Ruled by the Rod (18 page)

In forty
minutes we went up to the study, finding it in darkness. We could
hear Charlotte breathing very hard and, when we had lit the lamp,
discovered her, as we had known we would, mounted on the horse. She
had been to papa's cabinet of curiosities and taken the handcuffs
with spring catches, that he'd had off the Bow Street Runners when
he had visited London last, and now they held her wrists securely
locked behind her back. Before she had put them on, she had reached
down each side to fasten the straps on her ankles. Holding the cord
from the release lever between her teeth, she had set her parts to
the wicked black edge of yew wood, then pulled on the cord to drop
the side planks, so that they locked down, holding her legs
straight and keeping her balanced on her fork.

Now she had
been there near forty minutes, and like Marion, the strain showed.
There were tears on her cheeks, and her muscles stood hard as ropes
as she tried in vain to find some attitude less agonising than
another.

'It is
enough,' she gasped, as we came in sight. 'I know now what it
means. Let me down quickly, I beg you.'

We needed no
second asking, and in a trice had unfastened her legs and got her
down. It took a minute to find how to unlock the restraints on her
wrists, but then she clasped her centre, as Marion the night
before, and curled herself around her pain until it eased enough
for her to straighten, and thank us for rescuing her.

The next day
we carried on our self imposed regime, still true to papa's memory,
but we were all very withdrawn. I can only guess at the thoughts
that troubled my dear sisters, but I know that my own were partly
on what our future might hold, but mainly on what they had
experienced and I had not.

That evening,
after supper, I rose from table with no more word than Charlotte
before me, and stripped down to my stays and collar. At the door I
turned to them and said, 'Come for me in an hour.'

They nodded in
understanding, and I climbed the stairs to the study.

By the light
of a candle I found the handcuffs, set the steps, arranged the cord
from the lever where it was in reach. I mounted the device,
throwing a leg over the apex until I was standing upright on the
two steps, and leant over sideways. I found I could just reach
sufficiently to set the loop of the strap about my ankle, and draw
the buckle tight. When I had secured the other, I leant forward as
far as I could and blew out the candle, leaving myself in inky
darkness. Now I drew my nether lips apart with trembling fingers,
and set myself gently down on the hard sharp edge. As my weight
began to bear on my tender tissues between my thighs, I began to
get a first faint inkling of what might be in store, but I pushed
on with my design.

I had purposed
to explore what manner of torment this might be, just as Marion and
Charlotte had done already, and I would not turn back now. I took
the cord between my teeth and put my wrists into the cuffs,
snapping shut the half rings, so that they would not open again.
Now I was totally secured, and could not leave until someone
released me. Now there only remained that last, crucial act that
would plunge me, without reprieve, into that pit of anguish I had
seen the others writhing in before me. I settled my fork as firmly
as I might upon the painful ridge, my toes only taking a little of
my weight, and made to pull the cord.

But my coward
body rebelled, and would not do its duty, fearful of what it might
mean. My brave sisters had been weeping after little more than half
an hour, and the mature and masterful woman in the prison had been
reduced to a whimpering wretch, all her boldness fled. I was
determined that I would make trial for myself of this breaker of
woman's mutinous spirit, and resolved that I would release the
lever on the count of five. Slowly I counted them out, focusing my
thoughts entirely on the fact that, on the count of five, my head
would go forward and the lever would move, blotting out the
consequences, and thinking only of the need for the action
itself.

The stratagem
worked.

Blindly,
unthinkingly, I counted off the numbers and on five, just as I had
willed it, my head bent forward, taking the cord with it. The lever
moved, the steps fell away from beneath my toes, and my legs
straightened, letting my whole weight sink onto my most intimate
and delicate female parts.

Dear God, how
it hurt from the first! I gasped as the full pressure bit into me
for the first time. It cut into my pubic bone in front, for I was
still leaning forward, even though the cord had dropped from my
mouth as I had opened it in shock. I rocked back to ease it, and
the blade of the horse cut into me behind. I tried to find a point
between, but only served to cut more deeply into my softest tissues
as well. There was no position where one could escape, or even
mitigate the grinding ache below. I found my body tensing, the
muscles hardening as I had seen them in others. I sat rigid for a
few moments, until the pain went beyond endurance, but then moved
slightly, relieving the first hurt a trifle but merely transferring
it to another portion of my tender anatomy, where it built up from
the merely excruciating to the unbearably dreadful. And I would
move a fraction again, in a vain attempt to find some surcease of
the agony.

I sat there in
the darkness, concentrating on my hurts. There was nothing to
distract me, perhaps nothing could, and I began to see how a woman
put in this position would look inwards to her soul, and see and
repent her wrongdoing. From time to time I heard a strange moaning
sound and did not realise for a long while that the weird keening
came from my own lips. Tears ran down my cheeks, and every now and
again my careful equilibrium was shaken by a belly-deep sob, which
rocked me on my knife-edge, sending a new peak of savage pain into
my vitals.

My hour on
that dreadful mount, for Marion assured me they had come on the
very tick of sixty minutes, was the longest of my life, and seemed
like a dozen years of torture. When they found me I was moaning and
sobbing, almost unable to speak, just croaking, 'Get me down, for
pity's sake, get me down.'

They hastened
to comply and I lay on the floor, curled into a ball, holding the
bruised flesh between my legs with both hands, as if I could
somehow pluck out the throbbing agony that still raged there as the
blood was restored to the tissues.

When I could
at last contain the ache I tried to stand, but had to be assisted,
for my legs had become weak as jelly. And when I essayed a step,
the pain broke out anew and I had to shuffle with my legs splayed
wide, resting on my sisters' shoulders, as they helped me to my
bed.

