Beauty's Punishment

Penitential Procession

When Beauty awoke, it was late afternoon and she was alone in the Captain’s bed. A loud roaring came from the square below, with the slow chilling beat of a deep drum. In spite of the alarm that the drum sounded in her soul, she thought of the chores she should have done. She sat up in panic.

But immediately Prince Roger calmed her with a little gesture. “The Captain said for you to sleep late,” he said. He had the broom in his hands, but he was looking out of the window.

“What is it?” Beauty asked. She could feel the reverberation of the drum in her belly. And the steady beat filled her with dread. Seeing no one else in the room, she climbed to her feet and came up beside Prince Roger.

“Only the runaway Prince Laurent,” he said, putting his arm around Beauty as he pulled her close to the thick little panes. “Being wheeled through the village.”

Beauty pressed her forehead to the glass. Below in a great loose crowd of villagers she saw a giant two-wheeled cart being pulled around the well, not by horses, but slaves in bits and harnesses.

The flushed face of Prince Laurent, bound to the cross with his legs straight out, his protuberant sex as hard as ever, stared straight up at Beauty. She saw his eyes wide and seemingly still, the mouth quivering on the thick leather that bound the head flat to the top of the beam, the bound legs shuddering with the cart’s uneven movement.

The sight riveted her even more strongly than it had the night before, from this new perspective. She watched the slow progression of the cart and looked at the odd expression on the Prince’s face, so devoid of panic. The roaring of the crowd was as bad as it had been at the auction. And as the cart turned round the well and back towards the Sign of the Inn now, Beauty saw the victim fully from the front and she winced at the welts and bands of reddened flesh that covered the insides of his legs, his chest, and his belly. Two whippings more he’d had and a third promised.

But an even more disturbing sight absorbed her as she realized that one of the six slaves harnessed to the cart was Tristan. He was passing directly beneath her again, and it was Tristan without mistake, his thick golden hair shimmering in the sun, his head pulled back by the bit in his mouth, his knees rising sharply. And streaming out from the cleft of his handsomely shaped rump was a sleek black horsetail. No one had to tell her what held it in place. It was the phallus inside him.

Beauty covered her face with her hands, but she felt the familiar secretion between her legs, the first clarion of the day’s torments and raptures.

“Don’t be so foolish,” said Prince Roger. “The runaway Prince deserves it. Besides, his punishment hasn’t even begun. The Queen has refused to see him and has sentenced him to four years in the village.”

Beauty was thinking of Tristan. She felt his cock inside her. And she felt a mad fascination in seeing him trussed and pulling the cart, and seeing that appalling tail dangling behind him. It confused her and made her feel she had betrayed him.

“Well, maybe that is what the runaway wanted,” Beauty sighed, speaking of Laurent. “He was contrite enough last night, however.”

“Or maybe it’s what he thinks he wanted,” said Roger. “He has the turntable now to suffer, then round through the village again, and the turntable again, before he’s handed over to the Captain.”

The procession circled the well another time, the drum causing Beauty’s nerves almost to snap. Again she saw Tristan, marching almost proudly at the head of the team, and the sight of his genitals, and the weights hung on his nipples, and his beautiful face pulled up by the leather bit caused a little torrent of passion inside her.

“Normally the soldiers march fore and aft,” Prince Roger said as he picked up his broom again. “I wonder where they are today.”

“Looking for mysterious raiders,” she thought, but she didn’t say it. Now that she had her chance alone with Roger to ask about these things, she was too enthralled by the procession.

“You’re to go on down to the yard and rest on the grass,” said the Prince.

“Rest again?”

“The Captain won’t have you worked today. And tonight, he’s hiring you out to Nicolas, the Queen’s Chronicler.”

“Tristan’s Master!” Beauty whispered. “He’s asked for me?”

“Paid for you in good coin of the realm,” said Roger. He went on with his sweeping. “Go ahead down,” he said to her.

And her heart pounding, she watched the procession move slowly into the broad lane that led back to the other end of the village.