Ruled by the Rod (27 page)

At this point
he turned again to the man of medicine.

'Is it your
opinion, doctor,' he enquired, 'that these young women can sustain
a good whipping, without danger to their bellies or
themselves?'

'For certain,
my lord,' our medical adviser replied. 'These are strong young
women, in good health and well fed. Now that the bastard seed
inside them has been attached to their bellies for over two months,
there is little will jar it loose, as many a young woman has learnt
to her cost, who has allowed her swain to swive her, admitting the
flush of passionate seed into her fertility, then hoped by rigour
and stress to shake it free.

'No, they'll
take the whip, if that be your will, and no harm done. And a fine
example to other young women not risk their bellies,' he added
gratuitously.

Thus
reassured, the judge pronounced our doom.

'I sentence
you to be transported for life to the colony of Australia, and for
a parting gift you shall be flogged in the marketplace before you
go. Thirty strokes for each of you. God bless the King.'

And our fate
was sealed.

That night we
spent in the county jail, mocked by the wardresses who explained
that we had not been taken straight from the court to be flogged,
as was the usual custom, so that there might be time for the great
ladies who lived about to come to see the sight, and revel in our
sufferings for, they assured us, there was nothing these highborn
dames loved better than to see one of their own class stripped and
whipped, and better still if she were young and pretty. One such
was a rare treat. Three was a sight they would be very wroth to
have missed, and so our execution had been delayed sufficient that
they might attend.

We slept ill
that night on the thin straw that was all our bed, our thoughts
filled with dismay and uncertainty as to what would befall us,
buoyed up only by the thought that whatever the judge had ordered
must be just and for our own good, for he had been acting in the
name of the great British tradition of justice, rightly respected
throughout the known world.

In the morning
we were given a meagre breakfast of hard bread and a little small
ale, and left to fend for ourselves until the hour appointed, noon,
when the market would be crowded and the great ladies, and their
escorts, might be assembled. There was little to do but fret about
the coming ordeal, and sit nervously upon the pail in the corner,
when our nerves tipped our bladders, or our bowels, into
overflowing.

It came almost
as a relief when, a little before noon, the chief wardress arrived,
accompanied by a grim dark man, dressed in greasy leather, who one
would not mistake for any other than the public executioner, whose
duty it would be to flog our naked backs.

'This is
Master Hackett, come to see what he has to work,' the wardress said
by way of introduction. 'Get your stuff off, and let him feel your
meat.'

We interpreted
this as an instruction to bare our backs for his inspection, and
duly shed our gowns. Since we wore no stays, we had but shifts,
stockings and shoes left to us. By pulling down the straps of our
shift we could bare our backs, though it left our swollen breasts
exposed before. Master Hackett passed along the line, pinching up
flesh between finger and thumb, as if assessing prize pigs at the
show, to see if they would yield streaky bacon or fat.

'They'll do,'
he said. 'Fine healthy specimens every one. None of your half
starved hedge droppings here, but well padded flesh. They shall
have their whipping, and more. No need to hold back on these fine
ladies,' and he left us to the wardress's care, no doubt to make
sure of his arrangements in the marketplace.

'Right my fine
ladies,' the wardress mocked, taking her cue from the executioner,
'let us prepare. Women for public punishment go penitent and
barefoot, so off with those shoes and stockings. It will help you
feel humility on the way to the scaffold. You'll no doubt be
feeling something quite different when you return. Master Hackett
has a way of bringing blood to a woman's back, and tears to he
eyes. He'll make you squeal, I warrant, before you tread this way
again.'

With this
cheerful intelligence she encouraged us to shed our footwear, and
stand barefoot, clad only in our shifts. We had begun to raise the
straps over our shoulders again, once Master Hackett had pronounced
us prime meat for the slaughter, but the wardress checked us.

'Leave them
be,' she ordered. 'You must show where you are to be whipped as you
walk to your fate.'

We had hoped,
at least, to have been able to cover our breasts with our arms, but
even this was denied us for, as we came to leave the jail for our
long walk through jeering crowds, we were each given a long bull's
pizzle, the stretched and dried member of an ox, with which we were
to be thrashed.

