by Anne Rice
Sometime before dawn, I awoke.
I thought I heard some sound in the forest. But as I lay listening in the dark, there was only the usual murmur of the creatures of the wood and nothing to break the peace of it. I looked down on the village lying asleep under the heavy, luminous clouds, and it seemed to me something in its appearance had altered. The gates were locked.
But then maybe they were always locked at this hour. It was no concern of mine. And surely they’d be open in the morning.
And turning on my belly, I snuggled close to my Master again.
REVELATIONS AND MYSTERIES
AS SOON as Beauty was bathed, her long hair washed and dried, Mistress Lockley paddled her through the crowded Inn and out under the torchlit Sign of the Lion to stand on the cobblestones.
The square was crowded, young men drifting in and out of the various Inns, most village tradesmen and a very few soldiers. Mistress Lockley straightened Beauty’s hair, gave a rough fluff to the curls between her legs, and told Beauty to stand straight with her breasts thrust decently forward.
Almost at once Beauty heard the loud approach of a horse, and looking to the right at the far end of the square, she saw the open gates of the village and the dark shape of the countryside under the paler sky and the black figure of a tall mounted soldier approaching.
The hooves clattered on the stones, echoing up the walls, as the horseman pounded towards the Sign of Lion and reined in his mount sharply.
It was the Captain, as Beauty had hoped and dreamed, his hair a cap of gold in the torchlight.
Mistress Lockley pushed Beauty forward, away from the Inn door, and the Captain walked his horse slowly around Beauty as she stood bathed in the light, looking down at her own shivering breasts, her heart thumping deliciously.
The Captain’s huge broadsword flashed in the light, and his velvet cloak fell down behind him to form a deep rose-colored shadow. Beauty’s breath halted as she saw the brightly polished boot and the powerful flank of the horse passing again in front of her. Then, as the horse came dangerously close and she almost backed away, she felt the Captain’s arm catching her up and lifting her high into the air to bring her down facing him on the horse, her naked legs closing about his waist as she threw her arms around his neck tightly.
The horse reared and raced forward, out of the square and through the village gates, and along the road through the open farmland.
Beauty was jogged up and down, her sex spread wide open against the cold brass of the Captain’s belt buckle. And her breasts were pressed against his chest, her head tucked beneath his head against his shoulder.
She saw cottages and fields flying by under the dim crescent moon, the dark outline of an elegant manor house.
The horse turned into the denser darkness of the woods, galloping on as the sky vanished above, the breeze lifting Beauty’s hair, the Captain’s left hand bracing her.
Finally Beauty saw lights ahead, the flicker of camp-fires. The Captain slowed his pace. And they drew near a little circle of four snow-white tents, and Beauty saw a score of men gathered around the large fire in the center of the circle.
The Captain dismounted, setting Beauty on her knees at his heel, where she crouched, not daring to look up at the other soldiers. The tall trees towered over the camp, delineated in a ghastly flicker of firelight.
Beauty felt a thrill at the lurid flicker, though it struck some deep chord of terror in her.
And then to her shock she saw a rude wooden cross staked in the ground facing the fire, a short stubby phallus sticking up where the two beams were fitted together. The cross was not quite as high as a man, and the crosspiece was nailed to the front of the other beam, the phallus jutting up and forward at a slight angle.
Beauty felt a catch in her throat as she stared at it in the grim unsteady light of the fire. And she looked down at the Captain’s boot quickly.
“Well, are the patrols back?” The Captain was asking one of his men. Beauty could see his feet planted before her. “And you’ve had no luck?”
“All the patrols are back but one, Sir,” said the man, “and we have had luck but not what we expected. The Princess is nowhere to be found. She may have made it to the border.”
The Captain gave a low disgusted sound.
“But this,” said the man, “we flushed from the woods just over the mountain at sundown.”
Timidly, Beauty looked up to see a tall, large-boned naked Prince pushed forward into the light of the fire, his body streaked with dirt, his balls laced up tight to his erect penis, with a pair of heavy iron weights dangling from the leather. His long full head of brown hair was snagged with bits of leaf and earth. His legs and massive chest exuded power. He was one of the biggest slaves she’d ever seen. And he looked directly at the Captain with large brown eyes that showed resentful fear and excitement.
“Laurent,” the Captain said under his breath. “And no alarm yet even from the castle that he is missing.”
“No, Sir. He’s been flogged twice; his buttocks are raw, and the men have had a go at him. I thought it was what you would wish, no use keeping him idle. But we waited for your command to mount him.”
The Captain nodded. He was eyeing the slave with obvious anger.
“Lady Elvera’s personal slave,” he said.
The soldier who held the Prince’s arms pulled the Prince’s head back by the hair; and the light shone full on the Prince’s face, his brown eyes flinching, though he still looked at the Captain.
“When did you run away?” the Captain demanded. He took two long strides towards the Prince, and twisted the Prince’s head back even more cruelly. Beauty could see them clearly against the light of the fire, the Prince bigger even than the Captain, his body shuddering now as the Captain examined him.
“Forgive me, Sir,” the slave said under his breath. “It was late today that I ran away. Forgive me.”
