Ruled by the Rod (3 page)

'I believe I
must be guilty of some part in it, sir,' I replied, 'since I am a
female with all the attributes of my sex. My figure is formed, my
menses come and go regularly, and I must accept guilt. Moreover,' I
added, honesty forcing me to speak, 'though I am not conscious I am
exerting this baleful influence of which you speak, I was given
proof of my guilt only this afternoon, when we went to Sexton
Hinds, at your request.' And I told him, blushing guiltily the
while, how I had been responsible for the groom's arousal.

'I fear I must
have evil in me,' I said, 'for the poor man's body parts swelled up
so strongly they threatened to burst through his britches, and must
have caused him great discomfort, for which I should suffer an even
greater punishment.'

'It is just as
I thought!' he exclaimed, looking at me in sorrow. 'I have done you
a great disservice, my child, leaving you to go your fatal female
way, without stripes and tears to bring you back to righteousness.
But, never fear, I will rectify it this very night.'

He rose from
his desk and went to a cupboard I had every cause to know and fear.
From the corner of my eye I could see him take something long and
yellow from it. I knew that cane of old. It was one of his most
cruel, and stung a woman's flesh like a very viper.

'Kindly remove
your drawers and mount up on the chair,' he directed, pointing to
the large leather armchair with the wicked rod he held. 'I shall
start by giving two dozen cuts, after which we shall decide if more
should be called for. Your comportment under correction will of
course have some bearing on my decision.'

Two dozen, and
mounted on the chair. This was a stiff sentence, but no more than
my guilty person deserved. Was I not female, and responsible for
leading the groom, and who knows whom else, perhaps even my own
pious father, into those sinful temptations that stir the opposite
sex when the female cannot control her evil influence?

But I hated
that chair, as much as I feared that rod. One had to climb up on
it, with one knee on each of the padded arms. Since it was a chair
of normal width, suitable for a gentleman's library, a mere woman
had to spread her thighs to splitting distance to span them and
then, still stretched wide open, papa insisted that we put our
heads right down on the cushions of the seat, putting our arms
around the chair back to support our position. It was a most
testing posture, not least because it exposed all one's most
intimate parts to the gaze of the chastiser and, we feared, the rod
itself might even penetrate to those secret depths of our persons,
now humiliatingly displayed, and wreak havoc in our soft tissues.
Perhaps, in view of the dangerous nature of those parts of our
female bodies to the male at this time, papa had already decided
that they should be included in the portions of our anatomy to be
whipped into righteousness.

With trembling
hands I reached under my skirts to draw down, and discard
discreetly, the thin cotton garment in which the offending parts
were cased. Then I advanced to the brooding chair on equally
trembling legs, climbing first onto the seat, and hoisting my
skirts clear up to my waist. Papa was very particular about this,
and would award extra strokes if even one fold of cloth fell below
one's narrowest portion, before swinging each knee in turn up onto
the corresponding arm. I could feel the tendons at my fork
stretching with the extreme parting of my thighs, and knew that my
inner secrets were now visible to my guardian. Marion and I are
rather above average height for women, but despite our long lower
limbs, we are only just able to spread our legs enough to place our
knees in the required position, without straining the tendons in
our crotches to the point where we feel the damage when we come to
walk away from the place of chastisement. Charlotte has great
difficulty with the position. While her limbs are well proportioned
and shapely, she lacks the long thigh bones which enable Marion and
I to bridge the gap between the arms, and even without the
additional handicap of a bruised buttock, can only walk with a
clumsy, and painful, wide-legged waddle, immediately after her
correction.

I bent my head
and lowered it to the leather cushion that formed the seat of the
dreaded chair, a process not without difficulties of its own, for
we had been used to the beneficial restriction of tight lacing from
the advent of our womanhood, papa contending that a woman without
stays was too easily led into riotous behaviour, whilst firm bones
and strong laces provided a restriction on too free movement of the
body that would be reflected in a similar brake on our otherwise
all too weak and wandering natures. The devices he prescribed, of
whalebone, steel, buckram cloth and unyielding linen lacing,
extended from just below our breasts to rest on the outward jut of
our buttocks behind, with a stiffened busk flattening our bellies
before, and reaching down to almost the tops of our thighs, and,
bending to attain the required position for this form of whipping,
sent the bottom edge digging into the pad of flesh above one's
pubic bone.

