Cordelia Lavington Chapter 35

By Governess

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This story is intended for adults only. It contains depictions of forced nudity, spanking, and sexual activity of preteen and young teen children for the purpose of punishment. None of the behaviors in this story should be attempted in real life. If you are not of legal age in your community to read or view such material, please leave now.
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Chapter 35

Mrs Lavington made her way to the infirmary. She was told that both Clough and Graham had fallen into a fitful sleep around three o’clock. But in their desperate but fruitless tossing and twisting had moved their beds several feet into the dormitory. When Mrs Simmonds had come on duty at six o’clock she had sponged the chilli ointment off their genitals and wiped them with milk.

“And what about the other boys, Susannah?”

“Mrs Rowbotham says that whenever she crept into the dormitory they were silent and in their beds. Whether they slept with the sound of Clough and Graham suffering I rather doubt. But none seems to have left his bed.”

“And have the beds been checked for masturbation?”

“Yes, Matron.”

“And you found nothing?”

“No, Matron. Nothing at all.”

“Good. Given the example of what happens to boys who indulge themselves, I’m not surprised. And all the boys are dressed and ready for lessons?”

“Yes, Matron. Although I expect they’ll find it difficult to concentrate.”

“Well, I am sure no allowance will be made for a few hours of lost sleep. Nor should it be.”

She put down her handbag.

“But I’d better see Clough and Graham before they go to their classroom. Perhaps Anne would run across and fetch them.”

“Certainly, Matron.”

She had expected that both boys would look more dishevelled and exhausted than they did. But although their eyes were tired and they were a little flushed, they looked none the worse for the discipline they’d received.

“Stand over there. And put your hands behind your back.”

She sat at her desk and checked the staff roster for the week. She believed in making boys wait, allowing their anxiety and apprehension to rise. And that, she thought, was the secret of controlling boys. A constant background of fear to their lives. Fear that of the many things expected of them, one may have been forgotten; fear that of their inevitable sins and mistakes, one might be discovered; fear that their friends might give them away; and the fear of punishment itself.

She looked up.

“I understand that both of you were unable to lie still last night. That you thrashed about in your beds and moved them several feet into the dormitory. Is that right, Graham?”

“Ye . . .yes, Matron.”

“So why was that? Clough?”

“Be . . . because the stuff that you rubbed on our . . . our . . . Because it burnt, Matron.”

Mrs Lavington nodded.

“I see. So would you say it was a healing remedy. Graham?”

He hung his head.

“No . . . Matron.”

“And you Clough. What do you say?”

“No, Matron.”

“Well, I am surprised. Drop your trousers. And your underpants.”

They stood pale and trembling.

She stood beside Clough and reaching down held his small, limp, uncircumcised member in her hand. She tightened her grip a little and slipped back the foreskin. He winced.”

“So it’s sore, is it, Clough?”

“Please, Matron. Yes.”

She did the same to Graham. And then walked purposefully across the room and put her head around the door.

“Mrs Simmonds, would you hand me the salve that was put on Clough and Graham last night, please. And the spatula.”

She unscrewed the lid, looking at them. There was a sharp intake of breath and they noticeably tensed. She dug the spatula into the jar. She spoke quietly, with a firm, concerned voice.

“As you both seemed to doubt that the ointment has done any good, perhaps another application is needed.

They stood as if transfixed, saying nothing.

“What do you think Clough?”

His voice was anxious and shrill.

“No . . . Matron. No. Please. No.”

“But you told me you didn’t consider it a healing remedy. Both of you did.”

They were white as though chidden of God and visibly shaking. She said nothing for a moment, savouring their fear.

“You see, the question is has the ointment healed your disgusting proclivity to fondle each other’s genitals.”

Again she paused.

“You do understand what I am saying? Has it healed your disgusting behaviour of jumping into bed with each other and playing with each other under the sheets? That is the question.”

Again she waited for a moment. And now her voice was like a whetted knife.

“Well? Has it?”

Both nodded vigorously.

“Yes, Matron . . . Yes.”

“Are you quite sure?”

“Yes, Matron. Yes.”

“Very well, then.”

And she screwed the lid back on the jar.

“But you still face a flogging by the Principal. A public flogging before the whole reformatory. So you have that still to look forward to. Now, pull up your trousers and be off to your lessons.”

When they had gone she sat at her desk. She picked up a pencil and twisted it between her fingers. And her thoughts went back to those early years in Sainte Foy. She recalled Mme Soler publicly disciplining her best friend, Anna. They had been watching a pétanque match in the village square. Anna was probably about six years of age, and had become bored by the endless throwing of the metal balls toward the cochonnet, and had started to complain and then to grizzle. When Mme Soler told her to desist, she pouted and began kicking and shuffling her feet on the gravelly surface. Then, she had picked up a pebble and thrown it into the midst of the playing area. Her mother was furious, and Anna was led away crying. After a quarter of an hour, Mme Soler had returned to the village square with a red-eyed and tearful Anna who’d obviously received une bonne fessée. Anna’s hand was in hers, and in her mother’s other hand was a hairbrush.

