Beauty's Release - By A. N. Roquelaure & Anne Rice Page 0,72
Court behind us.
In the yard before the drawbridge, crude little signs were put around our necks, both bearing the single word: PONY.
And after that we were rushed across the drawbridge and downhill, once more, towards the dreaded village.
I tried not to envision the pony shackles. It was something absolutely unknown to me. And my only hope was that my bonds would be tight, and my position of servitude rigidly maintained by stern disciplinarians who would show me how to bear it.
One year ... phalluses ... bits.... It rang in my ears as we were carried back through the gates into the swarming noontime marketplace.
We caused quite a stir, the crowds gathering as the trumpet was blown before the auction block. The villagers moved in closely this time, though the soldiers ordered them back, and hands pushed at my naked arms and legs, making my body swing from the pole. I was choking on my tears, marveling that my understanding of what was happening did not lessen the degradation of it.
“What does understanding mean?” I wondered. To know that I had brought it all on myself, that humiliation and yielding are inevitable at any stage of the game—somehow it produces no calm, no defense. The hands that pulled at my exposed nipples, lifted my hair from around my face—these hands reached through all my carefully pondered defenses.
The ship, the Sultan, the secret mastering of Lexius, all swept away most certainly.
“Two fine ponies,” cried the herald, “to be added at once to the village livery stables. Two fine steeds for hire at the regular rate to pull the finest coach or the heaviest farm wagon.”
The soldiers hoisted the poles high. We were swinging above a sea of faces, hands slapping at my cock, slipping between my legs to squeeze my buttocks. And the sun glared on the many windows that surrounded the square, on the weathervanes turning on the gabled roofs, on the hot dusty panorama of village life—into which we had passed again.
The herald’s voice went on recounting that for one year we would serve, that all should thank Her Gracious Majesty for the beautiful steeds maintained in the town and the reasonable prices asked for their service. And then the trumpet was sounded again, and off we were taken, the poles lowered, our bodies swinging close to the cobblestones again, the villagers turning back to their work, the houses of the quiet street suddenly rising on either side of us, as the soldiers carried us on towards the mystery of the new existence.
IT WAS a giant stable like many another, I think, except that real horses had never been in it. The mud floor was strewn with sawdust and hay merely to make it soft and keep the dust down. Its rafters were hung with harnesses of the light and delicate sort fit only for men. And the bits and reins streamed from hooks along the rough wooden walls, while in a large open area drenched with sun from the open doors to the street stood a circle of empty wooden pillories. They were high enough for a man on his knees, with holes for the neck and the hands. And I thought as I glanced at them that I would know what they were for, perhaps, sooner than I wanted to know.
LAURENT: FIRST DAY AMONG THE PONIES
What interested me more were the stalls to the far right. And the naked men inside them, two and three to a stall, their backsides well striped from the belt, their very sturdy legs firmly planted on the floor, their torsos bent over a thick wooden beam, their arms bound in the small of their backs as they merely stood there. With few exceptions, all wore leather boots to which horseshoes had been attached, and in two of the stalls grooms worked—true stable boys in leather and homespun—scrubbing down their charges or rubbing them with oil, their attitude one of casualness and busyness.
The sight took my breath away. It was strangely beautiful and absolutely devastating. It made me realize in a flash what was to befall us. Words alone had not been enough.
After the white marble and golden-threaded fabrics of the Sultan’s palace, the tinted flesh and perfumed hair, this was shockingly real, the world itself, to which I’d been returned at last to pick up the thread of an existence for which I’d been bound before the raiders ever came.
Tristan and I were set down on the floor. Our bonds were cut.