Beauty's Punishment

by Anne Rice

  “The Captain thinks they’ll strike the farms outside the walls, the manor houses,” Beauty said. “And there’s a watch posted, surely.”

  Master Nicolas shook his head, disapprovingly. He locked the door of his house.

  “But, Master,” Tristan asked. “Who are these raiders?” His expression had darkened, and there was nothing of a slave in his manner.

  “Never mind all of that,” Master Nicolas said sternly as he started off ahead of them. “We will take Beauty back to her Mistress. Come quickly.”

  DISASTER

  NICOLAS LED the way fast through the little tangle of streets, allowing Tristan and Beauty to walk together behind him. Tristan held Beauty tightly in his arms, kissing her and stroking her. And the late-night village seemed peaceful enough, its inhabitants unaware of any danger.

  But suddenly as they drew near to the square of the Inns, there came from far off a terrible din of shrieking cries, and the thundering crash of wood against wood, the unmistakable sound of a giant battering ram.

  Bells rang from the towers of the village. Everywhere doors opened.

  “Run, quick,” Nicolas said, turning and reaching out for Beauty and Tristan.

  From everywhere people appeared, yelling, shouting. Shutters slammed against windows, men ran to fetch down their manacled slaves. Naked Princes and Princesses darted out from the dimly lit doorway of the Punishment Shop taverns.

  Beauty and Tristan raced towards the square only to hear the sound of the great battering ram shatter the wood that resisted it. And just beyond the square Beauty saw the night sky open up as the east gates of the village gave way and the air filled with loud, alien shrieks and ululations.

  “Slave raid! Slave raid!” The scream came from all directions.

  Tristan took Beauty in his arms, and dashed across the cobblestones towards the Inn, Nicolas beside him. But a great cloud of turbaned riders roared into the square. And Beauty gave a piercing cry as she saw that the doors and windows of all the Inns had already been bolted.

  High above her loomed a dark-faced rider in flowing robes, his scimitar gleaming at his side as he bore down on her. Tristan tried to dodge the horse. And a powerful arm swooped down, catching Beauty up and knocking Tristan off his feet as the horse reared and turned, Beauty’s body heaved over the saddle.

  Beauty screamed and screamed. She struggled under the powerful hand that held her down, lifting her head to see Tristan and Nicolas running towards her. But the dark streak of another rider appeared, and another. And in a flash of white limbs, she saw Tristan suspended between the two horsemen as Nicolas was hurled to the ground, rolling away from the dangerous hooves, his arms around his head for protection. Tristan was being thrown over a horse, one rider assisting the other.

  Loud whooping screams filled the air, shrill pulsing cries such as Beauty had never heard before. Beauty’s captor reared his horse, and as Beauty sobbed and wailed, a rope was looped about her shoulders, tightening and securing her to the saddle, her legs kicking vainly and furiously. The horse galloped on out of the square back towards the village gates. And everywhere it seemed there were riders shooting past, garments streaming in the wind, naked upturned bottoms bucking helplessly.

  Within seconds they were on the open road, the clang of the village bells growing ever more distant.

  On and on through the night they rode, over the open fields, crashing through streams and copses, the great gleaming scimitars rising to hack at the overhanging foliage.

  How large the party was Beauty could not tell; it seemed to go on forever behind her rider, the soft shouts of some alien tongue filling her ears, along with the sobs and groans of captive Princes and Princesses.

  At the same desperate speed the party drove into the hills, up perilous paths and down into wooded valleys. Through a high narrow pass they galloped as if through an endless tunnel.

  And finally Beauty could smell the open sea and, lifting her head, she saw before her the dull shimmer of the water in the moonlight.

  A great dark ship lay at anchor in the cove, without a single light to mark its sinister presence.

  And gasping frantically as the horses rode down the banks and through the shallow waves, Beauty lost consciousness.

  EXOTIC MERCHANDISE

  BEAUTY WAS lying down when she awoke, and she was so sleepy. She lay still, hardly able to open her eyes, and she could feel the heavy motion of the ship, a feeling she’d known only in her dreams when she was a girl in her father’s castle. In terror, she tried to rise, and suddenly a dark, olive-skinned face loomed over her.

