9

Rain

I cut at the soil with the hoe, chopping and loosening the dirt about the roots of the sul plant.

The sun was high overhead. It was hot. There was a peasant's kerchief on my head.

I worked in my master's fields. I was alone. I wore a peasant's tunic. It was white and sleeveless, of the wool of the Hurt. It came high on my thighs. Thurnus had shortened it. His companion, Melina, had taken the Ta-Teera from me and burned it. "Scandalous slave! Scandalous garment!" she had cried. She had then thrown me a peasant tunic, which had fallen to my knees. Thurnus, wanting to see more of my legs, to her anger, had shortened it with shears.

I straightened my body. My back hurt. I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand.

"You will learn toil, small beauty," he had said when I had knelt before him, among the pilings beneath his hut, my hands tied behind my back, my neck roped to one of the pilings.

I remembered the morning bitterly.

"I am going to Ar with the master," had said Marla, turning before me. "Now who is the most beautiful?" she asked.

"You, Marla," I had said.

"Farewell, Slave," she said, and left me.

I had knelt there beneath the hut of Thurnus, in the Ta-Teera, my hands tied behind my back, my neck roped to one of the pilings.

To another of the pilings four beautiful she-sleen were tethered. They were on short tethers. They were sleek, lovely animals. My master had purchased them. They could not reach me.

Clitus Vitellius and his men milled about.

"I shall miss you," said Eta, kissing me. "I wish you well, Slave," she said.

Lehna, Donna and Chanda came to me, and kissed me, and hugged me. "I wish you well, Slave," they said.

"I wish you well," I said.

Slave Beads stood to one side, looking at me.

"Will you not say farewell to your sister slave?" I asked.

She came to my side, and knelt down beside me. "Yes," she said, tears in her eyes. "We are all slaves," she said. She took me in her arms and kissed me. Slave Beads was no longer the Lady Sabina. She, too, now, was only a slave. "I wish you well, Slave," she said.

"I wish you well, Slave," I said to her.

"Coffle line!" snapped a guard.

Swiftly the girls fell into coffle line. I watched them. I wished I were with them.

Each beauty knew her place.

They did not daily forming the line. They did not wish to be whipped.

Marla led the line. What beautiful legs she had. The girls extended their left wrists, for the rings to be locked upon them. They stood straight, their eyes looking ahead, under discipline. Maria's right foot determined the line. Each girl, with the exception of Maria, the line's leader, aligned her right foot with that of the girl before her in the line. Sometimes a coffle line is drawn in the dirt and the right foot of each girl is placed on it vertically, such that the line besects the ball and heel of each foot.

Clitus Vitellius did not so much as look at me.

The guard, who was the blond soldier, Mirus, whom I found most attractive of the men of Clitus Vitellius, after he himself, unlooped the coffle chain from his shoulder.

The girls stood erect, left arms extended, wrist straight with the arm, their left arms aligned, each at a forty degree angle from her body, right arms at their sides, palms on thighs, ankles closely together, bellies sucked in, chins up.

Marla's wrist was locked in the first wrist ring. She smiled. She was coffled. When the lock snapped on her wrist she placed her chained left wrist at her side, her palm on her left thigh, still looking ahead.

Lehna, who was very beautiful, was the next locked in the coffle. She placed her left wrist at her side, looking ahead.

There are a large variety of coffle arrangements, given mixtures and combinations of materials and bonds, and aesthetic, physical and psychological considerations. Coffle arrangements are seldom random. From the physical point of view, the most common coffles are left-wrist coffles, left-ankle coffles and throat coffles. Left-wrist coffles and throat coffles are useful trekking coffles. The left-ankle coffle and the throat coffle free the hands to carry burdens. Clitus Vitellius still had the wagons stolen from the camp of the Lady Sabina and so his girls did not have to carry the burdens of his camp. Such burdens are often carried by girls in ankle coffle or throat coffle, and are balanced on the head, usually steadied by the right hand.

Donna and Chanda were now added to the coffle. Their left hands, now locked in wrist-rings, lay against their left thighs.

There was another snap of a wrist ring and the chain bore yet another jewel, the lovely, half-stripped Slave Beads.

Last on the chain was Eta. The guard looked at her, and their eyes met, and then he put the chain on her.

I did not know why Eta was last on the chain. I knew the look in the eyes of the guard. He wanted her for his own slave. She looked frightened. He stood behind her for a moment, and she pressed back, putting her head back against his shoulder. Then he moved away from her.

There was a mark on the side of Eta's face, where she had been struck. Perhaps she had not been fully pleasing for an instant to one of the soldiers, or to Clitus Vitellius, and had thus been struck, and put at the rear of the chain. Perhaps she was at the rear of the chain because she was the most beautiful, and her beauty was being saved for last; thus the chain would have begun with the beautiful Marla and then, with a surprise, finished with a girl yet more beautiful than the first. But perhaps she was thought to be ugly for a day or two, until the blow healed, and thus, for ugliness, was put at the back of the line. Or, perhaps it was merely that the last wrist-ring had then been open, I being left in Tabuk's Ford, and thus there was no reason for her any longer to be excluded from the coffle. Thus, she would merely have been placed in the available wrist ring, in my place.

Sometimes masters punish us without explaining the reason It is then for the slave girl to guess and wonder, and try harder to please. Sometimes, perhaps, there is no reason! We are so much at their mercy!

Beside my knee, in the dirt, there was a pan of water, and one of wet meal.

The last girl, Eta, was now coffled.

"Stand easily, Slaves," said the guard, and walked away.

Marla turned to face me. She lifted her chained left wrist… "I wear the chain of Clitus Vitellius," she said. "You wear the rope of a peasant."

"Yes, Mistress," I said.

She turned away from me.

The men were now hitching the bosk to the wagons taken from the camp of the Lady Sabina.

Two peasant boys stood nearby. They looked at me. I, kneeling, clad in the Ta-Teera, my hands tied behind my back, my neck roped to the piling beneath Thurnus's hut, regarded them.

"Greetings, Slave Girl," they said to me.

"Greetings, Masters," I said to them.

They turned away, grinning, and left the vicinity of the hut.

The first team of bosk was hitched up, two of the great animals, broad, shaggy, with polished horns.

Clitus Vitellius was talking with Thurnus.

"I, and the men, and other girls," he had said, "will leave Tabuk's Ford in the morning. You will remain behind. I am giving you to Thurnus."

I had cried out with misery and horror in his arms. "Master!" I had cried. He had then gagged me. He then tied my hands behind my back, and took me naked and stumbling from his furs. He found an ankle stock of heavy wood near the perimeter of his camp area. He put me on my back. The stock consisted of two heavy, oblong pieces of wood, each about four inches thick, joined together by hinged iron. He flung open the stock. He looked down at me. I half reared up, struggling, to a sitting position, my hands tied behind my back, my eyes wild over the gag. Our eyes met. He then, swiftly, brutally, used me, and I, miserable, helpless, my eyes hot with tears, again could not resist him, and, again, unable to help myself, responded to him, and responded as a slave. He laughed at me derisively and then, crouching beside me, threw my ankles into the stock and closed it, one of the two four-inch blocks of wood on each side of my ankles, and flung the hasp over the staple, which would hold the blocks shut. Then, with a drilled peg and a bit of binding fiber, attached to the stock, he, slipping the fiber through the staple and securing it to the peg, fastened the hasp down. This would hold a bound slave. If. my hands had not been tied a padlock would have been used. Tied as I was I was the prisoner of the stock, its weight and constraint. I lay on the ground, twisting, moaning. It seemed my guts had been torn out. I looked up, miserable, at the stars.