by Anne Rice
Even the hair of the ponies was dusted with gold, and their pubic hair as well. And the blinders, I saw now, were not solid gold at all, but stiff coverings of gold silk for the eyes, through which I could easily see the eyes staring forward, which meant that the ponies could see where they were going. And they could see me studying them, though they didn’t dare to look at me.
Only the four at the very head of the team lacked these blinders. As I stood before them, I felt my own cock stirring in my trousers, and I wondered if my face was visibly burning. I was grateful to be well hidden under my loose Russian garb. There was something overwhelming about the sheer size of the team. Sixteen proud ponies tethered to one chariot, and how many ponies might there be in all?
“Now, this is the King’s own team,” said Alexi. “That’s why you see the gold and scarlet everywhere, because these are the Court’s colors.”
“This is exquisite work,” I said. “I’ve never even imagined anything like it.” It was painted as well as carved leather, much of it. “But why the blinders for all except the first row?”
“These are the King’s favorites,” said the Captain as Prince Alexi deferred to him for the answer. “They don’t need blinders to calm them down. This is Caspian, Bastian, Throck, and Carnell. They are always at the front of the King’s team, and well experienced already and eager and frisky.”
As I expected, the ponies gloried silently in this praise, tossing their heads, making tiny gold bells all along their harnesses jingle, and shifting in their harnesses, not struggling, no, but shifting and leaning on one horseshoed boot and then the other. I could hear the horseshoes striking the stones. There wasn’t a tear on any of the faces of these four mounts and they stared straight forward. Only Throck, the darkest of all with his golden-brown hair, looked faintly bored, eyes roving the blue sky overhead, but he was essentially expressionless.
Slowly, unable to resist, I walked back and forth in front of them and studied them one by one. Their calf and thigh muscles were powerful. I remembered that, the sheer strength I developed as a pony.
The Captain had thought it such a crude debasement when he’d brought me to the stables. Yes, to have all the softness of the sultanate scrubbed away, as the Queen thought, but I had absolutely loved it. Obeying, submitting, that is what I’d found hard in my service under Queen Eleanor, and that is what I’d learned in the sultanate. But being harnessed, with one’s arms bound tight to one’s back, with a bit in my mouth? That had made everything profoundly simple. And if only I’d been allowed a set of gold silk blinders, covering my eyes, covering my gaze, covering my tears, that would have made it all even easier. I’d loved being a pony. One didn’t have to think, one didn’t have to submit. It was all done for me.
As I inspected these men now, I could see they loved it. Nipples were painted in gold, and even their lips stretched over the gold bits, and in their navels were bright red garnets—yes, red and gold—and never once, any more than soldiers at attention, did they acknowledge my inspecting gaze.
“Now, this is Caspian,” said the Captain embracing the pony nearest him with his right arm, and there was the old affection he’d showed to us so often, embracing us, crude as we were. “The King never rides out with a team without Caspian or Bastian.” And Caspian shivered all over as though he loved it, his blond hair gleaming with the dusted gold. Even his eyelashes were tinged with gold. Bastian was also fair, though his hair was darker and he had a thick fleece of chest hair as well, surrounding his gilded nipples and jeweled navel. He too seemed supremely happy and eager to run, pawing the ground in a stylized way that I’d learned so well long ago.
The Captain kissed Caspian’s face and I could see Caspian smile in spite of the bit, and then the Captain’s large hand, the hand that had struck me so many times, closed over Caspian’s right buttock and squeezed it hard.
Only now did the waiting grooms, all young men, with those straps in their hands, look a little restless.
“And you’ll notice that all have been well paddled to make their pretty hindquarters blush,” said the Captain in a smooth slow voice. Tentative, gauging my reaction.
“Yes, I see that.” I walked back slowly along the row.
They were all red indeed, and their thighs had been spanked as well.
“That’s how the King demands it,” said Alexi. “Ponies are under strict discipline. I believe all are strapped every morning and evening, regardless of how they perform.”
“It keeps them in condition,” said the Captain. Again, his voice was gentle, not that commanding voice of old, but I knew that voice still lived in him, like a lion ready to spring. I could feel it.
“Now this second set of four,” said Alexi. “These too are dedicated ponies like Caspian and the others, are they not?”
“Yes, absolutely,” said the Captain. “The King loves them. But when we get now to this third row, well, these are Punished Ponies, little boys who have been placed in the King’s team to learn humility and dignity. And here you’ll see the wet eyes and faces. This fourth row are very bad little boys, boys who’ve only just worked themselves up to the last row of the King’s teams—the King has several teams—after having pulled refuse carts in the village.”
Refuse carts. Yes, those I recalled very well.
The Captain’s hand went out again, to squeeze the backside of one comely blond-haired boy who was obviously struggling to conceal his sobs. Why had I not seen this earlier? The Captain had a napkin out to blot the boy’s cheeks. The soft sound of the muffled sobs ignited my blood.
