Rectory of Correction (5 page)

‘For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful.' Amelia kept her eyes on her plate of porridge as she spoke, but oatmeal was not what the familiar words brought to her mind that morning.

‘Amen.' There was a real and ominous relish in the way the Reverend Dawes pronounced the word.

‘Tuck in, girls,' he said as he attacked his breakfast. ‘You will all need to keep your strength up. I mean to exercise your bodies, as well as your mischievous minds!'

There was a strange atmosphere around the table. Amelia did not dare leave her porridge, but she found the unsugared gruel very hard to eat. Indeed, she found it hard to think about anything but the extraordinary friction produced by her flogging drawers.

Before Faith had let them don their uniforms she had gone around each of the girls, tightening a vertical side lace here, pulling on the horizontal thong that linked the drawers to the corset there, until each of the trainee's drawers gripped her loins tighter than an anaconda's coils. The net result was that Amelia felt she was being slowly crushed by the things. The upwards pressure of the lacing was so great that a crease of cotton had been pulled right up, and into, her labial folds. Simply sitting still was a distracting ordeal. Moving even a fraction brought tears to her eyes.

Amelia somehow swallowed another spoonful, and looked across the table. Charlotte had a glazed expression in her brown eyes and seemed to be having trouble eating, too. Linnet was pale and kept her eyes downcast as she slowly chewed with the demeanour of someone eating worms. Bella was visibly fidgeting, reaching down from time to time, all too obviously trying to ease the pressure of her drawers. Only Kirsty ate the porridge with what seemed like relish, though, sitting next to her, Gretchen had scraped her bowl quite clean.

‘Well, girls, I think it is time to start your lessons.' The Reverend Dawes put down his knife and fork and looked around. ‘Six months is not very long, and we shall need to use every second of it if I am to have a hope of introducing you to the benefits of truly rigorous discipline.' He looked around the table, fixing each of the six girls with his gimlet stare in turn. ‘And correcting your all too manifold faults.'

Amelia kept her gaze on her plate, but she sensed his gaze fall on her, a cold prickle of fear stroking her spine until she felt his hungry stare pass on to rest upon another victim.

‘Very well,' he said at last. ‘I think we might as well make a start. If you have finished, girls, we might go over to the schoolroom. Bella can have her three for lateness, and both she and Amelia will get six of the best for fidgeting at breakfast. Well, girls, what are you waiting for? Let us get on with the day!'

 

Swoosh
...
Crack
!

‘Oooh... ah... si-six, ah, oh, th-thank you, sir.'

The contortions of Bella's face were truly a sight to be seen. Amelia might have enjoyed the vision a lot more, however, had she not known she was about to take the girl's place.

The schoolroom was a grim little hall with bare floorboards and a few barred windows. Six small desks with attached wooden seats were arranged in two ranks of three, facing the front. There awaited a table and a blackboard for the Reverend and, with sickening inevitability, a rack supporting a selection of belts, paddles and canes.

‘I apologise for the spartan nature of the room, girls,' the Reverend Dawes had said jovially as his class filed glumly into the cheerless chamber. ‘We can decorate it as we go along.'

Bella had been sent to select a whippy rattan cane and made to bend over the Reverend's big table, facing the rest of the class. Without more ado he had taken his jacket off and set to his work. Amelia nursed few illusions about the Reverend's zeal, but her heart nearly stopped as she watched Arabella being magisterially thrashed.

The man was truly a brute, she thought. Each meaty crack as his cane lashed into Arabella's flesh produced a fluttery burst of panic in Amelia's belly as if in echo. Utter agony distorted Arabella's lovely face as the next stroke fell. Amelia watched, transfixed, at her little desk. Was there no escape from this? she asked herself in growing terror. Her hammering heart answered in the negative.

The class watched in appalled, almost paralysed silence. The only sound apart from that of stick on tender flesh was Arabella's whimpering as she tried to gain control of herself.

