Chapter 1

 

"Oh please... no... not on the bare..." At their governess's repetition of her instructions, the two girls bending over the back of the white and gilt sofa wailed in dismay, gripping the front edge with both hands, shaking their fair ringlets wildly.

"You will give them their punishment upon their bare bottoms!" the stepmother had said.

"Upon their bare bottoms, Lady Horter." Harriet Brown had repeated her employer's severe instructions, gripping her cane nervously in a moist hand. This was the first time in her short career as a governess that she had been obliged to give her youthful female charges a thrashing. Lady Horter had been adamant that it must be the governess's responsibility to act upon her complaint. Of course to spare the rod was to spoil the child! However well Harriet might understand the girls being insolent to the wholly unlovable woman who had attracted Colonel Sir Percy Horter's drink-fuelled lust and then contrived to have him marry her by bearing him a second male child, they must learn to be obedient. And, like them, Harriet was required to obey.

Sighing, she lifted Letitia's muslin petticoats to expose a perfect peach-like bottom squirming nervously over the narrow mahogany rim of the sofa back, her legs in white silk stockings gartered in pink just above the knee, her toes in neat leather slippers just touching the Aubusson carpet. She did the same to Lydia, who at fourteen was longer legged and whom Harriet noted showed a wisp of ginger hair between her well-formed thighs. Hardening her resolution, Harriet did her duty. The cane swished and cracked twice, followed by two mingled howls. The two bottoms showed almost identical red lines. "You will both be assured of perfect fairness!" she assured them earnestly as she continued to impress the rest of the lesson in quick double strokes.

"Six with the cane, good and hard!" Lady Horter had decreed. "And mind, though out of sight, I will be watching how you perform your duties!"

 

Harriet Brown, 19 years old orphan daughter of a struggling apothecary, had been governess for a year of the twelve and fourteen year old daughters of Colonel Sir Percy Horter, residing at his house in a remote and backward area of Cornwall.

A few days later, Harriet was in her small garret bedroom clad only in her shift and preparing for bed, having let down her dark hair to brush the luxuriant length she was so proud of, reaching as it did well below her waist, when her employer burst in accompanied by her maid, the fat cook and a fawning constable, the lady shrilly accusing Harriet of theft and directing a search of her room.

The governess' romantic relationship with their elder brother Tom, an ensign in the militia, currently absent with his regiment in Dublin, had been revealed to their step mother in revenge by the two girls, Letitia and Lavinia. Alerted by them, Lady Horter had intercepted a letter in which Tom's expressions of love disclosed how far the affair had gone and mentioning a ring and gold locket he had given Harriet in earnest of his intention to marry her. Lady Horter, whose daintiness of figure concealed a steely will, wrote at once to her husband warning him of a wicked plot laid by the new governess, to ensnare and elope with the young heir. The Colonel, alarmed by her account, had at once pulled strings to have young Tom given the immediate commission in a regular regiment that he had desired, ensuring that it was one imminently to be shipped overseas.

Meanwhile, his lady was in search of the ring and locket, having summoned the constable with the revelation that the new governess was a thief. The search of Harriet's bedroom disclosed the ring and the gold locket, Tom's intended love token, still containing his deceased aunt's portrait, since a replacement miniature of himself had yet to be ordered.

"Out of this house, you thief! You liar! Take her to the House of Correction, the she-villain! I will not have her under my roof!" the triumphant lady ordered.

"Please...! At least... let me dress!" Harriet cried, agitated by the presence in her bedroom of a man while she was so skimpily clad.

"Clothes provided by my wages! Not a further stitch shall you have!" Lady Horter slapped Harriet into breathless silence where she was being held in the grip of the muscular cook. "The wicked creature will fit her lying tongue to her purpose!" she demanded of the constable. "Surely you have the proper answer for that?"

The officer produced the piece of equipment he had been instructed to bring with him, one normally used for the silencing of foul-tongued female offenders. With Harriet being held by the two servants he fitted the cage of flexible iron bands over her head and face, fastening it with a hinged metal strap and a padlock behind. The central descending vertical divided either side of Harriet's nose and from the connecting band across her mouth a long leaf-shaped piece of metal thrust deeply in past her teeth to hold her tongue down flat. Arrested at her employer's behest and charged with the theft of the gold locket, Harriet could now only gurgle a response and, clad in nothing but her shift, she was hurried off to the House of Correction a few streets away.

