“Yes, Master!” said Publia.
“Yes, Master!” said Claudia.
“You, Publia,” he said, “prepared well to surrender yourself to Cosians.”
“Yes, Master,” she wept.
“You, Claudia,” he said, “were a traitress to your city.”
“Yes, Master,” she wept.
“And you are now both slaves,” he said.
“Yes, Master!” they said.
“And so,” he said, “you will enter Port Cos as the slaves, and sluts, you are.”
“Master?” asked Publia.
“The movements of your hips, and your squirmings and glances,” he said, “will leave no doubt as to the fittingness of your bondage.”
“Master!” wept Publia, in protest.
“Please, no, Master!” called Claudia.
“Your movements for the most part,” said the keeper, “will be slow and sensuous, but terribly meaningful, sexually. These may be mixed upon occasion with sudden, perhaps surprising, movements, almost spasmodic, or spasmodic, in nature. I trust that you understand these things. If there is difficulty in the matter it may perhaps be clarified by the whip.”
Publia threw back her head and wept, in the harness.
“You. Publia, first,” he said. He then required of her a variety of forward and backward movements of the lower belly, and then lateral movements of the hips. These things ranged, in their varieties, from almost imperceptible extensions and shadings, to sharp, forward thrusts, such as bumps and buckings, and from scarcely detectable lateral movements, to tantalizing or abrupt movements, to rhythmical swayings. He had Claudia, too, then, do these things. “Now,” said he, “consider transitions among such movements.” My hands clenched on the rail. The slaves were beautiful. “Now,” said he, “slow, rotatory movements of the hips, slow, agonizingly slow, grinding movements!” I thought that many on the piers might have to hurry their own girls home, if they could make it that far. I was almost in pain.
“Well done, girls,” said the keeper. “And do not forget the beauty of your breasts, and your squirmings, your glances and smiles.”
Publia cried out in misery.
We were now something like a hundred yards from the piers. Two of the fellows on the bow deck already had the forward lines in hand.
“It has been decided, slaves,” said the keeper to them, “that you will be sold at auction. In order, however, that you come into the keeping of Cosians, attendance at the auction, save by sales personnel, will be limited to Cosians. After a Cosian buys you, of course, he can do with you what he wants. We are now nearing the pier. I will point out various Cosians in the crowd, for there will be several. They are recognizable by their habiliments. You will then direct your glances and your movements particularly to them. Be pretty. Arouse interest in yourselves. We want them sweating blood when they bid for you!”
Aemilianus was already raising his hand to the crowds. There was much cheering.
“Look!” cried a fellow on the dock, pointing to the slaves.
“Yes!” said a man. “Yes!” cried another.
“Sensuous sluts!” laughed a man.
Claudia cried out with misery, but did not cease to move.
As so many were waving to us, I, too, with many of the others, at the starboard rail, waved back.
All seemed a riot of music and color.
“There,” said the keeper, gesturing with his whip, as we drew alongside the pier. “There is a fellow of Cos! Present yourselves to him! You are female slaves! Do it! And there is another!”
“I am not such a girl!” suddenly cried Claudia.
Then she threw back her head and shrieked, for the lash, swift, instantaneous, like lightning and fire, had called to her attention the mistaken nature of her claim.
She dangled and jerked in the harness, sobbing, wild-eyed, disbelieving, though she had been struck but once.
It was the first time in her life that she had felt the slave lash.
Its stroke was appropriate, of course, for she had not been fully pleasing.
She shook helplessly, miserably, in the harness.
Apparently she had not hitherto understood the nature of the monitory leather, the nature of its counsel, the nature of its reprimand.
Now she did.
She shuddered. It was to such an instrument that she, as bond, was subject.
She had felt it.
A thousand times better to kneel to it, to kiss it, and lick it in tender, prolonged supplication, than to feel it!
But she had felt it.
She was now different than she had been. Indeed, henceforth she would be forever different.
Why would it not stop hurting?
Would its flames consume her?
Much would she do now, I saw, to avoid any repetition of the burning terror of its kiss. Well now would she strive in trepidation, at a man’s feet, to be fully pleasing. That I could see in her eyes.
