Here is another contribution from TipTopper. This time instead of quaintly dated spanking humour we have a hard news illustration with part of the story attached.

This type of story was gold when I was growing up and in the 1970s and early 1980s there were many such articles with lurid drawings. However, one can’t help feeling some discomfort given the non-consensual and judicially challenged nature of these stories. I did consider not posting it or at least editing out the words on the grounds of good taste, but I think on consideration you are all grown-ups.

Besides whatever discomfort you may be feeling at the ambiguous enjoyment of the post, it was more than shared by the girls in the story.

This was clipping was sent in by a gentleman called RalphG. He is not sure what magazine it is from, but thinks it is from the mid-1950s, which matches the US population of that time. It is a bit illegible on this scan but he was kind enough to provide the text. He says he has had it for years tucked in the back of some old spanking books he bought at a market in Pimlico.

I haven’t been able to trace any more details about the case, although there are some other references to the Wives of Spanking Husbands Club mentioned in the article.

To Spank or Not to Spank?

The dilemma facing 160 million Americans

Following the conviction last week of a high school teacher for smoking marijuana, the inevitable calls for a crackdown on delinquency among America’s young has already begun. While summing up at 24-year-old Mary Gutteridge’s trial, the judge commented that instead of a custodial sentence, he wished he could have given her a “good sound spanking where it would do the most good.”

These comments, coming as they do, hot on the heels of the Kansas City debate last month on the issue of spanking over 21-year-old girls, suggest that there are a great many people in America who share the judges sentiment.

Twenty years ago this issue would not have been such a hot potato as just about every girl in America was still subject to regular spankings for as long as they lived under the parental roof. This correspondent’s own sister was spanked right through college up until the time she left home aged 23, just a year short of the unfortunate Miss Gutteridge. She would be the first to tell you that it did not do her any harm. So is there a shift in support for a return to more traditional punishments in America today?

Mrs Edwina Hart, the school principal in the case, said that 21 was too late to start with discipline, although, she added, “it certainly does (not) hurt to continue it beyond the teenage years where a young woman is accustomed to being spanked. A good spanking can keep many an older girl on the straight and narrow.”

And it seems it is not just the older generation that feels this way. Last week in this magazine’s own letters page 19-year-old Catherine Parker of Denver Colorado wrote to say: “I think it is just awful that these girls carry on so. Whatever must their families think? If I ever behaved in such a way I would expect be spanked on the bare and sent to bed and rightly so.”

“I am in my second year at college and still subject to my parents’ rules. I have twice been spanked this semester, once at home for cussing and once in my room at college for overspending my allowance. It is certainly embarrassing for a girl my age, but I know that if obey the rules then I will not be punished.”

Nor is she alone. The pages of magazines are full of such views coming from the youth of America. So should we get back to old-fashioned values and start spanking our teenaged and even our 24-year-old daughters? If this really would solve the countries ills then why stop at unmarried girls? After all isn’t a wife of 24 just as likely to become a delinquent as a high school teacher?

The Wives of Spanking Husbands Club advocates just this. They are an organization based in Sioux Falls Iowa that is dedicated the spanking of errant wives. They were formed way back in 1937 under the banner “Spare the hairbrush and spoil the wife.”

Mrs Rita Dayton, the club’s president, admits that there are not as many members as there used to be, but says “the values of their organization are just as needed today as they have always been.”

“If I get out of line then my husband spanks me on my bare bottom,” she says, adding “there are good many wives and daughters of all ages who are not too old to go over their husbands or father’s knee.”

There may be a lot of husbands out there open to persuasion on this, but my wife for one would have something to say.

Catherine sat on the end of her bed and stared at the paddle much as she had at the judge who had sent her here. It was hung on the door by a nail like a sign or a statement of intent.

The paddle itself was near two feet long and leaf-shaped. It had been fashioned from hard leather and although Catherine had not yet dare touch it, she was certain it was heavy.

Her cell, and that’s just what it was she reminded herself, was more like something out of a fashionable boarding school with tasteful prints and hardback books. It might even have been her room from her old school except for the en suite shower arrangements.

She turned back to the paddle and wished it away.

“Ooh, this is ridiculous,” she spat angrily, although there was no one to hear.

As the words escaped her well-formed pouty lips she drew up her long elegant legs so that both her smooth silk-encased knees came together level with her mohair covered breasts before dropping onto the floor in a double stamp.

Catherine hated her outburst and usually prided herself on her cool reserve. She had so hoped to get through the charade of this alternative sanction with the minimum of fuss or any assaults on her dignity. She was certain that good manners and keeping her cool would convince her gaolers that she didn’t require re-education and that she had already learned her lesson.

Then she had been confronted by the damn paddle; a humiliating warning of what she might yet endure.

“Catherine I had to pull an awful lot of strings to get you this alternative sentence,” her father had told at the lawyer’s office before the trial. “It’s practically an open prison and best of all; it won’t count as a custodial sentence on your record. That will look so much better for your future.”

“All you have to do is enter a guilty plea and show some contrition,” the lawyer put in, “A year to 18 months is not so bad, believe me. After that stunt pulled by your friend you could face three years in Holloway otherwise.”

Catherine closed her eyes in horror. She did not want to dwell on what Rupert Kemp had left in the bath of the flat. It was all too vulgar. It had only started as a prank. How was she to know that things would get so out of hand?

“Daddy can’t you just make it all go away?” She had pleaded.

Her father had looked back at her with sad eyes and whispered, “Not this time petal.”

Back in her room at Hardham House she sighed and then aloud she said, “Damn.”

*

Melanie Quaid stood to attention in front of the Assistant Principal and House Mother, Jeanette Barry. Her legs were easily spaced and her hands were clasped into the small of her back as she had been taught.

Melanie was a tall slim girl who had been at Hardham Hall for over a year now and the hard arsed gang-girl she had once been was now unrecognisable.

Jeanette remembered when the 23-year-old had had bright red hair with blue streaks and more ironmongery on her face than the local hardware shop. The young woman’s non-descript dark mousy blonde hair was now tidy after a fashion, with a reasonable fringe falling forward from a pony tail.

Being of similar height, the House Mother matched her brown eyes to the girl’s blue, daring her to eyeball her.

“That’s the third time this week, I thought you knew better Melanie,” Jeanette growled just inches from the younger woman’s nose. “I rather think Mr Alexander will have something to say don’t you?”

“Yes Ma’am,” Melanie said in a tight voice. “I’m sorry Ma’am.”

The girl had been on laundry duty and had mixed the coloured with the whites again. Now several house sheets were pink instead of white.

“Well, you had better cut along and see him hadn’t you?” Jeanette said with a sigh.

“Eh… Ms Barry, eh… couldn’t you… um… handle it?” Melanie ventured nervously.

“I handled it on Tuesday after the second mistake. Remember?” Jeanette said wearily. “Don’t think I don’t know what you were doing. You were mixing the batches for fewer washes so that you could skive off early.”

“I…”

“I really wouldn’t deny it if I were you,” Jeanette said pointedly. “Or you will take a well paddled behind off to meet Mr Alexander’s tender ministrations.”

“Yes Ma’am, I mean No Ma’am.”

The two women stared at each other for a moment longer until Jeanette said, “Well?”

“Oh… yes, Mr Alexander.”

After one more hopeful look at the house mother Melanie scurried away.

*

The afternoon sun through the great long gallery windows caused orange rectangles to fall across the parquet floor. The air was full of the scent of hardwood and polish that she knew she would remember all her life.

As Melanie stepped into each in turn it felt pleasantly warm and she wondered how many times she had walked this hall to Mr Alexander’s office. The tingle in her tummy was intense and she could feel the blood coursing through her head, which left her a little dizzy.

Melanie remembered her first few trips to see Mr Alexander. She had been angry and resentful. How childish I was, she thought, even managing a smile. After the second or third little meeting, she had been more scared than angry and had quickly made efforts to conform. The change in her treatment here and above all in herself had been a revelation.

After that, instead of resentment, she had felt cleansed, as if a weight had been lifted from her. Then she had begun to see herself and her life for what it was, so that these days her falls from grace were relatively rare and she could see that all her punishments were deserved.

Then the panelled door was in front of her and her heart began to race as if her previous nerves had been a rehearsal.

“Well here goes…” she whispered as she tapped lightly on the door.

The moment became glacial and for a small eon of time she though that there would be no reply.

She was about to try again when she heard a movement from within and a sharp voice called out, “Come in.”

*

The knock at the door startled Catherine and she stood up. Everyone in this place was her foe and she wanted to meet the enemy standing up. Then bravely she said, “Come in.”

The door was opened with a brusque confidence and Jeanette Barry stepped into the room.

Jeanette was a little taller than Catherine and she had darker tone that suggested the Mediterranean.

“How are we settling in?” The house mother asked with an easy smile.

Her friendly tone fell on deaf ears and Catherine scowled at her.

“Why are you new here too?” The younger woman sneered.

Jeanette frowned.

“I wasn’t born an assistant principal,” she replied, “And we all have to start somewhere. You can start by minding your manners. Now let us try again. I have settled in nicely thanks and some time ago. So I really have seen it all. How are you settling in?”

Catherine shrugged.

“Stand up straight and answer when you are spoken to,” Jeanette snapped.

“The room is okay and I have unpacked and sent my luggage to the storeroom as instructed.” Catherine spoke woodenly and made the minimum effort to accommodate her stance.

“Good,” Jeanette said pleasantly, “That is better.”

“I am so glad that you are pleased,” Catherine replied with a bitter edge to her voice that only just managed to fall short of sarcasm.

“Tell me, why did you choose to come here?” Jeanette said ignoring the younger woman.

Catherine shrugged again.

“Did you think it was an easy option?”

Catherine cringed inside and didn’t reply. She didn’t want to talk about it.

“Actually it is,” Jeanette said casually, “That surprises you doesn’t it, that I would say that?”

It did, Catherine realised. Her eyes narrowed and she considered. At school the pep talk would have been all about how tough it was, how the hard way was the easy option with all the usual platitudes.

“Here you get half a sentence in pleasant surroundings and instead of being brutalised and rendered unfit for society, you get to learn who you are,” Jeanette explained. “However, the question is, how easy do you want it? You can have an unpleasant 18 months or an interesting and challenging year. Which do you want?”

Catherine resisted the urge to shrug again and considered the point just made. She wasn’t stupid and at least the woman was being honest.

“You may answer,” Jeanette said.

“I’ll take the year,” Catherine said quietly. She felt like a five-year-old being scolded by her nanny in the nursery.

“Good,” Jeanette said with a huge sigh of relief. “Now that we have got that straight you had better know this. If you ever speak to me like that again I will put you across my knee and spank your precious little bare bottom until it is purple. Do you understand?”

Catherine’s lips stuck together and it was hard to open her mouth to speak and she was blushing. Finally she managed to say, “Yes.”

“Then before dinner I suggest you walk around the grounds and get to know the place. It is all quite simple, obey the rules and you will have that easy time you came here for. Don’t or give me any attitude and I will put you in your place and that place will mostly likely be the corner.”

Catherine nodded dumbly until Jeanette glared at her.

“Yes,” Catherine said in a whisper.

But Jeanette still wasn’t satisfied and continued to glare at her.

“Yes Ma’am,” Catherine quickly amended.

“Lovely,” Jeanette beamed.

*

Alexander had a kindly face that was constantly at war with itself whenever he tried to look stern. He had clear blue eyes that crinkled at the corners whenever he smiled and despite having topped 40 his hair was still dark, albeit a little receded. He was not especially tall, although not altogether short, standing near a head taller than Melanie who stood before him in a rough approximation of attention.

“Do I have to ask why you are here again?” He said in a disappointed voice.

“No Sir,” Melanie replied, a look of regret stealing across her face.

“Any excuses, reasons of mitigation or special requests for clemency?” he offered.

“No Sir, I am sorry though,” Melanie grimaced.

“So the dog didn’t eat your homework?”

“Homework Sir? No I messed up the…” Melanie began.

Alexander held up his hand and shook his head. “Please spare me Miss Quaid. I really don’t want to hear it.”

“No Sir.”

“Alright you know what happens next,” Alexander said wearily as he moved over to the cabinet at the far end of his study.

“Yes Sir,” Melanie sighed and began unbuttoning her skirt at the hip.

By the time Alexander had turned around with the cane she was already putting the folded skirt onto the seat of the chair and turning to face its back.

“Over we go,” Alexander ordered.

Melanie gritted her teeth and then after the briefest hesitation hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her knickers and slid them down her thighs. To minimise her exposure to him she quickly bent over the back of the chair and presented him with a view of her smooth pale bottom, which was neatly divided into two elongated globes.

Once she was in position her small prominent buttocks became pert and round and on closer examination Alexander could see a hint of peachy fuzz dusting her curves.

“How many was it last time?” Alexander asked as he slashed the air once with the cane.

“Sixteen Sir, if you recall I…”

“Yes, yes, I remember,” he said, cutting her off, “So how many do you suggest this time?”

It was the custom at Hardham to make a girl offer up her own sanction in accordance with an agreed formula. Like hanging paddles on the back of the girls’ bedroom doors and a dozen other little rules, he found that it created the right sort of psychological atmosphere.

“Eighteen Sir,” Melanie offered tentatively.

She might have said 17 and had still been within the rules, but after months of experience, she knew it was an inappropriate number and if he didn’t agree then he would make her suggest another, which by custom was required to be more than she first should have suggested and then he would add at least one penalty stroke.

Also given the clemency she had been shown by Ms Barry at the start of the week, he would have been within his rights to demand a higher count in any case. If incorrectly handled, 17 could have become 21 or 22 strokes as she would have been obliged to suggest 20 to make amends.

Mr Alexander might still reject 18 of course, but then she could still offer her behind up for 20 strokes in good faith and little would have been lost.

“Eighteen it is then,” Alexander said with a note of satisfaction.

Melanie relaxed a little. It was fair.

The first stroke cut across like the sword of justice and her eyes flew open. Her right leg kicked a little and she couldn’t help hook her foot up behind her left knee in a response. The cut continued saw long after contact was broken and the pain went on building.

Alexander was in no hurry. He waited while the stark white-on-pale line turned first pink and then deep plum and rose up in shocked rebellion from the surrounding flesh. Then he cut in two breadths of a stick below it.

“Uh,” Melanie grunted, violently wagging her bottom to shake off the sting.

Again Alexander waited until the corporal’s stripes had her attention and then he sharply promoted her to sergeant.

“Jesus Christ,” she hissed.

Alexander ignored her and after a short pause, took three or four minutes to double the count. On the sixth stroke Melanie gasped angrily and then as the pain built she began to shake as tears spilled from her eyes.

“Tell me Melanie, how long do you have to be in my good books before the count rolls back to a six or eight?” Alexander waited patiently for the answer.

It was a long time coming as Melanie could scarce catch her breath. Then finally she said in a thick wet voice, “One month Sir.”

“Good, just 28 days to be precise,” Alexander agreed, “And how many strokes could it get up to in just one month if you are not a good girl?”

Melanie was breathing heavily now. Few girls got as high as 18 before either getting into the clear or reaching a waypoint in the calendar like Christmas when all sanctions were reset. Melanie really loved Christmas and other such times, she rarely got out of jug on her own account.

“It’s a simple enough question Miss Quaid,” Alexander said drily.

“Yes Sir,” Melanie sobbed. She didn’t like the implications of his questions.

She ran the formula in her head as best she could. Six or eight rising to nine, then 10; skip 11, so 12, 14, 15, 16, 18, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 30, thereafter increments of four or two so that every two punishment it went up by six. Her mind raced. “Seventy-two,” she ventured.

“Quite possibly, and that is in just one month, assuming a punishment almost every day,” Alexander explained. “Although generally two visits a week with me is caning it, if you pardon the pun.”

“Yes Sir.”

“With you, if it wasn’t for our little amnesties, then you would get there quite often, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes Sir.”

“You see where I am going with this?” Alexander tapped her welted bottom with his cane.

“Yes Sir.”

“So behave,” he said sharply resuming the caning.

“Yah, shsss,” she yelped, or something like it.

Nearly halfway, nearly halfway, nearly halfway, the mantra ran through her head.

To be continued.

Our story began here.

Melanie had given up trying to hold back the tears. There wasn’t the slightest chance that anyone seeing her walking back to her room wouldn’t know she had just been thoroughly thrashed in any case. Her hands hovered permanently over her behind, which managed to at the same time throb with aching lines of dull pain and be raspingly sore. Her footsteps were slow and awkward and to relieve the point where her two swollen buttocks met she had to keep her legs apart as much as possible to avoid chafing.

Sitting down wasn’t going to happen for the rest of the day and for a few days to come she would have a choice of either taking a pillow to the refractory or standing up to eat; both options being too embarrassing to contemplate.

As she turned the corner she took a quick look about her before attempting a quick massage of her bottom. She immediately winced as she hefted both her hams through her skirt but strangely the pain was addictive and she persisted with the surreptitious rubbing for a moment longer.

Then she saw someone coming and tried to appear casual.

The intruder was a new face at Hardham and for a moment Melanie forgot her troubles. The newcomer was a pretty girl in her early middle 20s, with something of a snotty look. That won’t last, Melanie thought with a snort.

As the new girl got nearer, Melanie could see that the she was shorter than she first appeared, almost like a scaled-down dinky version of a leggy supermodel. The girl’s head was bowed and she didn’t bother to look up as she passed.

*

Catherine barely noticed the tearful girl at the corner of the yard. Although she did spare a glance for the imposing main building where she knew most of the courses and all of the administration was carried out. She wanted to hate it and re-imagined it as a Colditz-like place. However, the warm red brick edged in stone was rather beautiful and it put her in mind of one of those stately homes her parents used to take her to.

It was so unfair, she raged inwardly, she wasn’t a criminal, she didn’t deserve to be in gaol; not even a posh one run along the lines of mid-20^th century public school. So lost in her self-pity she almost didn’t register the bell; a short sharp two toned clang that she only caught on the second ring.

She racked her brains for a clue to the meaning of the sound, sudden apprehensive despite herself that she had overlooked some petty rule.

“Can’t be a fire drill,” she murmured, “Not with just two rings.”

She looked back the girl she had seen who appeared to be limping so had got so far and hastened after her.

“Hey you, I say,” Catherine called out, “What the devil is the bell for?”

Melanie cringed at the other girl’s clipped glass tones, even subdued and muted, they screamed superiority. She hurried on.

“I am addressing you,” Catherine persisted, “What does that bell mean? Are we supposed to be somewhere?”

Melanie rolled her eyes up and turned around.

“Oh,” Catherine was thrown by the young woman’s obvious tears. “Are you alright?”

“What? Oh yes, sure. I have just paid a social call on Mr Alexander,” Melanie said ruefully.

Catherine returned a blank stare and slowly shook her head.

Melanie frowned, she hated new girls. This was so embarrassing.

“I made a muck of things in the laundry,” Melanie said, as if that explained everything.

“Surely they will understand, I mean it isn’t something to cry about surely,” Catherine said brightly.

Why she should offer comfort to a laundry girl Catherine couldn’t quite fathom, but maybe it was because she was the first person who had not either given her an order or looked down on her since she arrived.

“Oh Ms Barry understood alright, that is why she sent me to see Alexander,” Melanie said and looked askance.

“Oh? … Oh,” Catherine said, the penny suddenly very much dropping. “You mean he…?”

“Eighteen bitey-witey little swipes you know where,” Melanie said chewing her lower lip and again clutching at her behind.

“Eighteen, but surely that’s…?” Catherine gaped.

“Oh sure, it took some doing, but I have been running up a decent bill for weeks now. I can’t wait for Christmas I can tell you.” Melanie felt another stray tear roll down her cheek, but suddenly she felt okay talking to the new girl. “Name’s Melanie Quaid.”

“Catherine Overton, how do you do,” Catherine offered her hand.

“Oh… eh,” Melanie stared at it and then after a pause shook it. Just like the movies, she thought.

“Christmas? What has that got to do with anything?” Catherine continued with the previous topic.

“You know, the amnesty. Actually I was thinking of opening up a book. What are the odds do you think of not topping 24 before Christmas Eve?”

“A book?” Catherine was genuinely puzzled. “And what amnesty? An amnesty for what?”

“You know, a tote, making bets on my chances of racking up another two or three sessions with Mr Alexander before Christmas,” Melanie explained.

“Oh I see,” Catherine said, although she wasn’t sure she did. “Like the horses.”

Melanie grinned. She felt better already.

“And this amnesty…?”

“You are new here aren’t you?”

“I came last night,” Catherine explained.

Then the bell rang again.

“What was that?” Catherine asked nervously.

“Beginning of lesson, for those doing courses,” Melanie shrugged, “Last one of the day; I didn’t have any. What are you going in for?”

“Oh I… I already have a degree,” Catherine explained.

“Oh you too, I have one in Sociology,” Melanie said brightly, “Sussex.”

“Really but I thought… you mentioned the laundry?”

“Part-time jobs, part-time courses, country walks, it’s all good here apart from the paddy whacking,” Melanie laughed. “That I don’t mind so much. You kind of get used to it. I am studying for my Master’s; criminology this time. I reckon I have a bit of an insight now.”

“I have a BA in fine arts,” Catherine said woodenly. Nothing here was what she expected.

“So about as useless as my first degree then,” Melanie laughed, “How long are you here?”

“A year I hope,” Catherine sighed.

“You can do a Master’s too then,” Melanie said, “Or maybe something vocational. We have a lot of plumbers here.”

*

Catherine couldn’t quite take it all in. After her meeting with Melanie she could almost convince herself that she was in college and not in a prison at all. The girl had been altogether a surprise. While she wasn’t exactly from Catherine’s class, she was clearly not quite the ignorant plebeian that she had expected to meet.

It had irked her a little that Melanie had compared her sociology degree with Catherine’s own in fine arts. However, the suggestion that she might get a master’s degree went some way to lifting the gloom that had assailed her since sentencing.

She could hear her friends now, “Where have you been? I heard you had been detained at Her Maj’s pleasure.”

Now she could reply, “Oh no, nothing like that. After that business with Rupert, Daddy thought it best if I went away to improve my education. I have a master’s now you know.”

It was beginning to sound so much better.

The more she thought about it the more she wanted to talk to Melanie again about her master’s degree. After all, she could hardly talk to one of the staff or that awful Barry woman; it would look too much like she was buckling under.

The knock at the door at that moment came as an intrusion. Catherine ignored it until whoever it was knocked again.

Sighing in irritation she finally said, “Come in.”

The door swept open and Jeanette Barry came in and closed the door behind her.

“How are we settling today?” she said with an air of expectation.

Catherine glowered at her but swallowed the urge to be sarcastic.

“Everything is fine,” she replied.

“Good.” Jeanette had a knowing smile.

As Catherine watched, Jeanette made a circuit of the room, picking up objects and testing for dust as she went.

“Tomorrow I will assign you your duties for next week and allocate you a place on the roster for the coming weeks. Also we need to talk about which courses you wish to pursue,” Jeanette said without looking up. “Meanwhile, you need to clean and tidy this room. Is that clear?”

Catherine bristled, she wasn’t a child.

“Is that clear?” Jeanette said again.

“Yes, perfectly,” Catherine replied tartly.

Jeanette studied the girl for a moment and then nodded.

“Good, I’ll drop by later to see that you have.”

Once Jeanette had gone Catherine hurled a book across the room and stamped her foot in frustration. Who does she think she is, Catherine thought bitterly? I haven’t had to clean my room since…

“Ooh,” she howled in frustration..

In a show of defiance she grabbed her jacket and decided to go and see Melanie. She would carve out her own path at Hardham and Melanie seemed just the girl to advise her.

There were only two halls of residence and the 30 or so names of the inmates were posted in the lobby on a single sheet of A4. There was only one Quaid and Catherine found her quickly at the building across the green.

The residence was much like her own and smelt of polish and lavender and the walls were half panelled in a light tan wood that matched the parquet floor. Tasteful prints of Constable and early Turner England hung on the walls and only the fire and smoke alarms gave any hint that the halls were of an institution.

Melanie’s room was on the first floor at the furthest end from the stairs. Her door had a picture of a puppy on it and a name plate onto which had been stencilled some impromptu roses. There was no bell, so Catherine knocked with her fist.

“If that’s you Jan, piss off,” Melanie’s voice rang out from inside.

Catherine frowned. “It’s… eh… Catherine,” she ventured, “We met yesterday.”

The door opened almost at once and Melanie peered around the door.

“Oh you, um,” Melanie stuck her head out and looked down the hall. Then she added, “You had better come in.”

As the door was pulled back Catherine could see that Melanie was dressed only in a T-shirt and short white socks. She was holding a pillow over her front for modesty’s sake, although she didn’t appear the least disconcerted that she was half naked.

“Is this an awkward time?” Catherine asked hesitantly.

“No you are alright,” Melanie said easily, “Tea?”

“Eh… no thanks I…”

Her words were cut short when Melanie threw herself face down on the bed and Catherine saw her bare bottom. Near perfect parallel plum lines scored the girls behind from the top of her cleft down to just above her thighs.

“Oh gosh,” Catherine gasped.

“Pretty ain’t they,” Melanie snorted, but she had the good grace to blush a little.

“Oh gosh,” Catherine said again, “You weren’t joking were you? I thought…”

Catherine didn’t know what she thought. Until this minute part of her hadn’t believed that women were actually caned at Hardham.

“It isn’t so bad. So long as I avoid hard chairs for a few days more,” Melanie said ruefully, “I have had worse.”

After that all thoughts of courses and recreational activities at Hardham dropped off of Catherine’s agenda and she pumped Melanie for accounts of her punishments. In fact she was still gaping in fascinated horror half an hour later when she remembered that she was supposed to be tidying her room.

Suddenly the threats and promises Jeanette Barry had made seemed more real and any doubts about the Hardham regime were dispelled with one look at Melanie’s welted bottom.

“I had better eh,” Catherine gulped, “Go.”

“Sure,” Melanie beamed, “Next time we’ll have tea and you can do the talking.”

Catherine nodded uncertainly and made to leave.

“Bye,” Melanie said without moving off her bed.

“Yes, good bye,” Catherine said hastily.

*

Jeanette was just coming out of Catherine’s room as she arrived.

“Miss Overton, there you are,” Jeanette said sharply.

“Ms Barry, I…” Catherine felt the blood drain from her face.

“It seems that not only can you not obey simple instructions, but that you do not take me very seriously Miss Overton,” Jeanette cut her off. “Did I, or did I not tell you to clean and tidy your room?”

“I… I just popped out, I had to…”

“You had to do exactly as you were told,” Jeanette scolded. “Come here.”

Catherine felt her mouth go dry, but was unable to examine the reason for her discomfort too closely. Her stomach did a flip and somewhere in her head a vein gently throbbed. There was something about the set of Jeanette’s shoulders as she went back into Catherine’s room that suggested gravity and for a moment the world went into slow motion.

It felt as if someone else followed the house mother as Catherine went in to the room after Jeanette. As she did so, she saw that Jeanette had taken something from the back of the door. Seeing the paddle in her the house mother’s hand was a shock but not a surprise.

“What… why… eh… what’s that for?” Catherine asked, blustering.

“You know exactly what it is and what it is for,” Jeanette said, “It was explained at your induction. It was made clear to you when you signed the papers before sentencing.”

“But I…”

“Remove your skirt, take down your under things and kneel upon the bed with your head down facing the wall and your bottom up at this end,” Jeanette said brusquely pointing to the foot of the bed with the paddle. “It is high time we christened this.”

“Look, this is absurd, I only…”

“Do as you are told and at once,” Jeanette barked.

Catherine’s hands fluttered at her waist and taking half a step backwards she felt a little faint. Then she straightened up and put on her best confrontational face.

“I only went…” she began.

Jeanette didn’t hesitate but extended one arm and seized Catherine by hers. A moment later she was sitting on the bed with Catherine across her lap.

“What are you doing? Don’t… I mean…”

Jeanette flipped Catherine’s skirt up and in one smooth motion drew her knickers down her thighs to her ankles.