The title was more grandiose than the fact for it was only the former principal gate-tower in the ruined town wall, now used as a prison for those miscreants condemned to whippings or hard labour by the magistrates and as the holding place for felons awaiting the next assizes. Its crumbling stonework and pantile roof sagging from neglect let in the rain even into the cells below ground. Harriet lay all night in the muddy dampness, trying to keep herself from the dripping walls. It was impossible to avoid the mud and by morning she was a dismal sight as she was led before the magistrate. The resident magistrate of the town was Lady Horter's father who normally held his courts in the principal inn, but on this occasion from consideration to his daughter and her elevated station he agreed to hear the case in the panelled dining room of his own house. Seated in a high backed chair behind the gleaming width of a mahogany dining table he was flanked by his daughter. Harriet stood in a dirty shift and with her hair bedraggled straggling around the rusty iron straps of the bridle, muddy feet bare on the thick carpet. At one end of the table a bespectacled clerk busied himself making notes and looking as frequently to Lady Horter as to the witnesses or the accused. The constable recounted the circumstances of his being summoned and the maid, the cook, and he related the discovery of the gold chain and locket and representing Harriet as having struggled and been put under restraint.

Lady Horter then left her seat to take up the position of witness, identifying the locket as her property from her husband, and testifying that Harriet, after blustering that the item had been stolen for her by her master's son Thomas, had struggled to escape so fiercely as to have to be restrained.

Harriet could only mumble when her stiff tongue was freed from its restraint, in any case all that she could say had been countered. Without Tom's presence her possession of the items was seeming proof enough. She had been warned that if she pursued the course of blaming Tom too far she would be accused of fornication instead and as he was still a few months under age, probably fare even worse. She resolved at last to spare her tongue and trust that her lover's return would put things right. No character witnesses came forth since, being a newcomer to the district, Harriet knew no-one intimately enough for them to brave Lady Horter's wrath. As she had miserably anticipated, Harriet was found guilty of theft but the sentence announced to her horror was that she was to be whipped at the cart tail through the town streets on the fair day following.

That was but two days away, but when the day came she was so muddy and bedraggled that Master Pounder, the part-time gaoler who doubled as the town butcher, decided she should first be given a bath which was done at the hands of his briskly impatient wife. First her shift and then Harriet herself, were soused and scrubbed in a wooden tub in the open yard with the excited junior Pounders, two little girls and a male infant handing their dame, kettle, soap or long handled scrubbing brush as required. Mistress Pounder kept up a steady chatter of admonition to her offspring and disapproval of Harriet's wickedness to which she dared make no reply after having been smartly spanked with the flat back of the scrubbing brush as a warning not to sully the ears of children with her lies. She was glad at least to be clean again though ashamed to have to posture herself so as to be scrubbed more thoroughly under breasts and belly and between the legs where the little girls exclaimed at her hairiness. Then, since her own shift was wet, Harriet was given an old one belonging to the gaoler's wife as a replacement before being taken out to be attached to the cart that her husband had been preparing in the outer gate arch.

A draught ox stood between the shafts, alarmingly suggesting that Harriet's progress was likely to be excruciatingly slow, her humiliation that much prolonged. As she was tied by the wrists to the rear of the vehicle with a length of rope, she imagined the feeling of the lash upon her bare flesh, the staring faces of the fair-day crowds the titters and sniggers at the exposure of her shame, dragged half naked through the streets. Since Mistress Pounder was twice Harriet's girth, the décolletage of the replacement shift was easily pulled wide over her shoulders and the upper part of the garment drawn down to her waist to be roughly tucked in to hang slackly about her white hips. Above it she was naked and only the clinging ropes of her wet hair served to partly conceal her pouting breasts. She was prohibited by the replacement of the scold's bridle from forming any last minute self-justification or plea for mercy, but the sounds of high female voices raised in argument gave her sudden hope.

