Mister Henry & Zelamir

The Village

Book Two

The Annual Pony Boy Race

Summary

What follows is less a story than an entertainment and it recounts a visit to the Vale by Mark Legge to his stay with his old friend Mister Jack Wardle of Dingle Hall on the weekend of the Annual Pony Boy Race.

It describes some of the unique customs and institutions of the Vale and includes descriptions of boys being physically and sexually abused.

Disclaimer added by Céladon Puerulus

If you don't like reading stories about men having sex with boys, why are you here in the first place?

This story is the complete and total product of the author's imagination and a work of fantasy, thus it is completely fictitious, i.e. it never happened and it doesn't mean to condone or endorse any of the acts that take place in it. The author certainly wouldn't want the things in this story happening to his character(s) to happen to anyone in real life.

It is just a story, ok?

Author's note

Measurements

First Publication

Chapter 1

Mark Legg gazed resignedly out at the country as it slowly unfolded on either side of the passing train. It was not very pleasant to look at, great fields of corn, unbroken by trees or hedgerows, relieved only by the occasional patch of 'set-aside land', covered by brambles and poisonous yellow ragwort. No birds or animals were to be seen to relieve the monotony of the scene, just corn and scrub stretching away into the distance. Every now and again a bunch of box like modern houses would erupt incongruously in the middle of this debased countryside. Without churches or shops these clumps of dwellings were not villages or towns just places where people slept between days of urban toil.

If it were not for the very fat woman pressing up against his arm to his right and the ear splitting noise being made by a transistor thumping out hard rock operated by four rather drunk young men at the end of the carriage Mark would have read his newspaper. However the Times being a broad sheet was difficult to read in a confined space, and no space was more confined, he reflected than the one into which he was currently crammed. Anyway concentration, or indeed thought of any kind, was rendered impossible by the noise of the ghetto blaster.

Eyhorne Street, Harrietsham, Lenham, Charring, the train stopped at each deserted semi-derelect station, with their litter strewn platforms, locked waiting rooms, vandalised lavatories and weed filled flower beds. Next stop was his, Westwell Leacon. The train would be almost four hours late but at least he knew there would be no question of having missed his connection. There was only one train a day between the evening and morning rush hours down the single track branch line to Muggleton and it would have been held back for the connection. Unlike the rest of England trains and indeed all other services connected with that place, were operated with the convenience of the public as first priority.

The train seemed for a moment to have picked up a previously quite unsuspected turn of speed. Through the dirt encrusted window partially further obscured by the carriage's "no smoking" sign, Mark saw the Westwell Leacon station sign flash past. He started to his feet. The train driver had stopped many times in the course of the journey when he should not have. Was it possible that, driven by some weird existential logic, he should now feel obliged not to stop when the timetable required that he should? If it had been the train-driver's intention to ignore the station, and who can fathom the workings of the mind of a Connex employee, he changed his mind as soon as Mark was on his feet. Slamming the brakes on he brought the train to a halt throwing Mark hard against the fat woman. Apologising Mark extricated himself from her arms and began to make his way along the central aisle of the carriage towards the doors. Shuffling through the detritus of empty, plastic coke bottles, lager cans, crisp and cigarette packets that littered the floor, his case bumping against his own legs and those of those passengers to be unfortunate to be seated on either side of the aisle, he eventually reached the end of the carriage. He pressed the button to open the sliding doors that would release him onto the platform. Nothing happened.

One of the youths, a large very black one with an Afro hair do, with the ghetto blaster stood up.

"Fucking safety feature," he shouted over the heavy beat of the music. There was a sharp click and a ten-inch [25cm] blade glinted in his hand. Inserting it between the two doors he prized them apart. One of his friends equally large but somewhat paler in colour got his fingers in the gap between the two doors and with some difficulty forced them further open.

"I'd fucking get out now if you want to dude," the first youth said, "he can't hold the thing for fucking ever."

Muttering his thanks Mark wriggled out through the narrow opening thus created and down onto the platform. The doors closed with a solid thud behind him. He turned to wave his thanks to the two youths but they had already returned to their seats.

The train having stopped showed no signs off starting again. It just stood there its diesel engine turning over noisily, its passengers cooking slowly in the heat. The platform was deserted. There was no shade. The sun beat fiercely down and its heat reflected off the asphalt was magnified many times. No one else got on or off the train. There was no announcement over the loud speakers.

Mark had not expected one. Muggleton was a very private sort of place. It had its own way of doing things that its inhabitants tended to think was better than other peoples' but it didn't impose its ideas on others and it expected that courtesy to be reciprocated. It wasn't exactly that it kept itself to itself, indeed Mark knew from his own experience how hospitable and welcoming Muggletonian's could be to those who sympathised with their ideas. It was just that it didn't push itself forward. It did not advertise itself.

In conformity with this attitude the train for Muggleton stood waiting, tucked inconspicuously away beside a neatly painted-waiting room and shaded by a stand of massive oak trees. A small steam engine, coupled to a single carriage both spotlessly clean and painted in the colours of the old lner company, puffed quietly away. The carriage was not a featureless mass produced metal tube of the sort in which Mark had recently been imprisoned but a carefully crafted object with luxuriously upholstered individual compartments each with its own door and a corridor. All the doors now stood open the sunlight, filtering through the thick canopy of oak leaves, glinting on their highly polished brass handles, so that they could be cooled and aired by the gentle breeze.

Mark climbed into an empty compartment pulling the door with figure "1" painted on its outside closed behind him with a satisfyingly solid clunk. He lifted his case onto the luggage rack thinking as he did so that it was the last time that he would have to handle it this side of his visit to his old school friend Jack Wardle. He sank down onto the thickly upholstered window seat facing the engine and leaning forward pulled on the thick leather strap that controlled the compartment's window causing it to drop down into the door. He had seen no sign of the engine driver or fireman but he was confident that now the connection had arrived it would not be long before the train departed.

He flipped down the thick armrest to his right and, unfolding his newspaper, buried himself in his Times. He was un-surprised to note that the Prime Minister's announcement, slipped into a press release detailing a reshuffling of sub-cabinet ministerial posts, that the monarchy was abolished and would be replaced with an elected presidency when the details had been worked out came in for some adverse editorial comment. The Times, it appeared, was not impressed by the suggestion by a Downing Street source that the country could chug along perfectly well for a year or two without a head of state or, if that proved not to be so, some interim temporary arrangement could be made. After all the country was managing perfectly well already with an interim head of the judiciary and an interim second chamber so why not an interim head of state? Everything anyway would be worked out in due course by a small committee of eminent individuals all of whom happened at one time or another to have shared a flat with the Prime Minister.

Mark had hardly got halfway through the editorial questioning the wisdom of this approach when there was a slamming of doors, a blast on a whistle and, with a discrete toot on it's whistle fully in accord with the restrained way that Muggletonians conducted themselves during their contacts with the outside world, the train began to move out of the station. At first the track ran through the same sort of debased and sterile countryside as before. Then with a considerably louder and more assertive whistle than before the train was suddenly plunged into brief total darkness before the electric lights flickered on as it entered the long Westwell Leacon Branch Line Tunnel. Mark, who had been expecting it, grabbed the leather strap and yanked the window closed so that no smuts and smoke could get into the compartment.

The carriage was filled with a low yellow light quite unsuitable to read by. Mark could have reached up and switched on the individual reading lamp set over his seat. Instead he settled back and, as the smoke and steam dimly illuminated by the light from the carriage swirled past the window, gave himself up to thought.

He had always enjoyed his visits to stay with Jack Wardle from way back when they were both boys together and he was commonly invited to spend part of his summer holidays at the old family home. This times though the visit seemed to promise to be something special. First of all it was the weekend of the Muggleton Race meeting, always a time of high excitement and pleasure. Then it was clear from Jack's letters that he thought that he had a very good team and driver for the Baron Corvo Challenge Cup. The last time a team out of the Dingly Dell stable had won the cup had been in Jack's grandfather's time. There would be great celebrations indeed if the cup could at last grace again the mantle piece in the dining room of the great house.

Then there was Daniel, Jack's young nephew now just ten years old. Mark knew what great hopes his friend had placed in that young animal. After his own wife had died in childbirth Jack had seen his younger brother's son as the way to preserve the family name and ownership of the Dingley Dell estate. He himself had had his doubts about the boy as he had about his father. He remembered Tom from his own visits to the place as a boy. A couple of years younger than Jack and himself he had always felt there was something odd about him even then. He couldn't put his finger on it but an uncertainty, a lack of confidence, a weakness perhaps of spirit. He had thought he had noticed the same flaw in Daniel and had tried tactfully to warn Jack but had been he thought ignored.