Catherine gasped and wriggled a little in shock.

“Whaa…” she exclaimed.

Hefting the paddle Jeanette patted Catherine’s now exposed bottom with it and shifted a little where she sat to adjust the girl’s weight.

“Three options,” Jeanette growled, “Take what is coming to you and that is more than you bargained for now you have added further disobedience to your crimes. Refuse and come with me to see Mr Alexander here and now; or demand an R386 form and request a transfer. Choose.”

“Ms Barry, this stupid can’t we talk about this?” Catherine spluttered.

“Choose,” Jeanette said crisply.

“Look I’m sorry okay,” Catherine wailed.

“Option one then,” Jeanette rasped.

Catherine gave a small nod; she was too mortified to speak.

The paddle blasted down and robbed her of all breath, but before she could regain it Jeanette spanked her again and then again twice more.

“Ahh, nuggh,” Catherine groaned.

She could not believe the sting in her behind.

“When I am done with you, you will go and stand facing the wall outside your room until I send someone to release you. Do you hear me?” Jeanette punctuated almost every word with a slam of the paddle onto Catherine’s bare bottom.

“Yes, Catherine wailed.

Jeanette spanked the girl three more times until she shook with giggle-like sounds that ended in sobs.

“Do you hear me?”

“Yes Ma’am,” Catherine yelped.

The crisp thwack of the paddle fell a dozen more times until Catherine broke to genuine sobs.

“Once released you will tidy your room and then return to face the wall once it is done,” Jeanette explained.

“Yes Ma’am,” Catherine sobbed.

“You will remove your skirt and under things as I told you to and you will stand outside and when told to, work without them. Do you understand?”

“Yes Ma’am,” Catherine said miserably.

“Later I will return and inspect your room again. If it meets my satisfaction then you will submit to the punishment you have already earned. Do you understand?”

“What… but…”

The paddle descended thrice more, extracting heavy wails.

“Yes Ma’am,” Catherine hissed as she shimmied her bottom in a hopeless attempt to shake out the sting.

“Good girl,” Jeanette said, allowing Catherine to fall to her knees. “Now let me see what you have learned.”

Catherine couldn’t meet Jeanette’s eyes and bowed her head as she knelt crying.

Jeanette was patient and looked down kindly, still holding the paddle. Then finally, still without meeting the house mother’s gaze, Catherine got to her feet and undid her skirt to remove it. Her knickers were already at her ankles and the spanked girl stepped out of them with a blush. Then as Jeanette watched, Catherine walked woodenly to the door and went out naked below the waist into to the hall.

She is a natural; Jeanette observed when she saw Catherine standing at attention with her nose pressed to the wall. The house mother paused to study the girl’s bright red domed bottom so stark in profile and then she nodded in satisfaction.

“Every so often a girl thinks she can slink back into her room and I won’t find out,” Jeanette said in a soft voice. “I always do. But I wonder if you believe me.”

Her voice cracking, Catherine said, “Please, this is so embarrassing.”

“I know. But it was your choice wasn’t it?”

“Yes Ma’am,” Catherine wailed pressing her face into the wall and wishing she could merge with it and disappear.

“Why do all you girls need to learn the hard way?” Jeanette sighed as she walked away.

To be continued.

Our story began here.

The first half-an-hour facing the wall had been a blur for Catherine. She had been too busy crying and processing the total humiliation of taking an over the knee spanking from Jeanette. Then as she came to her senses she became aware of the mundane, such as the draft on her legs and exposed bottom and the sound of other girls going about their business all around her.

Thankfully none had yet passed by, but she couldn’t be certain no one had seen her as she had as yet not dared to look around.

To her left was the window but a glance in that direction reassured her that anyone looking in would only see her top half, although it would be pretty obvious that she was in disgrace from her odd stance.

To her right was the main corridor for her floor, but it was a good 30 feet along and someone could pass by and not notice her. Risking a glance to look for witnesses, she then grabbed at her bottom and tested it with her fingers. The flesh was hot and felt hard to her touch. She managed to make it sting a little by pressing it with her fingers and after one more quick look down the hall she tried to look down over her shoulder at the polished red on her behind.

“This is stupid,” she groaned and she eyed the door and the refuge of her room beyond it.

What had Jeanette Barry said? She would find out if she did not do as she was told, but how? Would someone dob her in? It angered her that she had suddenly become to cowardly to put it to the test, but she wasn’t ready for another spanking or worse just then.

Catherine was still debating with herself when someone came around the corner and up the hall. Catherine wanted to melt into the floor.

“You Catherine Overton?” the girl asked.

Catherine’s face flooded red, but she managed to nod.

“Ms Barry says you can tidy your room now,” the girl said in a somewhat surly manner as if she was too busy for this chore.

“Thanks,” Catherine’s voice was tight and kept her face buried into the wall.

“Oh and Ms Barry says… eh, what was it? Oh yes. You are to go back to where you are standing once you are done. Remind you that is; yes that’s it. You already knew I guess. God I had to do that before. It’s a bitch ain’t it?” The girl snorted.

“Yes,” Catherine cringed and wished the girl would go away. She was far too embarrassed to move until she had gone.

Once she was alone Catherine could not get back into her room quick enough. For a moment she considered getting dressed, but then decided it was a risk with no gain. Nevertheless she felt foolish and self-conscious as she put her clothes and various detritus into draws and cupboards so that she could dust.

The biggest problem was that she had to hoover and the vacuum cleaner, if she remembered correctly, was down the hall in a broom closet.

She pondered the shame of fetching it as she was and found herself blushing heroically even though she was on her own.

“Damn,” she growled and then went to the door as she was.

Peeking out and seeing no one she made a dash down the hall and all the way along the passage to the closet. For a moment she wondered if she had to get a key from someone and her embarrassed-visage found a whole new shade that set her heart pounding. But the door was open and the vacuum was easy enough to retrieve. So easy in fact that she couldn’t help giggling as she dashed back to her room towing the cleaner behind her.

*

Despite her most thorough efforts, all too soon her room was immaculate and Catherine had to once again face the prospect of standing with her bare bottom displayed in the hall outside. Then she remembered the hoover and cursed.

“Oh well,” she said with a shrug.

This time she strolled along the corridor to the closet and took the trouble to put it away tidily, almost daring someone to come along.

This time someone obliged. Two women emerged from the fire doors by the stairs and went passed with barely a glance. Catherine decided that ducking into the closet would look too foolish, so she hovered in the half open door and tried to look busy. Then as a parting shot one of them said, “Ooh, I bet you felt that.” And then they were gone.

“No big deal I suppose,” Catherine sighed.

She remembered her games mistress when confronted with shy girls in the showers at school.

“All girls together,” she would sing out. It was true, Catherine realised.

Nevertheless, Catherine suddenly felt self-conscious again and hurried back to take her place facing outside her room. That burglary prank of Rupert’s really wasn’t that much fun, she thought idly as she touched the wall with her nose.

*

It took an age for Jeanette to come back and when she did, she ignored Catherine altogether. Instead she just breezed into the room and spent several minutes inspecting it. Finally she emerged and said, “Adequate I suppose.”

“Thank you Ma’am,” Catherine said shyly.

“Don’t you see, you could have just done what you were told before without all the unpleasantness,” Jeanette observed.

“Yes Ma’am,” Catherine sighed. It was true.

“Now we have one more chore,” Jeanette said. “Fetch the paddle and hand it to me. Then, let us see if you remember the position I told you to adopt from before.”

Catherine baulked. She had been praying that her punishment would be over, but she decided that she now knew better than to argue. Instead she said, “Yes Ma’am.”

The paddle was cool and stiff to her touch and it didn’t come off the hook easily and Catherine had to wrestle with it. Finally it came away and she could feel its weight in her hands.

Jeanette made her hold it for a long 30 seconds or so before taking the offered paddle and then she gave the girl a hard stare until Catherine bowed her head and turned to face the bed.

Catherine felt tears pricking at her eyes and she blushed again. The bed was set before her in an accusation and she was overwhelmed with a feeling that was somewhere between that of a condemned woman and her shame the day she wet herself during a school nativity play. Then nodding in acceptance, she stepped forward and clambered onto the mattress. It sank beneath her knees and for a moment she felt unstable as if she might topple off.

“Head down with your elbows level with the bed,” Jeanette said.

Catherine obeyed so that now her bare bottom was elevated and pointing obscenely at the ceiling. Then the room fell quiet and all that could be heard was the two women breathing.

Then Jeanette said, “When I tell you to adopt the position, you will do so at once. Do you understand?”

“Yes Ma’am.” Catherine’s voice was strained.

“Any further resistance from you and I will require this submission once a month as training; or maybe even once a week. Do you understand me? It can happen.”

Catherine looked back and gaped, but quickly looked away.

Luckily Jeanette did not demand an answer and the first blow of the paddle came as a hard sting.

“Yah,” Catherine yelped.

Jeanette spanked her again.

“Oh Jesus,” Catherine wailed.

“It is harder this time isn’t it? The thing about Hardham is that it can always get worse,” Jeanette explained.

The third swat was enough to set Catherine to boil over with tears and yelling at each impact.

The spanking was hard but it did not last as long as before and after 15 swats Jeanette returned the paddle to the hook on the door.

“We are done for now. What you get next depends on you,” Jeanette said with a shrug.

“Yes Ma’am,” Catherine moaned.

Once Jeanette was gone Catherine settled down for some serious bawling until she was thoroughly cried-out.

*

The next morning Catherine was astonished at the condition of her bottom and turned every which way in front of the mirror for a better look. Unlike Melanie, she found that although she could certainly feel it where she sat, sitting down was more than possible, which got her thinking about how very much worse the cane might be.

Also, even though she could die of blushing as she remembered every nuance of her humiliation: the vigil facing the wall, her public exposure and finally the spanking from Jeanette with her bare bottom sticking up in the air; she felt a strange comfortable tingle somewhere inside. It reminded her of the one time she had been scolded by daddy and of an imposition she had been given at school by a teacher she had had a crush on. What was wrong with her?

She pressed at her sore bottom with her fingers with the compulsion of a child pressing on a gap in a tooth with her tongue. It was the same compulsion she had when reliving her shame.

Later that day, she took an odd pleasure from showing Melanie her bottom and comparing notes on her spanking. She even felt ‘a warm fuzzy feeling’ at the embarrassment of talking about it and wondered if this was what having a sister was like.

“Looks like you had a good work out,” Melanie chuckled, “But it’s not so bad. It’s better than a session with old Alexander. In fact after a good spanking I feel all soft and kind of forgiven, don’t you?”

This last comment hit a nerve and Catherine hastily covered up and changed the subject.

“So what about these courses then? Anything I should know?” she said quickly.

*

As the weeks followed Catherine’s work schedule was not too odious and the MBA she had taken a shine to was fully accredited and genuinely interesting.  She wanted to knuckle down, but the same rebellious streak that had got her into to trouble to begin with burned within her and as much as she was settling in, she also hated toeing the line like a good little girl.

To satisfy her sense of self she tried to show small hints of resistance, but sabotaging her course was too much like ‘cutting her nose to spite her face’ and any hint of displeasure from Jeanette had her hurrying to obey as her bottom itched.

Finally, she heard from Melanie that sometimes girls crept out and went to the pub or to meet boys. Neither appealed to her and anyway Melanie refused point blank to ride shotgun. However, it did occur to Catherine that she could slip away to make a forbidden phone call home.

As it was her bi-weekly call home was recorded and could usually be overheard. If she could just talk to daddy uninterrupted then she might get a few extras in the post or find out if he could pull any strings to get her out.

Getting out of the grounds was risibly simple and within half an hour she was in a phone box outside a shop. Across the road was a pub with half a dozen young men sitting on motorbikes outside.

“Daddy?” she said once the phone stopped ringing, “Daddy, are you there?”

There was a long silence and then a woman spoke, “Is that Catherine? I thought… well your father is away on business.”

Catherine recognised her father’s housekeeper.

“Can I take a message?” The woman asked.

Catherine suddenly realised what a pointless errand she had been on. Her father had already done all he could and wouldn’t be best pleased that she had skipped out and jeopardised her position.

“No, no it is alright. Tell him… tell him I’m okay.” Catherine put the phone down.

The walk back to Hardham took longer than she remembered and she was almost glad to see the place as she slipped back in behind the kitchen block.

As she reached the corridor leading to her room it suddenly felt like home and she smiled.

“Maybe I should have gone to the pub while I was out,” she said aloud as she stepped into her room.

“Maybe you should have,” Jeanette said.

Catherine gasped and looked in horror at the house mother sitting on her bed.

“I was…”

“Mr Alexander will see you tomorrow,” Jeanette growled.

To be continued.

Our story began here.

Catherine felt sick like she had drunk too much and reality was spinning around her head trying to have nothing to do with her. Each step she took towards the admin building felt as if someone else was walking and she had to carefully plant each foot before trusting it to carry her forward.

She had a case of nerves that she associated with the dentist or final exams, only much, much worse. She had tried explaining that she hadn’t meant to run away or any real harm, but Ms Barry hadn’t been interested.

“Mr Alexander will see you tomorrow,” she had growled. “The matter is out of my hands.”

As Catherine made her way there she ran excuses and explanations through her mind and tried to convince herself that the right form of words would get her out of hot water. She had always thought of her charm as her strong point, but since her arrest and being deserted by most of her friends, she realised that nobody liked her, not really; so much for personal charm.

“You’ll duck this,” Rupert had told her with a cocky grin. “Pretty with money does it.”

Only she hadn’t and pretty with money just didn’t cut it here.

Mr Alexander’s door looked huge and she actually swallowed before knocking.

“You may come in,” a distant voice called out.

Catherine eyed the door handle as if it were a snake. She must have stood staring at it for too long, because suddenly the door opened and Alexander was there.

“Miss Overton, didn’t you hear me?” Mr Alexander said in an almost kindly voice.

“I… eh… yes… sorry…” Catherine tailed off, her mouth hanging open in the centre of her pale drained face.

“We met at your induction, I had hoped not to see you so soon,” Alexander sighed, “Come in.”

Catherine followed him to the study, a bright room lined with books, the corners of which were cluttered with tatty second hand furniture. Except that was for one, Catherine noted, a detail that pre-Hardham she would not have even noticed.

“You know why you are here Miss Overton,” Alexander pursed his lips in disappointment.

Catherine replied with a small nod.

It obviously wasn’t a fulsome enough reply because Alexander peered at her expectantly.

“I-I went into the village Sir,” Catherine ventured. Then added hopefully, “I… I came back.”

“Yes, well I can see that,” Alexander pinched his nose, “Anything else?”

In something of a confessional spirit, Catherine suddenly wanted to make a clean breast of it.

“I called my father,” she gushed, “I just wanted to…”

What had she wanted or still want? She looked away and fixed her eyes on a point on the bookcase as if it held the answer.

“Did you meet anyone? Or visit the pub perhaps?” Concern was etched on Alexander’s face and his blue eyes twinkled a little.

“Oh no Sir,” Catherine said eagerly, “I just wanted… I needed to know that my old life was…”

‘Over’ sounded so final, but ‘changed’ sounded lame.

“I think I see,” Alexander smiled, “But you know there are rules.”

“Yes Sir, I know,” Catherine said gloomily, “But I won’t do it again.”

Alexander gave her a warm smile and then his face became thoughtful.

“Well I am certainly pleased to hear that,” he said.

Catherine relaxed a little and allowed herself a little smile.

“Leaving the premises without permission is a very, very serious matter,” Alexander explained, “It is actually a breach of your bail conditions and in all honesty I should report this to London for a ruling.”

Catherine felt something rise from the pit of her stomach and reach her lower throat. She couldn’t have screwed this up too, she just couldn’t.

“However, it is a first offence and I am empowered to deal with it,” Alexander continued.

“Deal with it?” Catherine said uneasily.

As she watched, Alexander crossed to his desk and picked up a cane that he had already placed there. She blinked hard and licked her lips.

“Please remove your skirt and place them on that chair,” Alexander said brusquely, “Then when you are ready slip your…”

He made a vague gesture at her, indicating the general area of her waist.

“… things down,” he continued.

Catherine gaped. She was not entirely surprised, but still the reality was a little hard to swallow. Literally, as she demonstrated not once, but twice as her throat worked over time.

“I believe I gave you an instruction,” Alexander said pointedly.

Catherine smoothed down the front of her thighs and blushed. Then with her eyes downcast, she began to fumble with the button and the zip of her skirt; unzipping and then re-zipping it before deciding to tackle the button first.

“Today would work for me,” Alexander said crisply, then seeing the woman’s apprehension, he pointedly turned his back.

With a fresh resolve Catherine hastily removed her skirt and then carefully folded it to place on the chair. Then she looked over at Alexander’s back to make sure he wasn’t watching before slipping down her high-cut delicate black briefs and stepping out of them.

The blood pooled at the crown of her cheeks as she demurely stood with her hands strategically crossed over her sex.

“Sir I…”

Alexander whirled around and seeing that she was naked below the waist, he nodded.

“That chair,” he said pointing at an old stuffed armchair in front of the fireplace. “If you would bend over the back of it with your head and arms in the seat, if you follow.”

The specs of red on Catherine’s cheeks exploded into a full blush as she crossed the room, realising that Alexander could now see her bare bottom.

“This one?” she asked in as a casual a manner as she could managed and pointed to the chair her had already indicated.

Understanding her disquiet he merely gave a quick nod.

She turned to fully face it, conscious that he was watching her and probably looking at her bottom. She felt a strange thrill at the idea. Then she leant against the back of the chair so that it pressed into her sex. The old coarse texture rubbed at her in a parody of pleasure and she subtly shifted her hips.

He coughed.

It was her signal to fold herself over the back of the chair so that her exposed bottom was arched upwards.

“Try to keep your legs together more,” he suggested with another little cough.

Catherine’s eyes widened as her thighs closed.

“This is…” she breathed, but she was too embarrassed to speak.

“A first caning calls for six or eight,” Alexander explained, “And then next time, should there be a next time, we add a little as an incentive.”

Catherine nodded dumbly, although he couldn’t see. She was in no mood for arithmetic just then.

“Given the nature of your offence I shall give you eight,” Alexander said.

Eight didn’t sound too bad, Catherine thought, not as bad as sticking my bottom up at a strange man anyway. So now what?

The stroke stole her breath and redefined her concept of pain. She yelled incoherently and if it hadn’t been for gravity, she would have shot to a standing position. Nor did the cane’s bite end there, for it seemed to go one building until the world shrank to that one line of pain.

She was still trying to process the stroke when Alexander gave her another.

“Shit,” she said in a gurgle that ended in a hiss.

The first stroke was still singing in her behind and now its fellow formed a duet.

“Oh God, oh God, oh God,” she panted, bracing herself for more.

The third stroke did not seem as bad, especially as the first had finally begun to fall back to a dull roar. I can handle this, she asserted quietly.

“Sheesh,” she gasped as the fourth amended her view.

This one sawed in and kept sawing.

God please let it end, she prayed.

After the fifth impact she began to make a whining sound and shouted out at each slice of the cane right up to the final stroke until she was left in a panting heap over the chair-back.

“Alright,” Alexander sighed, “Let’s stop there. I really ought to have you cool your behind in the corner for a while, but it is your first time and I think you are actually sorry.”

“Yes Sir,” Catherin squealed, barely able to hold it together, “I am so sorry.”

She hadn’t been told to get dressed so she didn’t. She didn’t even try to cover herself. She had been thoroughly mastered and letting him see her seemed only respectful.

Alexander offered her his hand which she gratefully took, happy to be forgiven.

“Thank you Sir,” she said.

He smiled.

“You’re welcome.” Then seeing that she still hadn’t moved to get dressed he added, “You know my predecessor used to make naughty girls walk back to their rooms in the state they had been caned in.”

Her jaw dropped and she worked her mouth for something to say.

“Miss Overton, get dressed,” he smiled, “Oh, since you are in no hurry, please get dressed in the hall outside, there is no one about after all.” Then seeing her hover in confusion he added, “Before I send you away as you are.”

“Yes Sir,” Catherine blushed.

As soon as she hastened away the ridges across her bottom flared and once outside she burst into to tears.

*

Catherine cried all the way to Melanie’s room. She didn’t care who saw her, but she didn’t want to be alone, not just then.

Once she got to her friend’s door she didn’t wait and after a cursory knock she tried the handle.

“Piss off,” Melanie called out.

“Oh, sorry,” Catherine said miserably.

“Oh, it’s you. Hang on,” Melanie called back.

After a long moment the door lock clicked and Melanie appeared.

“Shit. What happened to you?” Melanie asked. “You had better come in.”

As Melanie turned to walk away Catherine could see that once again her bottom was very bare and as usual on these occasions her behind was scored with vivid welts.

Melanie winced as she lowered herself face down on her bed and Catherine gaped. Her hand stole to her behind but her little caning was virtually nothing next to Melanie’s adventures.

“You look as bad as I feel,” Melanie said ruefully.

“I-I just… I have been to see Mr Alexander,” Catherine said dully.

“Ooh, your first time,” Melanie cooed in sympathy, “Come on let’s see, I bet you have some beauties back there.”

“But you…”

“Oh it’s nothing. I’m used to it. Here I have just put some on. You’ll need it too,” Melanie said dismissively.

In a few moments both girls were laying side-by-side on Melanie’s bed while Melanie eased some pink sticky ointment onto Catherine’s bottom.

“Oh God, that feels so good,” Catherine groaned.

“Welcome to the club,” Melanie said cheerfully.

“Come on, give me that and I’ll do you,” Catherine said, realising that she was being selfish.

“I did mine,” Melanie said ignoring her. “Besides you have a cute bum and I don’t mind a bit.”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” Catherine chuckled, “Anyway, you missed a bit. Quite a few bits actually. What did that man use on you, a machine cane?”

“Alright, shift over and we’ll get head to toe,” Melanie giggled.

“How many did you get?” Catherine said in awe.

“Oh, twenty, looks like I am well on my way to winning my bet; or losing it. It depends how you look at it,” Melanie laughed.

*

Somewhere an owl hooted and a chill night breeze rattled through the trees before falling still. Jeanette looked up at the crystal clear night and marvelled at the stars. Lights-out had been over an hour before and she had finished her rounds and was now confident that all was well.

Then from the west, the wind picked up again and Jeanette shivered and hurried on.

The main building was quiet as she entered, the day staff having long since gone to their quarters and the only lights were the small emergency kind set in discreet corners. Jeanette thought about turning some more on, but decided that the shadows better suited her mood.

As she made her way up the stairs she remembered the first time she had made this journey so long ago. She had been 24 and an inmate here herself. She smiled at the memory. She had been so scared and yet so defiant. Much like the new girl Catherine, although her story was not one of privilege.

Her crimes were not pranks gone wrong, but a catalogue of misdemeanours and bad turnings that were rapidly leading her nowhere. Hardham had saved her. No, it was saving her still, she amended.

As she reached Alexander’s door she felt the same trepidation she had felt all those years ago as an inmate. She even took a breath before knocking.

“Come in Miss Barry,” Alexander answered.

Jeanette sighed and then taking a grip on the handle entered his study.

Alexander was waiting with his cane in hand.

“Here for your regular straightener are you?” It was part of the ritual and gave her an opportunity to consent.

“Yes Sir,” Jeanette breathed.

“You are late,” Alexander said gruffly.

“I’m sorry Sir, the stars were so…” Jeanette realised what she was doing, “Sorry Sir, no excuse.”

Alexander nodded.

There was a brief silence while Alexander eyed her up and then he nodded again. “You know what to do.”

“Yes Sir,” she whispered and moved her hands to her skirt.

Alexander turned his back as he always did while Jeanette first removed her skirt and then her underwear. Then he turned to see her correctly position herself over the back of the chair.

At 34 her bottom was fuller than it once was, but still it was still smooth and tight. He was pleased to see that she had exactly the right posture, the one that he had taught her to do so well.

Jeanette remembered months of defiance at such times, she must have incurred more penalty strokes than any girl in the history of Hardham she thought grimly. She realised now that it was because she had always know that this was what she needed.

As a point of discipline Alexander had taught her to present her bare bottom exactly so, she remembered. It had been mortifying. The indignity, the submission; he had not tolerated the smallest display of rebellion in word or posture. He had persisted until she had been utterly conquered and ready to learn.

“Miss Barry, how many was it last time?” Alexander asked.

“Forty-four,” Jeanette said. Her voice was thick.

“So you are expecting…?”

“Forty-eight,” she whispered.

“I imagine it will be 50 before the amnesty,” he murmured.

“Yes Sir.”

The stroke cut in hard and without preamble taking her unawares as it always did. Her jaw clenched and her eyes flew open in surprise, but her bottom did not move even as the neat dark line developed upon it.

She could never take it without tears and with 47 more to come she also knew that she would rebel a little by moving her bottom out of position before the end. But she knew that Alexander would never tolerate that and would punish her accordingly. If the mood took him he would award strokes again as well as giving her extra.

The next stroke ended all speculation; it ended all things in her mind but the sting that clawed at her bottom.

“Oh Sir,” she cried out.

Alexander answered with another stroke.

The end.

Hot on the heels of the republishing of the Russell Corner comes another story published by LSF. The Lord and Librarian is a stand-alone novel and was co-written with Lucy Appleby some time ago and is available for the first time in novel form.

Rowan Greenway applies for and is invited to take up a post as Librarian to Lord Merlin Collden at his castle perched on the border between England and Wales. It is a ‘Finding Year’ in Lord Collden’s mysterious domain, and Rowan has found her way to the castle where Lord Collden watches and waits, making allowances for now for her modern attitudes. When Lord Collden reveals an ancient secret, Rowan takes fright and escapes, only to run into new dangers at The Citadel. She is pursued by Lord Collden, who is determined to make her his bride.

This is the first book in The Prophecy Trilogy. It is a tale of romance and self-discovery and submission. It is also a tale of eroticism, passion, magic and mystery, interspersed with such activities as spanking and paddling, caning and flogging, strapping and birching, and whippings in the pillory – for this place and all its secrets is caught between different eras and ways of life.

It is now available from Amazon and LSF.

Picture by Brian Tarsis.

It seems that LSF are determined to publisher a sizeable proportion of my back catalogue. (Is that a double entendre or a pun?) Anyway, hot on the heels of the novella, Lizzie Baines, comes the re-publishing of The Academy (originally published as The Academy: the future of spanking).

There are two original works in the pipeline, but before then there are plans afoot to publish other works, including a collection of short stories to be sold on Amazon.

Getting back to the Academy; it is largely a dystopian sci-fi story that centres on a secret government project to save the world in the guise of some intrigue. Oh and there is quite a bit of spanking.

I had no hand in writing the publishers blurb but I kind of like it. It runs thus:

Founded after ‘The Fall’ when the world was changed forever and women outnumber men three to one, the Academy is a place of training for young women between 19 and 25. In this school, teachers are punished as well as the students! Having escaped prison, five new girls are sent to The Academy as an alternative.

All are nervous and horrified by the idea of corporal punishment. Kate is particularly brash and insolent, and quite determined that no-one will lay a hand on her, let alone a cane or a paddle. But deep down, she is as scared as the rest. It is not long before the girls plus new arrivals experience the disciplinary regime of The Academy.

But who are The Sacred Sisters of Revenge? And is Callie all she appears to be? Deceptions and punishments abound in this erotic tale of adult discipline.

For those who want a copy it is available here.

It was more than two hours since lights-out and the sun had long set on the Colossians Baptist Ladies College in the good old State of Alabama. Why was everything ‘good old’ in this part of the world, she wondered? It was crazy, just like the inmates, nothing was particularly old compared to her native England and so far there wasn’t that much good about it; not here in college anyway. She had as yet not seen much of Alabama. Maybe it was like the movies, she thought ruefully.

Carrie Johns tiptoed down the hall painfully aware that every footfall was a shout; or at least seemed that way. Damn these old wooden floors, she cursed inwardly. The only illumination was from the high hall windows that dropped moonlit oblongs onto the floor at regular intervals ahead of her. Then out of the corner of her eye she saw someone watching her and icy fingers of fear stole down her spine.

