LAURENT: LIFE AMONG THE PONIES
THAT FIRST day among the ponies had had its significant revelations, but the true lessons of the new life came with time, with the constant day-to-day discipline of the stable and the numerous small aspects of my prolonged and rigid servitude.
I had known many an ordeal before, but no special test had been sustained as this existence was. And it took a while for me to grasp what it meant that Tristan and I had been condemned for twelve months, that we were not to be spirited out of the stables for the Public Turntable, or a night with the soldiers at the Inn, or any other diversion.
We slumbered, worked, ate, drank, dreamed, and made love as ponies. And, as Gareth had said, ponies are proud beasts, and we soon admitted this pride, and a profound addiction to the long gallops in the fresh air, to the firm feel of our harnesses and bits, and to the quick struggle with our fellow steeds in the recreation yard.
But never did the routine make things easy. Never did the discipline soften. Each day was an adventure of accomplishments and failures, of shocks and humiliations, of rewards or severe punishments.
We slept, as I have described, in our stalls, bent over at the waist, our heads resting on pillows. And this position, though quite comfortable, did as much as anything else to strengthen the sense that we had left the world of men behind. At dawn we were hastily fed and oiled, and taken out in the yard for hiring to the waiting populace. And it was no uncommon thing for the villagers to feel our muscles before they chose us or even to test us with a few wallops of the strap to see whether or not we responded with quickness and good form.
Not a day passed that Tristan and I weren’t asked for a dozen times, and Jerard, who had asked Gareth for the privilege, was frequently tethered in the same team with us. I grew used to having Jerard near, just as I was used to Tristan, and used to whispering little threats in Jerard’s ear.
At the recreation periods, Jerard was mine completely, and no one dared to challange me, least of all Jerard himself. I whipped his backside lustily, and he soon was so well trained that he didn’t wait for me to tell him to assume the proper position for the whipping. He came on his hands and knees knowing what was to happen and kissing my hands after. It was the joke of the stables that I whipped him harder than any coachman, that he was twice as red as any other steed.
But these little interludes were brief. It was the daily work that made up our true life. As the months passed, we knew every manner of cart, coach, and wagon. We pulled the fancy gilded carriage of the rich country Lords, who divided their time between the castle and the manor house. We pulled the runaways on their Punishment Crosses to the public display and chastisement. And, just as frequently, we found ourselves drawing plows in the fields or singled out for the lone chore of tugging a little basket cart to market.
These lone treks, though physically easy, were often especially degrading. I found I hated it when I was separated from the other ponies and harnessed by myself to a little cart. And to be driven along by a weary farmer on foot, his strap always busy no matter how hot the day, kept me in steady fear and agitation. Becoming known to the individual farmers made it worse, as they began to ask for me by name, and let me know how much they appreciated my size and strength and what fun it was to whip me to market.
It was always a relief to be back with Tristan, and Jerard, and the others in front of a big coach, even though I never became accustomed to the villagers pointing to the fine equipage and murmuring their approval. The villagers could be quite a torment. There were young men and women who liked nothing better than to discover a team in harness on the side of the road, waiting helplessly and mutely for the coachman or Master or Mistress. We would find ourselves mercilessly teased, our horsetails pulled and pushed as the bushy hair stroked and tickled our legs, our cocks slapped to make the degrading little bells rings.
But the worst moment came when some determined young boy or girl decided to pump a big cock and empty it. No matter how much the ponies loved one another, the others would laugh behind their bits at the plight of the victim, knowing how he struggled not to come as the hands stroked him, played with him. Of course, to come and to be found out was to be severely punished. And the villagers who played with us knew it. During the day a pony’s cock was to be hard. Any satisfaction for it was forbidden.
The first time the unfortunate trick was done to me, we were tethered to the coach of the Lord Mayor and had driven him back from the farm to his fine house on the high road. We were waiting outside for him and his wife to appear when the offending boys surrounded me and one began to work my cock mercilessly. I danced back in the harness, trying to escape the hands—I even pleaded behind the bit, another thing that is strictly forbidden—but the friction was too great, and finally I came in the hand of the brat, who then scolded me as if I’d dared to do the unmentionable. Then he had the gall to call the coachman.
Foolishly, I had thought I would be allowed to speak in my defense. But ponies don’t speak; they are mute, bitted, creatures.
