Beauty's Punishment - By A. N. Roquelaure & Anne Rice Page 0,72

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