The Usurper (49 page)

Chapter Forty-Six

Cornhair shook her head a little, rustling the loop of chain wound about her neck, padlocked behind the back of her neck, fastening her to the others.

“Lift your head, stand straight,” said the slaver's man.

Cornhair lifted her head, and straightened her body.

The long chain passed through rings, fastened to the wall behind the slaves. Every four or five feet, or so, it was wound about a slave's neck and, as with Cornhair, two of its links were fastened together, behind the girl's neck, with a padlock. In this fashion a girl may be easily added to the chain, or removed from it. The slave shelf on which the slaves stood was some one hundred feet in length and some four feet in depth. It was about three feet in height, from the street. The hands of each slave were manacled behind her back. The height of the shelf makes for easy viewing from the street, and the surface of the shelf, reached by four steps, entirely along its front, is wide enough to allow a prospective customer to ascend to its surface and more closely examine a slave, to test her limbs and body for soundness, to examine her skin for blemishes, her teeth for regularity, and so on. The prospective buyer may also test the slave for responsiveness, as that is extremely important in a slave. She is not a free woman. It might also be mentioned that most female slaves are extremely, helplessly responsive. That seems to be an accompanying characteristic of the condition, and the collar. Also, they do not wish to be whipped. The market, as one would suppose, was one of Telnar's woman markets. There were several such markets in Telnar. This particular market was known as Tenrik's Woman Market. It was in one of Telnar's more shabby districts. It had seen its share of looting and arson. Indeed, from where Cornhair stood, her back to the wall, one of some twenty to twenty five or so slaves, she could see two burned-out shops. Some debris had been gathered together and placed to one side. Aside from this, things had returned muchly to normal here, and elsewhere, in Telnar. The guard planks of shops, with their rods and slung chains, which would be run through plank rings, were again stored to the side. Once more guardsmen, in their pairs, or larger numbers, made their rounds. Shutters were opened at higher levels. In two windows Cornhair could see plants. From another window, a pole was extended, on which washing hung. Men and women were about, passing by, conversing, shopping. A tunicked slave hurried by. Occasionally a man or woman paused to look at the slaves on the shelf. Cornhair could hear the tapping of a smith's hammer somewhere. Within the last hour a redhead had been sold from the chain.

Across the street, some fifty feet or so away, and to the left of Cornhair, as she was chained, there was a small restaurant, catering mostly to workmen, little more than a room, a kitchen, and a counter. Within there were four tables, and outside, two tables on the street. In such a place one might get some bread, olives, and cheese, which one might wash down with beer or a cheap, pale
kana
. Soup, if one wished it, could be ladled out from a lidded receptacle within the counter itself. Many took their orders with them, wrapped in folds of brown, waxed paper.

Cornhair felt the tip of the slaver's man's switch at the side of her neck. Frightened, she straightened her body more.

“I have seldom seen a slave so switched,” said the slaver's man, examining Cornhair's tortured skin.

“My Mistress found me displeasing,” said Cornhair.

“Women do not know how to handle women,” said the man.

“They handle them as they wish,” said Cornhair.

“Pray to Dira,” he said, “that a man buys you.”

Dira, the goddess of love and beauty in the Telnarian pantheon, herself a slave girl, the slave girl of the gods, was the goddess of slave girls.

“I shall surely hope that a man buys me, Master,” she said.

This hope was common amongst female slaves. The natural subordination of the female is to the male. There you have the perfect complementarity of owner and owned, of Master and slave. Men may own, dominate, and master their slaves without compromise, but they are also quite likely, having what they want, to be satisfied with them, and happy with them. Indeed, many men, at least to other men, boast of the quality of their rope sluts and chain bitches. Too, as every slave girl knows, men are easy to please. When a man has what he wants, he is content. Why should he not be? Most men are kind to their slaves and treat them well, as they would any other beast they own. Indeed, it is rumored some men, unwisely perhaps, actually grow fond of their meaningless, luscious chattels. Indeed, the female slave is very special amongst the beasts a man might own. In his slave the man has all the intelligence, beauty, needs, depth, emotions, and feelings of the human female, all her excitement, desirability, sensitivity, helplessness, and vulnerability, and it is all his, all safe in his collar.

