I shook my head. All I could remember was the blast of the trumpet telling me to flee, and then crawling desperately through one long corridor of shrubbery after another, until they found me and forced me up with loud cries to be punished with all the other quarry who hadn’t provided good sport. It was held in the afternoons then mostly, not by torchlight, and the Queen had scolded me endlessly for being such an utter disappointment.

Again, the sheer size of the garden was astonishing to me. The torches and lanterns were dazzling me as we moved along. And many different threads of music blended in a low rushing noise rather like the sound of the fountains we passed.

Truly, the festivities seemed to go on forever. And all the courtiers I observed seemed utterly at home in it, familiar with its pastimes, and busy and not dazed as I was at all.

“And this is every night?” I asked.

“For now,” said Rosalynd, “with so many guests and so many returning. Remember Prince Jerard, the blond one, not the dark-haired one, the blond pony who was in the village stables with you, the one always mourning back then for Laurent? Well, he’s just returned. The King was so glad to see him. And Gareth, one of the old grooms adored by the King during his time in the stables, has just returned also to help with the King’s steeds. Have you seen the Royal Stables? I must take you around tomorrow.”

“Yes, there’s so much to see, but I want—” I didn’t have to finish. She kissed me full on the mouth and guided me through the castle doors.

We went up the stairs, stopping briefly on each landing to embrace. I reached up under her heavy skirts and felt her ripe warm sex, always such a delightful shock under all the silk and velvet.

At last, we were in my quarters.

Maybe the two obedient night slaves were disappointed when called to unlace Princess Rosalynd’s gown. I hardly cared. They obeyed at once, releasing her from her bindings and lacings, and now I could clutch her immense breasts the way I wanted to do it, and bury my face in them as I nestled them together.

We fell under the covers, like people of the great world beyond might do, and she crouched above me as I suckled her nipples hungrily. I loved the sight of them dangling over my face like delicious fruit from a bough.

“You don’t want to take off your shirt?” she asked. “It’s so heavy.”

“No,” I said. “I prefer it this way, if you’ll forgive me.” Of course my leggings and tunic were gone and my sex was poking at her greedily.

But she wanted to tease me just a little more. She turned suddenly to the slaves who had retreated to the fireplace.

“Good little girl, bring me a blindfold,” she said. “Silk, see-through, now.”

I laughed.

“Hush, Prince,” she said teasingly. “Each cock is a story unto itself, and yours is gorgeous. Oh, how I hungered for it in the sultanate. And they were always so strict with us, so cruel in never allowing us to touch one another or ourselves.”

“Seems we managed now and then,” I said.

The blindfold was a pretty gold thing and she tied it around my eyes. Indeed I could see through it, but it made the world a dreamlike magical place and my excitement grew even more painful and sharp. I’d worn such blindfolds many a time. I marveled at the sense of release that accompanied the wearing of them, the new level of abandon. But the story my cock was telling me was one of agony.

“Stand up, Prince,” she said in my ear, jumping off the bed suddenly and stretching her long legs and arms. This I could make out in the golden haze that had become the room. Then she pulled her dark hair down out of its combs and let it fall behind her like a great shadow.

“Lovely,” I whispered. I reached for her voluptuous arms.

“Now I’m going to mount you and ride you,” she said.

“I’ll come and fall to the floor!”

“We shall see.”

She jumped up and onto my cock, my cock slipping into her, and her sex clamping down on it with the tenacity of the most eager pleasure slave. At last. I almost wept as I stabbed her in a series of jerking spasms.

“Not so fast, beautiful prince,” she said. “Now walk, walk around the bed carrying me.” She wrapped her legs around my hips and her arms around my neck. She was kissing me.

I didn’t make it five steps.

After that, it was a bit slower. Her hips and bottom were so voluptuous, and even her calves were soft and tender to the touch. I spread her apart like a peach sliced in half and gazed at the dark pit of her sex for the longest time, the dark purplish lips, the gleaming clitoris.

