The Birching of Altea

It is a while since we had a good story, so here is one about an 18th century judicial birching.  It seems that sometimes the birch was applied to a young woman standing at the whipping post, as this drawing shows:

And this is the position adopted by Altea and her friends in this story.  Rather than just one post the whipping column sometimes had a crossbar, again as in this story.  I have modified it here and there so that she is birched only across her bottom and thighs, and of course Altea is my own fantasy recipient.  Enjoy.

Ariel was first to descend, and tried to push away the hand of the man who would have helped her down. But he, with a coarse laugh, touched her waist and lifted her down, pressing against her lasciviously as he muttered, “Aye, lass, you'll soon be begging for gentler caresses like mine than what Master Dickon will dole out to you, I wager!”

Altea and Beatrice had tried to control their sobs and tears, learning that the implacable Queen was to watch their martyrdom. The friar ascended the steps of the scaffold with them, his prayers ringing out in the silence of the attentive courtyard. Ariel's eyes widened as she saw two buckets, in which sheaves of birch switches, bound and gathered and of varying thicknesses and lengths, were thrust. Buckets of brine, so that the withes would sting the more fiercely against naked young flesh. And there was no sun, only the gray leaden sky. The day was as mournful as their fate indeed.

They were on the platform of the scaffold now, the friar beside them, and the executioner and the assistant were off to one side, stooping over the buckets, verifying the condition of the rods selected for the castigation of these three young high-spirited rebels, whose caprice of a moment was to cost them so dearly. And now there ascended the steps the Lord High Constable, a bluff, red-bearded man in his early forties, with ruff and wig and sword and doublet, holding the imposing document signed by the Queen herself. He read it out sonorously, while the soldiers below played their drums in a low, muffled, continuous cadence, like that which is played when the condemned are brought out to face the firing squad or the noose.

It was a repetition of the sentence which had been read to them in the Tower. The young women stood, their backs turned to the palace, so that they would not have to face the mocking gaze of the Queen who would gloat over this atrocious hour.

The Lord High Constable now turned to Ariel and demanded, “Your age, Mistress Clarisson?”

“Twenty-three,” the beautiful young redhead responded with a steady voice.

“By the decree of Charlotte Sophia, then, Mistress Clarisson, you are to receive three and twenty cuts of the birch upon your naked body. And your age Mistress Digby?”

“Twenty—twenty-one,” blonde Beatrice tearfully stammered, then bowed her head as the tears ran down her cheeks.

“And you, Mistress Balmadge?”

“T-twenty,” brunette Altea responded faintly.

“You will mark that, Master Dickon,” the Lord High Constable admonished, and the hooded executioner inclined his head in respectful acknowledgment. “You will begin with the youngest, then. Let Mistress Balmadge be prepared for punishment!”

The terrible moment had come. And Altea Balmadge, with a cry of fright and shame, fell on her knees before the executioner and sobbed, “Have mercy, not naked, oh my God, not naked, whip me if you must, but don't expose me to all these people, in the name of mercy!”

The burly executioner moved towards the buckets containing the brine-soaked birch rods, and his young assistant, Tom, now approached the terrified brunette who was to be first to endure this public flogging. Seeing him approach, Altea uttered a cry of terror and, still on her knees tried to scramble to the edge of the scaffold. With a mocking laugh, the brawny young rogue seized her by the elbows and lifted her to her feet, weeping piteously. Then he hustled her forward to the cross-armed post to which she was to be tethered for punishment.

Master Dickon, stooping now, picked up a length of hempen cord and tossed it to his assistant who deftly caught it with one hand. Then taking a knife from the pocket of his leather breeches under the black hood which garbed him from crown to hips and thus made him the more terrifyingly sinister, Tom cut the cords binding Altea's wrists only to seize her left wrist in his left hand and draw it up high to the metal ring set in the crossarm. He turned to the executioner, who tossed him another length of cord, and this served to tie Altea's other wrist to the ring, so that she stood on tiptoes, painfully posed and helpless.

