Once upon a time, there lived a queen who read a lot of stories starting with, “Once upon a time.” Her favorite folk tale claimed to tell of a real-life custom that was practiced long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away…even though it somehow seemed to strongly resemble her very own kingdom.

There, the legend said, on one day every year the rulers would wash the feet of the poor, to show how completely devoted they were to serving their people’s needs. They called it Maundy Thursday, even though it obviously did not happen on Monday at all.

But, as her majesty soon realized, that tradition didn’t really prove anything, except that the monarchs were willing to wash the feet of the poor…especially since, studying further, she had soon learned that the chosen feet had been thoroughly cleaned beforehand. So she summoned her daughters, who numbered seven, since her reading had shown her that the proper group of daughters was either three, seven or twelve.

“Daughters,” she said, as they sat around their round table, just as her stories required. “You know that we rulers are the servants of the people.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Kate answered, who, as the eldest, was sitting at her right hand. “But speaking of servants, you could send some more to clean my room? It is a terrible mess.”

“Didn’t they clean it yesterday?”

“But everything got thrown around again.”

“You say that as though some evil spirit had done it,” her sister Etak muttered. “In fact, you were the one who threw it and then left it for the servants to pick up.”

“That’s their job, isn’t it?”

“We’ll speak about that later,” her mother told her firmly. “For now, I have a way to show our people how hard we try to serve them…namely, by actually doing it. You will each submit totally to one common man for one day every year, doing any work he gives you. And if you fail to please him, he can punish you until you do.”

“Where did you ever get that idea?” Kate demanded.

“In a story book,” her mother told her, as though that settled that. When they still seemed unconvinced, she added, even more firmly, “It started ‘Once upon a time.’”

“That isn’t what I’d call a really solid precedent,” argued her sister Mensetta. As a university student, she was used to impressing everyone else by using terms like that. For once, her mother was not impressed.

“Well, here’s a better one for you,” her majesty snapped. “The one who best performs this task will inherit all of my kingdom.”

This time, the girls were not surprised at all. In all of her mother’s stories, a kingdom was the only prize for any sort of competition, down to a pie-eating contest.

“Since you put it that way…how bad can one day be?” Kate decided. Especially since I plan to do as little work as I can get away with, she added silently…and even that will be a novelty, since I have never done any at all.

At that, it will be a great privilege for the commoner whom I chose to honor…and even if it is not, he would never dare to force a princess to do anything she didn’t want to do, when she might someday be his queen.

“It doesn’t matter how bad the day is, or how great the prize may be, because rules are rules,” responded Etak …who always reversed everything her older sister said, as the spelling of her name implies. “The rules said that princesses could not be spanked or struck by anyone but the queen herself, and she was always too busy to do it. Now my master will have to punish me, since the rules say that, too. Unless, of course, he gets too weird. That would be against the rules, too.”

“He will not HAVE to do anything…he will be your master, remember?” Mignonette pointed out. Her dreamy sigh made her bosom heave beneath her silken bodice, just as the stories all agreed it was supposed to do.

“That’s just fine with me,” she confided. “I have always secretly dreamed of serving a master, who can punish me when I deserve it, with a trip across his knee.”

“I just dreamed of the punishments, and the weirder the better,” Juliette murmured, with a wicked grin, which was her usual expression. “I don’t care if I deserve them or not. I just want that man to turn me over his knee and blister my bottom with his hand, his belt, a switch, a cane, a riding crop…” Her breathing grew faster and faster, deeper and deeper, as she named the implements in turn.

The others tried to ignore her. Whatever stories she was reading, they obviously did not begin with, “Once upon a time.”

“I think you are all missing the point,” Mensetta argued, as she leaned forward to gaze at the others intensely. “I say that the important thing is the symbolism…we must turn the day into a ritual.”

“That is exactly the kind of thing that an intellectual WOULD say!” Revolutzia sneered, leaning and gazing right back at her. “What we are really going to prove here, is how degrading and insulting every form of personal service is. We will take part in this new custom just so we can protest against it!” And she slammed her fist on the wooden table, as the first sign of her protest.

Obviously, her reading was not very heavy on “Once upon a time,” either.

