Buy one, get one for free. (Please PM first.)

[Sweet_Denna]

Buy one, get one for free. (closed to Patrick1)

The market along the old port in the newly subdued city of Massilia was filled with so many people and stands that they spilled into the smaller side streets and up the hills that overlooked the Mediterranean city. Excited chatter and laughter filled the air, people were shoving past each other and the sellers tried to outdo their neighbors in praising their merchandise to customers.

But today, the port along the glittering sea did not, as usual, house the stands of vegetable sellers and fishermen. After the mighty Roman army had swept over Gaulic lands, finally breaking the resistance of even the very last tribal leader, the appetite of the winning warriors did not long for fish and mussels to celebrate their victory. On stands, wooden platforms, on carriages, in cages, and sometimes simply on the pavement, the best slave traders of the empire displayed the most beautiful women and girls, the most handsome boys and young men that the Roman lands had to offer.

One of the most ruthless and famous traders of them all, the Egyptian Abu Ghassan, had secured himself a superb spot on the seaside, where he had skillfully arranged the women and girls and one dark skinned boy on a wooden platform. Instead of tying them down with iron chains around their necks as most traders did, he preferred to secure his merchandise with small golden chains around their ankles, as to not damage the delicate skin and have some cheap bastard lower the price just because of chain marks on the expensive slaves he sold. He was known to only sell the very finest of girls and boys, abducted royalty, daughters and sons of mighty lords and very wealthy merchants, untouched and unspoiled, a quality guarantee Abu Ghassan swore to by his dear mothers life. Today, for this very special of occasions, he had put together an especially exquisite selection. One of the girls, a tall woman with honey colored skin was obviously a Saracen princess, her manner and allure left no doubt about that. She stood tall and erect; her fine longs legs clad in transparent silk recalled those of a desert gazelle. Her face was uncovered now, revealing a face of such delicate beauty that several onlookers simply stared at her in wondrous disbelief. She seemed to ignore everything that was going on around her and large, shiny black and khol-rimmed eyes gazed over the bustling market with almost arrogant indifference. Had it not been for the chain around her ankle, she might as well have been giving an audience at court. The same transparent silk that covered her legs also covered her thin body, leaving not much to imagination. Her breasts were firm and taut, her muscles delicately defined under her golden skin. Her silken black hair fell down her back in one thick braid.
The girl next to her was not older than eighteen and her beauty seemed to be the exact opposite of that of her royal Saracen neighbor. Thick blond hair fell around her round, girlish face in playful curls and over her shoulders, and the thick lashes adorning her dark blue eyes were heavy with silently cried tears. She was naked, her flawless young body exposed to the onlookers, a fact that she seemed most conscious about. But it was to no avail that she tried to cover her small breasts and her most private parts with her arms. Whenever a buyer showed serious interest, Abu Ghassan yanked her arms to the side, revealing her soft pink nipples and the faint silken blondish curls covering her mound.
Next to her stood a lavish young woman with large and inviting breasts, and wide, sensual hips who almost seemed to enjoy the spectacle that was unfolding before her. Beautiful gypsy jewellery adorned her earlobes, her wrists and ankles and was made soft clinking sounds when she moved or was carefully presented to an interested customer. Abu Ghassan praised her as a Gypsy princess, and described her dancing skills and her ability to satisfy any manly desire in the most colorful phrases. At the moment, the gypsy dancer playfully turned for the son of a rich senator, revealing her round and dimpled ass cheeks with a coy smile over her shoulder. The boy very obviously liked what he saw and started to feel up her soft flesh, an activity that made his arousal all too obvious under his tunic, much to the pleasure of other bystanders.
For the more distinguished customer, Abu Ghassan had brought with him two sisters from the far-away lands of Persia, both of which were kneeling on the floor of the stand, the older one obviously tired and concerned about her younger sister, a girl with an innocent and terrified expression on her beautiful face. The slave trader preferred them to kneel because nothing put off interested and wealthy customers like slaves that were almost keeling over with fatigue. Persian women were usually in high demand in richer households, since their quiet devotion and very good education appealed to educated Romans and made them stand out from the women of Barbarian lands. This pair was most exquisite, and the resemblance of the sisters striking, as both were blessed with the same ebony skin and the same fairy-like bodies that were now clad only in revealing silk tunics.

Slave traders usually did not fight over a stand next to that of Abu Ghassan, since it was usually impossible to make the own merchandise look appealing to buyers next to his. But this time, a young man had put up shop next to the feared concurrent, proudly displaying one single piece of merchandise in a wooden cage that was attached to the protruding beam of one of the large ships for better view – and what a piece of merchandise it was ! The daring slave hunter had caught a dangerous item to openly sell on the slave market in broad daylight - many a Gaul would have his head on a spit in the blink of an eye for the blasphemy that the young man had committed. For in the cage sat a young woman, a girl, clad in a tunic made of the most delicate fabric that revealed more than it covered. The manner of her dress and the golden bands around her wrists and ankles suggested that she was a Gallic virgin priestess in service of the goddess Arduinna, probably abducted right from her place of worship. Her blonde braids were half undone, and her small beautiful breasts were heaving in anger and mortal fear from what had happened to her on this most unlucky day.
Gallic priestesses were selected for their beauty and fairness as well as for their spirit and courage. Once selected as priestesses, they had to stay virgins until the day of their death. And this young priestess knew all too well that whoever would free her from this cage today would not pay any attention to her religious sensibilities, especially not the heathen Romans that she hated with all the might of her heart for ravaging the lands of her forefathers. She sat on the floor of the cage that dangled lazily in the soft sea breeze, throwing defying glances at the crowd of men that had gathered around her prison. The seller had trouble to keep them from groping her through the bars. He wanted only a serious buyer, and that had to be a man or woman of considerable wealth, to touch and examine the delicate girl, let alone take her out of the cage. Most of the soldiers standing around with evident hungry lust in their eyes would just damage her white porcelain skin with ugly marks and thus lower her worth and were too poor to afford her anyway. She was almost priceless as it was and the trader could only hope that a man wealthy enough to afford the Gaulic virgin would find his way to the market today. If he had to sell her on the black market, or, the gods forbid, to Saracen pirates, he would not be able to get half the prize that he was hoping for on the Massilia slave market.

In another corner of the market, a pock-marked and ragged looking trader offered a somewhat more affordable set of girls - peasants, daughters of small merchants, even common whores. To attract buyers, he displayed them in a more daring manner than his more expensive colleagues, having them kneel, exposing their pussies and asses to the passers-by, slapping their cheeks to redden the young flesh in an appetizing manner, spreading their legs and glistening pussy lips in the most degrading way. Soldiers were allowed to fuck the already deflowered whores right there and then, to see if they were to their liking. Right now, a dark-skinned Roman was ravaging a small blond girl with luscious breasts who were swinging back and forth under his merciless thrusts. She screamed in pain and lust as the soldier took her in front of the cheering crowd, she obviously was of the trade and had no honor to protect or shame to pretend.
Next to her, however, kneeled a terrified-looking brunette, her curls falling in playful waves over her shoulders and down her back, as one man was examining her firm breasts, his fist grasping a fistful of her beautiful hair. A few freckles adorned her cute face, her wide green eyes were still red from crying. Anxiously, she bit her red, full lips, making her small doll mouth look just a little bit more innocent. The customer patted her butt and spread her legs a little to examine her pussy, than stepped back and shoved two fingers in her mouth, to which she was so surprised that she choked and started coughing. The man let his fingers slide out of her mouth, wet with her spit, and shook his head. If he was to buy a girl, she had to be able to handle more than two fingers in her mouth. The slave trader slapped her face for that clumsy faux pas and she fell to the floor, softly sobbing.
But the seller had already turned his attention to another customer who was interested in a fiery redhead that was about to take the cocks of two young men up her ass and mouth, another common whore, but affordable to the lowly soldier.

It was absolutely sure that on this day, no man, no woman and no taste would be left unsatisfied. In a darker corner, a Celt offered chained slaves for the most perverse and sadistic of desires, beautiful fair-haired Gaulic peasant girls that stood huddled together in fear. A Mauritanian slave hunter paraded beautiful black women and men around, their hands chained together. It was a dark day for the subdued Gallic population, but a festivity for the victorious Romans that everybody would remember for a very long time.

 

[patrick1]

The three men

'Really? You won't accept twenty denarii? For the two of them?'

The eager young soldier showed the older man his money. 'Put it away, soldier. You can afford better than them.'

'I am no more a soldier sir. I am Troilus.'

Patricles, stroking the hair of the two slaves at his feet, smiled. He saw that Troilus saw how they flinched before turning their faces upwards into obedient responding smiles. 'So sorry master,' said the blindfolded one with blond hair. 'Arg-arg-arg-arg,' said the other, gagged.

'And yours would be perfect,' Troilus went on. He'd consumed too much of some slave trader's free wine, his garrulousness knew no bounds, he just had to tell this stranger of his dreams – dreams of two women, just like these...

'But one,' drawled Patricles in leisurely tones, ' as you can see is blind, and the other is unable to speak...'

'And you, you old bastard,' said a third man, pulling up a stool in the open-air cafe without invitation, 'you wish you'd torn out their eyes and tongue yourself, relishing every scream, and perhaps you still will.'

'Troilus,' said Patricles, pouring the newcomer a large glass, 'meet Erudio. He's got this odd idea that one should persuade one's slaves to desire their enslavement.'

'And this,' said Erudio, just fingering a black hair that was out of place, 'is the sad old torturer who -'

Perhaps this is enough of their chatter to know a little of them now. How each in their way owns a part of the world they're in. How easiiy they disregard the women at their feet, although Troilus is itching to ask Patricles if the blindfolded one might take him in her mouth. How their relaxed conversation belies where they sit – in the teeming slave market, where even now many caged women and a few men are weeping, begging, refusing, seducing, curling themseves into a ball - all helplessly and hopelessly, for they are slaves, commodities, their tears and screams and soft words all as unnecessary and futile as passing traffic or idle birdsong.

Listen: Patricles is telling Erudio he has seen the perfect new slave for a teacher such as him, 'Golden skin, a princess.' Ah, and then Troilus is asking Patricles what he looks for in a slave, and Patricles says 'Resistance. Courage. Will. Endurance.' And then both older men are encouraging Troilus to keep quite about his new riches, and this is their cue to stand, to guide the young man to the market where all three of them, despite their affected nonchalance, crave to be. And Erudio has seen the very women for Troilus: 'Persian sisters,' he says, 'pretend not to be excited about them, for is it not greater depravity, to take two true sisters, perhaps, and force them into...?'

Need he add more? Now they are at Abu Ghassan's stall and Troilus, despite the advice of his mentors, is already gazing through the bars at the ebony skin showing through the revealing silk tunics of the Persian women. But what's this? Erudio has caught Patricles admiring the Saracen princess in the next cage, and is already teasing him about it. But is he also going to bid against him for the beauty...?

 

[Sweet_Denna]

Abu Ghassan’s lips split into a wide smile as he saw the three men approaching his stand.
“Patricles.” The Egyptian bowed deeply before turning his gaze to the man at his side. “Erudio. What a lucky day that sees my humble stand graced by such esteemed visitors. You are most welcome, my friends.” He only briefly looked at the young soldier who stared at the Persian sisters with obvious interest. He would not be able to afford them, or anything else that Abu Ghassan sold, and the only reason that the Egyptian did not chase him away altogether was that he seemed to be acquainted with the two men that had come to his stall and that counted amongst his most wealthy and most experienced customers.

For Erudio was not a simple buyer of slaves. He was a true connoisseur, an artist even, a magician. Most people acquired slaves to get rid of tasks they loathed doing themselves, to show off their wealth, or to find sexual gratification – for these people, slaves were nothing more but a piece of merchandise, not higher valued than a finely crafted piece of furniture. But Erudio …Erudio hat raised the meaning of slavery, of submission, to a whole new level altogether. Patricles was a different matter. He, too, was a true master of his art. People often simply called him “The Torturer.” He had made himself a reputation that made some shiver in fear, others in delightful anticipation: Patricles provided spectacles that put any games, any cruelty on display in the arenas of the Empire to shame.

The young slave trader that had put up shop immediately caught on to the names that his Egyptian concurrent had uttered with such humility. Here were two men who would be able to pay the full price for his little catch! If he played his cards right and was able to convince either of them to buy the blonde priestess, he would go home a rich man.