And when we returned to the stables, I was unharnessed and taken to one of the stable pillories. On my knees in the hay, I bent over to have my hands and head locked into place in the wooden board, and there I remained until Gareth appeared, who scolded me furiously. Gareth was as good at scolding as he was at affection.
I begged through moans and tears to be allowed to explain. I should have known it was not important. Gareth made up a mixture of flour and honey, telling me just what he was doing, and with this he painted my backside and my cock and my nipples and belly. The stuff clung to my skin, a hideous disfigurement compared with the beauty of the harnesses. Gareth finished his work by describing the letter P on my chest with the mixture, which he explained stood for “punishment.”
And then I was tethered in a heavy old harness to a street sweeper’s cart, the only fit place for a slave who had been so marked, and I soon saw the real meaning of the punishment. Even when I was at a fast trot, a rare thing with a clumsy street sweeper’s cart, the flies gathered to taste the honey. They crawled over my private parts and my bottom, deviling me unmercifully.
For hours the punishment went on, and it seemed all the gains I had made in acceptance and composure were reduced to nothing. When finally I was driven home, I was pilloried again, and the slaves on their way to recreation were allowed to rape my mouth or my backside as they saw fit, while I remained helpless.
It was an odious combination of debasement and discomfort, but the very worst aspect of it was the contrition I felt, the profound disgrace at having been a bad pony. There was little secret humor or gloating in it for me. I was bad. And I vowed never to fail again in any way—a goal that, for all its difficulty, was not entirely impossible.
Of course, I didn’t achieve it. There were many times in the passing months when the village boys or girls used me in that way, and I couldn’t control myself. At least half the time I was caught and punished for it.
But a more severe punishment was to come when I was caught, of my accord and out of sheer weakness and complacency of spirit, kissing and nuzzling up to Tristan. We were in our stall, and I thought surely no one would know of it. But a stable boy caught a glimpse as he passed, and Gareth was suddenly bitting me, and backing me out of the stall, and walloping me with the belt rather mercilessly.
I was stunned with shame as Gareth demanded to know how I could behave in this way. Didn’t I want to please him? I nodded my head, tears flooding down my face. I don’t think I had ever in my entire existence wanted to please anyone as much. As he harnessed me, I wondered how he would punish me. Soon enough I had the answer.
The phallus I was to wear was dipped first in a thick amber colored liquid, deliciously scented with spice, which caused my anus to itch miserably as soon as it was inserted. Gareth waited for me to feel it, to begin to twist my hips and to cry.
“We often save that one for a listless pony,” he said, smacking me. “It perks them up instantly. All along the road they grind their hips when they can, trying to soothe that itch. You don’t need it for spirit, beautiful boy. You need it for disobedience. You won’t commit those little sins with Tristan again.”
I was rushed into the yard and tethered to a coach that was headed for the manor houses. I shed disgraceful tears as I tried not to undulate my hips. I lost the battle. And, almost immediately, the other ponies began to laugh and whisper behind their bits: “Like that, Laurent?” and “Doesn’t that feel good, Laurent!” I didn’t answer with the threats that came to mind. There was nobody who could get away from me in the recreation yard, but what kind of a threat was that when most of them didn’t want to?
As we marched out, I couldn’t stand the strain anymore, and I pumped and rolled my hips, trying to ease the itching, the sensation increasing and decreasing in throbbing waves that passed all through me.
Every moment of every hour was underscored by the sensation. It grew no worse; it grew no better. Twisting helped and did not help. And many a villager laughed as he watched me, knowing full well the cause of my ignominious movements. Never had I known such a searing, draining torture.
And by the time I was returned to the stables, I was exhausted. I was unharnessed with the phallus still tied firmly in place, and I fell down on my hands and knees and whimpered at Gareth’s feet, the bit still in my mouth, the reins dragging.
“Are you going to be a good boy?” he demanded, his hands on his hips. I nodded passionately.
“Stand up in the door of that stall,” he said, “and grab hold of those hooks hanging from the beam.
I obeyed, reaching out for the two hooks, my arms spread wide. I went up on the balls of my feet as I held the hooks. He stood behind me, and, gathering the reins that hung loose from the bit in my mouth, he tied them tight on the back of my head. Then I felt him loosening the phallus, and just that slight shift of it sent exquisite relief from the itching all through me. When he had it out, he opened the oil jug and quickly covered the phallus with oil. I chewed hard on the bit, moans flowing out of me.