Carrie gulped and in her head rehearsed a yarn about being English and stupid and ‘where exactly is the midnight cocoa room’ in her best cliché prep-school tones. Some of the snobs here had already bought that line, but only some of them.

Frozen in place she slowly turned her head to face hard puritan eyes regarding her from the shadows. The Founder towered over her, drilling her with his eyes almost 120 years after he had died.

“Creepy bloody painting,” she cursed in a whisper. But if anyone had been watching her they would have seen the green eyes set in heart-shaped face close with relief beneath the fringe of her red-brown hair ‘that must not touch the collar.’

Carrie was small, slight in build and barely five feet two in height; the main reason she had been chosen for this assignment.

“You want me to infiltrate a Bible-bashing Southern college Chief?” she had gasped, “But I am nearly 25.”

“As Interpol is staffed entirely by graduates, I don’t have too many 18-year-olds at my disposal. The FBI would have used their own agent, but they don’t have anyone that young either. So as the only one who could pass…”

“Oh terrific,” Carrie had rolled up her eyes.

“Cut that out,” the Chief had scolded her in his best paternal manner.

“How long will I be in this dump?” Carrie said with a pout.

“I have enrolled you in the second semester. It should be long enough?” the Chief had told her.

“’Should be’ and anyway, a whole semester…?” Carrie had been dismayed, but already it seemed so long ago.

Carrie looked again at the portrait. It was almost as if he knew she was an interloper. She shrugged. She had no time for this.

The principal’s office was locked as she knew it would be. Its usual occupant was one Martin De Mark, an imposing cuss who could turn from jocular to imperious on a dime. But he was not in her sights. It was his secretary’s office that was her target. Or more specifically the student register. A request for it through the usual channels had been considered by the chief, but it was decided that it might tip off the suspect and with students coming and going all the time a sudden departure would not necessarily be a pointer.

Carrie needed to know who had enrolled at Colossians in the month prior to her arrival. That ought to narrow it down to no more than half a dozen suspects.

“Damn,” she cursed as she tried the door with an improvised lock-pick.

The word was a no-no at Colossians and she blanched out of habit lest someone was there to hear her. There wasn’t of course.

Okay it was worth a try. Now for plan B, she thought hoping she could come up with one.

The trouble was all she knew about the suspect was that she was female and could be no older than Carrie was. The informant had said that the woman was hoping to hide in an Alabama college until the heat was off, but not which one. Their only other lead had been the prospectus found in the trash at the back of the motel she was last known to have been whilst on the run. The motel had porn on tap so a genuine candidate was unlikely to have used it.

Carrie let out a heavy sigh and made to go back to her room. The light that came on left her momentarily blind.

“Miss Johns,” Principal De Mark said breezily. “How might I help you?”

“Eh… oh, silly me, I appear to be lost… where might I get some cocoa. I can’t… eh… sleep,” Carrie said blinking hard, her cut-glass tones laid on with a trowel, her usual accent being rather more estuary.

“I think it was explained to you during your first week here that there are no such arrangements available to students after lights out,” De Mark said sharply, adding, “And during your second week when Mrs Coleridge paddled you for the same mistake.”

Carrie felt her buttocks clench and her hand went unconsciously to her rear end as she blushed. The events mentioned had happened so fast that she had not had time to consider breaking cover. The same thought occurred now.

“Tomorrow; my office after second period, see me,” De Mark said in a crisp voice. “Now I suggest you go to bed.”

Carrie hung her mouth open to reply, but all she said was, “Yes Sir.”

*

“Now Miss Johns, you know the drill,” De Mark growled.

Carrie’s fluttered like a broken-winged bird, her arms flapping straight and nervously at her sides as she took a slight crouching position as if about to flee.

“Can’t we… I mean can’t we talk about this. You haven’t even asked me what I was doing,” Carrie protested with a wail.

The morning had dragged by as Carrie had wracked her brains for a plausible reason for her skulking on the administration floor after dark. Now in the principal’s office things were spinning out of control.

“I don’t care Miss Johns. Let’s face it, whatever you tell me will be a story and I don’t plan on giving you another chance to lie and imperilling your soul,” De Mark said in a bored voice.

“But I…”

“Tell you what Miss Johns, I don’t know how they do things in England, by while you slip your panties down and bend over I will fetch the cane instead of the paddle. Just in case last time we had a communication problem and you didn’t understand that ‘the paddle’ is American for ‘don’t get caught out of bounds.’”

Carrie took a deep breath and clamped shut her jaw.

“Look…” she began, but what could she say?

De Mark cocked an eyebrow until Carrie swallowed hard and reached under skirt to tug at her underwear.

By the time the Principal had turned back, a red-faced and soon to be very red-bottomed Carrie was bending over with her panties at her ankles to display her bare behind.

“Spare the rod and spoil the child,” De Mark intoned, “You know this English device is so much more biblical somehow.”

“I am not a child,” Carrie said sullenly, her accent slipping to show her rather lower middle class South London roots.

“You are under 21, which is much the same in my book young lady,” De Mark said sternly.

“But I…”

“You’re not going to argue, are you?”

“No… Sir,” Carrie said bitterly through her clenched teeth.

“That attitude will get you two extra,” the Principal barked.

Carrie gasped, “Sir I…” tears pooled at her eyes as she closed her mouth in resignation.

“Bend right over now, right over. If I have to offer you a chair back there will be a further two for the privilege,” De Mark promised. “I don’t know what your game is, but it ends here and now. Do you understand?”

Carrie gulped and folded herself over a little more so that her bare bottom was more obviously on display. She hoped it would be enough.

“Yes Sir,” she said; the words awkward in her throat.

“Legs together and bend a little more. Let me see you grab those ankles,” De Mark growled.

The rush of blood to her face felt hot on her cheeks but she did as she was told until her bottom was thrust right up and back at him in what seemed a somewhat obscene manner. Still he had ordered her legs closed, which was more than she had heard from other girls here.

The hard swish ended in a tight thwack somewhere nearby. It took a moment for the sting to register and she grunted and dipped her knees. The paddle had been worse she remembered, although just as embarrassing. But even as this thought came the cane continued to bite and she struggled bug-eyed for breath as the pain continued to build.

The second stroke was even worse and she sucked in air through her nose sharply as she processed it.

“Breath through your mouth, it will be easier,” he told her. He sounded concerned.

Carrie nodded and after a moment, did as she was told. She was still panting hard when the next stroke landed.

“Ah,” she barked and did a little dance without lifting her feet or standing up.

“You take it well Miss Johns,” De Mark said in admiration.

For some reason she was pleased by the compliment, which disarmed her. It was a transient thought brought to an end by another stroke.

“Ehhhrr,” she growled angrily as she struggled to stay bent over.

“Now, now,” he chided her even as caned her again.

“Ooh ffff… fthank you Sir,” she managed, aware of some wetness on her cheeks.

“You are welcome Miss Johns,” De Mark said, launching into another stroke.

“Aah, uhhhh,” the grunt stayed in her throat for a long drawn out groan and she scrambled to keep hold of her ankles.

“Two more I think. The extras I spoke of,” the Principal said taping her proffered bottom with the cane, an act which made her jump a little in anticipation.

The next stroke sent her up and back down low with an angry growl.

“Do that again and it won’t count and I’ll give you another,” he chided.

She again sucked on air and it was a moment before she managed to say, “Sorry Sir.”

For the last stroke her eyes and mouth flew open in tandem and she crushed her ankles in her hands to ride out the relentless wave of pain.

“Paddle swats from me come in multiples of six starting at 12,” De Mark informed her. “If you are caught sneaking around corridors at night again, that is something that you will truly learn.”

“Yes Sir,” she sniffed.

She was shaking at the knees now and had started to rock back and forth.

“Stand up Miss Johns and repair your dress,” the Principal said archly.

As she eased herself upright her bottom flared up and she was put in mind of her grandmother’s old electric bar fire on a winter’s evening long ago. It felt for all England as if she had sat on it three of four times.

Carrie shot a glance at De Mark and was surprised and glad that he had turned his back while she dressed.

“You deserved that Miss Johns,” he said in a friendly tone.

“Yes Sir, thank you Sir,” she responded.

It sounded strangely natural on her lips and the only resentment she felt was that she was not angry. As her knickers, or panties as they called them here, slid over her bottom she gave a wince.

“You are welcome Miss Johns,” De Mark said and offered her his hand.

She shook it with a limp hand and blushed.

“Of you go,” he said brightly when she did not move.

She gaped at him and then hastily said, “Yes Sir,” as she went out the door.

The moment Carrie was outside she clamped her hands to her bottom and bobbed up and down with her jaw on her chest. If her colleagues at Interpol could see her now she would never live it down. Then walking as normally as she was able she made her way to the nearest ladies’ and secreted herself inside a booth with a stack of water-soaked paper towels.

Lunch would have to wait, she decided as she lowered her knickers and one by one she pressed the wet paper to her bottom. Twisting this way and that she was able to see eight parallel dark pink lines across her flesh, each one standing proud in smooth ridges.

The things I do for Queen and Country, she mused ruefully, but the traces of her punishment strangely fascinated her somehow.

*

Class followed class and days went by and Carrie was no nearer finding her target.

“Why haven’t you checked out the office?” the Chief barked at her over the forbidden cell-phone.

“I have tried Sir, but… it’s not that easy,” Carrie reported.

She was reluctant to tell him she had got caught. Not least because it would bring her competence into question, but also because she suspected that the Chief would guess her fate.

“Well try again,” the Chief spat at her, “For all we know the bird has already skipped town and you are on a false trail.”

“Why not raid the place and zero in on this woman?” Carrie blurted, then she could skip town too.

But she knew why. They had no real evidence and the most important thing was to track the suspect back to whoever she was working with.

“Just get on with it,” the Chief growled at her, ignoring her question.

“Yes Sir,” she said, rolling her eyes up.

“Cut that out,” the Chief snarled, although he couldn’t see.

He knew her too darn well, Carrie sighed. Despite the Chief’s insistence, she could still feel aching lines on her bottom when she sat and nothing could induce her to go sneaking around the offices for a while.

That left her with a new tack. There were only so many new girls at Colossians and she might make headway by drawing up a list a checking out any girl who might be older than she appeared. Carrie wondered if she might even try sneaking some shots with the camera phone to pass on to the Chief for elimination purposes. The only problem was that she had absolutely no idea where to begin.

After a couple of free periods sitting on the main steps watching for loners and any prospects, she realised it was hopeless. Then she had a break.

It was the first day that she had dared a swim since her caning and was in the communal shower wondering if her marks still showed. Most of the other girls did not seem to mind displaying such evidence and there were plenty of well-paddled bottoms on show; some of them with quite outstanding paddle rash.

“Epic ain’t it?” said a bubbly blonde across the way from her who had seen her looking.

The girl had a quite impressive behind with even more impressive purple spore staining it. She dipped her knees as she spoke and pressed her bottom out for Carrie’s inspection.

“Eh… yes,” Carrie replied, suddenly embarrassed.

“Hey, you’re English,” the girl gushed, “That’s neat.”

“Carrie Johns,” Carrie said awkwardly.

It was more than strange offering a naked woman her hand.

“Casey, Casey Clark,” the girl continued to gush.

After several minutes chatter about where they had come from and what they wanted from the course in which Carrie did a mental exchange-and-find to replace key facts to feed the girl her Interpol interview spiel, the undercover cop asked what Casey had done to deserve such a shellacking.

“Oh that, I am always getting it,” she said dismissively, then added in a bright sarcastic tone, “Just luck, I guess.”

Carrie was about to accept that as the usual evasion when Casey continued.

“I got caught sneaking some chocolate from the student storage rooms. Well it was mine. I can usually manage it just fine but… I guess… well it’s an occupational hazard of being the Colossians Cat,” she said enthusiastically. “Oh it’s alright; I get spanked all the time at home. At least here they don’t have corner time.”

Casey rolled her eyes up at the last words in a way that reminded Carrie of someone. The chocolate craving touched a nerve too. It was one of a long list of goodies, like mobile phones, that were forbidden and put in storage at the start of each semester. But that wasn’t what intrigued Carrie the most just then.

“The Colossians Cat?” Carrie was impressed that the girl managed to get into student storage at all, it was quite a challenge compared with the office area; Carrie knew – she had tried.

“Oh it’s just a private joke. I can sneak into just about anywhere, you know” Casey beamed.

“What about the principal’s office and the admin area?” Carrie said casually.

“Oh sure that’s easy,” Casey grinned, “Too easy. Why? Do you want to alter some grades or check on someone else’s?”

“No…” Carrie said slowly, “Not exactly, but… eh maybe we can come to some kind of arrangement.”

It was too dangerous to talk in the showers, even with the sound of running water, so both girls slipped away to Casey’s room.

The small spanked blonde was strangely lacking in curiosity about Carrie’s request and agreed to it with a shrug.

“That is, if you can do something for me,” Casey sounded doubtful and perched herself expectantly, and not to say carefully, on her bed.

“No problem,” Carrie said eagerly, this was the breakthrough she needed.

“You might want to hear what I need first,” Casey looked decidedly shifty.

“If I can do it I will,” Carrie said in a determined voice.

After all she was a detective and whatever Casey wanted couldn’t be that big a deal.

“I have been busted way too many times this semester,” Casey began, “Not that I can’t handle my own lickings mind you, but… well the folks told me that if I get busted one more time then I can expect hell when I get home. You got to understand that I got some serious spanking and corner time coming anyway so when they say hell, well… let’s just say that last summer I got corner time at a family barbecue for… well that was just for starters and it is way too em-bara-sing!”

Casey rolled her eyes up again.

“So what do you want me to do?” Carrie was puzzled.

“Well,” Casey drawled, “I already got in a fix. Something the folks don’t know about, only…”

Carrie frowned; she wasn’t sure where this was going.

“This time I signed out a book and forgot to take it back… if someone else were to… well admit they took it and took the paddling, well then I would just get off with an ear-burning for not signing it back and the folks wouldn’t hear about it.” Casey didn’t look up as she spoke.

“I see,” Carrie sighed. “You want me to fess up on your behalf.”

Casey nodded.

“Maybe you’ll get off light as you haven’t done it before. I have the book,” Casey said eagerly.

Returning a book late was surely nothing to get paddled for, Carrie reasoned and besides, what choice did she have?

“Okay, give me the book, but I need the information first,” Carrie reluctantly agreed, adding sharply, “Tonight.”

“Not a problimo girlfriend,” Casey grinned.

*

It was insane, Carrie cursed herself, she wasn’t going to let some random member of staff paddle her for no reason. But then she reasoned, with any luck this would all be settled before she had to. Although at the back of her mind she wondered what would happen to Casey if she reneged on her deal just because she was a cop.

The girl had given her nine names for new students in the available time. One of those was in a wheelchair with other issues and another, Carrie knew vaguely, was immature for 18 and even had braces. There was no way either of them was the person she was looking for. That left her with seven suspects.

One by one she tracked them down by cross-referencing class lists and waiting by pigeon holes. In one case she even volunteered to deliver pamphlets to a hall residence to observe another suspect. However, with only one more to go, she had seen no one who remotely fitted the bill and was beginning to suspect that either she was on a wild goose chase or wheelchair and braces were very good actors.

“Harrumph-hum,” said someone beside her as she was leaving the residents’ hall.

Carrie turned to see a young 30-something woman in a plaid skirt and designer glasses. The woman, obviously a member of the faculty had her dark hair neatly tied up and piled atop of her head and she was regarding Carrie with a hard and serious gaze.

Carrie was in a hurry to find the last suspect and greeted the woman with a double rise of her eyebrows.

“Are you Carrie Johns?” the woman asked sternly.

“Eh, yes. Who… I mean, I am sorry Ma’am but…” Carrie shook her head in puzzlement.

“You have an unsigned-for book,” the woman pressed her. “Casey Clark said…”

The woman’s gaze fell on the book that was still under Carrie’s arm.

“I am the librarian, Mrs Sandhill,” the woman added impatiently.

“Oh… oh yes, I have it here. I am so sorry about the misunderstanding. I completely forgot to sign it out and… well I didn’t mean to get Casey into trouble,” Carrie said, fluttering her eyes as she offered Mrs Sandhill the book.

The Librarian took it and then looked Carrie up and down just as the secret police woman looked impatiently away for her prey.

“I am sorry, but that is just not good enough,” Mrs Sandhill blustered. “You know the rules.”

“Do I?” Carrie said still looking off to the left to study each passing face.

“Come with me,” Sandhill snapped, “Come with me right now.”

“I…” Carrie pointed impotently in the other direction.

“Unless you wish to see the Principal,” the woman said in a hard voice pointing more firmly the other way.

“Very well,” Carrie said in a bored voice and went where she was directed.

*

“Uh,” Carrie yelled as the paddle seared her rear end.

It was hard to hold position, even with her hands flat to the wall like they were. Her skirt was tucked up and her knickers, panties as the Sandhill woman had it, were stretched between Carrie’s slightly parted ankles.

The Librarian had wasted no time in having Carrie bend over to offer her bare bottom for 12 stiff paddle swats.

After the growing and rapidly unbearable sting, the worse thing was that she was being spanked in the semi-public outer office area of the library where two other library assistants and at least one other student had be on hand to see.

“Your attitude is appalling and your failure to sign out a valuable book will go on your record and be included in your end of semester report,” Mrs Sandhill scolded as she let fly with another swat.

“Yes Ma’am,” Carrie grunted through gritted teeth.

“Yes ma’am,” Sandhill mimicked with another swat, and then with another she repeated, “Yes ma’am.”

By the end of the paddling Carrie was puffing like a steam train and thoroughly sorry for everything she had done, hadn’t done or was ever going to even contemplate.

“Now get out of my sight,” the Librarian growled after almost grudgingly taking Carrie’s reluctantly offered handshake.

“Yes Ma’am,” Carrie sniffed as she wiped away a tear.

Out on the library steps Carrie was just weighing up the relative merits and personal preferences of the paddle as compared to the cane when she saw her.

The woman was tallish and elegant with long well-groomed black hair. The cream band that set off her tresses matched the sash at her model-like wasp-waist in a way that no gauche 18-21-year-old could carry off. Yet she was certainly no member of faculty, she even had a student name badge and a prospectus held neatly under one arm. And despite being the picture of a college student straight out of central casting, Carrie’s expert eye put her at around 28.

Forgetting the throb in her bottom, Carrie casually strolled after her until she was close enough to see the name on the badge. Helena Weir, it ran, the last name on her very short list.

*

Principal De Mark stood glaring at the two women in his office. One, the sassy English girl, stood with an attitude he did not like in a student with the aggressive body language of the cop she claimed to be. The other girl who was sitting bold as you please like butter could not melt in August was a criminal deceiver of all things. He had been duped and he did not like it one bit.

The Chief stood between the two women assuring him that Carrie Johns was indeed with Interpol and that Helena Weir, which was probably not her real name, was a suspect in a criminal conspiracy he would rather not explain just then.

“I have no idea what this is all about, really I don’t,” Helena complained in trim Bostonian tones.

“Hell, of course you don’t,” the Chief drawled.

Principal De Mark cocked a disapproving eye at the Chief’s swearing in front of two students, which was how he was forced to still see them, but decided that for once that the broad grizzled-haired policeman was more than his match and let it go.

Helena sucked in her cheeks pensively and looked away as if considering something.

“Run the whole story by me again DC Johns, for the benefit of the Principal and Miss ‘I have no idea,’” the Chief yawned.

Carrie had explained everything over the phone while the Chief was in transit. The only omissions made were the full extent of her part of the bargain with Casey and the previous consequences of her earlier failures. This time she repeated the story without mentioning the Clark girl’s part in it.

“So Miss Johns and this… this Weir person have been here for weeks under false pretences?” De Mark was fuming.

Real pretences surely, Carrie pondered, but thought better of passing a comment.

“I tell you I have no idea…” Weir began again.

“Miss Weir, you are already in enough trouble, I suggest you be quiet. Do you think I do not know when a girl is lying? I suspect it is a talent that the Chief here shares,” De Mark’s tone cut to Carrie’s quick even though it wasn’t directed at her.

One look at Weir was enough to see that Helena was quailed by him.

“Look I… I haven’t done anything…”  Helena protested.

“Then you maintain that you are a student?” De Mark demanded.

“Yes Sir,” Helena spluttered.

“Well I can see you are lying about something so…” De Mark picked up a long heavy paddle with drilled holes and hefted it. “Assume the position Miss Weir, over the back of the chair I think, you’ll need the support.”

Helena swallowed and shot a glance at the Chief with eyes that seemed to say, ‘you aren’t going to let him are you?’

The Chief shrugged. It was irregular to be sure, but given Alabama law and the fact that Weir was a consenting adult and claimed to be a student, the Principal was within his rights.

“Miss Weir,” De Mark barked.

Helena pouted a little and then gave a dismissive shrug of her own and did as she had been directed.

Carrie threw the Chief a look, but although she felt she ought to stop it this damn woman had been the cause of a lot of bottom pain and embarrassment. If she wanted to tough it out then it was up to her.

Helena made one more appeal with her eyes in the direction of the Chief and then with one more look of scorn at Carrie the woman hiked up her skirt and tugged her knickers down as went over the back of the chair.

The Chief was clearly appreciative of the impressive bottom on display and even Carrie had to gape a little. But the Principal was unmoved as he positioned himself to deliver the first swat.

The paddle was heavier than any Carrie had yet seen and carried two dozen finger-sized holes on its striking surface. She had heard of such a thing, the more hardened girls called it the beast and the others dared not speak of it at all.

The first swat landed with a dull thwack and Helena immediately reacted. In its wake the paddle left perfect stark white trace complete with pink circles on her smooth tanned bottom. Then as Carrie watched the pale flesh flooded with ever darkening pink as the skin began to rise in a welt.

It was on this tender spot that De Mark landed another swat to extract an angry grunt from Helena.

“Any time you want to admit that you are not a student I’ll let the Chief here handle things,” the Principal sounded cross.

“Oh don’t mind me,” the Chief chuckled.

“Uhm,” Helena grunted as she was spanked again.

Her bottom was beginning to look interesting now Carrie thought with a grin.

After four or five more swats Helena was rasping down air and clawing at the back of the chair. Carrie shifted her position so that she could see that the woman’s face was now damp with tears.

“I am a student,” Helena gasped, her eyes fixed on a single point, “Helena Weir is my real name. So it’s legal yah. You can’t get me on that.”

Carrie noticed that Boston had vanished from her accent and she was now whining in pure New York.

“Go on,” De Mark growled after another short salvo of swats.

“I-I… I’m just a courier… I swear. I don’t know what this is about,” Helena sobbed, her accent getting thicker by the moment. “I just gotta hang loose until I get’s word.”

De Mark let loose with a tight volley of spanks that had Helena howling in short order.

“Who do you have to meet?” the Chief said quietly.

He indicated to the Principal that he should stop or at least pause a minute.

“I doan know man. I doan know them and they doan know me. I just have to check a certain book in the library every day or so until I get instructions,” Helena sobbed bitterly as well she might given the state of her well-welted behind.

“Damn,” the Chief cursed.

De Mark glared at him.

“Well when I am done paddling you I want you out of here,” he said, and then to the Chief he spat, “Arrest her.”

“You want to resign your place here and come into protective custody?” the Chief said softly. “Of course you’ll have to tell us everything you know.”

“Yes Sir oh yes Sir,” Helena hiccoughed through copious tears.

The Chief pushed De Mark aside and helped the woman down.

“What about her?” the Principal pointed at Carrie.

“She’s not a student here, she’s undercover, so hands off,” the Chief growled.

But all the same he gave Carrie a withering stare. He hadn’t liked the way she had let Casey take the risks; especially as they didn’t know what they up against. Also he thought that Helena could have been taken quietly without involving De Mark. Then he paused.

The Chief took a long hard look at Carrie and smiled.

“Chief, what you thinking Chief?” Carrie didn’t like the look in his eye and suspected that she was way ahead of him.

“The real suspect doesn’t know who you are. They don’t know Helena or her name. She is just a reader of a note in the library,” the Chief mused. “For all they know, you are their contact.”

“But… but, I won’t do it,” Carrie wailed. “I won’t stay in this place one more minute.”

“You will and that’s an order Detective Constable Johns,” he barked.

Carrie rolled her eyes up.

“You do that one more time and I’ll…” the Chief snarled.

“So do I take it that we are to have the pleasure of Miss Johns’ company for the rest of the semester?” the Principal said in a weary voice.

“Oh yes indeed,” the Chief grinned.

Carrie pressed out her bottom lip and groaned.

“Then allow me to assist in her cover,” De Mark said darkly. “I don’t like liars and deceivers no matter which side of the law they claimed to be on.”

As he spoke he again took up the paddle and advanced on Carrie.

The Chief saw his intent and was about to cite ‘assault on an officer,’ but then he remembered Casey again.

“Chief, you can’t…” Carrie wailed.

“It might keep your mind focussed on the job and besides I don’t like how you have handled things. In any case we need a plausible cover for why you came to see the principal here,” the Chief shrugged.

“But…”

Carrie was a picture of woe as the Chief opened the door and summoned two low-key agents to collect Helena.

“Have fun,” the tear bedraggled former courier said bitterly as she left, shooting a glare in Carrie’s direction.

One of the cops eyed Carrie in puzzlement but then he saw her face and the paddle in the principal’s hand and smirked.

“Chief,” Carrie wailed in a pleading voice.

“I would love to stay,” the Chief grinned, “I really would. But I have to debrief this hostile witness so I can bring you up to speed. And you need to get back to normal college life before anyone notices anything amiss.”

As soon as they were gone De Mark tapped the palm of his hand and said; “Now Miss Johns, you saw how I had Miss Weir. Please assume the same position. This time I trust I will be allowed to complete my work.”

Carrie swallowed hard and went ashen. This wasn’t fair, she thought miserably.

*

Carrie just wanted to go somewhere and have a good cry. It was a bottom searing effort just to put one foot oh so carefully in front of the other. To anyone watching she had the appearance of one walking on fragile ice and every step launched a swarm of angry bees in the rounds of her buttocks. Those who saw her slow progress could not doubt that she had been to see the principal for an exemplary paddling.

Worse still was that Principal Martin De Mark had made it quite clear that he resented her infiltration of the school and was not going to make the slightest concession to her case. In fact she felt she was firmly in his sights for some special treatment she did not need.

“You darn Feds can go to hell as far as I am concerned,” he had told her, “And what in heck’s sake is Interpol doing here? Some meddling idea of the UN I don’t wonder. The people of Alabama and Colossians Baptist Ladies College will not kowtow to interlopers.”

His accent had come out proud and strong as he spoke. Carrie could almost sympathise, she would rather be anywhere but here just then. But then had come the paddle and all her sympathy had had to be reserved for herself.

Crossing the quad to her room put Carrie in something of quandary. She was already drawing sniggering glances and the shadows and seclusion of going around by the less visible way offered a salve for her dignity. On the other hand it was a route that was almost twice as far and full of promise of further purgatory for her poor ravaged behind.

“Oh well,” she said ruefully to herself, “At least the opposition is more likely to buy it if I am seen to be…”

She choked on the word spanked and had to fight back the tears. Chin up, old girl. Play up school. Jolly hockey sticks and all that rubbish, she mocked herself. It was time to go deep undercover in plain sight.

The end?

Sammie liked the place as soon as she saw it. It was the kind of house you saw in movies and the hometown cosy feel all along the tree-lined road had broken through her hard LA cynicism like balm for the soul. Not that she would ever admit it, perhaps not even to herself.

The couple who strolled onto the porch were not what she was expecting either. They were young and cool looking. She was at most a young 30 with long well groomed dark hair and looked like someone that belonged in a magazine. He was a little older with short sandy hair and a square jaw that held his easy smile like it never knew a frown. She was put in mind of the Marlboro Man, although this cowboy looked too smart to mess with cigarettes.

The c-word made her wince and was just one of the many reasons she was here.

As the car pulled to a halt the cool cowboy stepped from the porch and extend his arm with natural largesse.

