Bouquet of Bamboo

by Sarah Steel

  ‘I am a good girl, in truth, sir, and I thank thee for giving succour to myself and my sisters, but—’

  He held up his hand, and then waved it dismissively recalling the day his three distant cousins arrived, orphaned by the Napoleonic wars and quite destitute, in a pony and trap. ‘You will obey me, Rebecca. Am I to be rewarded for my charity by impudence, impertinence and improvidence? Across the table, now, my girl, for I mean to do my duty.’

  ‘No, please, sir…’

  ‘You three girls are wanton and most wicked. I will break your venal spirits and instil the righteous fear of God in each of you. Bend down across that tabletop my little sugared whore. Down across the table with you now.’

  Abruptly subdued, she submitted to his will. Spreading her naked thighs slightly apart, she dug her toes into the Turkish rug as her nipples kissed the polished mahogany and her full breasts slowly flattened their soft warmth into their own reflection.

  The parson stretched out a dominant forefinger and tapped the swell of her right buttock. The flesh dimpled and the whole cheek quivered a little. ‘Draw your legs together, harlot. Have you no shame?’

  The wet pink of her gleaming fig disappeared as she squeezed her thighs together obediently.

  He had snatched away the two blue ribbons fluttering from her twisting fingers before she undressed for her chastisement. Holding them, he stepped up behind her, pressing himself against the naked warmth of her thighs. His urgent manhood, already prompted into thickness by his wrathful ire, stirred and straightened as his taut moleskin breeches kissed her soft flesh. Trying to ignore the tumult building in his groin, he brought her wrists together and bound them tightly against the small of her back with the first ribbon, leaving her hands quite helpless just above the swell of her bare bottom. In his exertion to master her and bind her thus, he was forced to pinion the naked girl down by planting his knee in the small of her back. In doing so, the bulge of his cock briefly but disturbingly rode the ripeness of her naked rump. He swallowed hard to relieve the tightening in his throat.

  The second ribbon he brought down to her ankles, tying it fast around them. Her legs and thighs now pressed tightly together, Rebecca’s buttocks bulged invitingly. Then he bent over again and snatched up a single satin slipper, thumbing its supple sole.

  ‘A most fitting instrument for dispensing your penance and punishment, young lady,’ he decreed. ‘Let us see if you will still desire, nay, demand, the kiss of a satin slipper at your flesh within this quarter hour, hmm?’

  ‘You are most mean and cruel, sir!’ she wailed into the polished wood at her soft lips. ‘Mean and—’

  ‘Silence! All I presume to hear from you, my little harlot, are the words of your confession and true contrition. This being the Sabbath, you have sore need to be released from the coils of your wretched devices and dark desires. Speak.’

  ‘No sir, I will not.’

  ‘It is a bold and impudent jade you are, Rebecca. Let us see, shall we, if this slipper applied judiciously to your naked haunches will not spill forth words of repentance.’

  ‘Never!’

  During the silence that followed her rebellion, she squeezed her upturned cheeks together while the parson sniffed the sole of the slipper, and then furtively licked its soft suppleness.

  ‘Well, girl?’

  The young woman bent over the table remained stubbornly silent.

  The satin slipper spoke in her stead, barking sharply as it was brought down repeatedly across her rounded buttocks. She angled her knees inwards as she writhed under the stern chastisement, her skidding nipples raking their pointed peaks into the mahogany.

  Swish, crack! Swish, crack! The stinging slipper whispered malevolently as it struck the jiggling buttocks again and again. After the ninth searing blow the parson paused and absently brought the warm sole up to his lips again. He kissed it fleetingly, and then slapped it harshly down against his moleskin-sheathed thigh. ‘I demand to hear your words of repentance, Jezebel.’

  ‘No. I will defy you, sir. I will defy—’

  ‘Daughter of Gehenna!’ he snarled, plying the slipper viciously, and she screamed shrilly as it lashed down to scorch and scald her six more times in rapid succession – rapid, savage succession. And each blow addressed the smooth crown of her scarlet left buttock.

  ‘Speak, girl. I desire, and demand, to hear true words of atonement spill from your stubborn lips. Own your sin and admit your shame.’

