A New Virginity

Committed now, I applied myself to the study of the language and the customs of the peoples to whom St John would bring the fear of the Christian God, and submission to His will, using me as his chosen instrument to approach the females of the race, where men might not be allowed free access. One day, as I was engaged on this work, he came into the room and ordered me to put my book aside and pay attention, for he had something of the utmost import to discuss.

"I have just had occasion to visit that town where, you tell me, you were arrested and whipped last year, before we found you at our door. They remembered the event clearly, giving me graphic accounts of your flogging, and exposure in the pillory, remarking on the freshness of your body and your well-formed breasts. They added another piece of information too. Is it true that you were examined by the midwives?"

I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach, but acknowledged it was true.

"And that they pronounced you no virgin, but whore, and one but recently engaged with a man's member, and leaking his seed?"

I could not deny it.

"But I was raped," I offered, and told him how the coachman had taken advantage of my vulnerability, there in the middle of the waste, tearing off my clothes and forcing himself into me.

"I will believe you, but you could have been no virgin, even then, else the midwife would have noted your torn maidenhead, and reported so to the Magistrate."

"It is true," I admitted, "I was no virgin. I was ravished at a tender age by Mr Brocklehurst, and after him one other, but I was made to submit by the man's strength, and had no choice in the matter."

St John paced up and down the room, deeply disturbed, then halted and turned his fiery eye on me.

"I cannot wed an impure woman, nor allow her to conduct work in the Lord's name, it would be sacrilege, and an offence against religion, but the work must be done. Since, to do it, I need you, and you may only accompany me as my wife, you must be purged and restored, so that I can wed you."

"How restored? How purged?" I cried, overwrought with feeling. "A virginity once ruptured is gone for ever."

"Not so," he declared, "you shall be cleansed with fire, and purged by pain."

I looked at him aghast, but he did not explain further, but left me sitting, frozen by shock and fear.

A week later, the ceremony took place. We assembled in the large living room we shared, St John, his sisters, and my terrified self. St John was dressed in his parsonical black suit, with the white bands at his throat, his black bible in his hand. Mary and Diana stood, like widows at a wake, dressed all in black, with black veils covering their heads. I was naked, save for a similar veil, but mine was scarlet, as befitted my sins, and I saw all through a red mist.

Before the hearth stood a small trestle no more than two feet high with, set in its top rail, a metal socket, part of an old barn door bolt, forming a slot about two inches long by three quarters wide. In the fire was the iron bolt of the same section, and about eight inches long, that fitted the socket. Mary knelt by the fire, working the bellows to make the wood roar, until the iron glowed white hot from end to end.

St John began the prayers.

"We are met together in the sight of God to purge this impure vessel of her defilement, restoring to her the symbol of her chastity through the healing power of thy pure fire, and cleansing her soul with the inner fire of pain."

Through all his entreaties of the heavenly powers, Mary had continued to heat the iron, the roar of the bellows punctuating his discourse, and inflaming my fears as much as the iron.

"Enough!" St John cried, and drew the metal out with tongs, dropping it in the socket. It slid in snugly, until only an inch of incandescent tip showed, little sparks running over the surface, testifying to its heat.

"Mount, Jane," he thundered in a voice that compelled obedience, "offer yourself to the flame. Take the pain into your body, and emerge whole and wholesome once more."

Between terror and his command, I had no will left. I moved like an automaton, exactly as he had instructed me, over and over again, as he prepared me for my part, indoctrinating me with his recipe for my redemption, as he saw it. With legs like jelly, whimpering with my fear, I straddled the trestle and put my hands to my vulva. With trembling fingers I felt within the plump outer guardians, for the delicate inner lips, until I could grip them firmly, drawing them apart until I stretched the entrance to the vagina itself, opening myself until I could feel the cool air on the moist membranes inside the entrance. I hesitated a fraction, frozen by fear.

"Hurry Jane!" he barked, "the iron grows cold. Accept it into your body and become pure."

I could not resist him. His command over me was greater even than my terror, as I felt the heat from the iron scorching the tender membranes poised above it. The nose of the bolt was radiused to help it enter the socket of the lock, and now it was placed to enter me. I bent my knees and sank onto the glowing iron, until it pressed into the opening. For an instant it felt like ice, then the flame lanced through me. I did not scream, but my head went back, my mouth gaped, a weird, thin, high, strangled cry came from my clenched throat. St John would not commence those words that would make me pure, and release me from this tearing agony in my body, until I had lifted my heels from the floor and reached back to grip them with my hands, ensuring that my weight was firmly on the trestle and the iron fully in me. The anguish, and my keening response, continued, all the while St John prayed.

"In the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen," he intoned, slowly and solemnly.

At the conclusion of this awful Trinity, that seemed to last three anguished centuries, I sprang up off that terrible iron, that had burned me in my most intimate part, and collapsed to the ground, my hands clasped over my wound.

St John addressed no word to me directly.

"See she is closed," he told Diana, and strode from the room.

My dear sisters, for so I thought of them now, flew to my aid, raising me between them, and assisting me to my bed. They washed my wound, but all was not yet down. Carefully, they inserted a short length of clean straw between the two burnt inner walls, then took silk suture and needle, and closed the opening either side with several neat stitches so that it would grow together there, as it healed, to form a replica of that hymen Mr Brocklehurst had ruptured all those years before. It hurt me much, but the fear had gone, and the pain seemed less when inflicted with so much care and concern by Diana's loving fingers.

I was in pain for several days, but soon healed cleanly. After a week Diana removed the stitches and, when my monthly flow started, at two weeks from the burning, the value of the aperture left by the straw was proved. By the end of the month I was as well as if nothing had happened, endowed with a new maidenhead, and St John set a date for the wedding and for our departure to the Orient, once, in the marriage bed, he had forced the seal he had so recently and painfully applied.