“She is a nasty little slave, Delia,” called out the woman in the second palanquin. “She will do very nicely!”
“Excellent!” was the response from the first palanquin.
“They are pleased,” thought Cornhair. “They must have bought me for a man, perhaps for a friend, a husband, a son, or nephew.”
Whereas it was unusual for a wife to buy a female slave for her husband, it was not unusual for a husband to buy himself a female slave, for his couch ring. To be sure, this liberty was not reciprocated. If a wife desired extramarital male attention she would be well advised to proceed with caution, to arrange judicious assignations, or, incognito, visit male brothels.
Perhaps it was the anonymity of the hood, or knowing herself leashed, or being unable to part her hands, bound behind her, but Cornhair had seldom felt herself so much alive as now, when she was so fully and helplessly in the power of others. Could it be that she was a natural slave, living to be owned? Too, the sensations of the unexpected attentions, a pinch, a slap, had been acute, keenly enlivening, not really painful, but assuredly stimulating. And were they not, in their way, flattering, as well? And surely the feel of a pinch, the sting of a slap, lingered in her body. To be sure, such things were far less troubling, or disturbing, or significant, she was sure, than would have been a kiss, put on her as a slave, a caress or a grasp, a handling of her as a slave. There was no mistaking such things. Why should she fear certain sensations, she wondered, if she were hooded? Who would see the parting of her lips, the sudden, astonished widening of her eyes? Who would even be close enough to sense the tiny changes in her breathing, its quickening, who so close that they might hear the tiny inadvertent noises which might escape her, scarcely audible beyond the layers of closely woven canvas?
Cornhair had the uneasy sense that she might become needful, as a slave is needful.
How helpless would she then be!
Could she resist being enflamed? What if men should do it to her?
What would it be to feel a man’s hands on her, to know herself truly his slave?
She must then hope to please him.
She had felt the lash in the slave house.
“I am afraid of the whip,” she thought. “How is it that I should fear the whip? Only slave girls fear the whip. I fear the whip. What can that mean? Is its meaning not clear? I am a slave girl!”
Cornhair was well aware of the responses from the crowd, the noises, the comments, assessing her, as a beast may be assessed.
“Thirty darins,” she heard. “Thirty-five,” she heard.
And then Cornhair walked, as might have a thirty-five-darin girl.
She heard the women in the palanquin behind her call out to her companion in the lead palanquin, that to which her leash was attached. “She is the sort that men like,” she heard.
“Excellent,” she heard, from the lead palanquin. “She will do very nicely.”
But Cornhair was puzzled. It was a woman who had bought her. But, why? Surely to give her to a male. But what woman would buy a girl for a man? Was there not a war between the free woman and the slave?
Cornhair followed on her tether, for better than an hour, through various streets, some perhaps, from the sounds, and from the smoothness of the footing, boulevards, others less favored, more cobbled, streets of a more common sort, and, occasionally, it seemed, from the adjustments of the bearers, from the dampness and spillage, from the coolness, from the absence of sunlight on her body, from the sense of compressed, narrowly channeled wind brushing her, streets less streets than dismal alleys or secluded walkways, some little more than muddy trails, crevicelike, between walls. Then, later, the passage of the palanquins once more grew linear and their progress proceeded apace. Why, Cornhair wondered, had a seeming detour, through narrow, poorly paved, even sodden, streets, been effected? Were the grand ladies, for already Cornhair had begun to think of the free in terms quite different from those in which she thought of herself, reluctant to be recognized in this part of the journey? Did they wish to conceal their approach to a particular destination, by recourse to a less public, more circuitous route? Had she not thought she had heard the drawing of the curtains on two palanquins?
What is becoming of me, wondered Cornhair.
What are these strange feelings I am beginning to have? Surely they are not appropriate for one of the honestori, for one, even, of the patricians, even of the senatorial class! But I am no longer of the honestori, no longer of the patricians, no longer of the senatorial class!
I am becoming different. I cannot help myself!
Are these two women so truly grand, so different from me?
Would I not have despised them, even mocked them, in my freedom?
Why do I now fear them as so far above me, so far beyond me?
Why do I tremble before them? Why do I fear to meet their eyes?
Why should I stand in awe of them? Why should I hurry to kneel before them, and feel it right that I should do so?
Would they not be the same as me if their thighs were marked, if they were stripped, if their necks were clasped in the close-fitting, locked band of servitude!
No, they would not then be different.
But now they are!
So different!
I am changing, she thought. I cannot help myself. I am beginning to see the world as what I now am, as a slave, as one who is owned. I am beginning to think as a slave, move as a slave, speak as a slave. I am beginning to feel my body as the body of a slave, my mind as the mind of a slave, my feelings as the feelings of a slave.
And I want it so!
No, no, no, I must not want it so!
After something more than an hour, the small procession had halted, and the two palanquins had been set down.
To Cornhair’s surprise the bearers, or their leader, were paid. The palanquins, then, had been rented.
The ladies then, if they owned palanquins, had elected not to use them. Would private palanquins have been recognized, or noted?
Also, almost at the same time, Cornhair heard the warming of an engine, and the familiar hum of a hoverer.
Too, one may have landed nearby.
It seemed another was being readied.
Someone undid her leash from the back of what had been the lead palanquin. From the feel of the leash on the leash ring Cornhair conjectured it was in someone’s hand. A slave grows quite aware of such things. Did they truly fear she might dart away, hooded, her small wrists tied behind her back? Did they truly think that a bound slave was heedless or unmindful of the futility of eluding her restraints? Did they not realize how helpless, disoriented and dependent, a woman is, blindfolded, or hooded?
She felt herself lifted in strong, masculine arms and placed over the rail of the hoverer. A moment or two later, she was knelt on the floor grating of the hoverer; her ankles were crossed; her head was forced down to the grating; the leash was taken back between her legs, it was then pulled back tightly, tautly, and used to fasten her crossed ankles together.
Her head was then held down.
She could not raise it, in the leash collar.
Her hands moved a little in the cords that held them fastened behind her back.
“Satisfactory?” asked the male voice.
“Quite,” said a woman’s voice.
“A compact, fetching little slave bundle,” said the male voice.