"A rather volcanic passion," said that soft rumbling voice. "It wasn't the severity of the whippings that made him eat from my hand; it was the daily ritual."

O, how true, I thought. My face smarted. That fearsome, inevitable sense of nakedness again descended on me. I could still see the freshly turned earth before the tents, feel the straps and hear their steps and their conversation as they moved along with me. "Only one more tent, Tristan." Or that greeting every evening, "Come on, Tristan, time for our little trek through the camp, that's it, that's it, look at this, Gareth, how quickly this young man learns. What did I tell you, Geoffrey, that after three days I wouldn't have to use the manacles?" and their feeding me with their hands after, wiping my mouth almost affectionately and patting me and giving me too much wine to drink, and taking me out after dark into the forest. I remembered their cocks, the argument about who would go first, and whether it was better with the mouth or the anus, and sometimes one of them fore and one of them aft, and the Captain never very far away it seemed, and always smiling. So they had felt affection for me. It had not been my imagination. And neither was the warmth I felt for them. And a slow, undeniable realization was dawning on me.

"But he was one of the finest, most beautifully mannered of all the Princes," the Captain murmured, that voice seeming to come from his chest, not his mouth. I wanted suddenly to turn my head and look at him, see if he was just as handsome now as he had been then. My glimpse before had been too quick. "Given to Lord Stefan as his personal slave," he continued, "with the Queen's blessing. I am suprised to see him here." Anger crept into his voice. "I told the Queen that I myself had broken him."

He lifted my head, pushed it this way and that. I realized with mounting tension that I had been almost silent all this while, struggling not to make a sound in his presence, but I was now about to give way, and at last I couldn't control it. I gave a low moan, but it was better than crying.

"What did you do? Look at me!" he said. "Did you displease the Queen?"

I shook my head no, but I wouldn't look into his eyes, my whole body seeming to swell under the harnessing.

"Was it Stefan you displeased?"

I nodded. I glanced into his eyes and away, unable to stand it. Some strange bond existed between me and this man. And no bond - that was the horror of it - existed between me and Stefan.

"And he'd been your lover before, hadn't he?" the Captain pushed, drawing close to my ear, though I knew my Master could hear him. "Years before he came to live in the Kingdom."

I nodded again.

"And that humiliation was more than you could bear?" he demanded. "You who were taught to part your bu**ocks for common soldiers?"

"No!" I cried behind the gag, shaking my head violently. My head was pounding. And that slow, inescapable realization that had begun only moments before became clearer and clearer.

Out of sheer frustration, I cried. If only I could explain.

But grasping the little silver buckle of the phallus in my mouth, the Captain pushed my head back.

"Or was it," he said, "that your former lover didn't have the strength to master you?"

I turned my eyes, staring directly at him now, and if one can be said to smile with such a gag in one's mouth, I smiled. I heard my own sigh come slowly. And then despite his hand on the phallus, I nodded.

His face was clear and beautiful as I remembered. I saw his full and robust figure in the sun as he took the snapping thrash from my Master. And as we looked each other in the eye, he commenced to whip me.

Yes, the realization was complete. I had wanted the total degradation of the village. I could not bear Stefan's love, his tentativeness, his inability to govern me. And for his weakness in our predestined bond, I despised him.

Beauty had understood my aims. She had known my soul better than I knew it. This was what I deserved and hungered for because it was as violent as the soldiers' camp, where my dignity, my pride, my self had been so thoroughly plundered.

Punishment here in this busy, sun-drenched square, even with the little village girls gathering round, and a woman standing in the door of the Inn with her arms folded, and the loud snapping blows of the thrash - punishment was what I deserved, thirsted for, even in terror. And in a moment of utter surrender I spread my legs wide and thrust my head back and rocked my hips in a gesture of total recognition of the whipping.

The Captain gave great swinging sweeps with the flat lash.

My body was alive with the stings and hurts he had inflicted. And surely my Master understood the secret. And there would be no mercy for me as, reading this little dialogue, my Master would take me the full journey no matter how I might later plead with whines and whimpers.

The whipping was over but I did not break my supplicating position. And the Captain gave back the thrash and caressed my face suddenly, impulsively it seemed, kissing my eyelids just as my Master had done. The last knot in me broke. It was agony that I couldn't kiss his feet, his hands, his lips. That I could only incline my tortured body towards him.

He drew back, his arm out to my Master. I saw them embrace rather naturally it seemed, my Master slighter of build, elegant as a fine carved silver knife beside the solidly made Captain.

"It's always so," the Captain said with a slow smile, looking into my Master's cold and clever eyes. "Out of a batch of a hundred timid and anxious little slaves sent down for purification, there are those who have invited the punishment, needing the rigors not to purify their faults but to tame their boundless appetites."

It was so true that I was weeping, struck to the soul by the incentives this would give to all my tormentors.

"But please," I wanted to plead, "we don't know what we do to ourselves. Please have mercy."

"My little girl at the Sign of the Lion, Beauty, is the same," the Captain said. "A naked ravenous soul that foments the passion in me dangerously."

Beauty. And he had been watching her through the Inn door. So he was her Master. I felt a divine ripple of jealousy and solace.

My Master's eyes pierced me. The sobs shook me, the spasms passing through my c**k and my sore calves.

But the Captain was at my side. "I'll see you again, my young friend," he breathed against my cheek, his lips tasting my face, it seemed, his tongue licking at my cruelly opened lips. "That is, with your gracious Master's permission."

I was inconsolable as we moved on, my low weeping turning heads as we marched out of the square and through other lanes, and past hundreds of other unfortunates. Had they been revealed as I was revealed, both to themselves and to their Masters and Mistresses?