A Public Pillorying
“This is a very serious business,” Judge Roberts told Mather, peering down at him through his spectacles from the high and lofty bench. “As the duly elected representative of this Commonwealth, I cannot condone such sins against Our Lord.”
“Aw, we was only having a bit of fun, yer honor. The lady what saw us took it the wrong way. Wrestling—that’s all we was doing.”
“I assure you, young man, that the lady in question has no doubts about what she saw. She was raised in farm country and recognizes an act of… bestiality when she witnesses one.”
“Now, now,” Mather protested. “Wasn’t no beasts involved. That fella—”
“Exactly,” Judge Roberts roared. “A fellow. Another man. Against all that is holy. Give me his name and I might be moved to show you some mercy.”
Mather shook his head. He didn’t know the man’s name, not beyond a Christian name.
He’d just been some farmhand in for market day and up for a little hanky-panky behind the ale house.
But Mather wouldn’t give the man’s name even if he knew it.
That busybody of a barmaid had recognized Mather, so he had the misfortune of appearing before the bench today, but men of his sort didn’t rat on each other or there wouldn’t be any fun to be had at all.
“Since you show no repentance—”
“I’m a mite repentant.” He was sorry he’d gotten caught anyway.
“If you were repentant, you’d give the other man’s name.”
Mather shook his head again.
“Then you leave me no recourse but to be harsh. Very harsh.” Judge Roberts banged his gavel. “I hereby sentence you to twenty-four hours in the public pillory, said punishment to take place on the next market day.”
Mather nearly shrugged. No one had such a high opinion of him that it would be harmed by seeing him in shackles. A day in the pillory would be boring and uncomfortable, but he would soon be free to resume his activities, including the sort that had landed him in the pillory to begin with.
“And,” Judge Roberts continued, “since you are determined to participate in public lewdness, your punishment will be carried out in the altogether.”
Some of the townsfolk waiting their turn before the court gasped. Others tittered. It was true that women in the pillory occasionally had their skirts turned up, the better to shame them, but men weren’t treated that way.
“You mean I’m not to have any clothes on?”
“Exactly. And furthermore—”
“There’s a furthermore?”
“I count myself generous not to lock you up. An offense such as yours is worth a good year in the jailhouse.”
Mather considered whether he’d rather spend a day with his bottom hanging out in the public square or a year in a cell and decided he’d antagonized Judge Roberts enough for the day. He composed his features into something resembling humility.
“Beggin’ your pardon, yer honor. Only my behind is very pale and I fear what a day in the sun will do to it.”
“It won’t be pale for long because I furthermore decree that a paddle be provided and that any who care to administer punishment should dole out however many strokes they feel is just.”
Snickers rolled through the courthouse until Judge Roberts banged his gavel hard enough and long enough to stop them.
It wasn’t uncommon for a public paddling to accompany a sentence of pillorying, but said paddling was usually of a known duration and administered by an officer of the court.
Mather’s sentence seemed uncommonly harsh.
And for a first offense too. Not that the encounter with the unnamed farmhand had been his first outing of that kind, but it was his first time getting caught at it.
“When is the next market day?” Judge Roberts asked the bailiff.
“Why it’s this very Saturday,” the bailiff replied, sounding eager for it.
He was a tall, sturdy fellow, rough around the edges but trying not to look it here in court, with a shock of blond hair and a patrician chin.
Mather would rather fancy him in a different setting, but he didn’t appreciate the way the man was eying him at the moment, not with arms like those. Imagine them swinging a paddle!
Mather felt an unexpected stirring in his pants and turned away from the bailiff toward the crowd, many of whom were eyeing him with a similar leer.
The rotten bastards. Look at Tom over there, cupping his hand over his crotch to hide his excitement.
Mather and Tom had once been thick as thieves until they’d had a falling out over a petty bit of business and now Tom saw a chance to take his revenge, the bugger.
Mather’s ass hurt just thinking about it, but his cock was twitching like a snake caught on a sharp stick.
“I thank ye for your kind consideration,” Mather told Judge Roberts, in a rush to get out of the room and away from all these men looking at him like he was going to be their Saturday supper. Even Judge Roberts had a bit of a leer to him.
