Beauty smiled. “And no one had ever thought of such a thing before?” she asked. “Of a slave dressed and given privileges and then broken down to servitude for the greater appreciation of his own helplessness?”
Laurent smiled at her. “I don’t remember anyone ever doing it,” he said.
“No, no one had ever proposed it,” said Alexi. “But the Queen with a toss of her head, said, ‘Oh, do go, yes.’
“And Lexius was stripped right there at Court, all his accoutrements of authority taken away, and put back into the lowliest service.
“And that night, when the Queen slept, I had him to myself again.”
“And that was when, let me guess,” said Laurent, “he confessed to you that he was mad for Sonya.”
“Exactly!” said Alexi. “He dissolved into tears in my arms. He could not live without Sonya. Sonya had mastered him in such ways that the Queen had paled in his heart. He was living now for the two nights when he might go to the inn only to sneak off from it to Sonya’s cottage behind the mayor’s little manor house.
“I told him this was a dangerous game. He’d be caught, and if the Queen discovered this, that he in clothes of rank and privilege had stripped himself for a village woman to whip, she’d be furious. It would offend every principle she maintained. Yet even then I did not guess how much the Queen actually loved him.
“He told me he knew it was dangerous, and more than for himself he feared for Sonya. But he carried out his plan, and for months on end he accomplished his secret and heated rituals with the merciless Sonya.”
“And you and Lexius, during this time,” asked Beauty. “Did you continue with your embraces?”
“Yes, but they became more loving, more tender. I didn’t seek to make him my little puppy anymore. I merely loved him. And frankly, I was so afraid for him, I was hoping we’d be caught before he and Sonya would be caught, thinking that would be more tolerable for him, and the Queen in punishing him would extinguish his passion for sneaking off with Sonya.
“As the months passed, he fell deeper into the thrall of Sonya, and at last he was in perpetual agony. I could no longer really comfort him. Finally I resorted to trying to frighten him, reminding him what the Queen might do, that he was not highborn, that she might strap him to a wall naked for the next ten years if she chose, only taking him down for feeding and grooming a few hours out of every day. Did he not realize her power?
“And then he confessed to who he really was. Not royal? No. I was mistaken. Indeed, he said, he was from a great and noble family in India, and he had never been the Sultan’s servant. On the contrary, he’d been sent by his family as a guest to the Sultan to learn the ways of the Sultan’s type of pleasure slavery. He’d assumed the role of steward for the Sultan to perfect his learning. His family was rich, powerful, and could ransom him anytime he fell into difficulty. He had only to get a letter to them, and this he could do easily from the inn. He also told me he had gold aplenty hidden in the woods near the village. This he had taken from the doomed sultanate, but it was no more than he’d possessed when he had arrived there.
“‘But Lexius,’ I’d said to him. ‘What if you have no opportunity to defend yourself, to say who you are, to write a letter, to get to your gold?’
“He paid no attention to me. He went on with his ‘two lives,’ serving the Queen and loving Sonya.
“At that time, my family sent for me. My brother had died, and my nephew needed my guidance for a few years before he would ascend the throne. My clothes were brought to me, and because I’d served the Queen for so long and so well, I was given a luxurious apartment in the castle to rest before my long journey.
“Of course, ingrate that I am by nature, I smuggled Lexius in to see me. But I had to do it. I had to hold him in my arms before leaving him forever.
“And so we wept and talked together and went over all the many aspects of his dilemma. He told me he was from the city of Arikamandu, a port city in the southern part of India. And though he would not tell me his family’s name, he spoke of their dedication to a cruel goddess of love to whom they’d pledged eternal service.
“‘Perhaps I am ready now to return,’ he told me, ‘if only I can take my beloved Sonya with me. Alexi, will you help me? Your father’s soldiers are here. You are free. You are leaving. If I can get down to the village now and retrieve my gold and persuade Sonya to leave with me, will you help us go? Will you explain to the Queen who I am and that she cannot hold me?’
