"Master?" she asked.
"You were disobedient," I said.
"Master?" she asked.
"Earlier this morning," I said, "when I warned you to stay close to me, near the fence of the sunken sales pit, you fled from my side."
"Master!" she cried.
"Yes?" said an attendant, coming up to us.
"Bring me a slave whip," I said.
49 The Slave Girl
"I now know what it is to be whipped," she said, "and I will obey."
"Good," I said.
"I will be zealous to obey, I will be desperate to please!" she said.
"Your brand is pretty," I observed.
"I yield, I yield!" she whispered, clutching me.
"Apparently," I said.
"I can no longer live without this!" she said. "I need this, I need this!"
"They will soon be coming for you," I said.
"Hold me!" she begged. "Hold me!"
It was the afternoon of the same day we had visited the slave camp. We were now in our own camp, among the other small camps nearby. Marcus was not in the camp, as he had hastened to the vicinity of the Cosian camp, to deal with the sutler, Ephialtes, for the slim, dark-haired beauty I had arranged, somewhat maliciously, to be sure, to be presented before him.
"Do it more, please!" wept Ina.
"You squirm and thrash as a slave," I informed her.
"I am a slave!" she gasped.
Her fingernails were in my back, but I think she could not control herself.
"What you are doing to me!" she wept. I then held her at the brink.
"Perhaps you are prepared to submit, as a slave?" I inquired.
"Yes," she said. "Yes! Yes!"
"Perhaps you beg to be permitted to submit?" I asked, keeping her where she was.
"Yes!" she said. "I beg to submit!"
"You may then do so," I said.
"Master?" she asked.
I touched her once, gently.
"Aiiii!" she cried out. "I submit! I submit!"
Then she held me, closely. "I belong to men," she wept. "I belong to them!"
"Yes," I said.
"Is she ready?" inquired Mincon, now arrived at my small camp. Two other fellows were behind him.
"Yes," I said.
Ina quickly got to her knees and put her head down, low, to the dirt. I tied her hands behind her back.
"This is the traitress?" asked Mincon.
"Yes," I said.
He crouched beside her, and tied a rope about her neck.
"We are not fond of traitresses," he said to her.
"Yes, Master," she whispered, not raising her head.
"You understand the problems connected with her?" I asked Mincon.
"Yes," he said. "She will be disposed of, as one slave among others."
"Ina," I said.
"Yes, Master," she said, looking up.
"You understand the danger in which you might stand, if your former identity were ascertained?"
"Yes, Master," she said.
"I would thus take care, in so far as it was possible," I said, "to conceal it."
"Yes, Master," she said.
"In any event, that identity is now gone."
"Yes, Master," she said.
"What are you now?" I asked.
"A slave," she said.
"And anything else?" I asked.
"No, Master," she said. "I am a slave, and only a slave."
"Do not forget it," I said.
"No, Master," she said.
"She was a traitress to Ar," I said to Mincon, "and served Cos. It is perhaps then appropriate that she might be disposed of among Cosians."
"An excellent suggestion," said Mincon.
As she had served Cosians, it seemed appropriate that her beauty and service now, abjectly, and in the dimensions of the mere female slave, should be totally at their disposal. This would also, I hoped, keep her far from those of Ar. To be sure, the trends of events might take various turns in Ar, and she might not, after a time, not only not be sought by those of Ar, if, indeed, she was sought by them now, but she might not even be of interest to them. And, too, after being in the collar for a time, in virtue of its attendant transformations in beauty, attitude and behavior, she might not, now as a lovely, obedient slave, even be recognizable to those who knew her in Ar. They might note, casually, and perhaps with some interest, the resemblance of the enslaved beauty to a formerly known free woman. That would be all.
"On your feet, slave," said Mincon. Quickly Ina stood.
"You will be taken from the camp naked," I told Ina. "In this way you will be more anonymous than if you were wearing a garment of a given sort."
"Yes, Master," she said, her small, lovely, hands bound behind her back, Mincon's rope on her neck, its coils in his hand.
We had, after her discipline in the slave camp, incidentally, retrieved her garment, from where she had discarded it, thrusting it between slave cages. There was a particular reason I wished to retrieve the garment. It also gave me an opportunity to bring her back to our camp with the garment about her neck, a touch which I thought would be helpful in accommodating her to her new reality. Sometimes masters, as a discipline for their beauties, have them go naked in public, but with their tunic, or ta-teera, or whatever, about their neck or wrist. This helps the girl feel even more naked. Something similar occurs when a bound, stripped free woman is forced to hold a portion of her garments, perhaps a lovely, sliplike undergarment, between her teeth. This, as she is forbidden to drop it, acts as a de facto gag. It also, of course, helps her to understand that the nature of her new reality, the reality in which she how finds herself, may be other than that with which she was formerly familiar.
"I now," I said, "remove your name. Your name is removed."
She looked at me, frightened, a nameless slave.
"Your new masters," I said, "if they wish, will give you a name."
"Yes, Master," she whispered.
I then lifted up a sack I had retrieved from the concourse, on our return earlier from the slave camp.
She regarded it, terrified.
"I wish you well," I said.
"I wish you well, Master," she said.
I then kissed her and put the sack over her head, and, with its strings, tied it closed, about her neck. It was the same sack in which Octantius had apparently intended to bring her head to Saphronicus. On the other hand, it was also a nondescript sack, not different from hundreds of others. Perhaps that would have been part of Octantius' joke, bringing her head to Saphronicus in such a sack, not even in one of gold, set with jewels.
"Come, slave," said Mincon, and drew on the rope. I watched her being led from our camp, a stripped, bound, hooded, nameless slave, on her rope.
I then glanced to one side, a few yards from our small camp, to a set of stakes. There, attached to one of these stakes by an ankle chain, there was another slave. She was kneeling, and her head was tied down, to her crossed ankles, and her hands were tied behind her back, as were those of the slave who had just been conducted from the camp. The slave at the stake, moreover, was covered with a sheet. It had been put over her head, tied about her neck, that it might thus serve as a slave hood, and then draped over her. I had arranged yesterday, before Octantius had come to the camp, for her to be delivered this afternoon. I had found her here when I had returned with Ina from the camp.
Then I turned about, in time to see a distraught Marcus hove into view. I was quite pleased to note that he was a picture of dejection and misery.
I watched him approach the camp.
"She is not there," he said.
"Oh?" I said. I had become, incidentally, a master actor while with the troupe of Boots Tarsk-Bit. To be sure, he had never permitted me upon the stage, and, after observing my audition, so to speak, had utilized me primarily for other tasks, such as, as I have mentioned, assembling the stage and freeing the wheels of mired wagons. He was perhaps jealous of his own stardom with the troupe.
"She is gone," he said.
"That is often the case with folks who are not there," I said.
But I noted he was in no mood to relish this deft dash of wit.