"They all seem very close. The women are always talking in half sentences, never quite completing anything, as if they share a code, and don't need to spell it out exactly."
"They do in a way; lots of shared experiences, and that sort of thing. Makes them very close."
"I think I'd like to be like that, be one of the circle I mean," she said almost wistfully. Then, "What sort of secrets do they share? What sort of experiences?"
"You know, you ask altogether too many questions," Henry said. "Remember, curiosity killed the cat. Anyway, we're nearly there now, so let's concentrate on finding the next clue. If you really want to find out their secrets, the best way is to come out the winner in the treasure hunt, and be accepted into the circle. Then you'll be able to chew the rag with them all night long."
Back Lane, and its little orchard of leafy trees came in sight. In the spring, tourists by the drove flocked to the area to see the splendid vistas of pink and white blossom that filled the vale, but now the blossom had been replaced by clusters of fruit, not yet ripe, but beginning to turn colour. Next month the pickers would come and the tourists return to buy from wayside stalls, but for now the area was deserted. Up Back Lane the gate stood open into a yard, where the baskets were assembled for transport to market, the sheds now empty and closed, all save one whose door stood invitingly open.
"Pound to a penny that one's for us," Henry declared, and led the way into the cool shade of the interior.
The shed, like the others, was empty, or almost so. To one side was a simple wooden bench. It was painted white with a large black cross at its exact centre, where someone sitting on it would place their bottom while, pinned to the timber of the wall was a neatly printed white card.
'X marks the spot' it read, and then, underneath...
'Red hot not just pink, to win the prize!'
"What on earth is that meant to mean?" she asked, puzzled. "It doesn't make any sense to me."
"Clear as daylight to me," Henry replied, sitting down on the bench, and patting his lap, "take your knickers down, and come over here."
"What do you mean?" she said, suspiciously, hanging back.
"Just that. Take your pants down, and come over my knee for a good old fashioned bare-bottomed spanking. Cherry red those cheeks will be, when my handy hand has finished with them."
"Henry Travers, don't you dare," she squeaked in alarm, "I'll do no such thing."
"Then we might as well pack up now and go home," he told her making as if to rise from the bench.
That checked her.
"What do you mean? Nobody else is going to stand for this either. None of the other women would let a man spank their bare bottoms."
"Oh no? Calm down and try to think straight for a moment," Henry advised. "Do you mean to say you haven't seen the signs? The little secrets they have between them, the way they pat each other's bottoms sometimes and grin, and occasionally wince as if they're a bit sore down there? Can you really say you haven't suspected there's something like that going on around here?"
It was true. She had noticed things, a red patch on Georgina's bottom one day, when she was doing a hurried change in the ladies room at the club, Jenny's bikini riding up and showing a strange double track on the top of her thigh, girls sucking in their breath fiercely, and twisting up their faces as they took their place on a barstool. She'd speculated about these things to herself, and even mentioned it to Henry on one occasion. He hadn't mocked her suspicions, but he'd tactfully turned the conversation, and she'd got nowhere at the time. What she had got was a strange thrill from thinking that some of her new friends might have had their bottoms spanked or caned. Now that thrill came back in spades. Just what would it be like to lie over a man's knee and have her bare bottom spanked? Sore, she was sure, but exciting. She would never dare suggest such a thing, probably never agree to submit to it under any other circumstances, but this was the perfect opportunity, the ultimate cop out. She could pretend to herself that she was only doing it to be a good sport, and support her partner in the competition; classic feminine self-deception.
"Alright," she said, "but not too hard mind you, I'm very sensitive down there."
Henry repeated his invitation to bare her pretty bottom, and this time she obliged, putting her hands under her skirt and her thumbs into the elastic waist. She pulled them smoothly down over the firm rounds of her shapely buttocks, and left them dangling round her knees, then draped herself carefully over his lap.
He flipped up the back of her dress, exposing the taut bare flesh, the cheeks tightly clenched in fearful anticipation, and put his left hand on the small of her back to keep her down.
"You're clenching," he accused. "Relax, let your cheeks go slack. It will be better that way."
He omitted to mention that it would be better for him, not her. His sensual pleasure would be maximised if his hand slapped onto soft slack flesh, while she would feel the sting even more, but she'd have to learn that for herself.
She did her best to let her cheeks soften, some of the tension going out of them, and he raised his hand and brought the palm down hard on her left buttock.
"Ouch!" she squealed. "That's too hard. You can't expect a girl to take it like that."
"I can and I do," Henry replied firmly. "You think that stings? Just wait until I take my belt, or a cane, to you."
A belt or a cane! What did he mean? Henry cut off her panicky speculation by bringing his hand down again, this time on the quivering right mound, leaving a clear handprint to match that already glowing on the left cheek.
"The other women take it much harder than that," he assured her, "Besides, your cheeks have got to be cherry red, pink's not good enough, you saw the note yourself, and its kinder to get them red hot with a few good ones, than go on spanking you all afternoon. Not that I wouldn't enjoy doing just that," he added cheerfully.
"You beast," she squealed, wriggling under the stinging blows that now fell in a steady procession on her reddening cheeks, "I hate you."
