Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.The 1960s was a challenging time for spanking and spanking enthusiasts. Before this decade spanking was seen as a necessary evil, just and yes fun. After the 60s it was sexy and risqué even before people began to realise that spanking and feminism can mix.
The Sixties was a time when Black and White met Technicolor, an allegory for a clash of attitudes if ever there was one.
But during the 1960s it was still too close to home for the mainstream to be comfortable with sex and spanking and only the right wing were still pushing the ‘just but fun’ line in the guise of John Wayne and a few others.
To the youth it was seen as old hat and no swinging girl would freely admit that they were still getting spanked by their old man, married or not. Spanking was order, and order just wasn’t cool.
But still it had its champions and that primeval urge did not just go away. Here are a few snippets from that decade for some flavour.Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Lady CW speaking to the Women’s Institute in 1966 said, “Mods and Rockers, I see no very great difference between them and the Teddy boys and bobby-soxers. In my day we had flappers, it is all the same. Bad behaviour is bad behaviour, and if I had so indulged in my youth, then I would have had a damn good spanking on my bare behind and I would have deserved it.”
The TV documentary Man Alive took a closer look at the problem. Interviewing some 20-somethings outside a club they asked about ‘the breakdown of society and falling standards of the young.’
“Should you be out so late do you think?” asked an awfully Etonian reporter of a woman in a black and white mini dress.
“I don’t see what’s wrong with it,” she replied in pure Essex.
“Do your parents know you are out?” he persists.
“I am over 21, I can do what I like,” she replied indignantly.
But surely this is a revolution? The upper class reporter is clearly shocked.
Then another woman, over excited by the presence of TV cuts in with, “My old man don’t know I am here.” She laughs.
“Your father?” the reporter asks eagerly, excited perhaps by an implied admission of wrong-doing.
“Me ‘usband,” she cackles, “If he finds out I’ve been to a club while he’s working then I’ll get a good hiding.” She laughs again.
“Well he might find out now,” the reporter says smugly.
“He might,” she laughs.
“Does this disturb you?” the reporter is now sounding concerned.
“Nah, he would only wallop my arse,” she reassures him.
The revolution did not end there however. Such exchanges are hard to imagine today, but the 1960s are as far removed from us now as Elvis was from Edwardian London. Here is a vox pop taken from among young women at the time. This was following a series of much publicised cases of domestic spanking.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.I am not sure what recent events triggered it, but at the time there was the Helston case and the Darren Nesbit case, where he got a small fine for spanking his wife.
Q: Do you think it is acceptable to spank women?
Respondent 1: Depends what they have done I suppose.
Q: So you do think there are some times when it is justified?
R 1: Yes, there is nothing wrong with it. I don’t hold with fists and that though.
Q: Where you ever spanked, as an adult I mean?
Respondent 1: Sometimes.
Q: By your husband.
R1: No.
Q: Would you object if he did?
R1: he probably should sometimes, I wouldn’t mind, well you know, if I deserved it.
Q: How old is too old for a woman to get a spanking?
R2: I don’t know really. If she is living at home then it is up to whoever. Least that’s the way it was with us.
Q: But what about married women.
R2: Oh well that’s different, I think a man needs to take charge. Nothing wrong with a spanking to put you in your place.
Q: Has your husband ever spanked you?
R2: Yes, many times
Q: Do you think it is acceptable to spank women?
R3: No never, once a woman is over 21 she should be able to live her own life, not in this day and age.
Q: What about if she is under 21?
R3: If she is married, absolutely not.
Q: What if she is still living at home?
R3: That would depend then I suppose.
There was more of this but most of it was much the same, with opinions being split down the middle.
These Man Alive archives and UK Attitude surveys can be found online, but Google reader throws up dozens of pictures and cartoons from the time that show spanking was very much still around.
I was too young in the 1960s and my awareness was based upon an earlier age of old movies. The subtleties of the great changes that obviously went well beyond spanking was something that a I benefitted from but did not contribute to.
I do remember an interview with a bunny girl at the time who shyly admitted that her husband had spanked her with her father’s approval when he found out she had taken the job. Compare this with Miley Cyrus.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Our story began here.
Katherine and Mary had not moved from their wall time mooning the room for more than half an hour and it was beginning to get to work on their nerves as Alice had intended.
“I warned you that from now on I would be completely uncompromising,” Alice sighed.
“Yes Ma’am,” Katherine said breathily.
“Mary?” the governess said sharply.
“Yes Ma’am,” Mary said hastily now that she knew a response was required.
“So I have decided to punish each of your errors separately and fully. They will form part of your training so I hope you benefit from the experience,” Alice explained in a crisp voice.
It was a side to her they had not much seen since the early days. They supposed that this stern demeanour was to make up for any dereliction.
“So let me see… and do speak up if I am incorrect in my assessment or I miss anything out…” she continued. “You were late back, you were drunk, no doubt your intoxication, however slight, led to indecorous behaviour in town… did you talk to anyone… men perhaps?”
“One Ma’am,” Katherine said honestly, remembering the barman.
“One is too many while you are under training,” Alice sighed, “So we have… four offences, three of which are very serious.”
“Yes Ma’am,” Katherine agreed, followed a beat later by Mary.
Both women stood hard to attention and were blinking rapidly as they tried to focus on the wall just inches from their noses. Their posture emphasised the curve of their backs and made their bare bottoms jut out just so as if offered up for correction. The posture made Alice feel quite proud. But as she had learned during her own training, when a girl gets it, it is not the time to take one’s foot of the gas.
“Tomorrow you will rise at six and dress in such a way that you are fully attired, but your behinds are exposed as they are now. You may eat breakfast, in fact I suggest that you do, but by 6.45 sharp mind you, you will be facing the wall in the kitchen with your hands upon your heads to await your first spanking for tardiness,” Alice informed them.
They would stew on that overnight, she thought coolly. Then she paused before continuing. “Then we will proceed to the more serious offences. Moving outside you will learn how to cut a switch and the makings for a birch rod. After correctly bundling the latter we will observe the correct application and methods of the former. Then we will study a good old fashioned strap in action out in the woodshed.”
Both women sighed heavily and Alice noted Katherine’s eyes close in resignation. Mary on the other hand widened hers in gentle horror as she considered their fate.
“After returning to the house for some well-earned corner time and an opportunity to recover, we will then explore the thorough application of the birch to a thoroughly tender and humbled bare bottom,” Alice continued, “Any questions?” she added.
Katherine shook her head and Mary chewed at her lip as if holding back a tide of pleading.
“Sinclair girls answer clearly and promptly when they are addressed,” Alice said sharply. Don’t let up on the gas, she reminded herself, but she was feeling rather mean all the same.
“No Ma’am, no questions,” Katherine said with confidence.
“No Ma’am,” Mary agreed.
“Good, now get yourselves off to bed,” Alice barked.
*
There was something about the morning light that promised an intense day. Even the birdsong seemed auspicious and for Mary never had the dawn chorus seemed so sharp. But maybe that was because standing half naked facing the kitchen wall left her more exposed to the new day than usual.
Next to her with an equally bare bottom stood Katherine, who despite the indignity of their predicament managed her usual poise with aplomb. Not for the first time Mary wondered if she would ever be so gracious and elegant.
Katherine had even been together enough to manage a light breakfast before she had prepared herself, something that Mary could not even contemplate.
“Do you think she is going to be long?” Mary whispered after they had been standing at wall time for almost 20 minutes.
“Be quiet,” Katherine replied, her voice barely audible, “If she hears you, you will only make it worse for both of us.”
“You think it could get any worse,” Mary sighed miserably.
“You bet it can, but buck up will you, we signed on for this and we deserve it,” the older woman whispered.
“But…” Mary sounded as if she might whine.
“Shhh,” Katherine soothed, risking a side turn in order to give her friend a light punch on the arm.
“Okay,” Mary said resignedly and sighed.
It was another 30 minutes before Alice arrived but if she was pleased she had been obeyed she made no sign of it.
“Did one of you think to fetch the hairbrush?” she asked brusquely.
Katherine and Mary exchanged glances before the elder shook her head. Mary just anxiously bit at her lower lip.
“We’ll use the one on my dresser, fetch it will you Mary,” Alice said in an officious tone as she pulled a kitchen chair away from the table and made to sit on it.
Glad for the smallest reprieve from corner time, Mary hastened away to do as she had been told.
“She still reminds me of a timid rabbit sometimes,” Alice said lightly and smiled.
Katherine heaved a sigh. Holding on to her dignity was a trial. A private punishment with two dozen across the bare was one thing, but a semi-public over-the-knee session was humiliating at her age.
“Whereas you have always reminded me of me,” Alice continued.
“Even standing in the corner like an errant teen?” Katherine said sullenly.
“Especially when you’re standing in the corner,” Alice chuckled. “Like you, I always found such punishments the hardest. I served in the war remember, as you would have done a few short years ago. Can you imagine? I was mortified the first time I was reduced to sobbing across Mrs Baxter’s lap and every time since come to that. You know, you never get used to it. But it did me good and it will do you good too.”
Katherine shifted in her place and took a deep breath.
“I-I suppose,” she said with an uncustomary pout.
Mary returned a moment later and gave the hairbrush to Alice without a word.
“Yes alright,” her governess said when Mary didn’t move away, “Go back and face the wall.”
Mary sighed, half-relieved that she wasn’t to be first, half regretful that she wasn’t to get it over with. Then with a slow deliberation she composed herself and turned back to the wall.
“Katherine, front and centre,” Alice said sharply and crooked her finger.
“Yes Ma’am,” the elder girl sighed and turned around.
There was no dignified way to get across someone’s knee and Katherine felt as awkward as stooping down to half-crawl and half-tumble onto Alice’s lap. She was conscious of how her bare bottom must seem overlarge and hideously exposed.
“See what I mean about never getting used to it?” Alice murmured.
“Yes Ma’am,” Katherine sighed.
Alice found Katherine’s weight strangely satisfying across her thighs and smiled in amusement as the previously dignified woman squirmed to minimise her discomfort. All in vain of course, the governess thought grimly, because discomfort was the name of the game.
The brush had some weight to it, a present from Mrs Baxter Alice remembered. She also remembered that her old governess had christened it first with a vigorous application to Alice’s bare bottom before giving it to her. From bitter experience she knew that it could impart a sting sore-making spanking that could leave a girl unseated for a week.
Katherine’s bottom was both firm and yielding as the first biting smack cracked down. She hissed in acknowledgement but otherwise held herself. The second, third and fourth spanks had no better reaction either but at number five Katherine groaned.
By then two red ovals had formed on the crests of both of her bottom cheeks and as the spanking progressed these stains became deeper and sharper in colour. These marks also slowly spread out as they became darker and the puffiness at the edges, where the spanking had welted Katherine’s bottom, soon became slightly swollen into tender pads.
Alice knew that a prolonged spanking would cause the spanked areas to become leathery for a time, this where the flesh tightened and already she could see ever more closely knit goosebumps described on the tortured skin
“Ah,” Katherine yelled as the umpteenth spank landed and ever after her cries became shriller.
There was no begging though, or protests of pain or promises. Katherine merely grew ever more laboured in her breathing until she was forced to cry out at each spank. There were tears too of course. No sobbing, not yet, but a sheen of moisture covered her face and dripped from her nose, although some of that might not have been merely tears.
Finally Katherine broke into honking great howls and she jerked in a scissor motion at each heavy thwack.
Alice had no idea how many spanks there had been or how long she had spanked the girl, but her training told her to add at least three to five minutes from this point to make sure the lesson was learned. Stopping on the cusp could leave a girl coming back for more too soon.
It was a pity though that Katherine had proved so tough as now her bottom was a crimson tender wreck and further chastisement was going to be purgatory on the girl.
“That’s a good girl,” Alice sighed, patting her charge on the small of her back and helping her up.
Katherine rocked with sobs and reached for a handkerchief.
“Thank you Miss Bowman,” Katherine said, remembering her manners.
“Now back to the wall with you and put your hands on your head,” she was told.
“Yes Ma’am,” Katherine sniffed.
*
Mary’s spanking was no less severe but unlike Katherine she let go with some heartfelt howls from the very first. Now both young women were crying gently as they again faced the wall.
Katherine had been there for some 20 minutes already and another 30 or so would settle them down for the next lesson. Alice was just considering that when the back door rattled and a masculine voice yelled out, “Grocery delivery, coming through.”
Alice was as startled as the two punished women and before she had time to make a decision the man came in.
“Jesus lady this is heavy,” he cursed as he staggered in with a pile of three great boxes and placed them on the kitchen table. “Any chance of a coffee?” he added.
Alice didn’t quite know what to say but she did note with pride that neither girl had moved, although from their fidgeting demeanour they looked as if they wished they could flee.
“Eh… coffee?” Alice repeated, recovering herself.
“Sure, I don’t mind if I…” the man who had been wiping off his neck with a rag suddenly froze and gaped, finishing at a gasp with “…do…?”
“A little domestic problem…” Alice said casually, “I had to spank them.”
“Yeah…” the man muttered, “Maybe I should… eh… go…”
“No, why should you?” Alice said firmly, coming to a decision, “Coffee yes, please sit down, I’ll make you some.”
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. I haven’t seen Love, Honor and Obey (1938), although like many of you I have seen the posters and stills that occasionally circulate with the featured spanking. Apparently this movie has not been released for DVD nor is it available on TCM. The reason I suspect is the fisticuffs between the husband and wife at the end of the film.
The said scene is played for laughs and she gives as good as she gets before he settles things with a sound spanking.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Leaving aside the black eyes the scene is a strong domestic depiction of LDD, rare for a movie of any time and when the woman’s mother and father try to intervene mid spanking, and the Pricilla Lane (the wife) makes a good show of taking it for real, she breaks off from yelling and crying to say “can’t a guy get any privacy.”
The movie ends with the spanking still in progress.
I cast around for any other examples of domestic rows that ended in a spanking and although there are many I thought this one from a Boston newspaper in 1937 (two years before the movie) was most apropos.
Police called to a house in Stanton Street Wednesday last found a man spanking his wife “with some vigor.” Both parties were sporting various minor injuries, including a black eye and the woman was is some distress at her rough treatment.
When officers tried to intervene the wife berated them and declined all offers of help. She is reported to have said, “Can’t a man spank his wife when she needs it?”
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.If I was an American I would add the word ‘not’ after the heading, but then if I was an American I would probably have no idea what Bonfire Night is anyway. That’s the point really, Bonfire or Guy Fawkes Night is receding from British (English?) culture under the onslaught of Halloween (an even older British but now thoroughly Americanised pagan festival).
You will note that yesterday (on the day of Guy Fawkes Night itself) I published a late Halloween themed story and not a Bonfire one.
Bonfire Night, if you don’t know, ‘celebrates’ the capture of one Guido Fawkes, a terrorist caught in 1603 with a lit match next to a several tons of gunpowder under the Houses of Parliament in Westminster. He was a member of the Gunpowder Plot, which was a scheme to assassinate King James VI (First of England) and the entire political estate in the name of Roman Catholicism.
The plot, actually led by Robert Catesby, laboured under the delusion that if they could only kill a few lords and politicians the by then overwhelmingly Protestant nations of England, Scotland and Wales would rise up and reinstate the ‘True Faith.’
It never occurred to the plotters that what probably would have happened in the ensuing chaos is perhaps the greatest anti-catholic pogrom in history, so maybe that’s why my local Catholic Church has Bonfire Celebrations too.
To celebrate this lucky escape every year on November 5th people in Britain let off fireworks and burn effigies of Guy Fawkes.
Incidentally the plot gave us the English phrase ‘to blow-up’ meaning to explode when a rather vague note of warning was sent to King James containing this then unknown expression.
But what has this got to do with spanking? Well actually nothing, which is why I didn’t do a post yesterday.
Although I did find this anecdote.
“Yeah, when we were kids and old enough to buy our own fireworks we girls bought a batch and set them off in a rubbish bin to scare the boys. We found out that night that old enough to buy fireworks was not too old for a spanking.”
You have to be 18 to buy fireworks in the UK. So I thought about spinning it into a story, but I ran out of time.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Audrey Chancellor swung the horse around and pointed it at the high ridge that now stood in front of her. The High Country was no place for anyone, never you mind a lone woman. But the law was the law.
Audrey took a deep breath and blew a stray strand of red hair from under her wide-brimmed hat. If only Pa hadn’t taken a bullet, she thought. If only Jake and Thomas hadn’t had to take that prisoner to Hemingway. But ‘if only’ was only wishing and “if wishes were fishes then we would all have a good supper.” Her grandmother’s words rang through her brain.
Sure she was a full sworn deputy, Pa had seen to that. All the Chancellors were in law enforcement out here on the frontier. But she knew darn well that Pa and Jake only meant for her to keep gaol and do the paperwork. When Jake got back from Hemingway he was sure gonna wale the tar out of her for lighting out alone after that darn Indian.
Audrey straightened her hat and let go with another heavy sigh. It wasn’t too late to turn back. After all, the Indian had only winged P and her father had only gone after him in the first place because the mayor had said that no redskin could come to town.
She patted her ample right hip for her six-gun and then checked the Winchester in the saddle holster. She chewed her lip and then set her mouth sideways in consternation as she weighed up the options.
If she turned back now her elder cousin Jake would most likely still find out she had gone after the Indian. That meant a leathering in an empty cell or being sent out back to cut a switch for a trip to the woodshed. Previous variations played out in her head and none of them left her sitting any time soon.
If she headed up to the High Country most likely she wouldn’t catch-up with the Indian anyways, but at least she would have tried. It meant a spanking if she went and a spanking if she didn’t. She shrugged. The fact that she was over 21 would cut no ice with Jake and nor should it, she thought ruefully. If she had a spanking coming then she had a spanking coming, there was no sense in bitching about it.
So why wait? Was she afraid? Darn straight and not only of Jake. But Pa always said that don’t let off doing anything just because you’re scared. Nevertheless, the High Country was no place for anyone, especially a woman alone, she reminded herself. Audrey sucked in a breath and then kicked the horse forward and up the slope.
*
Cody Walking-Bear McKenzie sucked on a sprig of grass thoughtfully as he watched the rider come on. He hadn’t hurt the sheriff badly, but there was no way he was siting a horse this day and for a week or two to come. So the pursuer must either be a deputy or an outrider scout for a posse.
Deep-tanned and broad, Cody stood six-six in his moccasins and the firm dark eyes weighed up the opposition.
