"No, no!" cried the girl.
"No, what!" cried the Lady Florence.
"No, Mistress!" cried the girl.
"On your belly," said Tenalion to the slave. "Hold to the slave ring with both hands"
The girl obeyed. The Lady Florence then again, wildly, angrily, laid the leather to the lovely back of her former rival. I smiled to myself. Tenalion, though doubtless a strict master, was merciful. He was helping the girl to endure her first beating. Usually, of course, a girl is tied or chained for her beatings. Sometimes, however, she is not secured but merely ordered to hold the ring. After the first two or three strokes it is sometimes difficult to pry her fingers from the iron. The most merciful thing, is my opinion, however, is always to tie or chain the girl. The beating can then be straightforward and efficient. The Lady Florence was now gasping. Holding the whip clenched in her hands, standing over the slave, gasping for breath, she stopped.
"Do you beg to be whipped?" she asked.
"No, Mistress!" wept the girl on her belly at the ring.
"Beg!" cried the Lady Florence.
"I beg to be whipped, Mistress," she wept.
"Very well," cried the Lady Florence, and then, again, she struck at the girl. Then, after a few blows, five blows, she stepped back, and threw aside the whip. The girl lay at her feet, sobbing, shuddering, her hands white on the ring, her back richly striped with the blows of the whip. The Mistress returned to her place, exhausted. The Lady Florence was not strong. She had only a woman's strength. I observed the back of the girl. It was red, and covered with an intricate pattern of deeper reds, as stripes, but it was not bleeding, nor was it cut. The Gorean slave whip is made to punish a girl, and terribly, but it is not made to permanently mark or scar her. A girl with a scarred back brings a lower price in the markets. Melpomene sobbed in pain and disbelief at the ring. She had not known what it could be to be beaten. I had no doubt she would now be docile, helpless and obedient, a true slave girl. Yet I could not help smiling to myself. I wondered what would have been her reaction had she been beaten not by a mere woman, but by a man, with a man's strength.
"On your knees, Melpomene," snapped the Lady Florence.
"Yes, Mistress," wept the girl.
"Feed and water the slave," said the Lady Florence to Bonnie.
"Yes, Mistress," said Bonnie. She brought forth a pan of crusts and one of water, which she placed before Melpomene, on the floor.
"You see what an indulgent Mistress I am, Melpomene," said the Lady Florence. "I permit a slave to eat before our supper is finished"
"Yes, Mistress," whispered Melpomene.
"From whom do you receive your food and water?" inquired the Lady Florence.
"From you, Mistress," said Melpomene. The chain dangled from her collar, down, between her thighs, to the ring.
"Eat," said the Lady Florence.
"Yes, Mistress," said Melpomene. She reached for one of the crusts.
"Melpomene!" said the Lady Florence.
"Mistress?" asked the girl, frightened
"Do not use your hands," she said.
"Yes, Mistress," said the girl. She then bent forward and, the palms of her hands on the tiles, began to eat from the pan. Too, as she ate, she lapped at the water.
"Pamela, Bonnie," called the Lady Florence, "we are now ready for the second course of our supper."
"Yes, Mistress," they said, and hurried to fetch the second course.
"It is a small dish," said the Lady Florence, "the white meat of roast vulos, prepared in a sauce of spiced Sa-Tarna and Ta wine."
The guests expressed a murmur of pleasure and anticipation. "It will be wonderful," said the Lady Leta.
The Lady Florence turned to the musicians, who were sitting to one side. "You may play," she said.
"Yes, Lady Florence," said the czehar player, their leader.
I looked at the girl at the ring, head down, feeding as a she-sleen.
"Why have I been brought here?" I asked Kenneth.
"Be patient," said Kenneth.
"Yes, Master," I said.
The dinner proceeded in a leisurely fashion through seven of its courses. There was light banter and charming conversation. The playing of the musicians was pleasant, and unobtrusive.
When the tiny plates and cups of the seventh course had been cleared away the Lady Florence looked over to the chained slave, kneeling at her ring. She had finished her own meager provender even to, at the Mistress' command, licking the pans. They had then been taken away by Bonnie.
"It is time for you to entertain us, my dear," said the Lady Florence to the slave.
The girl looked at her, frightened.
"Surely you do not think slaves are kept about only to be pampered and fed?" she inquired.
"No, Mistress," said the girl.
"I had intended to rent a dancing slave in Vonda," said the Lady Florence to her guests, "a decorous girl in blue silk and a golden collar, who might by the loveliness and grace of her movements please us, but it slipped my mind. I am so forgetful! I am afraid we must make do with poor Melpomene."
The Lady Leta laughed.
"Pamela," said the Lady Florence, "bring dancing silks for our slave."
"Oh, Mistress," said Pamela, smiling, "this is a house of refinement. We do not have such scandalous garments here."
"Ali, poor Melpomene," said the Mistress. Then she snapped to Melpomene, "On your feet, Slave!"
Swiftly Melpomene leaped to her feet, tears in her eyes. The chain fell to the ring from the chain loop on her collar.
"Tenalion, my dear," said the Lady Florence, "would you please relieve our lovely Melpomene of the impediment of her chain?"
"Certainly, Lady Florence," said Tenalion. He had been considering Lady Florence, doubtless surmising the configuration of her body beneath the ornate robes.
In a moment Tenalion had taken the chain from Melpomene, unlocking it first from the iron ring in the floor and, secondly, from her collar loop. The order of these events was not arbitrary. It was the opposite, too, of course, of the order in which she had been originally secured, where the chain had been first placed on her collar loop and only then locked about the ring in the floor. Commonly, in a Gorean tethering or chaining situation, of this sort, where neither fastening has as yet been effected, that bond which is on, or near, a woman's body is the first to be placed; similarly, of course, it is the last to be removed. In many situations, of course, there is only one fastening to be effected, that on the woman. It is not unusual for a master, for example, to keep a chain attached to the slave ring at the foot of his couch. It only needs, thus, when he wishes, to be put on the woman. Tenalion coiled the chain, and returned to his place. He put the chain in the box, which reposed near him. Melpomene then, now unchained, but naked, and wearing her collar, stood on the red tiles near the slave ring.
The Lady Florence looked to the leader of the musicians.
"Surely you are not going to dance a naked slave in mixed company?" laughed the Lady Leta.
"Is this a rude house?" laughed the Lady Perimene.
"Scandalous!" laughed the Lady Leta.
"Oh," cried the Lady Florence, in mock dismay, "I wished to obtain a dancing slave from Vonda, but it slipped my mind, so silly am I, and we have now on hand only poor Melpomene."
"She will have to do," said the Lady Leta.
"She seems a poor slave," said the Lady Perimene."
"Many slaves are like that at first," said Tenalion, soberly, "but with diet and exercise, and training, and discipline, they become wonders."
"I see," shuddered the Lady Perimene.
"To be sure," said the Lady Florence, "to dance a naked slave in mixed company seems scarcely to comport with the dignity of a refined house, but remember, too, I am a hostess, and we have men present, and we all know what beasts they are." The women laughed. "Yes," said the Lady Leta. "And so," said the Lady Florence, smiling, "as a good hostess I am under the obligation, surely, of providing a little something for the men."