Ruled by the Rod (23 page)

The tunnel was
over three miles in length and we were nearly two hours traversing
it, and arrived at the far end most uncomfortably bespattered, for
which we were roundly reprimanded by our guardians and
unceremoniously dunked in the water of the cut to cleanse us. We
were judged to be too wet to resume even that little clothing we
were normally allowed, and completed the next hour's tow quite
naked still. Luckily there were few to see us on that isolated
stretch, other than the ubiquitous bargees who made clear in what
direction their lecherous thoughts were moved by our nudity.

Charlotte was
so ill advised as to protest at this affront to our modesty, being
made to run naked like an animal. It proved a costly indiscretion
for the gentlemen at once judged her guilty of mutiny, and the
judge sentenced her on the spot to be flogged at the mast, by which
he meant the stout post that served as an anchorage for the tow.
Being naked already there was little delay, and she was triced up
by her wrists, only her toes touching the deck. There was, however,
sufficient time for the word to be shouted all along the towpath in
both directions.

'A flogging, a
flogging. There's a young bitch about to get her back warmed,' and
a considerable crowd had assembled by the time she was taut in
place, and the driver, to whom the duty had been delegated,
positioned behind her.

He had secured
from somewhere - I learnt later he had borrowed from one of the
other boats where equine propulsion was employed - a long narrow
leather trace that served as an excellent whip, the thin lash he
employed to drive us being too long and unwieldy for the close
confines of the boat's deck. With this he proceeded to lay on the
fifty lashes to which poor Charlotte had been condemned.

She made a
picture of beauty as she hung from her hands at the post, her long
white back but faintly marked from the urgings of the thin lash
previously, her delicate waist flaring out to sleek but womanly
hips, the rounded buttocks tight and firm from their being so
well-exercised in towage. The post guarded her mossy grove in
front, but her firm pert breasts pressed proudly out either side of
the rough timber pole, which rubbed the tender valley between quite
sorely.

All thoughts
of such discomfort, and the stress on her wrists and toes as she
hung in place, vanished with the first crack of the lash on her
pale shoulders. She gasped and tensed as if taken aback by the
force of the blow and the sting of its attack, then grunted again
as the second fell a little lower. With remorseless precision the
blows progressed down her back to the jut of her buttocks, laid on
with sufficient pause for her to benefit entirely from each, but
fast enough to keep her constantly fighting to maintain some
control. Women will always fight these battles, and as frequently
lose them. By the time the lash had completed the first ladder of
stripes and started down again from the top, she was screaming
freely, her shrieks echoed by the laughter of the barge folk who
had gathered to watch.

The women were
even worse in their behaviour than the men. It might be thought
that they would display some sympathy for one of their own sex
subjected to such a whipping. Such scenes were not uncommon of the
cut as we had already observed on several occasions, but their own
experiences and fears, far from calling forth their kinder natures,
seemed only to bring out the harshest and most cruel reactions.

The women
danced and howled on the bank, calling for poor Charlotte to be
whipped more, mocking the driver that he was no man if he did not
make her howl, promising him, in the coarsest terms, the delights
of their own bodies if he should achieve what they so evidently
desired. By the end of her fifty strokes poor Charlotte did indeed
hang sobbing in her bonds, but whether the driver collected on the
offers made I cannot tell.

It would seem,
however, that the correction was successful in its purpose as
Charlotte did not raise her eyes from the ground for days
afterwards, even when on the tow, for she was not excused above a
day from that duty, and had to haul the cruel rope over shoulders
but newly wealed and sore.

We women are
nothing if not resilient though, and within days were all back in
our usual spirits and beginning to enjoy the life, whose hardships
were little more than our daily domestic duties at home and which
enabled us to breathe the fresh air and take in the warmth of the
sun in the delightful countryside through which we passed.

And we were
not alone in that environment. A constant stream of traffic on the
water demonstrated the prosperity that the land was enjoying. This
traffic to some extent accompanied us, for although we made better
progress while on the move, the efforts of two trotting girls being
enough to move our lightly laden craft faster than the deeply
loaded barges, the latter did not take those long breaks for
refreshment at the hostelries along the way that our guardians
found so essential to the roving life. Thus we kept re-encountering
many of the barge people. Though some were friendly, many of the
women, particularly the older ones, seemed jealous of our youthful
health and privileged station in life, and manifested this envy by
denouncing the nudity we wore when towing as shameful and an
offence to other females.

As time went
by they formed a coherent band of furies that screamed abuse at us
whenever we appeared at locks or passing places, until one evening
matters came to a head at an inn, where we had stopped and where we
had been put outside while the gentlemen enjoyed the last of their
meal inside.

Thus
unprotected we were easy prey to the parcel of drunken barge women
that suddenly erupted from the taproom and surrounded us.

'Sluts,
whores, jezebels!' they screamed in their drunken fury. 'String 'em
up, rip their cunts, stuff their arses!' they shrieked, and we
cringed before them. Never have I seen such rampant evil as those
who still called themselves women but were unworthy to be named
members of that sex.

Then, 'Caulk
their cunts,' one suggested. 'That'll keep our men out of their sin
pits,' and someone called for tar, and others rushed to the
boatyard nearby and came back with a great smoking pot of hot black
semi-fluid that was used to stop the cracks between the planking of
the boats.

Now it was our
cracks it would seal!

We were no
match for these hardened harridans of the cut, and in moments were
bent backwards over the bench on which we sat. Rough hands grasped
our legs and raised and parted them, letting our petticoats fall
about our hips and exposing us shamefully to the public gaze. It is
a curious thing that I never felt so humiliated or shamed before
men, no matter how gross the circumstances of my exposure, as I did
before these women. Somehow there was a naturalness in one's person
being bare before men, part of the natural order of things, while
exposure to females seemed a perversion of that healthy norm. Of
course, I was used to being open with my sisters, but that was a
different matter altogether, done in circumstances of love and
sisterly feeling.

