Beauty's Release (22 page)

Of course, I feared most for Lexius. But there was always the hope that the Queen would send him back. Or keep him at the castle. I would lose him, whatever happened. I wouldn’t feel that silky skin again. But I was prepared for this.

Our ignominious procession entered the village just as I was afraid it would. Crowds met us at the south gates, common people pushing and shoving to get a close look at us. And the slow beat of the drum preceded us again as we were carried through the narrow, crooked streets towards the marketplace.

I saw the familiar cobblestones beneath me, the high gables, the crude leather shoes of the people who lined the walls, laughing and pointing and enjoying the fairly unusual sight of slaves bound like game to the spit as we moved slowly onward.

The wide leather belt pressed against my teeth, but there was plenty of room for air, though I knew that with every deep breath, my chest heaved most noticeably. And though my vision was blurred, I nevertheless stared back at those who looked at me, seeing the same predictable superiority in their faces that I hadn’t seen enough when I was a captured runaway on the Punishment Cross.

How strange it all was: We were home and yet it was utterly new, the variations of the Sultan’s palace having given the village an alarming gleam, my mind keenly aware of each step the soldiers took, though I saw the garden of the Sultan in strange, warm flashes.

In due time, we were carried through the marketplace and out of the north gates. The high, pointed towers of the castle loomed above us. The cries of the villagers were soon left behind, and we were carried uphill at a fairly brisk pace through the hot morning sun, the banners of the castle flapping in the breeze ahead as if in greeting.

I was calm for a little while. After all, I knew what to expect, did I not?

But, when we crossed the drawbridge, my heart started to race again. The soldiers lined the yard on either side to salute the Captain of the Guard. The doors of the castle were opened. All the accoutrements of the Queen’s power surrounded us.

And there were the Lords and Ladies of the Court, come out to watch us being brought in—all the old royal finery that we were accustomed to. I felt the sting of familiar voices, glimpsed familiar faces. And I felt a catch in my throat as I heard the old language, laughter. The ambience of the Court came back. Bored Masters and Mistresses inspected us out of the corner of the eye—men and women who might find us quite amusing if we weren’t in such disgrace. In an hour they would be back to their old occupations.

The procession moved into the Great Hall. I cursed the strap that held my mouth open and my head up. I wished I could bow my head. But I couldn’t. And I couldn’t force myself to look down. I saw the Court assembling in all its glory—heavy velvet gowns with long dagged sleeves; the fine jerkins of the Lords; the throne itself and upon it Her Majesty, already seated, her hands on the armrests, her shoulders covered with an ermine-edged cloak, her hair long and black and twisting, like serpents, beneath her white veil, her face hard as porcelain.

In silence, we were set down on the stone floor at her feet, the poles withdrawn, the soldiers receding, until we were alone there—three bound slaves, resting on our chests, our heads raised, waiting for judgment.

“I see you’ve done well. You’ve accomplished the mission,” said the Queen, obviously addressing the Captain of the Guard.

I didn’t dare to look at her. But I couldn’t keep myself from glancing to the left and the right, and with a sudden shock I saw Lady Elvera, standing near the throne, staring at me. As it always did, her beauty frightened me. It seemed part and parcel of her coldness. And, as I stared at her composed figure in its tight-fitting gown of apricot velvet, a sense of her luxurious and undisturbed life came over me—a life from which I had been cast out. I felt my heart beating in my throat. I moaned, though I hadn’t meant to. I felt the stone pressing on my belly and my cock, and the old shame quickened in me, quickened as it had after I’d run away. I was not fit to kiss My Lady’s slippers anymore or be her garden plaything.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” the Captain of the Guard was saying, “and Princess Beauty has been sent home to her Kingdom with the proper rewards, as you decreed. Her party has probably already crossed the border.”

“Good,” said the Queen.

I knew secretly that her tone was probably amusing many in the Hall. The Queen had always been jealous of the Crown Prince’s love for Princess Beauty. Princess Beauty.... Ah, so much confusion. Was she really sorry not to be bound here with us, not to be naked and helpless before the scornful Court of men and women who would someday be our equals?

