Mister Henry & Zelamir

The Village

Book 2, chapters 12-18

Chapter 12

"The winner of the 2005 Baron Corvo Cup is Mister Jack Wardle of Dingley Dell, jockey Master Richard Smythe. I am sure it is a great pleasure for us all to see so stalwart and committed a supporter of the traditions of the Vale triumph at last. Congratulations Jack, well done."

Jack strode out onto the course. Tom with Richard Smythe beside him led Merlin and Lucifer, still blinkered and harnessed to the racing trap, over to him. Both groom and boy-jockey were grinning broadly, making no secret of their joy at winning the race.

What Merlin and Lucifer thought about the whole thing was rather more problematical. Still panting from their exertions, their naked bodies glistening with sweat, they limped wearily forward. Each step they took marked the grass under their feet with streaks of red. When Tom stopped they halted and stood, heads bowed, chests still heaving, shivering slightly from exhaustion. Very likely, imprisoned in their dark and almost silent world, Mark thought they did not even know that they had won the race. Probably they were simply thankful that they could at last stop running and their backs were no longer being raked by the lash.

"Thank you Richard," Jack said solemnly shaking the nine-year olds hand. "Thank you for bringing the Corvo Cup back to Dingley Dell Manor, where it belongs, after all these years."

"I'm afraid I ripped Merlin and Lucifer's shoulders a bit in the final straight Mister Weston," William replied blushing with pleasure at the praise, "but you said you wanted the cup and the brutes needed livening up."

"You did quite right William. The lash well laid on is the only thing the pauper scum understand or respect."

But even as Jack said this Mark noticed he turned to examine the damage to his pony boys. Oblivious to the cheers and excitement around him he bent down and taking hold of Merlin's right ankle pulled his leg back so that he could examine the soul of the brat's foot. The pony boy clearly recognised the touch of the master into whose care his loving parents had placed him at the age of five and who had made him what he was and for whose honour he had just run so hard and bravely. He stood still, only whimpering and shifting slightly as Jack dug his thumb into the torn flesh.

"It's the dry weather making the ground so hard that's done that." Jack remarked abandoning one foot and pulling back the other for inspection. "Seen the same thing often after exercising them in the winter after a hard frost. Nothing to worry about once it heals the brute's feet will be harder and tougher."

Jack turned his attention the boy's deeply tanned legs. He ran his hand up the smooth young limbs now blotched with livid red marks where the flames had scorched them. Methodically he worked his way up the brat checking every inch of its naked body for injuries. He began to release the pony-boy from the straps harnessing it to the shaft of the racing trap. Mark wondered at the ingenuity that had gone into developing the harness over the centuries that the sport had thrived in the Vale of Dingle. He felt sure that simple though it was there was probably no more efficient way of applying boy power to the task of drawing a racing trap.

Jack unbuckled the girth and Mark could see how cruelly it had galled the brat's body. Under the broad canvass belt the its skin was rubbed an angry red. Four straps fastened to the girth and joined together by a brass ring behind the brat's scrotum ensured that it did not ride up his body. These, being narrower than the girth, had chafed Merlin's flesh raw where the pressure on them had been greatest, on either side of his balls. The worst damage though was across the front of his shoulders and chest where the traces, against which the boy had thrown his whole strength, ran. Here the leather straps had bitten deep and blood oozed slowly from the furrows that they had carved into his flesh.

Tom stepped smartly forward to take some of the weight of the shafts as Jack, lifting the reigns over Merlin's head led the pony boy clear of the trap. Mark caught his breath. For the first time since the end of the race Mark he could see the boy's back. The brat's shoulders had been shredded by the metal tipped lash. He remembered seeing Merlin that morning, tethered naked to the rails in Jack's stable yard, his body sleekly glistening in the sun, his skin unmarked by the lash. Now the pony-boy's back was a mass of broken flesh. In the course of a few hours the boy had been reduced from a beautiful young animal glorying in its health and strength to an exhausted wreck, all in the cause of bringing success and glory to its master.

"Would you hold the little sod for me would you while I get the blinkers off it?" Jack asked lifting the reigns over Merlin's head and passing them to Mark.

It only took Jack a few seconds to remove the blinkers. Jack was amused to see that Merlin, his sight restored to him after hours of darkness made no attempt to look around. Instead he stood his head slightly bowed, blinking in the strong sunlight. The noise, the excitement, the crowd jostling around him; the naked pony-boy was oblivious to it all. In his eyes Mark could see only dumb unquestioning acceptance of a world of humiliation, suffering and total exhaustion. Mark thought of the boy's contemporaries in the United Kingdom away from the Vale of Dingle; spoilt uncouth louts, lacking in discipline and self control, discontented and unhappy, making their own lives and those of those about them a misery. There was no doubt that the brat, its spirit crushed, its strength unquestioningly devoted to its protector's service, was a testimonial to the benefits that the workings of old Hiram's charity had brought to the Vale of Dingle.

Mark's reflections were brought to a halt by a commotion behind him. Turning he saw that Stefan had somehow armed himself with a stout walking stick and was using it on his two pony girls. His father stood beside him holding the brat's reigns so that they could not bolt or shy away from the flailing stick. A crowd, almost as large as that surrounding Jack's winning team, had formed to watch the fun. It was attracted no doubt by the exceptional nature of the incident. Not two brats being beaten: such incidents were common enough in the Vale of Dingle and would attract the attention at the most of a couple or so of free boys with time on their hands. What made the event unusual, indeed exotic, and attracted the crowd was that the brats were girls and black.

Still harnessed to the racing trap the brats could not avoid the blows that Stefan aimed at them. Standing in front of them he struck at the front of their legs and chests. The blows fell fast and hard. The shrill howls of the girls were punctuated by the thump of wood against bare young flesh. Black skin does not show bruises as clearly as lighter colours do but the burnished jet of their strong young legs and unformed breasts was soon criss-crossed with deep red stripes where the stick had fallen.

The naked girls pranced and twisted under the rain of blows but there was no escape and each cut went home. Mark felt it was a pity that such healthy young animals should suffer in this way but how else were they to be taught that failure was not tolerated in the Vale of Dingle.

"Good boy that Stefan," Jack remarked before dismissing Merlin with a slap across his bare rump and turning his attention to Lucifer. "He'll fit in here very well. He clearly understands how to treat charity scum.

Three or four times one or other of the girls stumbled under the vicious assault but was prevented from falling by its harness binding it both to the racing trap and its team-mate. However, already exhausted by their efforts in the race, neither brat could survive on its feet indefinitely. Finally a particularly cruel cut across its shins brought one to its knees dragging the other with it.

Stefan swung the walking stick back over his head and brought it cracking down on the crown of one of the girls' heads. The brat slumped sideways but held by her harness could not fall any further. Her scalp was split by the force of the blow and blood coursed from the gash down her face and neck forming a dull red slick down her bare chest. Again Stefan lifted the stick. The two girls cowering at his feet whimpered in fear.

"Could you take Lucifer's reigns for me as well."

Jack's voice drew Mark's attention away from the sufferings of the two pony girls. He saw Lucifer had also been unharnessed from the racing trap. Once he had taken the reigns Jack cupped the brat's chin in his hand and lifted his face to the light. Mark could see blood trickling down Lucifer's chin from the right hand corner of his mouth.

"He tried to pull to the left Uncle Jack when he felt the heat of the fire," Richard Smythe said. He sounded rather nervous as though fearful of blame. "I had to pull really hard to the right to stop him. That's how his mouth's got torn."

"There's nothing to worry about Richard," Jack said reassuringly pulling at the steel bit to get a clearer view of the damage. "A couple of stitches will sort that out. It won't even be necessary to get the boy-vet. Tom could you get the suturing kit from the Range Rover. And you may as well get the cartons of wound powder and Ovingdean ointment at the same time. We can patch the two brats up here before they're walked home."

While the groom was fetching these things Jack unbuckled the boy's bridle and eased the bit from his mouth. Lucifer stood, his head bowed, shivering nervously, waiting submissively for whatever fate and his master had in store for him.

"Hold him for me Tom, would you please?" Jack asked when the groom had returned.

Tom stepped behind the Lucifer and slipping his arms under the boy's clasped his hands behind his neck. Tom was a tall strongly built man and leaning back he lifted the boy clear of the ground. Jack advanced on the lad, the thick suturing needle in his right hand. Taking a firm grasp of the brat's chin he pushed his head back and thrust the needle into his flesh just below the tear at the corner of his mouth. The boy lost all control as he felt the needle jab into his cheek. He yelled, jerking his head free from Jack's grasp and lashing out with his bare feet.

Jack swore and jumped to one side to avoid the brats thrashing legs leaving the needle with the length of gut trailing from its eye lodged in his cheek. Without hesitating Jack drove his fist into the brat's stomach. The boy moaned and hung limply gasping for air from the groom's arms. Jack calmly resumed the tasking of stitching up the tear at the corner of the boy's mouth. With three deft stitches he completed his task.

"Well," he said standing back and turning the boy's head this way and that to examine his handy-work, "in a day or two when we take the stitches out there'll hardly be anything to see."

Tom held Lucifer in his head-lock until he was breathing normally again and then put him back on his feet. The boy staggered slightly but then recovered his balance.

Mark noticed that Jack made no move to punish Lucifer for kicking out when he first felt the needle. Not for the first time he wondered at the understanding and patience that his old friend showed when dealing with pauper brats. Jack seemed to know instinctively what could be expected of them and what was simply beyond their capacity to deliver. He also admired Jack's effective and speedy reaction to the lad's panic. He didn't waste time tying him down or thrashing him into submission. Nor was there any nonsense about trying to calm the boy or minimising the pain. Jack seemed to know instinctively that all was required was a simple punch in the guts.

"Right," Jack said as Tom attached Lucifer to Merlin by a short halter between their two collars. "Let them have a drink. Watch them though. You know how stupid and lacking in self-discipline the brutes are. Left to themselves they'd drink the trough dry and I don't want them bloated. Just a couple of mouthfuls to keep them going and then, after you've treated their cuts and burns, walk them nice and slowly back to the manor. The six mile [10km] walk should stop them stiffening up. And keep the bastards moving. Don't hesitate to give them a taste of the strap if they start getting lazy."

This was typical Mark thought of Jack's concern for the well being of his charity boys. It would have been so easy for him to have left Merlin and Lucifer to the groom to look after while he celebrated his win with his friends. Yet here he was giving detailed instructions to safeguard their well being. And the instructions themselves illustrated the care he lavished on the training and disciplining of his brats. Only pony boys in the peak of condition and health would have been capable of undertaking the six mile [10km] trudge back to their stables after being raced over so lengthy and exacting a course in the full heat of a summer's day. Only boys who had been thoroughly schooled in obedience and submission to their betters could be expected to undertake such a march exhausted, thirsty and on feet already skinned by the hard earth.

Tom took Merlin's reigns from Mark and led him towards the side of the track where a stone trough stood water lapping over its sides. Lucifer feeling the halter attaching him to Merlin tug at his collar stumbled along after his team-mate. The two pony-boys moved slowly, heads bowed, dragging their feet, they were clearly exhausted. But when they realised they were being taken to the drinking trough their heads went up and they lunged forward. Tom, from pulling on Merlin's reigns to get the brats to move forward, found himself suddenly having to haul back on them to stop the boys bolting.

He managed to stop them a yard or two short of the trough. Grinning broadly he lent back, using his weight to hold the brats back. Excited by the sight of water and maddened by thirst they lunged against the reigns squealing with excitement and impatience.

"You would, would you, you sods," Tom growled cutting at the brats' thighs with his riding crop. "Stand up fuck you. Stand up. You're not going to get at that water till you stand up."

The pony-boys lost in their near silent world could not hear the individual words but the man's tone, the expression on his face and the crop's stinging imperative conveyed his meaning to them. Quelled, they stood, shifting from foot to foot, half crazed by thirst, whimpering softly as they gazed at the water flowing so freely and so near at hand. At last, satisfied that discipline had been maintained, the groom stepped to one side and the two brats, lunging forwards, dropped to their knees and plunged their faces into the trough.

Looking down Mark noticed that the brats' upturned rumps, now so prominently displayed, had largely escaped damage. Their legs had been scorched by the wall of flames and their shoulders scourged by the whip but their bottoms had, up to then at least, been spared. The contrast between the smooth deeply tanned skin of their unblemished rumps and the fire and lash ravaged flesh of their shoulders and legs was Mark thought very striking. He doubted however if the contrast would last long. Pauper boys' bottoms always presented such tempting targets.

"When you get them back to the stables give them a double ration of swill each and then let them sleep," Jack ordered. "Choose a couple of small low quality brats from one of the gangs working round the house and secure them ready for the brutes. Bring them out for their reward at quarter to ten tomorrow. I am sure my guests would like to see the fun before they go to church."

Mark remembered the first time he visited Dingley Dell Manor as a school friend of Jack's. They were both hardly eleven years old and the customs and practices of the Vale of Dingle were fresh and exciting to him. One of Jack's father's teams of pony-boys won a minor race and they were taken down to the stable-yard the following day to see the brats getting their reward.

When they arrived at the stables they found two small sluts tipped over the top rail of the exercise yard fence, their feet hanging clear of the ground, their wrists tied to bottom rail. There were five or six other free boys there who knew there was going to be some excitement and had turned up to watch the fun. Jack's father was working on the sluts' bottoms, a benevolent smile on his broad cheerful face, as he greased and stretched their holes apparently oblivious to their sobs. Then a groom appeared leading the two pony boys by their halters and the crowd of free boys cheered and laughed and pointed.

"Look at their pricks," Jack had exclaimed a hint of wonder in his voice.

The pony boys, Mark remembered had been sturdy well grown lads approaching the end of their racing careers. If they had been free boys he would have judged them to be fifteen or sixteen years old, being charity brats who developed later they might well have been a couple of years older than that. The brats' wrists, as was always the case with pony boys when they were not harnessed between the shafts of a racing trap, were secured behind their backs. Their pricks, free for once of their tight cock rings, wobbled stiffly in front of them as they walked. Their cocks were not in truth remarkable for youths of that age but looked immense to two eleven year olds who could only compare the swollen tubes of blood and gristle to their own twig like penises. Drops of precum, which had formed at the tips of their rods, glistened silver in the sunlight.

Catching sight of the two small pauper boys bent over the railings, their naked bottoms invitingly exposed, the pony boys jerked impatiently on their reigns. Feet prancing, chests heaving, unable to speak they signalled their lust and excitement with strange shrill squeals and whinnies.

The groom tethered the pony boys to the railing beside the two little sluts destined for their enjoyment. Spitting on the palm of his right hand he liberally smeared their pulsing members with saliva, the fingers of his left hand, thrusting up hard behind their balls, guarded against a premature orgasm.

An expectant hush had fallen on the audience of free boys. The only sound now was the frightened whimpering of the little sluts and the eager neighing of the pony boys.

The pony boys jerked at their halters, pawing the ground in their eagerness. Taking a firm hold of its bridle, the groom unclipped one pony boy's halter and led it across to stand close behind one of the slut's upraised bottoms. With the finger and thumb of his free hand he pried apart the lips of the brat's anus. The lad was wild with lust but with his hands secured behind his back he found it difficult to make a lodgement in the boy. Roaring in frustration he drove wildly forward, repeatedly missing his target. The slut, slung helpless over the rails and knocked about by the plunging pony boy, screamed in terror.

Jack's father, showing the concern for the true well being of the charity boys committed to his care that distinguished the more responsible inhabitants of the vale of Dingle, taking hold of the pony boy's penis levelled it at the entry to the slut's hole. The pony boy drove forward with such force that the brat was in danger of being tipped over the rail across which he had been secured. The groom, apparently satisfied that the boy's penis was firmly lodged in the child, ducked under the railings. Grabbing hold of the slut by his shoulders he held it steady. The slut's screams increased in intensity and volume as the lust crazed pony boy hammered his cock into its bottom. Mark remembered the way in which the muscles in the pony boy's deeply tanned flanks rippled as he worked his rod ever deeper into his victim's bottom.

The miracle by which lust anaesthetises and converts the agony of penetration into the most piercing pleasure soon reduced the slut's frantic screams into a low urgent moaning. From the pony boy came grunts and rasping pants punctuated by the urgent rhythmic slap of bare flesh against bare flesh as his thrusting pelvis slammed against the slut's taughtly drawn bum. In the background the second pony boy pranced and tugged at his halter, howling in frustration, impatient to be given a chance at his slut's bottom.

The groom, apparently satisfied that the first boy's cock was fairly lodged in his slut's bum, relinquished his grip of the child's shoulders. Ducking back under the railings he crossed to where the second pony boy stood straining at his halter. Soon that boy's penis too was buried deep in the slut selected for his enjoyment.

Mark remembered how he and Jack and the crowd of other free boys watched in open mouthed silence only broken by the occasional nervous whisper or giggle. Then the first pony boy began to pump his brat's hole with increasing urgency. His thrusts became faster and fiercer. He tensed, his cock buried in the slut's guts, his body arched like a tightly drawn bow. The muscles in his bottom surged convulsively before he slumped forward, his lust momentarily quenched.

But only momentarily, for very soon the boy's bottom began to move as he started, once again, to sound the slut's bottom.

By then though the tension that had held the free boys silent had broken and they were all chatting and laughing among themselves at the antics of the pauper brats.

Mark was sure that Jack's guests would find the sight of Merlin and Lucifer being rewarded for their efforts an entertaining and interesting one.

"Well I hope Mister Wardle you will allow me to congratulate you on a very fine win," a heavily accented voice spoke behind Mark interrupting his reflections.

Mark turned Mister Oblonsky and Stefan were standing there with the two black pony girls in the charge of a groom behind them.

"That's very kind of you Mister Oblonsky," Jack said taking the man's proffered hand and shaking it, "And sporting too if I may say so. Your team ran a good race and there was nothing really in it in the end."

"Do you want to water your girls," he continued. "There's room enough for both pairs of brats at the trough."

"Shift up you brute," he snarled landing a heavy kick with the toe of his leather brogues on the side of Merlin's rump. The pony boy without lifting his head jostled up against his team-mate, making room at the end of the trough.

"Food, water; both are privileges that such as these have to earn," Oblonsky remarked his voice icy. "The idle bitches have failed me and they will have to go thirsty and hungry till tomorrow. I've had them brought over here so that they can see the water and watch your brats drinking. That, together with the little lesson Stefan has already given them, will I hope persuade them to try just a little harder next time I run them."

Mark could imagine that this was so. Standing there in the heat of the sun he had already began to feel thirsty and he had not run thirteen miles [21km] cross-country urged on by merciless applications of the lash. Certainly the bitches longing for water must be immeasurably stronger and more urgent than his. Their agonies would be made all the greater by being able to see the water lapping coolly over the sides of the trough with the two naked pony boys drinking eagerly while being themselves forbidden to touch it. As for Stefan's little lesson, Mark could see that the girls' bodies that had begun the race looking as if they were fashioned from burnished jet were now bruised and ribbed with bloody welts. Their current sufferings were surely sufficiently severe to persuade the pony girls of the unwisdom of coming second again.

Mark said as much to Oblonsky.

"It is through suffering that trash such as these are trained," the Russian remarked grimly.

"That is so true but you cannot but feel pity for them," Anne Wardle had joined them. Her remarks Mark felt showed the soft caring nature that one would expect in a lady.

"Look at the poor children," she continued softly as she walked towards them, "so bruised, so weary, so thirsty."

She ran her hand up the side of one of the girls' flanks and then over her body until its palm was resting on the brat's chest. The girl stood quietly as the woman's hand fondled her body showing none of the violent revulsion that she had betrayed when before the race Jack had tried to handle her. Perhaps the brat was too exhausted now to care or perhaps there was some other reason that made the woman's caresses more bearable.

Mark wondered at the contrast between the white woman in her smart clothes and the naked exhausted black girl.

Anne took her hand away the girl. Turning it over, so that its palm was towards her, she examined it and smiled softly.

"The sweet little whore is still bleeding," she exclaimed softly.

She lifted her hand to her mouth and delicately licked her fingertips. Reaching out she put her hand under the girl's chin and tipped her head back. Bending down she kissed her on the lips. Mark saw the girl's naked body straining against her bonds as she responded fiercely to Anne's kiss.

"Such a pity," Anne said stepping back, "such a pity but then how else can the poor ignorant little whores be schooled."

She flicked one of the black girl's nipples with her thumb-nail and turned away. The girl accepting her dismissal stood patiently, her head bowed waiting for her master to decide her fate.

"We find with the pauper filth that they respond best to a firm touch and I expect it is the same with these," Jack remarked. "Anything else they interpret as weakness and then they try to take advantage of you and have to be checked. In the end it is kinder to be firm with them."

"Very true," Oblonsky replied, "but really I wanted to put a proposal to you. You have an excellent pair of pony boys there Mr Wardle and though I say it myself my girls are healthy strong young brutes and ran a good race although they failed to win. Why don't we try breeding from them? I think it is up to us, as responsible owners, to do all we can to improve the racing stock and that would seem to be an excellent way of doing just that."

"I've got nothing against your suggestion," Jack said after a moment's reflection, "but didn't you say your coach has dosed your bitches to stop their development."

"Ah the excellent Doctor Werner," Oblonsky exclaimed with a laugh, "such a good find for my purposes, a specialist with the East German girl's athletic team. I came across him shortly after the wall came down. His position then was one of some embarrassment, without a job and facing prosecution. Some of his, what shall I say, treatments, had unfortunate consequences. That was a long time ago and he has been able to improve his techniques markedly since then. Having an almost unlimited supply of subjects on which to experiment was a considerable advantage in this. Now he appears to be able to turn the biological clock on and off at will. He'll give the whores a couple of jabs in their thighs this evening and they'll be ovulating, or whatever the term is, like prize breeding bitches by tomorrow."

"Well that's fine but will they take kindly to being mounted? Jack asked. Look how one of them tried to go for me when I touched her. I don't want my boys damaged, I've invested a lot of time and money in training them."

"I'll see to that," Oblonsky replied, "We'll tethered and gag them before we put your boys to them."

"I must say," Anne interposed, "that it will be a very good thing for the free boys to watch the girls being fucked and I hope you will encourage as many as possible to be there to see it. I really think sometimes that having so many charity boys about may have a permanently corrupting influence on them. You know what they say – you cannot touch filth without getting dirty. Seeing the girls getting fucked will show them at least that there is more to life than just charity boys."

"My dear," Jack replied mildly, "you mustn't attach any importance to charity boys, no one takes them seriously. They're there to be used – nothing more. When I'm bored or tired or needing relaxation sometimes I take a drink, other times I fuck a brat, if one happens to be handy. Mind you I agree with you that seeing the girls mounted will be a useful educational experience. Some things are more easily explained by practical demonstration than anything else."

"Now you and Stefan," Jack continued turning back to Oblonsky, "are already invited over for tomorrow. Bring the bitches with you and we'll put them to the boys before lunch. There's always a gap between the end of morning service and the start of lunch that needs filling in with something amusing."

"Very well," Oblonsky replied, "I will do that. Now if you don't mind I will leave you. I need to take Stefan home now he has a whipping coming to him."

"A whipping Stefan?" Jack was clearly amused, "what have you done to deserve that."

"I came second so Dad will flog me," Stefan replied. He tried to sound calm but there was a tremor in his voice.

"Yes," Mister Oblonsky chimed in, "the bitches are being punished because they did not win the race. Stefan has to be punished for the same reason."

"Well of course," Jack accepted the reasonableness of this attitude, "But whipped? You do mean really whipped? Generally we regard the strap or cane as sufficient for free boys."

"Certainly Stefan will be whipped when I get him home. He will be stripped, hung up by his wrists and I will flog him with a very real whip. We Russians do not do things by halves."

"But why hurry home? I am having a little party and I would be delighted if you would join me. You can flog Stefan here just as well as at home. I am sure all the equipment required is to hand and then we can all enjoy the spectacle, except Stefan of course," and Jack laughed heartily in the jovial good-humoured way that was so typical of him.

"Why that is most kind of you. I will try to repay your hospitality by giving my son a severe and vigorous thrashing."

"Very good, very good indeed, I find there is little better for getting a party to go with a swing than the spectacle of a good looking boy being thoroughly flayed."

"Tom," Jack said speaking to the groom, "walk Merlin and Lucifer home, don't stand any nonsense from them and be sure to keep the lazy brutes moving. Double ration of swill this evening and the same again tomorrow morning. About eleven o'clock get their cock rings off and give them two blue pills each. I want them up at the yard at midday sharp. Do you understand?"

"Yes Sir," Tom replied touching his cap smartly before turning and aiming two sharp kicks at the up turned rumps of the pony boys whose heads were still buried in the water trough.

"Get out of there you useless lumps of dog shit," he roared.

Mark heard behind him, as he walked back to the marquee, the sharp crack of leather striking boy's flesh followed by a squeal of pain.

"Sound man Tom," Jack remarked approvingly, "knows how to handle charity trash."

"Yes indeed," Oblonsky replied and then calling over his shoulder to his son who was unaccountably showing a tendency to lag behind. "Come on Stefan we don't want to keep Mister Wardle's guests waiting after he's been so kind to ask us to his party."

The noise coming from the marquee suggested that the party was already well underway. The din of human voices, dominated as always be the shrill tones of the women's chatter, the roar of masculine laughter, the clink of glasses, all punctuated occasionally by the sharp pop of a champagne bottle being opened, drowned the bleeting of lambs and the song of the sky larks and all the other sounds of the countryside. Jack stepped inside the marquee and for a few seconds the noise continued unabated. Then the people nearest the entry saw him and turned to face him. There were a few hushes and more people turned round to look. There was a ripple of applause and then everybody in the place was facing Jack clapping and cheering frantically.

Jack, beaming happily, raised both his hands appealing for silence but still the cheering and clapping rolled on.

"Friends," he shouted trying to make himself heard over the din. There were cries of "hush", "let him speak" and "he's a jolly good fellow."

"Oh God," Mark thought, "he's going to make a speech off the top of his head and after winning the Corvo cup as well. He'll put his foot in it. I'm sure he will." He knew from long experience that Jack, normally the most level headed of men, tended to get carried away when making a speech especially if it was at a moment of deep emotional turmoil. The only way to avoid this was to provide him with a full script and to stand close by him to stop him if he showed any signs of straying from it. Jack's life and his own, for bystanders also tended to get involved, were littered with moments of acute embarrassment when this policy was not followed and now he suspected it was going to happen again.

"Friends," Jack shouted again and the continued more quietly, "friends this is a great occasion for me. After more years than I care to remember we are bringing the Corvo Cup back to the manor and it is a great pleasure to me that you are here to share this moment with me. I have to thank the stable staff whose keenness and dedication has made out of the unpromising material of a couple of pauper brats, and you can hardly get anything more unpromising than that, a pair of champion pony boys. I have also to thank Richard Smythe, stand up Richard so everyone can see you boy, who was my jockey today and a very brave and intelligent one. He ran a sharp race keeping the brats well in hand till the end and then lashing them onto victory in the final straight.

But finally and most of all I want to thank Anne Wardle my brother's wife. Now I'm giving no secrets away when I say my brother is an ass and a dangerous one as well. It is well known that he was banished from the Vale by my father for being totally unsound on the treatment of the charity scum. He, you will scarcely credit this accused us of stealing their childhood." Jack waited a second or two for the laughter to die down. "He said that we should stop beating the little brutes, should appeal to their better sides," again Jack had to pause for the laughter and catcalls to abate, "and try to persuade them to behave by treating them with kindness and reasoning with them."

"I know, I know," Jack said raising his hands to appeal for silence and laughing himself. "He said we should clothe and feed the little sods better, keep them warm in winter and in general stop toughening them up. He said that we should stop using them for our sexual pleasure and accused us," he paused fighting back laughter, "accused us of robbing them of their innocence."

"And this," Jack continued, "from a man who grew up in the Vale. Who knows full well what an onerous and thankless task it is to try to make something useful out of the subhuman animals that we have taken into our care and yet begrudges us the occasional tender bottom or hot little mouth to fuck. Who has had, like all of us, the advantage of listening to our Rector's thoughtful sermons, full as they are of Christian Charity and the need to submit to God's will. Sermons that so reminds us that it is blasphemous to reject both the duties He has imposed on us and the gifts with which He has endowed us."

