Энн Райс - Beauty's Punishment

They lay still, the candle discarded. And she wondered at what she had done, but Tristan only kissed her. He rose, poured a goblet of wine, and put it to Beauty’s lips. Puzzled, she took it, drank it as a Lady might and wondered at the curious sensation.

“But how have you fared, Beauty?” he asked. “Have you been rebellious all the time? Tell me.”

She shook her head. “I fell into the hands of a hard and wicked Master and Mistress.” She laughed softly.

She described the punishments of Mistress Lockley, the kitchen, the Captain’s way with her, and her evenings with the soldiers, lingering on the physical beauty of both her captors.

Tristan listened gravely.

She told about the runaway, Prince Laurent. “I know now that if I run away it will be in order to be found, to be punished like that, to spend all my years in the village,” she said. “Tristan, do you think me dreadful to want to do that? I would run away rather than go back to the castle.”

“But you might be taken from the Captain and Mistress Lockley,” he said, “if you ran away, and sold to someone else for harder use and labor.”

“That doesn’t matter,” she said. “It isn’t the Mistress or Master really who puts me in harmony with it, as you said. It’s merely the hardness, the coldness, and the re-lentlessness. I wanted to be cast down, lost among my punishments. I adore the Captain and I adore the Mistress, but there are other harsher Masters and Mistresses probably in the village.”

“Ah, you surprise me,” he said, offering her the wine again. “I am so totally in love with Nicolas I have no defense against him.”

Tristan then explained the things that had happened to him, and how he and Nicolas had made love and talked together, and gone out up onto the hillside.

“The second time on the Public Turntable, today at noon,” he said. “I was transported. The fear hadn’t left me. It was worse when I was rushed up the steps, because I knew just what would happen. But I saw the whole fairgrounds more clearly under the glare of the sun than I had ever seen it by torchlight. I do not mean I saw literal things. I saw the great scheme of which I was part, and under the grueling punishment, my soul broke open. My whole existence now, be it on the turntable or in the harnesses, or in my Master’s arms, is an entreaty to be used like the warmth of a fire is used, to be dissolved in the will of others. My Master’s will is the guiding will, and through him I am given to all who witness or desire me.”

Beauty was quiet, gazing at him. “Then you have given over your soul,” she said. “You’ve given it to your Master. That I haven’t done, Tristan. My soul is still mine and the only thing a slave can truly possess. And I’m not ready yet to give it. I give my whole body to the Captain, to the soldiers, to Mistress Lockley. But in my soul, I think I belong to no one. I left the castle, not to find the love I had not found there. I left to be tossed and tumbled among harsher and more indifferent Masters.”

“And you are indifferent to them?” he asked.

“I am as interested in them as they are in me,” she said, reflecting. “No more, no less. But my soul may change in time. Perhaps it’s only that I have met no Nicolas, the Chronicler.”

She thought of the Crown Prince. She had not loved him. He made her smile. Lady Juliana had affrighted her and disturbed her. The Captain thrilled her, exhausted her, surprised her. Mistress Lockley she secretly liked, for all the dread of her. But that was the extremity of it. She didn’t love them. That, and the glory and excitement of belonging to a grand scheme, to use Tristan’s word, was the village to her.

“We are two different slaves,” she said as she sat up, taking the wine and drinking deeply. “And we are both happy.”

“I wish I understood you!” he whispered. “Don’t you long to be loved, don’t you long to have the pain mingled with tenderness?”

“You don’t have to understand me, my love. And there is tenderness.” But she paused, imagining the intimacy that existed between Tristan and Nicolas.

“My Master will guide me to greater and greater revelations,” Tristan said.

“And my destiny,” she answered, “will also have its momentum. When I saw poor, punished Prince Laurent today, I envied him. And he had no loving Master to guide him.”

Tristan sucked in his breath, gazing up at her. “You are a magnificent slave,” he said. “Perhaps you know more than I do.”

“No, I am a simpler slave in some ways. Your destiny is mingled with greater renunciation of self.” She leaned on her elbow and kissed him. His lips were dark red from the wine, and his eyes seemed unusually large and glassy. Gorgeous he was. Mad thoughts came to her, of tethering him in the harnesses herself and . . .

“We must not lose each other. Whatever happens,” he said. “Let’s take our stolen moments whenever we can to confide in each other. We may not always be allowed ...”

“With a Master as mad as yours we might have plenty of opportunity,” she said.

He smiled. But his gaze was broken suddenly, as if by some distracting thought, and he lay still listening.

“What is it?”

“There is no one on the road outside,” he said. “It’s absolutely silent. And there are always coaches on the road at this hour.”

“All the gates are closed,” she said. “And the soldiers are all gone.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know, much whispering of searching the coast for raiders.”

He looked so beautiful to her now, and she wanted to make love again. She drew up on the bed, sitting back on her heels, and looked at his organ, which was already springing to life once more, and then she glanced at her own reflection in the far mirror. She loved the sight of the two of them in the mirror together. But even as she looked she saw another ghostly figure in the mirror. She saw a man with white hair, his arms folded, watching her!

She let out a shriek. Tristan sat up and stared forward. But she had already realized what it was. The mirror was a two-way mirror, one of those ancient tricks of which she’d heard tell as a child. And Tristan’s Master had all the while been watching. His dark face was amazingly clear, his white hair almost glowing, his brows knotted seriously.

Tristan half smiled and flushed. And a strange sense of exposure softened Beauty.

But the Master had vanished from the murky glass. The door of the room opened.

He drew near the bed, the elegant man in velvet and balloon sleeves, and he turned Beauty’s shoulders towards him. “Repeat this to me, all you’ve heard about the soldiers and these raiders.”

Beauty flushed. “Please don’t tell the Captain!” she begged. He nodded, and at once she told what she knew of the story.

For a moment, the Master stood still, thinking.

“Come,” he said and drew Beauty up from the bed, “I must take Beauty back to the Inn immediately.”

“May I go, please, Master?” Tristan asked.

But Master Nicolas was distracted. He didn’t seem to hear the question.

He turned and beckoned for them to follow. They walked quickly down the corridor and out the back door of the house, and Master Nicolas motioned for them to wait as he walked out towards the battlements.

For a long moment he looked from one end of the great wall to the other. The stillness commenced to unnerve Beauty.

“But this is foolish,” he whispered as he returned. “They seem to have left the village too little defended.”

“The Captain thinks they’ll strike the farms outside the walls, the manor houses,” Beauty said. “And there’s a watch posted, surely.”

Master Nicolas shook his head, disapprovingly. He locked the door of his house.