Hall of Infamy (19 page)

‘You see, Jamie, with these, the girl's state of mind may be monitored, yet as no nakedness is entailed, even the most prurient-minded could scarcely claim any impropriety.' He continued prodding for a few moments and Monique moaned again.

‘Hold your tongue, girl,' Mademoiselle Isobel said sharply. ‘I expect the Reverend will give you something to groan about, presently!'

‘All right, turn and bend over. Place your hands on the platform there,' the Reverend Dawes ordered in a slightly strangled tone. Monique obeyed, and Amelia caught her breath at the sight the girl displayed. She had a full bottom, and she might have as well have been naked for the extent to which the flogging drawers disguised the charm of her behind. She bent, corset creaking in protest, shapely legs straight, and as she bent the drawers appeared to tighten even more, though that seemed scarcely possible.

‘What is that, cotton?' Jamie put in, his voice slightly hoarse as well.

‘The finest cambric. Usually we use it for the ladies' pocket handkerchiefs,' Mademoiselle Isobel said.

‘That's why we need the leather strips,' the Reverend Dawes explained enthusiastically. ‘The front and back panels are so fine, and the stress on them so great, I expect that quite a few will rip through wear and tear and…'

He unleashed a yellow blur and the white-sheathed bottom quivered with the impact. The thwacking sound as the cane bit home made Amelia's own belly tense in sympathy. Monique's legs bowed slightly for a second and then straightened up again, but an ‘Ooh!' bore witness to the ferocity of the stroke.

‘The idea is,' the Reverend continued conversationally, as he lined up his next lash, ‘that the lacing strips can be re-used. When the panels split or rip, they can be replaced. A tedious job, perhaps…'

He struck again. Amelia saw no more than a yellow flicker, the cane cut through the air so fast, but she heard the thing crack across Monique's bottom and saw the buttocks quiver with the impact. This time, the shop-girl could not stop a squeal and she stamped three times with her high-heeled shoes before managing to straighten up into the prescribed position once again.

‘But not a skilled one. Mademoiselle can provide the panels, fashioned to the contours of the miscreants, and girls who split their drawers may be employed in sewing in new rears. Or fronts, should they split in that department!'

He struck again. This time the cane whipped across the girl's thighs and a strange whinnying sound was forced out of her mouth. Monique stamped her feet and wiggled her bottom desperately, and she had to be spoken to sharply by Mademoiselle before she would straighten her legs and assume the proper position again.

‘A most ingenious arrangement,' Jamie murmured with admiration. ‘Still, this pair has not split yet.'

The Reverend turned and smiled, flexing the cane between his powerful hands. ‘Quite right,' he said. ‘They seem to be standing up well, so far. Silk would be stronger, but I was hoping to keep to cotton, both for reasons of economy and because I do not want my girls giving themselves airs.'

At this, he looked straight at Amelia and she hurriedly dropped her eyes. The effect of this was that her gaze fell on her jutting breasts and the nipples that were sticking out, visible against the thin silk, as they seemed to do distressingly frequently. You can keep your silk, she thought mutinously. But she hardly breathed until the Reverend's attention moved back to the trembling Monique.

‘However,' the Reverend Dawes said with a dramatic flourish, ‘there is another test yet. You, girl, give me that sponge.'

The material constraining Monique's bottom and thighs was so thin, and so taut, that Amelia could already clearly see the welts that the Reverend's cane had raised on the girl's hindquarters; lines of pink glowing through the snow-white stuff. Monique gasped as the man applied the soaking sponge, thoroughly wetting the whole target area. Then she started whimpering strangely.

‘Is it shrinking?' Jamie asked in awe.

‘A little bit. I don't think these can get much tighter, really,' Mademoiselle chuckled.

What was not in question was that wetting the cotton made it more transparent. The welts showed through lividly now, and Amelia licked her lips. The now wet gusset revealed every detail of Monique's quim.

The Reverend stepped back and placed the cane across the moist material sheathing the fullest part of Monique's bottom. The shop-girl gave a little wail of fear and Amelia watched the plump cheeks clench in anticipation.

‘Relax them, girl. I'll have no clenching – relax them.'

Somehow Monique managed to comply and, without more ado, the Reverend lashed the proffered bottom once again. There was a subtly different sound as the cane impacted on bottom-cheeks constrained in wet cotton, and another shriek from Monique's lips. This time she stood and clutched her bottom, deaf to Mademoiselle Isobel's shocked admonishments. The girl shook her pretty head, and hopped from foot to foot for a full minute before turning a tearful and shamefaced look towards the man wielding the cane.

‘Feel that one, miss?'

