any other domestic animal which might belong to someone else. In this sense the slave is accorded some protection from free persons who do not own her in virtue of certain general considerations of property law. The power of the master over the slave, on the other hand, is absolute. He can do whatever he wishes with her. She belongs to him, completely. 'You do grant then,' he said, 'that your treatment of her was severe?'
'But intentionally so,' I said, grimly, looking after the girl, not small in the distance.
'Unnecessarily severe?' he asked.
'I do not understand,' he said.
'It was measured perfectly to her, and her act, and my plans.'
'Your plans?' he asked.
'Yes,' I said. 'That is the difference between your measurements and mine.'
'I do not understand,' he said.
'I wish her to understand what can be done to her,' I said.
'You speak as though you intend to own her,' he said.
'I do intend to own her,' I said.
'Oh?' asked Marcus.
'Yes,' I said. 'She will figure in my plans.'
'I see,' he said, softly.
'She is a field slave,' I said. 'I would suppose Appanius, who does not seem enamored of her, will let her go for a pittance, perhaps no more than a handful of copper tarsks.'
'That is a curvaceous female to acquire for a few copper tarsks,' he said. 'You noticed?' I said.
He laughed.
'There she is,' I said, pointing.
'Yes,' he said.
Her figure was now tiny, far away. She had stopped at the crest of a small hill, and was kneeling there, wearily, apparently to rest, her head down. The vessels of water were on the ground.
'I am touched by your concern, or reservations, pertaining to the severity of my discipline for her, denying her slave use,' I said.
He shrugged.
'Perhaps it is motivated by your well-known kindness toward animals,' I said. 'Perhaps,' he said.
'But I wonder, too, if your concern might not have been self-regarding in some respect, motivated at least in part by a certain disappointment that you were, in accordance with my decision, denied an opportunity to search out, locate and exploit the vulnerable pleasures of the slave?'
'Perhaps,' he laughed.
'She is struggling to rise,' I said. The small figure was trying to get her legs under her, and rise in the yoke, lifting the vessels. One does this by crouching and lifting up, trying to do most of the work with the legs.
'The weight is really too much for her,' he said. 'She is not large enough and strong enough for such labors.'
'But those are the labors to which she has nonetheless been set by her master, Appanius, and the whip masters in the fields.'
'Much must she had offended Appanius,' I said.
'Apparently,' he said.
'She is on her feet now,' I said. She stood, unsteadily, the vessels swinging on the yoke ends.
'Yes,' he said.
'Did you think she was pretty?' I asked.
'Very much so,' he said, 'even in her present wretched condition, shorn, roughened and burned.'
'Look!' I said.
'I see,' he said.
The girl, at the crest of the hill, had thrown her head back, to the sky. We could not hear her, of course, but she must have cried out, or sobbed, with misery and frustration. Her shoulders shook. Her small arms moved, at the yoke, pulling. But she could not, of course, free them, fastened as they were in place, by her wrists, widely separated, at opposite ends of the yoke, thonged back against the wood.
'Her needs are still much upon her,' said Marcus.
'Apparently,' I said.
Then she staggered down the other side of the small hill, and disappeared from sight. The sun was now well behind us.
'Surely she would make an amusing, squirming armful of slave,' I said.
'You noticed?' he asked.
'Yes,' I said.
'Do you not think it was cruel not to put her to slave use?' asked Marcus. 'Not nearly as so cruel,' I said, 'as it might be a few months from now, when she will have been longer a slave.'
'True,' he said. Slave needs tend to develop and deepen in the course of a girl's bondage. At Lavinia's present stage of bondage she could not begin to suspect that her needs would be like later, how helplessly she would become their prisoner, how hopelessly she would become their prisoner, how hopelessly they would put her at a master's mercy. In the face of such needs, the stoutest collars, the heaviest chains, are but as gossamer. The depths of a slave's sexuality, and love, I think, have never been sounded.
'She was cruelly deprived, even so,' he said.
'We will make it up to her,' I said.
'Oh?' he asked.
'Well, perhaps we will,' I said.
'Oh?' he asked.
'Assuming, of course, that the intensity of her zeal, and the perfection of her service, warrants it.'
'You are serious then,' he said, 'About bringing her within the scope of your whip?'
'Quite,' I said.
'How does she figure in your plans?' he asked.
'You will see,' I said.
He wheeled his tharlarion about, and dust rose.
'Where are you off to?' I asked.
'I want Phoebe!' he said.
'It seems then,' I said, 'that it is not only the lovely Lacinia, former free woman of Ar, who has been frustrated.'
'True,' he laughed.
'But she is helplessly yoked, and must depend upon men, even to be released,' I said, 'while you are free to ride to your slave.
'And what of you?' he asked. 'Are you so unmoved by the charms of your little field slave?'
'I? I said. 'I think I shall to a paga tavern.'
I, too, then turned my tharlarion.
'And perhaps some former free woman of Ar in such a place will have five pierced metal tokens, purchasable for so little as a tarsk bit, threaded on her ankle cord tonight?'
'I shall race you to Ar!' I said.
Losing not a moment then, eager and laughing, we raced toward Ar.
20 The Slave Will Obey
'I love my collar!' she wept. 'I love my collar!'
'You understand what you are to do?' I asked.
'Yes, yes, yes!' she wept.
I lifted my hand and her body leaped up, to resume contact with it.
