Even before the run started terror had engulfed her. As soon as she heard the dread phrase, ‘cross-country run’, Gretchen had felt sick to her stomach. She knew the other girls were, without exception, younger, slimmer and fitter than her. There was no doubt they would be faster too. The next hour or so, she knew with hideous certainty, was going to be the purest form of hell.
Nor was she mistaken. Rose had led the little pack of runners off up the rectory drive, the Reverend running back and forth along the line of girls, shouting encouragement and swishing his crop by way of punctuation. By the time they reached the road out of Hatherby Gretchen was already last. Faith ran beside her with a concerned expression.
‘Come on, Gretchen, you will have to run a bit faster, at least.’
The road out of Hatherby wound gently upwards on its way towards Hope Hall. This easy slope was quite enough to leave Gretchen gasping within the first few dozen yards. Despairingly she watched Charlotte inexorably pull away. Though she was the next slowest of the group, every time Gretchen looked up, panting, the girl was more distant.
‘Hurry it up! Hurry it up!’ Gretchen looked up just in time to see the Reverend Dawes lay a sharp stroke with his crop across Charlotte’s well-filled shorts. The crack of crop on bottom came back to her as she laboured up the hill, as did Charlotte’s startled gasp of pain.
She knew in her soul what was coming, but it did not come for a short while yet. The Reverend concentrated a little longer on Charlotte, chivvying her up the slope with a judicious mixture of sharp strokes of the crop and blood-curdling threats.
Gretchen had a stitch by the time she reached the little gate in Hope Hall’s surrounding walls. Tears misted her eyes as she stumbled up towards the iron gate and the man who stood awaiting her there.
‘Not a very good show, is it Gretchen?’ he asked mildly as she reached the gate.
‘Ha... I... oh, I can’t...’ she gasped as she staggered through.
The Reverend Dawes fell into a slow lope at her side.
‘Faith, go and up and keep an eye on Lady Charlotte, she is falling somewhat behind,’ he said, breathing but little more heavily than usual, while Gretchen was now gasping desperately for air. Faith increased her pace and soon disappeared from view amongst the rhododendrons and camellias that lined the gravel drive.
Gretchen tried. True terror ensured no one ever tried harder, but it was no use. Too many cream cakes and lazy afternoons had taken their inevitable toll.
‘You are a fat, lazy trollop, aren’t you, girl?’
Gretchen did not have the breath to answer. Between her broken breathing and the sound of feet on gravel she did not even hear the warning whistle of the crop.
It caught her square across the broad beam of her bottom and pain lanced through her, so sharp that it turned a laboured gasp into a sob.
‘Come along, you great tub of lard!’ Again the crop cracked across her behind. Gretchen gasped and stumbled and this time she fell. Too winded to rise, she panted, quivering like a jelly, as the gravel of the drive abraded her hands and knees.
‘Come on, get up!’ The Reverend Dawes ordered pitilessly.
‘I c-can’t, s-sir,’ she panted, the stitch still piercing her side.
‘Very well, you lazy slut. Stick that fat bottom up and out.’
Still panting, her hams trembling violently, Gretchen somehow forced her bottom to obey.
There was a whistle and a crack, and she was in agony. She had neither enough breath to howl her distress nor enough time to catch it, before he unleashed the riding crop again.
Amelia’s lungs felt like they were bursting as she hurried through the rhododendrons, desperate to keep Kirsty in view. Leggy Bella had pulled away with Rose right from the start, and Kirsty was evidently also fit but, somehow, Amelia had managed to stay in touch, whilst slowly outpacing Linnet. She did not know what would happen if she lost contact with the leaders in this race, but she was learning how the Reverend Dawes’ mind worked, and she did not like the prospect one little bit.
There was something else on her mind as she scrambled along the drive that wound through the overcast shrubbery. The course was taking her ever closer to Hope Hall. To her relief the leading runners did not take the route that led to the Hall’s courtyard and stable block, but it was short-lived relief, for she realised the route would take them in front of the great house.
