The Thistle Ride

 

Jemima cautiously opened the front gate of the playhouse garden.

She was holding a handkerchief over her nose ready to give a convincing demonstration of sniffles, adding credence to the message that she had sent to Arabella yesterday reporting her indisposition. Actually Jemima did not want to be here. She wanted to be in the school stable loft, sharing in everything that she knew even now the boys were doing to Sue. But she had promised to find out what Arabella’s reaction to Sue’s disappearance was and what she might do in response. So Jemima had gone home as soon as she had been released, told her mother what a nice night she had spent at the Hall, and then hurried back here. She was looking forward to making her report to the boys. Amber had advised her to be a little reluctant to speak, and Jemima secretly thrilled at the thought of what they would do to her to persuade her.

There was nobody in the playhouse, but she heard voices from the back garden and went through. Belinda, Penny and Ernestine were sitting out on the lawn.

“There you are,” said Belinda impatiently as Jemima appeared. “Where did you go to yesterday afternoon?”

“I didn’t feel well,” Jemima said quickly, displaying her handkerchief for all to see. “I left a message for Arabella telling her I was going home. Er... where is she?”

“We don’t know,” Ernestine said. “Everything was open when we arrived, but there was no sign of Arabella.”

“And she’s taken the girl with her,” Penny added with a scowl, “so we haven’t anything to do.”

“Oh,” said Jemima, finding herself a seat. She thought for a minute, then said hesitantly: “of course, we did used to play at lots of other things before we found Sue. Why can’t we try them again?”

“Huh!” said Belinda contemptuously. “Those were children’s games. We’re too old for that now - except you! You’ll always be a silly girl, Jem.”

Just then the backdoor of the playhouse opened with a bang and Arabella strode out into the garden. Her face was set, her eyes were gleaming. Before they could say a word her gaze fastened on Belinda.

“Come with me!” she snapped in such commanding tones that Belinda jerked to her feet without question.

“What’s happening?” Ernestine asked.

“And what have you done with our slave?” Penny added.

Jemima’s heart thudded, fearful that Arabella would somehow know she had been responsible. But Arabella didn’t spare her a second glance.

“She’s gone,” Arabella said simply. “We’ll talk about it later. This is more important. Come on, Belinda.”

And the two of them walked briskly away, leaving the other girls to exchange puzzled glances.

 

Melanie tried to move to ease the pain, but her bonds were too tight. She moaned but could not cry out: a gag strap stretched her lips back with cruel tension. Her bared teeth chewed on leather.

She was tied with her back to a tree, her arms wrenched out behind her and pulled upwards so high that she thought her shoulders would dislocate. There was a rope around her middle, cutting into her stomach and pinching it in painfully tight. Her legs were pulled wide apart and back around the tree, with her knees bent so she could not support her weight. Only her bonds held her upright. Her bonds... and the stick.

Arabella had rammed one end into the grass between the tree roots so that the stick leaned inwards at an angle. The top end was cleft in a ‘Y’ fork, like an extended thumb and forefinger. The ‘finger’ was lodged in her vaginal passage which was distending under the weight of her body, pressing up against her bladder. The ‘thumb’ was gouging into the upper fold of her vulva, pushing the cleft mound of soft brown flesh upward beyond its natural limits, stretching it agonisingly into a vertical grin. Her perversely aroused clitoris ground against hard wood. Arabella had smiled when she inserted the stick. It was a symbol of her power over Melanie; a reminder of her subjugation.

Now disgust mingled with Melanie’s fear and pain. How could she have been so stupid as to refuse her? The only consolation was that something like this would have happened sooner or later. Arabella would have made more and more taxing demands of her until she rebelled. She had obviously been looking for an excuse to punish her - ‘training’ her as she thought of it. At least Thomas and Gerard had refused to help. But they had still left Melanie to her fate. Perhaps it wasn’t done to interfere with the punishment of another person’s slave. Not polite. Not good manners.

Melanie found herself crying. The warm companionship of the pack, her delight at serving the Major, the challenge and joy of the hunt; all were melting away before the stark realization of her utter helplessness in the face of Arabella’s malevolence. How had she let this happen to her? She had to get away... but to get away was wrong. She was a slave.