“Patricles! Erudio! Welcome, welcome!” His raised voice cut through the respectful tone that Abu Ghassan had employed while speaking to his potential customers. “If ever there was a woman that merits your attention, it is this one here!” Stepping slightly to the side, he made an inviting gesture with both arms, finally pointing up at the blonde girl sitting in the cage and throwing the newly arrived men angry glances.

Abu Ghassan first smiled at the two men apologetically, whispering “He is new in the trade and does not know the very basic rules of courtesy.” Then he turned around to the young man and growled: “You better keep your loud mouth shut. Or I will throw both you and your Barbarian whore into the sea to drown like stray kittens.” The young slave trader grinned back at him. If only half of what people said about Erudio and The Torturer was true, if they deserved only half the reputation they had made themselves, they would know about the value of his “Barbarian whore.” He would not back down. Ignoring the Egyptian’s warning, he bowed lightly before the two men he longed to sell the priestess to.

Meanwhile, the younger of the two Persian girls had remarked the interest that the young soldier had in them and tightened her grip around her sister’s waist in fear, a movement that in turn prompted the sister to look up. Her shimmering black eyes met the Roman’s gaze and widening for the moment of a heartbeat, they seemed to plead with him – she herself was not sure for what. She kissed the top of her sister’s head, whispering a few Persian words to calm her.

The Saracen princess did not even look at the men standing next to the platform. Only once did her glance hush over them, without much interest and under half-closed, raven lashes. She shifted gracefully from one leg to the other, causing the thin golden chain around her ankles to emanate a soft metallic sound.

Abu Ghassan realized that the young man next to him might yet snatch away his wealthy customers and hurried to praise his wares: “Now, my dear sirs, for this most glorious day – may the Empire grow and prosper – I have brought slaves so beautiful that the sun herself covers her face in jealousy and shame. Look at this Saracen princess, this delicate gazelle; have you ever seen a similar wonder, I ask you? Never has any man laid eyes on her, let alone touched her, she is as perfect and unblemished as the bud of the pomegranate tree in spring, noble and a challenge to any man who really wishes to possess a woman, to make her his property.” He smiled at both of them, sure that the amount of coins he could get for the princess would rise by their each of their struggles to purchase her. She was irresistible.

Continuing to the left, he pointed at the crying blonde girl, yanking her hands to the side once more to present her immaculate body to his customers. “This blonde rose flower is the daughter of a mighty British king, a Barbarian Emperor who commands armies in her homeland. Isn’t she a sight worthy for royalty, my dear sirs?”

The Egyptian smiled and shook his head when his eyes fell on the lovely Gypsy. “She is not for you; I know it and I will not force the matter. I know what you are looking for.” He frowned at the Roman soldier who was still staring at the two Persian sisters in wonder but was careful not to make a remark about it. “Now…these two sisters, my dear sirs, these two sisters are not only beautiful and educated, instructed in the arts of music, poetry, mathematics and rhetoric, no, they are also…true pillars of virtue, unspoiled….innocent.” His lips curled into an evil smile. They would not call him Abu Ghassan anymore if he let a bloody sapling like the boy next to his stand steal away his esteemed customers. “Which is it that strikes your fancy, dear sirs?”

 

[patrick1]

Jingle Jangle

Jingle and Jangle, heads bent, follow after Patricles amid the crowds, then kneel – he doesn't have to instruct them, a flick of the forefinger and the gagged one knows; then the other blindfolded one. But how?

Each wears only a pack on her back, a leather collar at her neck attached to a leash her master holds, and a determined smile in case her master turns to her suddenly. They know this place; they passed through it once, in the hands of this very Abu Ghassan whose slippery words float above their heads; they crouched in cages then like these Persian sisters, hoping for a kinder man than Patricles. Now they know what their task will soon be, and shiver with fear at whether they will be able to bear it. 'Umh,' says gagged Jangle. Blind Jingle nods.

Back at the villa they knew that one might be blindfolded and one gagged, it's an old trick of their master's, and they have seen fellow-slaves whipped for the crime of stumbling, beaten for the sin of not getting up quickly enough. So, anxious to minimise their own suffering, they devised a simple language through the bells at their nipples that had given them their names.

And so their bells were taken from them, and they spent a day fastened to each other by a fiendish contrivance of a double clip at each of their nipples that hurt them terribly, and made every movement, facing each other so close, clumsy and awkward.

And yet, determined sister-slaves, the very next day they devised a new system to cope with the blindfold and the gag: grunts of different tones and lengths to mean directions, and warnings, and simple feelings. Patricles discovered their plot of course – he has a terrible way of knowing everything about his slaves - but, admiring their ingenuity, he whjpped them only lightly – the marks still adorn Jingle's thighs and Jangle's breasts – and stopped short of forbidding them to use the code. So now, amid the fumbling hands of passers-by and the desperate caged slaves they try not to see, gagged Jangle grunts and blind Jingle understands.

Conversation whirrs above their heads. To their surprise Patricles is negotiating, not with the oily Abu Ghassan, but with the new trader neighbouring him. Jangle turns warily (she has no permission to look anywhere but at her master) to see who might have caught her master's eye and when she does, being herself from the north, she gasps. The poor girl/woman. A priestess surely? Or she guesses by the creature's golden bangles, and her delicate skin, and her stunning beauty – and her proud look of outrage and defiance. Oh goddesses and gods, don't let my cruel master buy her. Sell her to the almost kindly one who teaches, please. I am so afraid. For a moment the fair blind woman touches the gagged one's shoulder even though it's forbidden and feels her quivering flesh. I am afraid for us. And so afraid for her.

Patricles, intent on a likely purchase, nevertheless senses something different, through the leashes in his right hand. He turns, sees the flesh he owns. Ah yes: a smile of satisfaction. Their fear is such a pleasure to him, he savours it for a moment, then turns back to the perfect flesh behind bars that he craves to add to his collection.

 

[Sweet_Denna]

Before, the blonde priestess had tried to crouch into the corner of her cage that dangled over the sea, as far away as possible from the hungry gazes and filthy comments of the people that gathered to stare at her from below. When the three men approached, the gasped at the sight of the two slaves, one gagged the other blindfolded, lead behind one wealthy-looking Roman on leashes like animals. Like dogs!

Slowly, she gets up on her knees, unable to take her dark blue eyes off the sight before her. Like dogs! Finger by finger, she wraps her delicate hands around the wooden bars of her prison. The soft sea breeze plays with strands of her golden hair. She kneels now, and none of the words spoken and gestures made escape her attention. Nobody gives her as much as a glance, all of them admire the wares of the Egyptian, but her captor knows how to draw their regards on himself and his extravagant little offer.

Several pairs of eyes are suddenly set on her and she can feel a cold shiver running down her spine as the man that holds the ends of the two leashes in his right hand so nonchalantly looks straight at her. The beautiful girl frowns, growls almost. Only her feverishly pounding heart betrays the fear that she is so eager to conceal in front of this horrible man. The sight of fear, she knows, works like a drug, like a spell on his kind. Silently, she prays to Arduinna to help her, to grant her a fast, merciful death rather than letting this man lay one finger on her.

“What men these mighty Romans are!” the priestess suddenly says, loud enough for the men to hear her. “They have to gag and blindfold our women; put them on leashes so they won’t run away.” She masters the Latin language well, and her sharp accent only adds to the contempt that drenches her words. Faces turn up to her, the young slave trader pounds against the bottom of her cage with his fist to silence his insolent merchandise. Most customers are not keen on purchasing slaves that rebel against their masters so openly, but then again Patricles, who is now discussing the price of the Gallic bitch with him, is not most customers.

“400 denarii.” His first demand had sounded preposterous even in his own ears, but the trader is set on aiming high. While he is not an experienced slave trader, he does know what a woman like this should be worth to a man of Patricles’ standing and reputation. “A Gallic priestess, sir, nobody has ever captured one of these creatures alive. She is truly everything that you are looking for in a woman. Never have grace, courage and strength inhabited a more beautiful vessel, wouldn’t you agree?” The young man senses the Torturer’s interest, he instinctively knows that Patricles would have a hard time to let an opportunity this unique pass him by.

He follows Patricles’ gaze, and his eyes meet that of the young woman in the cage. Quietly, she looks at the trader, and to the young Roman, her silence seems like a more violent accusation than her angry words before. For a second, he feels the sting of guilt. The two slaves that Patricles leads on a leash behind him are telling examples of the world that the Torturer lives and breathes in; they are the illustrations of his philosophy of fear and pain. Her ruby lips move silently, mere whispers in her heathen language, he is sure that she is throwing a curse at him for the sin that he is about to commit. May the gods forgive him, but the Gallic priestess will have to submit to her fate, just as he has to submit to his. But suddenly, he wants her gone as soon as possible and with an angry sigh, he breaks from her stare and says: “300 denarii, sir. My final offer.”

The older of the two Persian sisters has followed the scene with great attention. She realizes that the young Roman soldier might just be the lesser of many evils. What kind of man treated women the way this cruel Roman did? A mere glance from their master, and these lovely creatures trembled in terror. Shyly, she tries a smile, encouraging the mesmerized young man to stay a little longer, blocking her and her terrified sister from the view of the Roman leading his slaves around the market on leashes. In any case, the soldier would not be able to afford them. She feels sorry for the girl in the wooden cage. So very sorry. Again, she places a soft kiss on the raven hair of her younger sister that is now sobbing quietly. “It will be alright, my dear sister”, she whispers. But will it really?

Abu Ghassan who is attentive enough to follow his hated concurrent’s conversation with Patricles with one ear, laughs silently at his stupidity. 300 denarii is a ridiculous price for the Gaul, but once uttered, an offer cannot be taken back. It comforts him that the annoying greenhorn is too impatient to bargain by the book. He will not make the same mistake. If Erudio wanted to see the Saracen bend to his wishes, he would have to pay the price for that delightful sight.

 

[patrick1]

Anticipation, Patricles has learnt, can be the most terrible torture of all. Feeling the creak in his ageing bones, he crouches by the wooden bars of the priestess's cage. 'Look at me,' he says. It's a challenge she meets. Perhaps she has decided that if she looked down she would seem more submissive than if she obeyed him. Her blue eyes gaze into his as he speaks: 'You are mine. When the sun is just past its zenith, your ordeal will begin.'

What should he care for the words she mumbles in her own tongue as she steadily holds his gaze? But as she pronounces the names of her goddesses her eyes holds his and it's he who has to break away. 'No food,' he snaps to the trader, 'plenty of water. Give her a good scrubbing. I want her naked when I return.' And he tugs at the leashes of his crouching slaves, and puts his arm round the shoulder of the young soldier, and is gone.

+

Troilus is unpersuadable. Patricles has sobered him up with two fresh cups of provencal squeezed fruit, and pointed out to him how inexperienced he is to be taking on one slave, let alone two, and warned him how such sophisticates as the Persian sisters can end up ruling their master – 'Believe me, when I was a young man it happened to me, a lass called Zana, she could twist me round her little finger'. Finally, to the accompaniment of rustling among the slave-flesh at his feet, whom he had kindly placed in the shade and given bowls to lap from, he has even offered to Troilus his own Jingle and Jangle.

'No. The Persians. I will have them. You see...there is a memory...one day perhaps I can explain...'

Why does Patricles feel such sympathy for the young fellow? Is it simply that he seems such an echo of himself long ago, a man who one day came back from a cruel, pointless war with violence in his heart? Or that there's an empty space in his villa, in his heart, for...?

'Let me make you an offer, Troilus.' Goddesses, has he had too much wine already? No, he has begun with an offer, so no backing down now. 'I need guards for my priestess. You will see: she will need protecting when the show begins. I will place you in charge of the guards. And in return you will have a set of rooms in my villa,' that might have been my son's, my lost son's, no need to explain, 'big enough for three, and I shall help you with your new prizes whenever you want...'

+

Erudio kneels at the feet of his new slave. He likes to begin this way: with the surprise of him kneeling at their feet. He unlocks the chain at her ankle. Abu Ghassan knows his ways, and has moved off to barter with someone new for the naked blonde. Show him your cunt floats on the air. Erudio takes the left hand of his new slave, and kisses it. 'I am Erudio, your new and temporary master.'

The Saracen woman, so composed even when lascivious men were trying to paw her, when every ugly passing fool was insulting her in all manner of disgusting ways, is disconcerted by his civility. 'And I am...'