Setting his hand to the neck of her dress, he ripped it to her hips, and Altea uttered a scream of shame and terror: “OHHHH OH NO, NOOO! PLEASE—MERCY—MERCY!”

Beatrice, still on her knees, watched with horrified despair as she saw in this scene her own following ordeal. Only Ariel remained courageous, standing straight, her hands bound behind her, her back turned to the window from which the Queen watched with greedy eyes and smirking lips.

“Courage, Altea, courage. It will soon be over,” she murmured consolingly. But the brunette could take no consolation from the words. Her head strained back over her shoulders, dragging wildly on her bound wrists, she tried to twist her creamy body away from the executioner's young assistant as, chuckling lewdly, he seized the rent gown at the hips and ripped it down to the hem. It festooned at her ankles, and now she was seen in a white chemise with elegant lace trim. This too went the way of the gown, and Altea uttered another piercing cry: “OH NOT NAKED, NOT ALL NAKED!!” as she pressed herself frantically at the whipping post, glancing feverishly back at the hooded man behind her.

She was presented now in white batiste drawers, and a short white camisole which concealed her uptilting, conically shaped breasts, whose hard, dark coral tips nuzzled the thin material in the wild, sporadic panting of her terror.

Now the camisole was torn away and the glories of her virgin titties were displayed to all. Altea Balmadge's skin was a warm, ivory-cream in hue, satiny soft and finely sensitive in texture. Now that one could see her naked bubbies, one gaped at their beauty, for the lovegourds of Altea Balmadge could be fondled by one's glance, even if no mans' fingers had as yet encountered their satiny naked resilience. 

Widely separated, set high on her creamy chest, they were proud and firm, arching upwards and out. The aureolae were narrow and brownish-coral, and one could see also the shallow, wide niche of her belly-button. Stretched in cross as were her arms, the soft nooks of her armpits were displayed to all those lusting eyes, silky down with soft black hair in tangled little curls.

Her stockings were of gray silk, held up high on her thighs by mauve garters, flouncy rosettes which could well have furnished some aspiring lover a delicious and provocative momento. Her legs were long and beautifully curved, the thighs gradually ripening as they neared the base of oval-cheeked but ample buttocks, gradually furrowed by a deepening cleft which led to both temples of her virginity, that of Venus and that of Sodom as well.

Naked now except for her drawers, garters, hose and shoes, Altea bowed her head and burst into hysterical sobs. The sides of her titties pressed against the rough wood of the whipping post's upright stake, impinging upon her the awful reality of this despairing situation, this public humiliation and awful degradation.

The young assistant halted a moment, perhaps so the spectators could feast their eyes on the lascivious nakedness of the lovely young brunette. Her curls were piled high on her forehead and at the top of her head, then tumbled in a thick, shimmering black swathe to her shoulder blades. Her eyes were closed desperately tight, but tears edged beneath the fluttering lids. Her delicate nostril wings flared and shrank, and her lips twisted as they sought to suppress the sobs and groans and supplications which surged to her creamy throat.

“Go on, man,” Master Dickon softly growled, as squatting beside the buckets containing the birch rods, he turned to watch his young assistant.

“At once, good Master Dickon,” the young assistant retorted. He put his hand to the waistband of the drawers, and with a despairing shriek, as she futilely ground herself against the whipping post, Altea Balmadge announced that this veil of modesty had just been torn from her shuddering, ivory-white body.

Now she was naked except for hose, garters and shoes, and her buttocks were delectably vulnerable and palpitatingly tempting in the morning light. The cool air made the flesh shrink, and the ample oval cheeks tensed and contracted violently as the unfortunate young woman strove with all her might to hide the most intimate regions of her person from these libidinous eyes.

