By Governess
liviaarbuthnot1@gmail.com
Copyright 2025 by Governess, all rights reserved
[2,568 words]´
* * * * *
Chapter 78
‘Please hold him, Mrs Cranborne’
I was in no hurry to commence the flogging. I have always valued the
discipline of holding a boy in that anteroom of nervous anticipation
where his innards churn, and his breathing quickens and the fear of the
rod slowly consumes him.
“How does this boy compare to your two, Mrs Cranborne?”
“How do you mean, Miss Ravenscourt? In his build or his behaviour?”
“I was thinking about his behaviour. But were they comparable in size at this age? At the age of eight?”
“At eight, Thomas was about this size. And with the same firm little
buttocks. But Luke was much bigger. He could have been taken for a
ten-year-old, and behaved as though he was one. And I made sure he
received a ten-year-old’s punishment. He was the one we apprenticed to
the farrier.”
She smiled.
“Today, he’s heating up
horse shoes and beating them into shape. It doesn’t seem that long ago
that I was heating up his bottom and beating him into to shape. But
behaviour? Well, aren’t all boys the same, Miss Ravenscourt? Want their
own way and not willing to submit to authority. And as far as I can
see, this one is no different. And he's a wilful one, I can see that.
He’ll wear out a good few birch rods before he’s broken in. Mark my
words.”
She pursed her lips.
“My youngest was the
same. Never did as he was told from the word go. Once out of nappies, I
was spanking him most days a week. And that’s an understatement.
Sometimes, it was more than once a day. That boy had a permanently
well-smacked bottom. Up to the age of seven, he had disobeyed because
he wanted what was forbidden But at seven, he was disobeying out of
sheer defiance. And that’s when I bound up my first birch. Fortunately,
my cottage garden has several birch trees as well as some hazel. And I
enjoyed binding up those rods. Doing it again, for you, certainly
brings back memories.”
Ì looked down at James, my hand still placed firmly in the small of his back.
“Did you hear that, James? Mrs Cranborne enjoys binding up birch rods.”
“I swished the rod I was holding, lightly across his bottom.”
“Please, Miss Ravenscourt! Please, don’t!”
“Hold your tongue, James. In a moment, you’ll be flogged properly. Until then not another word.”
I turned to Mrs Cranborne.
“My father told me that in the Greek and Russian churches where Our
Lord and the saints are venerated, painting their icons is regarded as
an act of devotion and accompanied by prayer. And he believed that a
birch rod should be bound up with the same devotion and reverence. It
was, after all, the instrument of a child’s regeneration, to provide a
child with the strength and grace to obey and live within God’s law.”
Mrs Cranborne nodded.
Well, I’m not sure about icons, but we give thanks for food, and we ask
a blessing. But food just builds up our bodies. A birching helps a boy
behave and those responsible for his upbringing should certainly show
their gratitude for the rod and give thanks for it, just as they do for
food before meals.”
I smiled.
“And so should the boy. Boys are flogged for their own good. They should be expected to show gratitude and give thanks for it.”
I gave James's upturned bottom a light swish with the birch.
“Well, James? Are you grateful that you have a governess who flogs you?”
He clenched his buttocks.
“For many years you’ve not received the discipline a boy needs. But
that has now changed. And it is a change for the good. I want to hear
you thank Mrs Cranborne for binding up this rod, and thank me, too, for
taking the trouble to flog you with it.”
“Please, Miss Ravenscourt. Please.”
“Please what, James?”
“Please, I’m sorry. Please.”
“And I’m sorry you cannot understand a simple request and do as you’re
asked. You are a very fortunate boy, James. A sound flogging depends on
having a suitable implement and a willingness to use it unstintingly.
So, I want to hear you give thanks for it.”
I waited. His only response to my request was a further contraction of his buttocks into tight hard resistance.
“Hold him, please, Mrs Cranborne.”
And I raised the birch and brought it swishing down. I aimed at the
base of his buttocks, beneath the clenched flesh, and into that soft
sensitive place at the top of the thighs. He gasped and then shrieked.
“Stop that caterwauling, James, and listen to me. In a moment I am
going to give you the sort of flogging that should have been a regular
feature of your life for the past three or four years. But I think Mrs
Cranborne will agree with me that it is never too late to start regular
flogging and it cannot do anything but good.”
