“May I lower it further, Master?” she asked.
“I do not understand,” I said.
I felt her lips on my boots.
“I am sorry if I displeased Master,” she said.
I was silent.
She, this woman, was at my feet. I recalled her from Ar. She, this slave, was at my feet. I recalled her from Ar.
“Thank you for punishing me, Master,” she said.
“It is nothing,” I said.
“It is late,” said Tarl Cabot. “She is to be returned to the Kasra area, is she not?”
“Yes,” I said.
“She was displeasing,” said the tarnsman.
“Yes,” I said.
“Shall I have a punishment tag brought,” asked the tarnsman, “and a thong?”
The punishment tag, as noted earlier, would be wired to the slave’s collar, her hands would be tied behind her back, and she must hurry to her keeping area, where discipline would be meted out by her keepers, the large women.
“What do you think, slave?” I asked her.
I recalled her former terror that this might be done to her. I gathered it was very unpleasant for a lovely slave, a slave such as she, well-curved and delicious, a man-pleasing slave, the sort that men wish to buy, the sort that men wish to own, the sort that men find attractive, and care for, an exquisite, feminine slave, to find herself at the mercy of the ill-tempered, hating, envious, jealous, unhappy, gross brutes likely to be found in charge of a keeping area.
“It will be done with me as masters please,” whispered the slave, head down, at my feet.
“It will be done with you as masters please,” I assured her, “have no fear, slave, but what would you like?”
“That it may be done with me as masters please,” she said.
This answer pleased me.
“You have come far in bondage,” I said.
“It is my hope to please my masters,” she said.
“You have been punished enough,” I said. “You may go.”
“Keep me,” she said. “I beg to please you!”
“Please me?” I said.
“Yes!” she said.
“How?” I asked. “In what way?”
“As a slave,” she said. “As the slave I am!”
“Do you know what you are saying?” I asked.
“Oh, yes, Master!”
“Speak,” I said.
“I beg attention,” she said.
“Attention?” I said. After all, why make things easy for a slave, particularly such a slave.
“You would make me speak, of these things, I, knowing who I once was?”
“Of course,” I said.
“Seize me, take me!” she wept, lifting her face to mine. “Put me to use! I beg it! Employ me as a means to your pleasure, a mere means! I ask nothing else, or further! I am collared! Behold me! I am a needful slave! Be kind! I beg! Put me to your pleasure! What am I for if not to please you? Put me to your pleasure, Master! Use me! I beg it!”
“And it was so,” I asked, “even from Ar?”
“Yes, Master,” she wept, putting her head down. “Even from Ar!”
I found this answer of interest.
“The deck is hard, cold, and wet,” said the tarnsman. “There is a large coil of rope nearby.”
The lantern was lifted a little higher, better illuminating what knelt at my feet, head down.
She did not now dare, her confession uttered, to raise her face to mine.
“Your use has not been given to me, slave girl,” I said.
“But you have tied me,” she said.
“As might any man,” I said.
She put her hands on my legs and looked up at me. I saw in the light of the lantern that her face was streaked with tears.
“Might not a slave find favor with Master?” she asked.
“Go,” I said.
“Master!” she begged.
“Must a command be repeated?” I inquired.
“No, Master,” she said, quickly. She then pressed her lips again, fervently, to my boots, and then rose to her feet, backed away, head down, and then turned and ran, weeping, from the lantern light, disappearing in the darkness.
“You well know how to handle a slave,” said the tarnsman.
I did not respond.
“The slut was quite ready,” said the tarnsman.
It is interesting to see how helpless slaves can be, like a blanket of heat and need. Much, I supposed had to do with the collar, with slavery itself.
Odd, I thought, how bondage can free them.
It is no wonder men put them in collars.
They belong in a collar. They want them. In the precincts of the collar they find themselves, fulfill themselves, and are whole.
“Her use is not mine,” I said.
I looked at the large coil of rope to the side.
“To be sure,” said the tarnsman, “it is scarcely the furs of love, spread on the floor at the foot of a master’s couch.”
As is well known, it is a mark of great favor for a slave to be permitted on the couch of a master.
If I owned the lovely Alcinoe, I doubted she would soon be there. Such a mark of favor is not easily purchased.
“She is a ship slave,” I said. “I do not own her.”
“It would be dangerous, as well,” he said, “for he who calls himself Rutilius of Ar finds her of interest.”
I had gathered that from long ago.
“I wonder what is his interest in her,” said the tarnsman.
“She is not without slave interest,” I said.
“She has grown in beauty,” said the tarnsman.
“That is common in the collar,” I said.
“True,” he said.
“It seems she has become a helplessly hot little slut,” he said.
“That, too, is common in the collar,” I said.
“True,” he said.
“If she were a free woman,” said the tarnsman, “I suspect she would purchase a collar, and kneel before you, begging you to make her your slave.”
I was silent.
Few free women can so conquer their pride. Slaves, on the other hand, are not permitted pride.
That is one of the attractions of a slave.
Free women often fear to be in a man’s arms, fearing what will become of them. Perhaps few understand the meaning of their restlessness, their irritations, their distractions, their turnings and thrashings in the night, or perhaps, somehow, they understand them only too well.
Many pillows have been dampened with the tears of free women.
Do they know the source of their tears?
Perhaps.
Many are the cultural expectations imposed upon the free woman. Is she not more of a slave than a slave? Abundant are her limitations; narrow are the corridors permitted for her movements; stout are the bonds of convention wherein she is bound. Can she fail to sense the invisible ties which bind her? How natural, then, imbued by unquestioned prescription and expectation, for her to justify the walls within which she is imprisoned. How natural then her pride, her aloofness, her struggle to maintain the pretenses demanded of her. What is her will compared to the weight of society? Too, is it not easy to make a virtue of necessity, that ice should commend cold, and the stone its lack of feeling? How natural then that she should, with all innocence and conviction, often with a raging earnestness, praise the treachery which has been done to her, and struggle to betray herself, to deny herself to herself. How natural then that she should compete with her sisters in her imperviousness to desire, in her frigidity and inertness, in her estrangement from herself. How glorious is the free woman! She possesses a Home Stone, as a slave may not. But she is a woman, still, and that, however denied, is adamant. It continues to exist. Its hereditary coils reign in each living particle of her body. Truth, primitive and antique, remains true. Her nature is with her, for it is herself. Does she suspect at times that there is a slave masquerading within her robes? Does she not, at times, hear the whimpers, the cries, of the slave within her? Does she not long, at times, for the collar of a master, for the weight of his chains? Does she not know in her heart that she is his rightful slave?
“You did not call for the punishment tag,” said the tarnsman, “or the thong.”
“No,” I said.
I did not care for the large women. I thought discipline, if required, was best administered to a slave by a male. That is the natural way, and is far more meaningful to the slave. She is, after all, his. And he is, after all, her master.