Chapter 3

In Which the Pony’s Mettle is Tested.

 

 

They rose the next morning to find the cart assembled and being loaded into the back of a horse-box by the cook. Sir Osmond bustled them along, putting Jeremy into the back with the cart and locking the tailgate shut after him. Susanna was allowed to sit in the Range Rover, but only after acquiescing to the cook tying her hands behind her back and blindfolding her.

Unable to see, she had no idea how much time had passed or where they were when she felt the car pull to a stop and Sir Osmond turn the engine off. All she could hear was the occasional snatch of bird song and the distant hum of traffic, perhaps from a motorway. He helped her from the car then, without warning, pulled her shorts down and her top up over her breasts. Without underwear, she was left standing nude from tits to thighs for several minutes while he unlocked the tailgate of the horse box and unloaded the cart. Only then did he come over, untie her hands and finish stripping her, leaving her in only her training shoes.

As the blindfold was removed Susanna saw that they were on a dirt track deep in woodland. The path was smooth and dry and disappeared around corners a little way in either direction, running between woods too thick to see more than a few yards. There was something oddly familiar about the location, which she tried to fathom out while she was put in harness and tied between the shafts of the cart, but was unable to. Only when she was completely ready and Jeremy was already seated in the cart did Sir Osmond return to the car to fetch a map and three padlocks, which he used to fix her waist belt in place and lock it to the shafts. Using another padlock to fix Jeremy’s ankle to the frame, he ensured that there would be no cheating.

“I’ve marked out the route you’re to take clearly,” he began, passing Jeremy the folded map. “Time is no object, for me at any rate, so feel free to study the map for a while before you set off. I’ll be waiting with the horse box at the point marked with a red ‘X’. The tailgate’ll be down just in case there’s a hue and cry, but I doubt there will be. It should take you about an hour. All clear? ”

“What if someone takes the number of the car?” Jeremy asked. “Or we get arrested, or anything, damn it, something’s bound to go wrong! ”

“Unlikely,” his uncle retorted coolly, “for reasons that Susanna will explain to you when you open the map. Should, however, some busybody report the number plate of the car, they’ll find that is registered to a certain Superintendent Wilkes of the county constabulary, which should prove amusing. Well, I’ll be off then, it’s almost lunchtime.”

Sir Osmond drove off as Jeremy fiddled with the map, finally managing to fold it in such a way that he could see the route clearly. Susanna peered over her shoulder, pushing the leather bit out with her tongue so that she could speak.

“Where are we then?” she asked.

“Hmm. . . , let’s see. Here’s the M4, that must be what we can hear, and this must be Manorhouse Wood. . .”

“Manorhouse Wood!?”

“I think so. . .”

“No! The bastard! He can’t have! ”

“Why, what’s wrong?”

“It’s near Longmead!”

“Your old sixth-form college!? ”

“Yes, I recognise this track now, it goes straight there, and it’s the middle of term, the place will be swarming with girls and nearly all of them will recognise me! Oh God, and the mistresses! God your uncle’s a bastard! Maybe there’s a way to go round, where have we got to get to? ”

“Err. . . let’s see, we go down this track, across a road. . . it’s over the fold of the map. Yes, here’s the cross. It’s outside two ‘H’ shaped buildings on the far side of the college complex. There are a number of longer routes we could take, but they all go through a good part of the college grounds. What can we do? ”

“Fuck him! Now I see why he knows we won’t be reported to the police. Think of the scandal if an ex-prefect is arrested for running through the college as a Pony-Girl, they’d rather close the place down than report me! Oh God, it’ll be so humiliating, they’ll see the marks on my bum from yesterday! I was never beaten, but I used to dish it out enough, and now they’ll all see that I’ve been swished! Sod him, the filthy old toad! ”

“Perhaps we can find something to cover you?”

“What? ” Susanna started crossly. “You can’t take your shorts off, I’ll take your top, but it’s my bum and pussy I really don’t want bare. Hold on, I know, there’s a little changing hut by the sport’s fields, the first ones we come to. There’re always odds and ends in there and everybody’ll be in lunch, so if we hurry I might be able to cover myself and not too many people will see anyway.”

Susanna set off, running as fast as she could. While she was painfully aware that this must be exactly how Sir Osmond had planned it, she lacked the strong streak of obstinacy that could have stopped her playing along. Within minutes she was streaked with sweat and she realised that the pony tail she had been told to make with her long, black hair was practical as well as ornamental. They crossed a road and, with some difficulty, opened a gate on the far side that led onto the deserted playing fields. They made the hut without being seen, negotiated the door, and to her utter relief found that a there were indeed a few items of discarded clothing. With Jeremy’s help Susanna managed to squeeze into a pair of white panties that were several sizes too small for her and a tartan skirt that covered her bottom at least adequately.

Susanna peered out of the hut door down the cinder track that led towards the all too familiar buildings of Longmead Ladies’ College. No one was in sight, and she braced herself for the sprint that would inevitably take her past the main buildings of the school.

“Hold on,” Jeremy said from behind her. “What if you turned right along the river, then up the hill past a building which is marked as ‘The Old Vicarage’, then we’re in woods until perhaps two hundred yards from the horse-box. It’s longer, but. . .”

“You’re right,” she replied even as she bumped the cart over the door sill, “there may be some girls, but no teachers, not on a Sunday afternoon.”

Susanna started down the track at a fast trot, her leg muscles burning from the exertion. In the copse of elder and black-thorn that sheltered one side of the hut, a lean red haired girl crushed the cigarette that she had been smoking illicitly beneath her toe and watched the cart disappear with a mischievous smirk on her face. Her name was Elaine Johnston, and the last time she had seen Susanna had been in very different circumstances.