“Aunt Aggie,” he grinned.

“Oh don’t, you make me feel old,” Sammie’s mother simpered.

Sammie rolled her eyes up at the lame exchange as an opener for getting back into character.

“Nonsense, you sophisticated city-types never get old,” he teased, “And anyway we are practically the same age.”

Sammie rolled up her eyes again, this was so lame. She knew her mother was at least six years older than her great nephew Dhenry. Dhenry, what kind of name was that anyway?

“This is Samantha, your… cousin, sort of? I never remember how it works,” Sammie’s mother offered hesitantly.

“Cousin will do fine Aggie, after all I can’t really call an 18-year-old my aunt can I?”

“She wouldn’t be your aunt anyway honey,” the long-haired woman said, coming forward.

“I’m almost 20 you dork.” Sammie muttered under her breath.

Aggie glared at her daughter, but Dhenry appeared not to hear.

“This is Kathy,” he said introducing his wife.

“Kathy,” Aggie said enthusiastically and took her hand.

Sammie folded her arms in defiance to the world.

“Samantha,” Aggie said in a tight voice, “Come and say hello.”

Sammie rolled her eyes up for the third time in as many minutes and heaved a sigh like she had just been asked to walk home on a wet day in January. Then she threw her long suntanned legs out of the car sideways and without unfolding her arms came to an upright position.

“The spit of her mother, with the same red hair and pretty too,” Kathy said with a warm smile as she offered Sammie her hand.

“Give me a break,” Sammie muttered, “My hair is washed out ginger and everyone knows it. And the only pretty one here is you.”

“Thanks… I guess, but you’re pretty too you know,” Kathy said uncomfortably.

Pretty lame, Sammie lied to herself for amusement, which showed on her face as a smirk.

“Young lady if you don’t amend your attitude…” Aggie said in a threatening tone.

Sammie went for a fourth eye-rolling.

“I can see we are going to have our work cut out for us with this one,” Dhenry chuckled.

“Look I am so grateful for taking her in like this,” Aggie said in a weary voice admixed with relief.

“It really is our pleasure, besides, what are families for?” Dhenry reassured her. “What was the beef with the courts anyway? I heard she was cleared…?”

“They never even pressed charges,” Aggie said quickly, “She was just a material witness, but there are some issues that came to light and… well the court said she could not reside within 50 miles of the city…”

“And you have your job… of course,” Dhenry said calmly.

“I don’t know anyone 50 miles from LA and there is no way she is setting up house on her own at the moment. As for family, there are only you or your Aunt Margaret in Boise…”

“Talk about me as if I am not here why don’t you?” Sammie said belligerently.

Aggie had never felt more embarrassed and that was saying something given the number of police stations and courts she had attended with Sammie in the last few months.

“I am rather afraid I took my eye off the ball since Tom left… Fiji, I ask you, he was always such a dreamer. You know his girlfriend is only… sorry,” she sighed, “It’s not his fault. My work has been… anyway it is out of my hands for the moment.”

“Hello,” Sammie said in a surly voice, “I am still here.”

“Excuse me,” Aggie said abruptly, “There is something that needs my urgent attention.”

With some sixth sense Sammie’s ears pricked up, but it was too late to flee. Aggie grabbed her daughter’s arm and without breaking step marched towards the porch with her daughter in train.

“Mom, come on, I’m sorry I…” Sammie whined.

Aggie didn’t speak but availing herself of a bench on the house’s veranda she sat down and hauled her half-struggling daughter across her knee.

“N-not here, come on,” Sammie gaped, her face colouring sharply.

The denim shorts were a struggle, but Aggie was fast becoming an expert and in a moment they were going south to meet Sammie’s ankles.

Before the girl could react her mother hooked a thumb in the band of her panties and they too joined the shorts.

“Mom,” Sammie gasped, “Please.”

For a moment Aggie lamented the fact that she didn’t have the hairbrush to hand, but needs must… she thought and brought her hand sharply down on the bare seat of her daughter.

“Omigod,” Sammie gasped, but the spank was the first of many.

The spanking was sound enough, but it was more of a marker against future behaviour and although Sammie’s bottom was red, the girl was more embarrassed than stung by the time she was set on her feet.

“Now Samantha, do you want to go to Aunt Margaret’s or stay here?” Aggie barked at her by now meek daughter.

“Here,” Sammie said in a small voice.

“Right, then mind your manners while your elders talk. Now face that wall there until you are told to move.

Sammie made to pull up her shorts but was told to leave them with a bark.

“If she gives you any trouble, you have my full permission to spank her,” Aggie said wearily. “And make it count; these days she is used to far more. Something we just got around to lately.”

“Oh I think we can manage that,” Dhenry said pointedly glancing at his wife.

Kathy blushed and sucked in her cheeks, a response that was not missed by Aggie who smirked a little. The older woman remembered just how Dhenry and Kathy handled their marriage.

“Did you hear that Samantha?” Aggie said in a scolding voice.

“Yes, ooh,” Sammie bit her lower lip.

Dhenry was surprised at the transformation. She just needs to be away from LA and the whole sin city routine for a while, he decided.

“I’m sorry for her attitude, but it has been a long drive. Not that I am making excuses…” Aggie said with a sigh.

“Aggie, we get it, no need to explain. I am sure that Sammie and I will get on like a house on fire as soon as she learns the rules.

“House on fire, eh, just don’t let her play with any matches,” Aggie said ruefully and glancing back at her daughter facing the wall on the porch. “She can stay there until it gets dark.”

“That’s in about 40 minutes and by then supper will be ready anyway,” Kathy put in.

On the porch Sammie groaned and shifted from side to side in irritation, but knew better than to complain.

*

Sammie had been with Dhenry and Kathy for about a week and had yet to settle in. The day after her mother had left, Dhenry had given her a pile of community college pamphlets with the pronouncement, “It’s that or you get a job.”

She had considered answering back, if only to test his resolve in disciplinary matters, but he had eyes like the chief cop who had arrested her and so far she had funked it.

The other thing Sammie couldn’t figure was the whole place, both house and town. It was a complete dump by LA standards. The TV was out of the Ark and they had no cable.

“Not a great package huh?” she had said when she had been told.

“Eh no, we have no package, zilch, nada, no cable,” Dhenry had explained.

Then she had been told that the house was a smoke free zone and that included the porch.

“I don’t smoke,” Sammie had said quickly.

Dhenry had given her a hard look then until she had been forced to look away.

“We don’t tolerate lies here either. I know perfectly well your mother has forbidden you to smoke, but you do it anyway, so I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. You’re 19 and what you do in town is your own affair; within reason that is,” he had scolded her.

Shifting uncomfortably and to change the subject Sammie had asked, “About town, what do you do here anyway? You’re not actually a cowboy are you?”

“Cowboy?” he laughed, displaying one of his sudden mood swings she was to get to know so well, “No, I am not any kind of a cowboy. I am the town sheriff.”

Sammie’s jaw had hit the floor; she could see why her mother had kept back that particular titbit of information.

“Kathy is the head librarian in town,” he continued, “No cowboys here.”

“I am one of two librarians,” Kathy put in, “I just happen to be senior. Just as Dhenry here is chief of police in town, but only has three deputies.”

“Rub it in why don’t you?” Dhenry growled good-naturedly, giving Kathy a swat on the tail.

The swat was something that occurred a lot between them and not always in such good humour, Sammie had noticed. It took her that first week to find out why.

Their home was big and solid and Sammie had been given a large cool room above the garage in a wing away from the main part of the house. It was all angles with alcoves so that her bed was out of sight of the desk and she could pretend it was an apartment. This not only afforded Sammie some privacy but as she suspected kept her out of their hair.

But with no real TV and only a magazine she had already read twice, Sammie decide to snoop.

On her first foray she found a paddle, a cane and an antique hairbrush on the dresser with pristine bristles on one side and devoid of varnish on the other. The third item she might have missed but for the first two and the fact that her mother had one like for much the same reason, if Sammie’s guess was correct.

There were also some books with suggestive titles like Sweet Surrender and Her Master’s Voice along with a copy of the Story of O, but they were clearly Kathy’s and on Dhenry’s shelf were car mechanic books and text books on law and law enforcement.

Her second reconnoitre came as a result of the sounds of an argument. Sammie was keen to know that Mr and Mrs Perfect weren’t so and at the back of her mind she was curious about how this might get resolved given her earlier discoveries. She wasn’t disappointed.

By the time she got to the landing where their room was, a spanking was already well under way.

The door to their room had been left open and by hanging back she could see that Dhenry had Kathy over his knee with her denims and panties down at her ankles. Her bottom was already a mean red, but Dhenry was putting the hairbrush to her like he was only just getting started.

“So you forgot to do the laundry,” Dhenry was saying in a hard but calm voice as he swatted away. “It’s no big deal, but don’t bitch to me about it and make it a problem.”

“But you have no clean shirt,” Kathy wailed.

“So why is that my fault?” he growled.

“It’s not I… ow, I was embarrassed and got mad… ah, sorry Sir, I’m sorry.” Kathy’s breathing was ragged and there were already tears in her voice.

This is neat-o, Sammie thought, but her schadenfreude was tempered by concern for Kathy’s bottom. It had got to the hard welty stage where the flesh had become shocked and swollen. Sammie knew herself that it was a hard gig; this from her own experience on the day after she had been arrested.

Dhenry then proved that he was strict and would tolerate no attitude or deflected guilt from his wife. The spanking, which was already sound enough, took on a new tempo and did not end for some minutes. Long before he was done Kathy was bawling like a teen and hugging into him for respite.

“Right young lady, you can put yourself in that corner and don’t move until… well don’t move,” Dhenry barked.

“Yes Sir,” Kathy sobbed.

Sammie watched in amazement as the 30-year-old woman, still hobbled by her jeans and panties, limped carefully to the corner and put her nose meekly to the wall.

“Dhenry,” she said in a muffled voice.

“Yes,” he replied archly.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

“Dhenry.”

“Yes,” he said impatiently.

“Can you close the door in case…?” she swallowed, “In case… you know… Sammie…”

Dhenry chuckled and said, “Maybe this time, but she is going to find out.”

“I know,” Kathy whispered to someone very far away.

Then Dhenry moved across the room and Sammie dropped back in a panic, but he shut the door without looking up the landing.

Close call Sammie thought and then as carefully as she had come crept back to her room, her heart pounding. Her dad had always been easy going and spankings had been few and far between back home. I guess Dhenry is cut from a different cloth, she thought, and gulped.

*

Throughout breakfast Sammie couldn’t help stealing pointed glances at Kathy. And when the older woman visibly winced as she eased onto her seat at the table, Kathy noticed Sammie watching and blushed.

“You heard what happened last night didn’t you?” Kathy whispered after Dhenry had rolled out the door to mount his SUV with all the show of a cowboy sheriff of old.

Sammie coloured a little and shrugged.

“I wasn’t sure what I was hearing so I snuck down,” she said in an uncomfortable voice, “I saw through the door.”

“You were snooping before that weren’t you?” Kathy said with a blush.

Sammie nodded.

“Busted,” she said, “You gonna tell Dhenry?”

“What do you think he’d do if I did?” Kathy asked as she shifted uncomfortably and folded her arms.

Sammie sucked in a breath that she didn’t release but just stood there with her mouth open and blanched.

“Spanking, paddling, switching are age old traditions around here and Dhenry takes them to heart, we both do,” Kathy said gently, “You are a long way from LA here. I need to know if I have a viper in the nest or just a lost girl who gets it.”

“How do you mean?” Sammie was conscious of the awkward void between her and the older woman.

“I mean sooner or later we are both going to get blistered behinds while the other is around, and that means you brat-girl, LA know-all or not. So, are we going to be friends?” Kathy shook off her discomfort and rounded on the younger woman.

“I don’t know,” Sammie looked at her shoes, “I get it I guess and… I’d like to be your friend.”

“So, what do you think Dhenry would do if I told him you were snooping around our stuff and spying on us?” Kathy’s eyes danced back and forth as if she was willing a right answer from her young cousin-in-law.

“Spank me I guess,” Sammie mumbled and kicked at her shoe without looking up.

“And how do you feel about that?” Kathy pressed her.

“I-I… my Dad was kinda soft… Mom tries but I guess I got too grown-up too fast for her… I guess I kinda got it coming sometimes. I mean I sometimes wish my Dad had pushed back… well you know… kinda,” Sammie mumbled through the speech without looking up until the end. “You gonna tell him?”

“No, I think your snooping aided your education somewhat,” Kathy smiled visibly more relaxed, “Let’s keep it between us, but if I find you have been spying on me getting… well then you can kiss your bee-hind goodbye.”

“Deal,” Sammie grinned.

“Now after you help me with the dishes I’ll drive us both in to town and you can check out courses and the small ads at the library,” Kathy chivvied her.

*

It had rained all morning and the library was busier than usual. Several of the foul-weather readers who had taken refuge from the inclemency outside were somewhat noisy and there had been several complaints from the regulars.

Among the newcomers was Sammie, who was fast making new friends in and around the Main Street coffee shop. She had even secured a part-time job there after Dhenry had called in a favour. A lot of the kids in town were impressed that Sammie knew the cute and cool sheriff, especially the girls and Sammie was quickly becoming popular.

“Will you girls be quiet,” Kathy scolded the small group of young women in the corner for the third time that morning.

“What are you going to do? Fine us?” Rosemary Tailor, one of Sammie’s new friends sneered.

The others giggled, all except Sammie who blushed.

Kathy gave her a hard stare before rounding on the others.

“I could speak to your mother and yours Josephine Samuels, I see you there, I know what she would do,” Kathy said sharply.

Josephine and another girl Kathy didn’t know glowed red like traffic stop lights while Rosemary mouthed a silent mimic of the Head Librarian’s words. But all the same she fell to whispers as Kathy gave Sammie a warning look and then moved away.

“Hey look,” Rosemary gushed as soon as Kathy was out of earshot, “They have some sex books.”

The four girls dropped the magazines they had been reading and moved over to the shelf to look.

“The Art of Fellatio,” Josephine giggled, picking up the book.

“Sex for Beginners,” Rosemary guffawed.

Then Josephine squealed in delight as she grabbed a book emblazoned with the legend: “Spanking, a disciplinary manual.”

Sammie felt a strange head rush and gaped as she coloured. She wasn’t the only one, Lucy another new girl in town went bright pink as she stared wide-eyed at the pictures and title headings on the pages that Josephine flipped over.

Sammie took it from her with something approaching reverence as the two more raucous young women fixed on some Chinese pillow books. But she noticed that Lucy still had her eyes glued to the book so she hastily put it back on the shelf lest she show undue interest.

Further along there were art books with nude men as well as women and it was these that quickly grabbed their interest. Then Rosemary found a Mapplethorpe and the girls dissolved into laughter.

“Oh gross,” Rosemary said in a loud voice, her usual default setting.

“Will you girls be quiet, I won’t tell you again,” Kathy shushed them.

While Rosemary made another show of defiance Sammie seized her chance and whirled around and slipping away to the other shelf, she grabbed the book about spanking. She reasoned that she couldn’t very well borrow it openly and it would be easier enough to return; what did it matter if she didn’t actually check it out?

“If you girls can’t be quiet I’ll have to ask you to leave. I might even exclude you for a month and then I will tell your parents,” Kathy said wearily.

“What are we, kids? We are not in high school now,” Rosemary spat back.

But the others shushed her and each for their own reasons began to move away.

Just then Dhenry came in hoping to take Kathy to lunch.

“You girls causing some mayhem?” he said in his best paternal voice.

All four girls blushed; Josephine and Rosemary even fluttered their eyelashes.

“No Sir,” they giggled.

“Hi Sammie, how is your course hunting going? And anyway, shouldn’t you be at work?” Dhenry said.

“Oh eh, hi… it’s okay… I don’t work today,” Sammie stuttered.

Under his hard eyes, his smile was easy, but a slight frown touched his brow as looked them over. Maybe it was just the innocent guilt of meeting the law but all four shifted uneasily and backed away towards the door even as they continued to giggle.

One step beyond the barrier the alarm sounded.

“Hold up there,” Dhenry called over, he could see at once the look of panic that marred Sammie’s face.

The girls looked bored as they rolled their eyes up at the checkout desk; everyone but Sammie that was. She wondered if she looked as sick as she felt.

Kathy quickly searched their bags, puzzled at the lack of evidence. Then she saw Sammie’s face and the fact that Dhenry had already singled her out for attention. Oh Sammie, what have you done, she thought?

As Kathy looked in Sammie’s bag she saw at once what the issue was. She hastily swiped it with the barcode reader without removing it and then quickly stamped it.

“You must have forgotten,” she said quickly.

Dhenry leaned forward at grabbed the bag before she could close it and stole a glance. He exchanged a look with Kathy.

“Must have,” Dhenry said in a growl.

The others missed it, but Sammie wanted the ground to open up and swallow her down to hell.

“I’ll talk to you later young lady,” Dhenry said quietly.

*

Sammie didn’t quite know what to expect. The embarrassment of being caught with an erotic book was quite bad enough but her immediate emotion had been one of relief that Kathy had quietly validated it instead of causing a scene. Now that she made her way home she wondered how she was going to face them. Dhenry was the law for heaven’s sake, and she rolled up her eyes at her own stupidity, how would it have looked if she had been arrested?

Then as she got nearer the house the feeling of disconnect and an overwhelming assault of butterflies was augmented as she recalled Dhenry’s words, “I’ll talk to you later young lady.”

He couldn’t possibly mean…?

As she reached the end of the drive Dhenry’s SUV swung in off the road and went past her. She noticed he didn’t as much as look in her direction and she wondered if this was a sign that he was mad.

By the time she reached the house Dhenry was waiting on the porch with an opened beer.

“About this time I like to unwind with a brew,” he said in a casual tone, but there was an edge to his voice.

She stopped and regarded him sheepishly, maybe it was alright and he really didn’t have a problem with her.

“But then a chore crops up and sometimes the beer has to wait,” he continued as he set the bottle down on the rail where it was shady.

“I could use a beer myself,” Sammie ventured.

“Oh I bet you could, but that really is not going to happen, not in this house. Not until you are 21.” He sounded a little pissed now, she thought.

“I guess not,” she whispered.

Normally she would have told him she had plenty of beer back in LA and what was the big deal. But just then she sensed that this wasn’t time to test his resolve or the extent of the disciplinary waters.

“So, do you want to wait until Kathy comes home or do you want to get it over with?” he drawled.

She swallowed and wondered if she knew what he meant. She certainly hoped not.

“What do you mean?” It was a nervous breath.

“Are you testing me young lady? You know perfectly well what you have coming,” he growled.

“No I… please can’t we talk about this? Is this about the…” She didn’t finish as she was suddenly aware of the weight of the book in her bag and she hefted it in his direction.

“Oh we can talk about it sure enough. We can talk about theft. We can talk about deception. We can talk about stealing from family and the folks of this town. We can even talk about why on Earth you would want an unsuitable book like that in the first place. Shall I go on?”

Dhenry folded his arms and leaned back a little as if to get a good look at the woman who lived in his house.

Only she didn’t exactly feel like a woman right then. The years were escaping her even as she hopped awkwardly from foot to foot. Sixteen would be a stretch just then.

“No,” she mumbled and looked at the floor. “Look, I meant to bring it back, I just wanted to… you know, look at it.”

“And you couldn’t just take it out like a normal person?” he accused.

“I… I was embarrassed,” she admitted.

“I am not surprised. Wanted to do some research on how we handle treacherous little thieves around here did you?”

“No I… I really didn’t mean to… I was just curious and…” she fell silent.

Dhenry sighed.

“Look I know what you thought and didn’t think, mostly didn’t think would be my guess. If I thought you had any real malice then we wouldn’t be having this discussion and you would be packing your bags,” he said. “And that brings us back to my question. You want to wait or get it over with?”

“Wait…? I… I don’t…”

“Let’s make this real simple,” he said sharply. “You can go and stand on the porch where your mom put you that first day. We’ll see what Kathy thinks when she gets home.”

“Out here on the porch? I mean that’s something that we don’t usually… it was just that one time,” Sammie blustered through a crimson face. “I mean… time out is for little kids.”

“This ain’t exactly a time out,” Dhenry growled. “It’s corner time pure and simple. Now get and do as you’re told.”

Sammie swallowed and tried to gather some dignity. Then with an effort she put one foot in front of the other and walked up the porch steps. Once there she tossed the bag into the swing seat and leaned against the wall sideways on.

“If you don’t mind me young lady, I am going to paddle your rear end raw and then when Kathy gets home you’ll get a switching too.” Dhenry faced her down worse than any city tough she usually tried to avoid.

“But I…”

“Turn and face the wall as you were before. Exactly how you were before with your skinnies and panties at your ankles and be quick about it,” Dhenry rasped at her in a controlled snap just below a yell.

“Ooh,” Sammie wailed, but she was suddenly cowed and hastened to obey.

She was mortified that he could see her bare behind. And then risking a glance over her shoulder, she was even more mortified that he wasn’t even looking at her, but drinking his beer and gazing at the early evening horizon.

*

The sun was low in a fiery sky as Kathy pulled off the road and onto the drive. The white-washed house and picket fences were all bathed in a warm orange glow and draped in long shadows from the trees lining the lane that bordered the property.

As soon as she made the turn she could see Dhenry and Sammie standing on the porch, but it took a moment longer to realise that the latter was facing the wall by the swing seat next to the door. The rail obscured everything below the girl’s waist, but as Kathy stepped from the car she spied that Sammie’s denims and panties were bunched at her ankles and the girl was definitely doing corner time.

Her predicament wouldn’t be obvious from the road but she doubted that Sammie realised that or that it would be much comfort if she had.

“I thought…” Kathy murmured; she could see now that as yet Sammie had been left unspanked.

“It seems our little thief wanted to stall some, so I gave her some time to think about it,” Dhenry explained and took another swig of beer. The chill had left it, but he had tried to string it out nonetheless so as to have only the one before did what he had to do.

“Oh Dhenry, she’s not exactly a thief. I am sure she intended to return…” Kathy protested.

“Oh is that a fact?” Dhenry said sharply, “That’s not what you said when I arrested the Bormann girl last summer. She only boosted a book on witchcraft on account of her father being the preacher.”

“Yes well…” Kathy blushed.

She remembered that the girl’s father had whaled Jenny Bormann’s behind at the family barbecue and she hadn’t showed for work for three days afterwards. It had been the talk of the town.

Her father had promised her another good spanking if the judge stopped at a fine and she didn’t have to do any jail time. Jail time for a library book, Kathy sometimes wondered what went through these folk’s minds. Neither had been necessary as far as the court was concerned, but Kathy doubted that Jenny had sat down for a month afterwards.

Dhenry had later showed his own displeasure at his wife’s lack of perspective. It had helped with the guilt somewhat and she could see now why he was angry at her reticence at his stance on Sammie.

“You think what she did was acceptable?” Dhenry continued.

“No,” Kathy sighed, “You’re right I suppose, just let’s not say thief alright?”

“But you agree she has a good spanking coming?” he pressed his wife.

Kathy looked at Sammie who shifted uncomfortably where she stood. Even from behind it was obvious she was blushing to her ears.

Time stood on end for the cornered girl as she waited for Kathy’s verdict.

“Yes,” Kathy agreed, “I am pretty mad about it actually, but I guess you’re mad enough for the both of us.”

Dhenry nodded, somewhat placated.

“What do you say to that Sammie?” he asked his young cousin.

“Ooh… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…” she whined.

“You saying you don’t have a spanking coming?” Dhenry growled.

“No Sir I…”

“Turn around then,” Dhenry barked.

A shamefaced Sammie reluctantly shuffled around to face them with her head dipped and her teeth worrying her lower lip. As she did so her hands moved to cover front.

“I ought to take my belt to you or a switch,” Dhenry said softly, “But I doubt you ever had anything like you’re about to get judging from your mother’s previous efforts, so I’ll settle for the small paddle this time.”

Sammie lifted her head momentarily affronted by the aspersions cast upon her mom’s spanking abilities, but one look at Dhenry’s face sent her chin south again and she decided it might be better to reserve judgement.

It hadn’t escaped her notice that Dhenry had already acquired the paddle and she wasn’t so sure it was all that small.

“Any final words?” Dhenry asked; he included Kathy with his eyes.

“No Sir,” Sammie’s voice was on the very edge of panic.

Kathy shook her head. It was going to be strange seeing Dhenry spank another girl.

Dhenry took her by the arm and guided Sammie’s shuffling steps towards him and tumbled her gently over his lap. For Sammie this was novel, never having been spanked by a man before. His thighs were firmer than Mom’s, and where with her mother she had put up token resistance for form’s sake, here she was truly helpless and exposed across the sheriff’s knee.

The blood pumped to Sammie’s head with the increased embarrassment and pinned down as she was, she felt both lost and secure at the same time.

“So you’re interested in spanking are you, well here is a first-hand insight for you,” Dhenry growled.

At the reminder of what she had done Sammie felt vaguely sick and for a moment and for the first time in her life, it crossed her mind that she might actually deserve this.

Dhenry gave her no time to dwell on this epiphany and brought down the short hard leather paddle with a firm crack that arrested Sammie’s train of thought. Even then it took a moment for the shock to transform into a sting that pricked her behind the eyes.

The second swat built on the first and then as another blasted down as the sting mounted to an out and blaze that extracted a decided wail from the helpless Sammie.

“Omigodfuckbejeezus,” she shrieked.

“Yeah, he tends to have that effect on me too,” Kathy said ruefully as she watched Sammie’s firm young bottom cheeks go from a sharp pink to an ever deeper red.

The swats came in a regular beat now so that Sammie tried to kick back with her constrained legs and bucked up and down across Dhenry’s lap.

“Oh God, oh God, oh God, please,” Sammie shrieked in a rising crescendo.

The sting had become a real fire now and Sammie thought of skinned knees as child, only this was on her bottom. The tears overtook her suddenly and came as great chuckling sobs that rattled in her throat.

Kathy shifted against the rail and clutched at her throat. Her confused mind thrilled with concern but also she was aware of where her thighs met as she always was when a spanking arose. Despite Sammie’s distress Kathy’s eyes took in the tight domes of the girl’s bottom with the two scarlet welted pads that crowned them and wondered if her bottom ever looked like that. But she knew that it did, she had many times felt for herself the hard shocked pads of flesh that sang for shame in her tail.

The spanking lasted for a good while as Kathy knew it would and Dhenry did not let up until sometime after Sammie had begun protesting her sincere regrets.

“Now young lady are we done here?” Dhenry said after a pause.

“Yes Sir,” Sammie said frantically.

“So you’re not going to take any more books without checking them out?”

“No Sir,” she sobbed, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

“Good girl, now you can go back to the corner… the one in the house now I think,” Dhenry quickly amended as he glanced around at the gathering gloom, “You can stay there and think about what you did until I tell you to come out.”

“Yes Sir,” Sammie agreed eagerly, realising the spanking was over.

It briefly occurred to her that sometimes with Mom she had tried to resent being spanked, but today for the first time she knew it was an unworthy thought. In fact far from resentment, she actually felt cleansed and when Dhenry had said ‘good girl’ she also felt forgiven.

“Come on, I’ll show you the corner,” Kathy said gently as she took Sammie by the arm and led her shuffling into the house. Then she added ruefully, “I know it well.”

“I’m sorry Kathy, I’m sorry,” Sammie said, continuing to sob.

“I know, I know,” Kathy shushed her.

*

Sammie sat uneasily for the next few days, which was about as long as it took for her to look either of them in the eye.

“I feel such a screw up,” she finally plucked up the courage to say to Kathy. “I am really sorry I boosted that book. But I promise I would have brought it back.”

“I know kiddo, I get it. I would never have had the courage to check that book out, not at your age anyway. If Dhenry hadn’t have been there I am not sure I would have told him,” Kathy reassured her.

“I… I kind of hope you would have done, I mean… he was right to be mad at me,” Sammie said shyly.

Kathy pulled her mouth into a sympathetic line that might have passed for a smile.

“Well it’s over with now,” she shrugged.