Just as they were about to start quarreling about it, their youngest sister Omnia stopped them by saying, “I think you are all partly in the right, and I’d like to take the best from your different ideas.”

That silenced them all, because…as they knew from their stories…the youngest sister usually knew best. Although, even for Mensetta, it was hard to see how they could all be in the right, since they disagreed so drastically with each other.

* * *

Piotr didn’t really care who was right or wrong. He was certainly not interested in taming any shrews, no matter what the names Piotr and Kate might suggest. Above all, he didn’t really believe that his royal family was really planning to act as his humble servants, but he didn’t mind that either. Two years after losing his wife, he was only trying to get his house cleaned.

It’s not that he was too poor to afford a housekeeper…far from it. But one after another of those ladies had taken one look at his towering pile of crusty cook pans, while sliding around on the greasy floor, and announced that she would have to spend an entire year there, along with a backup team, to even make a dent in that disaster.

In vain, he had assured them that, as a wealthy wool merchant, he could make it worth their while. They had always responded that there was not enough wealth in the world…and perhaps the best he could do was go sleep in the sheep pens, which his shepherds kept a whole lot cleaner than his own living quarters.

So when the herald came around to announce the queen’s new holiday, he was not as cautious as his neighbors. He was, instead, more desperate.

“So who will step forward and take advantage of this generous offer?” the herald asked the villagers who were clustered around him, while trying not to make eye contact.

“I will,” the wool merchant responded, stepping forward boldly, ignoring his neighbors’ desperate efforts to tug him back again by his long woolen sleeve.

“Nothing good can come of it,” the nearest one whispered, “especially with that oldest daughter. She will be your servant until nightfall…but then she can have you sent to an even more filthy hovel than yours.”

He thought about that for a moment, then shook his head.

“She couldn’t,” he decided. “There is no such place in the entire kingdom.”

* * *

“I will do my best,” Kate assured him. Actually, she planned to do as little as possible before getting the Heck home where the servants did all the cleaning, which was the only sensible way to get it done.

She had passed the palace kitchen, though, on her way to somewhere else. There, she had seen an army of servants scrubbing away, so that the kitchen was always as spotless and shiny as the throne room, of not more so. From what she was seeing here, the entire palace staff could not have made a dent in this disaster area, so it did not make much sense for one lone lady to even try. Even if she had intended to do so. Which she certainly did not.

“So where shall I start?” she asked him, feeling sure that, wherever it was, she would still be there when the day was finished.

“I suppose with the pans, dishes and utensils,” he said. “The iron stove would take a whole week, at least. Of course, I don’t expect you to get it all done…if I can eat from them, that will be good enough for me.”

“Sounds good to me,” she agreed, and headed towards the sink. On the way, she skidded on the yellow tiles…which had been white, but were now covered with two years’ worth of dried food and cooking oil. He grasped her arm just in time to keep her from sliding into the sooty stone walls.

She was grateful for the competing smell of spilled beer, which gave the place the odor of a really cheap tavern, rather than a grease pit. Otherwise, she might have thrown in the towel…assuming she could have found one that was not too putrid to pick up in the first place.

For an instant, she recoiled from his commoner’s touch. Then she found herself strangely aroused by the firm grip of his long, strong fingers. They were immaculately clean and even scented…just as his dark beard was perfectly groomed and curled.

His fresh, herb fragrance would have been pleasant enough, even if it had not been her only refuge from the kitchen’s all-too-distinctive tavern smell. She only wished that she had thought to wear her own floral fragrance…preferably the entire bottle.

As it was, she was glad she was wearing the sturdy green woolen frock, with its white cap and apron. The colors were a perfect foil for her red-brown curls and the eyes that almost matched them. Now she was glad that she had gone to the expense of having had this servant’s costume made for the occasion, at a cost that far exceeded a staff of real live servants for a day.

“I hope you have a lot of sand,” she told him, as she waited for him to release her. “These will take a lot of scouring.”

“A whole boxful, right over there,” he said, removing his fingers long enough to point at it. “And you’ll see lots of woolen pads beside it.”

“Then I might as well get started,” she said.