For the third time, we were on the carpet. She begged me to remove my shirt but I wouldn’t. I forced her over and up on her hands and knees, and rode her now, my cock inside her, forcing her forward on her path. When she started to come, my hands found the little slippery clitoris and I pinched it and stroked it as I spent into her from the rear and felt her spend as she cried out.

All the day’s torment and agonies and delicious surprises and tantalizing memories had heated everything I felt for her, and then there was the familiarity of her, after all those years together—this succulent wench whom I’d never been allowed to touch.

An hour later I woke to the stillness of the room. The night slaves were still as statues in their positions by the hearth. Rosalynd was gone. Fabien had gone to his closet a long time back.

But at some point he had set out my writing things, as he knew I would want. A lamp burned on the table. Dim sounds came to me as if from throughout the castle, dim vibrations and hints of scraping music, and even bits and pieces of song.

I got up, and turning my back to the night slaves who were dozing anyway, stripped off my tunic and shirt and put on my dressing gown, lacing it at the neck and tying the sash. I was pleasantly exhausted, but my mind was as feverish as it had been all the long day.

At the table I sat down, smelled the black ink, and then dipped my quill pen.

There was a fresh little bound book before me—the kind I had made for my private thoughts. It was thick, but not too thick, the parchment good quality, and covers made of soft leather engraved with the letter D.

I began to write. But I found I’d seen and felt and thought so much that I could only list things, list items and people and moments, and places, and so finally, this was all that I did.

When next I fell on the pillow, I slept like the dead.

vii

By noon I was in my townhouse and what a pleasant affair it was.

Like all village townhouses it was more a work of wood than stone, and its buffed and gleaming floors and stairs and railings were its glory, along with its soft painted plaster walls. The tones of peach and yellow and occasional blue were fine for me, the heavy oak furnishings fit for a castle, and by afternoon, I had positioned my chair by the high fourth-story window to look down on the open square.

No Barbara as yet, but I had been promised she would be delivered soon.

By evening, I’d sent my letter to His Majesty begging to speak with him about the Place of Public Punishment and asking to offer my services if they should be wanted as “guiding genius,” to use his well-chosen words.

That night, he came himself to bring me my gold chain and medallion. A messenger came first to say he would shortly arrive.

I was again at the window, and the square below was wondrously illuminated, nothing like the shadowy place it had been before.

Slaves were being spanked on the turntable, of course, and I could see the maypoles were busy and people were going in and out of the tents. I thought of many things, many innovations. The ball game with the bent-over painted slaves was fun, but what if the balls were driven at the targets by paddles? I could think of several other variations. Slaves on hands and knees with heads straight to receive the circular garlands tossed from a distance by competing lords and ladies.

I had been watching it all for hours, and picturing to myself the King coming down from the castle—did he drive his own chariot with his finest ponies four abreast—when, suddenly, I saw him with his retinue below in the square. What a grand figure he was, with his streaming red-and-gold cloak, striding through the crowds as they broke for him and bowed on all sides.

And how he nodded and reached out to clasp hands here and there, and how buoyant and gladsome he looked.

I could see it all even from this distance, the fine figure he cut, and I thought, Yes, he has the greatness to rule Bellavalten, with his gracious queen at his side. She was not with him, no, but her devotion to him had been obvious when I’d seen them last night. She had a shyness about her, a shrinking quality. She’d had that when she was a slave.

But he was immense—immense in stature and also in spirit. I had never had such a strong sense of it as I did now watching him receive the admiration of so many eyes and the humble respect of so many hands as he made his way right towards my house.

He didn’t remain with me for long.

I received him in my new parlor which must have looked quaint and small and confining to him. Had he ever resided or even stayed in such a place?

He stood the whole while with his secretary, Emlin, and his attendants behind him, a giant beneath the low ceiling.

He put the chain about my neck.

“You are now the master of the Place of Public Punishment,” he said.

He embraced me, and kissed me. He was perhaps the tallest man I knew.