"The man had lived here all his life up to then and he could talk of pauper sluts being innocent."

"Come here turd. Yes you, you idle lump of filth. Here at once," he roared at the serving boy nearest to him.

The brat, a slim lad about twelve years old his brief white tunic contrasting nicely with his sunburnt limbs, sidled reluctantly forward.

"Look dear it's our Billy," a smartly dressed lady standing sipping from a champagne flute loudly exclaimed. "Move yourself Billy you ungrateful slob. Do as Mister Wardle says or Daddy'll strip the skin from your worthless carcass with the buckle end of his belt."

Thus encouraged the boy stumbled forward. Jack started impatiently towards the cringing slut and grabbed him by the ear.

"Look at this little whore," Jack sneered, twisting the child's ear so viciously that it was forced to bend almost double with the inevitable result that its white vest rode up revealing a sweetly curved boy's bottom. "Does it look innocent to you? Anyway let's find out how innocent it really is?"

"Well filth what do you want? Speak up pig shit so the Ladies and Gentlemen can hear."

"Mister Wardle Sir," the boy whined, "please Sir I want to serve you Sir and please you Sir and Sir would you be so good if I fail in any sort of way to thrash me really hard till my shoulders and bottom are ribbed with stripes and all bloody and I'm very grateful to my Mummy and Daddy and to Missis Wardle and to you Sir……"

"Shut up garbage," Jack shouted driving the boy's head, crown first, against a nearby tent pole to bring to a halt the brat's near hysterical exercise in fear driven self humiliation. "I said what did you want cretin not what do you need. Of course you need to be thrashed…… all pauper scum do. What… do…… you…… want…?"

Each word in this last sentence was followed by a sharp crack as Jack slammed the hapless boy head first into the tent pole.

"Do" (crack) "you" (crack) "want" (crack) "to" (crack) "be" (crack) "fucked" (crack)?

"Oh Sir Yes Sir I'm sorry Sir, I do want to be fucked Sir. Please Sir I want a man's cock up my hole Sir. I want it in deep Sir, deep and hard Sir. I don't care if it splits me open Sir I just want to be fucked and then afterwards to be allowed to lick the shit and blood and cum off the cock Sir."

"Well if you want to be fucked whore we'd better let the gentleman have a good look at what you're offering them. Come on round you go so they can see your bottom."

Laughing Jack manoeuvred the boy till his bottom was presented to the crowd of onlookers while they hooted and stamped their feet.

"Well they seem to find something funny but nobody's showing a great deal of interest in fucking your bum. Wiggle it about a bit maybe that will get them going. Now reach round and pull your cheeks apart so they can see right into it and wriggle it at the same time…. Wide apart slut…… wide apart. You want cock up you don't you whore?"

"Yes please Mister Wardle Sir. Please let me have a man's cock in me… Please Sir," the slut whined.

"Perhaps we'd better just check that hole of yours out for tightness."

Saying this Jack quickly dampened the index finger of his free hand with saliva and then jabbed it, without warning, into the brat's bottom. The boy squawked his shock and pain at the brutal assault. Jack though was not going to allow the protests of a pauper brat to influence his behaviour in the slightest. He just jabbed harder, twisting his finger as he did so.

"For God's sake Billy you miserable louse," a large red faced man standing beside the smartly dressed woman who had earlier identified herself as the boy's mother shouted, "push out as if your shitting. You should know that you stupid cunt the number of times I've told you when I've had you face down over my knee stretching your hole with my fingers."

"Typical bit of charity filth, stupid, ungrateful and lazy," the man continued addressing the crowd in general. "Of course my wife and I were bitterly disappointed when we realised what an abortion we had produced but we didn't abandon the little turd. No we did the best for it we could, toughening it up, disciplining it, teaching it to know its place. Most evenings before we locked the slut out in the garden for the night I'd tip him over my knee and work on his hole preparing it in case anybody wanted to use it. It was as much part of the daily routine as the regular leatherings my wife and I gave his bottom. And look at him now. I might as well not have bothered."

While the man was talking Jack had managed to work his index finger into Billy. Now it was buried knuckle deep in the brat.

"Now look at how innocent the tart is," Jack exclaimed, transferring the grip of his left hand from the boy's ear to his hair and yanking him upright.

It was clear that Billy had escaped, by the only means open to him, for the moment from the miseries and humiliations of a pauper brat's existence. The boy's thin little prick was straining upwards, his narrow chest heaved as he panted for breath, his eyes were glazed, strange moans and whimperings came from his half open mouth. Mark could see the muscles in his deeply dimpled rump move as he rode Jack's probing finger.

"Billy, Billy," his mother screamed urgently, "don't you dare cum. Your body is to give pleasure to your betters not for you to enjoy, you self centred thieving little turd."

But Billy had gone beyond remonstrance. His head went back, the muscle in his small boy's bottom clamped tight on Jack's finger. Gobs of pale fluid spurted from his cock.

Billy's mother, furious at the boy's blatant disobedience, darted out of the crowd and punched him hard on the side of his head. Catching the boy as he slumped forward, his orgasm spent, the blow knocked him to the ground. Seizing the opportunity the woman stamped down on the back of the boy's head, driving his face down into the matting. The red faced man, clearly as enraged at his son's behaviour as his wife, strode forward, his belt ready in his hand, the buckle end hanging loose and ready to use. His wife, seeing him approach, thoughtfully paused to pull Billy's tunic up clear of his bum before resuming her stamping and kicking with renewed vigour. The man taking full advantage of the target so temptingly presented to him brought his belt cracking down again and again across the brat's bottom and the back of his thighs. The metal clasp scored angry weals across the child's firm flesh.

Such though was the natural courtesy of the inhabitants of the Vale of Dingle that hardly had the man landed four fair cuts, and cuts was the appropriate word, for the buckle, wherever it landed, left a bloody trail of broken skin and torn flesh across the brats writhing body, than Billy's mother brought operations to a halt.

"Darling," she said grinding her heel into the back of the slut's neck, "I am afraid the ghastly little tyke is dirtying Mister Wardle's matting with his blood."

"So he is," the man replied, "typical of the slut. I wouldn't be surprised if he's doing it deliberately just to try to escape his well-deserved beating. Well he won't get away with that. We'll stop now and give him the rest and I need hardly say the greater part of it, when we get him home tonight, if that is Mister Wardle is agreeable."

"By all means my dear chap," Jack said cheerfully. "There's a pair of heavy manacles in the Range Rover, right wrist crushers, secure him to a tent peg or something outside the marquee with them and then you can take him home with you when the party's over. Or better still, because you won't want to be bothered with him then, leave him out in the open over night and collect him tomorrow. You'll both be fresh and rested then and able to bring renewed vigour to the task of thrashing him and he will have the whole night to think about what is to come to him. When you've finished with him send him straight back to the manor please. I see he's soiled his tunic and Mrs Thomas, my excellent housekeeper, will not wish to allow such irresponsible carelessness to pass unnoticed."

"Certainly we will," the man said cheerfully before kicking the sobbing boy hard in the ribs.

"Get to your feet Billy you idle louse. And stop making such a fuss. You'll get it much worse tomorrow when your loving Mother and I have the time to give you the flogging your atrocious behaviour really warrants."

He drove the sobbing boy out of the marquee with a series of vicious kicks on his already bloody bottom.

"Well," Jack said effortlessly resuming his speech, "I think that demonstrates, if indeed demonstration was necessary, the self evident truth that all charity brats are morally and mentally corrupt and that my poor brother was a misguided ass."

"But in one respect and one respect only my friends he was not an ass. He married Anne. That was the one sensible thing that he has ever done."

"As you probably all know I asked Anne to join me at Dingley Dell Manor with her son Daniel. Not having a son myself we thought, Anne and I, that Daniel might be a suitable boy to be trained to be my successor at the manor. We were to be bitterly disappointed. Daniel had inherited all his father's weaknesses and none of the firmness of character or sound common-sense that distinguishes his mother. In short he was incapable of taking a place in the free society of the Vale."

"In this crisis Anne acted with great firmness of mind. She accepted the situation as it was and assumed the responsibilities of a caring mother who had had the misfortune to bear a child so depraved and degenerate that it needed the special protection and guidance granted to pauper children by our uniquely philanthropic foundation. She submitted Daniel to the Trustees for acceptance as a charity boy and, when that was granted, she set about destroying the last vestiges of pride and wilfulness in the brat with exemplary firmness."

"In addition she has over the last six months run the household at the manor raising it from a rather rough and ready bachelor establishment to a well ordered, even luxurious, home. She holds none of the stupid liberal opinions of her husband. She does not think that you can appeal to a charity boy's reason or to its better feelings because she knows it has niether. She knows the only the only thing such scum can understand and respect is the lash."

"And I think as Daniel has proved himself to be totally unsuitable to inherit the mansion and estate the best thing Anne and I could do is to get together to make another heir."

Wild applause and cheering filled the marquee.

"At least," Mark thought glancing at Anne, her face scarlet with embarrassment, "old Jack has kept me out of things this time."

"And while I am on the subject," continued Jack with cheerful insouciance, "I've got a bit of advice for my old friend Mark Legg. Lots of you know him because he's been a very regular visitor to the Vale of Dingle since we were both boys together. He's the big man standing next to me."

Jack helpfully paused to give the crowd an opportunity to look at Mark. One or two people stood up on their chairs to get a better look at him.

"Mark its time you thought about settling down and I think Angela Thompson would suit you very well. Pretty girl and although, like you, not a native of the Vale she clearly fits in."

Mark hung his head not daring to even glance in Angela's direction. He did indeed find the girl attractive and admired the firm confident manner in which she treated the charity sluts she came across. Many new comers to the Vale seemed, for some odd reason, to be embarrassed by the crowds of cowed and famished pauper boys in their rags and nakedness and reacted to their presence either by pretending they did not exist or by adopting a jocular even kindly approach to them. Angela on the other hand seemed to accept their presence and their services as part of the natural order and there was certainly no sign of her treating them with undue kindness.

He had thought a lot about her but wondered how she would view his occasional enjoyment of a boy slut. He didn't want to have to give that up completely. Such things, the casual penetration of a brat's bottom could hardly be referred to as a 'relationship', meant nothing but perhaps Angela would not see it that way. Now, after Jack's crass behaviour, the point was academic. The girl would certainly have nothing to do with him after being publicly humiliated in that way. Jack seemed to think he could publicly offer the girl to him for his enjoyment in the same way as he would if she was some grubby little pauper slut. It was really too bad of him.

Jack was still talking and swallowing his chagrin, Mark forced himself to listen. At least it seemed his old friend and sometimes, as with all old friends, he wondered how he put up with him, had moved on from playing the matchmaker.

"Now I have a very pleasant duty to perform. It is to welcome two newcomers to the Vale and to introduce them to my friends. Mister Ivan Oblonsky and his son Stefan. Ivan in the short time he has been with us has shown himself to be a great supporter of our traditional ways and a great sportsman. No one who saw his team of black pony girls run this afternoon can doubt his skill as a trainer of brats. I can say that in addition he is a great sportsman and a true gentleman. I know from personal experience how hard it is to see a team of brats that you have spent years breaking and training being beaten into second place. It is particularly hard if the defeat is a narrow one."

"That is what Mister Oblonsky, I shall call him Ivan in future for I regard him already as my friend, had to endure this afternoon and by the narrowest of margins. And yet within fifteen minutes of that bitter disappointment he was shaking me by the hand and congratulating me on my win; the behaviour of a gentleman and a sportsman."

"You all saw Stefan this afternoon racing his father's team and you know he is the best sort of free boy, intelligent, brave and high spirited. You will also know that he is already able to extort the last drop of effort and strength from a charity brat. No one who saw him drive those black girls up the final straight cracking the whip over and over again across their bleeding shoulders will be in any doubt of that. With young men like him coming along we can be confident that the unique traditions of the Vale will be upheld and that the responsibilities that we have been obliged to assume over the pauper brats in our care will be vigorously and enthusiastically fulfilled."

"Now we have a treat for you. We have already witnessed a charity boy being thrashed. Although a commonplace event I found it moderately stimulating to witness, as I do any such flogging, especially if the slut being chastised is, as it was in this case, a pretty one. There's something about the sight of a cane being applied to a brat's firm young bottom that is inherently exciting."

"But beating a charity boy is rather run of the mill. There is nothing to it beyond the purely physical and the simplest of emotions, the pain and terror of the slut, the fierce anger and mixed with pleasurable excitement of the person administering correction. It is amusing to watch the brat squirm as the rod bites its tender flesh and to listen to its howls and broken pleas for mercy. However there is really nothing more to it. The whole thing lacks psychological depth. There is nothing to compare to the emotional complexity that exists when a free boy is beaten. There is no relationship between man and brat except contempt on one side and an equally well founded fear on the other. The brat lives in the expectation of being beaten. It knows it is going to be beaten. It has no pride. It is not humiliated by its nakedness and feels no shame when it screams under the lash."

"A free boy fears the lash. There is no point in using it on him unless he has been taught to fear it. But a free boy is a proud high-spirited creature. He fears much more disgracing himself while suffering under it and he feels the humiliation of having to submit to it. However he does submit because he respects, loves and trusts the person chastising him, for in the Vale it is always a free boy's parents or guardian who is privileged to perform this delicate but enjoyable task. The boy as he bends, trembling, to submit his bare rump to the cane and bites his lip to try to hold back the cries of pain that would in his view bring disgrace upon himself, is demonstrating that love. The man knows this and in his way reciprocates it."

"The difference between a free and a charity boy being beaten is that between high drama and the lowest of low burlesque."

"Thanks to Ivan Oblonsky you will now be able to enjoy a few minutes of high drama. As you know his team of pony girls driven by his son Stefan came second in the Corvo Cup this afternoon. He feels understandably that this was not good enough. It was his intention to make his displeasure in this respect clear to his son in private but he has very kindly agreed to allow us to witness this process."

"Stefan as you can all see is a very handsome young boy, although the racing leathers he is for the moment wearing somewhat obscures his charms. It will be a real pleasure to see more of him, as we undoubtedly will, in a minute or two."

"I am sure Ivan, being a Russian and coming from a land with as long a tradition of corporal punishment as our own; we had the cat, they had the knout; will make his displeasure and disappointment with poor Stefan's performance crystal clear."

"Ivan perhaps you will show us a little bit of Russian discipline."

Chapter 13

Oblonsky chuckled richly at what he clearly regarded as a joke and a ripple of laughter ran through his audience. Stefan however did not join in the general merriment. The boy stood red faced apparently on the verge of tears.

"Now Stefan," Oblonsky continued in a kind almost gentle voice, "step forward please and prepare yourself for your punishment."

All eyes were on the ten-year old boy as he obediently moved forward to the centre of the marquee. It was clear that there was a procedure that he was required to follow. Bending over, his flaxen hair gleaming, his leathers tightly hugging his slim young body, fingers fumbling with nervousness, he unlaced his ankle length boots. He pulled them off and placed them side by side on the floor. Inside them went his socks and then, unzipping his black and yellow leather top, he pulled it up over his head. That was folded and hung neatly over the back of a chair where it was shortly joined by his trousers.

The boy's only clothing now was a pair of spider-man Y-fronts. His hands moved to their waistband and hesitated.

"Come on Stefan. Get them off please. We mustn't keep Mister Wardle and his guests waiting." Oblonsky spoke kindly but firmly.

"Dad please. Do I have to?" the boy asked blushing scarlet with embarrassment.

"Of course you do Stefan. You don't seriously think that I would whip you with your underpants on do you? I need to see where the lash lands to do the job properly and you know how angry your Mother becomes if you bleed on your clothes. Please take them off straight away."

"Dad its all these people watching. Please don't make me take them off."

"For heavens sake Stefan don't make such a fuss. Get your underpants off now. I am beginning to get a little impatient."

"I really do apologise," Ivan Oblonsky continued speaking to Jack Wardle, "I don't know what has got into the boy. He usually doesn't make a fuss at all."

"It's the audience no doubt," Jack remarked with once again showing his innate understanding of the juvenile mind. "You must remember Stefan is not a shameless pauper slut. He is a free boy with a free boy's pride. His modesty does him honour and his embarrassment as it is violated adds to the entertainment."

As Jack was speaking Stefan reluctantly pulled down his pants. He stepped out of them and quickly bending picked them up from the floor and placed them with the rest of his clothes. Hastily he turned to face the crowd, his hands clasped over his crutch in a pathetic attempt to hide his nakedness. His face was on fire and tears of shame glinted in his eyes.

Mark was, struck as always, by the difference in the ways free and charity boys were addressed. Even when about to be flogged free boys were spoken to gently and politely. Orders, at least among the better sort, were preceded by 'please' and obedience acknowledged by 'thank you.' Some efforts were made to preserve the boys individual dignity. No such courtesies were extended to a pauper boy. He faced a constant barrage of abuse and orders were reinforced with kicks and blows. A slut who used its hands to cover its body as Stefan had done with his would have been regarded as giving itself airs and not knowing its place, two of the most serious faults it could commit, and punished accordingly.

"Stefan," his father ordered, still speaking in the calm measured way that he had used through out. "Would you please go to my car and fetch the whip there. The heavy one with the five foot [1½m] lash, not the light one."

Stefan hurried from the marquee still using his hands to shield his nakedness. There were none of the whistles and coarse comments that a pauper brat of his quality would have elicited. There was not a male member of the watching crowd who did not, looking at the delectable boy, imagine him branded and cut, with a pauper brat's metal collar clamped about his slim neck, available to be used and enjoyed. However nervous as he was, naked and sent to fetch a whip for his own flogging, Stefan still retained a free boy's confidence and spirit. Fear might numb his legs so that he stumbled and fill his eyes with tears but it was not the abject, habitual, terror that every charity brat knew. He knew the animal fear of pain as well as any pauper boy but he also knew another deeper keener fear that a slut could never know. The fear of breaking down, of disgracing both himself and his parents. It was this that made him keep his head up and his shoulders back and to choke back his tears. It was this that set him above and apart from any charity brat.

Mark watched the boy as he set off on his errand, admiring his lithe young body, tanned golden brown by the sun. It was clear that in one respect Stefan had not yet fully adapted to the customs of his contemporaries in the Vale. There free boys commonly dispensed with their clothes when playing or among family or friends. As a consequence they were as uniformly brown as any pauper brat sent by his loving Mummy and Daddy to labour all year round naked in the fields. Stefan, though his shoulders and legs were deeply tanned, had a small band of pale flesh around his middle where his bathing trunks had shielded his body from the sun. Mark found his eyes drawn to the boy's egg-white bottom, always the most interesting and exciting part of the juvenile anatomy, with its tight curves and hidden recesses.

While Stefan was getting the whip, serving boys scuttled about fetching the rest of the equipment required by Mister Oblonsky. Mark wondered if the brats were showing somewhat more than their usual eagerness in their work. No doubt the prospect of seeing a free boy being thrashed rather than one of their own kind had its attractions for them.

"You intend to hang the boy from the wrists?" Jack enquired. "I have to say I am a little surprised. It is usual here to expect a free boy to keep in position for his punishment. It would be considered demeaning for the boy to tie him down – implying that he has not the courage to stay down."

"But that no doubt is for the cane or strap across the bottom," Oblonsky replied. "I doubt if any boy, however brave, would be able to stay still for the whip."

"At least that is a hypothesis capable of being tested empirically," Jack remarked with a cheerful grin, glancing at the free boys who had all crowded together round a table laden with bowls of strawberry and cream.

The boys looked puzzled until Adam, who had been frowning in thought, said, "I think he means he could try it out on one of us," a remark that sent a detectable shiver of trepidation through the previously cheerful group.

"Yes indeed," Oblonsky replied joining in the joke, "Which one do you think……? No matter we can make our selection after I have finished with poor Stefan.

"And stringing a boy up has other advantages too," Oblonsky continued turning away from the group of boys who seemed suddenly to have lost their appetite for strawberries. "The lad's weight draws his skin and flesh taught thus increasing the pain of each stroke. His body is totally vulnerable. A skilled practitioner with the whip can direct out the tip of the lash into the tenderest and most intimate recesses a boy's body."

"I would have thought," Jack said thoughtfully, "that a boy would thrash about a bit while he's flogged if he's just suspended from his wrists."

"Yes certainly," Oblonsky agreed cheerfully. "In the early stages of a flogging a boy does tend to throw himself about, just as he'll scream a lot. Rather entertaining to watch I think and its a real test of your skill and judgement to lay the whip where you want it. And you can have some fun too. You can spin the boy like a top if you wish. As the whipping goes on though he'll progressively quieten down till he's just hanging there only moving when the lash strikes him. That's the time to stop by and large. No point in flogging a boy if he can't feel the pain."

"It does strike me that while Stefan's weight will draw the skin on his shoulders and chest tight. It won't work so well on his bottom and legs. And he's a slim lad so his weight won't be all that great."

"Very true, but there are ways round that. Indeed I was going to ask you if I could borrow the boy who was your jockey to help me overcome that problem in this instance."

"William Smythe? Why of course William come here please we need you."

William detached himself from the group of boys and came forward. He looked, Mark thought decidedly nervous. Perhaps he thought that he had been selected to be the subject of the experiment with the whip.

"There's nothing to worry about William," Oblonsky said reassuringly, apparently sensing the boy's unease. "I just thought as Stefan is being whipped for allowing himself to be beaten by you in the race it would be a good idea for you to be involved in his flogging. Now just strip off please. We don't want your clothes getting messed up." William, a true child of the Vale, did not have any of Stefan's inhibitions about his body. He quickly pulled his clothes off and was soon standing naked, totally unembarrassed clearly eager to join in with whatever the adults had planned.

While William undressed a serving boy was ordered to shin up one of the marquee's tent poles with a length of rope. With the slut gripping the pole with his hands and bare feet the hem of his flimsy cotton shift quickly worked its way up round his waste. The crowd showed none of the restraint that it had earlier displayed when Stefan was required to strip. It greeted the brat's involuntary display of its charms, which got more complete and explicit the higher up the pole it climbed, with whistles and bawdy comments. The slut for his part exhibited no sign of the embarrassment or distress that had afflicted Stefan greeting all comments on the attractiveness of his body and speculations as to his expertise as a boy-whore with a broad grin.

Reaching the top of the post the brat lent out as far as he could and looped the rope over the ridge-pole. Then, taking hold of the double strands of rope in his hands, he swung clear of the tent pole and slid back to the floor in a flurry of brown limbs and thin white cotton.

At this moment Stefan reappeared carrying the whip. Mark noticed that he had given up any attempt to shield his crutch from the general gaze, not, he thought, that there was all that much to hide.

Reaching out his hand Oblonsky took the whip from his son. A heavy five foot [1½m] lash was attached to a sturdy leather covered handle. Holding the whip by its handle in his right hand he drew the lash, fashioned from plated leather thongs, through his left. Stefan watched wide eyed with fear, his upper lip trembling, as the lash curled itself, like some dark vicious snake ready at any second to rise and strike, on the ground at his father's feet. Oblonsky's hand jerked sharply. There was an explosive crack as the lash shot forward. The crowd jumped, Stefan squeaked in surprise, and the slut, who an instant before was grinning happily and revelling in a typically whorish sort of way at being the centre of attention, was lying on the ground rolled into a ball, his hands clutched to his crutch, keening shrilly.

"It's all right," Oblonsky said laughing lightly. "I haven't castrated the little brute just nipped one of its balls with the tip of the whip."

A man bent forward and rolling the boy onto his back, pulled his hands apart. Mark saw, before the inquisitive crowd closed round the brat, that indeed one the slut's balls had already swollen to twice its, admittedly not very large, original size and had turned a deep purplish red in colour.

Mrs Thomas appeared a short leather strap in her hand. The crowd parted in front of her. Soon she was standing looming over the brat still prostrate on the floor. She raised the strap above her shoulder and brought it cracking down across the front of the stricken boy's thighs. It scored a broad livid line across the brat's deeply tanned firm young flesh.

"Stop making such a ridiculous fuss and get back to your feet you idle lump of pig's crap," she shouted as she slashed again and again at the brat's flailing legs.

"My excellent House Keeper," Jack remarked with a chuckle. "Amazing how potent a brat cure-all the strap becomes in her hands."

Indeed even before Jack had finished speaking the brat was back up on his feet. Mrs Thomas sent him back to work with a hearty kick up his bum. Jack noticed though that the slut was walking somewhat splay legged.

"Well, well we'd better get back to the main business before us," Oblonsky said picking a pair of manacles up from the table beside him. "Please hold your hands out Stefan."

"Hold on my dear chap," Jack said quickly, "we should avoid inflicting any ancillary damage if we can."

While Oblonsky waited Jack wrapped napkins round the lad's thin wrists. Mark reflected that such consideration would not have been extended to a pauper brat. Indeed manacles in the Vale were made deliberately heavy and rough edged, designed to crush and skin a brat's wrists or ankles. As Jack explained once, you only put irons on a slut if it had done, or if you thought it would do, something wrong. The two were essentially identical. Irons with admirable logic were therefore designed to be a punishment as well as a means of constraint and it was by design such manacles ripped a boy's wrists as quickly and as effectively as the standard weight cane did his bum.

Watching Mark was struck by how small and slight Stefan's slim figure was compared to those of the two men looming over him.

"Now Stefan," Oblonsky said as he fastened the manacles about his son's wrists, "I have asked William Smythe to help me while I whip you. I want you to be friends with him and I think you should say thank you to him."

"Thank you William," Stefan said a slight tremble in his voice and then added smiling bravely. "I hope I can do the same for you next time we race each other."

"Good boy," said Oblonsky ruffling his son's head while William grinned his appreciation of this sally. "Now Jack if you'd help we'll get him up ready for the whip."

With Mark lending a hand Stefan was soon suspended from his wrists, his toes hanging, swinging slightly, some three feet clear of the ground.

While Oblonsky turned away to pick up the whip Jack pulled a short bar made of hardened black rubber from his trouser pocket.

"There," he said slipping it between the boy's teeth, "bite on that it will help with the pain."

Stefan clamped his teeth tight. He could not speak but his eyes expressed his gratitude. Once again Mark wondered at his old friend's ability to manage all manner of boys. He seemed able to deal empathise with a high spirited free boy like Stefan while at the same time knowing instinctively how to deal with some brute of a pauper brat.

The crowd was silent as they gazed at the naked boy his body stretched by its own weight, arms straining upwards above his head, ribs clearly visible under the taughtly drawn skin.

Oblonsky stood for a moment contemplating his son, tanned golden brown by the sun except for a small band of pale flesh around his loins. He reached up and steadied the boy with one hand against a tightly curved pearl white buttock.

"Often," he remarked in a conversational tone to Jack, "I have a brat, either one of my racing bitches or just one of the sluts I brought with me from Russia, oiled before having it strung up. Somehow the light glistening on it's oiled and naked flesh as it swings and writhes under the lash makes its sufferings more exciting to witness. And you get very interesting effects when it begins to bleed. Both oil and blood reflect the light but skin that is slicked with fresh blood has a darker redder tinge. The contrast between the two and the way the deeper darker areas grow as the whip ravages the brat's carcass adds a fresh dimension to the spectacle provided by what would otherwise be a fairly routine whipping."

"However Stefan is a free boy and he is being whipped to teach him the lesson that coming second is not good enough. Any entertainment to be derived from his sufferings must be purely incidental. I am afraid therefore I will, on this occasion, have to deny you that additional refinement. I hope though that watching poor Stefan endure his flogging will be not without interest. I myself have always found watching a handsome young boy, and Stefan poor child is a pretty little lad, being flogged an invigorating experience. Of course, I suppose, if Jack will lend me one of his sluts and if time permits, after I've finished with Stefan we could always oil and whip it."

Oblonsky gave Stefan's bottom a final firm pat. Then he ran his hand down the back of his son's leg. His fingers caressed the boy's well-rounded thigh, stroked and pinched his firm young shins, momentarily encircling the child's leg just above the ankle. For a moment he played gently with Stefan's bare foot squeezing it, toying and spreading the boy's small toes. Then, with one final fond squeeze, he released it and stepped back.

