The long winding way back up the hill was lined with torches. And at several points I marveled to see brightly illuminated shrines in which highly polished slaves were posed and bound in what seemed rather beautiful positions. The lanterns surrounding these niches and their human artifacts were large and glittered with multiple candle flames.

“It’s not as taxing as it looks,” said Alexi, following my eyes. “They are mounted in those niches for no more than three hours each evening. They’ll be relieved later on by others and then by the stroke of midnight they’ll be packed off to bed. The King and Lady Eva are ever vigilant that every slave be well treated. And Queen Beauty would be shocked were they not.”

The castle and the castle gardens were splendidly illuminated as we drove up. I could hear a great gentle buzz of voices everywhere, and the high crenellated walls of the castle were ablaze with torches as well.

I kissed my companions goodbye, hurried up to my room, and fell down on the bed in a dead faint. My cock pulsed and demanded things of me. I told it to be still, and fresh for the night.

vi

The great red-and-gold-canopied pavilion of the King and Queen dominated an immense garden that I didn’t recognize from before, so huge was it, and filled with other smaller pavilions, fountains, and potted and natural trees.

The King and Queen were feasting at a long banquet table when at last I was summoned, along with several other royal returnees, and told I might be introduced and present my gifts now.

I’d dressed carefully for this in a lighter silken European tunic and leggings and slippers, and felt much more comfortable now in the warm delightful breeze.

The air was filled with the music of harps and horns and drums.

On great polished platforms laid down on the grass, lords and ladies danced with stately precision, and a long carpet ran up to the platform before the King and Queen.

King Laurent looked larger than life in his brilliant scarlet velvet and gold tunic and long full bordered sleeves, and the Queen was a vision of delicacy and enticing loveliness, suggestive of lilies, with her pale skin, golden hair, and girlish eyes.

To either side well-dressed members of the Court dined with them, the tables seeming to go forever out of sight. I knew some of these faces, even from a distance, and thought I glimpsed old Lord Gregory there, bending over his plate rather moodily with heavy brows. And if I wasn’t mistaken the severe cold-eyed woman looking back at me sharply from the Queen’s left was Lady Elvera who had once been the harsh, merciless mistress of the King.

There were others far too numerous for me to note. Everywhere I beheld costly attire, jewels on throats and fingers and wrists, and shimmering veils of the sheerest silk, and the glitter of silver and gold plate. The many tables all around me and before me were strewn with fresh flowers.

The scent of gardenias and lilies was intoxicating. Potted rose trees bloomed everywhere I looked, it seemed, and pathways had been made through the maze of the garden by fine India carpets, trodden under foot now as carelessly as the grass.

Naked slaves, exquisitely coiffed and groomed, and some even decorated with leafy chains of little flowers laid over their hips, served wine and steaming hot platters of food to the royal guests and to a wilderness of other banqueting nobility and gentlefolk in pavilions or at open tables everywhere I looked.

Behind the King and Queen, naked slaves stood on a low wall, still as statues, legs wide apart, oiled genitals gleaming, garlanded heads bowed. Man, woman, man, woman. Arms raised, hands clasped behind the neck.

To the far right as I approached I saw slaves running on the familiar Bridle Path where I’d been such a failure in my time, falling down and then crawling away from the mounted lord who sought to drive me with his paddle—such a disgrace.

The slaves I glimpsed ran fast and with grace, knees high, booted feet striking the earth gracefully, but I realized quite suddenly that the “mounted figures” driving them were not mounted on horses at all. Each was in a small light chariot, like an ancient battle chariot, pulled by a male pony!

I wanted to see more of this and knew that later I would.

I could see companion slaves everywhere at the feet of those they served, sitting back on their heels waiting for the slightest command, and some being made to play “fetch” with a flowering branch or a bright golden ball.

There were fountains surrounded by naked slaves on their knees facing out with their arms bound to the rim of the fountain, and in the center of these busy sparkling pools of water stood other slaves about the high pillar that held the smaller second basin with its splashing spout.

Now all this took me back to the sultanate where every night it seemed I’d been in a lighted garden, playing at games of fetch, or adorning some fountain, superbly taught by my dark-faced and delicate-fingered masters, none of whom spoke our tongue, but managed to convey their wishes to us effortlessly with their firm hands. Only Lexius had spoken our tongue and he’d been taken away by Laurent and the Captain shortly after we’d been brought there.

