By Governess
liviaarbuthnot1@gmail.com
Copyright 2024 by Governess, all rights reserved
[2,203 words]´
* * * * *Chapter 69
Eagerly, I read on.
I
felt an excitement in the pit of my stomach as we waited for Cicely to
be brought to the library. After about five minutes she came in
accompanied by Mrs Marchant.
“And this, Mrs Marchant, is the girl who is causing Mrs Dunnett distress?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“So, what is your name, child?”
“Campbell, Sir.”
“And your Christian name?”
“Cicely, please, Sir.”
“Well, Cicely, what have you been doing to upset Mrs Dunnett?”
“I don’t know, Sir.”
“Mrs Marchant?”
“She is uncooperative and surly, Sir. And her work is shoddy and slapdash.”
“So, what do you say to that, Cicely?”
“I don’t think it’s true, Sir.”
“Yet Mrs Marchant and Mrs Dunnett think otherwise. And as I believe
their testimony rather than yours, that means you are not only
unreliable and disobedient, but also a liar. Have you anything to say?”
The girl looked tearful but defiant.
“That cook’s never liked me, Sir. It’s always my fault if anything goes wrong. I’m blamed for everything.”
“But apparently it is your fault, Cicely, and you compound that by surliness and bad temper. Is that right, Mrs Marchant?”
“Yes, Sir. That’s exactly right.”
“And has Mrs Marchant punished you, Cicely?”
“Ye . . . yes, Sir.”
“And how did she punish you?”
“She spanked me. With a hairbrush. On my bottom.”
“On your bare bottom?”
The girl looked down.
“Yes, Sir. On my bare bottom.”
“And was it painful?”
“Yes, Sir. It hurt a lot.”
“But not sufficiently to bring about an improvement in your behaviour.”
The girl hung her head.”
“I do try, Sir.”.
“But clearly not hard enough. And do you know why that is. Cicely?”
The girl looked down.
“Look at me, child, when I’m speaking to you. You do not try hard enough because the punishment is not hard enough.”
He paused.
“But that can easily be remedied.”
In the library, apart from the books lining the walls, was a writing
table with a chair and in front of the window, a flogging horse. This
was about four feet in height, with splayed legs like a sawhorse. But
unlike a sawhorse, the cross beam was surprisingly wide, for most of
its length, being some eighteen inches across. However, at one end, it
narrowed to six inches across and that was where the child to be
flogged had to straddle before being bent forward along its length. The
cross beam was covered in soft chamois leather.
When my
father judged my conduct sufficiently egregious to merit a more serious
flogging, I would be told to report to the library at half-past four
that same afternoon. As the time approached, I can remember my
tremulous fear, almost excitement, not unlike that felt when walking
through a dark wood at twilight. I would knock at the door and on
hearing the command to enter, turn the handle and walk into the room
endeavouring to appear brave and submissive in the face of adversity.
Usually, my having to report to the library arose from behaviour which
my father regarded as ‘pert’ and displaying disrespect for his
over-arching authority over the household. I am sure he regarded the
horse as adding an important element of shame and disgrace to what was
already a humiliating punishment. I would be told to mount the horse
and press myself flat along its length. A strap would then be run under
the beam and around my body and secured in the small of my back.
Needless to say, I had already been stripped of my nether garments, so
my bottom was bare and ready to receive the severe birching my father
judged necessary. So, when I had heard Cicely was to go to the library,
I knew exactly what was in store for her.
“Thank you Mrs Marchant. You may return to your duties.”
As soon as she had left, the girl started to plead.
“Please, Sir. I’ve struggled to do my best. Mrs Dunnett is so unfair. I don’t deserve to be punished. Please, Sir.”
“If Mrs Dunnett reports that you are troublesome and disruptive,
Cicely, then I believe her. And your protestations only confirm that
she is right. You came from the orphanage to be provided with security
and employment. Which you are abusing.”
He paused looking at the squirming girl who was now quite pale and wringing her hands.
“You will be flogged. Whether you are returned to the orphanage will
depend entirely on your attitude to your discipline and whether you are
prepared to learn from it. Laura, prepare Cicely for her flogging.
Remove her nether garments and assist her to straddle the horse.”
A frisson of excitement and also of trepidation passed through me, as I
assisted Cicely to perch on its narrow end before being forced forward,
exposing her bottom and her tight little anus. I rolled her soft black
working dress half way up her back, and then retrieved the strap from
the library table drawer. The girl was by now utterly compliant,
helpless and clearly petrified by fear.
As the first stroke
was laid on Cicely’s pale flesh, she wriggled at the strange stinging
sensation; but as yet the birch was providing but a faint signal of the
suffering to come. By the sixth stroke, she was beginning to grasp the
full horror facing her, and by the tenth, she began to scream, shrill
bursts of agony as the flexible twigs cut her soft little rump. She
heaved herself up against the restraint, testing its strength. But it
held her firm. For her, it was the shackle that bound her to the rack.
But in the eyes of my father, it held her in a loving embrace.
At first, the pain aroused only resentment. But as the birch lashed her
buttocks to a deep crimson, and little seams of blood appeared on the
smooth surface, her resentment was slowly stripped away. After more
than two dozen cuts, my father took a second rod from the pail, and the
torture continued. At last, all that remained of her resistance was
dissolved in an all-consuming agony.
“Is that enough, girl, to teach you respect and obedience to those in authority over you?”
Her response was barely audible, consisting of little more than choking
sobbing. My father waited, savouring the girl’s distress.
