Beauty's Release

by Anne Rice

  I was a Prince, though bound to serve – a high-born being temporarily deprived of his privileges and made to undergo unique and difficult trials of the body and the soul. Yes, that was the nature of the humiliation: that I should be privileged again after it was over, that I was the equal of those who enjoyed my nakedness and reprimanded me severely for the slightest show of will or pride.

  It was never so clear to me as when Princes from other lands came to visit and to marvel at this custom of keeping royal pleasure slaves. How it had flayed me to be presented to these guests.

  "But how do you make them serve?" they would ask, half astonished, half enchanted. You never knew whether they yearned to serve or command. Do all beings have both inclinations at war within them?

  The inevitable answer to their timid questions was a mere demonstration of our fine training; that we must kneel before them, offering our naked organs for their examination, our upturned backsides to be whipped.

  "It is a game of pleasure," My Lady would say matter-of-factly. "And this one, Laurent, a beautifully mannered Prince, amuses me in particular. He will one day rule a rich realm." She would pinch my nipples slowly, then lift my cock and balls in her open hand to display them to the amazed guest.

  "But still, why does he not struggle, resist?" the visitor might ask, possibly masking his deeper feelings.

  "Think on it," My Lady would say. "He is quite well stripped of the accoutrements that would make him a man in the outside world, only the better to expose the fleshly accoutrements that make him a man for my service. Imagine yourself as naked, as defenseless, as thoroughly subjugated. You might serve, too, rather than risk a gamut of even more ignominious corrections."

  What newcomer had not asked for his own slave before nightfall?

  Red-faced and trembling, I had crawled to obey many an order given in an unfamiliar and unpracticed voice. And these were Lords I should some day receive in my own Court. Would we remember these moments? Would anyone dare to mention them?

  And so it was with all the naked slave Princes and Princesses of the castle. Nothing but the highest quality for this utter debasement.

  "I think Laurent will serve another three years at least," Lady Elvera would say airily. How remote she was, how eternally distracted. "But then the Queen makes these decisions. I shall weep when he goes. I think perhaps it is his size that most entices me. He is taller than the others, bigger-boned, yet his face is noble, don't you think?"

  She would snap her fingers for me to come near, and then run her thumb down my cheek. "And the organ," she might say, "it is extremely thick but not overly long. That is important. How the little Princesses squirm under him. I simply must have a strong Prince. Tell me, Laurent, how might I punish you in some new fashion, something perhaps that I have not thought of?"

  Yes, a strong Prince in temporary subjugation, a monarch's son, with all his faculties engaged, sent here to be a pupil of pleasure and pain.

  But to incur the wrath of the Court and to be sent to the village? That was an altogether different ordeal. And one that I had barely tasted, though what I did come to know was the very quintessence of it.

  Only two days before my capture by the Sultan's thieves, I had run away from Lady Elvera and the castle. And I do not know why I did it.

  Certainly, I adored the Lady. I did. No doubts really. I admired her imperiousness, her endless silences. She could only have pleased me more had she whipped me herself more often, rather than ordering it done by other Princes.

  Even when she gave me to the guests or the other Lords and Ladies, there was the special joy of returning to her, of being taken again into her bed, being allowed to lap at the narrow triangle of black hair between her white thighs as she sat there against the pillow, her hair down, her eyes narrow and indifferent. It had been a challenge to melt her glacial heart, to make her throw back her head and cry out in pleasure finally like the most lascivious little Princess in the garden.

  Yet I had run away. And it had come over me suddenly, the impulse – that I should dare to do it, just get up and go off into the forest and let them search for me. Of course they'd find me. I never doubted they would. They always found the runaways.

  Maybe I had lived too long in fear of doing it, of being captured by the soldiers and sent to labor in the village. It was tempting me suddenly, like the plunge from a great cliff.

