Beauty’s Kingdom (Sleeping Beauty #4)(70)
Author: Anne Rice

“I had to try!” he called out. He fell on his knees and threading his fingers together as he raised his hands, he implored me to understand. “I had to try, great Lady Eva.”

“You did? You will rue the hour when you tried,” I said. I slammed the door shut and threw the bolt.

It was the night on which the favorites of the King and Queen were run on the Bridle Path, along with the favorites of the more powerful members of the Court.

I stood at the door of the Bridle Path Hall where the glittering chariots were lined up, the various lords and ladies already mounted in them, and ponies stamping their booted feet ready to pull them, and the poor slaves chosen to be runners waited in line as well.

Rosalynd and Elena were instructing the grooms as they prepared the slaves, adjusting coiffed hair or braided hair, brushing the bushy locks of the boy slaves, and warning each and every one to run fast and hard.

“There is no escaping the paddle,” said Rosalynd to the little thing closest to her, “and if you pass the royal banquet table without putting on the very best show, you’ll find yourselves hung upside down in the gardens for the night.”

The little thing was Sybil, stunning dark-haired slave already well trained as a pony in the Queen’s Stables, but she seemed at quite a loss now, stripped of all her fine harnesses and ruthlessly exposed except for her boots.

Nothing chastens quite like the Bridle Path, I thought.

Behind her came the tall and supremely lovely Blanche, Tristan’s most attractive slave, and Tristan in his finest Court dress was already in the second chariot, ready to drive Blanche hard with the paddle for the frantic run of her life. Blanche had been run countless times and accepted her fate with downcast eyes, hands clasped to the back of her neck beneath her long hair, breasts heaving anxiously, though she was otherwise quite still.

Long ago, the girls had all had their hair braided, and we boys who had been run had had our hair combed back with oil.

But all slaves were ornamented now or they did not appear in the garden, and all lips and nipples were rouged or gilded, and hair was luxuriantly free.

Lord Stefan, behind a gorgeous gold leather mask adorned with rubies, stood waiting in third place. In the third chariot some distance away stood Dmitri, regal as ever, his blue eyes fixed on Stefan, though Stefan stood motionless with only the smallest twitch to the edge of his handsome mouth.

His punishment and training had been a great success, all knew. And several other members of the Court had since gone down on bended knee to Queen Beauty asking to accept “the Discipline of the Mask.”

Of course Beauty, gracious and loving in all things, had said she wanted to ponder the matter, but that she fully understood their wishes. She and her closest advisors would give immediate attention to this idea of the “Discipline of the Mask,” and she would have a decision very soon.

Was Stefan to become the first Disciple of the Mask? He was the lone such disciple tonight to be run on the Bridle Path.

I had my old memories of course of having been whipped along it near every day for the pleasure of Queen Eleanor (though she herself never whipped any slave on the Bridle Path; that was not for her) and always at what we called Festival Night. Now every night was Festival Night.

Stefan’s sometime slave Becca, now the Queen’s slave once more, who had seldom before been subjected to this ritual, stood waiting in fourth place. Dmitri had turned her into a gorgeous nymph and part of her bright shining hair was swept up and back into a thick silver buckle fitted with star garnets to reveal the special favor from the Queen with which she was now blessed. If Sybil pleased the Queen tonight, she would hereafter wear the buckle with the star garnets. And there were two other girls down the line so honored already.

Sweet Princess Lucinda, garbed in puce velvet, was already in her chariot to drive Becca. She flashed a loving smile on me when I caught her eye. A tall willowy figure with the most girlish smile, she would do an excellent job of it, of course, as she rode the chariot with the Queen’s crest. It was her keenest pleasure outside of presiding over the Queen’s Stables, and she drove one of the Queen’s favorites almost every night. She was one of those imperturbable mistresses who saw to every punishment with great efficiency and unbroken decorum, never raising her voice.

I saw no end of sumptuous breasts and lavish pubic hair, of shapely legs turned out in tight boots, or downcast eyes and wet cheeks. Most cocks were erect and glistening, balls oiled to shine in the light of torches and lanterns, and gilded nipples everywhere twinkled like stars.

