The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (30 page)

“There was a grand banquet that night at the castle. You’ve seen such a banquet as there was one held for you at your presentation. I had not seen it before. And I had my first experience of serving wine for the Queen and for the others to whom she sent me ceremoniously as a gift now and then. When my eyes caught those of Princess Lynette I smiled at her without thinking about it.

“I felt I could do anything I was commanded to do. I had no fear of anything. And so I can say by then I had yielded. But the truest indication of my yielding was that both Leon and Lord Gregory—when they had the chance—told me I was obdurate and rebellious. They said I mocked everything. I said this was not true when I had the opportunity to answer, but I seldom had such an opportunity.

“Many other things have happened to me since then, but the lessons learned in those early months were most important.

“Princess Lynette is still here, of course. You’ll come to know who she is in time, and though I can bear anything from my Queen, from Lord Gregory, and from Leon, I still find it difficult to bear Princess Lynette. But I should stake my life on it that no one knows this.

“Now, it’s almost morning. I must return you to the dressing room, and also bathe you, so no one knows we’ve been together. But I’ve told you my story so that you can understand what it means to yield, and that each of us must find his or her own path to acceptance.

“There is more, however, to my story which will only reveal itself to you in time. But let it stand by you in simple ways now. If you must bear a punishment which seems too great for you, think to yourself, ‘Ah, but Alexi bore this so therefore it can be borne.’ ”

Beauty did not mean to silence him but she could not restrain her embraces. She was as hungry for him now as she had been earlier, but it was too late.

And as he led her back to the dressing room, she wondered whether or not he could guess the true effect of his words upon her. Could he know that he had enflamed and fascinated her, and amplified for her an understanding of resignation and yielding which she had already felt?

As he bathed her, wiping away all evidence of his love, she remained still, caught in her thoughts.

What had she felt earlier this night when the Queen had said that she wanted to send her home on account of the Crown Prince’s excessive devotion? Had she wanted to leave?

A horrid thought obsessed her. She saw herself asleep in that dusty chamber that had been her prison for a hundred years, she heard whispers all about her. The old witch with the spindle that had pricked Beauty’s finger was laughing through her toothless gums; and lifting her hand to Beauty’s breasts, she exuded some lewd sensuality.

Beauty shuddered. She winced and struggled as Alexi tightened the shackles.

“Don’t be afraid. We’ve had the night together undiscovered,” he assured her.

She stared at him as if she did not know him because she was not afraid of anyone in the castle, not of him, the Prince, the Queen. It was her mind that frightened her.

The sky was paling. Alexi embraced her. She was now bound to the wall, her long hair pressed between her back and the stones behind her. And she could not get out of that dusty chamber in her homeland, and it seemed to her she was traveling up through layers and layers of sleep, and this dressing room about her in this cruel country had lost its substantiality.

A Prince had come into her sleeping chamber. A Prince had lowered his lips to her. But it was only Alexi kissing her, wasn’t it? Alexi kissing her here?

But when she opened her eyes on that ancient bed and looked at the one who now broke her spell, she saw some bland and innocent countenance! It was not her Crown Prince. It was not Alexi. It was some pristine soul liken to her own who now stood back from her in astonishment. Brave he was, yes, brave, and without complexity!

She cried out. “No!”

But Alexi’s hand was over her mouth. “Beauty, what is it?”

“Don’t kiss me!” she whispered.

But when she saw the pain in his face, she opened her mouth and felt his lips sealed over it. His tongue filled her. She pressed her hips against him.

“Ah, it is you, only you ...” she whispered.

“And what did you think it was? Were you dreaming?”

“It seemed for a moment all this was a dream,” she confessed. But the stone was too real, his touch too real.

“And why should it be a dream? Is it such a nightmare?”

She shook her head. “You love it, all of it, you love it,” she whispered in his ear. She saw his eyes linger languidly on her and then drift away. “And it seemed a dream because all the past, the real past, has lost its luster!”

But what was she saying? That in these few days she had not once longed for her homeland, she had not once longed for what her youth had been and the sleep of a hundred years had given her no wisdom?