But the Captain was continuing. And slowly, I picked up the thread:

“... all showed the most ferocious ingratitude, begging to remain in the Sultan’s Land, furious that they had been rescued.”

“This is absolute impertinence!” the Queen said. She rose from the chair. “For this they will pay dearly. But this one, this dark-haired one who cries so piteously—who is he?”

“Lexius, the chief of all the grooms for the Sultan,” the Captain said. “It was Laurent who stripped him naked and forced him to come with us. But the man could have saved himself. He chose to come and be thrown upon Her Majesty’s mercy.”

“That’s very interesting, Captain,” said the Queen. I saw her take several steps down from the dais. In the corner of my eye, her figure moved towards the bound figure of Lexius that rested to the right of me. I saw her bend to touch his hair.

How did it all seem to him? This clumsy stone edifice, its gaping, unadorned hall, this powerful woman, so different from the shuddering darlings of the Sultan’s harem. I could hear Lexius moaning, see the motion of his struggling. Was he pleading for release or to serve?

“Unbind him,” the Queen said. “And we will see what he is made of.”

The leather bonds were quickly cut. Lexius gathered his knees under him and pressed his forehead to the floor. I had told him on shipboard the various ways he could show his respect here, very much the same as we had shown it in his Land. And a dark pride rose in me as I saw him crawl forward and press his lips to the Queen’s slipper.

“Very nice manners, Captain,” the Queen observed. “Lift your head, Lexius.” He obeyed. “And now, tell me that you wish to serve me.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” came his soft, resonant voice. “I beg to serve you.”

“I choose my slaves, Lexius,” she said. “They do not choose to come to me. But I shall see if you can be effectively used. The first thing we will do is strip away the vanity and softness and dignity bred into you in your native Land.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” he answered anxiously.

“Take him down to the kitchen. He will serve there as punished slaves do, the plaything of the servants, scouring pots and pans on his knees, bearing their needs when they see fit. And, after a good two weeks of that, have him thoroughly bathed and oiled and brought to my chamber.”

I gasped behind the gag. This would be so difficult for him. The kitchen slaves laughing and prodding him with their wooden spoons, paddling him for nothing, oiling him with the cooking grease before they whipped him back and forth across the floor for nothing more than an afternoon’s diversion. But it would do just what the Queen wanted it to do. It would make a gorgeous slave out of him. After all, everyone knew she had trained her own Prince Alexi this way, and he was incomparable.

Lexius was taken away. We did not even look at each other to say farewell. But I had more important things to think of.

“And now for these two, these ungrateful rebels,” the Queen said, turning her attention to Tristan and me. “When will I not hear discouraging reports of Tristan and Laurent?” Her voice showed genuine irritation. “Bad slaves, disobedient slaves, and ungrateful when freed from the Sultan’s bondage!”

The blood pounded in my face. I could feel the eyes of the Court on me, the eyes of those I knew, had spoken with, had served in the past. How much safer the Sultan’s garden seemed, with its preordained roles, than this deliberately temporary servitude. Yet there was no escape from this! It was as absolute as the garden had been.

The Queen drew near, and I saw her skirts before my eyes. I couldn’t move to kiss her slipper or I would have done it.

“Tristan is a young slave,” she said, “but you, Laurent, you served Lady Elvera for a year. You are well trained and yet you disobey, you rebel!” Her voice was caustic. “You even bring back the Sultan’s servant on a whim. You are determined to distinguish yourself.”

I heard myself whimpering in response, my tongue touching the leather belt over my mouth, my cheeks burning against it.

She moved closer. The velvet of her skirt touched my face, and I felt her slipper against my nipple. I began to weep. I couldn’t contain it. All my ideas about the things that had happened to me left me. The fierce Master who had trained Lexius on the ship was vanquished again, wouldn’t come to my aid. I felt only the tension of the Queen’s disapproval, and my own unworthiness. And yet I knew I would rebel again, given half the chance! I was truly incorrigible. Nothing but punishment was right for me.

“There is but one place for you both,” she said. “The place that will strengthen Tristan’s uncertain soul and quell your strong spirit thoroughly. You will be sent back to the village, but you will not be sold from the auction block. You will be delivered over to the Public Pony Stables.”

