"You may now leave us," said Ute to the guard, and he left.
"Am I truly a work slave?" I asked.
"Yes," said Ute.
"Am I under your authority?" I asked.
"Yes," said Ute.
"Ute!" I cried. "I did not mean to betray you! I was frightened! Forgive me, Ute! I did not mean to betray you!"
"Go into the shed," said Ute. "There will be work for you tonight, in the kitchen shed. Tomorrow will be soon enough for you to eat."
"Please, Ute!" I wept.
"Go into the shed, Slave," said she.
I rose to my feet and, naked, entered the dark shed. Ute closed the door behind me, plunging me into darkness. I heard the hasps cover the staples, one after the other, and then I heard the heavy padlocks snapped shut.
The floor of the shed was dirt, but here and there, under my feet, I felt a rounded metal bar. I fell to my hands and knees and, with my fingers in the dirt, felt the floor. Under the dirt, an inch or so, and in some places exposed, was a heavy gridwork of bars.
Girls locked within this shed would not tunnel their way to freedom. There was no escape.
Suddenly, locked within, alone in the darkness, I grew panic-stricken. I flung myself against the door, pounding on it in the darkness with my fists. Then, sobbing, I slipped to my knees and scratched at it with my fingernails. "Ute!" I sobbed. "Ute!"
Then I crawled to one side of the door and sat down, my knees drawn up under my chin, in the darkness. I was lonely and miserable. I felt the steel collar, so smooth and obdurate, fastened on my throat.
I heard a tiny scurrying, of a tiny brush urt, in the darkness.
I screamed.
Then it was silent, and again I sat alone in the darkness, my knees drawn up under my chin. In the darkness I smelled the scent of the Torian perfume.
Ute was not particularly cruel to me, as I had feared she would be. She treated me justly, as she did the other girls. It might even had been as though it were not I who had betrayed her to the slavers of Haakon of Skjern. I did much work, but I did not find that I was doing more than the other girls. Ute would not, however, let me shirk. After I had recovered from my fear that she would exact a vengeance on me for betraying her, I found myself, eventually, becoming irritated, somewhat, that she would treat me with no more favoritism than the other girls. After all, we had known one another for many months, and had been together, I recalled, from well before the time when Targo had first crossed the Laurius northward to the compound above the town of Laura. Surely that should have counted for something. It was not as though I were a stranger to her, as surely were the other girls. Yet, in spite of these considerations, I was not treated preferentially! I had some consolation in the fact that certain other girls, who would try to be particularly pleasing to Ute, who would try to insinuate themselves into her favor, were treated with abrupt coldness. She treated us all alike. She kept herself remote from us. She did not even sleep or eat with us, but in the kitchen shed, where she would be chained at night. We respected her. We feared her. We did what she told us. Behind her lay the power of the men. Yet we did not much like her, for she was our superior. We were pleased that she treated others with justice, not giving them advantages and privileges over ours, but we were angry that the same justice was meted out, in turn, to us. We were not given advantages and privileges over them! Surely I, at least, should have received some consideration, for I had known Ute for many months, and we had been friends. Yet she treated me no differently than the other girls, scarcely recognizing me in my work tunic among the others. When I could, of course, I managed to avoid tasks, or perform them in a hasty, slipshod manner, that I might save myself inconvenience and labor. Ute could not watch all the time. Once, however, she caught me, with a greasy pan, which I had not well scrubbed, but had returned, not clean to the kitchen shed. "Bring the pan," said Ute. I followed her, and we walked through the camp. We stopped by the framework of poles, which I had seen before. There was a horizontal pole, itself set on two pairs of poles, leaning together and lashed at the top. I had thought, when first I had seen it, that it was a pole for hanging meat. The horizontal pole was about nine feet high. Beneath its center, on the ground, there was an iron ring. This ring was set in a heavy stone, which was buried in the ground.
I stood there, beneath the pole, by Ute's side. I held the greasy pan. "The girl's wrists," said Ute, "are tied together, and then she is tied. Suspended by the wrists, from the high pole. Her ankles are tied together and tied, some six inches from the ground, to the iron ring. That way she does not much swing.
I looked at her, holding the pan.
"This is a whipping pole," said Ute. "You may go now, El-in-or."
I turned and fled back to the kitchen shed, to clean the pan. After that I seldom shirked my work, and I made, generally, much effort to do my work well. It only occurred to me later that Ute had not had me whipped.
Often during the day, and sometimes for days at a time, most of the tarnsmen of Rask of Treve would be aflight. The camp then would seem very quiet. They were applying themselves to the work of the tarnsmen of Treve, attack, plunder and enslavement.
A girl would cry, "They return! and we, eager in our work tunics, would run to the center of the camp to greet the returning warriors. Many of the girls would be laughing and waving, leaping up and down, and standing on their tiptoes. I did not betray such emotions, but I, too, found myself eager, almost uncontrollably excited, to witness the return of the warriors. How fine they were, such magnificent males! I hated them, of course, but, too, I, like the others, most eagerly anticipated their return. And most of all was I thrilled to witness the return of their leader, the mighty laughing Rask of Treve, whose very capture loop I had felt on my own body, whose collar I wore, whose I was. How pleased I was to see him bring back yet another girl, bound across his saddle, a new prize. How skeptically, and eagerly, with the other girls, I would silently appraise her, comparing her, always unfavorably, on some ground or another, with myself. Once Rask of Treve, from the saddle, looked directly at me, finding me among the mere work slaves, in their work tunics. I had felt an indescribable emotion, an utter weakness, when our eyes had met. I put my hand before my mouth. How magnificent he seemed, how mighty among those mighty warriors, he, their fierce leader.
Many of he girls ran to individual warriors, their eyes shining, leaping up and seizing the stirrups, pulling themselves up and putting their cheeks against the soft leather boots. And more than one was hauled to the saddle and well held and kissed before being thrown again to the ground.
When the tarnsmen would return, with their captives and booty, there would be a feast.
I would serve at this feast, but when it came time for dancing silks and slave bells to be withdrawn from the ornate, heavy chests, I would be dismissed to the shed, where I would be locked, alone.
"Why am I never belled and put in dancing silk?" I demanded of Ute. I could scarcely believe that it was I, Elinor Brinton, who so protested. Yet I heard the words. "Why am in never allowed, late, to serve the men in their tents?"
"No man has called for you," said Ute.
And so I, my work tunic removed, would be locked in the shed at night. I would lie there and, through the crack beneath the heavy plank door, hear the music, the laughing, protesting screams of the girls, the laughter, the shouts of satisfaction, of victory of the men.
But no man had called for me. No man wanted me.
How pleased I was to be spared the ignominious usage to which the other girls, my unfortunate peers, were subjected! How I pitied them. How I rejoiced that I did not share their fate. I screamed with rage, and taking up handfuls of dirt, hurled it against the interior walls of the shed, within which I was locked. At the third or fourth hour of the morning, one by one, the girls, their silks now removed, would be returned to the shed. How stimulated they seemed, how untried. How they laughed and talked to one another! How vital they seemed! We had work the next day! Why did they not go to sleep? One would sing or hum to herself. Another would cry out some name, that of a tarnsman, to herself with pleasure. "Ah, Rim," she would cry out, twisting in the darkness, "I am truly your slave!"