Cauldron of Fear (35 page)

'A lot less
dangerous than marching in with a full platoon, yer honour,' Riley
grinned, when the suggestion was put to him. 'I'll take Sean Kelly
with me and we'll get rid of these red coats, too. They make for
too easy targets. Far better something dark, if y'can perhaps do
the honours, sorr?'

'I'll find
some jackets for the two of you,' Thomas replied. 'Whatever
happens, we cannot let them move the women.'

'If yer girls
are there, yer worship, we'll find 'em,' Riley promised, 'and
dependin' what else we find, we'll maybe even have 'em out of there
even afore you and the captain sorr gets back with yer
warrant.'

'It may not be
as easy as you think, sergeant,' Thomas warned. 'There are probably
a couple of dozen armed men up there, maybe even more.'

The grizzled
Irishman raised one eyebrow and grinned. 'Sure, and Sean and meself
have sorted worse odds than that of a Saturday night in Dublin,' he
quipped. 'And if ye've ever been faced with even half a dozen
drunken Irishmen, then thirty paltry English lackeys - beggin' yer
pardon, sorrs - are nothin' to worry over. We'll be all right, Sean
and me, don't you worry now.'

The full
implications of what she had walked into only began to dawn on
Harriet when the party eventually reached what appeared to be a
huge barn and she was hustled inside, pushed into one of what she
supposed had once been stalls and forcibly stripped by the two
grooms.

Despite her
frenetic struggles and attempts to gouge the eyes of the older man,
whose name she learned was Nathan, she was soon completely naked
and stood, shivering against one wall, desperately trying to
preserve what remained of her modesty with her hands. Even that was
quickly denied her, for her arms were drawn roughly behind her back
and secured there with linked metal cuffs.

'Damn your
souls for eternity!' she hissed, spitting at Artie, who simply
laughed at her final attempt at defiance. At the same time Nathan
stepped forward and delivered a heavy slap to the side of her face,
the impact sending her staggering sideways.

'You worry
about your own soul, you arrogant little bitch!' he snarled. 'Any
more of your filthy nonsense and I'll hang you up by your thumbs
while we finish our work.' Blinking furiously, with tears now
filling her eyes, Harriet managed to bring his face back into some
sort of focus; the expression she saw on his face assured her that
his threat was no idle one.

'Now then,
Artie,' Nathan said, when he saw that the fight was, temporarily at
least, gone out of her, 'let's have that trestle in the middle here
and mount the bitch on it. Yes, that one there, the one with the
nice fat cock on top.' He turned back to Harriet, leering at
her.

'You look like
a good cock in your cunt would do you a world of good,' he rasped.
Harriet recoiled in horror, seeing for the first time the trestle,
from the top of which rose a dark and forbidding looking shaft.
Momentarily the horror of what they were proposing to do threatened
to overwhelm her and she fell back against the timber partition,
her knees buckling so that she would have fallen to the floor had
not her senior tormentor caught hold of her arm and pulled her
upright again.

'Probably
never had a man inside you, eh?' Nathan sneered, with awful
accuracy. 'Well, we can't have you staying virgin now - not where
you're going to. It'd give the game away for sure. Artie, gimme a
hand with her, but oil that damned cock a bit first.'

The younger
groom turned away from the trestle and moved to a high shelf on the
far side of the cubicle, reaching up to take down a dark coloured
glass jar, which he brought back to the centre of the room,
unstoppered and dipped two fingers inside. When he drew them out,
Harriet saw they were thick with some sort of grease, which he
proceeded to transfer to the leather shaft, smearing it liberally
and evenly.

When he was
done and the jar returned, he came over and took up a station on
the opposite side of Harriet from where Nathan stood, still
gripping her upper arm. Then, at a quick count of three, both men
placed a hand about one of her thighs and, steadying her by her
elbows, lifted her high off the floor, drawing her legs wide apart
and carrying her the short distance to where the awful contraption
awaited her.

'No-ooo!
Please!
' Harriet wailed. 'You surely cannot! Oh, such foulness!' She
tried to struggle again, but such was the position in which they
held her that her best efforts were to no avail and then they were
lowering her, guiding her unerringly, until she felt the hard tip
of the phallus pressing against the entrance to her sex.

