Beauty's Punishment

by Ann Rice

  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 have 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!"

  "Out of the question, dear Prince. In the complex exchanges between great powers, some things must be sacrificed. And it violates no agreements. You were sent to serve, and serve you shall, in the Palace of the Sultan. And have no doubt, you will be treasured by your new Masters. Though the Sultan has many slaves from his own land, you captive Princes and Princesses are a special delicacy of sorts, and a great curiosity."

  I was too angry and defeated to speak further. It was hopeless. Nothing I said made any difference. I was imprisoned like a creature of the wild, and my mind lapsed into miserable silence.

  "I did what I could," said the Lord, his eyes including the others now as he stepped back.

  Dmitri
was awake and leaning on his elbow as he listened.

  "I was ordered to obtain an apology for the raid," the Lord went on, "and a stiff indemnity. I got more gold than I expected." He was going to the door. His hand was on the latch. "Two years, Prince, that's not so long," he said to me. "And when you return, your knowledge and experience will prove of inestimable value at the castle."

  "My Master!" I said suddenly. "Nicolas, the Chronicler. Tell me at least, was he harmed in the raid?"

  "He's quite alive and, in all probability, fast at work at his written account of the raid for her Majesty. He grieves bitterly for you. But nothing can be done. Now I must leave you. Be brave and be clever, clever at pretending you are not clever, that you are no more than the most abject little bundles of ever-demonstrable passion."

  And he left us immediately.

  We all remained quiet, hearing the distant shouts of the sailors above. Then we felt the sea surge sluggishly as the other craft pulled away from us.

  And the giant ship was moving again, fast, as if at full sail, and I slumped back against the cool gold bars and stared forward.

  "Don't be sad, my darling," Beauty said as she peered at me, her long hair veiling her breasts, the light glinting on her polished limbs. "It's only the same whirlwind."

  I turned over and stretched out, despite the uncomfortable metal between my legs, and rested my head against my arms, and for a long time I wept in silence.

  Finally, when my tears had dried themselves, I heard Beauty's voice again.

  "I know you're thinking of your Master," she said gently. "But, Tristan, remember your own words."

  I sighed against my arm.

  "Remind me, Beauty," I asked quietly.

  "That your whole existence is but an entreaty to be dissolved in the will of others. And so it goes on, Tristan, and we move deeper and deeper, all of us, into that dissolution."

  "Yes, Beauty," I said softly.

  "It's but another turn of the wheel," she said, "and we understand now more keenly what we have always known, since we were made captives."

  "Yes," I said, "that we belong to others."

  And I turned my head to look up at her. The position of the cages wouldn't allow us to touch more than our fingertips if we tried, and it was better just to see her pretty face and her luscious little arms as she held the bars still.

  "It's true," I said. "You're right." And I felt a tightening in my chest and the old familiar awareness of my helplessness, not as a Prince, but as a slave, entirely dependent on the whims of new and unknown Masters.

  And gazing at her face, I felt the first stirring of the wonder that was kindled in her eyes. We did not know what torments or rapture lay ahead of us.

  Dmitri had turned and gone back into his slumbers. So had Laurent below.

  And Beauty stretched again like a cat and lay down on the silken mattress.

  The door opened and the young silk-clad attendants came in – six of them, one for each slave, it seemed – and they approached the cages, offering, as they unlocked the doors, a warm, aromatic drink, which surely contained another welcome sleeping potion.

  VOLUPTUOUS CAPTIVITY

  It was night when Beauty awoke. Turning on her belly she saw stars through a tiny grated window. The great craft creaked and hummed as it rode the waves.

  But she was being gathered up, taken from the cage, her dreams not yet dissipated, and laid down upon a giant cushion again, this time atop a long table.

  Candles blazed. She could smell the heavy perfume of incense. And from far away came a rich and vibrant music. The lovely young men surrounded her, rubbing the golden oil into her skin, smiling down at her as they worked, stretching her arms up and back, training her fingers to hold tight again to the edge of the cushion. And she saw a brush dipping down to color her nipples carefully with glittering gold pigment. She was too shocked to make a sound. She lay still as her lips were also painted. Then the soft hairs of the brush skillfully lined her eyes with the gold, stroking it onto her eyelashes. Great jeweled earrings were shown to her and, with a little gasp, she felt her earlobes stabbed, but her silent smiling captors hastened to shush and console her. The earrings dangled from the tiny burning wounds and the pain dissolved as she felt her legs drawn apart and a bowl of brightly colored, glistening fruits was held above her. The little armor of mesh was removed from her sex and tender fingers patted and stroked her until her sex awakened. Then she gazed into the same lovely olive-skinned face of the man who had first greeted her. Her attendant, he must be. And she saw that he was taking the fruit from the bowl – dates, pieces of melon and peach, tiny pears, dark red berries – and that he was carefully dipping each piece in a silver cup of honey.