For a time all had gone well. In Jack's eyes his nephew could do no wrong but then, when he was brought to the village, the baseness of the boy's nature became apparent. Mark could tell from his friend's letters how hard a blow this was to him. All at once all the hopes he had invested in the child were betrayed. But Jack did not show his disappointment. He did not hesitate but simply acted in the only way possible for a man of his integrity. Daniel lacked moral fibre. He would pollute others if action was not taken. Jack could easily simply have sent the boy away from Dingley Dell, back to the outer world which had already become so degenerate and corrupt that Daniel's presence would hardly make it any worse. But that would have been a renouncement of responsibility and Jack never evaded his responsibilities and did not intend to do so on this occasion. Despite his deep disappointment at his betrayal by the boy he applied to the trustees to have his nephew admitted as a charity boy.

Even then he did not consider his work done. As he wrote to Mark, "Daniel is my family's problem and it is up to me to deal with it. If my Father had faced up to my younger brother's inadequacies and taken the appropriate action then none of this would have happened. I do not intend to repeat my father's mistake." He kept Daniel in his own household, not now as a probable inheritor of the family estate, but as a mere charity boy. He devoted a great deal of time and energy to toughening the brat up physically so that he could do a full and proper days work. At the same time he worked hard to instil in the boy the habits of unquestioning obedience and willing acceptance of his servitude working at the same time to make him appreciate the deep debt of gratitude he owed for being allowed, unworthy though he was, the opportunity to serve his betters.

Mark could tell from his letters that Jack found all this a trouble. Passing references to his right arm being tired from beating the boy or of his rest being disturbed by the child's howls as either his mother, who had generously agreed to stay on at the big house to help with the schooling of her son, or Mrs Thomas his excellent house keeper, tried to thrash some sense into the little tyke, attested to this. Indeed his letters were full of praise for the commitment that Jean, Daniel's mother showed in forwarding the process of bringing her son to heel. A commitment that contrasted painfully to the disinterest, amounting almost to open hostility, in the process shown by the boy's father who remained working for some worthy but ineffective nga in the Far East, his only contribution the occasional carping letter.

"Bad blood Mark," Jack had said in one of his letters, "and what makes it worse it is our family's blood. When I think what poor Jean has to put up with from both her husband and her son and when I reflect that if my Father had but done his duty when Tom's inadequacies were all too clear as a boy she would have been spared all this, I am consumed with guilt." "I wish Mark," he had written on another occasion, "that you could have been here this morning when the excellent Mrs Thomas dragged Daniel into the dining room by his ear and announced that she had discovered the miserable little brute thieving a slice of burnt toast from the kitchen swill bin. Jean had nothing to hand with which to hit the thieving little turd but that did not stop her. Quick as a flash she had pulled off one of her shoes and began beating him about the head and shoulders with its heel. His scalp was soon torn but neither the blood nor the brat's screams could deflect her from her duty. She is a wonderful woman with a real knack in handling charity scum. What a pity she is wasted on that useless fellow my brother."

More recently a rather more optimistic note had appeared in Jack's letters. "There is after all only one final outcome possible in a struggle between a member of the community and even the stubbiest of charity boys and as the old saying goes the longer it takes to break a brat the more total its final submission is." One recent letter even suggested that the boy's behaviour and attitude had sufficiently improved for Jack to be considering giving him as a gift to a young protege of his, William Smythe, the thirteen year old son of the village Doctor. William, Jack remarked was a tough little fellow that would stand no nonsense and would appreciate having a charity boy of his own to keep up to scratch. They would be good for each other, William would have the opportunity of working and disciplining a brat while Daniel would benefit from having a young energetic master who would no doubt adopt a hands on approach to disciplinary matters.

Mark looked forward to seeing how Daniel had made out as a charity boy. He had seen the boy about the place from time to time during his visits to the big house and although he had thought him an attractive enough little thing in his school uniform shorts and grey flannel shirt he had always felt that the child would look much better as a charity brat. Mark secretly imagined the child stripped naked or dressed in the single meagre garment allowed a charity boy, his skin burnt nut brown from constant exposure to the sun and wind, the few excess ounces he carried stripped from him by hunger and hard work, his taught young body bearing the inevitable marks of a recent beating. Shortly he was going to see whether the reality was as attractive as he had imagined.

He wondered if Jack was keeping the boy naked or allowing him some vestigial clothing. He knew that early on Daniel was denied all clothing for Jack had mentioned the boy's initial reluctance to show himself naked in the village. Jack dealt with this in short order but had clearly been more amused than angered by the child's reluctance. The idea of anyone taking any notice of anything as commonplace and normal as a naked charity boy running around the village was laughable and after all the brat would have to endure many greater and more painful humiliations in its existence. Of one thing Mark was sure, if the little brute was allowed any clothing it would be minimal. Jack was not the sort of man to waste money on clothing pauper boys and he was too generous and considerate a man to needlessly deprive his neighbours of the pleasure to be had from seeing a pretty young slut about the place.

Mark remembered Daniel's nicely rounded bottom with the dimples on either side clearly visible beneath the tightly fitting grey flannel shorts. Those dimples would be more pronounced now as the boy had been toughened up and lost weight and seared into the deeply tanned flesh just below the top of the child's left hip would be the Trust's CB brand. Had the brat been fucked yet? He was ten years old so if he had not the moment, the third climactic as it was often called in a pauper boy's life, circumcision, branding, penetration, could not be long delayed.

With a hoot and a roar the train emerged from the long tunnel. Sun light flooded the compartment and Mark abandoning his reverie sat gazing out of the window awaiting the trains arrival at Muggleton Station with a sense of excited anticipation.

The railway track now ran down the side of a wide valley. To left and right the South Downs rose, their grass covered slopes dotted with white sheep. Beside the track the valley floor was divided by high hedgerows, where dog rose and honey suckle bloomed, into a patchwork of small fields. There was none of the sterile uniformity that had debased the country earlier. This was a living and various landscape. Hay meadows, where the breeze sent ripples of movement through the tall grass, stood side by side with pasture land, where black and white Friesian cows grazed quietly, and corn fields. Even these latter were not uniform. Mark could see fields of barley, oats, wheat, even potatoes and other vegetables, flash by the carriage windows as the train trundled steadily forwards. There were frequent little woods and coppices while every farmhouse seemed to have a small orchard growing near by.

In the middle distance the Dingle river, a sheet of polished silver under the blazing sun, ran through water meadows golden with buttercups and celandine. Beyond this the patchwork of small fields and woods resumed until the land rose sharply again on the far side of the valley.

A couple of rabbits disturbed by the passing train scuttled across a freshly mown hay field, a fox skulked along a hedgerow, swallows wheeled and darted overhead. A herds boy trudging bare footed after his charges, a pair of ragged shorts his only clothing, turned to salute the passing train and it's passengers. He dropped to his knees in the mire and pressed his head to the ground, as the rules required. Then, springing to his feet, he waived vigorously in a spontaneous gesture of welcome, white teeth flashing in his dark face as he grinned. Words, Mark reflected, could not more clearly express both the brat's submission to the system that governed his existence and his unquestioning acceptance of his roll in it.

The train rolled on. A gang of near naked field boys, all hefty young animals fifteen or sixteen years old, were raking and turning freshly cut hay by hand under the blazing sun. Watching them, whip in hand was a slight young boy, probably the farmer's son, no more than eight years old. The boy stood there, his straw hat perched nonchalantly on his head, confident in his ability to control eight brutes each one of which was individually bigger and stronger than he was. Even as Mark watched the boy sensed some failure or lack of effort from one of the gang. Mark could not hear the crack of the whip or the scream of the boy across whose shoulders it scored a livid weal but he saw the youth leap under the bight of the lash and bend with renewed energy to his task. No doubt he and his fellows would need and get a great deal more encouragement of a similar nature before their daily sixteen hours of hard labour drew to an end.

How well thought Mark had the arrangements made in the mid fifteenth century by that philanthropic wool stapler and alderman John Hiram lasted and how well had they served successive generations rich and poor alike of the inhabitants of the Dingle Valley. Mark knew Hiram's original bequest, prompted it was believed by an incident when a pauper boy refused alms threw a lump of horse shit at the good man, was of five pounds. The income from this was to be used to clear the streets of Muggleton of all "idle vicious or unwanted boys and to bind them to the service of worthy masters so that they could spend their time in useful labour and learn the virtues of obedience and humility." He adjured the trustees of the fund to be frugal in the provision of maintenance for the pauper boys for it was right and necessary that they should be early inured to hardship and not to spare the rod when correcting their manifold faults. The consequences of this foundation were found so useful and beneficial to the community that over the following two hundred years many of the more affluent inhabitants left further sums to the trustees of John Hiram's foundation considerably increasing that worthy's original bequest.

