The Mortification of Isabel

by Lindsay Ross

  As my eyes became more accustomed to the gloom I saw that on one side of the chamber there was a cell with thick bars. At the rear of the iron cage I could see there was a recess cut into the stone which had a plank of wood across it bearing a palliasse. This amazed me since it suggested the place might still be in use. Outside the cell when I looked up I saw there were ropes and chains and apparatus hanging from the ceiling and lowering my eyes again I could make out a cage with metal bars like those used to transport wild animals and there were other items suggestive of medieval torture. I thought of Matilda immediately and for a moment or two I wondered if I had stepped into my master’s narrative…

  Part Two – Laurence

  Chapter Five

  The Formative Years of a Flagellant and how I earned the Sobriquet “Fiercest Flogger in London”

  My father was an explorer and spent long periods away from home. I believe my mother simply assumed I would follow in his footsteps, perhaps literally with regard to exploring some of the same continents, and that it was her task to prepare me for the privations and hardships inherent in the way of life. Consequently I was subjected to Spartan conditions even from being a baby. My mother made me sleep with the nursery window open and with very little covering and when I was a little older she would plunge me into cold baths before drying me vigorously. She took me for long walks in the bracing country air, better described as treks, being adept at reading both compass and map, and it was not uncommon for us to pitch a tent on a windy hillside and walk for a second or third day.

  Mother was also a very strict disciplinarian and used the cane on my bare backside if I ever crossed her or showed wayward tendencies.

  When I was about eight years of age, mother hired a governess who turned out to be a secret drinker who used me to vent her anger whenever she was inebriated, usually late into the night. I read somewhere that Lord Byron was subjected to physical and sexual abuse in a similar way and at a very young age.

  When Mrs. Downs was in drink she would flog me mercilessly and then play with my private parts which she had exposed for the purpose of carrying out the chastisement. Her punishments were arbitrary and appeared to depend on her mood rather than anything about my behaviour. She would send me on ridiculous errands or set me pointless tasks and I learnt nothing from her apart from the vagaries of human nature and that the supposed gentler sex could be as cruel as the male.

  Eton was rife with flagellation at the time I attended and my buttocks were birched on several occasions. When, as an older pupil, it was my turn to administer corporal punishment, I liked to lay it on very hard and gaining a reputation as the Prefect to avoid. The young sprog would be stripped of his breeches and made to touch his toes and I would start my run out on the landing so that when I reached him there was real force behind each stroke.

  I would have preferred to birch a girl’s bottom but that presented more of a challenge.

  I remember one occasion when a group of us had been drinking in the taverns around Windsor and we persuaded a young street girl to come to our rooms with the promise of more alcohol and more money. We managed to smuggle her up to our rooms and got her undressed and tied to my bed. I gave her a thorough birching on her very fleshy rump and then let the others have a turn. How I relished watching her cheeks turn crimson.

  When I went up to Oxford and took rooms in the town I used the local prostitutes on occasions but was more likely to travel up to London where there was more choice and brothels offering flagellation were common.

  With regular practice I became an aficionado of the art of flagellation. I had known for a considerable time that I liked nothing better than thrashing female bottoms, enjoying it much more than if I fucked the girls. As I matured into a young man this predilection became obsessive and addictive, dominating my fantasies and using up more and more of my time and my money.

  In time I built up a reputation in the Soho bordellos that caused me satisfaction and pride. Just as when I had been at school, I became known as a cruel and vicious flogger and many of the girls tried to avoid having to bare their arses for me. Those who did often drank a deal of gin or took laudanum or even opium before my visits. Some of the madams tried to put up their prices for “the fiercest flogger in London” as they called me.

  When I went to the whorehouses I changed into an outfit of black leather with a mask which made me look like an executioner and I took special clothing for the girl. This consisted of an impossibly tight black leather corset which at the back incorporated a single black glove which sheathed both arms. When every strap and buckle had been tightened the whore was effectively held fast in a straightjacket. I also asked for the tart to be gagged for I found their constant screaming very tiresome after a time.

  Most of the brothels I frequented had apparatus whereby the girl could be suspended upside down and I favoured this as the best way of presenting her naked arse or strapped to a horse like the one at Mrs. Berkeley’s.

  Why did I enjoy this pastime as much as I did? First, I find the female posterior aesthetically very pleasing, the softness of the flesh in that region, the tendency for the cheeks to be dimpled and voluptuous, the symmetry of the two globes, the dark valley between which invites exploration, the delicious proximity of the vulva; all combine to make the derriere the apogee of woman’s beauty; the pinnacle of her allure and yet in the base area. It is fashionable to dwell on the décolletage but I favour the sit upon or to be less prissy, the arse. A woman with a fine ripe arse is a woman indeed!

  The other reason that I have a great love of flogging young women is that I enjoy having them in my power, preferably bound and gagged. I desire their complete submission. I do not mind if the woman is not submissive by nature because there is often great fun to be had in overcoming a girl’s resistance. But I have also come across women who positively relish the lash.