Advancing his left foot he stood a moment carefully judging the distance, holding the whip with the lash looped in his hand. Satisfied he let the lash go and it tumbled downwards curling itself on the ground.

Oblonsky narrowed his eyes in concentration and then setting his teeth, pivoting from his waste he swung the whip back over his right shoulder. He paused a fraction of a second to allow the lash to straighten and then with all his strength and weight behind it he brought it slashing downwards. The lash cut through the air with a rich sibilant hiss. It cracked down across Stefan's narrow shoulders. The plaited leather ripped the boy's flesh scoring a cruel red and purple welt across his golden skin.

The impact of the blow rocked the boy setting him swinging violently from his bound wrists.

Oblonsky waited a moment and then struck again. This time he lifted the whip back above his left shoulder and struck back handed bringing the lash slashing down across the front of Stefan's tightly drawn rib cage. Being delivered back hand the stroke could not have had as much power behind it as Oblonsky's first cut but the effect on the boy was dramatic. His knees jerked upwards to his chest. His mouth flew open. The hard rubber bar that Jack had so thoughtfully put between his teeth fell to the floor. Jack bent and picked up the bar. He looked at it for a moment and then, shrugging, pocketed it. He clearly judged that it would serve no useful purpose to replace it between Stefan's teeth and events were to proof him right.

Smiling coldly Oblonsky gave impetus to the whip with a quick vicious flick of his wrist. The tip of the lash struck snake like into the open crack of the boy's rump. Stefan's body jerked convulsively. His legs straightened as fast as they had, a split second before, been drawn upwards, while his arms momentarily bent lifting him away from the cruel bite of the lash. A shrill scream was wrenched from his tortured body. It was as though a massive electric shock had torn through him.

It was a stroke that required remarkable accuracy combined with quickness of eye and hand. Oblonsky's skill drew a spontaneous and well deserved round of applause from the crowd.

"Thank you, thank you," he said half bowing, "I have just one more fancy stroke with which to amuse you before I get down to the serious business of flogging my son."

He took a step nearer Stefan's body now once more hanging sobbing and quiescent in its bonds. The lash flew back over Oblonsky's right shoulder. This time he struck forward with a straight arm curling the whip across the boy's narrow shoulders and around his chest before drawing his arm backwards in a long straight swoop. The boy suspended from his wrists spun as the lash was withdrawn, a delightful kaleidoscope of juvenile naked limbs and bare flesh.

"Now," Oblonsky said once Stefan's body had more or less ceased to spin, "to work. William it is time for you to take a part in the proceedings. Wrap your arms round Stefan's knees. No, no, no, stand in front of him not behind. I'll be taking a few cuts at the back of his thighs and will want a clear field of fire. Now haul down on them. You can lift your feet from the ground if you like. I want you to hold him steady so I can work him over and also stretch his body as tight as you can so that he feels the whip cuts more keenly."

The two naked boys, the flaxen haired Russian with his slim body already marked by the whip and the darker sturdier British child, presented an interesting and attractive picture. Stefan stretched by his own weight and that of William Smythe's whimpered softly waiting for his father to resume his grim task.

Stefan's wait was a short one. Soon the marquee was filled with the cruel but exciting sound of a boy being flogged. The hiss of the whip, the crack of plaited leather striking bare flesh the shrill screams of the young victim combined in a harsh but intoxicating music. Oblonsky worked methodically, maintaining a steady pace as time after time he laid the whip across his son's narrow shoulders, the lash scoring livid weals across the boy's smooth golden flesh. Beads of blood were soon welling from where the point of the lash nipped the child's skin or strokes crossed each other. Soon glistening dark red riverlets had formed and were trickling down the boy's back and thighs, following the smooth contours of his body.

Glancing round Mark noticed the differing reactions of the watching crowd. The adults watched intently eyes glittering in excitement faint smiles on their slightly parted lips. The free boys too were clearly enjoying the spectacle though one or two of the older bigger ones looked a trifle thoughtful. No doubt they were remembering Jack's suggestion that their fortitude under the lash might also be tested and wondering which of them would be selected for that purpose. The brats though had relapsed into their normal state of abject terror. Any passing satisfaction they got from seeing a free boy being maltreated being no doubt more than countered by the reflection that if those into whose care they had been committed could treat one of their own in this way how much more brutal would they be prepared to be to such debased and helpless creatures as themselves. Even, Mark reflected, pauper brats stupid as they were, would see that Stefan's sufferings only heralded an even more stringent discipline than that under which they already lived for themselves.

Only one free boy stood out from his companions. Nicky, Mark noticed, far from being excited seemed to be almost on the point of tears.

"That boy does not belong here," a woman's voice spoke quietly in Mark's ear.

Turning he saw Angela standing close beside him also looking at Nicky.

"He certainly seems out of place," Mark replied quietly.

Perhaps he thought Jack's crass speech had not been wholly counterproductive. Surely Angela would not have been talking to him at all if it had been.

"Something should be done about it," Angela said.

"He's not a bad looking boy," Mark remarked thoughtfully and indeed Nicky was a pretty little thing with his fair hair, long shapely legs and deeply tanned body. A tan that came from many months working in the fields at Ovingdean Reformatory and which had been maintained by the tough and healthy regime under which he and Adam had lived together after his release from that harsh institution. A tan furthermore that was enhanced by the contrast between it and the flimsy white shorts, that were his only clothing, that tightly hugged his pert and deeply dimpled rump.

"Not a bad looking slut," with that one word Angela brought out in the open what both of them were thinking, "but it's not fair on Adam or the other boys……"

"No I suppose not," Mark replied implicitly accepting Angela's judgement. "I don't know though exactly…"

"The rule as I understand it is quite clear," Angela interrupted, "a boy who allows himself to be penetrated ceases to be free……"

"You mean I should……?"

"It would be kinder in the end and I have never seen a fruit more ready to drop."

"It can't be easy living a lie and the brat certainly doesn't look happy. It would be a false kindness to allow him to go on as he is. It's not fair either to any free boys he comes in contact with, or to his mother and step-father whom he is deceiving, or to Jack whose hospitality he is abusing, or to anyone else, including the brat himself. I suppose you are right but Angela would you mind? I mean my…"

"You think I would be jealous of a brat?" Angela asked with a laugh, "I'd be as likely to take exception to your making a fuss of a dog or some other pet you took a fancy to. Everybody knows sluts are not to be taken seriously."

Throughout this Stefan's ordeal continued with unabated ferocity. The boy's frenzied screaming drowning the words of the conversation and masking it from bystanders. Indeed so absorbed was everybody in the cruel drama that no one noticed Mark push his way through the crowd to where Nicky was standing. Mark clamped his hand round the back of the boy's neck. The lad started in surprise and turned. Mark saw fear in his eyes. He jerked his head at the exit from the marquee and still retaining his grip on the boy's neck guided him towards it. Nicky made no resistance and nobody, not even Adam beside whom he was standing, noticed him being led away.

Wordlessly Mark marched his victim out of the tent and round to its back. There shielded from view he swung the boy round to face him. There at last Nicky made a feeble attempt at protest.

"Please let me go Sir please," he whimpered.

Mark back-handed the boy hard across the mouth, splitting his lower lip near the centre. Blood began to trickle down his chin. Mark did not hit the brat because he enjoyed doing so, although to a certain extent he did. He hit him because he was not going to take any nonsense from him and furthermore it was a well-known fact that kindness was wasted on sluts. They only regarded it as a sign of weakness and tried to take advantage.

Shifting his grip from the nape of Nicky's neck to the hair on the back of his head he kissed the brat savagely on his bleeding mouth. At the same time Mark slipped his left hand down the back of the boy's shorts feeling the skin of Nicky's bottom cool and velvet smooth to his touch. He clenched his hand, brutally squeezing one firm, well rounded, little buttock. Nicky gasped and Mark slipped his tongue between the boy's open lips. As Mark probed Nicky's throat the taste of blood from the boy's split lip was strong on his tongue.

Mark moved his left hand so that he could slide his index finger into the boy's crack. Mark's questing finger-tip found the entry to the brat's hole. For a moment he teased the lips of Nicky's anus. Then, increasing the pressure he began to force his finger into the boy. Nicky moaned softly. He pushed his bum back, inviting further invasion of the most intimate and tender areas of his young body.

Anger, contempt and a fierce feeling of self-justification rose in Mark tightening his chest and making him fight for breath. He and Angela were right about the boy, he was nothing but a common slut. How dare the degenerate little turd try to pass himself off as anything but a filthy whore? The thought of the way he had imposed himself on them all, deceiving his mother, endangering the moral well being of the free boy's with whom he had come into contact, taking advantage of Jack Wardle's, good nature enraged him.

Mark wrenched his lips away from the brat's mouth. He looked down into his face, eyes glazed, lips parted, blank with lust. The slut had been allowed to forget its place. It was time to teach it a lesson it would never again forget.

"Boy-bitch," Mark snarled. "What are you boy-bitch?"

Nicky's lips moved soundlessly. Mark smashed his fist savagely into the boy's face and blood spurted from his nose.

"You're a filthy boy-bitch you stupid little cunt," he shouted. "Now tell me bitch what are you?"

"A boy-bitch Sir a filthy boy bitch." Nicky's spoke in hardly more than a whisper and his voice was choked with sobs.

Mark hit him again.

"Say it louder whore," Mark demanded.

"I'm a boy-bitch Sir – a filthy boy bitch."

Mark hit him again.

"Louder bitch."

"A boy-bitch Sir – a filthy boy-bitch." This time Nicky's voice was a shrill scream.

"And you want a man's cock up your bum. Tell me what you want and tell me so I can hear it whore."

"I want a man's cock up my bum Sir."

"So ask for it… Come on tart you want to be fucked ask for it." Transferring his grip to the brat's tiny balls Mark squeezed and twisted them.

"Please Sir, please fuck me Sir, please shove your cock up my bum Please……" Nicky's voice tailed off into an agonised squeal as Mark increased the pressure on his balls and pulled sharply downwards.

Mark released his hold. Whimpering quietly, Nicky bent forward, his hands clasped to his crutch. Mark swung the boy round and, with one hand on the nape of his neck and the other grasping the waste band at the back of his shorts, frog marched him across to a car parked near by. With a sharp jerk he pulled the boy's shorts down and then swore angrily. He had forgotten that Nicky, masquerading as a free boy, would be wearing underpants as well as shorts. These too joined the boy's shorts on the ground about his ankles.

"Brace yourself against the car and get in position whore," Mark snapped slapping the boy viciously across his bare rump.

Nicky, reaching out to steady himself against the car, bent forward and, slightly spreading his legs, pushed his bum up as high as he could in the air. It was clear Mark thought, with a mixture of approval and contempt, that the slut had at least remembered some of the things he had been taught in Ovingdean.

Mark did not hurry himself. It would be good for the brat to have time to appreciate its helplessness and humiliation. A cow lowed in the distance, nearer a blackbird trilled its liquid notes. Faintly from the marquee came the sharp snap of leather striking bare flesh and the shrill cries of a child in distress. Clearly Stefan's flogging was still underway and providing, Mark thought as he unbuckled his belt, fitting background music to the work he had in hand.

Eventually Mark was stripped to his shirt. The fact that he had taken his time did not mean that he was not intensely excited. He would have to be careful, he thought, looking down at his erect and throbbing cock, to pace himself or he risked ejaculating before he had got himself fairly lodged in the slut.

Spitting on the palm of his hand he liberally smeared his prick with saliva. Then he advanced on the trembling boy. Nicky, he thought, had done his best to get himself correctly positioned, straining to force his bottom up high, but that was no reason to be soft on him. He pushed his hand between the boy's legs. He felt the his little cock hard against his palm. He really is a contemptible little tart excited by his own shame, Mark thought, as he lifted upwards so hard that Nicky's feet rose clear of the ground. Placing his free hand on the back of the boy's head he pushed forward. Satisfied at last that the brat's bum was as high and as open as was possible he released his hold of the boy's crutch. Grasping his cock with his right hand he aimed it's swollen head at Nicky's hole while he pried the lips of the slut's anus open with the index-finger and thumb of his left hand. Initially the boy's bottom clenched tight in a reflex reaction to the intrusion. Mark felt the slut pushing backwards in a deliberate attempt to relax his sphincter. He drove forward hard burying his cock-head in the boy's bottom.

He transferred his grasp to Nicky's hips. Holding the boy firmly Mark drove forward. Nicky's hole had been well used during his time at Ovingdean and Mister Ellis had not been gentle with his favourite slut. Nevertheless however frequently a boy's bottom has been fucked each fresh entry, even if it is gentle and well prepared, causes an initial stab of pain. Mark's assault was brutal and sudden and Nicky screamed as searing pain coursed through his body.

The boy's cries only served to excite Mark further. He felt no pity or guilt, only a fierce and cruel excitement as he hammered his cock into the sobbing brat. Three savage thrusts had his rod fully sheathed in the boy's guts. Grunting with effort he pumped the boy's hole, each forward thrust bring his hips slamming up against the slut's rump.

Mark laughed savagely as he felt the muscles in Nicky's bottom begin to work trying to draw his probing cock ever deeper into his body. Evidence he thought of the brat's sluttish nature.

"Whore," he shouted as he drove savagely forward. "Whore, tart. You want it whore and you'll get it."

Reaching round he gripped Nicky's by the balls with his right hand feeling his small prick hard against the palm of his hand. He twisted and pulled. The boy's sobs rose to a wild scream. Mark thrust forward once more and then held his pulsating cock steady, buried in Nicky's bottom. He felt the boy's guts shifting and squirming round his cock as his body was convulsed with pain. Blood pounded and roared in Mark's head as he shot his seed deep inside the boy.

For a moment after the crisis had passed Mark rested panting resting his weight on the boy's back. Then he pulled away from him, drawing his now shrunken member from the boy's hole with an audible damp plop. Mark was suddenly aware that his right hand was smeared with warm sticky fluid. So, he thought, as he wiped his hand dry on the tightly drawn skin of Nicky's bum, the slut did get its release after all.

Mark stumbled wearily across to a canvas chair that someone had left outside the marquee. He slumped down on it, spreading his knees wide. Nicky remained bent double, bum up in the air, hands braced against the car waiting to see what further was required of him for he had been well schooled during his time at Ovingdean. Mark noticed filth trickling from the boy's hole forming rivulets that glistened damply down the inside of his thighs.

"Here filth," Mark commanded.

"Quick and walk properly don't waddle like a duck," Mark added for the boy was walking somewhat splay legged. No doubt, Mark thought, he was feeling the consequences of the brutal rape of his bottom. He wondered if he had torn the slut. There had been a reddish streak or two in the stuff trickling from his bottom that might indicate bleeding. It didn't matter if he had, at the worst it would mean Mrs Thomas having to stitch the brat up.

Mark said nothing further but pointed at his crutch. Without further prompting Nicky dropped to his knees. Then he hesitated for the briefest of moments before beginning to lower his head towards where Mark's now shrunken cock lay in a thick forest of dark coarse pubic hair which spread over his belly and shrouded his balls.

The brat's reluctance was understandable Mark thought for cock, pubic hair, and balls were all splashed and coated by a nauseous mixture of cum, shit and possibly blood; understandable but not to be tolerated. Normally such reluctance would be overcome by a cut or two across the rump with the cane. On this occasion Mark, experiencing as he was a degree of post-coital lassitude and with the boy positioned kneeling between his spread knees, felt an alternative means of galvanising the lad should be employed.

There was no question though of allowing the brat to get away with it. Mark had spent enough time in the Vale over the years to realise that it was his duty to help Nicky to recognise and accept his sluttish nature. Only in that way would the brute be reconciled to the life of service and subordination that was the ineluctable destiny of a pauper brat. Slackness, letting the brat get away with things, these were false kindnesses. It was better in the end, kinder in the end, to treat the slut rough, to toughen it up, break its will, and root out false pride.

Mark placed his hand on the back of Nicky's head and forced the boy's face down into his crutch rubbing it in the foul smelling dirt.

"Get on with it whore," he commanded, "and don't forget to get the filth out of my hair down there. Come on use your lips and tongue what the hell do you think they are for."

Chapter 14

He glanced down at the top of Nicky's fair head, feeling the gentle tug of the boy's lips as he sucked the lumps of congealed filth from his pubic hair. Everything about the world seemed to him at that moment to be right. He was satisfied and happy. The slut kneeling between his knees, face buried in his crutch, was no doubt finding fulfilment and release in his service. How well things were organised in the Vale, Mark reflected, just by allowing nature to take its course, the strong to dominate the weak, the weak to serve the strong. That was the natural order of things and it worked.

But he must not forget that with the privileges that with strength came duties, above all the obligation to instruct the weak in their duties of obedience and submission. He reached out and stroked the boy's blond hair.

"You see Nicky," he said gently, "it is much better this way. Trying to be what you are not will never work or bring you happiness. Happiness for you and your like lies in service and you must be grateful to me for showing you the way."

Nicky did not pause in his work but took refuge in an indistinct murmur that could be taken as expressive of acquiescence and gratitude. It was enough for Mark. He did not expect the brat to really understand what he was saying. Charity boys it was well known were of limited intelligence, feeling rather than thinking, but some part of it might lodge in Nicky's head and in time be absorbed.

Mark settled back in his chair gently toying with Nicky's ears as the lad licked and sucked his genitals clean. Eventually the boy withdrew his face from his crutch and hunkering back on his haunches looked nervously up into Mark's face.

"That'll pass," Mark announced after a quick check.

Relief flooded the boy's bruised and bloodied face. Nicky made a move to wipe away the shit and other filth that smeared about his lips and nose with the back of his hand but Mark knocked it impatiently away. He wanted the boy, when he took him back to his mother, to bear clear evidence of his shame so that there could be no argument as to what his future should be.

He did not explain this to Nicky. You did not explain things to pauper brats. You just told them what to do and hit them if they were disobedient or slow.

Mark took his time dressing. There was no hurry. From the sounds coming from the marquee the party was going well and Nicky would only benefit from being given time to appreciate the depth of his humiliation and for the terror to build up inside him. Judging from the occasional sob that came from the brat he seemed to have a realistic view of what his future held.

Once dressed, Mark walked slowly round the boy as he knelt naked and trembling at his feet. He made, Mark reflected, a pleasingly abject spectacle.

He didn't bother to speak to the boy. Just kicked him sharply in the bottom before turning away and walking into the marquee, confident the slut would follow.

Nobody at first noticed his entrance and he had time to look around. Stefan's flogging had clearly long since ceased. He was back on the floor, bravely trying to smile, while being fussed over by his father. By the rope from which Stefan had been hung while he was being whipped, Jack Wardle, obviously in high good humour, was busy kneading oil into the skin of a naked serving boy. Mark noticed that, though Jack was cheerful, the brat's face was twisted in a comical expression of distress. He assumed that Jack had decided to follow Oblonsky's suggestion of having a charity brat oiled and flogged. It was typical of the generous good-hearted host that he was that he should take up the hint so quickly and choose to provide his guests with such a novel and entertaining spectacle.

If Jack was a jovial host his sister-in-law was a conscientious hostess. She kept a discrete eye but eagle-eye on all around her; not least the serving boys. Anne Wardle stood in the midst of the crowd, chatting animatedly all the time checking that the brats kept the guests glasses filled and carried round the trays heaped with smoked salmon sandwiches, prawn vol-au-vonts and a myriad other delicacies. It was her boast that despite the brats being half starved and, as everybody knew born thieves, very little of the food went astray. It showed what could be achieved through vigilance and strict discipline. Even the hungriest and stupidest, and they were all very stupid, of charity brat would hesitate before stealing food if it knew the chances were that if it did it would find itself being sent to Mrs Thomas to have its lips sown up.

Quite soon Mark caught Anne's eye. She half smiled and then frowned in anger as she spotted Nicky standing behind him.

"Mark," she said furiously, "I am used to Jack bringing filth like that grubby little brute into the place but I had expected better from you."

The recognition lightened her face.

"Good God it's Nicky," she exclaimed.

"Yes I am afraid it is," Mark replied regretfully. "I am afraid the boy has been masquerading as something he is not."

"Nicky," Mary Roberts screamed obviously, as any right feeling mother would be, enraged at her son's dishonest and presumptuous behaviour. "You have deceived me and your step-father and abused the hospitality of Mister Wardle. Making out you're a normal boy when you are nothing more than a stinking piece of carrion."

As she spoke she snatched a heavy plate loaded with sandwiches from the hands of a serving brat. Brushing past Mark she advanced on her cowering son. Magnificent in her rage, she was one of those women that anger suited Mark reflected, she lifted the platter as high as she could in the air and slammed it down on Nicky's head. The plate shattered, sandwiches and fragments of china showered the floor. Nicky staggered and dropped to his knees.

Brian Roberts as enraged as his wife by his stepson's abominable behaviour drove the heel of his Oxford Brogues into Nicky's shoulders knocking the boy flat. Beside himself with wholly justifiable anger he began stamping down at the brat's prone body.

"Darling," Mary Roberts said urgently, "do be careful. If you break something maybe that nice Mister Adams might not want him. Don't forget he offered us four hundred pounds for the little brute so that he can pass him on to Mister Ellis. Nobody else would be fool enough to give us a quarter of that for such a miserable lump of misshapen brat flesh."

"Blast and damnation," Brian Roberts roared and then continued more quietly, "you're quite right of course but it goes against the grain to let the little turd off so lightly." He lashed out with the toe of his shoe catching the boy in the ribs.

"I'm sure Mister Adams will see he gets well flogged for his insolence dear," Anne said comfortingly. "He's not the sort of man to tolerate any nonsense from a lump of pig's shit like our Nicky and neither is Mister Ellis."

"Dad," Adam said, "do we have to sell Nicky. Couldn't we keep him for ourselves?"

"What throw away four hundred pounds?" Brian exclaimed in amazement.

"Really Adam," Mary Roberts interrupted her husband, "talk sense. Just think what we can do with four hundred pounds."

"Your parents are quite right," Jack Wardle said gently moved by the boy's stricken face. "Four hundred is a very good price for a brat like that and really can't be rejected. I tell you though what Adam, I've already promised Stefan and William the choice of a couple of sluts after lunch tomorrow. I'll get Misses Thomas to look out a dozen small sluts suitable for you boys to use and get them cleaned up and the three of you can take your pick of them."

"And there's no reason," Mark chipped in kindly, "why you couldn't give Nicky a fucking now if you fancy it. You wouldn't damage him any more than I have already done."

"Why yes excellent idea," Jack Wardle exclaimed enthusiastically.

Mark suspected that Jack would approve of the suggestion for, if put into effect, it would both provide further entertainment for his guests and at the same time give pleasure to young Adam. The conventions governing life in the Vale were based on a rather old fashioned respect for the proprieties leavened with a certain robust recognition of the realities. This meant that while it would be regarded as quite unacceptable for a man to enjoy a charity brat's bottom or mouth in public when ladies were present no such inhibition applied to free boys. He supposed that the distinction was based on a recognition that with maturity came a degree of self control denied to the young. While on the aesthetic level the spectacle of a lithe young free boy fucking a brat had a charm and indeed beauty lacking when the active participant was a middle-aged man.

A murmur of approval rose from the crowd and one or two people began to clap and cheer. The applause swelled to a crescendo as the crowd, its enthusiasm fuelled by generous draughts of champagne, stamped and whistled and hooted.

Grinning Jack bent down and grabbed Nicky by the hair. He dragged him to his feet and flung him across a nearby table. The boy lay face down in a jumble of plates and food his legs hanging over the edge of the table. For so powerful a man Jack was a quick mover and before the brat had time to move Jack was on him again and grasping him by the upper arm and thigh heaved him up so he was lying full length on the table.

Mark realised that Jack must have got some of the filth that had dribbled out of the brat's hole on his hand for he saw him look at his hand with an expression of disgust on his face before wiping it clean on the side of the boy's rump.

An expectant hush fell on the crowd.

Jack glanced around. His eyes fell on the serving boy whose naked body he had been busy oiling when Mark had returned to the marquee.

"You," he snapped, "get your tongue in this slut's hole and clean it out. And do it good you idle little turd, a free boy's cock is going in there so it's got to be clean for that."

Mark smiled to himself as, unbidden, Nicky spread his legs and raised his bottom opening himself for the other brat's questing tongue. With that simple gesture he knew that the brat must have banished any lingering doubts as to his essentially sluttish nature.

The serving boy, perhaps hoping to be let off his whipping if he performed his task well, trotted forward. A hope, that if he entertained it at all, Mark, from his long experience of the practices of the Vale, suspected would prove illusory. The brat quickly clambered onto the table and kneeling between Nicky's wide spread legs pushed his face down into the boy's open bottom, his tongue eagerly lapping at the filth there. Nicky kept his legs apart but whimpered as the boy's questing tongue touched the soreness in his hole.

"We'll have to get Mrs Thomas to check that out when you've finished with him Adam," Jack Wardle remarked, showing his normal exemplary concern for the physical wellbeing of any brats for which he even momentarily assumed responsibility. "Nothing that a bit of suturing won't put right and it's good the little brute is sore. He'll give you a more lively ride as a consequence. If he wasn't with the way his hole has been used he'd probably hardly feel your cock in his bum."

"Now get your head out of there whore," Jack ordered slapping the serving boy's oiled and glistening rump, "I want to check your work."

He pushed his finger into Nicky's hole ignoring the boy's squeal of pain. Withdrawing it he subjected it to a brief inspection before nodding approvingly.

"That'll do now get out of the way," he snapped cuffing the serving brat on the side of the head so hard that he sent him tumbling to the floor.

"Come on Adam," Brian Roberts fondly urged his son, "show us how to do it."

Adam blushing deeply stepped forward. As the crowd roared their appreciation and encouragement he slipped his shorts down over his hips. Mark could see that despite his embarrassment he was in a state of high sexual excitement, his fourteen year old cock swollen and jutting upwards.

Nicky lying on the table stirred and moved his legs so that his right foot was resting against his left knee. Mark realised that the slut was deliberately narrowing the entry to his body tensing the muscles of his bottom in readiness to receive his half-brother's swollen but not yet fully-grown cock. Matching his bottom to the size of the tool to be inserted was, he supposed, a further skill Nicky had learnt at Ovingdean. He wondered if it was instinctive or a deliberate attempt to see that Adam enjoyed and perhaps remembered enjoying his bottom.

It was quite possible it was the latter. The boy must know that he was destined to Mister Ellis's service. That it was most unlikely that he would ever see Adam again and that if by any chance he did the gulf between free boy and charity brat would divide them almost as effectively as physical separation. The only thing that could bridge that gulf was if Adam took a fancy to him out of all the other sluts available to a free boy in the Vale but he would be under Mister Ellis's protection and the man having paid four hundred pounds for him would be unlikely to let anyone else use him.

If it was the slut's hope that Adam would remember him. Mark thought he was fated to be disappointed. He remembered old Mister Wardle's, Jack's father, comment when as a young lad he had enthused about the performance of some slut he had just fucked. "One brat is very like another brat to fuck. You have to look at them to tell them apart." And thinking back he couldn't remember a thing about that particular brat or indeed perhaps more surprisingly the first one he ever enjoyed. He could remember the occasion well enough.

Jack and he were hardly eleven years old. Mister Wardle had sorted four or five of really young sluts out for him and Jack to make their selection, probably not much more than seven years old any of them, choosing them on purpose so that their small bottoms would be a tight fit round their own small cocks. He remembered old Mister Wardle, he was not so old then of course, watching, a benevolent smile on his kindly old face, as the house-keeper paraded the naked little sluts before them in the sitting room. He and Jack were almost as nervous as the sluts at first. It was worse of course for Jack. It wasn't a problem being watched by his father, a cheerful kindly man who had a natural affinity with free boys but his mother, sitting there her needles clicking steadily as she knitted, worrying quietly about getting the carpets messed was a different matter. Still once they had made their selections and the frightened little brats had been kicked and slapped into position, bent over the arms of two sturdy chairs, by the housekeeper and Jack's father, excitement had banished nervousness.

