People traveled little in those days, but one day a merchant

from little Halpytus journeyed on foot to the next town,

where he hoped to exchange some wares,

brought in bags and slung over an ass,

for other wares, or coin.  Arriving in little Tibrium,

the young merchant found a sign

reading “home of our lord’s wife.”

Asking around, he even found a stone well, whereat

a sign proclaimed that Prince Guyesp had stopped

and wed, on that site, the world’s most beautiful girl.

This merchant made his exchanges as planned,

then returned to Halpytus with the strange news.

Some refused to believe and claimed the merchant

a maker of stories, a seller of tales.

As for the mayor, he suggested that

Tibrium had heard the tale of Halpytus

and sought to duplicate through fraud

the great honor bestowed upon his own town.

But the merchant recounted how the townspeople

had seen their marriage, or had heard of it at the time,

how Guyesp had stopped through on his trip throughout his realm,

how he’d blessed the little town of Tibrium.

Others did believe, and soon sent a man to Tibrium

who not only confirmed the tale, but heard told

of a man from Tibrium who had visited Ellritbom

and warned they too had such signs and such tales.

In all the tales, the local beauty had been renamed Isabel.

Poor Lavina!  For after the prince had taken his pleasure in her,

he told her of the princess’s carriage, one even more opulent

than his own and which he had ordered prepared.

He dressed her and kissed her and escorted her out,

where he placed her in the care of his guards,

who were to walk her to her carriage.

Hers would be the last in the train, his the first,

but hers was even bigger, the largest of them all.

Truly, she thought, it must be a fantastic sight,

and she imagined all the silk and perfume and rarities

it must contain from all his wealth and travels.

The door was not wood but sculpted iron,

though she noted the lack of windows.  But when

the door was opened – O, woeful sight,

she saw a dozen women, sweaty and packed tight,

each bound with a gag to keep them silent,

but their eyes screaming.

At this, the guards grabbed her and held her down

while others bound and gagged her with a roughness

she had only seen used for cattle.  And then,

the newly deflowered Lavina was thrown,

still bleeding, into the rolling prison.

The women were unpacked and fed between towns,

and it was only then that they could speak –

but then only in hushed tones, lest the guards

beat them for talking.  If any need piss or shit,

they had to do so in front of all the others

and the guards.  Humiliated, Lavina learned fast

to honor the rules.  Once, she had complained

of lack of privacy while she shat and was beaten

not by one but by six guards, eager

to train her in compliance lest she trouble them again.

From the whispers at such stops she ascertained

the others had gone through the same,

been married to Prince Guyesp, taken away and enjoyed,

then bound and thrown together in the hot iron car.

Sometimes before the feeding session, the prince

would await them as they disembarked;

he would pick one and lead her, still bound and gagged,

to his own carriage, where the restraints would be loosed

just enough to let him enjoy her but no more.

In his loveplay, these girls would no longer find

the wandering prince who had taken their virginity

as they dreamed of their life at court, but rather

a rogue who used them like the basest prostitute.

The chosen girl would be taken back by guards

to the assembled other girls, where the prince’s chosen

entertainment would have to eat quickly, lest

she be famished before they stopped again.

Lavina’s beauty was such that she was chosen twice

for this honor.  In the first, she resisted, protecting

what chastity she had left

with a furor with which mothers might protect their cubs.

But he had her beaten until she bled from the mouth,

and then he sodomized her there, in the dirt.

She was not permitted to eat before being stuffed,

dirty and bleeding, back into the cart.

The second time, she merely cried.

After some weeks, the cart filled with cargo

was replaced with a fresh, empty one, ready to be filled,

while the old one was driven off to some secluded field

where it greeted other carts, now turned stables.

There, the women were fed daily, not just

between towns as before, and they took some comfort

in this.  They ate and were allowed to piss or shit in shifts,

so that no group of a dozen and a half

saw another group, though they saw the other carts

and could tell, from the sounds inside and the rubbish out,

what dread contents they harbored.

By the time Lavina reached the camp, there were six carts

already, and by the time she left, there were sixteen.

The guards got more and more numerous as other carts

arrived, and with time they became increasingly savage.

When one girl, mad from the conditions, tried to escape,

she was beaten in turn by not a few but a mob,

who then decided to make a demonstration of her:

they stripped her and took turns raping her

in a procession so long that it lasted through all the shifts.

The next day, she sat through all the shifts,

wailing from an unrecognizable face and lying broken,

nude and bloody on the ground.  The girls were forced

to urinate and defecate upon her, and those who balked

were beaten briefly before they agreed.  After several

such days, the girl who’d tried to escape lay clearly near death,

silent and looking dead already, reacting only barely

as the hot urine or shit fell upon her.  At last the girls

found her dead, though they were still forced to use her corpse

for a toilet.  There were no infractions after that,

though no one but her own group ever knew her name,

and even then only from whispers during feeding.

After the sixteenth cart had arrived, half a month passed

wherein no new carts were brought – though

none of the girls knew why or dared to ask.

At last, the carts were strung together and the departed.

This caravan stopped only at dusk, beginning anew

each day at daybreak.  In the dying light,

some carts would be emptied and cleaned, one at a time,

while their girls were fed some gruel.

Each cart was opened and cleaned, and each cart’s girls fed,

once every two or three days.

During the trip, one of the girls in Lavina’s cart died,

and all of them became sick with coughs and pains.

The body was not removed for over a day

until another feeding, during which her corpse was cleaned

with the shit and piss

from that iron box on wheels.

