Part 2
At length, they took us from our cell into the courtyard to flog us. I shook the whole way. I couldn’t help it. I took long, deep breaths, but my body would not stop shaking. It felt the same way I had felt with my first and only client as a prostitute.
I had known it was a sin. For the first few days after my husband died, I had tried begging, but one night on the street I barely escaped being raped, and as my stomach growled I decided it would be better to sell myself than to be taken against my will. I was a good Jewish girl, and I shook uncontrollably as I lay down in my client’s bed. (I attended him in his own house because I didn’t have one of my own.) At least I wasn’t joining the robbers, I told myself over and over as he fucked me.
For the luxury of a roof over my head, I had slept all night with him and let him have me again in the morning. His wife had been attending a friend’s daughter as a midwife, and he expected her to stay there for a few days to help with the baby. Unfortunately, it was a stillbirth, and she returned home that morning to find us both naked in her bed, in the act. In the time it took me to get dressed, an angry mob of neighbors appeared to drag me off, and I was lucky to get away with my life.
Now I was in trouble again, this time with Rome. And this time I wouldn’t get away unpunished. In the center of the courtyard was the low whipping post, waiting for Gesta and me. All around it, the pavement was wet with dark blood. His blood. I shuddered even more, if that were possible. A glance at the table holding the lictors’ implements showed me the flagrum was still dripping.
“We haven’t been heard by the Prefect yet!” Gesta protested as they brought us to the post and stood us on opposite sides of it. Several soldiers chuckled, and the one responsible for Gesta struck her in the mouth.
“The Prefect doesn’t have time for girls like you.”
“Roman pig,” she muttered, and he struck her again. She spat blood.
“Strip them,” ordered the officer sitting behind the table. I knew they couldn’t whip us through our tunics, but somehow I had still hung onto the hope that, in consideration of our femininity, they would find a way to bare only what was needed for the lash. I suppose I knew better all along, and though it was still a shock, it was not really a surprise when a soldier stepped up to each of us, tore our tunics down the middle by the seam in front, and slipped them off of our shoulders like a robe, leaving us naked.
In the sudden rush of shame that came over me, I hugged my breasts to cover them, crossed my legs to hide my private part, and generally contorted senselessly as if it would protect my petite body from the eyes of the soldiers. A thrill of terror rippled through my vagina, and a tingling, though I derived no pleasure from it.
I didn’t have even a moment to recover before they were binding our hands together and tying us to the post, facing each other, on opposite sides.
“How many?” asked Gesta, squatting at the post and looking much more comfortable than I felt. It was strange to see her naked, and I lowered my eyes instinctively. The lictor just laughed, picked up a single-tailed whip (I thanked God it wasn’t the flagrum) and cracked it hard across her back. She cried out, more in anger than in pain, I thought.
“Until you shut up! As many as it takes!”
My back tingled. Would they strike me next? Or would Gesta get more first? My bottom felt so vulnerable, naked behind me as I squatted like Gesta, and when a light breeze reached my annus, it was almost unbearable. The tingling in my nether parts reignited as my heart pounded.
Then I heard him step up behind me - a second lictor. I listened for the swish of the lash through the air, but before I realized I had heard it, the whip had cracked and burned across my bare back. I threw my head back in pain as the wind left my lungs in a guttural cry of shock. I had never felt such pain.
“Count!”
I heaved, catching my breath. This was worse than I had imagined.
“COUNT!” he yanked my neck back by my hair, and I realized he was speaking to me.
“One!” I shouted, and then I broke down weeping at the cruelty.
The other lictor addressed Gesta: “Since you like to talk so much, you can count too.” And he lashed her. Again she yelled in anger, then counted, “Two,” in the grim voice of a woman whose rage, though contained and delayed, burns hot beneath.
CRACK!! This time the whip blazed around my middle back and curled around to sting the side of my right breast. I squealed, then managed “Two!” amid weeping. I could have borne the pain of two lashes without weeping, but the cruelty of these men and the stress of being so vulnerable and exposed at the post had shattered my nerves, and I couldn’t take it.
CRACK!! Gesta’s yell and count.
CRACK!! I shrieked amid my tears, then barely managed “Three,” as I sobbed.
And on it went. Each lash surprised me, feeling harder than I remembered the last, but I sobbed less because of the pain and more because I felt so utterly broken, violated, and without hope. When this was over, where could I go but back to the robbers? Would I be caught again? Beaten again? Should I try again to be a prostitute? I was trapped, and the cold world just punished me for it. So I wept.
By the time we had counted fifteen, the lictors were looking for more entertainment.
“Stick your butt out,” mine told me. I felt that in my squatting position it was already thrust out prominently, but I was too broken to resist. I arched my back and cocked my hips back further. “More. More!” he commanded, prodding with his boot under my bottom. Weeping with a deeper anguish, I let my knees fall to the ground and leaned forward to lift and display myself in the most degrading way I could. I clenched my eyes shut and he whipped me across both cheeks, stinging my soft girl-part between. I cried out and threw my torso upright to clench my buttocks beneath me and shelter my sensitive parts.
“Sixteen!” I wailed, feeling my flesh quivering with pain.
“You want mine, too?” said Gesta, craning her head around to address her lictor, holding her bum up high and swaying it obscenely from side to side, inviting him to strike. He made her pay; the whip whizzed between her open thighs and the tip cracked hard into her vulva. She screamed, this time with just as much anguish as rage, and immediately collapsed to sit on her ankles. When she lifted her head to count, her eyes were full of tears.
“Come on,” prodded my lictor, “stick out your butt.” Again I obeyed, though with more reticence. Again the lash tore across parts of my body I wished with all my heart were covered.
“Seventeen!” And I collapsed. How many lashes before this degradation ended?
Just then a centurion approached. “The Prefect has given his verdict for these two,” he said. “Stop the flogging. Get them up.”
TBC