She now had some sense as to what it might be to be slave.
A humble tool, but well it keeps order amongst them, lovely beasts such as she.
“I am such a girl!” cried Publia, fervently, seeing the keeper turn toward her. “I am such a girl!”
“If she is recalcitrant, or not pleasing,” cried slave girls on the pier, “strike her! Strike her! Punish her! Punish her! Punish her severely!”
Slave girls, kept under strict discipline themselves, they wanted it imposed on others with the same authority, exactness and perfection that it was imposed upon them. They were deeply concerned that Claudia not be permitted to get away with anything, no more than they. Was she, too, not a slave girl? Thus, interestingly, it is often slave girls themselves who are most zealous to see that masters are strict with their slaves. But, too, interestingly, this is not simply a matter of not wishing to see other women exempted from strictures to which they are themselves uncompromisingly subject, but also because they have come to understand not only the gratifications and fulfillments of, but also the fittingness, the justice and rightfulness of, the order of nature in which they are involved. They want their masters to be masters, and to be strong, and they want other masters, too, to be truly masters, and be strong. In their hearts they know their rightful place, and wish to be there. Indeed, until a woman kneels before a man she is forlorn and homeless. Too, weakness, masquerading under diverse rhetorics, is seductive. Laxity of discipline is dangerous. It can undermine and destroy the edifice of authority.
The keeper turned back toward Claudia.
“I, too, am such a girl!” she cried out, wildly, swinging in the harness. Clearly she did not wish another blow from the disciplinary instrument. Yet, too, I think that the matter was far deeper than that, and this became clear but an instant later. The chain-and-leather harness, incidentally, is muchly open. This is what one would expect, considering its display purposes. On the other hand, a consequence of this openness, also, of course, is that it affords little, or no, protection, from the slave whip. Claudia swung in the harness to face me. Our eyes met. “Yes!” she cried. “Yes! I am such a girl!”
“You are,” I assured her.
“Yes!” she wept. “Yes!”
I saw then that her small rebellion had been no more than a foolish sop to her pride, one perhaps she thought in order, I wondered if she had uttered her silly noise only because I was there, who had known her when she was a mere free woman. I hoped not. But in any case, whether because of her own pride, in itself, or her concern that I who had known her as a free woman was about, or because of the strangers in the crowd, or the other slave girls, or whatever, how woefully out of place was that absurd utterance in her new reality! But then I saw in her eyes, she half laughing, half crying, that whatever had been her motivation, whether some or all of the things I had wondered about, or even others, that she had only wanted the reassurance of the whip, the reassurance of the inflexibility of the will of men, that she must now obey, and was truly a slave. Moving as she did, and being wha
t she was, a slave, was the deepest and most wonderful thing in her being, and she reveled in it, and loved it! She had wanted only the clear understanding that she must now surrender to it, that she was now truly a slave. She was elated in the harness.
At an end then were her vanities and her inhibitions, her reservations and hesitations, her reluctances and all the stultifying pretenses and falsities of her hitherto shackling, self-denying, alleged liberty, the burdensome equipages of meretricious, traitorous, self-betraying claims and dignities, all this now replaced with a new liberty, a genuine liberty, that to be what in her heart she truly was, an eager, ready, desiring slave, joyous in her categorical subjection at last to her true nature, that of the human female, in her place in nature, where she belongs, and wants to be, at the feet of masters. No longer would she be permitted to frustrate, other than in the way any beautiful woman must cast frustration about her by her very beauty alone. But she would belong to a master, to whom she would owe all, and have no choice but to yield all. No longer would calculation and business enter into her relationships, no more than into the relationship of a sleen and her master. No longer must she strive to protect an imposed, false image, but at last was free to be herself, secure in servitude, possessed and treasured, dominated, helpless and loving, the last particle of will removed from her, even the last iota of self-entrapping, troublesome waywardness no longer permitted to her. She is now vulnerable, absolutely choiceless, owned, and must obey, and in this she finds redemption and salvation. In her chains she finds comfort, meaning, identity, and reassurance. She gladly exchanges one liberty for another, that of intimidation, stratification and convention, of misery and loneliness, and unhappiness, for another, that of owning no option but to obey and please, to serve and love. No longer does she wander in forlorn distress in fields alien to her very nature; in being wanted by a man, and belonging to him, she has come to that country which she has long sought, and never dared to enter, that of herself.
