“Assume the position,” my erstwhile hostess, now my chastiser, ordered in a commanding voice, and, again, I needed no further direction.
There was the Turkey rug, set where there was clear room all around it, for an arm to swing, a rod to fly. Standing on the precise part of the pattern where each candidate for correction had to place her feet on pain of extra strokes for her default, I bent and clasped my ankles, feeling the slight fattiness of my spread buttocks stretch, the skin made even more tender and easily scored by the action.
“Eight strokes, Jane,” pronounced my executioner, “and you shall have the same on waking and sleeping each day of your sojourn here, until it is time to let your buttocks heal, so that you may bring them clear to your final reckoning.”
It was a salutary beating. Miss Temple had lost none of her skill and force in the interregnum, since I had seen her last. The first stroke surprised me so by its ill-remembered venom, that I squealed in agony, and my fingers dug into my ankles as I fought to absorb it, and the surging flood of pain that followed. If this was what I had to suffer, every morning and every evening of my stay, I would be a sad and contrite creature by the end, never doubt it.
I was still moaning when the second stroke caught me, slicing in just beside its fellow, sending me up on my toes as I rode the pain. Another and another burrowed into my fatty underhang, the wood seaming to have teeth of steel to rend my flesh. I had become unused to this treatment, forgetful of just how much this healing correction could hurt, cutting into one’s very soul. By six I was crying out, my scream merging into a grunting sob and, when I was finally commanded to rise, after the eighth flaming brand had been laid across my throbbing nates, the tracks swelling to thick bruises the colour of crushed blackberries, hot and full of blood, my eyes swam with tears.
I knew I had been soundly beaten and, oh, the relief. It is not good for a woman to go without the feel of the rod in her hinds for too long, or she forgets her station, and loses the comfort of a Master’s correction and control. Now I felt at home again, as if returned from an exile. I hurt dreadfully, but I felt a strange happiness.
After I had kissed the rod, and returned it to its place in the cupboard, I stood to attention on the mat of correction, my back straight, my hands at my sides, fighting the urge to clasp my wounded bottom and try and squeeze out the pain that raged in it. Miss Temple gave a pull on the bell cord and, after a minute, one of the female servants entered.
“Take Miss Eyre to the detention cell,” she ordered, “she is to be secured close, with no privileges. I will give you your further instructions later. Meanwhile all you need to know is that she has been given over into my charge entirely, and you will take no orders from her, nor listen to any plea she may make. Secure her tight, and return.”
The servant curtsied in acknowledgement of her instructions and, gesturing to me to accompany her, left the room. I followed, naked and sore, still keeping my hands from my scorching buttocks, though I longed to cradle and comfort them, but that would not serve my redemption, and I kept them to my sides, though my fingers twitched continuously.
That night I slept on straw on a stone floor, a chain locked around my neck, the throbbing in my hinds only slowly subsiding, and a sickness in my belly at the thought that the strokes would be repeated the next morning, and evening, and every morning and evening for the days that stretched ahead. I did not dare think of the other torments that awaited me, let alone the ultimate flogging I had committed myself to.
There would be, could be, no turning back now. I had entered the tunnel that led to salvation, and would only exit it when I had passed through the fiery furnace, and been cleansed of my pride and presumption; had regained that proper submissiveness that is the hall mark of the true woman.
For ten days I endured the rod, morning and night, sometimes managing to take it with the stoic passivity that submission to discipline demanded, sometimes screaming, when my resistance was low, but always taking it; I had no other choice. I came to dread the sound of footsteps along the corridor, as I lay on my straw in the early morning light, to cringe from the rod in Miss Temple’s implacable hand, to whine and sob as I was made to bend and present my inflamed, bruised and welted buttocks for yet another hellish laving.
For twelve hours each day I worked naked, always under the eagle eye of one of the domestics, armed with a vicious strap to encourage my efforts, scrubbing hard floors on my hands and knees, carrying water and coals to the furthest parts of the buildings, emptying the night soil, washing heavy cloths by hand, dragging back-breaking loads of wet linen sheets to the line, toiling over them with the ponderous flat iron in scorching heat, no rest save short breaks for my meagre diet of bread and water, or to attend to calls of nature.
My longing for the twelve hours of solitary rest on my straw was tempered by the knowledge that, to gain it, I had first to submit to another terrible eight searing cuts of that ‘best’ rod that Miss Temple wielded so expertly, and so mercilessly. Gradually my spirit was moulded into something like the quality of acceptance that was necessary for me to be cured of the assertiveness and independence with which I had become infected, but it was nearly a fortnight before Miss Temple decreed that I should move on to the next stage of my rehabilitation.
Now, although any unoccupied moments were still filled with the arduous domestic labour of my first weeks, the emphasis was placed on those trials and torments that had so troubled the great girls, myself included, when sentenced to serve a term in ‘detention’, for we were not only detained, but detained under such conditions as to make each fair culprit quiver in her belly, and clench her knees together, merely at the recollection.
Each day for a week, I was taken to the room where such sentences were served and subjected to some form of torture, for it could be described as none else, that would rack my body and, especially, those parts that proclaimed me woman, for this was an establishment for females and, I, one guilty of offences against the proper behaviour and bearing of my sex.