It was the young assistant executioner who would flog Altea Balmadge. Brawny Master Dickon squinted at the ivory bottom-cheeks of the weeping young sufferer, and then judiciously selected one of the half-dozen birch rods soaking in the brine-filled buckets before him. It was a rod composed of half a dozen long, supple switches on which the green twigs could still be seen. A black cloth had been neatly and tightly wrapped around the heavier ends to form a grip for the wielder's hand. It was neither too bulky nor too thin, but in the opinion of the head executioner, an ideal instrument of fustigation for the proportions of Altea's ivory-sheened bare bottom.

Fighting her apprehension, her eyes tightly closed, her body pressed convulsively against the heavy upright piece of the whipping post, the naked young brunette awaited her birching. The cool air tickled her skin, sensitized her nerves and made this tension-filled moment before the actual first stroke and interminable, indescribable agony. With all her might she pressed her loins against the rough wood of the post to hide the thick black curls over the prominent fig of her virginity. One could see the rippling spasms up and down her thighs and along her stockinged, supple calves as she prepared herself for the first bite of the birch rod.

“I will mark it for ye,” Master Dickon muttered to his young aide, who nodded and took his place behind the shuddering naked brunette, standing at her left and brandishing the rod. He gave it one or two preliminary swishes in the air to test its efficacy, and the whistling sound made Altea Balmadge gasp and shrink herself with even more convulsive anguish against the rough post. Arching up on tiptoe, her arms dragged out in cross, the magnificent sculptuary of her white body stark against the leaden sky, against the brown planking of the scaffold. And now a collective hush had fallen upon the absorbed spectators. Ariel watched from where she stood, her shoulders still straight and her head high, while poor Beatrice Digby remained kneeling, weeping, head bowed, afraid to see the fate of her companion because it would foretell only too torturingly her own.

Tom lowered the rod to the floor of the scaffolding, measuring his distance, appraising the firm, ample ivory ovals of that luscious naked bottom given up to his flagellatory skill. Aware that Charlotte Sophia herself was watching, he determined to acquit himself with valor, for this might be an opportunity to win royal favor and rank as high as the man to whom he had been apprenticed these four years. He watched the young woman's buttocks tighten and shudder, as all her muscles came to her defense, and he waited his time, to prove he was no novice at this art. When he saw the cheeks of Altea's bottom relax their contraction, he suddenly drew back his strong young right arm and swung the birch out horizontally, taking a step forward, so the withes fell fantail across the upper summits of both naked bottom globes.

The shock and the surprise of the first cut overcame what remained of the brunette's already dispersed courage. With a convulsive jerk at her bound wrists, her head fell back and her mouth gaped in a raucous scream: “AAHHRR!!! OH SPARE ME, IT HURTS ME DREADFULLY, OH SPARE ME, I'LL NEVER DO IT AGAIN!”

“One!” Master Dickon imperturbably counted. He had risen, standing at the victim's right, his muscular, hairy arms folded across his chest, and his eyes glistened through the slits in the hood. He was a burly rogue in his late forties, heavily set and stolid, and it was his boast that he had broken some of the most distinguished criminals in all England on the wheel and made them linger longer than his predecessor, who had been a valorous dispatcher of criminals for the greater glory of the Crown.

He watched critically now, for his own skill was indirectly tested. It was he who had taught Tom how to apply the birch as well as the cat, and it must be done slowly and dramatically, spinning out each possible nuance of torment and terrified anticipation of the next stroke, until the victim's nerves were completely attenuated. The cries and the bodily movements of the culprit during chastisement would be the best clue to the efficacy of the flogging.

This first stroke was well placed, he silently approved, as he eyed his young assistant. Bright pink stripes formed vivid parallel upon the ivory escutcheon of Altea's naked behind. Now that she had had a taste of the lash, she would be the more vociferous and mobile under the following cuts. Squinting at his aide, he waited to observe how Tom administered this first of three whippings before the eyes of the Queen herself.