And now I
could feel the air on those parts, and knew that the position I had
assumed, had opened up not only my nether cheeks, exposing my rear
opening to the light, but also had made those fleshy lips that
guarded my female entrance, to part, and leave all that tender
tissue unprotected from either eye or rod. With my head on the
seat, my shoulders were near level with my knees, and I was able to
put my arms round the back of the chair, digging my fingers into
the leather near the bottom of the back.

Now I was
positioned correctly for the rod to have the maximum effect.

My buttocks
were spread and stretched, so that the flesh was at its most
vulnerable, while the confines of my position meant that I could
not move one inch to avoid the worst ravages of the cane, but must
hold myself steadily to absorb it. The only way I could avoid its
dreadful bite would be to let my knees come off the arms, and that
was unthinkable. To do so meant extra strokes, or even to take the
whole punishment again the next day. On one memorable occasion
Marion had slipped, I am sure it was not a voluntary movement,
after twenty-three of a two dozen sentence. She was made to take
the remaining stroke, then report before breakfast the next morning
to take the full two dozen over again. This was the only time I
ever remember Marion weeping openly after a correction, and I had
no wish to follow her example. I would cling to that chair and keep
my knees planted like the roots of an oak, though hell itself was
loosed in my buttocks.

Papa
approached and checked that my posture was correct. His hands
explored my bent cheeks, probing and squeezing to assess their
resilience and fitness for the cuts to come. Ordinarily he would
probe my previous welts with his finger, to assess what degree of
bruising remained, but on this occasion I had been left so long
that only brown and green traces remained on the surface, and the
swellings had all subsided to such an extent that bruising was
patently absent. His hands pressed in further, to expose the fleshy
parts around my 'fig', while his thumb pressed against the dimple
set behind. I believe he did this to assess my general state of
health, with a view to deciding how much punishment it would be
reasonable to inflict.

I heard a
rattle as he picked up the cane from the desk, where he had laid it
while he inspected my person, and looking through the arch of my
parted thighs, saw him come into my line of vision. As he raised
the yellow length I closed my eyes, and waited, bracing my body for
the first shocking blow, praying that the coming agony would help
me suppress those parts of my nature that had such a harmful effect
on the male sex, driving out the evil inherent in all womankind, or
at least rendering it harmless.

My teeth
grated as I clenched them tightly to trap my screams before they
could rise, and my fingers dug even more deeply into the leather of
the chair back. I was set now. The cane touched my nether cheeks,
though only to mark where he would set the first line of fire, but
to my shame my flesh cringed of its own volition. Papa growled that
I was clenching, and to open up. Desperately I forced my buttocks
to relax, leaving them open for the rod to do its best work in the
soft folds.

My heart
beating wildly, I waited.

I had already
forgotten just how deep that testing cane could bite. One might
have been forgiven for thinking that with so painful an experience
the memory would remain forever sharp, but I think the mind must
soften the outlines of the blazing agony it raised in one's
buttocks. Perhaps it was just the female mind that could perform
this insidious treachery, evading thereby the lessons so
assiduously imprinted in her nether parts, and intended by her
master to guide her out of the paths of wrongdoing, into the way of
grace. We are unruly creatures; untrustworthy, even in our own
minds, and I think it quite likely that we are guilty of this
evasion of our duty as of so much else.

Be that as it
may, the first blow shocked me. My breath went out in a sharp cry,
bitten off almost as soon as started, then returned hissing between
my teeth as I felt the full flow of that throbbing agony that
floods into the welt with the returning blood. Burning with shame
at being so nearly undone at the first cut, I tightened my grip on
the chair back, put my head even more firmly into the cushion,
thrusting my spread buttocks up and back to greet the rod, and
resolved to take the next stroke with better grace.

