Story: Maid Jenny and Her Mistress. Chapter 7.

by Jackie J

Bundled into the rear compartment of Sister Agnes’s carriage, Lucy was in a state of shock and panic. Looking out the small window, she watched Long Lawns disappear behind the tall fir trees that bordered the grounds of what was her home. It all happened so quickly. Why didn’t she shake free of Sister Agnes’s firm grip of her arm? In truth she had tried but to no avail. Why didn’t she scream out her true identity to stop this madness before being locked in the back of this carriage? Why did Mrs Sunderland not stop the woman, say anything, do anything to prevent what amounts to no less than her abduction? And that sly grim behind the look of concern that she saw on her Mistress's face when she agreed for the nun to take her away to the convent! What was she thinking? And why, like Mrs Sunderland, did she do nothing when matters escalated and she was being dragged from Long Lawns?

The compartment in the carriage was cramped and Lucy sat on the small wooden bench and put her head in her hands. Possessed? What madness! She could not help those feelings. She told the nun how she felt and thought she could trust her! Perhaps more in desperation than hope Lucy looked out through the grill on the door at the rear of the carriage. Was her Mistress's carriage following to explain everything to Sister Agnes and take her back to Long Lawns? However, there was no sign of a pursuit, just a dusty empty roadway with the carriage rattling its way to the seclusion St Catherine’s convent.

The journey to the convent was a short one - just over four miles. It sat prominently atop Romney hill, overlooking vast swathes of the county and clearly visible from Long Lawns.

Sister Agnes who was seated in the comfort of the front of the carriage had not spoken a word during the journey and when the carriage pulled into the courtyard of St Catherine’s, cold eyes looked through the partition with a withering look.

Left to brood on her situation, Lucy remained in the carriage whilst Sister Agnes stepped out to be greeted by two nuns who hurried to her.

Whilst she had resisted the idea previously, surely this had to end if she was to salvage what remained of her sanity and escape the clutches of this mad nun. Lucy’s only decision now was when and how to tell Sister Agnes who she really was, accept the shame and embarrassment, so she could return to Long Lawns and call a halt to the foolish scheme she had instigated. These were the thoughts that any rational individual would have, but something was stopping her...

Sure, it was her maid Jenny. Miss Osborne, under the stewardship of her friend Marianne, Mrs Sunderland, was becoming more ladylike by the day. She was elegant, confident, authoritative commanding a competent Mistress of Long Lawns. She had already passed herself off to be a lady, another six months and surely no one would even think to question her heritage. Whilst Marianne was successfully developing and elevating her maid to be a lady, through her increasingly confident and encouraged prodigy, Marianne had been, for some time, enthusiastically engaged in, and no less successfully, transforming the Mistress of Long Lawns into an obedient, unquestioning mistress’s maid. Was Lucinda so blind, already so immersed in her role of a house maid at Long Lawns that she could not see what her friend was also doing?

The answer, unfortunately for Lucinda Lancaster, was yes! For six months she had worn nothing other than her unflattering uniform of service, she had willingly embraced, accepted and conformed to the rules and conditions stipulated for the maid of Long Lawns. For six months she had been deprived of meaningful conversation, intellectual stimulation and independent thought. Talked at rather than with, subtly coerced until the daily routines of a housemaid had become second nature to her, the initially contrived curtsey now ingrained and a natural act of deference to her betters. Being berated and physically punished by her former maid had awakened perverse masochistic desires, feelings and emotions so strong that the Mistress of Long Lawns, whether see realised it or not, had acquiesced to unquestioningly accept the domination, control and ascendency of her once maid.

It was Mrs Sunderland, her friend Marianne, who had sought the intervention of the mother superior of St Catherine’s convent following her overt masturbation; she had told her she was worried about her. Jenny, Miss Osborne was now a lady in all but name. She couldn’t ruin all of Marianne’s endeavours and her own sacrifice. She knew what she had done was not right and weird but she couldn’t help herself. She wasn’t possessed, was she? Sister Agnes would soon discover that and she would be swiftly returned to Long Lawns. She would go along with whatever Sister Agnes prescribed a few days at the convent and away from her chores and duties at Long Lawns would be a refreshing rest, wouldn’t it?

Following an exchange of words, Sister Agnes pointed back to the carriage and the two nuns unlocked the door and stared with disdain at the maid sat huddled on the small wooden bench. This was the maid brought from Long Lawns who was found to be repeatedly sexually abusing herself without shame and in front of her mistress. Also told by their Mother Superior it was a good maid of many years’ service suddenly becoming wanton, its soul possessed by evil.  That evil, through prayer, isolation, discipline and atonement, must be driven from her so she can be returned to her Mistress and continue her maid’s duties at Long Lawns.

Sister Agnes having convinced her fellow sisters of her deluded conclusions they would be willing lieutenants in carrying out the wishes of their Mother Superior. Told to ignore any outpourings before her initial purification, the two nuns pulled the maid from the carriage.