“Didn’t get very far, did you, my pretty Prince?” the Captain asked. He turned to the officer. “The men have taken their pleasure of him?”
“Two and three times over, Sir. And he’s been run and whipped well. He’s ready.”
The Captain shook his head slowly and took the slave by the arm.
Beauty’s soul trembled for him. As she knelt in the dirt, she tried to keep her legs apart and her glances furtive.
“Did you plan this attempt with Princess Lynette?” the Captain asked as he shoved the slave towards the cross.
“No, Sir, I swear it,” said the Prince, stumbling as he was thrown forward. “I didn’t even know that she’d run away.” He kept his hands clasped on his neck, though he almost fell. And Beauty saw his backside for the first time, a perfect mesh of pink stripes and white welts all the way to his ankles.
As he was turned around with his back to the cross, his cock pulsed under the lacings. It was large and red, the tip moist, and the slave’s face was coloring darkly.
An excited murmur rose from the company, and Beauty heard men stirring and moving about in the shadows beyond the light of the fire, as if drawing in closer.
The Captain motioned for his men to lift the Prince.
Beauty’s throat thickened and went dry. The soldiers lifted the slave, spreading his legs way out on either side of him, and fitted him down on the wooden phallus.
He gave a harsh groan.
A low cheer went up from the soldiers.
But the Prince groaned even louder as his wide-spread legs were bent all the way back to lie atop the crossbeams. It made Beauty’s thighs ache to look at it, the Prince bound flat now to the cross, sore buttocks against the beam under him, the phallus deep inside him.
But it was not finished. As the Prince’s arms were laced behind the cross, his head was being bent all the way back flat on top of the upright beam, a long leather belt bound across his open mouth, and buckled to the wood beneath his ears as he stared straight up into the sky helplessly. Beauty saw his glossy tangled hair fall down in back. She saw his thro
at undulating with his silent swallows.
But the display of his bulging sex seemed the worst, and as the lashings were torn off the cock, it wagged and quavered, pulling at the heavy weight that hung from it. And Beauty felt her own sex again twitching and flinching.
The men had gathered all around as the Captain inspected the work. And the Prince’s whole body shuddered and strained on the cross, the iron weight swinging from the swollen penis. Beauty could even see the buttocks rising and contracting on the thick wooden phallus.
The whole figure stood no higher than a short man, and the Captain stood alongside it now and looked down into the Prince’s face and wiped the hair back from his eyes roughly. Beauty could see the eyelids moving, and the Prince’s mouth straining to close on the broad leather belt that bound it open.
“Tomorrow,” the Captain said, “thus exhibited, you will be mounted on the cart and driven through the village and the countryside. The soldiers will march before and behind, and the drums will beat to rouse the public attention. And I shall send word to the Queen that you have been taken. She may ask to see you. She may not. If she does, you will ride in the same fashion to the castle to be placed there in the garden on display until she decides to make her judgment. If she does not wish to see you, you are sentenced without recourse for the rest of your years here to the village. I shall have you whipped through the streets, then auctioned. Now you will take your whipping from me.”
Again the company cheered.
The Captain took the leather strap that was hooked to his waist and stood back to gain the room for the swing of the arm and commenced the whipping. It was not too heavy a strap, nor a wide one, but Beauty winced and secretly covered her face with her fingers, peeping through them to see the flat lash descend upon the inner thighs of the Prince, which brought immediate grunts and groans from him.
The Captain whipped hard, sparing no part of the legs, the strap licking the sides of the calves, the upturned shins, the ankles. Even the soles of the upturned feet, and then he whipped the Prince’s naked belly. The rounded flesh quivered and jumped and the Prince moaned against his gag, the tears streaming down the side of his face, his eyes open as they stared above him.
His whole body seemed to vibrate on the cross. The buttocks rose and fell in spasms, revealing the base of the phallus.
And when he was a deep shade of rosy pink from his pubic hair to his ankles, and chest and stomach were well latticed with swelling ribbons of pink, the Captain drew up to the side of the cross and, taking only the end five or six inches of the strap, lashed the Prince’s bouncing cock with it. The Prince strained and pumped on the cross, the iron weight dangling, the cock growing huge and almost purple in color.
The Captain stopped. He looked down into the Prince’s eyes and laid his hand on the Prince’s forehead again. “Not such a bad whipping, was it, Laurent?” he asked. The Prince’s chest heaved. The men throughout the camp laughed softly. “Except that you will receive it again at dawn, and then at noon, and then at twilight.”
Another burst of laughter. The Prince sighed deeply and the tears rolled down the side of his face.
“I hope the Queen gives you to me,” said the Captain softly.
He snapped his fingers for Beauty to follow him into the tent. And as she crawled on her hands and knees into the warm light beneath the white canvas, an officer walked quickly past her.
“I wish to be alone now,” the Captain said to the man.
Beauty settled to the side of the doorway meekly.
“Captain,” the officer said, dropping his voice, “I don’t know that this can wait. The last patrol came in moments ago while you were whipping the runaway.”
“Yes?”
“Well, they didn’t find the Princess, Sir. But they swear they saw horsemen in the forest tonight.”
