Beauty's Release - By A. N. Roquelaure & Anne Rice Page 0,77

this he thrashed both of us soundly.

It did not hurt like the wallop of the strap, but the strips were heavy and they covered all of the flesh in each sweeping blow easily. Almost caressing they were, enveloping the naked skin in countless stings and prickles and scratches.

Gareth took our reins again and marched us to the gate. My heart came up in my mouth. I looked out over the broad road to the far wall of the village. On the top of the wall, the soldiers passed back and forth lazily, mere silhouettes against the sunny sky. One of them stopped and waved to Gareth, and Gareth waved back. A carriage appeared to the south, and it came on fast, pulled by eight human steeds, all harnessed and bitted as we were. I stared at it, stupefied.

“Do you see that?” Gareth asked. I gave as vigorous a nod as I could. “Now remember, as you march, that that is what you look like. And you belong to those who see you. Step high, step proud. I can forgive some faults, but lack of spirit isn’t one of them.”

Two more coaches went thundering past, slaves prancing, horseshoes ringing on the stones, leaving me all the more breathless, petrified.

For a year we would do this, this would be our lives. And, within seconds, the first excruciating test would begin in earnest.

My tears poured down, as freely as ever, but I swallowed the sobs, chewing on the leather bit, liking the feel of it as Gareth said I would, and when I flexed my muscles I liked the pull of the harness, the knowledge that I was bound too well for rebellion to make much difference.

In moments, the Mayor’s cart appeared, lumbering up to the gate and blocking everything beyond it. It was piled with linens, furniture, other merchandise, apparently to be taken out to the manor house from the market. And other stable boys quickly unharnessed the six dusty and windblown pony slaves who had been pulling it. Four fresh ponies were driven out from the stables and harnessed in the front places as we waited.

I wondered if I had ever known such tension, such a feeling of dread and weakness. Of course I had a thousand times, but what did it matter? The past did not come to my aid. I was on the cutting edge of the present. Gareth’s hand closed on my shoulder. The other stable boys moved in to help. And Tristan and I were ushered into place behind the first two pairs of steeds rather roughly.

I felt straps looped under and over my bound arms and through the ring attached to the phallus. The reins were lifted behind me.

And, before I could resign myself, or prepare my spirit for it, the reins and harness were pulled, the phallus lifting me off my feet, and the team was suddenly galloping.

Not a moment to beg for mercy, for time, for some last touch of comfort from Gareth. No. We were lifting our knees, moving fast on the cobblestones of the road, passing into the stream of traffic that we had studied in mingled apprehension and horror.

And I realized in these harrowing moments that the harness and bit, the boots and the phallus, were unlike any devices to which I’d ever been subjected. They had a clear and useful purpose! They weren’t merely to torture us, humiliate us, make us malleable for the amusement of others. They were for the simple and efficient pulling of this cart along the road. We were, as the Queen had said, workhorses.

Was it less debasing or more so, that we had been so cleverly put to work, our tendencies as slaves so expertly channeled? I didn’t know. I knew only, as we pounded suddenly into the middle of the road, that I was drenched in shame, each marching step intensifying it, and yet I felt as I always did at the core of punishment: the coming of a tranquility, a quiet place in the very center of frenzy, in which I could surrender all the parts of my being.

The driver’s strap licked down with a loud popping noise at my legs. The sight of the ponies in front of me stunned me. The bushy black tails swayed and danced in their reddened rumps. Their legs pumped at the ground, their hair shimmered against their shoulders.

And we made the same picture, except that the driver’s long strap smacked us hard over and over again.