“Now, that’s enough of that, Henri,” he said. “Stand up straight.” The Captain lifted the short thick strap that dangled from his belt, unhooked it, and smacked the thighs of the pony hard several times, making him dance as if he knew what was good for him. Not to dance would have only incited more blows. You learn that fast when you’re a pony. You can’t speak, but you can respond, and that is what Henri did. But I could see the dignity in him. His cock was hopelessly hard in its lacings, held up straight with his scrotum laced close to it. He would go slack as he trotted. That couldn’t be helped. But he’d be expected to be hard quick enough anytime the coach stopped.
My own cock was hopelessly hard, too. And I realized of course what this entire afternoon was going to be like for me, the pure torture of it. It would be like the torture of old, enduring for hours, even for those of us whose cocks were released three and four times a day.
I felt a low churning excitement inside me, something savage suddenly, something so familiar yet alien that I stood there in silent musing, allowing it to collect and to seek some definition for itself.
“Later on, perhaps, we’ll go to see the stables,” said Alexi. “They’re quite beautiful now. I never saw the stables of the village until this year. I never knew the village.” He didn’t say this with pride or spite because I had known both. He said it simply.
“Yes, I would love to see them,” I said.
We mounted the chariot, the Captain in the middle, Alexi on his far right and I on his left, and he started the team.
To my astonishment the grooms ran along two on each side of the team and began at once to whip the legs of the ponies.
It was a comfortable trot, nothing fast, but I could feel the smooth power of the immense team and the fine spoke wheels of the chariot moving over the stones.
I couldn’t take my eyes off the men, how proudly they held themselves seeming not even to flinch as they were whipped, but then the whipping obviously wasn’t hard and it was done with flat straps that made a noise. It would sting, yes, and I could feel that. Each of the four grooms had four ponies to drive, two in front, two behind, and now I could hear the groans and swallowed sobs of the Punished Ponies closest to us.
I felt the blood drain from my face.
This was the old road, I recognized it, that carts had once taken to the castle.
It had been a dull and dreary road then, never used by the Queen or her courtiers. But now it was a great curving and gently sloping thoroughfare, lined on both sides by banks of flowers.
It must have been entirely rebuilt and regraded. Again, the sharp memory of the day I’d been taken down to the village came back, as if it were happening now, as if I weren’t riding along beside the Captain, a guest of the Court, as if I were that naked slave in the cart with the other disgraced ones. And it had been that other captain, the Captain of the Castle Guard, who’d whipped us fiercely as the cart rolled on. I hadn’t tried to hide in the crowd from his lash. I’d failed so miserably at the castle that I’d been almost glad to be going to the village. They wouldn’t expect anything of me, I thought. They’d only punish me.
Wicked old Lord Gregory—in his fifties then—had told me over and over what the Queen might do to me if I didn’t improve. And I’d been glad to get away from him.
As we rounded the bend I saw the great castle in all its breathtaking glory. It seemed its grim towers had been washed clean somehow and they shone in the sun as if cased in limestone. We were beyond the garden walls, descending very gradually towards the village. Somewhere up there, inside those towers and wings, old Lord Gregory still presided over trembling slaves, or so Alexi had written to me. Wicked Lord Gregory, always angry, always striking terror in the hearts of the most playful slaves.
“Prince, you see that all this has been replanted,” said the Captain of the Guard, “as this is now a thoroughfare which the King and the Queen and courtiers travel all the time.”
“It’s very impressive, Captain,” I said.
“That road there leads off south to Prince Tristan’s manor house, and on to the other new manor houses.”
“Oh, you must see them,” said Alexi. “Tristan has his own little Court. He spends his days writing just as Lord Nicholas once did. He has become the new Court Chronicler.”
At last I could see the walls of the Queen’s Village up ahead or what was now called the Royal Village.
How we had all cried and moaned in the cart that awful morning. And how the sight of the battlements had terrified me, even though I’d been glad to be free of the angry queen and the angry Lord Gregory.
“I’ll take you around the village,” said the Captain. “It’s quite large now. The walls have been extended and will be extended more in the future, and many live outside the walls, as it is quite as safe to live outside as it is to live within.”
“Yes, I should like to see it,” I said softly. My eyes fell on the ponies again, all the tossing heads, and the jingling bells and the jewels flashing.
I remembered the feel of the plug in my anus, the feel of the horse’s tail brushing my naked legs, the feel of the harnesses holding me so firmly. It had been so simple! I’d wept only because it was expected that I weep, as bad little boys should when made into ponies, and I could still remember the anticipation I felt when the day was over that I’d be whipped hard and then some hot wet mouth would come to ease the torment of my cock, and I’d be able to sleep in my stall, standing up, bent over at the waist, my head on a pillow of straw.
My backside had been so toughened by then I could take the longest whippings or paddlings.
Suddenly we were on the flat plain before the gates of the village and then taking the road to the west around it. I could see soldiers up on top of the walls and many farmhouses now in the mown fields. The road was broad and well beaten and again there were flowers blossoming everywhere, and great shady copses of old trees.
And now I saw the old spectacle of naked slaves working in the fields, tossing seed from baskets they carried, and other slaves laboring along the road, some pulling little carts full of fresh goods, driven by a solitary master with a switch.
