The Sins of the Fathers

Chapter Thirty-Two

The Procter Residence

Boston

Massachusetts

Olivia Stoddart, Hermione Symonds and Simone Holden all needed to be helped into their seats after their punishments. Miss Derbyshire, Hermione's strict, diligent keeper, could not rely on the auto-punishment function in Boston, because they were out of range, but she still had to follow the new regulations with Hermione and she did not think it fair that her single charge should be chastised when her pious companions were just as guilty. None of the ladies would have been punished under the old settings, but the law was the law, and as the senior keeper present, it was her decision to make. Her only concession to her hosts was to reduce the time at level five. She settled on fifteen minutes of that, and left the three sobbing women on level one for the rest of their sentence.

Once settled on the sofa, still deaf, dumb and blind, Olivia tried to compose herself. Level one was like a dull ache, and bearable, but level five was horrific, and although she had felt that, and worse, many times before, it was still totally debilitating. She sat perfectly still, her mittened hands clasped together in her lap and her head slightly bowed, listening to a famous Michael Winstanley sermon on the subject of the need to punish sins. Once she had stopped crying, her sight was restored. Looking up without moving her head, she could see Hermione on the sofa opposite her, also recovered and watching her. They smiled at each other, sensing a kindred spirit in the other. To her left, Simone Holden was not recovered, from the look of things. She was fidgeting and still had tears running down her cheeks. Finally, the sermon ended, and she heard the familiar click in her ears as her earpieces were switched back to normal, and felt the clips around her vocal cords expand.

"Do you have something to say, ladies?" Miss Derbyshire asked.

"Thank you for correcting me, Miss Derbyshire." Olivia said, in unison with Hermione, as expected, still keeping her head down.

"British standards of behaviour are not beyond you, Mrs Stoddart...you actually did quite well against the old standards, but you will need to up your game to meet the new ones...I shall give your keeper some advice to help you, dear?"

"Thank you, Miss Derbyshire."

"And you, Hermione...I am very disappointed...you knew exactly what was required of you this morning but you hardly improved upon your normal performance...we will discuss this again later, in private."

"Of course, Miss Derbyshire...I beg your forgiveness, Miss Derbyshire." Hermione replied quietly with a tremble in her voice as her keeper told her that she would be punished again later in the day. Olivia felt sorry for her, and for poor Simone, who had certainly never been punished like that before. But the pain did not last, or mark the skin like a physical beating could do, which was the whole point of their punishment chips. Strict discipline was a biblical requirement, and ever since boarding school, where the nuns had used a leather paddle, she had expected her sins to result in painful penance. And she accepted that, whilst never really expecting any castigation to be fair. It was not really fair to hold her and Mrs Holden to the new British standards. Neither of them had been trained, at least in her case recently, to move so little over a two-hour period.

"My brother-in-law is a very devout man," Hermione said an hour later, when they had all reached the park and been tethered to the new railings. Olivia was facing Hermione, with Simone Holden to her left, their leashes all tied short, so that they could hardly move their heads at all, and their mittens clipped high. "The new standards mirror what is expected of his wife and daughters...and dear Clara is rarely punished...but she is a Winstanley and was always trained to be a paragon of virtue."