"We shall leave now," said Marcus.
"Yes, Master," said Phoebe.
We then turned about, and left the vicinity of the Wall Road. Near the entrances to Harness Street, off the Wall Road, I turned about.
"Continue your work for peace!" called the guardsmen to those on the wall. The men on the wall then, and the youth, and women, returned to their labors. "Incredible," marveled Marcus.
"Master," moaned Phoebe.
Things were then much as they had been before. Nothing had changed. To be sure, the work was not now being performed to the music of flute girls. Tomorrow, however, I did not doubt but what the flute girls would be back, and numerous guards in attendance, at least on the street.
"Is your sword for hire?" I asked Marcus.
"It could be," he said.
"Good," I said.
"You have some plan?" he asked.
"Of course," I said.
"Master," whimpered Phoebe.
Marcus stopped and looked at her.
She, too, stopped, and looked up at him.
"Strip," he said.
She looked at him, suddenly, wildly, and then about herself. "This is a public street," she said.
He did not speak.
She squirmed. "Is there no doorway? No sheltered place?" she asked.
He did not respond to her.
"I was a woman of Cos," she said, tears springing to her eyes. "This is a public street in Ar!"
His expression remained impassive. He maintained his silence.
"Cos has defeated Ar!" she wept.
He did not speak.
"Am I to suffer because you are angry with the men of Ar?" she asked.
"Does the slave dally in her obedience?" he inquired.
"No, Master!" she said, frightened.
"Must a command be repeated?" he inquired.
"No, Master!" she cried. Her tiny fingers began to fumble with the knot of the slave girdle, on her left. Then she had the knot loose and pulled away the girdle. She then, hastily, struggling a little with it, pulled the tunic, a light pullover tunic, off, over her head. "The slave obeys her master!" she gasped, frightened, kneeling before him. He then tied her hands behind her back with the slave girdle and thrust the tiny tunic, folded, crosswise, in her mouth, so that she would bite on it. He then pushed her head down to the stones. "Are you now less angry with the men of Ar?" I asked him, in an Ehn or two. Marcus stood up, adjusting his tunic.
"Yes," he said.
Phoebe turned about, from her knees, the tunic between her teeth, and looked back at us.
"This had little to do with you," I told her. "Too, it is immaterial that you were once of Cos. A slave, you must understand, must sometimes serve such purposed." Her eyes were wide. But one of the utilities of a slave, of course, is to occasionally serve as the helpless object upon which the master may vent his dissatisfaction, his frustration or anger. Too, of course, they may serve many other related purposes, such as the relief of tensions, to relax oneself and even to calm oneself for clear thought.
"Do you understand?" I asked.
She nodded.
I regarded her.
She whimpered, once.
"Good," I said.
One whimper signifies "Yes," and two signifies "No." This arrangement, at any rate, was the one which Marcus had taught to Phoebe long ago, quite early in her slavery to him, at a time when she had been much more often kept bound and gagged then now.
Marcus then snapped his fingers that she should rise.
She leaped to her feet.
We turned our steps once more toward our lodging. Phoebe hurried behind. Once she tried, whimpering, to press herself against her master. She looked up at him, tears in her eyes, her hands tied behind her, the tunic between her teeth. She feared that she might have now, because of her earlier behavior, lapsed in his favor. Too, compounding her misery, was doubtless the fact that Marcus, in his casual usage of her, had done little more than intensify her needs, the helpless prisoner of which, as a slave girl, she was. He thrust her back. we then continued on our way, Phoebe heeling her master. I heard her gasp once or twice, and sob. She was now, I was sure, much more aware, in her own mind, of what it was to be a slave. I do not think, then, she thought of herself any longer, really, as a woman of Cos, or even one who had once been of Cos, but rather now as merely a slave, only that, and one who had perhaps, frighteningly, to her trepidation and misery, failed to be fully pleasing. I did not doubt that later, when we had reached the room, and she was unbound and freed of the gag, that she would crawl to Marcus on all fours, the whip between her teeth, begging. Too, though he loved her muchly, I did not doubt but what he would use it on her. She was, after all, his slave, and he, after all, was her master.
9 The Plaza of Tarns
"She," said Talena, Ubara of Ar, "she is chosen"
The woman uttered a cry of anguish.
There were cheers, and applause, the striking of the left shoulder, from the crowd standing about the edges of the huge, temporary platform, the same which had earlier served near the Central Cylinder for the welcoming of Myron, in his entrance into the city.
The woman, held now by the upper left arm, by a guardsman, was conducted to a point on the platform, erected now in the Plaza of Tarns, a few feet from a rather narrow, added side ramp, where she was knelt, to be manacled. This smaller, added ramp would be on the left side of the platform, as one would face it. My own position was near to, and rather at the foot of this ramp, such that I would be on the right of a person descending the ramp. Talena, with certain aides and counselors, and guardsmen and scribes, was on a dais, it mounted on the surface of the platform, a few feet away, rather to its left, as one would face it. There was a similar added ramp on the other side, by means of which the women, barefoot, and clad at that point in the robe of the penitent, would ascend to its surface.
The manacles were closed about the wrists of the kneeling woman, one could clearly hear the decisive closure of the devices, first the one, then the other. She lifted them, regarding them, disbelievingly.
"Have you never worn chains?" asked a man.
First with one hand and then the other, suddenly, frenziedly, first from one wrist, and then from the other, sobbing, she tried to force the obdurate iron from her wrist.
Then, again, she lifted the manacles, regarding them, disbelievingly.
"Yes, they are on you," laughed a fellow.
"You cannot slip them," said a man.
"They were not made to be slipped by such as you," said another.
There was much laughter.
The woman sobbed.
"Do not blubber, female," said a man. "Rejoice, rather, that you have been found suitable, that you have been honored by having been chosen!" the woman, then, conducted by another fellow, with an armband, signifying the auxiliary guardsmen, the first fellow, a uniformed guardsman, returning to the group on the platform, was conducted down the ramp. She was knelt before me. "Wrists," I said. She lifted her chained wrists. I then, by means of the chain, pulled her wrists toward me. I inserted the bolt of a small, sturdy, padlocklike joining ring through a link in the coffle chain. This would hold it in a specific place on the chain, preventing slippage. I then snapped the ring shut about her wrist chain. She looked up at me, coffled.
"On your feet, move," said another auxiliary guardsman.
She rose to her feet and moved ahead, to the first line scratched in the tiles of the plaza. There were some one hundred such lines, each about four or five feet apart, marking places for women to stand. As she moved ahead, so, too, did others. Beyond these hundred spaces the chain moved to the side, and was doubled, and folded back upon itself, again and again, in this fashion keeping its prisoners massed., different lines facing different directions, and all in the vicinity of the platform.
"It angers me," said a fellow nearby, "that these women should complain. It is as simple enough duty to perform, and a worthy enough act, as female citizens, given the guilt of Ar, her complicity in the wicked schemes of Gnieus Lelius, to offer themselves for reparation considerations.
"Few enough are chosen anyway," said a fellow.
"Yes," said another, angrily.