But I soon came to see that these weren’t ordinary farm fields as they’d been in my time. No. Everywhere I looked I saw the crop was now flowers of various sorts and in the distance I could see the shining glint of glass hothouses no doubt for more tropical or delicate blooms. Slaves were doing the work as before, but I sensed even from the distance of the road that they seemed spirited and contented in what they were doing, tending the rosebushes, or the great patches of lilies, and I even saw two naked slaves obviously chatting with one another but then a busy master did appear with the inevitable strap.
Nevertheless much had changed indeed.
After my time as a village pony, I’d been sold off to a farmer who lived in the village, for more punitive service, and I remembered pulling a small plow through the fields. It wasn’t backbreaking labor, not at all, and though I came to hate the tedium of it, and the mud and the inevitable sweat and my feet deep in the soft earth, I had loved the fresh breezes and the great open blue sky.
Once again a flood of memories came back to me, of being driven by the strap to work on the farm and then back to the village where I was often strapped outside the door of the farmer’s narrow house, with my hands tied over my head to an iron bracket for the evening. I was turned facing out when the strapping was over. Barefoot, soiled, thirsty.
An old scholar often came by to chat with me, though why I never knew. He’d tease my cock as so many other passersby did, considering it their duty to keep the cocks up and down the street hard, and the old scholar, who was really no older than I am now, and rather elegant, told me that we naked slaves at the doorways were like the Herms of ancient cities.
“And what in the world, sir,” I had asked one evening, “is a Herm?”
“In old Athens, they were pillars, young man, outside of houses, with the head of Hermes atop them, and cock and balls carved in relief. They were sacred. And they were for luck.”
Then he had recounted an old story of how frightened the Athenians were when, the night before their fleet went out to fight a great war, all the Herms of the city had been vandalized. He thought the whole thing very interesting, and explained in depth to me how we naked slaves, almost all male, were exactly the same sort of sacred creatures, meant with our prominently displayed genitals to turn away harm.
Some Herms had the head of Athena, he told me, and from these old statues had come eventually the word “hermaphrodite.” I’d been fascinated, uncomfortable as I was there, exposed and being teased idly by him, and helpless and listening as he took his time to tell me things of which I’d never dreamed.
I had no inkling then that this was something I would never forget. I remember only that my cock did jump at the thought of a pillar with the head of Athena and a cock and balls, and I had been quiet to encourage him to go on talking, which he likely would have done even if I’d gone to sleep.
I was shocked out of my reverie as there loomed into view one of the village pony teams, in their simple leather, pulling a large wagon full of people.
As it lumbered past us on the left I scarcely had a moment to drink in the spectacle of the struggling male ponies with their heads bowed, their boots dusty, and their black horsetails gleaming in the sunlight. Again the sight of the rippling muscles went to the root of my being. And only as the cart moved on did I realize the passengers were bowing to us.
I had served in the village two full years before Lexius was brought up on fearful charges, and, well, by then I don’t think the Queen so much as remembered me, and when she let me go, a while after Lexius and Alexi, it had been with a careless wave of her hand. “Oh, that one, the clumsy boy, send him home too.”
No wonder my brother’s first words to me—after all the years—had been: “What are you doing here?”
There came other carts now laden with flowers, pots and baskets of flowers, and male slaves struggling as the farmer alongside swung his lash.
Did they envy our ponies in their splendid and glittering trappings?
I felt the Captain of the Guard’s left hand on my shoulder suddenly. He was embracing me.
“Forgive me, Princ
e, you do look pale,” he said.
iv
For an hour we walked around the village, the three of us, Alexi as fascinated as I. We were to meet Lady Eva at the Punishment Shop, he told me.
“Do you know what that is?”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. I glanced at Captain Gordon who had a remarkably serene smile on his face.
“Yes, Alexi, I was sentenced here for two years. I know what the Punishment Shop is.” I didn’t bother to add that my master, the farmer, hadn’t wanted to spend the money to send me there, but had done so just to keep up appearances, now and then, and to please his wife.
She had been the anointed worrier of the household and felt I just wasn’t whipped enough.
So we would sit there now as patrons of the establishment, would we? I couldn’t quite wait.
But it was the Place of Public Punishment I wanted to see above all else.
As for the village itself, it was splendid now beyond imagining, with all façades freshly painted in shades of Roman red or olive green, or deep ochre—and brass doorknockers galore. The streets were so thronged with gentlefolk that I could scarce see the slaves adorning the open doorways, or working busily inside parlor and shops.
What astonished me was the new cleanliness, the lack of the old familiar smell, and the glitter of gold everywhere as people bought the rich wares on display at every turn.
We moved all too fast through the huge fountain court of the inns, as far as I was concerned. I’d never been inside any of those august establishments but Princess Beauty had told much of her time under the thumb of Mistress Loxley in one of them as we lay in our golden cages in the hold of the Sultan’s ship. Captain Gordon had kept rooms at Mistress Loxley’s inn and Beauty had first been given to him there.