The Other Tom Brown's Schooldays Chapter 17
By Pueros

Copyright 2007 by Pueros, all rights reserved
Comments to the author can be sent to [email protected]

This story is intended for ADULTS ONLY

Chapter 17 - Arches

(Cellars, Sodomhall School, Northumberland, England, March 1803)

The only exception to Daniel's traumatised inaction whilst being stripped naked and subsequently left alone and nude in the dark dank cavernous school cellars had been the boy's instinctive shy covering of his exposed genitalia by his hands. The manual reaction was very common in response to the indignity of being forcibly deprived of clothing but perhaps rather incongruous in that the Prefects, who had perpetrated the deed, had seen the newly 11 year-old undressed before and anyway there was now no one present to see his shame.

Daniel's inaction was maintained for a while, as his trauma caused him to remain virtually motionless in terror at his circumstances. However, two factors eventually finally encouraged the naked boy to move and explore his new environment, which was very frightening to him not only because of the inherent nastiness but also because of what he would suffer here in punishment for attempting to flee Sodomhall School.

Daniel did not yet know what his chastisements would entail over the promised several weeks of incarceration in the dreadful place, although he had heard the appalling rumours about what previous inmates had encountered. However, the boy fully appreciated that the relevant punishments would not be nice but would instead be undoubtedly very unpleasant and painful.

The two factors that now encouraged Daniel finally to come out of his trauma and move were the chill pervading the cavernous windowless school cellars, which had begun to transfer to his now bare body, and the disturbing noises echoing around him. As far as the latter were concerned, the boy was not fearful of the loud sound of dripping water emerging from the many shadows created by the meagre lighting provided by the flaming wall-torches, which were sparse in number. His main worry was instead fixed on the regular rustlings that he heard.

Daniel initially wondered whether there were, after all, other persons present with him in the cellars, hiding in the shadows. Perhaps, he pondered, Dr. Strappem had somehow arrived via another entrance in readiness to inflict the first punishment but was currently intent on creeping up to scare him.

Daniel's petrified mind subsequently considered the potentially even worse possibility that there might be vagabonds camping in the cellars, who might like to do him harm. The boy's terrified mental processes then proceeded to contemplate the possibility of ghosts, as more rustling in the shadows was heard.

As a consequence, Daniel finally had to remove his hands from protecting his completely smooth hairless genitalia because his bladder had decided to empty in fright. Just as the resultant flow of urine began to hit the cold cobbled floor below, the boy finally noticed the first of the many rats that shared the cellars with him.

(Form 1B classroom, Sodomhall School, Northumberland, England, same time)

Although no one appreciated the fact, the classroom of Tom's form, numbered 1B and shared by other first-year boys of Narcissus and Phaethon Houses, was directly above the place in the cellars below where the naked Daniel was shivering in cold and fright. The pupils present were currently rather noisy because their teacher, Mr. Younglove, had not yet arrived for the initial lesson of the day.

The noise emanated from the fact that most of the boys were chatting to other pupils located at neighbouring desks. Tom was as usual at such a time conversing with Christopher.

"We'll have to do something to help Daniel," Tom suggested, "because it's partly our fault that he's where he is now. We should have done more to befriend him and help him snap out of his melancholy, which undoubtedly caused him in desperation to try to run away." "But what can we sensibly do without putting ourselves in a lot of trouble?" Christopher asked rather reasonably, given that he could not think of any practical action that could be undertaken to aid the boy.

For once, the highly intelligent Tom was stumped for an answer. "I don't yet know," he therefore answered, "but I hope that I'll quickly think of something!"

Christopher was about to attempt to suggest to Tom in return that truly nothing could be sensibly done to help Daniel. He did not want his best friend to produce wild ideas that he was determined to pursue.

Knowing how determinedly brave, convincing and stubborn Tom could sometimes be, Christopher worried that he might also be persuaded against his better judgement to feel obliged to assist in an unwise and therefore highly dangerous venture, more out of loyalty than conviction and which ultimately led only to disaster. They could thereby then find themselves in the cellars with Daniel.

Christopher's attempt to dissuade Tom from contemplating such perilous plans was, however, thwarted by the arrival of Mr. Younglove in form 1B. All boys in the class immediately became silent and stood until their teacher took up his position at their head and gave them permission to sit in readiness for the first lesson of the day, which everyone knew was to be classical Greek.

Classical Greek was considered by most boys to be the worst of the subjects imposed upon them at Sodomhall School. The boring lessons involved the monotonous learning of not only a dead foreign language, which was of little use except to historians of the ancient world, but also a different alphabet. At least, the majority of pupils thought, the similarly defunct Latin tongue, which they were additionally required to study, used lettering that was akin to that of English.

The cruelly smirking Mr. Younglove instructed his now sitting pupils to open the book that they had recently been studying, to help learn both classical Greek and some ancient history, namely Herodotus' 'Histories', at a random place in part 6. As customarily, he subsequently invited a boy to translate and read out aloud a particular sentence.

Most of the other boys in class were invariably relieved not to be the first chosen. As the subsequent order of sentences to be addressed was always consecutive, they had time to look at and translate them in case Mr. Younglove called upon them to do so.

