The handsome attendant guided me firmly with a warm tight-gloved hand on my upper arm. He was as tall as I was.

“Well, quite the whipping, young man,” he said evenly. “And you must have taken it very well if Lady Eva is passing you through without a full ‘over the knee’ paddling and other tests. Be assured, your groom will get her message. Go in here, and try to think straight about what you’re doing, as there is no undoing it. And I’m supposed to remind you of that.”

As he forced me into the clerk’s chamber, he gave me a hard squeeze with his gloved hand right on the sorest of my sore flesh. And I winced, but didn’t break form or respond except to murmur, “Yes, sir.”

It seemed I could hear a strap or paddle going somewhere working hard, and there flashed into my mind the image of Sybil being paddled over the knee and I felt my cock stiffen again. She’s been accepted, I told myself, now leave the matter.

The clerk’s office was cluttered, and I found myself before a high desk littered with parchment and ink stands and feather pens while a wall of fat bulging books rose to the ceiling behind the man.

I didn’t look him in the face naturally. But I could see in a blur that he was older with dark gray hair.

The door shut behind me.

“Look to the right, Brendon of Arcolot,” said the clerk. “In that open chest there, are those your belongings?”

“Yes, sir,” I replied at once because they were. My bundle had been emptied, and my books and papers and clothes and shoes were all neatly arranged, with the sack itself in which I’d carried them folded. It even appeared to have been washed, but there seemed scarcely time for that.

He was busy scribbling for a while, as I stood waiting, the pain simmering warmly all through my bottom and my legs. My calf muscles twitched. And I realized my cock was hard again.

It didn’t seem to matter at all to him.

“Very well, and is that all you possess? Do you wish to look through it?”

“No, sir, that’s all. I can see it.”

“Very well, and you can read this document, can you?”

“Yes, sir.”

He turned the long page to me.

I saw it had been written out in advance in wonderful script and my name had been filled in by a careful but less-fluent hand.

“I, Brendon of Arcolot, hereafter to be known as Brenn, do of my own free will . . .” And on it went, affirming that in six months’ time, if I failed to please, I’d be sent from the kingdom, but that I might at that juncture choose to go of my own free will, and would be released without question if I so wished it. But I was being received now for no less than two years’ service, and once that probationary period was past, I would continue in that service, not to be released on any account ever unless the King and the Queen chose to find me unfit and exile me.

All the protections were spelled out—no cutting, burning, harming the skin, the organs, the health of a slave, and so forth—and the promises that I would be well fed, well groomed, and allowed plenty of sleep and so forth and so on.

It was easy to wrest the sense from the ornate and official language, and I marveled even in my trembling state at the beauty of the hand and the phrasing.

As I took the quill and signed my full name, I acknowledged as the document said that my body was now the property of King Laurent and Queen Beauty of Bellavalten, to do with as they wished within the constraints assured to me. I would never be sold outside the kingdom nor given to anyone who did not abide by its laws.

There was a lot more there, all about how incorrigibles might be exiled, and what it meant to be incorrigible. But I knew all this.

I wasn’t going to be incorrigible.

As the clerk seemed so utterly indifferent to my physical state, my nakedness, the redness of my limbs, or the manner in which I stood there, I almost ventured the question of whether or not Sybil had signed her document.

But at that very moment, I saw Sybil’s green wool mantle, the one she’d worn all the way from our home, and that it was folded in an open chest that stood beside my chest. I saw the lining of gray miniver. And in that chest there was also a long parchment document. Daring to turn my head in full I read the huge and familiar signature of Sybil of Arcolot on it plainly.

The clerk never noticed. He was making some notes in a great book.

Then he lifted a brass bell with a wooden handle and rang it.

“This one is ready for you,” he said without looking up to another well-dressed man who appeared. Like the other attendant earlier, he was comely, obviously chosen for his grace and his looks.

“Ah, so this is the second one directed for the royal table or stable,” said the attendant.

Table or stable! He’s spoken these words without a touch of humor. It startled me.