“Go on then. And behave yourself in the future.” Judge Roberts dismissed him with a final bang of the gavel.
The bailiff called the next case as Mather wandered out of the dark courtroom into the sun.
There, in the middle of the square, sat the wooden pillory he would be fastened to, large and intimidating.
Most of the folks passing through the square avoided it, but a group of young men hardly older than teenagers lounged against it, smoking tobacco and teasing each other.
The boys were handsome, like young’uns often were. Loud and sure of themselves, the way young’uns were too. Every one of them fit and strong. Mather could only hope they would find a different spot to occupy come Saturday.
~~~
Judge Roberts had been prevailed upon to withhold the more embarrassing part of Mather’s sentence until after dusk—not for the sake of Mather’s paleness but out of respect for the sensibilities of the ladies doing their weekly marketing—and so the first half of Mather’s incarceration was unremarkable.
His head was constrained in a hollow nook between two boards, and his wrists were likewise constrained.
His legs were free to move, but other than dancing them around, he couldn’t move them far, and being bent at the waist kept his gaze down and firmly ahead.
His back ached, and the wood against his skin was rough and splintered, but the few taps of the paddle he’d received were so ineffective as to be almost disappointing.
A sign had been posted labeling him as a sodomist, and the paddle lay within easy reach for whoever chose to apply it, but few did.
Occasionally a stern-faced farmer or a tittering maiden delivered a single smack to his outthrust backside, but for the most part people had more pressing things to concern themselves with than what Mather and another fellow had gotten up to behind the pub.
As the light began to fade, Mather grew sleepy in his bonds. What a long, boring day, and still hours yet to go. His stomach growled restlessly. He was as empty as a man could be, barely a sip of water all day, and he was thinking fondly of his bed when he became aware of a gathering presence.
The square had been emptying, vendors packing up their stalls and mothers hurrying home with their children, but now it was filling again. Men filtered in from the shadows and took quiet, watchful stances, as though waiting for something.
“No sun now,” someone behind him said. That was Tom, the devil. Mather would know his voice anywhere.
“Nor any ladies either.” That was Judge Roberts, his voice as stern and deep as when he’d been handing down Mather’s sentence. “The time has come. Bailiff, if you would do the honors.”
Mather felt two rough hands at his waist, undoing the knot on the rope he used to hold up his trousers. The bailiff made quick work of stripping him—trousers first and then small clothes too until the cool evening breeze wafted over his bare backside.
“Walp,” someone said. “He waren’t wrong about having a pale ass.”
The assembled crowd laughed, the sound low and rough and menacing.
“And I wasn’t joking about pinking it up for him,” Judge Roberts said.
From the corner of Mather’s eye, he saw the judge’s hand reach for the paddle.
“Who would care to start us off?” A light tapping sound suggested Judge Roberts was testing the paddle against something—his palm or perhaps his thigh.
“Seems as though you should do the honors,” Tom said.
Mather and Tom might not have parted on good terms, and perhaps Mather was more to blame for that than Tom, but was he so much to blame that Tom should be a part of this planned assault on his person?
Mather was sorry about their break now. The two of them had had a nice hidey-hole for their romantic interludes where nosey barmaids couldn’t intrude.
And Tom had been good to him. Perhaps too good.
He was a rotten little thing. His mother had always said so.
He never appreciated when he’d gotten lucky and always had to push until he got unlucky again.
But it wasn’t Tom with his muscled arm who stepped up to Mather’s side now.
It was Judge Roberts, less bulky without his robes but no less intimidating, especially since Mather knew the size of the paddle he was about to wield, which was a good six inches broad and long enough that a man could work up a swing.
Mather had felt it against his backside at regular intervals throughout the afternoon, but he’d had his breeches on then, and the folks swinging it had seemed to be doing it out of duty rather than interest. Judge Roberts had interest. Mather could see now that the sentence he’d been given was for the judge’s own lewd purposes and that the judge intended to make the most of the opportunity he’d presented himself.
Still, the first tap came lightly.
“Get one with yer,” someone yelled.
Mather swung his head sharply in that direction and saw his worst nightmare materialize. It was the group of young men who’d been loitering against the pillory the other day—five or six of them. Strapping and healthy and cruel.