Mrs Macgiven was head of the Ladies Society for the Reformation of Female Vice. It seemed that her vigilant committee had objected to the indecency of such an abandoned hussy, being displayed half-naked before a mob of drunken men for their lascivious examination of her charms. Lady Horter conceded that it was notorious for fair days to produce riotous behaviour that sometimes took directions not to the liking of the persons in authority. "But where is the use of making an example of her, if no-one is to see it?" she asked

The other conceded. "If such treachery by one who is an upper servant should pass unnoticed we would be unable to trust any of our servants!" She suggested that it would be their duty to organise a party to supervise the punishment, made up of the ladies of the society and such of their daughters and maidservants whom they felt would benefit from the example. Lady Horter concurred and sent to her father to obtain his assent therefore, to altering the sentence of a whipping at the cart tail for a punishment to be carried out in the prison yard. The magistrate was busy supervising the opening of the fair but his assent came in due course, acceding to his daughter's alternative suggestion of a thorough birching of four dozen strokes, the public nature to be maintained by its being performed before an audience of ladies.

In this way Harriet, to whom no explanation had been offered, was unexpectedly released from the cart. A stout wooden stool had been placed in the centre of the yard, over which she was now thrust face downward, her single garment slipping over her hips and down to her knees in the process. None of the attending ladies deigned to remedy this. "It will serve us just as well as having her skirts thrown up!" Mrs Macgiven observed. Harriet lay folded over the wooden seat, with her elbows and knees strapped tightly each to one of the four legs, naked to the tops of her black woollen stockings, her bare bottom at the highest point and her breasts dangling beneath her like pale ripe fruit.

"The creature isn't breeding, is she?" one of the ladies ventured. "She has such an enormous pair of bubbies!"

From this unpalatable idea, Lady Horter quickly diverted attention. "I am glad to see that you have given her a good scrubbing, Mistress Pounder!" she called. "I trust that she gave you no trouble?"

"Not at all my lady! She was perfectly submissive."

"I am glad to know that she is sensible of her position."

Of course Harriet had not dared disobey the formidable Mistress Pounder, lest her even more alarming husband be called upon for assistance. She had another wait while chairs were hastily brought in and placed in two half circles about her, those in front for the reception of the various ladies who had been invited as witnesses, and those to the rear for their daughters or maids who were felt to be in need of the instructive experience.

"We cannot properly hear her response to the birch, nor observe her face," Mrs Macgiven complained. "A girl's cries and changes of expression while she is being punished should always be a properly instructive example to the young." Harriet's tongue was therefore released from its restraint and her hair was drawn up from where it hung curtain-like down to the dust, various ladies volunteering grips with which to bundle it up on her head and neck.

Having been refreshing himself in the nearby tavern, the gaoler had reappeared in a new guise. He had stripped to his shirt, the open neck showing a black mat of hair, his sleeves rolled up. It was also his appointed duty to administer whippings of all sorts and, apprised of the punishment ordained, he carried in his big fist one of his supple birches, fresh and glistening wet from the brine tub. Trapped in her upside down viewpoint, Harriet let out a horrified cry, craning her neck to follow his progress. During her imprisonment, she had often shuddered to contemplation of the massive frame and bristly red face of the gaoler with his big hands and his hairy forearms bulging with muscle. Now the sight of that meaty right hand swishing a lengthy collection of knobbly black birch rods, bound tightly at one end with cord revealed the exact nature of the dreadful instrument that was to be used upon her.

She had to wait yet longer in contemplation of this, while Lady Horter punctiliously called the ladies' attention to the birch, urging them to pass it from hand to hand and inviting their comments. Meanwhile Harriet's fear of the birch competed in her mind with shame at how much she was forced to expose to the eyes of Master Pounder standing to her rear, her legs having been bent at the knees and fastened wide enough apart to accommodate the splay of the supports of the stool. By the time that the birch was returned after many expressions of approval to the gaoler's hand, she was almost thankful that it was to be at last begun. She clutched the stool with white knuckles, while her trembling knees knocked against the wood that parted them, though she resolved not to disgrace herself as a gentleman's daughter under the scrutiny of all these cruel and snobbish females.