The rider was small, so maybe a scout. But Cody’s instinct said no. A posse would take another day to gather and he doubted they would bother unless the sheriff was dead. That pointed to a deputy trying to pick up a trail.
Cody could duck out easily but if the deputy was stubborn he might get lost and end up dying out here. That would be on Cody then and the law would not fast forgive. It would be best to jump the fool and slap him down a little before taking his guns and pointing him to the trail home.
*
Audrey saw the tracks and frowned. She knew darn well it had been intended that she see them and that meant a trap. Instinctively she reached for the Winchester, the weapon she was most proficient in and then thought better of it. A trap meant her quarry was close to. Instead of the rifle she palmed the pistol in its holster and dismounted.
Maybe the Indian was watching her already. Maybe he would just shoot her. Her tummy tightened and she felt sick. I should turn back, she thought, her eyes danced rapidly as she scanned the rocks. I really should turn back.
“Sister, don’t move,” a dark accented voice called out from behind her.
Audrey froze.
Cody had spotted that his pursuer was a girl an hour back. The revelation had left him a quandary, but it was now even more certain that he shouldn’t let this woman go any deeper into the High Country alone.
“I have come to take you in for shooting my Pa,” Audrey yelled back. But she didn’t move and allowed her grip on the handle of her six-gun to loosen and let go.
“Your Pa went for his gun first, there was no call,” Cody responded. “I would have left town. I know where I am not wanted.”
“That’s as maybe but…” Audrey worked her mouth. She was alone out here and she knew nothing about this man.
He had a point though. Her Pa never would have been so hasty if it hadn’t had been for the mayor. Where was the harm in being an Indian anyway? Only her Pa called them Breeds and look of disgust came over his face when he said it.
Jake always handled it better. He was polite and let the few Indians who braved town trade a little before moving them on. “Cash on the nail is cash on the nail,” he would say.
“Unhitch your belt real slow lady and kick your pistol away,” Cody told her.
The girl looked out of place, even out here. For one thing she wore pants like a man. Well not exactly like a man, she filled them out just fine.
Audrey was about to obey when old bones crackled at her feet. It sounded like grit and death rolled up in a tin can and she startled as she whirled around. By the time her pistol cleared the holster Cody was in view, his rifle blasting off a shot in his hands. He was big and mean-looking. Without thinking she fired too.
The Indian fell hard and backwards with a sickening crunch. It was only after he tumbled over the rocks that Audrey saw the rattler on the ground. What was left of it anyway.
“Bitching hell,” she gasped, falling back on the worse cuss words she knew or pretended to know at any rate. “Hey Indian…? Mister? Are you alright?”
Audrey crept forward at a stoop to where she had last seen him, her pistol lamely waving in the same direction as if another rattlesnake would leap out at her at any moment.
“You going to shoot me again?” the man growled as he clambered to his feet.
A well-blanched Audrey shook her head vigorously and holstered her gun.
“Sorry,” she winced, “You alright?”
“Probably,” Cody admitted as he dusted himself off.
“You saved my life,” Audrey said sheepishly.
“And you nearly killed me for it,” Cody said angrily.
“I reckon,” Audrey groaned.
“Why I ought to… I ought to spank the living…” Cody snarled.
Audrey laughed nervously. “I guess if you did then I’d have a red skin too.”
Cody stared at her in disbelief and narrowed his eyes. “Is that a joke?”
“No Sir I… I mean I…” she knew the man’s look, it wasn’t so very different to Jake’s or her Pa’s in such circumstances.
“You really gonna spank me?” Audrey asked nervously, her teeth devouring her lower lip.
Cody was surprised at the change in the girl’s demeanour and folded his arms as he weighed the situation up.
When the man didn’t answer Audrey dropped her gaze and began t unhitch her gun belt. The band hitching up her pants came next and to Cody’s surprised she began doing a shimmy and shucking down her denims.
“I guess I got it coming,” she said ruefully.
Cody was not only surprised by this turn of events, he was shocked to see that the girl wore nothing under her pants.
“I guess you do,” Cody agreed as he took the initiative.
*
“I am only letting you do this because you saved my life,” Audrey said ruefully, “That, and I think you got a tough break back in town.”
“And the fact that I shot your Pa…?” Cody asked incredulously as she snuggled down across his lap.
“Oh, that was nothing, you only winged him,” Audrey scoffed, “He’s been shot plenty of times afore. He’ll be back in the saddle by Tuesday.”
Cody pinned her hands into the small of her back and adjusted his thigh so that her bare bottom curved upwards rather more. She was beautiful she decided, but obviously crazy.
“I wasn’t going to shoot you,” Audrey admitted meekly, “I mean I never shot anyone and confronting you up here and almost killing you and all… well I guess it learned me that I should have stuck to the gaol like Pa and Jake told me. I am so gonna get it.”
“Worse than this?” Cody asked as hand slapped down hard across bare flesh.
Audrey squealed as if she meant it and for a few long seconds she bucked up and down obscenely as she squirmed. “Much worse,” she finally replied breathily.
“That remains to be seen,” Cody growled, put out that his own prowess was being compared unfavourably with this Jake.
The Indian’s great arm swung down like a paddle and it came down fast and hard. In moments Audrey was not only the reddest bottomed girl in the territory but could have won state medals for bawling.
“Jiminy,” she piped up, “You sure do spank hard.” She was panting like a girl in a race now and she was suddenly very eager to reach the finish line.
However, despite Cody’s pace and energy, he was a conducting a marathon not a sprint and they were only just getting started.
“Whoo-hoo, I’m sorry,” Audrey wailed heedless of any dignity.
“You sure are,” Cody chuckled as he set in to spank her for a good portion of the afternoon.
*
Sobbing hard, Audrey had steadied herself on all fours for a good 15 minutes. Her behind was as hot as pipe-stove coals and twice as bright. That had been some spanking, she thought ruefully as she calmed herself down. She had totally forgotten that she was showing the Indian her bare bottom. But at least he was handsome and if a girl was going to get a spanking it might as well be by an expert.
“I guess I’ll be going now,” Cody said with a very great reluctance.
Audrey sniffed and nodded, she was too shy to look up and meet his eyes.
“No hard feelings?” Cody asked as he swung himself into the palomino that had seemingly come from nowhere.
“No Sir,” Audrey winced as she at last began to rise to haul up her pants. “Getting a spanking is an occupational hazard for a girl in this territory,” she added ruefully.
Cody nodded and wheeling his horse he quite literally rode off into the sunset.
The Indian spanked her good, Audrey admitted, but after braving the High Country and getting captured she now faced Jake. That meant the belt and a switching, she reckoned. She only prayed that corner time wouldn’t be in the gaol house where she could be seen. But she wasn’t hopeful, she wasn’t hopeful at all.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Her father was dead. That was the way it went sometimes. There was still the herd to get to Abilene and if they could cross the mountains before the snow then they might just save the ranch.
Jane Campbell-Lane thought herself as a hard woman for a hard country. Her black unkempt hair was hauled back to a practical bun giving her a masculine appearance head on. Or at least it would have done if her features hadn’t been unmistakably feminine. Even her heavy dark brow complimented this despite the mean dark-eyed look she gave the world from under them.
Her attire too was mannish. She had opted for denim pants rather than a riding skirt, but here too the harsh cotton clung to her ample curves in a way that city folk might have considered obscene.
“Go easy girl, no one will blame you if you fail,” her grandmother had soothed as Jane had been preparing the herd to go.
Jane had swung the jet black horse round in a tight animated circle to glare at her elder. “No one will blame me until you have nothing for the table old woman,” she spat.
Her grandmother’s eyes tightened. In her day she had stood with the men to fight off Indians. In her day she might too have taken the same view as Jane, but it galled her that those days had past. Still it was no way for a girl to speak to her elders. Jane had lost her Pa but Catherine Campbell-Lane had lost her only son.
“Maybe so,” Catherine said wistfully, “But despite what you say I would rather see you home and broke than not at all.”
“Then you’re the only one,” Jane hissed, “I am going make it or die trying.”
Then with a kick of the horse she raced it across the short mean grass to berate half a dozen cowhands still chewing the fat.
“You’re spending my daylight shitheads,” she yelled, “Get them doggies moving.”
Her Pa had often spoken to the men like that, but coming from her it sounded meaner.
“Yes’um Miss Campbell,” the Ramrod acknowledged with a tip of his hat. But as soon as Jane had hauled her tail to berate someone else the man spat on the ground before glaring after her.
Catherine caught the gesture and shrugged. Jim Canyon was an old friend and he was one of her husband’s first hires. But there was nothing to say. Jane was the boss now.
*
They were twelve days out of Albuquerque when they saw smoke.
“Grass fire I reckon,” Jim said thoughtfully.
“Reckon so,” Tom Mention agreed.
Next to Jim he was the top hand. Dark tall and lean he didn’t say much. He had been a cowhand since he had been 12 and 25 years on there wasn’t much he didn’t know about cows, horses or the open range.
“We had better swing the herd north some,” Tom suggested, his voice no more than a harsh whisper.
“That would be my thought,” Jim agreed, “But somehow I don’t think Miss Big Britches will go for it.”
“Well it’s that or risk the herd,” Tom shrugged. He frowned though. He didn’t like Jim disrespecting the boss, not that she wasn’t a right royal pain. But it had to be said that she was as good as most men he had ridden with and with her Pa dead she was up against it. She had hard choices to make and she had been making them.
“It’s her herd,” Jim sighed, but his gaze never left the ever smokier horizon.
Just then the big black horse that had been riding them since Utah thundered up with all the menace of a storm.
“What are you skanks gawping at, get back to work, your burning my daylight,” she bellowed.
“Just watching that there prairie fire ma’am,” Jim answered, his eyes still rooted on the ominous sky.
“It’s a ways off yet,” she snarled, “So don’t go afearing,” she added with a sneer.
“No call to say that ma’am,” Jim replied, “I am only saying…”
“Get them moving man, south-east, that way,” she barked, pointing slightly to the right of the pall of smoke.
“But ma’am,” Jim shot back, “The wind is…”
“If you move quick enough we won’t be here by the time the wind has anything to say,” she cut him off.
“Well that’s true enough,” Tom agreed as Jane sped off, “All we got to do is fly.”
Jim frowned and gave him a hard stare, but it didn’t take long for it to crack multiplying the smile lines on his face.
Tom laughed and slapped his thighs. Then both men shook their heads and set to work.
*
“You bastards, you god dammed bastards,” Jane raged, “If you had only done as I said…”
The men were silent now, mere shadows of grey in the haze of dust and smoke. Grime clung to their hollow faces so that bleary eyes peered out hauntingly through masks of dust and sweat.
An hour before the fire had finally hit the herd. Most of the steers were upwind by then and another 30 minutes and they might have got clear altogether, but now they were spooked and some had gone south while others had fled who knew where to escape.
“We nearly made it ma’am,” Jim said when he could draw a breath.
“Nearly, you old fool, nearly buys nothing. We may have lost half the herd all because…” she lit into him.
“Begging your pardon ma’am,” Tom cut her off. “Jim did mighty fine, we all did. You took a risk, some might say a foolish risk, but that was your call. I admire you for it. It nearly paid off too. But you’ve no call to speak to Jim like that.”
“Is that a fact?” Jane said with a storm-edged quiet. “You admire me do you? Foolish, but admirable, is that what you’ll put on my tombstone?” The last words exploded from her mouth.
Tom was unmoved and merely mopped his brow as if something was itching at him. “We can still probably save most of the herd, who knows, it may not be as bad as we feared, ma’am.”
“You useless lazy shit, you only had to…” Jane was incandescent. “This is Pa’s herd, my Pa, he spent his life… we might save half of it? Is that what you said? Well that’s alright then… I bet Pa is…” she continued to rage.
“Ma’am, you got no call talking to Jim like that and you ain’t got no right talking to me like that,” Tom said quietly.
“No right is it, why you…?” Jane was a dog with a bone and now she had an enemy she could see. Now she had someone she could blame.
“Ma’am, I suggest you simmer down,” Tom warned.
Jane dropped from her horse to square up to the man. Even though she came in at the height of his chest she did not pause. Then hands on hips she sucked in air for another tirade.
“You bastard, you bastard, you…” the storm broke and small fists pounded on the man’s chest why she spat the worst venom she knew.
“Ma’am, your Pa ain’t here, so I guess what’s needful falls to me,” Tom sighed.
Just to the left of them was a hillock, a grass lump not a yard high poking out of the ground. With a firm grip on Jane’s arm Tom steered the woman firmly towards it and then sat down. Jane had sprawled helplessly across his lap before she even knew what was happening.
“How did her Pa do this, it’s important?” Tom asked Jim.
“He used his belt,” Jim replied, his voice slow and sad. “The pants were taken down I reckon, but I never looked in on the barn to see for sure.”
“Nooo-nooo nooo,” Jane wailed and began to struggle. It was a futile gesture in the face of the man’s grip.
The belt made a zip-flapping sound as it cleared Tom’s pants loops. A similar action repeated at Jane’s waist.
“You wouldn’t dare,” Jane growled, her face contorted with rage.
Several men turned away as her pants slid over the smooth white domes of her bottom as it was bared. Although Jim watched until the faded blue denim was bunched all the way down to her boots. It took him that long to decide if he was going to allow this.
“Tom,” Jane gasped and slammed her small fists into the ground in a vain attempt to gain some escape leverage.
Tom pinned her hands into the small of her back with one hand and deftly doubled his belt with the other. The first thwack was like a rifle shot and Jane growled through her clamped jaw. But a dozen more quickly followed until she bucked and danced under the onslaught.
“You bastard, you… bast…” she wailed, her bottom now grazed scarlet and raw from the leather.
“I don’t talk like that in front of a lady and I won’t hear it from one either,” Tom said sternly as he continued to lay on the belt.
“Tom please,” she wailed, “Tom… Mr Mention…”
Tom’s prairie-hardened arm powered down relentlessly adding dark red fire to Jane’s already blazing bottom until her wailing gave in to full throated bawling and she broke down into convincing sobs.
Finally Tom dropped the belt and scooped the sobbing girl into his arms and held. “There you go, there,” he soothed as he gently rocked the crying woman.
It took a while but as Jane came back to herself she sobbed, “Pa would have put me in the corner about now.”
“I don’t reckon there is a corner for a hundred miles,” Tom chuckled.
Jane nodded as she used her one free hand to wipe her nose. “I’m sorry Tom,” and then with a fresh sob she heaved a breath and added, “I’m sorry Mr Canyon.”
“Don’t take on so ma’am,” Jim coughed, his back still firmly turned away. “We have a herd to save.”
“You reckon we can… save it I mean?” Jane sniffed as she got her feet and pulled up her pants.
“I reckon we can.” Jim agreed.
“Then we will push on to Abilene as soon as we have rested up,” she told him shyly, adding “and I can sit horse.”
Jim and Tim laughed, although the other men had already moved away to attend to their horses.
“Thank you Tom,” Jane whispered as she found her walking had for the moment picked up a slight limp.
“You’re welcome ma’am,” he said tipping his hat.
“Oh Tom…” she suddenly sounded anxious, “Don’t tell grandma will you?”
The grin and the shaking head seemed to contradict themselves.
“You b… beast,” she said, but when he winked she smiled.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Sometime ago I chanced upon a reference to a birching tower in a book. There was no more information, but the most likely explanation that it was used for storage; or so I thought. In the History of the Rod there is a mention of birching rooms in gaols and apparently women prisoners were often ‘taken to the tower for decency’s sake,’
The engraving above of is of one such 18th century birching tower, where recalcitrant women prisoners, were birched.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.In England women could also be birched up until the middle of the 19th century for other offences in lieu of incarceration. Maybe they were taken to such a ‘tower for decency’s sake.’
It is likely to a be a British, Dutch or perhaps French institution, as in Prussia and Bavaria (Germany) and Bohemia (Czechoslovakia) they had no such scruples about birching women on the bare and in public.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Nell in Bridewell had much to say on the subject, and although it must be remembered as fiction there is truth behind the inspiration for despite the official reasons, it may have been discretion for the witnesses that were uppermost in the gaolers mind. As for a fee the well-to-do were often admitted to bear witness to such punishments.
According to this account a “special whipping bench was placed in the centre of a large underground hall and this bench was equipped with stocks at either end. One held the girl’s neck and wrists; the other set of stocks clamped her ankles.”
“The condemned girl was brought in and stretched out along the bench, and her head and feet confined in the stocks. Her skirts were raised up to her shoulders, revealing her bare buttocks. Back then women did not wear drawers or bloomers, but shielded their modesty with heavy petticoats.”
By the Victoria era rods came in three basic sizes. The Nursery Birch, which was small and light, the Governess Birch, which was longer and heavier and used on ‘great girls,’ and the judicial birch for the one procedure described above.
Even noble ladies were not immune, but if they were lucky their modesty would be preserved by being punished in their own rooms to “receive the withes across their naughty bare bottoms.”
Perhaps in grander houses they might have a birching tower like the one above.Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Writing in dotage before the Second World War, one Mary Louise Hammond has this to say in her memoirs.
“At approaching 20-years-of-age I deemed myself too old to be spanked, let alone soundly birched; this operation traditionally conducted upon my bared behind. So it was I refused correction from my old governess for some forgotten trifle. However, my dear Papa was not amused at my rebellion and I was soon paid out with high drama upon my hideously and shamefully exposed hindquarters until I quite begged quarter and forgiveness.
My governess was quite satisfied with my demeanour and treatment then, but added to my shame by setting me nose to the wall in the nursery for the remainder of the afternoon. You can be quite certain I did not think of resisting and all the while my mind dwelt upon what my justly angry Papa had seen during my chastisement. As amusing as it seems now, sometimes it shames me still.”Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Lupus Vane stood at just over six feet, somewhat tall for a veteran of the Assassin’s Guild. But although it sometimes made him more conspicuous than he would have wished, today it was a blessing. He ran a hand through a bristle of dark hair and thrust out his square-like handsome jaw; his good looks too playing into his hands on this day.
It was a pity his borrowed guard uniform did not fit, but not one of his temporary comrades was under six feet and all were picked for their looks so he doubted anyone had noticed as he picked his way through the inner gate.
It was essential for this job that no one knew he was there; indeed his target must perish as if from natural causes. Not a glamorous assignment, he always preferred to face his prey with a sword, but it paid well enough and so it should considering the mark.
The moonless night also aided his work and keeping to the shadows he gained the inner courtyard challenged only by an owl who cried out, “Who, who?”
