He stood there, in the reddish darkness.
Then it seemed he would turn away.
“Master!” she called. “Please, Master!”
He approached the cage.
“I have been brought by mistake only a pan of cold porridge,’’ she said. “I cannot eat that. I will need something else. Please bring it to me.”
“Kneel,” he said, “kneel straightly, back on heels, knees wide, head up, hands on your thighs, palms down.”
She obeyed. How she hated to be commanded by such a simpleton.
But was some semblance of obedience not required by her role as putative slave?
“Now put your hands, clasped, behind the back of your head,” he said.
That such a simpleton could command her!
She did as she was told, feeling strange feelings.
“I cannot eat this cold slush,” she said. “It has been brought to me by mistake. Bring me something to eat.”
How strange sounded such words to her, in her present posture.
He tried the cage gate, which was well locked.
Was he trying to get in, and, if so, what for?
Happily he did not have the key.
He fingered a disk of wax wired about the gate and jamb of the cage. He let it drop, with an angry sound.
It was, she had learned, the virgin seal, the rupture of which would testify to an unauthorized opening of the cage.
He looked at her, in the half darkness, and she shrank back a bit.
“No,” he said.
He turned away.
“It is late,” she said.
This was true, in ship time.
He turned about, to regard her, kneeling as she was.
“The floor of the cage is hard, and metal!” she said. “I will be cold. Bring me a comforter!”
“Curl,” said he.
“‘Curl’?” she said.
“Lie down, on your side, curled up,” said he.
She did so.
“Bring me a comforter,” she said.
“No,” he said.
“What is your name,” she demanded.
“Qualius,” said he.
“What do you do on the ship?” she asked.
“I am a tender of pigs,” he said.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Tending a pig,” he said.
She gasped, in fury.
“Curl more prettily,” he said.
She did so, angrily, her right hip high, the love cradle of her vulnerable, and tormentingly beckoning, her waist marvelously turned, and roundly descendant, then swelling upward, roundly, to the excitements of her bosom.
It was an excellent body, even for a slave.
“Bring me a blanket!” she said.
“No,” he said.
“I shall report you to the supply officer,” she said, “to the captain!”
To be sure, she had not even seen the captain, nor had she seen the supply officer since the quay.
He turned away.
“Even a tiny rag, Master!” she called.
He stopped at the door, and looked back.
“Please, Master!” she called. “Please, Master!”
He stood there.
“Even a tiny rag, Master!” she called.
“No,” he said.
He then withdrew.
She sat again in the cage.
What a simpleton, and a fool he was, she thought. But she could dismiss him, she was sure, from her considerations. Iaachus would not have put a task of trust in the hands of so stolid and benighted a creature.
But she had knelt for him, and posed for him, as he had commanded.
Was she then, actually, a slave girl?
Never! She was acting. But she did have strange feelings, and a sense of the radical dimorphism that separated the sexes in her species, a dimorphism that did not stop with, nor was it limited to, certain differentials of size and hardness, of smallness, of softness, and lusciousness.
She feared she would be cold tonight.
Ship, she thought, bring me soon to Tangara!
She hoped that her isolation in the hold, her separation from the others, would not provoke suspicion.
The supply officer, she thought, perhaps it is he, he who will provide me with the dagger.
But I myself, she thought, may have to arrange the opportunity to be alone with the barbarian.
How can I arrange that, she wondered.
Perhaps my beauty will arrange it, she thought.
But her beauty, it seemed, had had no great effect on the tender of pigs. But was it not extraordinary, even among slave girls, women embonded for their beauty, and, in places, she had heard, even bred for it?
She was furious.
She had not gotten her way.
How she had demeaned herself, and yet had not gotten her way!
Did they think she was a slave!
She would think of some way to have her vengeance on the fellow. Iaachus could manage that.
He had tried the gate of the cage. Had he merely been checking it, or had he been interested in seeing if it were securely fastened, and, if not, what might have happened then? He had seemed displeased at the discovery of the virgin seal on the gate. What if the gate had been insecure, and the seal not there? She shuddered. Too, she began to suspect the vulnerability of the female slave.
She looked at the floor of the hold.
She wondered what it might feel like, on her body.
Suddenly, sitting there in the cage, she tried to slip the anklet from her left ankle. But she could not do so, and, in a few moments, she gave up the effort, angrily. It was on her, as the young officer on the quay had dryly observed.
It was a slave anklet.
It was part of her disguise, of course. It was not as though it was really on her. But it was, of course, really on her, at least in the sense that she could not remove it, no more than if she were in fact no more than another caged slave.
She looked down with distaste at the now-reddish-appearing gruel in the shallow pan.
Surely they did not expect her to eat such stuff.
She would starve first.
Who is the other agent, she wondered. Who has the dagger?
She slept fitfully that night, or rest period.
Her dreams were various.
She dreamed of a slender, yellow-handled poniard, a black-swirled design wrought within the handle, the handle itself with a double-scrolled guard, which was important, that her hand not slip onto the blade, that lovely narrow blade, that beautifully, harmoniously narrow blade, ideal for penetration, some seven inches in length, razor-edged, needle-pointed, coated imperceptibly with some transparent substance.
She dreamed of herself plunging it into the back of the unsuspecting giant, or perhaps, as he lay recumbent, unsuspecting, on a couch, into his chest.
But, too, she had frightening dreams, of herself stripped, and thrown, painted and perfumed, and chained, among barbarians, with other loot, of herself on a slave block, of herself being sold in a hundred markets to a hundred masters, of Iaachus laughing, of her family laughing, of her intimate maid, whom she must now strive to dress as a lady, she herself now the intimate maid, laughing, and holding a switch, the very switch with which she had beaten the slave before, only that it was she herself who was now the slave!
She awoke with a start.
I am not a slave, she cried to the hold. And then she was frightened, fearing that someone might have heard. I am not a slave, she then whispered to herself, intensely.
But then she remembered, from the dream, the fur beneath her knees, and the chains on her body, and the men about, regarding her, with a desire she had not understood that men could feel, and she knowing that she might belong to any of them and would then be his to command, she to be obedient to the least of his caprices. And she remembered the slave blocks and the cries of auctioneers and being exhibited, as a true slave.
She shuddered.
And, too, she remembered her indescribable thrills, knowing what she was, and how she must serve, joyfully, will-lessly compliant, how she must serve eagerly, helplessly, owned by another!