There was a mark on the side of Eta's face, where she had been struck. Perhaps she had not been fully pleasing for an instant to one of the soldiers, or to Clitus Vitellius, and had thus been struck, and put at the rear of the chain. Perhaps she was at the rear of the chain because she was the most beautiful, and her beauty was being saved for last; thus the chain would have begun with the beautiful Marla and then, with a surprise, finished with a girl yet more beautiful than the first. But perhaps she was thought to be ugly for a day or two, until the blow healed, and thus, for ugliness, was put at the back of the line. Or, perhaps it was merely that the last wrist-ring had then been open, I being left in Tabuk's Ford, and thus there was no reason for her any longer to be excluded from the coffle. Thus, she would merely have been placed in the available wrist ring, in my place.
Sometimes masters punish us without explaining the reason It is then for the slave girl to guess and wonder, and try harder to please. Sometimes, perhaps, there is no reason! We are so much at their mercy!
Beside my knee, in the dirt, there was a pan of water, and one of wet meal.
The last girl, Eta, was now coffled.
"Stand easily, Slaves," said the guard, and walked away.
Marla turned to face me. She lifted her chained left wrist… "I wear the chain of Clitus Vitellius," she said. "You wear the rope of a peasant."
"Yes, Mistress," I said.
She turned away from me.
The men were now hitching the bosk to the wagons taken from the camp of the Lady Sabina.
Two peasant boys stood nearby. They looked at me. I, kneeling, clad in the Ta-Teera, my hands tied behind my back, my neck roped to the piling beneath Thurnus's hut, regarded them.
"Greetings, Slave Girl," they said to me.
"Greetings, Masters," I said to them.
They turned away, grinning, and left the vicinity of the hut.
The first team of bosk was hitched up, two of the great animals, broad, shaggy, with polished horns.
Clitus Vitellius was talking with Thurnus.
"I, and the men, and other girls," he had said, "will leave Tabuk's Ford in the morning. You will remain behind. I am giving you to Thurnus."
I had cried out with misery and horror in his arms. "Master!" I had cried. He had then gagged me. He then tied my hands behind my back, and took me naked and stumbling from his furs. He found an ankle stock of heavy wood near the perimeter of his camp area. He put me on my back. The stock consisted of two heavy, oblong pieces of wood, each about four inches thick, joined together by hinged iron. He flung open the stock. He looked down at me. I half reared up, struggling, to a sitting position, my hands tied behind my back, my eyes wild over the gag. Our eyes met. He then, swiftly, brutally, used me, and I, miserable, helpless, my eyes hot with tears, again could not resist him, and, again, unable to help myself, responded to him, and responded as a slave. He laughed at me derisively and then, crouching beside me, threw my ankles into the stock and closed it, one of the two four-inch blocks of wood on each side of my ankles, and flung the hasp over the staple, which would hold the blocks shut. Then, with a drilled peg and a bit of binding fiber, attached to the stock, he, slipping the fiber through the staple and securing it to the peg, fastened the hasp down. This would hold a bound slave. If. my hands had not been tied a padlock would have been used. Tied as I was I was the prisoner of the stock, its weight and constraint. I lay on the ground, twisting, moaning. It seemed my guts had been torn out. I looked up, miserable, at the stars.
Clitus Vitellius then left me, to return to his furs, to sleep.
I cut again at the soil with the hoe, chopping down, loosening the dirt about the roots of the sul plants.
The sun was terribly hot.
On my throat I wore a rope collar. My hands were terribly blistered. It was painful to hold the hoe. My back hurt me. It seemed every muscle in my body ached.
I wanted to throw myself down and weep, but the suls must be hoed.
"You will learn toil, small beauty," Thurnus had told me. I had well learned toil, and misery. It is not easy to be a peasant's girl.
It is a hard slavery.
I remembered seeing Clitus Vitellius leave. He had not looked back. I had wanted to call out after him, but I had not dared. I did not wish to be whipped.
It is not easy to be a peasant's girl. it is a hard slavery.
I remembered the sting of the switch across the back of my thighs as Melina had driven me to the kennel.
"I will make you wish you wore a longer tunic, Slave!" she had cried.
I had dropped through the kennel door and, some feet below, struck the straw-strewn floor of the kennel. The kennel was a cage, a sleen cage, tipped on its side, fully barred, sunk mostly into the ground. The cage in its original attitude, when used for sleen, would have been some four feet in height, six feet in width and twelve feet in length. Tipped on its side, to better accommodate humans, it was some six feet in height and four by twelve feet in breadth and length. In this attitude, it was entered from the top. Within there was a wooden, runged ladder, for climbing out of it. It was sunk some four and a half feet in the ground. Wooden planks, covered with straw, lay over the bars on the bottom. These planks were separated by some two inches apiece, to facilitate drainage. The cage was roofed, too, with planks; these planks were set flush with one, another; they were fastened over the top of the bars, including some, sawed, over the barred door. At night a tarpaulin was thrown over the cage roof. Standing in the cage one could look out, one's shoulders being approximately at ground level.
I dropped to the floor of the cage.
I heard the heavy barred gate at the top, over my head, with its attached planks, flung shut. It made a harsh sound of metal and wood. Then I heard the rattle of two heavy padlocks on chains. There were two heavy metal snaps, as the door above me was fastened shut.
I looked up. I was locked within.
"Kneel," said a voice.
I knelt. There were four other girls in the cage.
"In the position of the pleasure slave," said one of them.
I complied.
"Let us see your brand," said another.
I turned to the side and drew back the tunic.
"A Dina," said another girl. There were four besides myself in the cage, Thurnus's other girls.
"Did you know," asked one, "that Dinas are suitable to be the slaves of slaves?"
"No," I said, "I did not."
"You were not given permission to cover your brand," said one, sharply.
I drew back my hand. I turned to face them, on my knees. They sat in the cage, on the straw.
"Are you a pleasure slave?" asked one, curious.
"Yes," I said.
They laughed. "Here you are a work slave," said one. "Here you will be worked hard," said another.
I straightened my back. They made me angry. I assessed them, obviously to a woman's eyes, though a man might not have noticed, one by one. It is a slight, tacit thing that women understand. I smiled. They were angry.
"Perhaps I will not be worked as hard as you think," I said.
I was clearly their superior in beauty.
"Insolent slave!" cried one. "How haughty you are, Slave Girl!" said another.
I shrugged.
"Do you think you are more beautiful than we?" asked one of them.
"Yes," I told them.
"Do you think you will please the master more than we?" asked another.
"Yes," I told them. "I am clearly more beautiful."
"She-tarsk," said one. "She-sleen!" cried another.
"You will be worked hard!" said another girl.
"We will see to that!" vowed the fourth girl.
"Do you have a comb for my hair?" I asked.
"Do not break the position of the pleasure slave," warned the largest of the girls, Sandal Thong, a long-armed, freckled giantess of a peasant wench.
"Very well," I said.
"It becomes you," said Verr Tail, a wide-shouldered, auburn-haired girl.