I tried to clear my vision, to hear what the Queen was saying—that they were so glad to receive me. I wanted to put my heated tumbling thoughts in order. Why, after all, when I’d been whipped there so often after my return from the sultanate, did my mind go back, right back, to that very first terrifying time?

“It will purify you,” the Captain had said earnestly, almost tenderly, as I was forced up the ladder. “Believe me, it is the most effective punishment. That’s why I want you to receive it now and often. You’ll see. Now up you go!”

I felt the whipping master’s left hand on my neck. Always. Left hand on the neck. My chin rested on the rough wood. And the crack over and over of the paddle, and the crowd screaming.

“Little piglet,” said the whipping master, “you’re giving the crowd a great show. You just keep struggling with all your might against those straps. But keep your chin on this post, or I’ll let the crowd name the number of the blows.”

Struggling. I felt it again, my toes hammering down on the wood, my thighs tensing, and my hands twisting and turning in the ropes. But the heavy hand on my neck kept my head firmly in place, my chin on the rough wooden post, and through my tears I saw the crowd in a haze before me, all around me, cheering and waving, and one lovely girl with a bright, round face smiling at me as she waved a blue scarf.

Strange to remember such a detail, but then after . . . yes, that scarf.

With a sudden shock, I realized the Captain, the very Captain who had taken me that day to the Public Turntable, was standing here beside the Queen.

“Prince Dmitri, of course you remember Captain Gordon,” she was saying in her sweet, cordial voice.

I couldn’t speak.

“Prince, you said in one of your letters you were eager to see the village,” the King said casually. “Well, the Captain will escort you there whenever and however often you want to see it. Why, there’s plenty of time before supper, if you’re so inclined.”

“Our guest might want to rest, my lord,” said the Queen. “He has a world of time in which to see everything.”

The village. Anytime.

“Yes, of course,” said the King, “but I welcome Dmitri’s estimation of the village. I really do. I’m pleased that Dmitri has asked about it, mentioned it.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” said the Captain.

“I do so want to see it,” I said, trying to steady my voice.

“But you are white, Prince, perfectly white with exhaustion,” said the Queen. “You should sleep first.”

“I am yours, my lord,” said the Captain to me. “All afternoon, I’m at your service.”

It was this man, this very man who stood at my service now, waiting, silent, waiting, who had brought me down the ladder and pushed me roughly towards the pillory, lifting the board, and forcing my hands and my head through the holes and then slapping the board down in place. The board had held me bent over from the waist, my bare feet in the dust. I could barely look up. But I did, and I saw the next victim on the distant turntable, a dainty red-haired princess blushing and gasping as the whipping master forced her to kneel down and bend over and place her chin on that post as he’d forced me to do. Her large lovely eyes were suddenly squeezed shut.

Then something blue filled my vision. Blue. It was that scarf, and a tender voice said in my ear:

“Let me wipe your tears. You are so handsome.” It was that round-faced girl from the crowd, with skin like fresh cream. “There, there,” she cooed, and another pair of hands appeared cupping a crude bowl of wine and I saw fingers dipped in it and I was given the fingers, dripping with wine, to suck.

“You know, Dmitri, we lack a guiding genius for the Place of Public Punishment,” the King said. “Perhaps for many aspects of the village. You mentioned that place in your letter. I never really knew the place. . . .”

The words struck my heart. A guiding genius.

“It’s going well, sire,” said the Captain.

“Yes, Captain, I know,” said the King. “And the Lady Mayor has the whole enterprise in hand. But it’s huge now. And the opinions of our beloved returning princes and princesses provide much insight.”

I saw the blue scarf in front of my eyes. Heard the sounds of the crowd. And it had only been the morning crowd.

The Captain had been scolding the villagers behind me as I lapped the wine from the girl’s cupped hand. “That’s it, dearest prince,” she whispered. I was so thirsty! My tongue scraped the palm of her hand.

