After greeting the royal couple I watched the team driven off to the stables, and marveled at how natural and exquisite they were.

The King embraced me as always and asked how things were going in the village and apologized for being too busy of late to come down.

“Sire, I’m there so that you do not have to come down,” I said. “Isn’t that my purpose? To oversee the Place of Public Punishment so that you need worry about nothing at all?”

He had the most interesting puppy boy with him I’d ever beheld. I knew I was glancing at him over and over, though I was trying to pay heed to the King. Finally the King said, “Oh, I’m quite thrilled that you’re admiring him. Have a look. Brenn, up for inspection on your knees.”

The boy obeyed immediately with perfect submission and grace.

He had thick unruly black hair and a face like an angel in an Italian painting, with ruddy lips and immense blue eyes. His skin was creamy and flawless, but the marvel was the thick shadow of his shaved beard and the dark fleecy hair on his chest, his arms and legs, and the thick boiling pubic hair that surrounded his swollen cock. And what a cock. I wasn’t going to say so, but it was like the King’s cock. Not as big, no, but then this man was not as big a man as the King. He was of moderate size, very well proportioned with powerful shoulders.

“May I see his back?” I asked.

“Of course,” said the King. “Brenn!” He snapped his fingers easily, and with a louder crisper snap than I could ever produce.

The boy turned on his knees, and I saw what I wanted to see—the loveliest backside perhaps I’d ever beheld. Tight, muscular, yet protruding just enough to be utterly inviting. Best combination of hard and soft I’d ever observed.

I let out a low whistle and shook my head running my tongue over my lips.

“I know,” said King Laurent. “You don’t have to say it, and he’s another natural! I tell you, the old kingdom never had such quality in such numbers.”

“Yes, sire,” I responded. “When you sent out the Proclamation you waked the gods and goddesses of old from their sensuous sleep. And they have sent their minions. How many more can the kingdom receive?”

And the boy was a natural.

As we sat down to meat and drink, he knelt silently and motionlessly by the King and ate quickly any tidbits thrown on his little silver plate.

I was seated to the King’s left and had a clear view of him at the King’s left side, a perfect pup if ever I saw one.

But the matter of the shivering suffering slave in the chamber above never left my mind. I was wondering if I would be allowed to take him out of here with me. I had a deep raging desire to whip him angrily all the way to the village on foot. I’d been doing this of late with those committed for public punishment.

Two days ago, when the Queen had handed over to me the proud flaxen-haired slave Becca, I’d strapped her fiercely on foot all the way down from the castle to the village, stopping over and over to scold her and berate her and whack her till she was squealing behind her lips. It took half an hour. I hadn’t minded the walk in the fresh air and the exercise of swinging the strap. And it was well worth every minute, to drive her dusty and sobbing into the village, walloping her furiously every step of the way. “Move, march, faster!” She’d blossomed under my raging commands like a flower that had never known rainwater.

By the time she was flung on her knees on the Public Turntable for the first time she was no more a haughty vixen but a whimpering partridge with a quivering little backside grateful for the cream smoothed on her by the whipping master’s groom. The crowd had screamed as she held her position perfectly, tears flooding down her face, chin on the post, for her sound paddling, her breasts shivering and her backside swaying with each blow.

Scampering down the carpeted steps, she hadn’t just kissed my feet, she’d licked them over and over, moaning in abject misery. She’d pressed her nipples to my slippers. Throughout it all she was a picture of remarkable loveliness, with fine clean limbs and that shining hair, such hair.

I’d gone down twice in that first night to check on her at the pillory. Even very late, there were always some around tickling and teasing the pilloried slaves and she sobbed in gratitude when she saw me and licked my hand over and over with her pink tongue to show her complete adoration. I’d rewarded her with a harsh, angry spanking. She’d been dripping with sweet juices when I’d finished with her. And though I’d planned to starve her, I hadn’t been able to resist her little plum-colored pubic lips, turned up to me as they were with her bent over at the pillory, and when I’d buried my cock in her, she had spent again and again, unable to muffle her cries.

