Of course, I had loved these moments--pumping my heat into the shy and quivering body beneath me, even the most frivolous Princess shaken by the chase and the capture, and both of us burning under My Lady's steady gaze as she nevertheless went on with her sewing.

Pity I had never covered Beauty during this time. Beauty had remained the Crown Prince's favorite until she fell from grace and was sent down to the village. Only the Lady Juliana was allowed to share her. But I had glimpsed her on the Bridle Path and longed to have her gasping under me. How finely tuned a slave she had been even in the first few days, her form as she marched beside Lady Juliana's horse quite impeccable. Her hair was golden as wheat as it hung down beside her heart-shaped face; her blue eyes flashed with burnt pride and undisguised passion. Even the great Queen was jealous of her.

But, looking back on all of it now, I did not for a moment doubt Beauty, when she said she had not loved those who claimed her affections. I could have seen, had I looked, that her heart wore no chains then.

But what had been the particular quality of my life in the halls of the castle? My heart did wear chains. But what had been the essence of my bondage?

I was a Prince, though bound to serve--a high-born being temporarily deprived of his privileges and made to undergo unique and difficult trials of the body and the soul. Yes, that was the nature of the humiliation: that I should be privileged again after it was over, that I was the equal of those who enjoyed my nakedness and reprimanded me severely for the slightest show of will or pride.

It was never so clear to me as when Princes from other lands came to visit and to marvel at this custom of keeping royal pleasure slaves. How it had flayed me to be presented to these guests.

"But how do you make them serve?" they would ask, half astonished, half enchanted. You never knew whether they yearned to serve or command. Do all beings have both inclinations at war within them?

The inevitable answer to their timid questions was a mere demonstration of our fine training; that we must kneel before them, offering our naked organs for their examination, our upturned backsides to be whipped.

"It is a game of pleasure," My Lady would say matter-of-factly. "And this one, Laurent, a beautifully mannered Prince, amuses me in particular. He will one day rule a rich realm." She would pinch my ni**les slowly, then lift my c**k and balls in her open hand to display them to the amazed guest.

"But still, why does he not struggle, resist?" the visitor might ask, possibly masking his deeper feelings.

"Think on it," My Lady would say. "He is quite well stripped of the accoutrements that would make him a man in the outside world, only the better to expose the fleshly accoutrements that make him a man for my service. Imagine yourself as naked, as defenseless, as thoroughly subjugated. You might serve, too, rather than risk a gamut of even more ignominious corrections."

What newcomer had not asked for his own slave before nightfall?

Red-faced and trembling, I had crawled to obey many an order given in an unfamiliar and unpracticed voice. And these were Lords I should some day receive in my own Court. Would we remember these moments? Would anyone dare to mention them?

And so it was with all the naked slave Princes and Princesses of the castle. Nothing but the highest quality for this utter debasement.

"I think Laurent will serve another three years at least," Lady Elvera would say airily. How remote she was, how eternally distracted. "But then the Queen makes these decisions. I shall weep when he goes. I think perhaps it is his size that most entices me. He is taller than the others, bigger-boned, yet his face is noble, don't you think?"

She would snap her fingers for me to come near, and then run her thumb down my cheek. "And the organ," she might say, "it is extremely thick but not overly long. That is important. How the little Princesses squirm under him. I simply must have a strong Prince. Tell me, Laurent, how might I punish you in some new fashion, something perhaps that I have not thought of?"

Yes, a strong Prince in temporary subjugation, a monarch's son, with all his faculties engaged, sent here to be a pupil of pleasure and pain.

But to incur the wrath of the Court and to be sent to the village? That was an altogether different ordeal. And one that I had barely tasted, though what I did come to know was the very quintessence of it.

Only two days before my capture by the Sultan's thieves, I had run away from Lady Elvera and the castle. And I do not know why I did it.

Certainly, I adored the Lady. I did. No doubts really. I admired her imperiousness, her endless silences. She could only have pleased me more had she whipped me herself more often, rather than ordering it done by other Princes.

Even when she gave me to the guests or the other Lords and Ladies, there was the special joy of returning to her, of being taken again into her bed, being allowed to lap at the narrow triangle of black hair between her white thighs as she sat there against the pillow, her hair down, her eyes narrow and indifferent. It had been a challenge to melt her glacial heart, to make her throw back her head and cry out in pleasure finally like the most lascivious little Princess in the garden.

Yet I had run away. And it had come over me suddenly, the impulse--that I should dare to do it, just get up and go off into the forest and let them search for me. Of course they'd find me. I never doubted they would. They always found the runaways.

Maybe I had lived too long in fear of doing it, of being captured by the soldiers and sent to labor in the village. It was tempting me suddenly, like the plunge from a great cliff.

And I had mastered all my other faults by this time; I had attained a rather boring perfection. I never shied from the strap. I had grown so to need it that my flesh quivered warmly at the mere sight of it. And I always caught the little Princesses quickly in the garden chase, lifting them high by their wrists and carrying them back over my shoulder, their hot br**sts thudding against my back. It had been an interesting challenge to master two and three in a single afternoon with the same stamina.

But this matter of running away.... Maybe I wanted to know my Masters and Mistresses better! Because, when I became their captured fugitive, I would feel their power to the marrow of my bones. I would feel all that they could make me feel, completely.

Whatever the reason, I waited until the Lady had fallen asleep in her garden chair, and then I stood up and rushed to the garden wall and climbed over it. This was no little bid for attention on my part. I would make it an indisputable attempt at escape. And, without glancing back, I fled over the mown fields towards the forest.