Previous Chapter Back to Content & Review of this story Next Chapter Display the whole story in new window (text only) Previous Story Back to List of Newest Stories Next Story Back to BDSM Library Home

Review This Story || Author: Smackmagnet

Chastening Day

Part 4

This story is a work of fiction. Do not copy anything in the story.


CHASTENING DAY    Act II:     A POOR GIRL, A RICH BOY


© smack magnet


Ch 4: Joseph, Jaxo & Dominic, Misha


Joseph Brozemann felt the weight of his father’s expectations press upon him daily.

“Look to the horizon, boy! Head up!”

Joseph was the eldest of five. His sisters mostly escaped scaldings from their father’s tongue. Joseph envied them, though the girls themselves felt the pain of it, for they were simply ignored. It was the youngest child, the second boy, who was the apple of their father’s eye. It seemed to Joseph that little Ezra could do no wrong. He would cheek their father and their father would laugh. He would play silly tricks and their father would indulge, even encourage him.

Joseph could not remember ever having had the same freedom. Right from the start his parents had fretted over his every move. They would chide when he did not stand in a way that they approved of. When he was not sufficiently co-ordinated, though its lack was simply a function of youth. When he failed to find joy in his father’s favoured sports.

“Stand straight, Joseph. Stop looking at the ground all the ruddy time!”

But at his feet were tiny flowers, twining stalks, bright bugs and patterned spiders. He had tried to explain this once to his father, but it only back-fired.

“Flowers? You look at the pretty flowers? What are you, some kind of a pansy, boy?”

To Joseph, the things at his feet were starting to make sense. That leaf was the same shape as the leaves which clung to the stems of buttercups. So the ground-creeping leaves must come before the stems. And even without flowers, they must be the same as buttercups.

This climbing stalk, angling first one way then another, which clung with fine tendrils to nearby grass stems, had small flowers so like the peas that his father’s gardeners grew that it must be related. Had garden peas come from a plant like this?

“You slouch so, boy. Look at your brother! Less than half your age and he’s more of a man already!”

Joseph liked Ezra, but being told that Ezra was more of a man than he was hurt. Jaxo the gardener saw Joseph’s baleful stare.

He said quietly, once Mr Brozemann was gone, “Not the child’s fault your da’s never happy with you. Maybe the little lad’s just not lived long enough to disappoint yet.”

Jaxo had been tending the Brozemanns’ big garden since Joseph was barely older than his brother. At first, Joseph and his sisters had resented Jaxo. For he was not old man Strattam, who would always have a sweet for them in his back pocket and a smile playing under his hairy moustache. The sisters never knew why Strattam had gone, but Joseph worked it out from things he overheard.

“Can’t have a commoner having influence. Ruddy socialists!” His father never spat, but he’s spat when he’d uttered that word, even though he’d been standing with Joseph’s mother. “Talkers and stirrers feeding sweets to my children.”

Still, it had taken Joseph a while to add two and two together. At first he hadn’t known to whom his father was referring, as the comments came in the evening and he’d last seen Strattam late in the morning. He did not yet know that he wouldn’t reappear. Nor did Joseph know what a socialist was. He hadn’t quite known what a commoner was, just that Brozemanns weren’t commoners and other people were. His father said a lot of people were common, even some as rich as the Brozemanns themselves.

But when Jaxo and his silent shadow Sturmer first started creaking cold-frame lids and hacking winter swedes from the frozen soil, and neither man was Strattam, Joseph was confused.

His second sister moved the first magic lantern slide in Joseph’s head. She’d gone straight up to Sturmer asking, “Where’s Strattam?” When he’d only shown her his back, she’d turned blinking to Jaxo. “Have you got a sweet for us, mister?”

For Joseph, as for his sister, sweets had resonance. And then the memory of his father’s words was there. As were the questions. Why would these rude men not talk to to his sister, when Strattam had always talked so much?

“Can’t have a commoner feeding sweets to my children.” Joseph remembered.

The young Brozemanns quickly learned to ignore the new gardeners, much as the gardeners ignored them in turn. The girls forgot old Strattam, and Ezra grew up barely knowing that gardeners could converse at all. But Joseph remembered. And Joseph resented.

Over the years, Sturmer remained consistently taciturn with the boy, but after a little while, Jaxo did begin a halting dialogue. Though it was noticeable that Joseph’s father was never present when such fragmentary exchanges took place.

It was, in fact, Jaxo who finally told Joseph what a socialist was, one day when Joseph’s father was out on business and his mother sipped tea indoors with the old priest Father Peter.