'Nooooo!' she
whimpered. 'Please no... oh God... aaahhh!' She gasped, as they
allowed her weight to descend and the unyielding rod began to
penetrate her, thrusting its way through the tender necklace of
tissue, pressing onward until she finally felt the rough timber
beneath her buttocks and knew she was finally and fully
impaled.

Such was the
height of the horizontal beam of the trestle that Harriet's bare
feet dangled just clear enough of the flagstones beneath to prevent
her from raising herself up again, so that, until the two brutish
men decided otherwise, she was helplessly trapped, unable to free
herself and all but unable to move and certainly not the latter
without causing the fat dildo to exert pressures in places that
Harriet had not, until now, fully realised she had.

'Bring a razor
and soap, Artie,' Nathan instructed the younger man. 'Apparently
the other wench is shaved down there. I'll tend to the shaving
myself, though, otherwise you're likely to nick and cut her and
they might notice that.'

Harriet stared
at him through eyes grown round with disbelief, hoping she had
misunderstood the meaning of his words, but it quickly became
apparent that she had not.

'Now then,
missy,' Nathan said, when Artie had brought the bowl of steaming
water, a brush and some soap, 'this won't actually hurt you, not
unless you wriggle about and make me catch your flesh.' He had
produced a razor from somewhere and also a short leather strop,
which he laid along the top of the trestle in front of Harriet and
began sharpening the wicked looking blade on it.

Harriet hardly
dared breathe, even when he was simply lathering the soap over her
neatly trimmed triangle and, when he finally brought the blade
close, every muscle and sinew in her body went rigid. She closed
her eyes, partly unable to actually witness the humiliation that
was being inflicted upon her, partly because she was too terrified
to look, convinced that the deadly implement would slice through
her most intimate flesh.

Nathan,
however, was true to his word. He worked carefully and methodically
and, when the final stroke was complete, not the slightest trace of
a cut was to be seen. Harriet now began to shiver, for the
sensations from her newly depilated mound were indescribable and
seemed to emphasise her nakedness ten times over. What came next,
however, was worse still.

Artie passed
Nathan a large pair of shears and, after satisfying himself that
the blades were properly sharpened, the older man grasped a handful
of Harriet's hair and cut it away at a single stroke. Harriet tried
to duck away to avoid his next grab, but only succeeded in
reminding herself of the size of the silent invader within her and,
as she gasped and groaned, another thick lock joined the first one
beneath her feet.

Hannah led
James deep into the woods behind her cottage, first following a
footpath that was so overgrown as to be barely visible and then
turning away even from that spartan trail, weaving her way between
trees and around patches of unruly undergrowth, so that before long
James knew that without her it would take him many hours to find
his way back to where they had started.

At last the
old woman came to a halt and leaned heavily against her staff. She
turned, looked up at James, and sighed. 'Perhaps I should have done
this earlier,' she said. 'The money would all have been Matilda's
anyway, once I am gone. Whatever was I thinking about, lad?'

'As you said,
Mother Pennywise,' James replied softly, 'to give in to such
extortion would only open the way for these fiends to pressure
other innocents in the same way.'

'Aye, but
Matilda should have been my first concern - my only concern, in
truth, for these blackguards will wreak their own foul hell on
earth regardless and now the entire village has seen what they're
capable of doing.'

Gently, James
laid a hand on her bony shoulder. 'Don't blame yourself for the
wickedness of others,' he said soothingly. 'Let's just do what
needs to be done now and what is past let remain so.' He gripped
the shovel in his free hand. 'Is this the place?' Hannah nodded and
pointed towards a strangely twisted oak tree that stood on its own,
even the undergrowth keeping a respectful distance.

'Down there,'
she said, 'between the largest of the two roots on this side. You
will need to dig quite deep, though the soil should be quite
soft.'

