UNDER THE STARS
UNFASTENING HIS breeches, he tucked in his shirt, laced it and laced his doublet. I hastened to lace his boots for him, but he did not acknowledge it. He gestured for me to rise again and follow him.
Within moments we were outside, and the air was warm and we were walking silently through the intertwining lanes, west, out of the village. I walked at his side with my hands clasped behind my back, and when we passed other dark figures, most often lone Masters with a single marching slave, I dropped my eyes, as seemed respectful.
Many lights burned in the little windows of the close-peaked-roofed houses. And when we turned into a broad street, I could see far away to the east the lights of the marketplace and hear the dull roar of the crowd in the Place of Public Punishment.
Even the sight of my Master’s profile in the dark, the dull luminosity of his hair, excited me. My spent cock was ready to come back to life. A touch, even a command, would have done it. And the concealed state of readiness heightened all of my senses.
We had come to the square of the Inns. There were suddenly bright lights all around us. Torches flared beneath the high painted Sign of the Lion, and the noise of a large crowd swelled through the open doorway.
I followed my Master to the entrance, and he gestured for me to kneel as he went inside, leaving me there. I rested back on my heels and peered into the gloom. Everywhere men laughed, talked, drank from their flagons. My Master was at the counter purchasing a full wineskin, which he already had in his hands as he spoke to the beautiful dark-haired woman with the red skirts whom I had seen that morning punishing Beauty.
And then, high on the wall behind the counter, I saw Beauty. She was bound to the wall, her hands above her head, her beautiful gold hair falling down behind her shoulders, and her legs were straddling the immense keg on which she sat, her eyes closed in pleasant sleep, it seemed, her luscious pink mouth half open. And on either side of her were other such slaves all dozing as if in deep fatigue, their whole attitude one of hopeless contentment.
0, if Beauty and I could only be alone for a moment. If I could only talk to her, tell her what I had learned and the feelings that had been aroused in me.
But my Master had come back, and bidding me to rise, he led the way out of the square. We were soon at the west gates of the village and we walked along the country road that led to the manor house.
He put his arm around me, offered me the wineskin. It was beautifully quiet now under the high dome of stars. Only one coach passed us on the road and it seemed a moonlight vision.
A team of twelve Princesses brought it smartly along, the lovelies harnessed three across in snow-white leather, and the coach itself was exquisitely gilded. To my amazement, my Mistress Julia rode in the coach beside a tall man, and both waved, as they passed, to my Master.
“That is the Lord Mayor of the village,” said my Master softly to me.
We turned before we reached the manor house. But I knew we were already on his land, and we walked over the grass, through the fruit trees, and towards the nearby hills that were densely covered in forest.
I don’t know how long we walked. Maybe an hour. And we settled finally on a high slope halfway uphill with the valley spread out before us. The clearing was just large enough for us to make a little fire and to sit back against the side of the hill, the dark trees hovering over us.
My Master tended the fire until it was going well. Then he lay back. I sat up with my leg crossed looking at the towers and peaks of the village. I could see the brilliant glare of the Place of Public Punishment. The wine made me sleepy and my Master stretched out, with his hands beneath his head and his eyes wide open and fixed on the dark blue moonlit sky above and the grand sweep of the constellations.
“I have never loved any slave as I love you,” he said calmly.
I tried to restrain myself. To listen only to my heartbeat for a moment in the stillness. But I said all too quickly:
“Will you buy me outright from the Queen and keep me in the village?”
“Do you know what you are asking?” he said. “You’ve only endured two days here.”
“Would it do any good if I begged you on my knees, kissed your boots, prostrated myself?”
“It isn’t required,” he said. “At the end of the week, I will go to the Queen with my usual accounting of the winter activities of the village. I know as certainly as I know my name that I will offer to purchase you outright and make a strong case for it.”
“But Lord Stefan—”
“Leave Lord Stefan to me. I shall make you a prediction about Lord Stefan: Every year on Midsummer Night a strange ritual is enacted. All those in the village who wish to be made into slaves for the following twelve months present themselves to be privately examined. Tents are set up for the purpose and the villagers are stripped and carefully looked over in every particular. And the same takes place among the Lords and Ladies of the castle. No one is entirely sure who has made himself or herself available for the examination.
“But at midnight on Midsummer Night the names are announced both at the castle and on the high platform of the marketplace in the village of all those who have been accepted. It is only a tiny portion, of course, of those who have offered. Only the most beautiful, the most aristocratic in appearance, the strongest. As each name is called, the crowd turns searching for the chosen one—everyone here knows everyone else, quite naturally—and at once he or she is found out, rushed to the platform, and there stripped naked. Of course there is dread, regret, abject fright at the wish being violently fulfilled, the clothing ripped off, the hair let down, and the crowd enjoys it as much as the auction. The regular slave Princes and Princesses, especially those who have been punished by the new villager slave, scream with joy and approbation.
“Then the village victims are sent off to the castle, where for a glorious year they will serve in the lowest capacities, but almost indistinguishable from Princes and Princesses.
