Miss Strang Chapter 61

Miss Strang Chapter 61
By Governess

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This story is intended for ADULTS ONLY. It contains explicit depictions of sexual activity involving minors. If you are not of a legal age in your locality to view such material or if such material does not appeal to you, do not read further, and do not save this story.
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Chapter 61

I stood listening to the tick of the schoolroom clock. From a distance, I heard my father speaking to Miss Strang.

"May I suggest Miss Strang that you continue what I interrupted when I entered the schoolroom? From what you have told me, much depends on the outcome."

"Thank you Mr Arbuthnot. John, turn around. No right round and face the desk. And now right over it, please. And grip the far side as before. There are four strokes to be given and I expect you to take each without a murmur. Any show of dissent, any whimpering, any girlish tantrums, and you know what the outcome will be."

She walked over to her desk and retrieved the tawse. And drew it through her hand.

"May I see the tawse, Miss Strang. It appears to be relatively unused. I am surprised."

She handed it to him.

"It is relatively unused, Mr Arbuthnot, for it was only purchased a few days ago."

He held it half way down its length and smacked it across his palm.

"My governess had a similar strap, Miss Strang. Possibly a little thicker and heavier. But this is certainly an implement to be feared."

He continued to smack it across his open hand.

"But there is no shame in fear. I used to tremble at the footsteps of my governess. My stomach knotted and my bowels churned when I heard her approach."

His voice, strong and commanding, took on a more reflective tone.

"She knew that I was afraid. And she teased and tormented me before my sisters. She stripped and exposed my small quivering body and invited their derision. But I learnt to embrace fear as my equal, and never to become its slave. I see a white faced boy, shivering, dreading the flogging that will leave him marked for a week. But while I feared the torturing pain, I did not cringe and abase myself before fear as before a master."

He paused. I could see Miss Strang listening intently almost reverently to his words. Her eyes were bright.

"There is no shame in fear only in parading it abjectly before the world. A boy who is flogged, just as a soldier in battle, must not yield to fear. He must show hope in the face of overwhelming odds. He must hold no grudge against his oppressor or his enemy . . . He must not be enslaved by fear."

He stopped and seemed for a moment transported to some other world. Then he recollected himself.

"My boy, do you know who Prometheus was."

"N . . n . . no, Sir."

"Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to mankind. How would we cook, how would we warm ourselves, how would we smelt iron and make great machines, if it were not for fire? But Zeus, the lord of all the gods, punished him for the theft. He chained him naked to a rock. And every day a great eagle came and pecked and tore at his living flesh to eat his liver. Can you imagine that? The sharp talons ripping your flesh. The beak stabbing and gouging out a bloody gaping hole. Tearing out your liver and slowly eating it before your very eyes. How you would hope for death. To be spared such suffering. But no. Zeus has declared endless suffering. And your liver grows again and the flesh heals, so that every day until the end of time, the bird will return to tear and rip, to torture and consume. Can you imagine that?"

Whether John knew what a liver was, my father's description was so graphic and so terrible that he could barely speak. Did he think that his father planned some such torment for him as he lay naked and exposed across the desk?

"I asked whether you could imagine such torment?"

"N . . . no, Sir."

"No. I am sure you cannot."

He turned to Miss Strang.

"Are you familiar with Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, Miss Strang."

"No, Mr Arbuthnot. I am not."

"Well, at the conclusion these words are spoken, with Prometheus left in his suffering.

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.

No one said anything. His voice was strong and melodic, vibrant and compelling.

"And that my boy is how you should comport yourself under suffering. Suffering wants to shrink your soul and possess it. But if you stand firm, you will grow and enlarge your soul. You become a source of life for yourself and your spiritual kingdom knows no bounds."

I rather doubted whether John understood any of this. Indeed, I hardly understood it myself. And yet I did grasp that the rod vigorously applied to our flesh offered not just correction of our faults and an atonement for sins, but also an opportunity to display courage and determination in the face of adversity. And to grow and enlarge ourselves thereby. But at my age, this was but dimly understood.

John said nothing. He lay over the desk, the green velvet dress pinned up, his back and bottom exposed for the further stokes of the tawse that were yet to be given.

"Well, Miss Strang. Let us see whether the boy is a lily-livered milk sop or has some of Prometheus's fortitude. We cannot tear out his liver to examine it, but I am sure your thick leather strap will serve as a worthy proxy to an eagle's beak and claws."

John lay desperately still.

"But Miss Strang, did you say there were but four strokes to be given? Does that provide opportunity enough to judge whether he has the fortitude and endurance to justify his casting off his petticoats? Surely not?"

"I am inclined to agree with you, Mr Arbuthnot. The four strokes were but the end of a dozen he received for inattention and the neglect of his work. He took those strokes so badly that I decreed that unless the last four were taken with more manliness, then he would be dressed as a girl for the rest of the week."

"In that case, Miss Strang, let us be generous and give the boy a further twelve strokes of the leather."