Lupus laughed as he relaxed his instinctive hold on the hilt of his sword. Bloody bird, he thought and smiled grimly. But he paused all the same and glanced around the darkened yard and listened to the breeze playing in the vines and under the eaves. Nothing else stirred.
The next part was the hardest. Without being seen or heard he had to climb a drain pipe under a canopy of ivy. He had scoped the route some days before and a posing as a guard in an unrestricted area had allowed him to lower a discreet rope just where it was needed.
Nevertheless, it took him almost 40 minutes to pick his way up the wall to the window and the challenge of opening it unheard.
Within, still sleeping, lay King Henrik, sovereign of the god-cursed land of Tragan and Head of the benighted House of Gordian. He hated Tragans, but as kings went Hendrik was one of the better ones. But what was that to him. The man’s own brother was paying good money for his shot at being king of the shit heap.
*
In the end it had been easy. The man hadn’t woken and dripping an odourless, tasteless oil into his mouth had been without incident. It would take a few hours to take effect of course, but by morning the king would be dead, apparently from a heart attack. For a man of over 60 no one would suspect.
All there was left to do was gain the woods just beyond the castle and collect the fee.
Lupus paused at the edge of the trees and listened. Something smelled wrong, literally. Beneath the mossy damp and rotten wood was another scent. It was a salty burnt smell Lupus knew well but couldn’t quite place. It wasn’t until he smelt the beer that he realised he could smell fried onions.
Lupus crouched down and scanned the shadows for the unwelcome tavern-goers. A clerical lackey would hardly a visited an inn or have indulged in such peasant food, not before such an important meeting.
Straining his eyes Lupus finally made out the men in shadows. Warriors of course and not a sign of anyone entrusted with gold. Damn, a double cross, he cursed. He was still pondering what to do when an angry voice snarled, “There he is; he’s spotted us.”
“Oh shit,” Lupus groaned and drew his blade.
There were eight he reckoned, a full squad. Not sharp cookies, but tough. They were mostly large, but a couple of them moved well, well enough to offer Lupus a challenge in single combat.
Years of training took over now and his mind raced. The job was compromised. Lord Varian would do anything to silence him now and if he ran he would be running still in a week and on a Tragan shit list for decades. This was not good.
On the other hand he had to deal with eight toughs and it wouldn’t end there. That would only buy him some time and the end result would be the same. The answer was oblivious. An axe flew past his head and Lupus realised he was surrounded; obvious, but far from easy. Three to one he would be dead in under two minutes.
A throwing knife found his fingers from his sleeve and the poisoned blade found its mark more than 20 feet away. It was short work to hurl another and three of his five such weapons hit flesh.
One of the men was already dead and two more were staggering towards him nearly so to get in the way. A fourth man was too eager and separated from his fellows Lupus cut him down easily.
That’s better odds, Lupus chuckled to himself and amended his chances to… he dodged two assailants and side stepping back unexpectedly he cut one man at the throat with the return stroke and chopped the other deep through the left shoulder so that he was doomed to bleed out.
The man looked confused as he dropped to his knees, but ever professional, Lupus had danced away without looking.
Then there were two.
“I would let you go boys, but I need a few hours to make a new deal, sorry,” Lupus sighed.
In any event, neither of the men looked inclined to run and they died valiantly.
*
King Henrik looked with some confusion at the large sinister man sitting at the end of his bed.
“Please don’t call out,” Lupus said with polite menace. “I just saved your life with an antidote; it would be a pity to have to kill you now.”
Henrik sat up and frowned. He felt woozy and the act of moving brought on some nausea. His hair was a boiling mess of thick white hair and it was hard to tell beard from mane. But amid the hirsute mask were two piercing eyes that seemed to hold the balance of the world.
“An assassin I presume,” he sighed.
Lupus inclined his head.
“Given that I am not dead I am guessing… what? You want more money?” Henrik growled.
“I am honour bound to see a job through, no money can buy me off, but your brother… he doesn’t keep his bargains, so I am released. I thought you might want me to kill him instead.” Lupus tilted his head sardonically.
This man might be outraged; he might have a concealed weapon. But instead the king nodded thoughtfully and pulled at his beard.
“It is beginning to make sense,” Henrik sighed. “My brother has kidnapped my daughter, or so I suspect. Killing me with her out of the way would leave the way open to the crown. Talia is next in line, but a woman monarch is a hard sell and if he already has her…”
“Your brother sounds like a bad lot. So, for a small fee…” Lupus winked.
“Yes, but not for that,” Henrik rubbed his eyes. “I am no murderer. But I have another proposition for you.”
Lupus made a gesture that he was listening and after pausing to check that the king wasn’t stalling he nodded.
“Rescue my daughter and I will be free to act against that bastard. I will give you double his offer and a pardon for any crimes committed in my lands.”
Lupus pursed his lips. This was not what he had hoped for. He didn’t rate this man’s chances of besting his brother, but he knew at once that he wasn’t going to get a better offer. Damn honour and all that, damn tricky thing, he thought as he knew too well.
“I am sure we can work something out your majesty, you had better tell me all that you know,” Lupus said breezily.
*
It wasn’t hard to trace where Varian was holding Princess Talia. After watching his castle for three days he observed the errant lord leaving by a secondary exit and taking an unusual route through the forest.
It was a simple matter to follow him and after a three hour ride with a small escort, the party arrived at a modest fortified house well away from the main road. Lupus waited all day, but finally just before nightfall Lord Varian left.
The house was a far less risky prospect than Henrik’s castle had been and it didn’t take long to gain access. This was made easy by the almost total absence of any servants or even guards. Indeed the house looked as if it were an old hunting lodge that had been vacated many years before. The furniture was Spartan and most of it was covered in dust sheets anyway.
In the end he located one guarded wing and a small kitchen where just two servants were preparing meals of some kind.
“Her highness is being tiresome again,” Lupus heard as he crept nearer.
“It’s nothing,” a woman replied. “She is always difficult when he comes. She will soon settle down. There is little chance she will try to escape in any case.”
“You believe our lord would kill the king if she opposes his plans?” There was awe in the male servant’s voice.
The idea of killing a king was heresy.
“Who knows,” the woman replied, “All I know is that she believes it.”
Lupus noted that there were rafters bridging the roof of the high corridor; an easy way to transverse the house without being seen. It took a moment to climb and eventually he saw the woman emerge from what he took to be the kitchen with a tray.
A previously unseen guard emerged to open a door, but otherwise Lupus saw no one.
“Here we go,” he muttered.
No great detective work was required. Had this been a saga the princess would have been secured in a maze or guarded by giants. However as it turned out the corridor led to a locked door at its very end and the servant only dallied under the supervision of a single guard long enough to open it and deposit the tray inside.
“Nice to be a hero for once,” Lupus said under his breath, certain now his work was done.
*
“Who by the shit damned saints of Valdor are you?” The imperious woman who spoke had the longest blonde tresses Lupus had ever seen. She was also shorter than he was expecting, a stature that served to emphasise her excess of curves. Now she was glaring at him with impossibly blue eyes and indolently full lips.
Lupus didn’t think her particularly pretty, she was too wide in the face for such delicate sentiments, but she was built like a tavern wench and some men went for the look.
“Lupus Vane at your service your highness,” Lupus said with a slightly mocking bow.
“Vane, that’s a Thorian name isn’t it?” she snarled, “I might have known such a cur would be working for my uncle.”
“I am Thorian it is true, but by the souls of my ancestors I am not working for Lord Varian,” Lupus said earnestly.
Now why had I said that, such words of honour should have been left at the assassins’ guild’s gates? The blurted words troubled him.
“Lies, and I couldn’t give a fart for the souls of your god-shitting ancestors,” she spat.
Lupus bristled. He was still off guard from his personal slip, but now his honour was being thrown back in his face.
“I have been called worse than a liar in my time, indeed I confess it is true. That is the bane of an assassin I am afraid. But I will trouble you not to insult my ancestors,” Lupus said with an iron pride.
“Oh that’s right; you Thorian’s have a big thing about your ancestors. Funny really, when you consider that they are all shit eating pig loving…” she was just getting into her stride when Lupus produced a ring.
It had been given to him by Henrik as a sign of his bona fides.
“An assassin you say?” Talia sniffed defensively, “Maybe I was hasty.”
“You were insulting and if you had been a man I would have been duty bound to hand you a sword for honour’s sake,” Lupus said in a steely voice.
“Don’t let that stop you, I’ll have you know… oh forget it, what does my father say cur?” Talia sighed.
Lupus pondered two dozen ways to kill her as he slowly counted to 10 in her head. “I am to rescue you,” he said at last.
“Fool, what good would that do?” Talia snarled, “Varian will kill him and then me. He has to die. Why are you wasting your time here?”
“It was the deal I made with your father. I agree it is not a good plan, but it is the one I have agreed to.” The assassin leant back against the wall and shrugged.
“Then I will make another arrangement with you. Kill my uncle and then you can set me free and collect on both contracts. I’ll pay you double,” Talia urged.
“An attractive offer and one that best meets my thoughts on this matter, however, you have insulted me and moreover you have insulted my ancestors,” Lupus said with a note of regret. “I cannot in honour do business with you.”
“I’m sorry, alright, I’m sorry, just take the money and…” Talia rolled her eyes and sighed. Bloody peasants were always so touchy.
“Honour must be served and honour demands a life,” Lupus said sharply.
“You’re going to kill me? Talia gasped.
Lupus shrugged. “I suppose that is one answer, can you think of another?” Honour was tricky and he hated that he was now in a bind that served no one.
Talia’s eyes darted back and forth in her head and she bit down on her lip as if solving a puzzle.
“The kingdom is at stake, my father’s life… what will satisfy you? Me? My life? I give myself to… to kill, to marry, as a…” she shook her head impatiently, “a supplicant to any revenge or… whatever the code demands. Only kill my god damned uncle and save the bloody kingdom.”
“Then I accept,” Lupus said with no little relief. He would collect later, a token of retribution that wouldn’t complicate things too much, well he hoped.
He moved to the door. “Are you coming?”
Talia looked at him incredulously. “Well duh, if I go with you then my uncle will know something is up and anyway, how do you think I can help you? My father won’t see past my safety. Honour my contract first and then… oh…”
“I promised to rescue you, I didn’t say what happened then, I can honour both contracts,” Lupus was beginning to like this insulting and haughty brat.
He winked and then he was gone.
*
The blond in Varian’s hair was touched with grey, but he was a good decade younger than the king. He regarded the man before him with disdain.
“Why are you here? I thought you were going to handle a small matter for me?” he said smoothly.
“Oh I did, but you had other ideas as I recall,” Lupus said smarmily. He was grinning in his most charming manner acting for all the world as if he didn’t know that Varian would kill him.
“Well I could hardly have you around to tell a story could I?” Lord Varian made a gesture with his eyes to the guard by the door.
Lupus dropped to a crouch and before the man had even moved Lupus executed a wide circle as he drew his sword. It was ballet of motion and even Varian was in awe. Then the guard’s head rolled onto the floor.
“G-g…” Varian gasped, unable to speak, and then he yelled, “Guards.”
Lupus sighed and wiped his sword. “Don’t bother, those within earshot are already dead: mostly from the poison in the soup.”
“Mostly, what w-what about the others?” Varian said with a voice one imagined a dead wooden tree might speak with.
“They wouldn’t eat the soup,” Lupus grinned.
Varian came alive and made a desperate grab for his sword. In a blink he had taken up an impressive battle stance ready to take on all comers.
“I am so disappointed,” Lupus said wearily, “I would have so loved to have tested your steel.”
As he spoke bells were clanging and angry shouts ranged through the castle.
“And so you shall,” Varian sneered.
Lupus shook his head and nodded at a small throwing knife protruding from Varian’s ribs. He winced apologetically and said, “Poison I am afraid. I didn’t have time for a fight.”
Varian followed Lupus’s gaze, his sword sagging to dip to the floor with the motion. By the time the lord folded over to hit the floor face down he was dead.
*
“My uncle is dead?” Princess Talia said.
Lupus nodded once and emphatically. “I have sent word to your father that you have been rescued and where you are. Varian’s servants and guards are… indisposed.”
Talia sighed with relief and even did an excited little dance. Then remembering something, her smile tightened and she composed herself.
“So what’s my fate?” she said wistfully.
“I am going to take your life, do you give it freely?” Lupus said with an honest formality.
Talia nodded, but she felt sick. Honour was all.
“You needn’t look quite so grim, not quite so,” Lupus winked. “In a few hours, a day or two at most, I’ll give it back to you. But first… well I am an assassin, I am not really considered a very nice man… honour demands… and anyway, I am going to enjoy this.”
Talia swallowed nervously and felt a little dizzy. She was falling, her life more out of control than it ever had been. Curiously it wasn’t all together an unpleasant feeling.
“W-what are you going to do to me?” she whispered.
“Everything, I should think, come this way, they have a rather interesting dungeon,” Lupus said with a malicious smile.
“I really am sorry for what I said, and I am so very grateful for all that you have done,” she offered nervously.
“Let’s see how grateful you can be and as for sorry… I have a lesson in sorry prepared just for you, your highness” Lupus said gently and bowed as he ushered her towards the door.
*
Talia was naked, body and soul. Her head and arms were locked into a kind of pillory that secured her face down over a semi-circular wooden ‘pillow’ that elevated her hips and pressed with an inappropriate allure at her sex.
Her bare legs had been left free save for some lose leather straps that prevented her from kicking but allowed full access for anything Lupus may desire.
Her position was terrifyingly shameful and yet her prison of honour thrilled her with its lustful freedom. She had made an honourable bargain and none of this now was her responsibility. She was at the assassin’s mercy and completely liberated from any guilt.
“You talked of setting me free,” Talia said carefully, “But I am a virgin, if you use me as honour dictates, as is your right, then I will be yours forever; as wife, as slave as… as anything you desire. That is the law in my land, so long as my virginity is freely given that is. Oh, and it is by the way… if you didn’t know.” Talia said hopefully. If the assassin didn’t set her free through this loophole then it was hardly her fault.
“What about here, or here?” Lupus chuckled touching her most intimate spot hidden between her bottom cheeks and then lightly brushing her lips with his fingers.
“They are yours to use without consequence,” she said breathily, her heart was pounding now as a thousand dreams threatened to become reality. No more duty, she prayed.
Lupus moved around the room to regard her face and the he showed her a long-handled leather leaf-headed paddle. “First you must atone to my ancestors, a spanking for each venerable one of them. And I have a lot of ancestors. We might have to restrict ourselves to the ones I can name,” he laughed.
Talia felt her sex tighten and she licked her lips. The hard wood under hips pressed all the firmer now and she was put in mind of some intimate episodes riding astride while hunting.
“That is your right and duty, I see that now,” she whispered.
“You won’t enjoy this,” he threatened as he moved behind her.
“Nor should I,” she said defiantly and tensing her knees she lifted and rounded her ample bare bottom to present it.
The paddle fell sharply with a heavy crack and she gasped. Lupus had ways to make the sting worthy of gods and never bruise; well not for some hours anyway. He struck again and enjoyed the colouring as flesh rippled.
“Ah,” Talia grunted and rolled with it.
The spanking came in short volleys setting the princess to strain and moan as she suffered. Between bouts of punishment Lupus inspected the dark red stain that so perfectly formed across both buttocks as it grew ever larger and darker. He would take his time, a half an hour should serve his father’s honour.
For Talia the sting was insistent and peeled her away in layers. Little by little she surrendered, all the while knowing it would be shameful to cry and certain that she would. By the time she broke she was gasping out sobs with her back arched and her sore bottom pointing upwards top receive its due; all without prompting.
Her sex was screaming for unmet release and she was on the verge of begging when she came back to herself and opened her eyes. The spanking had stopped and now Lupus stood naked before her.
His manhood was larger than she imagined and stood to angry attention an inch from her nose.
“Suckle this for a while, it will ease the passage at the other end,” he said huskily.
She blushed as she thrilled, but what was she to do, she was helpless in his power. It wasn’t her fault.
Her lips parted as she took the engorged head in her mouth like a hot plum. The bitterness tingled and she explored under a ridge she found with her tongue. She wanted more and worked upon it with her greedy mouth.
“Not yet,” he groaned and took away her toy.
The air was electric as he moved away to address her tail end. Moving atop of her she felt his rod brush her sore bottom cheeks and furrow in between. The press at her narrow bud was curious and shortly after it burned pleasantly as it parted and then her eyes bugged. She hadn’t counted on… oh and on, how much was there?
His extra limb was as a fist in her innards and she groaned and squirmed upon the hard wood that pressed at her sex. ‘Saddle pommel, saddle pommel, saddle pommel,’ she thought over and over as she bucked.
Then with measured cruelty he withdrew. She was bereft.
“Would you like to taste again?” he said as he moved to her face end and stroked her hair.
“Beast,” she said as she shuddered in faux horror. It was clean enough, but now with added bitterness.
He repeated the act back and forth for a while, each time taking her to the edge of completion. Then taking no pleasure even for himself he again took up the paddle.
“I have many, many ancestors and you have insulted them all,” he said and brought the paddle down hard.
The second spanking was a long one, a very long one.
*
His manhood burrowed deeply between her throbbing hot bottom cheeks and she moaned. This followed her third or fourth spanking; her nether end ached.
“Let me, let me, let me…” she begged.
He came in an explosion; the throbbing deep within her was intense. If it hadn’t been for the pressure of the wood beneath her she would have been bereft again but this time she reached climax and the world burned.
He was still hard when he pulled it out and she gobbled it eagerly when he presented it to her mouth, lovingly cleaning it of his seed.
“If I had a spoon I would serve you the rest of the sauce from the other end,” he quipped.
That was filthy, she thought but with a sly smirk she whispered, “There might be one in the kitchen up above.”
*
“Your highness, are you alright?” The voice was girlish and came from far away.
Talia roused herself. “Where is Lupus?”
“That man is washing, he says you and he are not done?” The maid was one Talia recognised from the palace. It seemed that the advanced guard had arrived to escort her home.
“If he says, then it is so,” Talia said proudly. She was naked and secure before a servant and had never felt so humble. “He can do with me as he wishes.”
Lupus was now wearing his breeches and he entered the room aglow. His eyes fell on Talia kindly and he winked.
“I can free you now if you wish,” he said gently.
“Not yet,” Talia said in panic.
“Well I do have a lot of ancestors,” he said, “But I am bored with just that paddle.”
“Hey you girl,” Talia barked imperiously, “Go and fetch… a quirt, and cut some birch rods, you know what for and be quick about it or you will feel them yourself.”
