I picked it up at once and sat back against the paneling, watching him.
He paced again, once, back and forth, and then he turned, staring at me.
“I’m in love with you!” he said. He drew close and peered into my eyes. “In love with you! Not merely with punishing you, though that I will do, or with your subservience, which I love and crave, also. I am in love with you, your secret soul that is as vulnerable as the reddened flesh under my strap, and all your strength collected under our combined governance!”
I was speechless. All I could do was look at him, lost in the heat of his voice and the look in his eyes. But my soul was soaring.
He drew away from the bed and, glancing sharply back at me, paced and paced again.
“Ever since the Queen commenced the importation of naked pleasure slaves,” he said, looking at the carpet beneath his feet, “I have puzzled over what it is that makes a strong, highborn Prince of a slave obey with such complete submission. I have racked my brain to understand it.” He paused, then went on, his hands loose at his sides and rising now and then with an easy gesture.
“All those I’ve questioned in the past have given me timid, guarded answers. You have spoken from your soul, but what is clear is that you accept your slavery as easily as they do. Of course, as the Queen has explained to me, all slaves are examined. And only the likely, as well as the beautiful, are chosen.”
He looked at me. I had never realized that there had been an examination. But immediately I recalled the Queen’s emissaries whom I had been sent to meet in a chamber of my father’s castle. I remembered them ordering me to remove my clothes and how they had touched me and watched me as I stood still for their probing fingers. I had exhibited no sudden passion. But maybe their trained eyes had seen more than I realized. They had kneaded my flesh, asked me questions, studied my face as I blushed and tried to answer.
“Rarely, if ever, does a slave run away,” my Master continued. “And most of those who run wish to be caught. It’s obvious. Defiance is the motive, boredom the incentive. The few who take the time to steal the Mistress’s or Master’s clothes succeed in their escape.”
“But doesn’t the Queen take out her wrath on their Kingdoms?” I asked. “My father himself told me the Queen was all-powerful, fearsome. Her request for slave Tributes couldn’t be denied.”
“Nonsense,” he said. “The Queen isn’t going to send her armies into war over one naked slave. All that happens is that the slave reaches his native country somewhat in disgrace. His parents are asked to send him back. If they don’t, then the slave earns no great reward. That’s all. No bag of gold. Obedient slaves are sent home with a great deal of gold. And of course there’s often the parents’ shame that their lovely has proved soft and inconstant. Brothers and sisters at home who have served as slaves resent the deserter. But what’s all that to a strong young Prince who finds service intolerable?”
He stopped his pacing and stared at me.
“A slave escaped yesterday,” he said “It was a Princess, and they have now almost given up the search. She wasn’t caught by the loyal peasants or any other village. She’s reached the bordering Kingdom of King Lysius, where slaves are always given safe passage.”
So what the slave pony Jerard had said was true! I sat, stunned, thinking about this. But I was even more stunned by the fact that the words had so little impact. My mind was in chaos.
He started to pace again, slowly, deep in his thoughts.
“Of course, there are slaves who would never take such a risk,” he started up suddenly. “They cannot endure the thought of the search parties, the capture, the public humiliation and even worse punishment. And over and over again their passions are roused, fed, roused again, and fed again so they can no longer tell punishment from pleasure. That is what the Queen wants. And these slaves probably cannot endure the thought of reaching home only to try to convince an ignorant father or mother that service here was unendurable. How to describe what had been done? How to describe that they bore as much of it as they did, or the pleasure that was inevitably incited in them? Nevertheless, why do they accept it so readily? Why do they strain to please? Why are they caught up in the vision of the Queen, the visions of their Masters and Mistresses?”
My head was swimming. And it wasn’t the wine that caused it.
“But you’ve shed much light upon the mind of the slave,” he said looking at me again, his face earnest and simple and beautiful in the glow of the candles. “You’ve shown me that for the true slave, the rigors of the castle and the village become a great adventure. There is something undeniable in the true slave who worships those of unquestioned power. He or she longs for perfection even in the slave state, and perfection for a naked pleasure slave must be yielding to the most extreme punishments. The slave spiritualizes these ordeals, no matter how crude and painful. And all the torments of the village, even more than the more decorous humiliations of the castle, tumble fast one upon the other in an endless current of excitement.”
He approached the bed. I think he could see the fear in my face as I looked up.
“And who understands power, worships it, more than those who have had it?” he said. “You who have had power understood it as you knelt at Lord Stefan’s foot. Poor Lord Stefan.”
I rose and he took me in his arms.
“Tristan,” he whispered, “my beautiful Tristan.” Our passions had been purged, but we kissed in a fever, our arms tight around each other, the affection overflowing.
“But there is more,” I whispered in his ear as he kissed my face almost hungrily. “In this descent, it is the Master who creates the order, the Master who lifts the slave out of the engulfing chaos of abuse, and disciplines the slave, refines him, drives him further in ways that random punishments might never provide. It is the Master, not the punishments, who perfects him.”
“Then it is not engulfing,” he said, kissing me still. “It is embracing.”
“Over and over we are lost,” I said, “only to be retrieved by the Master.”
