“Now, that’s enough of that, Henri,” he said. “Stand up straight.” The Captain lifted the short thick strap that dangled from his belt, unhooked it, and smacked the thighs of the pony hard several times, making him dance as if he knew what was good for him. Not to dance would have only incited more blows. You learn that fast when you’re a pony. You can’t speak, but you can respond, and that is what Henri did. But I could see the dignity in him. His cock was hopelessly hard in its lacings, held up straight with his scrotum laced close to it. He would go slack as he trotted. That couldn’t be helped. But he’d be expected to be hard quick enough anytime the coach stopped.

My own cock was hopelessly hard, too. And I realized of course what this entire afternoon was going to be like for me, the pure torture of it. It would be like the torture of old, enduring for hours, even for those of us whose cocks were released three and four times a day.

I felt a low churning excitement inside me, something savage suddenly, something so familiar yet alien that I stood there in silent musing, allowing it to collect and to seek some definition for itself.

“Later on, perhaps, we’ll go to see the stables,” said Alexi. “They’re quite beautiful now. I never saw the stables of the village until this year. I never knew the village.” He didn’t say this with pride or spite because I had known both. He said it simply.

“Yes, I would love to see them,” I said.

We mounted the chariot, the Captain in the middle, Alexi on his far right and I on his left, and he started the team.

To my astonishment the grooms ran along two on each side of the team and began at once to whip the legs of the ponies.

It was a comfortable trot, nothing fast, but I could feel the smooth power of the immense team and the fine spoke wheels of the chariot moving over the stones.

I couldn’t take my eyes off the men, how proudly they held themselves seeming not even to flinch as they were whipped, but then the whipping obviously wasn’t hard and it was done with flat straps that made a noise. It would sting, yes, and I could feel that. Each of the four grooms had four ponies to drive, two in front, two behind, and now I could hear the groans and swallowed sobs of the Punished Ponies closest to us.

I felt the blood drain from my face.

This was the old road, I recognized it, that carts had once taken to the castle. It had been a dull and dreary road then, never used by the Queen or her courtiers. But now it was a great curving and gently sloping thoroughfare, lined on both sides by banks of flowers.

It must have been entirely rebuilt and regraded. Again, the sharp memory of the day I’d been taken down to the village came back, as if it were happening now, as if I weren’t riding along beside the Captain, a guest of the Court, as if I were that naked slave in the cart with the other disgraced ones. And it had been that other captain, the Captain of the Castle Guard, who’d whipped us fiercely as the cart rolled on. I hadn’t tried to hide in the crowd from his lash. I’d failed so miserably at the castle that I’d been almost glad to be going to the village. They wouldn’t expect anything of me, I thought. They’d only punish me.

Wicked old Lord Gregory—in his fifties then—had told me over and over what the Queen might do to me if I didn’t improve. And I’d been glad to get away from him.

As we rounded the bend I saw the great castle in all its breathtaking glory. It seemed its grim towers had been washed clean somehow and they shone in the sun as if cased in limestone. We were beyond the garden walls, descending very gradually towards the village. Somewhere up there, inside those towers and wings, old Lord Gregory still presided over trembling slaves, or so Alexi had written to me. Wicked Lord Gregory, always angry, always striking terror in the hearts of the most playful slaves.

“Prince, you see that all this has been replanted,” said the Captain of the Guard, “as this is now a thoroughfare which the King and the Queen and courtiers travel all the time.”

“It’s very impressive, Captain,” I said.

“That road there leads off south to Prince Tristan’s manor house, and on to the other new manor houses.”

“Oh, you must see them,” said Alexi. “Tristan has his own little Court. He spends his days writing just as Lord Nicholas once did. He has become the new Court Chronicler.”

At last I could see the walls of the Queen’s Village up ahead or what was now called the Royal Village.

How we had all cried and moaned in the cart that awful morning. And how the sight of the battlements had terrified me, even though I’d been glad to be free of the angry queen and the angry Lord Gregory.