Secretly, though, she had to admit that it was rather exciting, trapped over the knee of a strong man, with her knickers round her knees, and a horny hand smacking her bare backside. She bit her lip and lay still, only jumping a little each time his palm cracked across her flaming cheeks.
After a dozen on each buttock she was beginning to get seriously sore.
"That's enough," she gasped, and put her hands behind her, trying to protect her battered bottom.
She might as well not have bothered. With swift movements he captured each wrist, forced them up between her shoulder blades, and gripped them there with his left hand, pressing tightly down. Now, when his right resumed its business of painting her pretty pink buttocks a deep cherry red, as they writhed and bucked under his flailing palm, she was truly helpless. For a second or so she fought him silently, then opened her mouth to threaten all sorts of dire consequences if he didn't let her go, but the words never came. Instead a strange weakness came over her, it was the magic of being held helpless by a strong man, the fire growing as hot in her belly as on her bottom, and she surrendered to it, regardless of, or was it because of, the hot throbbing pain in her backside which somehow had got all mixed up with warm wet feelings in her belly and weeping pussy. Whatever it was, she went slack and submitted utterly to him.
Henry felt her surrender and gave her a half dozen more, as hard as he could lay them on, just for luck, then pulled her to her feet, turning her so that she faced away from him. While she stood, quite docile now, he lifted the hem which had fallen down over the roasted rump and admired his handiwork. Both orbs glowed a bright red. Cherry it was, just as prescribed, and she subdued into the bargain. He dropped the flap of cloth over the glowing mounds and turned her back towards him. She let herself be handled like a tailor's dummy and when he drew her to him and kissed her on the mouth, opened her lips
and responded warmly.
"That's my girl," he said, "I'm proud of you. You took that like a good'un. Keep this up, and you'll win the treasure hunt, and acceptance into the group into the bargain. They'll all want to have you around if you're such a good sport."
It was only later, when the turmoil of the day was over, and she was beginning to think straight about what had happened, that she noticed that he had kept talking about her winning the hunt, not them, but at the time she was too absorbed in her burning feelings, not all in her bruised buttocks, to make any sense of it.
When they walked back to the car she hung on his arm with both hands, clinging to him as if she'd never let him go.
The spell was lifted, if not broken, when she sat, and the pressure on her seat reminded her that she was well spanked below, and her tender bum well bruised.
"Ouch," she cried. "You're a beast to treat a girl like that. I won't be able to sit for weeks."
"You'll have to sit right now if you want to win this competition," he told her, "just try and keep still, while we open the next clue."
Clue Three
Where the Pilgrims walked in pain,
You must follow too.
Fill your stocking with the grain,
Six pieces in each shoe.
"I don't understand a word of that," she said in a tone of deepest foreboding," but I'm quite sure I'm not going to like it. Your idea that I might find things a touch uncomfortable seems like a gross understatement form my point of view," she added, wriggling on her burning seat.
"Don't exaggerate," Henry advised, "a little bum warming never did a girl any harm. Besides admit it, you were getting quite turned on by the end."
Before she could utter the indignant denial that sprang to her lips he continued.
"The clue's quite simple really. The ancient Pilgrim's way crosses the downs just above here, and there's a memorial on the crest of the hill," he informed her. "Odds on it'll be up there."
The lane petered out a little short of the memorial and they had to abandon the car and walk the last few hundred yards to the little shrine with its ancient carvings, showing pilgrims passing in all forms of penitential guises; women on their hands and knees, a man hopping with one foot tied up behind his back, a woman, bent under an enormous pack, naked from the waist up as far as she could make out, and looking surprisingly like a modern day back-packer, she thought. Above the worn stone figures an inscription in Latin recorded their passing. A more modern inscription adorned a card wedged in a jar set neatly on a ledge.
'Six in each shoe' it repeated, and she opened the screw top to reveal the contents; hard grains of Patna rice.
"I still don't get it," she complained.
"Quite simple," Henry assured her. "In the old days the value of a pilgrimage was much enhanced if one paid a penance along the way; going on hands and knees like these ladies here, carrying a burden like this lass. One of the commonest was to walk with grains of rice or corn in one's shoes. There's a story that one wanton wench was condemned by her confessor to walk the way with dried peas in her shoes. She obeyed, but took the precaution of boiling them first. Mushy but painless. However there'll be nothing like that today," he warned. "You just have to put six grains in each shoe but, since you're wearing sandals, I think they'd better go inside your stockings, so that there's no chance of them falling out. You wouldn't want that, would you?"
Privately she thought that was just what she wanted, but decided it would be inappropriate to express her views on the matter. Instead, she sat on the stone bench that was part of the memorial, presumably for the pilgrims of old to rest on at the summit of their walk, and reached under her dress to unhook a garter tab from the dark nylon welt of one stocking.
Henry looked on admiringly. He always took pleasure from watching her perform this ritual. The baring of the long slim thigh, with the exciting band of white flesh above the stocking top, the symbolic admittance offered by the release of the grips, the sensuous motion of her hands stroking down the shapely leg, rolling down the flimsy covering producing a part nakedness almost more arousing than if she had stripped altogether.
