I grit my teeth so as not to cry out, but I can’t help it, not at first, and I’m glad I can’t see their faces. Can’t see them watching me, watching this. My submission. My very public humiliation.
I don’t know for how long this goes on. I’m cold and hot at once and watch as a droplet of sweat falls from my forehead onto the stone until finally, an eternity later, I’m lulled into a sort of dream like state, a quiet at the needle’s point. I feel Jericho at my back. He whispers to me telling me I’m doing well. I want to tell him to go fuck himself but as soon as I open my mouth, he starts again, the needles drilling art on my back.
Art? No. Not art. Ownership. His mark on me. His fucking mark.
And it’s not just my neck. I remember vague talk of this when Julia would tell me the dark secrets of The Society. I’m not sure I believed her then. It was all too archaic. Too impossible.
They’re supposed to mark the back of the neck. Fire or ink. Julia always got a glint in her eye at the fire. I wonder how she’d feel at the receiving end of that brand, bound like this in a pillory. I don’t think she’d be grinning then.
But what he’s doing, it spans to my lower back and farther. And it’s when I think it will never end that finally, what feels like hours later, he stops. The sound of buzzing is gone. And I think he must be exhausted. I am.
The men gather around me, Hildebrand standing, his brother and the others coming to see the mark. To congratulate my husband.
“Let’s finish this,” Hildebrand says. “I’m sure we’re all tired.”
Finish it? There’s more?
But I can’t lift my head to see their faces, to know what more is coming. I see them part though, the shoes of the others moving away as Jericho comes to stand before me. He crouches down but I still don’t look up. He pets my head, running his hand gently over my skull with the very hand that wielded the terrible machine. How is it a comfort to me?
“The words, Isabelle,” he says as he cups my cheek and tilts my face up a little, just enough so I can look at him.
I wonder what I look like, makeup smeared. Eye liner now black streaks down my cheeks. I probably need my nose wiped too. But I don’t care.
“Let me out of this,” I manage.
He studies me, smears his thumb across my cheekbone, then brings his ring to my mouth and I remember. The insignia is on his ring. The dual dragons. His mark. His fucking mark.
“The words.”
Dominus et Deus. My lord and my god. Just like Leontine instructed me.
“The words?” I ask, rage giving me strength. “You want the words?”
His eyes narrow.
I look beyond him at the others, not their faces. I can’t see that high. But I bring my focus back to my husband.
He wants me to say the words. To tell him he is my lord and my god.
He can go fuck himself.
So instead of saying any words, I smile up to him, all hate in that curving of the lips, and I spit on his shoe.
Well, at the ground beside his shoe because I miss.
We both look at it. It’s not the quantity I hoped for, but the message is clear.
A moment goes by. Another. My heart thuds against my chest. Then he straightens all false calm.
“Gentlemen, if you’ll clear the room. I need a few moments with my bride.”
I shift from knee to knee, try to free myself even though I know I can’t. And as grateful as I am that they’re leaving, when that door closes and Jericho moves behind me, my heart thuds and I stare straight down at the ground, at the little bit of white silk I can see beneath me.
“That’s no way to start a marriage,” he says from behind me.
He takes hold of my hips and draws them up so my ass is in the air putting pressure on my wrists and neck locked in this damned, medieval pillory. With one flip of his hand, he tugs the dress up to my lower back, exposing my thighs and ass.
“What are you doing?” I ask, waiting. Waiting. It’s all I can do.
“I could have you taken out to the courtyard for your disrespect. Have you bound to the post. Stripped naked. Whipped.”
“Wh… What?”
His fingers slide into the waistband of my white silk panties, and he pushes them roughly down to pool at my knees.
“It would be within my rights.”
I try to turn my head to look at him but can’t move. “Jericho?”
He doesn’t speak but I hear another sound. The clank of the unbuckling of a belt. The whoosh of it being pulled through the hoops.
“No!” I try to wriggle free, to sit on my heels but he grips one hip, fingers digging in hard.
“Stay,” he commands.
“I…”
“You prefer a public whipping? Because it will be public. And I won’t be the one wielding the whip.”
“No. No, please.”
“Then stay up. Knees spread.”
I stay as he instructs and a moment later, I hear the sound of it, the belt against flesh, the unforgiving, burning sound. I squeeze my eyes shut and scream in anticipation.
Except there’s no pain.
I turn my head a little when he moves, and he does it again. The belt doubled over slapping against his own thigh.
I scream anyway. I can’t help it.
It’s silent for a moment after that and I wait. I wait for him to whip me with that belt. Tears and sweat drop from me onto the ground.
“I’m sorry,” I mutter in those moments of silence.
“Are you?” He adjusts my dress higher, exposing more of me, but I think he’s taking care with the tattoo.
“You’re very pretty to look at like this. I think I’ll have a pillory made for you. So you always remember.”
He moves behind me and I hear it again, the whoosh, the thud of leather against skin and I sob as if he had struck me.
“Stop, please! I’ll say it! I’ll say the words!”
“Go on then.”
“Do…” I start but have to stop when his fingernails dig into my butt, scratch their way up along my cheek.
He leans over me, face close to mine. “I don’t hear you,” he says and straightens, bringing the leather of the belt to my hip, testing it softly.
“Dominus et Deus. Dominus et Deus.” I blurt out.
“Again. I’ll hear it again.”
“Dominus et Deus.”
“Good girl. Again.”
“Dominus et Deus.”
“And what does it mean?”
“My lord and my god.”
“Had you forgotten the words earlier?” he asks, coming around to stand in front of me so I’m looking down at his shoes again.
I shake my head as best I can and a moment later, he bends and unlocks the contraption and I feel an instant relief. He lifts the heavy wooden top and I draw out slowly, my body stiff and tense. I sit on my heels, the dress falling to cover me, and I look up at him.
He watches me as he loops his belt through his pants.
“Guard,” he calls, never taking his eyes from me.
The man who must be standing on the other side of the door must hear him because the door opens and in comes Councilor Hildebrand. But none of the others. He looks at me like he’d like me on that post in the courtyard, stripped and humiliated.
I look back up to my husband who still has not moved his gaze from mine.