Anyone of the currently 36 pupils present who did not manage the feat had to go to the front of the class to receive from Mr. Younglove one stroke of the cane across the palm of his outstretched hand for a first offence. Second failures were rewarded by a similar harsh hit but across the boy's covered bottom. The school shorts and under-briefs of a young miscreant would have be lowered to the floor for similar chastisement, but now inflicted on bare buttocks, for later ineptitude, with the number of blows rising by one during each visit to the Form-master.

Mr. Younglove considered such ritual to be not only an incentive to good learning but also personally pleasurable, given his sexual sadism. A noticeable bulge inevitably appeared at the front of his trousers whenever he taught classical Greek in this manner.

Mr. Younglove also appreciated that he was expecting a lot of young boys of a mere 10 and 11 years of age to translate Herodotus' texts successfully after just about 6 months learning of classical Greek. Most of these 1st-year pupils had only been introduced to the difficult subject when they had first started at Sodomhall School in the previous September. However, the personal pleasure gained from beating knowledge of the topic into them was too good to resist.

In order to avoid the attentions of the cane, some desperate boys took the great risk of furtively lifting the lids of their school desks to extract from within their classical Greek dictionaries, which had been allocated to all of them. They hoped to use the books secretly to translate their allocated sentences.

Mr. Younglove was, however, always on the lookout for such cheating. As part of this process, the Form-master was on constant alert to espy the attempts to lift desk lids and sometimes strolled up and down the rows of pupils, looking for extracted dictionaries. The cruel teacher always gained immense pleasure from discovering any such book in the possession of a miscreant boy, as the due punishment was severe.

On any such discovery, Mr. Younglove would harshly grab the nearest ear of the miscreant boy and, whilst steadfastly maintaining his painful grip, encourage the naughty pupil to rise and follow him to the front of the class. Shorts and under-briefs would soon be resting on the floor, whilst a bare young bottom received strokes of the cane commensurate with double the child's age in years.

As a result, most boys were not tempted to cheat. They generally considered that the punishment for discovery was simply too harsh to risk, with the lesser penances for inept translation, although nasty, more acceptable.

When the rather tremulous Tom's turn came, most of his young predecessors' attempts to translate their sentences had failed and the sound of cane hitting juvenile palms, and the resultant squeals, had regularly echoed round the classroom. The boy looked down at his own words of Herodotus in

classical Greek that he was supposed to read out in English,
namely ''              '.

Silence reigned in the classroom whilst Tom's mind glanced again at the ancient lettering, which he had already unsuccessfully studied. The very short sentence only comprised two classical Greek words but they were nevertheless difficult for a mere new 11 year-old to translate.

As Tom struggled to interpret the classical Greek words, he instinctively clinched his right hand, across the palm of which his worried mind considered that he could already feel the painful hit of a viciously but accurately delivered cane.

(Cellars, Sodomhall School, Northumberland, England, same time)

After urinating involuntarily in reaction to the frightening noises around him, Daniel's petrified mind somehow slowly acquired sufficient fortitude and sense to realise that the rustling sounds were made by rats, an example of which he had just seen. Such vermin would inevitably be found in such a cellar environment.

Daniel also recognised that the rats would probably be more scared of him than he was of them and that they should therefore cower away from him and leave him alone unless he threatened them. The naked boy therefore turned his attention to his other main current concern, namely the coldness invading his naked body.

Daniel appreciated that his first priority now had to be to attempt to find a source of warmth and this objective meant that he had to explore the cellars. The boy did not particularly want to venture any deeper into his new home from his current proximity to the entrance door but his mind, slowly recovering from his initial trauma, also realised that he had no choice if he was to avoid dying of the cold.

Daniel again identified in the flickering torchlight that the large vault in which he was currently standing was completely devoid of any furniture or fittings apart from those providing the illumination. The wall-torches would, of course, also supply heat but, for a boy of his age, they were out of reach.

Daniel's only hope in gaining urgent warmth was therefore to venture down the long and broad corridor, leading away from the entrance door. As the boy had already noticed, this was flanked on both sides by similar arched chambers or other passageways. Some of these were fronted by prison-like metal bars.

Because of his angle of vision and the pervading gloom, Daniel had so far been unable to ascertain what lay beyond the entrances to these vaulted chambers or passageways. The intelligent boy had also understood that there would probably be little there that was pleasant. However, these places represented the only possible sources of the warmth that his bare body, now visibly shivering and covered by goosepimples, desperately needed.

Consequently, Daniel, whose teeth also began to chatter through the pervading cold, started slowly to venture deeper into the cellars down the long, broad and increasingly dark corridor, whilst trying his best to ignore the scary rustling of the rats around him. Peculiarly, given his lonely circumstances, the naked boy's hands simultaneously returned to covering his shamefully exposed genitalia, which, equally strangely, started to exhibit signs of penile arousal.

(Form 1B classroom, Sodomhall School, Northumberland, England, same time)

"Hurry up, Brown T!" Mr. Younglove commanded impatiently of

Tom, whom the Form-master assumed from the boy's prolonged
delay was incapable of translating  ''              '. The
teacher simultaneously began restlessly to hit the palm of
his unoccupied left hand with the cane held by the other,
albeit much more gently, and therefore painlessly, than when
he did the same to that belonging to a miscreant pupil.

