“Yes, all of them.”

“What do I want, Brenn?” she asked. “Do I want to be the Queen’s filly or do I want to be the Grand Duke’s little finchling with a very red tail?”

“Maybe you’ll come to be both, Sybil,” I said. I snuggled against her, felt her hot breasts pulsing against my chest, her hand playing idly on my back.

“Brenn, do you think anyone will come looking for us?” she asked.

I laughed. It woke me out of my drowsiness to laugh. “I don’t care if someone comes looking for me,” I said.

“Nor do I, but I asked Lady Eva about it before she gave me over to be bathed. She said the King and Queen would never hear such requests. No one looking for us would get past the gates. I was so glad to hear this.”

“They’ll simply disown us, perhaps,” I said. “Again, I don’t care. I’ve cared about a multitude of things in the last twenty-four hours, but about that I do not care.”

She was silent. I opened my eyes. She had finally dozed off, and slept peacefully and deeply. I touched her lips carefully with my fingers. Sweet Sybil.

viii

The following evening we were anointed in the Goddess Grove. We’d spent the day being measured, tested in many ways, and trained in simple deportment, how to answer any and all questions with modesty and respect, and how to eat and fetch with our teeth and not our hands. We were together some of the time and at other times not. We were given potions to drink and studied for our behavior afterwards. One potion enflamed me so miserably that I wept. Another potion made me sleep at once. In a yard, we were made to trot in a circle around a central pillar and spanked hard as we did it, and then we were groomed meticulously, our nails being trimmed. And I was shaved more than once by the gentlest barbers. But not my pubic hair or any body hair. My pubic hair was carefully groomed, fluffed, even curled a bit here and there, though it was curly enough already.

At last at dark, we were assembled with ten other new slaves to be anointed.

The Goddess Grove was venerable, ancient, we were told. It had fallen into ruin in the old kingdom, but our new monarchs had restored it.

Our procession moved silently through the great gardens and then out and down a broad path towards it with lighted torches. Many lords and ladies watched.

It was a place of thick soft grass and abundant flowers.

A great half circle of arches in the grove held some twelve antique statues—some broken, some whole—of gods and goddesses. Flickering lamps illuminated each of these figures or groupings. I knew Aphrodite spanking her disobedient Cupid with a sandal, and Dionysius and the great god Pan. I knew Apollo as he tried to capture Daphne. And Priapus, yes. Others I could not identify. The grass was cool and torches were flaring everywhere, but the light was shadowy and an air of mystery enveloped us.

The King and Queen came into the grove and received each of us by name, for kisses and embraces, and we were prompted to repeat our vows to serve in our own words. Sybil was positioned some distance from me, but I got a good glimpse of her and she looked glorious, her hair never more lustrous and beautifully groomed with flowers and jewels.

Then as the Lord High Chamberlain held the oils for the King, we were anointed as slaves of the realm, by the King’s thumbprint on our foreheads, and the Queen decorated our heads with green garlands. Lady Eva came forward to anoint our private parts and claim them for the pleasure of the realm as indeed our entire persons were claimed. There was the strong sweet smell of gardenias and lilies everywhere. And we were made to kneel down before our sovereigns to receive their final blessing.

The King wished us a long life in the kingdom and reminded us of our protections and promises. His voice was natural and sincere as if he trusted completely to the words themselves. There was no cloying artificiality.

“Tomorrow,” said my groom as he led me away, “you’ll be a plaything of the King. And mark you scramble to obey his slightest command. To be the King’s pet is a great honor.”

i

He was a man of good height, clean limbed and well built, with a gentle, appealing face and eyes of near-perfect cobalt blue that made Beauty think of fine glazed porcelain. He had a youthful manner, not becoming of necessity in a man of his age, but not off-putting either. Beauty liked it.

And in his narrow face and almond-shaped eyes, Beauty could see something of the late Queen Eleanor, his first cousin.

But his real charm lay in his fine manners and his vibrant and tender voice, coupled with a thoughtful reticence. That one so handsome should seem so unaware of it, well, that too had its appeal and perhaps united all of the other seductive traits he possessed in the eyes of Beauty.

