by Anne Rice
But her thoughts drifted to Tristan. She had declared herself such a rebel to Tristan.
What had happened to him with Nicolas the Chronicler ? How would she ever find out? Maybe Prince Roger could tell her some news. Perhaps the dense little world of the village had its secret arteries of information. She had to know if Tristan was all right. She wished she could just see him. And dreaming of Tristan, she drifted into sleep again.
GRAND ENTERTAINMENT
Tristan:
WITHOUT THE dread pony harnesses, I felt rudely bare and vulnerable as I marched fast towards the end of the road, expecting any second the tug of the reins as if I still wore them. Many coaches roared by us now, decorated with lanterns, the slaves clopping fast, heads high, just as mine had been. Did I like it better that way? Or this way? I didn’t know! I only knew fear and desire, and an absolute awareness that my handsome Master Nicolas, my Master who was stricter than so many others, was walking behind me.
A brilliant light poured into the road ahead. We were coming to the end of the village. But as I marched around the last of the high buildings to my left, I saw, not the marketplace, but some other open place, immensely crowded and full of torchlight and lantern light. I could smell the wine in the air and hear the loud, drunken laughter. Couples danced arm in arm, and winesellers with full wineskins over their shoulders pushed through the crowd offering cups to all comers.
My Master stopped suddenly and gave a coin to one of these and held the cup before me to lap the wine from it. I flushed to the roots of my hair at the kindness of it, drinking the wine greedily but as neatly as I could. My throat had been burning.
And when I looked up I saw clearly that this was some sort of fairgrounds of punishments. Surely it was what the auctioneer had called the Place of Public Punishment.
Slaves were pilloried in a long row to one side, others were tethered in dimly lit tents with the entrances open for villagers to go and come, paying a coin to an attendant. Other tethered slaves ran in a circle around a high Maypole, punished by four paddlers. Here and there a pair of slaves scampered in the dust to retrieve some object tossed before them, while young men and women urged them on, obviously having placed some bet on the hoped-for winner. Against the ramparts far to the right, giant wheels turned slowly, spread-eagle slaves going round and round, their enflamed thighs and buttocks targets for apple cores, peach stones, and even raw eggs from the crowd, while several other slaves hobbled along at a squat behind their Masters, necks tethered by two short leather chains to their widespread knees, their arms stretched out to support long poles with baskets of apples for sale dangling from the ends of them. Two pink, plump-breasted little Princesses, glistening with sweat, rode wooden horses with wild rocking gestures, their vaginas obviously impaled by wooden cocks. And as I watched astonished, my Master walking me slowly now, his own eyes sweeping the fair, one Princess reached her flushing, red-faced climax for the crowd and was obviously applauded the winner of the contest. The other was paddled, castigated, and scolded by those who had laid down bets on her.
But the grand entertainment was the high turntable where a slave was being thrashed by a long rectangular leather paddle. My heart sank when I saw it. I remembered the Mistress’s words, threatening me with the Public Turntable.
And I was being forced steadily towards it. We were pushing right through the sea of howling, whooping spectators that radiated out some fifty feet from the high platform and right towards the slaves who knelt up with their hands behind their necks, much berated by the onlookers, as they waited obviously at the wooden steps to be taken up and paddled.
As I stared in disbelief my Master forced me directly into place at the end of this line. Coins were passed to an attendant. I was pushed to my knees, unable to conceal my fear, the tears stinging my eyes at once, my whole frame shuddering. What had I done? Dozens of round faces turned towards me. I could hear their taunts:
“Oh, is the castle slave too good for the Public Turntable ? Look at that cock.” “Has that cock been a bad boy?” “What’s he being whipped for, Master Nicolas?”