  And I had mastered all my other faults by this time; I had attained a rather boring perfection. I never shied from the strap. I had grown so to need it that my flesh quivered warmly at the mere sight of it. And I always caught the little Princesses quickly in the garden chase, lifting them high by their wrists and carrying them back over my shoulder, their hot breasts thudding against my back. It had been an interesting challenge to master two and three in a single afternoon with the same stamina.

  But this matter of running away.... Maybe I wanted to know my Masters and Mistresses better! Because, when I became their captured fugitive, I would feel their power to the marrow of my bones. I would feel all that they could make me feel, completely.

  Whatever the reason, I waited until the Lady had fallen asleep in her garden chair, and then I stood up and rushed to the garden wall and climbed over it. This was no little bid for attention on my part. I would make it an indisputable attempt at escape. And, without glancing back, I fled over the mown fields towards the forest.

  Yet never had I felt so naked, so utterly the slave as in those moments when I appeared to be in rebellion.

  Every leaf, every tall blade of grass stroked my exposed flesh. A new shame astonished me as I roamed beneath the dark trees, creeping past the watchtowers of the village.

  When night came on, I felt that my nude skin was glowing like a light, that the forest would not conceal me. I belonged to the intricate world of power and submission and had tried wrongly to steal away from its obligations. And the forest knew it. Brambles scratched my calves. My cock hardened at the slightest sound in the brush.

  And o, the final horror and thrill of capture, as the soldiers spotted me in the dark and drove me onward with shouts until they had me surrounded.

  Rude hands grabbed at my arms and legs. I was carried low to the ground by four of the men, my head hanging and my limbs outstretched, merely an animal who had given good sport, brought into the torchlit camp amid cheers and hoots and laughter.

  And in the blazing moment of inescapable justice, everything was further clarified. I was no high-born Prince anymore. I was a stubborn and lowly thing to be whipped and raped repeatedly by the spirited soldiers until the Captain of the Guard appeared and ordered me bound to the thick wooden Punishment Cross.

  And it was during that ordeal that I had again seen Princess Beauty. She had already been sent down to the village and chosen by the Captain of the Guard as his little plaything. Kneeling in the dirt of the camp, she was the only woman there, her fresh pink and milk-white skin all the more delectable for the dust clinging to it. She had magnified all that happened to me with her intense gaze.

  And no wonder I still fascinated her: I was a true fugitive, and the only one of us in the Sultan's ship who had earned the Punishment Cross.

  In earlier castle days, I had glimpsed such mounted runaways myself. I had seen them put in the cart to be taken to the village, their legs spread wide on the crossbar, their heads bent back over the top of the cross so that they looked straight up into the sky, mouths stretched by the black leather band that held their heads in this position. I had been terrified for them, marveling that even in this disgrace their cocks were hard as the wood to which their bodies were tethered.

  And then I was the condemned one. I had passed into the tableau to be bound in the same excruciating fashion, eyes heavenward, my arms doubled behind the rough stake, my open thighs stretched wide and aching, my cock as hard as any I'd ever beheld.

  And Beauty was but one of a thousand witnesses.

  Through the village streets I was paraded to the slow beat of the dru
m for common crowds that I could hear and not see, each turn of the cart's wheels jarring the wooden phallus implanted in my backside.

  It had been as delicious as it was extreme, the greatest of all degradations. I had felt myself luxuriating in it even as the Captain of the Guard whipped my bare chest, my open legs, my naked belly. And how divinely easy it had been to plead through uncontrollable groans and undulations, knowing full well that I would never be heeded. How it had titillated my soul to know there was not the slightest hope of mercy for me.

  Yes, in those moments, I had known the full power of my captors, but I had also known my own power – that we who are bereft of all privileges may yet goad and guide our punishers into new realms of heat and loving attentiveness.

  There was no desire to please now, no passion to accomplish. Only divine and anguished abandon. l had rocked my buttocks shamelessly on the phallus that jutted into me from the cross, receiving the quick blows of the Captain's leather strap like kisses. I had struggled and wept to my heart's content without a particle of dignity.

