It was a Wednesday, I remember, when Crispin arrived in town. The gates were closing behind him as his horse, which looked decidedly knackered, carried him slowly into the square. And the women started going weak at the knees. Fuck me he was gorgeous. Nobody should have a body like that: solid, flat stomach, powerful legs, pecs that could only have come from a lifetime of fighting or training, and so damned handsome it should have been illegal. But it was his golden blond hair, falling past his shoulders, that everybody noticed first. It wasn't long before people started calling him the Golden Boy. I'm fucking straight, and I even fancied the bastard.
I was on the way home after my morning pint of mead, but when I saw him dismount, tie his horse and go into the tavern, I turned round and went back in there myself. I wanted a better look at this boy.
He may have been beautiful, but it didn't take very long for me to realise that he was a prick. A wanker of the highest calibre. The serving lass was batting her eyelids and flirting shamelessly as she brought him a glass of ale, and she stood there watching as he preened and flexed for her. He snapped his fingers and she leaned closer, then giggled and nodded as he whispered into her ear. He stood up, then dragged her upstairs, leaving the glass of ale untouched on the table.
I mean, all credit to him – if you have a body like that and you're that good-looking, then why not bed every wench you can? But it was his manner, the way he assumed she would immediately drop what she was doing and go with him that annoyed me.
The next time I saw him he was having an argument with one of the stall holders; he'd picked up a couple of apples on his way past and the man was demanding payment for them. Golden Boy had no intention of paying – the man should be grateful that he'd chosen the fruit off his stall. It almost came to blows but the stall holder was a frail old guy and so he just grumbled and let Crispin go.
I decided to follow him. A bit further down the lane he grabbed one of the young urchins by the hair and demanded directions to somewhere. As such boys do, the lad wanted a coin for the information. Crispin gave him a hard back-hander across the ear. The boy ran off crying. Crispin looked around, collared another lad and interrogated him. Having seen what had happened to the previous one, this boy told him what he wanted to know and then legged it sharpish.
He must have been asking for directions to the blacksmith, because he led his limping horse there and disappeared inside. At that point I went home.
It was several days later when I saw my neighbour's son Michael go past my window. He was staggering, he had two black eyes and was holding one hand over a wound to his other shoulder. They've lived next door to me for as long as I've been in Wickham, and Samuel – Michael's father – is a good friend. A little later I knocked on the door of his house, wondering if I could help at all – I was a physician before I retired. Michael told me, as I cleaned the lad's wound and applied some herbs, that this long-haired blond guy had taken a fancy to his girl in the tavern and had dragged the lass off and raped her in the stables. Michael had had a fight with him, and had lost.
The following day Phillip the ironmonger stopped me in the street. Apparently he'd seen this lad – he described Crispin perfectly – get into an argument with another guy over nothing at all. Crispin had picked up a handful of horse shit from the road and smeared it all over the guy's face, then had kicked him in the arse and gone on his way. Phillip shook his head and sighed. The youth of today, he said.
When I next saw Crispin he was sat at a table outside the baker's playing a game of Noddy with three other guys. As I passed, voices were raised, one of the guys stood up, overturning the table, and lashed out at the Golden Boy. Crispin and he drew their swords and there followed a fracas which ended with all three of the men groaning and holding their wounds on the ground. Crispin wiped his blade, collected all the coins from the floor, spat at the men, and strode off.
A little while later I saw him going into an alley with Meg, the butcher's wife – protesting but firmly in tow.
Over the next days there were several other incidents that cemented my conviction that the Golden Boy was an ass of epic proportions. He seemed to think that all women were his for the taking, and by God he took them. To be fair, a lot of them fell over themselves to go with him, but others he simply dragged away to bed them. I found it difficult to understand how any one guy could be so perpetually horny. But it was the fights that were worse; he seemed to go out of his way to annoy people, and picked arguments with anybody he felt like.
I don't know where Crispin had come from, what his past was, what he'd been doing before he ended up in Wickham, but the boy certainly knew how to fight – he had skills with a sword and with his fists, and muscles to make it happen. Before long the men started to keep good distance from the arrogant blond bastard.
Things came to head the following week: an apprentice was up a ladder fixing a new sign outside the Swan Inn. He looked down, saw the Golden Boy and gave him a good-natured wolf whistle. Crispin did not like that. He kicked the ladder out from under the boy and started swearing at him and laying about him with his fists and his booted feet. Several passers-by waded in to pull him off, and ended up bruised and cut in the gutter. Crispin brushed his hands, spat at the boy on the ground, and marched off with his nose in the air.