“Socialist, is it? You’re wanting to know the meaning of it? Thing is boy, it’s the monied who have all the power. But the point there is, there isn’t so many of ’em. Their power comes from their money and what it can buy. Loyalty included. Only Socialists, they see strength not in money but in numbers. They notice there’s an awful lot of poor folks, but scarce so many rich folks. So Socialists think, why should the few have all the power when the many have none?”

Joseph sensed, as Jaxo knew well, not to talk to the gardener when his father might see. He would wait till neither could be spied before inching up for a quiet word. What did Jaxo think of this? What did he think of that? Did he know why the new priest had come, why Fr. Peter had gone? Fr. Peter hadn’t been as old as all that, had he, really?”

“I think we may find out soon enough. He’s a change in the weather, is that Dominic from the busy East.”

Joseph, like all the young people around and about, knew when Chastening Day was coming close. It was a herald of spring. As the weather warmed and the insects flew, the boys looked for willow to weave into whips and the skirts of the girls grew shorter by the week. Young people, like wildlife, flitted and flirted in the warming winds.

The good weather also saw Joseph’s name feature on notes to the Priest. Not for one outstanding golden deed, like Pavel Panchun, but for a rangier clutch of smaller eggs. He was noticed, and commended, for helping an older gent up from the ground when he was shied by a horse which had spotted a snake. The man took note of the boy’s name, wrote it on a slip and dropped it in the vestry box.

Joseph was commended next by a local landowner for getting his siblings to round up the fellow’s small flock of sheep. They’d escaped from a pen when a drystone wall shed its shape in a squirling wind. Joseph, touring wildflowers in a meadow in the calm of the morning, was first to see that the sheep were gone, and he worked out himself how to get them all back.

He’d even climbed a tree to fetch down the kite of a landowner’s boy. Been reasonably attentive in school. Asked a gardener what a Socialist was.

When the elders discussed the potential Chasteners, they could all agree that merchant Brozemann’s eldest seemed generally polite and kind to all. It was narrow as squeak. He was third, and only just. But picked he was, by three to one.


“Jaxmund, aha. We have our males. Should you be interested to learn now who is favoured?”

The priest had wandered in a slow meander, surveying borders and beds, to the gardener once more. Jaxo was not surprised by the inclusion in the list of every elder’s favourite, Marco Vance. “You’d almost think that boy hunts down commendations.”

He next reacted with predictable surprise, followed by a thoughtful raise of the eyebrows, to the shock inclusion of Pavel Panchun. “Wild card, that one, eh? Who knows what you’ll get there?”

But the name Joseph Brozemann brought a gleam to his eye.

“Young Joseph is it, Father?”

“You know of him, Jaxmund? But of course, your name was on a scrap in the box.”

“Know of him. Know him. Me and Sturmer grows his daddy’s greens.”

“It is a small world,” the priest remarked. “And how do you think of him?”

Jaxo leaned on the rake he’d ben working to drag tangles from the winter grass. “I like him fine enough, Father.”

The priest offered, “The family seem respectable.”

“They are that, and by a mile.” Jaxo wrinkled his nose.

“But the boy… I have a doubt. His own father… he was less than enthused.”

Jaxo considered. “I believe I shouldn’t never make to say such a thing. But I wonder if I find myself liking the boy rather more than I find the same like for his da.”

“So… how might you think… re Chastening day?”

Jaxo tipped his head. “Not a terrible cruel boy, Joseph. Not as such.”

The priest had learned when to wait for more.

“Private, this, Father. Serious. There’s a touch of bad blood between him and his da. I hear the squire thinks the boy… weak. A sissy, that’s the word the lad said his sire had used for him.”

The gleam in the priest’s eye showed him on track. “And is he, do you think? A sissy?”

“There’s ways to watch a lad’s eye for the girls. I see him drawn to the prettier friends of his nearest sister.”

The priest tipped his head. “May we judge him the same as most men, then?”

“Aye, of that I’m sure. And the girls, that lot seem to like him well enough. When he’s not on one of his shy days, anyroad.”

The priest took pause. “His father knows that he has been chosen. Elder Quare was made worried by the tone of his scorn. The man is sensitive to such things.”

“Scorn?” Jaxo prompted.

“That the boy would do well. He gave his assent. Though reluctantly, and not without some bluster. Peasant beliefs, I believe he termed the festival.”

“Does the boy know of his father’s words?”

“No, and I ask for your discretion. Do you think that Joseph might stand to swing a whip?”