She pulled the last few inches off her foot, the toe of the stocking reluctantly releasing the painted pink nail, then turned the last few inches inside-out, to form a cup to receive the six bitterly hard grains Henry counted out for her.
Now the process was reversed, the stocking carefully fitted over the arching foot, and round the slim shapely ankle, then rolled back up again above the dimpled knee. Finally Henry's favourite part, the slow sensuous stroking again, to fit it smoothly as far up the thigh as it could go before securing it safely back in place with the garter-tabs. By the time she had completed the same feminine rite on her other leg, Henry was becoming acutely conscious of a familiar hardening in his pants.
Finally it was done, and he held out his hand to help her stand again. For a moment it seemed as if nothing had happened, and then one knee gave way and she almost doubled over, as her weight came on one of the hard pieces under her tender toes.
"Come on," Henry urged, "we haven't time to hang about if we're going to stay ahead of the game."
Biting her lip, she forced herself to ignore the discomfort in her foot. Once she had got over the first shock it didn't seem so bad. Just a stone in her shoe and she gritted her teeth and tried to ignore it, but it was quite a walk to the car, on an uneven track, and a downward slope that threw her weight heavily on her foot with each step. By the time she reached the car she was hobbling painfully, and subsided into her seat, grateful to take her weight off her tortured toes, no longer mindful of the soreness in her bottom, which, in any case, was now no more than a pleasant warmth. 'Pleasant', she thought with a shock, what was coming over her? Further speculation was cut short by Henry handing her the next envelope to open:
Clue Four
"Naughty Nancy's pegged out her knickers,
And left the bag for you.
Help yourself to four tight clickers,
You'll know just what to do.
"There's more than one Nancy in the village," Henry observed, "but I think we can cut down the candidates fairly easily. Nancy Brigham is nearly seventy and, although they say she was quite a goer in her heyday, I suspect she tends to flannel bloomers, or at best, old fashioned Directoires. Nancy Giles is the right age, but no one would call her naughty. Bit of a prig really, and I would expect some very unexciting underwear if you lifted her skirt," he offered.
"As to the rest," he said, "Nancy Acton probably never wears anything but white cottons, and Nancy Chater's would have to be bloomers as big as bin sacks to take in her huge butt. Nancy Brookes would certainly qualify as 'naughty' but it's a question whether she ever wears knickers at all. No, he announced firmly, "it has to be Nancy Logan. She's bold as brass, and as attractive as sin. I think we'll try there first."
In the event Nancy turned out to have a line of delicate little numbers in black, red or gold and, as if to signal that she was the one, even a couple of G strings fluttering in the breeze. Whatever message these flags spelt out, it was probably close to Nelson's famous signal; Perhaps 'Nancy expects that every man this day will do his duty.'
Also on the line was the peg basket, a sewn up Tee shirt on a hanger with a slot to receive the pegs. There was no message that she could see but, printed on the front of the tee shirt, in the appropriate place, was a drawing of a half cup bra, the breasts within spilling over the edge, the nipples boldly picked out in scarlet. She gulped. She was beginning to get the message, but, this far on, she wasn't going to give up. She pulled down the front of her dress, lifted a breast until one rosy nipple found itself unexpectedly exposed to light and air, and held out her hand for a peg.
It cost her a grunt or two to get it in place, her fingers reluctant to let go and allow the full pressure to grip on the tender teat but eve
ntually she managed it. Then the other. After the first twinge it didn't seem so bad. As with everything so far, she was finding a girl could accommodate herself to such levels of pain quite easily.
"Aren't you forgetting something?" Henry asked, as she made to return the pegged tits to their habitual snug resting place, "the clue said four."
"If you don't mind," she retorted, "I only have two. I'm a girl, not a cow," she added, with a flash of spirit.
"I can count," Henry shot back, "but you can put one peg over another. Double the grip, that sort of thing."
For a moment she looked at him in disbelief, then set her mouth and held out her hand for 'afters'.
They hurt like hell, but she wasn't going to let him know she was suffering. This was turning into a challenge and accepting challenges was what had lifted her to the considerable success she had achieved on her own, before falling so helplessly for Henry's charm. Mercifully, by the time they got back to the car, the worst of the additional hurt from the doubled peg pressure was subsiding into a dull, but inescapable, ache, though she found it difficult to ignore it, even in the process of opening the next clue:
Clue Five
On Crockford's farm
You'll find a barn,
And something good for heating.
Set Crockies jaws
On lips of yours,
But not those meant for eating.
Henry gave a smug smile.
"That's easy. Ginger Harris lives at Crockford's farm, so its got to be there, and I know where there's an unused barn, too."
The barn proved to be more a workshop than a forage store, with a black iron stove in the centre. In its iron belly, cold now, they found a box with a card taped to it bearing the legend: 'Don't be greedy, only three per twat, but keep your balance please.'
She opened the box and looked with distaste at the contents; electrical clips, serrated crocodile jaws designed to ensure a good grip on battery terminals and murder on genitals, for by now she had absolutely no doubt about where they should go. Well perhaps one query.
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