Then I felt the phallus again, riding into me, past the hot itching flesh, and I almost died of sheer ecstasy. In and out, he drove it, soothing the itch, exhausting it, driving me into a frenzy. I cried as before but in gratitude. And as I snapped my hips, the phallus rocked inside me, and suddenly I came with great forceful, uncontrollable jerks into the air.
“That’s it,” he said, at once dissolving my fear, “that’s it.”
I leaned my head against my raised arm. I was his devoted and abandoned slave without reserve. I belonged to him and the stables and the village. There was no division in me, and he knew it.
I did not so much as whimper when he put me back into the pillory.
That night as the other ponies took me, I half-slumbered, wordlessly aware of how much I enjoyed their friendly pats, their tousling of my hair, their swatting me on the rump, telling me what a good steed I was, how they’d each had the awful itching phallus themselves, and that I’d borne it well, considering.
There was a rich echo of the maddening itch now and then as I was raped, but apparently there was not enough of the perfumed liquid left in me to discourage the others.
“What would happen if it was put on our cocks?” I wondered. “Best not to think about that,” I told myself.
What I thought about day to day was improving my form, marching better than the other ponies, deciding which coachmen I liked best, which coaches I enjoyed most pulling. I grew to love the other ponies, to understand their state of mind.
Ponies felt safe in their harnesses. They could take any manner of abuse as long as they were confined within their appointed role. It was intimacy that terrified them more than anything, the prospect of being taken out of harness and into some village bedroom where a lone man or woman might talk to them and play with them to his or her heart’s content. Even the Public Turntable was too intimate for them. They shuddered when they saw the slaves up there being paddled for the crowd. That is why it was such a torment to them when the village boys and girls played with them. Yet they loved nothing more than to pull the chariots in the race on fair day with the whole village watching them. It was what they were “born” to do.
I passed into this state of mind without entirely sharing it. After all, I rather adored the other punishments, too. But I didn’t miss them. I was happier in bit and harness than out of them. And, whereas these other punishments of castle and village life tended to isolate the slave, pony existence drew us together. And we amplified each other’s pleasure and pain.
I became used to all the stable boys, to their jovial greetings and responses. In fact, they were part of the comradery even when they paddled us or tormented us. And it was no secret that they loved their work.
Tristan all this time seemed just as content as I was, and in the recreation yard he admitted this. Things were harder for him; he was more gentle than me by nature.
But the real test and the real change came for him when his former Master, Nicolas, started to hang about.
At first, we saw Nicolas only occasionally passing the wagon yard. And, though I had not been very interested in him on the voyage from the Sultanate, I began to realize he was quite a charming and aristocratic young man. His white hair gave him a special luster; and he always wore velvet as if he were a Lord; and the expression on his face struck terror in the ponies, especially those who had pulled his coach.
After a few weeks of his quiet comings and goings, we started to see him at the gate every day. He was there in the morning, watching when we trotted off, and there at evening when we came back. And, though he pretended to be watching everything around him, his eyes settled on Tristan again and again.
Finally, one afternoon he sent for Tristan to draw a little market cart for him, just the sort of chore that froze my soul. I was scared for Tristan. Nicolas would walk right by him and torment him. I hated to see Tristan harnessed and rigged to the cart. Nicolas stood by with a long, stiff thrash in his hand, the kind that really marks the legs, just studying Tristan as he was bitted and fitted up well. Then he whipped Tristan’s thighs hard to move him out of the yard.
“What a terrible thing for Tristan,” I thought. “Tristan is too gentle for these things. If he had a mean streak, as I have, he would know how to handle that imperious wretch. He does not.”
Seems I was quite wrong. Not about Tristan’s lack of a mean streak, but about its being a terrible thing.
Tristan wasn’t back to the stables until near midnight. And, after he was fed and massaged and oiled, he told me in low whispers what had happened:
“You know how frightened of him I was,” he said, “of his temper, his disappointment in me.”
“Yes, go on.”