“Yeah, you know, that’s what I like about this small town way of dealing with things. I had to go through months of ass-pain with the suits back in LA before I could even get it over with. I realise now what I put Mom through. That’s why I am glad Dhenry found out. I mean, I think I would have had it on my conscience and so would you maybe. You know, like Mom sort of, you would have had to be in it with me.”

It was the most introspection Kathy had heard coming out of Sammie’s mouth, but then a spanking often did that for a girl.

“So, did you make any great discoveries about spanking in that book?” Kathy asked to change the subject.

Sammie blushed and gave a shrug.

“I don’t really get where the punishment thing and the fun parts meet. Or don’t,” she said, averting her eyes again. “I mean I kind of get that seeing someone spanked is fun. You know I spied on you… well that was neat now that I think about it. But it was just a thing, you know. I think what Dhenry did will stay with me forever, like, you know, it means something.”

“It’s a really big deal when you know you are going to get it, isn’t it?” Kathy prompted her.

“Yeah,” Sammie said eagerly, “It’s like you matter, you know, like what you do matters, even if it is a screw up.”

“At the time it’s a sensory overload that you need more than want, even when you hate it,” Kathy suggested in a half-mumble. “But afterwards you feel…”

“All clean and forgiven,” Sammie gushed in agreement.

Kathy nodded.

“The book said something about the most erotic spankings being associated with punishment,” Sammie said with a frown, “I kind of get that now.”

“You mean you found being spanked erotic,” Kathy gaped at her.

“Noo… not exactly, but the intensity afterwards… a long, long time afterwards,” Sammie said ruefully, rubbing her bottom, “Well I kind of get it, you know. It’s crazy isn’t it?”

“I never thought about it so much, let alone talked about it,” Kathy admitted, “It’s just something that Dhenry and I do. It’s how he takes care of me. Well one of them.”

“But isn’t kissing and making-up afterwards more fun if you have been… you know?” Sammie wanted to know.

Kathy blushed, “I think that is quite enough about that,” she said tartly.

Sammie giggled and joined her in blushing.

Kathy moved towards the car to get to work but as she reached the top step she turned and said, “Oh… maybe… maybe I could borrow that book before you take it back?”

Sammie grinned and said, “Sure.”

*

It was a week later and Dhenry stood on his usual spot on the porch drinking a beer when Kathy’s car made the turn at the end of the drive. He could tell at once that there was something wrong. The engine noise was off and as it drew near he could see off-side fender and headlamp were a mess.

“You okay honey,” he called over, concern carved into his face.

Sammie jumped up from the swing seat and ran over for a closer look.

“Man, what happened?” she gasped.

Kathy sat grimly behind the wheel and chewed at her lower lip.

“Kathy?” Dhenry put down his beer and crossed the yard with heightened concern.

“I’m okay,” Kathy said, opening the door. “It’s just the car.”

“I can see that, what happened?” Dhenry sighed. “You know we only had it fixed three months back.”

“I know, I know,” Kathy said irritably.

Dhenry bent his head to kiss her when he smelt the mints on her breath.

“Someone’s birthday?” he threw the curveball.

“Elaine’s having a kid,” Sammie said without thinking, “Why…? How did you…?”

“You stopped off at the Dewdrop for a beer.” It wasn’t a question. Then seeing that she blanched, he added, “Two or three maybe?”

“Two,” Kathy whispered.

“Is that when you hit something?”

“Atkinson’s car,” It was terse statement of fact. “Hell the old man wasn’t…”

“Wasn’t what, drinking?”

“He was just going in for one,” Kathy mumbled.

“Did Helen or Bart or anyone deal with it at the scene?” Dhenry asked in a professional voice.

“I wasn’t drunk, Helen agreed. Old man Atkinson was fine about it, he said…” Kathy’s voice tailed off; Dhenry was giving her the look.

“One beer might have been fine, if you hadn’t of been sucking mints, which is a kind of lie,” Dhenry growled, “But two, if it was only two, and wrecking the car…”

“I didn’t wreck it, it’s…”

Dhenry silenced her with a scowl.

“I’m in trouble aren’t I?” Kathy winced.

“Big trouble little lady,” he growled.

“Ouch,” Kathy squeaked and pulled a rue-filled face.

“I wait until I am home before I have a drink,” he said sharply.

“Yes Sir,” she conceded with a blush.

She was well aware Sammie was just there within earshot and shifted uneasily.

Sammie smirked on hearing Kathy use the s-word and with a snigger she moved quietly away to a safe distance lest she be completely dismissed.

“You know how I had Sammie the other day,” Dhenry said icily.

Kathy gaped.

“Not out here… someone…”

“You remember last time when I sent you off to the woods for a switch all naked below the waist?”

“I had more than two that time,” Kathy wailed.

“That’s why I am letting you off easily,” he scolded, “If you mind me now that is.”

He pointed at the porch without taking his eyes off her.

“Ooh,” Kathy stamped her foot offered him a lemon-sucking face, but marched off obediently nonetheless.

Once on the porch she shiftily looked all around, especially towards the road, before working the zipper on her skirt and stepping out of it. Then with one more angry and defiant look, she shucked down her panties and turned to face the wall. There were no neighbours to see and the view from the road was obscured, so unless anyone came right up to the house it was private enough from outsiders. Kathy darted a sideways look at Sammie sitting nearby. Still she felt embarrassingly exposed.

Sammie swallowed a smile and drew her legs up into a hug as she sat on the swing seat just a few feet away.

“Having fun,” Kathy hissed at the girl without turning her head from the wall.

“Oh, the most,” Sammie giggled.

*

Dhenry let his wife stew for a good while until he had finished his slow beer. The fact that Sammie was drinking it all in would serve as an added lesson to Kathy. She knew better than to drink and drive, for safety’s sake at the very least. Never mind how it looked to the town that the Sherriff’s wife and head librarian was so feckless.

He glanced at Kathy who stood nervously swaying with her nose pressed to the white-washed wall and let his eye wander down the elegant curve of her tightly split behind. Something twitched in his pants and he had to shake himself for focus.

“All right honey let’s get this over with,” he drawled, seeing her start.

Dhenry eyed Sammie and gave her warning look, which caused his cousin to blush. But then she garnered his meaning and leapt out of the swing seat to retreat down the porch some.

The broad-shouldered ‘cowboy’ cop dropped into her vacated place and drew his wife to him as he did so.

“Now, are you going to tell me you don’t have this coming?” Dhenry said in a low voice as he smoothed Kathy’s bare bottom with his hand.

“No Sir,” Kathy lisped; her eyes wide and blinking rapidly.

Dhenry reached down for the medium wooden paddle that he had earlier put under the seat and placed it next to him. Kathy tried to look back over her shoulder at the sound of wood scraping on wood and gulped.

But for now her husband had other plans. Before she knew what was happening, his great open paw swatted down like an angry bear and she gaped like hunted fish with the impact.

“Just a little hand spanking to set the tone,” he growled.

Kathy had no breath for protests and squirmed under the rapid volley that followed.

Then she found her voice, “Oh, ahh, Dhenry, please…”

At the other end of the porch Sammie pressed both knuckles to her mouth as she watched Kathy’s bottom quickly turn deep red.

“Hush baby, you know you got this coming,” he said sharply.

Kathy bucked as she crossed and re-crossed her ankles under the onslaught, but Dhenry took his time and the hand-spanking lasted a good 15 minutes before he was done.

When it was over a moist-eyed Kathy lay panting across his lap, all fight gone from her body.

“Now you know we aren’t done, don’t you honey?” Dhenry murmured and picked up the paddle.

Kathy didn’t reply, at least it wasn’t the heavy paddle or something worse, she thought as she braced herself. He could so easily have made a sharper point given what she had done.

The paddle was some 16 inches long and fitted easily in Dhenry’s hand. It wasn’t too thick, but had finger-sized holes drilled in the striking surface like her old sorority bat.

“I don’t think you’ll be sitting for a spell by the time I am done,” he said sternly.

Nor do I, thought a rueful Kathy.

This time the bear had claws and the paddle swat had real bite.

Kathy met the challenge with a jaw-clenching grimace. Her red bottom was suddenly invaded by a shocked white rectangle with angry puce holes. But it didn’t stay white for long and the oblong rapidly filled with yet more red.

The second swat, not quite matching the first, welted along one edge and Kathy gave an angry wail. From then on at one swat every few seconds she had to contend with a growing fire that soon had tears spilling form her eyes.

This spanking was shorter than the first, but throughout Kathy bucked and squirmed on Dhenry’s lap until finally she broke down sobbing.

Dhenry shot a glance at the still enthralled Sammie and jerked his head towards the door. Sammie took the hint and crept away.

“Oh baby, I’m sorry,” Kathy sobbed as she crawled up into his arms.

Dhenry kissed her forehead and then rocked her gently to let her cry herself out. As she wept he traced the extensive welting on her bottom with his fingers, drawing hisses and sighs from her as he did so. She was one well-spanked girl, he decided.

Nevertheless, he was still mad with Kathy and all further reconciliation had to wait until they were both safely in bed. As was brought home to her when she tried to suggest she escape to the kitchen.

“Shall I make supper,” she ventured once she had stopped crying.

“Oh no my pretty one, you can go into the house and find your usual corner just as you are. You don’t get off that easily,” Dhenry rumbled like a bear.

Kathy gaped at him, “But Sammie…”

“I really don’t care,” Dhenry intoned, folding his arms against further discussion.

As Kathy took her place inside for a long stint of corner time, Sammie offered to make some food, but Dhenry wouldn’t hear of it.

“I don’t see why you should be put out just because Kathy got herself a spanking. I’ll order pizza,” he said.

“Ooh,” Kathy wailed from the corner.

She bobbed up and down at the knees in frustration until Sammie thought she might burst.

“You know the rules my love,” Dhenry scolded.

“But…”

“We won’t let the pizza boy see, not if you’re a good girl,” he said with a wicked smile.

Sammie giggled at the idea of Kathy being so exposed.

“Can’t I at least move over to the other corner?” Kathy pleaded.

Dhenry appeared to consider this and Kathy stole a hopeful glance at him over her shoulder while he pondered.

“No,” he said at last, “I don’t think so.”

“Oooh,” Kathy wailed again in frustration. Something told her it was going to be a long night.

*

“So now you know,” Kathy said sheepishly as she took the last item out of the back of the wardrobe.

Sammie stood bug-eyed at the array of paddles, straps and canes laid out on the bed.

Kathy sat carefully on the bed to ready herself for deluge of questions, her bottom flaring a little after her encounter of a few days before.

“There are quite a lot of… has he… have you… felt all of these?” Sammie asked in an incredulous voice.

“Most,” Kathy answered tentatively, “The cane is… a challenge and I have never felt the big one. It’s English I think. Dhenry prefers a good old American switch.”

“What about this one?” Sammie gasped as she seized a large thin-bladed paddle.

“Uh-huh,” Kathy answered in the affirmative. “It stings more than bruises. My old sorority paddle is much worse.”

She pointed at a slightly larger version of the one Dhenry had used on her three days before.

“I felt that a few times at college, my sorority took discipline seriously back then.”

“Back then? You make sound like the Stone Age, you were only there what? Eight years ago,” Sammie pointed out.

“Oh, don’t remind me,” Kathy winced as reached back to her behind. “It bruises like the devil.”

“Speaking of which, how is your…?” Sammie murmured.

“Still blistered and bruised thank you very much,” Kathy said crisply, “Well still sore anyway.”

“Do you always have to stand in the corner like that? I mean for so long?” Sammie’s brow furrowed with something like concern.

“More or less,” Kathy admitted with a blush.

“With your eh… bottom left bare like that?”

“Uh-huh,” Kathy winced.

“When that pizza boy came I thought you were going to die,” Sammie gasped, reliving her disbelief.

“He didn’t see did he?” Kathy asked in a panicked voice.

“No, no Dhenry was careful,” Sammie reassured her.

“Not that Dhenry hasn’t threatened,” Kathy sighed with relief, “And drink driving is something that might earn it.”

“Then I for one am going to stick to Coke,” Sammie rolled her eyes.

Kathy laughed.

“Hey, let’s see that book,” she said suddenly, “I showed you mine after all.”

Excitedly both women scrambled for the book on the chair and began giggling over its contents.

*

It had threatened to rain all day and then with just hours to go until sunset the sky had cleared to bathe Main Street in a warm orange light.

“Typical,” Sammie’s boss said as he left, “Still maybe I can get out into the yard for a spell. Need a ride home?”

“No thanks,” Sammie smiled, “Kathy is picking me up in a minute.”

As she spoke Kathy pulled around the corner and slowed to a stop.

“Well okay,” he said with a cheery wave.

“Hi Sammie,” Kathy smiled at her from the car. “You don’t mind if we call in at the Sherriff’s Office first, I have to drop something off for Dhenry.”

“Hey, a real life cop-shop, I haven’t been there yet, it might be cool,” Sammie replied as she dropped in beside Kathy.

“If you say so,” Kathy snorted, “We won’t be a minute.”

Sammie picked up a sack of books off the back seat and began to turn over the covers one by one.

“Nothing about your current obsession there, sorry,” Kathy said with a wink.

Sammie blushed. It had been two weeks since the spanking incident and with Kathy’s collusion, she had checked out the library for any other books to clue her in about spanking and domestic punishment. There hadn’t been a great deal. The Story of O was too hands off for Sammie’s tastes and the Marquis De Sade was too much and rather gross in places.

Kathy had pointed her in the direction of the used paperbacks that were for sale at 50 cents each. There had been a couple of Danielle Steels that were better than nothing and some other pre-PC romances. Then Kathy had nudged her towards the sci-fi section and to some authors such as John Norman and Sharon Green.

The books were all very dog-eared with lurid drawings of scantily clad women on the covers. Both authors had been very coy about actual spanking scenes, but the scenarios were more to her taste than O.

Sammie might have plucked up some courage and asked for some more tips but the car pulled up outside the station house, a small modern building behind Main Street. There was only one police vehicle in the parking lot and it looked as if it was primarily for off-road pursuit or major emergencies.

“Coming?” Kathy asked as she got out.

Sammie shrugged and reluctantly followed. Now that she was here the police HQ brought back some unpleasant memories for her. But Kathy seemed right at home and just pushed on through the large glass doors in front.

Jolene Bates was the only staffer in the building as they entered and she was on the phone.

“Just wait in there,” she mouthed with a nod towards Dhenry’s office.

Kathy nodded and smiled.

“Pretty small,” Sammie sniffed.

“Like I said before, there are only four deputies stationed here. The State troopers take care of the highway and we don’t get much trouble in town,” Kathy explained.

Sammie ran her finger along the shelves and looked about at crime posters and one that said in big letters; “Get Your License.”

Then she saw some files on the desk with names of people here in town that she recognised.

“Hey look at these,” she exclaimed.

“Oh I don’t think you should…” Kathy began but then her eye fell upon an entry, “Oh my God, she never did… I can’t believe it.”

“What?” Sammie said excitedly, “Oh shit, that’s the preacher’s wife.”

Both women clapped their hands to their mouths and squealed in disbelief.

“What else does it say?” Sammie said eagerly.

Kathy picked up another file and began flicking through some pages.

“Tom Willover hasn’t paid his fire arms licence… oh and,” she snorted disapprovingly.

“No about the preacher’s wife,” Sammie said eagerly.

Just then they heard Dhenry’s voice out front and Kathy snapped the files closed.

“Leave them,” she hissed.

Sammie realised that the files were confidential but she wanted to know more about the preacher’s wife. So once Kathy had left the room, Sammie snatched up the file and began to nose through it.

The voices in the outer room sounded far away so Sammie just skipped to the page on the preacher and his family.

“What in hell do you think you are doing?”

Sammie whirled around with a start to be confronted by an angry Dhenry in the doorway.

“I was just…” Sammie blanched.

“Don’t you know they are not for your eyes?” his anger was contained but more than a little apparent.

“I guess,” Sammie squeaked.

“I ought to run your ass into jail,” he barked.

Sammie felt sick. This was LA all over again. Her mother was going to kill her.

“Wait until I get you home.” Dhenry’s voice had an undertone of menace.

“Yes Sir,” Sammie squeaked as she shot a glance at the cells at the back of the office.

But Dhenry took her by the arm and led her firmly from the building with a flustered Kathy in tow.

*

Sammie knew she was going to get a spanking. Or hoped she was in as much as it was a preferable alternative to being packed off back to LA. Not that either choice filled her with much joy as she gulped back bucketful’s of apprehension.

Neither did she glean much comfort from the setting of her dressing down. The porch was too near the road out of town for her liking and as a location for another spanking it positively sucked.

“What in the Devil’s name do you think you were doing?” Dhenry said in a hard-edged voice she could imagine he usually reserved for suspects.

“I was just curious,” Sammie offered weakly, it was lame and she knew it.

“Yeah, I am getting that, like you were just curious before when you stole that book,” Dhenry said dryly.

“You’re not going to send me back to LA are you?” she was close to tears.

“Oh, I’ll give you something to cry about,” he barked, but added in a sigh, “No I am not sending you home.”

“Dhenry…” Kathy interrupted.

“You know she’s has this coming,” he said impatiently.

“Well yes but…”

“There are no buts about this. This one could cost me my job,” Dhenry had never sounded so disappointed.

Tears really did pool at Sammie’s eyes at the words.

“Dhenry, please it’s not that bad, Jolene won’t say anything, but listen…” Kathy sounded as if she was reasoning with a bear.

“Kathy I know you think I am too hard on the girl, but that is hardly the point,” he said wearily.

“I know but it wasn’t her fault,” Kathy let the words out slowly.

Dhenry whirled on her to refute her claim but something in her eyes told him he was missing something.

“I… I kind of looked too, Sammie was just…” Kathy leaked the words to Dhenry like water to a dying man in a desert.

Sammie felt sick, like the time she had frozen back in LA instead of calling the cops. It couldn’t happen again. If only she had listened to Kathy when she said to drop it? But she just had to know, hadn’t she?

“She said not to, I was just curious,” Sammie blurted.

“Was that before or after Kathy looked too?” Dhenry said in a low voice, not taking his eyes from his wife.

Kathy sucked in her cheeks and coloured so that the truth was written on her face.

“It was my fault, you caught me,” Sammie said in a pleading voice.

“I caught you, but not her, is that it?” Dhenry sighed, his eyes still fixed on his wife who would not meet his eyes.

Kathy nodded.

Sammie winced. The gig was up and nothing could save either of them now.

“It was my fault,” Kathy said dejectedly, “I set her a bad example.”

“So it would seem,” Dhenry groaned. “Well you can both forget what you read. If one word of it leaks out I’ll know who to blame. I’ll take the skin of both your ‘hinies and neither of you will sit down for a month.

“Yes Sir,” they both chirruped in unison.

“Now guess what comes next?” Dhenry drawled.

“Where do you want us?” Kathy said glumly.

“I want you both out there in the woods cutting switches,” Dhenry told them.

Kathy didn’t look surprised and Sammie just looked at her shoes.

“Before you do that, you can both leave your denims and panties on the rail here,” Dhenry said wearily.

Kathy nodded, but Sammie gaped.

“The woods over there by the public highway?” she wailed, not quite believing it.

Kathy pursed her lips and nodded on Dhenry’s behalf.

“And when you get back you can both face the wall out here until I am ready for you,” he added.

“Yes Sir,” Kathy said in a tight voice.

“Ooh, this is…” Sammie moaned.

“Deserved,” Kathy finished for her.

“I guess,” Sammie said ruefully, adding in a put out voice, “But LA was never like this, let me tell you.”

“I bet it’s not,” Kathy said grimly as she began to shuck down her denims.

*

Sammie and Kathy didn’t have long to wait. Once they were denuded below the waist Dhenry handed a pair of clippers to his wife and told her what he expected.

“We can’t just go and… not like this,” Sammie wailed as she stood at a crouch tugging her sweater down in front.

Kathy was less coy, but it wasn’t her husband seeing her that concerned her. She looked at Dhenry’s impassive face and then at the woods on the other side of the main road. As she watched a car went by at a lick, although with no sign that the driver even saw them. But still it was barely 80 yards off and they had to cross the road.

“Come on, let’s be quick about it before another car comes by,” Kathy said in a determined voice.

Right on cue another vehicle came by, this time slower so that the driver might have seen had he glanced in their direction.

“Don’t go far,” Dhenry warned.

Kathy steeled herself and then keeping the shrubs on their drive hard to her left she made for the road. Sammie chose to back away until Dhenry turned away to grab a beer and then she scurried after Kathy mooning the house in the rays of dying sun.

One more car sped by before they hit the road and Sammie could see a sullen-faced kid looking their way in back. But he showed no sign of noticing their lack of lower attire and in any case the car was gone in a moment.

“Come on,” Kathy yelled in an excited voice, “Before another comes.”

Then like two college girls skinny dipping they shrieked in a parody of joy and scurried across the road to the relative safety of the trees on the other side.

“Maybe it will be dark by the time we have to cross back,” Sammie said hopefully as she struggled for breath.

“Dhenry will want us back long before then and I really don’t want to make him any madder than he already is,” Kathy said glumly.

“This is crazy, what if someone sees us,” Sammie said excitedly, “I bet no one else ever had to this.”

“I have never been caught, not since I was your age anyway” Kathy replied, but she was smirking, “But last summer Dhenry and I were out walking around here and we saw your friend Josephine out here in much the same state as we are now and I am pretty sure she was collecting a switch.”

Despite their predicament Sammie smiled.

“She ducked away before we had a good look, but it was her right enough. I can’t think of any other reason she would be out here mooning the world.”

“A local custom then?” Sammie replied, feeling a little better.

“It was certainly how I was brought up, well once I reached senior high and beyond anyway. Nothing like it for putting a college-aged girl in her place,” Kathy said ruefully. “Also I am pretty sure I am not the only spanked wife around here, although I am not sure how many go bare-assed into the words to cut switches.”

“If my friends back in LA could see me know I would die,” Sammie grimaced.

“Screw your friends in LA, what about that little madam Rosemary?” Kathy pulled a face.

“Oh don’t,” Sammie groaned.

“Come on, here’s the right sort of tree here,” Kathy sighed; she should know she had been cutting switches like this for half her life.

Getting back across the road was another trial and at least 10 cars went by before Kathy urged them to run.

Sammie was still puzzling as to why they needed three switches each when Kathy broke ahead, her white bottom bobbing in the growing reddish the last of the evening light like a foretaste of what was to come.

The sound of another car was the only spur she needed to catch-up and by the time she breathlessly reached the porch she had never been so glad to be home.

Home? She mused. I am about to get my behind whipped and I think of this as home now.

“Right you two,” Dhenry broke into her reverie, “Get your tails up here and face this wall.”

God, I hope we don’t get visitors, Sammie groaned inwardly as she put her bare bottom next to Kathy’s so that it faced outwards towards the drive.

*

Kathy had no idea how long they had stood there. At some point the porch lights had come on, which banished the shadows and made her feel even more exposed. The only sound apart from the occasional passing car and creak of floors as Sammie shifted a little where she stood was when Dhenry stood up to open another bottle of beer.

That was always the worst moment as Kathy was sure it was about to begin, but then she heard the click of a bottle top and the heightened tension was dashed.

So when Dhenry finally spoke it was a shock.

“I’ve selected the best switch for each of you, come and take one and return to the wall with it held under your bare bottoms,” he said sharply.

Kathy’s heart lurched, but again the imminent threat receded. She knew this stance and it was usually one that Dhenry employed at the outset of corner time before a switching. So God alone knew how long this was going to take, she groaned inwardly.

Both of them dutifully turned and grabbed a switch from the rail. Kathy swallowed and immediately turned back with the switch pressed exactly to the under curves of her bottom.

For Sammie it was harder and she didn’t know the drill. So watching Kathy with wide eyes she blushed at the intimate gesture before copying it.

“Feel that,” he said once they had both obeyed him.

“Yes Sir,” Kathy said in a thick voice; echoed by Sammie a beat behind.

“Feel where it caresses your bare behinds and imagine what it will feel like with some force behind it,” he rasped.

Sammie gulped and a pulse in her head began to beat.

Kathy wondered how long he was going to draw it out.

“Have you any idea how damaging to everyone concerned your actions might have been?” Dhenry growled.

“Yes Sir,” they both breathed in unison, as if a louder voice would shatter the world.

“Do you?” Dhenry raised his voice so that they both started.

“I’m sorry,” Kathy wailed, “We’re both sorry.”

Sammie nodded frantically, desperately fixing her eyes on a spot on the wall as if to break her gaze with the one she had chosen was to die.

“Let us see how sorry,” Dhenry sighed. “Sammie turn around and bend over the rail.”

Sammie moved hesitantly, but the exposure of her front side encouraged her to obey quickly. As she did so Dhenry took the switch and then waited until Sammie got into position with her bare bottom jutting out towards him.

At that moment another car went by and Sammie wondered if anyone could see her and her shame, just as the preacher’s secrets were exposed by her snooping. In that moment it seemed only fair somehow.

“Bottom back a little more,” Dhenry instructed.

The indignity irked her as much as anything, but Sammie had no option but to obey. Then she again felt the switch as Dhenry tapped her bottom with it to line up for a stroke.

The sound began as a whisper and long way off, followed by zip that landed across both cheeks of her tail at once. For the longest moment Sammie could barely connect the sound with the sudden needle thin line of pain she felt in her bottom. Then the connection filled her mind and she grunted with surprise.

She tumbled forward but her fall was arrested by the rail that pressed to her lower belly and she bounced back in time to meet the next stroke.

The whisk-whip of the switch came thin and fast then and as the pain grew exponentially she went form a wail to a series of shouted yelps.

“Oh God, oh God, oh God,” she strained to scream.

Forever after she would look fondly on a mere spanking.

As the switching progressed Sammie dipped at the knees as she bobbed and bounced at the rail in time to the slices of pain handed out by Dhenry.

Kathy had not seen a switching close up for years and with Dhenry focused on Sammie she risked a peek over her shoulder at Sammie’s punishment.

The girl’s bottom looked huge as it was displayed; two red rounds lined with purple scores that raked her bottom in ever greater rills. Each mark would be hell to touch for days to come and the thought of panties against them was just a hint of the terror that sitting down would promise for a week or more. Kathy knew this from long bitter experience.

“I’ll be good, I’ll be good,” Sammie wailed, “Please, oh please, I’ll never be bad again.”

Cured then, Kathy thought ruefully, just like I will be for about a month. Then I’ll forget. I always forget and Dhenry will remind me.

Sammie was a sobbing wreck by the time Dhenry let her stand to face the wall again. Now it’s my turn, Kathy quailed.

The cold wood of the rail came lower down atop of Kathy’s thighs compared to Sammie. This gave her a greater sense that she might fall over forward. But the Dhenry had her edge backwards and push her bottom out behind so that she was fully exposed and had a good purchase on the porch crosspiece.

“I am so mad with you,” Dhenry whispered.

“I know,” Kathy said the tears welling, “I’m so sorry honey.”

Then she had to brace herself with a teeth-creaking grimace as the switch burned a track across her flesh. As ever, the pain went from bad to impossible within five or six swipes and Kathy quickly went form rapid breathing to a continuous wail.

“Oh shit, shit, shit… aieee,” she screamed through her teeth.

No doubt her banshee wail could have been heard from town.

*

I don’t suppose either of you wants to sit down,” Dhenry said mischievously.

“No Sir,” they both said quickly.

“Then you had better stay in your respective corners while I order some pizza,” he chuckled.

Kathy was grateful to be cornered inside and was under no illusions that she would escape before bed time. And although Sammie was still gently crying, Kathy could tell from Dhenry’s tone that they had both been forgiven.

Pizza did sound like a threat though and given the serious of her crime, it was not above Dhenry to invite the boy in when he came while he pretended to search for some money. Not that it had happened since she had been in college, but still… she just melted to a blush just considering it.

“You okay kid?” Kathy whispered to Sammie.

She hadn’t stopped crying and it had been a hard gig.

“Yes ma’am,” Sammie said sorrowfully.