I had little
time enough for these speculations as the howling harpies tore my
legs apart and the searing heat of the tar brush found the
quivering cunny between. I shrieked in pain and despair as the hot
tar penetrated my crack, seeming to fill my belly, though I later
discovered it barely passed the outer lips. My thick bush of dark
hair that covered my woman's parts fared less well. The viscose
matter froze onto the curled tendrils and converted all to a tough
black mat, immovable by any normal means and impenetrable to
testing tongue or finger.

Apart from the
hurt of the hot tar, something a woman may endure and dismiss soon
enough, we were plagued by being denied entirely that solace to
which we resorted to alleviate the troubles of the day and the
smart of our stripes. The material, when it set, became such a
tough carapace, reinforced as it was by our nether hair, that all
access to our sensitive buds was impossible and we must lie in
frustration until it could be removed. We had no facilities for
this on our tour and it was not until we returned home that we
could relieve ourselves of the unwelcome addition to our anatomies,
and then only at the expense of the sacrifice of our lower hair,
which must be pulled out at the roots.

For Charlotte,
whose pubic decoration was more fuzz than fur, this was no great
torment. But both Marion and myself were endowed with luxuriant
thickets of tight glossy curls that adhered the tar without hope of
separation, and whose extraction was torture of a particularly
unbearable and long-lasting kind. We were both in tears before we
had managed to remove the bulk of our contamination, and were not
truly clean for months.

It was
fortunate perhaps that this unhappy incident took place towards the
end of our cruise. Naturally enough, seeing what orifice the
gentlemen made use of in draining their humours, we were able to be
of our usual service to them, but became increasingly morose and
unhappy from being denied our own relief, and were much improved
once we had returned home and torn the offending tar from our
bodies.

It should not
be thought that we had not enjoyed our time on the cut, despite the
hardships endured, for novelty is always welcome. If anyone came
home in lower spirits than she had left it was Charlotte, who took
her flogging very heavily, being much removed for a time from her
usual buoyant self, not looking the gentlemen in the eye and only
speaking when spoken to.

It is a
well-known fact that, for women, a flogging on the back is a much
harder affair to bear than a whipping on any other part. A woman's
buttocks are so intimately connected to her belly that it is almost
inevitable that sensations created in the one, however painful,
will be transmitted to the other, and as inevitable that the womb
will convert them to the only sense it is created for; pleasure of
the most carnal sort. Even the breasts or the cunny, though so much
more sensitive, will to a degree effect this mutation of pain into
pleasure when transmitting it to the seat of womanhood. As the
doctor was fond of remarking when discoursing on the subject, 'In a
woman, all roads lead to womb.'

It was about
this time that we received another visitor. At dinner one night we
were surprised to find not three gentlemen, but four, our guardians
having been joined by a large gentleman of florid appearance. His
manner was abrupt, as if brooking of no opposition, and he radiated
an aura of power and ruthlessness that caused us females to quiver
internally, and treat him with even greater respect than due in any
case to a member of his sex.

'This is Mr
Brangwyn,' the judge informed us, by way of introduction. 'He will
be staying a day or two. Kindly lay an extra place and see that
there is a room made up for him.'

Naturally we
hastened to comply, then served the meal, each kneeling, as usual,
beside her particular guardian to receive from their plates and
glasses such sustenance and refreshment as they chose to allow
us.

Mr Brangwyn
seemed much impressed by the procedure, though in truth, we found
it now the most natural thing in the world, and commented freely on
how well we had been trained, and the high degree of submission
that our guardians had induced in us.

'I only wish,'
he said, 'that the idle bitches who work for me were half as
docile.'

His speech, it
must be admitted, was rather on the coarse side, compared with the
educated and enlightened conversation of the others. But we put
that down to too long exposure to the uneducated and brutal
labourers he employed, for Mr Brangwyn was the proprietor of
several collieries in the Forest of Dean, on the English-Welsh
border.

After dinner
it was time for the regular disciplinary exercises. It would have
normally been Charlotte's turn to account for her sins, and service
the gentlemen's needs but, in honour of our guest, we were each
required to strip to the usual degree, and mount the chair for our
buttocks to be scourged and our souls purged, before easing the
executioner of our penance, by the actions of our nether orifices
clenching around their inflamed members.

We were a
little taken aback, at fist, to find Mr Brangwyn accompanying us to
the study, where the process was to be carried out. But it was made
clear to us that industry was to join religion, medicine and the
law in our governance, in accordance with the most modern thinking,
and we forbore to argue with our betters on the matter.

Thus it was
that, after I had received a particularly severe whipping from the
bishop, who seemed to have abrogated the usual formula for their
calculation, and thrashed me so sorely that I could not hold back
my tears, not only he but our new guardian entered me from behind,
squeezing my sore nether cheeks with hard male hands, while their
iron-hard rods reamed my tender back passage.

I was more
than ready for my bed that night, and some tears stained my
pillow.

The coal
magnate stayed with us three days, with three nights of exceptional
soreness as we demonstrated how far the limits of our endurance
stretched. He seemed to rejoice in our restraints, as being so
beneficial to womankind, and would often come at first light to see
us cavort naked under the icy pump, apparently greatly approving of
this means to hygiene of body and soul.

Thereafter he
became a regular visitor, and we were always in a state of
particular apprehension when one of these visits was announced, for
we knew that our discipline would acquire an extra dimension of
strictness and depth, while he was with us.