by John Norman
“Ar, Lady,” said Ligurious.
“Our allegiances, I thought,” I said, “are with Cos.”
“Drusus Rencius is a renegade, Lady,” said Ligurious. “Do not fear. He now serves only himself and silver.”
I inclined my head to Drusus Rencius. He was a dark-haired, tall, supple, lean, long-muscled, large-handed man. He had gray eyes. He had strong regular features. In him I sensed a powerful intelligence.
“Lady,” said he, bowing before me.
He seemed quiet, and deferential. But there was within him, I did not doubt, that which was Gorean. He would know what to do with a woman.
“He is to be your personal guard,” said Ligurious.
“A bodyguard?” I inquired.
“Yes, Lady,” said Ligurious.
I looked at the tall, spare man. He carried a helmet in the crook of his left arm. It was polished but, clearly, it had seen war. The hilt of the sword in his scabbard, at his left hip, too, was worn. It was marked, too, with the stains of oil and sweat. His livery, too, though clean, was plain. It bore the insignia of Corcyrus and of his standing in the guards, that of the third rank, the first rank to which authority is delegated.
In the infantry of Corcyrus the fifth rank is commonly occupied for at least a year. Promotion to the fourth rank is usually automatic, following the demonstrated attainment of certain levels of martial skills. The second rank and the first rank usually involve larger command responsibilities. Beyond these rankings come the distinctions and levels among leaders who are perhaps more appropriately to be thought of as officers, or full officers, those, for example, among lieutenants, captains, high captains and generals. That Drusus Rencius was first sword among the guards, then, in this case, as his insignia made clear, was not a reference to his rank but a recognition of his skill with the blade.
That these various ranks might be occupied, incidentally, also does not entail that specific command responsibilities are being exercised. A given rank, with its pay grade, for example, might be occupied without its owner being assigned a given command. The command of Drusus Rencius, for example, if he had had one, would presumably be relinquished when he took over his duties as a personal guard. His skills with the sword, I suppose, had been what had called him to the attention of Ligurious.
These, perhaps, had seemed to qualify him for his new assignment. To be a proper guard for a Tatrix, however, surely involved more than being quick with a sword. There were matters of appearances to be considered. I felt a bit irritated with the fellow. I would put him in his place.
“The guard for a Tatrix,” I said to Ligurious, “must be more resplendent.”
“See to it,” said he to Drusus Rencius.
“As you wish,” responded Drusus Rencius.
Ligurious had then left.
Drusus Rencius looked down at me. He seemed very large and strong. I felt very small and weak.
“What is wrong?” I asked, angrily.
“It is nothing,” he said.
“What!” I demanded.
“It is only that I had expected, from what I have heard, that Lady Sheila would be somewhat different than I find her.”
“Oh,” I said.
He continued to look at me.
“In what way?” I asked.
“I had expected Lady Sheila to seem more of a Tatrix,” he said, “whereas you seem to me to be something quite different.”
“What?” I asked.
“Forgive me, Lady,” be smiled. “If I answered you truthfully I would fear that I might be impaled.”
“Speak,” I said.
He smiled.
“You may speak with impunity,” I said. “What is it that I seem to be to you?”
“A female slave,” he said.
“Oh!” I cried, in fury.
“Does Lady Sheila often go unveiled?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “A Tatrix has no secrets from her people. It is good for her people to be able to look upon their Tatrix?”
“As Lady Sheila wishes,” he said, bowing. “May I now withdraw?”
“Yes!” I said. He had seen me without my veil. I felt almost naked before him, almost as though I might truly be a slave.
“I shall be at your call,” he said. He then withdrew.
***
I twisted on the couch and turned again to my back. I looked up at the ceiling.
The effects of the wine I had had for supper were still with me. I think it may have been drugged.
It was not easy to sort things out. I had had a strange dream, mixed in with other dreams.
“I am the Tatrix of Corcyrus,” I had said to Ligurious, in the palanquin. “Of course,” he had said.
How can I be the Tatrix of Corcyrus, I asked myself. Does this make any sense? Is it not all madness? I could understand how women could be brought to this world to be put in collars and made slaves, like Susan, for example, and doubtless others. That was comprehensible. But why would one be brought here to rule a city? Surely such positions of privilege and power these Goreans would reserve for themselves. The more typical position for an Earth girl, I suspected to find herself at the feet of a master. I wondered if I were truly the Tatrix of Corcyrus. Surely I had seldom exercised significant authority. Too, at times, my schedule seemed a bit erratic or strange. At certain Ahn I was expected to be in the public rooms of the palace and, at others, even at the ringing of palace time bars, for no reason I clearly understood, I was expected to be in my quarters.
