Miss Strang Chapter 62

Miss Strang Chapter 62
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 62

Never had I seen a boy flogged by a man before. There was a harshness about it that made me shrivel inside. Not that Miss Strang was not strict. She had no hesitation in raising welts on a boy's skin, and on a girl's, too, if she thought it justified. She firmly believed that a child must pay for his sins in the coinage of physical pain. And a child was never released until he had paid the last farthing. And yet retribution in her hands was never distant or judicial. A child whether writhing over her knee or laid across the arm of a chair or horsed across a servant's back was never less than a child. The subject of her discipline but never an object merely to be punished.

But as I watched my father thrashing my brother with the tawse, I knew that for him John was but an object of scorn and contempt and no different from any other milksop, even though this was his son,. There was no compassion. No thought that here was a small frightened boy who had endured to the extent of his courage. A boy who had lost his mother but a short time ago. The rod in Miss Strang's hand was a sceptre before which a boy was expected to abase himself, and having kissed it was accepted back into the warmth of her regard. In my father's hand it was a flail that separated a child from his tormentor as surely as the grain is separated from the chaff.

I watched. And it was as though an icicle was being thrust down my throat, past my gullet and into my stomach. I fingered my boy's jacket as I watched stroke after stroke being laid on John's small bottom. Every stroke of the hard fat leather made contact with the same inflamed band of red heated flesh. My father continued until the skin was broken and the surface was contused and raw, rubbed away to expose the wet dermal layer beneath, red and glossy and seeping blood. My brother had cast aside all pretensions to manly endurance and roared profusely, writhing and tearing at Miss Strang's grip on his arms. But to no avail. If anything his exertions seemed to encourage my father to greater effort.

Never had I seen such power and strength employed in the disciplining of a child. I looked at Miss Strang. Her face was still pale but there was a patch of colour high up on each cheek. Was she shocked at the punishment? Not so much at its severity, for she too was severe, but at the lack of restraint. The utter commitment to wielding the implement of chastisement, as a woodsman wields a sledgehammer, driving in a post with no thought for the wood other than to pound it ever deeper into the ground.

I fingered my jacket. And wondered how I would feel with a small boy like John at my mercy. I had seen him catch a butterfly, a large red admiral, beautiful and fragile. He had showed it to me between his hands. It had almost escaped. And then he had thrown it into a spider's web. It had fluttered helplessly caught on the sticky threads. And it hung there slowly tearing itself to bits. Its delicate wings disintegrating until it looked like a piece of torn rag. And although it was a horror to behold, it also fascinated me, so that I was unable to tear my eyes away. I shivered at such senseless cruelty. And yet it was not senseless. It was the proclamation of that power that built empires. Which eschewed sentimentality and soft womanly virtues. I fingered my boy's jacket again. Was I proud to be a boy?

And I looked at Miss Strang. And she smiled at me. A faint but reassuring smile. I knew that if she had beaten John the outcome would have been no different. That he would have still be unable to show the required fortitude. But just as a kiss may differ depending on whose are the lips that give it, so too with the whip on a boy's flesh. Every stroke my father gave was a cut of rejection. But it would not have been so with Miss Strang.

Even though John would have been reduced by his governess to a small sobbing child of five, each imprint of the tawse on his flesh would have been a caress, a sign of her love. A love that disciplines but never rejects. And in his writhing and agony, he would have known that. That she was not only his judge but also his saviour.

Eventually, my father stepped back.

"Well, Miss Strang, the boy clearly needs to be kept in petticoats. When he merits the return of his shirt and breeches, will be for you to decide."

He paused.

"And, Miss Strang, do come and see me when you have these brats tucked up in bed. There are one or two matters I wish to discuss with you."

When my father departed, John was kneeling on the seat of the prie dieu, sobbing, his hands clutching his buttocks.

I fingered my jacket. The beating that my father had inflicted on my brother had aroused me, just as the pictures of the boys being impaled had aroused me. I was fascinated by the sheer cruelty of it. And yet, I was also repelled. I wondered whether, if I had John at my mercy, I would have punished him as my father had done.

"Stand up John."

He did so and faced her one hand still on his bottom. The other rubbing his eyes with his knuckles.

"Hold out your hands."