“I’ll take you around the village,” said the Captain. “It’s quite large now. The walls have been extended and will be extended more in the future, and many live outside the walls, as it is quite as safe to live outside as it is to live within.”

“Yes, I should like to see it,” I said softly. My eyes fell on the ponies again, all the tossing heads, and the jingling bells and the jewels flashing.

I remembered the feel of the plug in my anus, the feel of the horse’s tail brushing my naked legs, the feel of the harnesses holding me so firmly. It had been so simple! I’d wept only because it was expected that I weep, as bad little boys should when made into ponies, and I could still remember the anticipation I felt when the day was over that I’d be whipped hard and then some hot wet mouth would come to ease the torment of my cock, and I’d be able to sleep in my stall, standing up, bent over at the waist, my head on a pillow of straw.

My backside had been so toughened by then I could take the longest whippings or paddlings.

Suddenly we were on the flat plain before the gates of the village and then taking the road to the west around it. I could see soldiers up on top of the walls and many farmhouses now in the mown fields. The road was broad and well beaten and again there were flowers blossoming everywhere, and great shady copses of old trees.

And now I saw the old spectacle of naked slaves working in the fields, tossing seed from baskets they carried, and other slaves laboring along the road, some pulling little carts full of fresh goods, driven by a solitary master with a switch.

But I soon came to see that these weren’t ordinary farm fields as they’d been in my time. No. Everywhere I looked I saw the crop was now flowers of various sorts and in the distance I could see the shining glint of glass hothouses no doubt for more tropical or delicate blooms. Slaves were doing the work as before, but I sensed even from the distance of the road that they seemed spirited and contented in what they were doing, tending the rosebushes, or the great patches of lilies, and I even saw two naked slaves obviously chatting with one another but then a busy master did appear with the inevitable strap.

Nevertheless much had changed indeed.

After my time as a village pony, I’d been sold off to a farmer who lived in the village, for more punitive service, and I remembered pulling a small plow through the fields. It wasn’t backbreaking labor, not at all, and though I came to hate the tedium of it, and the mud and the inevitable sweat and my feet deep in the soft earth, I had loved the fresh breezes and the great open blue sky.

Once again a flood of memories came back to me, of being driven by the strap to work on the farm and then back to the village where I was often strapped outside the door of the farmer’s narrow house, with my hands tied over my head to an iron bracket for the evening. I was turned facing out when the strapping was over. Barefoot, soiled, thirsty.

An old scholar often came by to chat with me, though why I never knew. He’d tease my cock as so many other passersby did, considering it their duty to keep the cocks up and down the street hard, and the old scholar, who was really no older than I am now, and rather elegant, told me that we naked slaves at the doorways were like the Herms of ancient cities.

“And what in the world, sir,” I had asked one evening, “is a Herm?”

“In old Athens, they were pillars, young man, outside of houses, with the head of Hermes atop them, and cock and balls carved in relief. They were sacred. And they were for luck.”

Then he had recounted an old story of how frightened the Athenians were when, the night before their fleet went out to fight a great war, all the Herms of the city had been vandalized. He thought the whole thing very interesting, and explained in depth to me how we naked slaves, almost all male, were exactly the same sort of sacred creatures, meant with our prominently displayed genitals to turn away harm.

Some Herms had the head of Athena, he told me, and from these old statues had come eventually the word “hermaphrodite.” I’d been fascinated, uncomfortable as I was there, exposed and being teased idly by him, and helpless and listening as he took his time to tell me things of which I’d never dreamed.

I had no inkling then that this was something I would never forget. I remember only that my cock did jump at the thought of a pillar with the head of Athena and a cock and balls, and I had been quiet to encourage him to go on talking, which he likely would have done even if I’d gone to sleep.

I was shocked out of my reverie as there loomed into view one of the village pony teams, in their simple leather, pulling a large wagon full of people.

As it lumbered past us on the left I scarcely had a moment to drink in the spectacle of the struggling male ponies with their heads bowed, their boots dusty, and their black horsetails gleaming in the sunlight. Again the sight of the rippling muscles went to the root of my being. And only as the cart moved on did I realize the passengers were bowing to us.