Beauty s Punishment - By Anne Rice Page 0,11

gaze drift up the walls, and she realized that there were people in the windows here and there watching her. Ahead she saw a woman with her arms folded before her as she looked down. And across the way farther on was a young man sitting on the window-sill who smiled at her and blew her a little kiss, and then there appeared in the lane a coarsely dressed man with bowed legs who took off his hat to "Mistress Lockley" and bowed as he went past. His eyes barely touched on Beauty, but he gave her buttocks a pat as she went by.

That odd feeling of the regularity of it began to confuse Beauty. At the same time she luxuriated in it, as she was brought swiftly into another very large cobble-stoned square, this one with a public well in the center, surrounded on all sides by the signs of various Inns.

There was the Sign of the Bear and the Sign of the Anchor, and the Sign of the Crossed Swords, but by far the most magnificent was the gilded Sign of the Lion, hanging high over a vast carriageway and under three stories of deeply cut leaded windows. But the most startling detail of all was the body of a naked Princess swaying beneath the sign, bound with her ankles and her wrists together on a leather chain, so that she hung like ripe fruit from the shingle, her naked red sex painfully exposed.

It was exactly the way that Princes and Princesses had been tethered in the Punishment Hall at the castle, a position Beauty had never suffered and that she dreaded most of all. The Princess's face was fixed between her legs only inches above her swollen and mercilessly revealed sex, and her eyes were almost closed. When she saw Mistress Lockley she moaned and wriggled on the chain, straining forward in supplication, just as the punished Princes and Princesses had done in the Hall of Punishments.

Beauty's heart stopped when she saw the girl. But she was pulled right past her, quite unable to turn

her

head for a better view of the unfortunate, and trotted into the main room of the Inn.

Despite the warmth of the day the enormous room was cool, and a little cooking fire blazed on the giant hearth under a steaming iron kettle. There were dozens of smoothly polished tables and benches spread out over the vast tiled floor. Giant kegs lined the walls. There was a long shelf at one end coming out from the hearth and, on the far wall opposite, what appeared to be a crude little stage.

A long rectangular counter extended towards the door from the hearth, and behind it stood a man with a flagon in his hand and his elbow resting on the wood as if ready to serve ale to any who asked for it. He lifted his shaggy head and caught Beauty with small deep-set dark eyes, and smiling said, "Quite well you've done, I see," to Mistress Lockley.

Beauty's eyes took a moment to get used to the shadows, and when they did she realized there were many other naked slaves in the room. One naked Prince with beautiful black hair was on his knees in the far corner scrubbing the floor with a heavy brush that he held by its wooden handle with his teeth. A dark blond Princess was set to the same task just inside the doorway. Another young woman, her brown hair coiled on top of her head, polished a bench on her knees, mercifully allowed to use her hands to do it. Two others, a Prince and Princess, their hair free, knelt at the far edge of the hearth in the blaze of sunlight from the back door, polishing pewter plates vigorously.

None of these slaves even dared to glance at Beauty. Their whole attitude was one of obedience, and as the little Princess with the scrub brush hurried on to wash the floor very near Beauty's feet, Beauty saw her legs and buttocks had recently been punished.

"But who are these slaves?" Beauty thought. She was almost sure that she and Tristan had been among the first load to be sentenced to hard labor. Were these the incorrigibles who behaved so badly they had been consigned for a year to the village?

"Get the wooden paddle," said Mistress Lockley to the man at the bar. She pulled Beauty forward and quickly threw her over the counter.

Beauty gave a groan before she could stop