  She saw a pair of jet-black eyes, exquisitely almond-shaped, looking down at her out of a young flawless countenance. Long black curly hair framed the face, rendering it almost angelic. And she saw a finger bidding her urgently to be absolutely silent. It was a tall young boy who made this gesture, and he stood over her, dressed in a shining tunic of gold silk, girdled in silver at the waist, over long loose trousers of the same fabric.

  He sat her up, his dark hands remarkably smooth against her own, and smiling, he nodded vigorously as she obeyed, stroking her hair and making effusive gestures to indicate he found her beautiful.

  Beauty opened her mouth, but at once the lovely boy pressed his finger against her lips. His face showed great fear, as his eyebrows knit and he shook his head. Beauty was silent.

  He drew a long comb from a pocket of his loose garments and combed her hair. And looking down drowsily, Beauty realized she had been washed and perfumed. Her head felt light. She was scented all over with some sweet spice. She knew the spice. And her skin was gleaming. A dark golden pigment had been oiled into her, and it contained the scent. The scent was cinnamon. How lovely, Beauty, thought. She could feel some coloring on her lips and it tasted like fresh berries. But she was so sleepy! She could hardly keep her eyes open.

  And all about her in this dimly lighted room were sleeping Princes and Princesses. She saw Tristan! And with a sluggish surge of excitement she tried to move towards him. Her dark-skinned attendant restrained her with feline grace, his urgent gestures and facial expressions letting her know she must be very quiet and very good. With an exaggerated frown he wagged his finger. He glanced at the sleeping Prince Tristan, and then with the same exquisite tenderness, he stroked Beauty’s naked sex and patted it, nodding and smiling.

  Beauty was too tired to do more than stare in wonder. All the slaves had been oiled and scented. They looked like golden sculptures on their satin beds.

  The boy brushed Beauty’s hair with such care she did not feel the slightest pull or tangle. He cradled her face as if she were a very precious thing, and then he stroked her sex again in that same loving fashion, patting it, and this time awakening it as he beamed at Beauty, his thumb softly pressed to her lips again as if to say: “Be good, little one.”

  But more angels had appeared. A half dozen lean olive-skinned young men who wore the same attentive smiles as they surrounded Beauty and, drawing her arms up over head and pressing her fingers together, lifted her up and stretched her out to carry her. She felt those silky fingers supporting her from her elbows to her feet. And gazing dreamily at the low wooden ceilings, she was carried up a stair and into another room thick with the babble of foreign voices.

  She saw brilliant fabric above her, artfully draped, the rich red field covered with tiny intricate bits of gold and glass, and she smelt the strong aroma of incense.

  And suddenly she was being set down upon a much bigger, plumper satin pillow, her arms stretched way out to the edge above her head, her fingers beneath it.

  She made the tiniest noise only to see her angelic captors evince terror, fingers darting to their lips again, heads shaking in ominous warning.

  Then they withdrew, and she was looking up into the faces of a circle of men, their heads wrapped in brilliantly colored silk turbans, their dark eyes flitting over her, heavily jeweled hands gesturing as they talked back and forth, seeming to argue and to haggle.

&
nbsp; Her head was raised, her long hair lifted and examined between careful fingers. Her breasts were very softly pinched, and then spanked. Other hands parted her legs, and with the same careful, almost silky manner, fingers pried open her pubic lips, rolled her clitoris as if it were a bauble or a grape, the rapid conversation continuing above her. She tried to be still, gazing up at the bearded chins, quick black eyes. And the hands touching her as if she were of immense value and very very fragile.

  But her well-trained vagina tightened, gave forth its juices, fingertips gathering the moisture out of her. Her breasts were spanked again and she moaned, very careful not to open her mouth, and she closed her eyes as even her ears and her naval were probed, her toes and fingers examined.