  Rose had both a beautiful backside and a love of punishment

  I was a seasoned flogger by the time I met her, a connoisseur.

  As I have explained, most whores take the birch or the cane reluctantly and need to deaden the pain by taking one drug or another. Rose was most unusual in that she actually enjoyed being flogged. Whether she was consumed by guilt and felt she deserved punishment or whether she was inured to pain as a child I do not know. She was only eighteen when I found her. She was the only prostitute I had encountered up to that point in my life who actually cried out for the blows to be harder and for the flogging to go on longer. Consequently her skin, especially her arse, was rough and calloused from receiving so much punishment. On the other hand, she had a very pretty face, which is not always so common with whores, and with most, what beauty they have as young girls fades very rapidly.

  Rose was a real challenge and I tried to reduce her to tears and appeals for mercy but never succeeded.

  I suppose some of the women in medieval times who endured cruel torture in the name of their religion were her kind for it appears some welcomed their mortification with open arms, indeed much of it was self-inflicted, and even embraced their eventual martyrdom.

  ***

  When I left Oxford I settled into a pattern of life which was to last years though not many people would see me as a creature of routine. I would spend a year or two on an expedition and then spend a year or two writing about it based on my notes and diaries. The public perception was that I led the most adventurous life and that was true to a degree but it had elements of the mundane and ordinary. I did not always relish the writing phase because it kept me from the kind of writing I preferred, namely writing and drawing erotica. I had some of this secret writing published but always used a nom de plume and no-one made the connection between Francis Delamere and Laurence Povey, at least not to the best of my knowledge.

  I suppose the obvious explanation is that writing about flagellation was a substitute for actually indulging my obsession.

  At this time, early in my career, I had no way of knowing that fate was going to hand me an o
pportunity to make my fantasies reality.

  I was sailing off the coast of a country fringed with many islands when the wind blew my small craft off course and landed me on one of them. I am not about to disclose precisely where this was because, even now, I wish to protect the islanders and their way of life.

  The most surprising feature of the island was it was populated by people with black skins and people with white skins and many of mixed race – I will not use the word Mulatto because that could point to certain geographical locations.

  I discovered the reason for this was that a ship carrying white passengers had been wrecked in a terrible storm and some of the survivors had come ashore. Over the years some of the white people had produced children together and some had inter-bred with the indigenous population.

  I learned more about their history as I spent longer on the island.

  Recently there had been a slave’s rebellion and when the chief saw I had two guns, and learnt from me how they were used, he thought I might be the man to restore order. Firearms were unknown on the island, save for a few rusty muskets dating back to the time of the shipwreck, so the weapons represented considerable power. The chief also seemed to think a white man from afar was a person of authority.

  As I listened to the chief give me full freedom to introduce any measures I chose to calm the volatile situation I could not believe my good fortune.

  The climate on the island was hot and humid and the slaves wore only the briefest covering around their loins, no more than a thin cord round their waists with lengths of grass and reeds attached to cover the sexual parts. This covering, such as it was, simply hung down at the front consequently their bottoms were completely bare.

  There were male and female slaves of every skin colour and I was told slavery was used on the island as the punishment for any serious misdemeanours but the real truth was that anyone who offended the chief was placed in bondage. Although he had given me a job to do that greatly appealed to me, I had to acknowledge that he was a despot who would brook no opposition. He clearly expected me to be ruthless in carrying out his orders to frighten the slaves into total submission.

  He gave me a beautiful female slave and told me she was called by a name that meant deep lagoon in English. I smiled to myself wondering if she would turn out to epitomise our expression that “still waters run deep.”

  The sound she made when she pronounced her name sounded a little like Sheena so that was what I called her. I flogged her every night to keep myself supple and in good form with the whip.

  I began my task by visiting the ringleaders of the slave revolt in the stockade that served as their prison, carrying a bamboo cane and my drawing materials. They, four males and two females, were all naked and tied to stakes set in the sandy soil under the baking sun and I walked round to examine them. Two of the men were young bucks of fine physique and since there was no-one with me I ran my hands over their firm buttocks and their muscular legs.

  Perhaps I should make it clear that although I prefer women I am not averse to sex with young men if they are physically attractive and I am certainly pleased to flog their backsides when opportunities come along.

  One of these two men, a light skinned boy, was particularly handsome and unusually well endowed both in the length and circumference of his member and I took his cock in my hand and played with it, drawing back the foreskin and examining the bulbous purple head. I had no measure with me but I judged his cock would be at least eight inches in length. As an anthropologist I was greatly interested in him as a specimen of local manhood and was able to compare his genitals with young men I had seen in other parts of the world. Glancing at the other three men, I saw they all had big cocks, none of them circumcised (it seemed not be practised on the island) and wondered if most of the men here would have this same physical feature.