He paused.

"And I am not altogether happy about positioning him over the desk. He can cling to that in his desperation. Lean on it for support. Hide his face in his misery."

If it had been Mr Innes making such a suggestion, I am sure that Miss Strang would have bridled and defended her decision. But she showed not the least sign of irritation.

"I am sure you are right, Mr Arbuthnot. What do you suggest?"

"The boy should be made to stand behind an upright chair, his wrists secured with thread. Any unseemly writhing or girlish tantrum and the thread will break and he will stand condemned."

Miss Strang raised her eyebrows, and drew her head ever so slightly backward.

"You look surprised Miss Strang. It is, I assure you, nothing original. It is something I endured at the hands of my own governess. Her means of controlling my natural writhing and squirming under the rod. And if I failed, if I broke the fragile bonds, then from the dark cavern of my governess's imagination would crawl some further horror."

There was silence for a moment. Then, Miss Strang turned to me.

"Oliver, go and ask Mrs Mountfield for a reel of thread, please."

When I returned, John was standing behind the lion chair facing over its back. The rag doll, Amanda, had been placed on the seat beneath him. Miss Strang held out her hand and took the reel from me. She drew a double or triple length, snapping it off.

"Stretch out your arms, John, and place your wrists either side of the chair, half way down the frame."

Slowly he complied, under the stern gaze of my father. Miss Strang wound the thread five or six times around his left wrist and fastened it. Then she tied the dangling ends of the thread several times around the chair before knotting it. Then she did the same with the right wrist.

My father stood back.

"And I do not expect unseemly howling and girlish shrieking."

He nodded to Miss Strang. She stepped forward and draped the tawse over her shoulder. John stirred uneasily. I glanced at my father. There was an intent look upon his face such as might have been seen on the face of Nero when a gladiator in the arena was facing some savage beast about to be let off its chain.

The tawse twisted through the air and impacted with a dull thud on the crown of my brother's right buttock. He jerked his head back, his mouth open in a silent roar of agony. His body shook but somehow he managed to keep from breaking the thread that bound him to the chair.

"Miss Strang, remember you are the eagle sent by Zeus to punish this child. You may not have talons to tear at his flesh or a beak to gouge a hole, but use what you have. Apply the tawse repeatedly to that buttock. Until the skin breaks and the contused flesh bursts."

I looked at Miss Strang and there was a heightened colouring to her usually pale cheeks. A look of intense concentration in her narrowed eyes. The contrast with her reaction to Mr Innes's suggestions of yesterday and her ready acquiescence to my father's word was marked.

"Yes, Mr Arbuthnot."

The second stroke of the tawse was lashed across my brother's small, compact buttock, the end biting into the already red and smarting flesh. His whole body jerked like a marionette, but somehow he restrained any wilder movement so that the thread binding his hands remained intact.

Again the tawse was draped over Miss Strang's shoulder and again it swung heavily through the air landing with bruising force on the same livid spot. My brother shook his head. Wrenching it from side to side. All his instinct to flail his hands and stamp his feet was channelled into the wild uncontrolled movement of his neck and head. His face was damp and his hair flopped forward and adhered to his brow. His eyes rolled upward.

My father smiled.

"Well, Miss Strang the boy seems to be displaying a little more of a manly spirit. That is most encouraging."

I was astounded at this surprising display of fortitude. The tawse swung once more through the schoolroom air. There was a heavy, dull smacking noise. I was watching my brother's face as he endured this pitiless leathering. He was biting his lip in the terrible effort to control himself. Tears were trickling down his cheeks.

My father nodded and another stroke was applied. His whole body seemed to be shaking, not violently but as the ground shakes before the earthquake tears it apart.

My father smiled. Was he recalling his own suffering at the hands of his governess all those years ago? Did he see himself exposed and tormented under the merciless leathering that Miss Strang was administering?

But by the next stroke, my brother could contain his agony no longer. His head went back as though forced there by some invisible hand. I could see the redness of his tongue There seemed a smear of blood on the whiteness of his teeth. He roared in his torment. A long, animal howl that reverberated around the schoolroom. And when his lungs were empty, he greedily sucked in air, great scoops of air, desperate for breath.

And any attempt to control his bodily response to the frightful stimulus of the tawse was abandoned. His hands broke free from the tenuous bonds that bound him. He stamped and kicked. And then he curled into a shivering ball, writhing on the schoolroom floor.

For a while nothing was said.

"Well, Miss Strang. We need gouge no deeper. The boy has a lily liver."

The voice seemed not dissatisfied at the outcome.

"But if he thinks by his display of despicable cowardice that he will be spared his punishment, then he is much mistaken. Get up boy."

He turned to Miss Strang.

"Hand me the tawse."

He took it. And then pulled the prie dieu toward him and spun it round.

"Stand facing its back, boy, and reach over it with your arms. Miss Strang, put a foot on the seat and grasp his arms and hold him firmly."

(To be continued)