such men. We are not patient with such things. Even had you lied about something as small as a candy or pastry we would not have accepted it. We approve of, and expect, truth from a slave. In short, had you known the sort of men we are, it is my speculation that you would not have lied to us.'
'No, Master,' she said.
'But, as I have suggested, I am inclined to be lenient, in this first offense.'
'Thank you, Master,' she said.
'Also, of course,' I said, 'we are not your master, and it seems that serious or grievous discipline should be the prerogative of the master. These prerogatives we do not desire to usurp.'
'No, Master!' she said.
'Accordingly,' I said, 'your discipline is to be light.'
'Thank you Master,' she said.
I then lashed her head back and forth, first with the palm of my right hand, and then its back. Then, with the last backhand stroke, I struck her from her knees, to her side, and she was lying on her side, twisted, her palms down in the white dust. She looked back at me, disbelievingly, startled, tears in her eyes, over her right shoulder.
'Position,' I said.
She crawled back to where she had knelt, and resumed her former position, her head bowed.
I walked about her and then crouched before her.
I put my hand under her chin and lifted it. Her face was red from the cuffing. There were tears on her cheeks. Her lip was swollen. There was some blood at the side of her face. I removed my hand, and let her once again lower her head. 'Oh!' she said.
'You have a good belly,' I said.
'Ai,' she said, softly.
'And an excellent figure,' I said.
'Oh!' she exclaimed, softly, helplessly.
I removed my left hand from the small of her back, where I had held it, that she might not draw back more than I would permit. 'And you have at least the glimmerings of slave vitality,' I said.
She moaned.
'You are not going to lie to us again, are you?' I asked.
'No, Master!' she sobbed.
I then rose to my feet and stepped back a little.
She squirmed a little. 'May I speak?' she begged.
'Yes,' I said.
'That was a light discipline?' she asked.
'Yes,' I said, 'naught but a mere cuffing.'
Normally, of course, one cuffs with a single blow. She had, however, lied. Even so, I had, of course, pulled the strokes. One does not wish to injure the slave, only punish her. Had I struck her heavily, with the force easily summonable by a strong man, I might have broken her neck.
'I am sorry, if I have displeased Masters,' she said.
I did not speak.
'But Masters are wrong in one thing,' she said. 'What is that?' I asked.
'I have in me more than the glimmering of slave vitality,' she said.
'It seems so to you now,' I said, 'but in some months, when you are truly helpless under the lash of your needs, and you understand the prison in which they have placed you, you will better understand my words.'
'Even so!' she wept.
Her eyes pleaded with me.
'You may break position,' I said.
She flung herself to her belly before me, and pressed her lips to my feet. 'Please,' she said. 'Please!'
'You grovel as a slave,' I said.
'I am no longer a free women,' she said. 'I no longer have to pretend. I no longer have to lie.'
I looked down at her, pondering her needs. Her lips were soft on my feet, timid, petitioning.
'I am now half naked and in a collar!' she sobbed. 'I am at your mercy. Take pity on me!'
'You wish to placate masters?' I asked.
'If I have displeased them, yes!' she said.
'You would like to escape further punishment?' I asked.
'Surely it is understandable that a girl such as myself, one so helpless, one in bondage, would seek to avert the wrath of men, that she would seek by her curves, her service and love to soften the hearts of masters.'
Yes, I thought, that is understandable. Slave girls are, when all is said and done, in spite of their beauty, so vulnerable, so owned, so ultimately helpless. 'Please, Master,' she said.
'You wheedle and beg well,' I said.
She looked up at me.
'Doubtless you learned that in your first days as a slave, in the house of Appanius, perhaps desiring to be fed.'
'I am begging!' she said.
I looked down at her.
'Surely master understands for what I am begging,' she said.
'Oh?' I said.
'Command me to strip,' she wept. 'There is shade on the other side of the tank. The dust is cool there. You do not need a blanket or a wrap. Put me in the dust itself!'
I did not speak.
'If you wish,' she said, 'I shall serve you here, in the hot dust, in the glare of the sun.'
'A begging slave,' I commented to Marcus.
'Yes,' he said.
'Please,' she said.
'Kneel over there,' I said. I indicated a position near the yoke and the buckets, near the tank. Quickly she rose up and went and knelt where I had indicated. I then lifted up the yoke, which, as I have mentioned, was thrice drilled, once in the center, and once near each end. At these points leather thongs were wound in and around the yoke.
'Master?' she asked.
I put the yoke across her shoulders.
'Master!' she said.
I loosened the thongs at the center of the yoke and then, by means of them, looped about her neck and tied, fastened the yoke on her. I then used the thongs on her right to fasten her right hand to the yoke there, and then, to her left, similarly served her left hand. I then stepped back to regard her, fastened in the yoke, her hands widely separated.
'As you may recall,' I said, 'you incurred discipline twice, once for lying, for which you were cuffed, a preposterously light discipline considering the offense, and secondly for daring to suggest that a master might not be interested in the answer to a question which he had asked.'
'Forgive me,' she said.
'It is your business to answer questions, with exactness, and with the fullness desired,' I said, 'not to comment on such matters as their propriety or appropriateness.'
'Yes, Master,' she said.
'Your needs are apparently on you,' I said.
'Yes, Master!' she said, delightedly. 'But I am helpless!' She moved her head about a little, turning it a little from side to side, her neck within the loops of the thongs; too, she moved her hands a little, futilely, they held back against the wood, by the thonged wrists.
'Surely you are aware that a woman may be used in a yoke,' I said.
'Yes, Master!' she said.
Indeed, it is quite pleasant to use a woman in a yoke. Too, a girl is sometimes given to field slaves that way,
