The Emperor

by Norman, John;

  A moment ago the door had been opened, and two men had entered the chamber, one richly dressed, one bearing a lantern.

  “What is going on?” had whispered Viviana, to the girl next to her. “It is early. The sales do not begin until noon.”

  “I do not know,” had said the brunette.

  The slaves stirred in the straw.

  “One is one of Varick’s men,” said a girl near them. “I do not know the other.”

  “He is surely well-placed,” said another.

  “Do these sluts not know enough to kneel in the presence of a free man?” asked the richly dressed visitor.

  “Kneel,” barked Varick’s man, lifting the lantern.

  There was a movement of straw, and the line at the wall was kneeling.

  “They are clothed,” observed the richly dressed man.

  The fellow with the lantern did not respond.

  “Varick spoils his girls,” said the richly dressed man.

  “That they may better learn, by contrast, once sold, what it is to be a slave,” said Varick’s man.

  “In so sharp a change,” said the richly dressed man, “shocked and terrified, they sooner learn their collars?”

  “Precisely,” said Varick’s man.

  “Let us look at them,” said the richly dressed man.

  The two entrants into the chamber, one of them with the lantern lifted, Varick’s man, then began to peruse the line of kneeling slaves.

  “Get your head up, slut,” said the richly dressed man.

  “Yes Master,” said Viviana, lifting her head, looking away from the lantern.

  The line was perused twice, carefully, and, at the indication of the richly dressed man, sixteen girls, including Viviana, with a rattling of chains, were removed from the line.

  “I would see these in the light,” said the richly dressed man. “Take them upstairs, and put them with the others, in the rear court. We will make our selections there.”

  The sand of the rear court, behind the house of Varick, within its rear wall, closing the grounds, was warm to Viviana’s bared feet.

  She was one of some fifty girls standing, waiting.

  “Days ago, bells rang,” said Viviana.

  “It was holiday,” said one of the other girls.

  “I know little of what has occurred,” said Viviana.

  “The matter is muchly done,” said the girl.

  “My Master was unable to flee the city,” said Viviana. “Affairs, I gather, went awry. He was killed before he could reach an outer gate.”

  “I heard guards speaking,” said the girl. “A revolt was afoot, thousands roving and ransacking in the city, for days, looting, and burning. How hard to accrue, how easy to seize, how hard to build, how easy to destroy, particularly under the cover of crowds and fire. The palace was attacked, the emperor, Ottonius the First—”

  “The Usurper,” said Viviana, quickly. “Aesilesius is the emperor.”

  “You are quite wrong, slave,” said the other. “The sword determines such matters, and, even if it did not, the accession was approved by the senate. It was accepted and ratified, all in a perfectly legal manner.”

  “Law itself rests upon the sword,” said another girl.

  “Ottonius, the First, is emperor,” said the first girl. “Do you dispute it?”

  “No,” whispered Viviana. She knew it was so.

  “Do not concern yourselves,” said the second girl. “What are matters of state to horses, pigs, and slaves?”

  “Pray, rather to Dira, the goddess who became the slave girl of the gods,” said another girl, “for a master who will not beat you as often as you deserve.”

  “To continue,” said the first girl, “the palace was attacked, and the emperor, Ottonius, the First, and others, escaped, but, days later, were apprehended. Eventually, fires diminished and a semblance of order was restored. The regime was to be swept away. An infant prince was to be crowned, the son of Viviana, of the house of Aesilesius, who died in childbirth, and the child’s father, a Drisriak, a tribe of the Aatii, was to be appointed regent by the senate.”

  “Viviana,” said Viviana, “did not die in childbirth, nor has she ever borne a child.”

  “How do you know?” asked a slave.

  “I have heard so,” said Viviana.

  “The revolt became understood as a revolution,” said the first girl. “It is well known that things are named for purposes, and that fools seldom look behind names. They see realities as they are named and fail to see realities as they are. A day of festival and regeneration was proclaimed, and the captured emperor, Ottonius, and selected cohorts, were to be put to death on a platform set up in the square before the palace, almost at the steps of the palace. The square swarmed with celebrants. One could scarcely move. The mood was joyful. Guards, soldiers, ministrants, servants of the temple, the rich and the poor, the high and the low, were in evidence. Citizens vied for points of vantage. Abroad was eagerness to see death. But the revolt or revolution was short lived. The time of vandalism and murder, blessed and sanctioned, was at an end. The legislation of the streets was over, the decree of mobs was no more. Authority abolished hoped to be replaced with authority renamed. But it was not to be. At the last moment barbarians, horsemen and others, Otungs and Heruls, intervened. The great square ran with blood, it is said to the knees of horses. Thousands perished. Men who came to see death themselves died. The revolt or revolution was done; ambitions were thwarted, fortunes were reversed; the barbarian, the Otung, Ottonius, the First, was again on the throne.”

