But he was watching something through the open door of the Sign of the Lion, and in one glance I saw the little spectacle. A lovely village woman with a pretty red skirt and white ruffled blouse was spanking her slave quite diligently upon a wooden counter, and the lovely face peering out through its tears was that of Beauty. She writhed and struggled under the paddle. But I could see she was unfettered, just as I had been last night on the Public Turntable.
We passed the door. The Captain looked up, and as if in a nightmare I heard my Master halt the ponies. I stood still, my cock straining against the leather. But this was inescapable. My Master and the Captain were greeting each other and exchanging pleasantries. And the Captain was admiring the ponies. Roughly he jerked the horsetail up in the one on the right, lifting and stroking the shining black hair, and then he pinched the red thigh of the slave as the slave tossed his head and sent a shiver through the harnesses. The Captain laughed.
“O, we have a little high spirits here!” he said, and he turned to the pony with both hands, apparently provoked by the gesture. He lifted the slave’s chin and then the phallus and gave it several strong rocking upward jerks until the pony kicked and worked his legs friskily. Then came a soft pat on the rump, and the pony settled quietly.
“You know, Nicolas,” he said in that familiar deep voice, able to strike fear with one syllable, “I’ve told her Majesty several times that she should give up her horses for short journeys and rely on slave ponies. We could outfit a great stable for her quickly enough, and I think she would find it delightful. But she sees it as a village occupation and won’t really consider it.”
“She has very particular taste, Captain,” said my Master. “But tell me, have you ever seen this slave before?”
And to my horror he pulled my head back by the straps of the harness.
I could feel the Captain’s eyes on me, though I didn’t look. I could picture my cruelly stretched mouth, the straps of the harness scoring me.
He drew closer. He stood not three inches from me. And then I heard his low voice deeper still.
“Tristan!” and his large warm hand closed on my penis. He squeezed it hard, pinching the tip shut, and then let it go as sensation knotted at the end of it. He fondled my balls, pinching between his fingernails the covering of skin that was already pulled so tight around them by the lacings.
My face was scarlet. I couldn’t meet his gaze, my teeth clamping down on the huge phallus as if I could devour it. I felt my jaws working, my tongue lapping the leather as if I were somehow forced to do it. He stroked my chest, my shoulders.
A flashing image of the camp returned, of being tethered to that great wooden X in a circle of X’s and the soldiers standing idle about me, teasing my cock, educating it as I waited hour by hour for the evening whipping. And the Captain’s secretive smile as he strode past, his gold cape over one shoulder.
“So that is his name,” said my Master, his voice sounding young and more refined than the deep murmur of the Captain. “Tristan.” And hearing him speak it further tormented me.
“Of course I know him,” said the Captain. His large shadowy figure moved just a little to let a collection of young women pass, who were laughing and talking loudly.
“I brought him to the castle only six months ago. He was one of the wildest, broke and ran through the forest when he was ordered to strip, but I had him beautifully tamed when I put him at her Majesty’s feet. He’d become the darling of the two soldiers whose duty it was to whip him daily through the camp. They missed him more than any slave they ever had to discipline.”
I shivered silently, swallowing the sound, as the gag, strangely enough, made it all the harder.
“A rather volcanic passion,” said that soft rumbling voice. “It wasn’t the severity of the whippings that made him eat from my hand; it was the daily ritual.”
O, how true, I thought. My face smarted. That fearsome, inevitable sense of nakedness again descended on me. I could still see the freshly turned earth before the tents, feel the straps and hear their steps and their conversation as they moved along with me. “Only one more tent, Tristan.” Or that greeting every evening, “Come on, Tristan, time for our little trek through the camp, that’s it, that’s it, look at this, Gareth, how quickly this young man learns. What did I tell you, Geoffrey, that after three days I wouldn’t have to use the manacles?” and their feeding me with their hands after, wiping my mouth almost affectionately and patting me and giving me too much wine to drink, and taking me out after dark into the forest. I remembered their cocks, the argument about who would go first, and whether it was better with the mouth or the anus, and sometimes one of them fore and one of them aft, and the Captain never very far away it seemed, and always smiling. So they had felt affection for me. It had not been my imagination. And neither was the warmth I felt for them. And a slow, undeniable realization was dawning on me.
“But he was one of the finest, most beautifully mannered of all the Princes,” the Captain murmured, that voice seeming to come from his chest, not his mouth. I wanted suddenly to turn my head and look at him, see if he was just as handsome now as he had been then. My glimpse before had been too quick. “Given to Lord Stefan as his personal slave,” he continued, “with the Queen’s blessing. I am suprised to see him here.” Anger crept into his voice. “I told the Queen that I myself had broken him.”
He lifted my head, pushed it this way and that. I realized with mounting tension that I had been almost silent all this while, struggling not to make a sound in his presence, but I was now about to give way, and at last I couldn’t control it. I gave a low moan, but it was better than crying.
“What did you do? Look at me!” he said. “Did you displease the Queen?”
I shook my head no, but I wouldn’t look into his eyes, my whole body seeming to swell under the harnessing.
“Was it Stefan you displeased?”
I nodded. I glanced into his eyes and away, unable to stand it. Some strange bond existed between me and this man. And no bond—that was the horror of it—existed between me and Stefan.
“And he’d been your lover before, hadn’t he?” the Captain pushed, drawing close to my ear, though I knew my Master could hear him. “Years before he came to live in the Kingdom.”
I nodded again.
“And that humiliation was more than you could bear?” he demanded. “You who were taught to part your buttocks for common soldiers?”
“No!” I cried behind the gag, shaking my head violently. My head was pounding. And that slow, inescapable realization that had begun only moments before became clearer and clearer.
Out of sheer frustration, I cried. If only I could explain.
But grasping the little silver buckle of the phallus in my mouth, the Captain pushed my head back.
“Or was it,” he said, “that your former lover didn’t have the strength to master you?”
I turned my eyes, staring directly at him now, and if one can be said to smile with such a gag in one’s mouth, I smiled. I heard my own sigh come slowly. And then despite his hand on the phallus, I nodded.
His face was clear and beautiful as I remembered. I saw his full and robust figure in the sun as he took the snapping thrash from my Master. And as we looked each other in the eye, he commenced to whip me.
Yes, the realization was complete. I had wanted the total degradation of the village. I could not bear Stefan’s love, his tentativeness, his inability to govern me. And for his weakness in our predestined bond, I despised him.
Beauty had understood my aims. She had known my soul better than I knew it. This was what I deserved and hungered for because it was as violent as the soldiers’ camp, where my dignity, my pride, my self had been so thoroughly plundered.