by Anne Rice
Beauty gasped to hear this.
The sun was fully risen now, and the cart had taken a sharp turn in the road and the descent was slower over uneven terrain, the slaves pitched more roughly than ever against one another.
“You can imagine our surprise,” Tristan said, “when we discovered ourselves Master and slave at the castle, and when the Queen, seeing the blush on Lord Stefan’s face, immediately gave me over to him with the sharp instructions that he train me himself to be perfect.”
“Unbearable,” Beauty said. “To have known him before, to have walked with him, spoken with him. How could you submit?”
All her Masters and Mistresses had been strangers to her, defined perfectly in the instant she realized her helplessness and vulnerability. She had known the color and texture of their magnificent slippers and boots, the sharp tones of their voices, before she had known their names or their faces.
But Tristan gave the same mysterious smile. “0, I think it was far worse for Stefan than for me,” he whispered in her ear. “You see, we had met before at a great tournament, struggling against each other, and in every feat I’d bested him. When we hunted together, I had been the better shot and the better horseman. He had admired me and looked up to me, and I had loved him for it because I knew the extent of his pride and the love that equaled it. When we coupled, I was the leader.
“But we had to return to our Kingdoms. We had to return to the duties that awaited us. Three stolen nights of love we had, maybe more, in which he yielded as a boy might to a man. Then letters that at last became too painful to write. Then war. Silence. Stefan’s Kingdom allied with that of the Queen. And later, her armies at our gates, and this strange meeting in the Queen’s castle: I on my knees waiting to be given to a worthy Master, and Stefan, the Queen’s young kinsman, sitting silently at her right at the banquet table.” Tristan smiled again. “No, it was worse for him. I blush with shame to admit it, but my heart leapt when I saw him. And it is I who, out of spite, have triumphed by abandoning him.”
“Yes,” Beauty understood this because she knew she had done it to the Crown Prince and Lady Juliana. “But the village, weren’t you afraid?” Again there came the quavering in her voice. How far were they from the village, even as they spoke of it? “Or was it simply the only way?” she asked softly.
“I don’t know. There must have been more to it than that,” Tristan whispered, but then he stopped as though bewildered. “But if you must know,” he confessed, “I am terrified.” Yet he said it so calmly, his voice so full of quiet assurance that Beauty couldn’t believe it.
The groaning cart had made another turn. The guards had ridden ahead to hear some orders from their Commander. The slaves whispered among themselves, all too obedient and fearful still to discard the little leather bits in their mouth, yet able to consult frantically on what lay ahead as the cart rocked on slowly.
“Beauty,” Tristan said, “we’ll be separated when we reach the village, and no one knows what may happen to us. Be good, obey; it can’t ultimately—” And again he stopped, unsure. “It can’t ultimately be worse than the castle.”
And now Beauty thought she heard the barest tinge of real trepidation in his voice, but his face was almost hard when she looked up at him, only the beautiful eyes softening it just a little. She could see the slightest golden stubble of beard on his chin, and she wanted to kiss it.
“Will you watch for me after we’re separated, try to find me, if only to say a few words to me?” Beauty said. “0, just to know you are there ... but I don’t think I will be good. I don’t see why I should be good any longer. We’re bad slaves, Tristan. Why should we obey now?”
“What do you mean?” he asked. “You make me afraid for you.”
From far away, there came the faint roar of voices, the sound of a large crowd carrying sluggishly over the low hills, the dim vibration of a village fair, of hundreds talking, shouting, milling.
Beauty pressed close to Tristan’s chest. She felt a stab of excitement between her legs, her heart knocking. Tristan’s organ was hard again, but it was not inside of her, and it was an agony again that her hands were bound so she couldn’t touch it.
Her question seemed meaningless suddenly, yet she repeated it, the distant noise growing louder. “Why must we obey if we are already punished?”
Tristan too heard the distant swelling sounds. The cart was picking up speed.