It was another half an hour before the match ended. As was usual it was followed by wine with crusty bread and rillettes. But before people began to eat, Mme Soler announced that her daughter had an apology to make. There was silence as she lifted Anna on to a bench. Everyone’s eyes were on this small, dark, six year old girl who tearfully stammered out her regret for what she had done.

And there was no surprise at what followed. Mme Soler was known to be une mère très sévère. She ordered Anna off the bench and sat on it herself. Then, she pulled the girl towards her, turned up her dress, and took her knickers down. Les marques du martinet were clearly visible on her buttocks and thighs.

Cordelia remembered how a few months ago, she had listened to Mme Soler talking to her mother about a new martinet for Anna.

I have asked M Aillot to make me a new martinet, Mme Réglat. Anna is becoming très volontaire. I’ve used the present one since she was three, and the lashes are too thin and light for a girl of her age. He is making me a martinet with lanières that are a little shorter and much thicker.

Bien sûr, Mme Soler. A martinet must do more than just tickle a child. It has to cut into the soft flesh. It’s the only way to ensure a child is obedient and polite.

And on that already well whipped flesh, Mme Soler spanked her. Apart from a pigeon cooing and the distant sound of a dog barking, all that could be heard was the steady, remorseless smack of the hard back of the brush on Anna’s small compact bottom, punctuated by her screams.

It was not the first time Cordelia had seen Anna spanked. Mme Soler kept the hairbrush with its hard ebony back on a shelf in her kitchen. And it was regularly used. In Mme Soler’s eyes, a child’s rightful sense of self-worth could all too easily become overlaid with the scaly skin of sinful self-regard. And when that happened, that skin had to be to be painfully flayed from the child.

Like her own mother, Mme Soler spanked with a painstaking thoroughness, slowly inflaming each small buttock until the agony was almost insupportable. Some children are stoical under punishment. But not Anna. From the first smack of the brush, she was desperately pleading for forgiveness, begging her mother to stop. But to no avail. And before long she was wriggling like an eel. Her mother always continued until her daughter had been whipped into sodden, tearful submission.

The first time Cordelia had watched Mme Soler spanking Anna, she had felt a shivery, tingling feeling running all the way down her diaphragm to her stomach. She felt a strange, pleasurable constriction in her chest and she knew she wanted to see Anna spanked again. And it was not long before she did.

Several weeks later, playing at Anna’s house, Cordelia thought her friend seemed subdued and anxious. After about half an hour Mme Soler called both girls into the kitchen. She sat on an upright chair, and spoke to Anna in a quiet authoritative voice.

Apporte-moi la brosse à cheveux, Anna.

Anna reddened and bit her lip, but did as instructed. Cordelia realised that the reason for Anna’s subdued mood had been the spanking hanging over her. And she knew that Mme Soler had delayed her punishment in order to shame her by spanking her in front of her.

As she sat at her desk, twisting the pencil between her fingers, Cordelia thought how shaming it was to be spanked in front of another. Both girls knew the other was spanked, but still Cordelia hated it when she was punished before her friend. For as she was stripped of her clothing and held firmly across her mother’s knee, her claim to independence and the right to determine her own small life were revealed as wholly illusory. All was in the gift of her mother. And however much she might struggle to assert herself against her mother’s authority, slowly the hard wooden back of the brush would force her to capitulate. And it was that surrender to her mother’s will in tearful brokenness that was so shameful. All the confidence and self-possession that she flaunted before her friends had been removed. Like the core from an apple. She was empty, hollow, and humiliated, and marked with the red and smarting weals of submission.

And of course, thought Cordelia, that was the intention of a spanking. It was not just a swift retribution for sin, but a process of breaking the will, of making a child aware that she was subject to her mother’s authority in all that she did. But where a child resisted loving correction and shamelessly refused to submit to the rod in private, then public shaming was necessary.

She thought again of Clough and Graham. So deeply ingrained was their commitment to masturbation that contrition would not come easily. She had leathered their behinds and disciplined the offending member of each, but there was yet more to be done. She nodded to herself. Yes, a public flogging was necessary as it had been for Anna Soler all those years ago in the village square of Sainte Foy. She would report to the Principal later in the morning. She glanced at the clock. Just time to catch Howard Greaves before class started.