“I think ma’aming me now is kind of redundant,” Kathy laughed.

Sammie glanced over and saw just how welted Kathy’s bottom was. It looked as sore as Sammie’s felt.

“I guess so,” Sammie smiled through her tears. “But I feel so sorry right now that I’ll be all Sir and ma’am for a month I wouldn’t wonder.”

“Oh yes,” Kathy said in a clipped voice, “I know exactly how you feel.”

“If you two don’t stop yattering I have a paddle with both your names on,” Dhenry growled a warning.

“Yes Sir,” they both squeaked.

As Sammie got her bearings and began to mind being in the corner she started to look forward to bed and a cold flannel where it would do the most good. She might even re-read the Warrior Within, I might as well use my experience creatively, she decided.

Meanwhile Kathy contemplated other diversions, albeit ones that could only be enjoyed face down on her knees and only then very carefully. But then making up was the best part of a marriage like hers.

The doorbell startled them both and promised just one more sting in the tail.

Please, please, please don’t let him come in both Kathy and Sammie prayed together. I have seen enough of this lifestyle for one day, the younger of the two thought ruefully. One more witness was now surplus to requirements.

The End

LSF have published another novella by yours truly. This time it is the socio-religious exploration of an alternative Earth where college girls have guardians and questioning the faith or the mysterious origins of their society can be seriously dangerous for a young girl’s bottom.

The publishers blurb has it:

Chelsea and Candida are lying in the sunshine trying to study the complex history of their country, Americana. They read about banned books and the World Beyond – a world which inspired their civilisation. Their own land is one that has a strict religious fraternity, based on the teachings of the Holy Church of Day and Night.

In this land, corporal punishment is the norm. Every infraction is punished, no matter how trivial – as Chelsea discovers when she arrives 45 minutes late for dinner. The girls are routinely punished whilst wearing the traditional garb of the penitent’s dress – demure at the front and cut out at the back! Even marriage ceremonies involve spankings in this land.

You can get it here.

Our story began here.

War Child
“I don’t care what that woman’s argument with me is, she has no right involving Katrin,” Fear raged as he swept into Amber’s cave. “What I want to know, is she the demonic traitor or not?”

Amber swallowed hard, since his encounter with the demon the Black magus had been acting emotionally, erratic even.

“Well if she has been… seduced by Praelium or Inlecebra for that matter, then she is not strictly speaking herself,” Amber countered.

“You think Tugaal could be at work here too,” Fear’s heart skipped at the mention of his arch-nemesis other name.

“No,” Amber said hesitantly, “I don’t think so. This has all the hallmarks of the Worm not the Raven. You see… oh the gods.”

Amber hated taking a lead in such matters and so far her research had been inconclusive. She had hoped that Lucy Greystoke would have got back to her with more of her own findings, but to date Amber had been on her own.

“Speak,” Fear said, as he struggled to rein in his anger.

“Praelium,” she lowered her voice as if speaking its name would summon it, “Can I just call it or more correctly her, for this creature described using the feminine in both the arcane and classic tongues, or better yet can I call her the Worm?”

“You speak of Praelium?” Fear said boldly as if daring the creature to appear, “Call it what you will.”

“It seems that Worm burrows into the soul of the corrupted and utterly enslaves them. As with the snakes and worms of legend, this creature has many heads, all aspects of the same demon,” Amber explained.

“You are saying that there may be more than one traitor?” Fear pressed her.

“In essence yes, although not necessarily more than one here at Pandoria. The Worm, or so the old stories tell us, finds a victim close to the ones or places it wishes to corrupt and then having done so moves on,” Amber continued.

“So if we follow Demdike’s prophecy… then this worm-woman creature may have first manifested itself in Challis and then spread to other courts and key positions like Pandoria?” Fear said thoughtfully.

“That would be my guess,” Amber agreed.

“So if it has taken Maxine… well we can kiss goodbye to the fleet… but others too maybe infected,” Fear sighed.

“I am afraid so,” Amber said through gritted teeth.

“You say the creature is female? Does it target women then?” Fear asked. “That would certainly explain Maxine.”

“To be honest, I know only that the feminine form in the old tongues is used when describing it. But given that the demon is born of Wild Magic, the area of magic most associated with women, then…” Amber shrugged.

“I see, then why not witches? I mean why doesn’t it target witches?” Fear asked.

Amber frowned and thought for a minute.

“Perhaps it has… although maybe witches and other Wild magic practitioners are in fact less vulnerable because they recognise the danger,” Amber suggested, “In any case, how many witches do you know are close to positions of power and influence?”

“This is getting us nowhere,” Fear groaned. “Isn’t there anything we can do?”

“To identify compromised persons you mean?” Amber asked him seriously.

“Yes,” Fear said urgently.

Amber ran her fingers through her hair and gave a heavy sigh. There was a way that just might render some results, she thought, but Fear was not going to like it.

*

Rachel Dvanjester stood nervously outside the Scroll Keeper’s office. The fact that the Grand Magus had denied a request from the Magister to convene a full hearing to assess her case was at least encouraging. Nevertheless, Sejanus Jacelon was a mean old bastard of the old school and taking up the slack he had referred her situation to lesser court of her peers.

Rachel, having made a full confession, had laid herself open to charges relating to failing to report her suspicions about Maxine sooner and eavesdropping on a meeting in the Grand Magus’ office, which in the heat of the moments she had confessed to. Frankly, she thought, it was only this that was unambiguously wrong, the rest was rather circumstantial. How was she to know there was a serious traitor in their midst until Tabitha told her about the rumours?

In fact it wasn’t until Maestro William Tulore had pointed out collaboration with a traitor in wartime was a serious matter, that Rachel had realised the extent of the trouble she was in.

“Come now,” Lucy had spoken up, “That is going too far.”

“She is a student for the god’s sake and as an apprentice she was in an impossible position,” Dr Fear had interjected. “It is Maxine who deserves our ire.”

“Technically we are not at war anyway and in this case Arlon has a point,” Davidus had said.

The debate had lost its force quickly after that and that was how she came to be outside the Scroll Keeper’s office waiting to be seen by… she heaved a sigh. She didn’t even know that.

The worst part was the waiting. Minute by minute her confidence deserted her and a speech rehearsed and polished in her head quickly sounded feeble and irrelevant until she had scrapped it and reviewed the matter over and over in her mind.

Then as with all such things the door suddenly opened unexpectedly.

“You are Dvanjester.” The young man at the door was dressed all in black and carried himself like a senior journeyman. “Your presence is required.”

The knot in Rachel’s tummy made her feel sick and she had feeling as if she was out of time and place and that it was someone else going to the gallows. She felt like a passenger in her own body.

She followed the man into the room and saw that the Scroll Keeper was already there sitting off to one side of the room. Her eyes were drawn to a row of faces sitting behind a long table.

There were four men and a woman all journeymen except for the man in the centre who Rachel recognised as one of William Tulore’s adepts. No doubt he was the chair of this disciplinary panel.

He was somewhat older than all but one of the others and he wore dark burgundy robes that signified he was a fire adept.

The woman wore white a robe that matched her pale blonder hair. It made her look noble somehow, like the personification of justice. Rachel offered her a small smile, but the woman was stony faced.

Also on the panel was a ruddy-faced youth with bad ache in a brown robe, a boy about Rachel’s age in blue like hers and a rather serious looking much older man with salt and pepper hair dressed in mustard robes. He looked far too old to be a student, but many such people populated Pandoria as teaching assistants. Also he may have received his calling late Rachel pondered.

The young man who had fetched her in moved off to sit next to the Scroll Keeper.

“You are Rachel Dvanjester?” the adept intoned.

“Yes, yes Sir,” Rachel said in a strained voice.

“We have been convened as a disciplinary board,” he said, “As you can see Sejanus Jacelon is present but he is merely an adviser and an observer here. It is we who will decide your… punishment.”

The white-blonde woman on the panel coughed.

“If punishment is warranted,” the adept quickly amended.

“Yes Sir,” Rachel said nervously.

“You need not know our names at this point,” the adept told her, “Know only that we have been chosen to hear your case.”

*

Katrin looked like a flour-drenched shadow as she sat in the corner. Her hair was tied back to reveal her face, which although still beautiful, looked drained and haunted.

“Are you sure… I mean if you are not ready for…” Fear said anxiously.

“No, I want to do it,” Katrin said urgently, although her voice sounded strained and husky.

“Are you sure?” Amber asked, concern was etched on her face, “These rituals are quite… challenging.”

Katrin’s eyes darted around the room as if she was expecting something to leap out of the shadows at her. Only Fear’s presence gave her any comfort, and that was scant enough.

“Oh, I’m sure,” she croaked.

“You have to understand that our only real connection to the demon is you. You may be able to give us an insight into the beast that attacked you or… well since it is also connected to the other one…” Amber sighed, “I really don’t know what will happen, but anything we can learn about that Triptych is…”

Useful, helpful, damning… any of these could apply or none. Amber was beginning to wish that she had not started this.

“What do we need to do?” Fear asked, seeing her doubt.

“I would like to involve Meredith and perhaps Erin and Tabitha,” Amber said lightly as if she expected Fear to object.

But the Black Mage only nodded.

“Where do we start?” Fear asked.

“Given our last encounter, I would like to start outside and well away from the buildings or anyone else,” Amber suggested.

“That makes sense,” Fear agreed, “Gather who and what you need. I will talk to Davidus and get his permission. He may want to put additional… arrangements in place.”

“There is a mountain clearing well beyond High Point,” Amber said.

“I know it, is that where we will meet?” Fear nodded.

Amber let out a long sigh and said, “Yes.”

*

Rachel had put up no defence and had thrown herself on the board’s mercy. What had followed had been a terrifying round of hard glances and muttered huddles. The words detention, suspension, demotion and expulsion had been bandied around in excited whispers.

“Expulsion is beyond your remit,” Sejanus had interjected at one point.

It had been the only bright spot in the proceedings.

A short while later Rachel noticed the woman in white and the adept-chair with their heads together whispering.

“I think given Rachel Dvanjester’s obvious contrition and the prevailing situation, suspension and other such sanctions will only serve to distract resources and see this affair drawn out. In any case, no charges have been brought against Maxine Du Jared as yet and it would not serve justice shift too much blame here,” the adept said bringing the panel to some order. “The only clear transgression is being out of bounds and spying on the Magister in conference. A relatively minor offence I would opine. So letting all other matters fall… after being noted of course, I suggest we proceed to a traditional Dovecote solution to resolve this quickly.”

The female journeyman on the panel sat back and chewed thoughtfully on the inside of her cheek. She knew what was coming although from the small eruption of muttering from the men, they did not.

“What have you decided?” Sejanus asked in a matter-of-fact tone.

Next to him the black-robed journeyman who had first admitted Rachel sat scribbling furiously as he took minutes.

“I suggest that here and now, Rachel Dvanjester receive a corporal sanction on her person,” the adept-chair announced.

Rachel swallowed. Part of her had feared as much and she had harboured visions of being sent to Dniester. This might turn out being worse she thought.

“You mean…?” the spotty youth put in.

“How would we do it?” said the older journeyman.

“We should fetch a whipping stool and then have her disrobe,” the woman told them. “I suggest we use a senior grade paddle.”

“I don’t know where we can get such a thing or a stool for that matter,” the young man in the blue robes said.

“Oh I do,” the woman told him.

*
Rachel stood facing the wall dressed only in her shift. She had been ordered to place her hands on her head, an act that serve to raise the short hem of her linen undershirt and expose the lower curves of her bare bottom to the people in the room.

Luckily Sejanus had absented himself before she had been required to disrobe, but as she had complied with that instruction she had exchanged a mortified glance with the spotty youth who was wide-eyed and gaping at the slowly denuded beauty before him.

With her back turned Rachel felt exposed and very definitely on view. From the conversation that ran back and forth between the members of the panel Rachel learned that the woman in white had until recently been a monitor in another part of the Dovecote. If Rachel was right, then this must be Sarah Sojourn, the talented air magic student who had a reputation as being a harsh disciplinarian with the novices and initiates in her charge. They had never met as such, but they had been contemporary monitor’s together Rachel realised.

After a while she heard two men puffing and panting as they dragged something into the room. The whipping stool, Rachel surmised. A guess confirmed by the final scrape on the floor and someone muttering, “Put the paddle on top for now.”

“Who is going to do this exactly?” one of the men asked.

“We could take it in turns,” another said rather too eagerly. She knew from the voice that it was the spotty youth.

“I am not sure I want to… well beat a girl,” the first voice said.

Rachel decided it was the fellow water adept of around her own age. She found herself liking him a bit.

“It’s not a beating, it is a well-deserved spanking. She’s a Dovecote girl, she has had as much before I assure you,” the woman said.

“This almost never happens among the men…” the water journeyman put in, “Are you sure…?”

“You should do it Sarah, you have the experience,” the adept said with some authority.

“No… I think it would serve us all better and especially Rachel if… John does it. He is the oldest,” Sarah said.

“Agreed,” the adept said decisively and not without a little relief.

It sounded as if he was washing his hands.

The entire conversation was carried out behind Rachel’s exposed bare bottom and she had never felt so small.

“Alright, it won’t be the first time I have paid out a naughty wench,” John said with a sigh.

“Dvanjester, get over here and bend over the stool,” Sarah ordered.

Rachel blushed and could not help keep her eyes on the floor as she turned around. At least she could lower her hands now, which served to cover her naked front.

John looked like a man pushing 40 and standing up he looked even larger than when Rachel had first seen him and she could see now he was broad-shouldered with a barrel chest. His greying hair made him look stern, but nonetheless he had something of a kindly face. From the way he was holding the paddle, she could see he had experience as he had told them.

“Bend over here with your head down there and your… eh… sticking up here,” John instructed her.

Rachel swallowed and lowered herself to her knees facing the stool.

“I’m John Lassiter,” John whispered, and then in a reassuring voice he added, “It won’t be so bad.”

Rachel nodded at this, but she didn’t believe him. This was already quite bad enough. Still she had been well-trained to this, first at Shula’s hands and then Maxine’s. She had also suffered mightily under Gort as well as Dniester’s on occasion. Apart from the acute embarrassment of public exposure, she doubted that this would be any worse.

As Rachel bent forward she blushed as her bare bottom stuck out behind and everyone could see. The adept and the other four journeymen including the young man who had acted as scribe stood in a formal line watching.

“Do we have a count?” John asked.

“We’ll call it,” the adept replied.

He looked at Sarah who gave a curt nod in agreement.

“Present yourself a little more Miss Dvanjester,” John said in stern voice.

Rachel already felt as if her bottom was the centre of everyone’s attention and another surge of blood went to her head as she prayed to the gods to open up a hole in the floor.

“Miss Dvanjester, I will not ask you twice,” John growled at her.

Rachel steeled herself and shifted her knees further under the stool so that her bare bottom curved up a little more.

“Whatever else she has done, Maxine Du Jared taught the girl well,” Susan observed from somewhere behind.

The paddle landed with a firm splat that robbed Rachel of her breath. She was still contending with the growing pain when another blast of the paddle landed across both cheeks of her bottom. Maxine had taught her that undue fuss was unladylike but not acknowledge the pain was rude to one’s punisher.

But Rachel was five swats I before she could find the breath to yell.

“Oh the gods,” someone whispered.

“Now that is one red bottom,” Susan said cheerfully.

None of them spoke and the spotty youth shifted a little and adjusted the front of his robes.

John brought the paddle down fast even strokes, spacing them at four or five second intervals that left Rachel gasping for breath and healthy tears pooling at her eyes.

Once he reached around 20 strokes he paused to look at the adept.

“What do you think?” the senior asked Susan.

Susan pondered for a moment and then crossed the room to study Rachel’s plum-coloured bottom and then bent down close to the punished girl’s tear-raked face.

“Tell me, as monitor you handed out much more for much less didn’t you?” Susan whispered.

Rachel could scarce think as she contended with the intense throb in her bottom.

“Miss Dvanjester, can you hear me?”

“Yes ma’am,” Rachel sobbed.

“Do you agree?”

Rachel nodded.

“I think we can continue,” Susan said to the adept.

He looked surprised but he didn’t argue.

John moved behind the raw-bottomed Rachel and renewed his assault.

This time Rachel howled out at each impact until another dozen or so had been delivered.

This time John did not seek guidance but dropped the paddle beside the stool and turned to face his fellow panel members.

Susan looked ready to suggest another round, but the adept only nodded.

“I guess she is cooked,” he said. “I pronounce your punishment is complete.”

Rachel got unsteadily to her feet and tried to pull herself together.

“I would have preferred to meet you under different circumstances,” John said as he handed Rachel her underwear and robe.

“That makes two of us,” Rachel said through some heavy tears, “Oh… I should…”

Rachel extended her hand and John shook it.

“Thank you Sir,” she said.

“You’re welcome,” the older man chuckled.

To be continued.

Our story began here.

The Siege
Shula hadn’t been quite ready to believe the reports regarding the size of the army set against them until she saw it with her own eyes.

“You say we think this the main force has gone to Timbre?” she said to Euan Stand as she reviewed the hordes of warriors rapidly surrounding the castle.

“It is hard to say but… this is what we face your highness,” the captain offered tentatively, his great mass towering over her as he scratched the graze of steel grey hair that topped his head.

“This force is roughly a third of the size of the army that has taken Motra Mundy highness,” Crane put in with a shrug.

The tall thin wizard resembled a ragged crow and although usually people thought of him as tall, he was near a head shorter than the Euan Stand.

Shula glanced at both men and nodded.

“I suppose what the captain is trying to say is that it doesn’t matter how much more trouble Timbre is in, this is the battle we must fight,” Shula sighed.

Euan Stand heaved the smallest sigh of relief. The woman was catching on fast, he thought.

The princess pulled a cloak tight about her throat and went a little ashen so that her freckles stood out on her face. Her emerald green eyes peered out between two bangs of red hair as she looked again on the army outside. But she did not quail and moved closer to the window to review the situation again.

The enemy were too far away to discern much about them, but Crane had reported few magical elements among their ranks, which was something at least. So too was the construction of the castle. Standing at a bend in the River Renton, it was surrounded on three sides by deep wide water. The central tower on which they now stood looked short to an outside view, but it was stolid and squat and appearances were deceptive. And whilst the ancient inner tower was more vulnerable to modern siege equipment, the outer circular walls were far more robust. One of these was hard to the old keep and great hall, while another greater wall surrounded that holding supporting buildings and a haven for the refugees.

“There is a blind side from this tower above the great hall,” Euan said gently as he hoped that the princess was receptive to his strategic thinking. “The roof of the hall rises half as high as the main tower to block the battlements on the river side.”

Shula nodded as she tried to take it in.

“It can be countered by placing archers on the roof, but that will weaken our defence forces a little and require some disruption in the royal apartments as we struggle to keep these men supplied,” the captain said softly.

“You expect to fight within the inner keep then?” Shula shuddered at the thought of the foe so deep into her home.

“Not for several days or, the gods be praised, weeks I hope,” the captain offered carefully, “But if the need should come… it will take too long to place men on the roof as it has no ready access.”

Shula nodded again. She remembered her father saying that castles were always impregnable until 10 minutes into a siege and then all the foolish weaknesses were revealed.

“The water we have will outlast any siege,” Shula said decisively to show she understood, “There are wells that draw from the river. But we must strictly ration food, have someone calculate what we have… for? How many people are there?”

Euan shrugged.

“Find out. You and your men will get subsistence rations from now on; you and the younger children under 10. All non-combatants like me are to be given starvation rations. No exceptions do you understand?” Shula sounded angry. “If there is not enough food for a month then we will…”

“I think we have at least that much Ma’am,” Euan assured her, “Actually I am more worried about our supply of arrows and medicine.”

The captain was also worried about the woman’s soft heart. He had to say something.

“Your orders regarding the children…” he knew it was essential that they could discuss this.

“Parents will feed their children no matter what. Even your soldiers,” Shula said firmly. “And even if they don’t, a castle full of screaming children will drag moral down faster than…”

Only a woman would think of that, Euan realised, she might turn out to be good at this.

“In that case Ma’am, we should perhaps feed children up to 12 or even 14 if our stores will support it?” the captain suggested now convinced the woman was right.

“Let us see what we have first, but I agree,” Shula replied.

Both she and the officer looked at Crane for his opinion, but he only shrugged. What did he know of sieges?

*

Days had passed into weeks and the enemy at the gates were in no hurry to make their assault. Euan was convinced that it was because the more dynamic generals and most of the priest-witches were focussed on Timbre and that the siege here was intended as a holding action.

“Well it is working,” Shula said bitterly.

“Yes Ma’am,” Euan agreed.

But not everything was going against them. The stores versus refugees had held up well and even with a relaxed distribution regime, supplies could last eight or nine months. However, the shortage of medicine remained a problem and the best they had been able to do was distil vinegar to clean wounds. But Crane had consulted with several healers in the castle and reported that matters might be mitigated with magical intervention.

“I thank you Mr Crane,” Shula said with a smile.

Crane bowed awkwardly and muttered for the hundredth time, “It is just Crane Ma’am.”

The arrow shortage had been rather more critical. Euan had set fletchers working around the clock and given the lack of serious attacks they had been able to make more than they were using.

“We will use them fast enough when they attack,” the captain said bitterly, “A thousand archers can get through over 200,000 arrows an hour in a battle.”

Shula gaped. That was one for every man at her gates.

“Most fall harmlessly even in an experts hands,” Euan might have been reading her thoughts.

“How many arrows do we have?” Shula felt sick, knowing that when the attack came it would really bite.

“We began with a million or so,” Euan shrugged, “I have 200 fletchers and hastily assembled apprentices working around the clock producing near 5,000 new arrows every day… I expect the count to reach 12 hundred thousand by about tomorrow. Or to make it clearer, half a day’s solid fighting’s worth if all our archers shoot.”

Shula sat down ashen faced as she took this in.

“Your highness, if it came to that we would probably win. That many arrows…” he imagined the carnage, if only they were that foolish, he thought. “Sorties generally last 20 minutes and less than 500 men would be in a position to return fire,” Euan said encouragingly.

“Good to know,” Shula said unconvincingly. “What you are saying is that they will wear us down with small attacks and each time we will…” she did a calculation in her head, “…use some 30 or 40,000 arrows.”

He nodded.

“Which will then take a week to replace?” Shula added pointedly.

“So long as the materials last out, yes,” Euan agreed.

Shula pitched the bridge of her nose in despair. Thank the gods I am not a man. I despise this mathematics of death.

“Your highness, there are other matters we must…” Euan decided to broach the thing now.

Shula looked up and wondered what more horrors he had for her.

“Restrictions on supplies of food and medicine have been strict, but we have had a few breaches,” he sighed, “Hoarding and attempts to side step the rules.”

Shula frowned. She thought about her maid Cali still standing in the corner back in her chambers. The girl had swiped a crust of bread from the kitchen; an act for which she would heartily pay when Shula had the time. The girl wouldn’t sit down for a week by the time Shula was done with her.

“One was just a young mother chancing her arm,” Euan said, “I took the liberty of having stripped across a block in the yard and even now she is having her bare arse blistered with a quirt by a sergeant-at-arms. She won’t sit easily for the rest of this siege I promise.”

“That is for the good but see that her children have been fed. Some food may have been… misplaced.” Shula relaxed. She was on easy ground now. “Oh and put the woman to work… making arrows.”

Euan snorted in approval. Then he said, “Actually it is the other issue that concerns our remaining thief.”

“Misplaced food you mean?” Shula asked.

“That’s right Ma’am,” the captain looked uncomfortable, “We caught some black-marketeers, a man and a woman. The man was killed trying to escape, but we have the woman in custody.”

“You want to hang her?” Shula said bluntly.

Oh the gods no, Euan thought, but it was needful he knew.

“Bring her in,” Shula said wearily.

It didn’t take long and after a minute two guards entered either side of a woman like bookends. She was tallish and thin with short tousled hair and men’s clothes. Shula adjudged her to be in her late 20s, but by her manner she was not the usual highwayman’s moll or footpad. In fact she looked arrogant and defiant.

“What is your name?” Shula asked.

The princess took a moment to sit down without looking at the woman as if her captive were singular of no importance.

“Leah Gingham-Woolf,” the woman said in a dead voice.

By its vowels she was of a professional class, but not so highborn that she didn’t carry a hint of an Aspen accent.

“You are what a… a footpad, smuggler?” Shula asked.

“I am the proprietor of an export business,” she said proudly, and then a bit less certainly, “Or I was.”

“You don’t look like an exporter,” Shula accused her.

“I had to take to the road when Aspen fell and I thought I might be safer as a man.” The woman sounded bored.

“Hard times,” Shula replied.

“It has been dreadful your highness.” For a moment the woman sounded as if she might cry.

“So you thought you would make it harder for others by stealing?” Shula said bitterly.

The woman blanched and then looked at the floor.

“I didn’t mean…” she sighed. At school this was the time to say ‘no excuse ma’am’ and take her licks. But her licks this time would be delivered by a rope. “I fell in with the wrong man, alright,” she spat bitterly as if it were Shula’s fault. “It is kill or be killed out there, you should try it sometime ma’am. I have been a proud woman all my life and I have never needed a man… but Gus saved me… I didn’t want to raid the stores… I swear by the gods that I didn’t know that was what he intended until… oh what difference does it make? I probably wouldn’t have stood up to him anyway. Life is just small steps isn’t Ma’am? And I took small steps in the wrong direction.”

“And if someone had stolen from you? Back in Aspen I mean?” Shula asked.

Leah opened her mouth to answer and then closed it again.

“I once vouched for a woman who had. Got her whipped instead of a penal indenture. She came to work for me afterwards actually.” Leah smiled at the memory. “But it was only a blanket she stole and it wasn’t during a siege. Anyway she is dead now too; never made it out of Aspen.”

The sadness in the woman’s voice was crushing.

“I have no one,” Leah whispered, “So hang me. It is just.”

“No it is not is it? Nothing about this is just,” Shula sighed. “This damn war wasn’t asked for and the demon-spawn bastards at our gates can go to bloody hell.”

Shula sucked in air through her nose and let it go slowly as it would blow away all the world’s ills.

“Drop those ridiculous breeches right down to your ankles and get over that bench. I want your bare bottom pointing at the ceiling and your elbows on the floor.” Shula ordered the woman.

“Your highness…” Euan protested.

“Hanging a woman this early in the siege is not good for morale is it? We have the culprit; this man. Hang him from the castle gibbet with a sign that reads ‘looter,’” Shula spat angrily.

“But he is already…” Euan let the puzzlement fall from his face and he shrugged. “Yes Ma’am.”

Leah was still hovering and eyeing the guards and the bench in some consternation.

“You, breeches down, bottom over that bench, I won’t tell you again,” Shula snapped.

The woman fumbled for a coarse rope that held up her tattered clothing and pulled it free. Her trousers fell to her ankles in one motion, baring her legs and revealing a lack of underclothes.

There was no dignity in her struggle to get down and over the bench, but she managed it after a fashion so that she was jack-knifed with her small hard white bottom mooning the ceiling.

“You,” Shula said sharply to the older of the two guards gaping at the woman’s shame. “You have grown daughters?”

“Yes Ma’am,” the guard said awkwardly. “And granddaughters come to that.”

He was a big fellow with grey hair that put his age above 50.

“Good. Take a belt to this woman’s bottom like it was a daughter you just caught selling her tail to a Westerner and don’t stop until I tell you,” Shula said.

The guard nodded and offered Leah’s vulnerable bottom a disappointed smile. Then he unhitched his sword belt and laid it with his shield by the door.

“You can go,” Shula said to the other guard.

The man snapped to attention and fixed his eyes ahead and the wheeled on his heels and marched out.

“I’ll go too if I may be excused,” Crane said pointedly and without waiting he strolled away.

The older guard had removed his other belt and folded it double before advancing on Leah’s long pale legs and exposed bottom. Then he took one final glance at Shula who gave one curt nod.

The first thwack of leather on skin was as loud as trebuchet assailing a castle and a red band of pain landed across Leah’s behind.

