In many ways Chanticleer was much like any large cathedral anywhere, with massive columns and arches and the light streaming in through stained-glass windows.  It was only in the details of its decorations and fittings that it’s uniquely Albion nature could be appreciated. 

There were erect phalluses everywhere, both as ornaments on their own right or else rampantly fixed statues of idealised men.  The other decorative feature was naked and bound living women.  Some were hung from chains and impaled on the statues’ huge phalluses.  They appeared to be half insensible except the slight twitches and faint moans.   Above their heads rings of naked slave girls jutted out from columns and pillars serving as living support brackets for lighting globes.

They were impaled upon rod-like slender iron phalluses which extended out from the pillars at angles of forty-five degrees.  Their ankles were chained about the phallus bases while the heads of the phalluses penetrated their rectums, making their bottoms bulge.  The girls’ arms were pulled behind their backs by chains running back from wrist cuffs to big rings set in the pillars.  These pulled their bodies back against the resistance of the phallus rods, shaping them into the graceful forms of swan divers.  

Cold light globes were hung about their bowed bodies.  Large hollow globes had been fitted over their heads, totally concealing their faces.  A pair of smaller globes hung on slender chains from their pierced nipples, stretching them and their breasts painfully downward.  A final globe was hung from a large ring protruding between their labial lips, which must have been attached to a plug lodged in their vaginal passage.  

Even though she was still dazed from her beating and orgasm, Lyn glanced significantly at Pippa and then at the array of captive flesh about them.  They must not be distracted from their objective.  But with the head globes completely concealing their features, almost any of the lighting girls might have been Myrtle. 

Buskin and Cope led them towards the east end of the Cathedral. 

‘There are public services every day and a great service on Sundays,’ Buskin told them.  ‘They are conducted by Bishop Scrobis or Dean Fannel.  They are opportunities for women to confess their sins and acknowledge male dominance, and the men to assert their supremacy over them.   Penitent women are also made to run gauntlets of pain and shame.  You’ll be doing that tomorrow.’

There were already some men sitting in the pews.  Some had women with them but none of them were seated.  They were all naked like the ones they had seen entering the cathedral earlier, with pads on their hands and knees.  They were kneeling in tightly huddled balls between the pews in front of their men with their bottoms facing them serving as living footstools.  The men’s flies were all unbuttoned, exposing their genitals as freely as the priests did. 

‘In here men are encouraged to show they are the masters,’ Cope said.  ‘The cockhead is divine and you will learn to revere it.’