“But even without that one all-powerful love,” he insisted, “you are enfolded in a womb of relentless attention and pleasure.”
“Yes,” I agreed. I nodded, kissing his throat, his lips. “But it’s glorious,” I whispered, “if one adores one’s Master, if the mystery is intensified by an irresistible figure at the core of it.”
Our embrace was so rough and sweet, it didn’t seem that passion could have been any better.
Very slowly, gently, he drew back.
“Get up,” he said. “It’s only midnight and the spring air is warm outside. I want to walk in the country.”
UNDER THE STARS
UNFASTENING HIS breeches, he tucked in his shirt, laced it and laced his doublet. I hastened to lace his boots for him, but he did not acknowledge it. He gestured for me to rise again and follow him.
Within moments we were outside, and the air was warm and we were walking silently through the intertwining lanes, west, out of the village. I walked at his side with my hands clasped behind my back, and when we passed other dark figures, most often lone Masters with a single marching slave, I dropped my eyes, as seemed respectful.
Many lights burned in the little windows of the close-peaked-roofed houses. And when we turned into a broad street, I could see far away to the east the lights of the marketplace and hear the dull roar of the crowd in the Place of Public Punishment.
Even the sight of my Master’s profile in the dark, the dull luminosity of his hair, excited me. My spent cock was ready to come back to life. A touch, even a command, would have done it. And the concealed state of readiness heightened all of my senses.
We had come to the square of the Inns. There were suddenly bright lights all around us. Torches flared beneath the high painted Sign of the Lion, and the noise of a large crowd swelled through the open doorway.
I followed my Master to the entrance, and he gestured for me to kneel as he went inside, leaving me there. I
rested back on my heels and peered into the gloom. Everywhere men laughed, talked, drank from their flagons. My Master was at the counter purchasing a full wineskin, which he already had in his hands as he spoke to the beautiful dark-haired woman with the red skirts whom I had seen that morning punishing Beauty.
And then, high on the wall behind the counter, I saw Beauty. She was bound to the wall, her hands above her head, her beautiful gold hair falling down behind her shoulders, and her legs were straddling the immense keg on which she sat, her eyes closed in pleasant sleep, it seemed, her luscious pink mouth half open. And on either side of her were other such slaves all dozing as if in deep fatigue, their whole attitude one of hopeless contentment.
0, if Beauty and I could only be alone for a moment. If I could only talk to her, tell her what I had learned and the feelings that had been aroused in me.
But my Master had come back, and bidding me to rise, he led the way out of the square. We were soon at the west gates of the village and we walked along the country road that led to the manor house.
He put his arm around me, offered me the wineskin. It was beautifully quiet now under the high dome of stars. Only one coach passed us on the road and it seemed a moonlight vision.
A team of twelve Princesses brought it smartly along, the lovelies harnessed three across in snow-white leather, and the coach itself was exquisitely gilded. To my amazement, my Mistress Julia rode in the coach beside a tall man, and both waved, as they passed, to my Master.
“That is the Lord Mayor of the village,” said my Master softly to me.
We turned before we reached the manor house. But I knew we were already on his land, and we walked over the grass, through the fruit trees, and towards the nearby hills that were densely covered in forest.
I don’t know how long we walked. Maybe an hour. And we settled finally on a high slope halfway uphill with the valley spread out before us. The clearing was just large enough for us to make a little fire and to sit back against the side of the hill, the dark trees hovering over us.
My Master tended the fire until it was going well. Then he lay back. I sat up with my leg crossed looking at the towers and peaks of the village. I could see the brilliant glare of the Place of Public Punishment. The wine made me sleepy and my Master stretched out, with his hands beneath his head and his eyes wide open and fixed on the dark blue moonlit sky above and the grand sweep of the constellations.
“I have never loved any slave as I love you,” he said calmly.
I tried to restrain myself. To listen only to my heartbeat for a moment in the stillness. But I said all too quickly:
“Will you buy me outright from the Queen and keep me in the village?”
“Do you know what you are asking?” he said. “You’ve only endured two days here.”
“Would it do any good if I begged you on my knees, kissed your boots, prostrated myself?”
“It isn’t required,” he said. “At the end of the week, I will go to the Queen with my usual accounting of the winter activities of the village. I know as certainly as I know my name that I will offer to purchase you outright and make a strong case for it.”
“But Lord Stefan—”
“Leave Lord Stefan to me. I shall make you a prediction about Lord Stefan: Every year on Midsummer Night a strange ritual is enacted. All those in the village who wish to be made into slaves for the following twelve months present themselves to be privately examined. Tents are set up for the purpose and the villagers are stripped and carefully looked over in every particular. And the same takes place among the Lords and Ladies of the castle. No one is entirely sure who has made himself or herself available for the examination.
“But at midnight on Midsummer Night the names are announced both at the castle and on the high platform of the marketplace in the village of all those who have been accepted. It is only a tiny portion, of course, of those who have offered. Only the most beautiful, the most aristocratic in appearance, the strongest. As each name is called, the crowd turns searching for the chosen one—everyone here knows everyone else, quite naturally—and at once he or she is found out, rushed to the platform, and there stripped naked. Of course there is dread, regret, abject fright at the wish being violently fulfilled, the clothing ripped off, the hair let down, and the crowd enjoys it as much as the auction. The regular slave Princes and Princesses, especially those who have been punished by the new villager slave, scream with joy and approbation.