Soon she was finished, too. Which is to say, she had moved the 20 pans from one side of the sink to the other and piled them neatly in stacks of five, after dealing with each one. And we do say “dealing with,” rather than “cleaning,” advisedly. She did a fine job of clearing the center of each one, while ignoring the crusted, rusted edges.

As she did so, she tried hard to ignore the way he stood gazing down at her from over his crossed arms.

“What about lunch?” she asked, after the first half hour. Granted, she had had breakfast in the palace less than three hours earlier and wasn’t really hungry, but she felt that she had earned a break.

“We don’t have any clean plates yet,” he reminded her. “But I do have some bread, cheese and beer in the ice chest. I’ll look and see what’s there.”

After throwing out a loaf that had turned purple and a chunk that had apparently turned to stone, he triumphantly produced some samples that were still edible.

As she looked around for a chair that had not been pressed into service as a storage shelf, she heard him tell her pointedly, “I will bring it to you while you are working.” With some disappointment, she resigned herself to eating with one hand while scrubbing with the other.

“So…what next?” she asked, as she turned to face him, theatrically rubbing the non-existent sweat from her creamy white brow.

“What’s next?” he demanded, as he stalked towards her in a way that made her flinch and back away, until she bumped against the sink. “You haven’t even finished your first job. You’ve cleaned the mess out of the center of each pan, but you haven’t touched the sides.”

“Well, you can still cook with them, can’t you?” she demanded. “You didn’t get them this filthy in one day, but you expect me to get them clean. Look what I’ve done to my hands, just trying to do it!” And she thrust them up for his inspection.

“So,” she told him, as she wiggled her reddened finger angrily under his nose, “will you just leave me alone so I can do the best I can with the rest of this disaster area until tonight, when I will be able to go home where we have servants to do this work every day, before it can pile up like this. There’s the door…if you can see it through all that dirt.” Pointing at it even more dramatically, she added, “Just go!”

He was actually turning to do it, when he suddenly wheeled back.

“I just remembered something else,” he said.

“What was that?” she asked crossly, as she dipped another woolen pad into the box of sand.

“If you do not please me, I can punish you if I wish. And you did not…and I do.”

While she tried to unravel that sentence, he stood glaring down at her. Long before her mind could rearrange the words to clearly say, “You did not please me, and I do wish to punish you”…long, in fact, before even Mensetta could have done it…his menacing tone and glance told her what his tangled terms had meant.

“Of course, I could spend the rest of the day getting one set of utensils ready,” she told him uneasily, as she started backing away.

“You will spend the rest of the day making them all gleam,” he said.

“I would never have enough time, no matter how I tried,” she wailed.

“I will have plenty of time, though, to make sure that you try your best.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, her voice quavering.

“You’ll find out,” he told her, as he cleared a chair by sweeping off his books (the ones he had been planning to put back on the shelves for the past six months). He pushed up the sleeves of his white silk shirt in a theatrically threatening gesture that revealed the muscular arms beneath. Then he dragged her towards him as he threw himself into the seat.

Too stunned at first to resist, she started to struggle desperately as he pulled her over his knee and lifted her skirt, to reveal the white linen shift beneath. Which would not have been white, as she suddenly realized, but rather a dismal gray, if she had been washing it herself. He had little time to admire the garment, though, before he pulled it to her waist.

Now he was staring right down at her creamy white backside, which no man had seen before. Mercifully, she had little time to be embarrassed, before shame gave way to the sudden stab of stinging pain across her right buttock cheek…immediately followed by an identical flash across the left. The smarting grew to a burning heat and then a blazing fire, as his long, strong fingers kept striking the same spot on either side, with unerring accuracy.

Desperately, she tried to push herself up off his lap, only to find his free hand clamped across her shoulders, holding her firmly in place. At the same time, she tried to kick her legs, only to discover that they, too, were imprisoned between his thighs.

In that helpless, hopeless position, she could only scream out her wild threats, even knowing how empty they were.

“I will—OW!—tell my mother on you—OW! OW!—and she will have your—OW! OW! OW!—HEAD!”

“I don’t think so,” he cheerfully replied. “I read the rules before I took you on, not that I had much competition. I am supposed to punish you if you fail to please me, as you have certainly done so far.”

And those words, she realized, were all too easy to understand.