Then there were Dmitri’s three darlings, Bertram, Kiera, and Barbara, all wearing his newly chosen signature jeweled buckles of gold and malachite. Would Stefan win such a buckle tonight?

Kiera and Bertram had run the Bridle Path many a time, and were only a little anxious, but Barbara was crying copious tears. She’d never been to Court before, ever. And though Dmitri could not return again and again to personally paddle all of his slaves along the path, he would double back to whip Barbara himself. I knew the terror she was experiencing now at the mere thought of his disapproval, how she trembled at the mere sound of Dmitri’s steel voice.

I remembered how Dmitri had come to love her when he first saw her, and he had already created in her a slave of dignity and infatuating submission.

It seemed to me Dmitri’s beauties lived in a delirium sustained by his capacity to frighten them and shame them which was as exquisite as any music ever played by horn or harp. His groom Fabien had been coming along as a household disciplinarian as well. Fabien’s style mirrored Dmitri’s style, and grooms of such personal will and force always fared well in the kingdom.

Dmitri did not so much as look at the others. The test for him tonight was Stefan, and his eyes were fastened to Stefan, but surely he was quite certain Stefan would not fail. Fabien stood against the wall watching Stefan also, as he’d apparently been told to do.

My eyes moved down the long row, casually inspecting others I knew by name and some I knew only by face and form.

There was juicy and curvaceous Cressida, another pony from the Queen’s Stables, with her flaming hair, crying softly as the grooms rubbed more rouge into her nipples and obviously coaxed her to stand up straight and proud. She had become fast friends with Sybil, in the stable yard at recreation. And the Queen favored them as a pair. But now Cressida was a quivering lily without the security of her customary bit and harnesses.

Then came Penryn, the sturdy and boyish slave of Prince Richard, who had never been brought up from the village before and was plainly very afraid. Prince Richard, who always cut a fine figure, was kissing Penryn and stroking his mop of yellow hair—a rare bit of mercy for a slave whom Richard drove relentlessly to be “as perfect” as any slave at Court, though Penryn spent most of his days in the village with his master, and was paddled in the Punishment Shops twice a day.

What was a special humiliation for most village slaves was daily life for Penryn because of Prince Richard’s duties, and he lived to please Richard, often subjected to the worst humiliations if he failed. Whenever I spied Penryn on the Public Turntable I turned to watch, and I was never disappointed. The tender whipping master of the Punishment Shop called Penryn his favorite “dumpling.”

After these and some others stood my own slave Valentine, sobbing bitterly, a precious gift given me by Dmitri who had bought Valentine from the village booksellers for the price of a precious volume of Horace.

Valentine had been bought for the village when he came to the kingdom. And had never dreamed he would become the slave of a prince. I found him sensitive and inviting in all ways, and loved that he cried unceasingly like an overflowing fountain. Blond hair, very pretty mouth. Almond skin. After the long boredom of belonging to a village scholar, he had found the ways of the Court terrifying in the beginning, cleaving to me when I walked him on a leash as if great peril might at any time befall him, but I had enjoyed training him, wiping his tears, pinching him, and making him jump, and he was polished enough now to be brought along with me when I went to dine alone with the Queen. Tonight, if he did well, he’d be bound to a cross in the gardens after and allowed to doze before adoring eyes. If he failed, he’d be hung on the stable wall with the bad slaves and punished and teased all night.

I wouldn’t drive the boy myself on the Bridle Path tonight. Elena was doing the honors as the ride in the chariot thrilled her and the husky boy pony pulling the chariot was one of her favorites, part of the King’s team—a punished pony who’d been promoted to a permanent pony on account of his great stamina.

At the very end of the present line—it would in the course of the night see many additions—stood César, the tall proud pony whom the King so loved.

I adored César. I was intrigued by César. I felt that his life story in the kingdom told us volumes about the minds and hearts of all slaves and that César ought to be studied in depth by those aspiring to be great masters and mistresses.

César had lived for two decades in the village stables, one of those slaves so attuned to pony life that no one ever thought he would be good for anything else. “Workhorse,” “plow horse,” those were terms used in the past for César. But the King, quite fascinated with César, had forced the slave to new heights.