Ruled by the Rod (7 page)

Presently, the
crowd starts to bay and cheer behind us, and we turned to see a
cart approaching very steadily down the centre of the street. The
crowd parted to let it pass, then closed behind it, cheering and
waving. As it got nearer we could see that the cart was followed by
a woman of about five or six and thirty years. She was naked to the
waist, the bodice of her gown torn down until it rested in tatters
on her flaring hips, and she was constrained to follow the cart
unwaveringly, by reason that her wrists were tied fast to the
tailgate. She wore no stays, and her large breasts hung on her
chest heavily. When younger she must have been quite a beauty; her
waist was still narrow, her bare feet, peeping out beneath her
kilted gown small and delicate, and her features still smooth with
good bones, though her face was distorted by the extreme emotion
she was under, for, as she was forced by the slow and even progress
of the cart to walk equally slowly down the street, the brutal
figure of the town jailer marched behind her, and at every second
pace brought a vicious black whip down across her back and
shoulders.

Left, right,
left, crack, her calvary proceeded, gasping at each blow, crying
out and twisting when a particularly cruel lash curled round her
flank and bit in under her arm, where the flesh is tenderest. When
she twisted, her large and slightly pendulous breasts swung
violently on her heaving chest like, as Charlotte so crudely
remarked, 'turnips in a sack'. Her nudity was made all the more
bizarre by the fact that she was completely bald. It appeared that,
though she had once been proud of her lustrous dark locks, it was
customary to cut them off, to leave the back bare to the whip, and
her head bobbed behind the cart, shaved clean all over, another
smooth turnip to match those swinging on her chest.

After the cart
and its doleful followers had passed, papa drew our trap into the
road, and made shift to follow as far as the marketplace, where we
watched as the wretch was cut down from the cart. Her back was
bloody, the whip having marked her well, and she had to be
supported, gasping and sobbing, to the pillory, where her wrists
and neck were gripped by the cut-outs in the sturdy timbers, and
the top lowered, leaving her to face the mocking crowd, unable to
use her hands to cover her face or deflect the missiles, for the
crowd was making great sport, and threw all manner of filth and
rotten eggs, from which she was quite unable to defend herself.
Foremost among her attackers were a group of finely dressed women,
who I judged to be the wives of burgesses of the town, or yeomen
farmers of the district. Some openly jeered at the poor woman, and
purchased ancient eggs and rotten cabbages from the hucksters
peddling them to all who would pay, and others of the heartless
band, too nice to do such work themselves, slipping coins to rough
men and coarser women, in the throng, to purchase similar fare or
worse and throw it on their behalf. I saw one offer a slattern a
shilling if she would throw the fresh steaming dung our horse let
drop into the widow's unprotected face and shaven pate.

Nor was it
only her head and face that suffered, for the pillory below the
cross planks was but a post little more than a hand's breath
across, and gave no shelter from the furious rain of filth. As much
was aimed at her breasts and belly as her visage, and she was
fouled over every part.

When the
commotion had died down somewhat, papa completed our journey to the
draper's shop, and ushered us all in. The woman who was the
proprietor had been advised of our coming, and papa's wants, and
had ready for us several sizes and patterns of drawers or
pantaloons.

Papa first had
us line up and lift our gowns right up to our waists, leaving
ourselves quite bare below, for we had not put on anything at his
instruction. The shopkeeper then assisted us into each of her
styles, until papa had made his choice for us, and then each of us
assumed the chosen style in several sizes until he was quite
satisfied.

When it was
all over we each had three pairs of serviceable drawers, chosen by
papa to be well fitting on our rounded posteriors, but a loose fit
along the length of our thighs, almost to the knee.

All this
choosing and fitting had taken a great deal of time, extended by
the tea and cakes for which papa had rather uncharacteristically
sent, in such good mood he was, and by the time we emerged from the
draper's shop with our purchases the crowd was re-gathering, for
the widow's two hours were up and she was to be drawn to the county
boundary, and sent packing.