She made her way through the corridors and as she passed a classroom she heard a boy being caned. She stood for a moment and listened to the remorseless swish of the rattan and the shrill squeals of agony that followed each cut. And it transported her once more to her childhood in Sainte Foy. She and Anna lived in adjacent cottages that shared a party wall. She would sometimes put her ear to the wall but she could barely hear anything for the walls were thick. However, for much of the year windows were usually open, and with her ears pricked, it was possible to overhear Anna being disciplined by Mme Soler. As Anna was usually punished in the kitchen, Cordelia would then creep out into the shared garden behind the two cottages and sit, hugging her knees, against the wall, immediately beneath Anna’s kitchen window.

I will not tolerate disobedience, Anna. The sooner you learn that the better.

And then Cordelia would hear the clack clack of Mme Soler’s shoes on the stone flags as she went to retrieve the hairbrush from the dresser or to take the martinet down from its hook. If she heard the scrapping of a chair being positioned, then she knew that Anna was to be spanked. And she hugged herself even tighter as she listened to the distinctive sound of the hairbrush being smacked across firm sensitive bottom flesh; and to Anna’s roars of agony. But sometimes there was no scrapping of a chair to be heard. Only a pause and the sound of Anna sobbing and protesting. And then she knew that Mme Soler was preparing Anna for the martinet.

She remembered her breathlessness as she imagined the scene. She knew that into one of the beams was fixed a large metal hook. Sometimes Mme Soler would hang a bunch of herbs from it, but most of the time it was left unused. Except when Anna was whipped. Her mother tied her wrists together and then ran a loop of cord underneath the wrist binding and fastened the two ends of the loop over the hook, dragging up Anna’s arms and forcing her to stand almost on tip-toes. Cordelia had seen this only once when visiting with her mother but had been taken home before the whipping began. But listening, she could imagine it. La culotte being taken down aux chevilles. The dress lifted and tucked between her raised arms. And then the martinet being whipped across her bottom and thighs and then her calves. And Anna twisting and turning as she screamed and pleaded. As Cordelia breathlessly listened, she would count the strokes. It was rare for Mme Soler to give less than two dozen, and often more. And as she crept away she knew that a sobbing Anna would be au piquet sans culotte for a good half-an-hour.

But why did she want to see and listen to Anna being whipped when her own little brother, Charles, was spanked so often? Later, she came to realise it was because Charles was a boy; and Cordelia at just over six years was already fascinated by her own bottom. She wondered at its firmness. Its resilience. Its soft full sensuous shape. She would feel each buttock when she was undressing for bed, and if she had been spanked examine the inflamed surface in the mirror and run a finger over the raised imprint of hairbrush or martinet. Charles’s bottom was a meagre thing in her eyes. And although she watched his spankings they didn’t excite her in quite the same way as seeing or hearing Anna spanked.

When she was spanked she could examine the consequences in the mirror, and touch the tender flesh. But what she could not see was the spanking as it was given: her desperate writhing as she tried to escape the pain; the reddening of her buttocks as the implement of correction was applied; and the the branding of her flesh with the oval marks of the brush. But as she watched Anna being spanked it was as if she were watching herself and listening to her own screams of agony.

Their mothers would often quote to them the old proverb Qui aime bien, châtie bien. And if chastisement were the mark of love, then both Cordelia and Anna were well loved. And looking back, she came to see that her arousal by Anna’s spankings and her eagerness to witness them was, too, a mark of love. For she was sharing in Anna’s sufferings as though they were her own. The hot smarting flesh was her flesh; and in that shared suffering they became one.

Cordelia shook her head at the memory, and continued down the corridor to the classroom where Howard Greaves was taking the register. He looked up as she entered.

“Good morning, Matron. Is it one of the boys you want to see?”

No, Mr Greaves, I was hoping for a word with you. Now is obviously not a convenient moment. Would it be possible for you to look into the infirmary later in the morning?”

“Certainly, Matron. I’ll look in at lunchtime.”

Mrs Lavington made her way back to the infirmary, and looked in on the sick room. A new boy had been admitted yesterday with a high temperature.

“Well, Cranston, how are you today?”

“I . . . I think I’m a lot better . . . thank you, Matron.”

Mrs Lavington placed her hand on his forehead.

“Yes, your temperature seems to have come down. We’ll keep you here until lunchtime, and if it remains down, you may return to your class this afternoon. And keep drinking the water that you are being given.”

She smiled.

“Boys have been spanked for not drinking their water.”

She returned to her desk and got on with some paperwork until eleven o’clock. Then, she told Anne that she would be with the Principal for the next hour.

Diana opened the door.

“How delightful, Cordelia. I expect you have come to see James. He’ll be back in the next half hour. In the meantime would you like some coffee?”

She rang the bell.

“And Mary will bring some of cook’s new shortcake biscuits.”

(to be continued)

(The End)