“Yah,” she yelped. School had been nothing like this.

The second stroke landed followed by a third before the woman could draw breath. Thereafter she continued to wail with only the crack of leather for punctuation as each swat pursed swat as regularly as sword drill.

Shula guessed the proud Leah Gingham-Woolf, former merchant of Aspen, had never been so treated. Well it would do her good and at least it was better than a rope.

Leah’s bottom leathering lasted an age and hard welts of red had formed long before Shula called a halt. By then of course the woman was a mess of sorrow sobbing and howling like an Aspen orphan who had gone without supper.

“I doubt you’d make a good fletcher’s apprentice my fine lady,” Shula said soothingly, “So you can work as a scullion for the duration.”

But Leah was passed caring as she bucked over the bench in great heaving sobs.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she wailed.

“I know and I so am I,” Shula sighed.

It took a while for Leah to half rein-in her tears and get to her feet and when she did she bounced up down with her hands clamped to her bare bottom without the least regard for her modesty or dignity.

“Say thank you to the man,” Shula said quietly.

“Thank you Sir,” Leah wept.

The man nodded.

Then Leah turned to Shula and kneeled, “Thank you Ma’am… thank you so much.”

Then the woman stooped to kiss the hem of Shula’s dress.

“You may go,” Shula said, faintly embarrassed, and to the guard she muttered, “Take her to the kitchens.”

To be continued.

The figure above, possibly a king, looks rather like Good King Wenceslas of Bohemia (now in the Czech Republic). He was a man with a strong sense of justice from a part of the world where the chastisement of women has a long and continuing tradition.

It is not clear if this is indeed the case or if the illustration is real and not shopped in some way by someone of our persuasion. The bucket of birches rather suggests that it is genuine.

From the style of dress the court is definitely one from the late 16^th century and the hairstyle of the woman suggests that she is a central European noblewoman or even perhaps the man’s queen.

The gentleman to the right in red is almost certainly a cardinal, which does support a Bohemian setting, as does the cityscape, which although Rome-like is also similar to Prague or early modern Budapest.

If it is Rome, then the man is probably the Pope, although which one is unclear.

How this painting ended up in the archive or where it is from originally is a mystery. But it seems  a worthy enough post for today so enjoy.

Our story began here.

The Invasion of Timbre
The cliffs of Challis stood like a wall for as far as the eye could see in both directions. They weren’t high as cliffs went and unusually from a Precips perspective they were topped by sporadic clusters of pine trees that grew so abundantly here in the north. Facing the cliffs were the combined fleets of Precips and Timbre ranging the seas in patrol.

Prince Jason viewed the shoreline with grim satisfaction. Every so often a horseman would break cover and go racing along the edge of the trees atop of the cliff before ducking into the undergrowth. We have them rattled, he thought. He knew that his smaller faster ships had eyes on every port and possible landing site ready to turn on their keels and signal the larger flotillas should any western ship try to run the blockade.

Since his previous battle, his fleet had dominated the northern ocean, a situation that coupled with the internal collapse of the kingdom of Challis, had taken that nation out of the war.

Jason knew that victory was in no small part due to the magical intervention of Maxine Du Jared and he regretted that she had been recalled to Timber for the battle there. Still, the blockade was working and a good part of the Western Army was bottled in Challis, unable to swell the ranks for the invasions elsewhere.

“Does it matter then?” Captain Timorous asked.

The Admiral shrugged.

“We might have prevented the landings at Precips if we had known, but nothing could have prevented the fall of Motra Mundy,” he said. “In any case, the army on Challis is going nowhere. Those were our orders.”

“What if they use magic against us?” Timorous remembered the mountains of ocean falling on the foe at a word. Thanks to Maxine, that had served them well, but the captain feared what would happen if the tables were turned.

As if reading his mind another authoritative voice answered his fears.

“Wild Magic holds no dominion over the sea and even without the presence of a magus; my fellow adepts and I are more than a match for any threat here.”

Captain Timorous turned to view the old man. He hadn’t liked the look of him since he had first been dispatched to replace Maxine in leading the cadre of wizards. It wasn’t just that the captain felt they were being palmed off with a mere wizard, but the ancient sage looked too frail for war and he was far too condescending.

“Mr Dniester, you are confident that you can contain any magical threat then?” Prince Jason asked.

“Any magical threat, you say, well that is a big ask indeed,” Dniester replied, “But I know I can meet any challenge that is likely to arise.”

*

Motra Mundy was still burning and even though his forces would need the city largely intact Maiestatis had given no orders to halt the carnage. This after all was what he had foreseen and victory was in his grasp.

Draken watched the demon shuffle from side to side and at first he was puzzled by what he saw. Surely the Wolf of the West and last of Triptych could see that their army would need the port before the war was done. The enemy may have been out manoeuvred, but it still held a threat at sea and if Maiestatis knew where the King of Precips and those damn mages were, he was not saying.

“The fire is spreading,” the warlock offered tentatively.

But the demon ignored him as he continued his grotesque dance.

“Don’t we need the port?” Draken tried again.

“The port will survive the onslaught,” Maiestatis said chokingly, his mouth and head twitching. “I have seen it, seen it.” His voice scratched like rats’ claws on marble.

From the hill he not only saw the city as it was, but how it had been and would or could be again. There were still hopelessly hopeful people fighting for their homes and resisting the invaders. Maiestatis could feel the song of their pain and frustration as he danced.

“What about…?” Draken tried one more time.

“The mages?” the demon cackle-croaked, “They come, they come, but he is not among them. Not yet.”

Draken was not sure of whom he spoke, so he said nothing. The latest reports had been that Castle Maelon was under siege and even without reinforcements from Challis they outnumbered the allied armies in Timbre by five to one or would until the King of Precips arrived with is paltry army. Why was the damn demon so complacent? They should strike now before the allies combined their forces.

The warlock looked back at the city and to the land beyond stretched out before them. Soon it would be time to do his part.

*

Nansi Pyke hated that she had no magical ability. It meant that as a woman she had been relegated to a commissary role in the coming siege on Timon. At least she hoped there would be a siege. If there wasn’t and the fools of Timbre decided to meet them in open combat then the battle would be short and fierce and she would have no role to play at all.

Nansi, the Sword Leader of the Fourth Battle Coven, was half a head taller than most woman of her clan, that is to say a foot shorter than most of the men. But what she lacked in physical presence she made up for in determination. Her hard grey eyes had seen much in her 25-year life and if anyone had every thought she was beautiful, they had never said.

Formerly she had been second upper housemaid at Griswold Hold far to the West, a bitter remote place that had afforded her little authority and 18 hours a day hard drudgery. There had been few men of her social rank and her time had been spent bitching her way to the top of an inferior heap of females. Foolish women who did nothing but preen themselves for imaginary men they would never see and do as little work as possible.

When the conscription order had come most women had been horrified. This had been the first war in history that had ever admitted women; war was no place for them, or that was the common view.

But Nansi was an uncommon girl and ambitious. Cropping her dusty brown hair like a boy, she had quickly transferred her paltry domestic leadership role into that of marshalling sergeant. Unlike many other more reluctant women she had applied herself diligently to every task assigned her. This had included three extra hours a day at weapons drill while other warrior maidens slept. Added to that was the fact that she was one of the few women who could read so she had quickly risen to be an officer.

Up to now the women cadres had been assigned to rounding up the surviving civilians and guarding supply wagons. There were great many slaves to be resettled in the West and even with men to spare the War Leader had demanded every one of them for the coming battles.

Nansi drew her sword and scythed a stand of grass just outside Motra Mundy’s city gates. Nothing but a glorified housemaid again, she thought bitterly. Then she caught an under-sergeant watching her display of temper.

Under-sergeant Rondel was a tall nervous woman whose face had a permanently startled look as if she had no idea where she was or what she was doing, which in her case was probably true. The woman was a hopeless warrior and had probably only made under-sergeant on account of the fact that she could read.

“Get on with your work girl,” Nansi bellowed at her.

The woman jumped and unconsciously grabbed at her behind.

“Eh… Ma’am… one of the prisoners…” the poor women looked like she wanted to flee.

Nansi wondered how the stupid girl had ever made under-sergeant, but then on reflection it wasn’t that much of a mystery, few enough wanted the job. No wonder we don’t get a proper job.

“What about this prisoner? Spit it out girl,” Nansi barked at her.

“Ma’am, she was complaining and the sergeant beat her…” the under-sergeant said meekly.

“So,” Nansi shot back angrily.

She hated the sergeant. She was a brutal woman who provoked the prisoners beyond reason and made everyone’s job more difficult, but in this army such reasoned stances might be seen as a weakness.

“She didn’t just… ma’am… eh… it was one of the highborn women that… our orders…” the under-sergeant was obviously terrified that the whole coven could get crucified if they disobeyed standing orders.

“For the gods’ sake,” Nansi groaned as she strode back through the city gates.

Inside the city reeked of burnt flesh and stale smoke. Just one of the reasons Nansi had opted for hanging around the gates. She was a country girl and hated cities at the best of times. This was so far from the best of times for Motra Mundy that very stones might weep.

There was an open area to the right of the gates where wagons had been stored and beyond it was a tavern that served as the Fourth Battle Cadre’s headquarters. The cadre’s pennant hung next to the Wolf’s head of the Western Host’s flag, obscuring a large ugly painting of a great red head of a boar, which Nansi presumed was the tavern’s name.

To the left, opposite the pub, was a burnt-out building that could have served any purpose. And although its walls still stood the floors inside were gone as was the roof, so that building was exposed to the sky right down to the cellar.

It was in the basement of this ruined structure that prisoners had been secured pending dispatch to wherever they had been assigned. In addition an impromptu whipping post and pillory had been set-up by the hastily repaired doors and next that was a small block of wood over which women warriors were disciplined when the need arose.

The difficult highborn women were supposed to be taken down a peg by being caned across this block like her warriors, but Nansi could now see that Lady Merringham, the self-appointed leader of the slaves, was sitting on the floor nursing a bloody face while the sergeant stood over her bellowing.

“I don’t take no shit from the likes of you, not anymore,” the sergeant was yelling.

Lady Merringham glowered up at her defiantly. The woman has spunk, no question, Nansi thought.

“Callous, Sergeant Callous,” Nansi called over, thinking and not for the first time that it was a highly apt name, “What is that woman doing out here?”

“Complaining,” Callous sneered.

Callous was a tall girl of around Nansi’s age. She was a city girl and although pretty, was given to rough ways. Nansi suspected that she may have had a less than respectable occupation before the war.

“Reasonable complaints are to be brought to me. Unreasonable complaints… well just cane their backsides or birch them in the pillory,” Nansi said with a sigh, adding pointedly, “Highborn ladies are caned, remember?”

“I don’t need no help here Sword Leader,” Callous did not even turn round or salute.

Nansi had been here before, but not while there was still fighting all around. She couldn’t let this pass. Furthermore all the guards were watching them.

The sword leader turned and glanced at the headquarters building. The Cadre Leader had strolled onto the street and was leaning on the door post. No doubt she had seen the beating and was considering what to do about the breach of standing orders.

“Callous,” Nansi said sharply, “Stand to attention when you are talking to me.”

The sergeant was still bending over the fallen noble woman, but she turned her head with a look of scorn in Nansi’s direction before slowly standing upright in a poor semblance of ‘at attention.’

“Ma’am,” Callous said belatedly in acknowledgement.

“Highborn ladies are caned; don’t you remember the standing orders?”

Callous shrugged and mumbled something.

“What was that?” Nansi barked, striding forward to close the gap between them.

“The bitch had it coming,” Callous sneered, adding, “Ma’am.”

Nansi pressed her face in close to her sergeant and whispered, “I decide what she had coming, get it? If you want to have some fun, then do it as if you at least gave a shit about orders. Or don’t do it at all.”

“Not one of these bitches could fill me shoes and you know it. So it looks like we are just stuck with each other,” Callous said with a yawn. The absent ‘ma’am’ was deliberate.

Nansi had never killed a woman, or a man, come to that. She had seen it done though. An officer had been crucified for a breach of orders on the long march to the coast. That had been before the ships and that long horrible voyage. Callous was pushing it.

Damn this stupid woman, Nansi groaned inwardly.

The only difference between a sergeant’s rig and one of the ordinary warriors was the red rope that was wound around her shoulder. Nansi gave Callous one long hard look willing her to say ma’am and stand down.

It soon became horribly clear that the woman was never going to. Damn, Nansi thought and snatched the rope from the sergeant’s shoulder.

Callous gaped at her for a moment, giving Nansi time to bark an order.

“Under-sergeant, put this woman over the block,” she yelled, then seeing that no one moved, she all but screamed, “Do it.”

Even then it took a moment before the under-sergeant motioned to three other warriors. By then Callous was smirking.

“You think you can handle this mob without me,” she sneered.

But there was no resistance. The former sergeant just walked casually to the block and dropped her breeches. Then kneeling with her bare thighs touching the dust, Callous bent over so that her bare bottom was sticking upwards and her head was down.

Nansi studied the proffered bottom in some awe. If this woman hadn’t been selling it back before the war, she certainly could have, she thought. And then someone handed her a cane.

*

Callous was an athletic woman, but no less feminine for that. There was a defiance to her posture and from her place over the block she seemed to thrust her bottom up at Nansi as if daring the Sword Leader to do her best.

In her own way Nansi Pyke would normally take some pleasure form having a comely bottom at her mercy, just as Callous did. But for the former sergeant it was a brutal way of life and she had demonstrated no finesse or art to her sadism. Whereas for Nansi it was just good sport and she had long dreamed of this moment.

However, it was no game and Nansi’s limited pleasure came at a cost. The demotion of Callous would be a sore loss to their battle coven. Damn the woman.

With that bitter thought Nansi brought the cane down with a will and struck Callous hard across her firm hard buttocks. The former sergeant did not even flinch. Although the Sword Leader noticed that the ninny of an under-sergeant did. By the gods’ rotten teeth I can’t promote her, Nansi thought bitterly and in frustration she struck Callous again across the bottom.

There were now two hard red scores across the woman’s behind. In contrast to the pale ruddiness of Callous’s flesh, they stood up like mountain tracks and looked twice as raw. But still she made no show of discomfort.

“How many do you think Rondel?” Nansi asked the under-sergeant with a hint of mockery.

Rondel gaped and began rubbing her hands on her thighs in some agitation. Her eyes, Nansi noticed, had not left Callous’s bottom. I would love to have you across this block, Nansi thought. And then she recalled that she already had. The woman had a ridiculously small bottom, Nansi remembered and she had not taken her punishment well.

“I… eh…” Rondel swallowed and continued to stare. “A standard is 15, ma’am,” she said nervously.

“I know what a standard is woman,” Nansi barked, “So you think gross insubordination and disregard for standing orders only rates a standard then do you?”

Rondel looked panicked and finally tore her eyes away from Callous to look at Nansi.

“No I… a double standard I should think,” she spluttered.

“You think far too much woman. I ought to give you a double standard,” Nansi snapped.

Rondel blanched.

Returning to Callous, Nansi laid on three more strokes just about as hard as she could and then added another with some real vim. This stroke finally got a grunt from the former sergeant. But it was Nansi who was doing all the heavy breathing.

Looking down she saw that the bottom was heavily scored now and the redness from each welt had ‘bled’ out into the surrounding whiteness. I’ll have her bleeding in earnest if she doesn’t… but it was just Nansi’s frustration. That sort of extremity was something that was more Callous’s line.

Nansi looked at Lady Merringham on the ground. She was still bleeding from her nose, but her eyes were clear and sharp. You don’t want us here do you? Nansi thought. She had been so determined to get away from her drudge ridden life that she had never given the least thought to the justice, necessity or the indeed the value to the war.

Somewhere someone screamed and there was a crash of falling masonry. Parts of the city were still burning, mostly for the pleasure of brutes like Callous, Nansi realised.

Nansi put nine hard strokes down with a more artful follow through of her wrist. With 10 or 15 seconds between each Callous began to twitch a bit and for the last three she groaned louder than she yet had.

There was no sign that the skin was broken, but for mischief’s sake and as a precaution she ordered one of the more brutish women in her command to fetch a scrubbing brush and some styptic before she continued with the second 15.

Callous’s bottom was raw beyond belief before Nansi struck again and this time the former sergeant felt it. A fact which she announced through gritted teeth at each stroke.

Damn the woman and damn this war, Nansi screamed inwardly, damn it all.

To be continued.

Our story started here.

Quail was awoken by someone kicking her in the side.

“Get up, where do you think this is, a hotel?” said a gruff voice.

She was about to say of course it is a hotel when she realised that she was naked and lying on the floor. Quail’s eyes flew open and her old reflexes had her on her feet at once.

Chains bound her hands and restricted the movements of her legs. Also it was dark and the only light was from an opening ahead of her. She could see the outline of a man but little else.

“Alright, we haven’t got all day,” the voice came at her again.

So she had moved on again, she pondered, now unconcerned. The voice cajoling her was familiar and so were the smells of the place; cold and metallic, yet musty like a space dock or… a sick feeling assailed her stomach even as she was pushed into the familiar hall outside.

She was in the slave pens of Xajule Six. She was certain of that because she had been there just a few months before. She had gathered some excellent slaves from a raid on a passenger hauler and had even bought a cute girl from there.

Strangely although she had been quite taken by the girl, she had thought of her since she had sold her…

“Move,” the man bellowed.

Quail staggered forward towards what she knew was the bidding arena. It was hard to look up on account of the strong light, but she had a sense of space.

“Fifty credits,” someone called.

“I’ll bid 80, let’s cut to the chase.” Quail took a moment before she recognised her own voice.

“Too rich for my blood,” the first voice chuckled.

I’ll go 90, Quail remembered.

“I’ll go 90,” said a new voice.

“I am bored now, 200 mega credits or you can keep her,” Quail’s voice sounded cocky like she didn’t want the girl and was just making a point.

A few weeks back the ploy had worked. But how could she be in the arena and bidding?

There was plenty of laughter, but it was pretty obvious that no one would go as high. Quail tried to make out the faces above her. Although her eyes had adjusted they were in silhouette still. Then she saw her own reflection on the far wall; a cruel piece of theatre to humble slaves up for sale.

It was not her own face she saw, but… Cutie was all she had called her; a tall woman with wide hips and sad eyes. Her bottom had taken the whip and paddle well, but there had been no true submission.

Finally Quail had sold the woman on an agrarian world. It had looked like a shit hole, a fate worse than a city bordello, Quail had thought. She had felt bad about it afterwards and had got drunk.

Why can’t I be me this time? Like before. Then I could… I could set her free on a good planet with some money this time. But it hadn’t happened like that and nothing about this virtual replay could change that.

*

The next few weeks played out scene by scene as it had happened. As Cutie, Quail experienced every indignity at her own hands, which was weird enough. But worse still was the hatred she felt for the pirate woman who whipped her just for fun.

How can I hate myself? It was a question that tortured her night after night as the chapter played out. It would serve me right if… Quail felt physically sick as a thought occurred to her. She was going to spend the rest of her life as an agrarian slave, she was certain. None of the other chapters had been this long.

Let me be me, she screamed inwardly at the universe. I can put it right. But such prayers are never answered. The adventure didn’t end until she was ankle deep in excrement and watching herself fly away.

“Work hard and maybe one of these grunts will buy you for a wife,” a scornful voice rasped in her ear.

Quail had heard some such comment on the dock before the transaction. At the time she had laughed.

*

Quail awoke with a start and swung her legs down off the bed. There was a pristine mirror facing her and this time it was her own face that stared back at her. Quail almost wept with relief. Almost and then for the first time since home-world she did.

Hunched over with her head in her lap, she cried for a long time, until finally she was totally spent. The hollow-eyed woman in the mirror was only very slightly older than Quail remembered. Only a tiny fresh scar and a single wisp of grey at her temple had changed. Then she noticed the lack of implants and the bright orange jump-suit. Prison coveralls, she thought.

“Okay, I get it,” Quail said bitterly, “This is Christmas future and I have been a bad girl.”

There was no response. No one cared; she was just one more captive on a backwater somewhere. Well she had been in worse places. She would soon see her chance, Quail promised herself.

Strangely her prevailing thought was that she could go back to the agrarian planet where she sold Cutie and rescue her. If only she could escape, that was.

*

Quail spent a night and another day in her cell before anything other than grey goo and water came to her. But finally the door slid back and a rather dour woman in a grey business suit was standing there.

“Ms Quail,” she said imperiously, adding tentatively, “I have some… good news, yes, I would say so.”

Quail stood up and wondered where the woman would sit. She recognised her of course. They had never met, not in fact, but even Quail had forgotten that. Somehow she had forgotten everything, or could not bring it to mind just then, which was much the same thing. But the woman she knew. She was her lawyer.

“I am not going to stay, my work is done,” the woman said, “I have entered the guilty plea and…”

“What…” Quail gasped.

“We agreed,” the lawyer looked puzzled. “The death penalty, it has been set aside. We got everything we asked for, don’t you understand?”

Quail frowned, she couldn’t… she sighed.

“It has been… could you just run it by me again.”

“The death sentence, personality wipe, indefinite incarceration… we had them all set aside. In return for a guilty plea the judge has recommended the alternative,” the woman was nervously excited now. Maybe Quail had gone mad.

The woman opened a file that she had been holding under her arm and began to read aloud.

“Letitia Quail, 39,” the lawyer glanced up at her once glamorous and youthful client. Not bad for 39, but that won’t last, she thought, “Eh…” she continued, “Unproven charges of murder and grand larceny. But piracy and kidnapping all substantiated. It is recommended…”

“An agrarian world right?” the knowledge came to Quail suddenly and she remembered the deal. “It is appropriate I suppose.”

She was thinking of Cutie again.

“There is just one thing…” the lawyer licked her lips.

Quail shrugged. It didn’t matter, nothing mattered anymore.

“You have to serve 30 years as I told you but…”

Quail shrugged. She knew that part, but with remission she could get out in 15 or even 12 years.

“…the sentence doesn’t start until you have been… well there is an assessment and a period of… strange planet this… it will all work out but… you have to atone first and they have to believe that you have atoned,” woman gabbled.

*

Quail was naked again.

She had been stretched over a frame so that her head was down and her bottom uppermost. It was a classic punishment position, but instead of the floor in front of her nose, there was a platform for an audience and beyond that a large screen that displayed her bottom on a big screen in tri-vid HD.

The whole structure reminded her of a museum rather than a correctional facility. There were certainly enough gawping people passing by to watch.

She knew that she had been wired to some sensors that monitored her brainwaves and every other bio-response she had to her punishment. Three weeks in and she had never felt so meek. The day had only just got started and she would remain in strapped in place for another four hours.

Every other day was an exercise day, but each night she had to fill-out a journal and undergo automatic psych tests.

“How long… I mean…?” Quail had gaped on her first day.

“Oh it is indefinite, I assure you, if you and your smart off-world lawyer have pulled a fast one then you are in for a… well let’s just say, I really do hope you are sorry,” the warden had told her.

The round-faced sweating man looked as if her regrets were the last thing he was hoping.

Nor did it help that she didn’t appear to be alone. From her vantage point she could see other women in various states of undress either undergoing a strapping or facing the wall to await their turn.

Quail wasn’t even the centre of attention. She was just one more woman to be punished. Then even this realisation was robbed from her thoughts.

The prison strap landed with a painful thwack that dragged a grunt from Quail’s lips. On the screen her bottom bucked and then shimmered from side to side. Then before she could shake out the sting another blow landed and she began her dance again as he bottom slowly reddened.

“I’m sorry, okay, I’m sorry,” she yelled.

But the only acknowledgement was another blast of prison strap across her bare bottom. This time the fire in her tail started off bad and then got worse. On the platform opposite the glass outside two young couples stood in a grinning group. As the strap seared Quail’s behind for eighth or ninth time they began to applaud.

“I’m sorry,” Quail shouted at them in a pleading tone, but they were no longer paying her any attention and had gone to gawp at another woman being punished.

To be continued.

Our story started here.

Quail stood meekly in the line while the commune’s leader gave his speech. She had been living this life so long now that she had decided that this was the end game.

The punishment centre had held her for almost a year before her lawyer argued that the psych tests proved she was penitent. He had been a new one this time, a local boy who felt sorry for her and had enough contacts to get her a hearing.

By then she had almost got used to kneeling on the floor to eat off her bunk and sleeping on her belly. But she had never got used to the almost relentless strappings, which after a few weeks had finally broken her.

It had come upon her suddenly. One minute she was grunting angrily and trying to ride out the waves of pain where the sting met the burn and locked themselves in a dance on the curves of her raw-sore bottom. Then all of a sudden she began to sob. Great gasping wails of tears to punctuate her all too earnest begging and please of “I’m sorry, so sorry.”

Even the duty punisher noticed her change in attitude.

“Sorry are you, really?” he said sharply during a pause in the relentless strapping.

“Yes Sir, oh yes Sir,” she had gushed earnestly.

“So you admit you do deserve this?” he asked.

She could only nod miserably.

On bad days after that she would sometimes remember where she was and beg for the access codes or the exit codes or plead with her unseen tormentor for another scenario. Then she would yell incoherently as she begged to know, “What do you want from me?” or “I won’t steal it, I won’t, I swear it.”

But usually she just called out in a miserable sobbing voice, “I’m sorry, so sorry.”

The commune was better than the detention centre. Well anything was better than that. At least now her sentence had formally started.

It had been explained to her that for every day she behaved herself she would get a day taken from her sentence. If she had a spotless record for five years and learned enough skills then she could become a trustee and have two days taken off her sentence for every day of good behaviour.

The commune wasn’t such a bad place either. It was not a bit like the dread planet that she had marooned Cutie on. Here there were trees and soft beds. Although the women all had to wear dark grey dresses with white aprons and white caps, at least they were clean. And every five days there was a day off so that the girls could study and better themselves. Passing exams was even rewarded with more remission off their sentences.

Most days Quail forgot that none of this was real. But then she no longer even knew that for certain. In her more optimistic moments she thought about a holiday at Cloudhaven and prayed that she could wake up there again. But somehow she knew that that moment had passed for her; slipped from her grasp just as it had in her former life.

On other days she wondered if such places as the commune and the detention centre even existed in the ‘real’ world. Or was it some invention of her own guilty conscience she had dreamt up to punish herself?

It didn’t matter, not any more. If there was some greater purpose they she would have to play it out and wait. Until then all she had was the commune.

The worst thing was the speeches.

Every morning the commune leader or one of his deputies gave a speech about good behaviour and working hard. Quail could swear that each of the men only had three original speeches and kept recycling over and over in oh-so pious monotonous drone.

To say that the speeches were the worst thing was just Quail’s idea, she imagined. The other girls dreaded the punishments more, she knew.

The punishments were severe and varied. They ranged from a sound over-the-knee spanking on the bare bottom with a short paddle, through harder spankings with a large drilled paddle while bent over a chair or rail, to a trip to the woodshed for a sound birching.

Sometimes a girl was bent over a frame like the one at the detention centre and soundly strapped on the bare bottom in front of everyone as a prelude to a caning.

Only these latter punishments counted against a girl’s remission, which was one of the reasons Quail could cope.

For the Quail the lesser punishments added a sense of danger and spice to the monotony of commune life. And even when it was not her being punished, she could enjoy the punishments of others.

Not that she actively courted these punishments. It was just that they added some risk to other activities like apple scrumping, swiping booze and the occasional roll in the hay with another girl.

True Quail would have preferred one of the men, but they were all staffers and too discreet to involve themselves with a new girl.

“Now girls, gather into your assigned teams and listen for your allotted jobs,” the speech finally came to an end.

Quail looked up down the rows of smartly aproned girls, all meekly looking at the ground. She still felt like a tigress in a field of sheep. In eight or nine years she would be a senior trustee with a line to the outside. And in 12 years tops she would be out of there with a stake and… her thinking went no further. It never did except to think about Cutie.

*

Sara was a new girl. She was a young pretty blonde working under a five-year sentence. She had run with some gangs on the outside and hadn’t worked out that not only was she here for the duration, but she wasn’t as tough as she thought she was.