“Well, I can see there is still work for the birch to do.”
And setting aside the second birch now worn and used up, he selected a
third rod, swishing and shaking the moisture from it. At the
realisation that her flogging was not yet over, she heaved upwards
against the restraining strap, fighting it, writhing and kicking out
wildly. Her shrieks were interlaced with gurgling and babbling, such
that might have issued from the mouth of a demoniac. My father paused.
“Your protests, Cicely, only confirm that you have not yet learned the lesson that is being taught.”
And the flogging was resumed.
I felt a queasiness in my stomach as the birch swished again and again
through the air until her bottom was streaked like a ripe autumn apple.
After a further two dozen strokes, she was dishevelled, drenched in
tears, and completely mastered by a torturing pain never before
experienced.
My father stepped back and threw the birch down to join the two earlier discarded rods lying beneath the horse.
“Remove the strap, Laura. And sit up straight, girl.”
Sobbing quietly the girl did as she was bid, her back stiff and aching
from being stretched forward and from her repeatedly fighting the
restraint that held her.
“You will sit upright on the horse
and remain there for the next hour. Laura, fetch your Livy from the
schoolroom and we shall continue your lesson here in the library. And
you, girl, not a sound from you. You will sit in silence.”
My
lesson continued but I found it difficult to concentrate after the
emotional disturbance of witnessing Cicely’s punishment. I glanced from
time to time at the girl astride the horse, in increasing discomfort.
After my father’s remonstrating with me for my poor effort at rendering
Livy into acceptable English and warning me that unless I concentrated
a birching would be the outcome, I struggled to comply. When the time
came for Cicely to dismount, she was in such a state that she needed
assistance. She stood sobbing gently.
“I trust you have
learned your lesson, Cicely, and will now obey Mrs Dunnett and be as
asset to her in the kitchen. I will be asking her for a weekly report
on your behaviour and you know what to expect if you are found wanting.”
He smiled.
“Mene, mene, tekel upharsin is the expression I think. And where does that come from, Laura?”
“From the book of Daniel, Father. It was God's judgement on King Belshazzar that appeared on the wall at the feast.”
“And it means?”
“You are weighed in the balances and found wanting.”
“Well remembered, Laura. Now please accompany Cicely back to Mrs
Dunnett and tell her to give the girl a thorough enema before returning
her to her duties in the kitchen.”
Before I could read further, I heard the front door open, which had been left on the latch, and Diana came into the room.
She smiled.
“How have you got on with the book? It’s very compelling, isn’t it?”
“I couldn’t put it down, Diana. If you hadn’t come back, I’d still be reading it.”
“So, what did you think of it?”
“Well! I’m not sure where to start. I suppose the thing that came
across above everything else was her complete, overwhelming commitment
to the birch. And I suppose that was in a way birched into her own
flesh as a girl struggling to master her Latin and Greek, not to
mention her German. It made me think how important that commitment is
to learning”
“So right, Cordelia. We easily forget that in
Tudor times, boys were expected, like Laura, to master Latin and Greek
at an early age, often being expected to speak in Latin rather than
just read it. And I am sure it was the widespread commitment to
corporal punishment that made that early attainment possible. “
“But something else that struck me was the similarity of Laura’s early
years to those of James. Both had mothers that were somewhat
indifferent to them, both were farmed out to a girl from the local
community, and both lacked that affirming love that we received and
that gave us confidence and the ability to take an active role in
disciplining our children. But despite that similarity, Laura is an
active disciplinarian while James is passive and prefers to leave the
discipline to you and to watch you administering it. I wondered as I
read how that can be understood.”
“That’s an interesting
observation, Cordelia. It’s not something I’ve thought about. But
you’re right, they both experienced a lack of warm, affirming
mothering, yet both turned out very differently.”
She frowned.
“But I suppose there were other differences that might account for that.”
Again, she frowned.
“For a start Laura had an enormous amount of freedom before she started
her schooling around the age of seven. She ran wild in the countryside
and no doubt discovered in that freedom a growing self-confidence in
her ability to shape her own destiny in the woods and also a sense of
being comfortably at one with the natural order. And then, later, her
father was a huge influence on her. His strength and discipline might
have overwhelmed a different child, but the self-confidence she brought
to the relationship enabled her to appreciate his strength and
authority. She exchanged the natural order of the woods for the natural
order of the schoolroom, and in both cases she measured up to it and
grew in the face of their similar yet different challenges.”
“Yes, I think I can see that, Diana. For James his discipline became an
expression of love and caring that in his inner spirit he welcomed and
where he found comfort and security, despite the agony inflicted on his
flesh. Laura however, experienced her discipline as a challenge. She
fought the pain but in succumbing to it accepted that she had been
mastered by a greater strength that in its own way was admirable. And
it was a strength and an authority that she wanted to emulate.”
“I think you’ve expressed that very well, Cordelia.”
She paused.
“But as James found security in his passive engagement with discipline,
I wonder whether Laura experienced a security in actively administering
it. Although I’m not sure that comes across in what she has written.
What do you think?”
Cordelia shook her head.
“No, it
doesn’t. Not at all. There is no sense that she needed to be birching
Marius and Torquil because it helped her to find some inner security or
stability in the face of life’s challenges. As I read it, she birched
them because she believed it was what every boy needed. It corrected
error and wrongdoing and provided scope for the boy to measure himself
against pain and provided him with the opportunity to grow in courage
and fortitude.”