“Certain traditions customarily govern the calendar of the Tatrix,” Ligurious had informed me. At certain times I had been conducted to my quarters, I had thought that sessions of important councils had been scheduled, councils at whose sessions it would be natural to expect the presence of the Tatrix. The matters to be discussed in certain of these meetings, however, I had learned from Ligurious, were actually too trivial to warrant the attention of the Tatrix. Thus it was not necessary that I attend. In certain other cases, I was informed, the meetings had been postponed or canceled. Protocols and customs are apparently extremely significant to Goreans. What seemed 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 Corcyrus 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 Corcyrus!” 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 still 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 had 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 Tatri
x.
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 dream, 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 dreams!
“I think she will do very nicely,” said Ligurious.
“That, 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 are 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 cities, 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. Susan, I recalled, had thought it possible that a man, some men at least, might find her of interest, really of interest, of sufficient interest to be worth putting in bondage. I wondered if she could please a man. Perhaps if she tried very hard to be pleasing, some man, in his kindness, might find her acceptable. I turned before the mirror, studying the girl that I was thusly displaying. Yes, I thought, it is not impossible that I she might be considered worthy of a collar. “Mistress would look well being sold from a block,” Susan had said.
“Are you free, Tiffany?” I asked the image in the mirror. “Yes,” I told myself. “I am free.” I turned my left thigh to the mirror, I lifted my chin. I studied the girl in the mirror. I wondered what she would like, with a brand, with a collar. “You see, Tiffany,” I said. “You are not branded. You are not collared.”
I looked at the girl in the mirror. I wondered who I was, what I was.
“I am the Tatrix of Corcyrus!” I said.
But the girl in the mirror did not appear to be a Tatrix. She appeared, clearly, to be something else.
I forced from my mind the memory of the slaves I had seen earlier, the girls in the street, in their one-piece, skimpy garments, heads down, kneeling, chained together by the neck, the girls in the market,
in their chains, stark naked, kneeling, too, their heads down to the warm cement, being publicly displayed for sale.
“What are you?” I asked. “Do you not dare speak? Then show me. Show me!”
Slowly, numbly, frightened, I turned about and went to the foot of the great couch. I knelt there, and, putting my head down, tenderly lifted up, in two hands, a length of the chain that lay coiled there. I kissed it. “No!” I cried out to myself, replacing the chain. But then I rose up and, timidly, softly, went to the wall where the whip hung. I removed the whip from its hook and knelt down with it. I wrapped its blades back about the handle. Then, humbly, my head down, submissively, near the point where the five long, soft blades join the staff, holding it in both hands, I kissed it. “No!” I wept, in protest. Then I replaced the whip on its hook.
I went then again to the mirror. The vanity was low enough, meant to be used by a kneeling woman, and I was back far enough, that I could see myself on the tiles, completely. I saw the girl in the mirror kneel down. “No,” I said. I saw her kneel back on her heels. I saw her straighten her back, and lift her chin, and put her hands on her thighs. “No!” I said. I saw her spread her knees. “No,” I said. “No! No!” I had seen girls in the palace do that, for example, when a free man had entered a room.
Sometimes, too, in identically this same position, they would keep their heads submissively lowered, until given permission to raise them. This variation, and similar variations, depend on the specific discipline to which a given girl is subjected. The head is usually kept raised; this precludes the necessity of a specific command to lift the head; in the headlifted position she has no choice but to bare her facial beauty to the viewer; too, her least expression may be read; too, of course, she can see who is in the room with her and is thus better able, even from the first instant, to discern his moods, anticipate his needs, and respond to his commands.
I leaped to my feet, furious with the girl in the mirror. She lied! She lied! I fled to the wardrobe. I flung back the sliding doors. I am Tatrix! I tore my yellow robe, that of brief silk, from its carved hanger. I put it on me, swiftly, angrily, belting it, tightly. I ran to the door leading from my quarters. I reached to the handle and jerked it wildly towards me. I had opened this door a hundred times. I cried out in surprise, in misery. This time it did not yield. I jerked twice again, both of my hands on the handle. The door, somehow, was fastened on the other side. It seemed, or something on it seemed, to strike against some obstacle or barrier.