  Sobbing as she writhed in her bondage, the punished nude trod the Turkish rug awkwardly with her feet, and the parson stood directly behind her addressing the curved right buttock with the slipper’s hot sole. ‘Repent, girl.’

  ‘Damn you, sir!’

  Swish, crack! Swish, crack!

  Six blistering strokes ravished her pale right buttock, turning its soft swell a cruel shade of crimson.

  Perspiring freely, the parson stood back to peruse his handiwork. ‘Now your rump is as red as the lips of a Drury Lane drab, young lady. And, to the grave peril of your soul, a Drury Lane drab is what you will become if you insist on spending my monies on ribbons and satin slippers. What, jade, you seek to speed your passage into licentiousness? Remember, my pretty little whore, that bare feet are well suited to the penitent. Satin slippers, indeed. To quicken your steps to perdition? “She that runneth hasteneth to her folly and despair”. Luke, chapter four.’

  A tiny trickle of wetness glistened at the juncture where her squeezed fig peeped below her crimsoned cheeks. The parson grunted thickly and swiped the slipper harshly against the wet cunny.

  ‘I confess!’ she cried, writhing in renewed anguish.

  Briefly lost in a trance, he examined the wet stain on the slipper’s sole. ‘What, girl, you confess?’ he asked vaguely.

  ‘Yes sir, I will own all,’ she whimpered.

  ‘I await your full contrition.’

  She sobbed for a moment, and then rapidly confessed to all of which she stood accused. The frivolity. The vanity. The unpardonable largesse when times and circumstances were so straightened.

  ‘Fair words, young lady. Fair words, and meekly spoken. You have taken unto yourself a bridle and you scold and muzzle your pert tongue most seemingly. I am pleased.’

  ‘As you say, sir.’

  ‘But what remains to be said? What more do I need to hear, girl?’

  ‘I repent me of my sins, sir, and beseech you to rule me with thy rod of righteousness.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Do your duty by me, sir, and do with my sinful flesh what you deem fit and proper.’

  The parson surreptitiously and inquisitively touched his tongue-tip to the wet stain on the slipper’s sole, before levelling it up above the squirming cheeks, whilst squirming her engorged nipples into the table’s polished surface, Rebecca emitted a series of low, carnal moans.

  Taking these to be the true sounds of sorrow and remorse, the parson gripped the slipper fiercely. ‘Whisper your penance as I beat you, girl. It will cleanse you of all ungodliness.’

  Inching up onto her toes, Rebecca pressed her pubic mound against the table’s bevelled edge, and the smooth wood received the slippery crown of her vulva, pressing firmly against her clitoris.

  Crack! Crack! Crack!

  The parson swiped the slipper down, biting it into the blaze of her punished cheeks. At each remorseless stroke the naked girl thrust the warmth of her juicy fig into the hard wood. With each merciless stroke she rode the smooth mahogany, jerking and tightening her ravished cheeks in mounting ecstasy.

  ‘I will make and keep thee chaste,’ the parson snarled, oblivious to her lascivious self-pleasuring against the table’s edge.

  ‘Beat me, sir! Oh beat me! I am a sinner and must suffer sorrow at full measure!’

  The perfume, the very scent of Sodom from her weeping pussy, pervaded the room, stabbing at the
churchman’s flared nostrils. Snuffing up her feral odours, his hand spasmed and the slipper dropped silently to her naked feet.

  Staggering slightly, as if he had partaken of too much claret, he turned away from the naked girl sprawled across the table. Breathing sharply, he clutched his groin and climaxed violently inside his moleskin breeches.

  Warmed hare soup, an excellent saddle of Canterbury mutton served with capers and followed by Stilton and port, made a most agreeable dinner. In all conscience, the parson would have accepted a lighter supper of toasted cheese and four penny ale. Stern stringencies, he reflected, pouring out another pint of the capital port, must be more strictly observed.

  After dinner he busied himself with the pile of dusty papers concerning the case he proposed to bring against the rural dean at the Courts Consistory in the Spring term following Rogation Sunday. The rural dean was evidencing, the parson felt, somewhat popish tendencies. And what would follow? Schism, doubt and a scandal. The matter of the rural dean’s Romish proclivities must be brought to book, no matter what feline wiles the bishop brought to bear as a result. Mindful of the time told to him by the half-hunter watch at his elbow, he ploughed on through the thicket of fine theological points he was arranging to place as pleas against the rural dean.

