Thyme II Thyme (18 page)

'Oh, you mean like a discarded leather suit with a dog mask or maybe a whip with Meg's initials on it?' I asked sourly. 'No, we're not going to find anything here. During the war there would have been hundreds of service people wandering all over the place. If there were any little trophies or relics, they'd have found them. Besides, there wasn't much in the place to leave behind aside from a few buckets and the odd length of chain. Whoever knocked the place down would have taken everything away first.'

We turned around and began walking back up towards the site of the house, stopping when we emerged from between the trees again to turn and look across towards the crest that was Meg's Mount. The late sun still glinted along the chalky section, but now the white line was beginning to look distinctly orange.

'I wonder what
did
happen to her?' I was speaking as much to myself as to Anne-Marie. 'Did she end up going off her head and just wandering around the woods and hills? Something must have happened, because there's one thing we don't know.'

'And what's that, Teenie?'

'Well, we found that record of her registering her title to the estate, didn't we? But nowhere does there seem to be anything written down as to how the estate was sold or broken up. There are title deed records to all the farms around here now, or there ought to be, but nothing to show how Meg disposed of everything, the house included.'

'Maybe she didn't. Maybe she just died and went mad and this Spreadwell or Spigwell bloke was... well, maybe he was Angelina's son and he just stayed on here.'

'He'd have had to be bloody Methuselah then,' I replied. 'If he was a son of Angelina's, then that would have made him at least a hundred by the time the last war started.'

'Grandson then,' Anne-Marie persisted. 'Either way, I reckon he had to have been a Spigwell and not Spreadwell; the name's no coincidence.'

'No,' I agreed, 'I don't think it is. But whoever he was, and whatever his name was, I don't think it's important to me. But then again, same as I said, I don't know what is, or isn't, important any more.'

The four troopers were very drunk now and barely able to speak coherently, but the bearded corporal beckoned to Indira with an unmistakable gesture.

Slowly, she crawled across the bare floorboards to him and lowered her head. 'Master?' she whispered without looking at him. She could feel his lustful eyes boring into her, taking in her nudity and her heavy breasts with their gold nipple rings, which had been the object of great interest among these rough and ready men. They had been tugged and twisted as much as she herself had been beaten and continually abused, a plaything for these men who would go out to defend an empire from barbarism and yet who thought nothing of throwing a defenceless girl on her back and using her merely for their own satisfaction.

'Y'know what I want,' the corporal slurred, dropping the near empty bottle on the floor. 'Get yer arse over here and suck my bobbin, ya heathen slut.'

Indira slithered closer and reached into his lap to unfasten the waistband of his breeches. She had to delve deep to find his weapon, for it was limp and lifeless.

'Get to it, whore, make me bobbin stand up and then you suck him dry, else'n I'll ram me boot so far up yer cunt ye'll be able to polish the toe through yer mouth.'

Obediently, Indira took the flaccid organ in hand and began manipulating it. Somewhere behind her she heard a crash as a bottle hit the floor and shattered, followed by a muffled curse and then a groan. She risked a glance over her shoulder and was rewarded by the sight of two soldiers slumped unconscious against the wall. The third soldier was sitting cross-legged and swaying in a stupefied fashion.

She returned her attention to the corporal, for it would not do to stir his ire just now. He had whipped her twice already since the beginning of the week and took great pleasure from tying her hands and leaving her helpless and naked for hours on end, available for any man who ventured into the guard hut and took a fancy to her. Her deft fingers worked away... she needed her hands free, for escape would be impossible if he tied her up again. The wall at the edge of the compound was not that high, but she would need her hands if she were to scale it...

'Whaddaya fuckin' about there?' the corporal peered blearily down at his organ, which had managed a half-hearted salute. 'Get the fucker in yer fuckin' mouth, ya he... heathen...' His head lolled forward and his fingers slackened around the bottle they had been nursing.

Indira grabbed at the glass neck before it could fall, moving it carefully aside and placing it quietly down on the floor. Her other hand remained wrapped around the corporal's cock, though it was no longer responding and would not now - not for a few hours, at least.

She peered back at the cross-legged trooper, the last of the four men still conscious, and then across the room to where the earlier discarded bottles lay haphazardly in a pile to one side of the wood stove. The man still rocked slowly back and forth, his eyelids drooping ever further, but somehow he seemed to be resisting the pull of sleep, fighting against both the alcohol and the herbal sedative Indira had added to each bottle she had opened for them.

What remained of the ground powder, no more than a few grains, was inside the corner pocket of the ragged smock dress that was all they had given her to wear. Not even a pinch of the powder was left from a handful she had managed to prepare when she was supposed to be cooking and no one was watching. It was surprising what grew wild in England and even along the walls and fences of an army barracks amidst dandelions and nettles and the first wild snowdrops of spring. All she had needed was a few leaves picked and left to dry at the back of the stove, then pressed into the palm and worked with determined knuckles until they were broken down into a fine dust, which she had slipped into a few wine and rum bottles where the taste would be swamped by the sharp edge of the cheap liquor. It was only a mild dosage, and even taken in greater quantities the herb was not deadly, but it was enough to induce a deep sleep when mixed with alcohol, especially at the end of a long day. It was enough to keep her captors out of action for the time she needed to slip away through the darkness and get to that wall.

'They shall not send me away from you, my cherished little jewel,' she whispered, turning back to check that the corporal was now completely unconscious. 'The evil one shall not harm you, shall not have you, even if I have to give my very life to make it so. This I swear by everything I hold sacred.' She closed her eyes but her lips continued moving in a silent incantation whilst behind her a soft thud told her the last man in the room had finally surrendered to the arms of Morpheus
.