He could remember all that but he couldn't remember the name of the brat nor whether it was fair or dark haired or had had its head shaved. Perhaps come to think of it he was never told the child's name. There was no reason why he should have been. Charity boys after all were commonly addressed as "shit" or "turd" and such like. Still he felt he should be able to remember something about the appearance of the slut.

The roar of the crowd reached a new crescendo and Mark saw that Adam was climbing onto the table. Brian Roberts placing his left hand on the back of his son's bare rump. Spitting on the palm of his right hand he smeared saliva over the boy's stiff rod. Bending down he whispered a few words of inaudible advice or encouragement in Adam's ear before slapping him on the bottom and stepping back.

Adam needed no further encouragement. Supporting himself on one arm he positioned his cock at the entrance to Nicky's hole. His assault was sudden and violent. He lunged forward as hard as he could, driving his eager rod deep into his victim's guts. The slut's shrill scream of pain could be clearly heard over the cheers and laughter of the watching crowd.

Adam ploughed Nicky's bottom undeterred by his howls of pain. Three hard thrusts had his cock fully sheathed in the screaming slut's carcass. Adam's haunches rose and fell as he probed the brat's bottom. Despite the pain Nicky began to respond to the assault. Even as he squealed his distress Mark could see the muscles in the little whore's rump flex as his guts clenched tight about Adam's pounding cock. Nicky's agony though was not long drawn out for Adam, with all the impetuosity of hot youth, took his pleasure fast and hard. For a brief moment Adam, his head thrown back, mouth open, breath coming in short harsh gasps, lay rigid on top of the whimpering child his flanks quivering convulsively as he shot his load.

Then, with a triumphant grin on his face, he jumped to the ground and after landing a resounding smack on the brat's bottom turned away from him to receive the congratulations of the crowd of spectators. The message could not have been clearer. Nicky was just another slut. Adam had taken his pleasure and had no further use for him.

"Can someone," Anne Wardle's voice rose in outrage over the hubbub, "get rid of that revolting animal."

A clap of thunder shook the window and rain-drops plopped heavily against its glass panes. Mark stretched himself luxuriously in his bed and listened to the rumble and crash as the storm rolled over the Downs above the house.

Sunday morning, there was no hurry to get up, he could lie in a bit and try to remember the events of the previous evening. It had been a good party. There was no doubt about that but he to admit that the details, especially of what happened later on in the evening, were a little vague. He could remember Oblonsky flogging the serving boy. The brat suspended by his wrists, kicking and twisting under the lash, the light glistening on his oiled and burnished skin as the whip laid ridges of vivid cochineal across his milk chocolate flesh. Angela standing close beside him, holding hands and then turning to him, her eyes glittering with excitement, lifting her face to be kissed. The long hard embrace, her body pressed close against his, as the child's screams echoed in their ears.

But after that what? Simply fragmentary memories. The free boys nervously drawing lots. William grinning ruefully, stripped and bent across the seat of a chair. The boy's howl of pain as the whip cracked down across his bottom and the laughter that filled the marquee when he jumped up his hands clasped to his wounded rump. Jack's good humoured suggestion that he should try again because, perhaps, if he knew what was coming he would not be so shocked by the pain and would be able to stay down. The boy's reluctant acquiescence to this suggestion although the event showed that his doubts if the outcome would be any different were well founded.

Later – much later – noisy goodnights – the drive back through the narrow lanes – Nicky whimpering in the brat cage in the back of the Range Rover – laughter when they got back to the Manor to find Angela had got in the wrong car and Anne's good humoured insistence that she should stay the night.

His memory was so hazy and fragmentary it was remarkable that he felt so well. It just showed that you didn't get a hangover if you drank decent champagne. No headache no nausea – just a certain dryness in the mouth. Well that was easily remedied – the bed slut Tommy was lying beside him – the idle little turd could fetch him a cup of tea.

He reached out to shake the tyke awake. There seemed to be something wrong. It didn't feel like Tommy or any other brat. Too soft, too much flesh, he moved his hand down, there were no… He sat up quickly. Angela lay on her back beside him her dark hair tumbled on the pillow. His sudden movement threw the duvet back baring her breasts.

Memories, still partial, came flooding back, the unsteady climb up the stairs, opening the door to his room and seeing Tommy's delicious little body lying naked on the bed. The boy suddenly awake smiling up at him as he clumsily undressed, ripping his clothes off and shedding them haphazardly on the floor in is eagerness to penetrate slut's sweet rump. Then, just as he was about to fling himself on the bed and Tommy had rolled onto his face and invitingly pushed his sweet little rump up towards him, there was a knock at the door.

He paused, surprised. No charity brat, certainly no slut trained by Jack Wardle, would commit the social solecism of knocking on a door at least not more than once. That would imply that what it saw or heard mattered and it would be well flogged for such insolence. Then who the hell was it? Not surely Jack come up for a chat. Jack had drunk quite as much as he had done and had been slurring his words and repeating himself. He hoped to God it wasn't Jack.

As he was still hesitating the door was pushed open and Angela walked in.

"Just as well I got the right room," she said and Mark could see what she meant for she was quite naked.

The next moment she had caught hold of Tommy by his ear and yanking him from the bed sent him stumbling into a corner of the room with a well placed kick up his bottom.

"Ouch," she said, "I must remember to put shoes on before doing that again."

Then her mouth was on Mark's and her arms were around his neck drawing him down onto the bed. They coupled with fierce passion in a tangle of sweating straining limbs. Tommy's presence, a silent witness of his betters' passion, forgotten until, his appetite momentarily sated, Mark shouted at the slut to turn off the light.

Mark cupped one of the sleeping girl's breasts in his hand feeling her nipple hard against his palm. Angela's eyes blinked open. She smiled softly and reached up to him. This time their lovemaking was a slow and gentle indulgence of their shared passion until the final mutual orgasm that consumed their bodies in a shared ecstasy of lust.

Mark returned to reality to find Tommy standing wide eyed at the end of the bed. It didn't bother him that the slut had been watching. Charity brats simply did not matter and what they saw and heard did not matter either. It did concern him though that the boy had been idle. There was plenty for him to do apart from gaping at his betters; the curtains to draw back, bath to be run, tea to be prepared, the clothes he had thrown off the previous night to be picked up from the floor and put away. It was clear glancing round the room that he had done none of them.

"Tommy you idle little rat," he snapped, "get on with your work."

"Typical slut," Angela remarked, "They're all the same, lazy and stupid. Need to be thrashed regularly to keep them on their toes. Is the turd going to condescend to fetch us a cup of tea do you think darling or do we have to make it ourselves?"

Tommy scuttled off to return a few minutes later with a tray with tea things on it.

Mark and Angela lay side by side on the bed sipping tea while the thunder rumbled outside and the rain beat against the windows.

"He's not a bad looking slut," Angela remarked eyeing Tommy appraisingly as he busied himself gathering the scattered clothes from the floor, "what's he like to fuck?"

"Oh not too bad," Mark replied, "quite a hot little tart, knows what he's about and got plenty of enthusiasm."

Tommy flushed with pleasure at this compliment but did not interrupt his work.

Angela finished her cup of tea and swinging her legs from the bed began to wander round the room. Mark watched her long legged and naked as she idly examined the pictures on the wall. She was very nice to look at but they would have to do something about getting her back to her room to dress. Charity brats commonly ran around naked or as good as but it wouldn't do for her to do so. Perhaps Tommy could fetch something from her room or perhaps better, for the stupid brute was almost certain to make a mess of it she could borrow his dressing gown to get back there.

Angela paused before the fireplace to look at an oil painting of Acteon being torn apart by Diana's hounds. It was a piece commissioned by old Jasper Wardle at the end of the nineteenth century, Acteon being modelled on a favourite brat of his, the hounds being drawn from the Vale of Dingle Foxhounds. It was a striking picture although Jack had assured Mark that despite appearances no lasting damage had been done to the brat by the hounds, just a couple of deep bites on the thighs and arms which had healed quite quickly.

She turned her attention to the mantelpiece. It was Jack's thoughtful custom to place on it in each bedroom a variety of toys with which his guests might amuse themselves if time hung heavily on their hands. She picked up a boxed set of long stainless steel needles their eyes threaded with lengths of various coloured cottons. She turned them over in her hands looking speculatively at Tommy who had busied himself tidying the room but found time to steal increasingly nervous glances at Angela.

Shaking her head she replaced them on the shelf.

She stood a moment in thought and then with a slight smile picked up a large silver cigarette lighter. Tommy seeing what she was doing began to whimper quietly. She flicked the lighter on and off adjusting the flame as she did so until it was a tiny pinprick of heat burning brightly some four inches clear of the lighter nozzle.

Walking back to Mark she swept his legs from the bed and seated herself beside him.

"What's the filthy little whore's name," Angela asked still absently playing with the lighter.

"Tommy," Mark replied.

"Ah, Tommy sweet, come here my little pretty, we're going to play a little game with you."

"Take the slut, Mark darling, and hold him really tight for me."

Mark reached up and dragged the sobbing brat down onto his lap. The boy's tight little rump pressing into his crutch excited him. He bent forward and kissed the child on the side of his neck his nostrils full of the smell of well-scrubbed boy.

"Now Tommy do you know how 'this little piggy went to market' goes."

"Yes Miss," the miserable slut whimpered, "my Mummy used to play it with me before she discovered I was just a useless charity boy and Mister Wardle very kindly took me into his protection. Please Miss please don't hurt me. Please."

"Tommy," Angela protested in mock horror, "you are a wicked selfish little boy. Do you begrudge your kind loving Master's guests a little bit of fun? I'm sure Mister Wardle would be very angry if I old him you did."

"Please don't tell Mister Wardle Miss but Miss do you have to hurt me Miss? Please…………"

"Now Tommy," Angela said firmly interrupting the boy's desperate pleas, "enough of this nonsense. We will get on with our little game."

She extinguished the lighter and placed it on the mattress beside her. Taking hold of the big toe of Tommy's right foot she began to chant the familiar words of the old nursery rhyme.

"This little pig went to market.
This little pig stayed at home.
This little pig had roast beef.
This little pig had none.
This little pig went wee wee wwe,
All the way home."

As Angela chanted she moved her hold from toe to toe.

"Why," Angela laughed as she reached the end of the rhyme squeezing Tommy's little toe, "look at this sweet little piggy. I think perhaps it needs cooking. Rather than roast beef let's have roast pork shall we?"

Gripping the boy's foot with her left hand she picked up the lighter. One handed she flicked it on and adjusted the flame till it burnt four inches or so above it.

"Miss please Miss," Tommy screamed in terror. The child writhed and twisted in Mark's lap as he fought to escape.

Mark saw Angela bend forward as she brought the flame down towards the underside of the brat's foot. Mark watched her bring the flame ever closer to the boy. Tommy's struggles and pleas increased in desperation. Mark tightened his grip on the panic-stricken slut enjoying the sensation of its smooth little rump wriggling in his crutch.

Tommy's foot hid the flame from Mark's view and then the brat's body leapt in his grasp while his screams reached a new and shriller intensity.

Mark could see Angela's face as she applied the flame to the child's bare flesh. Her expression was calm, almost relaxed, only the faint smile on her lips and the glitter in her eyes gave any indication that she shared his intense excitement.

After a few seconds Angela sat back. Replacing the lighter on the bed she slapped the screaming boy as hard as she could on the side of the face.

"Stop that noise this instant," she snapped.

"Yes indeed," Mark chimed in chiding the brat, "the noise you're making you selfish little brute will wake the house. Have some consideration for others and stop making a fuss about nothing."

"Well," Angela continued when the slut's screams had at last abated to a low desperate sobbing, "we'd better get on with things and choose another little pig to roast."

"Oh Miss please Miss don't hurt me any more…… Mister Legg Sir please please……"

"Don't you want to play with us any more my sweet?" Angela asked softly.

"Not like that Miss. Please not like that."

"I suppose time is getting on and I am quite peckish. Perhaps we'd better be getting down to breakfast. What do you think Mark."

"Thank you Miss……… Please Mister Legg Sir please aren't you hungry too Mister Legg?" the brat asked hopefully choking back its tears.

"I certainly could do with something to eat. Playing with you Tommy seems to have given me quite an appetite," Mark said nuzzling at the side of the boy's neck."

"Thank you Mister Legg. Thank you Miss……"

"But," Angela, who had busied herself examining Tommy's foot as Mark was speaking, said, "I can see the inside that little toe of yours hasn't been cooked. I don't think it would be right to leave the job half done. Hold the slut tight Mark."

Tommy, who had thought he was about to escape further abuse, his hopes suddenly dashed began once more to sob wildly.

Pulling Tommy's toes apart with her left hand Angela once more picked up the cigarette lighter. This time Mark could see the flame lick along the inside of the boy's little toe and linger on the tender flesh that separated it from its next door neighbour. As Tommy screamed and struggled in his lap he saw the brat's skin redden and then bubble as the blisters formed.

Suddenly Mark found his lap deluged with warm liquid. With an exclamation of disgust he tipped Tommy onto the bed.

"The disgusting little animal has peed itself," he exclaimed.

Angela glanced over at him, her face breaking into a happy smile as her eyes took in his penis standing rigid and erect excited by the pressure of the brat's wriggling bottom. Leaning forward she kissed him on the lips and throwing her arms about his neck drew him down beside her on the bed. There, on the urine soaked sheets, with Tommy rolled into a ball of naked boy misery nursing his burnt foot sobbing beside them, they coupled for a second time that morning.

Sated Mark lay on the damp sheets waiting for his strength to return.

"I think darling," he said rousing himself and brushing Angela's forehead with his lips, "that we'd best have a shower and get dressed if we are not to be late for breakfast."

Clambering to his feet he saw with a feeling of rising irritation that Tommy was still lying on the bed feeling sorry for himself. The brat seemed to think that he was in some sort of holiday camp, he reflected. It was really too bad, Jack took the little brute into his house, trained him, fed him, housed him, generally looked after him and the ungrateful turd took the first opportunity that came along to shirk his work. No doubt his burnt foot hurt but that didn't mean he couldn't work. Furious Mark took the strap from its hook beside the fireplace and lashed down at the brat's naked body.

Tommy alerted by the hiss of the falling strap tried to get out of its way. He was not fast enough. The leather strap caught him square across the centre of his bottom. With a squeal of pain he clapped both hands to his burning rump and jumped off the bed forgetting in his terror his burnt foot. He remembered it though as soon as it touched the floor. Giving out a further howl he began to hop round the room, still holding his bottom with both hands, his face twisted in a grimace of pain, all the time emitting small piercing cries of distress.

Mark, his ill humour banished by this comical sight, choked back his laughter just long enough to tell the boy to stop the nonsense and get on with stripping the soiled sheets from the bed.

After they had showered together Mark and Angela returned to the bedroom to find Tommy hobbling painfully round the room pulling the soiled bed clothes from the bed and bundling them.

Mark picked found the indelible marking pencil on the mantle-piece and wetting its point with his tongue called Tommy to him. He made the boy turn round. He noticed with satisfaction that the strap had raised a livid welt across the centre of the curve of the boy's rump. Bending down he wrote on the child's flank "6+" before sending him back to work with a resounding slap on the bum.

"What's that in aid of?" Angela asked.

"It's a signal to Mrs. Thomas, Jack's excellent housekeeper, that she is to give Tommy at least six cuts of the cane at a time convenient to herself. I expect though, conscientious lady that she is, she'll give him the round dozen and that would really not be much more that he deserves, making so much noise and then lazing about on the bed."

Chapter 15

Mark found Jack Wardle sitting at the dining table, watched by four hungry eyed serving boys, eating from a plate heaped with bacon, scrambled eggs and all the other components of a traditional English breakfast.

"Had a good sleep?" Jack asked grinning knowingly as Mark seated himself.

"Very good thanks," Mark replied poker faced.

"Seemed you were having some fun this morning judging by the noise. I think they probably heard the screams in town."

"Sorry about that Jack. Angela was roasting that pretty little sluts toes with the cigarette lighter."

"Oh that's what was happening," Jack said laughing heartily, "ingenious girl that one and a nice looker and has a natural way with our pauper dirt, not afraid to treat them tough. I'd stick close to that one Mark. Make it permanent if you can."

"Well I rather hope to and I think things are looking hopeful."

"Best thing is to come straight out with it like I did to Anne last night."

"It didn't seem to me she reacted too well to your doing so."

"She played up a bit to start with," Jack admitted with cheerful insouciance. "How could I embarrass her before all her friends and so on but after you and Angela went up to bed I returned to the subject and she saw sense soon enough then. Said something on the lines that she had to give me full points for persistence and she supposed she had to agree or she would never have any peace."

"Well congratulations Jack."

"Only condition she made was that I had to get that brat Daniel out of the house. She said she couldn't forgive the little brute masquerading as a free boy and taking advantage of us all. It wouldn't be so bad if the little tyke was not her own son but he is and she can't guarantee that she can stop herself doing some permanent injury to him his behaviour makes her so angry. Maybe I'll just pass him on to Mister Patel to use in one of his factories but he's quite a pretty slut so that would be a bit of a waste at this stage; when he's older and lost his looks perhaps, but not now."

"He was certainly a hot little whore," Mark remarked remembering Daniel's enthusiastic response to his initial penetration.

"Well I'll have to see what I can arrange. Ah here's Angela."

"Angela," Mark said, "you have to congratulate Jack he's fixed things up with Anne."

"And now you and Mark should do the same my dear," Jack interposed beaming.

"Well I haven't been asked," Angela replied lightly placing her hand on Mark's shoulder.

"Good, excellent," Jack beamed, "I'm glad we've settled that. Now I must just sort a few things out so if you will excuse me… I am sorry to hurry you but if you want to come to church you will need to be ready in the hall in about half an hour."

Angela and Mark stood at the open front door looking out at the drive and the lawn beyond. The sun was shining again but the sudden storm had freshened the air and banished, for the moment at least, the oppressive heat of the last few days. Two traps each drawn by a pair of sturdy pony boys were drawn up in the porte-cochere their bridles held by a couple of pretty young charity boys. The traps were quite unlike the light single seated racing carts that had been used in the Corvo Cup. These were much larger two seated vehicles that would comfortably take a couple of full-grown adults. The pony boys too were altogether heavier built animals than Merlin and Lucifer though just as sleek and well cared for in appearance.

It occurred to Mark that in many ways the best treated pauper brats were those selected to be pony boys in prosperous households. Admittedly the long hours of schooling in the exercise ring on the lunge reign, were hard as was the work itself, straining at the traces between the shafts of a trap urged on by the whip. However a well-matched pair of healthy young pony boys was a potent status symbol and therefore highly prized and carefully cherished. The old saying, "between the shafts a brat is worth nothing – in the stables one hundred guineas", summed the situation up.

"But where," Angela's voice interrupted his thoughts, "are all the other brats?"

It was a reasonable question. Apart from the pony boys and their two young attendants there was not a brat insight. The teams of tanned bare limbed boys who tended the gravel drive on their knees or who endlessly trimmed the grass of the lawn with nail scissors were no where to be seen.

"Oh they will have been sent to church," Mark replied, "Jack is very good about that. He insists that all his brats, other than those directly employed in serving him or his guests, go to church."

"They haven't got the day off?"

"Good heavens no," Mark laughed at such ridiculous an idea. "Indeed they will work two hours later tonight to make up the time they spend in church."

"Ah good you're here already," Jack said hurrying into the hall from the back of the house. "We'll be off directly now. Anne says she can't come. She's too tied up with all the people we are having for lunch. But I'm just waiting for Mrs Thomas to produce Nicky. I need to get him registered and branded this morning as Mister Adams is taking delivery of him today."

"Mister Wardle, I am so sorry to have kept you waiting," said Mrs Thomas pushing open the green baize door at the rear of the hall that divided the front of the house from the servants' quarters. "The charity scum are all just the same. No thought for others and no self discipline. The stupid slut made such a fuss. It just needed a touch of the hot iron to cauterize the wound but the way he screamed and wriggled and threw himself about you would think I was thrusting the iron right up into him."

As she spoke she hurried forward dragging Nicky along behind her, with sharp tugs on a short length of chain attached to the iron collar clamped round his neck.

"I've done the best I can with the slut Sir," she said apologetically coming to a stop in front of Jack Wardle, "but he took a real hammering last night not that he would be anything to talk about anyway – miserable little git."

Indeed Nicky was a pathetic figure as he stood shaking with fear, behind Mrs. Thomas. Livid bruises disfigured his face and naked body where Mark had thumped and slapped him. The heavy manacles securing his wrists behind his back, which didn't look as if they had been moved since the previous evening, had chafed and cut his skin and blood dribbled down the back of his hands. His head and shoulders were down. He looked defeated and spiritless as he waited eyes fixed on the floor for whatever the future held for him. It was clear that he had given up all hope and was resigned to his servitude.

"I'm afraid I was a bit rough with the brute," Mark said. "The way he had deliberately deceived and taken advantage of us all, particularly you Jack, worming himself into your house in the pretence he was a free boy and not part of the charity scum made me very angry."

"Why Good Lord Sir," Mrs. Thomas protested, "I wasn't criticizing you. A bit of rough treatment was what the little turd needed and you only need to look at him to see that was exactly what he got and its done him the world of good."

As they were speaking Jack was subjecting the boy to a cursory examination, running his hands over his naked body assessing the extent of any damage as the boy stood shivering but otherwise still.

"It's all superficial," he remarked, "nothing to permanently detract from the brutes value. And talking of value," Jack bent to prod the muscles in Nicky's firm young thighs, "do you know Mrs Thomas that Mister Adams of Ovingdean Reformatory has offered four hundred pounds for the slut. What do you think of that?"

"Four hundred pounds for that," exclaimed Mrs. Thomas, "the man must be mad. Why there are plenty of loving parents in the Vale who would be keen to let their brats go to a house where they would be toughened up and strictly disciplined for four pounds."

"It does seem a bit steep certainly," Jack admitted stepping round the boy and jerking the manacles securing his wrists upwards so he could examine his bottom. Nicky sobbed as the steel cuffs bit into his already badly chafed wrists.

"Perhaps," Jack continued disregarding the boy's cry of distress, "he's a particularly good fuck. Mark you had him last night. What was he like?"

"All right but nothing special, no better than Tommy or your Daniel. Once I was fairly in him his guts began to work on my cock but that's no more than happens with any other slut."

"I'm glad you found Daniel adequate. At least there's something the little sod can do," Jack remarked before turning his attention back to Nicky's bottom.

"You do seem to have got bigger or something Mark," Jack continued in an amused tone of voice. "You didn't use to tear brats so much but first Daniel and now this tart. You've become a real bum ripper."

"What do you expect with Daniel?" Mark protested indignantly. "It was the first time for him and you told me you wanted him to feel it. Nicky was a bit different but I wanted to get the job done and back to your party. I didn't see why I should waste time being gentle with the whore."

"Quite right too," Jack said heartily. "Brats should be regularly beaten hard and fucked hard. It stops them from getting above themselves. Anyway Mrs Thomas has done her usual excellent job in patching the whore up. Once the scar tissue comes away he'll be as good as new."

Nicky squealed and jumped as Jack probed his hole.

"And he'll forget how sore he is down there as soon as the branding iron scorches him," Jack commented with a laugh as he straightened. "The brand will be there," Jack rested his finger on the left side of Nicky's bottom just below the hip.

"Now we'd best be off or we will be late. Move slut."

"Do you know," Jack continued as he led way out of the house with Nicky trotting along behind him like a dog on a leash, "what a slut said to me the other day when I asked him which hurt the most being branded, cut or fucked for the first time?"

"No what?" Angela asked.

"Please Sir, all of them Sir."

Jack's imitation of a panic stricken charity brat's terrified whine was so realistic and at the same time so comic that Angela and Mark burst out laughing.

They were still laughing when they reached the two traps drawn up in the porte-cochere. Jack snapped the loose end of the chain attached to Nicky's collar to the rear of the lead trap and swung himself up into the driver's seat. He flicked the serving boy holding the pony boys' bridle across the front of his bare thighs with the whip. The brat squeaked and jumped clear as Jack whipped the pony boys into a rapid trot with a couple of flicks from the lash across their naked shoulders.

Mark helped Angela into the second trap and then taking the reigns himself set off in hot pursuit of Jack. He was he knew quite good at handling pony boys, not quite perhaps as good as Jack who lived all year round in the Vale, but still good enough to be glad of an opportunity to show off his skill to his fiancée. Urging the pony boys on with frequent cracks of his whip he soon had them up to a sharp canter.

The air was still cool after the recent rain. Drops of water on leaves and grass glittered in the bright sunshine so that it seemed the trees and meadows were covered in silver gilt. The pounding feet of the pony boys threw up showers of sparkling water as they ran from the puddles on the drive, covering the brats' bare shins and thighs with a glistening sheen of moisture. The two steel rimmed wheels threw spray high in the air, creating miniature rainbows, as they raced clattering and bumping over the wet ground.

They were gaining on Jack. Angela holding tight to the side of the trap to steady herself from its constant jolting smiled happily up at Mark.

"We're catching up," she cried, "use the whip Mark. Give the brats more whip."

Thus encouraged Mark plied the lash vigorously, cruelly nipping the brats' tanned shoulders and flanks, scoring their deeply tanned skin with angry red welts. Jack sensed their approach. Turning his head he saw them and laughing stood up in his trap, shaking the reigns, whooping and cracking his whip across his brats' bare shoulders as they strained in the shafts.

They came to the base of the long gentle slope at the top of which stood the ancient church whose bells had summoned the free people of the village of Dingley Dell and surrounding hamlets to Sunday worship for centuries and whose chimes had reminded generations of charity boys that the dispensation under which they laboured was sanctioned both by the laws of God and man. Jack's brats lent into their traces as they exerted all their strength to maintain their lead. For a moment it seemed to Mark that he might catch up and indeed pass the other trap. Then his team too began the ascent of the long hill and Jack began to pull away again.

Swearing in a way quite inappropriate to the Sabbath, Mark lashed at the shoulders of the two brats as they laboured to drag the trap up the hill. He knew in his heart that they could never now hope to catch Jack up. It was clear that the two teams of brats were equally matched and therefore Jack's trap with its single passenger had a decisive advantage over his own with two. Nevertheless he wanted to put a good show on for Angela and so he cut at the brats' naked backs with abandon.

Jack realising that his lead was safe allowed his brats to slacken their pace and in the end Mark pulled up his team only some thirty seconds behind his friend. Jumping from the trap he tied the reigns of his panting brats' to the hitch rail beside the lych-gate leaving them to stand there, sweating and trembling, as he turned to help Angela from the trap.

As Angela climbed down from the trap she looked about herself with keen interest. Indeed to those unused to the ways of the Vale the scene outside the church was a remarkable one. Row upon row of kneeling tribute boys were ranked on either side of the path leading from the lych-gate to the church door. Every charity brat in the parish, other than those directly involved in serving their protectors was required to be there. Farm boys, caked with mud and filth, who toiled all day in the open fields, serving boys scented and spotlessly clean, four of the five sluts from the Lamb and Flag, the fifth was servicing a customer, all these and many others were there. So many brats were there that their ranks overflowed the churchyard and spread out over the village green.

Seeing the wonder in Angela's eyes Mark wished that she could have seen it as he had when he had visited Jack last Christmas. Then a fall of snow had covered the ground with a white blanket which contrasted dramatically with the dark chocolate brown bodies of the naked pauper brats as they knelt patiently on the freezing ground. The snow had fallen again while he was in church and when he came out again the brats' bare heads and bare shoulders were flecked with white but still they knelt the only indication of their distress a low quiet sobbing that rose like a gentle susurration from the rows of shivering boys.

As the Rector remarked when he came to the door of the church, muffled in overcoat and scarf, for, courteous and considerate man as he was, he insisted despite the bitter cold on shaking hands with every member of his departing congregation, glancing at the ranks of naked boys, their patient endurance of the freezing cold was a testimonial to the exemplary strictness of those whom a beneficent providence had set over them.