At first the trustees confined their activities, as perhaps John Hiram had intended, to the children of the indigent poor. Thus the custom, that persisted to the current day, of referring to boys in their care indiscriminately as charity or pauper boys. It was only in the early seventeenth century that the full potential benefits of the charity were recognised. A solicitor practising in Muggleton consoled himself for the death of his first wife by marrying a local landowner's daughter. He cast around for a way of ridding himself of the inconvenient existence of a child from the first marriage, being prevented from simply having the young boy strangled by an unusually tender conscience for one of his profession. In preparing an indenture transferring ownership of a of a coffle six nine year old pauper brats to a merchant in the Turkey trade, who thought he saw a chance of disposing them profitably in the Levant where there was and indeed still is, a strong demand for pretty blond boys, he stumbled across the original wording of old John Hiram's bequest.

He immediately presented his weeping son for acceptance by the trustees. He argued that, while admittedly the brat was not a pauper nor indeed so far as he was aware more than usually idle and vicious for a boy of his age, he was most certainly unwanted. The trustees immediately saw the force and convenience of his argument (the boy was a remarkably pretty one). They accepted responsibility for the brat and ordered that his name should be added to the indenture that was at that moment lying on his father's desk still awaiting completion.

In this way the solicitor was freed of an embarrassment, the Turkey merchant turned a tidy profit and a precedent was set that was enthusiastically followed over the following centuries. To such an extent indeed that by mid-nineteenth century the parish roles suggest that 87% of boys resident in the Vale of Dingle between the ages of eight and sixteen were charity boys. In the end John Hiram had achieved in his native town, Mark reflected, what modern governments have totally failed to deliver nationally with all their expensive paraphernalia of child benefit which is not paid, schools that fail to teach, parenting orders that are ignored, police who do not act and courts which do not convict. He had helped parents with the cost and trouble of rearing children, he had created a society where juvenile hooliganism was unknown, he had imposed order and purpose where otherwise there would have been simply self-destructive chaos.

The few glimpses of life in the Vale of Dingle that his train journey had provided showed that the system was destined to endure. The little herds boy signalling his willing submission, the small farmer's son so confident in his authority and the gang of docile young field hands labouring under his direction all showed that this was so.

Just as Mark reached this comforting conclusion there was a grinding of brakes accompanied by a loud hissing signalling that the train was drawing into Muggleton Station. The carriage trundled slowly forwards, past the Stationmaster's immaculate vegetable garden with cabbages, carrots, beetroot and other vegetables all neatly ranked and a small naked pauper boy assiduously hoeing between the rows of lettuces. The brat's zeal was no doubt partly accounted for by the presence on the station platform nearby of the station master himself resplendent in his navy blue uniform and peaked cap heavy with silver braid. As the child bent to his task Mark noticed a couple of fresh bruises on his bottom that suggested he had already that day been given a taste of the man's belt. It rolled slowly on past a small flower garden where with chrysanthemums, flox, sweet peas, dahlias, irises jostled each other for space.

The instant the train came to a halt at the platform, still wet from it's most recent scrubbing, the door to Marks compartment was pulled open. Rising from his seat Mark saw a pretty little twelve-year-old urchin holding the door open for him. The boy wore a small pillbox hat set jauntily on one side of his head on top of a mass of dark curls and a tight little shell jacket both in yellow and brown colours of the old lner and nothing else. Unless that is you included under the heading of clothing the thin band of metal encircling the base of the child's tiny prick and tight hairless ball sack forcing his genitalia away from his body in a way that almost invited an exploring hand. As Mark stepped down onto the platform the brat gave respectfully at the knees turning his left thigh outwards and with his open palm briefly brushing against the black outline of a rampant man's cock tattooed on its inside at its very top.

Mark knew that this sign meant that the boy's body was available to be used by any man who was prepared to pay, the no doubt very moderate fee, set by the station master for his use. A matter of a few pence no more. As usual what determined the price of an asset or service was supply and demand and while demand for the services offered by the slut was no doubt high the number of good quality brats available would keep their price depressed. Having said that the boy was a pretty little animal and Mark might well in other circumstances have raised the question of his price with the stationmaster who was standing by the gate to the station yard. But even at that moment Mark caught sight of Jack setting a spanking pace as he drove up the village high street in a stylish open two wheeler drawn by a well matched pair high stepping of pony boys with a smaller running boy keeping a steady two feet [60cm] behind it.

Mark, as he stepped out onto the platform, briefly squeezed the child's balls. The little whore straightened himself pushing his pelvis forwards. Mark walked on with a smile. Forbidden to speak unless spoken to charity brats nevertheless generally managed to get certain simple messages across to their betters.

The stationmaster was waiting to apologise to Mark for the late arrival of his train and to welcome him on behalf of the railway company to Muggleton. The functionary made no reference while doing so to the possession or otherwise of a ticket. To have done so after all would have been to commit the social solecism of implying that Mark was the sort of person who might travel without one.

These courtesies completed the official excused himself on the grounds that he needed to ginger up the gang of pauper boys charged with unloading the goods van. The crack of leather striking bare flesh and the squeals of pain coming from the far end of the platform following his departure suggested that he performed this task with exemplary vigour and enthusiasm.

The stationer master gone Mark stood alone in the shade of the ticket office admiring Jack's rig as it approached. This was not some old buggy taken out of the barn on market day by a local farmer with two of his sturdiest boys taken straight from the fields and clapped between the shafts to draw it. The carriage was a thing of beauty, light and elegant, it's black and gold paintwork pristine and gleaming. The two pony boys drawing it looked bred for the task. Their oiled and burnished bodies glistened with health, their feet pounding the road in perfect timing as they ran, lifting their knees just as high after covering six miles [10km] at a cracking pace in the heat of the day as when they set out.

Such precision, discipline and endurance were not easily or quickly inculcated. Behind these two fourteen year olds now drawing their master so smartly up the little town's main street lay some seven or eight years of patient schooling. Jack and his fellow trainers were always scanning the fresh drafts of charity boys for little brats with the potential to grow into strong well-made beasts with long legs and good chests. The problem was to judge how a skinny seven-year-old colt would look in five years time when he could be expected to be put between the shafts for the very first time for a novice chase or similar race. Jack said he looked at such indications as the size of the feet and hands, the way the shoulders were set to the trunk and surprisingly into the child's eyes to judge its courage and willingness to give all for its master. The task of selecting likely colts for training was further complicated by the fact that in prestige terms being the parent of one of a pair of champion pony boys ranked only second to owning a pair of such boys. As a consequence the training yards were always having visits from mothers hawking what they fondly imagined were likely brats from one establishment to another in an endeavour 'to do their best' for their little darlings.

However a colt was selected and from whatever source he came the signing of his indenture papers and the acceptance of the consideration by his parents marked the beginning of a long and arduous program of preparation and training.

Pony boy racing had a long history in the Vale of Dingle. The earliest historical record being a mention in the will of a wool chandler in 1543 leaving to "my brother Thomas my hunting dog and my two trotting boyes and my chariotte". However, as with many other sports, a set of rules governing its conduct was only drawn up in the mid-nineteenth century with the creation of the sports governing body "The Muggleton Boy Trotting Club" with, incidentally, Jack Wardle's great great grandfather as it's first chairman. The club undertook such important tasks such as standardising the specifications of the racing traps though these were substantially revised over the years as new and lighter materials became available for their construction allowing more arduous courses to be set and faster times achieved. They also prescribed the somewhat stylised running style required from the boys, knees being raised high and the feet being then driven hard downwards and required that racing pairs should be trained to match each others stride, inner and then outer feet hitting the ground consecutively.

The club also made explicit what had been from very early years in the history of the sport an important but unstated requirement for its development; that the trotting boys should experience the world in much the same way as their equine equivalents. The minutes show that initially a proposal to seize all babies of paupers immediately after birth and to bring them up as animals was considered. This was not pursued partly because human babies, to use an agricultural term, are not 'good goers', that is they take a considerable time to wean and so on. Further it was pointed out that to confine the selection of trotting boys to the children of the indigent classes would lead to the loss of some very high quality stock.

In the end the committee confined itself to stating certain conditions that a boy had to satisfy before he could be registered as racing stock. The most important being that he should be put into training no later than the end of his eighth year and that at the time his parents signed his indentures his eardrums should be punctured and the tip of his tongue removed though a later alternative to the latter was the cutting of the bat's focal chords. After this was done a pony boy could only express himself in grunts and squeals and he could not understand what was said about him although it was thought that he might be able to hear sufficiently to pick up something from the tone of voice used just as dogs or indeed horses do.

