15
I Am Spoken To By My Mistress
I was thrown to the tiles before the recumbent figure seated on the curule chair.
"This is your mistress," said one of the men, indicating the recumbent figure, with lovely figure, veiled and gowned who sat easily, regally, on the curule chair.
I looked up from my knees, her slave. The bracelets had been removed from me. I had been placed in a brief white house tunic, sleeveless.
I was barefoot. It was all I wore.
"Leave us," said the seated woman. The two men withdrew.
I put my head down to the tiles, alone with my mistress.
"Lift your head, Judy," said the woman.
I looked up, startled.
"Do you not know me, Judy?" asked the woman.
"No, Mistress," I said.
The woman put back her head and laughed merrily.
My mind raced. I could not know her. And yet she spoke as though I should know her. And she had called me Judy. I had not been called Judy since I had left Earth.
"Judy Thornton," laughed the woman. I detected by her laughter that she was young, that she, too, was only a girl, save perhaps that she might be a bit older than I. My mistress was a girl. I was owned by a girl!
"Mistress?" I asked.
"Has slavery been hard for you, lovely Judy?" she asked.
"Oh, yes, Mistress!" I said.
"Would you not like to be free?" she asked.
"Yes, Mistress!" I cried.
Smiling, with a graceful gesture, the woman lifted back her veil, revealing her face.
"Elicia!" I cried. "Elicia Nevins!" I cried, weeping with joy. I threw myself into her arms, sobbing. And she put her arms about me. I could not control my emotions. The ordeal was now over. I shook, half choking, half sobbing. Behind me now was the steel of slave bracelets, the fear of the whip, the misery and degradation of the slave girl. "I love you, Elicia!" I cried. "I love you!" I would now be free. Soon, with Elicia's help, I would be returned safe to Earth. She had rescued me! "I love you, Elicia!" I wept.
The woman thrust me from her, and I, startled, slipped back, losing my footing, to the tiles. I was on my knees.
I looked at her, puzzled.
"It is well," she said, "that a slave girl loves her mistress."
"Please do not joke," I begged.
"Are you not grateful to me?" she asked.
"Yes! Yes!" I cried. "I am grateful, so grateful, to you, Elicia!"
"It is well," she said, "that a slave girl is grateful to her mistress, that she is permitted to live and is not slain."
"Elicia?" I asked.
"Do not rise from your knees," she said, coldly.
"When will I be freed, and returned to Earth?" I asked.
"You always were a stupid little fool," she said. "I wondered what the boys ever saw in you."
"I do not understand," I said.
"That is why you are a slave, and I am free," she said.
"Surely," I whispered, "you do not intend to keep me as a slave. You are of Earth!"
"This is not Earth," she said.
"Oh, please, Elicia!" I said.
"Silence," she said.
I was silent.
"We were great rivals, were we not?" she asked.
"Yes," I said.
"I shall enjoy owning you," she said, "as a serving slave."
"Oh, no, Elicia!" I begged.
"I saw you as a slave even on Earth," she said, coldly. "When I saw you in classes, in the cafeteria, in the library, walking on campus, attending functions, dating, laughing, applauding, lying beside the pool, posing for the boys, cute, pretty, trying to pretend to be more beautiful than I, I saw you as what you truly were and deserved to be, and would someday be-only a lovely little slave.
"Free me," I begged.
She laughed.
"You asked if I wanted to be free," I moaned.
"Do you?" she asked.
"Yes, yes!" I cried.
"That will make the owning of you all the more pleasant," she said. "But you should not be free. You are a natural slave," she said, "like many of the women of Earth."
"You are of Earth!" I cried.
"Yes," she said, "but I am not a natural slave. I am different from the others."
I put down my head.
"Are you familiar with the duties of a serving slave?" she asked.
"Elicia!" I cried.
"Are you?" she asked. "I do not wish to spend a great deal of time training you."
"To some extent," I said, coldly.
"It is all a little thing like you is good for," she said. "I will get much use from you."
"Please, Elicia," I wept, breaking.
"Go into my room," she said, "through the door on your right. On the wall there is an opened slave collar and a slave whip. Bring them."
I went into the beautiful room, lavishly appointed, with chests, mirrors and sunken bath. I found the collar and whip and, barefoot, returned.
I handed her the collar and whip.
"Kneel," she said.
I stepped back, and knelt.
"You were very pretty on the block," she said.
"You saw," I moaned.
"Everything," she said.
I put down my head. She had seen me exhibited naked, and sold.
"Why did you not buy me then?" I asked.
"There were excellent reasons not to do so," she said. "It was enough to know your location, and where you could be obtained."
"I do not understand," I said.
"To determine," she said, "that others did not follow you."
"I do not understand," I said.
"The search for you," she said, "was long."
"You have gone to much trouble," I said, "to secure a female serving slave."
"Your name is Judy," she said, naming me.
"Yes, Mistress," I said.
"You understand, of course," she said, "that you bear the name now as a slave name."
"Yes, Mistress," I said. It might be changed, or taken from me, at her whim.
"You will address me," she said, "as Lady Elicia, my mistress, or, as you have done, simply as Mistress, that sort of thing."
"Yes, Lady Elicia, my mistress," I said.
"Excellent, Judy," she said, "you learn swiftly." She leaned back. "Oh, I shall relish owning you," she said. "I shall demean and humiliate you, and work you, and have whatever I wish from you."
"Yes, Lady Elicia, my mistress," I whispered. My former rival now owned me.
She rose easily from the curule chair and stood before me. She held the opened collar before me. It was slender but sturdy, steel, enameled with white, decorated with tiny flowers in pink, a collar suitable for a woman's girl. There was printing in the enamel, tiny, exact.
"See the printing?" she asked.
"Yes, Mistress," I said.
"I know you are illiterate," she said, "so I shall read it to you. It says 'I am Judy. Return me to the Lady Elicia of Six Towers. "Then she said, "Put down your head, Slave."
I knelt, with my head down. The collar was locked on my throat.
She stepped back. "Miss Judy Thornton," she said, "-collared at my feet!" She turned in the lovely gown she wore, her arms raised, fists clenched, eyes closed. "The triumph! The pleasure of it!" she cried.
"The collar," I whispered, "has my name on it?"
"Yes," she said, looking at me. "It has been waiting for you a long time."
"It is a ten-hort collar," I whispered. I could tell by its feel.
"Your size exactly," she laughed.
I wondered when the measurement could have been taken. From what she had said I gathered the collar had not been made recently, that it had not been made following the sale in the house of Publius, in which my various measurements, those of a slave, had been made public.
I looked at her.
"You were measured when you were unconscious," she smiled, "before you left Earth."
"How did I come here?" I asked.
"Unconscious," she said, "naked, in a slave capsule."