Beauty’s Kingdom (Sleeping Beauty #4)(29)
Author: Anne Rice

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, Prince, 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.

“And where do you live now?” I asked, as if I’d been talking not thinking, and though my question startled him, he answered politely enough.

“I have a townhouse now, Prince, that His Majesty has given me. I’m grateful. It’s more comfortable than any lodgings I’ve ever had.”

As we walked on, finally, to the Place of Public Punishment, he pointed out the house, a narrow but grand three-story building, which had once been the house of Nicholas the Queen’s Chronicler and his sister.

I remembered the Queen’s Chronicler. He’d been a dreary miserable man during my years here, as he’d lost Prince Tristan, whom he loved with all his soul. He was held up to ridicule, but in whispers, as someone who had been foolish enough to ruin his heart on a slave.

I knew now that Tristan had eventually returned to the kingdom. Alexi’s letters had mentioned this and so had the letters from the King. Tristan had his own fine manor house, and the King had indicated that I might want such a place of my own.

At last we came to the great fairgrounds that I’d been thinking about since news of the new kingdom had come to me.

I stood still as we left the paved street that had led us here so that I could take it all in.

It was the very same, yet utterly transformed. The old beaten earth was gone, and the stone paving went on forever, and once again it was swept and clean.

To the far right I saw three of the great maypoles, with the slaves tethered to long leather ribbons by their necks, forced to run in circles by those handsomely dressed grooms in special village livery, it seemed, who paddled them—and as before, the wheels to which slaves were strapped, spread-eagled, who might be turned upside down by a patron for a small coin. It was not the worst of punishment by any means, but it was frightening, and I had known it in my last six months, but I had been a very different slave by then from the one first brought here in terror and shame.

The slaves squealed and cried as the giant wheels turned, males as well as females, and of course the patrons teased them with little whisk brooms as they had in my time, but these now looked not so much like improvised or household tools, but like gaily beribboned trinkets sold here for the purpose and I soon saw that they were.

A slave forced to squat and walk behind a peddler carried two full baskets of such brooms for sale, on a long pole.

And all over, everywhere, were the bright striped tents—tents as I knew for having one’s slave bathed, tents for having a slave male or female for a small payment, tents merely to look, or to watch or to spank.

But novelties had been added, or so it seemed. I saw a booth where female slaves were kneeling on a shelf, their hindquarters bared, of course, to the crowd, who bought three and four yellow balls at a time to hurl at them to see who might strike the heart of the target, which was, naturally, the anus of the slave. The backsides of these unfortunates were painted with brightly colored target stripes in what seemed like a thick adhesive paste, and I soon saw that some of the balls stuck to the targets in question, and the players argued spiritedly about who was better than whom in scoring at the game.

Seemed obvious enough to me.

As we walked about, we came to the rear of this tent, where I saw the heads of the bent-over slaves, fixed into a long yellow-painted wooden pillory, faces down, hands clenching and unclenching. I wondered did it hurt much when the ball struck one’s backside. Likely not all that much. Again, it wasn’t the worst punishment for a slave, but I knew those subjected to it would feel a thrilling shame nevertheless.

Variety was the spice of the kingdom.

“I heard this was a very dusty place and rather crude in the old days,” said Alexi. “I only saw it once before the King and Queen came.”

“Well, that was true,” said Captain Gordon, “but truthfully, my lord, lots of the Court came down here just to see it from time to time, though they didn’t let on to the old queen. It was supposed to be for the common people only, but look at the crowd now.”

He was right. The area was milling with all manner of persons, from the finest and most ornately dressed to the simplest, but I could see that the gentry outnumbered the simple folk.

Yes, gaily dressed village boys and girls were lined up before the tents with their coins ready, but plenty of the richer men and women regarded this as a feast for the eyes. I saw dark-haired Prince Roger moving through the crowd—no mistake, it was he—whom I’d briefly known in my time in the village, but he did not see me, and I did not feel moved now to speak to him. That would occur naturally enough later on.

And it was larger, all of this. Much larger.

Only now as we moved through a field of high tents did I see the Public Turntable coming into view.

Like all else, it had been refurbished and ornamented. No more the crude wood ladder up which slaves had been driven to be paddled, but now there was a gilded stair. The great turntable itself was trimmed in dagged leather of many colors, and the great whipping master himself, who had always been a rotund and crude fellow with rolled-up sleeves and bulging arms, was now in a smart livery of gray and yellow—like all the grooms who paddled the maypole slaves, and pushed and directed other slaves all about.

But the whipping master was nevertheless a huge man, and I could hear the rumble of his deep, laughing voice from where I stood. He had a head of long flowing hair and enormous shoulders.

There was a row of unfortunates lined up to be paddled for the crowd on one side and on the other an endless row of gilded wooden pillories where slaves would be taken after their whippings to be displayed, bent over from the waist.

A huge burst of collective laughter erupted from the tents behind us. I turned, and only then realized that indeed I was near dizzy, my senses flooded with scents, sounds, and sights.

The Captain steadied me again, but very respectfully.

“Dmitri, we don’t have to remain here,” said Alexi.

“Oh, but I want to see it,” I said.

“Well, you’ll see it’s changed,” said the Captain softly and he kept his firm hand on my arm. I didn’t mind it. I didn’t care.

My cock was like a brick in my trousers. And I felt my nipples tingling and burning inside my shirt. Herms. Hermaphrodites. I heard the voice of the scholar.

“. . . an ancient idea, of an ideal creature who combined the traits of male and female . . .”

“Here, my lord,” said the Captain. “Drink this wine.”

“The last thing I need in this sunshine,” I said.

“It’s weak, but it’s very cold.”

I did drink it.

In a daze, I saw a slave girl before us with a pitcher. And I knew that she had offered the cup. Hair the color of copper flowing over her shoulders; such a wealth of it, she seemed scarcely to be naked. If I’d been her master or mistress, I would have tied up her hair.