The earth
between the roots was indeed quite loose, despite the covering of
grass and moss and James realised, as he began to dig, that it
could not have been so long since it had last been disturbed.
Hannah, presumably, made frequent pilgrimages to the tree to add to
her little hoard. After ten minutes, however, James began to form a
new respect for the old woman, for even with his jacket discarded
the sweat was pouring from him.

At last, when
the pit had reached a depth approaching three feet, the blade of
the shovel clanked against something hard, something metallic
itself. Crouching awkwardly, James began to clear away the soil
from either side and, after another five minutes, was able to climb
out of the hole, kneel by the side of it and reach down to withdraw
the small iron box, its coating of rust evidence enough of the
years it had spent going in and out of the ground.

'Fill the
hole, James,' Hannah instructed. 'I'll not be needing it again.'
She stepped forward and took the heavy casket from his, cradling it
in her arms. 'There are those who think of me as wise,' she said,
'among other things, of course. Well, I have today learned a new
wisdom.' She looked down at the box and smiled, sadly. 'In this
casket, James Calthorpe,' she said huskily, 'is gold to the value
of more than one thousand guineas.' James stared at her in
disbelief. 'Oh yes,' she continued, seeing his look of incredulity,
'it's a small fortune, I know.'

'A large
fortune, more like,' James said, aghast.

Hannah nodded
and the thin smile evaporated. 'A fortune, anyway,' she said
levelly, 'and yet what good has it ever done anybody, buried deep
in the ground? Will it sprout and grow? Will it bring forth green
leaves, fragrant blossom or fruit? No, none of those, as we both
know only too well.

'And what,
pray, if something had happened to me before now, eh? I'll tell you
what, James - this little trove would have remained buried where it
was until the last tree in these woods had withered and died and
probably long after that, useless and forgotten, as most of us
shall be in time.

'Come, lad,
leave the hole anyway. Nature will attend to her own in time. We
have far more pressing business, for the sun is beginning to sink
faster even as we stand here rueing my folly.'

'Well, I see
they've done an excellent job in preparing you, my dear.' Jane
Handiwell stood in the open doorway of the stall, a malicious grin
on her face. Harriet, who had been left mounted on the abominable
trestle, trying to ease the aching in her hips without causing too
much friction from the dildo that filled her, raised her head, her
cheeks burning with shame and hatred.

Nathan had
finished hacking away her hair quite quickly and then, not
satisfied with that, had lathered the remaining stubble and
proceeded to use the razor again, so that when he finished
Harriet's skull was as smooth as ivory, the cool draught tickling
the naked flesh in seemingly mocking fashion.

'Why are you
doing this to me?' Harriet whispered. 'I know you cannot face the
fact that your father has feelings towards me, but surely you
realise I am no threat in that direction, nor ever was?

'Thomas is a
fine man, an honourable man,' she continued, 'and a good and
trustworthy friend, but that is all and I have repeatedly made my
position clear to him.'

'Which will
never stop him persisting in his folly,' Jane sneered. She stepped
into the chamber and looked down at Harriet's spread thighs. 'He'd
give everything he owns to have his cock where that shaft now is,'
she leered, 'but I intend to make sure that never happens.'

'It shall not,
in any case,' Harriet retorted. 'But I see there is no reasoning
with you, not now, nor ever in the past. It is a great pity, Jane,
for we could have become friends, I'm sure.'

'That I
doubt,' Jane snapped, 'for I know your sort. Sweet and blushing and
always so neatly pretty. Butter'd not melt in your mouth, nor even
between your thighs.' Her long thin face contorted into a grimace
so fearsome that Harriet let out a frightened whimper. 'Well, you
ain't so damned pretty now, are you Harriet Merridew? Oh, how I
wish there were time to have a picture painted of you just as you
now are. I'd make sure that my dear, foolish, gullible pater
received it in a gilded frame and be there to see his face when
first he set eyes upon it! However, there is no time for that,
sadly.

'I have a
better purpose for you, my sweet little English rose. Tonight we
kill two birds with the one stone - perhaps even three. Nathan!'
She turned and called towards the doorway. 'Nathan, bring in that
harness I left on the bench out there. Might as well get her as
ready as possible here and save ourselves some time later!'