“And for the first few hours he whipped me mercilessly, all through the market. And I tried to be cold, to think only of being a good pony, to put him in the scheme of things, like a star in a constellation. Not to think on who he really was. But I kept thinking of when we had loved each other, he and I. And by noontime I knew I was grateful just to be near him. How wretched it was. He wouldn’t stop whipping me, no matter how well I trotted. And he never spoke a word.”
“And then?” I asked.
“Well, in the middle of the afternoon, after I’d been watered and rested on the edge of the marketplace, he drove me up the main road to his door. Of course, I remembered the house. I’ve recognized it every time we’ve passed it. And when I realized he was untying me from the cart, my heart stopped. He left me in bit and harness and whipped me into the hallway and then into his room.”
I was wondering if this wasn’t forbidden. But what did it matter? What could a pony do when such things occurred?
“Well, there was the bed we’d made love in, the room where we had talked. And he made me squat low, on the floor, facing his writing desk. And then he sat down at the desk and looked at me as I waited. You can imagine how I felt. That position is the worst, squatting, and my cock was unbelievably hard, and I still wore the harness, my arms bound tight against my back, and the bit with the reins over my shoulders. And he was picking up his damned pen to write!
“‘Drop the bit,’ he said to me, ‘and answer my questions just as you answered them once before.’ I did as he said, and then he began to interrogate me about all aspects of our existence: what we ate, how we were groomed, what were the worst trials. I answered everything as calmly as I could, but finally I was crying. I couldn’t control it. And all he did was write down the things I said. No matter how my voice changed or how I struggled, he kept writing. I confessed that I loved the pony life, yet it was hard. I admitted that I didn’t have the strength that you have, Laurent. I told him you were my idol in all things, that you were perfect. But I longed for a stern Master still, a loving and stern Master. I confessed everything, things I didn’t even know that I still felt.”
I wanted to say, “Tristan, you did not have to tell him. You could have concealed your soul. You could have taunted him and insulted him.” But I knew this was no good for Tristan, this line of thought.
I kept silent and Tristan went on with his account.
“Then the most remarkable thing happened,” he said. “Nicolas set down the pen. And for a moment he said and did nothing but gesture for me to be quiet. Then he came and knelt before me and put his arms around me, and he broke down. He said that he loved me, had never stopped loving me, and these months had been agony for him....”
“Poor boy,” I whispered.
“Laurent, don’t make fun of it. It’s serious.”
“I’m sorry, Tristan, go on.”
“He kissed me and embraced me. He said that he had failed me when we had left the Sultanate. That he should have whipped me for my confusion in not wanting to be rescued and guided me through it—”
“It’s about time he realized that.”
“And he wanted to make up for it now. He wasn’t allowed to take off my harness—there was a stiff fine for that and he had to respect the law—but we could make love together, he said. And we did. We lay on the floor together, as you and I did in the Sultan’s bedroom, and I took his cock in my mouth as he took mine. Laurent, I’ve never known such pleasure. He is my secret lover again and my secret Master.”
“What happened after that?”
“He drove me out again into the streets, and thereafter he kept his hand on my shoulder, and when he whipped me I knew that it was giving him pleasure. Everything was magnified. I was exalted again. Later, in the woods near his manor house, we made love a second time, and before he put the bit back in my mouth he kissed it lovingly. And he told me that all this must be kept secret. That the rules regarding the village pony stock were very, very strict.
“Tomorrow we’re to lead his team when he goes to the country. We’ll be tethered to his coach for some time almost every day, and he and I will have our secret moments when we can.”
“I’m happy for you, Tristan,” I said.
“But it’s going to be so hard, Laurent, waiting for opportunities with him. Yet it’s thrilling, isn’t it, never knowing when they will come?”
I never worried about Tristan after that. And, if others knew of his renewed love with Nicolas, they did not seem to mind. When the Captain of the Guard came round to talk to me, he said nothing about it and treated Tristan just as affectionately as before. He told us both that Lexius had been taken out of the castle kitchen almost immediately and he now served the Queen on the Bridle Path every day. The fierce Lady Juliana had also taken a liking to him and was having a hand in his training. He was becoming an exceptionally accomplished slave.
“So now I don’t have to worry about either Lexius or Tristan,” I thought.