As she rounded the corner she knew the worst. A group of elegantly dressed gentlefolk were sitting on the bench before the house and taking tea. Mortified, Amelia recognised the relatives who had so cruelly consigned her to this fate. Lord and Lady Feversham – Amelia’s Uncle Alexander and Aunt Alicia – sat sipping tea with that damned young dandy Jamie Fanshawe and her thrice cursed cousin, Clara. They turned at the sound of her feet pounding the path and smiled smugly as she panted her way towards them. Amelia clenched her teeth. She might have known the Reverend Dawes would not miss an opportunity to humiliate her further. The company clapped languidly as Rose led Bella past them and a suppressed surge of fury took over Amelia’s proud soul.
Why should she be humiliated like this? Why should that little blonde slut Clara, who was younger than Amelia by almost a year, get to sit in comfort and laugh at her as she stumbled past? Tears of frustrated anger misted Amelia’s eyes.
‘Come on, Amelia, pick those legs up, you old slowcoach!’
Jamie’s amused comment as Amelia pounded up the drive towards her relatives made her want to weep. Cousin Clara could not disguise an amused smile. Lady Alicia let out a peal of laughter and Lord Alex clapped languidly as she laboured past the party. Desperate to get out of sight of the grinning foursome, Amelia put down her head, ignored her aching legs and ran.
Kirsty was fit, but she was somewhat shorter than Amelia, whose long legs soon ate up the gap between them. Amelia overtook her even before the course wound down the rise that was known as Holly Hill.
To Amelia’s distress, Rose turned at the bottom and ran along the edge of the lake, back across the front of the house and in full view of the watching company. There was nothing she could do about this, but she thanked God that, this time, the audience would be a good deal further away. Amelia ran as fast as she could along the lakeshore, desperate to get out of sight of her tormentors. So fast did she run that by the time the course wound back up into the woods and out of sight of the house, she had almost caught up with Bella and Rose.
The effort caught up with her as she pounded after their backs. Her lungs were bursting now and her thigh muscles shrieking their distress. Amelia gasped and slowed a little, thankful that Gretchen had delayed the Reverend way back along the course. Then she raised her head to follow Rose’s route. What she saw made her knees go weak.
The Reverend Dawes was standing by the side of the path, leaning casually against a tree and looking perfectly collected. With horror, Amelia realised he must have cut across the route of the run to intercept them. As Rose and Bella ran past him he swung his arm almost lazily and laid a stroke of his crop across the tight seat of Bella’s shorts.
Amelia’s stomach contracted at the sound of the impact. Bella stumbled and gave a little gasp of pain, then she was running even faster, away into the woods. Now there was no one between Amelia and the smiling Reverend Dawes. She put her head down and tried to ignore him, running as fast as her aching legs and laboured breathing would allow.
‘Come on, Amelia, buck up. You can do better than that!’ the Reverend called out to her as she drew near. As she drew level, she saw him smile and raise the crop.
The stroke caught her right across the centre of her bottom. The pain was so intense that Amelia closed her eyes for a second, and narrowly avoided colliding with a tree. A strange, agonised hiss came out of her lips, but as the pain subsided she congratulated herself that at least she had got past the waiting Dawes.
She heard his step and the whistl
e of the crop a split second before pain shot through the top of her right thigh.
‘I said buck up! Come on, girl, pick those legs up now!’
There was another whistle and another excruciating crack. Amelia could not stop herself from sobbing as she ran. He kept pace with almost contemptuous ease, raining blistering crop strokes down on her bottom and thighs. She was running as fast as she could manage, but still he whipped her mercilessly on down the little woodland path. Yelping with pain, tears streaming down her face, Amelia stumbled on blindly, anxious to get away from the wicked crop.
So desperate was she, so intensely did her hindquarters burn and her legs ache, that she was not even aware, for the first few seconds, that the punishing rain of crop strokes and the Reverend’s exhortations had ceased. Still she dared not look around in case he was keeping pace behind her, ready to start whipping her again. Instead she gasped lungfuls of air and ran on as fast as ever she could.
