"Would you have had us spend the night on the road, like peasants?" demanded the third woman.
"But these are hard times," I said, "and not all men are fools." The third woman cried out with anger, shaking her shackles. She was well curved, and diet and exercise could much improve her. I thought she might bring as much as sixty copper tarsks in a market. If that were so, and the inn sold her for that much, they would have made then, as I recalled, some twenty-five copper tarsks on her.
"When you discovered you had not the price of the inn's services," I said, "you might have asked if you might earn your keep for the night."
"We are not inn girls!" cried the second woman.
"It is interesting that you should think immediately in such terms," I said. "I had in mind other sorts of things, such as laundering and cleaning."
"Such tasks are for slaves!" said the fifth woman.
"Many free women do them," I said.
"Those tasks are for low free women," she said, "not for high free women such as we!"
"Yet you are now at the wall, in shackles," I said, "and have upon you not so much as a veil."
"Nonetheless," said the second woman, "we are high free women, and women such as we do not earn our keep."
"Perhaps women such as you," I speculated, "will soon, at last, find yourself doing so."
"What do you mean?" she cried.
"Are there others like you inside?" I asked the first woman, the Lady Amina of Venna.
"Only one," she said, "she who owed the most. She was kept inside. There was not a shackle ring for her here."
"Why should she who owed he most be kept inside, and we, who owe less, be shamefully chained here, in plain view, and exposed to the elements?" asked the fifth woman.
"Perhaps she who is inside has already begun to earn her keep," I said. The fifth woman shrank back against the logs.
"My arms ache," said the second woman.
"Have other free women entered the court, since you have been fastened here?" I asked the first woman, the Lady Amina of Venna.
"Yes," she said, "and have seen us here. Some of them then, after visiting the keeper's desk, doubtless those with insufficient funds, left the inn." "There seems a point then in having you chained here," I said, "aside, of course, from such things as having you brought to the attention of fellows who might redeem you and making clear the inn's disapproval of attempted fraud, namely, that you might serve as a warning to other free women, women who might otherwise have been tempted try similar tricks."
"If we are not redeemed, what will be done with us?" wailed the fourth girl. "Surely you can guess," I said.
"No! No! No!" she cried, in misery.
"Redeem me!" begged the fifth girl. "I will make it worth your while, handsome fellow."
"Slave!" cried the first woman, angrily, to the fifth woman.
"Slave! Slave!" said, too, the second woman to the fifth.
"Come now," I said to the first and second woman, "she is not a slavea€”yet. "Yet!" cried the fourth woman.
Too, I was amused that the first and second woman seemed to think that slaves might bargain. They had a typical free woman's misconception of what was involved in total female slavery. The slave is owned. She does not bargain. She owes all to the master, and gives all to the master. She strives to be fully pleasing, in all ways, and hopes desperately that she will prove so. Perhaps they would learn that sometime.
"I am not like these other women," said the first woman, suddenly. "Redeem me! Some women, such as these, doubtless, have made a way of life of what you refer to as tricks. I have not! This is the first time I have ever had recourse to such fraud!"
The other women cried out angrily in their chains.
"Once is enough," I told the first woman.
"It costs only forty tarsks to redeem me!" she said.
"You would probably bring more than that in a slave market," I said. "Please!" she wept.
"I would cost only twenty-seven tarsks to redeem!" called the fourth girl. "Redeem me," said the second woman. "I am of high caste. Consider the glory of redeeming a woman of high caste!"
"The slave," I said, "has no caste, no more than a verr or tarsk." The woman cried out in misery, helpless in the shackles.
"I am shapely, and blond," said the third woman, suddenly. "Redeem me!" "Slave!" chided the fifth woman.
"Slave!" retorted the third.
"I do not want to be a slave!" cried the first woman.
"Obviously you are not a slave," I said, "for you have no wish to be pleasing." "I have slave needs, I confess it!" cried the fifth woman.
"I find that of interest," I said.
"I, too, have slave needs!" cried the fourth woman.
I had not doubted that. There was something about her body, which seemed lusciously slavelike.
"I, too!" suddenly wept the third woman. I regarded her. I thought she would indeed move well in a man's bonds.
"But I do want to be pleasing!" said the first woman.
I looked at her.
"Do not consider her," said the second woman. "Redeem me! I, too, have slave needs! I confess it! I have slave needs!"
"I, too, have slave needs!" suddenly cried the first woman.
"You?" I asked, as though skeptically.
"Yes!" she wept. "Yes!"
The first time I had laid eyes on her, of course, I had seen that she was born for silk. "Let me kiss you!" cried the fifth woman.
The others gasped in astonishment, in anger, in protest, in indignation, in outrage, at her boldness.
"Taste me," called the fifth woman, enticingly.
"Slut! Slut!" cried the other women.
It had been a slave's invitation. I wondered where the free woman had heard it. Not all free women are as ignorant as many men believe. There had been many indications that the fifth woman's slavery was very close to the surface. To be sure, she may have often fought it. I did not know.
"The eager lips of a free woman await you," called the fifth woman. I went to stand before the fifth woman and she, pulling at her chains, leaning forward, tried to reach me. I stood there for a moment, she straining toward me, I regarding her, thinking. She looked at me. I now let her wonder, now that she had made her bold overture, if I would choose to accept it. Perhaps, now, to her shame, to her humiliation, before her sisters in custody, her revelatory, astonishing, compromising advance would be rejected. Perhaps, even, she might be cuffed, or mocked. I saw fear in her eyes. So I took her in my arms and put my lips to hers. It began as a free woman's kiss but, as I held her, and pressed her to me, and she then pressed herself to me, it ended as a kiss which, though doubtless still that of a free woman, hinted at unmistakable latencies within her, that she might, under suitable conditions of helplessness and submission, and perhaps proper training, be capable of at least the nearest reaches of the kisses of slaves.
I released her, and she looked at me, shaken. She grasped the chains above the manacles tightly. Then she recovered herself. She released the chains above the manacles and her small hands now appeared as they had before, the clasping iron of the upper part of the shackles close below the fleshy part of her palms, below the thumbs, and at the sides of the hands. She squirmed a little. "Redeem me," she said, slyly.
"Taste me!" said the lovely, slighter girl, who was fourth, who had seemed perhaps the quieter of the five. I thought she might go the gentlest, and the most willingly, and the most gratefully, to her chains.
"Slut!" cried the third woman. I then kissed her.
I saw that she would make a superb slave.