  The only flaw in the magnificent scheme, I suppose, was that I could not see my tormentors unless they stood directly above me, which only happened rarely.

  And at night, when I was mounted high in the village square, and I could hear them gathered on the platform below me – feel them pinching my sore backside, spanking my cock – I wished I could see the contempt and humor on their faces, their utter superiority to the lowest of the low which I had become.

  I liked being condemned. I liked being this grim and frightening exhibit of folly and suffering, even as I quaked at the sounds that signaled a fresh whipping, as the tears spilled uncontrollably down my face.

  It was infinitely richer than being the scarlet-faced and trembling plaything of Lady Elvera. Finer even than the sweet sport of mounting Princesses in the garden.

  And finally, there were special rewards for the painful angle of my vision as well. The young soldier, after whipping me at the stroke of nine o'clock, had mounted the ladder beside me, and looked down into my eyes, and kissed my gagged mouth.

  I had been unable to show how much I adored him, unable even to close my lips around the thick band of leather that gagged me and held my head in place. But he had clasped my chin and sucked on my upper lip, then my lower lip, running his tongue into my mouth under the leather, and then he promised me in a whisper that I should be whipped again very well at midnight; he would see to it himself. He liked the task of whipping bad slaves.

  "You've a good tapestry of pink stripes on your chest and belly," he said. "But you're going to be even prettier. And then there is the Public Turntable for you at sunup, when you'll be unbound and made to kneel over, and the village Whipping Master will do his work on you for the morning crowd. How they will love it, a big strong Prince such as you."

  Again he kissed me, sucking on my lower lip, running his tongue along my teeth. I had heaved against the wood, against my bonds, my cock a shaft of exquisite hunger.

  I had tried in every unspoken way known to me to show my love for him, his words, his affection.

  How strange it all was, that he might not understand it. But it didn't matter. It didn't matter if I was gagged forever, and could never tell anyone. What mattered was that I had found my perfect place and must never rise above it. I must be the emblem of the worst punishment. If only my sore cock, my swollen cock, could know a moment's respite, just a moment's....

  And, as if reading my thoughts, he had said:

  "Now I have a little gift for you. We want to keep that handsome organ in good form after all, and that is not done through laziness." And I heard near him a woman's laughter. "She's one of the lovelier village girls," he said, brushing my hair out of my eyes. "Would you like to have a good look at her first?"

  Oooh, yes, I tried to answer. And I saw her face above me – bouncing red curls, sweet blue eyes, blushing cheeks, and lips that came down to kiss me.

  "See how pretty she is?" he asked in my ear. And to her he said: "You may go ahead, dearest."

  I felt her legs hooked over mine, her starched petticoats tickling my flesh, her wet little crotch rubbed against my cock, and then the hairy little sheath opening as she came down on me very tight. I was moaning louder than it seemed possible to moan. And the young soldier smiled above me and lowered his head again to bestow his wet, sucking kisses.

  O, lovely hot little pair. I thrashed uselessly under my leather bonds. But she made the rhythm for both of us, riding me up and down, the heavy cross shaking, my cock erupting into her.

  I hadn't seen anything after that, not even the sky.

  I vaguely remembered the young soldier coming and saying it was midnight and time for my next good whipping. And, if I was a very good boy from now on, and my cock stood well to attention for every whipping, he might have another village girl for me the next night. It was his opinion a punished runaway ought to have a girl often. It only made his suffering worse.

  I had smiled gratefully under the gag of black leather. Yes, anything to make the suffering worse. And how was I to be a good boy, by twitching and struggling and making noises to show my suffering, by thrusting my hungry cock into the empty air? I was more than willing to do it. I wished I knew how long I would be on exhibit. I wished I could remain so forever, a permanent symbol of baseness, worthy only of scorn.