The first day I was set on the bar, a yard of iron, its section square, an inch a side, and twisted like a corkscrew. It was set in the wall, projecting horizontally about four feet from the ground. I was bitted, with a cruel piece of cold iron set in my mouth, pulling my lips back at their corners, a loop of chain joining the ends behind my head. My hands were tied behind my back, the cord securing them taken to the chain from the bit, dragging my head back until I could only look upwards.
Pinioned thus, I was made to stand on two stools, astride the bar, and lower myself, until the most intimate part of my person touched the bar. The grim domestic in charge of the arrangements parted my nether lips, and I was made to set my inner moistness on the corrugated metal edge. When the stools were removed, the bar sank into this tender flesh with what ghastly result only another woman can imagine. I faced a blank wall, my head thrown back by the bit and its hawser and the arc of my body was completed by a strut projecting from the wall below the bar, at a level with my knees, forcing them back just as my shoulders were forced back by the tension on my neck.
It was a position of the most appalling agony, one’s whole body set in terrible tension as one essayed, in vain, to find some way of easing the grinding torture in ones fork. At detention we great girls had been taken down after twenty minutes, weeping and unable to close our thighs properly, nor walk without a stiff legged spraddled gait, but, this time, I had to endure four full hours.
The room where these exercises were conducted had only small high windows and, with these close shuttered, I was left in almost compete darkness, to contemplate the iron in my vulva that penetrated to my very soul. When they came to take me down, I was racked with sobs, their broken hiccuping only adding to my torment, as they rocked me on my iron saw edge. Let down I could only writhe on the floor, clasping my aching groin. The tension of trying vainly to control my pain had set my muscles and every part of me, my shoulders, my belly, my tight stretched ribs, each contributed its share o
f protest. It was some minutes before I could stand, and then only with aid, and I had to lean on the burly domestic to regain my cell, my legs hardly able to support my weight, my thighs parted, my knees stiff, waddling with the gait of a goose, trying not to inflate the awful pains that still racked my poor female parts.
Another day I was put on a ‘carrot’, a ribbed wooden pole, as great as the most endowed male member, and set in a saddle shaped stool. Trussed with bit and wrist restraint as usual, I had to advance my shrinking anus to the tip of the pole, then sink my weight upon it until it penetrated my sphincter. Mercifully it had been anointed with grease, or it would have surely torn me, so large was it, and so strongly shaped, with its ridges and deep whorls fashioned in the dense hard wood. I shudder to think how I might have fared if I had not specified that I was to receive no hurt that could not be cured before my Master felt the loss.
Once it was fairly entered, my legs were kicked away from under me, allowing my whole weight to fall on the monster, driving it sharply up into my gut, and I screamed as I felt it drive against my entrails.
It was so large and long it pressed hard against my organs, seeming to reach almost to my lungs, so that I could only breathe in shallow pants. The position was intolerable, but had to be tolerated, for there was no way of escaping it, or even alleviating it, my ankles having been tied tight under the stool, and there was worse to come. Every half hour or so, when the domestic visited to check my state of misery, she would work a lever projecting from under the stool, whose effect was to raise and lower the prong. From several minutes at a time she would pump the lever up and down in a barbarous buggery, seeming to suck my guts out of my body, as she plucked the invader from its deepest intrusion, then ramming me to the gills as she sent it plunging home again.
Each buggering made me scream in pain, each session left me weary and near collapse, though the latter was denied me by the security of my confinement on the monstrous organ. After four hours I was again helpless to stand, my cramped legs quite unable to support me. Moreover, for days, I could not pass a motion except in agony that made me groan and left me with tears running on my cheeks.
And so the days passed, each bringing a new torment. My twice daily beatings, of eight fearful cuts each, which had reduced me to a cringing wretch after nearly two weeks, had ceased on my transference to the perils of the detention room, in accordance with my agreement with Miss Temple that I should go to my final flogging with a relatively whole buttock.
After the repeated barrages of eight full blooded cuts, morning and evening, my normally somewhat soft and slightly fatted posterior had become tumescent, hardened and ridged, its once white surface laced and lined with thick welts of all hues from blue to brown and green, the bruising going deep, making a hard underlayer where I had been soft and pliant, my flanks scabby where cane tips had dug in, breaking the skin. The whole mass was tender and aching in the extreme, every fresh cut into it a torture that sent me writhing and screaming, even the thought producing a groan, a cringing flinch.
Now the twice daily exercises had ceased and I was healing fast, but do not think, because I was spared these cuts to my buttocks, to make room for more and worse, I was not whipped. I had agreed that I might be flogged on other parts of my person, while my buttocks recovered, and so I was. Not a day passed without I was put to the triangle, for my shoulders to be lashed with a long leather whip, had to hold out my flinching hands to receive cut after cut from a thin stinging cane.