This time I had no sensation of passing out, no falling through space, no blackness, no nothing. One minute I was walking back up towards the site of the old house with Anne-Marie and the next I was laying in the straw back
in that horrible little prison.

My arms and legs felt stiff, not just sore but completely stiff and useless from their rigid encasement within the leather suit, and my first attempt to rise proved useless, for without flexibility in either my knees or my elbows I was like a turtle pushed over onto its back, my limbs flailing uselessly in all directions.

I paused, forcing myself to lie still for a moment and consider the situation.

I remembered that Erik had lowered me bodily to the floor earlier, but surely I was not stuck like this just because he was not here to help me? With a great effort I attempted to lift my upper body using only my stomach muscles, a feat I practiced regularly in the gym, but that had been in my own well-tempered body when I was not handicapped by the tightly laced corset that now compressed my middle.

I relaxed again and considered another option.

I spread my stiff arms wide and then around and above the level of my shoulders, pressing back down into the floor in an attempt to obtain some leverage, but this proved another failure.

I thought again.

This time, I placed my arms tightly against my sides and began to rock from back and forth, gathering momentum until I managed to roll completely over my right arm and onto my stomach. So far so good, I thought, or else I had just traded lying helplessly on my back for lying helplessly on my stomach, my padded muzzle pressing deep into the straw. Now for the tricky part...

I stretched my arms again, bringing them around so that they were above my head, and pressed the padded paw ends against the wall where it joined the floor, but nothing happened. I grunted with exasperation and would have cursed out loud had I been able to speak.

I thought some more, and got another idea.

I rocked myself over to the left and wedged my right paw hard against the wall, throwing my weight back again and likewise jamming my left paw against the unyielding surface. Success, at least a minor one, for my breasts were now held just clear of the floor even though the pressure on my arms was enormous. I quickly tried a repeat performance and was actually able to raise myself into a sort of press-up position. I tensed my muscles and concentrated on my legs, performing a kind of bunny hop that dragged my feet along in the direction of my hands. It was more than just hard work, but I repeated the move three or four more times until I was finally up on all fours, and from there it was simply a matter of straightening up into a standing position.

'Back down where you belong, bitch!'

I all but jumped out of my skin - both my skins - as I swung around to face the door and Meg, who stood on the threshold flexing what looked like a riding crop and smiling wickedly.

'I said get down like the dog-bitch you are!' she commanded, swishing the crop before her.

I could have cried, not so much from being made to resume my four-legged stance but from the knowledge that she had almost certainly been standing there, silently watching my near superhuman effort to get myself on my feet. I dropped my front paws to the floor and regarded her balefully.

'Much better.' She stepped forward and, taking hold of my collar, began leading me around the small room, chuckling and making nasty little comments all the while. Eventually she tired of this circular promenade and squatting down before me, she looked me straight in the eye. 'You can never hope to be a real wife now,' she whispered, 'not after this. Even if you were to wear the finest gowns and jewels, he would always look at you and see you as you were last night, my little bitch in heat. He'll see your doggie face and your gaping pussy beneath your lovely curling tail and that's how he'll want me to keep you. Then he'll grow tired of the game and I'll find him other amusements. You'll be my little doggie forever, here in your nice quiet kennel, and you'll have your pups and if one of them is right, then he'll be brought up as the son of the house, but he won't be right, so it will never happen.
I'll
give him the son he needs myself, my little Sheba. It'll be his son and mine and he'll be master of the Marlins one day and you'll be
his
pet dog. Ha, that'll be a fine day, though you'll be an old dog by then, I think. Old and sagging, with a cunt that's tired and loose.' She straightened up again.

I lowered my head. I had already known she was completely mad, but now I had seen something more than simple insanity in her eyes as she spoke of her plans for me. I'm not sure the words had ever been invented that could plumb the depths of what I felt towards Megan Crowthorne just then. I would go back to my own time, I
hoped
I would go back to my own time, but what of Angelina? My sanity was protected in some way by the temporary nature of my predicament, but whenever Angelina was back in her own body, she would not have that small luxury. When it was she who crouched here as Sheba, she would know she was facing a lifetime of this painful humiliation with the only release her eventual death.

I knew that in her place I should soon be praying for death, maybe even trying to help nature on its way, but then I was not Angelina, and neither, I resolved, would I leave her to suffer if there was any way I could put a stop to Meg. Easier said than done, however, for what hope is there for a dog girl? What can a person do when she is confined to all fours on stiff legs and arms with even her power of speech denied her?

But if there really was nothing I could do, why was I here? Surely I had not been brought back in time merely to witness and share in the suffering of one of my ancestors? There had to be more to it than that - the big question was
what?

Erik arrived just as Meg was leaving. The two of them went outside together and I heard the sound of them conversing, though I could not make out what they were actually saying. Erik then returned alone and, using the metal funnel, gave me a drink of water before fastening my leash.

'Walk now we must,' he said, 'and necessary business you must be doing.'

I groaned inwardly for I could feel that I needed to do more than pee now despite the fact that I could not remember when I had last eaten any solid food. Perhaps Angelina's body had been fed during my absence from it since I didn't feel particularly hungry, but then having your stomach compressed as mine was now is not exactly conducive to a healthy appetite.

I shan't go into the details of what followed save to assure you that it was most embarrassing and, though you may find it hard to believe, far more of an ordeal in its way than being displayed the previous evening before Hacklebury's houseguests and then used by each of them in turn. At least I assumed it had been the previous evening, but I could easily have missed a day or two, or even more.