Beauty's Punishment - By A. N. Roquelaure & Anne Rice Page 0,4
of real trepidation in his voice, but his face was almost hard when she looked up at him, only the beautiful eyes softening it just a little. She could see the slightest golden stubble of beard on his chin, and she wanted to kiss it.
“Will you watch for me after we’re separated, try to find me, if only to say a few words to me?” Beauty said. “0, just to know you are there ... but I don’t think I will be good. I don’t see why I should be good any longer. We’re bad slaves, Tristan. Why should we obey now?”
“What do you mean?” he asked. “You make me afraid for you.”
From far away, there came the faint roar of voices, the sound of a large crowd carrying sluggishly over the low hills, the dim vibration of a village fair, of hundreds talking, shouting, milling.
Beauty pressed close to Tristan’s chest. She felt a stab of excitement between her legs, her heart knocking. Tristan’s organ was hard again, but it was not inside of her, and it was an agony again that her hands were bound so she couldn’t touch it.
Her question seemed meaningless suddenly, yet she repeated it, the distant noise growing louder. “Why must we obey if we are already punished?”
Tristan too heard the distant swelling sounds. The cart was picking up speed.
“We were told at the castle that we must obey,” Beauty said, “our parents had willed it when they sent us to the Queen and the Prince as Tributes. But now we’re bad slaves...”
“Our punishment will only be worse if we disobey,” Tristan said, but there was something strange in his eyes that betrayed his voice. He sounded false, as if repeat-something he thought he should say for her good.
“We must wait and see what happens to us,” he said. “Remember, Beauty, in the end they will win over us.”
“But how, Tristan?” she asked. “You mean you condemned yourself to this, and yet you will obey?” She felt again the thrill she’d known when she left the Prince and Lady Juliana weeping behind her at the castle. “I am such a bad girl,” she thought. Yet...
“Beauty, their wishes will prevail. Remember, a willful, disobedient slave will amuse them just as much. Why struggle?” Tristan said.
“Why struggle to obey?” Beauty said.
“Do you have the strength to be terribly bad all the time?” he asked. His voice was low, urgent, his breath warm against her neck as he kissed her again. Beauty tried to shut out the sound of the crowd; it was a horrid sound, like that of a great beast coming out of its lair; she knew she was trembling.
“Beauty, I don’t know what I’ve done,” Tristan said. Anxiously he glanced in the direction of that awesome, menacing noise: shouts, cheers, the mayhem of a fair day. “Even at the castle,” he said, the violet-blue eyes fired now with something that might have been fear in a strong Prince who could not show it. “Even at the castle, I found it was easier to run when they told us to run, to kneel when they told us to kneel, and there was a triumph of sorts in doing it perfectly.”
“Then why are we here, Tristan?” she asked, standing on tiptoe to kiss his lips. “Why are we both such bad slaves?” And though she tried to sound rebellious and brave, she pressed herself against Tristan all the more desperately.
THE AUCTION IN THE MARKETPLACE
THE CART had come to a stop, and Beauty could see through the tangle of white arms and tousled hair the walls of the village below, with the gates open and a motley crowd swelling out onto the green.
But slaves were being quickly unloaded from the cart, forced with the smack of the belt to crowd together on the grass. And Beauty was immediately separated from Tristan, who was pulled roughly away from her for no apparent reason other than the whim of a guard.
The leather bits were being pulled out of the mouths of the others. “Silence!” came the loud voice of the Commander. “There is no speech for slaves in the village! Any who speak shall be gagged again more cruelly than they have ever been before!”
He rode his horse round the little herd, driving it tightly together, and gave the order that the slaves’ hands should be unbound and woe to any slave who removed his or her hands from the back of the neck.