He stretched them out, trembling, fearing further punishment. Miss Strang held them in hers, smiling at the still sobbing boy.

"Shhh. Stop crying."

She waited patiently, still holding his hands.

"Shhh. That is enough."

After a while he stopped crying and stood there. His shoulders were drooping and he looked as limp as the rag doll that had fallen to the floor. Miss Strang put her arm around him. He leant against her wanting to be reassured that his ordeal was over.

"Turn around, John."

I looked at the raw abraded skin and wondered how long it would be before he could sit comfortably. Miss Strang removed the safety pins from the dress and it fell down covering his bottom.

"Sit down at your desk, John. There is a little time before supper. You had better start the exercise that still has to be completed."

My brother eased himself with exquisite care on to the hard bench. He winced and gave a little gasp as his bottom bones pressed his sore flesh against the wooden surface. He leant over, trying to place most of his weight on to his left buttock.

"Sit up straight John. When I was a girl, if I leant like that I would be made to work with a book balanced on my head. And woe betide me, if it slipped off. And Oliver continue with your Latin."

She thumbed through the grammar and directed me to page 20.

"You will memorise the vocabulary on that page, and I will test you tomorrow morning. Simon, get out your arithmetic book and attempt the subtraction problems on page 78."

We worked quietly until supper time.

When we went into supper, John was white-faced, obviously dreading being seen in a dress. To add to his discomfiture, Miss Strang insisted that he take with him my rag doll, Amanda.

When Mrs Mountfield came in she seemed, unusually for her, a little preoccupied. However, that did not stop her commenting on our attire.

"My goodness, Miss Strang. It's all change here. No doubt about that. First, Miss Livia in boy's clothing and now the boy in petticoats. Well, my mother always said nothing calms a boy down more than being put in petticoats. A good spanking and a week in petticoats. That was her recipe for bringing my brother in line when he got out of hand."

"Thank you Mrs Mountfield. Perhaps we may have supper. It is an early bed for these children. And I have to spend some time with Mr Arbuthnot.

"Of course, Miss Strang. My apologies if I spoke out of turn."

"That is quite all right, Mrs Mountfield. John, please put your doll on the vacant chair next to you."

John turned red and looked as though he were about to burst into tears.

"And sit up straight. If I have to remind you about your posture again, you will be punished."

Supper was uneventful. Miss Strang seemed a little withdrawn and I and my brothers had no wish to incur further correction. When Mrs Mountfield returned to clear the table, she brought up the scrubbing brush that Miss Strang had promised would be placed in my bedroom that night as a deterrent. Simon returned his green button and we were told to tidy the schoolroom. Then, after an evening bedtime prayer we were sent to our rooms.

"And I will be looking in to see that you are all settled down in ten minutes."

When Miss Strang had left me, I lay there, my thoughts scampering around inside my head. My father had come as I imagined God would come at the Last Day. Bringing judgement and punishment. I remembered all those stories of how people would be calling out in their terror for the mountains to cover them. And that for the guilty there would be no escape and no mercy. Just as there had been no escape and no mercy for John.

My hand crept under the boy's nightshirt that I had been made to wear. And with my middle finger I gently stroked myself.

As I drifted off into sleep, I dreamt that John was again over the prie dieu. His green velvet dress hitched up. Mary was restraining him, her foot on the seat, and I held not the tawse but the new, thick, flexible dragon cane in my hand. I was still wearing boy's clothes, and in that vaporous world of dreams I was both sister and father to the boy stretched out before me. His buttocks were round and full of springy resilience. Smooth and delicious, and surprisingly unmarked. And I heard a voice like the sound of rumbling thunder telling me that they had been fashioned to receive both discipline and punishment. I swept the cane back and brought it down with all my force, twisting my wrist to speed it downwards. And I delighted at the whoosh of the rattan as it parted the still air, and at the solid smack as it impacted on soft flesh. But the boy made no sound and lay perfectly still. And I laid on another stroke and then another. And the stripes cut into his flesh and blood was trickling down his thighs. But still I continued. Cut after cut. Until his buttocks were sliced into ribbons of torn flesh.

And then he turned and looked at me.

"Are you proud of me father?"

And I knew from his deathly pallor that he was dead, and that I had killed him. I awoke to desperate sobbing.

(To be continued)