My crying increased. I couldn’t stop it. It seemed the leather belt did little to muffle the sound of it.

“And there you will serve night and day all year,” she continued. “And strictly as ponies—to be rented out for the pulling of carriages and carts and other draught work. You will spend your waking hours harnessed and bitted with the proper horsetail phalluses fitted into place, and you will know no reprieve from this to enjoy the attention or affection of any Master or Mistress.”

I closed my eyes. My mind traveled back to the time so long ago, it seemed, when I had been brought through the village on the Punishment Cross, and the human ponies had pulled the cart, Tristan among them. The image of the black horsetails streaking from their backsides, their heads held high by the bits, obliterated all other thoughts in an instant. It seemed infinitely worse than marching with my hands tied to the bronze phallus in the Sultan’s garden. And it would be done not for the Sultan and the royal guests but for the common and thrifty people of the village.

“Only when that year is passed will your names be brought again to my attention,” said the Queen, “and I give you my word that you are more likely to find yourself on the village auction block than at my feet when your service as ponies is ended.”

“An excellent punishment, Your Majesty,” said the Captain of the Guard softly. “And these are such strong slaves, well muscled. Tristan has already tasted the bit. For Laurent it will do wonders.”

“I wish to hear no more of it,” said the Queen. “These are not Princes fit for my service. They are horses to be well worked and well whipped in the village. Get them out of my sight immediately.”

 

 

Tristan’s face was red and streaked with tears when I finally saw it. We were both lifted again on poles, as we had been before, and hurriedly carried out of the Great Hall, leaving the Court behind us.

In the yard before the drawbridge, crude little signs were put around our necks, both bearing the single word: PONY.

And after that we were rushed across the drawbridge and downhill, once more, towards the dreaded village.

I tried not to envision the pony shackles. It was something absolutely unknown to me. And my only hope was that my bonds would be tight, and my position of servitude rigidly maintained by stern disciplinarians who would show me how to bear it.

One year ... phalluses ... bits.... It rang in my ears as we were carried back through the gates into the swarming noontime marketplace.

We caused quite a stir, the crowds gathering as the trumpet was blown before the auction block. The villagers moved in closely this time, though the soldiers ordered them back, and hands pushed at my naked arms and legs, making my body swing from the pole. I was choking on my tears, marveling that my understanding of what was happening did not lessen the degradation of it.

“What does understanding mean?” I wondered. To know that I had brought it all on myself, that humiliation and yielding are inevitable at any stage of the game—somehow it produces no calm, no defense. The hands that pulled at my exposed nipples, lifted my hair from around my face—these hands reached through all my carefully pondered defenses.

The ship, the Sultan, the secret mastering of Lexius, all swept away most certainly.

“Two fine ponies,” cried the herald, “to be added at once to the village livery stables. Two fine steeds for hire at the regular rate to pull the finest coach or the heaviest farm wagon.”

The soldiers hoisted the poles high. We were swinging above a sea of faces, hands slapping at my cock, slipping between my legs to squeeze my buttocks. And the sun glared on the many windows that surrounded the square, on the weathervanes turning on the gabled roofs, on the hot dusty panorama of village life—into which we had passed again.

The herald’s voice went on recounting that for one year we would serve, that all should thank Her Gracious Majesty for the beautiful steeds maintained in the town and the reasonable prices asked for their service. And then the trumpet was sounded again, and off we were taken, the poles lowered, our bodies swinging close to the cobblestones again, the villagers turning back to their work, the houses of the quiet street suddenly rising on either side of us, as the soldiers carried us on towards the mystery of the new existence.

I
T WAS a giant stable like many another, I think, except that real horses had never been in it. The mud floor was strewn with sawdust and hay merely to make it soft and keep the dust down. Its rafters were hung with harnesses of the light and delicate sort fit only for men. And the bits and reins streamed from hooks along the rough wooden walls, while in a large open area drenched with sun from the open doors to the street stood a circle of empty wooden pillories. They were high enough for a man on his knees, with holes for the neck and the hands. And I thought as I glanced at them that I would know what they were for, perhaps, sooner than I wanted to know.