The precious little boys – they could be no more than fourteen or fifteen, despite their height – had always been richly dressed, but this morning they wore embroidered silk robes, and their tight waist sashes were made of rich striped cloth, and their black hair gleamed with oil, and their innocent faces were dark with an unusual air of anxiety.
At once, the other royal captives were roused, and each slave was taken from the cage and led to the proper grooming table.
Beauty stretched herself out on the silk, enjoying her sudden freedom from confinement, the muscles in her legs tingling. She glanced at Tristan and then at Laurent. Tristan was suffering too much still. Laurent, as always, looked faintly amused. But there was not even time now to say farewell. She prayed they would not be separated, that whatever happened they would come to know it together, and that somehow their new captivity would yield moments when they might be able to talk.
At once the attendants rubbed the gold pigmented oil into Beauty's skin, strong fingers working it well into her thighs and buttocks. Her long hair was lifted and brushed with gold dust, and then she was turned on her back gently.
Skilled fingers opened her mouth. Her teeth were polished with a soft cloth. Waxen gold was applied to her lips. And then gold paint was brushed onto her eyelashes and eyebrows.
Not since the first day of the journey had she or any of the slaves been so thoroughly decorated. And her body steamed with familiar sensations.
She thought hazily of her divinely crude Captain of the Guard, of the elegant but distantly remembered tormentors of the Queen's Court, and she felt desperate to belong to someone again, to be punished for someone, to be possessed as well as chastised.
It was worth any humiliation, that, to be possessed by another. In retrospect, it seemed she had only been a flower in full bloom when she was thoroughly violated by the will of another, that in suffering for the will of another she had discovered her true self.
But she had a new and slowly deepening dream, one that had begun to flame in her mind during the time at sea, and that she had confided only to Laurent: the dream that she might somehow find in this strange land what she had not found before; someone whom she might truly love.
In the village, she had told Tristan that she did not want this, that it was harshness and severity alone she craved. But the truth was that Tristan's love for his Master had deeply affected her. His words had swayed her, even as she had spoken her contradictions.
And then had come these lonely nights at sea of unfulfilled yearning, of pondering too much all the twists of fate and fortune. And she had felt strangely fragile thinking of love, of giving her secret soul to a Master or Mistress, more than ever off balance.
The groom combed gold paint into her pubic hair, tugging each curl to make it spring. Beauty could hardly keep her hips still. Then she saw a handful of fine pearls held out for her inspection. And into her pubic hair these went, to be affixed to the skin with powerful adhesive. Such lovely decorations. She smiled.
She closed her eyes for a second, her sex aching in its emptiness. Then she glanced at Laurent to see that his face had taken on an Oriental cast with the gold paint, his nipples beautifully erect like his thick cock. And his body was being ornamented, as befitted its size and power, with rather large emeralds instead of pearls.
Laurent was smiling at the little boy who did the work, as if in his mind he was peeling away the boy's fancy clothes. But then he turned to Beauty, and, lifting his hand languidly to his lips, he blew her a little kiss, unnoticed by the others.
He winked and Beauty felt the desire in her burning hotter. He was so beautiful, Laurent.
"O, please don't let us be separated," she prayed. Not because she ever thought she would possess Laurent – that would be too interesting – but because she would be lost without the others, lost....
And then it hit her with full force: She had no idea what would happen to her in the Sultanate, and absolutely no control over it. Going into the village, she had known. She had been told. Even coming into the castle, she had known. The Crown Prince had prepared her. But this was beyond her imagining, this place. And beneath her concealing gold paint she grew pale.
The grooms were gesturing for their charges to rise. There were the usual exaggerated and urgent signs for them to be silent, still, obedient, as they stood in a circle facing each other.
And Beauty felt her hands lifted and clasped behind her back as if she were a senseless little being who could not even do that much herself. Her groom touched the back of her neck and then kissed her cheek softly as she compliantly bowed her head.
Still, she could see the others clearly. Tristan's genitals had also been decorated with pearls, and he gleamed from head to toe, his blond locks even more golden than his burnished skin.
And, glancing at Dmitri and Rosalynd, she saw that they had both been decorated with red rubies. Their black hair was in magnificent contrast to their polished skin. Rosalynd's enormous blue eyes looked drowsy under their fringe of painted lashes. Dmitri's broad chest was tightened like that of a statue, though his strongly muscled thighs quivered uncontrollably.
Beauty suddenly winced as her groom added a bit more gold paint to each of her nipples. She couldn't take her eyes off his small brown fingers, enthralled by the care with which he worked, and the way that her nipples hardened unbearably. She could feel each of the pearls clinging to her skin. Every hour of starvation at sea sharpened her silent craving.
But the captives had another little treat in store for them. She watched furtively, her head still bowed, as the grooms drew out of their deep, hidden pockets new and frightening little toys – pairs of gold clamps with long chains of delicate but sturdy links attached to them.
The clamps Beauty knew and dreaded, of course. But the chains – they really agitated her. They were like leashes and they had small leather handles.