Jack spotting Mark waiting for him rose in the trap and waived before urging the pony boys on with vicious lashes of the whip across their bare shoulders. The trap swung into the yard the harness jingling, the pony boys' feet pounding the ground. Jack yelled and hauling hard on the reigns brought the trap to a sharp halt. The pony boy's stood still, their chests heaving as they fought for air, their bodies slicked with sweat. Mark could see from the livid welts that marked the deeply tanned skin of their shoulders and flanks that they had been driven hard.

"How are you?" Jack called out leaping down from the trap and then as the two pony boys tried to move towards the water trough beside the hitch rail quickly turning and grabbing the nearest brat by the bridle, "no you bloody don't."

A sound, half moan, half whimper came from the two boys as they were forced back from the trough. Despite being deprived of the power of speech their distress at being deprived of the chance of slaking their thirst was clear.

"They'll only try to drink the trough dry," Jack explained laughing. He hauled the boys back and secured the pair to the hitch rail on a short reign, "and get so bloated that they can't manage more than a slow trot on the way home or they'll foul the road and upset people."

It was typical of Jack's responsible and kindly nature that he should be concerned about the effect his brats could have on others.

"And you, you lazy lump of dog shit," he shouted fiercely turning his attention to the running boy who hands on his knees stood panting from his recent exertions, "do something for once to justify all the trouble you and your mother have taken with you, you ungrateful pig. Get Mr Mark's case out of the train. Quick now."

"Mark," he continued returning to his normal friendly easy tone of voice, "get your boot up the bum of that useless scum bag when he passes you. Perhaps that will induce some sense of urgency in the little brute."

Mark obligingly swung round, his foot raised, and looked at the boy properly for the first time, for up to then his attention had been concentrated on his old friend Jack and the two pony boys. He saw it was Daniel, but a very different Daniel from the rather reserved and self-conscious little schoolboy he had met on previous occasions. It was Daniel as he had sometimes imagined him in his fantasies, stripped of his clothes, a lither thinner boy, his body tanned a deep golden brown by the sun and wind, a deep purple bruise across the front of one firm young thigh showing that he was subjected to the same discipline as every other pauper brat. Mark had always thought that the boy would make an attractive charity boy and he was glad to see that opinion born out in practice.

He had just time enough to take in Daniel's transformation and to notice the scrap of blue ribbon tied round the base of the child's tiny hairless balls, a sign that the boy had not yet been penetrated, before the boy darted past him. Mark lashed out with his foot and with perfect timing caught the brat full in the rump with such force that he was lifted bodily into the air. The boy squealed and loosing his balance crashed down on the platform on his knees. His upraised bottom presented a perfect target as he scrabbled on his hands and knees to regain his feet. His blood raised, Mark started forward to take full advantage of the opportunity but the brat was too quick for him, scuttling away out of range.

The heat struck Mark like a blast of hot air from a furnace as he stepped out of the shade. The asphalt surface of the station yard had begun to bubble and melt in the sun. He walked slowly; no sensible person would do anything quickly in such heat, to where Jack was standing. The pony boys shifted uneasily their harnesses jangling, obviously bothered by the flies that were beginning to swarm about them. With their hands shackled to the trap shafts they shook their heads, wriggled their shoulders and twitched their bottoms in a vain effort to keep the creatures from settling on them. The flies were thickest round their eyes and on their backs and shoulders swarming where the whip had broken the skin or on their legs where blood welled darkly from bramble torn flesh.

"Sorry I wasn't in time to meet the train," Jack said straightening from examining a long gash down the side of one of the boy's legs. "The station master telephoned me to say it was delayed but he was just a little over pessimistic in his forecast of its probable arrival time."

"That's all right Jack the train had only just got in."

"I suppose I could have brought the car and I would have been on time but then I thought you'd enjoy the ride up to the house in the trap better in this weather. Nothing pleasanter on a hot summer's day than being drawn at a smart trot by a pair of pony boys along our lanes in an open trap."

"A well matched pair too," Mark remarked.

"Pretty good, pretty good," Jack replied complacently, "torn their legs a bit though. Took the short cut through the eighty acre wood and the brambles hadn't been cut right back on the footpath. Nothing that some wound powder won't put right though."

"You must be hungry and thirsty though. What about a couple of pints and a ham salad or something at the Duke opposite?"

"The beer sounds fine. I don't think I can eat anything though in this heat."

"You'll feel different after a pint of Black Sheep Bitter," Jack said confidently

"God the flies are bad," he added absent-mindedly brushing a horse fly from the side of the nearest pony boy's rump. "Come on lets go before they start on us."

"You," he yelled at Daniel, who was struggling to get Mark's case out of the compartment, "get a move on you lazy little tyke. This isn't a holiday camp you know. Get that case over to the ticket office. We're going over to the Duke and I want you there too NOW."

Chapter 2

"I'll get young William Smythe to come down for the case," Jack remarked as they walked. "He's sure to up at the stable yard when we get back. He spends all his spare time there when he's out of school and he'll enjoy the chance to drive to take out a trap by himself."

"A fine young lad, Doctor Smythe's eldest son, the best sort of boy. Seems to know by instinct how to handle the charity scum we're afflicted with. I had hoped 3;" He checked himself and shrugged.

"Well here we are at the Duke let's go inside and get our beers. Where's that useless brute. Oh here you are and about time to. Well open the door for us boy and we can all go in."

The two men closely followed by the naked boy, still panting and sweating slightly from his exertions, walked into the Duke.

The Duke although it called itself an hotel was primarily a public house which, more as a sideline than anything else, let out rooms. It was the most superior of the sixteen public houses that together laboured to assuage the thirsts of Muggleton's adult inhabitants. It was here that the more considerable farmers of the area met at lunchtime on market days to drink and to forecast their imminent financial ruin. It was here that the social elite of Muggleton, the doctor, the solicitor, the accountant, the headmaster, Inspector of Taxes, the Inspector of Police, the more prosperous shop keepers and so on, met in the evenings in the front bar to gossip about each other and get discretely drunk.

The lay out of the place made little concession to its status as an hotel. You entered the building from the street and found yourself in a hall that smelt in equal parts of beer and cooking whose walls may once have been painted a specific colour but had now through the passage of years and the smoke of countless cigarettes become a dingy nondescript yellow. There was no reception desk but there was a hand written notice cellotaped to the wall next to a bell push saying, "please ring for attention". In front of you a set of stairs covered in threadbare carpeting rose uninvitingly upwards. To the right was a door with small glass panels and a brass label reading "saloon" which was known commonly as the front bar. To the left a similar door bore the label "bar" which in its turn was usually referred to as the back bar although in fact it was no more in the back of the building than its socially more pretentious rival.

It was to the front bar that Jack led the way. It neither being market day or the evening the room was deserted. Jack strode across to the bar and rapped on it. There was a flutter of activity in the nether regions of the hotel and eventually a rather plump middle aged lady appeared. Catching sight of Jack her face broke into a smile.

"Why Mr Wardle," she said, "how nice to see you. What can we do for you today."

"Two pints of bitter Gwen as quick as you can for we're both parched with thirst and what can you do us for lunch."

"Well," the bar maid said as she drew the pints, "we have faggots and mushy peas, bangers and chips, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, blue grass Thai Curry, that's very popular that is, and the chef likes it cos it comes in a packet and he just has to put it into the micro-wave 3; 3;"

"Those sound all very nice Gwen but perhaps a bit heavy for lunch on a day as hot as this. Do you have any salads?"

"Salads," the idea was clearly a rather unorthodox if not revolutionary one; "well I'm not sure Sir. I'll have to ask the chef. I'll just finish drawing this pint and I'll go and see."

"Chef says," Gwen announced on her return, "that as its you Mr Wardle he can do either a ham salad or a very nice cold salmon one though he doesn't usually do salads on Friday and they're with chips or baked potatoes."

"Well cold salmon salad and a baked potato Gwen thank you. And you Mark?"

"The same please."

"Good I'll settle up now and if you give me a shout when they're ready I'll send the brat up for them. Mark the table by the window I think. I'll be along in a moment."

"That's better," Jack said a few minutes later after taking a long swig at his beer, leaning back in his chair and stretching his legs out luxuriously. I could have done with that and no doubt you could even more so Mark after that train journey of yours."

"Good beer and very welcome," Mark replied wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. It did occur to him that Daniel, who was hovering nervously behind Jack's chair, having run the six miles [10km] from Dingley Dell to Muggleton in the heat of the day was probably more thirsty than either of them but he of course didn't count being only a charity boy.

"And what," asked Jack suddenly reaching back and grabbing Daniel by his arm just above the elbow, "do you think of this little rat."

He pulled the boy roughly forward his fingers and thumb pressing deep into the flesh of the brat's thin arm.