Before she was
released from the frame in which she was trapped by her head and
hands, the jailer went behind her and cut the waistband of her
gown, drawing it to the ground. The woman cried and protested as
her lower portions were uncovered, but the jailer ignored her sobs
and entreaties, for the sentence was that she should be drawn
naked.

While he
stripped her roughly, I noticed that several of the same well
dressed women, who had ensured she suffered at the hands of the
filth throwers, had stayed to see her further humiliated, and added
their own shrill invective to the howls of the mob.

The now naked
woman was taken down from the pillory, scarce able to stand, and it
could be seen that she was as well formed below, as above. Her legs
were long and straight, the thighs well rounded without being
overly plump, and the joint of her thighs supporting a thick bush
of glossy thatch, no doubt matching the luxurious tresses of which
she had been shorn before being flogged.

Now a crude
hurdle was brought, and the woman laid on it on her blood-streaked
back, causing her to cry out anew. Her arms were parted to secure
her wrists to the top corners of the wattle frame, and her legs
drawn apart, to lash her ankles to the lower corners. Spread like a
starfish, her parts were open for all to see. Her widely spread
thighs left her nether lips gaping at the beholders, revealing even
the delicate inner folds, with her bud, which was very large and
prominent, clearly showing at the top.

A horse was
harnessed to the hurdle and commenced to draw it, and its white and
weeping burden, towards the Westgate, and papa made haste to
follow.

Once again we
followed as the horse was driven, at a smart trot now, along the
mired and cobbled street, the naked woman receiving a fresh coating
of ordure from the evidence of horse and cattle in the street,
while the bouncing of her bare and beaten flesh on the rough woven
sticks of the hurdle must have caused her excruciating torment.

The small
procession of the horse with its postillion, ourselves, and several
other conveyances, including one containing several of the
vindictive ladies of fashion we had previously observed, revelling
in the widow's sufferings, proceeded for over a mile until we
reached Buttock Cross, where a weathered pillar bearing the faint
remains of a carved cross, marked the boundary in the midst of a
barren moor.

The woman was
cut free of her painful carriage, but at first could scare stand,
so weakened and exhausted was she. The harpies who had followed her
so far, called her harlot and bid her be gone, and, when she seemed
not to hear them, called on the postillion who had drawn her to the
place of parting to send her on her way, which he did, uncoiling
the long thin whip he carried and lashing the poor naked form until
she set off down the road, away from her home and erstwhile
friends, stumbling and limping, her hands clasped round her
breasts, her shoulders heaving with her sobs.

The party
watched her until she disappeared in a dip in the road, then turned
and went their different ways.

One cannot but
feel some compassion for the lady, for had she not worked
unselfishly to ease the throbbing excesses of poisonous matter
generated in several worthy men of the district? But we did not
know that at the time. In any case, had she not displayed blatant
indecency, and in a place of worship, as well as the public
thoroughfare. Several witnesses at the trial, including many of the
ladies most vociferous in their condemnation of her at her
flogging, had testified how, passing her kneeling in her pew, they
had looked down and seen her rosy nipples peeping through the lace
of her bodice, and had had to interpose themselves so that their
husbands or sons might not be offended by the sight. And others
claimed to have seen the whole of a kid leather boot, replete with
a dozen brass buttons, which her shortened skirts revealed as she
descended the steps outside, after service. Such indelicacy is not
to be borne in any well regulated community, and no doubt I am at
fault in sympathising with the woman at all.

In any event,
she left the district, and it was from that time that our regime
became more 'tight' and our discipline more rigid.

The new
drawers, that had been the pretext for our visit to Sexton Hinds
the day the widow was whipped through the streets, had little use,
for our fetters were ordered only a fortnight later, and the
delicate undergarments were soon languishing in our lingerie boxes,
being incompatible with our now permanent fettered condition.