Now though, in high summer, the brats had only to kneel for an hour or two in the heat of the sun before returning to their labours. Nevertheless the brats in their carefully marshalled lines were even now a striking sight. Along the path to the church family groups strolled, adults in their smart Sunday clothes chatting together, girls demurely following in their best summer frocks, free boys some wearing brief shorts many though quite naked grinning and laughing and fooling around in the way of boys. All seemed oblivious to the rows of kneeling charity boys who, as their betters passed, prostrated themselves in a carefully choreographed ritual of submission and humiliation. This had a curious effect as though a series of irregular waves passed over the crowd of brats, the summit being the bowed heads of those kneeling the trough the up raised rumps of those with their faces pressed to the ground.

Jack unhitched Nicky from the back of his trap and with a sharp jerk on his neck chain began to lead him towards the church. Mark with Angela leaning on his arm fell in beside his old friend.

"What's this?" Angela exclaimed.

They had reached the steps at the base of the old stone cross. There, as on most Sundays about a dozen brats guarded by two smartly turned out auxiliary police cadets were kneeling, their heads and wrists clamped in a long pillory fashioned out of stout wooden beams.

The bottom of the pillory was fashioned from a single roughly hewn tree trunk and rested directly on the ground so the brats were obliged to kneel with their rumps higher than their heads, a position that had the dual advantage of being uncomfortable to maintain and amusing to observe. The upper portion of the pillory consisted of a series of heavy blocks each secured at one end to the bottom beam by a massive iron hinge. A series of matching notches had been cut into the beams, two shallow ones in each instance flanking a deeper central one. Once a slut was in place with his neck in one of the deeper central notches cut in the base of the pillory and his wrists in the shallower ones on either side the hinged beam would be brought down clamping him in place. The upper beam would then be secured by slipping over its free end a broad brass band fastened to either side of the pillory's base.

"These," said Jack easily, "are brats caught thieving from the pig swill bins in the village. They will have their lips sown up by our good Rector's wife after the service to ensure they do not offend in a similar way again and as a warning to others."

"There are nine I see this time," said Mark who had been taking a quiet count.

"That's about average," Mark said, "give or take a couple either way. It's surprising how the brats keep on thieving food though they know what will happen to them if they get caught and generally they do get caught. Just shows how stupid and lacking in self discipline the charity scum are."

As he was speaking Mister Henry appeared dragging the pauper brat David along by his ear.

"Get this little turd in there," Mister Henry ordered the two police cadets twisting David's ear so hard that the brat doubled over squealing in pain.

Mister Henry placed a well-aimed kick up the slut's bottom sending him stumbling forwards. Grinning, the two police cadets grabbed David and set about securing his wrists and neck in the pillory.

"Borrowed the turd back from young William Smythe to give me something to amuse myself with over night," Mister Henry said, "and soon as soon as I took my eyes the thieving little swine was at the cat food. Found him on his knees in the kitchen wolfing down Paws from the cat's plate. Ungrateful brute after all the trouble and care I have taken to make something of the worthless lump of dog's shit. I don't know how many canes I've broken on the brat trying to beat some sense into its worthless carcass and it goes and does something like that."

"I'd have sent him back to his Mummy and Daddy to deal with but I telephoned William Smythe and he begged me not to. He blamed himself for being too soft on the slut. Only using the metal tipped strap a few times and letting him stuff his belly with swill twice a day. He begged me to give him a second chance and promised he wouldn't be so foolishly over-indulgent next time round."

"That's typical of William." Jack Walton interposed. Springing to his favourites defence, "a really conscientious boy who ties hard to uphold the values and virtues of the Vale. If all our free boys were as stalwart and honest as him we would need to have no fear for the future."

"Exactly my opinion," Mister Henry replied, "I've seen his father, as a responsible loving parent should from time to time, thrash the boy till his bottom was as bloody as any charity brat's and him not utter a sound during the whole time, but the mere thought that he had disgraced himself by failing to discipline a brat adequately moved him almost to tears."

"That's what makes me so angry," he continued his voice shaking with well justified rage. That a selfish disloyal rat who thinks only of its stomach can cause such distress to a fine upstanding boy like William."

In a fresh paroxysm of anger Mister Henry lashed out with his foot catching David, who was now firmly confined in the pillory, a crashing blow on the side of the head with the highly polished cap of one of his heavy Oxford brogues. It was an indication of Mister Henry's natural courtesy and innate consideration for others that despite the extreme provocation to which he had been subjected by the brat he refrained from kicking the delinquent brute full in the face. To have done so would have risked splitting the slut's lips. This in itself was a matter of no importance but it would have made the good rector's wife's task of sowing the boy's mouth up even more messy and difficult than it would otherwise have been. In such small details of behaviour can be found the marks of a true gentleman.

"Do you want us to work him over a bit for you Sir?" the youngest of the Auxiliary Police Cadets asked eagerly drawing his baton. A fresh faced youth of seventeen he had just completed his basic training and was keen to show off his newly learnt skills.

"Of course I do," Mister Henry snapped clearly surprised the lad thought it was necessary to ask.

Immediately the two youths sprang into action. The kneeling brat his neck and wrists trapped in the pillory that kept his head just inches above the ground provided an easy and tempting target. The batons rose and fell as the two police cadets methodically beat the boy.

Mark had of course seen police cadets busy about their work before. Even the most casual and occasional visitor to the vale could hardly have failed to do so. You could hardly walk down Muggleton High Street and not see some charity brat being knocked about by a pair of cadets. It was there task to keep the brats in line and they undertook it enthusiastically. A foot placed on the pavement, a glance up into a passer-by's eyes, a clenched hand, a perceived scowl or sulky expression, any of these and a hundred other faults could trigger a beating for some unwary pauper boy. But often as he had seen this he still wondered at the skill and judgement which the cadets brought to their task. Each blow of the batons was nicely calculated to cause the maximum pain possible without doing any permanent damage. The sharp raps that inflicted on David's head and hands, trapped and held still by the pillory, by the youngest of the cadets contrasting with the full blooded blows delivered with his companions weight and strength on the brat's bum and thighs. The younger cadet turned his attention to David's arms delivering short sharp blows to the brat's forearms while his colleague continued to concentrate on the sobbing boy's bottom and legs.

David's sobs rose to shrill screams as his youngest tormentor delivered two sharp cracks to his elbows.

"Let's move on," Mister Henry said raising his voice to be heard over the howls of the brat, "one can hardly hear oneself think for the noise the stupid little turd is making."

"That's better," he continued more quietly as they moved up the path towards the church. "I do wonder where William is though. He said he would be at church today with the rest of his family and I want to remind him to take the stitches out of that slut of mine's lips after forty-eight hours. I don't want the same thing happening as with that farm boy of Ralph Simpson's."

"I'm sure they'll all be along in a minute. The whole family is very regular in its attendance at church, an example to us all and stalwarts of our community," Jack said jerking sharply on the leash attached to Nicky's collar bringing the boy stumbling along behind him. But what happened with Ralph's brat. I've heard nothing about it."

"Oh," Mister Henry replied laughing, "I looked into the George Wednesday night and it was the talk of the place. Apparently the week before last Ralph happened across one of his farm sluts huddled behind a hedge gnawing on a swede. Well after he'd whipped the thieving little tyke he marked him down for having his lips sown up the next Sunday and thought no more about it. Sunday came and the brat's mouth was sown up and he was given another beating and then sent back to work. Tuesday evening he should have got his mouth unstitched, forty eight hours being about what a brat can stand without food and water, but you know Ralph's farm is a big one and I doubt if Ralph himself knows off hand how many brats he has working it and he forgot all about it. The brat having its mouth sown up couldn't speak and no doubt if he did try to tell anyone he just got his headed clouted and told to get on with his work. Wednesday morning he was set to picking stones with five other sluts in the fifty acre field. Before long he fell flat on his face. He got up pretty sharp when the foreman swore at him for an idle turd and gave him a taste of the strap. But he was down again soon after and this time no amount of shouting or kicking or whipping could rouse the slut. Even when the overseer put the hot iron on him he didn't get up. Just moaned and jerked about a bit on the ground. He was just going to give the lazy brute a further touch with the iron. When one of the Simpson girl's, who had come out from the farm when the overseer to watch the fun, remarked it was funny the slut wasn't screaming or anything. Then of course they remembered the slut's mouth was stitched up."

"What happened then?" Mark asked laughing.

"Oh well they unstitched the brats mouth and gave it some warm milk to drink and half an hour later it was back at work. Needed some encouraging with the whip mind you to keep it going."

"Just shows how healthy and tough the little beasts. We can really feel proud of the way we care for them, hardening them up," Jack remarked.

"Yes indeed, Ralph had brought the brat with him to the pub to show us. You know where his farm is, a good six miles [10km] outside Muggleton. He rode in with the brat having to run behind him with his wrists tied to his stirrup leathers. By the state of its knees it'd gone down a few times but it made it and od course it had to run the full six miles [10km] back at the end of the evening."

Laughing heartily at the comical incident just recounted the three friends walked on together.

They were so close to the church that Mark felt the heat of the coals smouldering in the brazier on the flagstones just outside the porch. Sticking out of the brazier were three iron rods, the handles of branding irons being heated in the glowing coals. Secured by his neck to an iron ring set in the flagstones a small naked brat cowered against the church wall. He seemed to be trying to get as far away from the brazier as the short length of chain joining the ring to the collar round his neck allowed.

"Damn," Jack explained coming to a sudden halt.

Glancing back Mark could see Nicky straining back against his leash his eyes rolling in terror.

"Come on blast you," Jack yelled jerking hard on Nicky's leash. Then seeing the Smythe family coming up the path towards the church he called, "William give this slut a cut or two to get it moving."

"Sure thing Uncle Jack," William shouted cheerfully and wielding a short leather strap he was carrying in his hand he slashed twice in quick succession at Nicky's bare rump.

With a howl of pain the boy started forward. Jack giving him no opportunity to balk again led him past the brazier and kicking away his feet from under him brought him tumbling to his knees. Stooping quickly Jack fastened the free end of Nicky's leash to the ring in the flagstones and stood back. Nicky shuffled away on his knees to cower whimpering quietly with the other brat.

"Lucky I had Dad's steel tipped strap with me," William, who was quite naked and sported Mark noticed a full erection, remarked, "I'd just borrowed it to give David a couple of cuts as we passed the pillory and hadn't given it back."

"Very lucky indeed," Jack agreed gravely, "and lucky too William that you enjoy disciplining the brats and generally keeping them in order so much."

William glanced down at his erection and grinned.

"I'm afraid I always do get hard when I thrash a brat," he said.

"No need to apologise William," Jack replied, "I do the same and so I am sure does Mister Henry and my old friend Mark. It is just as well we do as otherwise the essential task of keeping the charity scum down would be simply a boring chore rather than an exciting and entertaining challenge."

"I certainly didn't find beating David boring," William said with a laugh, "the steel tip cut slices across the sluts bum and you should have heard him howl. It was great fun."

"Only two brats to be branded?" Mark said the question mark implicit in his tone of voice.

"Yes, its not one of the really popular days like Christmas Eve or Easter Sunday when there could be easily fifty or more," Jack replied. "Indeed being the day after the races there are a good deal less than than usual. Most Sundays we get a dozen or so."

"It's there they put the brand isn't it Uncle Jack?" William asked, with all the eagerness of an intelligent young boy with an enquiring mind, bending down to press the tip of his index finger into the side of Nicky's bare rump as the brat cowered away from him.

"Yes on the left hand side just below the hip. You've got the place exactly right."

"I wish I could do it. I wish I was allowed to brand just one brat. I'm sure I could do it." William gaze wandered travelled wistfully from the two naked brats huddled on the flagstones at his feet to the brazier with the branding irons thrust into its glowing coals and back again.

"I'm sure you would William," Jack said fondly. "We'll ask the Rector if he'll let you have a go. Look he's coming now."

And indeed just at that moment the Rector hurried up to them dressed in a black cassock that hung down to his feet, rubbing his hands together and smiling benignly.

"Good morning, good morning, good morning, glad to see you all. And how are you young William? I'm pleased to see your parents have taken notice of the sermons I preached on the foolishness of being over indulgent to our young free boys. Both you and your brother Richard, our champion jockey, being brought to church naked. Quite right, quite right you must be toughened up and disciplined so that you in your turn can undertake the task of disciplining and ruling those placed by Divine Providence in our care."

"I am sure Rector we can rely on William and Richard as well, to play their part to the full in that. Indeed at this very moment William was saying how much he wished he could have a chance to try his hand at branding a brat or two. You wouldn't consider letting him a go today would you?"

"Well I don't know Jack. Branding a boy is not as easy as it looks. You know it's one thing to imagine it quite another to actually be faced with doing the job with the brat whimpering and screaming even before the glowing iron touches his flesh. Many people find they have great difficulty when it comes to the point in pressing the red hot brand against the side of some howling slut's tender little bottom and holding it firmly in place while it writhes and sobs and the smell of burnt flesh fills the air."

"I'm sure I could do it Sir," William repeated, "please give me a chance Sir"

"Oh all right then," the Rector said laughing at the boy's eagerness. "You can do these two after the service I'll ask the Vicars Warden who usually has to do it be ready to give you a helping hand if you need it."

"Thank Sir. Thanks a lot. I'll manage OK Sir. I'm sure I will. Do you think they'll shit themselves. They usually do don't they Uncle Jack."

"They certainly do William," Jack replied smiling.

"Gosh don't take too long on the service will you Sir," William said to the Rector before hurrying into the church after his parents and younger brother. The three men followed him laughing at the lad's youthful enthusiasm.

It was matins and the Rector followed the old order laid down in the King Edward the Sixth Prayer book, the sonorous words echoing round the ancient and beautiful building. The church, as was usual in the Vale of Dingle, was well filled and the singing lead by the choir with the treble voices of the free boy choristers rising above all filled the chancel and knave with music.

The moment came for the Rector to give his sermon. He climbed into the pulpit his black cassock swirling about him as he moved. Looking up at him as he towered over his congregation Mark could see motes of dust dancing in faint beams of sunlight filtered through the stain glass windows.

"My lesson today is taken from Genesis Chapter 7 verses 18 and 19. "But with thee will I establish my Covenant; and thou shall come into the arc, thou and thy sons, and thy wife and thy sons wifes with thee. And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female."

"Now it may seem strange talking about Noah and his ark during a period of almost uninterrupted fine weather" (Mark had noticed before the Rector's tendency to import into his addresses a certain pawky humour from time to time) but it often strikes me that we have built here in the Vale a sort of arc not of wood like Noah's but of people and customs. Noah's arc was built to save Noah his family and the animals and birds from drowning in water. Ours is built to preserve our little society here in the Vale of Dingle from being overwhelmed by the forces of barbarism and lawlessness that swirl around outside the magic confines of the Vale. Forces that are becoming, judging from today's papers, ever more powerful and dangerous. Terrorism, rioting, strikes, rampant criminality all threaten us. It is well that our ancestors built well when they constructed our ark and it is well that we should be vigilant in defending it."

"But defence alone is not enough. We have to be careful to keep our arc in good repair just as Noah would have had to if the flood had lasted five centuries and not a mere forty days."

"There was an instance of this quite recently when I had to warn from this pulpit against what was then becoming the excessively indulgent attitude of certain parents to the rearing of their free sons. If we are to maintain our defences against the hordes of barbarians without it is necessary to bring up our free boys to be as hard and as tough, no harder and tougher, than those that threaten us. This will not be achieved by mollycoddling. The, then growing, tendency to allow free boys clothing was bad enough but when I discovered that certain parents had bought their sons UNDERPANTS to wear I felt I had to speak out."

"I am glad to see looking round the church today that my words did not fall on stony ground. There is not a boy here under fifteen years old that is other than naked. Even the choir-boys I happen to know are naked under their surplices. Well done, now all that remains is for parents to see that this improved behaviour continues into the snows and frosts of winter."

"But we must not only be alert to correct lapses from the standards of behaviour in the past. We must also ensure that we are not led to betray the principles of our predecessors by the glib arguments and plausible proposals of those posing as liberals or philanthropists. I do not know how often I have heard such people suggest that our arrangements are hard on the charity boys, that we ought to take some action to ameliorate their lot, perhaps to work them less hard or to clothe and feed them better or to beat them less often and less hard."

An unbelieving titter ran through the congregation at these last words. The rector raise his hand for silence.

"Yes I know it sounds, more it is funny but I assure you I have often heard such and similar suggestions. Indeed when you see the brats hungry and naked labouring in the heat of the sun in the summer and in the snow and the rain in the winter you might feel that they are hard done by. But appearances are deceptive. They in fact are the lucky ones. They are the true innocents. It is we, the free, that have the hardest task."

"God has made a covenant with us as the lesson I have just read said. He has given us dominion over them as well as over every other "creeping thing that creepeth on the earth." Their lot is an easy one. They only have to obey. We have the more difficult and harder tasks, to decide to command to enforce obedience."

"But nevertheless could not I am asked make things easier for them. Do they have to be worked so hard, beaten so often? Could they not be fed and clothed better? My unhesitating reply is that they could not. If anything they should be subjected to a harsher discipline."

"All they have to do is to obey and we have the more difficult task of exacting that obedience. We all know from bitter experience how stubborn, how lazy, how ungrateful and indeed insolent charity boys can be. Do you seriously think they would be better behaved under a milder kinder regime? Of course they would not. To fulfil God's purpose and will their spirits must be utterly crushed. Only in that way will they retain the innocence that comes from lack of choice that is the one great gift that God has granted them and only in that way will we be able to exercise the dominion that God has granted us over them and which it is our right and duty to impose."

"However we have not only to ensure our ark is kept in good repair and that its structure is not wrecked by ill-advised innovations. We must also see that it is adapted to meet changing needs and circumstances. Our community in the Vale does not exist in a vacuum – unfortunately. However stoutly we build the walls of our arc some water from outside will seep in and the bilges from time to time will need to be pumped out or some repairs made to the hull."

"Many changes have been made over the centuries to meet changing circumstances and we must be alert to make fresh changes as the need arises in the future."

"I have become aware increasingly over recent years of a change in the outside world that is having increasing repercussions here. I refer to the appearance of the female yob. When Hiram set up his charity all those hundreds of years ago the main threat to the social tranquillity and cohesion of the Vale came from gangs of able bodied idle youths and boys. Girls were docile quiet creatures engaged in housework and rearing babies and this remained the position for many hundreds of ears. It was only in the comparatively recent past that I have noticed the appearance here of a phenomena now all too familiar outside the vale – the rowdy, bawdy, assertive teen-age and indeed sub-teenage girl. Everything an ill behaved disruptive boy can achieve by way of spreading aggravation and chaos can now be done, indeed more than done by his female counterpart."

"It is time to act. It is time to take into our arc, as our lesson today told us we should, both males and females of the charity breed. I know certain parents have driven to despair by unruly and impudent daughters subjected them to a disciplinary regime similar to that imposed on charity boys. But to leave the treatment of this problem to individual families and parents is neither effective nor fair. It is ineffective because the taming of a delinquent brat be it male or female is too heavy a task for one family to perform quickly and efficiently. It is unfair because it imposes on one family a task whose performance, if successfully completed, benefits the whole of society. We must as a society take responsibility for dealing with this problem and the only effective way of dealing with it is to extend Hiram's charity to cover brats of both sexes."

"I have to admit that a short time ago I would have opposed the proposal on purely aesthetic grounds."

"I personally prefer the trim lines of a young boy's body with it's tight dimpled bottom to the generally softer and plumper form of a girl of the same age. Until recently the strength of my preference was such that I would have scouted any proposal to introduce charity girls. Yesterday though the Corvo Cup was run and the race was a revelation to me. The pair of perfectly matched naked pony-girls the sun glistening on their naked limbs, highly schooled healthy young animals, their strong young bodies harnessed to the shafts of the racing trap were a joy to look at. And then can anyone claim to have seen anything as thrilling as that final dash up the long slope to the finishing line. The two bitches matching the boys stride by stride as they as they vied in strength and swiftness of foot for the honour of their masters. Their young jockeys playing their parts in the drama, raking their bratd' bare shoulders with the lash to get them to give more than they ever knew or guessed that they possessed."

"I am now convinced that girls properly schooled and toughened up will make perfectly acceptable charity brats. I am further convinced that the Vale is in danger of being, rather already has been effected by the indiscipline that is now endemic among immature females outside its confines. The time therefore has come when we must take into our Arc as Noah took into his both 'the male and female kind". We must no longer shirk our duty to these unfortunates. We must take into our care charity girls as well as charity boys and extend to them the inestimable blessing of complete innocence that comes through unquestioning obedience and unremitting toil."

"There are certain practical problems that will need to be resolved but these are matters that should be settled by agreement among the trustees and there is no need for me to go into them now so I will now bring my remarks to a close."

"That," the Recror added smiling, "will no doubt will be a great relief to my young friend William Smythe who I happen to know is eager to brand his first brat. But I would say that when William presses the glowing iron against the brat's rump and its shrill screams are ringing in your ears do not pity the child but rather envy it for with his branding comes true freedom, the freedom from all responsibility and the promptings and the constant nagging of a tender conscience."

"Now in the name of the Father and the"………… and the Rector galloped through the remainder of the service.

Chapter 16

As soon as the service was over William made a dash for the door. Following at a more sober pace the three men found him standing by the brazier. He had pulled a branding iron from the smouldering coals and was gazing transfixed at its glowing red-hot end. Mark saw that his little prick was standing rigidly erect, its tip almost touching the front of his tummy.

The two brats had spent the whole service tethered to the ring set in the paving stones close enough to the brazier to feeling the heat of the burning coals against their naked bodies. They had ample time to reflect on what was going to be done to them. They huddled together whimpering in a state of abject terror; their eyes fixed on the free boy and the hot iron that they knew was soon to be pressed against their naked rumps.

"Hello Uncle Jack, Mister Legg, Mister Henry," William said eagerly, "do you think I can start soon. I'll need someone to unlock them from the ring and to hold them down."

"You'll have to be patient William," Jack replied laughing. "The sexton'll be along in a minute with the key and the police cadets should be here as well to hold the little brutes down for you and you've got to give those in the congregation who want to watch the fun an opportunity to get here. Meanwhile you'd better put the iron back in the coals, it needs to be as hot as possible to burn a good clean mark into their flesh."

At these words the two sluts' sobs increased noticeably in volume.

"All right Uncle Jack," William replied, thrusting the iron back into the brazier. "I do wish he'd come though. I want to get on with it. They do look funny don't they? I don't know why they're making so much fuss. It won't make any difference how much they blub. They'll be branded whatever."

Indeed the two trembling charity boys tethered together on the floor, holding onto each other in a hopeless attempt to protect themselves, their faces contorted with terror, did present a rather comical spectacle.

"Well of course I know that and they know that but charity boys aren't like us. Bravery and pride mean nothing to them. They're terrified of being hurt so they howl and scream. It's a good thing they are terrified, branding marks not only a charity brat's body permanently but its mind as well. The mark on its rump tells the world that it is owned the mark on its mind never lets the brat forget that."

"Ah here is the sexton and the cadets. Now you can get on with things."

While they had been talking people had been filing out of church. Some, who no doubt had seen hundreds of brandings in their time, simply walked past intent on getting home and having their Sunday lunch. A considerable number however, probably feeling that certain spectacles never lost their entertainment value, lingered, forming a rough semi-circle round the area where the brazier stood.

Now the sexton, a burly man jangling a bunch of keys, joined them followed by the two cadets.

"You're trying your hand at it today are you?" the sexton asked William and then, without waiting for a reply, added. "Remember don't be put off by the brat's screams, push the iron firmly against its flank just below the hip and hold it there for the count of three, a slow three. No doubt the crowd will help you."

He glanced behind himself checking that the cadets were in place. Satisfied that they were he strode over to the two sluts.

"Let's have you first," he said grabbing hold of Nicky by his upper arm.

Bending down he unlocked the chain securing the boy by his collar to the ring in the paving stones. With a sharp jerk he pulled Nicky clear of the arms of the other boy awaiting branding. The two sluts wailed shrilly and reached out to each other. The sexton sent the second brat tumbling backwards with a sharp kick to the ribs. He ran Nicky across to the wooden log over which countless generations of squalling charity boys had been held for branding, the boy vainly struggling and screaming against the man's vastly superior strength. The two cadets pounced on Nicky and joined the sexton in forcing him face down over the log. They held the screaming slut firmly in place, head on one side of the log, feet on the other, bare bottom raised ready for the brand.

"Right give it to him now," the sexton ordered.

William grinning happily drew the red-hot iron from its bed in the glowing coals. Despite being held in place by the sexton and the two police cadets Nicky's flesh seemed to shrink away from the glowing head of the branding iron as it approached. Escape though was impossible. The boy's screams redoubled in volume as William pressed the iron into his flesh. A wisp of grey smoke rose from where the brand was marking Nicky's rump. There was a faint smell of burning flesh similar to what you get when a pork chop is inexpertly barbecued. This though was rapidly replaced by a ranker stench as the brat in his agony emptied himself.

"One… Two…… Three……" The crowd chanted loudly, shouting to make themselves heard over Nicky's screams.

William withdrew the iron from Nicky's bottom and thrust it back into the brazier. One of the police cadets released his hold of Nicky's legs and picking up the bucket of water hurled it's contents over the boy, washing away the worst of the filth from where he had shit himself.

The sexton hauled Nicky to his feet and taking hold of the free end of his neck chain marched him over to where Jack stood. Both Jack and the sexton bent to examine the brand mark while William waited nervously for their verdict on his handiwork.

"Excellent piece of work," Jack announced straightening up and taking Nicky's chain leash from the Sexton, "neatly and clearly incised. Well done William."

"Now get back you snivelling louse," he snapped cuffing Nicky so hard on the side of the head that the wretched brat already unsteady on his feet stumbled and almost fell. Crouched almost double Nicky scuttled off until checked by the short length of chain attached to his collar. There he hunkered down on his heels his body racked by muffled sobs. Jack cast one contemptuous glance at the miserable slut before turning back to watch William operate on his next young victim leaving Nicky alone in his misery.

The second brat, being by the look of him about eight years old, was a good deal smaller than Nicky. The two police cadets made short work of dragging him to the tree trunk although he screamed and struggled as hard as he could, throwing himself about in a frantic attempt to break their hold on his arms. There he was upended and William scorched the brand mark into the brat's tender flesh with the same skill as he had displayed in branding Nicky while the crowd good-humourdly counted the seconds and the little slut screamed and emptied itself.

"Thanks for waiting till I finished that," William said turning away from the screaming child he had just branded, "can we go and see that slut David having his mouth sown up. I don't want to miss that."

"Certainly," Jack said as the three men laughed together at the boy's enthusiasm. "Perhaps you would like to try your hand at that as well," he added in a teasing tone.

"No fear," William exclaimed in disgust, "sowing is girls' work."

The men laughed even louder.

They made their way down to the pillory accompanied by the crowd of people who had watched the brandings. They were all chatting together, although as the time and place required in quiet reverential tones, there was even some muted laughter. Mark reflected how pleasant it was to have some entertainment after church that all, young and old, could appreciate.

The brats confined in the pillory, hearing the sound of the approaching people and realising that the time was very near when they would pay the penalty for their wicked thieving, began to wail dismally. The sight of the naked line of sluts, their hands and heads held by the pillory only a few inches clear of the ground, their bare bottoms stuck up into the air and their faces contorted with misery and terror, caused an outbreak of laughter among the free boys in the crowd. This was quickly hushed by the grown ups with adjurations to remember where they were and to behave themselves accompanied however by indulgent smiles and a few quickly suppressed chuckles.

The rector's wife came hurrying out of the church carrying a small wicker box with a hinged lid, her smart Sunday dress covered by a full length apron of the sort old fashioned French waiters wear. It had once been white but now it was liberally blotched with the dark rusty brown stains that dried blood leaves. The brats, catching sight of this lady with her sowing box, wailed louder. Three or four peed themselves, pools of amber fluid forming on the paving stones under their kneeling bodies. Others panicked their upraised rumps wriggling desperately as their feet and knees scrabbled at the ground as they fought vainly to pull their wrists and necks free of the pillory.

