by Anne Rice
“I have never loved any slave as I love you,” he said calmly.
I tried to restrain myself. To listen only to my heartbeat for a moment in the stillness. But I said all too quickly:
“Will you buy me outright from the Queen and keep me in the village?”
“Do you know what you are asking?” he said. “You’ve only endured two days here.”
“Would it do any good if I begged you on my knees, kissed your boots, prostrated myself?”
“It isn’t required,” he said. “At the end of the week, I will go to the Queen with my usual accounting of the winter activities of the village. I know as certainly as I know my name that I will offer to purchase you outright and make a strong case for it.”
“But Lord Stefan—”
“Leave Lord Stefan to me. I shall make you a prediction about Lord Stefan: Every year on Midsummer Night a strange ritual is enacted. All those in the village who wish to be made into slaves for the following twelve months present themselves to be privately examined. Tents are set up for the purpose and the villagers are stripped and carefully looked over in every particular. And the same takes place among the Lords and Ladies of the castle. No one is entirely sure who has made himself or herself available for the examination.
“But at midnight on Midsummer Night the names are announced both at the castle and on the high platform of the marketplace in the village of all those who have been accepted. It is only a tiny portion, of course, of those who have offered. Only the most beautiful, the most aristocratic in appearance, the strongest. As each name is called, the crowd turns searching for the chosen one—everyone here knows everyone else, quite naturally—and at once he or she is found out, rushed to the platform, and there stripped naked. Of course there is dread, regret, abject fright at the wish being violently fulfilled, the clothing ripped off, the hair let down, and the crowd enjoys it as much as the auction. The regular slave Princes and Princesses, especially those who have been punished by the new villager slave, scream with joy and approbation.
“Then the village victims are sent off to the castle, where for a glorious year they will serve in the lowest capacities, but almost indistinguishable from Princes and Princesses.
“And from the castle we receive those Lords and Ladies who have given themselves over in like manner, having been stripped by their peers in the Castle Pleasure Gardens, sometimes so few that there are only three of them. You cannot imagine the excitement it brings on Midsummer Night when they are brought to be auctioned. Lords and Ladies on the block. The prices are dizzying. The Lord Mayor almost always buys one as he reluctantly gives up last year’s prize. Sometimes my sister, Julia, buys another. Once there were as many as five, last year only two, and now and then one. And the Captain of the Guard has told me that this year, all the bets are down that the castle exiles will include Lord Stefan.”
I was too amused and surprised to answer.
“From all you’ve said, Lord Stefan doesn’t know how to command and the Queen knows it. If he offers himself he will be chosen.”
I laughed softly to myself. “He does not even guess what is in store for him!” I said quietly. I shook my head, and then laughed again under my breath, trying to subdue it.
He turned his head to smile at me. “You’ll be mine soon, all mine, mine for three, maybe four, years.” And when he rose on his elbow I lay down beside him and embraced him. The passion was rising again, but he bid it be quiet, and I lay still, trying to obey, my head on his chest, his hand on my forehead.
After a long time, I asked: “Master, is a slave ever granted a request?”
“Almost never,” he whispered, “because the slave is never allowed to ask. But you may ask. I will permit that much.”
“Is it possible for me to discover how it goes with another slave, if she is obedient and resigned or being punished for rebellion?”
“Why?”
“I came down in the cart with the Crown Prince’s slave. Her name is Beauty. She was high-spirited, a sensation at the castle for her hot passions and her inability to conceal even the most transient emotions. In the cart she asked me the very same question you asked: Why do we obey? She’s in the Sign of the Lion now. She’s the slave whom the Captain mentioned by name to you today at the well after he whipped me. Is there any way to discover if she has found the same acceptance that I’ve found? Just to ask, perhaps ...”
I felt his hand gently tug at my hair, his lips touch my forehead. He spoke softly. “If you like, I will let you see her and ask her yourself tomorrow.”
“Master!” I was too grateful and amazed to put it further into words. He let me kiss his lips. Boldly I kissed his cheeks and even his eyelids. He gave me the faintest smile. Then he settled me back on his chest.
“You know your day will be hard and very busy before you see her,” he said.
“Yes, Sir,” I answered.
“Now, go to sleep,” he said. “There’s much work for you to do in the orchards on the farm tomorrow before we go back to the village. You’ll be harnessed to pull a good-sized basket of fruit back to my town house, and I want to be done with all that so that by high noon when the crowd is at its daytime thickest you can be punished on the Public Turntable.”
A little conflagration of panic flared inside me for a moment. I clung to him a little more tightly. And I felt his lips brush the top of my head tenderly.
Gently he disengaged himself and turned over on his stomach to sleep, his face away from me, his left arm curled under him. “You’ll spend the afternoon at the public stables to be hired out,” he said. “You will trot on the pony track there, harnessed and ready, and I expect to hear that you showed such spirit you were hired out immediately.”
I looked at his long elegant form in the moonlight, the gleaming white of his sleeves, the perfect shape of his calves in their sheathing of supple leather. I belonged to him. Completely I belonged to him.
“Yes, Master,” I said softly.
I knelt up and, bending over him silently, kissed his right hand, which lay on the grass beside him. “Thank you, Master.”
“In the evening,” he said, “I’ll talk to the Captain about sending Beauty.”
An hour must have passed.
The fire was out.
He was sound asleep, I could tell from his breathing. He wore no weapons, not even a dagger concealed on his person. And I knew that I could easily have overpowered him. He hadn’t my weight or strength, and six months at the castle had toned my muscles well. I could have taken his clothes from him, left him bound and gagged, and made off to the land of King Lysius. There was even money in his pockets.
And surely he had realized all this before we ever left the village.
He was either putting me to the test or so certain of me that it never crossed his mind. And as I lay awake in the dark, I had to learn for myself what he already knew; Would I or would I not run now that I had the opportunity?
It was no difficult decision. But each time I told myself that of course I would not, I found myself thinking of it. Escape, going home, standing up to my father, telling him to call the Queen’s bluff, or going off to some other land in search of adventure. I suppose I would not have been a human being if I didn’t at least think of those things.
And I thought too of being caught by the peasants. Being brought back over the saddle of the Captain of the Guard, naked again, to some unspeakable penance for what I’d done, and perhaps losing my Master forever.
I thought of other possibilities. I thought them all through and through, and then I turned over and snuggled close to my Master and slipped my arm gently around his waist, pressing my face into the velvet of his doublet. I had to get to sleep. After all, there was much to be done in the morning. I could almost see the noontime crowd around the turntable.
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 throat 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 heav
y 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.