  She let out her breath with a start as her teeth were pried apart, her lips pulled back. She blinked and drowsed again. She was turned over. The voices seemed to grow louder; a half dozen hands pressed her welts and the crisscross of pink stripes that surely covered her buttocks. Her anus must be opened, too, of course, and she squirmed only a little, her eyes closing again as she rested her cheek on the delicious satin. A few sharp slaps roused her only slightly.

  And when she was turned on her back again, she could see the nods, and the dark-faced man in the center to her right smiled at her quickly and gave her sex that same approving pat. Then the angelic boys again lifted her.

  “I have passed some test,” she thought. But she was baffled more than afraid, lulled, and almost unable to remember what she had just been thinking. Pleasure zinged through her like the echo of a plucked lute string.

  It was a different room into which she was taken.

  And what a strange and marvelous thing! It was filled with six long golden cages. A paddle, delicately enameled and gilded, its long handle twined with silk ribbon, hung from a hook on the end of each cage. And the mattress inside was covered in sky-blue satin. It was full of rose petals, Beauty realized, as she was laid inside one of these cages. She could smell the perfume, and the cage was quite high enough for her to sit up if only she had the stamina. It was better to sleep as her attendants told her to do. And of course, she understood the reason they were fitting the most lovely little golden mesh covering to her vagina, strapping it over her moist clitoris and lips, and clasping the delicate golden chains around her thighs and waist to hold it. She could not touch her private parts. No, she shouldn’t. That was never allowed in the castle or the village. The door of the cage closed with a clink and the key turned in the lock, and she closed her eyes again, the most luscious warmth suffusing her.

  Sometime later she opened her eyes again, though she could not move, absolutely couldn’t move, and she saw Tristan being put into the cage that stretched out at an angle from the foot of her own, those lovely young men—they were men, not boys, just very small and delicate men—patting Tristan’s balls and cock with those dark, languid fingers. One of those pretty mesh coverings was being fitted to Tristan, too, and how much larger it was! And she glimpsed for a moment Tristan’s face, utterly relaxed in sleep and incomparably beautiful.

  ANOTHER TURN OF THE WHEEL

  Tristan:

  I SAW BEAUTY stir in her sleep. But she did not awaken.

  I was sitting up in the cage, my legs crossed, my eyes fixed on the ceiling of the room with total concentration.

  Half an hour ago, we had been flagged by another vessel, I was sure of it. We had dropped anchor, and someone had come aboard, someone who spoke our language.

  But I couldn’t make out the words themselves, only the familiar tone and inflection. And the longer I listened to the conversation above, the more I was convinced that there was no interpreter. This man had to be from the Queen, and he knew the language of these pirates.

  Finally Beauty sat up. She stretched herself like a kitten, and, staring down at the small triangle of metal between her legs, appeared to recall everything. Her eyes were clouded, her gestures uncommonly slow as she moved her long flaxen hair back, blinking at the single lantern that hung from the low ceiling above. Then she saw me.

  “Tristan,” she whispered. She sat forward, clinging to the bars of the cage.

  “Shhhh!” I pointed to the ceiling. And in a hurried whisper told her about the ship coming alongside and the man boarding us.

  “I was sure we were sailing far across the sea,” she said.

  In the cage beneath her, Prince Laurent, the poor runaway, slept on, and Prince Dmitri, a castle slave sent down to the village with us, slept above her.

  “But who has come on board?” she whispered.

  “Be quiet, Beauty!” I cautioned again. But it was no use. I couldn’t make out what was taking place, except that it was continuing vigorously.

  Beauty had the most innocent expression on her face, the gold-tinted oil enhancing every detail of her form enticingly. She looked smaller, rounder, more nearly perfected; and crouching in the cage, she appeared some bizarre creature imported from a strange land, to be set in a pleasure garden. We must have all appeared that way.

  “We might still be rescued!” she said anxiously.

  “I don’t know,” I answered. Why were there no soldiers? Why was there only that single voice? I couldn’t frighten her by telling her we were true captives now, not valuable Tributes under the protection of her Majesty.