She heard the beat of hooves. Two horses! She twisted her head around in the wild hope that it was Thomas and Gerard returning. But it was Arabella, together with a dark-haired girl perhaps a couple of years younger than she was.

They dismounted and walked up to Melanie. The new girl looked her over in wonder, but also with a touch of the coldness Arabella showed.

“Oh, she is beautiful,” she said, turning Melanie’s head from side to side and squeezing her breasts. “I can see why you wanted her for yourself. Does she really run as well as they say?”

“Yes, but she needs more obedience training.”

“The sort of thing you did to the Drake girl?”

Arabella smiled cruelly, looking Melanie straight in the eye. “Better than that. Help me get her onto the frame.”

They pulled the cleft stick out of Melanie and released her bonds, leaving the rope ends bound about her wrists and ankles. Melanie fell forward onto her face, her arms and legs numb and useless. They dragged her over to the packgirl frame which was lying flat on the grass. Resting her on the netting they tied her face down, her hands fastened over her head to the bar at the apex of the ‘A’ frame which hitched over the back of a saddle and her feet on the rests over the axle.

“Now unhook the net,” Arabella said.

Belinda obeyed, leaving Melanie hanging in a bow from her wrists and ankles, her stomach and breasts brushing the grass. Mutely she watched as they fitted rods from the pack Arabella had brought with her to either side of the frame top, forming extended ‘handles’ about five feet long. Loops of leather trailed from the handle ends.

They brought their horses up and positioned them close together and then lifted the frame by the handles and rolled it forward so that they could hook the leather loops over their western-style saddle pommels. Now Melanie hung suspended from the frame between the two horses, hanging at an angle of some forty-five degrees. The girls mounted up and Arabella looked across at Belinda.

“You’ve always boasted you were a good rider,” she said. “Can you follow my lead and hold the frame steady between us?”

“Of course,” Belinda replied confidently. “Where are we going?”

“Just across to the next field. You’ll see. Ready?”

They set off. The frame rattled along between the two horses. Melanie swung limply from her ropes, her breasts bobbing and swaying with a heavy fluid motion. Arabella watched her with triumphant eyes. They passed out of the woods and along the top of a field and through a gate. The field beyond had been left fallow. Most of its lower slopes were covered in clusters of bright green spear thistles, some already standing four or five feet high, though not yet in flower.

Belinda laughed at the sight. Melanie whimpered and began pulling futilely at her bonds, shaking her head desperately.

The riders urged their mounts into a trot and then a canter, sweeping down across the field and into the thistle patch with their helpless victim suspended between them. The hoofbeats of the two horses became a pounding roar in Melanie’s ears. She shrieked behind her gag, then turned her head aside and screwed up her eyes as she ploughed into the first clump of thistles.

The plants broke against her naked, unprotected body with a swish and slap, their hollow stems popping as they fell, raking along the length of her before being scythed by the frame’s axle. Vicious inch-long thorns stabbed and tore at her out-thrust breasts and stomach like spiked flails, leaving beaded trails of scarlet streaked down her body. Shorter, finer thorns broke off in her brown flesh, each forming a burning point of pain. Her body contorted in reflex, muscles over her shoulders and back lifting and hardening. Her buttocks became glossy, perfectly rounded hills, clenching inward as though to close the deep cleft between them. Thighs swelled, calves bunched, tendons stood out in sharp definition as she strained magnificently at the ropes that bound her to the frame, hopelessly trying to shrink away from the agonising onslaught. Under the pressure Melanie’s bladder cut loose, spraying a convulsive stream wildly across the grass.

From the safety of her saddle, Belinda laughed at this loss of control and dignity. Arabella watched each twist and jerk the tortured woman made, her eyes straining as though trying to take in every thistle point as it struck home.

Then they were through the thistles and the two horses were slowing to a trot, then a halt. Melanie’s head dropped limply onto her chest as though in a faint. Incoherent gurgling noises came from behind her gag. Arabella dismounted and ran eagerly round her horse to inspect the effects of her punishment at close quarters.