The sound of crop on bottom and a cry of pain in Kirsty’s voice behind told her the Reverend’s whip had found another target. Saying a prayer of thanks, she followed the girls ahead back on to the road, and ran down the hill to the rectory with all the concentrated haste of a gazelle pursued by a particularly lean and hungry wolf.
‘Oh, God, I will never survive six months of this!’ Charlotte gasped as the hot water hissed out of the showerheads on to the pink bodies of eight completely naked girls.
Amelia, whose bottom still throbbed like the very devil, knew what Charlotte meant. All the same, the presence of so much fetching female flesh around her made her feel, at least for the moment, slightly more sanguine about her awful fate.
‘Ach, it’s no’ so bad,’ Kirsty said with her usual cheeky grin. ‘Hey, Amelia, want me to soap your back?’
Amelia gave Kirsty a disdainful nod and turned to let her do so. She found herself facing Gretchen, who looked very sorry for herself. Gretchen turned, wincing as the hot water hit her body, and Amelia’s mouth went dry as she stared at the mass of livid welts on the pale mounds of her bottom.
‘You really caught it,’ she said, something in her voice sounding almost like sympathy.
Gretchen turned back and gave her a shy smile. ‘I deserved it, I suppose,’ she said sadly. ‘I am very lazy and very slow.’
‘Well, he did not have to thrash us as brutally as that,’ Charlotte put in, feeling her own well-striped bottom gingerly.
Turning, Amelia was in time to catch the maids, Faith and Rose, exchange a furtive glance.
‘The Reverend,’ Faith said anxiously as she soaped Rose, ‘does not like to have his actions questioned.’
Kirsty handed Amelia the bar of soap with a sardonic smile. Amelia began to soap the girl’s flawless back. Kirsty’s skin was as smooth as wet satin. Amelia tried to ignore the insistent tingling between her legs as she lathered away. ‘And who exactly tells him what is said?’ she asked.
Faith flushed and exchanged a look with Rose again.
‘That’s clear enough,’ Bella put in, having noticed the glance as well. ‘Remember girls, watch what you say around the Reverend’s maids.’
‘No, you don’t understand.’ Faith looked appealingly at the other girls. ‘He has ways of finding things out. If he asks... well, I just have to tell the truth.’
‘I can’t imagine lying to him, if that is what you mean,’ little Linnet said softly as she soaped Gretchen’s back.
The two made a delightful tableau, Amelia thought as she looked over Kirsty’s shoulder at them. Delicate, slender, Linnet with her tight little bottom and exquisite, apple-sized breasts next to big Gretchen, whose breasts were like honeydew melons in comparison.
Kirsty winced as Amelia, a little distracted by this vista, reached her bottom. She stood back and looked down. Six lurid weals still stood out on the girl’s jutting cheeks. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled.
‘Och, you’re all right. I’ve had a hell of a lot worse than these wee cleg bites.’
The water ceased and there was a mass sigh of disappointment. She was not the only one who had enjoyed the communal shower, Amelia thought with a smile. As she towelled herself dry she thought about what Faith had said. She imagined herself being interrogated by the Reverend Dawes, his cold eyes holding her in their hypnotic stare. She realised that, even if she could hold her tongue, few of the others would withstand him.
She resolved to be particularly careful about what she said.
A groan from several female mouths brought her out of her reverie. She turned to find that Faith was pointing to a pile of corsets and the dreadful whipping drawers. Amelia’s heart sank at the sight. The tight drawers would be even more galling over a welted bottom.
‘Oh, no,’ she said out loud before she could stop herself, ‘not those bloody monstrosities!’
The Reverend was waiting for the girls as they filed into the classroom. The combination of their impossibly tight drawers, punished bottoms and leg muscles stiff from their exertions ensured that every one of the trainees moved gingerly.
Amelia moved to her desk and stood up straight, anxiously awaiting further orders. The Reverend looked at each of his charges in turn. She swallowed hard as his eyes fixed on hers.
‘All right, sit down,’ he said at last.