The birch was lowered to the floor of the scaffold now, as Tom again gauged his distance. Moving slightly more to the left and a step back, he now drew back his right arm, hovered the rod in the air, then lunged forward. There was an angry Swishuish as the withes sang through the air and curled with an angry and crisp impact against the very middle of both nether hemispheres. Altea Balmadge stiffened, her head twisted back and her eyes dilated and filled with tears, then she jerked frenziedly at her bonds and arched forward, grinding her furry cunt against the whipping post as she shrieked: “EEEYEEOWWW!!! I'M ONLY A GIRL,  OH THE PAIN, THE PAIN, FORGIVE ME, OH HAVE PITY!”

“Two,” Master Dickon remarked and, catching his aide's eye, gave the youth a brisk nod of approval. The vivid tracery of the switches against that tender nacreous flesh dramatically and lasciviously accentuated all the immaculate ivory beauty of Altea's nakedness. Ariel slightly turned her head, and she saw that those seated in the pavilion were craning their necks to absorb the spectacle before them. She did not lift her eyes to the second floor of the palace where Charlotte Sophia broodingly watched the carrying out of her heartless decree.

Huishhhh! The second cut was placed perhaps twenty-five seconds later and again without warning, as the executioner's aide whirled the rod overhead and then stepped forward to send it slashing across the base of Altea's naked posterior. Once again the young body jerked convulsively at the whipping post. The knees bent, the loins ground feverishly, with a kind of salacious suggestiveness of self-masturbation, against the chafing rough wood of the whipping post. Then that agonized and lovely face was turned back over Altea's bare white shoulder, bathed in tears and contorted in indescribable suffering as her mouth gaped to emit the piercing scream of “AIIII!! OH, MERCIFUL HEAVEN, I CANNOT STAND SUCH PAIN, HAVE MERCY ON A POOR HELPLESS GIRL!!” 

“Three,” the executioner proclaimed. Now, content with his apprentice, he directed his contemplative gaze at the two remaining victims, both of whom he personally would birch. The Lord Chamberlain had this morning personally informed him that the red-haired baggage was the guiltiest of all and must have more than her share of the switching. By the Rood, she would without fail. The haughtiness of her attitude, coupled with her vivid and sensitive beauty, stirred in the cruel heart of the royal executioner a satanic resolve to break her spirit, to humble her more than her companions. He would save the full strength of his arm for that saucy backside of hers. He would shame her and make her beg for mercy. That was Master Dickon's resolve.

By now the count had reached six, with fourteen lashes left. But already, distributed as they had been from the tops of Altea's ivory hips to her thighs, her bottom was furiously inflamed with the horrible striata which Tom had inflicted on her tender flesh. Her reactions delighted the spectators. There is always a sort of lustful enjoyment of such scenes, and from the dawn of time man has lusted to see his fellow man agonized by torment and by execution. The morbid festival of lust is always in vogue, regardless of the era of the setting. And the delicacy of savoring the lovely nakedness of this unfortunate beauty at the whipping post served to inflame the male spectators the more.

In places like the Bridewell, prostitutes and new offenders sentenced for a stipulated period of confinement received the “Welcome” given usually with the birch, or sometimes with a leather strap. In such cases where the quality of the prisoner was of low degree, the governor of the prison would decree the number of strokes to be inflicted. On Tuesdays and Fridays, the whipping day at the Bridewell, ladies and gentlemen of quality attended in large numbers. It was a rule that the female bottom was bare only for the birch, never for the pizzle or the cane or the strap; they would wear whipping drawers in the prison for their thrashings. But Master Dickon regretted only one thing in this most unusual chastisement: he would have given a year of his life, if the truth be known, to have had the affair staged at Tyburn, where all could see.

Moreover, in such a sentence as that pronounced on the trio, the phraseology indicated that the birch might be inflicted all over “the naked body” as set forth in the edict signed by Charlotte Sophia. At the Bridewell, whipping was given only on the thighs and the buttocks predominantly, although at times the prison matron might apply the strap over a lazy or insubordinate prisoner's shoulders, dispensing as many cuts as she deemed advisable to bring about discipline.