This is sometimes spoken of in Gorean as the paradox of the collar, that only in the collar, only in subjection to a male, only in being owned, only in obedience, service and love, does woman find her true freedom.
The male longs for his slave; the woman for her master. Thus speak the genes of a radically dimorphic primate species. So saith nature.
“There!” said the keeper, pointing out a fellow with the coiled whip.
She swung about. “Am I pretty, Master?” she cried. “Will you bid upon me?”
“Bid upon me!” cried Publia to him. “I need a collar and a man!”
“There is another,” said the keeper.
“Perhaps it will be you who will own me?” called Claudia to him.
The forward lines were cast to fellows on the pier. In a moment they were made fast to mooring cleats.
There was much cheering, and waving, and calling out, between the pier and the railing. Drums and pipes on board the Tais sounded. A plank was being run out to the pier. The following ships in the flotilla, scarcely less resplendent than the Tais herself would, in moments, in turn, take their own berths.
“What manner of slaves are those?” called a fellow on the pier, apparently, by his garb, a Cosian, to the keeper on the bow deck. “Are they common slaves?”
“They are as common as you will have them!” shouted back the keeper.
“They are not branded, are they?” asked the fellow. “They are not collared!”
“Such details will be soon attended to,” laughed the keeper. I did not doubt it. Goreans are efficient about such matters. For an instant Publia, startled, and Claudia, frightened, stopped writhing in the harnesses. It was, after all, their own branding and collaring of which the men were speaking!
The transition to bondage is a profound one.
Well is the girl entitled to view it with some apprehension.
Who knows the nature of the bondage in which she will find herself, other than the fact that it will be absolute? Who knows the nature of the man who will buy her, other than the fact that he will be her unqualified master, and that his power over her, and his ownership of her, will be absolute?
“Move,” growled the keeper.
Then again they moved, frightened, obedient slave girls.
There was laughter from the pier.
“Wriggle!” called out a slave girl to them.
“Squirm! Squirm, Kajirae!” called out another.
“Do you not know how to squirm?” laughed another girl.
“How is it that these two are at the prow?” called another fellow.
“They squirm well,” said a man.
“Writhe—writhe—more slowly,” said the keeper to them.
“Aiii!” cried a man.
“How is it that these two are at the prow?” called the fellow again.
“Stop,” said the keeper to the two slaves. Motionless were they then, their arms high, their bodies beautifully elongated, stretched out, suspended from the outjutting beams in the shackles and harness.
“Beautiful!” cried a man.
The keeper then, with his coiled whip, in two expansive gestures, one to port, one to starboard, indicated, and called attention to, the lineaments of the figures of the two lovely slaves. “Can you not guess?” he asked the fellow who had asked the question.
“Yes!” said the fellow.
“Are they not worthy to be at the prow?” asked the keeper.
“They are!” called out more than one man. And they were worthy not only because of the beauty of their figures, so well displayed, but because of their facial beauty as well.
I saw a slave girl in her skimpy tunic, scarcely a rag on her, nuzzling a fellow, rubbing her face and head against his left shoulder. She was trying to distract him from the suspended slaves. She was urging a consideration of her own not inconsiderable charms upon his attention.
“But perhaps, too, there is another reason!” hinted the keeper.
“Oh?” asked his questioner.
“This one we call ‘Publia,’” said the keeper, “and this one ‘Claudia.’” As he said these names, he reached out, and, in turn, Publia first, flicked each of them with the whip. At this touch, even as light and playful as it was, each of them recoiled in dread. Both had now felt the whip at one time or another, indeed, Claudia only a moment ago. There was more laughter. “They were both free women of Ar’s Station,” continued the keeper. “Publia dressed in such a way that her caste, that of the Merchants, would be concealed.”
