Part 3 (1/2)

She laughed. ”In two days,” she said, ”at festival, I will put you at stake as a prize for girls.”

There was laughter at this, and shouts of pleasure.

My shoulders and head fell forward and, bound, I shook with shame.

The girl turned. ”Follow me, Slave,” said she, imperiously.

I struggled to my feet and, to the jeers of the rence growers, and blows, stumbled after the girl, she who owned me, my mistress.

4 The Hut

In the stem of the girl's rence craft, she poling the craft from the stern, I knelt, cutting rence. It was late in the year to cut rence but some quant.i.ties of the rence are cut during the fall and winter and stored on covered rence rafts until spring. These stores of rence are not used for adding in the making of rence paper, but in the weaving of mats, for adding to the surface of the island, and for the pith, used as a food.

”Cut there,” said the girl, moving the rush craft into a thicket of rence.

One holds the stem of the plant in the left hand and, with the right, with a small, curved, two-inch knife makes a diagonal upward stroke.

We were towing a small rence raft and there was already much rence upon it.

We had been cutting since before dawn. It was now late in the afternoon.

I cut again, dropping the tufted, flowered head of the rence stem in the water, and then I tossed the stem onto the raft of rence, with the piles of others.

I could sense the rence craft move as teh girl s.h.i.+fted her weight in it, balancing it and maintaining it in position.

I cut more.

She had not seen fit to give her slave clothing.

About my neck she had coiled and tied a length of marsh vine.

I knew her to be barefoot behind me, in the brief-skirted tunic of yellowish-brown rence cloth, cut away at the shoulders to give her freedom of movement. She wore a golden armlet. Her hair was bound back with the bit of purple rep-cloth. She had, as the girls do in rence craft, tied her skirt high about her thighs, for ease in moving and poling. I was terribly conscious of her. Her rather thick ankles seemed to me to be strong and lovely, and her legs st.u.r.dy and fine. Her hips were sweet, her belly a rhythm made for the touch of a man, and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, full and beautiful, magnificent, tormenting me, strained against the brittle rence cloth of her tunic with an insolence of softness, as though, insistent, they would make clear their contempt for any subterfuge of concealment.

”Slave,” had cried the girl once, ”do you dare to look upon your mistress!”

I had turned away.

I was hungry. In the morning, before dawn, she had placed in my mouth a handful of rence paste. At noon, in the marshes, with the sun burning at meridian, she had taken another handful of rence paste from a wallet worn at her waist and thrust it in my mouth, again not permitting me the dignity of feeding myself.

Though it was now late in the afternood and I was hungry I would not ask to be fed again from the wallet at her side.

I cut another rence stem, cut away the tufted, flowered head, and threw the stem onto the raft.

”Over there,” she said, moving the rence craft to a new location.

She had made little attempt to conceal her beauty from me. Indeed, she used it to torment and shame me, using it, like blows and abuse, to increase my miseries.

This morning, before dawn, she had affixed my collar.

I had spent the night in the open, a foot or two from her tiny hut on the rence island, my wrists tied to my ankles, my neck tethered to an oar pole thrust deep through the rence of the island.

Before dawn her foot awakened me.

”Awake, Slave,” she had said.

Then, as casually as one might untether an animal, fearing nothing, she unbound me.

”Follow me, Slave,” she had said.

At the edge of the rence island, where her rence craft was drawn up on the sh.o.r.e, as well as several others, together with some rafts for transporting cut rence, she stopped, and turned, and faced me. She looked up into my eyes.

”Kneel,” she had said.

I had done so, and she had drawn out a handful of rence paste from the wallet at her side, and she fed me.

”Stand,” she had said.

I did so.

”In the cities,” she asked, ”they have slave collars, do they not?”

”Yes,” I said.

Then she had taken a length of marsh vine from a packet on her rence craft.

The, looking up into my eyes, smiling, close to me, her arms about my neck, she insolently wound the vine five times about my neck, and knotted it in front.

”Now,” she said, ”you have a collar.”

”Yes,” I said, ”I have a collar.”

”Say,” said she, her arms still about my neck, ”I am your collared slave.”

My fists clenched. She stood within my grasp, her arms on my neck, taunting me with her eyes.

”I am your collared slave,” I said.

”Mistress,” she taunted.

”Mistress,” I said.

She smiled. ”I see,” said she, tauntingly, ”that you find me beautiful.” It was true.

The she struck me suddenly, with savagery. I cried out with pain.

”Dare you aspire to me!” she cried. ”I am a free woman!” Then she hissed out, ”Kiss my feet, Slave!”

In pain, on my knees, I did so, to her laughter.