I pondered this, but did not understand it.
She was a free woman.
I closed the door, and locked it, and put the key back about my neck.
“You may rise,” I told her. The door was now securely locked. The lock was heavy, the bars were thick. She was well held within the cell.
I looked at her. She had remained on her knees.
Somewhat to my surprise the pit master had been agreeable to the free woman’s desire to bathe, and he permitted me, the next day, when the cistern was free, to take her there. How joyously she bathed!
“Do you think now that I am beautiful enough to be a slave?” she had asked me later, happily, kneeling beside the cistern, throwing her washed hair behind her.
“Yes,” I had told her. “I think you would look well in a collar.”
She had laughed delightedly.
I eyed her pile of garments. How filthy they were!
“I shall launder these for you,” I said.
“No!” she said. “I shall clean them!”
“You are a free woman,” I said. “Free women, or at least such as you, do not attend to such matters.”
“Please,” she said. “I want to!”
“You want to work?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Work me! Work me-as a slave!”
I regarded her, startled.
“You have been taught how to work, have you not?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. In my training I had been taught the performance of numerous servile tasks. I had, for example, by female slaves, been instructed in sewing, laundering, cleaning, cooking, the polishing of metal, and the grooming of leather. When one buys a woman, even a pleasure slave, one expects, as a forgone conclusion, that she will know how to do such things. Yes, even a pleasure slave, who might, in her more familiar modalities, drive a master mad with passion, may be expected, either out of his sight, or under his supervision, if he pleases, to make bread and repair a rent garment, such things.
“Show me how to launder,” she begged, “-as a slave!”
“It is doubtless the same way in which free women of low caste launder,” I said.
“Show me,” she begged.
“Kneel beside the cistern,” I said. “Knot your hair behind your head, that it not drag in the water. The garments must be soaked, and twisted, and kneaded, and beaten on the stone, again and again. One soaks the garments, one beats them. It is not easy work. It is hard work. It takes time. Begin.”
She took her veil first, and submerged it in the water.
The next day, I came early to her cell. She had requested it. The pit master had given his permission. At my arrival she had knelt without being asked to do so, and had removed her veil.
“Greetings,” I said.
“Greetings,” said she.
“May I stand?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
To my surprise she then removed her outer garments, putting them to one side. Then she stood before me in a light, silken, sliplike undergarment. It was quite brief. It was not, I thought, unlike a slave garment. I wondered if free women sometimes studied themselves in the mirror, in such garments. I recalled that I had, it now seemed long ago, wondered what I would look like if my wrists were roped, if there were a chain on my neck. She then, again, knelt.
“What if the guard should see?” I said.
“It does not matter,” she said.
“Do not be foolish,” I said. “Do you not know what the sight of you, as you are now, might do to a man!”
“What?” she asked.
“Do not ask,” I warned her. “You are a free woman!” I dared not tell her the might of the desires of men such as these, of their mercilessness and their power.
“Janice,” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Exercise me,” she said.
“Do not be foolish,” I said.
“I know nothing of such things,” she said. “Please!”
“in what way would you be exercised?” I asked.
“Exercise me,” she said, “-as a slave.”
I considered this matter. I supposed that her body might, indeed, cry out for some exercise. She had been long incarcerated. But why, I asked myself, did she wish to be exercised in a certain way, as a slave? Surely that was incomprehensible. On the other hand, I asked myself, how often does a slave have this power over a free woman? Indeed, would it not be amusing to exercise her-as a slave?
“Stand!” I said. “Spread your legs widely! Put your arms out to the sides!”
I feared I was not easy with her. And yet the harder I was upon her the more eager, the more zealous, the more compliant, the more helpless and obedient, she was. Afterwards I took her to the cistern that she might wash her body and her garment.
After that she was exercised regularly.
Once she asked me, “What are slave paces?”
“They are movements, attitudes, positions, poses, and such,” I said. “designed to display a slave.”
“Put me through them!” she begged.
“You a free woman,” I said, “ask to be put through slave paces?”
“Yes!” she said.
“You are mad!” I said.
“Please!” she begged.
“And that,” I cried, a few minutes later, “is how a slave may be put though her paces.”
“Yes, yes!” she had cried, wide-eyed, gasping, fighting for breath, drenched with sweat, lying before me on her belly, on the stone.
“To be sure,” I said, “if you were really being put through your paces, you might expect certain things to be different. Presumably you would be naked and collared. I would be a man. Would have a whip or switch. There might very well be other men present, and so on.”
“I understand,” she whispered.
“Yet,” I said, “perhaps now you have sense of what might be involved.”
“Yes,” she whispered, in awe. “Thank you, Janice.”
“Do you not now regret your request?” I asked.
“No,” she said.
“Are you not now outraged and humiliated?” I asked.
“No,” she said.
I had then left the cell, locking the door behind me. I looked back, once, at her. She still lay on the floor, in the tiny sliplike garment she had worn. She had lovely legs. She seemed in awe.
The next night she had wanted to know something of the intimate exercises of female slaves. I did not even know how she, a free woman, had heard of them. I described them to her.
“How helpless you are!” she breathed.
“Yes,” I said. “We are helpless.”
I had then again left the cell, locking the door behind me. When I looked back at her, she knelt. “I would put on again the veil and the robes of concealment,” I said.
“Janice?’ she said.
“The guard will be making his rounds,” I said. “I do not think it would do to let him see you as you are.”
“Why?” she asked.
“It is better, I think,” I said, ‘that he not realize how beautiful you are.”
“Why?” she asked.
“He might take you for a slave,” I said.
“I see,” she smiled.
“Do you not find that thought frightful,” I asked.
“No,” she said.
“Oh,” I said.
“What if he did?” she asked.
“You do not know what it is to be the object of such inordinate, uncontrollable, raging desire,” I said. “You do not realize what it is to be the object of such lust and passion, such as may be stimulated only by a woman in bondage.”
She looked at me, startled.
“Men kill for us,” I said.
“I see,” she whispered, frightened.
“Wars have been fought for us,” I said.
“I see,” she said.
“To be sure,” I said, “some men may prefer gold, but even gold is usually valued for its uses, one of which is to buy such as we.”
“I understand,” she whispered.
“Doubtless the bars would hold,” I said.
“You could always stay back from then, so that he could not reach you. I do not think the pit master would permit him the key.”
“But what if he could open the cell?”
“And took you for a slave?”
“Yes,”
“Inquire not into such a dreadful possibility,” I said.