“Then I will cut your head off myself, when I am queen!” she wailed.

“The way you are going, I doubt that she will chose you for that honor, either.”

“OW!” was all she could answer. She was trying to think of another threat, but her angry cries turned to desperate pleading instead.

“Please stop!” she cried. “Please, please, stop it! You must have hit me a hundred times already, and I can’t take any more.”

“It was more like twenty,” he told her. “And you’ll have to take it, until I decide to stop.”

“Then I won’t be able to do any more work for you!”

“Then you’ll get much more of the same…only even harder…like this!” And he raised his arm as high as it would go.

“OW!” Even more desperately, she asked, “Isn’t your hand starting to hurt?”

“Actually, it is,” he said. “It is probably turning red…but not as bright as your bottom. It isn’t as hot either…and I do like to feel that heat coming off of those plump little globes of yours, every time I smack them. But you do have a point…my hand is starting to sting…and I don’t want to wear it out too soon.”

At that, he released her, and she pushed herself to her feet as quickly as the greasy floor would allow. She had to grasp his shoulder to steady herself but pulled her hand away as soon as she could stand by herself.

“Now you had better get back to the pots and dishes,” he said, as he lowered his sleeve again.

“Yes, sir,” she answered. “I will do my best.”

This time, she felt sure that she was doing just that. She would not have dared to do any less, knowing what the result would be. His stinging hand would recover much more quickly than her burning bottom, she felt sure. While she found it hard to imagine how it could hurt any worse, she had the dismal feeling that it could.

With his threat firmly in mind, she did not even dare use one of her hands to rub the injured area. All ten fingers were busy scrubbing those pans and digging the dirt out of the edges with the nearest table knife. Not even that could get it all, of course, but she had certainly tried.

She glanced around from time to time, to be sure he appreciated her efforts. Since she could read nothing from his stern expression, she quickly turned back again.

When she was finally finished, she pointed at the pile of pans.

“Would you like to look at them now, sir?” she asked. “I think that you’ll be satisfied.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” he told her. As she wiped her hands on her apron, she found herself wringing them anxiously. But he had to be pleased with her effort, she tried to assure herself…those wretched utensils could not have gleamed as brightly on the day they were made.

Thinking of that, she could not stop herself from asking, “Don’t you see how bright they are?”

“Yes, I do,” he answered. But almost immediately, he interrupted her sigh of relief. “In places, that is. But look at these other spots…I can still see last year’s mutton stew there.”

“But I did my best,” she insisted, stamping her foot in frustration.

In a stern tone, he answered, “Obviously, I did not do mine.” In case she didn’t know what he meant, he rolled up his sleeve again.

This time, she did not try to resist as he pulled her back over his knee. Struggling could only make it worse, she realized…although, when his hand first fell on her bruised red bottom, she could not imagine how it could be.

He was raising his hand high above his head now, so that it fell more slowly, but with even more force, on flesh that was still stinging from the last assault. She could not have imagined that this second spanking could hurt any more than the first one, but now she knew with agonizing certainty that it could.

She knew, because every blow caused a blinding flash of pain, growing brighter and brighter each time. And even now, she did not know how fierce it would become, before he was finally through.

Knowing, this time, that both threats and pleas would be useless, all she could do was howl, “OW! OW! OW!” At last she collected herself enough to demand, through gritted teeth, “When are you going to STOP?”

“We are halfway done already,” he assured her. “We only have ten more to go…on each side, that is.”

“Only halfway?” she wailed. “But why?”

“One smack for each of those soiled pans. And you will have twice as many next time.”

“There won’t be a next time!” she promised fervently. “I will do my work perfectly!”

“I hope so…for your sake.” But she noted that he kept his sleeve rolled up this time.

Now she could not stop herself from rubbing her poor bruised bottom gently after every few minutes of scrubbing…although those minutes seemed more like hours to her.

“The pots look fine,” he assured her, as he examined them. Her heart rose at his reassuring smile…but sank to her feet as he picked up the spoons and it turned into a frown.”

“I can still see some egg specks on these,” he accused her.

“But I didn’t see them!” she wailed. “Honestly, I did not!”

“Then you should have looked more carefully.”

