Tales of Drysdale House (9) The Slave’s Tale

 

And many are the dead men,

Too silent to be real.

-Gordon Lightfoot.

Lena collapsed into Anders’s arms as she burst into tears. It was one of the most surreal moments I had ever experienced: Anders with two dead men at his feet, and a crying naked woman in his arms. Maybe that was normal in his world, but I was a patent attorney from San Francisco. My life had changed so much since I and my girlfriend had set out on a camping trip to the Yellowstone Valley for the Memorial Day weekend. In the valley of the Bighorn River, a tributary of the Yellowstone, we had played a game of make-believe. We had role-played as barbarian and captive, Master and Slavegirl. Gradually role play had become reality, games had become life. We had become entangled in a range war out of the 1880s, had met piratical ranchers who were shipping enslaved women to another planet, and in self-defense I had killed two men.

Now two more dead men lay at my feet, killed by Anders, an Assassin by caste from the planet Gor. Suddenly I was sick to my stomach in the bushes. I looked up. Anders was just watching me while he held onto the girl, his hand still over her mouth. Her struggling slowly ceased, as she realized the futility of it; Anders strong arms held her without difficulty. She was still tense and stiff in his arms.

He looked at me.

“Drag them into the bushes. You will feel better with something to do. Make sure their communication devices are turned off, and any other electronic devices that could be used to trace them. Drag brush over them to hide them from the trail. We know from the briefing by Woodrow Frick that they have no dogs. VanRijn can’t stand dogs.”

I did as I was told. Two bodies, that five minutes ago were men, living men with lives, struck down because they had come between Anders, and to be honest, me, when we were on a mission of vengeance. VanRijn, their employer, had tried to kill my Juli and me, and then my sponsor Wyandotte Frick. So Anders had been commissioned to kill VanRijn, and I had agreed to guide the Gorean Assassin through the woods to VanRijn’s remote home. All because of Juli. I loved her to distraction, and on the Bighorn, I had learned I wanted to possess her; to own her. She, who had once wanted a respectable married life, felt the need for the absolute commitment of slavery. And the Fricks had facilitated that. And here I was, a respectable lawyer from San Francisco, hiding two bodies in the woods, and with the prospect of killing more.

But no relationship could be as deep as Master and Slave. Juli and I knew that. Although civilization promised peace, comfort, and softness, I was learning that to live deeply was to live with harshness. To be happy, there must be conflict, obstacles to overcome, problems to solve, even enemies to defeat. I, a man of law, who had always been guided by what was legal had been dragged into the brutal world of the Fricks. This was a world were I was an accessory to murder; a world where I hid bodies while we planned to kill at least one more man.

I could try to disguise it as self-defense, I could pretend it was VanRijm or me. But I felt an atavistic drive to kill me, not just because he had tried to kill me, but because Juli was in the car, as much a target as I had been. It was for that I wanted to see VanRijn die. To be the man worthy of owning Juli, the man worthy of putting a locked steel collar around her throat, the man worthy of personally branding her with my own initial P, I had to become the man who was willing to keep her,

Only the Strong deserve the Fair.

But deserve the Fair, does not mean the Hollywood ending, kisses, the wedding march, love in a bungalow with wrangling and bitterness as we grew old. It meant possessing the Fair, have them feel the joy of being possessed, of being mastered, of being desired so fiercely only owning her would be enough. Only when she is owned can she feel the joy of possession. The great physical release of being Mastered. Only then can she surrender fully to her physical needs. Julia had surrendered, she had felt that joy. Now to prove I was a worthy Master, I had to perform this task. A Chivalric Hero will die for his Love’s Freedom, what joy can she take in that. A Gorean Master will kill to possess his love, she can take joy in her surrender. In these past few months, I had become someone different, as had Juli. Our physical love was something that she could never have known when free. I must be a worthy Master.

With the bodies buried, I turned back to Anders. The girl was calm now in his arms. They had enfolded her, the same arms that had killed the men that had been

holding her.

“Hush now, kajira, hush now. We have you. Now who were those men? Why were you running?”

She was taking deep breaths, her chest contracting and expanding. Anders had removed his hand from her mouth; she was standing on her own. She looked around, really taking in Anders and I for the first time, She became aware of her nudity; tried to cover herself with her hands. Anders tone was still kindly,

“Kneel, kajira, do not cover yourself.”

She just stood there, still covering herself. Anders tone grew harsher.

“Kneel, kajira, do not cover yourself. Place your hands behind your head. Must a command be repeated.”

“Why are you doing this? Protect me, what is a kajira.”

Anders stepped towards her. She knelt quickly.

“A kajira is a collared Slavegirl, a possession, a property, an owned thing. Like you, a naked beast with a collar.  A slave.”

Lena began to cry again,

“Slave, slave, slave. You are as bad as them. As bad as VanRijn. Obsessed with owning a woman, using her as you will. I am not a slave, I am not a slave.”

She was becoming hysterical. I expected Anders to slap, to strike, to impress upon her his authority as Master over a slave. To me surprise, he knelt behind her, his arms around her. He soothed her with quiet words, he stroked her hair over and over, smoothing it, stroking her hair. She became less hysterical; her breathing calmed. He stroked her head and neck, as if petting a dog, or stroking a cat. Anders settled into a rhythm, his right hand stroking her shoulder and neck and head; his left soothing the outside of her left thigh.  She lay back against him, skin touching skin, quieted by his tone and soothing words.