Too, the intervention of the free male is often the only thing the slave girl can hope for, to protect her from the hatred, jealousy, and cruelty of the free woman. The free male is often the only thing standing between the slave and the free woman, resolute and unconstrained, driven by vindictiveness and malice.

“Tenrik will soon be about, himself,” said the slaver's man, “to hang your placard about your neck.”

“What will it say, Master?” asked Cornhair.

“I do not know,” said the slaver's man.

“Should we not be permitted clothing, Master?” asked Cornhair.

“Not on Tenrik's shelf,” said the man. “Do you think you are a free woman?”

“No, Master,” she said.

“Men like to see what they are buying,” he said.

“Yes, Master,” said Cornhair.

The fellow then seized one of Cornhair's wrists, behind her, it manacled, chained to the other, by three links. He shook the wrist, with a rustle of linkage.

“You are well held,” he said, releasing her wrist.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

“Tenrik will be along presently,” he said.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

It had now been six days since the raid of Abrogastes on the capital, leading to the encounters in the palace, and the abduction of the two royal princesses, Viviana and Alacida. As nearly as Cornhair could gather, the abduction was not generally known.

The last few days had surely been amongst the worst in Cornhair's life. In the lofty behaviors of her days of freedom, long ago, she had given little attention to the men and women she had routinely dismissed and slighted. They were not even enemies. They were too far beneath her. They were little more, from her point of view, than
humiliori
, save for their pretensions. Sometimes she mocked them, more often she ignored them, patently. Whereas she had frequently received the gratifications attendant on the superior person's license to despise and humiliate inferiors, she had failed to realize, in her naïveté, that these others, however mistakenly, might take themselves as seriously as she took herself, and that slights, and such, unavenged, not replied to, might rankle, and fester, for years. How pleased then would so many have been, had they discovered the downfall of that haughty, thoughtless patrician, even of the senatorial class, the Lady Publennia, of the Larial Calasalii, who had been the source of so many of their most keenly felt humiliations. Cornhair, in the matter of the Lady Gia Alexia of the Telnar Darsai, had fallen into the clutches of an enemy whom she had wholly forgotten, and even earlier, when aware of her, would never have accorded the dignity of being regarded as a rival, let alone an enemy.

“There!” had cried the Lady Gia Alexia, as she had snapped the collar on Cornhair's neck. And then had come the first of Cornhair's many switchings. The Lady Gia Alexia, almost beside herself with fury, had laid the switch liberally on the body of her slave, until scarcely an inch of Cornhair had not felt its stroke. She was even struck across the face, and she feared she might be blinded. She put her head down. She was struck even on the back and sides of the neck, and on the calves and ankles, as well as on her back and belly, sides, and arms and legs. “Please stop, Mistress! Please, stop, Mistress!” had begged Cornhair.

“There you are,” laughed the Lady Gia Alexia, lowering the switch, her arm weary, “once the rich, arrogant Publennia, scion of the Larial Calasalii, now a blubbering, beaten slave! Is it not true?”

“Yes, yes, Mistress,” wept Cornhair. “Please do not beat me more!”

“Can you cook, slave?” asked the Lady Gia Alexia. “Can you sew?”

“No, Mistress,” wept Cornhair, her body a shuddering terrain of stinging fire.

“Can you do hair? Can you draw baths? Can you mix cosmetics, perfumes, use the pencils and brushes?”

“No, Mistress,” wept Cornhair. “Such things were done for me.”

“Useless slave!” said the Lady Gia Alexia.

“Yes, Mistress,” said Cornhair.

“Perhaps you can launder, scrub floors, and carry a market basket behind your Mistress?”

“Yes, Mistress,” wept Cornhair.

“And carry notes for me, to my male friends?” she said.

“Yes, Mistress,” wept Cornhair.

“I have chains in my domicile, left over from a former tenant,” she said. “I am sure they will fit you nicely.”