“Lord Stefan, please, be at your ease,” Beauty said. She sat opposite him at the table, the morning sun spilling down into her private parlor from the high-arched windows. “You need hold nothing back from me, my lord. I am your queen. I am listening.”

It was plain he wanted to open his soul. Tears hovered in his eyes suddenly, and Tristan who sat beside him, Tristan who was taller, stronger, and so much more imposing, reached out for Lord Stefan as he might to a younger brother.

Long years ago, when Beauty and Tristan had been slaves together on their return voyage from the sultanate, Tristan had told her all of his love for this diffident and sweet lord who had failed to be Tristan’s master. And Beauty had forgotten none of the story. Lord Stefan and Tristan had known each other and loved each other before Tristan was brought as a bound and naked slave to the feet of Queen Eleanor. What a disaster that she’d given Tristan over to the fearful and anxious Lord Stefan to master.

Lord Stefan’s hair was a golden brown, exquisitely highlighted by the sun, and that he wore it very long and very full gave him a slight suggestion of the feminine. But his shaven beard and mustache were thick and had left a dark shadow on his face, attesting to his virility. And then there was the touch of hair on the backs of his wrists and even on his long fingers. And the depth of his voice, so like a smooth thick syrup when he spoke. But then what about the exquisite character of his dress, his lace shirt studded with tiny pearls and the heavy slashed balloon sleeves that covered it with the lining of violet silk? It was all rather confusing. Virility, femininity—for Beauty they had more to do with the subtle presentation of self than any physical attributes.

And in Lord Stefan’s eyes, Beauty saw timidity and anguish that might belong to any soul, regardless of gender.

As for his slave Becca, what an icy and merciless gaze she cast on him from her place in the corner, where, naked and still, she rested back on her heels gazing at him. Her breasts were almost too big to be beautiful, but not quite. And her mouth was not cruel but coldly perfect. Her flaxen hair, parted in the middle, made Beauty think of her own hair. She had an oval face not unlike Beauty’s face as well and large well-shaped hands. She sat there utterly still as if she controlled every fiber of her physical being. Her eyes were paler than those of her master, an ice blue as vivid as the coral tint of her lips and her nipples.

She put Beauty in mind of a white panther if such a thing existed—a sleek white cat the size of a human.

“Your Majesty,” said Lord Stefan. “I cannot bear it anymore. I am unable to pretend any longer. In the last years of the old kingdom, I died on the vine like everyone else. No, Tristan, don’t protest. I did. You know I did. I might as well have lived in any kingdom or no kingdom at all. I kept to my chambers with Becca. And it was a farce, I tell you, whenever we appeared together before others.”

Beauty understood. Of course. But she didn’t say so. I am living my own farce, she thought, pretending that I love wielding the paddle and the strap, pretending that I delight in the submission of others. I admire it, and I envy it, but I don’t delight in it. I delight in the glory of the Court, the realm, the well-run kingdom of Bellavalten, the kingdom they now call Beauty’s Kingdom, but I don’t delight in anyone’s submission. It does not send my blood rising. But this Beauty had confessed to no one and she did not confess it now.

Of course Laurent knew. Laurent knew Beauty as he knew himself, and he had always known how to handle her, take her, thrill her, and leave her satisfied. But they had never really spoken of it, not in the old days before the gates of the kingdom came crashing shut behind them.

And now in the midst of the great revival of the immense Court that swirled around them, Laurent assured Beauty that she must in all things please herself.

“If it does not come naturally to you to enjoy disciplining slaves,” he’d said, “then don’t do it, my darling. Leave it to Lady Eva. Leave it to me. Leave it to your grooms. Who says that you must enjoy wielding the paddle? You are queen here, Beauty. Not Eleanor. Eleanor is gone. All those around you long only to make you happy day and night.”

But Beauty had not been entirely comforted by Laurent’s words. She wanted a deeper immersion in the thrilling complexities of the kingdom, and held herself to be too timid and unsure.

She struggled now to clear her mind and look at Lord Stefan, who was in such need of her.

“And how so is it all a farce, my lord?” she asked him. Uppermost in her thoughts was the resolve to listen, to be attentive, to comfort, and to solve the problem of this soul who depended so upon her.