by Anne Rice
At once I was pulled back. A dish of wine was given me to lap. And I was marched to the next waiting Prince, who was already struggling in the inevitable rhythm.
My jaws ached when I finished the row.
My throat ached. And my own cock could not have been any stiffer, any more eager. I was now at the mercy of the groom and desperate for even a sign that I should know some relief from the torture.
He immediately bound me to the beam, my arms thrust over it, my legs in the same awkward, degrading squat. But there was no slave there to satisfy me. And as the groom left us alone in the empty stable, I broke into soft muffled groans, my hips straining forward helplessly.
The stable was quiet now.
The others must have slumbered. The late afternoon sun leaked like a vapor through the open door. I dreamed of relief in all its glorious forms, Lord Stefan lying under me in that land long ago where we had been friends and lovers before either of us had ever come to this strange Kingdom, Beauty’s delicious sex riding my cock, the Master of the Mistress’s hand touching me.
But this only made my torment worse.
Then softly I heard the slave next to me. “It’s always so,” he said sleepily. He stretched his neck, twisting his head so that his loose black hair fell down more freely. I could only see a little of his face. Like all the rest he had an obvious beauty. “One is made to satisfy the others,” he said. “And when there is a new slave he is always the one. Other times it’s chosen in various ways, but the one chosen must suffer.”
“Yes, I see,” I said miserably. It seemed he was slumbering again.
“What is our Mistress’s name?” I pressed, thinking he might know, since surely this was not his first day.
“Mistress Julia is her name, but she’s not my Mistress,” he whispered. “Rest now. You need your rest, uncomfortable as it is, believe me.”
“My name is Tristan,” I said. “How long have you been here?”
“Two years,” he said. “My name is Jerard. I tired to run away from the castle and almost reached the border of the next Kingdom. I would have been safe there. But when I was only an hour or less away a band of peasants hunted me down and caught me. They never help an escaping slave. And I had stolen clothes from their cottage. They stripped me fast enough and bound me hand and foot and brought me back, and I was sentenced to three years in the village. The Queen never even looked at me again.”
I winced. Three years! And he had served two already!
“ut would you really have been safe if you... ?”
“Yes, but the great difficulty is reaching the border.”
“And you weren’t afraid that your parents ... ? Didn’t they send you to the Queen and tell you to obey?”
“I was too afraid of the Queen,” he said. “And I wouldn’t have gone home anyway.”
“Have you ever tried since?”
“No,” he laughed softly under his breath. “I’m one of the best ponies in the village. I was sold right away to the public stables. I’m rented out every day by the rich Masters and Mistresses, though Master Nicolas and Mistress Julia rent me most often. I still hope for clemency from her Majesty, that I’ll be allowed back to the castle early, but if not, I won’t weep. If I weren’t run hard every day I’d probably become anxious. Now and then I feel fretful and I kick or struggle, but a good thrashing quiets me down beautifully. My Master knows just when I need it; even if I’ve been very good, he knows. I like pulling a handsome coach like your Master’s coach. I like the shiny new harnesses and reins, and he swings a hard strap, that one, the Queen’s Chronicler. You know he means it. Every now and then he’ll stop and rub my hair, or give me a pinch, and I almost come on the spot. He declares his authority over my cock, too, lashing it and then laughing at it. I adore him. Once he had me pull a little basket cart on two wheels all by myself while he walked beside it. I hate the small carts, but with your Master, I tell you I almost lost my mind from pride. It was so lovely.”
“Why was it lovely?” I asked, mutely fascinated. I was trying to picture him, his long black hair, the hair of the horsetail, and the slender elegant figure of my Master walking beside him. All that lovely white hair in the sun, my Master’s lean thoughtful face, those deep blue eyes.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m not much with words. I’m always proud when I am trotting. But I was all alone with him. We came out of the village for a twilight walk in the country. All the women were out at their gates to bid him good evening. And gentlemen passed, returning from a day of inspection at their farms to their lodgings in the village.
