“I don’t know. There must have been more to it than that,” Tristan whispered, but then he stopped as though bewildered. “But if you must know,” he confessed, “I am terrified.” Yet he said it so calmly, his voice so full of quiet assurance that Beauty couldn’t believe it.
The groaning cart had made another turn. The guards had ridden ahead to hear some orders from their Commander. The slaves whispered among themselves, all too obedient and fearful still to discard the little leather bits in their mouth, yet able to consult frantically on what lay ahead as the cart rocked on slowly.
“Beauty,” Tristan said, “we’ll be separated when we reach the village, and no one knows what may happen to us. Be good, obey; it can’t ultimately—” And again he stopped, unsure. “It can’t ultimately be worse than the castle.”
And now Beauty thought she heard the barest tinge of real trepidation in his voice, but his face was almost hard when she looked up at him, only the beautiful eyes softening it just a little. She could see the slightest golden stubble of beard on his chin, and she wanted to kiss it.
“Will you watch for me after we’re separated, try to find me, if only to say a few words to me?” Beauty said. “O, just to know you are there . . . but I don’t think I will be good. I don’t see why I should be good any longer. We’re bad slaves, Tristan. Why should we obey now?”
“What do you mean?” he asked. “You make me afraid for you.”
From far away, there came the faint roar of voices, the sound of a large crowd carrying sluggishly over the low hills, the dim vibration of a village fair, of hundreds talking, shouting, milling.
Beauty pressed close to Tristan’s chest. She felt a stab of excitement between her legs, her heart knocking. Tristan’s organ was hard again, but it was not inside of her, and it was an agony again that her hands were bound so she couldn’t touch it.
Her question seemed meaningless suddenly, yet she repeated it, the distant noise growing louder. “Why must we obey if we are already punished?”
Tristan too heard the distant swelling sounds. The cart was picking up speed.
“We were told at the castle that we must obey,” Beauty said, “our parents had willed it when they sent us to the Queen and the Prince as Tributes. But now we’re bad slaves ...”
“Our punishment will only be worse if we disobey,” Tristan said, but there was something strange in his eyes that betrayed his voice. He sounded false, as if repeating something he thought he should say for her good.
“We must wait and see what happens to us,” he said. “Remember, Beauty, in the end they will win over us.”
“But how, Tristan?” she asked. “You mean you condemned yourself to this, and yet you will obey?” She felt again the thrill she’d known when she left the Prince and Lady Juliana weeping behind her at the castle. “I am such a bad girl,” she thought. Yet. . .
“Beauty, their wishes will prevail. Remember, a willful, disobedient slave will amuse them just as much. Why struggle?” Tristan said.
“Why struggle to obey?” Beauty said.
“Do you have the strength to be terribly bad all the time?” he asked. His voice was low, urgent, his breath warm against her neck as he kissed her again. Beauty tried to shut out the sound of the crowd; it was a horrid sound, like that of a great beast coming out of its lair; she knew she was trembling.
“Beauty, I don’t know what I’ve done,” Tristan said. Anxiously he glanced in the direction of that awesome, menacing noise: shouts, cheers, the mayhem of a fair day. “Even at the castle,” he said, the violet-blue eyes fired now with something that might have been fear in a strong Prince who could not show it. “Even at the castle, I found it was easier to run when they told us to run, to kneel when they told us to kneel, and there was a triumph of sorts in doing it perfectly.”
“Then why are we here, Tristan?” she asked, standing on tiptoe to kiss his lips. “Why are we both such bad slaves?” And though she tried to sound rebellious and brave, she pressed herself against Tristan all the more desperately.
The Auction in the Marketplace
The cart had come to a stop, and Beauty could see through the tangle of white arms and tousled hair the walls of the village below, with the gates open and a motley crowd swelling out onto the green.
But slaves were being quickly unloaded from the cart, forced with the smack of the belt to crowd together on the grass. And Beauty was immediately separated from Tristan, who was pulled roughly away from her for no apparent reason other than the whim of a guard.
The leather bits were being pulled out of the mouths of the others. “Silence!” came the loud voice of the Commander. “There is no speech for slaves in the village! Any who speak shall be gagged again more cruelly than they have ever been before!”
He rode his horse round the little herd, driving it tightly together, and gave the order that the slaves’ hands should be unbound and woe to any slave who removed his or her hands from the back of the neck.
“The village has no need of your impudent voices!” he went on. “You are beasts of burden now, whether that burden be labor or pleasure! And you shall keep your hands to the back of your necks or be yoked and driven before a plow through the fields!”
Beauty was trembling violently. She couldn’t see Tristan as she was forced forward. All around her were long windblown tresses, bowed heads, and tears. It seemed the slaves cried more softly without their gags, struggling to keep their lips closed, and the voices of the guards were miserably sharp!
“Move! Head up straight!” came the gruff, impatient commands. Beauty felt chills rising on her arms and legs at the sound of those angry voices. Tristan was behind her somewhere, but if only he would come close.
And why had they been put out here so far from the village? And why was the cart being turned around?
Suddenly she knew. They were to be driven on foot, like a gaggle of geese to market. And almost as quickly as the thought came to her, the mounted guards swooped down on the little group and started them forward with a rain of blows.
“This is too bitter,” Beauty thought. She was trembling as she started to run, the smack of the paddle as always catching her when she did not expect it and sending her flying forward over the soft, newly turned earth of the road.
“At a trot, with heads up!” the guard shouted, “and knees up as well!” And Beauty saw the horses’ hooves pounding beside her, just as she’d seen them before on the Bridle Path at the castle, and felt the same wild trepidation as the paddle cracked her thighs and even her calves. Her breasts ached as she ran, and a dull warm pain coursed through her sore legs.
She couldn’t see the crowd clearly, but she knew they were there, hundreds of villagers, perhaps even thousands, flooding out of the gates to meet the slaves. “And we’re to be driven right through them; it’s too awful,” she thought, and suddenly the resolves she had made in the cart, to disobey, to rebel, left her. She was too purely afraid. And she was running as fast as she could down the road towards the village, the paddle finding her no matter how she hurried, until she realized she had pressed through the first rank of slaves and was now running with them, no one before her anymore to shield her from the sight of the enormous crowd.
Banners flew from the battlements. Arms waved and cheers rose as the slaves drew closer, and through the excitement there came the sounds of derision, and Beauty’s heart thudded as she tried not to see too clearly what lay ahead, though she could not turn away.
“No protection, nowhere to hide,” she thought, “and where is Tristan? Why can’t I fall back into the flock?” But when she tried, the paddle smacked her soundly again, and the guard shouted to her to go forward! And blows were rained on those around her, causing the little red-haired Princess on her right to break into helpless tears. “O, what’s to happen to us? Why did we disobey?!” the little Princess wailed through her sobs, but the dark-haired Prince on the other side of Beauty threw her a warning glance: “Quiet or it will be worse!”