'Afterwards I was frantic that I must set him at his ease, that I must let him know that I was not offended. I must encourage him to return. I must see him again! I sent him a note, informing him that I would permit him to speak to me.'
'And then?'
'He did not come for two days,' she said, 'and when he came he contritely confessed that he had lacked the courage, he so unworthy, to approach one such as I, so high born and free. Soon one thing led to another, he even claiming that he was my slave in right, and in his heart, and not that of Appanius, his legal master. I was overcome. What free woman has not coveted such adulatory attention, though in her heart she knows it is she who in nature belongs worshipfully at the male's feet? Oh, yes, I was a pretty little vulo, ripe for the snare. There is a special room in which we agreed to meet.'
'I know the place,' I said.
'Oh?' she asked.
'Yes,' I said. 'It is in the Metellan district.'
'Yes,' she said. 'Well, it was there that the net fell. Now I am in a collar.'
'Yes,' I said.
I looked down at her, she kneeling so far below us, in the hot, whitish dust. 'Where I belong,' she said.
'True,' I said.
'May I be of further service to Masters?' she asked.
'I have obtained from you the information I wished,' I said.
'Then a girl is pleased,' she said.
I then slipped down from the saddle of the tharlarion.
'Master?' she asked. She had moved suddenly, almost involuntarily, as though she might have thought of leaping to her feet and fleeing, as I had dismounted, but she had had the good sense to think the better of it. Certainly she had not received permission to break position. She then knelt there, her back very straight, trembling.
'Lift your head,' I said. 'Look up.'
She did so. Her lower lip trembled.
I regarded her short brush of hair, the brief, tattered rag, scarcely more than a ta-teera, which was her only garment, the simple collar, no more than a strap of black iron curved about her throat, its small, right-angled, pierced terminations flush to one another behind the back of her neck, held together by the rivet, her blistered, burned skin.
'Field slave,' I said.
'Yes, Master,' she said.
'You have lied to free men,' I said.
She regarded me in terror.
'You told us that you had been brought in as a consequence of the levies, whereas it was in consequence of the couching laws.'
'Forgive me, Master,' she whispered.
'But I am not particularly angered,' I said.
'Thank you, Master!' she said.
'You hastened to rectify your account.'
'Yes, Master!' she said.
'And were on the whole exact, voluble and diligent in your subsequent responses.'
'Yes, Master!' she said.
'Do you think you would have lied to me, if I owned you?' I asked.
She looked up at me. 'No, Master!' she said.
'I do not think you would have either,' I said.
She shuddered.
'But, of course, I do not own you.'
'No, Master,' she said.
'But as you know, an errant slave may be disciplined by an free man.'
'Yes, Master,' she said.
'For example, her master might not be present.'
'Yes, Master,' she whispered.
'Her slavery does not exist only in his presence,' I said.
'No, Master.'
'It is uncompromised, categorical and absolute, at any moment, wherever she is,' I said.
'Yes, Master.'
'And thus it is fitting, is it not, that she be subject to the discipline of any free man?'
'Of course, Master.'
'And Marcus, my friend, and I are free men.'
'Yes, Master.'
'And you are thus subject to our discipline.'
'Yes, Master.'
'And you lied to us.'
'Forgive me, Master!' she begged.
'If I were your master,' I said, 'I do not know what I would have done with you. It is an interesting question. Surely, at the least you would have been stripped and tied, and given a lashing.'
She swallowed, hard.
'And I do not think you would soon forget it,' I said.
'No, Master,' she said.
'Do you think you would then lie to me again?'
'No, Master!' she said.
'You would attempt to improve your behavior, in all ways?'
'Yes, Master.'
I regarded her.
'Master?' she asked.
'I am thinking that since we do not own you that perhaps it might be fitting if your discipline were decided by your master, the noble Appanius.'
'Please, no, Master!' she said.
'It would be easy enough,' I said, 'to strip you and tie your hands behind your back, and then write upon your body some brief but suitable message.'
She seemed to pale beneath her burns.
'The left breast, as you know,' I said, 'it the usual place for such messages.' This is, one supposes, because most masters are right-handed.
'Please do not inform my master, Appanius!' she wept.
'You seem to fear him,' I said.
'Yes!' she wept.
'It is good for a girl to fear her master,' I said.
'You do not understand!' she said. 'I have already it seems muchly displeased him. Already I have been shorn and put in the fields! If I gave him further cause for discipline I do not know what he would do with me!'
'You might be whipped?' I said.
'He might have me thrown to the eels in his pool!' she said.
'Have no fear,' I said, 'you have been helpful and cooperative, and I have obtained much of value from our conversation, more doubtless than you understand. Similarly, as this is the first time we have met, at least formally, I am inclined, somewhat against my better judgment, to be initially lenient. It might be pointed out, for example, that you did not know the sort of men we were. Perhaps some men ignore lies in a slave, pretending not to notice them, or, mistakenly, graciously accept them as trivial, as merely a girl's peccadilloes. But we are not