Her groom touched her lips for quiet and then quickly stroked her right nipple, gathering a nice pinch of breast into the small gold scallop-shell clamp before he snapped it shut. The clamp was lined with a bit of white fur, yet the pressure was firm. And all of Beauty's skin seemed to feel the sudden nagging torment. When the other clamp was just as tightly in place, the groom gathered the handles of the long chains in his hands and gave them a tug. This was what Beauty had feared most. She was brought forward sharply, gasping.
At once the groom scowled, quite displeased with the openmouthed sound, and spanked her lips with his fingers firmly. She bowed my head lower, marveling at these two flimsy little chains, at their hold upon these unaccountably tender parts of her. They seemed to control her utterly.
She watched with her heart contracting, as the groom's hand tightened again and the chains were jerked, and she was pulled forward once more by her nipples. She moaned this time but she did not dare to open her lips, and for this she received his approving kiss, the desire surging painfully inside her.
"O, but we cannot be led ashore like this," she thought. She could see Laurent, opposite, clamped the same as she was, and blushing furiously as his groom tugged the hated little chains and made him step forward. Laurent looked more helpless than he had in the village on the Punishment Cross.
For a moment, all the delightful crudity of village punishments came back to her. And she felt more keenly this delicate restraint, the new quality of servitude.
She saw Laurent's little groom kiss his cheek approvingly. Laurent had not gasped or cried out. But Laurent's cock was bobbing uncontrollably. Tristan was in the same transparently miserable state, yet he looked, as ever, quietly majestic.
Beauty's nipples throbbed as if they were being whipped. The desire cascaded through her limbs, made her dance just a little without moving her feet, her head suddenly light with dreams of new and particular love again.
But the business of the grooms distracted her. They were taking down from the walls their long, stiff leather thongs; and these, like all other objects in this realm, were heavily st
udded with jewels, which made them heavy instruments of punishment, though, like strips of sapling wood, they were quite flexible.
She felt the light sting on the back of her calves, and the little double leash was pulled. She must move up behind Tristan, who had been turned towards the door. The others were probably lined up behind her.
And quite suddenly, for the first time in a fortnight, they were to leave the hold of the ship. The doors were opened, Tristan's groom leading him up the stairs, the thong playing on Tristan's calves to make him march, and the sunlight pouring down from the deck was momentarily blinding. There came with it a great deal of noise – the sound of crowds, of distant shouts, of untold numbers of people.
Beauty hurried up the wooden stairs, the wood warm under her feet, the tugging of her nipples making her moan again. What precious genius, it seemed, to be led so easily by such refined instruments. How well these creatures understood their captives.
She could scarcely bear the sight of Tristan's tight, strong buttocks in front of her. It seemed she heard Laurent moan behind. She felt afraid for Elena and Dmitri and Rosalynd.
But she had emerged on the deck and could see on either side the crowd of men in their long robes and turbans. And beyond the open sky, and high mud-brick buildings of a city. They were in the middle of a busy port, in fact, and everywhere to right and left were the masts of other ships. The noise, like the light itself, was numbing.
"O, not to be led ashore like this," she thought again. But she was rushed behind Tristan across the deck and down an easy, sloping gangplank. The salt air of the sea was suddenly clouded with heat and dust, the smell of animals and dung and hemp rope, and the sand of the desert.
The sand, in fact, covered the stones upon which she suddenly found herself standing. And she could not help but raise her head to see the great crowds being held back by turbaned men from the ship, hundreds and hundreds of dark faces scrutinizing her and the other captives. There were camels and donkeys piled high with wares, men of all ages in linen robes, most with their heads either turbaned or veiled in longer, flowing desert headdresses.
For a moment Beauty's courage failed her utterly. It was not the Queen's village, this. No, it was something far more real, even as it was foreign.
And yet her soul expanded as the little clamps were tugged again, as she saw gaudily dressed men appear in groups of four, each group bearing on its shoulders the long gilded rods of an open, cushioned litter.
Immediately, one of these cushions was lowered before her. And her nipples were pulled again by the mean little leashes as the thong snapped at her knees. She understood. She knelt down on the cushion, its rich red and gold design dazzling her slightly. And she felt herself pushed back on her heels, her legs opened wide, her head bowed again by a warm hand placed firmly on her neck.
"This is unbearable," she thought, moaning as softly as she could, "that we will be carried through the city itself. Why were we not taken secretly to His Highness the Sultan? Are we not royal slaves?"
But she knew the answer. She saw it in the dark faces that pressed in on all sides.
"We are only slaves here. No royalty accompanies us now. We are merely expensive and fine, like the other merchandise brought from the hold of the ships. How could the Queen let this happen to us?"
But her fragile sense of outrage was at once dissolved as if in the heat of her own naked flesh. Her groom pushed her knees even wider apart, and spread her buttocks upon her heels as she struggled to remain utterly pliant.
"Yes," she thought, her heart palpitating, her skin breathing in the awe of the crowd, "a very good position. They can see my sex. They can see every secret part of me." Yet she struggled with another little flair of alarm. And the gold leashes were quickly wound around a golden hook at the front of the cushion, which made them quite taut, holding her nipples in a state of bittersweet tension.
