The Chieftan

“No,” she said, “we are different.”

“That is heresy, is it not?” he asked.

She turned white, and was silent.

After a time, she turned to the wall, and said, “I hate you.”

“Why?” he asked, puzzled. She had seemed to be pleased but moments before, weeping, crying out for more, begging, subdued, ravished.

“Because you do not put a collar on me, and make me walk behind you,” she said.

“I do not understand,” he said.

“But this is not such a world,” she said.

He did not respond.

“Too,” she said, “you do not know who you are.”

He looked up from his boots.

“That is why you hate me?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Who am I?” he asked.

“A man,” she said.

He shrugged.

“It was so from the first joining of the gametes,” she said.

“What are gametes?” he asked.

“You are not educated, are you?” she asked.

“No,” he said.

“Can you read?” she asked.

“No,” he said.

“From the beginning,” she said, “you were a man, or a male, from the beginning. It was so in the chromosomes.”

“And you, in such things, whatever they may be, were female, or woman?”

“Yes,” she said, “from the beginning, totally that, not other than that, never to be other than that.”

“Interesting,” he said, for he, though not educated, had an inquisitive mind, a lively mind. That there should be two forms of being, and in his own species, was surely worthy of note. This was not, of course, the first female he had held in his arms. There had been others, Tessa, and Lia, and Sut, or Pig, who had put themselves in his way, who had surprised him in the fields, at troughs, in the hay sheds, who had lain on the wooden floors of the varda coops, their smocks thrown off, the slatted shadows of the lath bars falling across their vital, waiting, beautifully curved bodies, an interesting symmetry. His favorite had been Pig. But there had been trouble.

“What is your class?” she asked.

“I am of the humiliori,” he said, “but I am not a serf, nor a colonus.” The coloni were tenants, under the protection of wealthy landowners. “What is your class?” he asked.

“I, too, am of the humiliori,” she said. “Do you think I would be here, as I am, a pay woman, in this small room, with the single, tiny window, on this bed, over a wretched tavern, were I not of the humiliori?”

“I am of the peasants,” he said.

She turned back, quickly, to face him.

“You do not have the body of a peasant,” she said. “It is not deformed for the hoe, the plow.”

He stood, belting his tunic. “And what sort of body have I?” he asked.

She slipped from the bed, and came to where he stood, and then she knelt before him, holding to his legs, looking up at him. “Linger,” she said.

He looked down at her, regarding her.

“There are masters and there are slaves,” she said. “Each must learn which he is.”

Oh, he had intended, even before the trouble over Pig, to leave the festung village. Having come of age, and having refused the garb, the habit and hood, he might leave. Too, this was practical, for on the world in which stood the heights of Barrionuevo, and the festung of Sim Giadini, now far away, the villagers had not yet been bound, or the guilds, or the coloni.

“You speak well,” he said, “You are highly intelligent. Can you read?”

“Yes,” she said.

“You were not always of the humiliori,” he speculated.

“I was once the daughter of a senator of a local municipality, on another world, one far away,” she said.

“You were then of the honestori,” he said, impressed.

“Yes,” she said.”

“But now you kneel naked,” he said.

“It is said that women such as I make the best slaves,” she said.

He supposed that much would depend upon the woman, whatever her class or background, on her capacities for love, her unbridled sexual needs, on her uncontrollable passions, which put her so helplessly at the mercy of masters, on her capacity for loyalty, for diligence, for service, such things. The more intelligent the woman, it was said, the less the need for taming and training. Such, it was said, arrived the most quickly at the deepest understanding of themselves, and were the first to yield themselves up wholly, helplessly, to the fitting raptures of their bondage.

“Beat me,” she said, “Master.”

“You are not a slave,” he said. “Do not say such things.”

It was a saying of slaves. It was not that they wished to be beaten, or seldom was it so. It was rather a way of professing to the master their slavery, that they understood their situation, that they were owned, that they acknowledged his punishment rights over them. The saying is useful, too, in reminding a slave of her bondage. The usual response of the master is the issuance of some innocent command, but the slave knows what might have been done. To be sure, it is a rare slave who does not long, at times, to be reminded of her bondage, that she is truly a slave.

“Where is your father?” he asked.

“He is dead,” she said. “He was ruined, the taxes. He died of drink.”

“And you fled?”

“Yes,” she said.

“And so became of the humiliori?”

“Yes,” she said.

On many worlds, many of the humiliori class had been bound, the soil workers to the soil, to given fields, the members of guilds, and their offspring, to their crafts. Even the captains of ships, of merchant ships, and the bakers, and carpenters, the masons, the armorers, and those of many other crafts and occupations, even the members of actors’ guilds, had been bound. This stabilized the population, holding it in place, that given taxations might be efficiently exacted. Many of the landlords, particularly the less wealthy landlords, those who could not afford the bribes to governors and prefects, and who did not have groups of armed retainers, feared by the tax farmers, at their disposal, and even the senators, of local municipalities, had been made responsible for the collection of taxes, due on their lands, or in their districts. Shortages in the collection were expected to be supplied by these unwilling deputies. Many were ruined. The father of the pay woman, we may surmise, was one. The population, you see, fleeing judicial and economic oppression, as presumably the pay woman had done, had tended to be fluid, too easily slipping away. The binding, to craft and locality, too, of course, made things easier for the tax farmers. These individuals, usually rented in gangs from certain wealthy entrepreneurs, licensed by the governors and prefects, were the usual instruments of tax collection. The tax farmers were to collect the due taxes plus a percentage thereof, as their commission. It was well known, however, that they normally collected far more than the due taxes and the commissions, the gang bosses, and entrepreneurs, pocketing the rest. Also, one might note, in passing, in speaking of taxes, the existence of various forms of munera, taxes paid in service, for example, manual labor on local roads and bridges, supplying free bread to local troops, gratis transport of goods on behalf of governmental commissaries, such things. A common form of munera was that of the peasant, required to donate military service some weeks in the year, expected to work in his lord’s fields and