"As a free woman?" I asked.
"Of course," she said. "That is what I am."
"You are an incredibly beautiful free woman," I said.
"Your body obviously agrees with you," she said.
"Indeed," I admitted.
"And free women," she said, "are a thousand times more, above a mere slave."
"Yes," I said. "There is no comparison. A free woman is inordinately precious. She is a thousand times, and more, above a mere slave."
"Your status here," she said, "is that of a servant, a total servant, until I have you enslaved."
"I understand," I said.
"I think it will be amusing to apply a free man to the duties of a silk slave."
"Doubtless," I said.
"Indeed, I may dally somewhat, as it pleases me, or not, in the matter of your enslavement."
I said nothing.
"And perhaps, if I find you quite good, after you are enslaved, with your fellows, I might not even sell you at the Fair of En-Kara. I might keep you-as a silk slave."
I did not speak.
"You will touch me if, and only as, and exactly as, I direct," she said. "I am total Mistress. I shall obtain considerable gratification from you, and you will obtain gratification, if any, only as it pleases me."
"I understand," I said.
"To the silks, my brawny, helpless servant," she said. She then put her small hands in my hair. She drew me to her. "Please me," she said.
I then began to address myself to her pleasures.
I immersed myself in the exciting, intimate, marvelous, powerful odors of the aroused female.
"Oh, Brinlar," she gasped, suddenly, "you are an excellent servant!"
I took her wrists in my hands and pulled them from my hair, and held them to her sides, meanwhile alternately forcibly and aggressively, and delicately and tenderly, continuing my service.
Her wrists were helpless in my grip. She pressed herself piteously against me.
She began to moan and squirm.
Suddenly she said, "I am helpless! I am being held, helplessly!"
"Forgive me, Mistress," I said, unhanding her, as though my grip upon her might have been an inadvertence.
She seized me again by the hair, drawing me closely to her.
"Oh, Brinlar," she whispered. "Yes, Brinlar! It is marvelous, Brinlar! Do not stop! Yes, Brinlar! Yes!"
In such a; manner can one subdue a female, turning her into an object, totally helpless with pleasure.
"Yes, Brinlar," she whispered. "Yes! Yes!"
I did not think it was necessary to remind her that I was not really according to her the polite courtesies and gentle dignities appropriate to the pleasures of the free woman, but was, in effect, of my own will, by my own decision, subjecting her to attentions more commonly reserved for the imbonded female, the woman who has no choice but to submit to a lengthy and authoritative ravishing, one which well teaches her the meaning of her collar, and what it is to be in the hands of a men, and as he wants her.
"Oh, Brinlar!" she whispered.
Her responses were such that it was difficult to conjecture what her experiences might have been had she truly been a slave, and had she known herself helplessly in my power, and had she know that she must yield totally and without reservation in the last fiber of her very being.
"Brinlar!" she cried, surging against me. "Yes, Brinlar!"
"What is your name?" I asked.
"Yanina!" she cried. "Lady Yanina!"
"Of what city?" I asked.
"Brundisium!" she cried. "Brundisium!"
4 Flaminius
"Drink, Mistress?" I asked.
"yes, Brinlar," she said. She lifted the veil delicately, almost flirtatiously, drinking behind it. She looked at the man across from her.
"Drink, Master?" I asked.
"No," he said. I then withdrew a yard or two and knelt in the grass, holding the vessel of light Ka-la-na. I wore a tunic of white silk.
She dabbed at her lips with a napkin, under the veil, and then let the veil fall again into place.
"This is a pleasant spot," she had said earlier. "Spread the cloth here, Brinlar, and lay out the things from the basket."
"Yes, Mistress," I had said.
We could see the Sardar Mountains in the distance. I had been her servant for some three days. After the first night she had not commanded me to her intimate service. I think that first night had terribly unsettled her. She had apparently not understood that she could have such feelings. At times she had seemed almost taken out of herself. At times, clearly, she had responded uncontrollably, reflexively, at my mercy, almost as might have a slave. This sort of behavior was inappropriate in her, inexcusably so, she doubtless deemed, as she was a free woman. Roundly had I been scolded for my part in matters. Yet with mixed feelings, it was, I think, that she chastised me. I pretended, of course, to ignorance and innocence, and a perhaps overzealous desire to please. In any event she clearly now feared her feelings.
She had not dared to again order me to her pleasure. I think she was now afraid of herself in a man's arms, and what she might become. Too, I think she clearly understood that what I had done to her might, as a matter of fact, have been done to her by almost any man.
"He is coming now, Brinlar," she had said earlier.
"Yes, Mistress," I had said, shading my eyes.
A rider, mounted on a high tharlarion, flanked by two footmen, had been approaching.
I had little doubt this had to do with her business in the vicinity of the Sardar.
"I must make my identification," said the fellow to her. "Lower your veil."
She unpinned the veil.
"Lady Yanina," he said.
"Yes," she said. I gathered they knew one another.
"You may replace the veil," he said to her.
"It does not much matter, does it," she asked, "as in the course of our work you have, of necessity, several times, seen me face-stripped?"
"Do as you please," he said.
I saw that she repinned the veil. She was extremely modest. She was not a slave. She was a free woman.
The fellow, clad in dark garments, with a cape spread behind him, sitting cross-legged at the edge of the cloth, she kneeling across from him, turned to look at me. I lowered my head.
"I do not care to speak before him," he said. His two footmen were in the background, a few yards away, where the tharlarion was tethered. Two of Lady Yanina's men, from her camp, were also nearby. They were withdrawn several yards to the rear, behind us, as his men were behind him. They were sitting cross-legged in the grass, playing stones.
"Do not mind him," she said. "He is only a servant."
"What sort of servant?" he asked.
"A common sort of menial," she said. "I use him for various things. He waits upon me, he combs my hair, he tidies up the tent."
"I see," he said.
"Does it bother you that I have such a servant?" she asked.
"No," he said. "Of course not."
"You have girls who tend you hand and foot," she said.
"I would rather not speak before him," he said.
"Several times," she said, "we have spoken openly before your slaves."
"That is different," he said. "They are only slaves."
"Would you feel more comfortable if I put him in a collar?" she asked. "It is my intention to do that."
"I despise such servants," he said.
"I shall withdraw, Mistress," I said, making as though to rise.
"Stay, Brinlar," she said, imperiously, coldly.
"yes, Mistress," I said. I smiled inwardly. My trick had worked. I had been reasonably confident that she would choose to exert her authority in this fashion. She was obviously in some sort of competitive relationship with the male. There was a tautness, a tension, between them. She seemed jealous of him and his power. She was very defensive about her status in his eyes. I conjectured that they were theoretically on the same level, or nearly on the same level, perhaps reporting to the same superior, or superiors, presumably Priest-Kings. If it were acceptable to discuss sensitive matters before his slaves, women like herself, but reduced to a status as negligible as that of furniture or animals, then surely it should be similarly acceptable to discuss such matters before a male, she must have reasoned, one who shared his sex, but was now to her only as total servant. Clearly, of course, she did not understand the differences between men and women. They are not the same. No more fundamental mistake can be made. Too, in making his identification, he had her face-stripped. This is not a small thing from the point of view of a Gorean woman. I saw that it was important to her to pretend to be his equal. From his point of view, of course, she was only a woman. He must have often conjectured, like any strong man, what she would have looked like at his feet, stripped and in chains. If any roughnesses remained in their relationship after that, they could always be smoothed out with the whip.