In the summer of 1648 Isabelle was a bright eyed, mischievous maiden of 15 years, living in a small town in the provinces of southern France with her mother, her father having died honourably in one of the many wars in which France was engaged. She and her mother managed a small rooming house and Isabelle got up to all manner of excitement with her group of friends. They teased boys, taunted the old and stuffy and carried secret crushes for some of the young men of town. Isabelle was especially taken with Jean-Marcel, the young assistant magistrate who was charged with carrying out the corporal punishments in the town square on market day. He was tall, lean and muscular, with long dark hair and brooding eyes.

One bright day, while frolicking with her friends, Isabelle dared them to thieve a ribbon from the haberdasher. Intending to prove to them how easy it would be, she tried to steal on herself but was spotted by an old crone who had often been the subject of their taunts. She was swiftly taken to the cells, there to await the magistrates' hearing the following day.

When Isabelle appeared in court, the old crone was there to tell not only of the theft of the ribbon but to paint a picture of Isabelle that turned high spirits into foul tempers and mischief into evil. The elderly magistrate listened gravely, then pronounced a sentence "that will teach a lesson to all those who would disrespect their elders and betters. Fifteen lashes, to be administered in the town square on the forthcoming market day, three days hence!"

Isabelle could scarcely believe what she heard. She was to be humiliated in public.... by him!

She scarcely slept the next three nights, kept awake fending off advances from the other women in the cell. During the day, they were moved to the yard where Isabelle slept in the warm sun and dreamed about her punishment. Deep down, she found it intensely exciting. She knew the form the punishment would take and imagining herself submitting to lashes at the hand of Jean-Marcel made her vagina wet and her nipples hard.

On the morning of the market day they were woken before dawn and herded into the yard where the hair was shaved from their heads. Some of the women cried at having their long locks shaven, but Isabelle preferred short hair and was not concerned. Cuffs with lengths of chain attached were fastened to their ankles and wrists and the chains were padlocked together. Collars were placed around their necks. A chain ran from a ring on the front of each collar to the back of the collar of the next woman and in this way, their heads bald, their wrists and ankles secured and each one chained to two others, they were marched from the cells to the square where the punishments were to take place.

Isabelle tried not to look at the faces, although she knew that many of the people there already knew her. She thought instead of the punishment she would receive from Jean-Marcel, thought of it with an intimacy and a thrill that belied its supposed intention.

The hot summer sun had risen by the time they reached the market square, already crowded with merchants and townspeople. The women prisoners, seven in number, were herded together beside the platform where justice was dispensed. It was the custom to punish the women first and a crowd of young men were jostling for position in front of the A-frame to which the prisoners were chained while their punishments were administered. Jean-Marcel stood on the platform with the tools of his trade arrayed on a table beside him. He barked an order to the gaoler and one of the women was unchained from the group and pushed up the steps to the platform.

She was a beautiful young woman who had been forced to marry an elderly town councillor. She was to receive five lashes for being caught in the arms of a young man. Her husband looked on as Jean-Marcel led her to the frame. Isabelle turned her head; she wanted to keep to herself the vision of the man of her dreams, in his black boots, trousers and thin cotton shirt, and she thought only of him and her forthcoming punishment.

One by one the other women were led to the platform until only Isabelle remained, lost in the eroticism of her imagination. She heard Jean-Marcel call her name, then she was pulled to her feet and shoved toward the steps. She looked at Jean-Marcel as she mounted the steps. His handsome face was hard and expressionless; his eyes did not meet hers. He took the chain between her wrists, led her to the frame and looped the chain onto a hook at the top of the frame, stretching her arms above her head. His strong hands grasped her ankles and spread them apart, securing them to the base of the frame. She heard the material of her dress tearing as Jean-Marcel's knife cut it from the hem to the neck, then down each sleeve and her clothing fell away from her, exposing her beautiful young body.

