by Solomon Bond
As the calendar was approaching the nineteenth century, three Scottish ladies met after a long interval. Two were cousins and one was related through marriage. Their years were advanced, but their minds were sharp.
"You know, all of our lives were turned around by one thing," declared the first, a woman called Eleanor Fraser, as reminiscences were shared.
"And what would that be?" enquired her cousin.
"I think I know what you are going to say," interrupted Moira, the third member of the group. "Each of us received a good thrashing in our younger days, and for each of us it led to a better life."
Smiles were exchanged at the truth of the statement.
"But smiles were far from our faces then, I declare! What do you remember of it, cousin?"
"You must forgive a confession," said the second woman, whose name was Constance. "When I was but a girl, I harboured feelings for your brother." She turned to Moira. "That is to say, the man who would become your husband!"
Moira merely laughed, and the story continued.
"When I was commanded to take down my drawers for my thoroughly deserved thrashing, honesty compels me to admit that there was an element of pleasure in what I felt. However, when the cane began to land, that pleasure evaporated like the morning mist!"
"I was there too, cousin," said Eleanor. "Obviously, my feelings for my brother had no resemblance to what you felt, but I did feel, as the rod struck, that I was paying for my stupidity and that my life was changing."
Moira spoke up. "The two thrashings that I received as a maidservant held nothing for me but fear and pain. They were fully justified, I do not deny it, but they were severe and to have my lower body exposed for them was a humiliation beyond imagining... although I must state that they set me on a path for which I am truly grateful, and I have been able to pass on the experience to the benefit of others, for which I am also thankful. The pain, however, is something I would not like to feel again!"
The three moved a little awkwardly in their seats, with the memory of never forgotten punishments still very real in their memories.
"Would that someone could tell of our experience," contemplated Moira. "Should it not say something to the youth of today, who have not felt the bite of the rod on their behinds? Would they believe the benefit that we gained from corporal correction? Only the telling of our tale could answer that."
The Laird of Kirkbarton, Donald MacSnaid, was not best pleased to be woken from his afternoon comforts. A roasted grouse, a fine claret and a couple of good drams from the MacSnaids' private still had induced a satisfying lethargy when in his favourite chair by the log fire.
He would have been hard put to say at which point his waking fantasy had turned into a dream, but as he dozed and hovered between wakefulness and sleep, he was visited, as had happened before, by the nursemaid who had kept his backside well warmed with her wicked hairbrush throughout his childhood. This time however, it was Laird MacSnaid, the lord of the manner who had the upper, very firm, hand.
The surroundings were vaguely familiar, but it was the enticing rear end of the nurse that captured his attention.
"Please sir, I am sorry for treating you badly. I beg your forgiveness!" she pleaded, as he flexed the cane, but he was in no mood for being merciful.
"You will bend over now Miss," he commanded. "And what is more, you will remove your skirts and your drawers!"
He was certainly enjoying the spectacle that his subconscious mind was treating him to and was delighted to witness the nursemaid nervously unhooking her skirt on his command. He was certainly less pleased to be roused from his warm and pleasant state by the over-loud coughing of someone nearby.
"What the devil is going on MacAlpine?" he growled at his butler, who had had the sheer audacity to break into his dream just as the wicked young woman was about to accommodate his desires. "Will you not leave a man to take his repose?"
"I'm begging your pardon, Your Lordship, but I have come to the source of the missing shillings."
MacAlpine was a thin man - none too pleasant to the eye, but a good servant and an honest one. When the household books had not tallied, he had not rested until he had found out the reason why, and that reason was standing just inside the doorway, quivering with fright.
"I found her with her hand in the strongbox, Your Lordship, and thought that I should bring her to yourself straight away."
"Aye, you may be right, MacAlpine, but take her away the now and bring her back an hour hence, when I am fully rested."
Sleep would not return to the Laird of Kirkbarton, however, and the chastisement of the nursemaid would have to wait, but the one with the thieving touch was a comely wench too. He had noticed her grow over the years she had been with them. He mused that she must be a good twenty years old now - and ripe for the picking!
When MacAlpine brought her back in, she was if anything, even more terrified.
"That'll be all MacAlpine. Ye can leave the lassie with me now."
With that he dismissed the senior house servant and turned to the girl who now stood alone in front of him. It would be the first time that she had been alone with the master of the house - not just of the house, but the laird of the whole valley, its farms, its rivers and its people.