Her heart beat too fast. Her little groom further frightened her with all his desperate gestures that she be silent, that she be good. He was being fussy as he touched her arms. No, she must not move them. She knew that. Had she ever tried so hard to remain motionless? When her sex convulsed like a mouth gasping for air, could the crowd see it?
The litter was lifted carefully to the shoulders of the turbaned bearers. She grew almost dizzy with an awareness of her exposure. But it comforted her just a little to see Tristan kneeling on his cushion just ahead, to be reminded that she was not alone here.
The noisy crowd made way. The little procession moved through the huge open place that spread out from the harbor.
Overcome with a sense of decorum, she dared not move a muscle. Yet she could see all around her the great bazaar – merchants with their bright ceramic wares spread out upon multicolored rugs; rolls of silk and linen in stacks; leather goods and brass goods and ornaments of silver and gold; cages of fluttering, clucking birds; and food cooking in smoking pots under dusty canopies.
Yet the whole market had turned its chattering attention to the captives who were being carried past. Some stood mute beside their camels, just staring. And some – the young bareheaded boys, it seemed – ran along beside Beauty, glancing up at her and pointing and talking rapidly.
Her groom was at her left, and with his long leather thong he made some small adjustment of her long hair, and now and then fiercely admonished the crowd, driving it backwards.
Beauty tried not to see anything but the high mudbrick buildings coming closer and closer.
She was being carried up an incline, but her bearers held the litter level. And she struggled to keep her perfect form, though her chest heaved and pulled at the mean little clamps, the long gold chains that held her nipples shivering in the sunlight.
They were in a steep street, and on either side of her windows opened, people pointed and stared, and the crowd streamed along the walls, their cries growing suddenly louder as they echoed off the stones. The grooms drove them back with even stricter commands.
"Ah, what do they feel as they look at us?" Beauty thought. Her naked sex pulsed between her legs. It seemed to feel itself so disgracefully opened. "We are as beasts, are we not? And these wretched people do not for a moment imagine that such a fate could befall them, poor as they might be. They wish only that they might possess us."
The gold paint tightened on her skin, tightened particularly on her clamped nipples.
And try as she might, she could not keep her hips entirely still. Her sex seemed to churn with desire and move her entire body with it. The glances of the crowd touched her, teased her, made her ache in her emptiness.
But they had come to the end of the street. The crowd streamed out into an open place where thousands more stood watching. The noise of voices came in waves. Beauty could not even see the end of this crowd, as hundreds jostled to get a closer look at the procession. She felt her heart pound even harder as she saw the great golden domes of a palace rising before her.
The sun blinded her. It flashed on white marble walls, Moorish arches, giant doors covered in gold leaf, soaring towers so delicate that they made the dark, crude, stone castles of Europe seem somehow clumsy and vulgar.
The procession turned to the left sharply. And, for an instant, Beauty glimpsed Laurent behind her, then Elena, her long brown hair swaying in the breeze, and the dark, motionless figures of Dmitri and Rosalynd. All obedient, all still upon their cushioned litters.
The young boys in the crowd seemed to be more frenzied. They cheered and ran up and down, as though the proximity of the palace somehow heightened their excitement.
Beauty saw that the procession had come to a side entrance, and turbaned guards with great scimitars hanging from their girdles drove the crowd back as a pair of heavy doors were opened.
"O, blessed silence," Beauty thought. She saw Tristan carried beneath the arch, and immediately she followed.
They had not entered a courtyard as she had expected. Rather they were in a large corridor, its walls covered in intricate mosaics. Even
the ceiling above was a stone tapestry of flowers and spirals. The bearers suddenly came to a halt. The doors far behind were closed. And they were all plunged into shadow.
Only now did Beauty see the torches on the walls, the lamps in their little niches. A huge crowd of young dark-faced boys, dressed exactly like the grooms from the ship, surveyed the new slaves silently.
Beauty's cushion was lowered. At once, her groom clasped the leashes and pulled her forward onto her knees on the marble. The bearers and the cushions quickly disappeared through doors that Beauty hardly glimpsed. And she was pushed down onto her hands, her groom's foot firm on the back of her neck as he forced her forehead right to the marble flooring.
Beauty shivered. She sensed a different manner in her groom. And, as the foot pressed harder, almost angrily, against her neck, she quickly kissed the cold floor, overcome with misery that she couldn't know what was wanted.
But this seemed to appease the little boy. She felt his approving pat on her buttocks.
Now her head was lifted. And she saw that Tristan was kneeling on all fours in front of her, the sight of his well-shaped backside further teasing her.
But as she watched in stunned silence, the little gold-link chains from her clamped nipples were passed through Tristan's legs and under his belly.
"Why?" she wondered, even as the clamps pinched her with renewed tightness.
But immediately she was to know the answer. She felt a pair of chains being passed between her own thighs, teasing her lips. And now a firm hand clasped her chin and opened her mouth, and the leather handles were fed to her like a bit that she must hold in her teeth with the usual firmness.
She realized this was Laurent's leash, and she was now to pull him along by the damnable little chains just as she herself was to be pulled by Tristan. And if her head moved in the slightest involuntary way, she would add to Laurent's torment just as Tristan added to hers as he pulled the chains given him.