Surely the Sultan’s influence was alive here in this endless paradise of sweetly illuminated trees with its countless guests.

I saw slaves as footstools, and kneeling as pets beside their masters and mistresses. And then the spectacle of X crosses, to which spread-eagled slaves were bound with shining silver and gold cuffs at ankles and uplifted wrists, heads held in place with stately collars, and often crowned with flowers, genitals decorated in gold.

Here and there leashed slaves were being driven as puppies through the festive crowds, their necks collared, their heads bowed. Inevitably some were prodded about by a phallus driven into the anus at the end of a handsome tooled leather rod. How I recalled the feel of that phallus and the way one was prodded forward by the rod or wand.

I saw a stately young noblewoman standing idly beneath a tree strung with flickering lanterns, making her little boy kneel up and beg for the sweets she dangled over his head, with his hands bound behind his back.

Slave cocks were everywhere erect, bottoms red, faces modest and submissive. The serving slaves with the pretty fluttering flower chains around their hips looked more naked than all the rest.

I found myself in a short line of others waiting for my audience. Fabien stood beside me with my gifts. I think he had become more used to things by this time, perhaps with memories of India and Lexius returning to him, but he was devouring what he saw.

I’d added to my gifts since my visit to the village—several antique volumes of history in Greek and in Latin, and a book of old Roman poetry especially for my lord, the King. These I’d brought with me for my own sometime pleasure, but was now delighted to offer them to Laurent.

At last my name was announced.

I stepped forward before the long banquet table and bowed.

“Prince Dmitri, we welcome you to the kingdom,” said the sweet-faced and generous queen as if we hadn’t met earlier that day. She was outfitted entirely in blue, blue that matched her peerless eyes, and her thin white veil barely concealed her magnificent hair.

The King stood and put out his arms to me, his face filled with warmth and good cheer, and we embraced over the litter of meats and fruits and platters of sweets and then I stepped back smiling at both of them, and telling them from my heart how happy I was to be here and how I hoped to remain. This is usually where I dip my long full sleeves into a plate of sauce and despise myself for it, but this time I did not.

Fabien stepped forward at my summons and I opened the first casket and presented my gracious hosts with the gold and silver vessels I’d brought from the Russian lands.

“These came from old Constantinople in my grandfather’s time,” I said with muted pride. “For Your Majesties, with all my heart.”

Then came the casket of gold, equivalent to the collective dowries of all my sisters and female cousins, and the King nodded gratefully with the seemingly very sincere words that I was “too kind.”

Other gifts followed—candlesticks and plate, a necklace of Indian diamonds for the Queen, emerald brooches, and finally the books and the book of poetry which I gave to the King with my own hands.

“The Latin poem of Propertius, my lord,” I said.

“Ah, but I shall treasure this, Prince,” he said. “And will you remain with us? We are so hoping that you have made your decision to stay.”

“My lord,” said the Queen. “Prince Dmitri will be living in a fine townhouse adjacent to the Place of Public Punishment. Lady Eva has arranged it all.”

The Queen nodded to her left and for the first time I saw Lady Eva there, her hair pinned up and back and studded with pearls and diamonds and ivory combs. How grand she looked, how truly regal, and I had treated her so casually. I was ashamed. After I kissed the Queen’s hand, I took Lady Eva’s hand.

“Ah, Prince, I do hope you’ll be pleased,” she said to me. “Your house is ready for you tonight, if you so choose, though it’s our hope you’ll feast late with us and go tomorrow at your leisure. It’s your choice.”

She was indeed high in favor here, and had a self-possession well beyond her years.

A sweet-faced naked boy stood behind her chair, arms pulled back as if they were folded against his back. I could see his cock was about half hard, which is the usual thing during long banquets, but his pubic hair was decorated with small flowers, and so was the full blond hair of his head. His nipples had been gilded, but apparently with a paste of gold, because small bells hung from them on delicate shimmering threads. I could feel this when I looked at it, feel the paste on my own nipples, feel the bells against my chest. Soon I realized that was true of almost all the slaves. Nipples were tinted with paste and many decorated with flowers and bells. And this fine stripling dared not raise his eyes to me as the lady spoke.