Jaxo thought. “I’d hope. His da weren’t born here, so he doesn’t feel it. But Joseph was. The family might keep its nose in the air, but that lad’s a local. He snorts the same air as me and mine, and he’s sniffed it from birth. I’d say he’s one of us lot, sure.”

Dominic looked, and Dominic smiled. Jaxo spoke, and Dominic learned.

“Now my mind is more at rest,” he said, “I am wondering who to pair with whom.”

“Got the Shrews picked out as well then, Father?”

“I should perhaps not reveal,” said the priest. “I see in the records that certain past females ran and hid, who discovered their fates too early.”

The gardener still marvelled that the priest deemed it fit to speak to him at all, let alone to seek his advice. “Though men talk in the taverns, others can sit on their thoughts,” he said.

“And which might you reckon yourself?”

“I’m one who can pick and choose. Such as when to speak out and when to keep private.”

“Foreknowledge is such a dangerous tool that I beg your silence.”

“As you bid. You’ve shown faith in me and Sturmer, Father.”

The priest drew air through flaring nostrils, then threw out, “Anja Salidef.”

Jaxo smirked and looked to the ground.

“But as First Shrew, she should by tradition be paired with First Chastener.”

“Good luck getting that lad to top that one,” Jaxo said wryly, incorrectly assuming that Marco would be automatic choice as First.

“And Marta Smolt,” said the priest.

“Oh aye? We seen her looking haughty enough. A friend of the other, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Third is Misha Spinnet.”

Jaxo’s head started. “Jack Spinnet’s daughter?”

“You know her?”

“She’s a sauce,” said Jaxo, as he looked away and laughed.

“May I ask? You seem amused.”

The gardener said, “I was thinking of her paired with young Joseph, Father.”

“And how does that pairing look? In your mind’s eye?”

Jaxo briefly re-engaged his look with the priest’s. “Well his father wouldn’t like it much!”

“How so?” asked Dominic.

Jaxo shrugged. “Or maybe he would, who knows? What I hear is, his da don’t much like poor folk mixing it with rich folk. But maybe if he’s whipping her?”

The priest was thoughtful. “And the boy?”

Jaxo’s face went through a shape or two. He said, “I’ll tell you something honest, Father. There’s two folks who I’d not expect to confide in me, who makes to confide in me nonetheless.” He looked to the distance. “I’m nobody. I’m a common man without even a secret silver spoon hid back of his mother’s bobbin drawer. One who speaks to me so is yourself, sir. The other is the Brozemann boy.”

“He confides in you, Jaxo?”

“Don’t tell his da, I ask you most kindly. Last gardener talked free to that lad found himself out on a stone-scuffed ear.”

“My discretion is assured, as I hope is yours. To the nub… As a pairing for the Brozemann boy. Marta Smolt or Misha Spinnet?”

Jaxo smiled. “The Smolt girl is fine to look at, I suppose, for them who likes ’em tall. Finer than Spinnet, some might argue. Only them with looks aplenty may not find need to work on how they meet the world. That Smolt girl I reckon rich in looks and poor in her person. Misha Spinnet, now. She’s t’other kind.”

“Not so pretty?”

“Depends who’s looking. She’s rich in character. Got more up here too,” he said, tapping his head. “And a whole lot more cheek.”

“So… she’s one of you lot?”

“Haha! You have it. You know what I’d like to see there, Father? I’d like to see our Joseph try and resist that Misha Spinnet’s sauce.”

Dominic said, “Ah…”

“And I’d fancy seeing his da’s face turning purple if she won!”


Misha stood with the third girl in the view of the three elders. She whispered, “Feels more like past times than recent, this.”

Marta Smolt twitched her head, “What does?”

“Us. Here. It feels more like the stories you hear. Of past times.”

“What stories?” Marta asked.

“You know. Of Shaming Day.”

Marta frowned, then huffed. “I don’t know why they still call it that. It’s a stupid day.”

Misha looked sidelong. “Not lived here all your life now, have you?”

“I’m wishing I didn’t live here now.”

Misha said bluntly, “Lived here long enough to know consequences, though. Played a dangerous game, you and your friend. You must have knowed how the folks round here think, surely?”

Marta snorted. “I knowed it, did I?” Then she shut her mouth and turned her head away.

Misha brushed her good dress down, ignoring Marta’s sarcastic tone. She said, “Might have walked across the heath enough for a month of Sundays, me. But I never once figured I’d be up here for this.”

“Hush, girls.” Elder Quare’s voice sounded reedy thin behind them.

