"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.
He might have remained crouching in his hole, thinking what thoughts he might, but I do not think he would have dared to touch me. A male slave can be slain for touching a free woman. "She is not here for punishment," Hermidorus had informed the dark shapes beneath the grating. I then realized that a slave girl, perhaps for purposes of her discipline, might be lowered through the grating hole, doubtless into eager hands, the grating then being resecured.
In the corridors, in our movements through them, particularly in the upper levels, we would sometimes encounter slaves, usually employed in domestic tasks, such as running errands, carrying burdens, dusting or cleaning. These women were usually naked, except for their collars, which, I gathered, was the way women were usually kept in a slaver's house. At the approach of the free men, Hermidorus and Drusus, they would immediately position themselves, usually with their knees wide, kneeling back on their heels, their heads up, their bands on their thighs, in the position I had come to understand was that of the pleasure slave, but sometimes, instead; kneeling with the palms of their hands on the tiles, their heads down, too, to the same tiles.
There was one temporary, partial exception to this, which I wrn mention. After we had left some carpeted corridors, higher in the house, and were moving to the lower levels, and traversing heavy, ftagstonelike tiles, we approached a slender, dark-haired girl who, on her hands and knees, in chains, with a bucket of water, cloths and a brush, in that portion of the corridor, was scrubbing tiles.
As we approached, she oriented herself towards us, palms of her hands on the floor, and put her head to the tiles. But, as we neared her, she lifted her head, desperately.
"Hermidorus!" she cried, suddenly. "Hermidorus!"
He stopped before her, a few feet from her, and we stopped, too, behind him. "Do you not know me?" she begged. The chain she wore was a work sirik. It resembles the common sink but the wrists, to permit work, are granted about a yard of chain.
Like the common sirik, it is a lovely chain. Women are beautiful in it.
"Deirdre!" she cried. "Deirdre! Two years ago ill Ar we lived in the same building!"
He looked at her, not speaking.
"Deirdre," she whimpered.
"In the instant you were imbonded, you ceased to be Girl,' be said.