  Her legs were stretched wide apart and she realized the honeyed fruit was being placed inside of her. Her well-taught sex tightened irresistibly as the silky fingers forced the quartered melon deep within, and the next piece, and the next, bringing stronger and stronger flushes and sighs from her.

  She couldn't keep from moaning, but this her captors seemed to approve. They nodded, their smiles growing ever brighter. She was filled with the fruit. She felt it bulging from her. And now she was shown the glistening bunch of ripe grapes that was laid between her legs. And a lovely sprig of white flowers was dangled over her face, and her mouth was opened and the sprig laid between her teeth, the waxy petals fluttering against her cheeks and chin every so slightly.

  She tried not to bite down on the stem, merely to hold it firmly. Her underarms were being painted thickly with honey. And something, a plump date perhaps, was being pressed into her naval. Jeweled bracelets went about her wrists. She was being fitted with heavy anklets. She undulated almost irresistibly on the pillow as the tension mounted in her, the vague infatuation with the smiling faces. And she knew fear, too, as she felt herself slowly transformed into an astonishing ornament.

  But she was left alone with the urgent caution to be very still and silent.

  And she heard other quick preparations in the room, heard other soft sighs, and she could almost make out the tempo of a heart beating anxiously near her.

  Finally her captors appeared again. She was lifted on the great thick cushion, like a treasure. The music grew louder as she was carried up the steps, the walls of her sex clamping against the enormous filling of fruit, the honey and the juices trickling out of her. The gold paint dried on her nipples, tightening the skin. On every inch of her flesh she felt some new stimulation.

  Into a large chamber she was brought, the light soft and shimmering. The incense was intoxicating. The air pulsed with the rhythm of tambourines, the strumming of harps, the high metallic notes of other instruments. Over her head the draped cloth of the ceiling came alive with its hundreds of tiny fragments of mirrored glass, glittering beads, intricate gold patterns.

  She was set down on the floor again and, turning her head helplessly, saw the musicians far to her left and, directly beside her on her right, her new Masters sitting cross-legged as they banqueted from large dishes of delicious-smelling food, their robes and turbans of ornately embroidered silk, their eyes darting to her now and then as they spoke to one another in rapid muted voices.

  She writhed on the pillow, holding the edges tight, keeping her legs well apart as she had been taught so well to do at the village and the castle. And her silent fearful attendants, cautioning her, imploring her, with dire looks and fingers to the lips, again withdrew to the shadows where they stood to watch over her unnoticed by those who feasted.

  "Ah, what is this strange world into which I've been reborn?" she thought, the fruit swelling against the stricture of her heated vagina. She felt her hips ride up from the silk, the earrings throb in her ears. The conversation went on in a natural current, now and then one of the dark-turbaned Lords smiling at her before he spoke again to the others.

  But another figure had appeared. Something in the corner of her eye, to the left. She saw it was Tristan.

  He was being brought in
on his hands and knees, by a long gold chain affixed to a jewel-encrusted collar. And he too was polished with gold oil, his nipples gilded. His thick bush of pubic hair was dotted with tiny sparkling jewels and his erect cock glistened under its thin gold burnishing. His ears were pierced not with dangling earrings but with single rubies. And the hair of his head was parted in the middle and had been beautifully brushed with gold dust. Gilt paint lined his eyes, thickened his lashes, defined the startling perfection of his mouth. And his violet-blue eyes burned with an iridescent radiance.

  His lips moved in a half-smile as he was led towards her. He didn't seem sad or afraid, rather lost in his desire to do the bidding of the pretty black-haired angel who led him. And as the dark-skinned one guided him to straddle Beauty, pressing his head down to her left underarm until his face touched the honey, he began to lap it.

  Beauty sighed, feeling the hard wet pressure of his licking tongue on the rounded curve of her flesh. And her eyes grew wide as he cleaned away the liquid, his hair tickling her face, and then bent to feed upon the right underarm just as greedily.

  He seemed an alien god leaning over her, his painted face like something from the very depth of her unavowed dreams, his powerful arms and shoulders polished to a magnificent luster.