"For God's sake stand up straight you ghastly little scumbag so Mister Mark can get a proper look at your miserable carcass," he ordered roughly releasing his hold of the boy's arm and leaving the naked child standing between the two men.

Mark noticed bruising beginning to develop where his friend's hand had gripped the boy's upper arm. He also saw that both Daniel's knees had been skinned when he had fallen on the platform and blood was oozing from the grazes and trickling down the front of his shins. However blood and bruises, in moderation at least, did not in Mark's opinion detract from the attractiveness of a young boy.

"He looks better as a charity boy," Mark remarked leaning forward and running his hand along the side of one bare thigh feeling the boy's skin cool and silken smooth to his touch. He thought he discerned a slight tremor in the boy. He wondered what Daniel felt being obliged to submit himself quietly to their inspection and handling. Then he noticed a slight stirring in the child's tiny prick. It was very slight but the thing was undoubtedly showing signs of swelling and hardening. The slut, Mark realised with a feeling of contempt, found it exciting.

"That's because he always was one," Jack said carrying Mark's unspoken thoughts to their logical conclusion. "Mind you we had a struggle to get him this far though we were working with the grain. When I think of the amount of time his mother and Mrs Thomas and I have had to spend over the last few months thrashing the conceit out of the little brute I am appalled. Looking back at times it seems to me I spelt all my waking hours slicing his bum to bits with the cane. Still it seems to be coming together now though and I hope the brat is grateful 3;are you turd?"

"Oh yes Uncle Jack Sir," Daniel said earnestly beginning one of those exercises in complex self abnegation that pauper boys performed whenever the opportunity was offered them. Mark was uncertain whether they did so because they believed and meant the sentiments they were expressing or simply in order to curry favour with their betters. "I will always be grateful to you Sir and my loving Mummy and good Mrs Thomas for all the time and trouble you all spent beating a proper sense of my own inferiority and worthlessness into my useless hide and I hope Sir you and Mummy and Mrs Thomas and Mr Mark Sir will flog me again whenever I do anything wrong so that I can learn quickly how to become 3; 3; 3;."

The brat ran on and on. Mark stopped listening and turned his attention back to his examination of the boy's body running his hand up the inside of one thigh he rolled the Daniel's tiny balls between his finger and thumb before turning his attention to the child's small but increasingly tumescent prick. Daniel had like all charity boys had had his foreskin removed during the induction process. Mark initially thought, turning the brat's cock between his fingers, that, as usual, they had made quite a neat job of it. Then lifting it he saw that the foreskin had not been cut square at the back. Perhaps the knife had slipped or the brat had suddenly managed to break loose of the hands holding him down but a distinct flap of loose skin remained uncut.

"It's not cut quite right," Mark said pulling at the flap with his finger and thumb and interrupting Daniel in full throw. The boy fell immediately silent, as the rules required of a charity boy when one of his betters spoke.

"Yes," Jack replied, "Angela does her best but it's not easy for her. She had more than a dozen to cut when Daniel was done and the brats scream and throw themselves about while it's done even with three or four people holding them down. And then there are the village boys all milling about and pushing and trying to get close to see what's being done. And, on top of everything, the added pressure that we all want the thing over and out of the way so we can get back to our houses and have our Sunday lunches."

"Why don't you get her some help then or get the job done at another time or at another place or something?"

"It's obvious you don't live in a village Mark. The rector's wife has cut the boys immediately after Matins on the Sunday following the Sunday on which they were branded for over four hundred years. Propose changing any of that and Angela will see it as a criticism of the way she does the job and be mortally offended. It's easier to correct the occasional errors oneself. Anne like a good mother has been planning to slice that bit of flesh back to Daniel's cock for month but it just gets being put off the way minor jobs do. Its no great deal just a cut with a Stanley knife and then a touch with the electric soldering iron. We've got one down the stable yard somewhere a very handy tool for cauterising fairly small wounds."

"And I see you haven't penetrated the brat yet?" Mark remarked the question implicit in his tone of voice.

"Why yes I suppose he's ready for it. But I was postponing it till you came down to visit. Anne and I were wondering if you'd look after that for us."

Mark gasped in surprise. He knew that it was the custom among more affluent members of the community to offer the first enjoyment of any reasonably attractive pauper boy in their care to a friend. But he had never expected to benefit himself from this pleasant convention.

"You needn't look so surprised Mark," Jack continued laughing. "I noticed the way you used to look at the boy when you visited in the past, as if you were stripping him naked in your imagination. I chatted it over with his mother and she agreed that there was no one we would prefer more to have first fuck of the little tart's bottom."

"You know Mark you and Jean are remarkably alike in some ways. Neither of you are natives of the village but you both instinctively seem to know how pauper scum like this," he continued landing an open handed slap on Daniel's bare rump, "have to be handled if its to be any use at all. You know that branding, cutting and penetration should mark a brat's mind just as indelibly and deeply as its body. Each through the pain it involves tells the brute in the only way it is capable of understanding that it is owned and powerless and it is a lesson it will never forget, provided that is that each job is done right."

"I told Jean that we could be sure that there would be no nonsense of your being kind or gentle with the slut when you enjoy its bottom and she said 'that's the man I want to fuck my son. Tell him he's to go in as deep and hard as he can and not to take any notice of the little shit's screams. After all it doesn't matter if he's torn. Mrs Thomas and I can always sow his bum back up again."

"Well its very nice of you both and I'm touched by your confidence in me but you know Jack I'm not exactly over-endowed. I'm not sure 3;"

"My dear chap," Jack replied laughing, "I know very well what you're like and what you're capable of. We were at school together and you've been a frequent and very welcome and active visitor to the village ever since those days. I'd describe you as perfectly adequate for all purposes and I've prepared Daniel's bottom with you in mind. I've got a size two plug in him rather than the size four or five if I was going to give him to someone like Big Willy Darling. Just big enough to be sure you can get the tip of your cock into him but you'll still need to hammer away to get beyond that. No nonsense though of using KY jelly or Vaseline or anything though. The brat's own saliva is the only lubricant allowed but you know that anyway."

"Have you got him plugged?" Mark asked for he had seen no sign of such a thing being in the boy and had indeed been rather surprised not to do so.

"Yes indeed, it's a new arrangement. I am rather pleased with it but its still in the trial stage."

"Stop that stupid grizzling slut," Jack snapped for sometime during the discussion of his coming penetration Daniel had begun to whimper, "and bend forward. For heavens sake turn your bottom to the light you stupid turd and pull your bum open. We can't see anything like that."

Impatiently Jack jumped to his feet and placing both hands on the naked boy's hip turned him so that his rump was to the light. With the brat bent double and his hands pulling the cheeks o his bottom apart Mark could see a conical shaped rubber washer partly buried between the lips of his anus. Inside the inverted cone was a small metal toggle resting on what looked like a compressed spring.

Jack moved to stand behind the boy and placing his left hand flat on the boy's bottom to brace the child he took hold of the toggle and pulled. A length of stout nylon cord was drawn out of the boy through the centre of the washer. The spring, a quite sturdy object, the pressure on it released, hung loosely curled round the cord. The cord checked. Jack pulled harder and Daniel gasped in pain. Slowly from between the lips of the brat's anus appeared attached to the nylon cord the end of a rounded, cylindrical tube.

"I won't draw it right out," Jack said keeping the tension on the cord, "there's no point and it would be a bit messy. That tube is solid and is about four inches [10cm] long the other end. The end inside Daniel is similarly rounded."

"Stand up straight boy," Jack commanded sharply.

Daniel obeyed and Jack released his hold on the toggle.

Before Jack's fascinated eyes the chord began to be drawn back into the boy.

"See the slut's bum muscles working," Jack said triumphantly. "The randy little whore can't help himself. The idea occurred to me while I was fucking one of the brats. I can't remember which one now. Was it Jonnie, or Tim or 3;? Well, it doesn't matter anyway. I'd just got fairly inside the whore and he'd clamped his bottom tight round me and it seemed to be drawing me in, although the stupid bitch was whimpering and moaning and making a general fuss like they usually do, and it came to me. It's much simpler than the old Zelamir plug. It's got no screw to tighten or rubber ring to crush and expand in the boy or bristles or anything. You shove the cylinder into the boy's hole. It's just long enough to trigger the brat's bum muscles and you need to do nothing more. The slut draws it in to himself until the toggle comes up against the washer with its spring. The washer is pulled partly into the boy spreading the lips of his anus and the spring is compressed. Mind you, you have to be careful the cord is not too long. You don't want the slut having constant dry orgasms. The boy's bottom will be straining against that spring the whole time and that I hopes will have effect of strengthening the muscles there and making him a more exciting ride. That's very difficult to measure though and I'd ask you Mark to let me know if you think Daniel's performance is better than you would usually expect and in particular if his bum grips tighter than is usual."