‘If you have quite finished grunting and groaning, girl,' the Reverend said disdainfully at last, ‘that completes the six for fidgeting. I hope you will remember them and, in future, sit still for your meals.' He looked up at the other girls, his gaze raking the rows of desks, for all the world like a hunting harrier quartering a reed bed in search of prey. Amelia sat so still that, for a moment, she quite forgot to breathe.

‘I shall operate a system of escalating tariffs. That means you will not receive the same punishment for a repeat offence,' the Reverend informed them. There was nothing jovial about his tone now. His face was set and his voice as dry as the dust of any catacomb. ‘I require and expect improvement. If it is not forthcoming, you must expect more severe penalties for further infractions. I trust I make myself clear?'

He stepped towards Arabella's bottom and reached down. Amelia could not see what he was doing from her seat, but it seemed he was squeezing the recently caned flesh, for Arabella's face contorted in pain.

‘This is a magnificent bottom, Arabella. Fine and big and firm. Excellent for the rod, if I may say so. Such well developed buttocks and strong thighs will take a healthy count.'

The expression on Arabella's face had changed to rather startled distraction. The girl closed her eyes tight and bit her bottom lip. Amelia could not but wonder what the Reverend was doing with his fingers. She felt a surge of anger course through her. How dare the swine? she thought with impotent fury. Has he no respect at all for the proprieties?

‘Now, your three for tardiness, my dear.'

The expression on Bella's face changed once again, becoming a picture of apprehension in a second. Without more ado the Reverend Dawes stepped back and raised his cane. Amelia watched the yellow stick go up; she could no more have looked away from it than she could have ignored a snake that was poised to strike.

Whoosh
...
Crack
! The venomous stroke was too fast to follow.

‘Ooh... ah, ah, ah. Seven, th-thank you, sir,' Arabella managed between gasps as tears coursed down her flushed cheeks.

With every lash, Amelia knew, her own appointment with that blistering rod was coming closer. Her heart was thumping in her breast now. Goosepimples bloomed like a rash of tiny flowers on her arms and legs. If only the damned drawers were not so distractingly tight. If only she had made more effort to sit still. If only...

The cane came down again, the snapping sound echoing around the little schoolroom. Amelia heard Gretchen, who was seated to her right, give a terrified squeak. There was a long pause before Bella could say anything. She merely grimaced and made a strange hissing sound.

‘Oooh... that was tight, sir! Ah, eight... thank you, sir.'

The last stroke was a sizzler. Amelia knew before it struck. This time the sound of the cane cutting through the air was the leaner, meaner whooshing of a nastier blow. She heard the ripping of thin fabric, blended with the sound of hard cane punishing firm flesh. Then all she heard was Bella's howling. Meaty bottom or not, a glance at the girl's face, let alone the shrieking she was making, would have told any observer what a wicked stroke the Reverend had unleashed.

Bella's control seemed to have deserted her completely. She stood, though she had received no permission, and clutched her bottom cheeks, jiggling up and down and howling. The Reverend stood aside and watched her with a cocked eyebrow and sceptical expression, waiting patiently until his victim settled down.

‘Oooh! Sorry, sir – th-that was a real blisterer...' Bella got back into position hurriedly. ‘Nine, sir, th-thank you, sir,' she gasped.

‘A disgraceful exhibition, girl. You have earned yourself a detention this evening. I shall essay to instil in you a little self-control. One thing you will learn here, girls,' he turned his gimlet gaze on the rest of the class, ‘is how to comport yourself like well brought up young ladies whilst under the corrective rod. Very well, Bella, you may resume your place. Now then...'

The blood began to pound in Amelia's temples as she found herself transfixed by the Reverend's gaze. He swung the cane casually and Amelia found her eyes drawn to the thing and then back to his pitiless stare.

‘Amelia, my dear. Perhaps you would care to step this way.'

 

‘Now then, girls, who can tell me what this is? Amelia, surely you must know?'

