Her small shoulders thrust up suddenly against the collar stocks. Her small hands pulled back in the wrist stocks, but could not escape their grasp. Her hands opened and closed. Her head turned to the side, her eyes closed.
"Steady!" I said.
But apparently she could not control herself. She was in the grip of her own needs, which seized her and would do as they pleased with her, having their way with her, whether she wished it or not, giving her no quarter.
Then she subsided, and looked at me, wonderingly.
"Are you all right?" I asked.
"Yes," she breathed.
I inspected her limbs, where they were enclosed in the stocks. There was some redness, and some minor abrasions from scraping, on the ankles, and neck, but it was nothing serious.
"What you did to me!" she said.
"As I told you before," I said, "it is your body, and your sensitivity."
"If I were a slave, you would own them, you would own it all!"
"You are a free woman," I said.
She looked at me wildly, protestingly.
"It is your body," I said.
"But you made it do what you wanted," she said, "behave as you wished!"
"Perhaps," I said.
I freed her neck of the planks, putting them to the side.
"I could not help myself," she said. "You made me behave as though I might have been a puppet, on strings!"
I freed her ankles. "Perhaps," I said.
I stood up.
She looked up at me, her wrists still in the wrist stocks, these stocks keeping her, in virtue of the slots and fastenings, on the bench.
"I could not believe my feelings," she said, "what you made me feel!"
I freed the wrist stocks from the rings and clips which held it in its slots in the armrests. It could now be lifted out of the slots. She still, of course, wore it. If she were to stand it would still be on her. Sometimes, incidentally, such stocks, and similar stocks, are used to fasten a girl's hands behind her body, at the sides. There is a large variety of stocks, and yokes, of course, for various purposes.
She looked up at me.
"I did very little," I said.
"Consider the nature of my responses!" she said.
"I did very little," I said.
I freed her wrists of the stocks, and put the stocks to the side.
"But my responses!" she said.
"I, if anything, merely triggered them," I said.
"No," she said. "You summoned them, you called them forth!"
"If you wish," I said.
"You mastered and commanded them!"
"If you wish," I said.
"As you may now master and command me!" she said, suddenly kneeling before me.
I looked down on her.
She put her head down and kissed my feet, as eagerly and avidly as an ardent slave, hoping to please her master. Then she lifted her head, and looked up at me, tears in her eyes.
"I cannot believe what I felt!" she said.
"You look well on your knees," I said.
"It is where I belong," she said, "before you."
"Before men," I said.
"Yes," she said, "before men!"
"It was only a touch," I said.
"Do not forget," she said, "that you had put me at your mercy, and that I was controlled and helpless."
"Still it was only a touch," I said.
"It was in an entire context," she said.
"That is true," I said.
"And the thing is a wholeness," she said.
"Perhaps," I said.
"And there was in me, I sense now, a readiness for that experience," she said, "and a fittingness in me for it. Too, in it I sensed the hint of a possibility, of a modality of existence, of a way I might be, of a possible way of life."
"I did very little," I said.
"It was you," she said, "who constructed the entire context of surrender, of helplessness, of submission."
"Of submission?" I asked.
"Yes!" she said.
"Interesting remarks," I said, "from a Cosian spy."
"Forget what I have been," she said. "Think of me now only as what I am, and only am, a woman at your feet!"
"I see," I said.
"For the first time," she said, "I begin to sense what it might be to belong to a man, to be his, totally."
"I see," I said.
"And the perfection, and rightfulness, of it," she said.
"I see," I said.
"It is morning," she whispered.
"Yes," I said.
She then crawled back, on all fours, a few feet, and put her head to the floor, the palms of her hands, too, on the floor, in a common position of obeisance. "I hope to be pleasing to you today," she said.
"That is a slave formula," I said. With such formulas a girl might greet her master in the morning.
"I know," she said.
"And you know what is involved in such formulas?" I asked.
"Yes," she said.
"And you still dare to say such?"
"Yes," she said.
"Very well," I said. "You will be held to it, as a slave, and if you are not pleasing have no fear but what, also as a slave, you will be suitably, and severely, punished."
"That is as I wish it," she said.
"You may raise your head," I said.
She lifted her head. Her hair was wild, and damp. She trembled.
"Oh, I must be touched," she whispered. "Be kind to me, I beg of you."
"But there are gants to prepare," I said. "We will have a feast."
"Let Ina first be your feast," she begged.
"Do you know how to be a feast?" I asked.
"Teach me," she said. "Teach me to be a man's feast!"
"Rise," I said. "Approach."
"She obeyed.
"You are permitting me to face you?" she asked, disbelievingly.
"As it pleases me, at the moment," I said.
She looked at me gratefully, tears in her eyes.
"So much is often permitted even a slave," I said.
"I understand," she said.
I motioned her forward and she hurried to my arms, sobbing, holding me. She pressed herself against me, closely, tightly, crying. There would be the print of accouterments on her body. My tunic was dampened by her tears. When I held her back a bit from me, by the upper arms, I saw, as I expected, the mark of my sword belt, diagonal, across her body, and the print of two buckles in her flesh, that of the sword belt, and that of the pouch, or knife, belt.
I then lifted her up and carried her back, and to the side, where I put her down, on her back, on the floor.
When I removed the pouch and knife from my knife belt, I doubled it, and held it to her, and she took it in her hands, and kissed it, as a slave might have the whip.
"You understand our relationship?" asked.
"Yes." she said.
I then knelt beside her and she lifted her arms and put them about my neck.
"What it must be, to be a slave," she whispered.
"But you are not a slave," I said.
"No," she moaned.
I then lowered myself to the floor beside her, our lips meeting.
26 The Cry
"Do not sing," I said.
"I am sorry," she said, happily. It was not the first time I had warned her about such things.
She sat at the rear of the raft, facing forward. Her legs, to the thighs, were muddy. We had recently left the raft, together, to thrust it through thick rence. Though her strength was small she lent it unstintingly, unbidden, to this common task. It was anomalous to see her, a lady of Ar, slipping unbidden into the marsh, eagerly, zealously, pitting her tiny strength against those recalcitrant logs, therein attempting to assist in the progress of our bulky conveyance. She now, for the most part, rode on the raft, at the back. As her weight was negligible compared to that of the raft, this did not impede our advance. Her hands were now free, but the collar and strap, fashioned from the harness I had once worn, was still on her throat, fastened to the raft. She was forbidden, of course, to remove it without permission. I did not always permit her hands to be free. Sometimes I tied her hands behind her back, and fastened her ankles closely to her hands, and put her on her back, on the logs in the back. At certain other times I kept her bound hand and foot, but in a more common fashion, her ankles not fastened to her wrists. At other times I had her tied as I usually slept her, her ankles crossed and bound in the center of the length of binding fiber, the same fiber, now in its double strand, being brought up and used to tie her hands together before her body, its separated ends then tying behind her back, to keep her hands at her belly, to keep the knots behind her back, where she could not reach them. A similar tie may be used, of course, with the girl's hands tied behind her back, the knots then before her. In such ties, helpless, being transported on my raft, lovely Ina would have little difficulty in recollecting that she was my prisoner. In all these ties, of course, when she was on the raft, she wore the collar and strap. Too, when her hands and feet were free, I kept a length of binding fiber thrust over the collar. In this way it would be handy, if I wished to make use of it. Similarly the common camisk is often belted with a length of binding fiber, which, pulled free, may be used to bind the occupant of the garment, usually a female slave. Ina, of course, did not have a camisk. I kept her stripped.