The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (23 page)

“Of course I told myself all this was disgusting and beneath me. I should never play such games.” He laughed softly, and squeezed Beauty against his chest with his arm, kissing her forehead. “I’ve played them enough since,” he said.

“But now and then, too, Prince Gerald did choose a Princess. This angered the Queen, though only slightly. She had the little girl victim perform some hopeless tasks in the hope of escape, the same game with the slippers, or the getting of a hand mirror or the like, all the while driving her mercilessly with the paddle. Then she would be thrown down on her back and taken by the lusty little Prince for the Queen’s amusement. Or she might be doubled and hung as in the Hall of Punishments.

Beauty winced at this. To be taken in such a position hadn’t occurred to her. But a Princess would surely be ripe and open for it.

“As you can imagine,” Alexi went on, “these spectacles became a torture. In my hours alone, I longed for them. As I watched, I could feel the blows on my buttocks as if I too were being spanked, and I felt my penis stir against my will at the sight of the little girls being chased, or even Prince Gerald being stroked and sometimes suckled by a Page for the Queen’s amusement.

“I should add that Prince Gerald found this very hard. He was an anxious Prince, ever striving to please the Queen, and punishing himself in his own mind, dreadfully, for failure. He never seemed to realize that many of the tasks and games were deliberately made too difficult for him. The Queen would have him brush her hair with the brush fixed in his teeth. This is most difficult. And he would be weeping when he could not brush her hair in long enough strokes, nor thoroughly enough. Of course she was annoyed. She’d throw him over her lap, and with a leather-handled brush flail at him. He wept, full of shame and misery, and feared her worst wrath: that he be given over to others for pleasure and chastisement.”

“Does she ever give you to others, Alexi?” Beauty asked.

“When she’s displeased with me, she gives me to others,” he continued. “But I have surrendered and accepted this. It saddens me but I accept it. I am never in the frenzy in which Prince Gerald always found himself. He would beseech the Queen with silent kisses all over her slippers. It was never any use. The more he pleaded, the more she punished him.”

“What became of him?”

“The time came for him to be sent back to his Kingdom. That time comes for all slaves. It will come for you, too, though when, no one can say, on account of the Prince’s passion for you, and that he awakened you and claimed you. Your Kingdom was a legend here,” said Prince Alexi.

“But Prince Gerald went home richly rewarded and I think most relieved to be let go. He was of course beautifully dressed before he left, and received by the Court, and then we were assembled to see him ride out. It’s the custom. I think it was as humiliating for him as anything else. It was as if he remembered his nakedness and his subjugation. But other slaves suffer just as much when they are released for many reasons. Who knows, however. Maybe Prince Gerald’s endless worries saved him from something worse. It’s impossible to tell. Princess Lizetta is saved by her rebellion. It was
interesting
to Prince Gerald surely ...”

Prince Alexi paused to kiss Beauty again and soothe her. “Don’t try to understand all I say just now. That is, don’t try to find immediate meaning in it,” he said. “Merely listen and learn and perhaps what I tell you shall save you some mistakes, give you different paths for the mind later. Ah, you are so tender to me, my secret flower.”

He would have embraced her again, perhaps become carried away by his passion again, but she stopped him with a touch of her fingers to his lips.

“But tell me, when you were shackled to the wall, what did you think of ... when you were alone, did you daydream, and what did you dream?”

“What a strange question,” he said.

Beauty seemed very serious. “Did you think of your former life, and wish you were free for this or that pleasure?”

“Not really,” he said slowly. “I thought rather of what would happen to me next, I suppose. I don’t know. Why do you ask this?”

Beauty didn’t reply, but she had dreamed three times since she had come and each time her old life to her had seemed grim and fraught with tiny worries. She remembered hours with her embroidery, and the endless bowing at Court to the Princes who kissed her hand. She remembered sitting quite still for hours at interminable banquets where others talked and drank, and she had felt only boredom.

“Please continue, Alexi,” she said gently. “But to whom does the Queen give you when she’s displeased?”