"Something must be done." George, the baker – along with me and the other eight men who made up the tithing (our community law-enforcement group) – were gathered in my living room. We'd called a meeting to discuss this latest arrival in our town.
"String the bugger up. Beat the shit outta him." That was Ernest, the blacksmith.
The others looked at me, as the head of the tithing. I'd been thinking about this. I nodded slowly. "That's a possibility. But we need something worse than a beating. That boy would just stand there and take it, and that would not look good. No. What we need to do is humiliate the arrogant bastard."
I told them my plan, and they liked it.
Stuart, the butcher, smiled. His wife was a medicine woman and knew many devious recipes. "I'll get Morganna to whip up a potion."
Spiking the boy's ale had been simplicity itself, and he'd been carried to the town square and lashed to the scaffold there, facing outwards. We left him for a few hours to recover from the potion – we wanted him alert and fully functioning.
We'd let it be known that Crispin was going to be punished at noon, and by that time the square was bursting with people – just about the whole of Wickham had turned out. Vendors walked amongst them, doing a good trade selling hot potatoes and chestnuts. There was much excitement.
I mounted the wooden stairs to the plinth on which stood the old scaffold – nobody had been hanged on it for years; nowadays it was where criminals were flogged for minor offences – and I held up my hands to quieten the crowd.
"People of Wickham. We take pride that our town is a welcoming place. We have people living here from all corners of the kingdom, and that is good, and as it should be. But when a man arrives who shows no respect for us, who picks fights for no reason, who injures us, who beds our women with no regard for their wishes – or for the wishes of their husbands, who beats children and who cheats at games of chance, then it is incumbent upon us to take action." I pointed to Crispin, who was snarling and pulling at his restraints on the scaffold frame.
"You see before you a boy of some twenty summers. A fine specimen of manhood, you may think. Look at his muscles, his flowing hair, his blue eyes. Nature has indeed been kind to him – and yet he chooses to use those gifts – to squander those gifts – to get what he wants without the slightest regard for the feelings of others. As far as he is concerned every other person and every thing has been placed here for his amusement, for his use. He is powerful. He is, unquestionably, beautiful. He is in control of every one and everything." I smiled. "Well, now he has little control, and very soon he will have even less."
I nodded to the other guys standing there on the plinth with me. They took out their knives and carefully cut off every inch of his clothing. When they had finished the boy stood there as naked as the day he'd been born. All eyes, of course, went to his cock which was, in proportion to his body, impressively large. It hung there softly between his thighs above a pair of huge round balls. There were giggles and sighs of desire from many of the women, cat-calls and wolf whistles from the men. Crispin was beginning to look very uncomfortable.
I nodded again at the men, then moved to the side of the plinth to watch proceedings, and so as not to block the crowd's view.
There were seven guys stood around Crispin. Each one reached into his tunic and produced a feather. All together, they began to apply the soft points to the boy's body, tickling him slowly.
Crispin's reaction when he saw the feathers was to throw his head back and laugh in derision. A few seconds later, however, the character of his laughter began to change: the ridicule in his voice was abruptly replaced with giggling. Over the next minute that became ticklish cackling, and then full-scale, hysterical laughter as the feathers traced lightly over his golden skin.
The men were enjoying this hugely, and were becoming increasingly inventive, getting their soft instruments of torture into every nook and cranny that presented itself to their pointed ends, and exploring them comprehensively.
The boy's armpits were proving to be particularly rewarding, and so his arms were moved and re-restrained above his head to make them more accessible. Two of the guys then concentrated on them, causing Crispin to convulse on the scaffold.
Another man was kneeling down behind him, reaching around to tickle the sides of the boy's feet and between his toes.
Only Crispin's wrists and ankles were tied, and so he had much freedom to move and struggle, and he was doing so greatly. His curly blond hair was moving to and fro over his shoulders as he shook his head violently, his body twisted and turned in a desperate effort to evade the devilish feathers, and his good-looking face was contorted with ticklishness. I was delighted to see that the boy was so insanely ticklish – I had been afraid that he wouldn't be, and that my plan would not work.
I watched as the feathers stroked slowly and teasingly over his huge pecs and his flat stomach; one guy's attention was on Crispin's navel at the moment.
A couple of the men squatted down occasionally and worked on the solid, muscular legs and thighs. Crispin's knees opened and closed involuntarily as the feathers tickled. This caused his weight to be taken just by his wrists above his head, and that in turn made his armpits even more defenceless and vulnerable.
