I walked about her, examining her. She stood, angrily, inspected.
With the blade of my scimitar I brushed back the slashed, left leg of her trousers. She had an excellent leg within.
“Please,” she said.
“Remove your boots,” I told her. In fury, she removed them. She then stood, barefoot, on the tiles in the center of the room.
“You will lead me barefoot before the Pashas?” she asked. “Is your vengeance not sweet enough, that you will so degrade me?”
“Are you not my prisoner?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“Then I will do with you as I please,” I told her.
“Oh, no!” she wept.
In a moment I told her to kneel. She knelt on the tiles, her head down, her head in her bands. She was stripped completely by my scimitar.
“What have we here?’’ asked Hassan, entering the room. To my interest he had changed his garments. He no longer wore the white of the high Pasha of the Kavars but simpler garments, those which might have befitted Hassan, the outlaw of the Tahari.
“Lift your head Beauty,” said I, gently putting the point of the scimitar beneath her chin, lifting it.
She looked at Hassan, incredibly beautiful, her cheeks stained with tears.
“This is Tarna,” I said.
“So beautiful?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“The capture is yours,” said Hassan. “Put a rope on her neck.
Haroun, high Pasha of the Kavars, and Suleiman, high Pasha of the Aretai, are eager to see her.”
I smiled. From within my sash I found a length of prisoner rope. It was coarse rope.
“Doubtless,” said Hassan, “Haroun, high Pasha of the Kavars, and Suleiman, high Pasha of the Aretai, will pay a high reward to the man who brings Tarna before them.”
“Doubtless,” I said.
“I have heard them crying out for her,” said Hassan.
I knotted the rope about the beauty’s neck. She was mine.
Hassan looked down upon the stripped, tethered beauty.
“I do not want to die,” she suddenly cried. “I do not want to die!”
She put her head down, in her hands. She wept.
“The punishment for breaking a well,” said Hassan, “is not light.”
Tarna, shuddering, wept, her head to the floor, my rope on her neck.
“Come, Female,” I said. I jerked her head up, by the rope. “We must go to see the Pashas.”
“Is there no escape?” she wept.
“There is no escape for you,” I said. “You have been taken.”
“Yes,” she said, numbly, “I have been taken.”
“Are you thinking, Hassan,” I asked, “what I am? That there might be one hope for her life?”
“Perhaps,” grinned Hassan.
“What?” cried Tama. “What!”
“No,” I said. “It is too horrifying.”
“What!” she cried.
“Forget it,” I said.
“Forget it,” agreed Hassan. “You would never approve. You are too proud, too noble and fine.”
I jerked on the rope, as though to draw Tarna to her feet, in order to lead her to the presence of the Pashas.
“What!” she cried.
“Better torture and impalement on the walls of the kasbah at Nine Wells,” said Hassan.
“What?” wept Tarna.
“It is too horrifying, too terrible, too utterly degrading, too sensual,” I said.
“What?” wept the tethered beauty. “Oh, what?”
“On the lower levels,” said Hassan, “I understand that slave girls are kept.”
“Yes,” said Tarna “for the pleasures of my men.”
“You no longer have men,” I reminded her.
“I see!” cried Tarna. “I might be slipped among them!”
“It is a chance,” admitted Hassan.
“But I am not branded!” wept Tarna.
“That can be arranged,” said Hassan.
She looked at him with horror. “But then,” she said, “I would truly be a slave.”
“I knew you would not approve,” said Hassan.
I jerked at the rope on the beauty’s neck. Her chin was pulled up. The knot was under her jaw on the right, turning her head to the left. “No,” she said. “No!”
We looked at her.
“Make Me a slave,” she whispered. “Please! Please!”
“There will be much risk,” said Hassan. “If Haroun, high Pasha of the Kavars, should hear of this, he might skin me alive.”
“Please!” wept Tama.
“It will not be easy,” I said.
“Please, Please!” she wept.
“How should we go about this?” I asked.
“One thing,” said Hassan, “prisoner rope is not appropriate. She must be put on a wrist tether.”
“I see little problem in this,” I said.
“A more serious problem,” be said, “will occur in leading her through the halls.”
“I can walk with my head down, as a slave,” said Tarna.
“Most female slaves,” said Hassan, “walk very proudly. They are proud of their slavery, and their mastery by men, They have learned their womanhood. It has been taught to them. In their way, though imbonded, totally, I suppose they are the truest and freest of women. They are closest, perhaps, to the essentials of the female, those of subservience to the masculine will, obedience, service and pleasure. In being most themselves, utter slave, they are most free. This is paradoxical, to be sure. Most girls, verbally, will object to slavery, but this half-hearted, pouting, ineffectual rhetoric is belied by the joy of their behavior. No girl who has not been a slave can understand the joy of it, the profundity and freedom. The objections of girls to slavery, I have noted, are usually not objections to the institution which, in the sweet heat of their bodies, they love dearly, and fear only to lose, but to a given master. Given the proper master they are quite content, in the proper collar a woman is serene and joyful.”
“Are slave girls truly proud?” asked Tama.
“Most,” said Hassan. “You may think only of have dominated, or seraglio mistresses, presiding over weaklings. But have you seen girls, truly, before men?”
“In a cafe, once,” she said, “I saw a girl dance before men. She was scandalous!
And the girls, too, who served in the cafe! Shameful! Scandalous!”
“Speak with care,” said Hassan, “Girl, for someday you, too, may so dance and serve.”
Tarna turned white.
“Did the girls seem proud?” asked Hassan.
“Yes,” said Tarna, sullenly. “But why should they have been proud?”
“They were proud of their bodies, their feelings, their desirability,” said Hassan, “and proud, too, of their masters, who had the will and power to put them in a collar and keep them there, because it pleased him to do so.”
“How strong such men must be,” whispered Tarna.
“Too,” said Hassan, “undeniable females, secure in their sexuality, it was difficult not for them to be proud. Too, joy can make girls proud.”
“But why, why,” wept Tarna, “should they be proud?”
Hassan shrugged. “Because they knew themselves to be the most perfect and profound of women,” he said. “That is why they are proud.” Hassan laughed.
“Sometimes,” he said, “girls grow so proud it is necessary to whip them, to remind them that they are only slaves.”
“I can walk proudly,” said Tarna. “Lead me through the halls.” She rose to her feet, and stood before us.
“There is a difference,” laughed Hassan, “between the pride of a free woman and the pride of the slave girl, The pride of a free woman is the pride of a woman who feels herself to be the equal of a man. The pride of the slave girl is the pride of the girl who knows that no other woman is the equal of herself.”
Tarna suddenly shuddered, inadvertently, with pleasure. I could see that this insight had thrilled her to the quick.
“You are no longer competing with men,” said Hassan. “You are now something different.”
“Yes, yes!” suddenly whispered Tarna. “I see! I am different! I am not the same!” She looked at us. “Suddenly. “ she said, “for the first time I love the thought of not being the same. “ “It is a start,” said Hassan.
“Do you think she is fit to be led through the halls?” I asked. I could hear men shouting outside. There was singing, the sounds of carousing.