"The plug isn't quite as firmly anchored in the boy as the old Zelamir one but its shape makes it all but impossible for a brat to pull out by himself and, anyway, he knows what'll happen to him if he's caught trying."

"Now I see Gwen has our Salmon salads. I'll just make sure the toggle is properly housed in the washer and the spring compressed. Bend forward again brat. Yes, excellent. Very well, now go and fetch our food. Mister Mark and I are both very hungry."

"I don't suppose," Mark remarked as he watched Daniel trot across the carpeted floor to the bar, "that we are either as hungry as that little sod."

"Hungry," Jack exclaimed surprised. "Hungry, he'll have had a bowl of maize porridge mixed with swill before he started work at five this morning and he'll have another when we get back to the house. That's ample. Any more and the brute would begin to get fat and lazy. Don't make the mistake of thinking the pauper filth are the same as us."

Then Jack jerked his head towards the bar and winked silently indicating to Mark, in the same way as they had used when they were both in the fourth form at school that something amusing and interesting was likely to happen.

Daniel had almost got to the bar when Gwen, who had been leaning with both arms folded in front of her watching him approach, picked up what looked like a sawn off broom handle. The brat who would have learnt early in his existence as a pauper boy to fear sticks in the hands of his betters stopped abruptly. Gwen smiled and beckoned him to her. Very reluctantly Daniel took a further step towards the bar. Gwen hefted the staff in her hand and again beckoned the trembling child forward. Cringing in expectation of the blow to come, for Gwen's intentions were all too plain, he took another step nearer her.

A broad smile split the women's face. She raised the rod and brought it down in a short hard blow across the crown of the boy's head. Daniel yelled and clapped both hands to the top of his head.

"Put your hands down dear," Gwen ordered quietly.

Very slowly Daniel obeyed. Gwen waited a moment permitting Mark and Jack who were lounging in their chairs watching the comedy to share her enjoyment of the whimpering child's fear. Very deliberately she lifted the baton once more. She paused and then brought it cracking down on the brat's head.

"Do you know why I am hitting you? She enquired softly.

"I spose I've done something wrong Miss," Daniel gasped out between sobs.

"You suppose exactly right my sweet," she said her voice as sweet as honey and then suddenly hardening. "That carpet your standing on where the gentlemen stand when they're drinking at the bar. They don't want filthy little pauper tykes like you getting in their way and polluting the place while they're doing so. If filth like you are sent to get something from the bar you walk round the carpet to the window at the side of the bar. Do you see it shit face?"

"Yes Miss."

"And you wait there nice and quietly until I have time to deal with you. Do you understand toerag."

"Yes Miss."

"Daniel," Jack suddenly roared angrily. "Miss Gwen has been kind enough to tell you what you were doing wrong you ungrateful slab of excrement you might have the common courtesy to thank her."

"Thank you Miss. Sorry Miss. Sorry Uncle Jack Sir," the boy faltered.

"And so you should be you turd," Uncle Jack snapped at the sobbing child.

"Gwen," he continued speaking in once again in his usual relaxed tones, "I think you better hit the brat once more to make sure he remembers what you've told him. You know what short memories the pauper scum have."

"Very well Mr Wardle," Gwen said cheerfully.

"Keep your hands down brat," she ordered sharply.

Once again the staff thudded down. Daniel staggered under the impact of the blow. He stood a moment shaking his head and whimpering while the three adults watched him with amused expressions on their faces.

"Are you coming round to the serving window or are you planning to stand there all day while your Master and his friend go hungry?" Gwen enquired with false sweetness.

Somewhat unsteadily Daniel made his way to the window and collected the two plates. Walking carefully round the side of the room, taking great care not to step on the carpet he carried them to the table where the two men were sitting.

"You see," Jack said watching the boy with a quizzical smile, "they can be taught simple things quite quickly if you set about it in the right way."

He waited until Daniel had placed the plates on the table in front of the two men before he spoke directly to the brat.

"Daniel," he said speaking quite mildly, "I'm disappointed that you showed yourself so ungrateful a little brute. What do you think Miss Gwen thinks of you after your failure to say 'thank you' to her."

Daniel did not reply but hung his head.

"I'll tell you Daniel what she thinks. She thinks you must have a Mummy and Uncle who spoil you, who don't care how you behave and haven't tried to teach you to be grateful when people try to help you improve your appalling behaviour."

His voice hardened as he continued.

"But you know and I know that that's not true. Your Mummy and I have tried very hard indeed. It won't do Daniel. It won't do at all."

Without warning Jack smashed his clenched fist with all his strength into the pit of the boy's stomach. Daniel jack-knifed. He collapsed to his knees his hands clasped to his tummy before rolling onto his side on the floor.

"Excellent salmon," Jack remarked as he began to eat his lunch apparently oblivious of the ball of sobbing naked boy misery at his feet. "Rod caught – none of that farmed rubbish. We've had quite a good run of salmon up the Dingle this season though the water is rather low now after all this fine weather."

Some ten minutes later Jack was in the middle of a detailed and to Mark rather tedious, for he did think his old friend tended to bang on excessively about his fishing, account of the catching of his last salmon.

"It was bright and clear and very low water so I had gone as fine as I dared. A five pound breaking strain nylon cast and a size twelve teal and silver. I was just fishing down into the neck of the sheep dip pool where there was still a bit of current to move the fly when there was a boil in the water and I knew I was into something good. Well I'd been casting as long a line as I could although you know the bank's bushed a bit there so the back casts a problem. Oh excuse me a moment Mark."

He broke off suddenly.

"You," he said prodding Daniel's bare bottom with the toe of his shoe, "you've had long enough to get over a little tap in the tummy. Get your idle carcass over to the brat pen where you belong and wait till you're wanted again. Though what use a lump of shit like you is likely to be to anyone I don't know. Move yourself now and be sure you sit right or you'll get a bloody sight more than a prod in the guts."

Moaning quietly Daniel heaved himself painfully to his feet. Bent double, still clasping his hands to his tummy, he managed a couple of uncertain steps and then stumbled to his knees. He dragged himself on all fours to the corner of the room where two low wooden rail set at right angles to each other had created a small square area, symbolically at least, isolated from the rest of the room.

All public and many larger private rooms had such areas popularly known as 'brat pens' where charity boys could be put to wait out of the way while their masters conducted their business or enjoyed themselves. Mark started as he saw with a feeling of quiet pride that the floor of the pen was covered with what was originally clearly a dark green plastic mat but which was now liberally spattered with dark stains. It was a larger version of the sort of mat that you found outside back doors in the country side made up of many hundreds of individual stiff plastic blades designed to scrape the mud from your Wellingtons when you wiped them on it.

"Yes Jack," said who had noticed his friend start and had guessed the reason for it, "I accepted your excellent suggestion that I should substitute plastic door matting for the more traditional chore matting at Dingley Dell and it was so clearly an improvement that it was quickly adopted through out the area."

"You know how naturally lazy and selfish pauper brats are if left to there own devices. Although the chore mats were very uncomfortable to sit on some managed, despite their obvious duty to keep alert and ready to serve their Masters, to fall asleep while sitting on them. There has not been a single recorded instance of this happening since the introduction of these plastic mats. Plenty of brats with bloody bottoms from the plastic blades sticking into them but that's a price worth paying."

Daniel had reached the wooden bar bounding the brat pen. He dragged himself painfully over it and began gingerly to lower his rump onto the plastic mat.

"Oh for God's sake look at the stupid little slut now," Jack burst out, half laughing at the comical expression on the boy's face, a grimace speaking equally of apprehension and pain as he felt the first touch of the dagger sharp blades against the tender flesh of his bottom.

Jumping to his feet Jack strode across to the brat pen. Burying a hand in the Daniel's hair he hauled the boy upright. Then he kicked the brat's feet away slamming Daniel with the boy's whole weight on his bottom down onto the mat.

"Now sit properly filth," Jack ordered raising his voice to be heard over the brat's squeal of anguish. "Ankles crossed and pulled up to your crutch, knees spread wide, arms down by your side. Mr Mark and I want to see your balls touching the floor."

Daniel hurried to obey but he was neither quick enough nor sufficiently compliant to satisfy his Jack who bending down placed a hand on each of the hapless child's knees and pressed them down hard. When Jack had forced the boy's knees down so that they touching the ground he deliberately pushed forward so that Daniel's bare bottom was raked by the keen plastic spikes. These scraped the boy's rump just as if it was a boot being wiped across them except instead of removing mud and dirt they tore away skin and tender boy's flesh.

"Shut up," Jack snapped slapping the brat back handed across the face, "Mister Mark and I won't be able to here each other speak with you making that stupid row you selfish unthinking lump of pig shit."

