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“Jolie Noble!”
The officer of the court announced her name and she rose to her feet without thinking.
Six people followed behind her, not Hannah, who had excused herself from the ordeal, but Daniel, the shrew Lettie Logan—since there had to be a woman present—then Donovan Brawley, Rory and an officer of the court. Six in all, including the judge, marched from the courtroom through the judge’s chambers and beyond.
Thirty lashes, what would that feel like? Jolie wondered. Daniel had caned her, but never more than twelve times.
Lettie Logan led her into the punishment chamber, a sizable square room adjacent to Judge Boone’s office. There was one high window, no more, and the light inside the space was eerily grim. She spied the whipping bar in front of her and her legs suddenly felt like they were going to give way. But Lettie caught her arm in her firm grip.
“We don’t care how scared you are, girl. It’s part of the treatment,” the woman barked. “You’ll get through it. Sinners must answer to God’s wrath; there’s no better way.”
The words flew through Jolie’s thoughts but they didn’t stick, since the notion of being tied to the bar held her entire attention. Bound. It seemed so … so medieval.
As she’d been ordered to do by the officer of the court, Jolie grabbed onto the bar that hung just above her head. She looked at the young man’s face. She’d never seen him, but he could hardly have been older that she was; there was still peach fuzz on his babyish face. When he looked back at her, she turned away embarrassed. He was sweet and handsome, the very kind of respectable young man she should be attracted to. Oh, if she only were!
The young officer tied her wrists to the bar as if he’d done the deed many times before.
What a horrible dream! He left her there to hang, and Jolie struggled anxiously with the sturdy rope until she realized how useless it was to fight.
“Tie up her skirt and open her blouse.” The command came out of nowhere like a slap in the face.
Oh, dear! What would they have done to her had her dress opened down the front? she mused as the pinch-faced Lettie followed the orders to the letter. Jolie felt a draft of cool air on her exposed back that made her entire body quiver. Her legs felt like jelly. Then as the woman moved on to tie her skirt up over her buttocks, Jolie kicked her. Not deliberately, but more like the instinctive reaction akin to a horse teased from behind reflexively kicking his hind foot at some unseen body.
The woman jumped back. “See what the brat did!” she shouted at the others.
“Ain’t enough to worry about, Lettie. She won’t do it again,” the judge told her, evenly. “Right, Miss Jolie?”
“Yes, sir, I’m sorry, ma’am.”
Lettie finished her task with a scowl on her hardened features, then she backed away to let Judge Boone take over.
Jolie felt a dozen eyes poised on her naked flesh. What were these people thinking? she pondered in that wretched minute before the first strike of Judge Boone’s tawse made contact with her back. She held her breath in wait, and when she could hold it no more, she breathed deep and strained once more against the ropes that held her fast. In that split second between the end of her one breath and gulping another, Judge Boone laid on ten stinging strikes—or thereabouts, she wasn’t really counting—in rapid succession. A cry screamed from her throat and died as soon as the ten were done. Her back burned like hot coals, while her skin throbbed from the welts rising on her flesh, long, thin red-hot lines of terrible pain.
Her chance to settle from the blows was brief. In seconds, she felt the fiery blast of punishment again, as one cutting, ripping, vicious strike after another laced her bottom Perhaps another ten. Again she counted only the pain that seemed to redouble with terrifying force, leaving her breathless and quaking from one end of her body to the other.
“Please, no!” she whaled and she started to twist and stamp her feet in anger. Hot tears stung her eyes. But there was no mercy in the old man despite the horrified cry that issued from her throat.
Hearing her plea, the judge strode forward and placed his thick hand at the back of her neck and drew her head back so he could look down on her sorrow-filled face.
“Calm down, girl, or you’ll not see the end of this day until I’ve levied twice the punishment on your sorry soul. I am tougher, meaner and more willing than any man or woman here to make you suffer. You chose the wrong man to defy.”
By the time the judge’s short speech ended, Jolie’s fight had ceased. It was not so much the words but the message behind them, convincing her with little argument that her angry demonstrations only made the punishment worse.
“I’m sorry, sir,” she weakly managed.
“Sorry you’ll be,” he agreed, and he backed off.
A vast silence followed. Jolie shivered, when her flesh didn’t ache. And the witnesses to the punishment quaked on their own, spurred by a bit of self-preservation. The man was infamous for his hard hand, but none in the room, save the officer of the court, had seen it firsthand until now.
The tawse flew again leveling another vicious blast of cruel cuts on Jolie’s skin from the center of her already punished rear cheeks to low on the back of her thighs. She screamed again and briefly stomped her feet. “No, no, no, mercy, mercy please, mercy, please. Noooo! Mercy, please!” she vented despite her intentions otherwise. Her tears flowed freely now as the tawse ended its reign and she was left to dangle in her misery.
The hands that removed her from the bindings, the officer’s hands, felt like the softest cotton down against her skin. How soothing! How kind! The officer gave her over to Daniel and she collapsed into her brother-in-law’s warm arms. Maybe he was sorry for making her suffer so.
Nothing more was said as her clothes were properly restored and he led her from the courthouse to her waiting sister.
Riding home in the buggy seat beside Hannah, every blow that jostled Jolie’s body hurt her wounded bottom; she couldn’t stop the tears from streaming down her cheeks. The atmosphere amongst the trio was strained but subdued. No one cared to say a word; what was there to say? And Jolie, little victim that she was, would not bother speaking to anyone for some days. Until another, greater horror, hit her squarely in the face, and her fate in the tiny wilderness town was securely sealed.
CHAPTER THREE