“Ah, that is a question with several answers,” he said. “But let me proceed. You can well imagine what my existence was, the hours of boredom and solitude broken only by these three diversions: the Queen herself, Prince Gerald’s punishment, or the fierce paddling from Felix. Well, soon, in spite of myself and my rage, I commenced to show my excitement whenever the Queen came into the chamber. She ridiculed me for it, but she marked it. And now and then, I could not conceal it when I saw Prince Gerald so boldly erect and taking his pleasure of one of the other slaves, or even taking the paddle. The Queen observed all this, and each time she saw that my organ was stiff and beyond my will, she would have Felix at once deliver a hard spanking to me. I struggled, I tried to curse her, and at first these spankings quelled my passion, but very soon they did not quell it. And the Queen added to my misery with her own hands, slapping my penis, stroking it, and then slapping it again at the very moment that Felix was punishing me. I twisted, struggled. It was no use. Very soon, I so craved the Queen’s hands that I was moaning aloud and in one of these great tormented states, I did all that I could by gesture and manner to show that I would obey her.

“Of course I had no intention of doing so. I did so only long enough to be rewarded. And I wonder if you can imagine how difficult this was for me. I was put free on my hands and knees, and told to kiss her feet. It was as if I had only just been stripped naked. Never had I obeyed any command; nor been made to obey while free of shackles. And yet so tortured was I for relief, my sex so swollen with desire, that I forced myself to kneel at her feet and kiss her slippers. I shall never forget the magic of her hands when she touched me. I could feel the shock of passion through me, and as soon as she stroked and toyed with my sex, my passion was at once released, which greatly angered her.

“‘You have no control,’ she said crossly to me, ‘and for this you will be punished. But you have tried to submit and that is something.’ But at that moment, I rose up and tried to run from her. I’d never had any intention of submitting to anything.

“Of course the Pages apprehended me at once. You must never think yourself safe from them. You may be in a vast, dimly lit chamber alone with a Lord. You may think yourself quite free when he falls asleep with his wine cup. But should you try to rise and escape, at once the Pages appear to subdue you. Only now that I am the Queen’s trusted valet am I allowed to sleep alone in her chamber. The Pages dare not enter the darkened room where the Queen sleeps. So they have no way of knowing that I am here with you. But this is rare, most rare. And even now we might be discovered ...”

“But what happened to you,” Beauty pressed. “They apprehended you,” she said fearfully.

“The Queen gave little consideration to how I should be punished. She sent for Lord Gregory and told him I was most incorrigible. That in spite of my fine hands and skin, and royal birth, I should be taken at once to the kitchen, there to serve for as long as she should decree ... and indeed, she hoped she would remember I was there and send for me.

“I was carried down to the kitchen, protesting as usual. Mind you, I had little idea what was to happen to me. But very soon I saw that I was in a dark and dirty place, full of the grease and soot of the cooking where the pots were always boiling and dozens of menials were at work at the chopping of vegetables and the cleaning or plucking of the fowl, and all the other tasks that go to produce the banquets served here.

“No sooner was I brought in than they rejoiced to have a little amusement. I was surrounded by the crudest beings I had ever seen. ‘But what is this to me,’ I thought. ‘I obey no one.’

“But in moments, I realized these creatures were no more interested in my compliance than they were interested in the compliance of the fowl they slaughtered, or the carrots they scrubbed, or the potatoes they threw in the pot. I was a plaything to them and seldom did they even address me as though I had ears to hear or sense to comprehend what they said about me.

“I was at once collared in leather, this collar linked to the cuffs on my wrists, and my wrists to my knees so that I could not rise from a hands-and-knees position. A bit with a bridle was placed in my mouth, and bound so securely to my head that I might be pulled forward by leather straps with little ability to resist, my limbs reluctantly allowing me to follow.

“I refused to stir. I was dragged about on the dirty kitchen floor while they howled with laughter. They had their paddles out, and were soon punishing me mercilessly. Nothing was spared, of course, but my buttocks in particular delighted them. And the more I bucked or struggled, the more they found it hilarious. I was no more than a dog to them. And that was precisely how they treated me. But this was only the beginning. I was soon unshackled enough to be thrown over a great barrel. And there I was raped by one and all of the men, the women looking on with laughter. I was sore from this, and so dizzy from the motion of the barrel that I was sick, but this again they thought most amusing.