Ignoring the consternation among the terrified brats the rector's wife smiled sweetly at the crowd of onlookers.

"Mister Henry," she said "how nice to see you back among us. I do hope you will be able to make a longer stay this time. We can do with as many really keen disciplinarians like yourself and Mister Wardle in the Vale as we can get if we are to keep the charity scum in its place."

"I am afraid this is just a fleeting visit Susan," Mister Henry replied regretfully, "I must be off again this evening. I have a plane to catch early tomorrow morning. But could you do me a favour please."

"I am so sorry to hear you are leaving so soon. As for the favour if I can do it I most certainly will."

"Thank you, it's just that you should deal with my brat, this one here," said Mister Henry landing a heavy kick on the side of David's head to indicate that he was the slut he was referring to. "Jack's been kind enough to ask me for lunch and he is in a bit of a hurry to get home."

"Why of course that's no problem at all."

"You," she snapped at the older of the two police cadets, "get this brute's head back so that I can get him done."

The cadet seated himself on David's back and reaching forwards cupped his hands under the boy's chin. He then pulled his head back until it was forced against the upper bar of the pillory.

With a deep sigh Susan lowered herself to her knees.

"I'm not getting any younger," she grumbled as she opened the wicker work sowing basket revealing a number of fine steel needles already threaded with lengths nylon monofillament. "I've told Geoffrey and asked him if we couldn't put the pillory on a platform so I could do the job standing up but he says no. This is the way it has always been done and tradition is so important in the Vale."

As she spoke she took two needles out of the box. Keeping one in her right hand she jabbed the second into the brat's cheek where it lodged ready to hand for future use. Ignoring David's squeal of pain she grabbed his nose between the finger and thumb of her left hand using her middle finger to roll his top lip back. Frowning with concentration she thrust the needle through the middle of David's upper lip drawing the double length of nylon thread through to the knot at its end. As the police cadet fought to hold the boy's head steady she passed the needle through his lower lip. She repeated the process three times and then slowly and carefully drew the stitches tight pulling the boy's lips together. David's full-blooded screams fell away to an indistinct moaning. Blood oozed from the holes pierced in the brat's lips and trickled down his chin. She secured the stitches with a neat knot and taking a pair of scissors from her work-box snipped through the monofillament. She reached out and pulled the second needle out of David's cheek. Starting from the left hand corner of David's mouth she secured his lips together with a series of large rough stitches.

"Twelve of them to do again today," she grumbled as she worked. "The thieving little gits never seem to learn, every Sunday more or less the same number to do. My knees will be giving way before I've finished."

"We tried to get William to offer to give you a hand," Mark said trying to lighten the woman's complaints, "but he said sowing was girl's work."

"If," Jack said hastily seeing that this had not been well received by Susan, "we have charity girls as the Rector suggest the same rules will apply to free girls as now do to free boys. Then maybe you can find a couple of free girls who'd enjoy taking over your job here."

"I don't know about 'if'" Susan said bristling. "When Geoffrey proposes something it generally takes place."

"Any way," she continued more cheerfully, "that one's finished. "Now please get the filthy slut out of here."

The police cadet swung the upper half of the pillory back on its hinges releasing David's neck and wrists. Grabbing the boy by his hair he yanked him upwards. Aided by a well-aimed boot up the bum from Mister Henry, David staggered to his feet. His face was distorted with pain and wet with tears that mingled with the blood that flowed freely from the puncture wounds in his lacerated lips down his chin.

"You can hitch the little sod to the back of my trap with Nicky," Jack said. There's sure to be a spare length of chain to act as a halter in the box. The four mile [6½km] run back to my place will do him good and Mrs. Thomas can put wound powder on his lips."

"Funny though to think he won't be able to scream when she does so his mouth being sown up," Jack added with a chuckle. "He'll certainly want to when the powder gets in the wounds"

"And now we'd better get on."

Mister Henry grabbed David by the arm and swung him round to face down the path away from the church. A hefty clout across the back of the brat's head with the back of his hand set the boy in motion. Jack jerked savagely on Nicky's neck chain. The four adults walked side by side down the path towards the village green apparently oblivious of the rows of kneeling charity brats prostrating themselves as they passed . Behind them stumbled Nicky, still whimpering from the pain of his branding, the mark a raw blemish on the smooth curve of his rump. David was also somewhat unsteady on his feet after his ordeal but Mister Henry, drawing a short but heavy leather strap from his pocket, kept the brat moving with frequent cuts across his bum, the crack of leather against bare flesh providing a rhythmic accompaniment to their walk.

They soon reached the place where the two pairs of pony boys were tethered. They were standing in the hot sunshine their harness clinking from time to time as they shifted uneasily between the shafts of the traps. The flies were clearly tormenting them. Every now and again they would throw up their heads or shrug their shoulders or simply twitch the muscles in their flanks in an effort to get rid of them but the flies still buzzed about them.

Mark wondered what was worse for the pony boys, the summer heat with its flies and thirst or the biting cold of winter. He thought perhaps the latter.

He remembered how one Christmas he had spent at the Manor House when after Midnight Mass they had found snow had fallen during the service. They had come out of church all bundled up against the cold in thick overcoats and gloves and scarves to find the church yard covered in a white carpet that softened the contours of the graves. The sky had cleared and in the soft light of the full moon the path, freshly swept clean by a team of naked, bare footed brats, stretched before them like a bar of black glistening steel. Ignoring the cries of "Happy Christmas Master" from shivering brats kneeling in the snow they hurried down the path to where the pony boys were tethered. They could hear the brutes' teeth rattling against the iron bits and Jack showed him how the mucous dribbling from their noses had formed a smear of frozen liquid on their lips and chins. They had been so numbed with cold that despite vigorous applications of the lash they had been able to do no more than stumble along at a shambling walk for fifteen or so minutes. After that though their circulation began to be restored. Then, encouraged by further touches of the whip and no doubt by the prospect of a return to the comparative warmth of their loose boxes, they picked up speed and finished the journey at a spanking canter, the wheels of the trap crunching crisply over the frozen gravel of the drive.

Over a whisky in the library, as they warmed themselves before a blazing fire, Mark had suggested that in really cold weather pony boys could be indulged with a blanket as they would be if they were ordinary ponies. Jack had rejected the proposal out of hand. Nothing he said, and no doubt he was right, would be gained by molly-coddling the beasts.

The truth though was he suspected that the brats' minds did not work like that at all. They did not dread either the heat of summer or the winter cold. Trapped from early boyhood in their blinkered, largely silent worlds, they simply suffered and endured. Indeed that was all they could do. They had no choice. Their days were periods of exhausting labour broken by intervals of total inaction. At one moment, urged on by cracks of the whip, they were running full tilt, straining at the traces of their harness, with aching legs and bursting lungs. The next they were standing idly between the shafts of the trap their knowledge of the world about them limited to the feel of the sun or the cold wind or the freezing rain against their bare skin. They did not know from one moment to the next what would be required of them. They would only learn that from the sting of the whip on their backs or the pull of the bit in their mouths.

As they drew level with the traps the pony boys sensing their presence stirred and shifted apparently readying themselves for action.

"Mark, if you would follow me this time," Jack said clipping Nicky's leash to the back of his trap before turning his attention to finding a length of chain with which to secure David in a similar way. "Be ready to ginger these two brutes up with your lash if they show signs of being a drag on the trap. They should both be able to cover the ground a good deal faster than the pony boys not having the trap to draw. But you know what lazy little turds charity brats are. They'll probably try and use what's just been done to them as an excuse to play up. As though a branding or a lip sowing is any excuse for idleness"

"Peter, you ride with me of course."

Mister Henry stepped up into the passenger seat of the trap. Jack paused to swat a horse fly on one of his pony brat's bare shoulders before untying the reigns from the hitching rail.

"I wish I could have a go driving the brats," Angela said wistfully as she prepared to get up into the second trap. "It must be really exciting whipping the brats up to a full gallop and controlling them with the bit."

"Dear lady," Jack said with all the old fashioned courtesy that came naturally to him, "of course you can take the reigns. It is a pleasure to be able to grant your wish. I just regret it is something so trivial as the opportunity to lay the lash across the shoulders of a couple of pony brats."

Saying this he jumped up into his trap where he was joined by Mister Henry. He waited till Angela and Mark were safely seated in the second carriage and then with a click of his tongue and a flick with the tip of his whip he set the light cart in motion. Angela fearful that she would be left behind slashed hard at the bare shoulders of the two boys harnessed to the shafts of her trap. The brats, galvanised by the bite of the lash, lunged forward. Mark had to grab the reigns and haul back sharply on them to stop the brats bolting and running into Nicky and David who were stumbling painfully along tethered to the rear of the lead cart.

"Sorry," Angela said, "I'll get the hang of it in a minute. Anyway if those two idle brutes had just moved themselves a bit it wouldn't have mattered."

To cover her embarrassment she cracked the whip viciously across David and Nicky's backs. The two boys, their hands pinioned behind their backs, dragged along in the wake of the cart to which they were tied by chains attached to their collars and urged forward by the cruel snap of the lash managed to break into a stumbling run. Angela seeing her chance raised the pace of her two pony boys with a rather less vigorous application of the whip than her initial one. She recovered the reigns from Mark and soon she had the trap bowling briskly along.

"This is fun," she said raising her voice to be heard above the rattle of the wheels the clink of the harness and the soft thudding of the brats' bare feet pounding along the metalled road.

"Yes indeed," Mark replied. He glanced at the backs of the two pony boys, their deeply tanned skins glistening with sweat and ribbed the livid welts raised by the lash, every muscle in their young lithe bodies tensed and working as they strained at the traces. Then he turned his eyes to the girl sitting beside him upright in the drivers seat, the long handled whip in her right hand, the reigns, held easily in her left, the breeze ruffling hair blond hair, a half smile on her lips. How pretty she looked he thought, how happy too and relaxed. It was amazing how confidently she handled the charity brats, no hesitation, no embarrassment, no signs of self-doubt, just an apparently effortless exertion of authority. How very lucky he was to have her.

They drew up under the porte-cochere at the manor house and two serving brats ran out to hold the pony boys' bridles. Mrs Thomas, the housekeeper, came hurrying out of the house to meet them.

"Could you take these two brats away," Jack said indicating Nicky and David who were standing still tethered to the back of his trap, panting and sweating after their long run in the heat of the sun, "and generally clean them up. Slap some ointment on Nicky's brand. The other slut has had its mouth sown up so wash the dried blood off and treat any open wounds with wound powder. Bring them both back when that's been done."

"Yes certainly Sir. I suppose this one," Mrs Thomas prodded David in the thigh with her forefinger, "had been caught thieving food."

"Yes absolutely right," Mister Henry said heartily. "I caught the ghastly little sewer rat down on the floor gobbling up the cat's food and when I finished thrashing him and told him I was sending him to have his mouth sutured he started to cry and say he was hungry!" Mister Henry laughed angrily at the memory of the brat's insolence.

"Well I was wondering Sir, if you have no further use for him for the moment, if I couldn't get him to carry round the iced water jug after I've cleaned him up. It is promising to be a very hot day and our guests will all be glad of a cold drink from time to time. It will be good for the brat as well. He must be very thirsty already after running in the hot sun. He can reflect, as the ice clinks in the jug and as the agony of his thirst increases, that he will have to wait two full days before the stitches are taken out and he is able to drink again."

"What possible use could I have for that miserable lump of dog's shit?" Mister Henry asked genuinely puzzled and then continued. "Be that as it may I think yours is an excellent suggestion. Perhaps if his sufferings are sufficiently severe it will get through to him that he must obey the rules. I doubt it though, the stupid tyke is as thick as a brick and as stubborn as a mule."

Mister Henry vented his well justified rage and frustration with the slut by booting him so hard up the arse that he was lifted bodily from the floor.

"Now about my nephew, Daniel. Mrs Thomas," Jack Wardle said, "I asked you to let me know how he was getting on after Mister Legg so kindly and, if I may say so, so expertly corrected our dear Rector's wife's botched circumcision."

"Why Sir he's healed very well. There's hardly any inflammation now where Mister Legg cut his foreskin and I've got to say I've never seen a neater job or a cut made closer to the rod. And I took the stitches out of his bottom this morning up at the brat's surgery so you wouldn't be disturbed by his screams and that's mended very well too. You'd hardly know he'd been torn."

"And the tongue Mrs Thomas, how has that turned out?" Jack enquired.

"Why Sir you know the stupid slut half bit through it in the agony of being penetrated by Mister Legg. Of course you do Sir, you cauterised it yourself," Mrs Thomas laughed at her own foolishness in forgetting this. "Well I discovered when checking it that unfortunately somehow the useless runt had bitten into it quite deeply for a second time. Deep enough to have his teeth catch in the cut if things were left as they were. So I cut it back, tidying it up as it were and cauterised it again. It's healed well but there's some scar tissue. You can see for yourself Sir if you want. I left him in the hall because I didn't know if you'd want to be bothered with him when you've got guests coming."

"It's not a question of wanting Mrs Thomas, I have a duty to the charity boys in my care that I must discharge particularly when it concerns the future of my nephew. I will see him now."

"Daniel you misbegotten lump of dog's shit," Mrs Thomas screamed in tones very unlike the deferential ones she used to her employer, "come here this instant and don't keep your kind and loving Uncle waiting."

A small naked figure dashed out of the house and hurled itself on to its knees on the flag-stoned floor of the porte-cochere its head pressed to the ground at Jack Wardle's feet. Mark had seen boys throw themselves down to slide on their knees but that was on floors of polished wood and they had been wearing trousers. He wondered how badly Daniel had torn himself. Looking down at the boys huddled and trembling body he thought he could see blood beginning to seep out over the flagstones from under his knees.

"Stand up this instance," Jack roared, "how can I look at your ugly carcass when you're down on the ground like that."

Mrs Thomas, who was best placed for the purpose, lashed out with her foot at Daniel's bottom. As the boy scrambled hurriedly to his feet she lashed him hard across his bottom with a heavy leather strap that appeared as though by magic in her hand. Mark reflected on how the inhabitants of the Vale always seemed to have ready to hand some instrument to encourage and motivate the charity boys in their care.

He noticed too how well schooled Daniel was, for although clearly terrified by being the centre of attention of so many of his betters, he nevertheless automatically adopted the stance required of a charity boy in such a situation. He stood, head bowed, his hands open and down by the side of his thighs, legs flexed his left foot slightly advanced. His whole attitude signalling submission and a readiness to do his master's bidding. The only thing that detracted from his implicit offer of service was the way his knees were shaking. The brat Mark realised was almost paralysed with fear.

Jack Wardle though, with his long experience of handling charity boys, made no effort to calm his nephew's panic. He knew that fear made a brat, just like any other animal, obedient and hardworking and he had no intention of loosening the bonds of terror that held Daniel and all his naked and half starved companions in bondage. However Jack also knew it was pointless to demand the impossible. The basic skill in managing charity stock was to know the most a boy driven hard could do and to require that and no more from the brat.

He therefore did not waste time trying to order the panic-stricken child about. Instead, standing carefully to one side so that his clothes would not be soiled if Daniel lost control of his bladder, he grabbed the boy by the jaw twisting his head to the light and forcing his mouth open.

"A neat job," Jack said approvingly. "Mark come here and have a look. You see, just a bit of scar tissue. No bad thing that, just think of having your cock licked by it. Put your finger in and see what it feels like."

Mark stepped close up to the naked boy and peered into his gaping mouth. He could see that the tip of his tongue had been cut off and thin flecks of scar tissue had formed along its severed end. He put his finger in Daniel's mouth and touched the end of his foreshortened tongue with it, feeling it warm and soft to the touch with a tantalising hint of roughness as if the tender flesh had here and there been speckled with minute fish scales.

He was about to withdraw his finger when to his amazement he felt Daniel's tongue begin to move against it. Startled he looked down into Daniel's face and saw the blank look of panic fade from his eyes and be replaced with something more knowing and exciting.

"You can see," Jack's voice held just a hint of amusement, "that the scar where you tidied up his foreskin has healed well too."

Glancing down at Daniel's little boy's cock Mark could saw that the slut had suddenly achieved the fiercest of erections.

"The soreness appears to have quite gone," Jack remarked, his voice still sounding as if he was enjoying a secret joke, as he rolled the small hard rod of swollen flesh between his finger and thumb. "You better check it Mark as you made the cut."

Mark took the brat's small but swollen prick in his hand. Then all at once the boy's head went back, his eyes glazed and his mouth gaped open. A half moan was wrenched from the slut's heaving chest as he thrust his hips forward and his cock jumped and surged in Mark's grip. A warm damp sticky fluid filled the palm of Mark's hand and dribbled from between his fingers.

Mark released his hold of the child's now shrivelled member and glanced down at his hand seeing it wet with clear young boy's juice.

There was the sharp crack of leather striking boy's flesh followed almost immediately by a shrill squeal of pain.

"You revolting little whore," Mrs Thomas screamed, "can't you control you're your filthy urges you nasty little brute."

Daniel's face was contorted in a grimace of exaggerated contrition and self disgust as he uttered a stream of strange slurred sounds which had some slight similarity to human speech. Mark thought he recognised a couple of "sorries" and three or four "sirs" among the strange babble of sound and realised the brat was struggling to express his repentance handicapped by the loss of part of his tongue. As the boy's distress and desperation increased the sounds grew shriller and louder and spittle began to dribble from the corner of his wildly contorted lips.

The stream of hysterical nonsense was ended by another explosive crack of leather hitting naked boy and a second howl of pain as Mrs Thomas lashed out again with the strap.

"You'd better put a cock ring on the little tart fast Mrs Thomas," Jack said at last allowing himself to laugh out loud, "or else he'll be squirting his boy juice everywhere when ever Mister Legg looks at him."

"This quite often happens Mark," he continued still chuckling, "if a man is, as it were, working with the grain of the boy when he penetrates a slut for the first time, especially if he is a bit rough with the brat. It's not love, that's a higher emotion of which a brute like Daniel is incapable. I suppose that the excitement he felt with your cock up his bum combined with the pain lit some sort of fire in his guts that the sight of you always rekindles. I'm afraid the language is a bit high flown to use describing the way the mind of a grubby little animal like him works. The consequence is that he's like a bitch in heat but only interested in one dog."

As Jack spoke he moved round Daniel and placing a hand between the boy's shoulder blades pushed so that the lad bent forward. He slapped the boy on the inside of one thigh to get him to spread his legs.

"His hole's healed well," he remarked approvingly. "You'd hardly known he was torn there."

"Young flesh," Mrs Thomas remarked as she squatted in front of Daniel tightening the jubilee style cock ring round his genitals.

"And his hole is very clean too."

"Ah that was young Tommy,"

Mrs Thomas jerked sharply on the cock ring checking it was tight enough making Daniel squeak in protest.

"I got him to do that before I gave him the thrashing you ordered Mister Legg. I think the slut thought I might let him off lightly if he made an especially good job of it." The house-keeper laughed at the unrealistic expectations of the young. "I've never seen a slut lick away so eagerly or get his tongue deeper than Tommy did."

"How many strokes did you give him in the end?" asked Mark curiously.

"Twelve Sir."

"But I put him down for just six," Mark said laughing to show he was not finding fault with the excellent woman.

"I know Sir but I think you were unduly lenient with the brat. It's not simply that he didn't get on with his work tidying the room and so on while you and Miss Thompson," Mark had to think for a couple of seconds before he worked out that Mrs Thomas was referring to Angela, " were enjoying yourselves but he should have done much more than that. The slut's primary task job is to give pleasure to Mister Wardle's guests. He knows that very well and when he saw the pair of you together he should have tried to find a way to increase your pleasure not just stood there gaping."

"Quite right," Jack Wardle agreed enthusiastically, "the the brat has been given one of the easiest jobs on the estate, its not as though he's working naked in the fields up to his knees in mud in the freezing rain or labouring eighteen hours a day in one of Mister Patel's factories. All the little whore's got to do is what comes naturally to such filth, use his body to give pleasure to his betters. Don't tell me he doesn't enjoy being fucked. They all do. Well his only qualifications are a pretty face and a nice round boy's bottom and there are plenty others like him. If he doesn't learn fast I'll send him to work on the farm and get another brat who can show rather more enthusiasm and initiative."

"To be fair to the boy," Mark said rather hesitantly, "Angela and I were fully absorbed in each other. I can't really have seen what he could have done."

"For God's sake," Jack exploded, "He's got soft lips and a quick tongue there's no end of things he could have done with them to tease and encourage you both. I think he should be given twenty four hours in the cage without food to think his future over and then one last chance."

"Very good Sir," Mrs Thomas said and her tone of voice indicated she approved of her employer's decision.

"We won't have that problem with you will we boy?" Jack his inspection of Daniel's hole completed gave the lad a resounding open handed slap on his bare rump.

Another flood of unintelligible sounds came from Daniel but the eagerness in his voice and the way his little twig like cock stiffened and jerked upright despite the ring clamped tight round it's and the lad's hairless ball sack's roots told their own story.

"Well Angela, Mark," Jack spoke lightly, resting his hand on the curve of his nephew's bottom, "this brat is Anne and my engagement present to you both. We know how much you both enjoy life in the Vale and we thought you would like to take a memento of it away with you. I have had a word with the manager of the dhss Office in Muggleton, a most helpful official, and he has produced papers certifying the brat as mentally defective and uneducable. Something anyone will believe who has heard the garbage that comes out of his mouth when he tries to talk. As a consequence he will be available for your use and service all the time. You will even get incapacity benefit for him so you'll make a bit of money as well. When you get tired of him just bring him back here and we'll sort out a replacement for him from what's available."

Mark glanced quickly at Angela and seeing her nod of approval launched into a speech of gratitude and acceptance.

"That's really uncommonly kind of you Jack, Angela and I very much appreciate……"

"Good heavens man," Jack said breaking in and laughing, "don't make such a fuss. It's only a slut after all, two a dozen. Glad to find someone to take the little brute in, just take the whip to him at the slightest sign of any nonsense. Now perhaps we'd better be getting round to the stable yard and seeing if Merlin and Lucifer are ready. Mrs Thomas, could you ask Mister Oblonsky to bring the pony-girls straight round there when he arrives. And send the other guests round too. We'll watch the girls being serviced, the boys will enjoy that, before we have lunch."

Chapter 17

They set off to walk round the house, the traps rattling along behind them, a couple of serving sluts leading the two teams of sweating pony-boys. Glancing back Mark saw Daniel standing disconsolately alone looking wistfully after him. Mark crooked his finger and the brat smiling happily, trotted eagerly after them, his erect cock wobbling as he ran.

The stable yard, although it was a Sunday was as usual a hive of activity. A string of twelve pony boys were being brought in from a spell on the gallops at the top of the downs, their harnesses clinking, skin slicked with sweat, restlessly throwing their heads back to try to shake off the flies that plagued them. A couple of young boys were being schooled by grooms in the exercise paddock on lunge reigns. One of them could not have been more than six years old and was being taught the high stepping gait required of a pony boy, the groom using his long handled whip to flick him mercilessly on the back of his thighs to force him to lift his knees. Jack lent his elbows on the yard rails to watch. Mark joining him saw that small rivulets of blood were beginning to trickle down the back of the brat's legs, already firmed by countless hours of exercise, where the lash had broken his skin.

"He's very young," Angela commented.

"Best time to start training them," Mister Henry remarked.

"Yes indeed," Jack agreed, "in two years time that gait will come naturally to him. Then I'll pick out another brat for his partner and they'll be trained together. By the time they're strong enough to be put between the shafts of a racing trap at twelve years or so they'll be moving as one."

"I'd start them earlier if I could but I find younger than six a brat just doesn't have the strength in his legs to do more than three hours schooling at a time, even using the whip. I get quite a few boys offered to me much younger but I tell their parents I won't take them till six and the best thing before then is simply to toughen them up. Don't spoil them, don't over feed them, keep them naked, don't let them in the house, and don't spare the strap."

Mark could only wonder, as he had done often in the past, at the attention Jack and his fellows lavished on the charity boys placed in their care. To devote six years to training a pony boy who once trained would give at the most five years service was a measure of the seriousness with which they took their responsibilities.

At that moment Anne Wardle joined them from the house bringing with her the party from the old gamekeeper's cottage and the two Smythe boys.

"Ah Mary and Brian," said Jack greeting the Roberts's, "we've had young Nicky branded. Mrs Thomas, my housekeeper is just cleaning him up. He'll be collected later by Mister Adams and then you'll be finally rid of the little brute."

"We're so grateful to you Jack," Mary Roberts said. "The sooner the runt is gone the better. Apart from anything else it's not fair to Adam. I'd never forgive myself if I knew Adam had been corrupted by contact with the evil little tyke, or Brenda and John's three boys either."

"We really admire the firm principled way you have dealt with Nicky," John Thompson said. "We are keeping a close eye on our three and I can tell you if any of them show the slightest sign of moral degeneracy we'll offer him to the trustees as a charity boy so Tommy, Neal, Peter you've been warned."

The three boys looked serious and frightened, as well they should be, knowing that at nine, seven and six respectively one lapse in their conduct would lead to their coming under the protection of old Hiram's trustees.

"From what I've seen of the boys they're fine spirited young fellows," Jack said heartily, "but I tell you what. I've told Mrs Thomas to sort out half a dozen sluts and clean them up for William and young Stefan Oblonsky to take their pick of after lunch, as I promised I would last night. I'll tell her to make it eighteen of assorted sizes and then all the boys can take their pick and we'll see how they manage them. You can tell a lot about a boy's character from how he treats the brats; any softness, lack of authority, confidence or other weakness quickly shows up. That's why I know that there's nothing wrong with young Adam. Look at the way he fucked that tart Nicky last night despite his screaming and his hole being torn and bleeding."

"Is there any chance my having a turn with Nicky again this morning Sir?" Adam asked eagerly, "before he's taken away."

"No I'm afraid not Adam," Jack replied laughing and tousling the boy's hair. "He's all clean now and I want to keep him that way but I'm sure we'll find another slut for you who is just as good to fuck or even better."

"Now," continued Jack, "I see Lucifer and Merlin are being brought out. I must check them over before Mister Oblonsky arrives."

"Tom," he called to the groom who had just appeared leading the two pony boys from the gloom of the stables, "bring them over here please."

Mark watched Merlin and Lucifer being led towards them. On strong young legs they pranced along, lifting their knees high, the sun glistening on their burnished bodies; two healthy young animals full of energy and life. Nobody would have guessed that they had run thirteen gruelling miles [21km] in the full heat of the sun the previous day dragging behind them a racing trap. As they approached nearer though Mark could see that the ordeal had left its mark. He could see the raw furrows in their flesh where the traces had galled them, the livid scar across Lucifer's right cheek where the steel bit had torn his mouth and the scorch marks on their legs from where they had been forced to brave the wall of fire. No doubt Mark thought the pony boys' shoulders and flanks were also still bore the marks of the lash so vigorously applied by young Richard Smythe in the last glorious dash for the finishing post. Yet, he reflected, the fact that the brats could walk at all, let alone move so freely and so easily was proof of the benefits of the care lavished on them over the years by Jack Wardle. Only boys who had experienced the benefit of being reared in the tough and wholesome manner prescribed for pauper children in the Vale of Dingle would have recovered so quickly.

In view of the services soon to be required of the two boys Mark's eyes naturally focused on their genitals. The boys being, as always, naked with their hands manacled behind their backs there was nothing to obstruct his view. He knew the brats' bodies had been shaved of all hair the previous day preparatory to their running in the race for the Corvo Cup and there was no way for him to tell whether their currently hairless condition was natural or not. However the size of their genitals, admittedly lifted and squeezed forward by their tightly clamped cock rings, suggested that they were good breeding stock.

Blinkered, as pony boys always were outside their stables, the two lads as they were led nearer nevertheless seemed to sense the presence of their protector. Throwing their heads back they uttered a series of high whinnying squeals more animal than human in nature. Brought before Jack Wardle they stood shifting uneasily from foot to foot, waiting, not knowing what the future held for them, trembling in expectation of his touch.

Jack reached forward and took hold of Merlin's balls. The boy started and squealed.