“I was horrified, but more to the point, I thought his plan was doomed to failure of another sort. ‘How will you and Sonya live and love without this kingdom?’ I asked him. ‘Don’t you see, your devotion to Sonya flourishes here in this atmosphere but likely will wither in no time outside of this unique realm.’”
Beauty smiled. How well she understood. The sanctuary of the bedroom, no matter how opulent and protected, was not the great engulfing world of the kingdom. The great world had a way of working itself into any bedchamber outside this kingdom, as she and Laurent had always accepted and always known. She’d loved Laurent with her whole soul since the day they married, but the heated embraces and rituals of mastery and submission they enjoyed in their bedroom were not really the glorious and luminous ways of the kingdom. And a conjugal love had been their everlasting defense.
Alexi had come to a stop.
“Well?” Beauty prodded.
Alexi swallowed and looked up. “Lexius said something strange in answer to this, that Bellavalten was not the only kingdom of its sort, even with the sultanate obliterated. He said he would handle the matter of where to go, where to take his cruel mistress, Sonya, and how his love for Sonya would flourish.
“And before I could answer him, or learn more, we were undone. The Queen appeared. She had been listening to everything we had said to one another from a small antechamber behind a curtain.”
There was an audible gasp from Lady Eva. But Beauty could see that none of this was news to Dmitri or Rosalynd or Elena, and the King merely waited attentively for the rest of the story. He had turned a little in his chair and rested his chin on his fist, studying Alexi, but plainly not seeing what was before him, but rather what might have happened long ago.
“We were confronted with our disobedience of course. I was denounced in the most vile terms and told to turn my back on the kingdom in the morning. But over Lexius’s deception, his failure to tell her who he really was, and his devotion to Sonya, she went mad with rage and grief. I had never seen her shed such tears. She smashed the mirrors of the room. She sent pitchers and goblets and plates crashing. She tore the necklaces from her throat, she rent her clothes like someone in mourning.”
He stopped. He shook his head. He looked stricken.
Beauty realized that Rosalynd and Elena had tears in their eyes, but Laurent and Lady Eva were merely fascinated. Had they really loved the old queen? It didn’t seem possible to her. No, they had loved Lexius.
“Well, what happened?” asked Lady Eva. She was bright and curious as always, fresh as if she’d stepped from a mountain waterfall, her quick green eyes filled with the usual optimism—that things could be known and understood and made better. How Beauty loved her.
“I had no choice but to appeal to her,” said Alexi. “I was no longer a naked slave. I was wearing the clothing brought to me from my father’s house. I was the regent of my own land, and wore the ring of regent brought to me by my father’s soldiers. I had not even undressed for bed. I wore my full attire, such as it was. Of course one doesn’t really emerge from naked pleasure slavery in a matter of hours, or days, or even perhaps months. But the point is, I was a royal guest in Queen Eleanor’s castle now, not a naked sacrifice on the altar of her desire. And I had to speak for Lexius. I had to. I loved Lexius. I would have spoken even if I had not been lately restored to my old status. But of course I knew as a guest that I’d wronged the Queen
in her house. Of that I was painfully aware. I remember feeling a certain shame that I had deceived her, even as a guest, as I had done as a slave. Whatever the case, I drew myself up and spoke to her as a mighty prince might speak.
“‘I love you, Queen Eleanor,’ I said to her, and this was true. It was. ‘I existed here for you. My cock existed for you. My body existed for you to use and punish. And I have deceived you and I am ashamed. But we cannot be commanded to love. And we cannot command ourselves to love either. I love you, but Lexius loves Sonya!’”
Beauty nodded silently. No, we most certainly cannot be commanded to love. Beauty gazed at him fearfully, wanting him desperately to continue yet afraid of what he might reveal.
“Well, she answered me in unvarnished words,” said Alexi. “‘My heart is broken,’ she said. ‘I lose you, Alexi, you who were to me the sun and the moon, and I lose him, this dark bewitching god of love who makes a fire in my blood that nothing can cool, all in the same night! I cannot bear it.’ She began to wail like a woman at a funeral pyre. And she sent for Sonya.