Once she was gone Talia looked up at her master and sighed, “Don’t free me.”
“We both have other lives, and in a day or two we must return to them,” he said, his voice tinged with real regret.
“A day or two,” she said ruefully, “You beast, when that girl gets back I am not going to sit down for a year.”
“That’s the spirit,” he said.
“Is your friend up to the game?” she smiled, nodding at his trousers.
“Is yours?” he chuckled thumbing her narrow bud, which was now as sore as the surrounding flesh.
“Hardly, but that is entirely beside the point you evil man,” she laughed.
*
The world turns and years pass unnoticed. Kings rise and fall and even the youngest queens must grow up and do their duties. So it was with Queen Talia in a time and land so very far away.
The man watched from the shadows unseen. He had no particular need to hide, but a life time as an assassin tended to form habits. This time however his visit was purely personal, although if he had been asked he could not have said exactly why he was here. For a man like Lupus Vane that was unusual.
Queen Talia had scarcely changed in the last two decades and he watched her slow stately progress around the court with pride. She had grown into a fine queen and perhaps her pursuit of duty and his releasing her had been the right thing to do.
Her son was 21 now and had already proved himself an able diplomat and general, contributing as much as his mother to Tragan’s golden age. It was sad though that he had been propelled so young to the role after his father’s death, but he had certainly proved able.
No doubt his twin sisters too were a great support and at a year younger they were virtually identical to their mother at that age.
Lupus’s gaze returned to Talia and he smiled. Oh well I saw what I came to see, he thought. It was a small matter to pick his way unseen through the crowd, after all invisible is as invisible does.
But he hadn’t counted on his elevated height and something about the way he moved caught Talia’s eye. Now there was a man she would never forget.
“Mr Vane,” she said expansively stopping the progress in its tracks.
There was a sudden burble of chatter, but once everyone saw the ordinary looking lesser gentleman to which the Queen referred, they lost interest. Their monarch was often given to such social largesse.
Lupus stopped and made a slow half turn on his heel to face his ‘old friend.’ As their eyes met he bowed. Perhaps she wanted some measure of revenge, or perhaps like him, she was curious.
“Your majesty,” Lupus said warmly as if they had seen each other only yesterday.
“There is a man I cannot help but think of every time I have to sit upon my throne,” she said turning to a puzzled courtier and tapping him on the shoulder with her fan.
The man shook his head in reluctant agreement and nodded a pleasant smile at Lupus.
The double-entendre was not lost on Lupus and he nodded in acceptance of the observation.
“Do you know that without this man I would have had no throne to sit upon and yet there was a time when thanks to him I could not sit upon it anyway,” she said cryptically. “Indeed I have much to thank him for.”
Several courtiers nodded like fools as if they understood.
“It has been a long time your majesty,” Lupus said in a neutral voice and dipped his head for another bow.
“Tell me, are you here on business Mr Vane?” Talia asked pleasantly, but there was some steel in both her voice and eyes.
“Indeed not,” Lupus said, “On that you have my word.”
“And your word is as good as your honour allows. I know that from… personal experience,” the Queen said imperiously. “Then what brings you to my court?”
“I had thought to visit an old friend to see how she fares,” Lupus said dismissively as he scanned the room for an exit.
“How nice, and what of me? Am I not an old friend?” Talia said more girlishly, her eyes crinkling at the corners, which was both charming and hinted a little at her age.
“The very one,” Lupus admitted.
Talia looked struck and tears pooled at her eyes. “Walk with me in the garden,” she said, but her tone was not a command.
*
“I have missed you,” Talia gushed once they were alone amid the garden maze.
“It was but two days and a night,” Lupus chuckled, “And that 20 years ago.”
“If I had been anyone but my father’s heir I would have been with you still,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “If you had but taken me as was your right I would have been yours anyway.”
“And what of the kingdom? I doubt you would have fared well as an assassin’s wife,” he laughed.
“For the kingdom I thank you, we both had our duty and in the end justice was served,” she pursed her lips and stood back chastened, “But I speak of dreams not duty and as I said then, you need not have married me.”
“There have been other women… used and discarded, what makes you think you would not have been one of them?” he asked her seriously.
She frowned. Part of her wanted to say that was of no account, that danger was part of her girlish thrill, but she knew that she was more than that and that wasn’t it. So instead she spoke the truth, “You are here now.”
“You have me,” he smiled boyishly and made a face like one whose hand had been slapped for cake stealing.
“No, you have me,” she said huskily.
He frowned quizzically.
“I mean it, steal me away, make me… do… you know… anything,” she babbled.
“Nothing would suit me better, but you have responsibilities,” he sighed.
“Yes,” she said forlornly, but her face looked like a woman working out the answer to a casual riddle. Then she smirked and let a smile dance on her lips. “And yet… my son needs some space to learn how to rule and my daughters need to be put to the test… if I were to…” she shrugged mischievously, “leave on a national and international progress for a year…”
“You would need an experience bodyguard and guide,” he said meeting her casual tone, “And a small escort of course.”
“Of course, very small…” she licked her lips. “Then after that… well who knows, many of the great and the good have ever hated being ruled by a woman… my son is ready… well even kings have abdicated into retirement… or disappeared entirely.”
“But aren’t you afraid?” Lupus asked now very serious.
“For my kingdom?” Talia said.
“For your bottom,” Lupus growled.
“Quite frankly, I am terrified, although perhaps you won’t be so gentle this time,” she said innocently and then winked.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.It sounds like the title of a risqué spanking novel, and indeed I may swipe it for a short sometime. But actually this is a short article about the memoirs of a plantation owner’s wife entitled Days of Glory. A fusty old tome written before world war two, but it does feature some brief spanking.
Early in their courtship the plantation owner and his future wife Jean go on a picnic. After a swim Jean complains that she is wet and has muddy feet.
“Nanny would spank me soundly for just my feet,” I told him. Her laughed and said “Well, I wasn’t too old.” I most emphatically told him he was wrong but seeing him strike up a playful stance I made to flee. He caught me under the oaks and after making a threat of turning up my skirts and such spanked me with no small effort. My bottom cheeks tingled, but mercifully only through my skirts on that occasion. Spanking was to play no small part in our courtship and in later days he went much further, but won’t dwell on such premarital high jinks.
Later she writes: I should have taken heed of his manner of handling me, his sister Ruth certainly warned me that her brother could be a bit of a brute and did not suffer giddy girls lightly. I doubt now that anything would have deterred me from the marriage in any case. But I feel a fool now at my surprise that once married and moved out to Kenya Graham missed no opportunity in turning up my skirts and taking down my under things for a playful and so often a not so playful spanking. This rude handling was not always welcome and indeed sometimes I was put to a few tears. I could certainly feel it where I sat for some time after. There were also those harsher episodes that certainly made me think, but I had been warned he was a brute and when all is said I would not have had him any different.
I read these excerpts off the shelf of a friend’s parents’ house some time ago so I looked up google reader. It was hard to find and I am sure there was a bit more in the book, but it is not a spanking book and there is a lot about ‘uppity natives,’ elephants and endless complaints about the climate.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.“Marcus, please this is uncomfortable,” the inventor’s wife said in some annoyance.
“Hetty the world of science is a perilous thing, now stop your squawking and let me make some adjustments,” Marcus Tyler snapped.
The ever fashionable Mrs Tyler might have felt better if she had been allowed to keep some of her finery, but now she was strapped unceremoniously across a stiff leather saddle in just her shift and bloomers.
“Are you going to be much longer Marcus?” Hetty whined.
“I think all this underwear is affecting the fine tuning,” Marcus said impatiently. “I think perhaps if we lower these out of the way…”
“Marcus, don’t you dare,” an outraged Hetty gasped.
Too late for Marcus quickly tugged on the draw string to her voluminous underwear and lowered her bloomers down to her ankles to expose her naked derriere.
“Marcus, Marcus,” she said frantically in shrill tones, “Cover me up at once.”
“Now, now this is almost the 20th century and I am your husband. Just think of all the fripperies I can buy you if the ministry approves my invention,” Marcus chided her.
“Invention, you fool, who wants to buy a God benighted spanking machine?” she spluttered. By now she was quite red in the face and exceedingly anxious that the made or worse the gardener would venture into the shed.
“Ready for the first test?” Marcus said in a serious tone.
“No I am not,” Hetty snapped back.
“Of course you are,” Marcus replied as he pulled the lever.
The clank was followed by a light hiss and the sound of a bicycle chain turning over a cog rattled the frame. As the wheel turned a medium sized stiff leather paddle swung down and delivered a firm smack across Hetty Tyler’s bare bottom.
“Yiiikes,” she gasped, “That’s too hard.”
“Well your bottom is only a little coloured and…” he peered at her upturned round behind coolly as the machine spanked his wife again, “It is only on setting four of 12,” he told her.
“Aaaah, you…” she growled, “That hurts.”
“Well it supposed to,” Marcus said sagely and made a note. “Test subject’s posterior moderately red after…” he watched the third spank, “Only three swats. Consummate with a brief slippering I would say.”
“Marcus, stop this infernal thing at once,” Hetty demanded before another swat made her yelp.
“I am going to drop it to a level two for a minute or so and see how it runs,” Marcus said thoughtfully, “It won’t be too bad.”
“M-Marcus, Marcus d-don’t you dare,” she warned and then added another shrill, “Marcus,” as she was spanked again.
“Maybe you are right, best leave it,” Marcus said absently as he got down onto his knees to view the mechanism running from underneath.
Distracted by the workings it was almost 15 minutes before he shut off the machine and during that whole time the only sound was the gentle clank of the device and an ever more distressed Mrs Tyler pleading for her husband to switch it off.
*
Lori Tyler frowned as she studied the bearing case and pondered where she might get a replacement. The postgraduate engineering student had found the Invention at the back of her Great Uncle Henry’s house in a shed. She knew at once what it was. Her Great, Great Grandfather’s spanking machine was something of a legend in the Tyler family, a kind of amusing monument to the eccentric old man and his work.
Few had ever actually seen it and until Lori had stumbled across it she hadn’t even known it still existed. But for the tom-boyish 26-year-old this family heirloom combined two of her passions in life: spanking and engineering.
If she hadn’t just had a monumental bust-up with Graham her boyfriend and if she hadn’t been between jobs, she might never have found the time for the venerable machine. But as it turned out, restoring the old thing to its imagined glory days had become this summer’s project.
Stooping down Lori sucked on a strand of dark brown hair and reached into her dungarees for a small bike spanner.
“Maybe if I just clean the bearings and repack them…” she mused aloud.
It would have been easier if she had had some plans or even a photograph of the intact machine, but then where would be the challenge? In any event, 10 minutes later the bearing canister slid home and she engaged the small sewing machine motor to watch it run.
“Finally,” she grinned and then whooped around the room punching the air.
Pity it wasn’t an achievement she could share with anyone. Graham might have cared, but sadly he was never much of a spanker. But who needed a boyfriend when a girl had a patented spanking machine?
She thought of all the times she had goaded him. His spankings had been lacklustre and he had never made her cry. He hadn’t even managed to bruise her bottom come to that. All in all, she was probably best without him.
“I bet you know how to be really strict,” she cooed as she patted the machine and then she giggled.
The remaining issues were making the right adjustments to the striking mechanism and testing it. Test subject: one little old Lori Tyler, tick, she listed in her head. But then who will operate it? She bent down and looked at the motor. Hmmm, a simple timer plug from the mains instead of a battery might do, she pondered, but then I might need a transformer. Then she was lost again in the world of engineering as she sucked on hair and made a face like her great, great grandfather over a hundred years before.
*
“What are you doing there?” the woman held herself with a stern demeanour in a way that had prompted Lori’s many fantasies. Pity she was just her uncle’s housekeeper.
“N-nothing,” a startled Lori said as she quickly threw a sheet over the machine. “I am just…”
“Well, I was just looking for you to say that your uncle and I are going out… I have to drive Mr Tyler into town for his monthly check-up,” Mrs Bailey said impatiently.
She had evidently taken some time to find her employers niece, but quite why the woman felt she needed to be informed Lori couldn’t guess.
“We will be a few hours, I expect there will be some shopping after,” the woman said dismissively as she turned to go. “Do you need anything?”
Lori glanced behind her to see if the machine was still covered. Not that she was sure why she had hidden it. “No, nothing thank you,” she said with an exaggerated enthusiasm.
“Alright then,” Mrs Bailey said as she walked away.
Lori sighed and turned back to her project.
The machine had been cleaned and polished. She had oiled all the moving parts and cleaned the bearings. The motor worked, although it was clear that this had been a later addition added sometime in the last 50 years. Now that was a curious thought, Lori decided.
She set the timer for two minutes and set the dial at four. She shrugged, she had run it empty a few times and it hadn’t appeared too brisk. Even allowing it to slap her hand had seemed feeble. But the main thing was that it worked.
Lori waited until she heard the car drive away and then she checked the time. It was doubtful that anyone would come back to the shed until teatime, if at all. There was no chance at all of that happening until after two. Lori nodded decisively and bolted the none-too-sturdy door.
Then with an excited sigh she slipped out of her dungarees and then slid her underwear off so that she was naked below the waist except for her trainers.
It didn’t take much bend over the saddle, which was pleasantly firm beneath her hips and she wondered if she should place a towel there in case… she shrugged as she abandoned the idle thought.
“Two minutes at level four, oh God, I hope this works and doesn’t kill me,” she said nervously to herself and with a cross of her fingers and tentatively chewing her lower lip she rammed home the operating lever.
The paddle swat stung and she gasped. Not too bad, she thought and she coped with another. The speed seems to deliver about… she gritted her teeth and counted as the third swat spanked her. It was a moderate struggle but hardly an ordeal and when the machine cut out she had barely broken into a sweat.
Her bottom tingled hotly enough and a quick inspection revealed two satisfying dark pink ovals covering the crowns and underside of her bottom.
“I wonder if I can increase the spank rate?” she mused and without dressing turned back to the machine’s workings.
*
Finally Lori was satisfied and she took a deep breath. “Round two,” she said in an expectant voice.
Her bottom still tingled, but much of the redness had faded and she gave it a rub. At the back of her mind she considered that elusive mind-blowing, bottom-busting spanking that had always been out of reach. She had long wondered what it would be like to cry, to be spanked so long and hard that her begging was as sincere as it was futile. She laughed, Graham had been a bastard sometimes, but the machine would be pitiless.
This time she set it for five minutes at setting six and she could already feel her heart pounding. The lever spring was a natural limiter for the spank rate but she reckoned that she had edged it up to 10 or 11 spanks a minute. For a sustained session it was more than adequate, but she would have liked to get it to 15 for a short sharp sustained beating. She repeated the phrase in her head and grimly wondered if she were mad.
Once across the frame a restraining bar lifted to stop her rolling and offering up anything other than her bare bottom to the paddle. The same feature would also make it impossible to escape the machine until it stopped.
“Oh God,” she sighed as she reached back for the lever, once pushed it would be out of her reach and she would be spanked for the duration. “I am going to regret this,” she muttered.
The paddle came down hard and she grunted at the impact. Her whole body rocked as she was slammed into the leather saddle. Thank God she hadn’t chosen a higher setting, she thought and then the delayed burn added heartfelt sincerity to that prayer.
“Sheesh,” she gasped as the machine spanked her again far sooner than she was ready for. “Okay, okay, this is going to be…. Uh, quite a… ooh… ride.”
It took a minute to leave her panting and by then her bottom was infused with a fiery sting and tears pricked her eyes. “Oh God, I wish I could see the time, I wish I had tested this setting for two minutes… I wish… damn that hurt, damn, hey…. Omigod, omigod, omigod…”
*
Lori thought that it would never end. Her bottom fizzed like a son-of-a-bitch and although the tears weren’t flowing, she had come close.
“Oh my God,” she said breathily and with a slow deliberation.
It was hard to gain her feet and free of the machine she did a little dance with her hands clamped firmly to her bottom.
An inspection in the mirror revealed a bottom that was as red and sore as she had ever seen. She attempted to sit for a moment and found the operation punitive so that she quickly stood again.
“I’m gonna spank you until you can’t sit down for a week my girl,” she quipped. If a man had spanked her like this she would have married him. “That Tyler, is a result.”
Somehow her bottom didn’t know the spanking had stopped and she took some time to rub it vigorously. She checked the time.
“It wasn’t so bad, I mean I could handle more,” she muttered aloud.
She looked in the battered mirror again. Her behind was red, but not heavily bruised. If I set the spank rate a little lower and… well maybe.
It wasn’t lost on her that this game could get addictive and she considered setting a 10 and running it for two minutes. In an empty test the machine had rocked at 12 and even the 10 setting was about as hard as a large man could manage. A useful application for a few minutes, but a girl would be bedridden for a month for a long session.
“Oh God, dare I?” she said to the machine and double checked the time. “Ooh, I’m crazy.”
The dial clicked to an eight and she set the spank rate to standard. Then she paused and her fingers hung over the timer. Without looking she twisted it to approximately 15 minutes and then remounted the machine.
The spank was a minor species of hell and Lori yelled. Okay, she told herself, she knew at once that she had overcooked it.
The second spank made her yell again and her bottom entertained something like a quick once over with a blow torch.
“Not good, not good,” she wailed, but the spanking was on now.
This time it took little over a minute for her to start to cry and the machine just wasn’t going to quit. “Please,” she sobbed, knowing that there was no one to save her and no way to stop it.
Not that she wanted it stop, not yet. This is what she had intended. Well kind of. I just have to keep telling myself… oh Christ, who am I fooling.
“Please help,” she yelled.
*
The fifteen minutes came and went and a sagging Lori had given up bawling like a banshee and was trying to keep it together. It had to stop, it had to.
“I’ll never do this again, never,” she sobbed at the universe. How approximate had she been with the timer anyway?
After 20 minutes Lori knew it would never end. They would find her in the morning and if there was anything left she would never live it down. The girl who couldn’t sit down for a year.
For Lori a small geological age had passed and she started running maths in her head. If I have been spanked for two hours then how many spanks have I had? But the burn and continued impacts robbed her reasoning power. Instead she started to beg again, there was at least some satisfaction in that.
*
The machine had stopped sometime before Lori had noticed. Her bottom felt like it had been skinned and she was exhausted. Realising that it was finally over she let herself break down into full hard sobbing as tentatively she touched her fire-throbbing behind.
Five minutes later the view in the mirror was impressive. “Narcissus rules,” she said ruefully, not able to take her eyes of the machine’s art.