'A rod for
your own backs, tradition says,' the wardress informed us. 'You
must carry it in both hands, placed across your backs, where it
will later fall. As to your breasts, full-bellied trollops have no
room for pride, and must expose them to their teats to the common
gaze.'

It was a
hideous walk, full of shame and humiliation. We walked in line, but
even then were made to leave such space that all could let their
eyes rest on us freely, nothing concealed. Our shifts hung down
over our gently swelling bellies, our figures maintained in some
balance by our swollen breasts above, the distended globes forcing
the turgid nipples into milky prominence.

All along our
path people had gathered, many men calling rough obscenities, but
even more women, whose lewd and cruel cries hurt more than the
coarse male repartee, for the women seemed to hurl spite with their
badinage.

We walked
behind the beadle, who set a pace so deliberate and slow, he must
have been paid by those who had no place by the scaffold, to hold
us back as long as possible within range of their taunts and
missiles for, as we slowly progressed, we had to endure a hail of
clods of earth, dung from the gutters, rotten fruit and evil
smelling eggs of ancient vintage. By the time we reached the
scaffold we were mired from head to foot, our faces splashed, our
hair and breasts dripping rotten egg, and stinking of it all.

We had
expected to be taken one by one and whipped in turn, speculating
gloomily during our incarceration whether it was better to be taken
first, and have it over with, or be last, and have to endure the
sight of our sisters being flogged before us. In the event we all
suffered together.

The scaffold
held three whipping posts, set on the points of a triangle and
linked at their tops for strength and stability. Now we saw the
reason we each carried our instrument of punishment, for the
executioner had engaged two assistants, each as burly and
uncompromising as himself, so that three lengths of bulls' leather
might lash three white backs at once.

Each of us was
led to her corner, and her wrists tied with leather thongs. Our
bound wrists were then passed over a hook high on the post, until
we were almost on our toes. Hands grabbed our ankles and drew them
apart, wrapping them with more thongs and fastening them to the
wooden platform on which the posts were erected to give the
populace a fine view of our disgrace and suffering. With our feet
spaced thus, we were up on our toes and could move but little,
offering a steady target for the whip, unable to turn away from its
bite when it began to gnaw our sides and under arms.

By now my
position was so extreme, and my fear so overwhelming, I could spare
little attention to my sisters' misfortunes, being wrapped up in my
own, which were considerable. I was strung up tight against a rough
wooden post which chafed my tender swollen naked breasts, while my
bulging belly pressed against the same post lower down, though
protected by my lowered shift. My arms were strained painfully
above my head, as I stood on my toes. Numbly I awaited the flogging
to which I had been condemned. Thirty strokes in public, from a
bull's pizzle on my naked back.

All around me
I could here the jeers of the women, especially the highborn dames
who had paid to have the best points of vantage reserved for them.
They chattered and called, made disparaging remarks about our
breasts, and the swellings just discernible below our shifts where
the seed was growing, and called us sluts and trollops, harlots and
scarlet women. Their fervour was such I suspected some of them
foamed at the mouth, and not only the mouth above their chins,
either.

There was more
harrowing delay, then a rattle of horse and wheels. I turned my
head as best I could and there, seated in a carriage for which a
space had been cleared not five yards from the scaffold, were the
judge, the doctor and the bishop, and those horrid girls whose
jealous importunities had led our guardians to deflower us and
ensure our ruin. Now they crowed in triumph over our discomfiture,
and our coming torment. God forgive me, for I wished that they
could have been stripped and set in my place.

Now there was
no more cause for delay. The sentence of the court was read, our
thirty lashes confirmed, and the executioner was bidden to do his
duty.

I closed my
eyes and held my breath, and a line of fire exploded across my
naked back. Another and another and another fell, tracing a hideous
ladder of pain down my shoulders.