Raised voiced started to come from the crowd. "Tickle the fucker's balls!"
"And his cock!"
I smiled. I'd instructed the men not to touch the boy's privates, but, when the crowd began to demand it, as I'd known they would, I stepped forward. I was the community leader, and so I'd reserved this role for myself. I took out my own feather, a carefully-selected goose quill with a particularly soft, pointed tip, and knelt down in front of the boy's left foot. One by one the other guys stopped tickling him and stood aside.
Beginning at the ankle, just above the leather restraint, I began to tickle his skin. I worked all around the ankle as far as I could reach for some time. The Golden Boy's hysterics had stopped and he was watching my hand intently.
Very, very slowly I began to work my way up his leg. I gave the knee particular attention – especially at the back – and this drew sharp barks of laughter from him. Then higher still. As the feather moved upwards the boy's ticklish laughter increased gradually until, when I reached his groin, he was hysterical again. I stopped, and began at the ankle of the other leg.
Sighs of disappointment came from the crowd. "Get on with it!" But I knew exactly what I was doing. Past the knee, up the outside, the front, back and finally the inside of the thigh. I watched the powerful muscle clenching and unclenching as the feather worked its magic on his skin just under his bull balls.
Carefully I inserted the point of the feather deep into the crease at the top of his leg, at the side of his balls. I moved it in and out unpredictably. And I saw the very first sign of interest from his cock. It was still quite soft, but it gave a single small jerk. I extracted the feather and did the same to the other side, being careful again not to touch the balls themselves.
A cheer went up as now – at last - I applied the feather to the boy's scrotum – but this cheer was almost drowned out by the shriek of pure ticklishness that came from the boy at that touch. He went berserk: his head began to shake and his body squirmed in the restraints as I teased the soft point of the feather over the huge testicles.
Then a wild cheer – along with much louder catcalls - was heard as the boy pissed himself. His cock moved, and a stream of urine erupted from him. It missed my tunic by inches and disappeared quickly between the wooden boards of the plinth. His face went bright red and he fought the restraints, trying desperately to hide his face from the crowd.
When that was over I went back to tickling his balls.
His cock was now beginning to grow in earnest. Slowly, as the feather worked, it became fatter, then stiffer – still pointing downward, but enlarging visibly. Encouragement was coming from the assembled onlookers, and I was quite sure that this was making many of them – men and women both – as horny as hell.
I continued to work on the balls as the so-far untouched cock enlarged and stiffened further, until eventually it began to rise. After a few minutes it was fully erect and stabbing the air, pointing forty-five degrees upwards. And it was an impressive thing indeed. I could fully understand why the women were getting so excited. It was obvious by the expression of intense concentration on Crispin's face that he was doing everything he could to stop his cock from getting hard, but inch by inch it continued to stiffen, and the boy was grinding his teeth in frustration at not being able to do anything to control it.
I beckoned Mark, the shoemaker's son, over to me, and whispered in his ear. He nodded, and conveyed my message silently to the others. They stood ready.
Having worked on the huge balls for a long time now, I transferred my feather to the base of his cock. The moment it touched it Crispin threw back his head and groaned loudly. I traced the white feather around the shaft, teasing and tickling every inch of it before moving upwards a tiny amount. I repeated this all the way up the considerable length until I arrived just below the ridge of the head. The Golden Boy's wails and yells of both ticklishness and increasing horny need had increased in almost perfect synchronisation with the progress of the feather up the shaft of his cock until now, as I traced the point around just short of the bulbous head's beginning, he was thrusting his hips and squirming shamelessly in his restraints.
I asked Stan to put a further, tight, leather strap over the boy's hips, so as to limit his thrusting movements. I continued.
So far the boy's cock head had not been touched, and I kept it that way for now, going back down the shaft and up again. Precum was beginning to appear, oozing out and dropping slowly to the plinth in large stringy globules.
I glanced at the others, signalling them to get ready. They nodded back.
The point of my feather now traced around the ridge itself, and then finally onto the bare, shining glans. I teased the head all over, lingering each time on the frenulum and paying especial attention to it with the edge of the feather. The boy's thrusting increased abruptly. I stopped, and gave a sharp nod. Immediately the other guys began to tickle the boy all over his body again, utterly destroying the orgasm that had been imminent. Crispin was thrashing about on the scaffold, yelling with ticklishness and wailing in frustration.