He raises his hand. 'There will be time for who you were. You are a different person now. A slave. My slave. I must ask you, if you would, to place your wrists together behind you. But let me assure you: I will let nothing happen to you that you do not wish.'

She dares to smile. He is a handsome man, his own smile comes easily, his grey-green eyes sparkle with mischief. She will essay something: 'And what, sir, if, to begin with, I do not wish to place my wrists behind me?'

He spreads his hands – thin, delicate hands – and then takes from a fold in his dark cloak a length of taut white silk. 'Then you will postpone the delightful experience of helplessness that this silk upon your wrists will communicate to you. For you are after all, helpless. A slave. I believe you will find the experience surprisingly pleasurable. Madam?'

She sighs; shakes her head, but not in refusal. Beyond him, she hears the clamour of obscenities. In her memory she hears the oily voice of Abu Ghassan whispering in her ear: Believe me my dear you will be fortunate if you fall into the hands of Erudio, the gentlest master in the known world, from Trafalgar to Trebizon.

And so, closing her eyes for a moment then opening them again - no, this is not a dream - she places her hands behind her, and feels his soft hands securing the silk over her wrists, tightly.

He stands in front of her, his hands on either shoulder. Why, he is no taller than she. 'Savour the new feeling for a moment, slave.'

It's more than a moment, it's more than a hundred moments before his intent grey-green eyes leave hers. He takes off his dark cloak – strange, he has a cream one underneath, as if prepared for this – and wraps it around her. 'Your body is beautiful, but you will not be treated with the grace you deserve if we pass through the streets with you as uncovered as you were.' There is a clasp at the front he secures. He smiles, brushes a little hair from her face, places his arm round her shoulders. 'You see: every time you give something of yourself to me, there will be many rewards. I have a special treat in store for you just across the market. Let us go...'

 

[Sweet_Denna]

The young slave trader has reached an agreement with The Torturer; the priestess’s cage is lowered. The Roman now has to crouch to reach her eye level, and his softly spoken words are more than a challenge, more than a threat. They are a promise.

It is hard not to crawl back in her cage, not to break the stare that locks her to the man that just bought her. Her slender fingers are wrapped around the wooden bars so firmly that her knuckles whiten in the effort not to tremble. Show no fear. Never show him how afraid you really are. In whispers, she pleads with her gods, asking them to curse the cruel man before her and to rescue their devoted servant. She wonders if the Roman can hear the frantic heartbeat that hammers through her small body, making it harder and harder to breathe. Show no fear, for it is fear that will bind you to him as his slave.
Finally, it is him who breaks the stare. A hissed order, a gesture, and he is gone. For now.

Benona – it is her name, the last thing that is truly hers – follows him and his two unfortunate prisoners with her eyes, unable to look away until he is lost amongst the crowds. How did she offend her goddess so, what had she done to deserve such terrible negligence, such punishment? She recalls the day the druids had chosen her to serve Arduinna, and to that end, had left her in the woods to see if the wolves would rip her to pieces or if the goddess would accept their choice and protect her new servant. How afraid she had been then. And the words of her brother: The wolves smell fear; they will be drawn to you if you are afraid. But this man, this Roman, his hunger was so different from that of a pack of wolves, and far more dangerous.

The slave trader pulls her from the cage, avoids looking her in the eyes. The pouch weighs heavy on his belt, reminding him of the coins he has exchanged the lovely girl for. May the gods forgive him, but she is but a Gallic whore, a slave, a commodity. It is the way of the world. He hands her a bowl of water. Silently, she shakes her head. The sun has almost reached its zenith, it is hot, and the stones underneath their feet are burning. But she refuses to drink. Benona’s wrists are tied, and then the trader hands her over to the women that hurry about the market, tending to the slaves bought by wealthy customers. “No need to dress her when you’re done”, the trader mumbles to a woman that gives him a toothless smile. “And be quick. Patricles is her new master.” No need to say more, the woman roughly pulls the blonde girl with her, in a hurry to obey.

Weeping and laughter collide in the humid bathing house, echoing around the tiled walls. Everything is arranged as ordered: diligent and experienced hands wash her, rub her skin until it burns, while she can feel fingers undo her tresses. Neither touch is gentle, neither holds any emotion, it is the world of slaves – diligent, unquestioned obedience. The Gallic priestess’ beauty yet draws stares; fearful whispers float around the large room. The Torturer has bought her, that poor child. Such wasted charms. An angry hiss, and the women fall silent again, continue to do as told. With little bronze pincers, a skillful hand removes the little body hair that covers the blonde girl’s sex, her arms and legs are cleaned with sugar paste; lastly, fingers rub aromatic oil over her skin to keep it soft. The canvas has to be immaculate for her new master to practice his art. And really, if it was at all possible, the Gallic girl is now even more radiant, more beautiful than she had been before, a living image of her goddess. The slave trader waits for her outside, it is time.

***
As it turns out, the young Roman soldier possesses wealth far beyond his apparent standing. A war hero maybe, or a war profiteer, the Egyptian slave trader does not care either way. But it is below Abu Ghassan to bargain with the soldier. The price he names is outrageous, but the Roman seems so set on buying the Persian sisters, and after all the Egyptian has a reputation to consider. Selling to lowly soldiers might just damage it, and the least he owes to himself is to outsmart the eager young man who does not seem to mind the amount of coins he spends anyway.

Jaleh and Sholeh, the two sisters, are pulled to their feet. Sholeh holds her younger sister tightly against her; she does not need to see the signs of friendship between the cruel Roman and the young soldier that is now their master. They are not safe yet. The young man had been insisting on their purchase heatedly, his obsession might still prove to be more dangerous than the cold evil streak of his older friend. Sholeh silently swears to protect Jaleh at any cost, she made a promise that she intends to keep. Her eyes observe the gentle Roman that kneels in front of the Saracen princess now, undoing her chain. The gods have been merciful with her; he seems like an educated, civilized man. His calm gestures remind her of her beloved Soroush that had not been able to save her family. For a short, vain moment, she wishes that it was her whose hands he tied so gently with a silken ribbon, that it was her who he looked at with such caring attention. If only….but it is to no avail, the bargain has been struck, and when she finally chases these useless thoughts from her head, both are gone, a last glimpse of his light cape and the Saracen’s black hair all for her mind to cling to.

***

Silently, the tall woman that is no more a princess follows Erudio, oblivious to the crowds they pass, oblivious to the stares and whispers that accompany their path. Her dark eyes are glued to the back of the man walking in front of her. She does not think about running, about trying to vanish between the stands of the market. And he knows this. His stature is noble, his walk steady and graceful. The Saracen will not run because she is now tied to him in ways he cannot yet begin to guess.

He intrigues her. His words still linger in her mind. The pleasure of being helpless…his concept of slavery is so different from what she knows. To submit willingly? It is something she cannot imagine, it is against everything she believes in, it stains the values she had been taught for nineteen years. She let him tie her hands with the silken band, yes; she did not flinch when he called her his slave, when the mere word is in reality the worst possible insult she can imagine. A slave! Does he not know that she can only clean herself from this shame with his blood?

He knows nothing of her, not yet. He knows nothing of her homeland in what the Romans called Arabia Petrea, knows nothing of Mayeed, the man who had tried to abduct her by force because she had not wanted to submit. Siham had taken his life for this insult, so that her father, head of her tribe, had decided to send her away to avoid further bloodshed. Go and live, he had instructed her, and never forget about the ways of your people. Submit. The gentle Roman does not know what great a sacrifice he asks of her. And yet…She can still feel the touch of his delicate hands on her shoulders, the color of his eyes is imprinted in her tired mind. The Roman that bought her – she cannot bring herself to call him ‘master’ – is handsome, and his beauty is enhanced by his civility, his almost admiring gentleness. Submit.
But Siham also knows to be patient, to wait for the right moment to rise against those that try to subdue her. The silk rubs against her wrists as she walks behind him, making her shiver.

 

[patrick1]

To be chained together in a cart to be pulled by donkeys, under someone else's guard, while he stays behind. He can see that the Persians – his new slaves – feel the indignity. They are weeping in each other arms. But Troilus himself is offended. 'Patricles - sir -'

'I understand. Believe me, I understand.' The impatient hothead, doesn't he see how much I've done for him? To have convinced Abu Ghassan he's a worthy buyer? To have offered him work and a place in my own residence?

'But sir -'

Steady, Patricles. Steady. We have need of the fellow. Arm round the young man's shoulder. 'I need you Troilus. Believe me, when the priestess parades through the port, your protection will be needed.' Why do I keep calling her the priestess? As if she still had some godly power. She's a slave, dammit. 'And when we arrive at the theatre - your new slaves will star in the show. Only by watching the priestess's first performance. And how, then they will be ready for their first night with you.'

Troilus shakes his head. This is not what he wanted at all. Already in his imagination he's alone with the women – just look at them, peeking out from their mutual embrace at him - and they are his, his. But what can he do but comply? Like a good soldier. 'Of course, sir. Of course. Where do you need me now?'

+

Erudio has brought her to a poor part of the market, she doesn't understand. There are four women in a small cage, Erudio has told her they are Abu Ghassan's lesser merchandise, looked after by his cousin but he takes a cut...And now Erudio is asking the four, 'Which of you loves women?'

Oh and of course they all, all love women, and he smiles that easy smile of his, his arm around her shoulder as if protecting her, or as if reminding her of the silk binding her wrists, and he says to them, 'No! I mean loves women.'

It's the moon-faced one in rags who hangs back from the others. She and Siham have been looking at one another from the first. It was always going to be her. Erudio turns now to ask: 'You would like her?'

What does he know of the love of woman for woman? She doesn't return his look: 'I am merely a slave, sir. Merchandise. What does my opinion matter?'

He stands in front of her, the way he did when he first bound her. Now she does meet his eyes. 'I did not make you a slave. But I offer you the possibility of finding something extraordinary in your enslavement. So – would you like her as a slave?'

'And I, a slave, require a slave because...?'

'Because domesticity is beneath you. Because you will understand enslavement better if one is enslaved to you. And for reasons we won't go into which I believe you already understand...'

Which of you loves women? As if she would not understand. And so, before she knows it, the moon-faced woman ('What is to be her name?' he asks her. 'Luna' she says before she can stop to think of the indignity of naming another) wearing a collar and rags has a chain from the collar leading to Siham's wrist, and his arm is there again, at her shoulder, saying, 'Now we must find our carriage home – when we have waved farewell to Patricles' priestess...'

 

[Sweet_Denna]

Benona stands next to the trader, waiting for The Torturer. She does not know about the name the people of Massilia and the nearby provinces call him by. She does not know what it is that will happen. But from the corner of her eyes, she watches the path of the sun anxiously. Despite the raging heat during mid-day, she shivers.
The young Roman slave trader glances around nervously. Where is Patricles? He feels uncomfortable with the attention he is drawing to himself with the nude priestess next to him, but he does not dare to cover her. The Torturer had requested her naked. Her silence makes his hair stand on end. Would she have cried, pleaded, cursed his name in a hundred ways, it would have scared him less. Her golden hair floats freely over her shoulders now, adorns her radiant face like flower petals. Her blushed cheeks, her soft, ruby lips, her porcelain skin, everything about her whispers delicacy, magnificence, grace. Benona has lived nineteen years and senses that she will not live to be twenty.

***

Jaleh and Sholeh are paraded through the narrow breach that the crowds open for the creaking donkey cart. Many stare at the spectacle, incredulous. The contrast between the shabby vehicle and the beauty of its load is too crass, too outrageous to ignore.
Her sister’s head buried at her shoulder, Sholeh throws the soldier pleading glances. His closeness to the cruel Roman makes her weary – the slaves Jingle and Jangle are a frighteningly foreboding mirror image to her. Please don’t touch my sister, she would not bear it. Let me take on the double of your passions, the double of your fury, but save her, I beg you. Of course, her lips do not move and not one word is actually uttered, but her large black eyes try to cling to his, it is all she can do. There is distress on his face, too, but the young Persian woman cannot guess why the soldier is dissatisfied. The terrible Egyptian had finally sold him what he insisted to make his, and while Sholeh is afraid of the answer, she is curious to know what has driven a simple soldier to spend such fortunes on two foreign women, on two slaves, when a man of his stature and youth could surely find a free girl to indulge in carnal pleasure. Sholeh has no doubts that this is his final purpose, and instinctively, she draws her arms tighter around her shivering sister.