The body was simply dumped in the mud beside their cart,

and Lavina and the others had to step over it

to climb back inside.

Hours later, even in that windowless cage,

they smelled the burning flesh outside.

The caravan arrived in the capital city of Triemte at night,

where it rolled under armed guard

into the prince’s palace complex

before being unloaded, one cart at a time,

into a courtyard.  There,

the bound and gagged women were led inside

into an enclosed garden, under a vaulted ceiling.

They were led to a large room where running water,

conveyed through a channel, fell in showers,

where they were stripped and set to bathe.

A doctor examined each, probing their every orifice

for infection, and prescribed the necessary

balms and remedies for each.  From there, they were led

to large rooms filled with soft beds,

sixty beds in each room, and were told

to lie down and wait silently.  There, for the first time,

Lavina encountered the women of other carts,

all of them young beauties, however exhausted

and suffering from infections.  The beds filled in wave

after wave, and then the room’s iron door was shut.

Lavina could hear the heavy locks on the outside,

and all waited in silence until sure the guards had parted.

Then:  an uproar of whispers, a cacophony of hushes,

as all compared notes.

These were young girls from the countryside, but even they

could guess their function:  some kind of harem, as one

had heard told was the way

of kings to the east.  Why else sixty girls

kept in a room after being chosen for their looks

and enjoyed?  That night, the girls heard told

sixty tales of a prince who wed them and bed them,

taking their maidenhoods as a husband of fantasy

but raping them afterwards as a conqueror of old –

sixty sad tales of royalty granted only to be despoiled,

sixty strange tales of being rechristened Isabel.

These sixty girls at last could share their horror

at the girl who was raped before them by all the guards,

but they talked somewhat less of their complicity

in disgracing her dying body.

Some girls recalled seeing the corpse being set alight –

the same corpse dear Lavina had smelled burn.

They disagreed about the possibility of eventual escape,

knowing all would depend upon their conditions.

And they hoped their parents and their towns

would seek them out and right this wrong.

The next day, they were led into the garden

and saw that there were not one but four such rooms of sixty,

all of whom were gathered for the first time,

nude together amidst the trees and bushes and birds.

Onto an ornate balcony, overlooking the garden

stepped Prince Guyesp, who greeted them

with kindness and called them his wives.

“I have not lied to you,” he told them.

“You shall indeed have rich lives, fair treatment,

medicine and soft beds, fine foods and all the things

my powers may provide.  In this, I honor you as my wives.

Now honor me, as you have pledged before God,

with your love and absolute obedience.”

He continued, explaining any resistance would be punished

“most savagely, for hath not a husband the right

to beat his wives?”  And he introduced the bulky eunuchs,

armed with swords, who would guard them night and day.

He had them pass out pink veiled garments

made of fine see-through silk that covered the head

to the toe, and which the girls greeted with joy,

they being the only clothes available

and the first clean garments since their marriages.

He also explained the strange décor

surrounding the balcony:  there was hung

the white silk handkerchiefs on which he’d caught

their hymens’ blood in that moment

when they were first taken on oriental satin pillows

as the virgin wives of their lord and prince.

He bowed to bid adieu and was gone.

From this point forth, the girls could talk and socialize freely,

guarded by what seemed a hundred eunuchs

and daily silent visits by Guyesp to the balcony.

The eunuchs indeed brought food, and the first batch

was filled with rare spices and cooked with a precision

the likes of which none of these girls had never seen.

They slowly settled into a new routine,

learning each other’s names,

and the soft beds were so welcome

after so much standing and bumpy riding

in carts filled with filth.

Almost every night, one or two of them

would be escorted out and return with tales

of meeting again their prince,

who demanded utter compliance to his desires

but spoke to them as if they were indeed his wives.

No chance of escape ever presented itself, and all

quickly gave up hope – such was

the staunchness of the eunuch guards.

In time, Lavina too had her turn with the prince,

though she shared him with one other –

a busty brunette from further south.

Lavina was made to sit on the other’s face;

the other tongued Lavina’s vagina while

Guyesp had his way with her.  Then,

Lavina was made to lick clean

the prince’s member.  Next, he bent her over

the side of the bed and made the other girl

sit on Lavina’s back.  He fondled the other’s

big breasts while he had Lavina through both

orifices, but at length

he was finally sated

and talked with them a bit

before the eunuchs escorted them back.

The women tried to get information

about the world outside

from the eunuchs,

but it proved impossible:

the eunuchs slept just outside the harem itself;

they had no contact with the outside world to share.

The prince himself was the only one

who knew anything of the world beyond

and ever stepped foot in the harem,

and even that was only the balcony.

It was a world enclosed.

Finding that the eunuchs beat any girl

who tried to arouse them even with the slightest look,

the girls began to satisfy each other sexually –

a few even began in the first week,

but almost all would follow.  Some became

recognized experts at tonguing a vagina,

and some became couples, caressing and licking

and sucking only each other.  The guards,

who observed all, permitted it – so long as nothing

was ever inserted save a tongue or a finger:

no dildo or replacement for a man’s organ

would be permitted, lest those who used

even a stick receive a severe beating.

Lavina resisted but, at length, surrendered

and grew to enjoy giving and receiving pleasure

with the other women, though like most

she thought it a poor substitute for a man,

even if that man were Guyesp.

Still, most hoped for liberation at the hands

of angry country mobs or sympathetic magistrates.

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