A petty argument over a bread roll had got her hauled out onto the back porch of the refectory

Sara had obviously thought to talk her way out of trouble but no sooner had she reached the porch when the deputy-leader had hauled her across her his lap and turned up her skirts.

“Hey you can’t…” she spluttered, but the man quickly bared her bottom and began spanking her with a small paddle.

The spanking was fast and furious and Sara’s small tight bottom went shiny red in moments as her voice made croaking protests.

Quail busied herself with a broom in the yard nearby so that she could watch the action. On days like these the commune wasn’t so bad.

“Nooo, you can’t noo… ah,” Sara wailed, as dark red doughnuts formed on the crowns of her bottom and tears spilled from her eyes.

Quail imagined the cocky arrogance with which the girl once might have mouthed-off or given attitude to a peacekeeper. Her fellow gang members would fall about laughing if they could see her now. Especially, Quail noted, as the girl had a totally glass-arse and was already bawling like the kid she was.

The spanking lasted for several minutes before Sara was set on her feet and made to stand and face the wall by the refectory door in full view of her fellow inmates as they filed out.

Later Quail found Sara morosely stacking seed pots in one of the out houses.

“Go away,” Sara said sullenly.

“Is your bottom still sore?” Quail asked.

Sara blushed. Close up Quail could see that she was barely 20 and the only thing holding her down was the native cunning that knew a bigger fish when she saw one.

“If you keep stacking those pots like that, then you will have an even sorer one,” Quail observed.

It wasn’t entirely a bluff; she had certainly seen better pot stacking.

“Oh,” Sara’s eyes were suddenly a little wider with panic.

“I have something here that will take some of the sting out of your bottom and then I can show you how to do it properly,” Quail offered.

Sara pursed her lips and blushed a little more. But she put up little resistance as Quail turned her about and bent her over the lower shelf. Lifting up Sara’s dress she found the girl’s bottom still mottled red with welting down the cleft. It was a rare treat to smooth cooling salve from a tube she had pilfered from the infirmary.

Sara gasped and closed her eyes as she allowed Quail full access to the underside of her bottom.

“Good?” Quail asked as she let her fingers wander deeper.

“Uh,” came Sara’s answer as she parted her legs somewhat.

Quail continued to tease the girl, letting her fingers stay on the upper slopes of Sara’s red-stained bottom and only occasionally dipping down low for tighter darker folds.

“See, I know how to…”

“Don’t stop,” Sara gasped

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” a voice snapped at them from behind.

There were no closed doors on the commune and Quail had known the risks.

“I was just…” Quail began, she allowed a pout of frustration to show on her face.

“I don’t want to hear it,” the man growled.

He was one of the younger deputies. He was tall with red hair and fierce dancing eyes.

Quail pouted some more as she got to her feet. Sara, she noted looked like a lamb about to be slaughtered.

“Get those dresses off, I want you stripped down to your stockings and bodices,” he snapped.

He didn’t wait to see if he was obeyed, but strode out of the shed, making a determined turn to the left once he was framed by the door.

“What is he going to do?” Sara gasped, her eyes domed and wide on her face.

“I don’t think he likes me undoing all that hard work they put in on your bottom,” Quail said sardonically.

Sara looked as if she might cry.

“Come on, do as he says, I’ll take a punishment but I don’t want to lose any remission,” Quail said hastily.

By the time the deputy had returned both women were huddled together in just a brief breast-supporting bodice top and grey thigh length stockings. The birch in his hand came as no surprise to Quail, but Sara began to whimper a little.

“Come with me,” the man snapped and then strode away again.

Both Quail and Sara followed on reluctantly, the air tickling at their legs and exposed bottom. Sara clamped her hands to her crotch and walked in an utterly cowed posture, while Quail led the way somewhat more stoically. As they went they drew a few glances from the other girls, but most were too busy to dawdle, lest they wanted a share of the birch themselves.

The deputy led them to the woodshed where there in the centre of the room was a low wooden crossbeam wide enough to take three or four bare bottoms in a row. At a nod from the man, Quail stepped forward and flopped right over it and then wriggled until the pressure from the beam on her lower belly was bearable and her bottom was properly elevated.

“Please Sir I didn’t…” Sara squealed in panic.

“No you didn’t, did you? And you were supposed to have done,” he snapped at her, “Besides, you know the rules, comfort from a punishment is not to be sought in working hours outside of the infirmary.”

“But…” Sara persisted.

“Bend over,” the deputy barked at her.

Sara gulped and then cast a glance at Quail’s blossoming behind. With a blush she scurried across the room and dropped face down next to her new friend so that her bottom too was neatly presented for the birch.

The birch fell in a healthy swoosh and landed crisply across Quail’s bare bottom. The pirate-queen displayed no reaction at first, but all too quickly the nibbling bite began to sing in her flesh and then burn. It was a fuzzy tang and she hissed through clench teeth as she rode it out.

The second swipe garnered much the same reaction as did the third, but each stroke that landed after that made Quail give out with a panicked wail as the fire in her behind grew and grew.

After eight searing swipes the deputy switched bottoms and lashed the birch across Sara’s waiting bottom.

“Yeow,” she screamed melodramatically, kicking her legs back as she rocked her bottom in bucking motions.

The second, third and fourth strokes all got the same reaction, but after the fifth Sara set-up a continuous howl and sobbed bitterly into the floor just inches from her nose.

Quail grunted at each stroke during her second set and made clawing motions with her hands as if swimming away from the fire in her bottom. Sometimes a good sound birching transported her back to the detention centre.

If Sara’s first set had been bad, the second was unsupportable and she began to howl like a banshee as she was birched for her second eight.

“No more, please, no more, I didn’t mean it,” she shrieked.

It was the kind of reaction Quail usually enjoyed but she was still holding on to herself and panting hard through waves of flame in her own bottom.

Quail’s third eight had spluttering to sobs every bit as earnestly as Sara after just two more strokes and this time the deputy took her up to 12 before he switched back to Sara. It ought to be enough for them both he decided as he readied Sara’s last set.

But after just one more biting swipe Sara leapt to her feet and began to dance around the woodshed.

“No more, no more please Sir,” she sobbed.

The deputy sighed.

“It looks like we have to start over doesn’t it?”

“Oh no, n-n-no, please Sir,” Sara wailed.

“Bend over,” he said sharply.

It took a minute for Sara to steel herself, but finally she stopping hopping around and woodenly walked forward to bend over.

The repeated first eight felt like someone had taken a blow-torch to her bottom and Sara shrieked so much that several people came running. By the time it was over Sara was a broken heap of tears.

“That would have been enough for you if you hadn’t rebelled,” the deputy said in a tone of disappointment.

“No more, please, please, please no more,” Sara sobbed.

“Too bad,” the deputy sighed.

“Please Sir,” Quail piped up. “It was my fault and she can’t help it. It is her first time.”

Quail found it a strain to speak and as she winced words through an aching jaw her bottom had to contend with a million billion bees drilling and biting into her.

“Your fault eh, so I guess you’re offering to take 20 more in her place,” the deputy scoffed.

But he was impressed with Quail’s courage all the same.

“Yes Sir, if it will spare her,” Quail found herself saying.

There was a mutter from the few people outside and the deputy gave a low whistle. Then he shrugged.

“I gotta see this,” he said, “But if you cry off before I am half-done she gets it just the same. And if you beg me sooner you’re both get it anyway and I tell you now, that is what I am working for.”

It sounded harsh, but Quail realised he could have birch them both twice over for trying to make bargains. He was fair at least.

The next stroke that seared its way across Quail’s red raw bottom made her grunt down a shriek and really dance over the wooden bar. She had now taken 29 and now had about as many to go.

“Oh comets on fire,” she gasped.

They were her last coherent words for 10 minutes as true to his word the deputy birched her to total surrender.

*

Both Quail and Sara were told they would lose their day off, which the heavily sobbing older woman almost protested as unfair. Then they were told to go and stand outside their dorm house and face the wall for the rest of the day.

It was as good a place to stand for a good cry as any, although the public exposure never lost its embarrassing shame-filled piquancy and was positively mortifying for the novice Sara.

After crying non-stop for a derision-filled hour Sara stole a glance over her shoulder and then whispered, “I’m so sorry.”

“Are you kidding,” Quail said miserably, “I got us into this mess.”

“But you… but you… but you… took my punishment,” Sara sobbed and then she was crying in earnest again.

Quail flicked an eye down over shoulder at the two heavy swollen domes protruding behind her. Quite an eyeful for the spank fan inmates like her, she thought ruefully and my bottom is about as raw as it could be short of being flayed. Her rounds were so fiercely throbbing she could actually feel a pulse in each cheek. Not the worst I have ever had, she thought, but her mind would not alight on a punishment that was. Then like Sara she started to cry again.

*

“Thank you Letitia, my bottom feels much better now,” Sara gushed shyly.

The two of them had stolen away to a quiet loft that Quail had scoped out. If they were discovered it would mean the paddle and then Quail would probably never sit down again, but that was her life now.

Quail had produced another tube of ointment and laying Sara naked on her front, she had smeared the soothing unguent gently over the girl’s tortured cheeks.

“What about you?” Sara had finally said in a thick voice.

It took all her will to break off from her own little ecstasy.

“I was coming to that,” Quail said huskily.

There was mischief in her eyes and she looked at the girl like she was breakfast.

“Put out your tongue,” Quail ordered the girl.

Sara gaped for a moment and then obeyed. Quail carefully squeezed a long worm of ooze down Sara’s pink digit and smiled.

“Whanth dyath wanth me too doo nowth,” Sara mumbled with a straight tongue as she tried not to laugh.

“You know,” Quail said offering the girl the curve of her bottom. “Your tongue is softer than you fingers.”

Sara giggled and then stooping down gently began to apply the unguent to Quail’s raw flesh.

“Careful now or I will spank you,” she cooed, “And don’t you think I wouldn’t love that.”

Given the intimate location of her tongue, Sara couldn’t reply.

To be concluded.

Our story started here.

Quail took Sara firmly under her wing after that. She supposed that she saw in the girl someone like her who was on the wrong path in life. Maybe if she could save Sara then in a small way she could save herself.

“Is it true you were a pirate?” Sara asked her one day.

They were in the small shed on the far side of the commune sorting out tools. There was a big pile of broken hoes and spades, some of which could be repaired and others that would have to be recycled for scrap.

Sara was stooped over letting her eye scan the pile for any that could still be used and pulling them out. She had spoken idly and without looking up as if the question was either trivial or the most important question of her life and she couldn’t bear to be disappointed.

“Who told you that?” Quail shot back at her angrily.

Sara looked up.

“I heard two of the deputies talking. They say you were real hard case and commanded a ship and everything.” Sara’s eyes were brimming with excitement. “One day I am going to get out of this dumb system and be just like you.”

Quail felt strangely sick, like she was falling and would never stop. Was she really ever as stupid as this kid?

“You get out of here clear and free in two years. You are doing great in your studies and not only will you have some qualifications, but you will have a recognised agricultural apprenticeship. It is more than you could ever have hoped for.” Quail was conscious of the desperation in her voice. “What about being a journalist? You sounded keen before. You could be an agricultural correspondent. It must be all they read about on this planet and then in a few years you could back to the city on your own terms.”

“But I could hook up with some of my own gang and steal a ship maybe…” Sara said excitedly.

Quail wanted to shake her. To tell her that she would be dead in a year if she were lucky and if not she would spend her life as a fugitive. But what was the point? Then she saw the short broken end of plank on the floor. It was tapered down one side as if to form a crude paddle.

Quail snatched it up and then grabbed Sara.

“You little brat, have you really learned nothing,” Quail raged, “If someone had caught me sooner and put me in one of these places…”

Quail was speechless now and tumbled Sara face down over her lap. The skirt was easy to hike up and in a moment Sara’s bottom was bare.

“What did I do?” Sara wailed.

Quail answered with a serious blast of the paddle which landed with a sharp crack across Sara’s exposed bottom. Sara’s legs shot out straight and she bucked her head back with a yowl.

“You are going to go to college,” Quail yelled as she spanked the girl again, “You are going to be a journalist,” and again, “You are going to make something of yourself.”

Quail blasted down her arm three more times drawing mewling squeals from Sara as she bucked up down on the older woman’s lap. There was a mess of hard red rectangles on Sara’s white flesh where the paddle had landed and they looked sore too. But Quail was too angry to care, too angry even to get any satisfaction form spanking her young protégé.

“If you ever, I mean ever, think about a life a crime,” Quail slammed the broken plank-paddle down as hard as she could, “If you… ever…”

Quail was speechless and brought the paddle down again and again.

“I am telling you girl, you won’t ever sit down again,” Quail spat. “If I have to spank you every day for the rest of your sentence, if I have to get us a public caning and loss of remission to keep you here until you see sense…”

“Alright, alright,” Sara wailed.

But Quail was far from done. She was set to spank the girl until someone came and dragged her off the girl, right then Quail would welcome a full paddle-strapping and caning just to clear her head.

Sara began to cry as she kicked her legs in futile protest as she felt her blistered bottom melt. But her only thoughts were of a home she never had and the only friend who ever cared.

Deputy Leader Andros stood at the door of the shed watching. He had come to break up what he had assumed was a fight, but had got there just in time to hear everything. He was the new kid on the block and was still finding his way around.

Andros was a tall and in his mid-50s with steel grey hair that was now thinning on top. He had switched careers after 30 years as a businessman in an effort to put something back. He was motivated in part after his own daughter went through a rough patch and did a short spell in correction.

Well that was what he believed for as an entity he was as fully formed as any and been born, grown-up, lived and loved in his world just like any other. Perhaps he was a copy of someone who had been on a similar journey to Quail’s at some time. Or maybe he was a construct from many such experiences or drawn from something deep in the lost pirate-woman’s consciousness. To the Sphere it was all the same. It dealt in myriad realities all complete within its matrix as it shaped and learned about the universe.

Andros himself would have been fascinated. He loved reading about alternative universes and the philosophical nature of reality. He often spoke on the subject over dinner.

“I think, therefore I am,” he might say with a grin.

“I eat therefore I am,” was the teasing reply his friends usually answered him with.

Andros didn’t care.

He had been watching these two and had assumed that there relationship was an unhealthy one. He had seen enough bull-dykes and their gimps to know. But then he had seen Quail’s eyes checking out the men in the yard and something else. He saw hope. Andros considered for a moment and then he quietly slipped away. He got 80 meters away before he could no longer hear the spanking.

But Sara heard it and the message it imparted. The shed rang with thunderclap spanks that went on and on for a good portion of the hour before Quail was spent. By that time the girl was a sobbing wreck and hugged into Quail with all her strength.

The next day Quail was made a trustee and assigned some admin work and a hip- switch.

*

The years passed in real time for Quail until she forgot that there ever was another world. From time to time she would get into some trouble and Andros would haul her off to the woodshed for a workout that left her standing for supper for days to come. But Quail needed and welcomed these moments of clarity and responded to Andros’s guidance much as Sara had.

Sara herself left the commune after only 18 months on account of diploma she had got in journalism. Initially she had gone to work for the justice system writing a newsletter on judicial communes for the profession, but after a year Sara had written to Quail and told she had been offered a job as a crime reporter in the city.

By then there were other Sara’s to help. Hard cases, some of them, but Quail spanked a measure of respect out of most of them and if that failed she went to Andros and arranged for a healthy portion of birch.

“What will you do when you get out of here?” Andros asked her one day.

“Out of here?” Quail mouthed back at him.

“Your sentence must be up soon, less than I year I make it,” Andros said happily. “You have been with us 10 years now, your remission has really piled up, and in a way we will be sorry to lose you.”

“Ten years,” Quail said absently.

A single tear rolled down her cheek.

*

Quail did not so much as wake but more came back to herself.

She was standing on a whirlpool of molten steel that spun beneath her feet as if it would swallow her, but never quite did. The room around and beyond her was made of opaque glass or so it appeared and it was this that lit the room, a hall really, with cool blue light.

Somewhere inside she knew she had full access. But she was calm. She no longer needed it.

“You have your prize now,” said a gentle female voice, “Don’t you?”

The woman was standing about 10 meters from her and directly ahead. Quail couldn’t think how she had not noticed her at once and she smiled. The woman was almost Jane from home-world and the house with the garden so, so many years ago.

“I am not sure what I have,” Quail whispered then she thought of something. “How… how long have I been…?”

She looked around and then back at the woman.

“Here?”

“Time is of no relevance to us,” Jane said, for Quail was sure it was a ‘Jane’ now. “Subjectively from your point of view you have been here 56 days.”

Quail opened her mouth to reply but found she had nothing to say to that.

“The Wayward Girl has docked and from here you can get a liner home,” Jane told her.

“Home?” Quail was puzzled, she didn’t even bother to ask who or what The Wayward Girl was.

“The ship you tried to rob,” Jane said in answer to her thoughts.

Quail nodded. She remembered now.

“There is a residential commune-college on home-world where you born,” Jane said casually, “You are enrolled there. They are expecting you in 43 days by your reckoning.”

“Redemption,” Quail whispered, she wondered how she could not think on home-world’s name for so many years, not even in her deepest thoughts.

“Yes Redemption,” Jane said brightly, “It is waiting for you.”

“The planet,” Quail looked at the woman sharply.

“All of it,” Jane replied.

“But…” Quail thought about Cutie and all the others she had harmed.

“Sometimes a line must be drawn,” Jane said in answer again. “The one you call cutie, Katherine Harrison, was redeemed by e-cheque 40 days ago and is now on route to her home. The funds were drawn from selling your ship and similar sources.”

“You can do that?” Quail gasped.

“We can access your… forgive me, primitive systems easily,” Jane smiled. “Similar arrangements have made where possible with other victims of yours.”

“But…” there must be some who could not be so easily helped. “I have to pay.”

“You have,” Jane said, “You judged yourself and served an 11 year prison sentence after helping dozens of others.”

“But it wasn’t real, none of it,” Quail insisted.

“Sara has just been made an editor and Andros has just got word, he has a third grandchild,” Jane tilted her head.

Quail opened her mouth again and then closed it.

“I don’t understand. Who are you?”

Jane shrugged.

“Yes you do,” she said.

Quail drew in a long slow breath. Well now she had no ship and… how could she go to college on Redemption, there she thought it. She was assailed with images of Cloudhaven and the cool green forests of Tannamere.

“Okay I am reformed, but…”

“You are now physically 19 again, your DNA altered by just enough to be consistent with being your own daughter. There is just enough from your ill-gotten gains, the lawful interest actually, to provide for your fees and an apartment when you are ready. The money is held in trust for you.”

Quail frowned. On Redemption she could not be a full adult until she was 25; one of the reasons she had left. Now she welcomed the situation.

“Who…?”

“A guardian has been appointed, he will suit you I think,” Jane explained.

“You know me so well,” Quail said sarcastically.

“Yes we do,” Jane stated it as fact.

“You even chose a new name for yourself,” Jane said brightly.

Quail nodded as new information was realised in her head.

“Tell me about this commune-college place I am going to.” Quail allowed herself some hope.

“It is very like the commune you now know in various uncomfortable ways, but you need that, don’t you?” Jane was actually smirking, “But they also have flyers for the crops and to get around the extensive lands they manage.”

Quail blushed.

“Goodbye Quail,” Jane said and then she was gone.

*

Quail stood at the end of a long blue-grey slate road that wound its way up the broad valley to the distant mountains. The nearer peaks were chiselled from blue stone and still held snow in the crannies sheltered from the sun. Overhead the sky was cobalt and crystal clear, although far across the hills were some great towers of white, like milk in water billowing into the sky. She knew that beyond the hills was another mountain range that led up to Cloudhaven and her heart swelled. Perhaps she would have a holiday there.

On either side of the road were dark-green Goya trees, their twisted grey-brown trunks curving out of the ground like umbrella handles. Here and there were signs of cultivation and there were even some vineyards on the far south-facing slopes.

She was still admiring the view when a tractor-hauler came up behind her and came to a halt. On top in a red bucket seat, which like the rest of the vehicle, was open to the elements, sat a young man of around 30.

He had sandy blonde hair and his white shirt sleeves were rolled up to his elbows to reveal heavily tanned arms. These thick limbs were dotted with dark blonde hair, but not too much, just enough to set off his manly rustic aspect, Quail thought.

“You heading up to the commune?” he called down.

Quail shifted her small pack on her back and grinned at him.

“Yes I am,” she called up.

“The main house is still six kilometres up the road, as for the rest you are looking at it,” he grinned, “The name’s Tony Nichols, come on I’ll give you a ride.”

“Thanks,” Quail beamed, “Quail, Sara Quail.”

She had always wanted a daughter called Sara and maybe now, one day she would have one.

Quail jumped onto a low platform in back of the tractor and shuffled her tail to get comfy.

“Ready when you are,” she called and the tractor pulled away.

Up in the sky a flyer turned circles and seemed to wave at her so she waved back.

The end.

Some years ago while on a business trip to Europe a colleague and I went to a Chinese restaurant for lunch. The premise was an old style establishment run by a Chinese family with more than a hint of sympathy for the New China.

In the corner was a TV churning out Chinese government news reports interspersed with soaps.

Then after a while on came a TV historical drama with girls in pretty dresses and a rather comically evil empress complete with hissing as she sat on a throne. The hissing was imagined as the sound was turned down.

Then a girl in yellow silk was dragged before the empress and thrown Monty Python-style to the ground on her front. Whereupon two splendid gentlemen in black began to spank her with paddles better suited to rowing the Queen Mary.

Since then I have seen many replays of this same scenario, many better executed with more subtle and delicate paddles. Perhaps it is an old staple of such imperialist Chinese dramas, like Indian movies which continuously rehash the happily-ending Romeo and Juliet scenario with singing and dancing.

Most of these dramas, like the one I saw, have the girls lusciously dressed in silk and spanked, often in pairs, fully clothed in such a described manner. But occasionally there are racier scenes where the girls are nude.

Ironically the nude versions are more nuanced and realistically executed, although I suspect the introduction of public nudity in reality may have been reserved for men. That is how it seems in period photos, which are grainy affairs with dour looking Europeans standing over them. This latter point about colonialism begs the question of how far back such public punishments go in Chinese culture.

Most of these recent scenes are well filmed with high production values and are satisfying intense, making one wonder about how spanking erotica is viewed in the Far East. Also that many of the more modern scenarios have focused on domestic spanking and sometimes caning, which is a departure from this tradition. Sometimes even introducing an openly erotic element between girlfriend and boyfriend.

I know Korea has explored this arena to good effect and have often tackled this subject head on in mainstream cinema, but unfortunately most have yet made to our screens and DVD shops. Some of the pictures above may in fact be Korean, my apologies but from this context I cannot be sure.

It is also worth pointing out that the top picture is a domestic scene where it looks like a cane is being used.

This snippet was first published by Alex Birch on his blog A Taste of Birch. Alex Birch sadly died a while back and his blog is no more, but apart from his stories, which can now be read at the Library of Spanking Fiction, he published historical accounts of punishments.

This story is a true one in all regards except possibly the last part. Perhaps Alex invented it, or perhaps his sources were better than mine. Lady Sophia Lindsay was indeed sentenced to be whipped for her part in the plot but the public portion was not carried out.

Was there a private portion as described in the account that follows?

In 1660, after a bitter Civil War and many years of Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate, England was restored to a monarchy with the triumphant return of Charles II as King. For many, their delight at seeing the restoration of the monarchy was soon tempered by the degree of retribution exercised by the new King for past crimes against his father and his own followers under the Cromwellian regime.

Before his return from exile, the new King had promised that all religious opinions throughout the lands of England and Scotland would he respected, yet soon signed a series of Acts of Parliament which outlawed any religious gatherings except those which pursued the authorised Prayer Book. Dungeons in England and Scotland were soon overflowing, a prime target for the new King being the rebellious Presbyterian Scots whose religious dissent was put down with ruthless ferocity.

The King’s brother James, Duke of York, became extremely powerful and, in many parts, feared, because as well as being a man of ruthless ambition he was a Catholic and therefore distrusted by the new restored Anglican Parliament. After some years as a kind of roving ambassador for Charles II, James was given a Scottish estate and appointed his brother’s unofficial representative for Scotland, which gave him sweeping powers of attorney. The Scots were suffering great hardship and torment in defence of their religious beliefs and rose up in revolt, eventually being routed at Bothwell Bridge by an army led by the Duke of Monmouth. The Duke of York now increased his campaign against Scottish dissenters but, with breathtaking hypocrisy, secured his brother’s permission to institute a Scottish Protestant Parliament dedicated to preventing a ‘return to popery’ while ensuring that he, a Catholic, would remain all powerful in Scotland.

The new Scottish Parliament instituted an oath which was confusing in the extreme but which intended to ensure that every sitting Member pledged allegiance to the organised Protestant faith. One of those members was the Earl of Argyll who was a Presbyterian and took the opportunity of such confusion to announce that he saw nothing in the oath which would prevent him from favouring changes to the law regarding Church and State while still remaining loyal to the Crown. In such a climate, these words were as a red rag to a bull and Argyll was arrested and charged with high treason. The Earl was tried by a jury of which the Marquis of Montrose (a Charles Stuart loyalist) was foreman, found guilty and sentenced to hang.

The news was received with horror by Argyll’s family and it was resolved that something daring needed to be done to avert this fate. One of the visitors allowed the Earl during his incarceration was his beautiful daughter, Lady Sophia Lindsay, the wife of Alexander Lindsay, Earl of Buccleugh. Lindsay himself was known to be a ‘soft’ Anglican thus trusted by the King’s representatives but who allowed his wife her Presbyterian views just so long as they were not publicly expressed. A very daring plan was hatched within the Earl’s family, apparently unknown to Alexander Lindsay, whereby Lady Sophia would visit her father accompanied by maidservants and pages. Because of her position, the family gambled that no obstacle would be placed in the path of such a visitation. They took extra clothing with them and, after distracting the guard for some minutes, they made up the Earl’s bed with blankets to make it appear that he was sleeping then the Earl of Argyll escaped, dressed as a page, as part of his daughter’s entourage. The deception was not discovered until too late and the Earl had contacted influential friends who spirited him away in a boat to Holland.

When the prime agent of this deception was discovered, Lady Sophia Lindsay was arrested and tried by a Civil Council. Such was the anger at her effrontery that the Council voted that the young woman should be stripped to the waist, tied to a cart tail and whipped all day through the streets of Edinburgh. The sentence was received with horror by Lady Sophia’s family, not least by her husband who sought urgent talks with the Duke of York, pleading desperately for some reduction in the sentence, emphasising the degree of humiliation for the whole family including himself, a Stuart supporter, should such a sentence be carried out.

The Duke of York listened sympathetically and, to Lindsay’s relief, agreed to substitute an alternative private punishment. He told Lindsay that as his young wife had behaved like a spoilt child she would be treated like one and pronounced his alternative judgement.

Thus it was that on a May morning in 1681, a very tearful Lady Sophia Lindsay was taken to a private room in Edinburgh Castle and there she found waiting a Sergeant-at-Arms, her embarrassed husband and her frantic mother. Knowing her intended punishment, she pleaded with her husband that she be spared this indignity but Lindsay bluntly pointed out that she had brought this upon herself and was fortunate that the affair was not public as originally intended. The Sergeant-at-Arms motioned the duty guard that Lady Sophia was to be made to kneel down over a low stool with her face pressed to the carpet, bottom thus fully raised. When that was done, her long dress and petticoats were lifted up and pinned to her shoulders thus completely exposing her naked bottom. The Sergeant-at-Arms then took up a birch rod and proceeded to give the young woman a very thorough and painful birching lasting half an hour after which she was released into the custody of her husband, amid floods of tears, presumably unable to sit down for a week! Some unsubstantiated reports have said she was given 50 strokes of the birch rod, wearing out two substantial birches in the process. The experience must have been painful and deeply embarrassing but surely preferable to the original sentence!

Sadly, the lady’s sacrifice was all too short term for the Earl of Argyll made his way secretly back to Scotland where he was caught, tried once more and this time he was executed.