  My handling of the young man’s member had made it stiff and now it looked even more impressive, blue veins bulged along the shaft and his balls swollen and hard. I frigged him a few times so that his cock was so upright it almost rested against his navel then I did a series of drawings of him in his aroused state. When I was satisfied with my sketches, I turned my attention to the other prisoners.

  The other young man who attracted my interest was black and his muscular body gleamed with sweat. Examining him closely I saw there were scars all over his body, his back and buttocks particularly, and it was clear his owner must have subjected him to many severe punishments with whip and with cane. Some slaves are constantly trying to run away and I wondered if this was the case with this young man. It would account for the mass of deep scars. The other explanation was the simple one, that his owner, whether male or female, simply enjoyed whipping his well formed body.

  I knew by this time that both men and women on the island owned slaves so the possibility that he belonged to a woman was a real possibility.

  The other men were not particularly attractive specimens and I passed on to the two female slaves.

  The first was a white girl with light hair, her bare breasts firm and her nipples erect, whether in anticipation of my inspection or not I could not tell.

  I felt my cock stir in my breeches as I surveyed her. There was a look of defiance in her eyes and I instinctively wanted to meet the implied challenge but simply smiled knowing I would soon have her fine body stretched out for a flogging. She must have known I had that power and yet she dared to defy me. The thought came into my mind that perhaps this girl was the leader of the rebellious band and not one of the men as I would have expected. It was entirely believable given that look in her eyes and her sheer physical presence.

  I decided to give her a foretaste of what was in store for her and came very close to look her in the eyes, and then pushed my fingers into her pussy. She was bound tightly to the post and could not move an inch so simply had to endure my invasion of her body. She did not allow her expression to change unless it was to add contempt to defiance. The look seemed to say I was not much of a man to take advantage of her in this way.

  I added more digits and thrust them up and down inside her until her juice began to moisten my fingers. I guessed she would be furious with her body for betraying her. I had my left hand jammed into her pussy and now I used my right hand to caress her lovely breasts, noticing a little sheen of sweat between them. I plucked at her nipples, teasing the coral coloured points till they stood out proudly from the milky whiteness of her cone-shaped breasts. Then suddenly she spat at me and the saliva dripped down from my forehead over the left side of my face. Her stare was unwavering without a trace of fear.

  Even when I struck her across her breasts with my cane she stared back at me without flinching as though she felt no pain.

  This was a most unusual woman and I was certain now she was the leader of the slave revolt. It would take a person of extraordinary courage and determination to take the lead in such an enterprise and she clearly had those qualities in abundance.

  It seemed a petty act when I struck her again to add another bright red stripe across her white breasts but I was still angry from the humiliation of being spat upon in front of the other slaves. I should have waited because I knew I would have ample opportunity to punish her and in surroundings more conducive to my art.

  I was keen to capture this woman’s likeness so I knelt with my drawing pad resting on my thighs and tried to do justice to the wonderful lines of her figure, her firm breasts and her fair-haired muff.

  The other woman was nondescript and I left the stockade to discuss with the chief arrangements for the interrogation of the prisoners.

  ***

  One of the few stone built buildings on the island was the chief’s palace, the rest being huts made of materials like the wattle and daub used by our ancestors in England. It was part palace and part fort because the chief’s father had been at war with a neighbouring island and had the then existing buildings supplemented with fortifications for the protection of his family. When I explained my
requirements, the chief took me to the cells in the bowels of the building which his father had made in the expectation of taking prisoners in the war. The chief, slightly shamefacedly, told me the cells had not been used because no enemy fighters had been captured. It seemed to me the so-called war had not amounted to more than a good deal of posturing on both sides. However, the underground cells and chambers were ideal for my purpose.

  Apparently the chief did not use the cells himself because he expected slave owners to meet out their own punishments to errant slaves.

  I knew I had work to do before the cells were ready to receive the suspects and that I would have to improvise given the materials available. Where I might have preferred metal I would have to make do with wood and the fibres I could find in nature.

  For the young man I found attractive I wanted to construct a device to keep him restrained by his genitals so I used wood for an upright and made two cross pieces to slide up and down the pole. When this pillory was placed between his legs the two cross pieces would hold his cock and balls in a vice-like grip if tied together with certain grasses and would keep him upright denying him any movement or the possibility of sleep. Nuts and bolts would have made things easier but it was an interesting challenge to use the only materials available to me.

  I constructed a flogging horse, a whipping post in the shape of a St. Andrew’s cross, and finally a rudimentary pulley system so that I could hoist bodies off the ground. Whips and canes were easy to make using the natural resources of the island and the slave owners had fashioned themselves fearsome looking examples of what could be done.

  There was a stoutly built wooden table in the main chamber that would be convenient for stretching out my victims during interrogation whether on their backs or their bellies and I eagerly anticipated putting the white woman across it.

  The chief ordered some of his men to bring the conspirators from the stockade and my cells were soon filled.