"I don't know what the brat is making all that fuss about," he remarked to Mark as he seated himself once more at the table. "The little tyke should be grateful. If he went to sleep while he's with me and the lazy little sod probably would if he was allowed although the hardest work he's done since he started at five this morning was to run the five miles [8km] from home to here, he'd deserve and most certainly get, the hardest flogging of his young life."

This statement by Jack was typical Mark thought of the responsible and caring attitude he took to the charity boys entrusted to him.

He glanced across at Daniel sitting rigidly in the prescribed position. The boy's body was wracked with silent tears his face twisted in pain. He saw the tears and snot mixed with blood from the lip split by Jack's backhanded blow trickling down his chin. The boy was so terrified that he did not dare to move even to wipe the filth from his face with the back of his hand. How fortunate the child was to be placed in the charge of someone who understood the importance of providing a firmly discipline and structured environment for one so totally lacking in moral fibre and incapable of self discipline. Jack also clearly understood that lacking self discipline, self respect, modesty or that spirit of emulation and competition that are characteristic of a mentally and spiritually sound boy there was no practical way of motivating or controlling Daniel or the other pauper brats in his care than by the well justified fear of the physical consequences of disobedience. Put bluntly Jack knew the only thing that pauper boys like Daniel understood or respected was the lash well laid on and he acted accordingly.

"Well," said Jack eventually pushing away his plate, "that was very good. I suppose we should be on our way soon but we have time I am sure for another pint if you wish for one."

"This Black Sheep brew is excellent," Mark replied.

Jack made the smallest movement of his index finger, lifting it just a fraction from the table on which his hand rested. Daniel, who had nothing to do for the last hour but watch anxiously for some signal from his master, anxiously for he knew from painful experience what would happen to him if he missed it, was on his feet in the instance.

Jack did not speak to the boy but simply pointed at the two empty pint pots. As Daniel turned to go to the bar Mark saw that the smooth curve of the boy's bottom was dappled with dark beads of blood where the plastic spikes of the mat had punctured the deeply tanned skin. A couple of minutes later fresh pints were on the table and Daniel was back in the brat pen. This time Mark noted approvingly the boy did not hesitate but, screwing up his face in anticipation of the imminent agony to come, sat straight down. For the next half-hour the boy sat watching his master and his friend drink. He was himself thirsty and hungry and desperately tired, his legs were racked with cramp from having to keep them crossed and his ankles tucked up into his crutch. His body ached from the blows and kicks inflicted on it while the tortured flesh of his bottom felt as though the skin and flesh had been ripped away by a metal grater. Daniel though felt no anger, no resentment. This was what being a pauper boy meant and he was a pauper boy.

Half an hour or so later Mark tipped the last drops of his beer down his throat.

"That was very good indeed," he said regretfully placing the empty glass on the table.

"Ah well," said Jack doing the same, "all good things come to an end I suppose."

He stood up and Daniel starting to his feet scuttled hastily across the room ready to open the door for the two men.

"Thank you Gwen," called Jack as he walked out of the bar to be answered by a faint "thank you Mr Wardle," from within.

Away from the hotel, out in the street it was as hot or even Mark thought hotter than before. Across the road the pony boys stood in the blazing sun. They were clearly being still bothered by the flies shifting uneasily and jerking their heads and shoulders in an attempt to dislodge them. Hardly had the two men begun to walk across to where they were tethered when they suddenly quietened. Apparently alerted by that sixth sense, that all pauper boys seem to have, that warns them when their master is near.

Jack unhitched the reigns from the rail when Mark remembered his Times.

"Where's my newspaper," he asked sharply. "My Times, it was on the seat in the railway carriage I can't see it now."

There was an ominous silence. The two men both looked at Daniel who began to cry quietly.

"You stupid careless little git. Can't you get the simplest thing right?" Jack exclaimed kicking the boy savagely on the shin. "It's too hot to beat you now but you can look forward to Mrs Thomas flaying the skin from your bottom when we get home."

"Tell you what Jack," Mark intervened, "give the slut to me to flog. I find thrashing a boy's bottom an entertaining and arousing prelude to fucking it."

"Yes I remember that of you from when we were at school. Fine, I know I can rely on you to get the message across to the careless little brute."

"But, Daniel," Jack continued now speaking with icy menace, "your Mummy will be very, very upset by your stupid selfish irresponsible behaviour. You should be ashamed of yourself, after all the effort and care she has taken to try to make something worth while of you, the hours spent trying to beat some sense of responsibility and gratitude into your worthless carcass, to let her down in this way. You have very good reason to cry now and I am sure Mister Mark will give you even more reason when he thrashes you tonight. I can tell you Mister Mark knows very well how to use the cane on a useless bag of squalling shit like you."

"Come on Mark. Don't lets waste any more time now on this turd."

Jack clambered into the trap and gathering the reigns in his hands waited for his friend to join him. Then with a shake of the reigns and a loud 'gee up' he set the trap into motion. Once clear of the yard a couple of sharp flicks of the whip that raised deep red weals across the pony boy's deeply tanned shoulders soon raised their pace to quick trot. They clattered up the main street with Daniel running behind, Jack calling out and waiving cheerfully to various acquaintances as they passed. Once a charity boy plodding along bent double under some heavy load threatened to impede their progress but a well aimed cut across the back of his thighs from Jack's whip sent him scuttering to the side of the road.

Soon they were out in the country. Even here though sitting on the trap up above the level of the hedgerows it was oppressively hot.

"We'll go a bit faster and get some more air," Jack said whipping the boys up to an even faster pace.

It was much more pleasant Mark thought than travelling in a car. Sitting out in the open, enjoying the breeze created by their passing, the two pony boys their naked bodies slicked with sweat straining against as they ran. The scent of honey suckle was heavy in the air and in the sky on either side of them skylarks sang shrilly. A sense of wellbeing and rightness filled him, partly no doubt accounted for by the two excellent pints of beer he had drunk. He was very glad Jack had decided to bring the trap to meet him.

They had reached the point where the road ran through a small coppice, the trees arching over them on either side plunging them into sudden deep shade, when round the bend coming from the opposite direction appeared a Ford Fiesta.

Jack hauled on the reigns slowing the trap to a walk and pulling it into the side of the road. The car also slowed right down and pulled over. The driver a young man in a dark suit and a dog collar rolled down the window.

"Good afternoon Mr Wardle," he called out.

"Jack, my dear chap Jack, I don't know how many times I've asked you to call me Jack. Anyway let me introduce you to my old school friend Mark Legg. Mark this is Father Roger Matthews our very excellent curate who plays a great part in instructing our charity boys in those virtues that are appropriate to their station in life, obedience, humility and willing submission to their betters."

Mark and the young clergymen nodded and smiled at each other.

"My work with the charity boys gives me great satisfaction. To know that one is instrumental in making something worthwhile out of such dross, to give purpose and meaning to lives that would be otherwise wasted in ignorant self indulgence, one feels indeed that one is labouring in the Lords vineyard."

"Is that not young Daniel there?" Father Matthews continued catching sight oh the brat who had sidled round the trap and was now trying to put it between him and the cleric. "Yes it is. Your induction was some five months ago wasn't it? Come here child and let me see how you are making out."

Very reluctantly, dragging his feet, Daniel began slowly to move towards him. Jack was not standing any nonsense from the brat. Leaning back in his seat he gave him a flick with the whip on his bare flank. The brat yelped and ceased to dawdle.

Father Matthews lent out of his car window and drew the boy to him. Mark saw the child shudder at the man's touch.

"Are you being a good little slut Daniel?" he asked running his hand up the back of one firm young thigh. "Is Mister Jack pleased with you?"

The boy tried to speak. His lips moved but no words came, only a half-strangled sob. Father Matthews moved his hand round to the front of the boy's thigh.

"Oh dear Daniel you seem to have lost your tongue." Father Matthews moved his hand upwards. It reached the boy's crutch. The man's fingers played idly with the slut's hairless balls and tiny cock.

"He's a pretty averagely useless lump of dog shit," Jack said roughly.

"Well if the little lad is not satisfactory you should send him back for remedial training. I am sure we can sort out very quickly any little problems the child is experiencing."

Father Matthews pinched Daniel's balls between his finger and thumb and the increasing the tightness of his grip twisted.