“His good looks,” said my Master with a soft touch of dark humor. I looked towards the steps and the high platform in horror. But I could see almost nothing but the lower steps now, as I knelt, the crowd some twenty or thirty deep in all directions. But laughter exploded at my Master’s answer, the light of torches glinting on moist cheeks and eyes. The slave in front of me struggled forward as another was rushed up the steps. From somewhere came the loud roll of a drum and renewed screams from the crowd. I twisted around to face my Master frantically. I went down kissing his boots. The crowd pointed and laughed. “Poor desperate Prince,” a man taunted. “Do you miss your nice perfumed bath at the castle?” “Did the Queen paddle you over her knee?” “Look at that cock, that cock needs a good Master or Mistress.”
I felt a firm hand grasp my hair and raise my head, and I saw through my tears that handsome face above me, smooth and a little hard. The blue eyes narrowed very slowly, their dark centers seeming to expand, as the right hand was raised, the first finger wagging back and forth stiffly, the lips forming the word “no” silently. The breath went out of me. The eyes grew still and stone-cold and the left hand let me go. I turned back in line of my own accord, clamping my hands to the back of my neck, again shuddering and swallowing as the crowd gave exaggerated “ooooh’s” and “awwww’s” of mock sympathy.
“That’s a good boy,” shouted a man in my ear, “you don’t want to disappoint this crowd, now, do you?” I felt his boot touch my buttocks. “I’m betting ten pence he puts on the best show tonight.”
“And who’s to judge that?” said another.
“Ten pence he really moves that bottom!”
It seemed an eternity before I saw the next slave go up, and then the next and the next, and finally I was the last one struggling forward in the dust, the sweat pouring down me in rivulets, my knees burning and my head swimming. Even in this moment I believed somehow I had to be rescued. My Master had to be merciful, change his mind, realize I’d done nothing to deserve it. It had to happen because I could not endure it.
The crowd shifted and pressed in. Loud cries rose as the Princess being paddled above squealed and I heard the thunder of her feet on the turntable. I felt the sudden impulse to rise and run, but I did not move, and the noise in the square seemed pumped to greater and greater volume by a roll of drums again. The paddling was over and I was next. Two attendants were rushing me up the steps while with my whole soul I rebelled, and I heard my Master’s firm command, “No fetters.”
No fetters. So there had been that choice. I almost broke into a wild struggle. 0, please for the mercy of fetters. But to my horror I was of my own accord stretching out to place my chin on the high wooden post and spreading my knees, and clasping my hands on my back with the rough hands of the attendants merely guiding me.
Then I was alone. No hands touched me. My knees rested in only the shallowest indentations in the wood. Nothing but the slender post of the chin rest came between me and thousands of pairs of eyes, my chest and belly tightening in rolling spasms.
The turntable was cranked around fast and I saw the huge figure of the shaggy-haired Whipping Master, sleeves rolled above his elbows, the giant paddle in his mammoth right hand as with the left he scooped up from a wooden bucket a great dripping dollop of honey-colored cream. “Ah, let me guess!” he shouted. “It’s a fresh little boy from the castle who’s never been paddled here before! Soft and pink as a piglet for all his golden hair and sturdy legs. Now are you going to give these good people a fine show, young man?” He spun the turntable again half around and slapped the thick cream to my buttocks, working it in well as the crowd reminded him in loud shouts that he would need plenty. The drums gave their chilling deep-throated roll. I saw the whole square spread out before me, hundreds of eager gaping villagers. And the poor unfortunates circling the Maypole, the pilloried slaves struggling as they were pinched and prodd
ed, slaves hung upside down from an iron carrousel being cranked slowly around just as I was being moved now in a relentless circle.
My buttocks warmed and then seemed to simmer and cook under the thick massaging of cream. I could almost feel it glistening. And I knelt freely, unfettered! My eyes were so dazzled by the torches suddenly that I blinked. “You heard me, young man,” came the Whipping Master’s booming voice again, and I was back facing him and he was wiping his hand dry on his stained apron. He reached out now and cradled my chin, pinching my cheeks as he wagged my head back and forth. “Now you will give these people a good show!” he said loudly. “You hear me, young man? And do you know why you’ll give them a good show? Because I’ll thrash your pretty buttocks until you do it!” And the crowd squealed in derisive laughter. “You’re going to move that handsome rump, young slave, if you’ve never moved it before. This is the Public Turntable!” And with a sharp slap of the foot pedal, he gave the turntable another whirl, the long rectangular paddle spanking both my buttocks with a shattering crack, driving me frantically to struggle for balance.