"Steady, steady," Jack said and the boy quietened almost immediately, reassured by the tone of his master's voice for his pierced ear drums would have prevented him from hearing anything more.

Jack hefted the lad's balls, so much larger and heavier than the small marble sized things that the younger sluts sported, weighing them in the palm of his hand.

"You kept the cock ring on him all night Tom?" he asked the groom.

"Certainly Sir," Tom replied, "and niether of the brutes were allowed to squirt for the fortnight before either Sir cos we knew they was to be run in the Corvo cup."

Mark knew that it was the custom to deny pony boys sexual release for some weeks before a big race on the basis that that this made them more focused and aggressive in their running.

Well excellent," Jack said cheerfully, "I reckon there's plenty of boy juice in there what do you think Anne?"

Anne in her turn cupped the boy's balls in the palm of her hand. First weighing them and rolling them between her fingers.

Watching her Mark reflected how well matched she and Jack were. The same no nonsense approach to the care of the pauper brats put in their charge. The same practical pragmatic approach to their rearing and use.

Hardly had Jack and Anne completed their assessment of the two pony boys' breeding potential than Ivan Oblonsky's silver grey Mercedes towing a tall sided trailer drew up at the side of the yard. Nothing could be seen through its darkened windows but then a uniformed figure got quickly out of the car from the driver's seat and hurried round to open the front passenger's door. He snapped to attention and saluted as Oblonsky emerged from the darkened interior. At the same time Stefan's slim figure burst from one of the rear doors while a small wiry little man got out more slowly from the opposite side of the car. The ten year old boy was quite naked and Mark reflected how quickly the newcomers were adapting to the ways of the Vale. Only the previous night the boy was embarrassed to be required to strip for the lash now he was running about naked as if he was a free boy born and bred in the Vale.

Jack hurried over to greet his guests.

"My dear fellow so glad you could come," he said heartily shaking Oblonsky's hand.

"The pleasure is all ours," the Russian plutocrat replied in heavily accented English. "I am sure you will remember Stefan my son from last night and this," he continued indicating the small wiry man, "is Doctor Werner who used to be Medical Superindendent of the East German Gymnastic team and now provides me with invaluable advice and expertise in training my racing bitches."

"Delighted to meet you," Jack said taking the German's hand, who clicked his heels and bowed. "I hope your stay among us will be a happy one."

"Thank you. I find your customs here very much to my taste and I hope I shall be able to play a useful role in your delightful community especially since I understand from my good friend Ivan that you are extending your enlightened treatment of your pauper boys to include girls also."

"Doctor Werner is full of ingenious ideas as to how the girls could best be managed in the charity contest," Ivan Oblonsky said sounding positively proud of his Teutonic friend's accomplishments. "But that reminds me Stefan fetch from the box our gift for our good hostess."

Stefan trotted off to the back of the Mercedes' trailer. Assisted by the chauffeur he lowered the ramp that formed the back of the box. He disappeared inside the box to reappear a few second later followed by a naked black girl of about his own age. Their nakedness and their age were though the only two things they had in common. A glance was enough to see that otherwise a great gulf divided them. Stefan moved with all the grace and spirit of a young free boy proud confident of his own worth. The girl's attitude in contrast breathed fear and submission. She did not need the collar round her neck or the cuffs securing her wrists behind her back to make clear to all her servile status. Her bowed head, her stumbling gait were enough.

Mark could see that the child was very much out of the same mould as the pony girls. Long legged and aquiline featured she had the same straight black hair and jet black skin. A few years younger than the other girls her body was softer and less pared down to pure muscle and bone than theirs. Yet she was by no means fat or even plump and there was little to distinguish her from a boy of her own age except the slit between her legs and a slight swelling of the breasts. The latter not enough in itself to determine her sex but taken with the slit another confirmation of her femininity.

As she drew nearer Mark's eye was caught by a glint of metal between her legs. The lips of her vagina had been pierced and two small golden rings had been inserted. A tiny padlock of the same metal secured them together.

Stefan led the girl up to his father and then stepped to one side. She stood head bowed, not even daring to steal a glance at those about her, trembling slightly, waiting to know what her fate was to be.

"Anne," said Oblonsky, "I noticed how taken you were with those two racing bitches of mine and I thought you might like this little slut. Her name is Buttercup."

"That is so very kind of you Ivan," Anne replied her pleasure at the gift clear from the tone of her voice, "but it is too generous……"

"Nonsense Anne," Oblonsky interrupted, "it is not generous at all. There are I assure you plenty more where this one came from. Not every bitch is suitable for training as racing stock and I keep ten or so of the best quality from each years intake for my own pleasure. This one hasn't been used yet. I personally don't like them much under thirteen years."

"She understands English," he added as an after thought. "That is the language in which the bitches are trained. It's the language the good Doctor Werner and I have in common."

His voice changed.

"Buttercup you worthless little whore," he snapped, "get down on yours knees to your new mistress."

In an instant the girl dropped to her knees and pressed her forehead to the ground at Anne's feet.

"There you are Anne," Oblonsky said prodding Buttercup's up turned bottom none too gently with the toe of his shoe, "the slut's yours if you want her."

Anne Wardle stood for a full minute in silence looking down at the naked girl crouched trembling at her feet. Then she spoke her voice soft and carressingly sweet.

"Well my pet," she said almost cooing, "stand up and let me look at you my little love."

Reassured by the tone the woman's voice the little black girl scrambled to her feet, a sudden smile splitting her dark face with a gleam of white.

"There child," Anne continued in the same soft voice, her hands exploring the girl's body as she spoke, "there I am sure we will be good friends you and I when we get to know each other."

Anne parted the child's hair to examine her scalp, pulled back her ears to check the skin behind them, rolled back her eyelids, pulled back her lips and forced open her jaw, all the time as her fingers probed and explored keeping up the same soft sweet murmur. But despite this Mark saw the smile slowly fade from the girl's face as a look of alarm and unease replaced it.

Anne's hands reached the child's chest, stroking and squeezing her breasts, hardly more developed than a boy's of the same age. Smiling slightly she took one of the girl's small pink red nipples between her finger and thumb and squeezed viciously. For the first time the child made a sound, a small sound, something between a moan and a sob.

"Don't make a fuss you silly," Anna chided her. "You're going to feel much, much worse than that my love."

Anne's hands continued their journey down the child's body, strong white fingers prodding and probing oiled and glistening black skin.

"What's this for?" Anne enquired flicking the little gold padlock that secured the two rings set in the lips of the girl's vagina.

"Please Miss," the child began but was silenced by a back handed slap across the mouth that rocked her back on her heels.

"Shut up bitch," Anne raged all softness gone from her voice. "I wasn't talking to you slut. You'll have to do better than that if you don't want the skin flayed from your rump you ignorant whore."

"It serves a purpose very similar to the cock rings on your charity boys," Oblonsky intervened smoothly. "They're just the same really, all scum and totally without self control and morally debased. If we didn't take action to prevent it they'd spend all their time masturbating themselves the filthy sluts. The serving girls, and Buttercup is one of them, I have ringed and padlocked so that prevents them indulging in self abuse but still allows me access if I should wish it. The pony girls I have secured with a single iron ring passed through their labia minora, a practice followed by the Roman's with their female slaves to avoid unauthorised breeding. Of course the disadvantage is that if I want them serviced, as the two bitches are to be today, I have to have the rings broken with pliers. Anyway the arrangement is much simpler and cheaper than a chastity belt"

"Well," Anne enquired, "is there a key to give me access to this little purse of delights?"

"Of course dear lady," Oblonsky said with old fashioned courtesy, "it goes with possession of the slut."

He took from his pocket a key ring and selecting a small key handed it to Anne, who, bending forward unfastened the tiny padlock. The child whimpered and a shivered of excitement passed through her small frame.

"So you're a hot little whore are you?" Anne enquired pushing the butt of her hand hard against the child's pubenda.

The girl mumbled incoherently, wriggling her hips and thrusting them forward, pressing back against the woman's hand. Anne smiled contemptuously and ran the tip of her finger along the girl's slit. Mark noticed a small dribble of saliva forming at a corner of the child's mouth.

"Open yourself bitch," Oblonsky commanded harshly, "let your mistress see inside you."

Obediently the girl took hold of the two rings in either hand and pulled her vagina lips back. Moaning with excitement she pushed her hips further forward. Anne though pulled her finger back, ringing a whimper of frustration and disappointment from the child.

"Why," Anne remarked as she bent forward to examine the child's opened bottom, "surely something has been done to the slut."

"Yes, yes," Doctor Werner replied, "you noticed eh? A little procedure I do to all the tarts selected as serving sluts. A clitoridotomy…… I just split the clitoral head. It makes the little bitches more responsive to sexual stimulation and increases their frustration when their slits are padlocked."

Mark glancing at the naked black girl, the subject of this discussion, standing silent, head bowed, with her hands holding her slit open by the rings set in the lips of her vagina as was surprised to see tears glistening on her cheeks. Why, he wondered, was the child crying. Nobody was hurting her at that moment and such creatures were surely below feeling shame.

"What an ingenious arrangement," Anne remarked admiringly, apparently oblivious and certainly uncaring of the sluts distress.

"Doctor Werner is a most ingenious man." Oblonsky interposed proudly. "He came up with the cleverest solution to a problem I had with those pony girls of mine. The difficulty only occurred to me after I had agreed to your excellent suggestion Jack that they should be put to your two pony boys to breed. The disgusting sluts would undoubtedly enjoy being mounted by two such vigorous young brutes. It wouldn't matter to them that they were serviced in public before a crowd of onlookers, they are after all no better than animals. But they had lost the race for me and they should get no pleasure or enjoyment as a consequence of that. It would breed quite the wrong attitude in them and the other stock I have in training. So I put the problem to my good friend here and… Werner, my dear chap, explain to our friends the elegant solution you found for our little problem."

"Oh it was the simplest thing," Doctot Werner said modestly, "I just removed their clitoris's, a simple clitoridectomy. It didn't take a second, just a nick with scalpel and the job was done. They'll still be very sore today and no doubt they'll both squeal like stuck pigs when the boy's are mounting them. They certainly won't get any pleasure from that. But even better," the little German continued, obviously taking pride in his own cleverness, "it will ensure they will get little or no pleasure from sex in the future and since that is about the only pleasure the brutes are capable of experiencing I think their fate will encourage the rest of the sluts to try harder."

"Perhaps," Jack interposed, "as you mentioned the matter it is time we go on and had the two bitches serviced. Otherwise we will be late for lunch."

"Certainly, certainly," Oblonsky replied, "Stefan get the two pony girls from the brat box straight away now."

"Chairs," Jack shouted imperiously. A gaggle of charity brats appeared with canvas directors' chairs and set them on the grass. Jack grabbed two of the sluts, one naked, the other sporting a ragged pair threadbare shorts clearly originally designed for a considerably smaller boy, by the scruffs of their necks.

"I'll have some more work for you two little rats later," he growled. He made sure they stayed still by slamming their heads together so hard that when he loosed his grip they both gave way at the knees and collapsed on to their bottoms.

Laughing heartily at the incident, so typical of the unrehearsed spontaneous moments of comedy that made life in the Vale so entertaining, the adults settled themselves on the chairs. The free boys, in the manner of their kind, sat down on the ground at their feet chattering excitedly among themselves.

Anne reached out and pulled Buttercup down onto her knees. She reached round the girl and placing her hands on the inside of the child's thighs, eased them apart.

It did not seem to Mark that the girl needed any particular urging to adopt this position.

Sliding her right hand higher Anne let it rest on the slut's pubenda. Buttercup's head went back, her eye's glazed over as she thrust her pelvis forward against the palm of her mistresses hand. Mark watched Anne as she crooked her index finger pressing it down between the lips of her little maid's slit.

"How about using our Daniel?" Angela suggested. "The scar tissue at the end of his tongue would I am sure give the bitch an extra thrill."

Mark could only wonder at the speed with which his fiancée had adapted to the ways of the Vale and to congratulate himself on choosing for his wife a woman with so lively and inventive mind.

"What a good idea Darling," he exclaimed, "but what does Anne think. The girl is after all hers."

"I think it's an excellent idea," Anne replied.

"Good Daniel you misbegotten little rat come here," Mark snapped.

Grabbing Daniel by the scruff of his neck he kicked the brat's legs from under him. The boy crashed to the ground on his knees between the girl's widely spread thighs.

"What the hell are you waiting for boy? Get your face right in there and your tongue up her slit," Mark shouted.

Daniel made the mistake of hesitating for a fraction of a second. A cane appeared as if by magic in Angela's hand. There was a rich sibilant hiss as the the rod descended followed by a sharp crack as it cut down across the boy's bottom raising a fresh scarlet wheal across the smooth brown flesh. Mark was fairly sure Daniel's hesitation was due not to any reluctance to obey but rather to the unfamiliarity of the task required of him. However hesitation for any reason was not to be tolerated from pauper brats and the boy had got what he deserved.

Mark wrinkled his nose in amused contempt as he looked down on Daniel's fair head pressed between the girl's firm black thighs. Obscene damp slurping sounds came from where his face was buried in the little whores crutch as the girl squirmed and whimpered in excitement on her mistresses lap.

Only pauper brats, Mark reflected, would be so depraved as to behave like that in public. No free boy or girl would do so. Only debased brutes, more animal than human, would be so lacking in modesty and self respect. You only had to look at the two sluts, boy and girl, consumed and ruled by their own foul lusts to realise how essential it was that the iron rule exercised over the charity scum should be continue to be maintained with unabated severity. Otherwise they would corrupt the very society that protected them and gave some sort of purpose to their miserable existence. Although he reflected, as he watched their lewd antics, it was unreasonable to expect them to behave in any other way. Dogs and other animals copulate in public. Why should pauper brats behave in any other way?

There was a clink of harness. Looking up Mark saw Stefan leading the two pony girls, naked and blinkered, their hands tethered behind their backs, towards the exercise ring. It was clear that the girls had been roughly treated although black skin of course does not mark as easily as white. None of the dark bruises that would have shown up so clearly on lighter skinned brats were apparent but numerous swellings and abrasions showed where blows had landed and the skin of their burnished ebony bodies were scored with rusty red lines where the lash had drawn blood.

Despite this the girls still retained the distinctive high stepping gate of their kind and tossing their heads fought against young Stefan's hold on their bridles. Despite their struggles the boy hung grimly on to their cheek straps, urging them forward. The slim blond boy fighting to control the two sturdy pony girls who towered over him on either side seemed to Mark to be an allegory for the Vale of Dingle where the brutish scum was curbed and held in check by the courage and will of the moral elite.

Oblonsky stepped forward to take one of the bitches from his son. The girl recognising her master's touch instantly stopped her struggles and stood trembling nervously. With a sharp back handed crack across her glistening black rump Oblonsky urged her to the rails surrounding the exercise ring. Slipping his right hand under the back of her collar he forced her forward bending her over the top rail. Pushing his left hand between her legs he boosted her upwards so that her feet were clear of the floor and she rested on her stomach across the wooden bar, her bottom exposed. He unshackled her wrists and quickly stretching her arms wide apart secured them to the bottom rail of the fence. When he had done this also to her ankles Oblonsky turned his attention to securing the second pony girl in place.

Meanwhile Jack with his genius for involving the young in his activities had, once Stefan was freed from his charge of the pony girls, had invited him and William Smythe to help him prepare Merlin and Lucifer.

Mark smiled to see the seriousness with which the two boys, under Jack's supervision, worked at greasing the pony boys' cocks. Merlin and Lucifer shifting and whinnying in excitement as the free lads, frowning with concentration, smeared their charges erect members with Vaseline, occasionally breaking off to thrust their fingertips hard up behind the brutes' balls when it seemed they were in danger of ejaculating. The earnestness with which William and Stefan undertook their task and the care they exercised in seeing the pony boys did not come to a premature crisis, was no doubt increased by Jack's loudly announced promise to flog the pair of them within an inch of their lives if they permitted the brutes to spill a drop of seed before mounting the bitches. A promise that had the dual benefit of reminding all the free boys present that they were, despite their many privileges, subject to a rigorous and healthy discipline and raising a tremor of excited anticipation among the adults present at the possibility of watching two such handsome boys being thrashed.

It was clear anyway that, quite apart from the prospect of this added bonus, the grown-ups were already in a state of high excitement. The two black girls bent over the rail their legs spread trussed ready to be mounted, the pony boys, erect and eager with the two free lads busy oiling their swollen cocks, all naked, young, and in peak physical condition were more than enough to rouse the most jaded appetite.

Mark glanced round the semi-circle of chairs. Anne sat with her eyes fixed on the upturned ebony bottoms of the pony girls as her little maid, driven wild by Daniel's questing tongue, wriggled her bare bottom in her lap. Angela her small white teeth biting into her lower lip in excitement shifted her gaze constantly between the bitches secured and ready to be serviced and the pony boys being prepared to play the stallion's part. The men and watching free boys were also transfixed by what was taking place, although with them excitement was mixed with ribald laughter.

"What are the brat's names Jack?" cried out John Thompson called out.

"This one is Merlin," Jack replied landing an explosive open handed smack on one deeply tanned rump, "and this," another explosive slap punctuated his words, "is Lucifer."

"I'll bet a tenner Lucifer shoots his load first," John announced.

"I'll take that," Mark said quickly and then there was a burst of shouting and laughter as Jack's guests, their sporting blood raised, hurried to place wagers.

"All right," Jack said good-humouredly when the noise had abated, "nothing like giving even the most mundane of processes a bit of sporting interest I suppose. But we should make the thing as fair and as interesting as possible. As things stand they'll both go as soon as they're fairly in the bitches or even before that, which would itself be a disaster. I think the only thing to do is to bring the brutes both down and that's soon done."

"Stefan, William stand clear a moment."

Jack held out his right hand and without further prompting one of the grooms hurried forward and placed the handle of heavy but short stock whip in it. In rapid succession he slashed the two pony boys across their bottoms, the crack of the plated leather thongs against bare flesh being followed by the strange high whinnying scream that was the distinctive cry of a pony boy in distress.

A roar of laughter rose from the onlookers as they saw the two boys' erections collapse.

"Good," Jack said joining in the laughter, "now Stefan, you're in charge of Merlin and William you take Lucifer. Get them both close up behind a bitch."

"You," Jack continued, his voice turning savage with anger and contempt as he lashed out with his toe of his shoe at the two serving sluts still huddled on the ground where they had fallen after he had slammed their heads together, " what the hell do you think your doing? You're not here on holiday you useless little turds. On your feet and over to the pony boys and get your mouths round their cocks. Move blast you."

He cut at them with the stock whip which he had sensibly retained, raising scarlet weals across the deeply tanned flesh of their firm young thighs. Squealing with pain the two little sluts scuttled across to where the pony boys now stood and dropping to their knees began to work away with their tongues and lips at their cocks while laughter and shouts of encouragement came from the watching adults and free boys.

"Stefan, William, as soon as your brute's cock is hard enough……," Jack began and then stopped himself laughing, "Oh hell get them in the bitches now quick…… Not that hole William the other one……… Good………"

Mark watched as Merlin and Lucifer rode the two bitches, their haunches rising and falling with ever increasing speed and force as they approached the moment of climax. The girls howled and screamed under their assault. It was clear, Mark reflected, that Doctor Werner's little operation had been a complete success. The thrusts came deeper and faster. The cheers and shouts of the spectators merged with the shrill half-human screams of the girls, the wild laboured panting of the boys and the slap of bare flesh on bare flesh in a wild crescendo of lust and pain.

Then first Lucifer and then Merlin were suddenly still only the muscles in their flanks twitching convulsively as they orgasmed, emptying their seed into the pony girls' guts. Perhaps Mark reflected performing what could be the ultimate service a charity brat could perform for its owner – the engendering of new stock and perhaps improved stock.

Jack let the two pony boy's rest a moment, panting, slumped over the bodies of the two sluts, making sure that the very last drops of boy seed were drained out of them. Then, catching hold of their collars, he hauled them off the girls. At the same time Oblonsky grabbed the bitches' collar, pulling them forward and down so that their hips were across the top rail of the fence and both their bottoms lifted as high as was possible in the air. It was clear that not a single drop of boy seed was going to be allowed to go to waste if he could help it.

Meanwhile Jack was shouting at the two small pauper brats to get their lips and tongues busy again on Lucifer and Merlin's now turgid pricks. Mark watched as the sluts, urged on by a couple of well placed kicks from Jack, once more buried their faces in the pony boys' crutches. They seemed to feel no shame at performing their task before an audience nor distaste at sucking cock that must have been liberally smeared with the juices of the pony bitches.

"Tom," Jack said addressing the head-groom who had taken up station behind his chair, "Lunch I am sure is ready and I will hand over to you now. As soon as the boys are hard put them to the bitches again and keep them at it till there's no more seed in them. Healthy young brutes like them should be able to manage six or seven orgasms consecutively, suitably encouraged."

Mark was glad to leave the heat and glare of the stable yard. Watching Merlin and Lucifer mount the pony girls had been entertaining enough but like the coupling of any other young animals as a spectacle it tended in time, to become boring and repetitious. And, while he generally enjoyed the sights and sounds of the Vale, there did come a time when he needed to escape to quieter calmer conditions. It would be pleasant he thought to spend sometime now in the cool of the Manor dining room away from the yard with its hoards of naked sweating brats. Of course they would have pauper brats there to serve them but they would be dressed in spotless white shifts and they would pad silently round the table serving the food and wine in a perfectly choreographed ritual under the watchful eye and strict supervision of the housekeeper. Any mistakes would be punished and punished severely but that would be done away from the table, somewhere in the bowels of the old house, where the screams of the errant brat under correction would not disturb the conversation of its betters.

It seemed Anne shared his views. Arriving at the porte-cochere she stopped by the brat kennel that stood by the front door. (A common feature of the bigger houses in the Vale this took the form of a small rectangular cage about three foot square and four feet long where visitors could leave sluts which they judged unsuitable to be let into the house when calling. A recent improvement Mark note was the replacement of the plastic shoe mat that had previously lined its floor with strips of metal set with rows of sharp raised points. Clearly Jack, with typical ingenuity, had found a new use for the metal strips that are used to anchor fitted carpets in place round the sides of rooms and across doorways. The purpose of the shoe mat with its stiff plastic blades was to keep any brat placed in the kennel alert and ready for its master's return and to prevent it dosing off which the worthless little brute, if left to itself, was almost certain to do.) Reaching back Anne grabbed Buttercup, who, her slit once more padlocked, had been trotting along behind her new mistress, by the scruff of her neck. Jerking the black girl forward she kicked her ankles away sending the slut tumbling to her knees. Anne pushed the slut's head down so that it was level with the door of the cage, overcoming any reluctance on her part to enter it with a well-placed and hard kick up her arse. Mark saw drops of blood glistening darkly on the girl's ebony skin as the weight of her body drove the small steel points into her knees and shins. She placed the flats of her hands on the floor to take some of her weight and quickly withdrew them as the points sank into them. Mark wondered how long she would be able to support herself crammed into the tiny cage on her knees alone.

"I am sorry," Anne said raising her voice to be heard over Buttercup's whimpers, "I know it may sound a little inhospitable but I don't want any grubby pauper brats inside the house. I want all brats placed in the kennel please. There will be properly scrubbed and groomed serving boys to look after all our needs. There is no need to pollute the atmosphere of the house with the filthy scum from outside."

One by one the brats who had followed them from the yard shuffled reluctantly forward and were forced into the cage. Buttercup had, once she had been got into the cage, stopped right up against its door. This was not surprising as to crawl down the cage would mean fresh wounds to her knees and shins and the palms of her hands as the steel teeth inflicted further damage to her tender flesh. Each time a fresh brat was introduced into the cage those before it had to shuffle further down the cage to make room for the newcomer. They were encouraged to do so by young William and Stefan wielding a couple of stout walking sticks they had found in the hall. With these they prodded and lashed at the huddled bodies of the naked sluts driving them down the cage. While this was happening Mark noticed a further improvement that had been made to the arrangements since his last visit. The inside of the bars that formed the roof and sides of the cage, as well as the floor, had been lined with sharp toothed steel strips. As a consequence of this the brats' backs and flanks as well as their knees and the palms of their hands were soon ripped and bleeding.

Daniel and then Nicky had been forced into the kennel. Now it was David's turn. His mouth stained by dried blood from his stitched lips he had lagged behind the others.

"Come on boy," Jack shouted impatiently.

"Do you mind waiting just one moment while I thrash the slut." Mister Henry said quietly. "I have to leave for London immediately after lunch and I want to give the little turd something to remember me by before I go."

"My dear chap of course," Jack replied cordially, "nobody could refuse so reasonable a request."

"Thank you Jack. I know I can rely on young William to keep the little rat in order but an extra flogging or two never does any harm to a brat."

"Come here David you thieving little tyke."

The boy stumbled reluctantly forward. He seemed to find difficulty in walking. His legs were stiff and his movements lacked co-ordination. He walked as though he was a puppet operated by an inexpert puppet master.

"Come on David," Mister Henry roared with wholly understandable impatience. "The longer you keep me waiting the worse it will be for you."

The burley man towered over the slim figure of the naked boy as David stood head, bowed and trembling, waiting for the inevitable beating. The brat's cheeks were wet with tears and his face worked desperately. Mark assumed the boy was trying to plead for mercy, though what the point of doing so was, when clearly none was to be expected from so exemplary a disciplinarian as Mister Henry eluded him. Anyway the brat was unable to form any recognisable words through his stitched lips and the only result of all his facial contortions was a series of strange plaintive mooing sounds which evoked fits of giggles from the watching free boys.

"Keep your arms down by your side while I'm thrashing you," Mister Henry grated holding his hand out wordlessly to William. Grinning, that boy surrendered the walking stick with which he had just been enthusiastically lashing, through the bars of the cage, at Daniel. Taking the heavy stick from the lad he hefted it experimentally in his hand. David's face puckered, his knees began to shake uncontrollably and water splashed onto the paving stones as he lost control of his bladder. Hoots of laughter and derision rose from the group of free boys standing round.

"You filthy brute," Mister Henry roared rightly enraged by the slut's carelessness. "You can't even be bothered to control your animal functions you lump of stinking pig shit."

Drawing back the stick he cracked the brat across the front of his shins. The heavy blow ripped the boy's skin and fresh red blood began to flow down the front of his legs as he hopped from foot to foot in agony.

"Stand still when I'm hitting you curse you," shouted Mister Henry lifting the stick and brining it down with a ringing blow across the top of the boy's head.

Again and again he struck at the cowering brat's head and shoulders; heavy flailing blows delivered with all the strength and fury that, that excellent man's well founded rage and fury gave him. In a silent but telling tribute tto the efficacy of Mister Henry's schooling of the boy David made no attempt to ward off the blows that rained down upon him. The boy staggered and reeled under the weight of the blows but somehow, for a time at least, managed to keep his feet. Finally though he could withstand the assault no longer. He took two faltering steps forward and collapsed to his knees, blood flowing from his gashed head down his face and over his heaving chest.

"GET UP! GET UP!" roared Mister Henry kicking the boy in his crutch.

As David doubled up Mister Henry drove the toe of his shoe into his face. Jack Wardle helpful as ever, bending down and slipping a hand under the back of David's collar and dragged the boy back to his feet. David hung from his grip, mouth slack, his head lolling loosely forward, blinking his eyes in a vain attempt to clear them of the blood that flowed freely from his torn scalp.

Mister Henry resumed the beating while Jack held the boy upright by his collar. Blow after blow thudded into the brat's naked body. Direct downward cuts at the boy's head and shoulders were succeeded by a series of sideways flailing blows at the side of his arms, front of his chest and thighs and shins.

Finally Mister Henry delivered two nicely calculated sharp raps across the front of each of the slut's knees before saying, "you can let the little brute go now Jack."

Deprived of Mister Wardle's supporting hand through his collar David collapsed to his knees. Without needing to be told, for after a life time engaged in caring and disciplining of pauper brats, Jack Wardle had an instinct for these things, he stamped the heel of his right shoe between David's shoulder blades forcing him face down on the floor. Mister Henry towering over the prostrate body of the naked boy brought the stout stick thumping down across his shoulders buttocks and thighs in a series of heavy blows.