Sitting was off the agenda for the rest of the day and probably the next. But all in all it wasn’t too bad. For one thing she had surely been punished for her folly, but she could hardly complain.
“I wonder if I could set the stroke number and change the paddle for a cane,” she mused aloud.
In the morning, or the next day she would look into that.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.The introduction music was lively and urgent with bass-driven undertones of peril. As it got to its second bar a metallic 3D banner scrolled across the screen proclaiming ‘Issues Tonight.’
“Hello and welcome to Issues Tonight,” an over smiling redhead with big hair and a clinging green dress said unnecessarily. “I am Mary Tonkin and tonight we will be looking at education in Afghanistan, the growing oil crisis and talking to Erin Seagrove about her new TV show.”
The camera panned away to show a poised 30-something blonde in a skirt suit sitting on the coach next to the presenter.
“First up… Erin,” Mary said, pausing for effect.
“Good evening,” Erin acknowledged the presenter in a firm feminine tone.
“Now a lot of people are going to be surprised about your new show,” Mary sounded smug as if she was about to spring a trap.
“Well it wouldn’t be good TV if it didn’t have a few surprises,” Erin said with a laugh and a glance at the camera.
“Yes but viewers are going to be shocked aren’t they, I mean your new season of…” Mary glanced away, “Erin Investigates is all about spanking.” The presenter drew her mouth into a line and cocked her head.
“Well not exactly,” Erin countered, “We are joined in our investigations by more than a dozen women who have a family connection or personal association with various historical incidents of corporal punishment.”
“But you are going to be using the descendants of the victims of these incidents, as you call them, to recreate them. Does this mean you will be spanking grown women on TV?” Mary sounded as if she had exposed a scandal.
“Well victims is a pejorative term and spanking… again a little bit salacious,” Erin said calmly. “We have a number of women in the show who have, for instance, family stories of their grandmothers’ or great aunts’ who were confronted with corporal punishment of some kind. Often these ‘victims’ as you called them, are quite sanguine about these experiences, a fact which some of our participants and the modern woman may find puzzling. Our investigation is going to put some historical context on these events and try to find out whether the modern woman is as tough as their predecessors.”
“But you are going to be punishing women physically during the course of the show?” Mary pressed.
“Yes, if the participants consent, that is the whole point,” Erin replied confidently.
Mary looked perplexed and glanced away at something off camera. Then she relaxed and came back at Erin with, “But why women?”
Erin tensed up and steeled herself for the next exchange. She hoped it didn’t show, but her true motives were complicated. She thought about saying that whipping men had been done to death and wasn’t actually controversial. She thought about just admitting that chastising men wasn’t her thing and would be no fun. But that wasn’t the line she had agreed with the producers.
So instead she put her best TV foot forward and said, “Because women are often invisible in history. There are experiences, both positive and negative, that we prefer to think did not happen and that haven’t been explored. Maybe we will be exposing some dark corners of history or maybe we will be gaining an insight into previous generations’ lives. That will be up to the viewer to decide.”
“But you will be actually punishing these women; is that really necessary? I mean what will that tell us?” Mary sounded almost angry.
Erin sat back and adopted a posture of superiority in the face of parochialism. “Women of previous generations accepted and suffered certain situations. Was this just and if faced with the same challenges could the modern woman cope? That is what we want to explore. For instance, many women serving in the services had to undergo rigorous discipline; during the Second World War for instance. Most who lived through it would tell you it was not as harsh as some of the things we required of our men. But yet the women had to cope with far worse things than we would tolerate today. In an age where we strive for equality, could their modern counterparts even handle these things?”
“But these things weren’t equal back then, they were even worse. As I understand it one of your shows seeks to recreate the military caning of a woman serving in the navy… the flogging of sailors was a barbaric practice abolished over a hundred years ago. These war time canings were a throwback,” Mary said angrily.
“Well two things here, you are right up to a point, but that is what we are trying to find out. In the Royal Navy for instance, officer cadets, both male and female were caned. Also we may not be comparing like with like. Remember in both world wars the Allies had to gear up and mobilise a civilian population as they never had before. This included women who were not as used to discipline in a physical environment as the men were and a way, however imperfectly, had to be found to integrate them into the military as quickly as possible.” This is bullshit, Erin thought, well kind of, but that is not the point. She groaned inwardly. It will be interesting and fun, it will be with consenting adults, and if you don’t like it don’t watch. Why does everything have to be so bloody political? She said none of this.
“Alright, but if you are going to explore the experiences of women in history, why begin with spanking?” Mary fell back on the controversial S-word again.
“I am not beginning with spanking, as you insist on calling it. This is my seventh season, my fifth on women, this is just a new take,” Erin replied calmly.
“Yes but you are actually asking women to suffer a series of punishment recreations…” Mary tailed off as if she couldn’t find a devastating enough question.
“Consenting women,” Erin put in.
Mary nodded in a way that suggested ‘I hear what you say but I don’t agree’ and then she asked, “I mean… would you do it?”
“Oh I am,” Erin threw back.
Mary wondered why she hadn’t been told this before the interview, someone had fouled up. Or else Erin had been holding back with an ambush. She suddenly suspected the latter. The voice in her ear urged her to wrap it up.
“Really,” the redhead gushed, now somewhat flustered, “But… I mean… won’t it hurt?”
“Well I expect so, I guess I am going to find out,” Erin chuckled.
“But I thought… I mean weren’t most of these punishments carried out on eh… well, on the bare bottom? Are you going to be nude on TV?” Mary asked in astonishment.
“I will be appropriately attired for my particular experience,” Erin acknowledged. “My show does go out after the watershed after all. This is a grown-up programme.”
“What experience have you chosen for yourself?” Mary sounded interested in an answer for the first time.
“That’s something the viewers will have to wait to find out,” Erin smiled.
“Sounds like an interesting show,” Mary came back with a plastic smile and a placating laugh as if she had been on Erin’s side all the time.
*
“What time do you call this?” The man spoke with a broad Northern accent, his words obscured on account of a large pipe in his mouth.
“It is only 10.30 Dad,” a rather pretty but harassed young woman of around 20 replied.
As had already been explained to a TV audience, for the purposes of this dramatisation, April Reynolds was a factory worker still living at home with her family. The local dance had been a rare opportunity to let her hair down. After running late she had taken the time to remove some lipstick and wash a pencil line from the back of her legs. This had been drawn on by a friend to suggest that she was wearing expensive silk stockings that a girl like her could never afford.
“Get in here, I’ll give you ‘it’s only 10.30,’ you should have been in half an hour ago. I’ve got work tomorrow and I can’t be waiting up for the likes of you,” the father said angrily, but so far his temper was even.
April was in fact a small business owner with an interest in BDSM parties. Erin had recruited her as an easy win for her new show after finding out that April had always been fascinated by the colourful stories of her great aunt growing up in a mill town just before and during the Second World War.
The aunt, also called April, was expected to live according to strict social rules for a woman and it had proved difficult to make an independent life while still living at home and had been subjected to routine corporal punishments.
“It is just the way that it was,” the younger April had been told, “It wasn’t all that much to get fussed over to tell the truth.”
Now April was going to find out.
“But Dad I only went to the dance,” April rolled her eyes and sighed heavily.
“Only a dance is it; and you with work tomorrow? How comes I am only hearing about this now? You said you were out with the Rosie Skillen.” Her father had become more enraged.
“So I was,” April said defensive and trying to get past to get to her room.
“Lies, bloody lies, now get out to the shed my girl, I think you need you need a lick or two of my belt,” the father scolded her.
A lick or two usually prove to be a considerable application across the bared bottom, usually with the reluctant compliance of the adult daughter, but not without some protesting.
“But Dad, I’m almost 21, you can’t,” April whined.
“Don’t you ‘twenty-one’ me, while you live under this roof…” he didn’t finish but pointed to the yard door and ushered up the passage.
“Please Dad,” April wailed once she reached the small patch that served as the yard.
The shed had coal storage on one side and her father’s bike and garden tools in the other. It also held her mother’s upturned wash tub ready for Mondays. It was bent across this that she would receive her punishment.
Once there the father unhooked his belt and pulled it through several loops until he had freed it to double it over. April regarded the preparations with a sour expression and then reached under her dress to tug at her undergarment. Bending across the tub was an old familiar posture.
“Hitch that skirt up… more than that…” Father growled, “I said get it up.” The last words were said with a grasp and push of the hem so that April’s bottom was now completely bare.
April took a deep breath and steadied herself. Almost by its own volition her bottom pushed back and up to meet the coming assault. The detail had been in her great aunt’s note, although it was as much an unconscious act now as it had been for the elder April.
“I’ll give you going to a dance,” the father growled as he brought the leather down with a will.
April yelled; the sting was more than she had counted on. All the same she tried to behave as if she were used to it and stay in the moment; hard to do as two more belting swipes came down.
The two or three promised licks turned into a good two dozen, but long before that April was bawling and stamping her feet as she rode out the burn.
“Alright lass,” he said at last.
“Sorry Dad,” April sniffed, hard pressed not to dance around the small space.
“I know,” he sighed, “Now get up them stairs.”
“Yes Dad,” April sobbed, the guided but ultimately improvised dialogue coming naturally.
Once lying on the bed April inspected the ravages of her skin. These were no love pats and the welts and near blisters throbbed in a sea of reddish-mauve. The lady camera woman closed in and the docudrama actress surrendered to the part and began to cry again. It was felt quite cathartic, she thought.
*
“How do you feel now?” Erin asked once the dramatised sequence was over.
April smiled and gave her still exposed bottom a good rub. “Not too bad, I mean it hurts and will for a few days, but I can see the whole thing from a different perspective now.”
Erin nodded. “I want to debrief you properly later, for an interview, but do you think this treatment was cruel or unnecessary?”
April frowned. “I can’t say. I mean I know how I feel and I can imagine that my aunt would not have resented this now. I mean she knew the rules and the consequences… were they fair… if that’s what you’re asking? I don’t know. I mean what else could he do given the fact that he had to protect her physically as well as her reputation and still go to work and make sure she went to work?”
“You’re a little older than April in the film… do you think you would feel differently if you were younger?” Erin asked.
“You know, it would make even more sense to me and would have done back then I think,” April answered.
“Alright, we will leave it there and we’ll see what you think tomorrow,” Erin smiled encouragingly. Then she looked directly into the camera and stop gesture with her hand.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Jocelyn Deveraux was a four feet eleven inch tower of defiance. Her impossible gold blonde tresses were neatly pinned under a riding bowler draped at the brim with a pair of driving goggles. From under these two big blue eyes regarded the world in triumph. The goggles were a promise to herself that she would have a steam car of her own one day, a somewhat childish aspiration in her father’s view, rather like buying a saddle when one did not own a horse.
Nor were the goggles the most controversial thing about her attire. As a keen modernist, Jocelyn was an advocate of trousers for women, but her father had taken a contrary position.
“Breeches on a girl, never heard of such a thing,” he had blustered, “The damn fillies in this house can wear any damn thing they want, so long as they clad themselves in a dress, what. That is my last word.”
Lord Deveraux had assumed that was the end of the matter. However, Jocelyn was not so easily cowed and had outfoxed the old duffer by indeed wearing a dress, but this gown was of blue silk cut bodice tight above the waist, but only hung to her knees in front and rose at the back bum freezer-style to reveal a trim pair of cotton trousers.
“What you need is a damn good thrashing,” Deveraux had raged when he saw them. But he had promised his late wife faithfully that he would have no hand in physically correcting is daughter once she turned 18 and she was now fast approaching 20.
Furthermore after the last governess had eloped with the under butler Lord Deveraux had public sworn off having such servants under his roof. He had rashly promises his daughter that no woman…
“Or tutors,” Jocelyn had quickly interjected.
“Or tutors,” her father had continued with his rage, “Will come to this house and lay hands on my blood while purporting to be moral.”
Jocelyn licked her lips and surveyed the expanse of land behind the house that would one day be hers. She sighed, she had got her way, she always got her way. Furthermore it was clear that father had finally given up contesting her will. For only that morning she had found a brochure from Marley-Dexter, the famous steam engineers. Clearly Daddy was considering buying a steam car, after all he could hardly want to buy an airship. Her heart soared.
That’s when she saw a curious person walking up the gravel path that cut across the back lawn. Like a huge bear or a great ape, the person was draped in a large leather coat and was stooped over so that a high stovepipe hat rose and fell like a piston as they lumbered along with a curious gait.
Stranger still, as he walked Jocelyn fancied she could hear a hissing sound followed by a gentle clank like child’s toy train.
“What a curious thing,” she muttered as she watched the man’s progress, for she was sure now that he was indeed a man.
The cause of his odd mode of walking was his limp. With each great step of his left leg, his right would stiffly clank forward in its train. Clearly the creature had some sort of steam-powered false leg, but while she considered this she noticed his face. Set next to a baleful bloodshot left eye, was a fearsome orb of steel and glass that far from being a dead thing, whirred and spun as if constantly trying to focus on some unknown horror of the world.
Then he stopped.
This motion was so absolute that Jocelyn startled and almost fled the terrace for the safety of the conservatory. Then the man straightened to his full seven feet in height and turned his head towards her.
“You must be Jocelyn Deveraux,” he said in a sharp melodious voice. It had an unearthly quality to it and Jocelyn wondered if it too was somehow an artifice.
Jocelyn gaped at the man and searched her soul for a reply.
“Young woman,” the man said firmly, “It is highly impolite not to answer when spoken to.” His face was scarred with ragged white crevices on his flesh and his jaw looked as if it might once have been broken and not quite correctly set.
“Oh… I… I… yes, I am… ah… Jocelyn Deveraux,” she spluttered.
“I am here to see Lord Deveraux, your father,” he said.
“Sir you have the advantage of me,” Jocelyn said, her imperious voice tried to hide her fear. “What business can you possibly have with my father?”
The man’s right eye made a sound and Jocelyn fancied that it just focussed like a lens. His left, more disconcertingly, finally blinked.
“My name is Axel Dalliance, and my business is you,” the man said.
Jocelyn caught a breath and gape-mouthed, she clutched her heart. Then Dalliance tipped his hat as he nodded and lumbered on to meet his appointment.
*
“I promised no more governesses, and no more tutors, I do not recall saying anything about governors,” Lord Deveraux said wearily, scarcely bothering to look up from his papers.
Jocelyn could only gape in disbelief. “Who on God’s Earth has ever heard of a governor?” she finally gasped.
“Well I have, and now you have, see your education is already advanced,” her father chuckled.
“But, but, but… it’s… it’s indecent,” she gasped, still clutching her heart for affect. It made her look delicate and maidenly.
“Indecent? Indecent how?” Lord Deveraux looked up with real interest.
“I mean,” Jocelyn blushed, her imagination had been running away with her, chiefly on account of an episode with her last governess. The old battle axe had not taken kindly to an adder in her bed and had resorted chasing Jocelyn around the school room. Jocelyn had finally been cornered in her own bedroom and forced onto her tummy and stripped; whereupon, the governess had lashed her bare bottom some two dozen times with a nursery birch.
Jocelyn could have sworn her father had smirked at her tapering protests and instead of putting ideas into his head, she took another tack altogether. “But he is a monster,” she said.
Lord Deveraux fixed her with a hard stare until she visibly quailed and then he said, “Mr Dalliance was wounded in the service of his country having served honourably with the Royal Engineers.”
“Wounded, there is barely anything left of him,” Jocelyn gasped, “I mean to say, how can he possibly be up to the job? He is half man and half steam engine.”
“Well if that is your only objection then let us put him to the task forthwith and see.” With that the matter was closed.
*
Jocelyn was beginning to regret her choice of wardrobe. The back-less skirts with tight breeches had seemed like a good one-in-the-eye to her father, but now she stood in the old school room confronted by her ‘Governor’ she was embarrassed.
Axel Dalliance was huge like an iron bear with not a trace of compromise anywhere in his features.
“There will be rules,” he said, “You may not know it, but after the army the only work I could get was at one of Her Majesty’s Prisons. The prison service thought me too frail for a male establishment and I was relegated to overseeing discipline at a Holloway and then Grantham.”
Jocelyn knew that both were women prisons and Grantham had a particularly harsh reputation. She didn’t like the implication one bit.
“I don’t see what that experience has too with me,” she said as haughtily as she was able.
“Oh you will learn that in time,” Axel said, this time he smiled and it was gruesome. “But I was speaking of rules and the observance of such.”
Jocelyn rolled her eyes, there were always rules, chiefly for the obedience of fools, she thought. “I know, no leaving the house or gardens without permission, no going into town without…”
“I am speaking of my rules,” he cut her off with an iron tone.
Jocelyn clammed up and blanched.
“No lateness, no answering back… no breeches,” he added pointedly, “You will walk the cinder path that borders the main lawn thrice around every day.”
There was a litany of other rules, most of which either common sense or variations on those her father had already outlined. Jocelyn listened to none of them.
“I was promised no tutors, so what are we doing in the old school room?” Jocelyn interrupted him.
“I am conversant in mathematics, geography, and German among other practical subjects. As you say, you are not required to learn any of them, but if you should so chose I am will be at your service,” he said, “You might recall I said no answering back and interruptions very much fall within that proscription.”
Jocelyn rolled her eyes again and signalled her boredom with a sigh.
The steam-borg glared, one metallic eye buzzing as it focussed down on her and then with an impossible speed he seized her from the floor and deposited her across his lap as he sat upon a chair.
“What the…? Omigosh,” Jocelyn gasped.
Face down across his knees her breech-clad bottom was already vulnerable to the threatened assault, but an unsatisfied Axel took hold of the fabric and tore the offending trousers away in tatters. This left the rebellious hoyden quite bare where it counted.
“Dr Dalliance,” Jocelyn squealed, now in a tumble of shame and confusion.
The half-man literally had a piston for a right hand, and although his many attachments could serve him for most things, today he had forsworn intricacies and in preparation had adopted a simple leather coated steel paw. It was with this well-attached paddle that he began his work, his steady eye in medic mode for maximum care and efficiency.
“Lady Jocelyn,” he answered her calmly, “You have a spanking coming to you, a very sound spanking. You have already broken two of my rules and now you will face the consequences.”
It was funny he should mention faces while regarding the other end, she thought, as her own visage coloured hotly. Then reality bit her. This wasn’t happening, it couldn’t be, she told herself; the first stage of a spanking always being denial.