“Then the village victims are sent off to the castle, where for a glorious year they will serve in the lowest capacities, but almost indistinguishable from Princes and Princesses.
“And from the castle we receive those Lords and Ladies who have given themselves over in like manner, having been stripped by their peers in the Castle Pleasure Gardens, sometimes so few that there are only three of them. You cannot imagine the excitement it brings on Midsummer Night when they are brought to be auctioned. Lords and Ladies on the block. The prices are dizzying. The Lord Mayor almost always buys one as he reluctantly gives up last year’s prize. Sometimes my sister, Julia, buys another. Once there were as many as five, last year only two, and now and then one. And the Captain of the Guard has told me that this year, all the bets are down that the castle exiles will include Lord Stefan.”
I was too amused and surprised to answer.
“From all you’ve said, Lord Stefan doesn’t know how to command and the Queen knows it. If he offers himself he will be chosen.”
I laughed softly to myself. “He does not even guess what is in store for him!” I said quietly. I shook my head, and then laughed again under my breath, trying to subdue it.
He turned his head to smile at me. “You’ll be mine soon, all mine, mine for three, maybe four, years.” And when he rose on his elbow I lay down beside him and embraced him. The passion was rising again, but he bid it be quiet, and I lay still, trying to obey, my head on his chest, his hand on my forehead.
After a long time, I asked: “Master, is a slave ever granted a request?”
“Almost never,” he whispered, “because the slave is never allowed to ask. But you may ask. I will permit that much.”
“Is it possible for me to discover how it goes with another slave, if she is obedient and resigned or being punished for rebellion?”
“Why?”
“I came down in the cart with the Crown Prince’s slave. Her name is Beauty. She was high-spirited, a sensation at the castle for her hot passions and her inability to conceal even the most transient emotions. In the cart she asked me the very same question you asked: Why do we obey? She’s in the Sign of the Lion now. She’s the slave whom the Captain mentioned by name to you today at the well after he whipped me. Is there any way to discover if she has found the same acceptance that I’ve found? Just to ask, perhaps ...”
I felt his hand gently tug at my hair, his lips touch my forehead. He spoke softly. “If you like, I will let you see her and ask her yourself tomorrow.”
“Master!” I was too grateful and amazed to put it further into words. He let me kiss his lips. Boldly I kissed his cheeks and even his eyelids. He gave me the faintest smile. Then he settled me back on his chest.
“You know your day will be hard and very busy before you see her,” he said.
“Yes, Sir,” I answered.
“Now, go to sleep,” he said. “There’s much work for you to do in the orchards on the farm tomorrow before we go back to the village. You’ll be harnessed to pull a good-sized basket of fruit back to my town house, and I want to be done with all that so that by high noon when the crowd is at its daytime thickest you can be punished on the Public Turntable.”
A little conflagration of panic flared inside me for a moment. I clung to him a little more tightly. And I felt his lips brush the top of my head tenderly.
Gently he disengaged himself and turned over on his stomach to sleep, his face away from me, his left arm curled under him. “You’ll spend the afternoon at the public stables to be
hired out,” he said. “You will trot on the pony track there, harnessed and ready, and I expect to hear that you showed such spirit you were hired out immediately.”
I looked at his long elegant form in the moonlight, the gleaming white of his sleeves, the perfect shape of his calves in their sheathing of supple leather. I belonged to him. Completely I belonged to him.
“Yes, Master,” I said softly.
I knelt up and, bending over him silently, kissed his right hand, which lay on the grass beside him. “Thank you, Master.”
“In the evening,” he said, “I’ll talk to the Captain about sending Beauty.”
An hour must have passed.
The fire was out.
He was sound asleep, I could tell from his breathing. He wore no weapons, not even a dagger concealed on his person. And I knew that I could easily have overpowered him. He hadn’t my weight or strength, and six months at the castle had toned my muscles well. I could have taken his clothes from him, left him bound and gagged, and made off to the land of King Lysius. There was even money in his pockets.
And surely he had realized all this before we ever left the village.
He was either putting me to the test or so certain of me that it never crossed his mind. And as I lay awake in the dark, I had to learn for myself what he already knew; Would I or would I not run now that I had the opportunity?
It was no difficult decision. But each time I told myself that of course I would not, I found myself thinking of it. Escape, going home, standing up to my father, telling him to call the Queen’s bluff, or going off to some other land in search of adventure. I suppose I would not have been a human being if I didn’t at least think of those things.
And I thought too of being caught by the peasants. Being brought back over the saddle of the Captain of the Guard, naked again, to some unspeakable penance for what I’d done, and perhaps losing my Master forever.
I thought of other possibilities. I thought them all through and through, and then I turned over and snuggled close to my Master and slipped my arm gently around his waist, pressing my face into the velvet of his doublet. I had to get to sleep. After all, there was much to be done in the morning. I could almost see the noontime crowd around the turntable.