Only then did she notice the crowd gathered in front of her, boisterous and excited, men and women alike, eating, drinking, laughing, enjoying the show. The sun shone down upon her and she felt the heat on her taut nipples, on her legs spread wide and her arms above her head. She felt the heat inside, too, a different kind of heat, centered in her genitals, primitive, instinctual and thrilling, chained naked to a frame, her unspoken love near to her.

Crack! The whip fell across the back of her shoulders and she cried out in shock and with the expectation of a pain she did not feel. Rather, it was a tantalising tingle, full of promise and anticipation, like a deep, strong kiss. She stretched her body against the frame, taut with excitement, desperate to feel Jean-Marcel's touch, nervous of the consequences of her desire.

The second lash struck her lower than the first and the third lower still. Jean-Marcel's rhythm was steady and insistent, slow enough to allow her to dwell upon the feelings building within her as the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh strokes fell across her soft, young flesh, each one lower than the previous, each building upon her wanton craving to feel his touch, feeding the fire burning between her legs. Naked and helpless before him, Isabelle only wanted to feel the sweet sensation of the whip Jean-Marcel wielded. All her senses were concentrated upon her skin. She did not notice the town square, the people crowded into it, the noise and the smells. She felt the hot sun upon her breasts and her belly and legs, the quivering flesh of her back, the heat between her legs, the dampness of her vagina that trickled down the inside of her thighs, the hunger of her nerves to feel the next sweet stroke.

The whip struck her across the top of her buttocks, the hardest stroke yet. Again she cried out and flexed against her bonds, thrusting her hips back toward Jean-Marcel, aching to feel him again, strong, hard, intimate. Twice more, the whip welted her buttocks, lower and lower. Five to go - five beautiful, hard strokes. She felt the air across her vagina, between her buttocks, against the tender sensitivity of her most private body and she ached to offer it to him, to his stern, masterful beauty.

The eleventh stroke hit her across the soft, tender flesh where her buttocks met her legs and a hot, stinging eroticism surged through her body, causing her to shake and moan with an intensity of pleasure she could never have imagined. Sexual tension grew within her, an almost unbearable pleasure, a bold appetite for the ultimate release. Isabelle thrust her hips backward, spread her knees and felt the twelfth and thirteenth lashes strike her buttocks, felt the rush of hot air on her labia and vagina and anus, the heat sparking within her body, felt herself being pushed toward an edge she had never approached.

Straining with a desperate urgency, she spread her legs and thrust backwards again, just as the fourteenth lash struck her, the leather whip moulding itself to the white curves of her young body and striking, ever so quickly, with a tantalising electricity, the tender folds of her labia. She screamed then, with a savage, primitive ecstasy, her entire being poised on the brink of an unknown abyss. Isabelle felt, Isabelle knew that she was one with Jean-Marcel in a matchless impetus of erotic desire and gratification.

Each fraction of each second dripped slowly through time as she flexed and strained to offer the most intimate part of her body to Jean-Marcel and the whip he wielded, to the divine sensations that surged through her beautiful body. She could feel her nipples standing out erect and stiff, her clitoris hard with sexual urgency, her legs trembling as she stood on her toes, the better to push against the final stroke.

Isabelle did not even feel the fifteenth and final lash of the whip, only the gorgeous, heavensent passion that flooded her body, her life, her entire being as the hard leather again stung the sensitive, velvety flesh of her labia and sent her tumbling screaming into the abyss of ecstasy.

She barely registered the gentle touch of Jean-Marcel's hands as he removed her chains from the frame but she had several hours secured naked in the stocks until sundown, the fate of all those punished on market day, to relive the intensity and intimacy of his whip across her body and the sure knowledge that he had indeed made love to her on the platform in full view of the crowded town square. Isabelle knew that Jean-Marcel felt it too and her heart burst with joy when she was informed by the gaoler that she was to report to her lover's house the next day for domestic service. Serve him, she would. She did not doubt it.