“Let go of me you bastard,” she snarled. “You wait until… aahhh…”
“And that is a hat-rick,” he sighed, “I know a young lady who might not sit down for a week.”
His arm descended with a solid thwack that put him in mind of willow upon leather, another equally English pastime. But this was long way from cricket, if Jocelyn’s stunned gasp was anything to go by; the hit rate of bat upon ball was much quicker for one thing.
“Mr Dalliance, Sir, I think we go off on the wrong… eeeh!” Bloodshot eyes started in her head as she received another mighty swat on the bare bottom. Following her denial and threats, the next stage, that of negotiation was not going well.
“No you started off in the wrong and it is my task to correct you,” Axel chided her as he spanked her again.
Looking down he was surprised that the two smooth rounds of her flesh had provoked a reaction. Maybe it was rapid flood of English strawberry red, or the firm perfect spheres? But spanking an errant had never been like this before.
“Please Sir,” she wailed a minute and perhaps 50 spanks later, “Please I’m sorry.”
Axel was surprised that she had arrived at the apology stage so quickly; he had assumed she would be more spirited,
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she wailed again, her words now somewhat damp and becoming obscured by sniffles.
Stage five would not be long in coming.
“Please, oh please,” Jocelyn finally sobbed, her bottom by them were quite interesting colours and textures. “I’ll do anything, I’ll be good.”
And there we are, Axel congratulated himself, and they were still barely six or seven minutes into her spanking. He paused.
Jocelyn could have kissed him for his mercy and now lay prone and panting in surrender.
“Now before we continue, let us have a little talk,” Axel said sagely.
Jocelyn gaped in horror at the floor; continue, she groaned inwardly.
“Now young lady, when we are finished here, and mark me, we are very far from being finished,” Axel warned, “Having nothing very much useful to do with your time, you will go and stand facing the wall with your arms neatly folded into the small of your back. You will stand there until I give you permission to take your daily constitutional.”
Jocelyn listened in horror to his words, all the while choking back little sobs and praying her would release her so that she could massage her tortured behind.
“Please I didn’t mean… can’t I… oh, oh…” she spluttered.
“You can do exactly as you have been directed to do as you so richly deserve and one more word of dissent or rebellion and we shall begin this little exercise over,” Axel growled.
The words spoken, Axel raised his piston arm and allowed it to fall with a will.
“Aaaahhhh,” Jocelyn wailed as she bawled out fresh sobs.
Axel, approving of her improved attitude, showed his appreciation with rapid and unrelenting one handed applause, all directed at his charge’s by now very sore and certainly very red bare bottom.
Jocelyn expressed her dismay with ever-vocal yowling as unamused chuckle-like sounds escaped her throat for another five minutes.
*
Jocelyn stood sobbing vigorously before her Iron Governor and now utterly defeated. It was all she could do not to claw at her searing bare bottom in a humiliating and unseemly display. Instead she just hopped about a bit with her arms hovering like broken wings at her side. Her crying was barely contained and she had yet to regain her breath.
“Is there anything you do not now understand?” Axel growled as he glared down at her.
“No,” she muttered sheepishly.
His right eyed whirred menacingly.
“No Sir,” she amended quickly.
“I will not see this ridiculous attire again and certainly no breeches,” he told her firmly.
“But I don’t have any other dresses now,” she wailed.
“Then you will have to make do with what you have,” he sighed.
“B-but… w-without breeches everyone will see my bloomers,” she gaped. “That is unseemly.”
“Is it now,” Axel said sharply, “Then you will do without bloomers, I doubt then you will ever want to rebel again.”
The horror of the order almost made her start to sob again.
“Have no fear, you are restricted to the house and grounds anyway,” he chuckled, “At least until you have made up your mind to request a return to your studies. Then I might consider permitting an alternative.”
Jocelyn was truly hoist upon a petard of her own making and glowered into the middle distance.
“Mark me, any rebellion, tricks or scheming and you will go back across my knee and I don’t care who is there to witness the event,” Axel said as if he could read her mind. “Now for the remainder of the morning you will turn and put your nose in that corner, just as you are mark me…”
Jocelyn gasped. The corner… but I’m… you can’t be serious,” she wailed.
“Oh I am and you will stay there until I release you for your afternoon constitutional around the grounds.” He barked at her, “If you don’t…” he raised his iron hand.
Remembering that she was naked behind she gaped, “But the servants, the gardeners…”
“Shaming isn’t it, how do you think your father feels? To him this shame is the lesser compared to your intention to dress as you do in public,” Axel said calmly.
Jocelyn blushed. She hadn’t thought of it like that.
“But please, at least let me put on some bloomers,” she begged.
“But that would be so unseemly,” he quoted her and gave her an iron smile.
*
Jocelyn nervously licked her lips and surveyed the expanse of land behind the house that would one day be hers. Well today she felt a long way from being lady of the manor, she thought ruefully. She heaved a hard sigh that almost turned to fresh sobbing.
Only yesterday she had stood here congratulating herself for outsmarting her father. Now she was in the same attire only sans culets and without breeches, and with a very tender red bottom hanging in the breeze. She had tried to ignore the snickering of the maids as she had left the schoolroom. Thank God they did not know that for more than an hour prior to her being dismissed she had stood with her nose to the corner like a juvenile. A fresh blushed suffused her face at the memory.
Her protest at the childish treatment had been met with another serious spanking threat and the promise that corner time could always be moved to the main staircase where everyone would see her. After that, the seam at the corner of the room school room had accepted her nose as readily as it had when she had last submitted it aged 10.
For more than an hour she had stood in a silent room while no doubt Axel Dalliance had regarded her very bare and very sore bottom in triumph. Now dismissed for her afternoon constitutional she faced another baptism of shame.
Thrice around the cinder path was almost a mile and unless she ran it would take perhaps 20 minutes to complete. It was unlikely that in that time the gardener’s boy would not see her shame. She blushed upon the first flush and felt her ears burn. Compared to him and Jarvis, the old man himself, sniggering maids would be nothing.
Oh well, she thought with a sigh, it is a far, far better thing I do… her nose found the air as readily as it had earlier found the corner and with her best haughty pose she took her first stride. The Ladies’ League for Trousers never faced such adversity, she would be bound.
Each step upon the hard ground made her bottom flare with pain. A surreptitious exploration with her fingers revealed some real heat and she winced as her fingernails scraped skin. Damn the man, damn the man and dog poo, the bastard, how dare he do this to her, how… the very nerve of the man.
Such was Jocelyn’s rage that she almost forgot that she was half naked behind, but thankfully, she was pretty damn sure neither of the men had seen her this day. Now all she had to do was fix Mr Dalliance and put herself back on top where she belonged.
*
That evening Jocelyn was permitted to go to her room without supper. Dinner would have been a trial, not least because Jocelyn could not contemplate sitting upon a hard dining room chair. But she still had no sensible dresses or even petticoats and while she had taken a tour of the garden all of her bloomers and breeches had been taken away leaving her only with the backless skirts she had so recklessly furnished herself.
Now she lay face down on her bed fuming at the injustice of it all and plotting revenge. But how did one get revenge on an iron man. She chewed a rueful lip as she remembered his paddle hand and iron will.
“Iron hand, iron heart and God damn his iron will,” she cursed. “I hope he bloody rusts.”
As she said it she remembered the time she had put a water bucket on her governess’s door. That had been funny enough, but mostly without consequence, but what if…?
Jocelyn ginned and with a riot of laughter and she rolled over in glee. Her mirth was momentarily cut off as her eiderdown scraped bottom. But she was undaunted. She had a plan. No she had a good plan. She would show him.
It was too late that night to find a suitable bucket and she would need to consider how to place it with some care. But now she had a plan she was happy to sleep.
But slumber came slowly and she found herself thinking on Axel’s cruel visage and wondered how he might once have looked. She thought about his hand and the relentless power of it that was so bitingly intimate with her. Over and over the events of the day played out, rearranging events in her mind… her nude upturned bottom… his wicked smile… his hand… and his… my God was that iron too?
The morning came suddenly and for a long moment Jocelyn could not remember where she was or what the day held for her. Then she remembered her Iron Governor and her humiliating afternoon constitutional around the garden.
Before that she had to report to the schoolroom with her bottom still displayed to sit, or more likely still, to stand in boredom or reading a book while he lorded-it over her. She sighed. She could always take up his offer of lessons, she thought, it might actually be fun.
But no, he was the enemy and accepting tuition would represent her defeat. Besides, she had a plan.
*
In many ways Axel Dalliance was a superman. His steam-borg enhancements made him stronger than most men and he had other skills too. His mechanical right eye, for instance, had a greater optical range than his natural one, being both telescopic and moderately microscopic. Other quick small adjustments could filter out ultraviolet or reveal certain light frequencies to him, like polarisation.
However, there was no doubting that even he had his limits and at the end of a long day his ravaged muscles and bones could ache and he was definitely prone to slowing down. So it was this evening as he clanked stiffly up the back stairs to his rooms. For once he certainly needed to get to his bed.
The fact that his door was ajar puzzled him, but he was too tired to think about it. No doubt one of the maids had left it after clearing his room. It wasn’t until he heard the scrape somewhere above his head as he entered that he became alarmed.
The metal bucket clashed hard against the plate in his skull and he feared for the delicate lens of his eye. Then the cascade of water sloshed him even more bitterly with its icy chill.
“Uh,” he gasped and already recoiling the now wet floor slid from under him and he crashed to the floor.
His frantic attempts to gain his feet caused him to become entangled in the now sodden rug that had been just inside the door. His chief fear was for his eye and abandoning the struggle to get up he ran it through its settings and back.
Then a horrified thought seized him. Had one of his enemies made an attack? From nearby he could hear people running and he vainly frisked about for his sword or pistol before remembering that they both in his trunk.
Then he saw the bucket hanging on a makeshift rope and someone was laughing.
“Are you alright Sir,” the maid was asking.
He looked at her angrily unaccustomed to seeing her in her nightgown. “I’m fine,” he said.
“What on Earth happened?” she asked in concern and moved to help him.
Another laugh was not her and Axel frowned.
“Oh I have an idea,” Axel muttered.
*
Jocelyn had been surprised to find Axel in the schoolroom as usual at nine and was glad that she had arrived on time to throw off any suspicion. Not only was he here, but he looked none the worse for wear.
“I heard about your mishap,” she said innocently. Jocelyn had taken to keeping her back to the wall on account of her nudity behind. She wasn’t yet used to the exposure and even the hope that Axel was damaged did not detract from her continued embarrassment. “I do hope you weren’t hurt.” Her expression bordered on a smile and gave her words over to being a lie.
“Not in the least,” Axel said with a casual firmness.
“Oh, I thought you might have been suffering from rust?” Jocelyn offered pertly with a smirk.
“Oh no, where would I be if I was prone to the rain? Good alloys you see. I did have some concerns about my eye, but it had a lucky escape,” Axel said pleasantly.
Jocelyn felt a pang of guilt about his eye. To cripple a man with rust seemed comical, half blinding him now seemed like a mean act. “Wh-what happened?”
“Oh just an old governess trick, a damn reckless one when using a metal bucket, someone without an iron plate in their head could have been hurt,” Axel explained almost conversationally.
Jocelyn swallowed something down and rather hoped it was her unease. “I am sure… um, that whoever did it… well they didn’t think of that,” she answered now not meeting his eyes.
“Whoever did it?” Axel said pointedly, “I do hope that ‘whoever did it’ isn’t going to add lies to their crimes.”
Jocelyn opened her mouth to answer and then closed it again.
“I heard you,” Axel said bluntly.
“I just…” she bit her lip to stem any reckless confession. What exactly had she ‘just’? He might have been killed. Why hadn’t she just borrowed her father’s pistol and had done with it?
Axel waited, his right mechanical eye lightly whirring as it focussed on his errant charge.
Jocelyn frowned and made to stamp her foot in frustration. “Alright I did it,” she blurted and in childish defiance folded her arms.
“I know,” Axel sighed and then he reached out and rang for the maid.
Was he going? Jocelyn suddenly felt an inexplicable fear that she had driven him away. Was he calling the maid to pack his bags?
The answer came swiftly. Axel moved fast and lifted her like a doll. Then in one motion he pulled up a chair and as he sat he dropped a stunned Jocelyn face down into his lap.
For a second her chief concern was for her renewed exposure, her bottom still being bare behind, and she extend the back of her hands to cover her nude bottom cheeks. But Axel was having none of it and it was as nothing to take both her wrists in his left hand and pin them in his grip to the small of her back.
His right hand attachment today was slightly lighter than his standard fitting, but this one was coated in leather and had longer tapered fingers. A better sprung joint at the wrist would make it much more resounding than his day-to-day hand and much less bruising for what he had in mind. He meant this to be a very long and very hard spanking that poor little Jocelyn would never forget.
The crack splat of the impact had a tang to it, an almost metallic echo that rang back off the walls. That first sound reached Jocelyn’s ears a micro moment before the pain impulse reached her brain. Then a cutting sting embraced both rounds of her pert bottom at once.
Her eyes flew open and she gaped in horror as she processed the spank. But there was no time for that as in a blink he spanked her again and then again with the relentless determination of a machine.
It took to maybe six or seven spanks for her to gain her breath and then she let it go in a wail. A simple protest began in “no, no, no, no, noooo…” and ended in a howl. Within a minute she was so well spanked that it was beyond her understanding and her bottom was on fire.
By the time the maid arrived Jocelyn was bawling like a five-year-old and the shameful owner of a hot sore bottom that resembled two polished tomatoes. Axel’s hapless young charge would have died of shame had she been cognisant of her audience, but for the moment her world consisted entirely of his hand, her bottom and the devil given sting.
“Y-you rang Sir?” Masie the maid whispered.
The spanking paused and Axel turned his smiling attention to the woman in the doorway. “Yes, can you wait for a few minutes?”
“Eh… yes Sir,” Masie bobbed.
“Quite a few minutes I mean?” Axel amended.
The maid grinned. “Yes Sir.”
Axel resumed the spanking as Jocelyn kicked and squirmed while all the while bawling out her protests. It took a little while but eventually, she began to splutter, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” over and over. By then they weren’t that far off the half way point and she was no doubt was very sorry.
*
Jocelyn was still sobbing hard as she was allowed to get to her feet, never had she felt so utterly defeated. Pain and acute embarrassment competed for her full attention and for a second the pulsing burn in her behind relegated all else. Then she saw that Masie’s professional calm demeanour, outwardly neutral, actually barely contained a mocking smile and embarrassment won out.
To compound this Axel barked, “Now my girl, will you be so good as to face the wall with your hands on your head?”
Miserably Jocelyn obeyed.
“You wanted me for something else?” the maid asked as if the well-spanked girl facing the wall was of no account.
“Yes, tell me is it still the custom to birch errant maids around her?” Axel asked.
The smile vanished from Masie’s face and she spluttered, “Why yes Sir,” and then visibly gulped as she wondered what she had done.
“The makings for a birch rod are collected from somewhere outside are they not?” Axel continued.
“Yes Sir.”
“You know the places?”
Masie nodded, still not knowing where the conversation was going.
“Return in one hour and escort our naughty little girl here to where a good rod or three can be obtained and show her how to prepare them,” Axel instructed.
Masie relaxed and allowed herself to smile as she enthusiastically said, “Yes Sir.”
*
Jocelyn looked like a hunted animal as she stepped onto the gravel at the side of the house. Frantically she scanned the bushes and lawn for any sign of the gardener and his boy, mindful too that the house servants had already been sneaking a discreet eyeful at her expense. She blushed fiercely.
The rasping hot sting in her bottom was in stark contrast to the cool of the garden air. It served to shamefully emphasise her exposed bottom in so public a place. It was humbling too to have to follow Masie to a place so mortifyingly associated with the discipline of the maids and anyone who saw them would know where they were going.
At the back of this was the imminent threat of a sound birching, no doubt carried out on her bare bottom and if the usual fate of the maids was anything to go by, it might well be a public event. Jocelyn’s eyes were pooled with supressed tears that the thought and having witnessed such a punishment she knew too that it would hurt and leave her skin grazed and raw.
The worse thing was, despite all her pride and protests, she could not supress the growing feeling that she thoroughly deserved her punishment. Axel had treated her no worse than he had been engaged to do and she had been more than just mean to him. She saw now that he might have been killed by her childish prank.
The idea that Axel Dalliance might be harmed suddenly filled her with dread. It was a curious thought that before this day she would not have entertained. But here she was in the garden shamefully exposed and on her way to collect birch rods for a much needed correction. The second idea blurted into her head and she blushed furiously. But there it was, when a girl had been so soundly spanked and exposed to the eyes of the world there were no longer any pretences.
Oh God, she thought as her teeth ruefully nibbled her lower, the man is a master of what he does. She knew that she had thoroughly been put in her place. Instead of anger, her heart raced at the idea and there was unusual churning in her tummy.
All this tumbled through Jocelyn’s mind as Masie led them ever deeper into the untamed woodland that abutted the garden. They passed a stand of silver birch trees, the white trunks of which seemed as glowing bars of a cage containing some leering beast deep in the shadowy recesses. Ahead there was a hazel tree with thin fingered branches pointing at her accusingly.
“Here it is,” Masie sighed. She had grim memories of her own. “Hazel makes for a better ‘birch rod,’” she said glumly, “Leastways that is what Cook says.”
Jocelyn eyed the bitter withes with a horrified fascination.
“Let me show you how to cut them Miss,” Masie said as she produced a small pair of secateurs from her pocket.
*
Three bound birch rods now sat in the self-same bucket of water that had been deposited on Axel’s head. A stuffed chair had been placed in the centre of the room and much to Jocelyn’s relief Masie had been dismissed. But before the she left Axel bid her wait and for one heart stopping moment Jocelyn thought she would be asked to watch after all.
“Do you have something to say to Masie?” Axel said.
Jocelyn frowned and her face coloured.
“Has she not shown you how to find and prepare these fine rods for your instruction?” Axel pressed her.
Masie was impassive and waited.
It was all Jocelyn could do to look up and meet her eyes, but at last she said, “Thank you Masie.”
The maid bobbed and turned to go.
“Ah,” Axel made a gesture with his hand and she paused. “For what are you thanking her?”
Jocelyn was momentarily confused and then she blushed. “Thank you Masie for helping me make some birch rods for… for my chastisement.”
Masie made a sympathetic face as she executed another quick bob and without waiting for further drama she hastened away.
“I suppose you are going to tell me I am a monster and that I am cruel and unjust?” Axel said sternly. His mechanical eye mad a small adjustment as he regarded her.