“I love it. I loathe it,” Alexi said. “I am humiliated by it, and recreated by it. And yielding means to feel all those things at once and yet to be of one mind and one spirit.”

“Yes,” she sighed, as though she had falsely accused him. “Wicked pain, wicked pleasure.”

And he gave her his smile of approbation. “We’ll be together soon again ...”

“Yes ...”

“... be sure of it. And until then, my darling, my love, belong to everyone.”

T
HE NEXT few days passed as quickly for Beauty as those before them. No one discovered that she and Alexi had been together.

The following night the Prince told her she had gained his mother’s approval. She would now be trained by him as his little maid, to sweep his quarters, to keep his wine cup always filled, and to perform all those duties that Alexi performed for her Highness.

And from then on Beauty would sleep in the Prince’s quarters.

She found herself envied by everyone, and it was the Prince and the Prince alone who prescribed her daily punishments.

Each morning she was given to Lady Juliana for the Bridle Path. Then Beauty would serve the wine at the noon meal and woe to her if she spilt a drop of it.

Then she would sleep in the afternoons so she might be fresh to attend the Prince in the evenings. And next Festival Night she would be entered in a race of Bridle Path slaves which he expected her to win after her daily training.

All this Beauty heard out with flushes and tears, again and again stooping to kiss the Prince’s boots as he gave his orders. He seemed still troubled in his love, and while the castle slept, he frequently awakened her with rough embraces. She could scarcely think of Alexi at these times, the Prince so frightened her and scrutinized her.

And when each day dawned she was brought out in her leather horseshoe boots for Lady Juliana.

Beauty was frightened but she was ready. Lady Juliana was a vision of loveliness in her crimson riding dress, and Beauty ran fast on the soft gravel path, the sun often causing her to squint as it flashed in the overhanging trees, and she was weeping when it was finished.

Then she and Lady Juliana would be alone together in the garden. Lady Juliana carried a leather strap, but seldom did she use it, and the garden was soothing to Beauty. They would sit down on the grass, Lady Juliana’s skirts a wreath of embroidered silk about her, and quite suddenly Lady Juliana might give Beauty a deep kiss that startled Beauty and weakened her. Lady Juliana stroked Beauty all over. She lavished her with kisses and compliments, and when she did beat her with the leather strap, Beauty cried softly with deep moaning breaths and a languid sense of abandon.

Very soon she was gathering little flowers in her teeth for Lady Juliana, or with great grace kissing the hem of her skirts, or even her white hands, all of these gestures delighting her mistress.

“Ah, am I becoming what Alexi wanted me to become,” Beauty thought. But most of the time she did not think at all.

At meals she took great care to serve the wine gracefully.

Yet there came that moment when she spilt the wine, and must take her punishment dangling from the Page’s strong grip, scampering afterwards to the Prince’s boots to beg silently for forgiveness. The Prince was furious with her, and when he ordered her spanked again, she was scalded with humiliation.

That night, he whipped her mercilessly with his belt before taking her. He told her he loathed the slightest imperfection in her. And she was chained to the wall to spend the night in weeping and misery.

 

 

She dreaded new and frightening punishments. Lady Juliana hinted that Beauty was but a virgin in some respects, that she was being tried very slowly.

And Beauty feared Lord Gregory too, who was always watching her.

One morning when she stumbled on the Bridle Path, Lady Juliana threatened her with the Hall of Punishments.

Beauty fell to her hands and knees at once, kissing Lady Juliana’s slippers. And though Lady Juliana relented at once with a smile and a toss of her pretty braids, Lord Gregory, nearby, showed his disapproval.

Beauty’s heart was a throbbing pain in her chest as she was led away for grooming. If only she could see Alexi, she mused, and yet he had lost some of his charm for her, and why, she was not certain. Even as she lay on her bed that afternoon, she thought of the Prince, and Lady Juliana. “My Lords and Masters,” she whispered to herself, and wondered why Leon had given her nothing to make her sleep when she was not tired at all and tortured by the little throb of passion between her legs as always.