“It was daylight by the time Sonya was brought into these chambers. Lexius was on his knees, nude, with his head bowed, saying nothing. And never had he looked more like a god, in fact, with his slender face and downcast eyes and strange patient submission. As for Sonya, this was the first time I’d ever beheld her and she had a humbling magnificence to her, that’s the only way I can describe it—a statuesque beauty who was clearly frightening. For one thing, she was exceptionally large for a woman, all over, large of bone, with facial features that were large, but the entire sculpture was that of exquisite and extreme femininity without doubt. She’d dressed hastily yet the impression was one of village opulence, I suppose, with the shorter hem required of villagers, yes, but beautiful sleeves and skirts and finely made boots. Her raven hair she had not done up, nor had time to brush, and as a consequence she looked as if she’d been pulled from bed, mussed with her cheeks burning, and her eyes aflame with a kind of raw indignation that can’t be suppressed.
“I could see in a flash why Lexius had succumbed to her. Sonya, of course, had never been anyone’s slave, and was in fact a terror of a mistress except to those who adored her. And when she began to speak to the Queen, she spoke much too much and she was not wise.
“‘Your Majesty,’ she cried, ‘I would never have left the kingdom with him and gone anywhere. I only took him into my private rooms because he needed so badly to be instructed, trained, broken. He had never really surrendered to anyone.’ Of course this infuriated Queen Eleanor as she thought she had already instructed, trained, and broken Lexius long ago, and that he’d surrendered to her completely.
“She banished all of us from the kingdom. Sonya, sobbing and crying, was not even allowed to see her uncle the mayor or say farewell to her beloved fillies, as she called them. Lexius was allowed his fine clothes, his sword, and his gold from its hiding place in the woods, as it was indeed his, and we were all put out of the kingdom.
“The Queen in those last hours was as a flower withered overnight, a flower that had been past its prime already for some time but as lovely still as other blooms—only to wither all at once, and drop its petals in a silent downpour. She was a ghost of herself as she stood accepting our parting bows. She gave gold aplenty to me as was the custom, but not her kiss, her forgiveness, or her blessing. And it was then—as I learned later on—that she began her turning away from the kingdom.
“I journeyed with Lexius and Sonya to a port from which they sailed for India. We spent many nights together in the inn there talking to one another as we waited for the right ship. Sonya and Lexius, well, they had begun to quarrel before they sailed.
“A year later, maybe a little more, I received a letter from Lexius that Sonya had disappeared. She had not found the climate of Arikamandu and its surrounding country congenial to her. She had gone away. Lexius had bestowed great wealth on her. But she was never coming back, this he knew. He was bereft. About that time, Dmitri had long been free and was visiting with me. . . . Dmitri wanted to visit Lexius—” He stopped.
“I went on to Arikamandu,” said Dmitri carefully. “I wanted to see Lexius. A bond had been forged between me and Lexius when he brought us back from the sultanate. I visited for some time with Lexius in India. We were bound together by many things. And then I returned, and now Lexius is returning as well.”
Beauty was amazed. What had the distant city of Arikamandu been like? And what of Lexius’s powerful family? There was so much she wanted to know. She did not yearn for foreign places or new adventures beyond Bellavalten, but she did long for knowledge, knowledge of all sorts, and she always had.
She tried to picture Lexius as she remembered him. There came back to her a seductive memory of him as the Sultan’s exacting steward, examining her body as he had received her into the Sultan’s service. There had been something melancholy and languid about him always. And when Laurent had made a slave of him, he’d enjoyed a sweet terror that she well understood.
“But what of his strange remarks?” asked Laurent. “What did he mean when he said that this was not the only such kingdom?” He waited and then gestured for Dmitri to speak. “How long precisely did you stay in Arikamandu?”