“We were told at the castle that we must obey,” Beauty said, “our parents had willed it when they sent us to the Queen and the Prince as Tributes. But now we’re bad slaves...”
“Our punishment will only be worse if we disobey,” Tristan said, but there was something strange in his eyes that betrayed his voice. He sounded false, as if repeat-something he thought he should say for her good.
“We must wait and see what happens to us,” he said. “Remember, Beauty, in the end they will win over us.”
“But how, Tristan?” she asked. “You mean you condemned yourself to this, and yet you will obey?” She felt again the thrill she’d known when she left the Prince and Lady Juliana weeping behind her at the castle. “I am such a bad girl,” she thought. Yet...
“Beauty, their wishes will prevail. Remember, a willful, disobedient slave will amuse them just as much. Why struggle?” Tristan said.
“Why struggle to obey?” Beauty said.
“Do you have the strength to be terribly bad all the time?” he asked. His voice was low, urgent, his breath warm against her neck as he kissed her again. Beauty tried to shut out the sound of the crowd; it was a horrid sound, like that of a great beast coming out of its lair; she knew she was trembling.
“Beauty, I don’t know what I’ve done,” Tristan said. Anxiously he glanced in the direction of that awesome, menacing noise: shouts, cheers, the mayhem of a fair day. “Even at the castle,” he said, the violet-blue eyes fired now with something that might have been fear in a strong Prince who could not show it. “Even at the castle, I found it was easier to run when they told us to run, to kneel when they told us to kneel, and there was a triumph of sorts in doing it perfectly.”
“Then why are we here, Tristan?” she asked, standing on tiptoe to kiss his lips. “Why are we both such bad slaves?” And though she tried to sound rebellious and brave, she pressed herself against Tristan all the more desperately.
THE AUCTION IN THE MARKETPLACE
THE CART had come to a stop, and Beauty could see through the tangle of white arms and tousled hair the walls of the village below, with the gates open and a motley crowd swelling out onto the green.
But slaves were being quickly unloaded from the cart, forced with the smack of the belt to crowd together on the grass. And Beauty was immediately separated from Tristan, who was pulled roughly away from her for no apparent reason other than the whim of a guard.
The leather bits were being pulled out of the mouths of the others. “Silence!” came the loud voice of the Commander. “There is no speech for slaves in the village! Any who speak shall be gagged again more cruelly than they have ever been before!”
He rode his horse round the little herd, driving it tightly together, and gave the order that the slaves’ hands should be unbound and woe to any slave who removed his or her hands from the back of the neck.
“The village has no need of your impudent voices!” he went on. “You are beasts of burden now, whether that burden be labor or pleasure! And you shall keep your hands to the back of your necks or be yoked and driven before a plow through the fields!”
Beauty was trembling violently. She couldn’t see Tristan as she was forced forward. All around her were long windblown tresses, bowed heads, and tears. It seemed the slaves cried more softly without their gags, struggling to keep their lips closed, and the voices of the guards were miserably sharp!
“Move! Head up straight!” came the gruff, impatient commands. Beauty felt chills rising on her arms and legs at the sound of those angry voices. Tristan was behind her somewher
e, but if only he would come close.
And why had they been put out here so far from the village? And why was the cart being turned around?
Suddenly she knew. They were to be driven on foot, like a gaggle of geese to market. And almost as quickly as the thought came to her, the mounted guards swooped down on the little group and started them forward with a rain of blows.
“This is too bitter,” Beauty thought. She was trembling as she started to run, the smack of the paddle as always catching her when she did not expect it and sending her flying forward over the soft, newly turned earth of the road.
“At a trot, with heads up!” the guard shouted, “and knees up as well!” And Beauty saw the horses’ hooves pounding beside her, just as she’d seen them before on the Bridle Path at the castle, and felt the same wild trepidation as the paddle cracked her thighs and even her calves. Her breasts ached as she ran, and a dull warm pain coursed through her sore legs.
