Энн Райс - Beauty's Punishment

“But what’s to happen to us, my Lord?” I demanded. His attitude was too clearly one of exasperation.

“That, my dear Tristan,” said the Lord, “is in the hands of your Master, the Sultan.”

Beauty gasped.

I felt my face harden, the rage welling up in me, silencing me for the moment as I stared at him. “My Lord,” I said, my voice shuddering with anger, “will you not even try to save us?” I saw in my mind’s eyes the figure of my Master, Nicolas, thrown down on the stones of the square, as the horse carried me away, my struggles useless. But that was not the half of my anguish. What lay ahead of us?

“What I have done is the best I can do,” said the Lord, approaching me. “I have exacted an enormous indemnity for each of you. The Sultan will pay almost anything for plump, soft-skinned, well-trained slaves of the Queen, but he likes his gold as much as the next man. And in two years,

he will return you well-fed, in good health with no blemishes, or he will not see his gold again. Believe me, Prince, it has been done a hundred times over. Had I failed to intercept his craft, his emissaries and our emissaries would have met together. He wants no real quarrel with her Majesty. You have never been in any real danger.

“No danger!” I protested. “We are going to a foreign land where . . .”

“Quiet, Tristan,” he said sharply. “It is the Sultan who inspired our Queen to her passion for pleasure victims. He sent the Queen her first slaves and explained to her the care with which slaves must be treated. No real harm shall come to you. Though of course ... of course ...”

“Of course what!” I demanded.

“You will be more abject,” said the Lord, with a little anxious shrug, as if he couldn’t fully explain it. “In the Sultan’s palace, you will occupy a much more lowly position. Of course, you will be the playthings of your Masters and Mistresses, very valuable playthings. But you will no longer be treated as beings with high reason. On the contrary, you will be trained as valuable animals are trained, and you must never, heaven help you, try to speak or to evince anything more than the simplest understanding—”

“My Lord,” I interrupted.

“As you see,” the Lord continued, “the attendants will not even remain in the room here if you are spoken to as if you have wits. They find it too incongruous and unseemly. They retire at the distasteful sight of a slave treated as. . .”

“. . . as human,” Beauty whispered. Her lower lip was quivering as she tightened her little fists on the bars, but she was not crying.

“Yes, exactly, Princess.”

“My Lord.” I was furious now. “You must ransom us, we are under her Majesty’s protection! This violates all agreements!”

“Out of the question, dear Prince. In the complex exchanges between great powers, some things must be sacrificed. And it violates no agreements. You were sent to serve, and serve you shall, in the Palace of the Sultan. And have no doubt, you will be treasured by your new Masters. Though the Sultan has many slaves from his own land, you captive Princes and Princesses are a special delicacy of sorts, and a great curiosity.”

I was too angry and defeated to speak further. It was hopeless. Nothing I said made any difference. I was imprisoned like a creature of the wild, and my mind lapsed into miserable silence.

“I did what I could,” said the Lord, his eyes including the others now as he stepped back.

Dmitri was awake and leaning on his elbow as he listened.

“I was ordered to obtain an apology for the raid,” the Lord went on, “and a stiff indemnity. I got more gold than I expected.” He was going to the door. His hand was on the latch. “Two years,

Prince, that’s not so long,” he said to me. “And when you return, your knowledge and experience will prove of inestimable value at the castle.”

“My Master!” I said suddenly. “Nicolas, the Chronicler. Tell me at least, was he harmed in the raid?”

“He’s quite alive and, in all probability, fast at work at his written account of the raid for her Majesty. He grieves bitterly for you. But nothing can be done. Now I must leave you. Be brave and be clever, clever at pretending you are not clever, that you are no more than the most abject little bundles of ever-demonstrable passion.”

And he left us immediately.

We all remained quiet, hearing the distant shouts of the sailors above. Then we felt the sea surge sluggishly as the other craft pulled away from us.

And the giant ship was moving again, fast, as if at full sail, and I slumped back against the cool gold bars and stared forward.

“Don’t be sad, my darling,” Beauty said as she peered at me, her long hair veiling her breasts, the light glinting on her polished limbs. “It’s only the same whirlwind.”

I turned over and stretched out, despite the uncomfortable metal between my legs, and rested my head against my arms, and for a long time I wept in silence.

Finally, when my tears had dried themselves, I heard Beauty’s voice again.

“I know you’re thinking of your Master,” she said gently. “But, Tristan, remember your own words.”

I sighed against my arm.

“Remind me, Beauty,” I asked quietly.

“That your whole existence is but an entreaty to be dissolved in the will of others. And so it goes on, Tristan, and we move deeper and deeper, all of us, into that dissolution.”

“Yes, Beauty,” I said softly.

“It’s but another turn of the wheel,” she said, “and we understand now more keenly what we have always known, since we were made captives.”

“Yes,” I said, “that we belong to others.”

And I turned my head to look up at her. The position of the cages wouldn’t allow us to touch more than our fingertips if we tried, and it was better just to see her pretty face and her luscious little arms as she held the bars still.

“It’s true,” I said. “You’re right.” And I felt a tightening in my chest and the old familiar awareness of my helplessness, not as a Prince, but as a slave, entirely dependent on the whims of new and unknown Masters.

And gazing at her face, I felt the first stirring of the wonder that was kindled in her eyes. We did not know what torments or rapture lay ahead of us.

Dmitri had turned and gone back into his slumbers. So had Laurent below.

And Beauty stretched again like a cat and lay down on the silken mattress.

The door opened and the young silk-clad attendants came in—six of them, one for each slave, it seemed— and they approached the cages, offering, as they unlocked the doors, a warm, aromatic drink, which surely contained another welcome sleeping potion.

It was night when Beauty awoke. Turning on her belly she saw stars through a tiny grated window. The great craft creaked and hummed as it rode the waves.

But she was being gathered up, taken from the cage, her dreams not yet dissipated, and laid down upon a giant cushion again, this time atop a long table.

Candles blazed. She could smell the heavy perfume of incense. And from far away came a rich and vibrant music. The lovely young men surrounded her, rubbing the golden oil into her skin, smiling down at her as they worked, stretching her arms up and back, training her fingers to hold tight again to the edge of the cushion. And she saw a brush dipping down to color her nipples carefully with glittering gold pigment. She was too shocked to make a sound. She lay still as her lips were also painted. Then the soft hairs of the brush skillfully lined her eyes with the gold, stroking it onto her eyelashes. Great jeweled earrings were shown to her and, with a little gasp, she felt her earlobes stabbed, but her silent smiling captors hastened to shush and console her. The earrings dangled from the tiny burning wounds and the pain dissolved as she felt her legs drawn apart and a bowl of brightly colored, glistening fruits was held above her. The little armor of mesh was removed from her sex and tender fingers patted and stroked her until her sex awakened. Then she gazed into the same lovely olive-skinned face of the man who had first greeted her. Her attendant, he must be. And she saw that he was taking the fruit from the bowl—dates, pieces of melon and peach, tiny pears, dark red berries—and that he was carefully dipping each piece in a silver cup of honey.