A Cosian merchant in the crowd cried out in anger.
“And that none would know she was wealthy!” said the keeper.
“She is not wealthy now!” cried a man.
“Let her now serve the wealthy!” called out a well-dressed fellow.
“Or serve a master of low caste,” called out a fellow in the garb of the metal workers, “with the same or greater perfections than would be required of her in a high house!” I smiled. A great deal, indeed, is expected in low-caste domiciles of slaves who were formerly of high caste. To be sure, they no longer have caste then, of any sort. Even the lowest of castes is then undreamt-of heights above them, for in such houses, as in any house, they are only animals.
“She was determined to survive the fall of Ar’s Station, whatever might prove to be the fate of her sisters in the city,” said the keeper.
There were cries of anger.
“Thus, by such means as provocative dress and habiliments, baring even her calves, hoping then to be taken for a lowly, beautiful, meaningless maid, by even refusing to cut her hair on behalf of the city’s needs, an act by means of which she hoped to appear more attractive to strong men, more attractive than might her sheared sisters, and a lack which, incidentally, as you can see, has been made up upon her, and by carrying gold with her, not shared with her sisters, with which she hoped to bribe captors to spare her for a nose ring and cord, she gave great attention to the readying of herself for a Cosian master.”
There was much laughter.
“And thus,” said the keeper, lifting the whip, “we think it is only appropriate that her planning not have gone for naught. It is to a Cosian, some Cosian, that she will be sold!”
Men, hearing this, slapped their thighs with pleasure. Slave girls, too, laughed.
“I am a Cosian!” called out a fellow. He, to be sure, did not wear the habiliments of Cos.
“Perhaps, then,” said the keeper, “yours will be the collar she will wear!”
“Perhaps,” he laughed.
“And this one,” said the keeper, indicating Claudia, “betrayed her compatriots, declared for Cos and took Cosian gold for treason!”
“But she is a slave now?” called a man.
“Yes,” said the keeper.
“Traitress!” cried a fellow, angrily, one in the habiliments of Cos.
Claudia looked wildly at the keeper. He nodded. He would permit her to speak.
“I regret what I did!” cried Claudia. “And I am only a slave now! Please have mercy on a slave!”
“She, too,” said the keeper, “is to be sold to a Cosian.”
“Traitress!” cried a Cosian. “Traitress!” cried another.
“Perhaps I will buy you!” cried another. “The whips in my house lash hard!”
“I will try to be pleasing, Master!” she wept.
It was very hard to hear now. The drums and pipes aboard the Tais were sounding. There was other music, too, here and there, from the piers, greeting other ships. There was much shouting, and calling, and raillery, between the piers and ships. Aemilianus, pausing now and then to wave to the crowd, and partly supported by Surilius, and most of those with him were conducted back from the bow deck. Calliodorus, I suspected, had now left the stern castle and was awaiting his friend, Aemilianus, amidships. Aemilianus, who had commanded at Ar’s Station, it seemed, would be the first to disembark. I, and some others, including the young warrior, Marcus, remained where we were. In a few moments, then, to drums and pipes, and cheers, I saw Aemilianus, unsupported, but obviously weak, make his own way down the gangplank. Behind him were Calliodorus and Surilius. Aemilianus and Calliodorus, and other officers, were embraced by several fellows wearing medallions of office at the foot of the gangplank. Following this official party, so to speak, the refugees of Ar’s Station disembarked, a few clutching tiny bundles containing meager belongings, some of their other belongings following timidly, on their own bare feet. Much of the crowd, in a few Ehn, then, had followed the procession of officials and officers, and refugees, and properties, from the wharf. Oars were inboard, stowed. Oarsmen and sailors now, save for a watch, weapons and sea bags over their shoulders, entering upon their leaves, and other fellows, their service now discharged, passed down the gangplank. Reunions were common and often demonstrative, those with relatives and friends, those of companions, those of masters with eager, scantily clad, loving slaves. Much the same sort of thing was occurring elsewhere, at other piers.
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