But all this set me to thinking again about love. Had I ever loved one of my Masters? Or was love elicited from me only by my slaves? Surely I had felt a frightening love for Lexius when I’d whipped him in his chamber. And I felt love, profound love, for Jerard now. In fact, the harder I whipped Jerard with my hand the more I loved him. Maybe it would always be so with me. The moments in which my soul yielded, in which everything formed a complete pattern, were moments when I was in command.
But one strange contradiction to this troubled me. It was Gareth, my handsome stable-boy Master. As month passed into month, I grew to love him too much.
Every night, Gareth spent some time in our stall, pinching my welts, scratching them with his fingernails as he complimented me on what I’d learned, or how well I’d done, or passed on to me the praise of some generous villager.
If he thought that Tristan and I hadn’t been whipped enough that day—and this was common when we were not the last two in a team—he marched us out to the training yard, a large place at the opposite end of the stable from the other yards, and there he whipped both of us along with other neglected ponies until we were good and sore, having us all run before him in a small circle.
All detailed matters of grooming for Tristan and me he attended to personally. He scrubbed our teeth, shaved our faces, washed and combed our hair. He clipped our nails. He trimmed our pubic hair and oiled it. He oiled our nipples to soften them after the pinch of the clamps.
And when we were put in the fair day races for the first time, it was Gareth who calmed us as the screaming and cheering crowds unnerved us, Gareth who hitched us to the little chariots we had to pull and told us to be proud as we strived to win.
Gareth was always near.
On those rare occasions when we were to have some new style of harness or rigging, he put it on us himself, explaining it to us.
For example, after we had been in the stables about four months, high collars were introduced, much like those we’d worn briefly in the Sultan’s garden. They were stiff to hold the chin high, and it was impossible to turn the head while wearing one. And this Gareth liked very much. He felt they added style, and provided better discipline.
As time passed we wore these more and more often. And the reins of our bits were run down through loops on the sides of these collars, so that our heads could be pulled more effectively. It was difficult at first to make turns in these collars. We could not turn our heads even a little as we had been used to do. But soon we did it well, in the manner of real horses.
On glaring hot days blinders were strapped on us that partially shaded our eyes, only allowing us to see a little of what lay directly before us. It was comforting in a way, yet it made us run at a more dogged and clumsy pace, because we were completely dependent upon the coachman’s commands for guidance.
We were fitted out with ornamental harnesses for festival and fair days. On the anniversary of the Queen’s Coronation, all ponies wore leather dripping with fancy buckles, heavy bronze medallions, and jangling bells, and it weighted us down and gave us a new awareness of our bondage, as if we needed it.
But, in truth, our rigging was so much the same that the smallest change could be used as a punishment. If I showed the slightest sluggishness or sulkiness to Gareth, I was made to wear a longer, thicker bit that disfigured my mouth and made me miserable. An unusually large and heavy phallus was always used at least twice a week to remind us how fortunate we were to have smaller ones the rest of the time.
And skittish, uneasy ponies were often completely hooded in leather, their ears stuffed with cotton. With only their mouths and noses exposed for breathing, they trotted along in silence and darkness. And it did seem to calm them beautifully.
The times it was done to me as a punishment, however, I found it completely demoralizing. I cried from start to finish of the day, terrified at being unable to hear or see and whimpering every time a hand touched me. In blind isolation, I was more vividly aware of the picture I made than ever before, I think.
But, as time passed, I wasn’t too often punished, and it became more and more of a catastrophe of the heart when I was, Gareth sparing me nothing of his disappointment and temper. I was too deeply in love with Gareth, and I knew it. I loved his voice, his manner, his mere silent presence. It was for Gareth that I showed my best form, did my best trotting, bore stiff punishments with heartfelt contrition, obeyed with quickness and even joy.
Gareth often complimented me on my handling of Jerard. He would come into the yard to watch. He said the added whipping made Jerard more animated and frisky. And I enjoyed the praise.
But, no matter how strong this love for Gareth became, the special love for Jerard grew as well. I became more and more tender with Jerard after the paddlings, kissing him and suckling him and toying with him in ways that weren’t too common in the pony recreation yard. I feasted on his body for the whole hour. And, on those days when he wasn’t put out for me to play with, I had little trouble finding obedient substitutes. It was amazing the pain I could inflict with my bare hand.
