“Did the intruders reach the lower corridors?” a man asked the officer.
“No,” said the officer.
One of the men with the officer, the captain, was clad not in the gear of war, but wore a blue tunic, and carried, on two straps, slung now beside him, a scribe’s box. It was flat and rectangular. Pens are contained, in built-in-racks, within it. Depending on the box, it may contain ink, or powered ink, to be mixed with water, the vessel included, or flat, disklike cakes of pigment, to be dampened, and used as ink, rather as water colors.
In it, too, in narrow compartments, are sheets of paper, commonly lined paper or rence paper. A small knife may also be contained in such boxes for scraping out errors, or a flat eraser stone. Other paraphernalia may also be included, depending on the scribe, string, ostraka, wire, coins, even lunch. The top of the box, the lid, the box placed on a solid surface, serves as a writing surface, or desk.
“There is the matter of the free women,” said another man to the officer.
“Yes,” said the officer.
They went then a little to their right, some few feet to my left, as I knelt.
“There are six of them,” said a man. He was one of the civilians who had stood guard over the women, keeping them at the wall.
The women looked up, frightened, the torchlight revealing them. Some tired to cover themselves.
“Kneel in a line, here, facing the captain,” said a soldier.
“We are unveiled!” protested a woman.
“Hands on thighs,” said the soldier. “Backs straight. Do not speak.”
Hurriedly they formed themselves, as they had been told. The officer considered them.
“These are the ones?” he asked.
“Yes, Captain,” said a man.
“Captain!” cried one of the women.
“Silence,” said the soldier.
“Bring a whip,” said a man.
“I have one here,” said a voice. It was handed to him. The woman shrank back, kneeling back on her heels, pressing the palms of her hands firmly down on her thighs.
“Backs straight,” cautioned the soldier.
The women complied.
Again they were regarded.
They trembled.
“What is to be done with them?” asked a man.
“They have proclaimed themselves slaves,” said the officer.“Let them be slaves.”
“No!” cried the women. “No!”
The lash fell amongst them.
Those who had leaped to their feet were seized and flung back, down, against the others. Some tried two, even three, times, to leap up, to flee to freedom, but they could not penetrate the ring of men. Each time they were thrown back to their knees, with the others.
They were then crowded together, one over the other. Down came the lash! They cried out with pain, huddling together. One tried to stand, just a little, her knees flexed, her hands and arms raised to fend blows, but she was then, blow by blow, stroke by stroke, returned to her knees, and then when another blow fell she cried out for mercy, and threw herself to her belly, her hands over her head, sobbing. She had now learned what the whip could feel like. Some of the women knelt, holding out their hands for mercy, but the lash fell upon them, too, and they put down their heads, sobbing, bending over, almost double. Some kneeling, crying out, sobbing, clasped their hands together, lifting them to the men. But the lash fell. And then they were a small, writhing knot of terrified women, each trying to hide behind the other. The whip, hitting at the edges of the group, the left, the right, forced it in upon itself, and then, sobbing, cowering, they huddled together, tiny, within the ring of angry men.
The lash ceased its whistling speech. To its hard discourse they had learned how to attend.
“Chain them together by the neck,” said the officer. “And take them to the pens. See that they are branded by morning.”
Chains were brought and the six women were fastened together by the neck. They were then knelt again before the officer, facing him. How strange it must have been for them, free women, to find themselves in steel collars, linked to other such collars, by chains.
“Please, no more the whip!” wept one, seeing it poised in a fellow’s hand.
“Do not whip us more!” begged another, cringing.
“Please, do not whip us!” begged another.
“As slave girls,” said the officer, “you will doubtless become quite familiar with the whip.”
One of the women moaned. She seemed to me one who might have been cruel to slaves. Now she herself had felt the whip. Had she owned female slaves? If so, she had undoubtedly found the whip effective in controlling them. She would now find that it would be similarly effective in controlling her.
“Are you prepared to obey?” inquired the captain.
“Yes, yes!” said the women.
“Turn to the right,” he said.
They then, kneeling, were in line, one behind the other, their right sides to the wall.
“Keep your eyes straight ahead,” said the officer.
The women complied.
“You will learn to be females and please men,” he said.
One of the women gasped. Two of the others trembled.
“Sell them out of the city,” said the officer. Women wept.
“Do you wish a record of this, Captain?” asked the fellow in the blue tunic, he with the scribe’s box, on its straps, slung at his left side.
“No,” said the captain. “Keep no record of this. They have shamed the city, and the Home Stone. Let them go their way. Let them not be remembered. Let it be, in the records of the city, as though they had never been.”
One of the women sobbed.
“Put your hands behind your back,” said the soldier in charge of the small coffle. “Now hold your left elbow with your right hand, and your right elbow with your left hand.” This pins the arms back, the forearms parallel to the ground. Sometimes arms are tied in this position.
The women complied.
“On your feet,” said the soldier in charge of the small coffle. “Left foot first, step! Step!”
The coffle was then marched past me. It rounded the corner of the wall and would, I take it, cross the bridge, and the docking area, on the way to the pens.
I felt sorry for the free women, in a way, but I think I sensed, and they sensed, as the men about perhaps did not, for I sometimes think men are very stupid, that the fate inflicted upon them was not as grievous as might be supposed. To be a woman, a true woman, in its total dimensionality, is not only a not unenviable fate, it is a fulfilling, exciting, thrilling, profound, deep, beautiful, and glorious thing. Sometimes I feel sorry for men, just a little, but then I grow afraid, for I remember that they are, after all, the masters.
The fellow with the whip had followed the coffle.
Around the corner, perhaps on the bridge, I heard the crack of the whip, and a cry of fear.
I doubted that the leather had touched anyone, but it could have, of course.
But then, a moment later, I heard the whip again and, this time, a cry of pain.