But it was
impossible. If I had Marion's stoicism and bravery I might have
done it, though even she had cried out last night. But I was not
made of such stern stuff and, though I clung to my position nor let
an outright scream pass my lips, I flinched with every cut, choked
on guttural cries, and by the seventh or eighth stroke, blubbered
like a child rather than the full grown woman that I was. My
guardian paused in his measured flogging of my bottom and, to my
shame, admonished me for my lack of composure.

'Not only are
you snivelling like a babe,' declared he, 'but you are clenching
your buttocks against the rod. Loose them at once, and let the rod
in. How can your soul be saved if your body will not submit?'

Mortified, I
stifled my sobs and let my buttocks relax as ordered, knowing that
in this fashion I would receive the utmost benefit from each
stroke. Desperately I clung to the chair through ten, through
twelve, through sixteen - an Andromeda clinging to her rock. But
there was no Perseus with his Gorgon's head to turn the Kraken into
stone. Instead the monster was in my buttocks, tearing and rending,
inflicting on me the very pains of hell.

At eighteen I
screamed, and nineteen too, as the cane dropped just a little to
strike, not on the painful crease between buttock and thigh, but on
the thigh-top itself. Papa growled his condemnation and I choked
into silence, or as near to as my stertorous breath would allow.
Plus the creaking of the leather as my body writhed on its perch,
seemingly of its own volition and quite outside my ability to
control, did not meet with papa's approval either, and he gave me
another cut to my thighs to still me.

By now I had
received twenty of the two dozen cuts I had been promised, and I
was conscious that a desperate effort was needed to restore my
credit, if further strokes on top of my present account were not to
be incurred.

I dug my nails
into the leather, forcing some stillness into my rebellious flesh,
and set my teeth in my lip. How often had my sisters and I cling to
this doleful mount in this fashion, driving our nails into the
thick cowhide? So many times, in truth, that the tough skin had
been all but worn through. It was only by dint of our assiduous
attention, several times a week, working the best saddle soap into
the hide for half-an-hour at a time, that we had managed to make it
sustain our agonised assaults thus far. We tried not to think what
would happen when inevitably, one of us in extremis, burst the
thinning membrane. Now I was in that same extremis, literally
clinging on by my fingernails to my position, and my consciousness,
through the last four terrible cuts. I knew I was clenching again,
for papa barked at me to make myself open, and I tried desperately
to meet his requirement.

And then it
was done.

The cane fell
no more, and I could only lie there sobbing, conscious of how I had
failed to live up to the standards I had set myself, and that papa
would have wished.

I was
surprised to hear the rattle of the cane as it was set down on the
desk, for I was convinced that my comportment under correction had
fallen far short of satisfactory. And then I was aware of papa
behind me, and something hard pressing against the little dimple
set behind my softly fleeced fig. I opened my eyes, that had
remained fast shut throughout, and looked through my spread thighs
to see that papa's breeches were round his ankles, and he held a
great throbbing member, redder than his flushed visage, directing
it between my cheeks.

'Oh, papa!' I
cried. 'Are you sure this is seemly?'

It cost me
dear to question my father about any matter, and especially of
behaviour, but the situation was so unexpected and unprecedented
that I forgot my duty so far as to query his actions.

My papa was
quick to spot my fault.

'Daughter,' he
gasped, for he seemed to be in the grip of some strong emotion, 'it
is not for you to decide what is seemly or not. However, I will
overlook your impertinence this once, though I doubt not I shall
rue my soft-heartedness ere long, and give you an answer, though in
truth you better deserve a thrashing. It would indeed be unseemly,
and a cause for scandal, if I were to attempt your maidenhead. But
such was never my intention for I would not wish to have you
succumb to the sin of bearing a child which would damn your soul
forever, and mean that I could never speak to you again, to work
your salvation, nor keep you in my house.