Jaleh, only three years Sholeh’s junior, refuses to look at their new master, as if her ignoring the young soldier would make him disappear. Jaleh has no more tears left. She has cried for so long now, hoping that their luck would change, that the Creator would have mercy on them, that he would reunite them with their loved ones. Vain hopes: all that Jaleh had once loved were dead, and all that she once cherished was now destroyed. The foolish governor that had dared to rebel against Rome had brought great misery upon the people he had been entrusted to protect. The memories of the voyage to Massilia are blurry, like patches of colors that just do no match. She does remember the face of Sholeh’s beloved, the man her sister had been destined to marry before he was killed by revengeful Romans. Jaleh can only guess the ache in her dear sister’s heart that she so carefully conceals.
Such a long way they have come to this city, such a long way from their homeland.

Her face is so delicate, so very innocent; she has only recently completed her eighteenth summer. Reluctantly, she throws shy glances around her, overwhelmed by what she sees.

***

Siham feels the tug on her bound wrists. She, the slave, now has a woman at her command, a servant of her own. The noble Saracen cannot help but smile at the Roman’s ingenuity. Every time you give something of yourself to me, there will be many rewards. Those had been his words. The beautiful Siham begins to understand that he intends to be true to them. But: she has not given anything, everything was taken from her. She was never really asked, the answers were extracted from her lips. Erudio is clever; he argues that it is not he who enslaved her. While this is true, it does not make him less guilty in her eyes. The Roman still enjoys the fruit of another’s crime, and if she is to cleanse her name, he will also pay for it.

The Saracen has owned slaves before. With a nonchalant gesture of her head, she motions for Luna to kneel at her feet. The poorly-clad woman obeys without question, without another glance at the man who so obviously is the master of the woman she is tied to. Siham wants the gentle Roman to know that she is not ashamed of owning a human being, that she expects no less. Her expression hardens at the mention of the Gallic priestess. While she knows nothing about the religion and the rites of the land of Gaul, she senses that something evil is at work here, that the man called Patricles is about to commit a monstrosity that would offend any god. The proud Siham only seldom feels compassion for another, weaker person, but her heart aches when she thinks of the fair girl she has last seen crouching in a wooden cage, dangling above the heads of filthy men like a delicate, unique bird. She wants to say something to Erudio, she wants to ask him about his friend Patricles, but her Latin is too weak for such discussion, and she remains silent, waiting next to the man that she refuses to call ‘master’.

 

[patrick1]

Seclusion, man, we require seclusion, the cover of the cage, for Mercury's sake!'

This, this being out in the open, this is what comes of using the upstart trader, of being diverted from the elegance of that Saracen princess for the forbidden delights of a priestess!

Patricles is not, no not jealous of Erudio. No: he is not an angry man. The fury in him he wreaks on the bodies of helpless victims. He closes his eyes, and tells himself so. Wait. Calm.

'Sir? Sir?' The ungagged slave – Is she Jangle? Jingle? - has dared to speak.

'Yes, yes,' he says impatiently, but he pats her head with uncharacteristic kindness.

And then they are within the cage, which has been hastily and somewhat inadequately covered, and Patricles is the man in charge and the priestess who is no longer a priestess has been laid on her back. 'Jingle, guide your sister to the woman's right. You will each place a leather band on one of her wrists and one of her ankles.' They know what to do. They have seen it done before. They have brought the stake from Abu Ghassan's store. The new prize, glowing even here in the semi-darkness, seems more bemused than afraid. Jingle – or is it Jangle? - tells the woman to sit up a little. There is a cubit of chain between each of her wrist-cuffs and her ankle-cuffs. Jingle tells the new slave to reach forward, her wrist-chain over her shins; then pushes the stake behind the new slave's knees, above her arms. That's it. Jingle and Jangle stand at either end of the stake. 'Lift!' says Patricles.

He hears the slave trader's sharp intake of breath as the man suddenly understands. The victim hangs naked, upside down, from the stake, terribly displayed. A noise comes from her; then stops. Patricles takes from Jingle's backpack the little mother-of-pearl box. He opens it with a fold of his cloak protecting his fingers; smears a little of the ointment on to the cloak; then rubs the ointment at the rim of the slave's exposed cunt.

How delightful is her pale skin and its quivering.

He hears a silence around him against the hubbub beyond the cage.

When he's put the box away he steps behind her and bends to take hold of her golden hair. He lifts her by her golden tresses, hearing Jingle grunt to Jangle, hearing her own cry. When she is horizontal he reaches instead for her nipples, beneath her, and pushes upwards until she is vertical. Patricles smiles, twisting each thumb and forefinger a little, enjoying the noises she makes. 'You have a new name now, slave. Now you are Cunnus. In a moment you will be displayed to the population in all your finery. While you are in my tender care you will receive, among other kindnesses, frequent ministrations of the ointment upon your tender parts. It will cause those parts to itch and burn terribly.'

Did he expect her spittle in his face? He doesn't flinch, or strike out. He simply lets go of her nipples quite suddenly, and she cries out, and her body swings on its spit, before her head hangs down again, and she is gasping.

'Now, slaves,' says Patricles, 'carry Cunnus to the theatre of pain. The blind first, of course. The blind must lead us.'

+

Erudio is waiting just beyond the cage's entrance with his new retinue. 'Patricles wanted you, you know. But I...'

There's an edge to his voice, he hears it. He is interrupted by the blind slave stumbling out, bearing the end of the spit on her shoulder, the spit from which the slave dangles. Siham cries out, and, seemingly unthinking, buries her face in his shoulder.

Erudio catches the eye for a moment, the unflinching eye of Luna, the collared slave in the dirt at the their feet. Then he looks again at what Patricles has done to the priestess, and, kindly slave-trainer as he is known to be, he feels in his heart and between his legs a great surge of desire. 'Come,' he says as calmly as he can, 'we have a closed carriage waiting.'

+

Dangling, naked, each in a solitary cage of wood above a stage, two bewildered slaves, Persian sisters, wait.

+

Still a thousand paces or more from them, a slow procession proceeds through the side-streets of the port. There aren't crowds along the route. Not everyone approves of such a display. Barbaric, some call it. But Patricles is a rich and powerful man. He has diverted his route to avoid the prudes and enemies. And there are watchers enough for him to relish the spectacle. He follows close behind, a long-tailed whip in his hand, Troilus to the right and Patricles' nephew to the left to fend off those who would touch the prize – the naked slave hanging from the spit between the shoulders of two other slaves, the leader blindfolded so that she keeps stumbling – all three slaves are sweaty and dusty and bruised now from their mishaps – while Patricles himself, savouring the journey, the fruit and eggs thrown, the obscenities hurled, shouts periodically, 'First show tonight at Dusk! The theatre of pain!'

 

[Sweet_Denna]

Benona can hear the Torturer’s angry voice drifting through the thick cloth that the nervous slave trader has hurriedly covered her new prison with. He has come for her, and his taste for pain seems more urgent than before. Yet she lies still, on her back as ordered, waiting.

But as he enters the cage, surrounded by his ever willful slaves, she can feel her heart straining against her chest. Her small breasts heave in growing panic that is increasingly hard to suppress. But her face shows no emotion; composed amusement, if any. The slender Gaul is set on defying the depraved fancies of this devil. He orders, and the slave-sisters obey, without question. There is no hesitation in their gestures; they know what is asked of them. Quickly and with able hands, they fasten cuffs around her hands and ankles, ask her to assist and she does not struggle, knowing that it would give the Roman’s even more reason hurt her. But when they are done, when Patricles coldly orders them to lift the spit, she gasps. It takes inhuman will not to flinch, not to lose her calm over how he puts her on display.

The young slave trader first turns his face away, shocked at what Patricles does to the fair girl, but he cannot help but throw her covered glances. To his shame, he feels his loins stirring in arousal at her sight, and at the thought of what is to come. He is not proud of it, but only with great effort does he restrain himself to touch her silken skin.

An unwanted whimper escapes her lips as the Torturer touches her sex, his fingers a reminder of what she still risks to lose. That he is yet able to take the last thing from her that binds her to her goddess as a priestess, after he has already taken everything else, even her name. She cannot help but shiver, and knows that he will sample her display of fear with delight. Silently, the blonde girl prays to Arduinna to protect her, to let her die untouched. Blasphemous thoughts worm their way through her exhausted mind: what if the gods have already forsaken her? What if they are helpless against such evil perversions altogether?

Just as Patricles has promised, her soft flesh begins to burn and sting in ways that drive tears to her eyes with the desire for relief. But she bites her lips, swallows any complaint. Outside, the crowds impatiently await the Torturer and his new slave that is soon to bear the traces of his art; she can hear faint shouting, clapping: the sounds of an excited public. Oh dear gods, let me stay strong. I beg you.

And then his hands are in her hair, roughly he pulls her up to face him, her blue eyes narrow in fury and she spits her disdain in his face. He cares not, he knows that there is nothing she can do, he does not fear her helpless goddess. She has to press her lips together as his fingers twist her sensitive flesh, pulls at her soft pink nipples that no man had ever dared to even touch before. Oh gods, let this be over quickly.

***

Not in fear does proud Siham hide her face behind Erudio’s shoulder. But she does not want to sully her regard with such depravity. An incredulous whisper escapes her lips. “Do your gods permit such barbarity? Does this monstrous man not fear their wrath?” The slave trainer’s words still ring in her ears. Patricles wanted you. Siham balls her bound hands into fists. For the length of one heartbeat, she sees herself dangling from the spit, her golden skin exposed to the staring crowd around them. Her jaw tightens as Patricles himself now descends from the cage, a long whip curled up in one hand.

The Saracen woman wonders what it is that Erudio had wanted to say and she will remember to insist on him finishing his sentence. The sudden edge in his voice did not escape her attention and she is curious what the Roman beside her, himself an owner and master of slaves might think about Patricles’ taste in such cruelty.

She wonders: Do Erudio’s beautiful hands ever inflict pain? Does he punish those that resist his teachings? Is he who subdues men by force really worse than he who seduces them to submit? Are both not means to the same, shameful end: to make a slave? What is permitted when men become the property of another? Her gaze falls upon Luna, the moon-faced girl that still kneels in the dirt diligently, waiting for her mistresses’ orders. She has accepted her fate, and thoughts of rebellion are, should they ever surface at all, tightly concealed in her heart. Erudio’s words tear her from her musings, and Siham nods silently. She is glad that the gentle Roman spares her further sight of the priestesses’ humiliation.

***
Sholeh kneels in her cage, her gaze intently on her younger sister who fearfully reaches out for her through the bars of her own prison. The young Persian woman would like to take the other’s hand, hold it in comfort, but they are too far apart. She whispers soft words to calm Jaleh, whose tears have started to flow again. The scene they suddenly find themselves in is too extravagant for Sholeh to understand. There is a stage, still empty, a theater whose stone rows still wait to be filled with a public thirsty for the display of other peoples’ sufferings. The Roman soldier, their new master, had protested in vain and finally given in to Patricles’ demands. Strip them of their garments, he had ordered. I want them nude, and not weeping in each other’s arms. Sholeh had tried to persuade them not to separate her from her sister, but to no avail, and now both sit in cages, suspended above the waiting stage. Softly, as if afraid to stir up the evil that surely sleeps underneath these wooden planks, she starts to sing. The words float through the air, destined to calm her frightened sibling. Her voice is clear and beautiful, and soon Jaleh wipes away her tears, listens mesmerized to the tale that unfolds in Sholeh’s song.

The young Persian still feels her master’s hands upon her, robbing her of the last pieces of scarce fabric that protected her decency. Now her slim body will be exposed to the stares of all, a fact she is most conscious of. It makes her shiver in shame, and while she feels guilty for thinking it, she almost wishes for the priestess to suffer enough to keep all attention from herself.

***

She hears the shouts and insults that are hurled sometimes at her, sometimes at the cold-hearted Roman, but she does not lend her ear to either. Dust is stirred up by many feet; she coughs, but does not interrupt her silent prayers. May the gods condemn you to eternal suffering in the underworld for this crime.

 

[patrick1]

'Down!' There is a wooden frame set towards the front of the stage, with hooks in various places. The exhausted slaves, Jingle and Jangle, set down their load beneath the frame. Cunnus is muttering, to her goddesses and gods no doubt. Patricles, in good fettle despite the heat, himself takes charge of her. He rubs the hair of Jingle and Jangle as if they were dogs. 'Good girls,' he says, 'Go find some shade. My nephew will bring you water. You may take off your gag and blindfold. Go, before I change your mind!'