I felt his gloved fingers closing on my left arm and he pulled me out the door.

Then came the weary murmuring voice of the clerk.

“I wish you good fortune, Brendan of Arcolot,” he said, “you and your sweet Lady Sybil. When the King comes tonight to inspect as he so often does, and ask whether this has been a good day, I shall tell him that it has been splendid.”

iv

This seemed to be a vast garden. I couldn’t tell. The quality of the light was bright yet not outdoor light, and only gradually did I realize as I was led through the potted trees that this was a tented enclosure that filtered the sun through white cloth.

I saw stone flooring beneath me strewn with mats and felt the mats under my naked feet and caught the scent of oranges. The air was sweet with other mingled scents, jasmine and mint, and slightly damp.

It seemed we’d walked forever until we came to a great bathing area where naked slaves were being bathed by liveried attendants in bronze or pewter tubs.

Water in tin buckets simmered on smoking braziers and the scent of cedar and incense thickened.

With my eyes down I could only catch furtive glimpses of the naked bodies standing or kneeling all around me for this bathing, and the glossy green leaves of potted shrubs brushed my legs softly as we moved on.

“Ah, there,” said the attendant, “and a great and good groom, Fane, who is beckoning for us. You’re blessed.”

He pushed me roughly forward until I was staring down into the warm water swirling with flower petals.

I heard him say to the groom named Fane that Lady Eva would likely be presenting me at Court this very night, and that I was to be thoroughly prepared, my face shaved but none of my body hair touched.

“Hmm, the chest hair is becoming enough,” said Fane, a young man in a light white short-sleeved tunic with what appeared a big scrubbing brush in his hand. “But the pubic hair, it’s so thick and so long.”

“Lady Eva was explicit,” said the attendant. “Goodbye, Brenn, and good luck to you.” He gave my backside a fierce smack.

I was ordered into the water by the groom who went to work as fiercely as the pretty female before.

“Quite a physique, young boy,” he said. “My name is Fane, by the way, and when you answer me, you may address me as ‘sir’ or as ‘Fane.’ That’s the way with all grooms or pages or handlers—the name or the respectful ‘sir’ or ‘madam.’”

“Yes, Fane,” I murmured.

“Oh, you don’t have to speak unless asked a question,” he said, correcting me.

I didn’t know what to do but nod.

He had me kneel up, then on all fours, then sit in the warm water as he worked, and spared no part of my body with the big, and thankfully soft, brush.

I couldn’t stop glancing about me—seeing flashes of other slaves being lathered and scrubbed and rubbed with foaming oils, the many grooms all quite similar in build and beauty, young men with powerful arms and sturdy backs and legs.

Beyond this ring of baths, I glimpsed a wilderness of what seemed high narrow beds on which naked flesh was being pounded and kneaded and rubbed with oil.

That part of the preparation came for me as soon as Fane had closely shaved my face and dried my hair.

He began to talk now as he stretched me out on the table and told me to slip my cock through the open hole provided for this before he pressed me down flat.

“Now, listen, Brenn, remembering my name’s not important, as you’ll likely not see me again if you behave yourself, but you’ll soon have regular grooms, grooms you’ll come to know and depend on,” he said.

He rubbed oil into my sore abraded bottom first and then my aching legs. The oil felt wondrously good and so did his powerful hands.

“Grooms are always willing to answer any questions you might have,” he went on. “And to make certain that you’re fearing all the proper things.” He laughed. “By that I mean, we’re to reassure you of what is in store for you and reassure you as to what is not.”

He turned my head to one side and let me rest on the left side of my face and now as he worked on my hair, brushing it strongly, obviously to bring up the natural luster of it, I could see beyond this area, and what appeared an entire wall of niches where naked slaves slept. So many! It seemed I could see thirty or forty, though I didn’t try to count.

“So you have nothing to ask me, Brenn?” he coaxed. “As long as you address me properly as ‘sir,’ and ask nothing importunate or willful, I’m here to tell you what I can.”