Thwackkk!!! She nearly lost her resolve at the first meaty smack. The supple birch splayed wide upon impact and the biting sting of individual stems was replicated a dozen times in the one strike across her plump flesh. She gritted her teeth desperately.

Thwackkk!!! Another swathe of fire landed across her cringing bottom cheeks and she tried to burrow her belly through the impenetrable timber. Her head tossed and shrill hisses emerged from between contorted lips.

Thwackkk!!! Harriet's entire bottom now felt as if it was being flayed. Her lips writhed and gurgles emerged from deep within her white throat. She looked in terror and panic towards the pale faces of the onlookers for signs of pity, but they swam like wet blobs in her tear-filled view.

"See how insolently defiant the villainess is!" Lady Horter said loudly.

Thwackkk!!! Pain fell upon already existing pain and the gurgles burst out in anguished wail.

Thwackkk!!! Thwackkk!!! Thwackkk!!! Harriet tried to set her teeth again, but shrill squeals continuously escaped her. She made the stool rock as she bucked and twisted, trying somehow to spread the pain, feeling her pubic mound grinding fruitlessly against the rounded edge of the seat. Her face had turned scarlet, her head jerking up and down involuntarily while she alternately squealed, gurgled and hissed.

Thwackkk!!! Thwackkk!!! Thwackkk!!! Harriet's bottom bounced wobbled and squirmed under the repeatedly descending birch. Strands of hair had escaped the confining pins and stuck to wet cheeks, her shift slid off to lie crumpled about her ankles, her stockings began to slip down her threshing legs, fragments of birch bark had flown off and clung to her naked back and flanks. At each impact of the flexing scourge her belly thumped the stool, which creaked in protest in its turn, her legs kicking as if to try to run away and her hands clawing at the air as if desperate to interpose themselves in defence. Sounds escaped her, but with words garbled by the impacts, were barely distinguishable as pleas for mercy.

Thwackkk!!! Thwackkk!!! The gaoler tried for parts he had not so far covered and the swishing birch fell alternately across Harriet's white thighs and then her upper hips, striping them as deeply red raw as the rest. After only twelve strokes, the unfortunate ex-governess was giving vent to throat-tearing appeals to have pity with yet another twenty-eight still due to her. Her round bottom had been turned a general scarlet hue, liberally flecked with sharper marks where the little knobbly irregularities of the birch had bitten deeper. Red-faced with beer and effort, the gaoler rested his arm for the moment and Lady Horter surveyed the engrossed faces of the ladies.

"Master Pounder! You do good work!" she pronounced. "At this moment the slut is obviously feeling very repentant indeed! But what is swiftly over is swiftly forgotten!" Mrs Macgiven nodded vigorously in agreement. "A spell of reflection, during which she can reflect upon what is to come, will doubtless impress the lesson even more firmly."

They sent to the magistrate again, leaving Harriet sobbing bitterly on her stool of penitence with her reddened bottom exposed to view in the cool air, while the appreciative ladies were served with refreshments brought in, at Lady Horter's expense, from the coffee room of the Horter Arms. The gaoler meantime retired as well to anticipate his fee by treating his cronies at the public bar of that same establishment. From time to time one or other of the ladies inspected Harriet, estimating with cool hands the degree of heat emanating from her flagellated hind parts. The magistrate, when tracked down, impatiently referred the matter to the discretion of the ladies and so by general agreement the continuance of the rest of the sentence was allowed to be suspended until the day following and ordered to be administered to Harriet in the same place and manner at the rate of six strokes of the birch each day, until the sentence was completed. The time was settled to be at two in the afternoon by the striking of the town clock so as to allow the interested ladies ample time to dress and prepare themselves.

Held in durance in the House of Correction, Harriet was brought out accordingly to be birched, at two o'clock prompt every day before a similar audience, until on the next to last day just as she was being led out, a letter arrived from Tom. She had to undergo the six slashing strokes of the birch with the missive unopened in her fingers, clutched tightly for fear of losing it. Back in her cell, kneeling on the flagstones since she couldn't sit, with her tears adding to the mud, she read the crumpled paper at last.