'You are helpless, Jason,' she told rime. 'The room may be in disrepair, but I assure you that the chains are new, and adequate. I have checked them.'
I cried out with rage.
Again, I struggled, but was held helplessly and perfectly in the sturdy steel.
'What a chained larl you are!' she laughed. 'How fortunate for me that your hands are not free. If they were free, I, though a free woman, could scarcely dare conjecture my fate!'
Again I struggled, and was again held helplessly and perfectly in the steel.
'Cease your struggles,' she said, suddenly, angrily. 'Or I will geld you.'
I ceased my struggles.
'That is better,' she said.
'What are you going to do with me?' I asked.
'Are you not slave enough to know?' she asked.
I looked at her, in fury.
'Do you think you can resist me?' she asked.
'No,' I said. 'I do not.' No man, chained as I was, could resist any woman. And she was exciting, and beautiful.
She mounted me.
'Unchain me,' I said. 'Let me take you in my arms.'
'I am not a fool,' she said. 'I will not be made a slave by any man.'
'Aiii!' I cried.
'Thus,' she laughed. 'I, the Lady Melpomene of Vonda, take the silk slave of my enemy, the despicable Lady Florence of Vonda!'
I looked up at her, shuddering.
'It is only the beginning,' she said to me.
She used me several times that night. It was only later that I realized that she, in spite of the fullness of her use of me, had never once kissed me. She did not wish to soil her lips by touching them to my body, that of a slave.
18 THE INSPECTION OF THE STABLE SLAVES
'The stable slaves are ready for inspection, Lady Florence,' said Kenneth, head keeper of the Mistress' slaves. Barus, who assisted him, stood near him.
We knelt in the sunlit, central stable yard of the Mistress' stables, which were extensive. There were barns about, and equipment and feed sheds. These structures were generally painted yellow and trimmed with shades of blue. These colors tend to be cultural for Goreans with respect to housings for domestic animals. Blue and yellow, too, of course, are the colors of the slavers. There may tie a connection here, for the slave is, of course, regarded as a domestic animal. To be sure, in barns and such the color yellow usually predominates, whereas in the colors of slavers, exhibited in such places as in the blue and yellow of the canvas covering slave wagons or is the blue and yellow of the tenting of slave pavilions, the blue and yellow is, or tends to be, more equally distributed, almost invariably occurring in stripes.
I knelt near the end of the line. The Mistress, with a long, tharlarion quirt, had begun her inspection.
When the Lady Melpomene had finished with me, after that long night of her use of me, she had held for me another draft of water, discolored by the reddish Tassa powder. I had not wished to drink this. Then she had held her dagger to my body. I drank. Soon I was unconscious.
'Kneel more straightly, Slave,' said the Lady Florence to another stable slave, down the line from me.
Apparently the two men in the hire of the Lady Melpomene, those two who had originally captured me, and carried me to her house in Venna, returned for me. I did not regain consciousness until, painfully, I was aware of being thrown upon a hard surface. I heard two men hurrying away. I was, knees drawn up, and head down, fastened in a slave sack. Within the sack itself my ankles were crossed and tied, and my hands, too, were similarly fastened, behind my back.
'What is going on here?' I heard cry. 'Stop!' It had been the voice of Kenneth, the head keeper of my Mistress' slaves, the Lady Florence of Vonda. I had heard a wagon rattling away, swiftly.
'What is going on?' I had heard, a woman's voice, that of my Mistress. Over my head I had felt the sack being untied.
'It is Jason,' had said Kenneth. He had drawn me from the sack by a bound arm. I felt my head slapped to the side. 'You are in the presence of the Mistress,' had said Kenneth.
I had then knelt before her. I was on the porch of her house in Venna. I was naked.
'There is a note tied to his collar,' said Kenneth. Men and women of the household, including male and female slaves, domestic slaves, house slaves, such as short-legged, luscious Taphris, had gathered about. The note on my collar was taken and handed to the Mistress. She read the note in fury, and then crumpled it, and cast it to the side. She looked down at me, in fury.
'Send him to the stables,' she said.
'Yes, Lady Florence,' had said Kenneth.
'Have the rest of you nothing better to do than gawk at a stable slave?' she snapped.
Quickly the small crowd dissipated, the free persons turning aside to their duties and the slaves, barefoot, including Taphris, scurrying quickly to their tasks. Lady Florence, Kenneth and myself were alone left on the porch.
Kenneth unbound my ankles and threw aside the binding fiber which had restrained them.
I kept my head down.
Kenneth stood up. 'Lady Florence,' he asked.
'Yes?' she said.
'When we return to your villa near Vonda,' he asked, 'is the slave to be returned to the house or is it your intention that he serve there, as well as here, in the stables, not your private stables but the great stables?' The Lady Florence owned more than a thousand tharlarion. She bred and raised tharlarion, and her stables were among the finest in the vicinity of Vonda.
'He is a stable slave,' she said, angrily. 'Use him as such.'
'In the great stables?' he asked.
'Yes,' she said.
'As a full stable slave,' he asked, 'subject to all the conditions and strictures of such?'
'Yes,' she said.
'Excellent,' he said.
Then, in fury, she had spun about and left, robes swirling.
I lifted my head. Kenneth was chuckling. For some reason he seemed pleased.
'Master,' I said.
'Yes?' he said.
'May I know what was in the note which was affixed to my collar?'
'I, too, am curious,' he grinned. He picked up the note. ' `My sweet friend and compatriot, Lady Florence of Vonda,'' read Kenneth, '`Thank you very much for the use of your lovely silk slave, Jason. I enjoyed him very much. It is easy to see why you are so fond of him. Incidentally, thank you, too, for the lovely gift of perfume. I wore it while using him for my pleasure. Thank you again, my sweet and understanding friend, and generous friend, for your kindness in these matters. I wish you well. Melpomene, Lady of Vonda.''
Kenneth then dropped the note, muchly where he had found it.
He pulled me to my feet and thrust me, stumbling, to my right, down the steps and toward the wagon way leading about the house, toward the stables.
At the corner of the house we stopped.