Amelia blinked and tried to focus on the figure in front of her, a feat that took every ounce of her self-control.

‘A – a martinet, sir?'

The Reverend Dawes gave her a nod of approbation and swished the wicked little whip through the air for emphasis.

‘It is indeed a martinet. Gretchen, stand out, girl, and bend over the table.'

Amelia was in a state of such distraction that she could hardly concentrate on what was happening. Her own caning, by some miracle, had not split her whipping drawers, but the Reverend had laid the six strokes on with real zeal, perilously close together, just below the middle of her bottom. These welted buttocks were now throbbing painfully against the hard wood of the bench seat of her desk as Amelia struggled to sit still.

The flogging drawers seemed to have become even tighter, the act of sitting down increasing the remorseless pressure against her crotch. The corset made her sit up rigidly, and if she wanted to write in the notebook on the desk before her, her only option was to lean forward, stays creaking, from the waist. At least this meant the fiendish tension on the lattice of lacing temporarily eased, reducing the force that tugged the cotton of her drawers into her most delicate folds. Sitting back brought back every ounce of excruciating pressure. She hoped the Reverend would soon make her write in the book again.

‘Write it down in your books, girls, and draw an illustration, while Gretchen helps me to demonstrate the effect.'

The first lesson of the course was ‘instruments of correction'. After caning Arabella and Amelia, the Reverend Dawes had informed them that every week would start with this cheery subject.

‘It will benefit you greatly, girls, to learn the names and uses of the principal implements for bestowing corporal correction. Now, as we have two miscreants to chastise, I suggest we begin the lesson with an introduction to the rattan cane.'

After the caning, Charlotte had been called out to help demonstrate the efficacy of hand spanking. She had proved a refractory subject, squealing and kicking mightily as she was spanked over the Reverend's knee and receiving a detention as a result of the fuss she made. In contrast, Kirsty had taken several tawse strokes on the hand with a practised impassivity that bordered on insouciance. Now, it seemed, it was Gretchen's turn.

The older woman glanced back at her companions mournfully, as she walked towards the front of the class.

‘Bend over the table and hoist your skirts. No, the other way. Let the girls see that great big bum!'

Gretchen bent over the table reluctantly, her bottom pointing towards Amelia and seeming even bigger than before, gripped as it was in the impossibly tight cotton of her whipping drawers. The Reverend put a hand on the mounds, almost reverently. Gretchen gave a little wail of fear.

‘You have a fine bottom, my dear, made for whipping.' The clergyman stroked the tautly sheathed rounds appraisingly. He took his time, apparently quite unconcerned about what his audience might think. Gretchen whimpered in anticipation and Amelia watched, dry-mouthed, as the woman's buttocks flinched.

At last the Reverend stood back and raised the martinet. It had a turned wooden handle, about a foot in length, and a dozen rather stiff looking leather thongs, each a little longer.

Swish
...! The thongs whipped through the air and across Gretchen's bottom. She gave a gasp and shifted her stance.

‘If I wished to administer a proper martinet flogging, I should require this girl to uncover.'

The Reverend struck again. Amelia blinked as she watched Gretchen's cheeks quiver like a tuning fork in response to the impact of the thongs. Gretchen gave a prolonged moan and raised her right leg, before putting it down again.

‘However, as this is a demonstration rather than a punishment, the subject has been allowed the modesty of retaining her drawers.'

The third stroke lashed the back of Gretchen's right thigh, hissing into the tight cotton that gripped her limb and wrenching a strangulated groan from her lips.

‘Which, of course, means she can barely feel it.'

This time he lashed the left thigh. Gretchen gave a startled cry and stamped both feet in turn.

‘The lashes being, after all, rather light, and the implement being one merely for surface scouring of the skin.'

The final stroke was harder than before, and whipped into the centre of Gretchen's bottom. The woman shook her blonde head, stamping her feet and snorting in a way that put Amelia in mind of a carthorse galled by hornets.