Jocelyn licked her lips as she shook her head, “No Sir, I know that my punishment is deserved.” She astonished herself with the honest humility of her words; it was almost as if someone else were speaking.
“Indeed,” Axel said in surprise and coked his good eye.
Jocelyn didn’t answer and dipped her gaze to the floor.
“Tell me, would you like to start again?” Axel said thoughtfully.
Jocelyn looked up and something like hope shone in her eyes.
“Your attire… do you still want to make a statement and wear breeches?” he asked. “Perhaps you would prefer something a little more appropriate?”
“Oh no Sir, I mean… yes Sir, I am so sorry…” she gushed, but her face was peony.
“I don’t intend to go easy on you, but we could dispense with the birching if you were willing say… to take up lessons again.” Axel let the words hang.
“Oh yes Sir,” Jocelyn nodded eagerly.
“I would give you a choice, to adopt some more appropriate clothing for a new start if you are agreeable. You would still be punished if you crossed me and I would be firm… but…”
“Yes Sir, oh yes please,” Jocelyn so wanted to be forgiven and she would do almost anything to escape the shameful petard she had been hoist upon.
“Very well,” Axel said, “Go to your room and tomorrow you will wear what Masie puts out of you and if our new arrangement is agreeable I will prevail upon your father to furnish you with a new wardrobe.”
“Oh thank you Sir,” Jocelyn made to hug the man but just stopped herself.
Axel coughed in embarrassment as he fended her off saying, “Until tomorrow then.”
*
That night Jocelyn dreamed she was lost in a deep dark wood. It wasn’t quite a nightmare, but the curious thing was that in the dream it was Axel she hoped would save her. Then strange twisted maid-like figures appeared, chasing her with birch rods and in her visons she knew that however bad the forest may be, the world beyond was so much worse. Then he came, a giant bigger than the house and scooped her up high above the trees and the whip-wielding women. Cupping in his hand he scolded her for getting lost. It was then that she remembered that she had no bloomers on and skirts that were open behind.
“I am going to spank you,” the giant Axel said.
Jocelyn wasn’t afraid, she knew she deserved it and now that she was safe.
The shush of curtains and a sudden burst of morning light shook her awake and Jocelyn rolled over blinking.
“I have laid out your things miss, you just have time for breakfast before meeting Mr Dalliance in the schoolroom,” Masie said cheerfully.
Jocelyn remembered the dream and blushed. Why should she turn to Axel if she was in danger and why would she welcome a…? The blush intensified and she was befuddled by the erotic aftermath of what she had dreamt. More strangely she felt a brief sense of loss.
Then she saw the clothes that had been laid out for her. The girlish blue sailor suit even had a floppy beret with a bobble on top. The skirt, she knew from her late childhood was obscenely short, and this one she recognised had been a little over the knee when she had last donned it at 14 or 15.
“Oh that man,” she cursed as she threw the hat across the room. Then she eyed the backless skirts of the dress she had taken off yesterday still hanging up to be cleaned. She supposed she could always appropriate the pale stockings and pantaloons from the sail suit and wear that, but it would be almost as ridiculous and would no doubt earn her another sound spanking.
Surely he won’t make me promenade around the garden this afternoon dressed like that, she thought in horror. Then she remembered that she had discarded all her grown up dresses during her rebellion and there would be no prospect of replacements for more than a week even if she were permitted any. The sailor suit was, she had to concede, better than the shameful alternative and it was after all her own fault.
*
“You are not really going to make me wear this?” Jocelyn pouted as she breezed into the schoolroom. She was barely 10 minutes late and Axel was already waiting.
“That is a perfectly respectable school uniform and since you have no other decent clothes I suggest that we adopt it for your lessons,” Axel replied in a dry voice. “In fact from now on you will dress this way each and every morning until after luncheon even after your new wardrobe arrives.”
Jocelyn was about to protest again but she couldn’t deny that it was her own fault she had only breeches and backless gowns to wear, besides for the moment there was a more important battle. “And until then?” she said.
“You will dress thusly morning, afternoon and in the evening,” he told her.
“But Axel,” she wailed.
“Sir or Mr Dalliance to you,” Axel barked.
“But Sir….” Jocelyn made a pout again.
“You have an alternative suggestion, and I warn you not to suggest breeches, I have had them all burned anyway,” Axel countered.
“No,” Jocelyn said sullenly.
“Good, now we have another matter to attend to,” Axel sighed wearily.
“Aren’t we going to start… this German and engineering malarkey?” she asked.
“I rather think that will have to wait until tomorrow now, this morning we must attend to your tardiness,” Axel told her.
“My…? But I was…” Jocelyn became coy and defensive, biting her lower lip.
“You are to be soundly spanked and sent to the corner for the remainder of the morning,” Axel informed her. “Take it with good grace and you will be permitted your afternoon exercise without further… shaming.”
Jocelyn could only gape, but she knew what further shaming might entail and after all, reluctantly she supposed, had been late. “Oh,” she miserably sighed.
The shame of baring her bottom again was far worse than coming pain, she thought as she was tumbled across his lap, a feeling that only intensified as her short sailor suit skirts and petticoat was raised off her cotton-clad behind. Last time she had already been bare by this point and had not had time to contemplate the humiliation, but now she blushed furiously as she felt a tug at her bloomers.
The shameful touch of air on her exposed behind made her gasp, but not for long. The first spank had a tang to equal a summer nettle and within three or four she had forgotten her embarrassment and was wailing like a child.
Her heavy breathing through clenched teeth gave her cries a grizzling sound and she kicked her heels in distress. But it was the dome of her bottom bore the brunt and her hot cherry cheeks sizzled under the onslaught of Axel’s spanking hand.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she wailed, big tears now rolling down her face.
“I know,” Axel soothed, but his hand had rather less sympathy.
“”I’ll be good, I’ll be good,” she bleated and then actually boo-hooed.
“Are you going to go to the corner like a good girl?” Axel said at last.
“Oh yes,” Jocelyn said eagerly through broken sobs.
“Very well then,” Axel growled, “I want to see your nose tight to the wall and your hands neatly folded into the small of your back.”
“Yes Sir,” she sniffed.
“I think I’ll open this door and let in some air,” Axel said once she was humbly secure in the corner.
Jocelyn glared in horror into the wall, she just knew the maids would make gratuitous passes and giggle at her expense. Inwardly she groaned, but further complaint would only make things worse.
*
That night Jocelyn dreamed that she had been summoned to see her Iron Master. Only instead of the school room she was brought along to a huge hall where some kind of ball was in progress. Amid ladies and girls of her own age dressed in gowns, she appeared in her sailor skirt. The smirks and laughter were shameful but through it all there was an erotic air she could not throw off.
“Young lady you are late,” Axel said imperiously, “You must be spanked.”
“Yes Sir,” she replied and instead of embarrassment she felt quite giddy. “I know I deserve it.”
Amid eager chants and applause she was soundly spanked on the bare bottom in front of everyone.
“You must hate me now,” Axel said sadly as harshly he spanked her.
“Oh no,” she gushed, “I love you.”
Jocelyn awoke with a start and sat up. There was a young woman cloaked in a mess of cotton staring back at her from the mirror across the room. As stare as she may she could see no hint of herself in the image.
*
The woman dressed as a girl felt as one deposited on a strange shore. The sailor suit was ill-fitting and itched in all the wrong places. Had Jocelyn been required to wear it for her old life she would have died of shame, but now it seemed oddly appropriate for her new adventure.
The principles of modern steam engines were more interesting than she could have guessed and for three days straight she arrived in the schoolroom on time. Her first afternoon walking the grounds in the sailor suit was indeed embarrassing, but not as bad has the risk of exposing her naked posterior on former days and by supper time instead of shame felt liberation.
Ironically she was only late on the fifth day of the new regime because she suddenly remembered that her father had a book on steam power in his library and she had made a detour to fetch it. Of course Axel would accept no excuses and she quickly found herself turned over his knee with her bottom bared for a long sob-jerking spanking.
“I’m sorry Sir,” she sniffed as she executed an awkward curtsey before meekly going to the corner without being told.
So the days past, some in study and some banished to the corner after a sound spanking. Then each night she would dream of Axel Dalliance and his cruel ways punishing her beyond endurance.
Even when finally she was allowed to wear some grown-up clothes for her afternoon constitutional, she scarcely minded anymore. Although she could not admit it, even to herself, she wore them because Axel had told her too, and that gave her an odd thrill. The sailor suit was a badge of submission to him and she even missed it outside of the school room.
Like many new converts the tamed rebel began to embrace the idea of discipline. Punishments for a girl were a good thing, she decided, they made her a better person. Besides, at least she was no longer bored.
Jocelyn did not actively court a punishment, not to her mind anyway, but the daily risk of incurring Axel’s displeasure gave her life a hint of jeopardy. Another benefit of behaving was the small praise she sometimes gathered and when she was complimented it was hard won and she blushed, giving her a small warm glow that lasted for hours.
It had been foolish of her to flout the conventions of society in the face of her father’s displeasure. Of course he had objected and it was no wonder that he did not trust her to ‘come out’ as the world chose to call it. But she would show him.
Such thoughts rolled around in her head as she took her afternoon and with each step she reflected on her past follies. Most made her smile and she blushed to think of the gardeners getting an eyeful of her exposed derriere when she had been at her most defiant. But one past sin increasingly troubled and grew in her mind. How could she have thought Axel a monster? He had been a hero and a champion in adversity. He had conquered not only his charge, but misfortune as well. What a nasty rude and foolish girl she had been.
One day after class Jocelyn went to her room and changed into her most grown-up clothes. She was a woman now, even if she had not formally come-out and she wanted to appear such for what she had to do. Then in her best feminine armour, a grey bodice dress button tight to her neck, she made her way to the schoolroom where she knew Axel would be preparing for the next day’s lesson.
The hard wood door was unyielding on her knuckles and her heart pounded in her chest as she knocked and then waited.
“I don’t need anything,” Axel called from within.
“Mr Dalliance, Sir,” Jocelyn ventured hesitantly.
“Jocelyn?” Axel said from within, a moment later the door opened.
Axel Dalliance’s one good eye appeared pensive while the cool steel-glass of the other focussed on her with an unintended malevolence. Jocelyn could hear it whirring as it automatically sought an appropriate setting.
“C-can I… can I talk to you for a moment Sir?” she asked with a bite of her lower lip.
“Come in,” Axel said casually as he stepped away backwards and waved her in with a slight bow.
After the door closed there was an awkward silence and Axel bade her sit. Jocelyn refused wordlessly and inclined her gaze to the floor. The school desks were set out in rows as they had been in her father’s childhood, where generations of the Deveraux’s had sat before. They were now ready for another perhaps, her own children, she wondered.
“You have something to ask me perhaps… about engineering or was it mathematics?” Axel said patiently.
Jocelyn made a small shake with her head and swallowed hard. “No Sir,” she whispered.
Axel frowned and waited.
“Firstly, I… I want to thank you for… well everything,” Jocelyn blushed. “I am sorry I was so much trouble when you arrived.”
Axel allowed himself something of a smile and a small nod of approval. He was about to thank her gruffly for her words when she made to say more.
“I am sorry too for what I said about you… I-I,” she took a deep breath, “I called you a monster and other things… I…” she choked and realised that she might cry.
“We have had quite a journey together in such a short time… I think we have both learned…” Axel coughed. He was a monster, he knew it and she had been brave and stalwart. All was well and it was better left now, he thought.
“No, please, I am so ashamed, I was a beast,” Jocelyn was gushing now and there was an eager shrillness to her voice. “I…” she swallowed again and with a broken sigh she whispered, “I need you to punish me.”
“If you are so much as a minute late for class or show me disrespect then I will, but…” Axel offered gently.
Jocelyn cut him off. “Please listen, I feel so badly about what I said, you a good and kind man and… and…” she blushed and looked away.
“I am hardly kind,” he muttered.
“I deserve to be punished and soundly too, you know like you do… no worse, as bad as… I mean as good as you have ever given anyone… I probably need more than just a good spanking… have the maid fetch a good birch rod or have me do it…” she gushed. “Maybe you should cane me,” she added.
“I have a good mind to do it too,” he chuckled, “But I think my work is done. I can see you have really learned your lesson.”
“Oh don’t say that, I am still a very bad girl, really I am,” she wailed.
“Thank you for coming to me, your apology is accepted,” he said, “Now I have some work to do.”
“Yes Sir,” Jocelyn sighed.
Axel gave her that half smile of his and opened the door for her in the spirit of indulgence. Jocelyn, who ought to have felt better nodded and reluctantly followed his lead. Only when the door closed firmly behind her did she feel utterly wretched.
She took no more than three steps before she knew what she had to do.
*
The second knock at Axel’s door was an unwelcome interruption. He had hoped to get his letter off and prepare the next day’s lesson in time for a walk before his evening meal while it was still light. He was about to tell whoever it was to go away when the door opened.
Jocelyn looked flustered but quickly composed herself.
“I am really sorry Sir,” she said breathily as if she had been running. “I went to fetch this,” she added and held out her arm.
The hairbrush was her own, a short stout affair of polished black wood.
“Jocelyn…” he began.
“Please Sir… I…” her eyes teared up.
“Alright, but I won’t need that,” he growled.
To Jocelyn’s surprise he rang for the maid and a thousand bats took flight in her tummy. Was he going to have the maid fetch a rod and birch her? Her eyes were wide with horrified fascination.
Masie came quickly but did not hide her surprise at finding Jocelyn there at this time.
“Ah good,” Axel said absently without looking up from a pretended interest in his letter. “Your mistress here needs a good spanking and I will attend to it in due course. Meanwhile, take some pins and adjust her skirts behind so that they are pinned to her waist. Oh and you may as well take her bloomers to the laundry, she won’t be requiring them again today.
“Sir,” the answer had the tone of an unasked question and the maid shot a quizzical look at Jocelyn whose face glowed red.
Jocelyn would rather have kept the matter between them but perhaps she deserved some shaming. Then she chided herself, no she definitely deserved some shaming.
Masie executed a quick bob and left the room for a moment. When she returned she held a small sewing box and with a matter-of-fact shrug she knelt behind her young mistress and one by one began pinning up her skirts. Once Jocelyn’s cotton clad bottom was exposed and all the skirts and petticoats were pinned to her waist, the maid quickly and efficiently tugged at the ties and pulled the bloomers down to bare her legs and bottom to casual exposure.
“You may go,” Axel said once Masie had completed the operation, “And you Miss Deveraux may go and stand in the corner with your hands firmly on your head until I am ready to deal with you.
“Yes Sir,” both women said in unison, a coincidence that caused them both to exchange a red-faced glance.
By the time Masie had made to leave Jocelyn was already standing with her nose firmly in the corner and still nursing a vivid blush.
*
“So you truly wish to make amends do you?” Axel addressed Jocelyn’s neat tapered back and exposed pert bottom which was still ensconced in the corner.
“I think I… I deserve to be punished for all of those awful things I said,” she ventured.
“But you were punished,” Axel chuckled, “Don’t you remember? And soundly too.”
“Yes but…” the heat rose to her face and she sighed. “Oh this is so… oh, oh…” she ducked her head in shame. “I was yes, but I wasn’t sorry, not really, I just resented it… so it didn’t really count,” she offered.
Axel nodded. “You think I won’t spank you properly if you ask and say you’re sorry?”
Jocelyn swallowed hard. She partly hoped that was so, but in truth she would have been disappointed if he went easy on her, it would be a mark of weakness on his part, or so she thought.
“You wish me to squirm in shame, I know I deserve it,” she whispered.
Axel shrugged and took pity then. “Very well,” he agreed and wondered if he wasn’t going to enjoy this.
“Come here and across my knee,” he growled, “Make yourself comfortable for you will be here a while.”
In forlorn resignation Jocelyn peeled herself from the wall and as a woman condemned she trudged across the school room to the lap of doom.
Axel’s thighs were iron hard and she felt herself pinned securely so that for a moment she felt safely ensconced in a safe haven. Then she remembered her bare bottom still exposed to his gaze and her heart raced. Even the measured pat of his hand stung her bottom and she gasped.
Then the first true spank blasted down with an enduring burn and her eyes flew open wide. There was no time to consider the tingle of fire or the tang of the impact of his leather-coated metal hand, for with the relentlessness of a steam piston, his arm swept down again and stung her more. Had she retained the coolness of mind she might have gauged that the spanking continued with a meticulous 43 swats a minute, but the overwhelming sting burned away such reckoning and Jocelyn howled like scalded banshee with wails that could be heard the house over.
Axel held her fast as she strained under the onslaught, dispassionately watching as her cool white flesh prickled taut with 10,000 goosebumps as first it went pink and then darkened to a pure strawberry.
Jocelyn for her part bawled like a sorry sister of shame as tears streamed down her face and broken apologies stuttered impotently from her lips.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she wailed as searing minute followed minute and the two hot spheres of her bottom were put far beyond sitting for many days to come.
Five or 10 minutes is an overstretched age for a girl when she is getting a good sound spanking so the heavens only knew how long 20 or even 30 minutes was to her. This spanking lasted so long that throughout the house wherever Jocelyn’s cries could be heard the maids had long stopped smirking and exchanging grins and had felt their own bottoms tighten in sympathetic dread. If their young mistress could be spanked so, then it did not bode well for their own tender behinds.
Jocelyn herself had long since abandoned hope that the spanking would end and wondered if it would have been less punishing to sit upon a bed of coals.
“Now young lady, I trust you are sorry?” Axel said at last.
“Oh yes Sir, truly, truly,” she gushed through her snot-nosed cascade of tears. She would have done anything then to be allowed to rub her bottom and would have done it twice if she could only sit in a bucket of ice.
She had not yet seen it, but her bottom was as two polished cherries just then and the caress of a feather would have been as torment to her.
“Now my girl, you ask to be punished. There is a principal at stake and for the remainder of this afternoon you will stand in the corner with your hands upon your head. If you so much as dare take your nose from that wall or attempt the least fumble of a rub of your bottom, so help me I will spank you again so that you will think that this last correction is only play pats.” Axel’s tone was so rich with menacing command that Jocelyn could not dream of defiance.
“Yes Sir,” she sniffed. Her hands fluttered in futile proxy and she stamped her feet in a vain attempt to shake out the sting. Careful what you ask for, she thought miserably. “Yes Sir,” she said again and he thought she might renew her crying. Nevertheless, as she took up her pennant vigil she felt cleansed of all sin and finally forgiven.
