"He is mine!" she hissed.
I put my head down, in defeat.
Then she cried out in pain, as she was flung by the hair to his feet.
"You are mine," he said.
"I am yours," she whispered, terrified.
Then he took her by the hair and dragged her to her feet and left, she bent over, held by the hair, running, stumbling, beside him. To me she had been formidable, but to him she was only a wench for his pleasure.
I rose to my feet, shaken. I rearranged my silk. It had not been torn.
I looked after the sailor and the red-haired girl, stumbling beside him, held by the hair. I saw he would use her well, very well. This pleased me.
A male slave, his wrists chained, separated by some eighteen inches of linked metal, pushing a wharf cart passed me. He looked upon me. I was furious! I ran to him, in rage, and slapped him. "Do not look upon me!" I cried in rage. "I am not for the likes of you! You are a slave! A slave!" He pulled back his head, angrily. "Slave!" I screamed. "Slave!" I spun about. I saw one who must be his master, a merchant. I was red with fury. I ran to the merchant and knelt before him. I pointed to the male slave. "He looked upon me!" I cried. "He looked upon me!" "Have you permission to speak?" he asked. "May a girl speak?" I asked, frightened. "Yes," he said. Emboldened then, I pointed again to the male slave. "He dared to look upon me," I said. I knew that male slaves were carefully supervised. I knew it could be quite unpleasant for one of them to be caught looking upon a slave girl. To be caught looking upon a free woman could mean death for them. "He looked upon me," I said, pointing to the male slave. Surely he would be, at the least, whipped for his indiscretion. The beauty of slave girls was for free men, not for the slave likes of such as he.
"You are too good for him?" asked the merchant.
"Yes," I said. I then realized this was not the proper thing to say. But I had said it.
"You are both animals," he said.
"Yes, Master," I said.
"But you are a female," he said.
"Yes, Master," I said.
"And he," he said, "though slave is yet male."
"Yes, Master," I whispered.
"And is not the male animal the master of the female animal?" he asked.
"Yes, Master," I said. I knew that male dominance was pervasive among mammals, and that it was universal among primates. It can be frustrated only by an extensive and complex conditioning program, one adequate, over a period of years, to distort the order of nature.
"Do you find this slave of interest?" asked the master of the male slave.
He shrugged. "She is small," he said.
I looked at him, frightened.
"But she is not without interest," he conceded.
"Do you think you can catch her?" asked the master.
"Of course," said the male slave.
I rose to my feet, frightened. I began to back away.
"She is yours," said the master.
I turned to run. He caught me before a large box, and flung me, face forward, against it. When I recoiled back from the hot wood the chain on his wrists had looped about me, and I was his, held to him by the chain about his wrists.
"It is long since I have had a wench," he said.
He dragged me along beside him, the chain looped about my body, cutting into my waist over the left hip.
"Be merciful to a slave, Master," I begged.
Behind some boxes, on the boards of the wharf, he threw me down, under him.
"Please be kind to a slave, Master," I begged.
He laughed.
The master did not hurry him, but, I think, attended to other matters.
The wharf cart had been empty.
When the slave left me I had yielded to him, as though he might have been a free man. I was much shamed.
I lay behind the boxes and looked up at the blue sky. I was miserable. I had been used by a slave. But, too, I was frightened. It was surely past the time when I should have returned to the Chatka and Curla. I did not want to be whipped!
Slowly, painfully, my legs stiff, I climbed to my feet. I rearranged the bit of silk I wore.
I stepped out from behind the boxes. I must hurry back to the Chatka and Curla.
I stopped, startled. Then I shrank back beside the large boxes. He was far off, but I was certain. I began to breathe rapidly. My heart began to pound.
It could not be, but it was.
I did not know what to do. At first I felt, unrestrainable, overwhelming me, an incredible flood of love and elation. I felt the incredible love and joy, the elation, possible only to a slave girl.
He was approaching from down the wharf, carrying a sea bag, in the guise of a sailor.
I wanted to run toward him, crying out, the length of the wharf, and throw myself to his feet, weeping, covering them with kisses.
Then I was frightened that I had made a mistake. It could not be true.
But I watched. I grew more and more sure, and then I was certain. He stopped to buy a cake from a vendor on the wharf. It was he!
It was my master, Clitus Vitellius of Ar!
"Oh, Master," I wanted to cry out, "I love you! I love you, Master!"
Then I saw him glance at a paga girl who posed, turning before him, and spoke to him.
Suddenly I hated her and him!
He dismissed the girl, but I had seen him look upon her, as a warrior, a master.
I hated them both!
It had been Clitus Vitellius of Ar who had first enslaved me. He had marked me with the hot iron, marking my very flesh, branding me a slave girl. He had made me serve him! He had made me love him, and had then; when it pleased him, his sport done, thrown me aside, giving me to peasants!
A bold plan, relentless and terrible, formed in my mind. I breathed deeply, in cold fury, resolved.
He would find that a slave girl's vengeance is not a light thing.
I straightened myself. I parted the silk, lasciviously. I lifted my head, with the small sounds of the bells on the collar.
He was coming toward me now, eating on the bit of cake he had purchased.
I saw he carried no weapons. This pleased me.
I ran toward him, with short steps, and knelt before him. I kissed his feet. At his feet I felt suddenly a wave of love for him, the helpless weakness of a slave girl overcome at her master's feet, but then I caught myself, and every bit of me became cold, and calculating and sensuous. I held the calves of his legs in my hands, and looked up at him.
"Dina," he said.
"My master calls me Yata," I said, "Master."
"Then you are Yata," he smiled.
"Yes, I am Yata," I said. I looked up at him, smiling.
"Are you as innocent and as clumsy as before?" he asked.
"No, Master," I said, putting my head down, beginning to kiss him on the side of the leg, deeply, puffing, sucking, at the hair a tiny bit.