Tom subsequently heard a discreet whisper from behind him and then said "You stir what you should not stir!"

(Cellars, Sodomhall School, Northumberland, England, same time)

Daniel rested his pretty head against the rusty but sturdy bars covering the first archway on the left and stared through to the lofty vault located there, which was enclosed on the other three sides by tall brick walls. In the dim light, the boy could just make out that there was only one thing present inside, namely a dirty blanket covering an unknown large object.

In relief, Daniel was about to open the relevant barred door, which was retained in a closed position only by an unlocked bolt, to enter the vault to retrieve the blanket when he heard a rather incongruous noise. The sound was not that of dripping water or rustling rats but of something snoring.

Daniel stopped and next perceived that the snoring was emerging from under the blanket, which covered the unknown shape. The boy immediately wondered whether the form concerned might be another poor incarcerated pupil and so, after his initial brief hesitation, he rushed inside the vault to find out whether his theory was correct.

Daniel eventually recoiled when he lifted the blanket because underneath was a very big but scrawny and rather ugly and ferocious-looking hound, which thankfully remained soundly asleep and snoring, whilst exposing a mouth full of nasty fangs. The boy perceptively correctly realised that, judging from the giant dog's gaunt appearance, the famished creature was unlikely to be friendly if awoken and so he beat a hasty retreat to the corridor, bolting the barred door behind him.

Daniel did not fancy his, presumably to a clearly starving canine, tasty naked body being the means by which the hound gained some sustenance. However, despite the boy's fright, he did retain sufficient composure to leave the vault with the dirty blanket.

The blanket was full of holes as well as encrusted with filth. Nevertheless, Daniel immediately wrapped the cover around his shivering naked body and instantly began to feel the benefit.

The blanket cover quickly proved to be sufficient to retain much of Daniel's natural body heat and so the boy soon started to gain lifesaving warmth but this welcome development did not prevent further shivering. However, such fevered reaction now entirely resulted from the return of fright at what he might soon be facing.

Daniel had just looked inside the right-hand chamber, opposite to the one in which the somnolent hound still thankfully rested. This vault was full of torture apparatus.

(Form 1B classroom, Sodomhall School, Northumberland, England, same time)

Mr. Younglove's facial expression, which had been displaying clear pleasure at the prospect of imminently caning Tom's palm, suddenly disappeared to be replaced by one of obvious

disappointment. The teacher was also forced to admit, in
respect of the boy's translation of ''              ',
"That's correct, Brown T!"

Mr. Younglove's was also to be disappointed when he next moved on to challenge Christopher's ability to translate one of Herodotus' sentences. The boy was actually proving to be an excellent linguist and his discreet whisper had just saved the palm of his best friend, Tom, from being caned.

Christopher also hoped that Tom would consider the sentence of Herodotus that he had translated carefully. The boy

believed that, as far as poor Daniel was concerned,
''              ' was very appropriate.

Christopher hoped that Tom would not 'stir what you should not stir', but he also somehow recognised that his aspiration would probably be dangerously defeated.

(Cellars, Sodomhall School, Northumberland, England, same time)

"Ah, I see, boy, that you've discovered one of the places in which I'll be entertaining you over the next few weeks," an adult voice stated from behind Daniel, causing him to jump and turn in fright. He then saw a rather happy-looking Dr. Strappem, with, as was common, his well-used cane in his hands.

Daniel had not heard Dr. Strappem enter the school cellars or approach him and he found the headmaster's ability to do so undetected very eerie. However, the boy had little time to reflect on the issue because the man next walked past him to open the barred door of the arched chamber containing the comprehensive array of torture apparatus.

After stepping inside the chamber, Dr. Strappem invited Daniel to follow. The naked boy, who was still instinctively protecting his genitals with his hands, was naturally very reluctant to comply. However, he also appreciated that he had no real choice but to do so.

After the very frightened Daniel had reluctantly entered the scary chamber, Dr. Strappem pointed to a set of currently opened, very low stocks, with two apertures, that was less than twelve inches high. "Shed the blanket, boy," the headmaster then commanded, "lie face-up on the ground and put your feet in those holes."

Daniel again reluctantly complied with one of Dr. Strappem's orders whilst experiencing immense trepidation and soon found his feet immovably locked in the stocks, whilst his bare rear lay on the cold stone floor. The headmaster subsequently paid attention to the arched soles of the boy's legs.

"Your first well-deserved punishment, boy," Dr. Strappem next advised, whilst beginning to rub his cane gently but menacingly across the arches of Daniel's feet, "will be to receive an extensive caning to these soles of yours. Did you know that they're amongst the most tender parts of your anatomy and, with the possible exception of your genitals, will therefore provide you with the most grief when beaten?"

"I consider first punishing you here to be most appropriate," the sadistic Dr. Strappem cruelly added, "because afterwards you'll hardly be able to walk let alone run away from my school!"

(To be continued in chapter 18 – 'Herodotus')