Melanie was hanging trembling in her bonds, her head hanging loose, her fingers and toes clawing feebly at the air. The front of her body was a mass of longitudinal grazes and fine streaks of blood, mingling with splashes of sap from the thistle stalks. The insides of her thighs glistened with urine. The upper slopes of her breasts, driving into the thistles almost full-on in her suspended position, had suffered the worst. They bristled with broken spines like pincushions. One large spine was actually embedded in Melanie’s left nipple. A bright red globule of blood was rising about its point of penetration.

Arabella grasped Melanie’s hair and tugged her head upright. Melanie’s face was frozen in a mask of pain, her eyes half-closed. Arabella pulled the gag strap from Melanie’s mouth. Her jaws remained parted, teeth still bared, a drool of saliva dribbled from her lips. On the strap were the marks of her teeth where she had half-bitten through the leather.

Arabella took in every detail of her abused body and smiled, savouring her slave’s distress, feeling elated at the change she had wrought in her.

“Oh, you are so beautiful,” she said softly.

Then she slapped Melanie’s cheeks repeatedly and hard, until Melanie’s eyes flickered open and focused fearfully upon her.

“Well, girl? How do you feel about licking my arse now?”

The question slowly penetrated the shocked layers of Melanie’s mind, still spinning in the waves of fire rising up from her tormented flesh. All her dignity and self-respect had been obliterated by the ordeal of her ride. Those few seconds had broken her spirit more easily than she could have imagined. It was more than the pain she had suffered, it was the fact that it could be inflicted upon her so casually. It was proof of her absolute subjugation to Arabella’s will. Arabella was her Mistress, she was her slave. She could escape the pain and the fear of more pain by agreeing to serve her. How simple it was.

Melanie fought to keep her voice steady. “I... I would be honoured... to lick your arse, Mistress.”

“And Miss Belinda’s?”

“Any... anybody you wish, Mistress.”

“You wish to serve me?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“Will you do anything for me?”

“Anything... everything... please let me show you, Mistress!”

Arabella considered for a minute, then said to Belinda: “Help me untie her.”

Melanie found herself blubbing with shameless relief. She kept saying: “Thank you, thank you...” to Arabella as she freed her, actually feeling gratitude to the person responsible for her suffering. A tiny part of her raged impotently against her cowardice, but the need to be free was overwhelming. If she was free she could pull out the agonising thorns and put dock leaves on her burning flesh. And she would serve her Mistress and be so good she would never, ever, need to punish her like that again...

It was several seconds before she realised that she was being re-tied to the frame in a new position.

“Mistress...?” she croaked.

Arabella smiled. “You said you would do anything for me...”

 

As Thomas and Gerard rode across the sweep of gravel before the Hall, they saw the Major descending from the trap that had taken him to the station hardly two hours earlier. By the time they trotted up the trap had set off again carrying Platt in the direction of the stables.

“Didn’t expect to see you back so soon, sir,” Thomas to the Major, who was standing on the steps of the front door.

Major Havercotte-Gore scowled. “The Express never arrived. Engine trouble, apparently. Waited around hoping for another train, but there’s nothing that could get us to Exeter in time.”

“Bad luck, sir,” Gerard said.

“Well, it can’t be helped. We’ll have to manage with two girls short for a little longer. Hope there’ll be enough of them for the Ball. I wanted the decorations to look particularly fine this year.”

“I’m sure everything will go swimmingly, sir,” said Thomas.

They chatted for another minute, then the Major turned to enter the house. But he was stayed by the sight of Platt dashing through the archway of the stable court towards him, with an anxious looking Alison at his heels.

“Good Lord, man,” the Major exclaimed as he reached them. “What’s the matter?”

“I’m afraid Miss Arabella has taken Melanie out to the woods... in the company of Mr Thomas and Mr Gerard.”

The Major fixed the two young men with an enquiring gaze. “Well, gentlemen?”

Thomas answered. “That’s quite right, sir. Arabella invited us and we had a little sport with Melanie - and very fine she was too.”

“And where is she now?” the Major asked impatiently.

The two men exchanged awkward glances. “Afterwards, Arabella wanted to punish the girl for not pleasing her,” Gerard said. “She, er, talked of thistles.”

“No!” exclaimed the Major.

“But we wouldn’t have any part in it,” Thomas assured him quickly. “And it needs two for that sort of game.”