Alexi looked up shyly at Dmitri, and Dmitri looked at Alexi in silence for a protracted moment that almost threatened disrespect for the King, but then Dmitri came to some inner resolve, and he looked towards Laurent.
“Sire, if you will forgive me, I must say that that is Lexius’s story to tell,” he said softly and pleadingly. “Please, I beg you, ask me not about those things. For that is another country, and another people.”
Laurent was obviously reflecting on this. Of course Beauty understood. Dmitri had been a guest in that other country, with those other people, and he did not want to violate his honor in any way.
Since he’d taken over the Place of Public Punishment, Dmitri had grown strong and resolute, losing entirely the tentative movements and speech that had marked him on the day of his return.
“I returned to my own country,” said Dmitri. “And it is this kingdom to which I belong now. Please let me say no more of Lexius than what I’ve said so far.”
“And Lexius will be here soon enough to tell his story,” Beauty said. “He’s made a long journey to come here. He must want to offer us more than his greetings and his good wishes. Those he might have given us by letter. Surely he has a purpose in coming himself.”
And that purpose had to be the very same purpose that brought all of them back, she thought, that he wanted to be part of the kingdom again.
A moment of silence fell. They were all pondering. Lady Eva was the first to speak.
“And was it this, you think, Alexi, this treachery of Lexius that started the decline of the old kingdom?”
“Yes, I suppose that it was, Lady Eva,” said Alexi. “But forgive me, Your Majesties, for saying so, because I must say so: the Queen did not understand things! I mean the undoing of the kingdom lay within the Queen for she had such strong ideas and was, well, blind to so much that was plain to others.”
“I agree,” said Laurent. “You don’t offend me when you speak of her in that way. I have spoken of her in that way, and so has my queen. All one has to do is listen to the grumblings and rantings of old Lord Gregory to understand what the Queen never understood.”
“Ah, but Lord Gregory has his uses,” said Lady Eva, rolling her eyes. She smiled and the King smiled at her in a secretive confiding way.
Beauty never minded when that happened. She’d grown accustomed to the King’s devotion to Lady Eva. She tended the King’s bruises and welts when Lady Eva had left his chambers. And Laurent came to her hot and hungry for her embraces on those nights as if Lady Eva had fed him one of her potions when in fact her potion had consisted only of her great gift for command.
“We have taken our building blocks
from Queen Eleanor here,” said Beauty, “but we have laid a new foundation. We have built new and wondrous edifices of our own.”
“Yes, Your Majesty, that is so true,” said Lady Eva, and now she flashed the smile she always reserved for Beauty, one of admiration and trust. “Well, maybe Lexius will have things to teach us, tricks and rituals from the Sultan’s kingdom for which the old queen had no taste.”
“Oh, he knows many,” said Rosalynd with a soft laugh. Elena nodded in agreement. “But then we know them too, don’t we?”
“You have been indispensable, Rosalynd and Elena, to the splendor in the gardens,” said Beauty. And this was a simple statement of truth. And then there were the slaves tethered in niches throughout the castle and on the road down to the village, works of art in bondage. These singular figures and clever tableaux were Beauty’s delight. “But then all of you here are indispensable. Yet there is room for more.”
“I will gladly receive Lexius,” said Laurent, with an air of finality. “Without hesitation, I will welcome him. It was I who brought him here years ago. I would have welcomed him had he come to me after he was banished. I’m glad he found friendship with you, Alexi and Dmitri.”
“Thank you, sire,” said Alexi. “I can’t claim to have done anything much but follow my heart.”
“And you are right,” Beauty said softly, gazing up at Alexi. “One cannot command oneself to love. How blessed we are those of us who do not have to try to do this. And we cannot command ourselves to love one form of loving over another.” She looked down, down at her hands folded in her lap, and her thoughts were suddenly confused and frightening to her. She wanted to speak of many things, but this was not the time or the place, and she feared she had revealed too much of her soul already.
“So true,” said Laurent. He turned and looked at her for a long moment.
“And Lexius should be here within days,” said Lady Eva.