  Silence filled the study. The glowing logs settled softly in the grate, sending fierce orange sparks shooting up the wide black chimney. His eyes flickered from the page before him. The half-hunter warned the parson it had just passed the tenth hour. Soon it would be midnight. Midnight, and the Sabbath spent.

  After rolling up his legal documents and tidying them away in the recesses of his cluttered desk, he snuffed out the candles in their pewter sconces. Rising, he left the darkened study and climbed the stairs. It was his intent and purpose to visit the bedroom of Judith, the elder of the three distant cousins, and discharge his stern duty.

  Standing at the door of Judith’s bedroom, the parson brought his ear gently to the wood. His throat tightened and his fingers twisted feverishly in response to the low, sweet moans emanating from within. It was just as the housekeeper had said. The wench was wantonly indulging in a bout of self-pleasuring. Soiled and stained bed sheets unearthed from the laundry basket told their own tale. He held his breath, wishing his loudly beating heart would be still, the better to hear the young woman at her sins beyond the closed door. Then a soft shriek pierced the dark silence. He twisted the doorknob violently and stormed into the bedroom.

  A flickering taper cast a dim glow over the bed. On it, lolling back almost drunkenly against the bolster, Judith gazed up at him in wide-eyed alarm. Wriggling, she tightened her hands over her cunny, and between her squeezing arms, her bunched breasts bulged.

  ‘So this is how it is, girl,’ he seethed. ‘Not joined in prayer as is meet and fitting for the Sabbath tide, I see your hands have been at the devil’s work.’

  ‘No sir, I was just—’

  ‘Whore,’ he snarled.

  She clutched the hem of her linen shift, which was hiked up around her hips and thighs.

  ‘Cover your maidenhead, girl. Have you abandoned all shame and decency?’

  Whimpering softly, she covered her cunny with her cupped hands. Her firm breasts burgeoned within the tight linen binding them. The thin material sculpted the delicious mounds, clinging to the perspiration-damp curves. The ripe bosom heaved, rising and falling after her bout of exertion and the tumult of sexual excitement.

  ‘You have stumbled upon Eve’s knowledge, whore.’ He licked his dry lips as he spied two berry-red nipples peeping boldly through the taut linen. ‘The knowledge of carnal sinfulness. You have tasted, nay, you have eaten, forbidden fruit, have you not?’ His nose quivered as it caught the haunting whiff of her sweet musk.

  ‘I did not mean to sin, sir,’ she whispered.

  ‘Do not lie, young woman. This is not the first occasion you have been so wicked, is it? You have bitten deeply into the apple of abomination, I believe, the wretched fruit of wormwood. And that worm within has entered into thee, wench.’

  ‘No, sir,’ she protested weakly.

  ‘I see how you give lusty glances to the waggoners that pass by. It is a canker within you, girl. It burns, does it not?’

  ‘Burns?’ she echoed.

  ‘There,’ he roared, jabbing a forefinger down at the hands cupping her cunny. ‘You must be thrashed.’

  ‘No, please, I beg you, sir!’

  ‘I would be unkind not to punish you, girl. Unkind and unjust if I was to let these sins go unpunished. Turn over this instant.’

  ‘Out of modesty I would not, sir.’

  ‘Modesty?’ he thundered. ‘I mean to punish you. Turn over and present your buttocks.’

  Judith squealed and flipped over onto her belly, burying her anxious face in the bolster. The linen shift still rode her hips, fully exposing her beautiful bottom to his stern gaze. He took a step closer to the bed, and the soft cheeks squeezed together in a spasm of dread.

  ‘It being the Sabbath, and you being taken in your sin, it becomes my solemn duty to beat you, Judith, to beat your bare buttocks.’

  ‘No, pray, do not speak of beating me, sir, please!’

  ‘It is my solemn duty to beat your bare, brazen buttocks, girl,’ he reiterated coldly. ‘You shall suffer the full twelve strokes.’

  ‘No, I beseech you!’ she wailed, writhing as her sentence was passed.