*
“A remarkable change, remarkable,” Lord Deveraux said enthusiastically.
Jocelyn stood demurely before him with her head inclined to the floor, the picture of a respectable young woman. “Yes Sir,” she said dutifully.
“Well I suppose I can see no further impediment to your coming out next month, none at all,” her father continued to enthuse.
“No Sir,” Jocelyn agreed without particular joy.
Coming out and being presented at court was all she had dreamt of for years. It was the mark of becoming a woman and her childhood years would be banished forever. But with that change Axel would leave them and she couldn’t bear it.
“I expect you will want a new gown and…” Jocelyn barely listened to her father’s plans and continued to play her part as a well-trained woman. “And I suppose you will want a husband…” her father continued.
For some reason an image of Axel popped into her head. She pictured herself on his arm as a tutor’s wife or perhaps the headmaster’s wife or… she blushed, giddy with insight.
“Are you alright Jocelyn,” her father asked solicitously.
She perked up then and with a faux smile quickly responded, “Oh yes father, quite.”
With barely a pause to ring for tea her father resumed his discourse and Jocelyn could only smile and nod between meek offerings of ‘yes sir.’
*
Axel was almost packed when she found him. Visits to his room were strictly verboten and she half expected a scolding. But if he had spanked her she would hardly have cared, not today.
“You are really going then?” she said quietly.
“My work here is done,” he shrugged.
“But my mathematics, my modern engineering appreciation… surely…” she protested.
“Young women don’t need such disciplines, or the German, not that I object. Those lessons were merely a device and you know it.”
She did and drew her mouth into a pensive line. “But I quite enjoyed them, really I did. I have some books… I have even read them,” she pressed him.
“There are women’s colleges,” Axel offered unenthusiastically.
“But couldn’t we…?” Jocelyn sighed.
“Couldn’t we what?” Axel growled and with an angry flurry began folding the last if his clothes for the trunk.
“I love you,” she said simply.
He froze and for a moment his prosthetic eye worked vigorously as if struggling to focus on something just beyond his gaze. Then as if she hadn’t spoken he finished his packing.
“Did you hear what I said?” she whispered.
He nodded.
“We could elope,” she said. “I’ll soon be 21 and I will have my own money.”
“You have money do you?” he rounded on her. “Is that what you think of me? And what of your father’s trust?”
“Don’t you love me?” she asked.
He softened as much as an iron man ever could. His nod was small and one could have almost missed it.
“Is there no hope, no hope at all?” Jocelyn was almost crying now.
Axel Dalliance then found himself and stood erect. He was her master again and she his student.
“What do you want from life?” he asked.
“You,” she answered.
“What do you really want? What is it that I represent?” his gaze was fixed on her now.
She felt for a moment as if he was testing her and failure would earn her a spanking.
“I… I don’t want to be another shire wife, I don’t want…”
“What do you want?” he pressed her sharply.
“I want what I do to matter. I want there to be a consequence if I fail… I want to see the world you showed me… above all, I want you and all the things I…” she stopped.
“I represent danger and the exotic. I offer some of what you want, but look at me? I am no ordinary man. I am both less and more than a man. You love me or think you do, but you are young…”
“Give me a chance,” she urged.
He paused and considered.
“If you do not want the life mapped out for you, then chose another. There are indentured opportunities in the city. Some industries even take girl apprentices I hear and a well-spoken girl with your education might gain a clerical post. If you become other than you are and see the world then… then perhaps a few years from now…” Axel’s voice carried urgent conviction.
“Will you write? Will you let me…” she was crying now.
“I think you will meet a young man and forget all about me,” he chuckled. “But if you want to write and if you still feel the same in two or three years…” He shrugged, “Well who knows…”
“I’ll do it,” she said with an emphatic nod.
“That is up to you,” he shrugged again. Then he paused, his prosthetic eye whirring as if trying to focus on a world yet to be. “Find a whole man, someone younger, but if you want to write…”
There was nothing left to be said and after a fashion he smiled.
*
Jocelyn Deveraux was scarcely recognisable. On top she was tightly bodiced to bursting point, her piled-high hair tucked under a riding hat complete with new-fangled googles. It was quite the vogue among the younger set and might have escaped notice had it not been for the tight worsted breeches that accentuated her curves.
Once a rebel, she thought with a smile, if Axel could see me know he would so spank me. She let her teeth test her lower lip at this thought and glanced around to see if a passer-by would guess. Seeing no one she snorted derisively at herself and then set about finding the turn for her appointment.
Marley and Dexter had advertised for a clerical assistant in their shipping department. The notice in The Times had promised young ladies would be considered by ‘this progressive go-ahead company,’ but that any young woman applying could ‘expect to accept traditional apprentice discipline.’ Jocelyn knew what that meant, she ruefully pondered. But she was ready.
“Axel Dalliance, I love you,” she sighed and then put her best foot forward.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.During my absence I had several emails asking about my historical articles and was there a book. Now there is a good idea. The answer is not at the moment, but I have picked up a few titbits here and there. In this vein I had several requests for more about the caning WRNS during WW2.
I am not sure if I have published some of this material before but here is a quick snippet of what I could find.
WRNS were established in 1939 under the Civil Establishments Branch at the Admiralty. They were therefore often considered as civilian workers rather than members of the service. Wrens could be punished, including discharge from WRNS, disrating, suspension, stoppage of leave and deductions from pay. They could also be charged in a Civilian court. They couldn’t be court martialled. Wrens remained free of the Naval Discipline Act until 1977.
Up until then they were constituted under the same military law and procedures as laid down for boys and other cadets. This allowed a loop hole in the Kings (later Queen’s) Regulations preventing corporal punishment.
One serving WRN reported:
“Often you would get a soft officer who would just give you a dressing down. Failing that there was a procedure to follow. After ensuring the offending girl had understood the offence, the officer would then to order them to disrobe down to the necessary. The woman was expected to pull down her service knickers to her ankles and bend over. She could then expect anything from between six to 36 strokes of the cane across her bare bottom depending on the offence and the level of authority of the officer carrying out the punishment.
A six was called a tick and was usually administered by the supervising office. Where this was a male officer he might cane across the knickers or skirt, but he was not obliged to allow this dignity.
My usual officer was a woman and she would always cane the bare bottom and could hand up to 24 strokes, although thankful she would often only give you 12.
The most dreaded punishment was a ‘commanding officers 30.’ This could under some circumstances be increased to 36 strokes and was particular dreaded as our CO was a man.”
A contributor to FemFirst contributed this:
“I asked my mother-in-law about this topic. She’s an old lady, but quite open about worldly subjects. When she was in the Wrens in WW2, was there corporate punishment for minor offences? And what kind?
She told my wife and I that it did happen fairly often. On a base she was posted to, there was one old male officer who was notorious for handing out beatings to the younger Wrens for trivial offenses.
Surprisingly, my mother-in-law, who says she was punished in this way twice, still doesn’t know whether there was any sexual motive or whether the officer was just a very strict disciplinarian from another era!”
Despite this regime it was recorded that between 1940 and 1942 only 37 wrens out of 11,000 deserted.
Nor was this type punishment limited to war time.
Mrs Gwen L, Cobham, Kent wrote:
I attended a Wrens’ Naval Cadets training school in London, in the early 1950s. We were subjected to similar discipline, which did sometimes include being caned on the behind, though it wasn’t bare but over our knickers. I don’t think it did me any harm, but I don’t think it did me any good either. What I do know is, bullying still went on, but we did tend to show more respect to authority and we were certainly not as rude as our modern-day counterparts, male and female.
Mary S, who served up until 1975 claimed that although corporal punishment was not allowed “taking a good hiding could get you out of all kinds of scrapes.”
“If you were lucky, taking six or 12 across the bum was better than going on report. I even heard of a girl having her knickers taken down and going across an officer’s knee for a bare bottom spanking. Definitely not in the book, but it happened and quite frankly, so what? Literally, worse things happened at sea.”
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.I was swimming through a few culled snippets – dozens of them, but all too brief to justify a post by themselves. Then I saw a common theme for a few of them. Most are from the past, which is a good job as today they would probably result in a court case. But all illustrate how times as changed in regard to societies attitude to women.
Obviously we have a prurient interest here and I would not hesitate to appropriate many of these scenarios for a short story. That doesn’t detract from the moral outrage we would feel if this happened for real. Does moral outrage have a statute of limitations? Different times certainly.
In 1960 Janice L, a secretary from Windsor, wrote to Woman’s Weekly to complain that her boss had spanked on numerous occasions for being late for work and other ‘sins.’ She said the spankings were pretty ‘sore ones’ applied to the seat of her knickers while she was across his knee.
“My bum hurt so much I could hardly sit down. But when I told my mum she said it served me right,” Janice wrote.
The vast majority of the women readers to that magazine had no sympathy either. One even suggested that she was lucky not to get a bare bottom spanking.
Writing in a UK national newspaper last yet a modern day captain of industry who had been a secretary herself during the 1970s was more sanguine and claimed she even missed those ‘innocent days.’ She said, “A red face and an even redder bottom, was reasonable recompense for shoddy work,” and “all-in-all was just a bit of fun.”
She admitted that there was ‘undoubtedly’ a sexual dimension to being spanked, but said office banter was often sexual in a way that “understandably would not be acceptable these days.”
“I don’t think we should judge it all by how we feel about it today, no doubt some of the men concerned are as embarrassed now as I was then. I think we can all move on.”
My favourite story in this vein was found on a now deactivated blog and was purportedly taken from a magazine called Titbits, also in the 1970s.
The background to the story was the recruitment of women clippies (ticket collectors) on London buses during the 1970s.
One hapless woman kept letting people off fares and sometimes forgot to ring the bell to let the bus move on because she was talking too much. She also had the habit of getting off and popping into shops for a few minutes.
All grounds for dismissal one might think but instead the bus driver decided to take matters into his own hands. After dressing her down in drivers’ rest room she resorted to answering him back.
According to a witness, another woman clippie, who had chanced in on them, “He had this clippie girl across his knee with her knickers right down and was giving her the spanking of her life. My gosh, she had a red bottom and was yelling her head off.”
“I just stood there dumbfounded for a second and wondered if I should get help. Then this girl saw me and all she said was, ‘do you mind, can’t you see we are busy?’ I left them to it.”
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.While we were on sabbatical I watched a great western mini-series on Netflix called Godless. I won’t go into the ins and out of the story here, it is essentially about a mining town populated by widows who are at the mercy of unscrupulous business men and a gang of bandits out for revenge.
Michele Dockerty (Downtown Abbey) plays a strong lead as another widow who owns a nearby ranch and Jeff Daniels is the chief villain.
One of the sub-plots involves a romance between the town’s deputy played by Thomas Sangster (Love Actually and Game of Thrones) and the young adult daughter of a Buffalo Soldier played by Jessica Sula, a young black Welsh actress previously known from the UK TV series Skins.
When her father finds out she has not only kissed the white gun-slinging deputy, but offers to bath him he sees the danger to her reputation and her life given the redneck nature of many of the characters. He forbids them to see one another and in the subsequent scene her gives her a bare bottom switching on the front porch.
It is quite a long scene and seen from the point of view of Sangster who contemplates some violent intervention and handled realistically.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Despite the bold claim of the title this is no more than a few observations about spanking erotica since the advent of the camera. Most weeks I run a feature called Vintage Sunday in which features old photographs that have some obvious appeal for a spanko readership.
Whilst actual spanking pictures are not rare as such, they are often not the most appealing. This is because the photographer often had no feel for the subject matter and was merely doing a job to order; ‘a bit of flage,’ as it is known in the trade.
I rarely explain or even know the background or context of the images, which is a shame. The ones above I stumbled upon on a short-lived Tumblr recently and I had never seen them before anywhere. They have the look of ‘flage’ about them and yet these Edwardian ladies maybe have something about them that maybe the photographer captured by accident.
I remember years ago watching a documentary about erotica (and porn) and several naked young women had to go through the motions of having sex for the camera. Once the shoot ended the impassioned women all went cool and business-like; all except one girl who was clearly lost in the experience. In the post production interview the previous self-confessed heterosexual woman admitted that she had enjoyed the experience and effectively came out as bi-sexual on camera. One wonders how often this has happened for spanking and BDSM related projects.
For me the difference between pornography and erotica is in the intent. Erotica is an art. It is a genuine attempt to explore sexuality and project either a genuine fantasy or reveal the truth of one. This is as opposed the ‘industrial’ exploitative ‘see what sells’ approach that is sadly in the majority.
The best picture not only reveal the heart and soul of what is arousing to the photographer, but carry on through to the model and is in her eyes: in short she too is touched by the scenario and lets it show.
I have included some racier BDSM images below, one of them is really quite graphic so don’t scroll down of you are of certain disposition. I do not know the artists but it is clear that no ‘flage’ exploiter could have easily faked this, the scenario’s are too specific. Also note the eyes of the woman below and those of the ‘tormentor’ in the next picture. Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Maybe some of these are early amateur to or even documentary subjects, but that is the point, the artists cannot fake it, which is while they hold genuine appeal to us sometimes more than 100 years after they were taken.Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Most of the artist here are unknown to me at least, but show a true feel for spanking and BDSM art right up to modern. The 1930s images above are by Carl Breuer-Corth I believe and the last image below is by Martin Zurmühle, who very much pursues this tradition.
I think it is interesting that these images all feature only women. One supposes that historically professional productions had only one audience in mind. But it is worth pointing out that there are many F/M BDSM that capture something real as far back as the 1920s and are excluded here as they are off-topic. The real shame is that M/F art before recent times was so very rare and usually have an exploitative feel.
Nevertheless, we will return to this subject and focus on M/F at a future date.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.During the 20th century in Europe and America there was a huge growth in spanking literature, artists, underground movies and even barely disguised spanking pursuits in mainstream books, movies, theatre and even night clubs.
Hardly anywhere in the so-called developed world seemed immune from the interest, although different cultures explored it differently. The now-liberal countries like the Netherlands and Scandinavia, for instance, were then more right-wing and inclined towards anti-decadence. The interests in these countries came in the form of punishment manuals with titles centred on spanking or whipping your wife or student manuals for young blue-stocking women being spanked, birched, paddled or caned even into their 20s.
In Britain there were risqué photographers and racy novellas, but often, like the Nordic countries they focussed on discipline and the return to traditional values. There is still a shop in London that sells umbrellas and riding crops for conventional uses. But their old signage is still extant and advertises canes, whips and other correctional paraphernalia. It is rumoured that it wasn’t only public schools that utilised their services.
Elsewhere the craze was more brazen.
The French had a whole host of artists and writers such as René-Michel , Pierre Dumarchey, Pierre de Jusange, Liane Lauré to name a few. Artists like Louis Malteste, Édouard Bernard, Carlõ, Chéri Herouard (Herric) were so prolific that their art can still be seen today in the not so dark corners of the Internet.
Not all these writers were French, many Italians, Germans, British and American writers and artist entered the fray.
One of the more interesting crazes in this vein was the ‘Slapper At’ or ‘Spanker At’ trend. Young women would dress or act in a juvenile manner to either court or at least pretend to court a spanking from an eligible young man (or sometimes woman).
I quote from my own article from 2011:
Originally a spanker-at was a term applied to a prostitute who would offer to take a spanking as one of her services. But in the hedonistic 1920s of the jazz age the term took on a wider meaning and by 1929 a spanker-at was a woman who would either take a spanking for fun or in modern parlance was spankable.
As the Depression hit it was even immortalised in song.
“No more money in the bank,
no more pretty babies to spank.”
It might help to put some of the movies of that era in context to know that ordinary girl-next-door types sometimes imagined themselves a real femme fatal, if they flirted with a spanking.
There were even clubs in New York and later London, called spanker-at clubs which lasted into the 1940s.
In Berlin the cabaret circuit was often openly gay-friendly for instance and would think nothing of exploring BDSM and the Spanker-At craze sat quite literally cheek-by-jowl with this world.
Newspapers would seize on any opportunity to report a spanking and the tone even in a serious article was schadenfreude and fun such in the illustration below, which is from an article purporting to be about juvenile delinquency.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
perhaps the reason for this so-called Golden Age is probably down to two concurrent developments. Firstly the growth of popular culture in general, the movies, the huge reduction in cost of publishing and the growth of a post-industrial class to take advantage.
But more than that, it was an age like no other when not only were traditional values being increasingly challenged (the permissive society did not begin with the 1960s) but unlike later the social revelations of the 1950s, 60s and 70s, people were far more innocent. So when Clark Gabel spanks Joan Crawford, she can tolerate it or even seek it out for her own good without the moral conservatives getting upset.
The fun ended in Europe during the 1930s when the Nazis occupied France and Germany and the British suddenly found they had more serious things to attend to. By the beginning of the 1940 the USA had followed.
Of course the real Golden Age of spanking is probably now, but that is a topic for another day.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.It has been a busy week and I have got a bit behind. Thanks to all for comments and for your patience when I didn’t (or some cases haven’t) got back to you. There are a couple of interesting activities out there with people doing things and posting things. I will unscramble these contacts and suggestions in due course.
I did a quick look at who was linking to us.
There are several history blogs and semi-serious sites linking in for my potted histories. Initially I was surprised, but looking at the subjects it seems we have covered, Lady Jane Grey, the Royal Navy, William the Conqueror, pirates, Roman Pagan flagellation, Egyptian marriage, Russian marriage and many others.
Since some of these articles are years old they may be worth a revisit when there is time.
I recently came across some material on the Prussians. There seems no end of nubile young women getting spanked, caned and birched in Northern Germany from the 16th century right through to the 20th.
I did plan a quick history, but I rather think I could get six out of the material.
For instance Elisabeth Foy, a young English woman who served as an assistant governess to a Junker family in the 19th century, was shocked and surprised to be required to ‘flog grown girls on their naked behinds’ for what she regarded as quite minor breaches of rules. Imagine how much more shocked she was when she was required to turn up her own skirts for a sound birching of her own.
It is not only foreign governesses and servant girls who were in for a culture shock. Several wives from France, England and Ireland found out that Prussian husbands could be very strict.
One noble French wife was birched for refusing to learn German.
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The 1960s was a challenging time for spanking and spanking enthusiasts. Before this decade spanking was seen as a necessary evil, just and yes fun. After the 60s it was sexy and risqué even before people began to realise that spanking and feminism can mix.
I am not sure what recent events triggered it, but at the time there was the Helston case and the Darren Nesbit case, where he got a small fine for spanking his wife.
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