Not long
after, as I have related, we were given the privilege of offering
that service, that the too indiscreet widow had heretofore provided
for Dr Boucher and Justice Rodsham.

In point of
fact, the lady's defection worked to our advantage, for did we not
now enjoy the inestimable boon of being guarded, guided and
corrected by representatives of the church, medicine and the law?
Until the advent of that worthy triumvirate, we had depended wholly
on papa for our spiritual and mental health, and the discipline he
deemed so essential, especially for the latter. His discipline
invariably took the form of a greater or lesser application of the
rod, but in future there were to be additions to the armoury of
those who fought so valiantly to save us from the dragons of sin,
lust and unwomanly forwardness.

This is not to
say that papa's reliance on the rod had been ineffectual. Indeed,
it had done much to keep us all in check. It was an experience that
always gave us pause. When we were advised that we should report to
papa's study and submit ourselves to the rod, I am ashamed to say
that our feelings were too often not those of repentance and
contrition that were mete for us at that time, but of stark fear,
for that thick yellow cane cut right into one's soft buttock flesh,
and hurt most excruciatingly. The first bite was as of a bolt of
flame searing the flesh. That was usually containable at first, but
then a wave of pure agony would flood in, making one's whole body
cringe, one's lungs burst to form the scream one's mind fought
desperately to suppress.

And it never
got easier to bear. One might have thought that, with time, one's
sensitivity might be lessened. True, one's skin did seem to acquire
a certain toughening, but this did us little good, since it only
inspired papa to strike the harder or to increase our ration, until
our bottoms showed the ruby, which he took to be the proof of a
whipping well done.

This
superficial toughening, however, made no difference to our
sensitivity, and we seemed to have just as many nerve ends
screaming their pain after each stroke, as the first time each of
us had bared her buttocks for correction. We came to fear that
aching length, and my belly would contract with terror each time
papa withdrew it from its place of keeping, in his study
cupboard.

It was not as
if our new regime meant any diminution of the frequency or severity
of our beating. On the contrary, with three males now available to
share the duties, we tended to find ourselves called on to bare our
buttocks, and mount the chair between our regular weekly visits for
ordinary, and extraordinary, discipline. But these interim
whippings were not severe by our regular standards, seldom
exceeding four or six strokes. The main innovation was the
introduction of a monthly 'court' or accounting. Where papa had
formerly merely referred to his book, in which he kept a memorandum
of various faults he had observed, or we, in duty, had confessed
and proceeded to execution without ceremony, Justice Rodsham now
sat at papa's desk, as if on his bench in the High Court, while
papa played the role of prosecuting counsel, and the doctor gave
them the benefit of his medical and scientific expertise.

Each of us in
turn would step forward, and stand with downcast eyes, though our
high collars kept our chins from drooping, our hands clasped behind
our backs, resting on our cringing buttocks, our stomach churning
with fear at what might be to come. Our judge would make us answer
to our name, then ask if there was any fault, not yet reported,
that we wished to confess, warning us sternly, that pre-confession,
or rather, the lack of it, would be taken into consideration when
passing sentence.

'Under the
law, any man is presumed to be innocent until found guilty, but it
would be far too dangerous,' he declared, 'to extend the principle
to the genus woman, and one should assume all such are guilty of
something. It only remains to determine precisely what, before I
deliver sentence.'

He would then
call upon papa to read out the charges and punishments recorded in
his book, since the last sitting of the court. When papa was done
with the sorry litany of our failings, and the measures taken to
improve them, we were again given an opportunity to make good any
omissions in the list, before a general discussion took place among
our guardians, as to our characters, our improvement or otherwise
since it was last assessed, our sins and omissions, our habits and
our deportment.

In fact, each
of us was dissected, like a beetle under a microscope, no facet of
our lives being neglected, and each learned male contributing from
his knowledge, observation and professional expertise to the
assessment, and what means might be sought to improve us.