And the slaves, unaccustomed to such benevolence and cheerfulness from him, scurry away.

Troilus lingers. Patricles looks up at him, from unfastening Cunnus's bonds. 'I need you, Troilus, to guard this one. To station yourself in front of the pit. There's shade there, enjoy it. Get a slave to bring you refreshment. Soon the early customers will arrive, even though the main performance will yet be some time hence. There are some who like to gaze, even at slow suffering. I need your women, as part of my tableau. Tonight, I promise you, they will be yours.'

'Sir!' says Troilus, 'But I think...' He indicates the naked Persian sisters, in their high cages, looking down.

'Yes, yes,' says Patricles, 'Make sure they are fed and watered, do.'

He turns to his charge as if Troilus is already gone, ignoring other demands on his time. The woman is shaking, as he pulls the stake from between her arms and legs. How beautiful she is in suffering. There's dust in her hair, on her face, her breasts. A cut on her right arm where she scraped the ground in one of the stumbles. That trembling just beneath the surface of her skin. Cold anger in her eyes. Already, perhaps, little strength in her.

Well, let us see what she can endure.

He lifts her so she is kneeling, and pulls her arms behind her. No, he will not caress her yet. Merely be utilitarian. There's rope already dangling from a hook in the frame above her head. He secures the rope once, twice, three times through the cuffs in her wrists; takes the other end of the rope and anchors it, a pace away, to a hook set in the floor of the stage. She won't rest in this pose.

He crouches down in front of her. Spit on me again if you dare. He strokes her sweating face. She licks her ruby lips. 'I shall leave you to roast in the sun for a while, Cunnus. When the Persians have counted to a thousand I shall return from my rest, to begin your entertainment.' He lets go of her and stands without another word, to call up to the cages. 'You can count, can't you?'

'Yes sir...Yes sir...'

'To a thousand, then. Begin now!'

+

How stuffy the closed carriage is. Erudio is hot; not quite himself. Perhaps it's the quiet dignity of the Saracen woman opposite. Perhaps it's the continued memory of his arousal at the naked priestess on the spit of Patricles' torture. And how he felt complicity only with the raggedy slave at their feet, whose moon face looked up at him, too inured to the horrors of enslavement to be shocked by cruelty.

How they bounce over the rutted road; how far it is to his home. He mops his brow. How unwavering in its resolution is the Saracen woman's expression.

Distraction. That's what is needed. The next step, there should be a next step. 'My dear...' - what's her damned name? He meant to rename her and didn't. There are moments when he wishes he were as ruthless as Patricles and she would sit naked before him, spreadeagled and weeping and helpless.

'My dear Siham,' he manages. 'It is some distance to my home – our new home. Let me offer you something. Your arms are no doubt somewhat uncomfortable now. Why don't I place the silk over your eyes instead of your wrists?'

Unwavering: 'And in return?'

Sir. I should like you to say Sir. That will come soon enough. 'I imagine Luna is thirsty. Perhaps she might find something to satisfy the needs of her tongue beneath your skirts...'

 

[Sweet_Denna]

Cunnus. The tired woman spells out her new name in her head, wondering if she has not forfeited the right to be Benona anyway. Cunnus. The frightening Roman has named her to his fancy, as if she was a stray dog he took under his care. The walk to the theater has been a long one; to her horror she finds that her muscles shiver, that she is exhausted already. The young priestess grits her teeth. No. She must not give in already, but she feels that it will take a lot of strength to even last until nightfall. Her lungs ache from the heat and the dust, from the lack of water. She can feel her throat rasp with every breath she takes. Not a drop of the relieving liquid has passed her lips since she first became a prisoner and then a slave; she now curses her own pride that pushed her to reject the young trader’s offer of relief. Her eyes are burning; dust sits on her silken lashes. Cunnus – No, she is Benona. Benona! – feels his rough grasp in her tresses again, and she looks in his face, her burning anger matching that of the sun. No, she does not dare to defy him again as she had in the cage. She must save her spit, her breath, her energy.

The sun, only barely past its zenith, burns down on her mercilessly, while she kneels on an empty stage, facing empty rows of seats. Her arms hurt; she wants to relax her muscles and finds that she cannot, the ropes tug on her wrists without regard for her exhaustion. Jingle and Jangle lap water from bowls in the shade, and the young woman groans, both in jealousy and horror. These two lovely women, now sweating and sullied, were free once, were human. Little trace is left of that and Benona wonders about the torture it took to break them in this way, to rob them of their last shreds of dignity. The blonde priestess straightens her back, suppresses the moan of pain that this movement causes. May this devil break her bones a thousand times over, she will not give in to Patricles, the Torturer.


***

A thousand! Sholeh hurries to nod and throws a worried glance at her sister who seems frozen in fear at the sight of the cruel Roman and his unlucky priestess. “One.” Jaleh starts to weep again. Sholeh shivers, raises her voice. “Two.” She must keep her frightened sister from sparking Patricles’ interest, or worse, his anger. Sholeh has seen it; their young master is weak in the face of the older man with the taste for pain. “Three.” Steadily, she counts, loud enough for the Roman to hear, loud enough to cover her sister’s tear-stained voice that struggles to follow. Somebody, yet another slave, brings her and Jaleh a bowl of water and some white bread, a few olives. Between hasty sips Sholeh keeps counting, unfaltering.

***

The faintest of smiles plays around Siham’s mouth. Did she detect a slight change in his tone? Her dark eyes rest on his face, as if drinking the tension from his lips, relishing the taste. His offer, while spoken so politely, so temptingly, does not hide his real purpose. While Siham would like him to free her aching wrists, she would like to change the position of her arms. The thought of the pretty little slave giving her pleasure sends a light shiver down her spine. While no man has laid hands on her before, she did know about the delight of a skilled woman’s lips and tongue. But now has come an opportunity to challenge him, and no promise of pleasure would convince her to miss it. Siham decides to sprinkle salt of the tiny, aching crack in his façade of perfect composure.

He seeks entertainment for himself. He seeks release. Distraction. “The silk around my wrists is not all that uncomfortable.” It is all she says, declining his wish without voicing objection. She goes further still, wondering how true the man who bought her will stay to his words. “But if you wish, I can order Luna to both quench her thirst and give you the relief you seek.”
The proud Saracen knows that she is being insolent now, by choice, but her regard is calm, her smile free of taunting malice. She finds that his face, already a mirror of male grace, increases yet in beauty by his inner struggle.

 

[patrick1]

'A slave is a slave.' Erudio touches her face softly as he says this. 'You will understand this. It is not an idle passing remark. A slave is a slave, however kindly the master.'

+

Watching, watching. How brutal they are. And, most extraordinary of all: whatever you think, how their brutality can excite.

+

It is beyond three thousand in the counting from the cages above – what is a slave to do when no master appears to say 'Stop!'? - before Patricles, naked, carrying a wooden stool, one leashed slave behind him, appears on the stage.

There is by now an audience of perhaps a dozen, to whom he waves.

The kneeling, naked, sweating Cunnus, her arms bent up behind her back, seems to take no notice.

He says 'Stand'.

Does it worry her that she obeys, without thinking?

And then he pulls a little more rope through the hook above her head, and re-knots it at the floor behind her.

He sits on the stool beside her. Jingle holds up the cotton shade to shield him from the sun.

'Cunnus,' he says, 'Cunnus.' And he knows what it resembles, but he continues: it's like making love. He begins to caress her. Her dainty feet with each second toe a little bent; her ankles, her calves, her shapely shins. Behind her knees; her thin thighs, one bruise on the left from the journey. He does not linger on her sex but he strokes her buttocks for a long time. Then, her hips and belly. Ah, the flesh on her ribs. Both his hands on her breasts, he smiles, watching her face as his palms circle over her nipples and she looks down. Her collarbone and shoulders. Behind her, her delicate fingers, hands, wrists, forearms, elbows, upper arms. Oh, her soft neck. Her hair. Her ears. Her chin, cheeks, lips, nose, eyes, eyebrows, oh her whole face.

His fingers touch her.

And again, beginning at her feet...

Sometimes he does stroke her cunt, where he knows it must be itching, at its opening. 'Cunnus,' he says.

How her bound body seems to him to want the touch of his fingers.

And then – when the voice from above says 'thousand' – how the body wants him to raise the rope a little, until slowly, slowly, her arms are raised behind her, from awkward and inconvenient, to difficult, to please-don't to painful, to...

He caresses her, as if she was his lover.

 

[Sweet_Denna]

Like accented count floats over Benona’s head. The anticipation, the waiting for the Torturer to begin, are so much worse than any agony she can imagine. She kneels. The sun burns down on her porcelain skin, as if jealously trying to destroy the suffering beauty. Benona’s mind starts drifting. Her lips are dry and have grown paler, her throat aches with the need for water. Every time she swallows, her eyes tear up – but she suffers silently, jealously watching others being fed and tended to.

The Torturer appears, and to her horror, he is nude. She is unable to turn her gaze, her eyes widen at the sight of his shamelessness. A frightening thought grabs her by the throat, she gasps silently. Benona turned Cunnus prays fervently that even this devil, this hellish creature that has taken human form will not dare to defy the gods so openly.

Too tired to challenge his order, the exhausted woman stands at his command. The sting of pain the movement causes briefly flashes over her face, she has kneeled for so long, and her muscles are tense with fear. Under lowered, dust-caked lashes, she follows his every move, but appears calm, almost arrogant to those that have now found their way into the theater. A few strands of golden hair cling to her forehead, her lips, her sweaty shoulders, but she cannot remove them, her hands are bound.

But Patricles can.

The young priestess – for she still thinks of herself as Arduinna’s servant – winces as his fingers gently brush the stray hair from her face. Oh gods. She turns slightly, lowers her head in a shy and vain attempt to avoid his touch: the gesture is almost coy.

The pain she had expected never comes. As if to reconcile with her goddess in the most blasphemous way possible, the Torturer treats her with indecent, gentle care. His hands caress her body; his lips caress her new name, whispered in almost devoted admiration: Cunnus. She shivers, he can sense her tremble beneath her silken skin. His fingers only briefly brush over the lips of her cunt, and while the unfamiliar touch causes her to gasp in shock, the relief his hands administer is clear: if just for a fleeting moment, the itching and the stings are soothed.

Like an evil sculptor, his hands seem to recreate the young woman that is, for the moment, both his oeuvre and his tool. There is not one inch that he forgets, neglects, deems unimportant: he lovingly caresses all of her. The priestess’ breathing quickens, against her will, again, she shivers. Oh gods.

And then the first soft hints of pain creep through her slender body; slowly her arms are lifted behind her, relentlessly, the rope pulls on her wrists. A soft moan escapes her lips, the first audible sign of her ordeal, but she is set to bear it. The unfortunate girl knows: if she begs for mercy, she will truly become Cunnus. A single tear, proof of her silent suffering, rolls down her blushed cheek.

***

Sholeh and Jaleh, frozen at the display of debauched cruelty, sit in their cages. The younger sister’s tears have subsided; too mesmerized is she by the sight of evil unfolding before her eyes.

***
Siham frowns, flinches at the touch of his hand. “A slave”, she reasons, “truly becomes a slave the moment she gives in to her captor’s whims and wishes.” Without further comment, the Saracen woman directs her gaze at the dusty road. A slave is a slave. His gentle touch haunts her. His self-assurance. Nothing will happen against her will, he had promised. But how is a master as kind as he to makes his orders heard, and more importantly, to make them heeded?

 

[patrick1]

'Here, you see...' They have arrived at the villa on the hill. The room he says is to be hers is beautiful: a mosaic floor, a hunting scene on the wall. There are clothes for Siham – and for the slave. There's fruit in a bowl, and outside, a bubbling fountain. 'You will want to settle in,' he says.

'But surely...?'

'Surely what?'

Surely he will want to savour his new slave? Yet instead he seems anxious to be elsewhere. He claims an appointment. 'I will return after dark.'

And, abruptly, she is left with Luna. Oh moon-faced girl, what shall we do with you?

++

The theatre of pain: never before has Erudio been so afflicted. It's the priestess's fault, she is too beautiful, a man could lose his reason over such a one as her. Bribing the guard, he slips in before the crowds. On stage, he's surprised to see Patricles is naked. The woman is shaking, her arms bent up high behind her. How intent they are upon each other: the torturer and the tortured.