“And from the castle we receive those Lords and Ladies who have given themselves over in like manner, having been stripped by their peers in the Castle Pleasure Gardens, sometimes so few that there are only three of them. You cannot imagine the excitement it brings on Midsummer Night when they are brought to be auctioned. Lords and Ladies on the block. The prices are dizzying. The Lord Mayor almost always buys one as he reluctantly gives up last year’s prize. Sometimes my sister, Julia, buys another. Once there were as many as five, last year only two, and now and then one. And the Captain of the Guard has told me that this year, all the bets are down that the castle exiles will include Lord Stefan.”
I was too amused and surprised to answer.
“From all you’ve said, Lord Stefan doesn’t know how to command and the Queen knows it. If he offers himself he will be chosen.”
I laughed softly to myself. “He does not even guess what is in store for him!” I said quietly. I shook my head, and then laughed again under my breath, trying to subdue it.
He turned his head to smile at me. “You’ll be mine soon, all mine, mine for three, maybe four, years.” And when he rose on his elbow I lay down beside him and embraced him. The passion was rising again, but he bid it be quiet, and I lay still, trying to obey, my head on his chest, his hand on my forehead.
After a long time, I asked: “Master, is a slave ever granted a request?”
“Almost never,” he whispered, “because the slave is never allowed to ask. But you may ask. I will permit that much.”
“Is it possible for me to discover how it goes with another slave, if she is obedient and resigned or being punished for rebellion?”
“Why?”
“I came down in the cart with the Crown Prince’s slave. Her name is Beauty. She was high-spirited, a sensation at the castle for her hot passions and her inability to conceal even the most transient emotions. In the cart she asked me the very same question you asked: Why do we obey? She’s in the Sign of the Lion now. She’s the slave whom the Captain mentioned by name to you today at the well after he whipped me. Is there any way to discover if she has found the same acceptance that I’ve found? Just to ask, perhaps ...”
I felt his hand gently tug at my hair, his lips touch my forehead. He spoke softly. “If you like, I will let you see her and ask her yourself tomorrow.”
“Master!” I was too grateful and amazed to put it further into words. He let me kiss his lips. Boldly I kissed his cheeks and even his eyelids. He gave me the faintest smile. Then he settled me back on his chest.
“You know your day will be hard and very busy before you see her,” he said.
“Yes, Sir,” I answered.
“Now, go to sleep,” he said. “There’s much work for you to do in the orchards on the farm tomorrow before we go back to the village. You’ll be harnessed to pull a good-sized basket of fruit back to my town house, and I want to be done with all that so that by high noon when the crowd is at its daytime thickest you can be punished on the Public Turntable.”
A little conflagration of panic flared inside me for a moment. I clung to him a little more tightly. And I felt his lips brush the top of my head tenderly.
Gently he disengaged himself and turned over on his stomach to sleep, his face away from me, his left arm curled under him. “You’ll spend the afternoon at the public stables to be hired out,” he said. “You will trot on the pony track there, harnessed and ready, and I expect to hear that you showed such spirit you were hired out immediately.”
I looked at his long elegant form in the moonlight, the gleaming white of his sleeves, the perfect shape of his calves in their sheathing of supple leather. I belonged to him. Completely I belonged to him.
“Yes, Master,” I said softly.
I knelt up and, bending over him silently, kissed his right hand, which lay on the grass beside him. “Thank you, Master.”
“In the evening,” he said, “I’ll talk to the Captain about sending Beauty.”
An hour must have passed.
The fire was out.
He was sound asleep, I could tell from his breathing. He wore no weapons, not even a dagger concealed on his person. And I knew that I could easily have overpowered him. He hadn’t my weight or strength, and six months at the castle had toned my muscles well. I could have taken his clothes from him, left him bound and gagged, and made off to the land of King Lysius. There was even money in his pockets.
And surely he had realized all this before we ever left the village.
He was either putting me to the test or so certain of me that it never crossed his mind. And as I lay awake in the dark, I had to learn for myself what he already knew; Would I or would I not run now that I had the opportunity?
It was no difficult decision. But each time I told myself that of course I would not, I found myself thinking of it. Escape, going home, standing up to my father, telling him to call the Queen’s bluff, or going off to some other land in search of adventure. I suppose I would not have been a human being if I didn’t at least think of those things.
And I thought too of being caught by the peasants. Being brought back over the saddle of the Captain of the Guard, naked again, to some unspeakable penance for what I’d done, and perhaps losing my Master forever.
I thought of other possibilities. I thought them all through and through, and then I turned over and snuggled close to my Master and slipped my arm gently around his waist, pressing my face into the velvet of his doublet. I had to get to sleep. After all, there was much to be done in the morning. I could almost see the noontime crowd around the turntable.
Sometime before dawn, I awoke.
I thought I heard some sound in the forest. But as I lay listening in the dark, there was only the usual murmur of the creatures of the wood and nothing to break the peace of it. I looked down on the village lying asleep under the heavy, luminous clouds, and it seemed to me something in its appearance had altered. The gates were locked.
But then maybe they were always locked at this hour. It was no concern of mine. And surely they’d be open in the morning.
And turning on my belly, I snuggled close to my Master again.