I was
determined not to cry out before these leering ladies, and the
crowing painted creatures in the judge's carriage, but it cost me
much. I had of course been whipped many times before, but always on
the buttocks or, very occasionally, on some excruciatingly painful
intimate part of breast, belly or vulva. These whippings had been
agonising, but something in their positioning made them become a
part of one's most sensual being and, though the pain was still
there, and not mitigated, nevertheless, this sensual connection
made it not as devastating. To be whipped upon the back made no
such connection. It was pure pain, of the most atrocious kind, and
not a frisson of sensual response to compensate. I found myself
beginning to despair after only ten strokes or so, and my strength
slipping from me. The pizzle was long and supple and wrapped round
my sides to bite into my armpit, or even caress the side of my full
swelling breast. I could not turn away, and the executioner, who
had chosen to lay on my stripes himself, leaving his assistants to
cut my poor sisters' backs, seemed to sense my anguish at these
bites, and let the tip out further so that it could reach my
tenderest parts with every blow.

I think I
would have screamed and pleaded for mercy at the next cut if I had
not heard one of the horrid girls cry out, 'Hurrah, Master Hackett!
Swing with a will! She'll sing soon, and her screams will be music
to my ears. Lash her well, mister, and you shall taste my gratitude
in my kisses. The blood on her back will be almost as sweet to my
eyes as that on her thighs, the night I had them rend her
maidenhead, the stuck-up little cow.'

I bit my lip
to the blood, and pressed my sore teats to the rough timber,
inviting splinters, and they helped me to hold out and deprive the
young bitch of her triumph. Sick and fainting, I took my strokes,
not giving a sound.

My tally
mounted, but I would not 'sing'. Though the last strokes nearly
broke me I clung on, buoyed up by hatred of the young harlot in the
carriage. She shrieked alternate abuse and promises at my whipper,
calling him no man if he couldn't make a milksop wench like me cry
out, offering him her tawdry body if he did. Little did she know
that, if she'd kept her peace, she could have heard my screams a
score of times before my tally of strokes was completed.

And so we
travelled up to London, sore in body and mind, our backs a mass of
weeping welts, that vexed us sorely whether we tried to stand or
sleep. We arrived at the dockside to find that the fleet was about
to sail, and were driven up the gangplank with staves and sticks,
told to hurry lest we miss the tide.

Now began a
very troublesome time for the three of us. As fast as our backs
healed, so our bellies swelled, until we became quite ungainly.
With little time to prepare, and forbidden to take more than the
judge had dictated, we had to rely on the rations issued on the
ship, and the kindness of strangers. When the private stores were
exhausted the women began to hunger, and made so bold as to ask the
purser for better portions. He dismissed their requests
contemptuously, and warned that any one asking again should suffer
the rope's end on their buttocks.

'I'll warrant
that'll make you dance,' he guffawed. 'Even the toughest tar will
dance a jig when caught across his canvas seat with a tarry
tawse.'

Matters got no
better, and Marion persuaded us that we should be the ones to
repeat the request.

'After all,'
she pointed out, 'they would hardly whip women in our condition,'
for, by then, our bellies proceeded us like sails.

With this
thought to sustain us, we went to see the purser, and requested him
politely to reconsider the women's rations for, as we pointed out,
the authorities could hardly wish to have us delivered dead or
dying, or so weakened by hunger that we would be of little use to
populate the new settlements.

This seemed to
touch him on the raw. Indeed we learnt later that he had a scale of
doles laid down for him, and supplies to match, but hoped to keep a
surplus and sell it advantageously in the new land. We were cursed
for impudent sluts and in minutes found ourselves on deck, bent
over a bollard, our mighty bellies pressed under us, our now
generously fatted buttocks exposed, for our gowns were flung over
our heads, muffling our cries and cutting us off from sight. While
jesting seamen made coarse comments on our fleshy posteriors, they
held us firmly in place, and the bosun's mate, summoned by the
irate purser, laid into those same plump pillows with tarry rope
knotted into hard knobs at one end. The pain of that heavy lash was
as bad as anything I had suffered in the past - papa's penal cane
note excluded. We shrieked and kicked under the whip, but the man
did not stop until all our buttocks were welted solidly from top to
bottom.