'Ah, I thought you were my nephew!' Patricles is freeing up the rope. 'She needs to rest a while before the show. Jingle, shade her for the present. Bring her some water, would you? Jangle, bring me my cloak!'

And soon Patricles' cloaked arm is around Erudio's shoulder, 'I am not sure to what I owe the honour, where is your Saracen?'

Erudio mumbles something unconvincing. 'You want to exchange? Too late my dear fellow, too late!'

What terrible deadening thing can he have experienced in his life? Patricles? To be so callous and disregarding of the woman, still shaking, whom he has caressed so long? To be so flippant, so light of mood, so oddly exhilarated -

And then his nephew arrives, waving something. It's a tiny thing, a sculpture, the length of a man's, no, a woman's hand: a figurine of a woman, side-saddle on a wild boar.

Patricles takes it from the younger man's hand. He strides over to the stage where Cunnus is resting, shaded by Jingle or Jangle or whoever she is. He shows the goddess figurine to the woman. 'Look. Anticipate. How lovely it is to anticipate. Imagine. If I break this in half – as I will, later – will not the goddess Arduinna and her animal fit perfectly into two intimate places her priestess has never had penetrated before...?'

 

[Sweet_Denna]

Like a caged tigress, Siham paces around the tastefully decorated room that is now hers. The soft sprinkle from the fountain seems to mock her thoughts rather than calm them. Euridio is gone, he has left her by herself, with only the quiet moon-faced slave to keep her company. He left, to return after nightfall. Her left without her, as if the presence of his newly acquired slave was already more nuisance than joy.

Why does this bother her?

Luna kneels in one corner, watching her mistresses’ anger and confusion from under lowered lashes. After the beautiful Saracen had declined her master’s wish, he had not insisted. The journey had adjourned in a silence heavier still than the heat. But he had not asked again, had not ordered his new slave to accept her station and comply.

Is this his punishment for her disobedience?

Siham’s naked feet make no sound on the stone floor. Alone now, she has discarded the dark cloak that Erudio had covered her with, and Luna cannot help but marvel at the beauty of the other woman. The afternoon sun kisses Siham’s honey-coloured skin as if trying to console her. But console her for what? Is she not relieved? And glad to be alone, finally, after days and weeks of uncertainty, fear, and anxiety? Happy to be able to rest, to shed the fatigue that all the hardships she has lived through have caused? Should she not rejoice? With a soft growl, she wipes a clay vase off its stand. The loud crash echoes through the halls, makes Luna flinch. The quiet girl does not dare to collect the shards, too vivid seems her mistresses’ anger. The gentle Roman asks of his Saracen the one thing she finds so impossible to do: Submit. Surrender. While she does not wish for his presence – and does she not? – his negligence does hurt her pride. And he knows this, too: Erudio had not taken any precautions against an attempt to flee. And somehow, it made it worse, much worse.

Where did he go?

Then, suddenly, she turns to her silent, moon-faced slave. “Prepare a bath for me, Luna.” It is all she says, her voice is calm; Siham is used to obedience.

***

Sholeh looks up, her dark eyes meet those of her caged sister: Unnecessary to know about the Gallic priestesses’ religion, the horrifying intent of the Torturer has been made so very clear. The kneeling Persian watches the face of the beautiful Roman that for a reason she does not comprehend, has come back: Deus ex machina. Has he come to save the unfortunate blonde woman, or come to watch her suffer?

***

Benona – she repeats her own name in her mind, like the line of a prayer– has to apply all the strength and willpower that is left not to sink to the floor as Patricles, finally, loosens the ropes that have caused her such pain. She stands, shaking, her arms still bound behind her back.

While the Torturer steps over to greet his arriving friend, the priestess can still feel his hands on her skin: he wants to fully understand the beauty he intends to destroy. Is it this thought, or the heat and dehydration that cause her to sway softly? Then, another hand, softer, shy almost, helps her to find her balance. Patricles has sent his slaves to take care of her.

Greedily , Benona drinks from an earthen cup that one of the girls puts to her lips, while the other is kind enough to grant her some shade. Some of the welcome liquid is spilled, leaves droplets on her chin and breasts, adorning her porcelain skin like splashes of diamonds. The cup is emptied much too quickly. “More”, the exhausted priestess gasps, still breathless with thirst. “More.”

And then, Patricles comes back. Speaks. Promises.

The theatre itself seems to hold its breath. Even the wind, the birds, fall silent. Benona feels her knees go weak, her eyes widen in disbelief as she tries to understand, to fully understand, the meaning of his words. Her gaze only slowly leaves the figurine, a delicate image of her goddess, and comes to rest on his calmly smiling eyes. Oh gods. Does he see it? The icy fear? The wild rage that rises from her heart? The thoughts of blood, revenge, of furious mayhem? Maybe he sees all of this in her shimmering blue eyes.

Yet, to another, her face betrays nothing.

She still believes that no god would allow what he so openly announces. She still hopes.

 

[patrick1]

There are torches among the crowd: perhaps two hundred strong, the capacity of the theatre, mostly men and some women, along the stone seats.

The stage in darkness.

And then, a hush. Patricles himself, in a cloak of gold-trimmed cloth, with a single torch; he lights two torches to show us, glowing, two suspended cages where two tremulous new slaves squat behind their bars. By the time the audience's eyes have feasted on this, he has crossed to light torches at the four corners of the central platform.

And there is the woman, the woman everyone has been talking about, the woman he is calling Cunnus, in a heap, naked, her pale body glimmering in the light of the torches.

And now the audience sees him pull ropes through hooks at the top of the frame. The ropes must be fastened to the woman's ankles. She is going to be upside down, spreadeagled, slowly raised by her ankles. Oil on her flesh makes her gleam. Her hair cascades to the ground as Patricles finishes raising her. Her arms are stretched out to her sides, ropes from her wrists to the frame. She groans into the silence.

'Fellow-citizens! Please: applause for – Cunnus!'

Not only is there applause. There are whoops. There are obscenities.

Finally, Patricles gestures with both hands. The woman twists a little in her bonds.

'Cunnus is – a virgin.' How he plays his audience, their laughter reverberates. 'For a few more minutes.' More laughter. 'In succeeding days, how many will have the pleasure of her? But tonight, there will be only two. Your host, myself; and her poor goddess Arduinna...' - he holds up two slivers of sculpture – 'already, as you will see, broken in twain from the wild boar she usually rides. Now, I shall be the wild boar. And what is my dear slave Jangle warming in a flame?' Jangle, at the mention of her name, at his feet and slightly to one side, lights the torch beside her. 'We shall see.'

He places the slivers of sculpture in a fold of his cloak. He begins with slaps. A gentle beating, slapping her buttocks – her back - her breasts – her face - her shoulders - her thighs. There is a slow rhythm to it. Some in the audience begin to clap. The woman is moaning, swinging and swaying.

'She prays to Arduinna. Is it time?' 'Yes!' cry the crowd. He shows them the splinters. 'Is it time?' 'Yes!' 'Is it time? 'Yes!'

He pushes the things into her simultaneously. Her piercing scream brings a terrible, savage echo from the audience. There is blood. Patricles is splashing her face to bring her round. He presents her to the audience, conscious of her pain and humiliation, raped by the fragments of her own goddess.

And then his arms are up, hushing the crowd. 'But wait! My good Jangle has something for me.' It's hard to see even from the front row what, kneeling, she hands him. 'A needle, my friends. A needle attached to a ring attached to a tiny statuette. Before Patricles enters our heroine himself, he will pierce the hood of Cunnus's little organ of pleasure, her clitoris, with a ring – and attached to it, a little statuette of her goddess Arduinna – so that every day from now on, whenever she moves, she will be pleasured by the goddess who so protected her at her time of need.'

The audience is almost too stunned to react except without a smattering of approval and laughter. Then Patricles, in the glare of torchlight, is piercing her clitoris hood with the needle. A rhythmic clapping from the crowd. There is a deep deep moan from the suspended woman. The ring is in her. Patricles is in her. His organ in her mouth. 'Yes!' he's saying to the rhythm of the crowd. 'Yes! Yes!'

There is no thunderclap. There are no goddesses or gods here, surely. But at the last, everything changes. What seemed to be Patricles' moans of pleasure are become a shrieking. 'My heart!' he seems to be saying, as he crumples to the ground. And slaves are rushing to him, and the crowd, treating it as part of the entertainment, yell and whoop, and the naked woman, suspended upside down, still twists in her bonds, the splinters in her cunnus and anus, a gold ring gleaming between her legs amid the blood, Patricles' cum dripping from her gibbering mouth, as her torturer writhes in his own agony beneath her...

 

[Sweet_Denna]

Benona is too scared, her mind races too frantically to really grasp what happens. She can hear the crowds stamping and clapping. Cheering. Flickering torches take away the safety of darkness, and suddenly, the rapacious eyes of the crowd are on her.

Raised by her ankles, she is bound again. The young priestess does not cry, she does not beg. Does she still hope or has trust in her goddess deserted her altogether? Patricles, dressed in lavish silk, approaches, now really in his element, he smiles, his stance underlines the confidence he feels. The theatre of pain! It is where he lives and breathes. Benona shivers.

This time, his touch is not soothing, not soft. Caresses have turned into slaps, he hits her, and just enough to stir the public’s hunger, just enough to have them screaming for her to really suffer. Her head starts spinning, the heat, the fear, the blood rushing to her mind in the position he has secured her in.

Soft moans escape her lips, the impact of his hands drive them from her throat against her will and need. Her eyes are closed, she prays.”A virgin!” she hears him announce. The crowd is raving for him to set an end to that. To her. To Benona, priestess to Arduinna. Oh goddess. Please. Grant me death. But Arduinna is silent before this monstrosity. Is it time? The bound woman winces. Please. Oh, please. She bites her lips.

And then. The pain that rips through her is excruciating. Both of her virgin openings are roughly filled with pieces of the statue, Benona cries out, screams, and only her tight bonds keep her from collapsing. This pain! Her thoughts racing, stammering, he splashes her face with water, rips her from the caressing arms of unconsciousness. Oh goddess. From what underworldly depts has this devil crawled to spit on the gods this way?

Words and noises start flowing together in her head, he turns her to face the crowd, but Benona hardly notices this detail of her humiliation. He is not done. The pain from her sex, her anus creeps over her whole body, makes her break out in sweat. He is not done. A needle? Again, his triumphant explanations to the crowd that wishes to see more, more do not reach her conscious mind. A needle. It is the new addition of pain that makes her understand. The crowd sees her slender body tense up in its bindings, her screams are silenced by Patricles himself. Something unfamiliar, throbbing flesh, forces its way past her lips. She gags, struggles, but nobody hears her.

He thrusts into her mouth, the crowd in screaming. But suddenly, a shriek. A salty, sticky liquid flows down her throat, she chokes and coughs as Patricles falls to the ground. Cum dribbles from her lips, the violated priestess is defeated. Or is she?

The Torturer writhes on the floor. Benona pants, tries to gather her senses enough to understand the sudden commotion. He suffers. Dies? Arduinna. Finally. It is the last satisfied thought before the blonde woman drifts into unconsciousness.

Only those that sit in the very first row can see that the priestess smiles.

***

Sholeh watches, her delicate features half hidden by the dancing shadows that the torches cast over her body. She watches. From where she sits, she can see so clearly what is done to the blonde priestess, impossible to look away. Impossible, also, to ignore the screams of pain. A silent tear, and then another, roll down her cheeks. The young Persian weeps over the pleasure that all of them feel in the face of such devilish cruelty.

No. Not all.

And then, the Torturer slumps to the floor, convulsing in pain whose source is hidden. And yet Sholeh knows. She wonders: will they kill him? Or will the gods spare the one creature incapable of mercy himself?

***

Lost in thought, Siham enjoys the soothing warmth of her bath. Steam curls up from the water and from her honey-coloured skin.

Her hair shines like black silk in the light of the evening; on the surface of the water, her tresses float like a strange flower. Luna kneels outside the basin and lovingly rubs some soap over her mistresses’ slender arm. Outside, angry crickets announce nightfall.

Siham thinks about his words. You are a slave. My slave. Every time you give something to me, there will be many rewards. He haunts her. His hands, his eyes, his voice. Where did he go? Why did he leave her behind, when she had so many questions that only he could answer? The young Saracen feels Luna’s delicate fingers slide around her shoulder and further down; just a little, shyly, before they retreat.