  Finally Laurent was coming to himself, rising slowly on account of the welts that covered his body, and with the rubbing of gold oil he looked as splendid as Beauty. It was an odd spectacle, in fact, all the welts and stripes so deeply colored with the gold so that they became almost purely ornamental. Maybe all our welts and stripes had always been purely ornamental. His hair, so neglected when he had been on the Punishment Cross, was dressed now and trained into magnificent dark brown curls. He blinked as he looked up at me, clearing the drugged sleep from his eyes rapidly.

  Hurriedly I told him what had happened and pointed to the ceiling. We were all listening to the voice, though I don’t think either of them heard it any more clearly than I did.

  Laurent shook his head and rested back. “What an adventure!” he said slowly, with an almost sleepy indifference.

  Beauty smiled in spite of herself at the word and glanced shyly at me. I was too angry to speak. I felt too helpless.

  “Wait,” I said, kneeling forward and taking hold of the bars. “Someone’s coming.” I could hear throughout the hold a dull vibration.

  The door opened and into the room stepped a pair of the silken dressed boys who had been caring for us. They carried little boat-shaped brass oil lamps. And between them stood a tall elderly gray-haired Lord clothed in familiar doublet and leggings, his sword at his side, his dagger in his thick leather belt, his eyes sweeping the room almost angrily.

  The tallest of the two boys gave forth a stream of soft foreign chatter to the Lord, and the man nodded and motioned with an angry expression.

  “Tristan, and Beauty,” he said, advancing into the room, “and Laurent.”

  At this, the olive-skinned boys at once seemed disconcerted. They averted their eyes and left the Lord alone with the slaves, closing the door behind them.

  “I was afraid of this,” he said. “And Elena and Rosalynd and Dmitri. The finest castle slaves. These thieves have such excellent eyes. They freed the others down the coast as soon as they had ferreted out the prizes.”

  “But what’s to happen to us, my Lord?” I demanded. His attitude was too clearly one of exasperation.

  “That, my dear Tristan,” said the Lord, “is in the hands of your Master, the Sultan.”

  Beauty gasped.

  I felt my face harden, the rage welling up in me, silencing me for the moment as I stared at him. “My Lord,” I said, my voice shuddering with anger, “will you not even try to save us?” I saw in my mind’s eyes the figure of my Master, Nicolas, thrown down on the stones of the square, as the horse carried me away, my struggles useless. But that was not the half of my anguish. What lay ahead of us?

  “What I hav
e done is the best I can do,” said the Lord, approaching me. “I have exacted an enormous indemnity for each of you. The Sultan will pay almost anything for plump, soft-skinned, well-trained slaves of the Queen, but he likes his gold as much as the next man. And in two years, he will return you well-fed, in good health with no blemishes, or he will not see his gold again. Believe me, Prince, it has been done a hundred times over. Had I failed to intercept his craft, his emissaries and our emissaries would have met together. He wants no real quarrel with her Majesty. You have never been in any real danger.

  “No danger!” I protested. “We are going to a foreign land where ...”

  “Quiet, Tristan,” he said sharply. “It is the Sultan who inspired our Queen to her passion for pleasure victims. He sent the Queen her first slaves and explained to her the care with which slaves must be treated. No real harm shall come to you. Though of course ... of course ...”

  “Of course what!” I demanded.

  “You will be more abject,” said the Lord, with a little anxious shrug, as if he couldn’t fully explain it. “In the Sultan’s palace, you will occupy a much more lowly position. Of course, you will be the playthings of your Masters and Mistresses, very valuable playthings. But you will no longer be treated as beings with high reason. On the contrary, you will be trained as valuable animals are trained, and you must never, heaven help you, try to speak or to evince anything more than the simplest understanding—”

  “My Lord,” I interrupted.

  “As you see,” the Lord continued, “the attendants will not even remain in the room here if you are spoken to as if you have wits. They find it too incongruous and unseemly. They retire at the distasteful sight of a slave treated as ...”

  “... as human,” Beauty whispered. Her lower lip was quivering as she tightened her little fists on the bars, but she was not crying.

  “Yes, exactly, Princess.”

  “My Lord.” I was furious now. “You must ransom us, we are under her Majesty’s protection! This violates all agreements!”