Tom. after a brief pause, dragging his gauntleted left hand over his perspiring forehead, he laid the birch across Altea's naked, tautening thighs, patting them as if to impart to the sobbing young woman where the next cut was to fall. Then, drawing back his arm, he inflicted the stroke with full vigor, and once again Altea Balmadge uttered a wild cry of pain and lunged against the post, her striped posteriors lunging and lurching from side to side in a most suggestive display.

“Seven,” Master Dickon announced.

The next three lashes were more slowly dealt. Tom applied them from the dimpled hollow of the satiny, creamy waist to the tops of her long thighs. Each left angry, blazing stripes against the tender, sensitive white skin, and each drew sobbing cries, heartrending pleas and plaints which attested to Altea Balmadge's suffering. By now, though she still strove with all her might to hide her pussy against the wooden upright of the whipping post, she was beginning to forget the shame of her posture and attire, for the birch had generated a most discomforting heat in her tender flesh.

Ten cuts remained. Tom studied his weapon, observed that some of the ends of the switches were frayed and some of the twigs scattered in his vigorous application. He dipped the birch into the bucket of brine, shook it out, and some of the drops fell on Altea's naked hips and sides, making her groan and sob even more piteously.

Satisfied that the rod would suffice for the remaining ten lashes, the young assistant once more resumed his place at the girl's left, and now extended the rod to press it against the plumpest parts of Altea's ivory botoom.

“Ohh, n-no, no, merciful God spare me such suffering,” the girl sobbed piteously.

Swissh! With all his strength, as if he had determined to draw the very plaudits of Charlotte Sophia with that single stroke, Tom applied the rod viciously against her lewdly presented buttocks. Altea Balmadge lunged madly against the whipping post, dragging on her bound wrists, head fallen back, eyes rolling and glassy with tears as she uttered a wild, wordless cry of torment.

Nine cuts remained. Slowly, seeming to prolong the interval between lashes, Tom inflicted the next six to the prisoner's naked bottom cheeks. But this time he applied the lashes diagonally, first attacking the right hemisphere, leaping the switches over the tightening, shadowy furrow which led to her virgin bottom hole, dealing thus two strokes from right to left.

Again he paused, and moved to the right. He inflicted the last two lashes from left to right, leaping the rod across the huddling, inflamed hemispheres. Each of the strokes drew piercing screams, incoherent pleas for mercy.

Despite the severity with which he had flogged the naked brunette, Tom glanced at his master to call the latter's attention to the fact that nowhere had he broken the skin. It was purplish and inflamed at many points where the twigs had nipped and where the long, slender withes had crisscrossed the previous marks. As he lowered the rod, Tom considered his handiwork and was secretly pleased with himself. This young bitch would have a difficulty in sitting down for quite some days. And she would need plenty of unguents and soothing salves before the skin of her bottom would lose the fiery heat he had engendered.

At Master Dickon's sign, two of the guards ascended the platform now, untied the half-fainting brunette and, forcing her to her knees, bound her hands once more behind her back. She must wait to watch the birchings of her two companions in crime, Beatrice Digby and Ariel Clarisson.

Swaying on her knees, head bowed, her naked titties heaving under the sobs she could no longer control, poor Altea Balmadge writhed and wept as there, kneeling naked on the platform in view of the small but highly appreciative audience, she exhaled her agony. Nor was she conscious that as she knelt, she exposed to glittering eyes the thickly furred oasis of her virgin cunt and the pucker of her oh-so-tight bottom hole.

The two guards now came forward to aid Tom in his preparation of Beatrice Digby, but he waved them aside with a contemptuous gesture. Bending toward her and seizing her wrists by the cord which bound them, he whispered, “On your feet, you yellow-haired vixen! You'll have Master Dickon to deal with.”

Using his knife again, as before, he freed her wrists, while the executioner tossed him two lengths of cord. As with Altea, Beatrice found herself with wrists cruelly and tightly bound to the metal rings of, the crosspiece of the whipping post, and then her own shameful martyrdom began in earnest.