The next day
Marion, our leader as always, sat us at the table when our frugal
breakfast was done, and broached the subject that had been
overshadowing us for days.

'We must give
some thought to this proposal to remove to Bath,' she opened. 'It
is a sinful city and full of snares and traps for weak women who
can be seduced into luxury, and ease, forgetting their duty to the
senior sex, and the pleasures of service, in the vice of being
served.' She looked from one of us to the other.

'Tell me that
I am not deceived in thinking that both of you have found doubts in
your deepest minds as to the wisdom of the undertaking.'

We both
admitted it was so, and she continued.

'I think we
are particularly vulnerable. Papa made it abundantly clear that we
were weak creatures, and in need of a discipline and a restraint
much above the commonality of womankind, and we have become used to
this support for our frailness. How do you think we would fare if
we were to lose it?'

'I think it
would go ill with us,' I replied, and Charlotte agreed.

'I was the
instigator of the plan,' she confessed, 'and still I hanker for it
at times, but, more and more, I know in my heart that we need a
man's strong rule. Oh! Bath would be delightful, I know it, but
would we be happy without our fetters? Without the sharp sting of
correction when our guilty selves tell us we deserve it? What would
stop us becoming a danger, to ourselves and to every male we come
in contact with, if we are not subjected to another's will and
rod?'

My heart
almost burst to hear my own fears and doubts, that I had hugged to
myself these last ten days, expressed so lucidly by another, and
know that I was not alone in looking with apprehension on our
coming change of life.

'But what can
we do?' I wailed, quite in despair, now that my fears had become
expressed, rather than suppressed. 'Dear papa is gone, and we are
alone.'

Marion put an
arm round me to comfort me.

'Hush,
Annabel,' she said softly. 'All is not lost. We have no commitment
to Bath, and will make none.'

'But we cannot
stay here for ever,' Charlotte objected. 'There will be a new vicar
appointed to the living soon, and we shall have to leave the only
home we have ever known and, even if we could stay, how would that
serve our needs?'

'I have an
idea,' Marion replied. 'Listen and I will lay it before you. We
must turn to our other guardians. The doctor will not return from
the Americas for some months yet and, in any case, his household is
already overstocked with women.' And such women, I thought,
recalling the grim mother and the stony faced daughter, a young
woman as devoid of pity and human feeling as a stoat among rabbits.
'But the worthy judge has but a housekeeper, and a large house,
with rooms for all. We would not come without dowries; our
inheritance gives us the means to pay our way, in addition to the
service we would take pride and pleasure in giving. He should be
returning from the commission at any day. Is it your will that I
should write to him, appraising him of our situation, and begging
him to take us in and keep our weak womanly spirits in decent
bondage, and disciplined restraint?'

We fell on her
neck, drowning her with our kisses, thanking her for her brilliant
scheme for our future.

The letter was
written that night, we all colluding in its composition, ensuring
that it conveyed the true depth of the submission we offered, and
the strong hand we craved, and despatched to the judge's house, the
other side of Sexton Hinds, the very next morning.

Within four
and twenty hours we had our answer, and we burst into tears of
happiness as Marion read it to us, her voice trembling so, she
could hardly continue.

It seemed that
Justice Rodsham had returned from his labours on the commission on
judicial punishment, where he had partially succeeded in stemming
the treacherous tide of misguided philanthropy that would remove
the reins of corporal punishment from females, with all that that
implied for the wellbeing of society, to find a parlous situation
in his own household. As stated before, his only servant living in
the house permanently, was a housekeeper, a fine looking woman of
close on forty years, but buxom and well built, with fine features,
long black hair, rounded bosom and buttocks, that had been with him
since she was a young woman in her twenties. It seems that the
creature had betrayed him by letting herself be got with child.
Whose we could not tell, for it seems she went out but little.
Knowing that her condition could not be hid much longer, she had
confessed all immediately on the judge's return. There was no
chance of her being allowed to stay on, the scandal would be too
great, and she was to be despatched to distant relatives in the
West Country, where she might disguise her sins under the cloak of
being recently widowed, and bearing a posthumous child.

Meanwhile the
judge was without a housekeeper, and we might come and take on that
role. Weeping anew at his generous spirit, we hastened to compose
our acceptance, and soon we were seated in the carriage he sent for
us, on our way to our new home, and the comforting arms of
discipline and correction so necessary to the female good.

We took little
with us, save our small valises containing what clothes we had. We
wore our fetters, our chains, our collars, as we hoped we would for
ever, and I cradled in my arms that fat leather-bound journal in
which papa kept the record of our transgressions and corrections,
and in which we had meticulously set down each instance of
departure from the paths that he had taught us, since his untimely
departure.

The trap and
its pony were given to George, the groom, as a gratuity, while such
of the furniture left in the vicarage that the new incumbent did
not wish to purchase for his own use, was to be sold, and the
proceeds divided amongst the daily women who came in to share the
housework, on condition that they renew their vows to love, honour
and, especially, to obey their husbands, else it was to be taken
from them and sent to the women's house of correction, for the use
of its stern governess.

All else we
had brought away followed in the carrier's cart; papa's cabinet of
curiosities, with its whips, canes, straps, chains and restraints.
That dread armchair on which we were used to pay for our sins with
the stripes and sufferings of our buttocks. And the Spanish horse,
that worthy mount that can carry even the most recalcitrant of
females on the painful journey back from sin to salvation.

Once they, and
we, were safely installed in the judge's unyielding care, we were
sure our happiness and health would be assured.

We arrived at
the judge's home in the late afternoon, with barely time to put our
modest belongings in the rooms set allocated to us, and see that
the carter carried the 'horse', and papa's cabinet and armchair
into the judge's own study, before we must set to, to put the house
straight for his comfort and prepare him a meal.