The crowd gave a genial roar as I was whirled around again and the second blow came and then the whirl and another and then another. I clenched my teeth on my cries, the warm pain radiating out from my buttocks through my cock. I heard taunts of “Harder.” “Really thrash the slave,” and “Work that rump.” “Pump that cock.” And I realized I was obeying these commands, not deliberately but helplessly, wriggling as I was sent into frantic upheaval by each deafening smack, trying not to slip out of place on the turntable.
I tried to close my eyes, but they opened wide with each blow, and my mouth was wide, my cries erupting uncontrollably. The paddle spanked me to one side and the other, almost toppling me and then righting me, and yet I felt my starved cock jerking forward at each blow, throbbing with desire at each blow, and the pain flashed in my head like a fire exploding.
The myriad tints and shapes of the square were mired together. My body, caught in the whirl of spanking blows, seemed to fly loose from itself. I could no longer struggle for balance, yet the paddle would not let me slide or fall; there had never been any such danger. And I was caught in the speed of the turns, riding the heat and force of the paddle, crying aloud in short wrenching bursts, the crowd clapping and shouting and chanting.
. All the images of the day fused in my brain, Jerard’s strange speech, the Mistress thrusting the phallus between my spread buttocks—and yet I thought of nothing clearly except the slamming of the paddle and the laughing crowd that seemed to flow out from the turntable forever. “Snap those hips!” cried the Whipping Master, and without thought or will, I obeyed, overcome by the force of the command, by the force of the will of the crowd, snapping wildly and hearing hoarse raucous cheers, the paddle slapping first the left and then the right side of my buttocks and then thundering on my calves and rising to my thighs and my buttocks again.
I was lost as I had never been lost. The shouts and jeers washed me as surely as the light washed me and the pain washed me. I was only my burning welts and swelling flesh and the hard rod of a cock jerking vainly as the multitude screamed, the paddle smacking again and again, my own cries vying with it in volume. Nothing in the castle had so drenched my soul. Nothing had so seared me and emptied me.
I was plunged into the depth of the village, abandoned there. And it was luxurious suddenly, horribly luxurious, that so many should witness this delirium of abasement. If I must lose my pride, my will, my soul, let them revel in it. And it was natural too that hundreds milling in the square should not even notice it.
Yes, I was this thing now, this nude and bulging mass of genitals and sore muscles, the pony who pulled the coach, the sweating, crying object of public ridicule. And they could take pleasure in it or ignore it as they wanted.
The Whipping Master stepped back. He whirled the turntable round and round. My buttocks boiled. My open mouth shuddered, cries choking loose as loudly as ever.
“Get those hands down between your iegs and cover your balls!” roared the Whipping Master. And mindlessly, in a last gesture of debasement, I obeyed, hunching, my chin still well propped, to shield my balls as the crowd stamped and laughed all the harder. Suddenly I saw a shower of objects sailing through the air. I was being pelted with half-eaten apples, crusts of bread, the soft crush of raw eggs as the shells exploded against my buttocks and back and shoulders. I felt sharp stings on my cheeks, the soles of my naked feet, my eyes wide as the hail continued. Even my penis was struck, which brought sharp shrieks of laughter.
Now a rain of coins commenced to hit the boards. The Whipping Master shouted “More, you know it was good. More! Buy out the slave’s whipping and the Master will bring him back all the sooner!” And I saw a youth rushing around me in an anxious circle gathering up the money. It was being placed in a little sack and bound with cord. And as my head was lifted by the hair, the sack was shoved in my open panting mouth as I grunted in astonishment. Clapping sounded all around, shouts of “Good Boy!” And teasing demands, how had I liked the paddling, would I like another tomorrow night?