‘Ooh, oh, yes, sir. It was terribly tight, your reverence, sir. Ooh. Ouch.'

‘Tighter than the others?'

‘Y-yes sir, quite a bit… ah… stingier on the wet.'

‘Excellent. Well, bend down again, girl.'

‘Ah, again?' Blinking away tears, Monique looked first at the Reverend and then at Mademoiselle, before turning back with obvious reluctance to the platform and taking up her position once more. The Reverend Dawes strode over to her and patted the damp seat of her drawers, causing the girl to wince and suck her breath in. The large man chuckled as he squeezed her bottom flesh appraisingly.

‘No splits. Excellent; these will do very well.'

Monique's bottom was moving in response to his probing; as his fingers moved down the cheeks to pass between her legs, she let out a groan. Amelia wondered crossly what this fingering could have to do with the Reverend's professed concern for the proprieties. Corporal correction was one thing, but it seemed to Amelia that this fondling was improperly intimate, and that Monique's moaning and writhing displayed an indecent response to such liberties. Of course, she reasoned as the girl's cries became more desperate, Monique was nothing but a shop-girl and little better could be expected from common sluts of that sort. Still, it was appalling that Amelia had to stand and watch the low-bred brute caress his trollop to what was obviously a climax, and she vowed to revenge herself on Monique, should the opportunity ever come her way.

At least she did not have to watch for very long. The girl soon started grunting and gasping in a most undignified manner and finally fell, squealing to her knees. She was given but the briefest of interludes to recover, then packed off to extricate herself from the whipping drawers and dress. Amelia sighed with relief as she watched the girl scurry away.

‘A most satisfactory experiment,' the Reverend said genially as he toyed with the cane. ‘I should like a dozen pairs initially, Mademoiselle, and two dozen extra back panels. Now, it only remains to enquire how the rubber version functions.'

Those predatory grey eyes locked onto Amelia's and suddenly her heart was hammering again.

‘My dear.' The Reverend Dawes inclined his head politely and indicated the platform with his cane. ‘Perhaps you would care to step this way?'

The joyous pealing of the distant church bells could be clearly heard from the nursery as the cousins were dressed in their Sunday best. Yet the sound failed to cheer Amelia. For one thing, the corsets had arrived from Mademoiselle Isobel's on the previous day, and Betsy was lacing her into the stays with a relish matched only by the nursery-maid's considerable strength.

‘Oof… ah… Please, Betsy, it's like a vice already… Ooh.' Amelia hung onto the bedstead for dear life, as the maid hauled at the laces with all her might.

Clara, already laced into her own white satin waspie, stood watching, looking startled and breathing carefully, to one side. All she wore was the corset and the usual silk stockings, this time supported by the new suspender drops with which the stays had come equipped. Thus, the white lace trim of the corset, the suspender straps and the silk stocking-tops provided the most delightful frame for the blonde girl's shaven quim.

Unfortunately, Amelia had no leisure to enjoy this prospect. Betsy placed a plump knee in the small of her back, to get even more purchase, and both girls grunted as the laces were forced tighter, and then tighter still.

When, a little later, they joined the rest of the Hope Hall household in the courtyard, Amelia felt no happier about the day. The collected maids all gloried in their full uniforms for once, hoisting long skirts out of the mire under Mrs Pritchard's disdainful gaze. They did not even have to undergo the humiliation of wearing collars. In contrast, once again Amelia and Clara had been given the absurd smocks to wear. Clara had then been issued with the usual frilly knickers but Amelia had had to endure even worse.

‘Now then Amelia, don't make a fuss, girl,' Jamie had said, smiling contently.

So it had been rubber bloomers again. The latex legs showed below the hem of the smock and they squeaked insistently as she walked, provoking all sorts of witty comments from Lady Alicia. And they rubbed, and rubbed, and rubbed. The worse thing of all was that Amelia knew only too well to whom she was squeaking towards across the park. There was no forgetting whose cold grey eyes would be waiting at the church.

All of which would have been sufficient to explain her distracted expression during the hymns, and the way she stared stonily at the back of Mrs Justice Ormorund in the pew in front of her during the sermon. But there was worse.

The Reverend Dawes had chosen a favourite line from Proverbs as his inspiration for the sermon.

‘There is a rod in pickle for the arrogant, and stripes prepared for the backs of fools,' he snarled, with barely disguised relish. It was not an especially cheerful text and, glancing furtively around the church, Amelia noticed that a few female cheeks had paled, and she observed several slender hands tremble on their hymnals as the rector of Hatherby expounded on his theme. ‘A whip for the horse, a bridle for the ass and a rod for the fool's back!' the rector exhorted from the pulpit, cracking his hand against the oaken structure as he did so, producing retorts that echoed around the church and provoked visible flinching among certain of the more comely members of the congregation.