“Why bother?” she heard herself shouting, to her own surprise and dismay. “You would find some excuse for spanking me, since that’s what you want to do. Well, you have done your worst already, so you might as well do it again!”

“You are right,” he admitted…and, again, she breathed a sigh of relief that lasted for only a moment. “I have done my worst…with my bare hand and your covered bottom. I am sure that would be enough to convince you eventually, but we only have this one day.”

Once again, it took a moment for her to understand his meaning. It became all too clear as he rummaged briefly against the pile of wooden spoons on the table beside the sink and chose the one that seemed cleanest.

“Oh, no!” she whimpered, pulling back again.

“Oh, yes!” he said.

“But you are not going to pull up my shift this time! It will hurt enough without that.”

“No, I am not.” And this time, she knew better than to feel relief. Sure enough, he added, “You are. Then you are going to turn yourself across my knee, so I can save my strength for your spanking.”

“I am not!” she gasped.

“Very well, then.” Before she could even think of being relieved, he added, “That refusal will cost you ten more smacks with this spoon…on top of the forty you already have coming.”

“Forty!” she cried. “I will never be able to stand it.”

“Then I don’t think you will want to ask for ten more.”

Seating himself again, he patted his lap with both hands in an unspoken command. Trying not to think about what she was doing, she leaned down to grasp the hem of her green woolen skirt and pulled it slowly, with numb fingers, to her knees. Her hands paused there, as she struggled to raise it further.

“We only have one day, remember,” he told her. “You’ve got to move faster than that. I will give you to the count of five…one…two…three…”

Now she forced herself to drag up the fabric automatically, without thinking of what she was doing, knowing only that the task must be completed before the count went over “four.”

“Very good,” he told her. “Now raise your shift the same way.”

Trying not to feel his eyes on her, she forced herself to pull the white linen to her waist. Then she stood there holding both garments awkwardly over her arm.

“Well?” he demanded then. “Do you plan to stand there for the rest of the day? Or I must start counting again?” And he slapped his knees for emphasis…although not, she knew, half as hard as he would soon be smacking her bare backside.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she fell across his lap and felt his legs and his left arm clamping her into place. She pressed her lids even tighter together as she heard the first loud smacking blow…which sounded more like a crash of thunder to her. It was bad enough imagining what was going on…she did not want to be able to look back and actually see it.

As it was, her imagination was quite bad enough. He must be breaking my bones, she thought, even though she knew perfectly well that her plump backside was there to protect them. The problem was…there was nothing to protect her backside.

At first she struggled and screamed frantically, as her torment grew beyond her belief. Then it filled her entire world, until all she could do was collapse across his knees and lie there sniffling.

Even when he was finally finished, she could not push herself up this time. Instead, she lay with her red curls brushing the floor, not even caring how dirty it was. Surely, she thought, he could not even expect her to stand up now, let alone to go on working as though nothing had happened…except that he had left her with a thoroughly spanked behind.

“Now you must finish your work,” he told her, almost gently, and she felt sure that she could hear some shame in his tone. As he stood, he helped her do the same. Glancing behind her, she moaned to see the angry purple spoon-shaped bruises.

He sees how badly he has hurt me, she thought, and at last he is sorry for it. He will have to let me rest. Instead, he led her back to the sink.

“You don’t have much more to do,” he said, in an even kinder tone. “I am sure you will finish by the time the day is done.”

“But it is getting dark already!”

“But the day will not be over until midnight. I will light a fire in the mantel for you.”

She thought of protesting, until she glanced at the pile of wooden spoons that was all too near his hand.

“Then you can go back home to your palace and let the servants do all the work again.”

Not even that blessed prospect mattered now. Right at this moment, she did not care for anything in the world, except to leave those utensils spotless…starting with the one that had so recently bruised her already-injured backside. Then she would be able to go home again, just as he had promised, and forget that this nightmare had happened.

It would be repeated next year, of course, unless the law was changed. But her royal mother would surely change it, when she learned how this dreadful man had carried out her instructions. Wouldn’t she?

Never mind that now, Kate told herself sternly. The only thing that matters is, I will soon be away far from him and out of his reach. That’s the only thing I want right now. Isn’t it?