“Yes, Miss
Ravenscourt. Better late than never. But as I said, this one is going
to use up a good few rods before he’s broken in.”
“Rods which I’m sure you will be very happy to supply, Mrs Cranborne.”
He flinched, as I ran a hand appreciatively down his back and lightly over his buttocks.
“I hope you’re grateful for these soft sensitive little buttocks,
James, that provide the means for teaching you how to behave. To be
diligent, hard-working, truthful and polite. And grateful above all for
Mrs Cranborne’s willingness to prepare a flexible punishing birch rod
like this and for my willingness to flog you as you need to be flogged.
So, let me hear you give thanks, please.”
I waited, but he was clearly tongue-tied and struggling.
“Let me help you, James. Repeat after me:
Thank you, Mrs Cranborne, for binding up this birch rod
And thank you, Miss Ravenscourt, for giving me the flogging that I deserve
May I accept it bravely and learn from it. Amen
He
repeated it in a low voice, and somewhat hesitantly, so that I insisted
he repeat it. And then again, in a stronger and more confident voice.
All this was done with him still stretched naked over the back of the
leather armchair. I allowed him time to settle, to anticipate the
strokes that were about to cut and tear the flesh of his soft little
eight-year-old bottom. Soon he would be screaming and writhing like a
dervish.
I raised the birch. It swept back, and I felt that
thrill as it leapt forward to pounce on the boy’s waiting, exposed
flesh. My whole body tingled with the delicious memory of the many
birchings I had administered over the years to my half-brothers, Marius
and Torquil; and a deep sense of pleasure descended upon me at the
thought of the future beatings I would inflict on this boy stretched
before me. The birch gave its distinctive whine as it cut the air, so
different from the whoosh of a rattan cane.
I have always
thought that a mother or a governess was far more a natural
disciplinarian than a man, and the high-pitched whine of the birch,
full of feminine venom, seemed to confirm it. After half a dozen
strokes, I looked at Mrs Cranborne. Her eyes were focused on the boy's
buttocks as the birch cut and scored the soft flesh. After a further
dozen strokes, which I laid on with no concession for his eight years,
flogging him as I would a boy twice his age, he was roaring profusely.
In school, a master would regard the marks of a such a flogging as a
sign of his absolute rule over the boy, while his peers would regard it
equally as a mark of camaraderie and if taken well without abject
squealing and protest as a further mark of his courage and his
effrontery in the face of adult authority. However, eight year old
James, severed from his schoolfriends and placed under my sole charge
had no such support and had no such accolade to buoy him up. And if
truth were told, the way he comported himself under punishment was
hardly likely to attract the admiration of his peers.
Later
in discussion with Mrs Cranborne, she confessed that his writhing and
screaming, and the drumming of his feet against the back of the chair
added greatly to her enjoyment. She told me that from the outset her
own boys had been secured to an upright wooden pillar that supported
one of the beams across the kitchen ceiling.
‘I’d strip him
naked and run a leather belt around his waist. He’d twist and turn,
trying to avoid the strokes of the birch and, my goodness, was there a
stamping of his feet and a flailing of his arms! But standing upright,
fastened to that pillar, his buttocks were nice and round and soft. I
wanted a nice accepting bottom with no clenching, and I made sure I got
one. I kept a swishy rattan cane,, and a clenched bottom meant five
strokes across the backs of his thighs. A separate cane meant there was
no mistaking what he got for clenching as quite separate from the
birching he had earned. I was happy for him to stamp and flail his arms
around, but woe betide him if he tried to put his hands between his
bottom and my birch. Then, his wrists would be tied together around the
pillar, and the rattan cane would register my displeasure with two
dozen strokes to his thighs and calves. I’d like to say he soon learnt,
but more often than not a birching ended with his wrists tied and the
back of his legs well-marked by the cane for resisting and clenching.
‘It’s surprising, isn’t it, how a boy refuses to sit as his desk and
learn his lessons and would rather be taught by the birch. But then,
that way, he still learns. and there’s a greater pleasure in teaching
him. There’s few things as satisfying in my book, Miss Ravenscourt, as
applying the birch to a boy’s bare little wriggling rump.’