  “It was on that day, I do not doubt,” said Viviana, “that my Master chose to flee the city.”

  “He was doubtless of the failed party,” said the first girl.

  “I fear so,” said Viviana

  “A man!” said a frightened voice.

  “Masters!” said another.

  The fifty slaves then knelt in the sand.

  “A line,” said one of Varick’s men, indicating a place.

  The girls then formed the line, as had been indicated, and then again knelt, facing the masters.

  Some six men were with the richly dressed person whom Viviana had seen in the subterranean chamber.

  “The tallest, that is Varick himself,” whispered the first girl.

  That was the first time Viviana had ever seen Varick, the man whose collar she wore. To be sure, the collar was a sales convenience, as she knew she was, strictly, a property of the state, whom Varick was expected to market, obtaining thereby his commission.

  Yet this gathering in the court did not seem a sale, at least not in any usual sense of a sale.

  “Stand,” said one of Varick’s men, he whom Viviana recognized as the same who had held the lantern earlier.

  The line rose obediently to its feet.

  Viviana stood well. She did not wish to be cuffed or switched. Slaves are not free women, who may behave and act as they wish. The slave, who is goods, and an animal, is to present herself well, as the beautiful, desirable, purchasable object she is.

  “Remove your tunics,” said the man. “Drop them to your feet, on the right side.”

  Viviana felt the slave girl’s thrill, obeying a dominant male. Even new captures, not yet marked and collared, sense such feelings. How keenly are they then aware of their womanhood, of the radical dimorphism of the sexes, of their slightness and softness, their marvelous difference from men, and what it might be to belong, as a woman, to a man.

  Viviana felt the sand beneath her feet and the warm sun on her back.

  The richly dressed man, accompanied by the fellow who had earlier carried the lantern and at whose command the girls had unhesitantly bared their bodies, then began to make his way about the line, sometimes pausing, and then, sometimes, going back a bit, and then again proceeding. He then returned to
the line, coursing it a final time.

  “I will take this one, and this one, and this one,” he said. In the end, twelve girls, one of them Viviana, were pointed out.

  “Reclothe yourselves,” said the fellow who had carried the lantern, and the slaves slipped back into their tunics.

  The twelve girls designated, now again tunicked, were arranged, standing, in a vertical line, one behind the other, in order of height, the tallest girl first, which is common in such arrangements. This line was oriented facing the interior gate of the court. Viviana was seventh in the line.

  “Return the others to their holding areas,” said Varick to one of his men.

  “You others, form a line, follow me,” said the fellow.

  Shortly, the only slaves left in the court were the twelve who had been selected out from the others.

  “An excellent choice,” said Varick to the richly dressed man.

  “Not an easy choice,” said the richly dressed fellow. “They are all superb.”

  “We endeavor to have them so,” said Varick.

  “I do not know what is going on,” thought Viviana to herself. And she was reasonably sure that the other girls were as ignorant of matters as herself. One seldom explains matters to slaves. Why should one? They are slaves. Who would stop and explain matters to domestic animals, to vardas, pigs, horses, or slaves?

  One of the men with Varick had withdrawn from the court, and had now returned with a length of chain, with collars.

  “How is it,” asked Varick, of the richly dressed man, “that you are not in the livery of the palace?”

  “Few are now to know of this,” said the richly dressed man. “It is to be a surprise.”

  “He spoke of the livery of the palace,” said Viviana to herself. “Can he be of the palace? I am afraid.”

  “Have you heard aught of the Drisriak prince, the conspirator, Ingeld?” asked Varick.

  “No,” said the richly dressed man, “but he must be in the city. They search for him, door to door, domicile to domicile. He cannot escape.”

  “It is said,” said Varick, “that the exarch, Sidonicus, and the deputy exarch, Fulvius, have disappeared.”

  “I know nothing of that,” said the richly dressed man.

  “It is rumored that they were slain by order of the crown,” said Varick.

  “I do not think it likely,” said the richly dressed man. “It is unpopular, even hazardous, to kill a common ministrant, and surely it would be politically injudicious, extremely so, to kill an exarch or a deputy exarch. Instantly they would be transformed into martyrs, even saints.”

  “But secretly?” asked Varick.

  “Unlikely,” said the richly dressed man. “Secrets are dangerous. They are seldom kept.”

  “Perhaps they are in hiding,” said Varick.