In fact, sometimes I wondered at my passion for whipping the others. I loved it as much as I loved to be whipped. And in my secret heart I dreamed of whipping Gareth.
I knew that if I whipped Gareth then the love I felt for him would boil over. It would be beyond my control or recall.
That never came to pass.
But I had Gareth. Perhaps he had had a lover in the early months; I was never to know. But by the end of the first half of the year, he was slipping into my stall and lingering there, and behaving restlessly and strangely.
“What is troubling you, Gareth?” I asked finally, getting the courage to whisper to him in the dark. He might well have whipped me for speaking, but he didn’t. He had moved my hands to the back of my neck so that he could rest his head on his folded arms on my back. I rather liked it, him resting there, the feel of him against me. He was running a lazy hand through my hair. Now and then his knee would nudge my cock.
“Ponies are the only real slaves,” he murmured dreamily. “I prefer them to the daintiest Princess. Ponies are magnificent. All men should be given the chance to serve as ponies for a year of their lives. The Queen should have a fine stable at the castle. The Lords and Ladies have asked for it often enough. They could go for little rides in the country with ponies in splendid rigging. There should be a fine academy for the ponies, and more races, don’t you think?”
I didn’t answer. I dreaded the races. I was a frequent winner, but it was as frightening a thing as any that I’d ever been made to do. It was performing for amusement again, instead of work. I liked hard discipline and work.
There was that knee again, against my cock.
“What do you want from me, beautiful boy?” I asked softly, using the phrase he often used for me.
“You know what I want, don’t you?” he whispered.
“No,” I said. “If I did, I wouldn’t have asked.”
“The others will make fun of me if I do it,” he said. “I’m supposed to use the ponies when I choose, you know....”
“Why don’t you suit yourself and not worry about the others?” I asked.
That was all the urging he required. He dropped down on his knees and took my cock in his mouth, and soon I was roaring towards a finish in sheer bliss. “It’s Gareth, my beautiful Gareth,” I kept thinking. Then there was no thought at all. He snuggled against me afterwards, telling me how fine I was, that he loved the taste of it, my juices. When he slipped his cock into my backside, I came close to paradise again.
And though this happened often, his delicious mouth pleasuring me, he was just as stern a Master afterwards, and I was three times over his shuddering slave, crying at his slightest word of disapproval. Now, when he was angry, I thought not only of his handsome face and pleasant voice but of the mouth sucking hard on me in the dark. I cried frantically whenever he scolded me.
Once I stumbled while pulling a handsome equipage, and when he got wind of it he had me spread out on the stable wall, and he whipped me with a broad leather strap until he wore himself out. I was shuddering in misery, not daring to rub my cock against the stones for fear I’d come. When he released me, I knelt at his feet kissing his coarse rawhide boots over and over again.
“Don’t be clumsy like that again, Laurent,” he said. “It discredits me when you are clumsy.” I was crying with gratitude when he let me kiss his hands.
When spring came round again, I could scarcely believe nine months had passed. Tristan and I lay together in the recreation yard, confessing our fears to each other.
“Nicolas is going to the Queen,” Tristan said. “He is asking to purchase me when the year is out. But the Queen is not pleased with his ardor. What will we do when these days come to an end?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we’ll be sold back to the stables,” I said. “We’re good steeds.”
But it was like all our conversations of this sort—pure speculation. All we knew was that the Queen would consider our cases at the end of the year.
And when I saw the Captain of the Guard, when he came into the stables and sent for me and let me talk to him, I told him that Tristan was desperate to return to Nicolas, and I was just as desperate to remain where I was.
After the life of a pony, how could I bear anything else?
He listened to me with obvious compassion.
“You’re a credit to the stables, both of you,” he said. “You earn your feed twice and three times over.”
“More than that,” I thought, but I didn’t say so.
“The Queen may grant Nicolas’s wish, and as for you, it would be the natural thing for you to be given over for another year. The Queen’s more than pleased as it is to hear that you’ve both quieted down and behaved yourselves. And she has plenty of new playthings to content her at the castle.”
“Is Lexius still with her?” I asked.
“Yes, she’s frightfully hard on him, but it is what he needs,” said the Captain. “And then there is a lovely young Prince who wandered into this Land and threw himself upon her mercy. Said he was told of the Queen’s customs by Princess Beauty. Imagine that. He begged not to be sent away.”