Cordelia
closed the book. It was a sentiment she agreed with wholeheartedly and
a good place to stop reading. Although she was far from daunted at the
prospect of preaching in chapel, she did need to develop those headings
she intended to speak from. So the text was from the Book of Proverbs:
Withhold
not correction from a child: if you beat him with the rod, he will not
die. If you beat him with the rod, you will save his soul from hell.
She gave a smile. Well the first heading was obvious and the others followed on.
Heading ONE: A spanking makes a boy feel he's going to die.
Heading TWO: It is necessary because a good beating gives life.
Heading THREE: How Clough and Graham are to be punished.
Heading FOUR: What their beating means for all of us.
That, she thought, should provide a good framework, although there was
no need to stick to it rigidly. The important thing was to hold the
boys’ attention and have them squirming on the edge of their seats.
Their bottoms would be tingling when she had finished describing the
fate that awaited Clough and Graham. She smiled. But Clough’s and
Graham's bottoms would be more than tingling.
She went into
her study and picked up the new heavyweight tawse and ran it threw her
hand. It was hard, and unforgiving, and yet wonderfully flexible. She
let it drop and swing heavily beside her, appreciating its weight. She
gave an involuntary shudder as she imagined a ten-year-old's bottom’s
having to absorb stroke after punishing stroke from such a solid length
of split leather, until the boy's smooth, firm young buttocks were
ridged and throbbing with a smarting agony beyond the imagining of any
boy who had never been flogged with such an implement. James
Fairclough's belief that the birch could provide comparable punishment
was for her a nonsense, just as it was for Isobel Crampton. While the
birch attacked the surface of the bottom, tearing and abrading the
skin, the tawse not only raised weals of painful inflammation on the
surface of the buttocks but also penetrated deeply into the flesh. She
regarded James Fairclough’s insistence on half of the two boys’
punishment being administered with the birch, a veritable mercy. And in
the eyes of Isobel, it was a mercy that was unwarranted. For her, both
boys deserved four dozen strokes not with the heavyweight tawse but
with the even heavier XL tawse. A belt that even James Fairclough had
regarded as too severe for a ten-year-old.
She put down the
heavyweight tawse and picked up its even weightier cousin. A tremble
passed through her as she felt the punishing power latent in her grasp.
Despite her earlier reservations, she wanted to stand over a boy; to
swing that tawse heavily through the air and see it impact with a dull
penetrating smack across his buttocks; to see the livid inflammation
raised by those split leather tails; to hear his shrieks of agony as
the pain coursed through his body. And then to continue, stroke after
stroke, again and again, slowly and unhurriedly, until the boy was
hoarse with his screaming and the full allotment of forty-eight strokes
had been given.
She felt weak at the thought and sat for a
moment at her desk. Yes, forty-eight strokes of that extra heavyweight
tawse would be too much for a ten-year-old. But the sentence was no
longer forty-eight, but twenty-four strokes of the tawse. Admittedly,
they had been paired with two dozen strokes of the birch. But the birch
provided, in her view, an altogether more superficial discipline to the
surface of a boy's bottom, whereas the tawse provided that more
penetrating punishment that left not only visible evidence of
a sound flogging, but a deep interior ache in the flesh of the boy's
buttocks. She frowned. Given that the two boys' tawsing had been
reduced by half was there a case for punishing them with the heavier XL
tawse. She was reluctant to discuss this with James Fairclough or even
with Diana. Both tawses looked very similar, differing only in weight.
Should she on her own initiative select instead the heavier of the two
tawses? Certainly, Isobel Crampton would be wholly in favour.
She went to her bookshelf and took down Eugenia Strang's book on disciplining boys. There was a chapter entitled How Severe is Severe?
No mother or governess wishes to be over-severe. But equally to give
token and ineffective correction is equally to be avoided. Children
despise weakness and respond to authority. The choice is between a
spanking that is too weak to correct and leaves the child angry and
resentful; or a spanking that leaves a child with a bare smarting
bottom, wracked with sobbing and promising never to sin again. The
message for every parent and governess is clear: to err on the side of
severity. Better to have more heartfelt sobbing and a child broken and
contrite than a child despising authority with a resentful heart set on
further sin and defiance.
Cordelia shut the book. Both
Clough and Graham, she decided, would be beaten with the heavier of the
two recently purchased tawses.