"You'll be Moira, I believe."
"I am sir!" she answered, curtseying and blushing the colour of the sunset.
"That'll be Moira the thief!" he said loudly, terrifying her till tears ran down her face. "Do we not pay you enough here girl that you have to rob the household of its silver coin? Four shillings have gone missing, and I dare say another today had MacAlpine not stood vigil! Explain yourself, you snivelling hussy!"
The girl had little courage to draw on, but that which she had she summoned to give faint voice to her situation.
"Sir," she said with another curtsey, "I know that you know my parents from the far cottage." As a mark of respect, she tried to speak English and avoid her native dialect, "My faither sir, is very sick. I hoped to buy some good meat for broth."
"And do you think that I am such a bad man that you had to steal? Were you to ask MacAlpine to come to me, I would have made sure that something was taken to your family. But now I have to decide what to do with ye! You know, do you not, the penalties for thievery?"
"I know they are severe, sir." Her tears were flowing freely.
"If we are to take ye to the judge you might find yourself on a convict ship to Van Diemen's land, that is if he doesn't want to go to the bother of having you hanged!"
Instinctively, she put her hands to her throat. Like everyone else, she had seen a few public hangings and the shameful end of the criminals on the gallows. The thought aroused a childhood fear that made her shiver to the depths of her being.
"Or we could maybe cast ye out with no reference and nothing but the clothes you came with."
This too would be a poor fate. With no hope of entering another household, she would be lucky to find a place in the brothels of Edinburgh or face a short life on the streets.
"However, lassie, if ye take my third choice, there may be a hope for ye. I will visit your family in the morning with Doctor Fraser, and we will deal with your faither as needs. I will pay the good doctor for this and for any cure that he offers. After your work is finished that evening, you will come to me for a fair thrashing. What do you say lassie?"
'Sir, I say thank ye!" She fell to her knees and looked up to him. "May God bless ye for your mercy sir!"
"I will tell MacAlpine to release you for an hour tomorrow. You are to go to the schoolroom and bring back the tawse. Then you are to go to our own gardener, Thomas Ballantyne, and have him prepare a switch. The evening will not go easy for ye lassie!"
"I care not, sir. If my faither can be cured and I am spared the gallows or the streets I can bear the whipping that I have surely earned."
Dr Fraser was a widower with two daughters, and a skilled physician. Before his return to the valley of his birth he had studied in Edinburgh and Paris. He had learned herbology from monks and surgery from naval experts. He could mend a broken leg and, although the term was not known, he knew the antibiotic qualities of certain plants. He immediately recognised the bacterial infection that was taking Donald McPhee to death's door and set to work with the contents of his wife's kitchen making a poultice for the skin rash that was tormenting the patient, and a broth of ingredients for the infection that was laying him low. He shared the recipe with Mistress McPhee and was confident that the cure would work.
"But even when he can rise, Madam, he must continue the cure for a fortnight. Then you will have your man back. You may even find him fine and lusty in your bed!"
"Sir, you shame me," said the good lady, "but I thank ye!"
Moira walked to the schoolhouse at the end of the village. It was a place that she knew well, having attended till the age of eight and learned the basics of reading and counting. She was unsure of her emotions. The guilt that she had carried with her since first pilfering a few coins was lessened now that she was to be punished. Her father was to be treated by the good physician and should be well again, but she knew that her flogging would be cruel.
The children were coming out as she approached. They were a bedraggled group and she recognised a few of them from the Sunday church service. The last boy out was holding his hands in his armpits and crying.
"How many did ye get?" his classmates were asking.
"Four!" he wailed, showing his hands to the curious.
Moira gave an internal shiver. She remembered the feel of the belt from her own schooldays, and the fear of the maister, as the teacher was known.
The schoolhouse had changed little, although the teacher was not the one that had educated Moira and her peers.
"May I help you Miss?" he asked politely, as she entered.
"Sir, if it is not too much trouble. I am sent from the laird to borrow yer tawse."
His look was quizzical. "Is the laird teaching a class?" he asked, genuinely confused.
"No sir, I am afraid it is for me."
She felt herself redden as the handsome young tutor opened his desk and handed her the dreaded leather instrument. It looked just as wicked as she remembered, with three tongues cut into the thicker end and a thinner part for the smiter to grip at the other.
"Will you return it to me when he is finished?" he asked.
"I will, sir."
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