to me inexplicable oddities or apparent caprices in my schedule were usually explained by reference to such things. It is fitting that the proprieties of torcyrus be respected by her Tatrix, even when they might appear arbitrary, had said Ligurious.
I looked up at the ceiling, in the hot Corcyran night.
Was I the Tatrix of Corcyrus?
Susan, I was sure, believed me to be the Tatrix. of Corcyrus. So, too, I was confident, did my bodyguard, Drusus Rencius, once of Ar.
Too, I had not been challenged in the matter in my audiences, my public appearances, or even in court. By all, it seemed, I was accepted as the Tatrix of Corcyrus. Ligurious, first minister of the city, even, had assured me of the reality of this dignity. And had I wished further confirmation of my condition and status surely I had received it earlier today, from the very citizens of Corcyrus itself. 'Hail Sheila, Tatrix of Corcyrusl' they had cried.
'I am the Tatrix of Corcyrus,' I had told Ligurious. 'Of course.' he had said. Inexplicable and strange though it might seem, I decided that I was, truly, the Tatrix of Corcyrus.
I closed my eyes and then opened them. I shook my head, briefly. The effects of the wine I had had for supper were stin with me. I think that it might have been drugged. What purpose could have been served by such an action, however, I had no idea.
I bad had a strange dream, mixed in with other dreams.
I whimpered on the great couch, lying in the heat of the Corcyran night. I was Tatrix.
How extraordinary and marvelous this was! Too, I was not insensitive to the emoluments and perquisites of this office, to the esteem and prestige that might attend it, to the glory that might be expected to be its consequence, to the wealth and power which, doubtless, sometime, would prove to be its inevitable attachments.
In office, clearly, I acknowledged to myself, I was a Tatrix.
I wondered, however, if there was a Tatrix within me, or something else. I forced from my mind, angrily, the memory of the girls in brief tunics, chained by the neck, kneeling down, heads down, in the street. I forced from my mind, angrily, the memory of the women in the market, naked, chained in place, awaiting the interest of buyers.
I twisted on the great couch, in misery.
Nowhere more than on this world had I felt my femininity, and nowhere else, naturally enough, I suppose, had I felt it more keenly frustrated. I wondered what it was, truly, to be a woman.
I had had a strange dream. I had awakened into it, or had seemed to awaken into it, from another. In the preceding learn I had been on my hands and knees on the tiles of a strange room. I was absolutely naked. There was a chain on my neck and it ran to a ring in the floor. Drusus Rencius, standing, was towering over me. He carried a whip. He was smiling. I looked up at him, in terror. He shook out the long, broad, pliant blades of the Whip. It was a five-stranded Gorean slave whip. I looked at the blades, in terror. 'What are you going to do?' I asked. 'Teach you to be a woman,' he said. I had then seemed to awaken into another dream. In this one was Ligurious. I felt portions of the coverlet being wrapped about me, between my shoulders and thighs. My arms were pinned to my sides, within the coverlet. I whimpered. It seemed that I was only partially conscious. Then I became aware of someone else in the room, bearing a small, flickering lamp. Ligurious held the coverlet with his right hand, holding it together, holding me in place, helplessly within it. With his left hand, it fastened in my hair, he pulled my head back painfully. This exposed my features to the lamp. I sobbed, responding to this domination.
'Do you see?' he asked. 'Is it not remarkable?'
'Yes,' said a woman's voice. I gasped. It was as though I looked upon myself. She, as I had, earlier in the day, wore the robes of the Tatrix. She, too, as I had, wore no veil. In the madness of the dream, in its oddity, it was surely I, or one much like myself, who looked upon me. How strange are dreamsl 'I think she will do very nicely,' said Ligurious.
'fbat, too, would be my conjecture,' said the woman.
Ligurious moved his right hand, grasping the rim of the coverlet, tight about my breasts.