On one occasion I was made to sit on a stool, my arms secured, my bit in place. I was kept from undue movement by a thin wooden spindle set in the stool, and penetrating my sphincter; not the torture of the ‘carrot’ but salutary enough, and preventing any untoward movement. Braced back as they were, my arms left my breasts free and thrusting prominently before me. the anxiety of my position, and the dread of what was planned, for I was not usually informed of my fate each time, had caused my teats to harden, a frequent enough occurrence with me, and they stood darkly engorged, throbbing with the blood pulsing inside, standing out from my out-thrust globes like babies thumbs.
My whole body quivered when Miss Temple herself approached bearing a long, but very thin and whippy cane. I knew at once what she planned, and made a mew of fear and protest, but would not, even then, cry out for mercy. She stood above me and smiled down into my upturned eyes, but said not a word. She did not need to do so for I understood only too well what she planned and despite my earlier weakness, held her eyes, and made such nod of assent as my strained neck permitted.
With my head tilted back I could not see all her movements clearly, but the thin line of the cane was full in my vision. I watched in awful fascination as it rose, hovered, then fell. It passed below my sight and a lance of fire flamed across my proffered breasts. I shrieked, and twisted my upper body as much as my bonds and the prong in my anus permitted for it was excruciating, the pain unbearable, the sensation such that my body seemed to crawl and squirm of its own volition, quite out of my control.
As I steadied, the narrow outline of the cruel instrument entered my line of sight again, and swooped down onto the throbbing globes. Six times the cane cut me in the soft white flesh of my breasts, three times above the nipples, three times below, then Miss Temple came to stand where I could look into her eyes once more. I moaned as the tip of the cane touched, first one nipple, then the other, but nodded my submission.
She moved to one side, and I could see neither her nor the cane, but I heard its passage as it flew down towards my tender points. It hit the teat that stood so proudly and vulnerably on the left breast. My shriek had barely ceased to echo around the chamber before I heard the air parting again, and the gristly stub on my right breast flamed, my body jerking as I screamed afresh. Miss Temple came to stand before me again. With gentle delicacy she laid the tip softly on first the left, then the right dug. Again I controlled my writhing features enough to nod.
I was trembling uncontrollably as she went to my side, my whole body tensed, my heart pounding, a small nasal whining escaping me. The rod sang its thin keen note, and anguish exploded in the already wounded teat. I shrieked, I howled, I flung my head about, although it added to my torment, the bit cutting into my mouth. When I had regained myself a little Miss Temple crossed over. When I had ceased to scream and writhe, and was aware properly of my state, I sat on my penetrating perch and rocked, sobbing and moaning by turns.
My last visit to the detention room, I spent the whole appalling day set on the bar. It was the longest day of my life and, indeed, seemed to last several lifetimes, lifetimes in which I went from hell to hell and never could escape. I had no respite in all that dreadful ten hours. Sometimes I shrieked and pleaded, sometimes I sat as still as I might and did no more than groan, sometimes I relapsed into a hot red world of near unconsciousness, but always, always, the bar pressed into my tender flesh, the agony set in throughout my body, my strained limbs shrieked and protested their own torment. I was but barely conscious of them taking me down, and remember nothing of being returned to my cell.
The next day nothing happened. I lay in my straw, nursing my wounded vulva, eating the bread and water I was given three times a day, free from toil, free from torment, but not free from fear itself, for this was just the lull before the storm. I was being rested so that I might face the tempest that would burst on me tomorrow or, rather, so that I would have the strength to remain conscious throughout and escape none of its rigour, none of its healing power. I wanted it and I feared it. I lay in my hard bed cringing from the pain to come, yet resigning myself to it gladly, for it would return me to my Master whole and sweet again, fit to love and serve him.
Morning came, and with it, both the domestics who had guarded me, worked me, flogged me, set me on the varied instruments of suffering I had endured, and bearing with them, to my astonishment, the clothing I had discarded so long ago in Miss temple’s study.
“Come,” they said, “you are to be made ready,” and
they brought water and soap for the first time in my incarceration. They washed my filthy body, for I was rank with stale sweat, old tears, my hair matted and lank. They dried and combed it, brushed it back to something of its usual gloss. When they came to dress me, I recoiled.
“How so?” I cried, “Am I not to be flogged today?”
“Indeed, yes,” they assured me, “to the blood, but you have a visitor, and it would not be seemly for you to appear as you were, and naked.”
A visitor? Who could it be? But I was too wrought up by my coming ordeal to speculate further and meekly allowed them to dress me. I was given a good breakfast in the comforting warmth of the kitchen. Bread and water, certainly, but also hot tea, with sugar, porridge with rich milk, and an egg and some butter with my bread. Clearly I was to be nourished to keep up my strength, so that I might go the whole distance without falling by the way.
Despite my taut nerves, and the twitching of my belly, I made a good meal, but the tension was becoming unbearable. Twice I had to use the pot to empty my bladder. The bell indicating a call from Miss Temple’s study tinkled on the kitchen wall, and it was with relief that I obeyed my gaoler’s command to rise and follow, but it was not to the study she led me, but the Duty room, that scene of salutary corrections, fierce enough to draw cries from even the staunchest ‘great girls’ after a swingeing sixer, or terrible eight, with the duty cane. At the door she knocked and, without waiting for an answer, opened it and thrust me through. The door closed behind me, as she left me to my fate.
Jane and Her Master Page 19