I held to the ribbon.
What if I should be a slave, I asked myself, a slave?
The next day I was introduced again into the rounded chamber, similarly unclothed, my wrists, as before, braceleted behind my back.
The guard told me to kneel in the center of the room, and put my head to the floor.
As he left, I remained standing.
What free woman, I asked myself, as I was, would do such a thing?
When he returned I shrugged my shoulders, and lifted my head, proudly. I would show them what a woman of Earth could be, particularly one of my refinement, intelligence, education, and class, and a member of my sorority. And thus I was returned to my cell.
The next morning I was routinely branded, and then returned to the cell. I could not believe the casualness with which I had been marked. I might have been any domestic animal! A moment after the iron had marked me, and I was screaming in disbelief and pain, a scarf was placed over my eyes, and I could not even see the mark, which now made me, I sensed, somehow, radically and irremediably different than I had been.
I would learn later that I wore in my thigh, small, but clear, imprinted there, the cursive kef. I would learn, too, it is a common brand, marking common slaves.
Following my marking, still blindfolded, my thigh burning, I was returned to my cell, but now, by means of a belly chain and bracelets, my wrists were fastened behind me, closely, at the small of my back. Thus, I could not reach the brand. Another chain, something like a yard in length, run from the belly chain, held me to the wall behind me. My feet were then joined, pulled forward, and chained to another ring. A consequence of this chaining was that I could not much move from my place. I could lift my knees, draw back a bit, and sit up. I could also lie on my left or right side.
As I could not reach the water, or feed myself, I was tended by a young, tunicked woman. In the light, small as it was, that came through the opened door, I caught the glint of light on metal. Something was on her neck. Then I realized the woman was collared!
“Have mercy on me,” I whispered to her. “You must understand my plight. Be kind! You are a female, as I!”
She placed her fingers lightly across my mouth.
Then she held a pan with water to my lips, and I drank.
“Do you speak English?” I begged.
I hoped, of course, that anyone sent to tend me might be familiar with my language.
A thick wedge of dried bread was thrust to my lips, and then forced into my mouth. It gagged me as effectively as leather or cloth.
“You were displeasing,” she whispered to me, frightened. “You did not kneel as requested. Fortunately this fault was committed before you were marked. I advise you not to be so foolish in the future. You have been marked.”
I tried to speak, as I was desperate to do, but could not do so, for the bread. Then she was gone, and the door locked.
The next day I was again conducted to the round chamber, as before, stripped, back-braceleted.
How had they known I had not knelt as requested?
Clearly, as I had suspected, they must be able to see into the chamber.
Before the guard left me in the room, I was again instructed to kneel in the center of the room, my head the floor.
The heavy door closed. It was bolted.
As far as I could tell, I was alone, and yet, as before, I sensed I might somehow be under surveillance.
I was afraid. My knees felt weak. I was afraid I might fall. I pulled against the bracelets. I looked about, searching for tiny cracks, or openings. There might be any number of such, undetectable from where I stood. I might be seen, and as I was, stripped and braceleted, from a thousand places. I felt the stones beneath my bare feet, was conscious of a tiny movement of air on my body.
How alive, I thought, must be the body of a slave!
How alive to small things, a breath of air, a scent, subtle, scarcely noticed, the texture of a bit of cloth on her body, the feeling of a carpet or tiles beneath her bared feet, a rustle of chain in an outer room, are they coming for her, the weight of a manacle on her small wrist, the solid, cold feeling of bars clutched in fear.
And what, if she were bound and blindfolded, the touch of a master?
I wanted to throw myself to my knees and put my head down to the stones.
I felt a desperate desire to prostrate myself before the unseen others, if they were there.
It seemed every muscle and nerve in my body cried out to me to kneel, to place myself in a posture of submission.
It seemed to me that I belonged in such a posture.
“It is what you are,” something seemed to say to me. “Be what you are! Do not fight what you are! Do you not know, Miss Allison Ashton-Baker, for all your pretensions, you are a slave. You belong on your knees!”
No, no, I thought.
“Do not be afraid,” something seemed to say to me. “Acknowledge your reality! It is not wrong to be what you truly are. Only then will you know yourself whole, and, enslaved, most free.”
No, I cried out, to myself.
“Do you really think you will be given a choice?” asked the small, insistent, internal voice.
I am a free woman, I said to myself.
“You know you belong on your knees before men,” said the secret voice. “You have wanted to kneel before them, and submit yourself to them, as a slave, for years, since the first hopeful budding of your body.”
Certainly not, I said to myself.
“Have you not dreamed of masters?” asked the voice.
Do not torment me, I said to myself.
“You wish the men, then, to see to it?” asked the voice.
I do not understand, I wept to myself.
“Perhaps they will help you,” suggested the voice.
I do not understand, I said to myself.
“Apparently you wish for them to do so,” said the voice.
I sensed myself on a threshold, tottering on a brink, between conditions and realities, between what I was and what, for years, I had been told I should be, what, for years, I had pretended to be.
Then I straightened my body, and threw back my head, proudly. “I am a free woman!” I cried. “I am a free woman!”
Almost at the same time, the voice which had so tormented me, that small, insistent, inward voice, somehow within me, again spoke. “Foolish slave,” it said, “do you not know slaves are not permitted to lie?”
I remembered reading, in the confiscated books, that there were penalties for such failures and faults in a slave.
Then I looked about, in terror.
I remembered that I had been marked.
Had I been less than fully pleasing?
I feared so.
Hopefully no one had heard me, hopefully no one would know!
Scarcely had my cry ceased to ring within the stones when the bolt was thrown back, and the guard entered.
He put his hand tightly, painfully, in my hair, and forced my head down, to his hip. Then I was dragged, stumbling, from the chamber. I remembered, from the books, something of what was being done to me. I was being conducted somewhere, where I did not know, in the helpless, shameful, leading position commonly used with a female slave. “Forgive me,” I cried. “Please do not hurt me, Master!” How easily those words escaped me. Might they not have escaped the lips of a frightened slave? And how naturally I had addressed a free man as “Master!” I recalled, from the party, that all free males were to be addressed as “Master,” and all free females as “Mistress!”
I was taken to a side chamber. One of my hands was freed from the bracelets, and then both hands were fastened together again, but before me. I was placed before a dangling rope. I looked up. It was threaded through a heavy metal ring over my head. Most of the rope was on the other side of the ring. It ran to the opposite wall, where it was looped, loosely, about a large hook. The end of the rope near me was fastened about the chain of the bracelets.