“Every now and then your Master would lift my hair off the back of my neck and smooth it out. He’d tethered the rein good and high so my head was way back, and he gave me many a crack on the calves I didn’t need just because he liked it. It was the most exhilarating feeling, trotting on the road, and hearing the crunch of his boots beside me. I didn’t care if I ever saw the castle again. Or ever left the Kingdom. He always asks for me, your Master. The other ponies are terrified of him. They come back to the stables with their buttocks raw and they say he whips them twice as much as does anyone else, but I revere him. He does what he does well. And so do I. And so will you now that he’s your Master.”
I couldn’t answer.
He didn’t say any more after that. He soon fell asleep, and I squatted very still, my thighs aching, my cock as miserable as before, thinking of his little descriptions. It sent chills through me to listen to what he said, and yet I understood what he was saying.
It unnerved me. But I understood it.
When they released us and drove us out to the coach, it was almost dark, and I felt myself fascinated by the harness and the nipple clamps and the reins and the lacings and the phallus as they were all refitted. Of course they hurt and frightened me. But I was thinking of Jerard’s words. I could see him harnessed in front of me. I stared at the way he tossed his head, stamped his feet in the boots as if to improve the fit. And I stared forward at nothing with wide, baffled eyes as the phallus was worked well into me and the straps pulled tight, lifting me off the ground, and we were jerked into a fast trot down the road, away from the manor house.
Tears were already spilling down my face as we turned on the road, the dark battlements of the village looming before us. Lights burned in the north and south towers. And it must have been that same time of evening that Jerard had described, as there were few carriages on the road, and women leaned on their gates, waving as we passed. Now and then I saw a lone man walking. I was marching as briskly as I could, my chin painfully high, the heavy, thick phallus seeming to pulse with heat inside me.
I was cracked over and over again with the strap, but not once was I reprimanded. And just before we reached the Master’s house, I remembered with a start what Jerard had said about nearly reaching the neighboring Kingdom! Perhaps he was wrong that he would have been received. And what about his father? Mine had said to obey, that the Queen was all powerful and I would be well rewarded for my service, well enhanced in wisdom. I tried to put it out of my mind. I’d never really thought of escape. It was too baffling a thought, too much against the grain of what was already so hard to accommodate.
It was dark when we pulled up to the Master’s door. My boots and harnesses were taken off, everything but the phallus, and all the other ponies were whipped away to the public stables, pulling the empty coach after them.
I stood still thinking of Jerard’s other words and wondering at the strange, hot shiver that went through me when the Mistress lifted my face and brushed my hair back from it.
“There, there,” she said again in that tender voice. She blotted my forehead and my wet cheeks with a smooth handkerchief of white linen. I looked right into her eyes, and she kissed my lips, my cock almost dancing, as the kiss took the breath out of me.
She slipped the phallus out so quickly I was pulled off-balance, glancing back at her in alarm. And then she disappeared into the rich little house, and I st
ood shaken, gazing up at the high-peaked roof and the fine sprinkling of stars above it, realizing I was alone with the Master, his thick strap in his hand as always.
He turned me around and had me march along the broad paved road back in the direction of the marketplace.
SOLDIERS’ NIGHT AT THE INN
FOR HOURS Beauty slept.
And only vaguely was she aware of the Captain jerking the bell rope. He was up and dressed without an order to her. And when she fully opened her eyes, he stood over her in the dim light of a new hearth fire, his belt still unbuckled. In one swift movement he slipped it from around his waist and snapped it beside him. Beauty couldn’t read his face. It looked hard and removed and yet there was a little smile on his lips, and her loins immediately acknowledged him. She could feel a deep stirring of passion inside, a soft discharge of fluids.
But before she could break through the languor, he had pulled her up and deposited her on the floor on her hands and knees, pressing her neck down and forcing her knees wide apart. Beauty’s face flamed as the strap walloped her between the legs, stinging her bulging pubis. Again came a hard slap to the lips, and Beauty kissed the boards, wagging her buttocks up and down in submission. The licking of the strap came again, but carefully, almost caressingly punishing the protuburant lips, and Beauty, fresh tears spilling to the floor, gave an openmouthed gasp, lifting her hips higher and higher.