  “I see no point in that,” said the richly dressed man. “They are ministrants. If accused or charged, they need only appear dismayed and scandalized, and deny complicity in any crime, of whatever magnitude. Blood seldom sticks to such hands.”

  “Perhaps they were done away with by their own followers, outraged and resentful, after the fiasco of the revolution, and the massacre in the palace square,” said Varick.

  “Perhaps,” said the richly dressed man, “but I think it unlikely. It seems to me that ignorant dupes would not associate them with the disaster, and that dissident elements would wish to retain the cunning and prestige of their leadership.”

  “To try again,” said Varick.

  “Of course,” said the richly dressed man.

  “But where then are they?” asked Varick.

  “I do not know,” said the richly dressed man.

  “I suspect they were slain, somehow, by someone, their bodies then disposed of in some carnarium,” said Varick.

  “Perhaps,” said the richly dressed man. “I do not know.”

  “There are many mysteries in the world,” said Varick.

  “True,” said the richly dressed man.

  Varick then turned to the line of standing, waiting girls, that selected twelve, amongst whom, in seventh place, was Viviana. All stood well, as was fitting, soft, slender, and tunicked; none dared meet his eyes. Such boldness might be deemed effrontery. He regarded the line for a moment. “I trust they will prove satisfactory,” he said.

  “I have no doubt of it,” said the richly dressed man.

  Varick then nodded to the fellow who had withdrawn from the court, and then returned with the chain and collars.

  That fellow then moved to the back of the line.

  The line was then knelt.

  At this point the richly dressed man withdrew.

  Kneeling is common with slaves, as it betokens their radical difference from the free, their inferiority, their meaninglessness, and submission. The slave, aware of what she is, accepts and welcomes this position. She feels its rightfulness for her. She wants to be on her knees, and is thrilled to be so. Often even the body of a free woman flames with femininity when she finds herself on her knees before a man. How perfect and right, despite her chagrin, her possible protests and tears, it suddenly seems to her. How she then understands what she is, a female. Another advantage of kneeling the woman is that she is then better held in place. Viviana heard the sound of chains behind her. A kneeling woman is less likely to bolt. One commonly begins a coffling with the last girl in the line, and then moves forward. This practice, like kneeling, particularly in the case of new slaves, tends to reduce the possibility of bolting. The girl may not even see the collar until she is its prisoner. There is a click, and she knows she has been added to the chain. Women, incidentally, understand chains and ropes. Few have not, if only in their imagination, felt them on their bodies. Many women have brought their fingers to their throats, softly, delicately, carefully, apprehensively, wondering what it would be to feel that wonderful, marvelous part of their bodies closely encircled with the locked collar of a master. Sometimes a woman, a free woman, of course, as a joke, is chained in her sleep, and placed gently on the floor, her neck fastened to the foot of the bed, thus to awaken, in consternation, and realize her womanhood and what might be done with it, should men choose. Sometimes an interested party contacts a dealer and requisitions a particular woman. The woman, usually wholly unsuspecting, is then, commonly, when convenient, rendered unconscious, usually as a result of the administration of a drug. She is then, while unconscious, after being stripped and chained, delivered to the appointed venue. There she awakens, to begin her new life. Perhaps she is aware of the collar on her neck. Surely she is aware of the chains on her fair limbs. Perhaps, in one corner of the room, she sees a glowing brazier from which protrudes the handle of an iron.

  Viviana, as she knelt in the sand, in line, heard the snap of a collar behind her, and knew that the girl behind her was now on the chain. She, Viviana, knew that she would be next. She knelt straight, preparing her body.

  “May I speak, Master?” asked the girl behind her.

  “How bold,” thought Viviana, “that she would dare speak. She must be a very brave girl. Perhaps she is unusually beautiful, and thus hopes to trade on her attractions. Still, even though she is beautiful, even very beautiful, she is only a slave. Might she not be beaten for her presumption?” Viviana was sure that she herself would have been cuffed or switched, perhaps even lashed, had she dared be so bold.

  “What do you want?” asked the master. There was a tiny sound of links. Viviana could sense the chain and collar dangling from his hand.

  “Handsome Master,” said the girl behind her, “though I am only a worthless slave, yet I am a woman and as such am subject to the pangs and torments of an unsatisfied curiosity. I am helpless and in agony. I suffer. Please have mercy on a meaningless beast and assuage its curiosity. Please consider my agony, and do as much for me, unworthy though I am, as you might for a nobler an
imal, could they but speak and understand, a pig or dog. I beg it, kind, handsome Master! What is to be our lot, what is to be done with us?”