“But that’s the trouble, sir,” Platt interjected. “Alison says Miss Arabella took out a horse for Belinda Jenkyns to ride half an hour ago.”

The Major’s face flushed with rage and dismay. “Gentlemen, we need your horses this instant!”

 

Melanie hung on the frame, her feet above her head and her back nearest the ground, her spread ankles tied to the supporting rods. Her wrists were bound to the footrests while her head hung downward, trailing her hair in the grass. Melanie’s bottom now twisted and swayed where her breasts had been on the previous run. Her thighs spread in grotesque welcome, her lovemouth gaping, exposing its coral-pink interior as though perversely eager to receive its chastisement.

The frame bounced between the two horses as they galloped across the field and into the thistle patch. Melanie’s scream rose above the pounding of hooves as the taller thistle heads lashed across her inner thighs, funnelled inward to the plump purse of flesh at their apex. Taller plants bowed over and slapped down on her mound, raking through her pubic hair and leaving spines and fragments of leaf entangled in the tight black curls. Dozens of spines every second were pricking and tearing at her most sensitive flesh, delicate inner labia twisted and tugged as though by many tiny pins. Thicker stems rasped deeper through her cleft, clawing at her clitoris, then ran on downward to cut a searing line between her buttocks. Fine streaks of blood appeared about her inner thighs, around the curve of her bottom cheeks and down the smooth skin of her back.

With a tremendous pain-driven effort, Melanie arched her body to lift her groin above the thistles. Arabella’s long switch cracked out, cutting across the taut muscles of her stomach and beating her down again. There was to be no escaping her punishment.

In all the ride lasted little more than ten seconds, but they were the worst seconds of Melanie’s life. Her screams continued far longer.

Then they ran clear of the thistles and the riders slowed to a halt. The two girls looked at the twitching, sobbing, bedraggled figure slung between their mounts. They felt the thrill of power course through them at the thought of what they had done to such a beautiful creature.

“Now she really knows what it is to be punished,” Arabella said, her eyes sparkling.

“She’ll never dare disobey you after this,” Belinda added.

“She might, but no matter. I want more of a challenge than Sue provided. But for the next few days, I certainly don’t think she’ll give any trouble. Now, we had better...”

“Arabella!”

The ferocious cry rang out over the hedgerows. Arabella and Belinda twisted round in their saddles to see the Major and Platt gallop through the upper field gate and race towards them.

“Damn!” said Arabella quietly.

The riders came to a halt only yards from them, their mounts snorting and kicking up a spray of earth.

The Major was purple with rage, while Platt almost fell off his horse in his haste to get to Melanie. He crouched down by her side and lifted her head with remarkable tenderness, muttering: “Dear Lord, what have they done to you, girl?”

They all heard the faint rasp of Melanie’s reply: “I... submitted... first time round... Mister Platt... but they did it again... please don’t let them do it again... please!”

Platt took in her scratched and torn body, then cast such a venomous glance at Arabella and Belinda that they shrank back in alarm. Pulling out his clasp knife he began cutting Melanie free.

The Major spoke, clearly fighting to keep his voice under control.

“Arabella, you will go to your room and stay there until I say otherwise. This may have to be referred to the police.”

“But we were only breaking her in, training her...”

“You call this barbarism training! Now do as you are told.”

“But the Ball tomorrow...!”

“There will be no Ball for you. Now go, or must I have the servants take you there by force?”

Platt had Melanie free and she rested unsteadily on her hands and widespread knees; too weak to stand, unable to lie or sit because of the thistle spines that bristled over most of her body. Platt was trying to support her as best he could, but there was hardly any place he could hold her comfortably. His eyes once again found Arabella’s face and she read the utter contempt in their depths.

Arabella mutely unhitched the carry frame from her saddle and rode off.

The Major turned to Belinda, who had been looking on trembling and white-faced.

“Miss Jenkyns,” he said in brittle tones. “I have no doubt my niece led you on in this, nevertheless you should have known better. You will return your horse to the stables and then leave my land. You are no longer welcome here. Do you understand?”

Belinda gulped, nodded and rode off after Arabella.

Only when they had gone did the Major dismount and kneel down by Melanie’s trembling figure.

“My poor brown vixen,” he said, gently stroking her hair.

And there were tears in his eyes.