Lucy was surprised by the strength of the two nuns and reluctantly accepted their refusal to answer any of her questions. Where were they taking her, what were they going to do to her, how long would she be here? Queries all met with stony silence.

Gripped by each arm being drawn towards a pair of large wooden doors an acute sense of foreboding gripped Lucy and with a change of heart she squealed.

“No, no! Wait! Wait! Stop! I must speak with Sister Agnes! I must! Please stop! Let me go! Stop! Let go of me, you are hurting me! Stop! I must see Mother superior! I must! You don’t understand! Please! Please!” 

Stunned into silence by a sharp slap across her face, Lucy stared in dismay at Sister Mary, the larger of her two guardians. Nuns were gentle and kind, they weren’t supposed to be violent. A hard squeeze of her arm and a glare like thunder discounted her preconceptions further. 

More pleading was met with a similar response and Lucy, gripped by both arms, was taken in silence through the large oak doors to ascend what seemed like endless stone steps.

A key turned in the lock to a room off a long cold corridor the trio entered.

There would be no conversation: both Sister Mary and Sister Jane were afraid they could be tricked or tainted by the evil spirit possessing this poor maid.

Sister Mary spoke with a stern expression. 

“Strip, everything off.” 

Lucy started to sob at the hopelessness of her situation and the two nuns, noting the maid’s reluctance, unceremoniously stripped her naked. Gathering up the uniform, underwear and boots, the two nuns blessed themselves before leaving Lucy naked and shivering in the bare stone walled room locking the door behind them. A narrow-slit window to one wall and a large crucifix hanging on the opposite side the only features of Lucy’s initial place of incarceration within the seclusion of St Catherine’s convent.

Lucy looked through the narrow window and in the distance over a copse of trees she could see Long Lawns bathed in the evening sun. Once her home so near yet so far, a home in which resided, enjoying its comforts, her Mistress, Miss Jenny Osborn.

Following an indeterminate time following the tolling of a bell the stout door was unlocked and Lucy was taken down to the chapel to be seated on a high stool in front of a gathered group of praying nuns. Sister Agnes pointed to the shivering frightened naked woman sat displayed on the stool.  Since her first meeting with Marianne Sister Agnes had been reading avidly from texts, many of medieval origin, with relation to the exercising of evil spirits from the possessed and was genuinely eager to free this poor wanton wretch of a maid from her affliction.

“Sisters, see before us a woman stripped of her adornments, here to be purified of her sins and set free from Satan’s grasp. Pray with me now, for this soul’s redemption whilst we celebrate its confession and begin to drive the evil from its flesh."

Mutterings of prayers rose from the gathered congregation whilst Lucy was lifted from her stool and leather bindings secured her wrists and ankles to spread eagle her against a large wooden X at the far wall.

Lucy squealed and squirmed in ignored protest until the first stinging lash.

Each nun in turn rose from her seat in the pews and having been blessed by Sister Agnes took hold of a leather strap and laid a painful lash to the floppy buttocks of the possessed sinner strapped to the cross to the accompaniment of the chanted mantra of the congregation. “Feel the pain of righteous retribution on the flesh of this possessed sinner and free this poor soul from your infestation of evil.” Lucy was soon sagging in her bindings, her begging whimpers drowned by each swish of the strap and the rhythmic chanting of the nuns. This couldn’t be happening to her. It was nineteen ten, not the middle ages! People were enlightened! Surely even nuns could not condone such barbaric treatment!   

Following what Marianne and Jenny had told her, confirmed by Lucy’s own confessions, perhaps the outcome of Lucy’s preparation for purification was not as Sister Agnes expected? There was none of the feelings of wanton desire displayed, no weakening numbness filling her senses, no arousal, no abandonment of self-control to be at her sex only the stinging pain of the strap.

This was a plain beating. It was humiliating to be helplessly bound and flogged naked in front of the convents gathered pious nuns, but what had stimulated the Mistress of Long Lawns into her raptures of debasement and self-gratification was not the punishment in itself but by whom, how and where it was delivered. Her once maid, spontaneous whilst being berated for her failings in her duties as a common servant and within her own home. It was this amalgam, this salacious debasing aphrodisiac that drove the once prim and demure Mistress of Long Lawns to succumb, surrender, submit and abandon all constraint and dignity in self-gratifying masturbation in the privacy of her dour, bleak maid;s quarters or more recently in front of her Mistress.

Leaving Lucy softly whimpering in her bindings, under the direction of their Mother Superior, the congregation continued to pray for the pitiful possessed wretch displayed naked before them.

Having had her crimson burning buttocks swathed in balm and kept naked, Lucy was returned to and locked into the bare stone walled room in the west tower of the convent - a palliasse, a rough woollen blankets, a crucifix, and the Bible Lucy’s only possessions.  Lucy peered out of the narrow-slit window at Long Lawns in the distance. Surely, Mrs Sunderland and Mistress would come for her and end her ordeal? 

For the next three days she was kept in total isolation, fed only bread and water.

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