"Kneel, back on your heels," said the trainer to the dark haired woman. "Straighten your back, suck in your gut, put your shoulders back, thrust out your breasts, spread your knees, widely, lift your chin, put your hands on your thighs.
You are not going to be sold as a tower slave, Lady Tina. You are going to be sold as a pleasure slave."
The whip cracked, and I jumped. But it had not touched the girl, only startled her.
She knelt behind the dark, smooth post, facing it, her knees on either side of it, her belly and breasts against it, her hands embracing it.
"this may be done to music," said Hermidorus, "and, as you know, there are many versions to the post dance, or pole dance, singly, or with more than one girl, with or without bonds, wand so on, but here we are using it merely as a training exercise.
The whip cracked again and the girl, suddenly and lasciviously, became active. I gasped.
She began to writhe about the pole. "Kiss it, caress it, love It!" commanded the trainer, snapping the whip. "Now more slowly, now scarcely moving, now use your thighs, and breasts more, moving all about it, holding it. Touch it with your tongue, lick it! Use the inside of your thighs more, your breasts, turn about it, slowly, sensuously. Lift your hands above your head, palms to the pole, caressing it. Turn about the pole! Twist about it! Now to your knees, holding it!" He then cracked the whip again. "Enough!" he said. She was then as she had been before, kneeling behind the post, her knees on either side of it, her belly and breasts pressed against it, her hands embracing it. The girl was looking at me. She was wondering, perhaps, if I were the next to be put to the post. I looked away, angrily. Did she not know I was not a lowly thing like she? Did she not know I was free?
"It is a useful exercise," said Hermidorus to Drusus.
"Obviously," agreed Drusus.
I looked back at the girl. She was now looking away. I looked at the post. It was dark, and shiny. It had been polished smooth, apparently, by the bodies of many girls.
The girl looked suddenly at me. There was a hostility in our looks toward one another. She saw, I think, in my eyes, that I thought I could have done better at the post than she.
Then I looked away. What would I care for her opinionsi Were we competitive women?
"Come along," said Hermidorus.
"These women," said Hermidorus, "are practicing their floor movements." A trainer stood among them, with a whip. Occasionally he would snap this whip near a girl. I did not doubt but what the girls on the tiles, if they were found sufficiently displeasing to the trainer, or too frequently required the admonitory signal of the cracking leather, would soon hear the snap of the lash not in their mere vicinity but on their own bared bodies. Two of the girls, I saw, had stripes on them, one on the thigh, and one on the side. The trainer was not now paying them much attention. They were now, apparently, doing well. "Come along," said Hermidorus.
"How beautiful!" I breathed.
Drusus Rencius looked sharply at me. I feared for a moment I might be struck. Hermidorus, on the other hand, did not seem to notice. My exclamation, perhaps, had seemed sufficiently inadvertent, involuntary and irrepressible, to be ignored; or perhaps it was to be ignored because I was not a slave, but a free woman. I did not meet Drusus Rencius's eyes. It was not like I had just decided to speak and had spoken. In a place like this I did not know if I was subject to discipline or not. I did not think so, for I was a free woman. On the other hand I knew I was here on the sufferance of the house of Kijomenes. Indeed, on these premises, I knew that Drusus Rencius even held a license on me.
The drummer and the flautist prepared once more to play.
The girl in the long, light chain smiled at me. She, at any rate, was pleased by my response.
A wrist ring was fastened on her right wrist. The long, slender, gleaming chain was fastened to this and, looping down and up, ascended gracefully to a wide chain ring on her collar, through which it freely passed, thence descending, looping down, and ascending, looping up, gracefully, to the left wrist ring. If she were to stand quietly, the palms of her hands ~n her thighs, the lower portions of the chain, those two dangling loops, would have been about at the level of her knees, just a little higher. The higher portion of the chain, of course, would be at the collar loop.
The musicians began again to play. There is much that can be done with such a chain. It was a dancing chain. Its purpose was not to confine the girl but to allow her to incorporate it in her dance, enhancing the dance with its movements and beauty. It is, of course, symbolic of her bondage, this adding fantastic dimensions of significance to the dance.
It is not merely a beautiful woman who dances, but one who can be bought and sold, one who is subject to male ownership. Too, of course, the wrist rings, and the collar, are truly locked on her. There is no doubt about it. It is a slave, with all that that means, who is dancing.
I watched her, my breath almost taken away by her beauty.
"She is a valuable woman," said Hermidorus.
I did not doubt it.
"'Come along," he said.
We are readying her for her sale," said Hermidorus.
I watched her naked on the block, under the tutelage of a whip-carrying trainer. It was small, rounded room, with mirrors. He was putting her through slave paces.
"She is to be auctioned in five days," said Hermidorus.
My eyes and those of the girl met. At that instant her weight was on the palms of her hands, her arms straight, and the sides of her feet, her body lifted from the block, her legs ~ight and spread widely behind her.
I realized then, with a shock, that she was going to be sold Then she was being put through further slave paces.
"Come along," said Hermidorus.
I was trembling. The hand of Drusus Rencius on my arm drew me, bodily, from the room.
"I have changed my mind!" wept the girl. "I will be pleasing! I will be pleasing!"
I looked through the heavy bars of the cell, some three inches in thickness, reinforced with crosspieces, to the opposite wall. It was hard to see. There, kneeling on straw, trying to pull towards us, her wrists tied behind her hack to a ring set in the wall, was a blond girl. "I will be pleasing!" she wept. "I will be pleasing! I will be pleasing!"
I then turned away from her, following Hermidorus and Drusus Rencius.
"She is not yet begging to be pleasing," said Hermidorus to Drusus.
"Correct," he said.
I looked behind myself, following them, at the dark cells, most of them empty, along the corridor. This was certainly not my favorite part of the house. It was dark, and cold, and clammy. Occasionally my bare feet stepped in puddles of cold water, seeped to this level, and caught in concavities or irregularities in the corridor flooring. And, here and there, I could see passages, narrow, crooked and dark, leading to even lower levels. I was pleased that we were not going to traverse them. It had seemed frightening enough to me to come even to this level. Sometimes, in our descent, bn cat-walks, we had even passed over pit cells, little more than holding holes, ceilinged with locked iron gates, sunk in the floor of the corridor. I had cried out with misery and terror in passing over one of these for a large hand, emerging suddenly through the grating, had seized my ankle. Drusus Rencius had pried open the fingers "and thrust the hand away. I then kept closely to the center of the catwalks. There were male slaves in this house, too, I had learned. Had the slave known I was free, I do not think he would have touched me.