. The blows weren't all that hard now. But I was so sore it scarcely mattered. Nice, lazy loud smacks from the strap had me writhing and crying.

And the garden was filling with voices. Men's voices. I could hear them coming in, laughing, talking. I could even hear, if I listened very carefully, the wine being poured into the goblets. I could smell it again. And smell the green grass right under my head, and smell the fruit, and the strong aroma of roasted meat and sweet aromatic spices. Cinnamon and fowl, cardamom, beef.

So the banquet was in progress. And the beating still went on, but the blows were coming more and more slowly.

Music had commenced. I heard the thumping of strings, the beat of small drums, and then the ring of harps and shrill, unfamiliar sounds from horns I couldn't name. It was dissonant and foreign and delightfully strange, the music.

My rump was burning with pain. And the strap played with it. There would be a long moment in which I would feel every inch on my backside glowing, and then the crack of the strap, the white-hot flair, for an instant. I wept. I realized it might go on like that all the evening long. And there was nothing I could do but cry helplessly.

"But better this," I thought, "than to be one of the others. Better this, to draw their eyes to it as they dine and drink and laugh together, whoever they are ... than to be a mere decoration. Yes, the disgraced one again, the punished one. The one with the will."

And I struggled violently on the cross, loving the strength of it, that I couldn't bring it down, and feeling the strap come down harder and faster again, my cries growing louder and more miserable.

Finally, the blows slacked off again. They became teasing. The strap was playing with various little marks, welts, scrapes that it had made in my flesh. I knew this little piece of music.