The Reverend Dawes's lip curled as he elaborated on the words ‘whip for the horse', and his grey eyes stared so hard at someone seated to the rear that Amelia, along with most of the rest of the congregation, turned to look at the trembling girl in a modest maid's uniform sitting at the back of the church. She recognised the red-haired Rose from their encounter in the birch groves. Rose kept her eyes downcast, but Amelia could tell from the girl's blush that she was perfectly well aware of the Reverend's attention.

A plump blonde farm girl received similar treatment when the good rector turned to the value of bridles when dealing with asses. Then, to her horror, Amelia found herself frozen to her pew by the man's basilisk stare, as he expounded on the value of rods when it came to the backs of fools, with all too evident enthusiasm.

‘Arrogance, disobedience, wilfulness, all are forms of foolishness, and all may be mitigated by the application of the firm corrective rod!' he boomed as Amelia hung her head, horribly aware that half the church was now following the preacher's lead and staring at her. Her rubber bloomers were

driving her to distraction now and she furtively tried to ease her position just as he paused. To her horror, a loud rubbery creak rang out in the sudden silence. There was a nervous girlish titter from somewhere to Amelia's left, and then the distinctive sound of a sharp slap and gasp of pain.

‘There is a rod in pickle for the arrogant,' the Reverend repeated in stentorian tones, once the commotion had ceased, ‘and I think we may safely predict that it will not be steeping there for much longer!'

A knowing chuckle rippled around the church. Amelia stared miserably at her silk-sheathed knees and tried not to think about where the taut rubber was chafing.

The walk back from church was no more cheering. Amelia and Clara, together with all the Hope Hall maids, walked back solemn-faced and subdued. Lord and Lady Alex, Jamie and Mrs Pritchard, on the other hand, were positively animated and jolly. They swapped witticisms and pleasantries, and affected puzzlement when Amelia did not join the general jollity.

The rubber drawers were vexing her now and the corset's grip was equally unrelenting. But the discomfort occasioned by her underclothing was but part of the reason for Amelia's misery.

She was dreading the famous Sunday Service. All Amelia's recent experience had not inured her to public humiliation, and she knew that many of the Whippery seats were bound to be filled that afternoon. Also, she was truly frightened of the birch. She had only ever had it once before, and that had been a light switching at school. Light or not, she remembered the experience with terror. The thought of a more severe birching made her feel faint.

‘What – what is the birch like, Amelia?' Clara asked with frightened eyes, as they waited in the nursery parlour to be summoned.

The cousins had been left with the nursery-maid after a cheerless luncheon of bread and water shared with a subdued and ashen-faced Betsy. Jamie had left the girls to their crust repast and gone down to the dining room for cold pheasant and claret.

‘What is it like?' Betsy looked as if she was about to cry. ‘Two words for a proper birching, girl. Just two words: red hell.' She put a knuckle in her mouth and started chewing it.

‘What are you worried about, anyway?' Amelia demanded of her cousin crossly. ‘You did not even get a black mark in the book!'

‘Jamie – Master Jamie, said he would mark me down so that I got a dozen anyway.' Clara's voice had died almost to a whisper. ‘On general pr-pr-principles. He said that I ought to know…'

‘A lot that little beast knows about principles,' Amelia hissed. Both Betsy and Clara stiffened as she spoke and she suddenly felt afraid. What if these sycophantic creatures reported what she had said? she thought, appalled. Could she trust them? No, of course not. Betsy disliked her and loved nothing more than to see her betters thrashed. And Clara? She seemed to think that Jamie was some sort of demi-god!

So Amelia held her tongue and tried not to listen as Betsy expounded on the terrors of the birch.

‘Next to the tawse, taken on the hand, I think the birch is the worse. A heavy cane, see, after a dozen or so good hard strokes, it dulls the nerves a little. The birch, though, that is a surface-scourer. It doesn't bruise, you see. There is no weight to it and the nerves never get stunned and numbed. But, oh, how it scours your skin! There does not seem to be a peak of pain after the first dozen, or the second. It just—' her voice had become very quiet, no more than a hoarse little whisper ‘—it just gets worse and worse and worse.'

The glum trio was interrupted at that point by the arrival of Mrs Pritchard. The housekeeper regarded the three of them with smug satisfaction.

‘Right, Amelia and Clara, come with me. Betsy, time to put on your flogging smock. Then you can join us in the Rod Room. Quick as you can. Come along you two, there is a little job for you to do.'