“Ah, Beauty.” I felt a sudden stab of pain. I don’t think a day had passed that I’d not thought of her in her velvet gown, a flower held in a gloved hand, its petals looking all the more delicate for the fabric that pinched it. Gone forever into propriety, poor darling Beauty....
“Princess Beauty to you, Laurent,” the Captain corrected me.
“Of course, Princess Beauty,” I said softly, reverently.
“As to what will happen,” said the Captain, going back to the question at hand, “there is Lady Elvera, who asks about you constantly.”
“Captain, I am so happy here ...” I said.
“I know. I shall do what I can. But continue to be obedient, Laurent. You have another three years to serve somewhere, I am sure of it.”
“Captain, there is one more thing,” I said.
“What is it?”
“Princess Beauty.... Do you ever hear anything of her?”
His face grew a little sad, wistful.
“Only that she’s sure to be already married by this time. The suitors were beating down the door.”
I looked away from him, not wanting to reveal my expression. Beauty married. Time had not made me miss her less.
“She is a great Princess now, Laurent,” said the Captain, teasing me. “You are having disrespectful thoughts, I can see it!”
“Yes, Captain,” I said. We both smiled. But it wasn’t easy. “Captain, grant me a favor. When you do hear for certain that she has been married, don’t tell me. I would rather not know.”
“That isn’t like you, Laurent,” he said.
“I know. How explain it? I knew her only a little while.”
Coupling in the dark in the hold of the ship, her little face blood-red as she came beneath me, her hips pumping so ecstatically, she all but lifted my weight with her, off the floor. Of course, the Captain didn’t know that part of it. Or did he? I tried to put it out of my mind.
Weeks passed. I couldn’t keep track of them. I didn’t want to know how fast the time was running out.
Then one night Tristan confided to me with joyful tears that the Queen was giving him over to Nicolas when the year was out. He would be Nicolas’s private pony and sleep again in Nicolas’s chamber. He was ecstatic.
“I’m happy for you,” I said again.
But what would befall me when the moment came? Would I be put up on the auction block, and bought by some wicked old cobbler, and made to sweep out his shop while the ponies trotted past the door in all their glory? Ah! I couldn’t think of it. I couldn’t believe in anything else but this! Days following days....
In the recreation yard, I devoured Jerard as if each moment was our last. And then one evening at twilight when I was just finished with him and pulling him up into my arms for a little tender nuzzling, I saw a pair of boots standing before me. And looking up, I realized it was the Captain of the Guard.
He never came out here. I went pale.
“Your Majesty,” he said. “Please rise. I have a message of the greatest importance. I must ask you to come with me.”
“No!” I said. I stared at him in horror, thinking madly that if I could somehow stop his lips the words wouldn’t work their evil spell. “It can’t be time yet! I’m supposed to serve for three more years!”
We had all heard Beauty’s screams when she’d been told of her reprieve. I wanted to roar just as loudly now.
“I’m afraid it’s true, Your Majesty!” he said. And, extending his hand, he helped me to my feet.
It was amazing, the awkwardness between us. And right there in the stables were clothes for me and two young boys, with heads bowed not to see my nakedness, who helped me to put the clothes on.
“Must this be done here!” I demanded. I was in a rage. But I was trying to hide my grief, my utter shock. I stared at Gareth as the boys buttoned my tunic and laced my breeches. I looked down in silent fury at my boots, my gloves. “Couldn’t you have had the decency to take me up to the castle for this little ritual! I mean I’ve never seen it done right here on the hay-strewn floor!”
“Forgive me, Your Majesty!” the Captain said. “But this news couldn’t wait.”
He glanced at the open door. I saw two of the Queen’s most important advisers, both of whom had used me well at the castle, and now they too stood with bowed heads. I was on the edge of tears. Again I looked at Gareth. He too was about to cry.
“Goodbye, my beautiful Prince,” he said, and he knelt in the hay and kissed my hand.
“‘Prince’ is no longer the proper address for our gracious ally,” said one of the advisers, advancing. “Your Majesty, I bring you the sad news that your father has died, and you are now the ruler of your Kingdom. The King is dead, long live the King.”
“Damn it all,” I whispered. “He was always an utter bastard, and he would choose this time to breathe his last!”