A slave. Her anger rises at the word, but why does her heart start beating faster? Why does it cause her to tremble, why does it chase shivers down her spine? My slave. Siham shakes her head, as if to chase an irritating fly. Despite sundown, she finds the air hot and troubling. She needs to clear her head. She needs to calm her feverish mind. She needs to...

With a low sigh, she catches the moon-faced girl’s wrist, guides her hand over her firm breast. “Luna”, she says. “Give me pleasure.” Not for him, she repeats in her mind. For me.

 

[patrick1]

'Show's over, show's over...' How long it takes to persuade the crowd to leave. Troilus is making himself not think about what he has seen. He has a job to do, and the Persian sisters, oh, if he had known what was to happen would he have...?

A deal was struck. The torturer Patricles gave him shelter and a job to do, and in return his new slaves would have to do no more than sit, naked, caged, above the spectacle, and watch...

He worries for the sisters. 'Move along now, show's over...' Hades, how long will these people take to stop gawping at the suspended woman, keening or singing or whatever it is she's doing now, and get off to their homes?

+​

Erudio, flustered by his hurry from the theatre, no not by the spectacle he saw there but by the rush to get away to his new charge, stops to take deep breaths. The summer night air is warm, scented with – honey? Perhaps he imagines it. The stars are in their usual places. Some nights, in the periods between the times he has charges to look after, he lies beside the pool in the little cloister of his villa, and watches the stars.

Peace, Erudio. Imagine peace in your heart.

Oh, and when he has calmed his heart enough to go in, what an unexpectly peaceful scene in his bed: the Saracen woman, sleeping, her head on her right side, perhaps naked beneath the coverlet, her exposed right arm like dark velvet. And on the floor beside her, alert as a good slave should be, Luna, in a dark shift she has found somewhere among the clothes in the chest, eyes blinking. Someone has taught her she must sit up and kneel in the presence of a Master. 'No, no,' says Erudio, ruffling her scraggy hair, 'go and fetch wine. White wine. Two goblets.'

The Saracen woman was, he thinks, only feigning sleep. Now she, rather sweetly, pretends to stir. 'Why...?'

'No, slave,' he has resolved to use that word to her straight away whatever else he says, 'no need to bestir yourself too much, you look beautiful.'

For a moment he thinks, through the rapid blinking of her eyes, she is going to thank him. He wonders what changes have happened while he has left them alone together; left her to reflect.

But she seems to think better of whatever she might have said. He inhales deeply; he knows what he smells on the air of this room: a certain female musk, an afterglow. He sits on the bed, turning away from her, and lets his cloak fall from his shoulders with the release of a pin. 'Massage my shoulders would you, slave? When the girl brings wine, I feel the need to talk...'

+​

Patricles the younger – the nephew, the one with his uncle's handsome features but not, alas, everyone says, his mind or judgment - is trembling. The naked woman in his arms. He has released her from her bonds, carried her here, up the hill, to the stream above the theatre where he has seen his uncle, many times before, carry his torture victims, to cleanse their wounds with surprising, bewildering tenderness. He, the younger, has done the work his uncle would have done, now, to the abrasions on her wrists and ankles, even at the cost of a slap from her when he rubbed between her legs, which after all he meant only kindly, because she was bleeding so.

Now what? She is babbling in her foreign tongue. 'Do exactly as I would do,' his uncle said to him, from his ghastly white face, as they carried the old man – how old he suddenly looked - off to the baths to care for him.

But is she possessed? Has she cursed his uncle? Is she cursing him, the innocent nephew, even now?

Do exactly as I would do. Well, next, Patricles would – and so, still mightily trembling, does the younger of the same name – carry her down to the vault beneath the theatre, lock her by one ankle to the chain in the wall, and give her covering, and fruit, and a bowl of water.

But what of tomorrow? I have never tortured anyone in my life. I am one of those who watches. Patricles the younger closes the door on the vault and walks down the hill to the water. He has a certain place by the dark sea, on the rotting hulk of an abandoned boat, where he likes to sit, and watch the waves. He will go over the events of the evening: the marvellous tortures he has seen, the terrible desires they arouse in him. He will decide what to do tomorrow.

+​

The poor women are confused. Troilus, for all the things he might wish in his darkest heart on his new slaves, feels for them. He brings them light tulle coverings and pins to secure the material as dresses, and they are suspicious of him. He tries to free the younger one from her cage and she fights him, her sister has to calm her, persuade her out. Perversely, the two of them seem to welcome the leather collars he secures around each of their necks, with a long chain between: as if that settles the order of things, their enslavement, as if that were somehow proper, for the present.

They are all shocked, all three of them. Now he has led them, by their chain, to the room, the one big room in Patricles' villa that the three are to occupy. It has bed, water, a food amphora, cushions to rest on. But the younger one is almost hysterical, she keeps railing about how she can't stand it here, this man will torture them hideously just like the man in the theatre, she only wants to die. Nothing the elder one can do will calm her.

And Troilus himself is tired, very tired. 'Please,' he says, 'I am not a torturer like Patricles. Sit, and refresh yourselves.'

He sees their shock. Ah: too tired. He didn't mean to reveal that he understood their language, their Parsi, at least not yet; let alone, that he could speak it so well.

But it has quietened the younger one with its new shock. Good. He clicks his fingers: isn't that what a Master should do to command a slave? He will return to Latin now, to remind them whose empire has enslaved them. 'Sholeh: find me some wine. You may bring goblets for the two of you too.' Another click of the fingers. 'Jaleh: Water and salts to bathe my feet. Quickly now!' And as he closes his eyes there is an enjoyable jangle of chain...

 

[Sweet_Denna]

Slave. The word stings and she flinches, too faintly for him to see it before the expression has vanished. Slave. Siham wonders what has changed since his hasty departure, she wonders where he went, and what he did there.

The night is warm and Siham always sleeps undressed; she herself is not quite sure if she wanted to provoke him with her nudity. But now, as he is back, the former boldness vanishes and she makes sure to stay under the covers as he speaks with her. And when he turns to sit on the edge of the bed, she wraps the thin sheets around her body in a makeshift dress that leaves only her shoulders and slender arms uncovered.

Yes, he seems more confident, much calmer than in the carriage before: He does not play, not ask her, no, he orders. Again: This word that makes it so impossible for her to bear her own presence in this house, and his care. Slave! She, a slave! But he is firmer now, there is no room for argument, and as he sheds his tunic, Siham gasps silently.

For a moment she thinks. How strange it is that she has killed a man, not one, but many, but never touched one tenderly. How smooth his skin is. How well-defined the muscles underneath.

Her fingers on his shoulders feel like the reluctant feet of a landing butterfly; a feathery touch, not more. He feels her warm breath on his neck; she kneels behind him, inhales softly as she feels the warmth of his skin. He does not see it, but she smiles faintly: for a man, he really is beautiful.

Luna arrives with wine and two cups; she fills both and hands one to her master. With a gesture of her head, Siham orders her to set hers down onto the floor. Her touch becomes more confident, with firm fingers, she massages his aching shoulders. Every time I give something to you, there will be many rewards. She ponders on these words again. Then speaks: “In return, I would like you to call me by my name again.” There is playful taunting in her voice, she does not order him, no, but her voice his self-assured, unwavering. “Call me Siham, as you did before.”

***

The sisters feel discovered; their last refuge has crumpled with the knowledge that he speaks their language. Jaleh falls silent immediately and worriedly looks at her sister whose lovely cheeks suddenly are without colour. She fears to know what thoughts rush through Sholeh’s mind.

A soldier. That is what he is: a young soldier, and as such from a rather modest background. Yet he has acquired remarkable riches, enough to buy two noble slaves from the most exclusive slave trader in the whole empire. He speaks Parsi, and very well. His faint Latin accent causes Sholeh’s heart to grind against her chest, and for a short moment, she swaggers, if only lightly. Unwanted memories, terrible images rush back into her mind.

Now it is the younger sister who tries to calm the elder sibling, and if only by a gaze, a gesture, a soft brush against her skin. It is as if his words have taken away their voices like an evil charm

The thin chain that links them in fate and person forces the two young Persians to stay together: Jaleh follows Sholeh as she sets out to fetch the wine that their master has ordered, and Sholeh diligently walks behind Jaleh, as she goes to find a bowl of warm water and some salt.

Now everything is arranged: Jaleh kneels before the young Roman, washes his tired feet without ever looking up to meet his gaze. She still does not trust him, she is still weary of his objectives– too insistent had he been on buying the two Persian sisters – but for Sholeh she stays calm and composed, she tries to be.

They are quiet now. The only sound is that of softly splashing water. Sholeh sits a few feet away from them, the length of the chain allows this, and quietly watches the soldier, their master, from under her lowered raven lashes. Why us? The question seems more pressing now than before, and her lips part to voice the question, but she remains silent. Three goblets filled with wine stand at his reach, neither sister has touched hers. It occurs to Sholeh that their complete silence, their sudden reticence might strike him as defiance, and with a graceful gesture, she reaches for her cup, and brings it to her lips.

The quiet night seems to lock them together in the luxurious room that Patricles has offered his new friend so generously, and Sholeh urgently hopes that their master will be too tired to ask any more of them than simple tasks. In the hope of distracting him, she quietly asks, in Latin: “Dominus, do you wish for me to sing for you?”

***

Benona wakes from her feverish dreams. What happened and where is she now? The crowds are gone; she is, finally, alone. Gone is the Torturer. A chain is attached to her ankle, but her skin has been carefully oiled, someone has tended to her injuries. The young man from her dream? Benona moans softly as she shifts her position, the pain between her legs reminds her of what had been done. Of what she has lost. And yet: her goddess has not forsaken her, no. She has saved her brave priestess from the claws of this devil, and punished him for what he dared.

In a bowl before her, there are grapes, and apricots, a few cherries. She takes one of the small, velvety orange fruit and brings it to her lips. Her hands are shaking; too recent and too powerful is the realization that she is not longer in Arduinna’s care. What will become of her now, that she is not the priestess Benona anymore?

After having nibbled only half the apricot, she lays down again, her arms under her head, trying to move as little as possible to avoid the pain. The blonde woman is too tired, too shocked still to do anything else but sleep.

 

[patrick1]

Her touch soothes his aching shoulders – his uneasy heart. 'In return,' she says, 'I would like you to call me by my name again.'

There is something in her tone. Something jabs at him: the memory of the night, of a woman, hung upside down. 'Be careful what you wish for, Slave Siham.' He feels her pause, at the prefix he loads on to her name, then a greater pressure in her fingers. 'Steady now. I have seen harsh things tonight. Please do not try to bargain with me.'

He hears himself say Please. Ha! Some Master, he.

He closes his eyes, the harder massage somehow what he needs even if Siham – Slave Siham – means it angrily. What is the meaning of the night's events? Was Patricles somehow punished by divinities for over-reaching himself? Or was it the purest chance? Erudio would like to debate. Perhaps the woman at his back would be his equal in such discussion. But he does not want to reveal to her the weakness of his uncertainty. He respects the possibility of goddesses and gods, but does not believe in them. Probably. Most nights.

'Enough,' he says. 'Thank you.' No need to keep insisting on the Slave. 'Tomorrow...' What of tomorrow? Tomorrow Patricles may be dead, for all he knows, and why in his heart does he not seem to care? Are they not old friends? Has Patricles' cruelty tonight set them apart? Even if – the most terrible thing of all – the cruelty was arousing?

'Tomorrow?' she asks.

He bends to whisper to the slave Luna. Eyes wide, she nods with a whispered 'Sir' and scampers away. 'The slave will demonstrate in a moment. Tonight I have seen a profound event, and I have come home to a beautiful slave.' He sees the momentary expression: why did I insist on saying it again? Don't show compassion now, though, man. 'And now I must rest, but tomorrow, among other pleasures, you will be introduced to...yes...Lie down dear, and play...'

This to Luna, who has returned with a curved, ivory, life-size, unmistakeable phallus. She smiles at Siham; lays down; begins shamelessly to play with the thing between her legs.

'Tomorrow you will be introduced to various,' he gestures, 'various pleasures that your life here may have in store...if you choose to partake of them...'

In the midst of his attempts to be suave, a little ribald, his usual self, he hears the woman, the priestess on the stage, screaming in his memory, and has to close his eyes, not registering therefore how the slave Siham reacts. He lays himself down, wishing she would stroke his hair, kiss his face. Oh, to be loved, or at least, cared for. Exhaustion overwhelms him.