But she had been resting only an hour when Lady Juliana came for her.

“I don’t much approve of it myself,” Lady Juliana said, as she forced Beauty out into the garden, “but his Highness must let you see those poor slaves being packed off to the village.”

Again, the village. Beauty tried to conceal her curiosity. Lady Juliana thrashed her idly with the leather belt, light but stinging blows, as they moved down the path together.

Finally they reached an enclosed garden full of low limbed flowering trees, and on a stone bench Beauty saw the Prince and a handsome young Lord at his side who was talking to the Prince earnestly.

“That is Lord Stefan,” Lady Juliana confided in a hushed voice, “and you must show him the utmost respect. He is the Prince’s favorite cousin. Besides, he is quite miserable today. It is his precious and disobedient Prince Tristan who is the cause of it.”

“Ah, and if I could only see Prince Tristan,” Beauty thought. She had not forgotten Alexi’s mention of him, an incomparable slave who knew the meaning of yielding. So he had caused trouble, had he? She could not help but observe that Lord Stefan was very handsome. Golden-haired and gray-eyed, his youthful face was heavy with brooding and unhappiness.

His eyes rested on Beauty only for a second as she drew near, and though he seemed to acknowledge her charms, he lapsed again into listening to the Prince, who lectured him sternly.

“You bear him too much love, it’s the same with me and this Princess you see before you. You must curb your love as I must curb mine. Believe me, I understand even as I condemn you.”

“O, but the village,” murmured the young Lord.

“He must go and he will be the better for it!”

“O, heartless Prince,” whispered Lady Juliana. She urged Beauty forward to kiss Lord Stefan’s boots as she took her side beside both of them. “Poor Prince Tristan will be in the village the whole summer.”

The Prince lifted Beauty’s chin and bent to take a kiss from her lips, which filled Beauty with a softening torment. But she was too curious about all that was being said and dared not make the slightest movement to attract him.

“I must ask you ...” Lord Stefan began. “Would you send Princess Beauty to the village if you felt she deserved it?”

“Of course I would,” said the Prince. But he did not sound convincing. “I would do it in an instant.”

“O, but you couldn’t!” Lady Juliana protested.

“She doesn’t deserve it, so it does not matter,” the Prince insisted. “But we are talking about Prince Tristan, and Prince Tristan, for all the abuse and punishments he has endured, remains a mystery to everyone. He needs the rigors of the village just as Prince Alexi once needed the kitchen to teach him humility.”

Lord Stefan was deeply troubled, and the words rigor and humility seemed to pierce him. He rose and begged the Prince to come with him and make a better judgment of it.

“They go tomorrow. The weather is already very warm and the villagers are already preparing for the auction. I’ve sent him to the prisoners’ yard to wait there.”

“Come, Beauty,” the Prince said, rising. “It will be good for you to see this and come to understand it.”

Beauty was intrigued and followed eagerly. But the Prince’s coldness and sternness made her uneasy. She tried to remain close to Lady Juliana as they proceeded along a pathway, out of the gardens, past the kitchen and stables to a plain dirty yard in which she saw a great cart, without its horse, standing on four wheels against the walls that surrounded the castle.

There were common soldiers here, menials. She felt her nakedness as she was made to follow the brightly dressed trio. Her welts and cuts smarted anew and fearfully she looked up to see a small pen, fenced in crude sticks, in which a gaggle of naked Princes and Princesses stood with their hands bound to the backs of their necks, milling as if it were less exhausting to walk than to stand by the hour.

A common soldier dealt a blow now through the fence with a heavy leather belt that sent a squealing Princess towards the middle of the group for cover. And, catching other naked buttocks, he walloped them as well, producing a groan from a young Prince who turned to him resentfully.

It infuriated Beauty to see this lowly soldier abusing such lovely white legs and bottoms. Yet she could not keep her eyes off the slaves who backed away from the fence only to be tormented from the other side by another idle, devilish boy who struck much harder and with much more deliberation.