The Captain, who had settled on his elbows at a little writing table, looked up. “What?” he asked, incredulously.
“Sir, they swear they saw and heard them. A large party, they said.” The soldier drew near to the table.
Through the open door, she saw the Prince’s hands twitching under their ropes on the back of the cross and his buttocks riding up and down still, as if he could not settle into his punishment.
“Sir,” said the officer, “he is almost sure that they were raiders.”
“But they wouldn’t dare to come again this soon,” the Captain waved it away. “And on a moonlit night. I don’t believe it.”
“But, Sir, it’s only the quarter moon. And it has been two years since their last raid. The sentry says he heard something too, near the camp only moments ago.”
“You’ve doubled the watch!”
“Yes, Sir, I doubled it right away.”
The Captain’s eyes narrowed. He cocked his head to the side.
“Sir, they were walking their horses through the woods, the soldiers said, without light. And with as little sound as possible. It must be them!”
The Captain considered. “All right, break camp. Get the runaway mounted on the cart and head back to the village. Send a messenger ahead to double the watch on the towers. But I don’t want the village alarmed. This is probably nothing.” He paused, obviously considering. “It’s useless to search the coast tonight,” he said.
“Yes, Sir.”
“It’s almost impossible to search all those coves even by daylight. But we’ll go out tomorrow.”
He rose angrily as the officer withdrew. He snapped his fingers for Beauty to come to him, and giving her a harsh kiss, he threw her up over his shoulders. “No time for you tonight, pet, not here,” he said and squeezed her hip as he carried her.
It was midnight when they returned to the Inn, riding well ahead of the others.
Beauty was thinking of all she had heard and seen, stimulated against her will by Laurent’s suffering. And she couldn’t wait to tell Prince Roger or Prince Richard what she had heard about the strange riders in the night, and ask what it meant.
But there was no chance for this.
Entering the hot, cheerful din of the drinking room, the Captain gave her over at once to the soldiers at the table nearest the door. And before she knew it she sat spread-legged on the lap of a lovely brawny young man with copper hair, her hips bounced down on a gorgeous thick cock, while a pair of hands from behind massaged her nipples.
As the hours passed, the Captain kept close watch on her. But he was often in fast conversation with his men. And many soldiers came and went in a hurry.
When Beauty grew drowsy he took her from the men and had her mounted high on a cask on the wall, her sex pressed to the rough wood, her hands bound over her head, her vision clouded as she turned her head to sleep, the crowd shimmering beneath her.
She thought again and again of the runaways. Who was the Princess Lynette who had reached the border, the same tall blond Princess who years before had so tormented Beauty’s beloved Alexi in her little circus performance for the Court at the castle? And where was she now? Clothed and safe in another Kingdom? Beauty should envy her, she thought, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t even think of it with any concentration. And her mind returned again and again, without judgment or fear, or even thought, to the stunning image of Prince Laurent mounted on the cross, his massive torso throbbing under the strap, his buttocks riding the wooden phallus.
She slept.
Yet it seemed that sometime before morning she saw Tristan. But that must have been a dream. Beautiful Tristan kneeling at the door of the Inn, looking up at her. His golden hair fell almost to his shoulders, and his large blue-violet eyes gazed up at her with the most complete affection.
She wanted so to talk to him, to tell him how strangely content she was. But then the vision of Tristan was gone, as surely as it had come. She must have been dreaming.
Through her dreams came Mistress Lockley’s voice, in low conversation with the Captain. “Pity that poor Princess,” she said, “if they are out there. But so soon, I can scarce believ
e they’d try it.”
“I know,” the Captain answered. “But they can come anytime. They can strike the manor houses and the farms and be off before we even know it in the village. That’s what they did two years ago. That’s why I’ve doubled the watch, and we’ll be patrolling until this is settled.”
Beauty opened her eyes. But they had moved away from under the keg and she could no longer hear them.
PENITENTIAL PROCESSION
WHEN BEAUTY awoke, it was late afternoon and she was alone in the Captain’s bed. A loud roaring came from the square below, with the slow chilling beat of a deep drum. In spite of the alarm that the drum sounded in her soul, she thought of the chores she should have done. She sat up in panic.
But immediately Prince Roger calmed her with a little gesture. “The Captain said for you to sleep late,” he said. He had the broom in his hands, but he was looking out of the window.
“What is it?” Beauty asked. She could feel the reverberation of the drum in her belly. And the steady beat filled her with dread. Seeing no one else in the room, she climbed to her feet and came up beside Prince Roger.
“Only the runaway Prince Laurent,” he said, putting his arm around Beauty as he pulled her close to the thick little panes. “Being wheeled through the village.”
Beauty pressed her forehead to the glass. Below in a great loose crowd of villagers she saw a giant two-wheeled cart being pulled around the well, not by horses, but slaves in bits and harnesses.
The flushed face of Prince Laurent, bound to the cross with his legs straight out, his protuberant sex as hard as ever, stared straight up at Beauty. She saw his eyes wide and seemingly still, the mouth quivering on the thick leather that bound the head flat to the top of the beam, the bound legs shuddering with the cart’s uneven movement.