  ‘The full twelve strokes, and at each stroke you will name one of the dozen apostles. If your memory fails you, the whipping will commence all over again.’

  She gripped the bolster between her clench fists and sobbed into its soft whiteness.

  ‘It is well said that idle hands do tempt the devil, girl. So be it. When you have been well whipped, we must make those hands busy, must we not?’

  Squirming deeper into the bolster and mattress, her only answer was a muffled sob. As she pressed herself down into her bed of shame, her naked bottom cheeks wobbled deliciously. The parson, gripping the brass bedstead until his knuckles whitened, growled quietly. And as his growl became a soft, carnal groan, she bucked against the bed, lifting her rump as if eager for the taste of pain he had promised to impose upon her nakedness.

  ‘Where is your Psalter?’ he demanded. ‘The Psalter you should have been attentive to this Sabbath tide?’

  Raising her head out of meek submission and twisting her face up to his, she nodded in silence towards her dresser. He turned, followed by her anxious eyes. On the pear wood dresser rested the large black Tewksbury Psalter. He gathered it up solemnly and returned to her bedside with it. Opening the book with due reverence, he thumbed the pages. Grunting softly, he paused to extract the bookmark – a broad strip of pale vellum four fingers wide and some eleven inches long, as strong as it was supple.

  Judith shivered and clenched her thighs together as the Tewksbury Psalter was snapped closed. Then she moaned and buried her face in the bolster again as the tip of the vellum bookmark skimmed the curves of her fear-clenched buttocks.

  ‘Be still and obedient while I speak to you of wickedness, girl,’ the parson said quietly, dangling the length of supple vellum just above her taut cheeks. ‘Give your haunches up to my leather and contemplate both the nature of your sins and the penance I propose to meet out to you.’

  Obediently, she inched her bare bottom up towards him and her soft cheeks kissed the dangling length of hide submissively. Whimpering softly into the bolster, she stretched at full length across her bed to receive the stinging homily. But then, as the parson’s withering words burned a deeper flame of shame into her face, she shrank timorously from the teasing torment of the vellum at her buttocks.

  ‘Bottom up if you will, girl.’

  ‘No, please, sir…’

  ‘And be so good as to recite the venerable names of the sainted twelve,’ he commanded, ‘as I thrash you. As I t
hrash your sinful flesh.’ He raised the vellum up and whipped it back down again. The first stroke licked her upturned cheeks with a vicious snap that left a blazing broad pink band across her quivering bottom.

  ‘Simon!’ she cried.

  He raised the vellum again, and held it aloft. The second stroke, delivered smartly after a deliberate pause, lashed her quivering cheeks devotedly, burning a second, deeper pink badge of shame into her tender flesh.

  ‘Peter,’ she groaned, naming the second apostle.

  Resting one bent knee on the mattress, and steadying himself by gripping the brass bedstead with one hand, the parson loomed large over the defenceless, twice-striped bottom of the quaking sinner below him. He struck again, relishing her just penance.

  ‘James!’ she gasped.

  Snap, crack!

  ‘John!’

  Snap, crack!

  ‘Matthew!’

  All twelve strokes were delivered with equal severity, eliciting sharp squeals and soft moans from the parted lips of the whipped girl, but she somehow managed to name all twelve apostles correctly.

  ‘Philip,’ she sobbed as the twelfth searing stroke crimsoned her fiery cheeks.

  The parson stood back from the bed and palmed the vellum, squeezing it hard before spreading it across the soft mounds it had just ravaged. ‘A moment for you to reflect, girl, to ponder on your penance and punishment.’

  Hating the touch of the firm leather across her blazing cheeks, Judith jerked her buttocks up, rebelliously attempting to rid herself of the added torment, but the parson spanked her and effectively stilled her writhing. She shrieked, but her sore bottom, quelled by the harsh hand, submitted to the leather strap draped across her smouldering cheeks.

  Gathering up the bookmark again, he fingered each reddened cheek to inspect and examine the effects of the vellum more intimately. He dimpled both crimson buttocks fleetingly as his stern forefinger dug briefly into each hot flesh-mound in turn. ‘Well whipped,’ he murmured, nodding his satisfaction. ‘Well whipped, as every whore must be.’