I put up my hand for silence.
“Very well. I ask that you both go to Lady Elvera, and send word to Tristan and summon the Captain of the Guard. But you must, all of you, keep this information from everyone else. No one must know of this calamity until we have King Laurent and Queen Beauty’s decision.”
“Agreed,” said the Grand Duke. “The slaves mustn’t hear a word of this, or the people either.”
“And no one here at Court must know,” I said. “And, Your Excellency, kindly wake your secretaries. We will need appropriate letters and documents for safe travel.”
“Ah, I didn’t even think of it,” said the Duke. “Eva, you think of everything.”
I thought to myself, I know, but I didn’t reply.
As soon as they had left me, I went into the bedchamber to find that my slave, Severin, had obviously been listening at the door. I slapped him hard for his impertinence. But he’d been weeping and he scarcely cared.
“Lady Eva,” he said, kneeling before me with his arms around my skirts, “I can’t be sent home. I can’t. I’d rather die.”
“Oh, do be quiet,” I said. “I haven’t time to whip you now. Pack my trunks at once, and go to the master of the common wardrobe and obtain clothes for yourself for the journey. You can’t very well travel naked. Now hurry!”
“Clothes?” he fussed. “I have to wear clothes?” He was such a pretty boy, with golden ringlets and sweet gray eyes.
But this was the limit. I dragged him to the nearby chair, sat down, and threw him over my knee and spanked him hard until I was tired of it. “And this is just a taste,” I said. “When we’re packed and ready, I intend to whip you so soundly you’ll be sore for the entire journey, and in any inn where we stop, I’ll whip you again and likely invite any innkeeper along the way to share the pleasure of same. As for your cock, I’ll starve it for the entire journey. Now go!”
More often than not, my beloved Beauty was like that, sleeping, sleeping as if she’d never wake. This time it was in that bower in the garden, her bed of silk and lace surrounded by fragrant and nodding flowers, her head to one side on the pale rose-colored pillow, a tapestried cover laid carelessly over her, her mouth still.
Had she looked like this when she’d been the Sleeping Beauty of fable?
All knew the old story. When Beauty had been born, the immortal wise women—or fairies—of the kingdom had been invited to celebrate her birth. Each wise woman had offered the baby girl a precious gift—beauty, wit, wisdom, talent, or so the tale went. But one wise woman, overlooked by the King and Queen, came only to curse the infant, predicting that she would someday prick her finger on a spindle and fall into a deathlike sleep—along with the entire Court. Not to be outdone, yet another fairy came who had pity for the tiny girl in her crib.
“Yes, she will sleep for a hundred years,” said this wise fairy, “but a prince will come to awaken her with his kiss. She will rise from her slumber, along with the King and Queen and all the residents of the castle. And the spell will be at an end.”
Was it a true story? How could I ever know? But I did know that a prince had indeed awakened Beauty from a long slumber, and he had been the son of the powerful Queen Eleanor of Bellavalten, and he had claimed Beauty as his naked pleasure slave, taking her to his mother’s Court.
Now why had he awakened her and not me? And why had he long ago passed out of her life, while Beauty had become my happy and contented wife of twenty years?
I wondered if she was still happy and contented, or had that not become a fable too.
She’d sleep like this until evening when I went to waken her—I, Laurent, her king—and to tell her it was time for us to dine together, and maybe after our lovemaking, she’d fall asleep again, into those dreams where I couldn’t follow. Beauty, my Beauty, my love.
She was bored. I knew it. Because I myself was bored and found our little retreat here so deadly dull. What had prompted us to choose this path—to leave behind the duties of our royal house, to place the crown upon the head of our young son, Alcuin, and establish him with his sweet queen in charge of the land we’d ruled for twenty years? We were tired of it, that was the reason we’d left it. We were glad to send our daughter, Alcuin’s twin sister Arabella, to rule in the land of Beauty’s late father, wife to a cousin chosen there to be the new king.
And I was tired of battles on land and on sea, mostly sought for adventure, and of the endless rituals of Court life. Let the younger ones take over. Give the young king the scepter. We’d left the coffers overflowing with gold, and yet taken a fortune with us to secure this fine palace of sorts and this gentle coast.