  Now and then I had thought, as the strap licked at my nipples and my belly, of how Lady Elvera had looked when they had brought me to the castle gates on the cross.

  Looking up, I had seen her with the Queen in the open window. And I had wept desperately, my tears overflowing. She was so very pretty! And that she would give me the worst now was why I worshiped her.

  "Take him away," My Lady had said with an almost bored air, her voice carrying over the empty courtyard. "And see that he is well whipped and sold to a good, cruel Master or Mistress."

  Yes, it was a new game of necessary discipline with new rules in which I discovered a depth of submission undreamed of.

  "Laurent, I shall come down myself to see you sold," she had said as I was being taken away. "I shall make certain you are given absolute drudgery."

  Love, real love for Lady Elvera, had underscored all of it. But Beauty's later ruminations in the hold of the ship confused me.

  Had the passion for Lady Elvera been all that love could be? Or was it merely the love one can have for any accomplished Mistress? Was there more to be learned in the crucible of heat and sublime pain? Maybe Beauty was more discriminating, more honest ... more demanding.

  Even with Tristan, one had the feeling that the love of his Master had been given too quickly, too freely. Had Nicolas, the Queen's Chronicler, really been worthy of it? When Tristan spoke of this man, did he illuminate any particular? What came through Tristan's laments was the fact that the man had invited the love with moments of remarkable intimacy. I wondered if, for Beauty, such an invitation would in itself have been sufficient.

  Yet in the village it had been bittersweet to think of my lost Lady Elvera as I stretched and twisted on the Punishment Cross, the strap doing its work. But it was also bittersweet to think of pert little Princess Beauty back in the soldiers' camp, who had stared at me in frank amazement. Was she on to the secret? That I had willed it? Would she herself dare such things? They had said at the castle that she had brought the village punishment upon herself. Yes, I liked her very much even then, bold and tender little darling.

  But my life as punished runaway had ended before it began. I had never seen the auction block.

  Within moments of that last midnight whipping the raid on the village had commenced. The Sultan's soldiers thundered through the little cobblestone streets.

  My leather gag and bonds were cut, and my aching body thrown over a speeding horse before I could even glimpse my captor.

  Then the hold of the ship, this little cabin hung with jeweled tentwork and brass lanterns.

  And the gold oil had been rubbed in my abraded
skin, the perfume combed through my hair, and the stiff mesh covering had been chained over my cock and balls so that I could not touch them. And the confines of the cage. And the timid and respectful questions of the other captive slaves: Why had I run away and how had I endured the Punishment Cross?

  And the echo of the warning of the Queen's emissary before we left her Kingdom:

  "In the Sultan's palace ... you will no longer be treated as beings with high reason.... 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."

  And I wondered now, as we drifted offshore, if in this strange land the diverse torments of the castle and the village might somehow be reconciled.

  We had been abject by royal command, then abject by royal condemnation. Now in an alien world, far from those who knew our history or our stations, we would be abject by our very nature.

  I opened my eyes, seeing again the one small night lantern hanging from its brass hook amid the tentwork drapery of the ceiling. Something was changed. We had dropped anchor.

  And there was much movement above. All the crew it seemed had been roused. And steps were approaching....

  BEAUTY: THROUGH THE CITY AND INTO THE PALACE

  BEAUTY OPENED her eyes. She had not been sleeping, and she knew without having to see through a window that it was morning. The air in the cabin was unusually warm.

  An hour ago she had heard Tristan and Laurent whispering in the dark, and she had known the ship was at anchor. And she had been only slightly afraid.

  After that, she had slipped in and out of thin erotic dreams, her body wakening all over like a landscape under the rising sun. She was impatient to be ashore, impatient to know the full extent of what was to happen to her, to be threatened in ways that she could understand.

  Now, when she saw the lean, comely little attendants flooding into the room, she knew for certain that they had come to the Sultanate. All would be realized soon enough.