Beauty bit her lip and felt the tears sliding down her face, but she was soothed by his speaking to her. He smoothed back the hair from her forehead. His hand was light and cold as if he were testing for a fever.
"Now be still. Everyone is coming to see you."
Beauty's eyes glazed over, but she could still see the distant thrones where the Prince and his mother were talking to one another quite naturally. But she realized all the Court had risen and was moving towards the dais. The Lords and Ladies were bowing to the Queen and the Prince, before turning and coming towards her.
Beauty squirmed. It seemed the air itself touched her naked bu**ocks and the hair between her legs, and she struggled to lower her face demurely but the firm wooden chin rest would not yield and all she could do was drop her eyes again.
The first Ladies and Lords were very near and she could hear the rustle of their clothes and see the flash of their gold bracelets.
These ornaments caught the light of the fire and the distant troches, and the dim image of the Prince and the Queen appeared to flicker.
She let out a moan.
"Hush, my darling dear," said the gray-eyed man. And suddenly it was a great comfort that he was so near to her.
"Now look up and to your left," he said now, and she could see his lips spread into a smile. "You see?"
For one instant Beauty beheld what was surely an impossibility, but before she could look again, or clear the tears from her eyes, a great Lady came between her and this distant vision, and with shock, she felt the Lady's hands upon her.
She felt the cool fingers gathering her heavy br**sts, and twisting them almost painfully. She trembled, trying desperately not to cry out. For others had gathered around her, and behind her she felt a pair of very slow and calm hands parting her legs even more. And now someone touched her face, and another hand pinched the calf of her leg almost cruelly.
It seemed her body was all concentrated then in its shameful and secret places. There was a throbbing in the tips of her br**sts, and those hands felt cold as if she herself were burning, and now she felt fingers examining her bu**ocks and prodding even at that tiny and most concealed of openings.
She couldn't help but moan, but she kept her lips tightly shut, and the tears fell down her cheeks.
And for one instant she thought of nothing but what she had glimpsed an instant ago before the procession of Lords and Ladies had intercepted her vision.
High up along the wall of the Great Hall, on a broad stone ledge, she had glimpsed a row of naked women.
It had not seemed possible, but she had seen it. They were all of the young like herself, and they stood with their hands clasped behind their necks as the Prince had taught her to do, and their eyes were down, and she could see the glow of the fire on the curl of pubic hair between each pair of legs, and the swelling, pink ni**les of their bosoms.
She could not believe it. She did not want it to be so, and yet if it were so...well...again only confusion. Was she all the more terrified, or was she glad that she was not the only one enduring this unspeakable humiliation?
But she could not even think of this, shocking as it was, for the hands were all over her. She had uttered a sharp cry to feel them touching her very sex, and smoothing the hair there, and then to her horror, as her face burned and she shut her eyes tight, she felt a pair of long fingers gliding into her sex and widening it.
It was still sore from the Prince's thrusts, and though the fingers were gentle, she felt that soreness again.
But the most excruciating part was being opened like this and hearing their soft voices now as they talked of her.
"Innocent, very innocent," said one, and another that she had very lean thighs and that her skin was resilient.
That seemed to produce laughter again -- that light tinkling laughter, as if all of this were but the greatest amusement, and Beauty realized suddenly that she was straining with all her might to close her legs, but it was quite impossible.
Those fingers were gone, and now someone patted her sex, and pinched shut the hidden little lips, and Beauty squirmed again, only to hear the laughter coming now from the man beside her:
"Little Princess," he said gently in her ear, leaning over so she could feel his velvet cape against her naked arm, "you cannot hide your charms from anyone."
She moaned as if she were trying to appeal to him, but his finger touched her lips.
"Now if I have to seal your lips, the Prince will be very angry. You must resign yourself. You must accept. It is the hardest lesson, compared to which the pain is really nothing."
And Beauty could feel him raising his arm so that she knew the hand that touched her breast was no his. He had imprisoned her nipple and was pressing it rhythmically.
At the same time, someone stroked her thighs and her sex, and to her shame she felt, even in the midst of this degradation, that disgraceful pleasure.
"That's it, that's it," he comforted her. "You must not resist, but rather take possession of your charms, that is, let your mind inhabit your body."
"You are naked, helpless, and all will enjoy you and what can you do? By the way, I should tell you that your squirming only makes you more exquisite. It is very lovely except that it is so rebellious. Now look again, did you see what I pointed out to you?"
Beauty made a soft sound of assent, and fearfully raised her eyes again. It was as she had seen before, the row of young women with their eyes down and their bodies as vulnerable in display as her own.
But what was it she felt? Why must she be subjected to so many confusing feelings? She had thought herself the only one so displayed and humiliated, a great prize for the Prince whom she could no longer see. And was she not displayed here in the very center of the hall?
But then who were these prisoners? Would she only be one of them? Was this the meaning of the odd conversation that had passed between the Prince and her father and mother? No, they could not have served like this. She felt an odd mingling of torrential jealousy and comfort.
It was a ritual, this treatment. Others had suffered it before. It was fixed and she was all the more helpless. She felt herself soften as she thought of it.
But her Lord, the gray-eyed one, was speaking: "Now, for your second lesson. You have seen the Princesses who are tributes here. Now look to your right and you shall see the Princes."
Beauty looked to the other side of the hall as best she could through the shifting figures about her, and there, on another high ledge, in the ghastly shadow-light of the fire, stood a row of naked young men, all of them in the same position.
Their heads were bowed, their hands behind their necks, and they were all of them very handsome to look at, as beautiful each in his own way as the young women on the other side, but their great difference lay in their sex, for their organs were erect and hard to a one, and Beauty could not take her eyes off this sight, for they appeared to her even more vulnerable and subservient.