I was being yanked up and rushed down the wooden steps, marched out of the brilliant torchlight and away from the turntable. I was thrown forward on my hands and knees and driven through the crowd until I saw my Master’s boots and, glancing up, saw his languid figure leaning against the wooden counter of a little wine stall. He gazed down at me without a smile or a word. And taking the little sack out of my mouth, weighed it in his right hand, put it away, and continued to look down at me.
I bowed my head. I laid my head in the dust and felt my hands slide out from under me. I couldn’t move, but mercifully there came no order to move. And the din of the square merged into a single sound that was almost like silence.
But I felt my Master’s hands, soft hands, the hands of a gentleman, lifting me. I saw a little bath stall before me where a man waited with a brush and scrub bucket. And quite firmly I was led towards it and given over to the man, who, setting down his cup of wine, took a coin gratefully from my Master. Then he reached out and silently forced me down into a squat over the steaming bucket.
At any other moment in the past months, the rough public bathing on the edge of an indifferent crowd would have been unspeakable. Now it was nothing but voluptuous. I was barely conscious as the warm water poured over my smoldering welts; of it sluicing away the sticking egg yolk and dust that clung to it; of my cock and balls being well soaked and much too swiftly oiled to alleviate their grievous hunger.
My anus was thoroughly lubricated and I hardly noticed the fingers driving in and out, and still I seemed to feel the shape of the phallus stretching me. The hair of my head was rubbed dry and combed. My pubic hair was brushed, and even the hair between my seething, quivering buttocks was combed out to right and left, all of this completed so fast that in moments I knelt before my Master again and heard his command to precede him to the road along the ramparts.
NICOLAS’S BEDCHAMBER
Tristan:
WHEN WE reached the road, my Master told me to stand up, and told me to “walk.” Without hesitation, I kissed both his boots and then rose to face the road and obey him. I put my hands behind my neck, just as I had done when I had been made to march. But quite suddenly, he caught me in his arms and turned me and put my hands down at my sides and kissed me.
For a moment I was so perplexed that I didn’t respond, but then I returned the kiss, almost feverishly. My mouth opened to receive his tongue, and I had to move my hips back so that my cock would not rub against him.
My body seemed to lose the very last of its strength, all my remaining vigor collected in my organ. My Master drew back a little and fed on my mouth and I could hear my own loud sighs echoing up the walls. Tentatively I lifted my arms, and he did nothing to prevent it as I embraced him. I felt the smooth velvet of his tunic and the soft silk of his hair. This was almost ecstasy.
My cock twitched, lengthened, and all the soreness i
n me pulsed with renewed fire. But he let me go, turned me, and put my hands on my neck again. “You may walk slowly,” he said. And his lips brushed my cheek, and the mingling of distress and longing in me was so enormous, I was almost in tears again.
Only a few open coaches moved along the drive, pleasure riders it seemed, making a broad circle when they reached the square and turning back to rush past us. I saw slaves in brilliant silver harnesses with heavy silver bells tinkling from their cocks and a rich townswoman in a bright-red velvet hood and cape, snapping a long silver strap at these ponies.
It crossed my mind that my Master should get an equipage like that, and I smiled to myself at the quality of the thought.
But I was still shaken by the kiss, and still thoroughly vanquished by the Public Turntable. As my Master stepped into stride beside me I thought I must be dreaming. I felt the velvet of his sleeve against my back and his hand touching my shoulder. I was so debilitated I had to make myself move forward.
His hand curling around the back of my neck sent a tingling all through me. The knot in my cock ached and tightened, but I luxuriated in these sensations. I half closed my eyes, seeing the lanterns and torches ahead like little explosions of light. Now we were far from the noise of the public place, and my Master walked so close to me that I felt his tunic against my hip and his hair touching my shoulder. Our shadows leapt out before us for a moment as we passed a torchlit door, and we were almost the same height, one man naked and the other elegantly clothed, carrying a strap in his hand. Then darkness.
We had come to his house, and as he turned the big iron key in the heavy oak door, he said softly, “Down on your knees,” and I obeyed, entering the world of the dimly lit polished hallway. I moved beside him until .he paused at a door, and I found myself entering a new and strange bedchamber.