The Captain stepped forward, and with his large naked hand covered Beauty’s sore bottom, rotating it slowly.
Beauty’s breath caught in her throat. She felt her hips lifted, swung, pushed down, and a little throbbing noise came out of her. She could still remember Prince Alexi at the castle telling her he had been made to swing his hips in this ghastly, ignominious fashion.
The Captain’s fingers pressed into Beauty’s flesh, squeezing her buttocks together.
“Wag those hips!” came the low command. And the hand thrust Beauty’s bottom up so high that her forehead was sealed to the floor, her breasts pulsing against the boards, a throbbing groan choked out of her.
Whatever she had thought and feared so long ago at the castle didn’t matter now. She churned her bottom in the air. The hand withdrew. The strap licked up at her sex, and in a violent orgy of movement she wagged and wagged her buttocks as she had been told to do.
Her body loosened, lengthened. If she had ever known any other posture but this she couldn’t clearly remember it. “Lord and Master,” she sighed, and the strap smacked her little mound, the leather scraping the clitoris as it thickened. Faster and faster Beauty swung her bottom in the circle, and the harder the strap licked her the more the juices in her surged, until she could not hear the sound of the strap against the slick lips, her cries coming from deep in her throat, almost unrecognizable to her.
At last the licking stopped. She saw the Captain’s shoes before her and his hand pointing to a small-handled broom beside the fireplace.
“After this day,” he said calmly, “I won’t tell you this room is to be swept and scrubbed, the bed changed, the fire built up. You will do it every morning when you rise. And you will do it now, this evening, to learn how to do it. After that you’ll be scrubbed in the Inn yard to properly serve the garrison.”
At once Beauty started to work, on her knees, with swift careful movements. The Captain left the room, and within moments Prince Roger appeared with the dustpan, scrub brush, and bucket. He showed her how she must do these little tasks, how to change the linen, build up the wood on the hearth, clear away the ashes.
And he did not seem surprised that Beauty only nodded and didn’t speak to him. It didn’t occur to her to speak to him.
The Captain had said “every day.” So he meant to keep her! She might be the property of the Sign of the Lion, but she had been chosen by its chief lodger.
She could not do her tasks well enough. She smoothed the bed, polished the table, careful to kneel at all times, and rise only when she must.
And when the door opened again, and Mistress Lockley took her by the hair and she felt the wooden paddle driving her down the steps, she was softened and carried away by thoughts of the Captain.
Within seconds, she’d been stood in the crude wooden hogshead tub. Torches flickered at the Inn door and on the side of the shed. Mistress Lockley scrubbed fast and roughly, flushing out Beauty’s sore vagina with wine mixed in water. She creamed Beauty’s buttocks.
Not a word was spoken as she bent Beauty this way and that, forcing her legs into a squat, lathering her pubic hair, and roughly drying her.
And all around Beauty saw other slaves being coarsely bathed, and she heard the loud bantering voices of the crude woman in the apron and two other strong-limbed village girls who went at the task, now and then stopping to smack the buttocks of this slave or that for no apparent reason. But all Beauty could think of was that she belonged to the Captain; she was to see the garrison. Surely the Captain would be there. And the volleys of shouts and laughter from the Inn tantalized her.
When Beauty was thoroughly dry, and her hair had been brushed, Mistress Lockley put her foot on the edge of the hogshead and threw Beauty over her knee and swatted at her thighs hard with the wooden paddle several times, and then pushed Beauty down on her hands and knees as Beauty gasped for breath and sought to steady herself.
It was positively odd not to be spoken to, not even sharp impatient commands. Beauty glanced up as Mistress Lockley came around beside her, and for one instant she saw Mistress Lockley’s cool smile, before the woman had the chance to remember herself. Quite suddenly Beauty’s head was lifted gently by the full weight of her long hair, and Mistress Lockley’s face was right above hers.
“And you were going to be my little troublemaker. I was going to cook your little buttocks so much longer than the rest for breakfast.”
