"You may break position," I said.
She flung herself to her belly before me, and pressed her lips to my feet. "Please," she said. "Please!"
"You grovel as a slave," I said.
"I am no longer a free women," she said. "I no longer have to pretend. I no longer have to lie."
I looked down at her, pondering her needs. Her lips were soft on my feet, timid, petitioning.
"I am now half naked and in a collar!" she sobbed. "I am at your mercy. Take pity on me!"
"You wish to placate masters?" I asked.
"If I have displeased them, yes!" she said.
"You would like to escape further punishment?" I asked.
"Surely it is understandable that a girl such as myself, one so helpless, one in bondage, would seek to avert the wrath of men, that she would seek by her curves, her service and love to soften the hearts of masters."
Yes, I thought, that is understandable. Slave girls are, when all is said and done, in spite of their beauty, so vulnerable, so owned, so ultimately helpless. "Please, Master," she said.
"You wheedle and beg well," I said.
She looked up at me.
"Doubtless you learned that in your first days as a slave, in the house of Appanius, perhaps desiring to be fed."
"I am begging!" she said.
I looked down at her.
"Surely master understands for what I am begging," she said.
"Oh?" I said.
"Command me to strip," she wept. "There is shade on the other side of the tank. The dust is cool there. You do not need a blanket or a wrap. Put me in the dust itself!"
I did not speak.
"If you wish," she said, "I shall serve you here, in the hot dust, in the glare of the sun."
"A begging slave," I commented to Marcus.
"Yes," he said.
"Please," she said.
"Kneel over there," I said. I indicated a position near the yoke and the buckets, near the tank. Quickly she rose up and went and knelt where I had indicated. I then lifted up the yoke, which, as I have mentioned, was thrice drilled, once in the center, and once near each end. At these points leather thongs were wound in and around the yoke.
"Master?" she asked.
I put the yoke across her shoulders.
"Master!" she said.
I loosened the thongs at the center of the yoke and then, by means of them, looped about her neck and tied, fastened the yoke on her. I then used the thongs on her right to fasten her right hand to the yoke there, and then, to her left, similarly served her left hand. I then stepped back to regard her, fastened in the yoke, her hands widely separated.
"As you may recall," I said, "you incurred discipline twice, once for lying, for which you were cuffed, a preposterously light discipline considering the offense, and secondly for daring to suggest that a master might not be interested in the answer to a question which he had asked."
"Forgive me," she said.
"It is your business to answer questions, with exactness, and with the fullness desired," I said, "not to comment on such matters as their propriety or appropriateness."
"Yes, Master," she said.
"Your needs are apparently on you," I said.
"Yes, Master!" she said, delightedly. "But I am helpless!" She moved her head about a little, turning it a little from side to side, her neck within the loops of the thongs; too, she moved her hands a little, futilely, they held back against the wood, by the thonged wrists.
"Surely you are aware that a woman may be used in a yoke," I said.
"Yes, Master!" she said.
Indeed, it is quite pleasant to use a woman in a yoke. Too, a girl is sometimes given to field slaves that way, cords attached sometimes to the ends of the yoke, that she may be pulled about, turned this way and that, and, in general, moved about and controlled as the slaves wish, until they weary of the sport and choose to have their way with her. I gathered, however, that this had not been done, at least as yet, with the lovely slave before us. She had, apparently, been tied to a stake for the men once or twice. The usual procedure, of course, is simply to put the girl in the common kennel after dark, where she is utilized, serving muchly, sometimes handed about, from man to man.
"But that is not our intention," I said.
"Master?" she said.
I put one of the vessels of water on the yoke. She had to bend down, that its weight was on the ground. Then I put the other vessel, too, on the yoke. She squirmed in the yoke, she sobbed.
"What is to be my second discipline?" she asked.
"Stand," I said.
With difficulty she stood. She could hardly stand upright. She wavered a little. "Am I not to serve?" she asked.
"No," I said.
She looked at me in misery.
"That is the second discipline," I said.
She closed her eyes, and tears forced themselves between those clenched eyelids. "I am not a free woman!" she said. "I am a slave. I need your touch!"
"It is the second discipline," I said.
"Please, please!" she wept.
"You are dismissed," I informed her.
"Please, Master!" she wept.
"Turn about, and be about your labors," said I, "field slave."
She moved then a little from the vicinity of the tank, a few steps. The weight was considerable for her. She staggered once or twice. She turned to regard us, pathetically.
"Away, field slave!" I said, with a gesture.
"Yes, Master," she sobbed, and turned away. We watched her moving slowly away, staggering at times, across the fields.
"How could you do that to her?" asked Marcus.
"Cuff her?" I asked, puzzled.
"Of course not," he said. "That was nothing."
"She thought it something," I said.
"She was let off easily," he said.
"True," I said.
"Doubtless she will in time, in trembling gratitude, realize how easily she was let off."
"Even as easily as she was let off," I said, "I do not think she will soon again consider lying to a free man."
"Probably not," he said.
I took saddle.
"What would you have done?" I asked.
"I would have put her under the belt," he said.
"And had it been Phoebe?"
"Phoebe knows better," he said.
"But if it had been her?"
"A number of disciplines," he said, "over successive days."
"What did you meant then," I asked, "how could you do that to her?"
"Sending her packing," he said, "rather than putting her to use."
"Should you speak that way," I asked, "of the former free woman, Lavinia of Ar?"
"Be serious," he said.
"Was it not merciful?" I asked.
"Certainly not," he said.
"As a discipline?" I asked.
"No," he said.
"Speak," I said.
"You dominated her, making her feel her womanhood, and its relationship to the male," he said, "and then, her belly ready, aching, vulnerably aflame, helplessly stirred, you sent her packing."
"What would you have done?" I asked.
"Nothing so heartless, so cruel," he said.
"You are speaking of the second discipline," I said.
"Of course," he said.
"What, then? I asked.
"I would have whipped her." He said. "Then I would have flung her to the ground, thrust her about, let her feel the side of my foot, such things, and then, when I wished, I would have knelt her, her head to the ground, and used her."
"In such fashion? I asked.
"Yes," he said.
"I see," I said.
"Slaves understand such things," he said.
"Of course," I said.
"And I do not think she would have been likely to commit the same error again."
"Probably not," I said.
"No," he said, "I do not think so."
"You grant, however," I said, "that my discipline is also likely to be effective?"
"I would think so," he said. "But I think mine might have been measured more perfectly to the slave, her needs and her act."
"You would have subjected her to use discipline?"