"I think," Jack said with a laugh when finally Mister Henry paused for breath, "that's a beating the slut will remember for sometime and now perhaps it is time we went in to lunch."

"Certainly, certainly," Mister Henry replied adding with all the old world courtesy that so characterised his behaviour. "I do apologise for keeping you all waiting but I did feel that for the brat's own good the job had to be done and done thoroughly. Delaying matters or being kind is only seen as a sign of weakness by such brutes and then you just have to be even harder on them to get them back in line."

"Don't lie there boy keeping your betters hanging around," he snapped impatiently kicking David in the ribs, "get in the cage so we can go and eat. Think of others sometimes you selfish turd."

On his hands and knees David began to drag his bruised and bloody body across to the cage. Mister Henry clicked his tongue impatiently. Bending down he lifted the boy bodily with on hand through the back of his collar and the other between his legs. Using the David's head as a battering ram he drove the other sluts whimpering and squealing as the steel spikes scored their flesh, further along the cage. When once he had managed to make room for the front half of the brat he shoved him as far into the cage as he would go. He got him fully into the cage by the simple expedient of kicking the door shut and locking the catch.

"Now," said Anne, "we really must be going in for lunch."

Chapter 18

They were in a different world now cool, shady and silent apart from the sound of their own footsteps on the flagstoned floor.

Generations of earlier Wardles looked down from their ancestral portraits as they passed; Sir Marmaduke Wardle resplendent in doublet and ruff; plain Jon Wardle in russet coat and breast plate with his sword at his side, the steel helmet with the nose guard on the table beside him; William Wardle the great improving landlord pictured with his prize bull 'The Pride of Dingle'; Beau Wardle in cut-away coat, flowing cravat and tight white pantaloons; Ebenezer Wardle top hat in one hand bible in the other. Finally there was Graham Sutherland's portrait of Frank Wardle, Jack's father, a rather unfortunate, Mark thought melange, of dirty greens and browns which still managed somehow to catch the bluff benevolence of the man as he stood there relaxed and smiling in his plus-fours and hacking jacket

Mark remembered Jack telling him how he felt every time he passed through the hall the eyes of these forbears of his on him demanding that he maintained the ancient traditions of the Vale which they had done so much collectively to preserve, shape and form.

It was Sir Marmaduke in the time of the First Elizabeth opposed the proposal to have all the charity boys shipped to Virginia as indentured servants arguing that the comparative idleness and luxury of life in the plantations would spoil the brats.

The energetic use of his troop of horse by Lieutenant Jon Wardle quickly, if a trifle brutally, surpressed signs of incipient unrest among the pauper brats caused no doubt by the general breakdown in civil discipline following the execution of the King.

William Wardle's introduction of the five year crop rotation system to the vale combined with his use of swedes as a fodder crop for brats as well as other livestock opened the way for a considerable increase in the number of charity boys.

Even Beau found time to spare from the race course and gambling tables to take an interest in the brats placed in his care. It was he who introduced the 'Beau Hurdle' that has proved so effective an aid over the years in training pony boys. Initially wooden structures, these were placed just a pony boy's pace apart around the training ring. The top rails, which were covered with hedgehog skins, the spines pointing outwards, would be fixed at a level exactly an inch above the top of the boy's knee. Then attached to a lunge reign and urged on by his trainer's whip the brat would be driven round the ring. It was remarkable how quickly once his knees and shins had been well and truly lacerated a brat learnt to adopt the unique high stepping gait required of a well schooled pony boy. Later the boys would be placed in pairs between the shafts of a specially constructed wide and high axled and again driven over the hurdles. The hurdles now were made of a single strand of barbed wire strung between two upright stakes but the idea remained the same.

Mark reflected that some might think the things cruel. Indeed the first time he had seen a pair of brats after a session in the training trap over the hurdles their naked bodies slicked with sweat shivering from effort and exhaustion their legs shredded by the barbed wire he had though it so. Until that is, Frank Wardle, Jack's father, seeing his face explained to him that as with so much else in the Vale that seemed harsh or cruel, it was really in the best interests of the brats. The brutes, he said as he ran his hands over the pony boys' trembling bodies, had to be trained. It was either a couple of dozen sharp sessions over the hurdles with an occasional refresher thereafter or further years of unremitting work on the lunge reign. The apparently crueller option was as so often the kinder in the end.

It wasn't as though he added, dismissing the brats with a sharp slap across one firm young rump, that they had not been given ample opportunity to learn. He had acquired them as a matching pair at six years and now at thirteen after seven years of training they were sturdy well-grown animals and ready to be raced. He had spent a lot of effort on getting them to that state and he could not be expected to loose much further time on them. Anyway with that amount of training they should have been more than ready for the hurdles. Their torn legs were simply an indication of how stubborn and lazy they were.

Ebenezer, Mark knew, had brought a new seriousness and sense of moral purpose to the Vale typified by his custom of offering a short extempore prayer to God every time before he chastised a boy asking that he should be given power to his arm. It was he who strove, for a long time single-handedly, to re-impose the prohibition on self-abuse among the charity boys that had been allowed to lapse during the more lax moral climate of the regency years. In the end he triumphed convincing, it must be admitted, his contemporaries less by the moral force of his arguments than by the practical considerations he advanced. He condemned the practice as a form of theft from the brats' benefactors frittering away strength and energy that should have been devoted to their service or pleasure in selfish indulgence.

Having convinced his equals of the justice and wisdom of his views there remained the task of imposing the new prohibition on the degenerate sluts to which it so justly applied. It will be no surprise to those who have had the misfortune to try to impose even a minimal respect for moral values on the debased offspring of the indigent poor that this proved an uphill struggle. Despite the liberal application of the birch to the quivering and bleeding buttocks of innumerable cowering young wretches the abominable practice continued.

It was only when Ebenezer, acting with all the determination and decision that comes naturally to a man as certain of his own rectitude as himself, took his cut-throat razor and with it sliced off the offending member of a young delinquent that progress began to be made. The salutary effect of this wholly justifiable act was heightened by his dragging the offending child, for it was no more than ten years old so early does vice manifest itself among that debased and ignorant sector of society known as the undeserving poor if unchecked by authority, to the steps of the assize court buildings in the centre of Muggleton and performing the amputation there.

The report of the incident in the Muggleton Courier of the time referred to the large crowd attracted by the frantic screaming of the miserable urchin as he was dragged to the place of execution. It also did justice to the hilarity engendered among the watching free boys by the brat's shrill pleas for mercy, as held firm by the court's bailiff, he waited and with horrified eyes watched as Ebenezer first calmly honed the edge of his razor on one of the Court House columns before securing a ligature tightly round the base of the child's small prick. Then the flash of metal, the agonized scream, the sudden gush of blood checked almost at once by the brat's flesh closing about the open wound (author's – note see the account in Simon Winchester's book The Surgeon of Crowthorne of the consequences of a similar operation undertaken by William Minor on himself iwith a pocket knife in 1899 see page 165 et seq of the Penguin edition of the work referred to above.) The impact of the lesson was spread and heightened by the brat, after his wound had been roughly dressed, being paraded round the town and its environs with the severed penis hanging from a cord tied about his neck. A penitential exercise that was repeated annually to ensure that memories should remain fresh for the next five years or so, the mummified organ being meanwhile stored in the muniment's room at the manor where it can be seen to this day.

A dissident and foolishly liberal group did attempt to censure Ebenezer on the grounds that his act transgressed the rule that no visible permanent damage should be done to a charity boy. Ebenezer defended himself vigorously from this charge. He argued first that cutting off a brat's cock improved rather than damaged it as the operation removed a source of temptation and ensured it would devote its whole strength and energy to the service of its betters. If on the other hand the rule had been broken, which he did not accept, this was justified by the effectiveness of his action for from that time forward the incidence of self abuse among charity boys declined steeply.

Indeed so strong was the impression made on the collective consciousness of the charity boys that, even to this day, it was enough to threaten a slut that Ebenezer was going to get him or, that you would 'do an Ebenezer' to him, to reduce him to a state of abject terror.

And finally Frank Wardle, a man of the twentieth century just as emphatically as Ebenezer had been a man of the nineteenth. Ebenezer had given the institutions of the Vale a new seriousness and moral purpose. Frank had faced the challenge of adapting them to the world of the welfare state and universal secondary education. There were those who thought the end of the good old nineteenth century bare footed, empty bellied, ignorant, work-house, poverty would spell the end of the charity boy. When the poor were really poor it was easy to see that their children, dirty, starving and no doubt delinquent, were the proper recipients of the all embracing charity of the Vale. It was Frank alone who had seen that the new social and economic egalitarianism far from rendering the charity obsolete offered an opportunity to extend its beneficent workings beyond the now almost extinct indigent poor. It was he who pointed out that it was not only the poor who were burdened with offspring who were rowdy, idle, disrespectful and lacking in moral fibre.

In a series of public meetings he appealed to all the inhabitants of the Vale to examine their own children and to identify those who would benefit from being placed in the care of the trustees. There was some initial reluctance but it was not long lived. The penal taxation of the immediate post war years had led to the comparative impoverishment of the middle classes. The solicitors, doctors, vets could no longer afford the school fees that had allowed them to banish their young from the home for long periods of time. They could with difficulty afford to send one son to boarding school, to send a second or even worse third, was impossible. And if you could not send them all, was it fair to send just one? The near permanent presence in their homes of their young sons soon persuaded them that it was not only the children of the poor that would benefit from being subjected to the robust disciplinary regime presided over by the trustees.

Such is the nature of the English middle classes that once the placing of unwanted boys in the care of the trustees became acceptable competition arose between families as to the fate and conduct of the brats. It was the ambition of every mother sending a slut to the trustees to have it accepted into the household of one of the pre-eminent families of the Vale and thereafter to be able to boast of the satisfaction it was giving there. "John, our eldest boy is in the sixth from at Repton" (or whichever other fee paying school he had been sent to) and hoping to go to Cambridge, while Timmy is being trained as a serving boy at the Pitt-Crawleys and according to Lady Margaret doing very well." You did not hear anything of poor ugly little Sam working in the mud and filth of Farmer Thomas's pig-pens.

The mass of the population followed where the middle classes led and soon the trustees had an ever growing number of charity boys to allocate.

No wonder Mark reflected that Jack felt the pressure of his ancestors' achievements and examples. And yet Jack himself was not doing too badly. His father may have risen to the challenge set to the ancient system by political and social developments of the mid-nineteenth century. Jack it seemed saw the growing social turmoil in the United Kingdom and the emergence of a global economy as opportunities to exploit rather than dangers. He was making, as a politician would inevitably say, the old institution 'relevant' to the needs of the twenty-first century.

Mark had no doubt that the draft of choice delinquent boys from Ovingdean would only be the first of many. It was a mere drop that would soon swell into a stream as the Home Secretary of the day, each more reactionary than the last, recognised how effective the methods of the Vale were in curbing the excesses of the young. Boys once wild and unruly but now trembling and fearful would be brought to the Vale from all over the United Kingdom to experience the benefits of the robust disciplinary regime of the Trustees. But the adjustments did not stop there. The presence of the Russian plutocrat Oblonsky in the Vale with his African pony girls signalled the introduction of an international dimension to the Trustees activities. Perhaps in time boys would cease to be brought to the Vale to be broken and schooled rather the methods of the Vale would be taken to the outside world. Then at last envy and unrest forcibly subsumed into service the comfort, property and profits of the affluent would be safe. Capitalism had conquered the world on its horse perhaps it was time to dismount and rule.

"Mark, Mark," a voice spoke sharply at his elbow jerking him out of his reverie.

"What ever are you doing? Are you dreaming or something. The others are all in the dining-room waiting. Do come along Anne gets very jumpy if people are late for lunch."

Mark hurried after Jack. He felt confused and embarrassed but he was somehow sure that something very momentous had occurred.

He had not time then to reflect on the significance of what he and many others later, after he had published that seminal work of the New Order My Plan, came to regard as a moment of apotheosis. His immediate task was to make peace with Anne and as he entered the dining room and felt every eye in the place on him he realised that this might take some doing.

It was clear that Sunday lunch under Anne's direction had become a very formal occasion. When he had last visited Jack they had eaten it perched at one end of the bare refectory table, drinking beer from pewter tankards and waited on by a pretty but rather grubby little slut whose bottom they took it in turn to fuck between courses. Now a spotless white table-cloth covered the long table. Silver and crystal glittered in the sunlight filtering into the room past the partly drawn curtains of the tall windows. A dozen perfectly matched serving boys dressed in tunics so short that it was clear that they were intended to tease rather than to obscure, stood lined up along the wall on either side of the door leading to the kitchens.

As Mark took his place at the table he saw Anne make an almost imperceptible sign with her hand, a simple raising of a single finger. The boys in a perfectly choreographed movement turned as one, forming two columns, which merged into one as they reached the door and filed in pairs from the room. A moment later they were back again in pairs.

The first four boys each carried a bottle of champagne so chilled that Mark could see the condensation glistening on the glass. These brats moved along the table deftly filling the glasses of the guests. As they busied themselves about this task their brief tunics, split to the waste on either side, rode up their rumps baring their tight sweet curves to view. Bending forward the front of their tunics hang down clear of their bodies giving tantalising glimpses of their tiny boy pricks and hairless balls given extra prominence, small as they were, by the metal rings that were clamped about their roots.

As they moved along the table filling the adults' glasses with the cold sparkling wine the guests could not resist investigating the boyish charms so invitingly displayed. Hands stroked firm young thighs and smooth bottoms, fingers played with twig like cocks and grape sized balls, while the four pretty little Ganymedes adroitly continued with their task. Mark noticed that despite all the caresses lavished on them they did not spill a drop of wine. He wondered at the level of discipline and training that had taught them to concentrate on their allotted tasks and to ignore the fingers exploring their most intimate parts.

Another, perhaps even more striking illustration of the excellence of the brats' training almost immediately presented itself. Even as the four serving boys were busy filling the wineglasses the remaining sluts filed into the room. Again they were in pairs, one boy carrying a tray on which were set a number of small ramekins, the other empty handed.

"Cheese soufflé," Anne announced from her place at one end of the table, "please start as soon as the slut gives it to you. It is essential it is eaten hot or it collapses. And watch the plates they are piping hot."

A smothered sob came from Mark's left. Turning he saw a serving boy his cheeks wet with tears about to place a small bowl on the table in front of him. Gingerly he brushed the back of his hand against the bowl an pulled it quickly away as the heat seared him. He grabbed the brat by one wrist and turned his hand palm upwards. It was raw and blistered with burns.

"Anne," he said admiringly, "you have the boys really well trained. However have you managed it."

"'There's nothing you can't train a brat to do," Anne replied quoting one of the old adages of the Vale, "provided you are patient enough and firm enough.' Once you get it into a brat's head that the consequences of failing to do something will be much more painful than doing it you are home and dried. The problem is getting it there in the first place."

"Anne has invented some extremely ingenious ways of training her serving boys," Jack Wardle intervened admiringly, "Perhaps you could show them an example of your methods while we are having coffee after the meal is over dear? I am sure they will find it both interesting and entertaining."

"Little Tommy Neale is about due for his first burning," said the ever helpful Mrs Thomas the housekeeper from her place by the sideboard supervising the serving boys. "I told the little slut a week ago that it was coming and he's spent most of his time crying since then. I've set him to scrubbing out the meat dishes but I can easily get him cleaned up and in a fit state to be seen by your guests."

"Please do Mrs Thomas," Jack replied and please telephone Mr and Mrs Neale and ask them to join us for coffee after lunch is over. I do like," he explained turning to his guests, "to give parents who have entrusted their sons to me the opportunity to see how their brats are getting on and that we are putting them to use."

"And Mrs Thomas," he added as the good lady turned away to carry out his instructions, "sort out a dozen sluts in the eight to nine year old age range for young friends here to play with, there must be plenty round the place one way and another, and have them ready for after Anne has finished with the Tommy brat."

"I must say Jack," Brian Roberts said, "I envy you your set up here. Everything is so well ordered and stable. I don't know how Mary and I would have coped with that filthy little brute Nicky away from here. Years of trouble and rows and expense but here, in the whole thing solved in twenty four hours and so much better for the brat too, cleaner, quicker no recriminations, no trying to make the little rat something he isn't."

"Yes indeed," Mary said chipping in to support her husband, "we are both most grateful to be rid of the worthless little runt. But it's not only that the Vale seems so pleasant and peaceful. Just like going back to the what they say the early fifties were like in the last century. We outside the Vale seem to live in a state of constant crisis."

"And they're getting worse." broke in Angela, "social unrest, public drunkenness, drugs, council estates ruled by yobs, the police apparently powerless or unwilling to get involved, people complaining of uncontrolled immigration on the one hand but unwilling to do menial but essential jobs on the other……"

"And the price of oil rising all the time," Brian Roberts interjected. "People don't seem to grasp the danger there. I tell you with our current lack of social cohesion and discipline that could trigger a complete break down in society. Remember how the oil embargo and the rolling blockades brought the country to a standstill in just three days."

"I must say though our current Home Secretary seems to have the right attitude," Anne remarked. "I was fearful when we lost Mr Plonkett that we would get some soft liberal in his place but this man seems to be even tougher and more realistic than him."

"I agree," Angela said enthusiastically. "The anti-terrorist legislation is a step in the right direction. After all any body with suspected anti-social tendencies can be described as a terrorist and put away."

"Yes but what heavy weather Parliament is making of it," Jack interjected, "I really can't see that all the fuss about getting evidence is justified at all. We manage very well with the charity scum applying the presumption of guilt rule and since what a brat says isn't admissible as evidence we always nail any slut that shows signs of getting above itself. I can't see why the government doesn't follow the same line."

"I'm sure the Home Secretary would like to Dear," Anne said, "I think he's a really sound man and the Prime Minister too, their instincts are right and the time will come when the rest of the country will recognise it."

"I think a good deal of the country does recognise it, certainly most of my friends think as I do it's better to lock a few people up than risk being killed or serious civil unrest." Brian Roberts interjected, "It's just the liberal politicians and media that are unrealistic."

"But what does the government actually do?" Jack said laughing, "ban foxhunting. I tell you, you had all best come and live here in the Vale."

"What are you doing with the hounds now?" Mark asked raising his voice to be heard over the laughter that this sally provoked.

"We haven't shot any yet," Jack replied suddenly serious, "and we won't for the time being but unless we find a way round the ban we'll have to. That's something the anti-hunt people didn't think of when they campaigned for the law. The net result will be if things don't change that a whole lot of people will loose their jobs, a lot of hounds will be shot and foxes will continue to be killed at the same rate or faster than before but shot, trapped and poisoned. And shooting won't be a quick death either."

"How about alternative quarry?" Mark asked adding with a laugh, "you could hunt a brat I suppose."

"It wouldn't be forbidden by the Act," Jack replied laughing, "It only forbids the hunting of wild mammals and I don't think a pauper brat would qualify. But I doubt if we could find one strong and fast enough to give us a good run. Anyway," he added regretfully, "there's the convention forbidding permanent damage otherwise it would be a possibility especially with the number of brats being offered nowadays and the chance of regular drafts from Ovingdean Grange."

Mark fell silent, oblivious to the conversation flowing freely around him.

His mind was busy once again considering the future of the Vale. For many hundreds of years it had guarded its heritage jealously minding its own business and expecting others to mind theirs. It seemed though that its isolation was coming to an end. Newcomers provided they accepted its customs were welcomed. The trustees were even prepared to accept as charity boys children born outside its boundaries. The Vale had, in a limited controlled sort of way, allowed the world in. Yet again Mark found himself wondering if the time would soon be ripe for the Vale to reach out to the world.

"We shall all take coffee on the terrace," Anne announced after the pudding, rich chocolate mousse for the grown-ups and ice-cream for the boys, had been eaten.

They settled themselves in intricately wrought cast iron chairs under the shade of wide parasols around small white tables. More serving boys, again perfectly matched in height and build and all dressed in the briefest of white shifts but this time all black haired little sluts, padded around on bare feet, bringing cups of coffee and bowls filled with Turkish delight.

William Smythe sidled up to where Jack Wardle was standing and spoke quietly to him. Jack listened attentively to the boys whispered request. Smiling indulgently he ruffled his young favourite's hair.

"Don't worry William," he said, "You won't have to long to wait. I am sure Mrs Thomas our excellent housekeeper has a dozen little brats sorted out for you boys to play with. And I promise you, you will all have something really interesting to watch soon. I'm just waiting for Mr and Mrs Neale."

"And here they are now and Mister Adams as well," he added as Mrs Thomas appeared on the terrace ushering before her a smartly dressed middle aged couple together with the principle of Ovingdean Grange.

"Mr Adams how fortunate," Jack continued, "you've come to collect Nicky. We'll get him for you in a minute. I think you will find him much improved from his visit to the Vale. First however Mr and Mrs Neale have come to see how their son Tommy who has been entrusted to my care is getting on."

"I do hope Mr Wardle that our Tommy has been behaving himself," Mrs. Neale said anxiously. "After our first two I said we should have one for the Vale and we brought him up accordingly. We did our best to toughen him up. He's slept out and not been allowed a stitch of clothing since he was three and we haven't spared the rod either."

"More the strap I would think Dear," Mr. Neale corrected his wife mildly. "More the strap, especially in the earlier years. The little brute's hide tore so easily with the cane I usually used the strap on him. Awkward having him bleeding all over the place and judging from the way he howled the strap was just as effective."

"I'm afraid though despite all the thrashings you gave him he remained a stubborn and ungrateful child," the woman said. "You remember the last Christmas before the trustees accepted him as a charity boy. The fuss he made screaming and kicking at the back door because he couldn't see why he couldn't be allowed in the house and have a bit of turkey like his big brothers. Although goodness knows we had explained to him over and over again whenever he was being flogged and that was often enough that he wasn't a bit like his brothers being destined to be just a charity boy."

"Yes and in the end I had to interrupt my meal and drag him down to the bottom of the garden and tie him to the tree there just so that we could get some peace."

"And then," the man added laughing, "I went and had too much to drink and forgot all about the little sod till the evening of the next day and it was too cold and wet for me to go out and release him then till the following morning."

"It did the runt the world of good though," Mrs. Neale remarked. "He wasn't half so cocky after that. It really cooled him down."

"Cooled him down is about right. Do you remember how the idle little sod wouldn't get to his feet when I untied him, just collapsed in a heap on the ground shivering and whimpering. It was only when you came out with the freshly boiled kettle and tipped it over him he livened up. Mind you that made him jump. Do you remember how he yelled." Mr Neale laughed heartily at the recollection.

"Yes indeed," the woman replied chuckling in her turn, "and when you took the belt to him laying it across his scalded rump and shoulders."

"Well all I can say is that the little slut does you both credit," Jack said jovially. "It was clear from the moment that he arrived that he came from a good home and had been strictly disciplined, an obedient willing little slut. I doubt if I've thrashed him more than a half dozen times in the six months since he was branded."

"Ah here he comes now and you will soon see from the state of his rump and shoulders how well he has adjusted to his life here."

A naked boy had appeared on the terrace. He approached the assembled company walking nervously, his eyes cast down, carrying a tray in trembling hands. He was Mark judged no more than nine years old. He was in one way nothing particular to look at, pretty enough perhaps, but pretty sluts were two a penny in the Vale. Chestnut hair with a slight curl to it, healthy rosy cheeks, soft generous lips in an almost perfect cupid bow, not by any means plump but carrying a trifle more flesh than the generality of pauper brats. Mark whose taste ran more to slim young blond lads, would normally not have spared the child a second glance and yet there was something about this particular brat that attracted him and held his attention.

Mark glanced quickly at Jack Wardle. He saw that he too had his eyes fixed on the boy, a half smile curling his lips appreciatively. Perhaps it was simply that despite his nervousness, despite his downcast eyes, under the veneer of youthful innocence, the boy was simply as sexually charged as a bitch on heat.

"Put the tray down on the balustrade Tommy and come here so your Mummy and Daddy can get a good look at you," Jack ordered.

Turning to obey his master's order the boy presented Mark with an excellent view of that portion of the juvenile anatomy across whose tender flesh the cane has traditionally scored its painful record of youthful delinquency. A single livid bruise marked the smooth curve of his young bottom. Curving diagonally round the back of one cheek to leave a raised welt across the firm flesh at the top of his thigh. A single stripe, it was the sort of stroke a boy got as a form of rough encouragement or wake up call rather than as punishment for some specific offence. The raised rib of discoloured flesh, purple laced with red, so dark as to be all but black, fringed with a penumbra of greenish yellow, laid across the skin, tanned golden brown by the sun, of the brat's round little rump, to Mark's eyes at least, served only to accentuate the boy's charms. It served as seasoning to giving zest and piquancy to an already toothsome dish.

Free now of the tray the boy moved on unsteady legs towards where Jack Wardle and his parents stood. The child's terror was almost palpable. He stumbled as he walked, his lips quivered and his eyes were wide with fear.

Mark knew that every charity boy about the place had a healthy respect for Jack Wardle. It could not be otherwise for Jack was a strict disciplinarian and stood no nonsense. A brat who had excited his anger and had felt the weight of his hand would not quickly forget the experience. Despite this though it was clear that Tommy was more in terror of his parents than of his current master. As he advanced he edged to the left away from where his mother and father stood and towards Jack. By the time he reached where they stood he was standing opposite Jack and even then he visibly cringed away from his parents.

The boy's attitude did not surprise Mark. It was common in the Vale for charity boys, especially those coming form the more responsible caring families, to be more in dread of their parents than those into whose care they had been finally assigned. Mark thought that this might partly be because the earliest whippings, inflicted when the child was small and its flesh tender and unseasoned to the lash, made the deepest impression. It also illustrated the truth of the dictum he had heard so often repeated during his visits to the Vale that "in the end it was kindest to be strict." A brat coming from a good home, where it had been flogged often and hard, would been well schooled, even before its parents parted with it, in obedience and humility. It was a case of the lessons learnt at its mother's knee, or more properly, over it in the case of a child destined to be a charity boy, never being wholly forgotten.

Mrs Neale however was clearly determined to stand no nonsense. Reaching out she grabbed Tommy by one thin arm and yanked him over to stand in front of her.

"Well you ungrateful little turd," she remarked her voice cold with fury, "I can see how glad you are to have your Mummy back."

"Oh please Mummy, Mummy I am glad you're back Mummy and I am grateful for all the trouble you took getting me ready to serve Mr Wardle," words tumbled out of the brat as panic stricken he tried to mollify his mother.

"You don't sound very happy you snotty nosed little liar," and indeed the poor slut did seem to be on the verge of tears. "Why are you so miserable if you're really pleased to see your Mummy."

"Please they're going to burn my hands Mummy I haven't done anything wrong Mummy bit they're going to burn them. Please ask them not to burn me please. I'll………"

Tommy's hysterical pleas were brought to an abrupt halt by his mother smashing her fist down on the top of his head. The brat just managed to stay on his feet giving his father the opportunity to box him hard on the ears.

"You miserable little rat," his mother yelled at him as he staggered under the impact of this dual assault, "you should be thanking Mr Wardle for bothering to take the trouble to train you to be a better more useful slut not begging him to leave you alone to be the idle useless lump of excrement that nature made you."

"Oh Mummy I am grateful to Mr Wardle Mummy, I am, I am," the child wailed the vehemence of his protestations making all the onlookers laugh loudly. "I'm grateful for Mr Wardle working so hard to make me a better slut and to you Mummy too and I hope if I do anything wrong you'll beat me really hard because that is the only way that filth like me learns. Mummy please……"

"Shut up pig shit," Mrs. Neale yelled at her son back handing him across the mouth splitting the almost perfect cupid bow of his upper lip and starting a trickle of blood down his chin.

Grabbing the brat again by the arm she spun him round.

"Just one," she said her concern apparent in her voice, "I hope you're not spoiling the slut Mr. Wardle."

"I assure you I don't spoil my sluts," Jack replied almost laughing at the ridiculous suggestion.

The End ???