“Maybe you still should,” Beauty whispered without intention or thought. “If that’s what you like for breakfast.” But she broke into violent trembling as soon as she finished. 0, what had she done!
Mistress Lockley’s face lit up with the most curious expression. A half-repressed laugh escaped her lips. “I’ll see you in the morning, my dear, with all the others. When the Captain’s gone, and the Inn’s nice and quiet, and there’s no one here but the other slaves waiting in line as well for their morning whipping. I’ll teach you to open that mouth without permission.” But this was said with unusual warmth, and the color was high in Mistress Lockley’s cheeks. She was so very pretty. “Now trot,” she said softly.
The big room of the Inn was already packed with soldiers and other drinking men.
A fire roared on the hearth, mutton turned on the spit. And upright slaves, their heads bowed, scurried on tiptoe to pour wine and ale into dozens of pewter flagons. Everywhere Beauty glanced in the crowd of dark-clad drinkers with their heavy riding boots and swords, she saw the flash of naked bottoms and gleaming pubic hair as slaves set down plates of steaming food, bent over to wipe up spills, crawled on hands and knees to mop up the floor, or scampered to retrieve a coin playfully pitched into the sawdust.
From a dim corner came the thick, resonant strumming of a lute and the beat of a tambourine and a horn playing a slow melody. But riots of laughter drowned the sound. Broken fragments of a chorus rose in a full burst only to die away. And from everywhere came shouts for meat and drink and the call for more pretty slaves to entertain the company.
Beauty didn’t know which way to look. Here a robust officer of the guard in his vest of shining mail pulled a very pink and pale-haired Princess off her feet and set her standing on the table. With her hands behind her head she quickly danced and hopped as she was told, her breasts bouncing, her face flushed, her silvery blond hair flying in long perfect corkscrew curls about her shoulders. Her eyes were bright with a mixture of fear and obvious excitement. There another delicate-limbed female slave was being thrown over a crude lap and spanked as her frantic hands went to cover her face before they were pulled aside and playfull
y held out before her by an amused onlooker.
Between the casks on the walls, more naked slaves stood, their legs apart, their hips thrust out, waiting to be picked, it seemed. And in a corner of the room, a beautiful Prince with full red curls to the shoulders sat with legs apart on the lap of a hulking soldier, their mouths locked in a kiss as the soldier stroked the Prince’s upright organ. The red-haired Prince licked at the soldier’s coarsely shaven black beard, mouthed his chin, then opened his lips to the kissing again. His eyebrows were knit with the intensity of his passion, though he sat as helplessly and still as if he had been tied there, his bottom riding up with the shift of the soldier’s knee, the soldier pinching the Prince’s thigh to make him jump, the Prince’s left arm hanging loosely over the soldier’s neck, right hand buried in the soldier’s thick hair with slow, flexing fingers.
A black-haired Princess in the far corner struggled to turn round and round, her hands clasped to her ankles, her legs apart, long hair sweeping the floor as a flagon of ale was poured over her tender private parts and the soldiers bent to lap the liquid playfully from the curling hair of her pubis. Suddenly she was thrown standing on her hands, her feet hoisted high above, as a soldier filled her nether mouth with ale to overflowing.
But Mistress Lockley was pulling Beauty so that she might take a flagon of ale and a pewter plate of steaming food in her hands, and Beauty’s face was turned to see the distant figure of the Captain. He sat at a crowded table far across the room, his back to the wall, his leg outstretched on the bench before him, his eyes fixed on Beauty.
Beauty struggled fast on her knees, her torso erect, the food held high until she knelt beside him and reached over the bench to place the food on the table. Leaning on his elbow, he stroked her hair and studied her face as though they were quite alone, the men all around them laughing, talking, singing. The golden dagger gleamed in the candlelight and so did the Captain’s golden hair and the bit of shaven hair on his upper lip, and his eyebrows. The uncommon gentleness of his hand, lifting Beauty’s hair back over her shoulders and smoothing it, brought chills over Beauty’s arms and throat; and between her legs the inescapable spasm.