Twenty years was enough, was it not?
But what were we to do with ourselves now, other than wander this sumptuous residence and these colorful and splendid gardens, and welcome the very occasional guest who came to disturb our retreat? The King and Queen of nothing.
I sat at the window, my elbows on the stone sill looking down on her as she lay there in the garden bower, her lady-in-waiting sewing beneath the nearby pear tree, and my queen not even stirring in her deathlike sleep.
Was she slipping back into enchantment because she had married the wrong prince? I’d been a pleasure slave for years in Queen Eleanor’s kingdom when Beauty was brought there.
I’d never quite believed the old legend about her. All I knew was that she was indeed beautiful, as dazzling a pleasure slave as any naked and voluptuous princess I’d ever furtively beheld during my sensuous captivity, and when she was sent home I grieved. When finally, I’d been set free to return to my own kingdom, I’d sought her out in her father’s house, and married her and brought her to my royal house to rule beside me, my splendid queen.
The secret memories of Queen Eleanor’s pleasure gardens united us; we’d whispered on the pillow of those times—of lush bondage and titillating punishments, of gilded paddles and straps, and delicious rebellion, of stolen kisses our cruel masters and mistresses did not see. I was Beauty’s master always; and she was my mistress. There were times when her deft and delicate little fingers tortured me as surely as my firm hands tortured her. But did we ever speak freely in all these years of how we’d loved it, those glorious days of true and inescapable servitude, of sublime nakedness and utter submission, of luxuriant humiliation and sweet shame?
I couldn’t fathom it.
More and more of late, I found myself thinking of Bellavalten.
Did I actually long for the realm of Queen Eleanor? Was it something I could not admit? I pondered this a lot lately, and why not, because I had absolutely nothing else to do.
It was the loveliest of spring days, the sky a featureless blue above the fruit trees, and, beyond the battlements below me, the endless sparkling sea. The faintest breeze stirred the old orchards, a breeze that cooled my face and my hands at the window, a breeze that refreshed me only to wonder how I might while away these hours until I might wake her, and tell her, yes, time for us to sup once more before the fire.
I was falling asleep.
I made my way to the bed and collapsed there, turning over on my back, my eyes closing as if I had no control. It seemed I felt and heard the breeze but little else was real to me, and I sank down deep towards sleep with bits and pieces of thought traveling like leaves on the breeze through my mind.
I felt lips touch mine. I felt a hand on my forehead.
At once, I opened my eyes. The world was dark around me, and I could see a sky of endless stars. I scrambled to my feet, but couldn’t see where it was that I was standing. The bed was gone, the room was gone, and the darkness around me seemed alive. The figure of a woman rose before me, blazing yet indistinct, suffused with an unnatural light.
It seemed she stood right in front of me suddenly—immense, overwhelming, and magnificent.
“Laurent,” she said. Her words flowed slowly and smoothly with a palpable resolution and calm. “You were the one intended all along. Long years ago when my sister cursed little Beauty at her birth to fall into enchanted sleep for a hundred years, it was you whom I chose from the great future for this sweet princess, this tender innocent, whom I would not suffer to sleep forever. It is by my will that she belongs to you and you belong to her as it is now.”
I was stunned yet thrilled. My heart was skipping.
I wanted to ask a multitude of questions. The darkness shrouding the woman’s image was filled with the roiling motion of smoke. Her shining face was smiling yet indistinct. A vague and enchanting perfume distracted me. I felt her finger against my lips as she continued:
“You were imprisoned in Queen Eleanor’s kingdom, were you not, when the time came for the awakening of my charge. And so the Crown Prince became my unwitting instrument to bring your princess to you in the land where you were held hostage, unable to go to her. Defenseless and given over to your servitude, you found each other irresistible as I knew that you would. Slaves together you loved. Free together you married. And trust in me, my king, that a new adventure awaits you both.”
For one split second, the figure of the woman blazed brighter and more vivid. I saw her shimmering hair, her translucent veils. Her eyes burned through the clearing mist and she spoke again even more distinctly.