I returned the feather to his cock head and resumed working on it. A couple of minutes later he was again on the point of cumming so I stopped and gave the nod again. For the second time his orgasm was demolished by the unbearable tickling of the feathers in his armpits, on his pecs, chest, and the backs of his knees.
"Let me fucking cum, you cunt! " He managed to shout between bouts of hysterical laughter.
I smiled to myself but said nothing. Instead, I began on his cock head again. That was the third of very many repeats that afternoon. Later the lads told me that several of the guys in the crowd had got so turned on by watching me doing that to the boy that they'd wanked themselves off there and then, in the square.
It was getting late. I brought Crispin to another edge of orgasm, and mouthed "Now!" to the guys. As per my earlier instructions, the guys dropped their feathers and set about him with their fingers, tickling the boy hard and mercilessly. His armpits, sides, chest, stomach, legs – no part of him that was accessible was spared the torture. He writhed and screamed on the scaffold as their stiff fingers probed and dug into his defenceless body, and had his cock not been so hard still, I'm sure he would have pissed himself again. As it was, he passed out.
George picked up a bucket of cold water and threw it over him. This revived him almost immediately. I stood up, wiped a little piss from the earlier outburst from my knee, and turned to the crowd. Crispin was hanging exhausted from his wrists, his face a picture of embarrassment and misery.
"People of Wickham. You now see before you not a man, but a boy - a little prick who is incapable of controlling himself. You saw how he writhed and struggled to get away – not from a sword, but from nothing more than feathers. And you heard how he begged and pleaded for me – another man – to make him cum. This pathetic little wazzock assumes that he is better than us; that everything is his, by some Gog-given right, for the taking. Now you see him for what he is: nothing more than a boy who is incapable of controlling himself like a man.
I turned to look at him. "I hope you have learned from this, Crispin. I hope you have learned that behaviour like yours will not be tolerated in this good town. You may have a powerful body, you may be strong and good-looking, but you will show respect for our community if you wish to stay here. If I see you on that scaffold again, you will be even more sorry, I assure you." I nodded to the guys. "Leave him here for an hour for the people's amusement, but see that they do not damage him. Then release him. He will have to find more clothes, but that's his problem."
I smiled at the last cheer from the crowd, then descended the stairs from the plinth and went home.
I heard later that for the following hour or so he was subjected to much mockery and flying vegetables from the people, and several tried to mount the plinth for a more hands-on approach, but they were repelled. The whole thing had, I thought, humiliated him satisfactorily.
Nothing was seen of the Golden Boy after that. I heard that he'd managed to beg some clothes and that he and his horse had left the town quickly.
The following evening there was a knock on my door. It was a man named Paul, the town's wheelwright. I'd noticed him in the crowd at the square during Crispin's punishment. I welcomed him inside.
"This may sound strange," he began, "but I have an odd request. Feel quite free to refuse, I'll understand. Steven, my son, is causing problems. Like all teenage boys, I suppose. I don't believe in beating a boy, and all the other punishments I've tried have had little effect on him. I was wondering, would you consider helping me out? A punishment, like you did to Crispin, but private? I think that may be much more effective on him."
I raised my eyebrows in surprise. Steven was a tearaway, but images of the boy strapped down while I worked on his cock came into my mind unbidden, and I confess that they appealed to me.
"Of course I would pay for the service. Would three silver be sufficient?"
Three silver coins was a very reasonable amount.
I thought about it for a while, then I nodded. "Yes, I don't see why not. See he's here tomorrow afternoon shortly after noon."
Paul went away pleased. I looked around. I was going to have to build some kind of restraint frame, and I'd better start now. I had an old table that would be perfect, I thought, if I attached some leather straps to it.
The tickling and edging punishment was gratifyingly effective on Steven, and I have to confess that I enjoyed doing it to him very much indeed. I made him suffer for far longer than I perhaps should have done. I smiled to myself afterwards: perhaps I had found my calling.
Word gets around a town like this very quickly, and the next day another father – Jeremiah this time – asked me for my services for his son. I was pleased to accept, and for another three silvers. At this rate, I would have a nice little nest egg for the rest of my retirement, I thought.
I hummed to myself as I began adding more straps to the restraint table. Hmm… One halfway down would make it much more difficult for the victim to struggle. And another idea came to me: if I blindfolded the boy, it would make him feel a lot more helpless, and a lot more responsive… I felt the stirrings of an erection beginning between my legs.
Yes, I thought, I was going to enjoy this new little job.