“Yes, Mistress,” said Cornhair. “Thank you, Mistress.”

“You are familiar with slave gruel, are you not?”

“Yes, Mistress,” said Cornhair.

“We will find a pan for you,” she said. “In the domicile, as you are a beast, you will, of course, not use your hands to feed yourself. Too, as you are a beast, you are not to stand upright. You may, of course, sit on the floor, kneel, lie down, be on your belly, be on all fours, or such. Too, you are not to use human speech unless permitted. If you wish to speak, you must approach me on all fours and whimper, for permission.”

“Yes, Mistress,” said Cornhair.

Such strictures, of course, impractical on the street, were limited to the domicile.

As mentioned earlier, the last few days had been amongst the worst in Cornhair's life. She was confined to lowly domestic labors, primarily the scrubbing of floors, naked and shackled, and, in this task, was loaned out, for a pittance, to several neighbors. She was also used for laundering, polishing leather, polishing silver, and such. Occasionally, she accompanied her Mistress to the market, bearing her basket, some steps behind her. Once, on the street, encountering some of her friends, the Lady Gia Alexia had turned to Cornhair, and had held out her switch to her. “Take it, if you wish,” she said. “I give you permission to strike me with it.” “No, no, Mistress!” had cried Cornhair, terrified, and fell to her knees, and put down her head, and piteously, in her terror, kissed, again and again, the Lady Gia Alexia's slippers. One of her friends had laughed. “Now,” she said, “dear Gia, you need not cut off her ears and nose.” Cornhair, of course, from her days of freedom, was fully cognizant of the penalties which might attend such things, perceived imperfections in a slave's deportment or service, things, for example, such as failing to speak deferentially to a free person, let alone such things as raising one's hand to a free person, or striking a free person.

Nights were unpleasant for Cornhair, for the Lady Gia Alexia kept her in close chains, and chained by the neck, closely, to a ring in the foot of her couch. The morning and bedtime switchings, brief as they were, were also unpleasant.

Cornhair, in her days of freedom, with her slaves, and, later, after her reduction in wealth and status, consequent upon the Larial Calasalii's loss of patience with her profligacy, with her single slave, Nika, had never considered that she herself might one day find herself in her present position, herself a slave at the mercy of a free woman.

The free woman hates the slave; the slave lives in terror of the free woman. And Cornhair was now a slave.

Aside from her various tasks, scrubbing, laundering, and such, Cornhair had also been utilized, as is not unknown for a free woman's slave, to convey messages on behalf of her Mistress.

Naturally it is much preferable to use one's own slave for such a purpose, particularly in certain instances, than to rely on the slave of a friend, a friend who has friends, with whom she is accustomed to exchange pleasantries.

The free woman's slave, as she is inconspicuous, generally not known, and such, is, accordingly, a frequently relied upon instrument in her Mistress' adventures. She constitutes an invaluable go-between in situations where a visible presence of the Mistress would be perilous, if not unthinkable. Indeed, the intrigues and assignations of a free woman would scarcely be conceivable were it not for the mediation of the free woman's slave. By means of the slave, of course, bearing the relevant notes back and forth, assignations, trysts, secret meetings, and such, may be conveniently and discreetly arranged.

Four times, and twice in one day, Cornhair had borne a note from her Mistress to a gentleman in the Lycon district, an attorney and rhetor, Titus Gelinus, prominent in the courts. Indeed, his cross-examinations, summations, and perorations were commonly greeted with applause by auditors, many of whom, it seems, had crowded into the galleries to hear him speak. This was particularly impressive because, apparently, this applause was not previously arranged for, and paid for, as was rumored to be the case in many trials. Sitting in on trials, and following interesting cases, and such, was a favorite pastime of many citizens of Telnar, at least those who, apparently, had little else to do.

Cornhair knew little of the law. She did know, even from her days of freedom, that the testimony of slaves was taken under torture.

“There are many welts on your body,” had said Titus Gelinus, when first Cornhair had knelt before him, head down, and held up, in two hands, she small, scented note she was to deliver.

“My Mistress was not pleased with me, Master,” had said Cornhair.