'Do you wish to see her, fully?' he asked. I whimpered. I realized he could strip the coverlet away, baring me in the light of the lamp.
'You are not so clever as you think, Ligurious,' she said.
'Do you think I do not see that you, in stripping her, would be, in effect, and to your lust and amusement, stripping me, and before my very eyes?'
'Forgive me,' smiled Ligurious, first minister of Corcyrus.
'Pull the lower portion of the coverlet down further,' she said. 'You have revealed too much of her thighs.'
'Of course,' he smiled, and adjusted the coverlet, drawing it down, over my knees.
'Men ate beasts,' she said.
'You well know my feelings for you,' he said.
'They will go unrequited,' she said. 'Content yourself with your slaves.' I feared the woman bending over me. I could sense now that even if she seemed superficially much like me, at least in appearances, she was in actuality quite different. She seemed highly intelligent, doubtless more so than I, and severe and decisive. She seemed harsh, and hard and cold. She seemed merciless and cruel; she seemed arrogant, impatient, demanding, haughty and imperious. Such a woman I thought, as I am not, is perhaps a true Tatrix. Surely it seemed more believable that such a woman might hold power in a city such as Corcyrus than I. The lamp again approached more closely. Again my head was pulled back, helplessly, firmly, forcibly.
'She is not as beautiful as I,' said the woman.
'No,' said Ligurious. 'Of course not.'
Then my hair was released and the two figures took their way from the room. I had then twisted on the couch, freed myself of the confinements of the coverlet, and, sensible of the effects of the wine, or perhaps a containment of the wine, had fallen into a dreamless sleep.
I heard movements outside the door. The guard was being changed.
I could not lock the door from the inside. Yet I lay nude, on my back, on the great couch. I wondered if this was brazen. I rolled to my side and pulled my legs up. I bit at the silken coverlet. I wondered if there was a Tatrix within me. I did not think so. There was something else in me, I feared, something that I had only become clearly aware of on this barbaric world, this world in which I must be true to my femininity, and in which there were true men.
I then understood, I thought, the strange dream I had had.
It was not contrasting now, I thought, perhaps two selves, or, more likely, two women, muchly resembling one another, but rather it had been calling to my attention, in its figurative imagery, in the symbolic transformations common to dreams, a discrepancy between what I in actuality was and what it was expected, doubtless, that a Tatrix should be. The contrast, I realized, had been clear, I helpless, sobbing under the domination of Ligurious, little better than a slave, and she above me, far superior me, haughty, decisive, imperious, cold and powerful. I sobbed. I knew then from the dream, or from what had seemed a dream, that there was no Tatrix in me. I was not a Tatrix, not in my heart. I was, at best, something different. Angrily I arose from the couch. I went to the window. I put my hands on the bars. Many times, secretly, I had tried them. They were heavy, narrowly set, reinforced, inflexible. I laid my cheek gently against them. They felt cool. I then drew back and, my hands on the bars, looked out, across the rooftops of Corcyrus, to the walls of the city, and to the fields beyond. The city was muchly dark. Some of the major avenues, however, such as that Iphicrates, were illuminated, dimly, by lamps. In many Gorean citim when men go out at night, they carry their own light, torches or lamps. I then looked upward, into the humid night. I could see two of the three moons of this world. I then, suddenly, angrily, shook the bars. They were for my own protection, I had been informed. But I could not open them, or remove them, say, with knotted clothing or bedding, to lower myself to the levels below. They might indeed serve to keep others out, perhaps climbing upward, or descending on ropes from the roof above, but they surely served as well, and as perfectly, to keep me within! What is this room, I asked myself, is it truly my protected quarters, or is it, rather, my cell? I walked back to the center of the room, near the great couch. I looked at the bars. Then I went to the long mirror behind the vanity. I looked at myself, in the mirror, in the dim moonlight, filtered into the room. She is rather pretty, I thought. She may be pretty enough, even, to be a slave.