+

'Dominus, do you wish for me to sing for you?'

Enough. Troilus has been restrained enough, dammit. The clink of the chain connecting the necks of the slaves – their scent – their skin, oh to touch their soft soft skin - enough!

'I shall be glad if one of you sings for me.' He hears himself sounding like an older man, one trying to impose his authority. He almost wants to laugh at himself. 'One of you will sing for me, while the other licks and sucks my prick. You may decide who takes which role yourself. But be quick about it...'

+

There is a grating above the vault that lets in a little moonlight. Patricles the younger, finding no resolution in what the wild waves of the shore said to him, has climbed back up to hill the peek in on the woman his uncle called Cunnus. She moans when she moves. A shaft of light glints for a moment on the ring between her legs, at her very cunnus. Lying there, face down, watching the chained woman, what is the young man to do but be aroused, imagine her beneath him, hear again her cries of the night?

 

[Sweet_Denna]

Enough. Is Siham relieved or angry that he makes her stop? That this is all that he asks of her? She senses that there is conflict in his heart, that he himself is not sure what it is he expects. Siham is unsure if she should despise him for his weakness, or if it softens her anger towards him.

She looks at him, quietly. Her heart does not stay unmoved by his beauty, but he insisted on purchasing her as his slave. There is a sudden wave of rage: why not as his equal? She knows that neither her capture nor her sale into slavery is his fault, but this insistence on her status...Siham clenches her fists. How easy it would be to rid herself of him now. She imagines the blade in her hand, the blood soaking the fine sheets he is now resting on, the appealing contrast both colours would make against each other. Not the thought of freedom lures her, but the possibility of revenge, of cleaning her name of the tainting title he attached to it. Why does she hesitate?

Her glance falls upon Luna who still lies on the floor, spread-eagled, working the hard phallus in and out of her sex with transport. Part of her wants the girl to stop, to halt this shameless demonstration, and only for the enjoyment of her master and mistress. But she cannot look away; too enrapturing is the display of unmasked lust. The moon-faced girl moans softly, so obviously enjoying the instrument of pleasure she is using, now glistening with the juices of her arousal.

Siham wonders. What it is like to be pierced by a hard cock. The proud Saracen does not know – unmarried, she only ever shared lust and plays of sexual pleasure with female companions. Luna’s lips part in a small cry, she has reached the peak and now bucks and writhes with the strong emotions that crush through her. Siham wonders. He spoke of pleasures, of discovery – but what price would she have to pay to indulge in them? And what pleasures did he speak of?

Again, she looks at him. Is he sleeping? What could have agitated him so? For a moment, she wishes to touch his smooth skin again, feel its warmth under her fingertips. Submit. The woman sighs, and lays down next to him, close enough to sense with her whole body that he is there. Her voice is cautious and soothing as she asks: “What is it that you saw tonight?”

***

Sholeh, who had been so resolved to save her sister from their Roman master’s sexual desires, senses her will faltering. His order still hangs in the air like a foreign object, like a dangerous and unknown presence that does not belong. The two sisters exchange anxious glances, for a moment, Jaleh forgets about her task. Oh Creator! Sholeh’s chest tightens. Would it have been different if he was not....? It would have been.

Jaleh knows exactly what thoughts have brought about her sister’s scared expression. No words are needed. The young Persian silently looks up at her master, and nods. She has never done what he asks of them, but wants to spare her sister from the torture this would surely be. Setting aside the water and the cloth, she kneels before the soldier, quite unsure of how to proceed. Her inexperience is painfully obvious as even her hands seem to be unsure of where to touch; clearing her throat, she whispers: “Sholeh will sing, Dominus.” And hopes that he will have mercy on her helplessness and show her what to do.

It is then that Sholeh seems to snap out of her shocked trance: she leaps forward, and almost knocks over the amphora filled with wine. In Persian, she stutters: “No, Jaleh has no talent for these things; she does not know a single thing about giving pleasure.” Almost violently, she shoves her sister aside, and takes her place, on her knees, her ebony tresses cascading down her back. “Her voice is more beautiful than mine, Dominus”, she adds apologetically.
But once that Jaleh quietly scampered off to the side, as far as the chain that connects her to her sister allows, Sholeh once again hesitates. Her thoughts wander, she cannot help it; the wound that his loss has caused is still much too fresh.

Soroush. Her beautiful fiancé was the only man her fingers had ever touched, the only that her lips have ever tasted. Soroush, who was murdered so brutally by the Roman occupiers. By soldiers, soldiers just like her master. Just like him. A sting in her downcast eyes announces tears. Her hands shake so violently that she has to take a deep breath to regain her composure. She feels his impatience and is afraid to rouse his rage: and how easily her own hesitation could make him want to turn on her younger sister! Sholeh frees his already half-erect cock from his clothes, holds it in two hands like a frightening weapon. And is it not exactly that? She can hear a slip in Jaleh’s song, a hint of shock, of anticipation maybe. The sad Persian leans forward, grazes the smooth tip of his prick with her lips: the taste of salty arousal – so different than the aroma she had cherished – makes her flinch. Jaleh’s voice is slightly shivering as she continues her soft singing, against her will almost her eyes are glued to the scene before her.

***

Benona drifts between leaden sleep and dazed wake, the night seems both endless and not long enough. What will become of her? The question plagues her, half-consciously. The moonlight is her only cover: it is cold, she shivers. She wonders if the blasphemous Roman is now dead, if she is freed of her cruel master. Still – there is another chain around her ankle, and she knows that the freedom she would gain from the Torturer’s death would not mean freedom from her fate as a slave of the Romans.

With shivering fingers, she brushes over her burning sex; gasping, she feels the small metal ring, hidden between her soft folds. Oh Goddess. She tugs and pulls slightly; the sharp pain makes her cry out, the walls of her prison throw the echo of her agony around. It does not come off, no. Not easily. Benona knows enough about wound infection not to try and rip the shameful ring out by force; she does not know how long she will be in this place, and does not want to risk a fever. One finger dips into her sex, it hurts, she still feels aftermath of Patricles’ plunder. Again – what will become of her now?

 

[patrick1]

How melancholy is the woman's song. Troilus closes his eyes, and falls back, so tired, so very tired. The other woman, the one with her mouth at his prick is, to his surprise, not a virgin to this way of pleasuring a man. He feels the expertise of her tongue, her sucking. 'Slowly,' he says, 'slowly,' for he feels his pleasure slipping towards him too quickly, and yet...

He has to lift her head from him suddenly, his hand in her hair, roughly, she cries out, he almost apologizes but stop, she is your slave, there is no need for sorrys, 'Slowly,' he repeats, she wants it over with quickly but she must learn, this is how it will be now that the two women are his slaves, oh, and as he closes his eyes again, yes, more sensual, more lavish, wilder fantasies invade his imagination, the sisters are naked and writhing...

And yet the song; the song wails through his bones. A memory of two women and a man, the man a soldier, the women Persians like these, the wailing of a song not this but like this, he must banish it, banish the memory, it's a stream he will not swim in, no, take the river of pleasure, yes, 'Slowly,' ah yes but not too slowly, the river widens, quite suddenly he has a vision of blinding sunlight, and the sea, the sea...

+

Patricles the younger watches the waves, a little moonlight glittering on them. Yes, he is resolved: that's why he's returned to the water's edge. The German woman has a cave beyond the headland. He has not visited her; but he knows his uncle went there, he accompanied him this far – it become slippery and rocky here, at high tide, as now - and was told to wait.

He didn't wait; he secretly clambered after the older man, out of sight above, and saw the woman herself, in all her hideousness.

Perhaps she already stirs. But he will wait here till first light, till the tide has turned, before enlisting her aid in what must be done to Cunnus the tortured slave.

+

'What is it that you saw tonight?' Did the Saracen ask him that just now? Or, he has been slipping in and out of consciousness – was it hours ago?

It's more than a matter of moments, for when he turns to her to answer her question, the warmth of her beside him radiating against his body, she is asleep. Or seems to be so. 'I saw,' he says, and she doesn't stir. He might stroke her smooth face, as if she were an equal, a beloved.

He does not stroke her face. He reaches beyond her – ah, the slightly sour scent of her - to the little table beside the bed, to the goblet of wine. The eager face of the slave Luna looks up from the floor: she is awake as soon as she hears him move. 'Sir?' she whispers.

He drains the goblet. 'More,' he says, and she surprises him by showing, as she rises, that the phallus was still inside her, as she removes it to go and fetch more wine for him.

'I saw,' he says again to the sleeping slave, 'I saw a cruel man I might have become, a man I found myself surprisingly envying for the honesty of his cruelty,' does she stir? No, it's just Luna returning with the goblet, drink, yes, more wine - 'I saw a woman who might have been you, he wanted you, you know, your pride, to ruin you, to ruin your beauty, to ravage, your integrity, to break. And yet...'

Sleep, man. Drink and sleep. He might stroke her breast, tenderly, exposed in sleep.

He does not stroke her breast, nor suckle it, as he would like. He closes his eyes, and sees horror. Oh, and he enjoys the sight, and the screams, as his dreams lurch towards him like crawling, enslaved, pleading women...

 

[Sweet_Denna]

Sholeh cries out as the Roman yanks her up by her tresses, roughly, to stop her from spilling his seed already. The young woman can feel the tension in his muscles, his arousal, and his hunger to savour his new slaves, who are in so many ways spoils of a war he helped his Roman masters win. Like a trapped deer, Sholeh shivers in his grip, unsure if she can bring herself to obey. The soft-spoken woman for the length of a fleeting second imagines herself rebelling against the soldier, sees how the earthen amphora crashes on his skull. Sweet revenge it would be. No: To make him pay for what they have taken from her, she would have to carve out his heart with the shards.

But her face betrays little, almost nothing, of the thoughts that plague her mind. With frightened eyes Sholeh looks up at her master, her dark red lips smeared with her spit. Slowly. He will not let her spoil the drawing out of pleasure, the balancing along the high cliff of climax, of satisfaction, as long as possible. Shivering, she nods silently. Slowly. As she takes his hard cock again, Sholeh is careful not to be hasty: if she will not give him what he wants, he might take it by force, and from her sister.

Two salty tears drop on his cock, on her slender hand that holds it while her lips are softly wrapped around the erect, throbbing flesh. She can feel his racing heartbeat. Yes, the Persian woman knows how to draw moans of pleasure from a man’s lips this way, she know how to use her lips, her tongue, her throat. She knows. Sholeh’s eyes are tightly shut, she tries to chase the image of Soroush from her mind – her actions, and her slavery to this Roman must not taint it - and finds that she cannot. So clearly can she now see him before her: his large black eyes, the long dark lashes crowning them, his smiling lips parted in a blissful sigh as she...oh Creator! Is it possible to suffer such painful, deadening loss and yet live?

Jaleh watches. She learns. She does not want her grieving sister to be tortured this way, not again, and not by him. He – and his comrades – have truly done enough already. The Persian girl learns. How his proud cock glistens now when it emerges from Sholeh’s mouth! Jaleh feels her own mouth grow dry; she has to wet her palace with a sip of wine before she can continue with her song. She wonders how the Roman’s impressive instrument fits into her sister’s delicate mouth, sees Sholeh’s cheeks carve in as she sucks on it; slowly, as he has ordered. How beautiful her poor sister is, even now, as she must suffer so! Almost against her will, Jaleh comes closer and reaches out, innocently, to caress Sholeh’s back, and is shocked as she angrily shakes her hand off. Why does her sister resist her attempt of consolation?

***

Benona cannot find sleep again; her thoughts – and the variations of pain she is experiencing – keep her wide awake now. Almost every position she can find hurts, until she rolls on her back, staring up at the faint moonlight falling in from above. Had she noticed a shadow there before? No, everything is quiet, only the crickets keep the unlucky priestess company, she is alone.

***

His answer comes too late for her to hear it – the exhaustion, the impressions, the many tiring emotions have taken their toll on the enslaved Saracen; she sleeps. Her chest rises and falls in deep, even draws of breath as Erudio confesses to the darkness that Patricles and his slave have dragged to the surface; the darkness he has been so successful at concealing up until now.

The slender woman stirs, does she dream? The night is warm, almost uncomfortably so; with an angry movement of her arm, she frees herself of the covers, baring her torso; as she rolls onto her side, a naked leg curls against his side. Siham sighs. Is it the image of the white phallus between Luna’s legs that has made her so restless? Is it him?