"But that," he continued raising his voice to be heard over the boy's screams, "is not what I stopped the car to talk to you about. I fear I have been a little to rough with that gate boy of yours that you so kindly gave me to fuck. What's his name? Nicky is it? It's become quite a regular thing with me, if my parish work takes me out this way and I feel so inclined, to take advantage of your invitation. Today to my amazement when I stopped the car, instead of immediately bracing his shoulders against the gate and getting his bum up in the air ready for me to fuck, the cheeky little sod began wittering on about how thirsty he was after being out in the sun from dawn this morning being chained to the gate by his wrists and how his Mummy had said she wasn't going to waste her time carrying water out to a useless piece of pig shit like him, as if any of that was of any importance to me. And then, and then," his voice raised in outrage, "the insolent brute begged me to fetch him some water from the trough by the side of the road. Typical of the charity scum – give them an inch and they'll take a yard."

"I expect you gave the slut a good deal more than an inch," Jack said laughing.

"Yes indeed I did," Father Matthews said chuckling in his turn, "the full 9½ inches [24cm]. I was so furious at his impertinence that I simply jammed his head through the two lower bars of the gate and fucked his backside there and then forgetting to lubricate my cock with saliva. I'm afraid I ripped him a bit and he's bleeding rather a lot. I think perhaps you should have a look at him if you can spare the time when you go past."

"My dear chap don't worry about a triviality like that. Who ever cares about a minor thing like a pauper boy's torn bottom. If its too bad I'll get Mrs Thomas to stitch it up, and I'll certainly have the brat whipped to teach him not to bother his betters about his own stupid wants."

"Now I must be getting on or we'll miss tea. I don't suppose that Nicky is going to be much fun to fuck now – his bottom'll be too loose unless I decide to get him sown up. Come up to the house one evening next week for supper and have a look at the brats about the place. If you see one you fancy you can have the use of him."

A few minutes later and they were trotting up to the park gate leading into the grounds of the big house. Mark could see the gate boy had been badly damaged. He was half hanging by his wrists from the top bar of the big white gate. There were dark stains down the inside and backs of his thighs formed from blood and other liquids dribbling from his ravaged hole. For a moment it looked as though the brat would not be able even to open the gate to let the trap through as his bare feet scrabbled ineffectively at the gravel. However a flick of the whip across his rump brought a him further access of strength.

"Mark, would you get down here and get the gate right open and secure it. You see that sort of hook thing set in the drive. That'll help restrain the brat when I sort out his bum. I'll tether the pony boys to the railings a little up the drive. They're sure to attract flies and God knows there are enough about here already."

There were indeed, Mark thought as he jumped down onto the drive and walked across to the gate, a lot of flies about. A cloud of them swarmed around the boy and crawled over his body feasting on the filth trickling from his bottom.

"Well," Jack said striding up with Daniel padding bare footed along a few feet behind him, "Father Matthews certainly gave the brat a good hammering. We'll need to get the slut cleaned up a bit before I can see how damaged he really is. Hold these a moment would you."

He handed Mark a clear plastic bag containing a torpedo shaped butt plug with what looked like a washer at one end and a plain white flat plastic envelope. It seemed to Mark that the butt plug was made of or rather was covered with a white porous material. It was impossible to see what the other envelope contained.

"The plug is impregnated with antiseptic," Jack explained. "I always carry a few of these in the first aid box. Never know when you may need them. Especially when Father Matthews is about. You can be sure the Nicky'll play up a bit when we put it in him. The envelope just contains dressings."

Jack slipped his left hand under the gate boy and grabbing hold of his balls pushed upwards lifting the brat back onto his feet and raising his bottom into the air.

"Daniel," Jack said.

Without further orders the boy squatted down on his heels and buried his face in his fellow brat's bottom. For a moment there was silence apart from the sounds of sucking and slurping as Daniel worked at cleaning out his fellow brat's hole.

"I always wonder how the sluts can make themselves do that," Mark remarked watching the back of Daniel's head move as he licked away. "But he seems willing enough."

"So he should be," Jack replied "though to tell you the truth Jean and I had a terrible time getting him to do it to start with. I don't know how many hours we spent altogether with me forcing Daniel's head down into the bottom of some other slut, Jean standing behind him cursing him and laying into him with the strap and Daniel howling and screaming and begging his Mummy not to make him do it. Then we'd lay off for a bit and explain to him that he had to do it and tell him that he was wicked ungrateful little turd not to do what his Mummy told him. And he'd weep and cry and promise that next time he'd do it. So we'd start the whole weary process again and straight away the stupid little brute would struggling not to have his face pushed into another sluts bum and screaming and yelling."

"We were near giving up on him and returning him to the trustees for remedial training but I suggested we should try an old trick that my father used to use occasionally. I mentioned it to Jean and she was against it at first. Said a slut should not be rewarded for doing something it should do as a matter of duty. She's very high principled you know and I admire her for it and I wasn't too comfortable about the bribery aspect of the thing but 3; well if it worked 3;"

"So Jean and I got hold of Daniel and told him he had one last opportunity or it'd be back to Father Matthews and a course of remedial training. Daniel started sobbing and promising this time he would do it. Well we'd heard that before, the lying little bag of shit saying "Mummy I will put my tongue in there this time I promise Mummy" and then when it comes to the point struggling an fighting and screaming to escape doing it, so we didn't take too much notice. We took the slut out onto the drive with his hands tied behind him and I grabbed one of the whelps that spends their time on their knees weeding it and I bend him over in front of Daniel. I could see the turd starting to panic again so before he could I pulled a bar of chocolate out of my pocket and showed it to him."

"You know what the sluts are like with chocolate. They never get it, at least mine certainly don't, but the sight of it drives them wild. And the sight of that bar drove all other thoughts out of Daniel's head. You could see greed replace panic in the slut's eyes. So I said to him "you can have a bit of chocolate Daniel but you'll have to get from where I put it." Then I snapped a square off the bar and with Daniel watching I pushed up the hole of the other little brat."

"Well the greedy brute couldn't think about anything but the chocolate and he was pulling away from Jean that had hold of him by his collar. But she hung onto him while I pushed a second square into the other slut and then for a minute or two longer so that the stuff had a chance to melt and run a bit. And then she let go of Daniel's collar and all we had to do was to stand back while Daniel liked and sucked every last bit of chocolate out of the other boy's hole. We had a good laugh about it and Daniel's never been reluctant to get his tongue up another brat's bum since then."

Mark thought this story just yet another illustration of his old friend's conscientious attitude to the pauper boys committed to his care and the infinite pains he took to educate and school them.

"Now he should have cleaned Nicky's bum up well enough now. Let's have a look."

Jack slipped his free hand through Daniel's collar and pulled his head away from the gate boy's bum.

"Now Mark will you take over from me holding this slut."

Mark stepped forward and relinquished his grip of the Nicky's tiny balls to him. Parting the brat's buttocks with his two thumbs Jack bent down to examine the damage.

"Could be worse," he said, "Don't know whether I'll bother to have it stitched or not. Perhaps it's hardly worth bothering. The sluts used meat now and it doesn't matter if its bum is slack. Anyway I'll shove the anti-sceptic plug in him and put a dressing over it to keep off the flies and decide on what else to do, if anything, later."

"Mark give me the butt plug and dressing and get a grip of the brat's collar with your spare hand and twist it so he can't breath. Give me the nod when you feel the slut's body go slack and I'll slam the plug into him. But hold onto him hard because he's going to buck like mad if you don't when the anti-sceptic bights."

Holding the envelope with the dressing inside between his teeth Jack opened the plastic bag containing the anti-sceptic butt plug. Deprived of air by Mark's grip on his collar the gate boy struggled briefly but then all the strength seemed to drain from his body. Mark nodded and Jack rammed the plug into the boy and quickly slapped the dressing over his hole.

"OK Mark let go and stand well back," Jack said himself stepping hastily away from the boy.

Released from Mark's grip the boy's knees gave under him and for a split second he hung motionless suspended from the top bar of the park gate by his wrists. Then he jerked convulsively, threw his head back and screamed. It was a shrill scarcely human sound that sent the rooks clattering and cawing in alarm from their roosts in the twin rows of beech trees lining the drive. The boy jerked frantically at his bonds trying to free himself, twisting and tugging in a grotesque pain driven dance in a desperate effort to get at and dislodge the plug set deep in his bottom. Scream after scream was wrenched from the wildly capering boy as the powerful anti-sceptic cleansed his internal wounds.

"Well," Jack said with a laugh as he turned away from the boy, "it's certainly hurting so presumably its working."

"What about the gate?" Mark asked. "Should we close it?"

"No need. We can leave it fastened back for now and young William Smythe can release it when he goes down to the station to fetch your case. The brat should have calmed down by then."

"Indeed," Jack added brightening, "I might ask William to give the slut the flogging that's owing to him for his insolence in bothering Father Matthew for a drink of water. It would be good experience for the boy. He's always enjoyed watching the brats being flogged and its time he thrashed a few himself."

The two men climbed back into the trap. Jack cracked his whip and soon they were rolling briskly up the drive towards the big house.

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