She couldn’t see the crowd clearly, but she knew they were there, hundreds of villagers, perhaps even thousands, flooding out of the gates to meet the slaves. “And we’re to be driven right through them; it’s too awful,” she thought, and suddenly the resolves she had made in the cart, to disobey, to rebel, left her. She was too purely afraid. And she was running as fast as she could down the road towards the village, the paddle finding her no matter how she hurried, until she realized she had pressed through the first rank of slaves and was now running with them, no one before her anymore to shield her from the sight of the enormous crowd.
Banners flew from the battlements. Arms waved and cheers rose as the slaves drew closer, and through the excitement there came the sounds of derision, and Beauty’s heart thudded as she tried not to see too clearly what lay ahead, though she could not turn away.
“No protection, nowhere to hide,” she thought, “and where is Tristan? Why can’t I fall back into the flock?” But when she tried, the paddle smacked her soundly again, and the guard shouted to her to go forward! And blows were rained on those around her, causing the little red-haired Princess on her right to break into helpless tears. “0, what’s to happen to us? Why did we disobey?!” the little Princess wailed through her sobs, but the dark-haired Prince on the other side of Beauty threw her a warning glance: “Quiet or it will be worse!”
Beauty couldn’t help but think of her long march to the Prince’s Kingdom, how he had led her through the villages where she had been honored and admired as his chosen slave. Nothing like that was happening now.
The crowd had broken loose and was spreading out on either side of them as they neared the gates. Beauty could see the women in their fancy white aprons and wooden shoes, and the men in their rawhide boots and leather jerkins, robust faces everywhere alight with obvious pleasure, which made Beauty gasp and drop her eyes to the path before her.
They were passing through the gates. A trumpet was being sounded. And hands reached out from everywhere to touch them, pushing them, pulling at their hair. Beauty felt fingers brush roughly across her face; her thighs were slapped. She let out a desperate scream, struggling to escape the hands that shoved her violently forward, while all around came the loud, deep, mocking laughter, shouts and exclamations, random cries.
Tears were flowing down Beauty’s face and she hadn’t even realized it. Her breasts throbbed with the same violent pulse she felt in her temples. Around her she saw the tall, narrow half-timbered houses of the village opening broadly to surround a huge marketplace. A high wooden platform with a gibbet upon it loomed over all. And hundreds crowded the overhanging windows and balconies, waving white handkerchiefs, cheering, while countless others choked the narrow lanes that led into the square, struggling to get close to the miserable slaves.
They were being forced into a pen behind the platform. Beauty saw a flight of rickety wooden steps leading to the boards above and a length of leather chain dangling above the distant gibbet. A man stood to one side of the gibbet with arms folded, waiting, while another sounded the trumpet again as the gates of the pen were shut. The crowd surrounded them, and there was no more than a thin strip of fencing to protect them. Hands reached for them again as they huddled together. Beauty’s buttocks were pinched, her long hair lifted.
She struggled towards the center, desperately looking for Tristan. She glimpsed him only for a moment as he was pulled roughly to the bottom of the steps.
“No, I must be sold with him,” she thought and pushed violently forward, but one of the guards shoved her back into the little cluster while the crowd hooted and howled and laughed.
The red-haired Princess who had cried on the road was now inconsolable, and Beauty pressed close to her, trying to comfort her as much as to hide. The Princess had lovely high breasts with very large pink nipples, and her red hair spilled down in rivulets over her tear-stained face. The crowd was cheering and shouting again now that the herald had finished. “Don’t be afraid,” Beauty whispered. “Remember, it will be very much like the castle finally. We will be punished, made to obey.”
“No, it won’t be!” the Princess whispered, trying not to move her lips visibly as she spoke. “And I thought I was such a rebel. I thought I was so stubborn.”
The trumpet gave a third full-throated blast, a high echoing series of notes. And in the immediate silence that fell over the marketplace, a voice rang out:
“The Spring Auction will now commence!”