In a moment, a second, deeper voice said, “This is all far from dignified. Father Peter would certainly not have approved.”

“The Church knows best,” said Elder Quare. “Father Dominic worked for the Bishop, you know.”

The second man cleared his throat. “I very much doubt if Bishop Fernandino pays heed to the heath from one year to the next.”

“But that cannot be so, Faltren. Or why would he send us his right-hand man?”

A third, mid-range voice, said, “We only have the priest’s word that that was the form of his former job.”

Misha turned her head to sneak a look. None of the elders was impressive now. She remembered Elder Urmsrow from village fȇtes: a man with a great booming voice and a barrel chest. Quare was so slight by comparison, so thin of voice, they could hardly hear him through a rustling wind.

He is our Priest,” said Quare like the squeak of a mouse. “That is how it is.”

They men fell silent. Misha rolled her slight shoulders and looked to Marta Smolt, but the taller girl would not acknowledge her.

Elder Faltren said, quietly, “Does it strike you, Runnel, that we have been dismissed from our own ritual?”

Runnel had a small mouth which he barely opened even for speech, making every word sound prim and humourless. “It is not our festival, Faltren, but a festival of youth.”

“Should one of us not have remained with the Shrew?”

Runnel quoted, “One good Adam for one poor Eve, one Elder to guide each youthful pair.”

“It’s you who’s First Elder, Quare,” Faltren said.

Quare’s voice quavered. “But Dominic specifically asked me to leave.”

Runnel said, “It is the common men of the village who should not have been allowed. Undignified, quite undignified.”

Quare’s voice piped up high. “Yet Father Dominic seems to know his histories, gentlemen. Is he not a scholar and a thinker? He showed to me the records of past ritual days. Witnesses were always present!”

“The participants’ fathers,” Faltren grumbled. “They should have been here. Where are they, Quare? I cannot name one!”

Quare said defensively, “Miss Smolt’s mother may have come if she was let.”

Faltren snorted, “Her mother! Where is the girl’s guardian?”

Elder Runnel said primly, ”I believe he does not live close enough to attend. Is this not correct, Miss Smolt? And Miss Salidef’s father favoured her presence, yet declined to grace us with his own. She cheeks him as well, I fear.”

“And the Spinnet girl’s sire is permanently absent. We all know the story. Where are the fathers of the other boys?”

“Squire Vance was present.”

Faltren huffed. “We all saw how Aldred Vance was shamed into leaving with his idiot son.”

Quare said, “I must say, I rather found the boy’s intentions chivalrous and kind.”

“The Smolt girl was chosen. The boy acted the fool. That’s where the balance was first tipped wrong. Quare, should you not be over there?”

“But Father Dominic said…”

At this precise moment, two screams reached the party in quick succession. The first contained a sudden fear, the second went beyond. Its tone was so chillingly shrill that Misha felt her knees go weak.

“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!” Quare gibbered.

Runnel pursed his mouth and froze.

Faltren sputtered, “What in God’s name?”

The first screams were followed by rhythmic, panted squeals, which reached them thinly over heather and gorse.

“He, ah, he said that we must wait!” said Quare. “With the other young shrews! Oh dear, what can have happened there?”

“They are murdering her,” Elder Faltren hissed.

“Um. Yes. Or… well, severely chastising,” Runnel said.

“We should all go,” said Faltren.

“But if we go,” Quare asked, “who will stand with the other shrews? Might you not go yourself?”

Faltren sputtered, “Me? It should be all or none! Quare, the Salidef girl is your charge!”

“Oh. Well.” Quare took a hesitant step forward, then two, then a new shrill scream echoed out from the heath, and his feet halted fast.

But a different pair of feet unfroze. The tall Misha Smolt was suddenly a blur, passing Misha, knocking Quare down to his knees. Away she scrambled in her pretty dress from the Elders, from the boys and the common men, out over the rise, away even from the village.

Misha, heart racing, watched Marta run a ragged path ’tween low stands of gorse and knee-high heather. Her own legs felt weak and drained of action, and a sigh of indecision left her tightening throat.

Quare pushed his creaking frame once more upright. He brushed his dusty fingers one against another. “Oh dear, oh dear,” he said querulously. “Shrews who run may be caught. And those who catch a Shrew may chasten a Shrew, whether Elder or Priest be present or no.”


Review This Story || Author: Smackmagnet
Previous Chapter Back to Content & Review of this story Next Chapter Display the whole story in new window (text only) Previous Story Back to List of Newest Stories Next Story Back to BDSM Library Home