Part Two. Golden nails.

 

Chapter 1. Punishment detail.

 

“Slave eight three seven!” the overseer called and Beeba watched impassively with the other drivers as the respective slave drew her weary limbs from the row-bench and stepped forward with palpable reluctance to the oar that was slung across the back of the slave galley.

Beeba, herself a whip-ravaged veteran of the slave bench watched with the aloof air that she had seen on a hundred overseers’ faces a thousand times as she herself stepped forward for her own punishment detail. Now, it was this slave’s turn and it was Beeba who had placed her on it. Beeba knew that it was only by working the slaves with a hard hand and an unfeeling heart that would keep her from a quick return to the row-bench and now, as an overseer, she did not want that return. It would have been better never to rise from the bench at all than to be given the chance to be a driver and then to have that dashed away and return to the agony and drudgery of the oar. Beeba newly raised from the depths of despair also knew that her actions and willingness to drive and work the slaves was being watched minutely and any sign of diffidence or squeamishness in dealing out strokes of the lash or delivering girls for studied floggings at the end of the day would condemn her. If she returned to the row-bench now, she would never rise from it again. Beeba knew it was them or herself and she knew she would not survive if she were not hard and strong.

She watched as the pretty sweating slave girl was pushed to face the oar and suffer her wrists to be bound to the oar. Beeba’s full, voluptuous body, stripped to the waist for the sweltering heat of the row-deck, ran with sweat and her loose fitting, blue pants hung on her hips and stuck to her sweaty dampness. Her blonde hair was tied up into a turban-wrap and she stood with a hand on her hip as her detail was bound to the oar. Her large, expressive brown eyes flashed in the gloom of the row-deck as she watched her pretty, sweating detail prepared for the lash. She heard the unfortunate slave’s sentence announced to the bowed heads of the other slaves.

“For failing to work her oar with a will, this slave will receive twenty-four lashes. Overseers, do your duty and in your own time!”

Two sweating overseers, each carrying a savage looking, five thronged cat of knotted leather and cord took stations either side of the bare and now spread back of the galley slave. Her back was trickling with sweat and bore loud, red welts where she had been driven throughout the day. They stood out stark and clear amidst a morass of fading stripes and others fading still further, all silent witnesses to the merciless driving both she and the other slaves of the galley Odalisque were put to every day of their miserable lives.

It gave Beeba no joy to watch a slave lashed, but gone was the outrage and silent condemnation that raged in the young Beeba at the cruelty slave girls were put to. It was her duty now to herself as much as any other, to ensure she did not sink to the benches again. Beeba watched as the hard whips slashed again and again across the broad, sweating shoulders. She watched the hard knots bite and sear into the ribs and the biceps and she watched the broad expense of attacked back redden, darken, bruise and then begin to split and bleed under the savage assault. She watched the sweating girl curl and twist and as the punishment progressed and the agony doubled and then doubled again, she watched her shrink and quail, squirm and stamp. The full and baggy, low slung, marl grey pants, stained dark with sweat, swayed and flapped as the girl writhed in pain and shouted out as the whips were hurled across the bare, vulnerable back. Beeba saw the overseers whipping her; their faces lined with intent and effort as they put all of their strength into their work. The overseers who performed the flogging were selected out of the ranks for their ability and hitting power. Most were trained in handling whips from earlier walks of life, before they were plunged into the hell and misery of the slave galley. Beeba could see that both of these girls were good at what they did. She remembered just how good all over again, every time she watched them destroy the resolve of yet another galley slave, just as they had destroyed her and left her stiff backed and sore for days and even weeks after.

The count went up and the constant hiss and whack of the whips filled the gloomy deck with their terrible sound. As always the flogging seemed to go on too long and as soon as the counter called ‘twenty-four’, she called for the girl to be cut down. Beeba watched still and silent, as the sweating slaves wrists were cut free and the broken slave stood quietly, her head down, her strong body wet with sweat and streaked with blood. She dropped each arm sullenly as her wrists were cut loose and then she was pushed away from the oar to make way for the next wetback. She knew well enough that she now faced an all but sleepless night, chained up with the other detainees of the day, gagged and crouched in a sweltering hotbox whilst the lashes still burned like brands on her back. It was almost as if whipping the girls like curs was not enough; nothing was too harsh, no treatment was too grim for a miserable, wretched galley slave and Beeba always maintained that it was the most miserable slavery any girl could be put to.