“But when they were done with me, and had to return to their work, they shackled me above the open hogshead that received the garbage. My feet were deposited firmly in the waste of cabbage leaves and carrot tops, onion peels, and chicken feathers that made up the refuse of the day’s work and, as they added to it, it rose around me. The stench was terrible and when I writhed and struggled, again they laughed, and thought of other ways to torment me.”

“O, this is too dreadful,” Beauty gasped. Each person who had handled her or punished her had in some way admired her. And when she thought of her beautiful Alexi treated this way, she felt weak with fear.

“Of course I did not know this was to be my regular station. I was taken out hours later when after the evening meal was served they again chose to rape me. Only this time I was thrown down and spread out on a large wooden table. And for their pleasure they paddled me again this time with coarse wooden paddles, saying the leather paddles they had used earlier were now too good for me. They held my legs wide apart, they lamented they could not torture my private parts without risking punishment. But by this they did not mean my penis which they punished a great deal with slaps, and rough handling.

“I was frantic by this time. I cannot explain it. There were so many of them, they were so crude, and my movements or sounds were nothing to them. The Queen had noticed my smallest change of expression. She had scoffed at my growls and struggles, but she had savored all of it. These crude cooks and kitchen boys rubbed my hair, lifted my face, slapped my buttocks and spanked me as if I had no sense whatsoever.

“They would speak of me, ‘What plump buttocks,’ and ‘Look at those strong legs,’ and that sort of thing as if I were a mere animal. They pinched me, poking me, jabbing me as they pleased, and then they set to raping me. They greased me well with their cruel hands as they had done before, and when they had finished, they flushed me out with some crude piping attached to a wineskin filled with water. I cannot tell you the mortification of this, to be washed inside and out by them. The Queen had at least allotted to me privacy in these matters, as the needs of our bowels and bladders do not interest her. But to be emptied by this violent stream of cold water and in front of these piggish men made me weak and spiritless.

“I was limp when they hung me back in the refuse. And in the morning my arms ached, and I was sickened by the stench that rose around me. Roughly they pulled me out and shackled me on my knees again and threw down for me some food on a plate. It had been a day since I had eaten; yet I did not wish to eat for their amusement, as they would not allow me the use of my hands. It was nothing to them. I refused the meals until the third day when I could endure it no longer and I lapped up the gruel they gave me like a hungry puppy. They never took the slightest notice. When I finished my meals it was back to the heap of refuse until they had some time to make sport of me.

“In the meantime I hung there. And when they passed, they would perhaps give me some strong slap, twist the nipples of my chest, spread my legs wider with one of their paddles.

“It was an agony beyond anything I had known in the Queen’s chamber. And soon, in the evening, the stable boys received word that they might come and use me as they wished. So I had them to satisfy as well.

“They were better dressed, but they smelled of the horses. They came in and took me out of the hogshead, and one of them thrust the long rounded leather handle of his whip into my anus. Lifting me up by this, he forced me into the stable. I was then laid over a barrel again and raped by all of them.

“It seemed unendurable, and yet I endured it. And as in the Queen’s chamber, I could feast my eyes on my tormentors all day long though in between their wants they took little notice of me.

“One evening however, when all of them had had much to drink and had been congratulated for a very good meal upstairs, they turned for more imaginative play with me. I was terrified. I had no thoughts of dignity anymore and began to groan behind my gag as soon as they approached me. I squirmed and twisted to resist their hands.

“The games they chose were as degrading as they were disgusting. They spoke of decorating me, of improving my appearance, that I was altogether too clean and too fine an animal for my lodgings. And, spreadeagling me in the kitchen, they soon cut loose their fury on me with a dozen concoctions they made from the honey, the eggs, the various syrups and mixtures at their disposal. I was soon covered with these egregious liquids. They painted my buttocks, and laughed as I struggled. They painted my penis and balls. They decorated my face with it, and stuck back my hair with it. And when they had finished, they took the feathers from the fowl and pasted these to my body.