Soon Amelia and Clara found themselves following Mrs Pritchard down the long corridor, now familiar to them from their visits to the barber's. Amelia felt the churning knot in her stomach grow tighter with every step. Her legs seemed to have grown inordinately heavy. It was almost as if there was a force, some malevolent radiation, pushing her back. She was compelled to walk forward to her fate, but a growing sense of dread made it ever more difficult to progress along that doleful passage. Mrs Pritchard seemed to have no such problems, however. She fairly skipped along.

‘Not like the old days, but with you two and the new kitchen-maid it will be a decent Sunday Service for a change. The last few weeks, there has barely been a brace of bottoms to be blistered.' The woman's lips curled contemptuously; she clearly felt that the very idea of such thin pickings was an insult to the traditions of the house. ‘Some may call me old-fashioned, but I say that there should always be at least a half a dozen ready, all nice and shivery, for the rod!'

Amelia had assumed that they would march right up to the Whippery, but Mrs Pritchard paused halfway down the frieze-lined corridor. Selecting a key from her collection, she unlocked a dark oaken door and threw it open.

Amelia felt her knees weaken. So this was where Betsy had brought the birches they had cut on their return to Hope Hall. There was the pile of twigs, their leaves curled and shrivelled now, stacked up to one side. It was not that that made her heart hammer in her breast, however.

The Rod Room was big, no mean ante-chamber but a long hall lit by a row of windows set high in the far wall. First Amelia's attention was drawn to the canes. There were dozens of them, arranged on racks hanging from the walls. No, she realised as she noticed the half barrels stuffed with rods and the coils of uncut rattan hanging from hooks, more like hundreds. The room smelt odd, of linseed mixed with green wood and something that might have been the tang of vinegar. Something

told Amelia that, from that moment on, this pungent mixture would always represent the true smell of fear.

‘Now girls, this should have been done already, so you had better get busy. Take those branches—' Mrs Pritchard indicated the pile of recently cut birch ‘—and start stripping off the leaves. If you have not done sufficient on my return, you may rest assured that you will have a black mark entered in the big book.' The housekeeper favoured them with a cold smile. ‘Yes, there is still time, just!' She indicated some small three-legged stools. ‘Sit down there and get on with your task.' She looked around the grim chamber with evident satisfaction, then took a deep breath, as if drinking in the gloomy atmosphere, and turned on her heel.

Amelia did not want any more marks in the big book. She had been sent to inscribe the black cross by her name on the previous day. The journey, alone down the long corridor, had seemed even worse than in Mrs Pritchard's irksome company. Somehow, she had done as she had been told, pausing at the entries, looking at the marks inscribed by the various maids. It had been some small crumb of comfort to see that other girls, and Betsy in particular, had black crosses stalking their names. Some comfort, but not, alas, enough.

The Honourable Amelia Colinbrooke was thoroughly frightened now. The whole day might have been designed to force her to dwell on her impending fate. How much would it hurt? She tried to remember the birching at school as she stripped the leaves away. Then she tried not to remember; to think about something else, a task nigh impossible in that place.

‘What an awful lot of canes,' Clara said in a small voice. ‘What do you think are in all those barrels, Amelia?'

Amelia glared at her cousin. Clara was sitting next to her on one of the little stools, bent over the birch branch she was stripping of its leaves. They sat in a pool of light from one of the high windows, the better to see their work. The sunbeams made Clara's golden curls glitter and made her cream smock glow angelically. The girl's face was angelic too, innocent and apprehensive, as she turned questioningly towards her cousin.

‘How should I know?' Amelia snapped. ‘Nothing good in this damned place, I would warrant.' She had wondered about the rows of big barrels herself. If it was wine or beer, the vinegary smell did not bode well for the palatability of the contents. She shrugged and picked up another leafy bough to strip.

The cousins had not finished their task when Amelia heard a commotion at the door, for they had cut a good load of birch branches on that sunny afternoon. She looked down anxiously at the prepared twigs which lay denuded at her feet, and wondered if it would be adjudged enough. Fortunately Mrs Pritchard seemed satisfied, more concerned with issuing fresh orders than inspecting the cousins' work. For the maids had arrived with her and Mrs Pritchard lost no time in giving them their instructions.

‘Kitty, Lucy, Betsy, you will show these new girls how to prepare their rods before braiding your own. Emma, as you have not yet been to the groves, you will take some of the young ladies' switches. I am sure they will not begrudge you a few twigs! Make haste, girls, for I shall be back in half an hour to take you through.'

Amelia looked up from her withy in time to see the

housekeeper's black receding back as she swept out of the room. She turned her attention to the new arrivals and her eyes widened in surprise. In place of their usual uniforms, the maids were wearing short white smocks, similar to her own.