The wardens disappear off to notify the Governess that the women prisoners are ready to receive their long awaited punishment. They return with the Governess’s niece, Jackie Frayn, carrying a solid looking contraption between them. The flogging horse. Often talked about, rarely seen, no woman who has ridden this steed is likely to forget the experience.
Even at this stage Anna can't really believe this is happening to her. Surely she's suffered enough already. But no, the wardens are advancing on Catherine Rowe who is unceremoniously lifted up between them and carried over to the horse, pyjama trousers trailing from her ankles. She struggles feebly as her wrists are fastened by the leather straps attached to the front legs and her ankles similarly secured. The short lecture delivered before preparing to set to with the cane is lost on Catherine: she's already started sobbing and can hear only her own tears, perhaps hoping that her abject contrition may yet give her a last minute deliverance.
Catherine feels the cane tapping on her bottom as Miss Jackie measures her swing: then comes the faint whistle of the descending blow. The sound of the contact is drowned by Catherine's screech and renewed sobbing. Each stroke follows the same pattern: the pause to let the wave of pain from the last stroke peak; the initial light touch setting the target for the next; the taps as the swing is measured; then the hiss and scalding pain, aching and burning together.
Miss Jackie takes not the slightest notice of the howling and wriggling of the wretched Catherine. She has a job to do, to give out the customary twelve and deliver the maximum pain in the process. Cold efficiency is the order of the day, punish and deter. Naturally it's expected that the recipient of the caning will be deterred from future misbehaviour, but Jackie Frayn intends that each of the women prisoners will be a visible example, carrying the marks back to their classmates as a public warning. So now she concentrates on raising a dozen glaring welts, twelve parallel proclamations of punishment in deep bruising purple for her classmates to stare at in changing rooms and dormitories for days to come.
To Catherine it seems an eternity on the horse, though it's no more than three minutes. Her backside is a screaming mass of pain, the twelve welts neatly spread from top to bottom. She longs to touch it: try and soothe it, apply cool water, but no, she's bent face down over her bed, hand clasped on the back of her neck while the attention switches to Anna.
"The rest of you, get up and turn around!"
Melanie and Anna raise themselves from the bent over postures they have held since their tastes of the hairbrush. One of the wardens hauls Anna over the horse by her ear and by some insistent tugging persuades her to get astride it. Her wrists and ankles are quickly secured and she's ready to receive her quota. Strapped down to the horse, all Anna can hear is tapping of heels on the stone floor: but Miss Jackie squats down so she's eye to eye.
"All ready are you now, Dobson? And when you've received what you most certainly deserve, then there'll be a little something extra from me to look forward to." She moves back to get a good view, but stays where Anna can still see her, relaxed, waiting for the show to commence.
And then Miss Jackie sets to work in the same fashion, targeting and marking: just another backside to be inscribed with the maximum of pain. Anna holds out for three before she begins to cry, but not loudly enough to drown out Miss Jackie's mocking comments: "But that's only three, Anna. I thought you were so grown up, but here you are blubbing like a baby.."
The tears continue to flow freely through the next nine strokes while Anna acquires her same twelve fiery welts. Being taller than Catherine, with the restraints unadjusted, she can raise herself slightly off the horse, like a jockey standing in the stirrups, but all that achieves is to expose a little more of the tender flesh below the curve of the buttock. Miss Jackie is not slow to take advantage, raising a purple welt right in the buttock crease across the tops of Anna's legs. If Anna could thrash wildly, she would: each movement of her swollen buttocks sends another stab of pain through this latest bruise. She is reaching a crescendo of pain, boosted by a final cut of the cane in almost the same place, which has her screaming all the louder.
Melanie grits her teeth and shuffles forward for her turn, kicking one foot free of her pyjama trousers so she can mount the horse.
Face down on the worn leather she can smell the rank odour of the sweat and fear of the terrified embrace of every girl who's been strapped down there - but Melanie has her extensive experience of being caned to draw upon. Even as the wardens are tightening the buckles around her wrists and ankles she's disconnecting, forcing herself to lie relaxed and limp, concentrating on the sound of her own breath. She tries to resist every temptation to take any notice of what is being done to her: the straps don't chafe, she can't feel the cane sizing up its target; she doesn't see the wardens grinning at her.
Her concentration sees her through the first four strokes with little more than a grunt under the impact of each landing. Even when she's wearing her twelve livid stripes she's uttered little more than a hiss between clenched teeth. In the next few seconds she fights to keep her mind clear of any anticipation of the feel of the first diagonal cut she knows is coming.
Despite her best efforts she jumps and jerks against her restraints as the ugly red line erupts across her existing aching bruises. The second cross cut draws a low groan out of her and she's breaking out in a cold sweat with the effort of staying in control. As Miss Jackie prepares to finish marking Melanie with a full strike on each buttock Melanie prepares to let go, with yelling and crying; she knows she's not going to get away with less than the twenty, but she also knows it would be most unwise to give them any idea that she's holding on to any shred of resistance.
Time now, though, for respectful contrition, as Miss Jackie inspects the swollen mass of bruises criss-crossing Melanie's bottom. Melanie has a suspicion that Miss Jackie's fingers linger a little longer and a little lower than is strictly necessary but she remains a model of tearful compliance until she is at last unstrapped and released to bend back over her bed rail.