Tonight, before I turned in, I’d be sure to march her up and down the main street of the village yet again, whacking her till she was hopping on the balls of her feet. She’d become used to that, my driving her before me on my late-night inspections. And if there were Herms out that late, good hard erect Herms, I’d mount her on any one I chose, spanking her as she struggled up and down on those cocks—pulling her hair back so I could see her face as she came. I knew that she lived now for the sound of my voice, or the sound of my boots approaching her. I kept her bound and starved when I was not working her. My voice and my voice alone meant good sound discipline for her spoiled backside and pleasure for her sweet hungry little cleft.

Just thinking of her on all fours, her little hind end turned up to me and her hot little strawberry tart opening to me, made me shift in my chair.

Now the whimpering male slave upstairs would present his own brand of challenge, but a furious flogging through the countryside, with my strap cracking him forward with every jump and staggering step, would soften him up wonderfully for whatever else might need to be done.

He wouldn’t see that grand kindly whipping master at the Punishment Shop, not with that shivering little posterior, until he was licking my hand the way Becca had licked it.

Becca grew more beautiful and self-confident in her service every day.

I waited, knowing Lady Eva would enlighten me soon as to what she wanted of me.

The Queen, as soon as all the usual pleasantries had been exchanged, and the first morsels of food devoured, asked Tristan tenderly what had “gone wrong.”

I was immediately intrigued.

“He is not ready, I understand, but why not, do you think, Tristan?”

“Ah, Your Majesty,” Tristan said. “He wants with all his heart to please but he can’t. He is not ready to be anointed. Not at all. Believe me, I want him to be anointed. But I feel something more drastic is required to prepare him.”

“Is the fault with you, Tristan?” asked the King, but it was asked in his usual kindly manner. “I don’t blame you if you can’t master him, but this should be considered. Perhaps it’s pointless for you to try, as pointless as it was for him to try to master you years ago.”

Ah, could this slave possibly be Lord Stefan? I didn’t believe it. Not Queen Eleanor’s young cousin, the tender male flower of the old royal family! The thought excited me completely.

“Well, I have considered it, my lord,” Tristan answered. “This is why I invited Lady Eva to come down earlier today.”

“And you’ve seen him, Eva?” asked the King. “So what do you think? Can you break him? I’d be surprised if you couldn’t. I’ve yet to see a slave you couldn’t break.”

“I thank you, sire,” she said. “He’s as fit to be a slave as any man I’ve ever whipped. He wants it with his whole heart, but he’s going to require great severity and I suspect that severity must come from a man.”

“But shouldn’t he be taught to obey both men and women?” asked Tristan. “Who is he to choose one over the other?”

“Once he’s broken and trained, Prince,” said Eva, “he will submit to either with good manners. But he’s a long way from being broken.”

“What do you suggest?” asked the Queen.

“Well, I have asked Prince Dmitri to join us because I think that he may well be the one to break and train this sort of slave in the village.”

The King laughed. I’m sure that he already suspected that I’d been summoned for this purpose, but he laughed when it was said aloud. “The village for the late queen’s cousin. And to think years ago he so wanted to be sent there!” He took a deep drink of his wine and then bent to pour out a little of it in the puppy boy’s plate.

I couldn’t prevent myself from watching as the boy lapped up the wine, tongue darting like that of a puppy all right and licking his lips in the same way. Quite a puppy boy, and quite a slave—secretly bristling with humiliation and shame, as far as I could tell, yet obeying so unreservedly.

“Prince Dmitri,” asked the Queen. “What do you have to say?”

“I am more than willing to take him in hand, Your Majesty,” I answered. “I find him very appealing. I remember . . . I remember when I first came to the kingdom, how I failed everyone for months on end. I am rather excited by the challenge. I’ll gladly whip him back to the village tonight.”

The Queen raised her eyebrows. “Lady Eva, this is what you have in mind?”