A roar rose from all around them, a near-deafening chorus, its loudness shocking Beauty so that she couldn’t feel herself breathe. The sight of her own quivering breasts stunned her, and in one sweeping glance she saw hundreds of eyes passing over her, examining her, measuring her naked endowments, a hundred whispering lips and smiles.
Meantime the Princes were being tormented by the guards, their cocks lightly whipped with the leather belts, hands plumping their pendulous balls as they were made to “Come to attention!” and punished with severe cracks of the paddle to the buttocks if they did not. Tristan’s back was to Beauty. She could see the hard perfect muscles of his legs and buttocks quivering as the guard teased him, stroking him roughly between the legs. She was miserably sorry now for their stolen lovemaking. If he could not come to attention, she would be to blame.
But the booming voice had sounded again:
“All those of the village know the rules of the auction. These disobedient slaves offered by our gracious Majesty for hard labor are to be sold to the highest bidder for the period of no less than three months’ service as their new Lords and Masters shall see fit. Mute menials these incorrigibles are to remain, and they are to be brought to the Place of Public Punishment as often as their Masters and Mistresses will allow, there to suffer for the amusement of the crowd as much as for their own improvement.”
The guard had moved away from Tristan, giving him an almost-playful blow with the paddle and smiling as he whispered something in Tristan’s ear.
“You are solemnly charged to work these slaves,” the voice of the herald on the platform continued, “to discipline them, to tolerate no disobedience from them, and never an impudent word. And any Master or Mistress might sell his slave within this village at any time for any sum as he should choose.”
The red-haired Princess pressed her naked breasts against Beauty and Beauty leaned forward to kiss her neck. Beauty felt the tight wiry hair of the girl’s pubis against her leg, its moisture and its heat. “Don’t cry,” she whispered.
“When we go back, I will be perfect, perfect!” the Princess confided, and broke into fresh sobs again.
“But what made you disobey?” Beauty quickly whispered in her ear.
“I don’t know,” the girl wailed, opening her blue eyes wide. “I wanted to see what would happen!” and she started to cry piteously again.
“Be it understood that each time you punish one of these unworthy slaves,” the herald continued, “you do the bidding of her Royal Majesty. It is with her hand that you strike the blow, with her lips you scold. All
slaves once a week are to be sent to the central grooming hall. Slaves are to be properly fed. Slaves are to be given time to sleep. Slaves should at all times exhibit evidence of sound whipping. Insolence or rebellion should be thoroughly put down.”
The trumpet blasted again. White handkerchiefs waved, and all around hundreds upon hundreds clapped their hands. The red-haired Princess screamed as a young man, leaning over the fence of the pen, caught her by the thigh and pulled her towards him.
The guard stopped him with a good-natured reprimand but not before he had slipped his hand under the Princess’s wet sex.
But Tristan was being driven up to the wooden platform. He held his head high, hands clasped to the neck as before, his whole attitude one of dignity despite the paddle soundly playing on his narrow tight buttocks as he climbed the wooden steps.
For the first time Beauty saw beneath the high gibbet and its dangling leather links a low round turntable onto which a tall gaunt man in a bright jerkin of green velvet forced Tristan. He kicked Tristan’s legs wide apart as if the Prince could not be addressed even with the simplest command.
“He’s being handled like an animal,” Beauty thought, watching.
Standing back the tall auctioneer worked the turntable with a foot pedal so that Tristan was turned quickly round and round.
Beauty got no more than a glimpse of his scarlet face and golden hair, blue eyes almost closed. Sweat gleamed on his hard chest and belly, his cock enormous and thick as the guards had wanted it, his legs trembling slightly with the strain of being so widely spread apart.
Desire curled inside of Beauty, and even as she pitied him, she felt her organs swelling and pulsing again, and at the same time the terrible fear, “I can’t be made to stand up there alone before everyone. I can’t be sold off like this! I can’t!”