Amelia winced, even before her sore bottom met the hard wood of her seat. The action of sitting tautened the cotton of her drawers uncomfortably. Then her martyred flesh did meet unyielding wood, and she winced again.
The Reverend Dawes stood before his table, leaning forward and supporting his powerful frame on straight arms that ended in clenched fists. He raked the rows of trembling girls with his pitiless raptor’s gaze.
‘Only one word could describe the performance of this class today,’ he said slowly. ‘Pathetic!’
Amelia felt her stomach clench as he spat the word viciously.
‘You are a lazy, disobedient, idle, fidgeting shower of brats!’
The Reverend stood back and shook his head in mock sorrow. He turned and strolled over to the rack of straps and canes. There was a horrible silence as he perused his implements at length. No girl dared to make a noise; Amelia barely dared to breathe. Eventually he selected a cane and swished it thoughtfully. Amelia’s knees had started trembling and she simply did not seem to be able to keep them still. The Reverend Dawes turned and stalked towards his class. Amelia’s mouth felt dry as blotting paper.
He walked through the desks until he was behind them. Amelia strained her ears to try to chart his progress, not daring to turn. The tension in the room was dreadful, a suffocating blanket of clammy fear.
‘All of you deserve a salutary thrashing on general principles.’
Amelia closed her eyes at the word ‘thrashing’ and tried to keep the tears at bay. Not more, she prayed. Her bottom was too sore for more. It simply was not possible to bear it...
‘However, in the interests of discipline I must appoint two of you as prefects. Two of you have shown slightly more promise than your wretched companions. These two girls will have the privileges and the responsibility of prefecture. They will have the duty of maintaining order in my absence.’
Let it be me! A faint ghost of hope tiptoed into Amelia’s heart. Please, she prayed silently, let me be a prefect.
‘The prefects will have food and dress privileges. Flogging drawers, for example, will be optional for them, outside of the classroom...’
The idea of being free of those wretched garments, even for part of the time! Amelia wanted it so much that she almost choked with hope. Why was he taking so long to announce his choices? She bit her bottom lip and tried to stay her trembling. The Reverend was playing with them, she realised suddenly, dangling the possibility in front of every girl in the class, simply to have the satisfaction of then snatching it away. Still, she reasoned as his measured footsteps paced behind her, she must be in with a good c
hance. After all, it would scarcely be Gretchen or Charlotte, and she could not see timid little Linnet being picked. With a sudden thrill, Amelia remembered, she had come in second on the cross-country run.
‘In order to maintain discipline in the dormitory,’ the Reverend continued after a long pause, broken only by his measured tread, ‘prefects will be authorised to administer up to four strokes of the tawse or cane, without reference to me.’
Amelia’s whole body was trembling now. He must pick her, he simply must! The idea of being punished by her fellows was intolerable. On the other hand, the idea of being able to punish these little trollops...
‘Right then,’ Dawes said crisply, stepping back into view as he walked back to his table. He paused, and placing the cane on the table he picked up two enamel badges. He turned to face the class and Amelia dropped her eyes to avoid his gaze.
‘Lady Charlotte Letherbridge-Lacey and the Honourable Amelia Colinbrooke. You are, as you know, the trainees from the most exalted families.’
There was a low growl from Kirsty’s direction. To Amelia’s astonishment, the Reverend merely smiled.
‘I am, of course, excluding barbarous tribal chieftains,’ he said dryly.
Emboldened by her good fortune, her suppressed pride in her ancestry seeping back into her soul, Amelia risked a glance at Charlotte, who smirked back at her. At least the man had the decency to appreciate the importance of good family, Amelia thought. Indeed, she realised, she might not have been entirely fair to the Reverend Dawes in the past, never having really acknowledged the man’s undoubted qualities, not the least of which was judgement.
‘Such a pity, then, that this breeding does not show in your deportment,’ the Reverend said dryly. ‘Mayflies show more fortitude, and I have known farmyard sows with better manners than you two spoilt little brats.’
Hope melted like butter on a griddle. Amelia felt bitter tears well as he chuckled at the disappointed girls.
Rectory of Correction Page 6