“No touching him there,” said the Captain to the others, whom I couldn’t see. “You may pinch and prod, but cocks starve in the Place of Public Punishment.” It had been so warm there and so dusty. “Yes, with feathers you can tease him, that’s fine, or whisk brooms, but that cock is to starve, and you know this.”

The Captain’s belt struck my backside, struck the flesh that was so sore and hot from the turntable. I knew it was the Captain.

“Now, you’re going to spend the day here, little boy,” he had said. “You’ll be spanked again up there at noon and again at dusk. And by late evening, when you’re brought up there for the last time, I want to see some composure, you understand me? I want to see an end to all that struggling. You’re here to learn to be the perfect little boy the Queen desires.” Crack of the strap.

“Prince, I think you should rest now,” said the lovely new queen leaning towards me. “You are pale and trembling.”

“I think you’re right,” I said. It was more of a stammer, a murmur. “And then later . . .”

Composure.

Well, I’d learned composure. But it was not there, not on that day, not with this man schooling me, though he had certainly given it his best. I’d learned it in the distant land of the Sultan, one of the last slaves privileged to know that strange exotic paradise before Lexius had come to warn all of its doom.

ii

My chambers were lavishly furnished. Two naked slaves were in attendance, and my befuddled servants and grooms were hustled off to a servants’ wing to be fed and rested. Fabien remained, of course, with a bed in an ample closet adjacent to my bedchamber.

The cold stone walls had been paneled in finely polished dark wood, and draped here and there with heavily embroidered hangings, and even the floors which had always been damp in my time were covered by scattered exotic carpets.

The bed was quite impressive, draped in linen as well as richly dyed wool, and the writing table and chairs were exquisitely carved with the usual curlicues and tiny animals. Indeed there were more wood movables in the room than I’d ever seen, stools, tables, cushioned benches, whatever one might desire for sitting, or a goblet or a foot, and even the great fireplace itself had a coat of arms carved in the stone chimney piece, though whose coat of arms it was I didn’t know.

The fire chased the damp, and the air outside was deliciously mild as it always was in Bellavalten. Perhaps the ancestors of the old queen would have never attempted naked pleasure slavery had not the kingdom existed in this sheltered valley, subject to warm breezes and a break in the mists that so often hover over coastlands.

I lay down on the bed and fell into a dead sleep for two hours.

It was only early afternoon when I waked, sat up, and looked about myself.

The two slaves knelt by the fireplace, facing me, sitting back on their heels, their heads bowed.

Immediately one rose, the girl slave, a beauty as were they all, but this one particularly was fair with the loveliest thick braids of blond hair and playful waves about her high smooth forehead. She came at once to the side of the bed with a goblet for me and a little plate of sliced apples.

“Master, what can I get for you?”

“Tell me if all the chambers in this new wing are so lavishly appointed,” I asked. I devoured the apple hungrily. It was all the food I wanted just now. I drank the cool water.

“Yes, Master,” she said. “Throughout the castle all the rooms have been restored. Merchants came day after day for months from Italy, Spain, and lands to the east, with cartloads of tapestries and carpets for the refurnishing of the castle. Carts laden with beds and furnishings arrived every morning for so long, and even now the carpenters are at work in the Queen’s Village, though now it’s called the Royal Village.”

She had pretty eyes, and plump cheeks, though her chin was small and delicate. Her breasts appeared slightly moist, dewy, and this time I didn’t resist the urge to slip my hand between her legs, to feel the soft warm pubic hair, and the lips, so naked, so tender.

She held quite still as I did this, the goblet and plate in her hand, not daring to move.

“And have you been here since the King and Queen came?” I asked.

“I’ve been here for two years, Master,” she said. “I was sent from a homeland that is gone now. I am at home here with the King’s blessing.”

Just the faintest blush flared in her white cheeks.

I examined her nipples idly, pinching them to make them nice and hard. How many times had that been done to me, how many times a day? I felt the old hands polishing my balls and cock with oil, oiling my anus, the old idle spanks, the pinching of my thighs.

She was incomparably lovely, but then so were they all.