“It will be clear, shortly,” said the first woman. The other person, also a woman, laughed.
“Your hood is going to be removed,” said the first woman. “You are to keep your hands at your sides, until you are given permission to move them.”
Cornhair then felt the hood being unbuckled. It was spread a bit, and loosened, and then it was jerked from her head.
There were cries of pleasure from several women, cries which seemed to come from above her, and about her.
Cornhair blinked, half blinded by the light, and the glare from the sand. For a moment she could barely keep her eyes open.
There had been two women with her, who now withdrew, taking with them, as was shortly clear, the leash and leash collar, the cord with which her hands had been bound, the collar which had encircled her neck, and the hood which had covered her head.
“There is one!” cried a woman’s voice.
“See her!” cried another.
“See the slave!” she heard cry.
“Good, good!” cried another.
Cornhair looked up, bewildered, frightened.
“Slave!” she heard cry.
She heard screams of derision. She saw faces contorted with hate.
“Mistresses!” she cried, plaintively.
There was laughter.
She now understood why she had felt no breeze, for she stood within a walled enclosure. The walls did not seem unusually high, perhaps only seven or so feet in height, surmounted by what seemed to be a railing of large, white, wooden cylinders. There were tiered seats, circling above and behind these cylinders. In these seats, there might have been a hundred, even a hundred and fifty, women, ringing her. Looking up, Cornhair could see, stretched on poles, shading the stands, yellow-and-red striped, silken awnings. It was these she had heard snap in the wind. Where she stood, for the time of day, in the early afternoon, there was no shade from the walls. The sun was fierce, the glare cruel, the sand hot. Cornhair looked wildly about herself. She stood, alone and trembling, in a small arena, some fifteen yards in diameter.
Cornhair looked up.
She still stood where she had been told, her arms at her sides. She was standing below, and before, what seemed to be a small, boxed area just behind one of the railings.
A woman stood up, elegantly robed, and, with a gesture, silenced the small crowd. This was the Lady Delia.
“Mistress!” called Cornhair.
Lady Delia had been kind to her.
“Approach, female slave,” said Lady Delia.
Cornhair hurried forward, her arms at her sides, as she had been told to keep them, to stand closer to the wall, behind and above which was situated Lady Delia’s box. Lady Virginia was with Lady Delia, on her left, and Cornhair recognized some of the other women in the box, as well. They had been present when she had been unhooded after her arrival in the domicile. Cornhair put her head back that she might the more easily look up.
“You are a pretty thing,” said Lady Delia.
There was some laughter in the stands.
“Thank you, Mistress,” said Cornhair.
“How are you clothed?” called the Lady Delia.
“In a tunic, Mistress,” said Cornhair, puzzled.
“What sort of tunic?”
“A slave tunic, Mistress,” said Cornhair.
“Why?”
“Because I am a slave, Mistress.”
“It is rather short, is it not?”
“We are clothed, if clothed, as our Masters or Mistresses please,” said Cornhair.
“You are well displayed,” said Lady Delia. “It leaves little of your body to conjecture.”
“It is a slave tunic,” said Cornhair.
“Unfortunately,” said Lady Delia, “there are no men here.”
“Mistress?” said Cornhair.
“No men here, to want you,” she said.
“I do not understand,” said Cornhair. “May I speak?”
“Certainly,” she heard.
“May I move my arms?” asked Cornhair.
“Certainly,” said Lady Delia, “you may move your arms, your body, move as you wish. That will make things more interesting.”
“I do not understand,” said Cornhair.
“Be patient,” she was counseled.
Cornhair put her hands to her throat. “My collar was taken,” she said.
“You feel naked without it, do you not?”
“I am afraid not to be collared,” said Cornhair.
“I can understand that,” said Lady Delia. “A slave who impersonates a free woman is to be put to a terrible death.”
“I beg to be collared,” said Cornhair.
There was more laughter in the stands.
“Why?” asked Lady Delia.
“Because I am a slave, Mistress,” said Cornhair.
“You acknowledge that you are a slave, wholly a slave, and only a slave?” asked Lady Delia.
“Yes, Mistress!” said Cornhair.
“To be sure,” said Lady Delia, “not all slaves are collared, at least publicly. Some seem to be free women, moving about, conducting their business, and such, but, when they return to their Master’s domicile and the door closes behind them, they kneel, and await their commands, as the slaves they are. They may then be stripped, collared, tunicked, bound, whipped, whatever the Master pleases.”
“Yes, Mistress,” said Cornhair, wonderingly.
“But such slaves are not impersonating free women, in the legal sense,” said Lady Delia.
“No, Mistress,” said Cornhair.
“But slavery should be public, and manifest,” said Lady Delia.
“Yes, Mistress,” said Cornhair.
“It would be quite embarrassing, and annoying, even an outrage,” said Lady Delia, “to discover that one whom you took to be free, one with whom you may have actually conversed, thought of as an equal, and such, was naught but a slave, who should have been kneeling, collared, ill-clad, and trembling, at your feet.”
“Yes, Mistress,” said Cornhair. Cornhair realized how mortified, and furious, she would have been, had she, as a free person, been the victim of such an imposture. But, too, she wondered if she might have been the victim of such an imposture, and more than once. How would she have known? One could not expect every woman one met to bare her left thigh. No, it was better, as Lady Delia thought, for slavery to be public, and manifest. It would not do, at all, to confuse free women and slaves. It would not do, at all, to confuse citizens with beasts, persons with objects, with properties.
“It is my impression,” said Lady Delia, “that slaves like their collars.”
“Mistress?” said Cornhair.
“That, in a sense, they like having their necks encircled with the band of servitude.”
Cornhair was silent. She feared to think such thoughts.
“It warms and heats them, it frees them, to become the most female of women, the most complete and perfect of women, the owned, submitted complement to masculine power,” said Lady Delia.
“How can it be, Mistress,” asked Cornhair, “for they are slaves?”
“As, in their heart, they wish to be,” said Lady Delia.
“Slaves!” cried a woman in the stands, “meaningless, worthless slaves!”
“Yes,” said Lady Delia, fiercely, “they have been found worthy of the collar! They are content, and reassured, in their collars! Not every woman is collared! Only those men want, the most exciting, the most desirable! So the sluts know how special the collar makes them! They have been selected not for their standing in society, their connections, the advantages they can provide, their wealth, but merely for their femaleness, which men will own, dominate, exploit, and master!”
“Have mercy, Mistress!” cried Cornhair, lifting her hands to Lady Delia.
“The sluts are proud of the bands on their necks,” said Lady Delia. “How unique, and special, that makes them! How superior to free women!”
Women in the stands cried out with rage.
“No, no, Mistress!” cried Cornhair. “They are only slaves!”
“Do they not see how men look upon their faces, their limbs, their figures, look so frankly, so appraisingly, so approvingly, knowing that such delights could be theirs, in exactly the same sense that they might purchase a pig or dog?”