“Tell me your story, kajira, how did you come to wear this collar. Start from the beginning until you found yourself her, naked in the woods.”

She had stiffened again at the word kajira, but relaxed again due to Anders quiet words and gentle hands. (The hands of a killer, I could not help thinking). Lena leaned back, her head under his chin, the looked up at him calmly. She ignored me, even though I could fully take in her nudity, and her displayed body. Her attention was all on Anders.  He was stroking the front of her thigh now.

“My name is Lena Calhoun. I am a forager. I grew up in Idaho, around Coeur d’Alene. I moved away when I left school, not much work in a dying logging town. I bummed around, waitressing, working in retail. I did a semester in community college, botany, but dropped out for lack of money. I learned about mushrooms, people will pay crazy prices for wild mushrooms. I drifted around, I heard the foraging was good around Dutchman’s Cut, about ten miles from here. The mushrooms grow well in cut over former timber lands”

She gave a short laugh.

“Funny, huh? I ended up in another dying timber town. I fell in with a group of other foragers. We gathered the mushrooms; sold them to buyers from the big Bay Area restaurants. Rafael Sabatini from Scaramouche always paid good prices.”

I knew Scaramouche, it was across McMurtry from my new house on Drysdale Circle.

Anders started holding her more closely. He had one hand resting lightly on her stomach.

“VanRijn and his people started hassling us. He said all the forest was his. His Patroonship, whatever that is. But we checked, his forest lease had lapsed, besides it wouldn’t hurt him if we took a few mushrooms. No skin off of his beaky nose.”

She sniffed. We were clearly coming to a difficult part of the story. Anders produced a handkerchief. Dark grey, not white. Something white would show in the woods; it might alert a target. She blew her nose.

“Thank you. A couple or three months ago, some of our crew were beaten up, or decided to leave. We always foraged separately anyway, to cover more ground. A lot of us, the loose group of us, decided to forage further away from VanRijn’s place. I came back to working in this direction because it had some of the best mushrooms. The ones that Sabatini and the other restaurants want. That’s when it happened.”

Lena stopped. This next part seemed like it would be hard for her to talk about. Anders just breathed in time with her, quietly. His hands moved slowly, massaging lightly Lena’s stomach and thigh. Looking at her, relaxed in Anders arms, I thought how natural she looked, naked and collared in a man’s strong arms. Her legs had spread somewhat as Anders held her. How desirable she looked. How natural in a collar!

Lena began again.

“Some time ago, maybe two months, I was foraging near here. I was doing very well. That is when Cathcart and VanRijn seized me. Grabbed me, put me in handcuffs and dragged me to that ugly house of VanRijn.”

I asked, “Who is Cathcart?”

She seemed startled; she must have forgotten about me as she lolled in Anders’s arms as she was stroked by the hands of a killer. Lena began to put her legs closer together, but Anders’s hand on her left thigh moved the leg apart again. She did not resist. She seemed under a spell.

“Cathcart is the head of the guards. The others rotate in monthly. Cathcart stays. Cathcart and Montgomery, Cathcart’s deputy. The others come and go.”

She continued:

“Cathcart and Montgomery stripped all my clothes off. Since then, I have had no clothing. VanRijn told me I don’t need any, since I wouldn’t be allowed outside. That was after he sentenced me to slavery; to be his slave. He held a mock trail in the big room; he called it the grand hall. He said that the Dutch authorities made his ancestor a Patroon in 1616 and because it had never been revoked, he could hold trials and have slaves. In New Amsterdam, before the English came. Such bullshit; there are no more slaves in this country!”

There was silence for a bit. I thought of two kajirae in San Francisco, Juli and Veronika, that I could own because I was consul for the tiny Grand Duchy of Lutha, and their laws permitted it. I thought of numerous enslaved females on the Lazy F ranch who were collared and branded under the laws of the same Grand Duchy and the laws of Ar on Gor for which there were representatives. I remembered Michael Emery bragging to Zach Frick, the night before Chelsea Frick’s Companionship Ceremony, of the numbers of livestock his family sold each year under the aegis of the Steel Worlds and the North American Families.

Poor innocent Lena. The number of slaves in North America alone was astounding; poor VanRijn had only had one. I wasn’t clear on who or what the Steel Worlds were, but I knew it was a big operation. I had become involved in something huge when I had just wanted to fully possess and own Juli. I knew that there was no way out though. No way out for me; and I was sure that there was no way of escape for Lena. Not when she was in the arms of a Gorean man.

I looked at Lena and thought that this would be my future. Delivering unsuspecting girls to a fuller, albeit enslaved life. I could not expect volunteers or nearly volunteers like Juli and Veronika. I would be going out to get them. To scout them, catch them, secure and brand them. This was my fate, which I accepted. It was an afternoon of epiphanies in the woods for me.

Anders asked;

“After you were stripped, what then ensued. How did you end up here?”

It was clear that this was a demand for Lena to talk through her collaring and slavery.

“I spent the next two nights in a basement room. It was locked and kept dark. There were many such rooms, I think mine was the only one occupied. On the third morning, Cathcart and Montgomery dragged me back the big room VanRijn calls the Hall. He eats there, he has meetings. I was naked and dirty. I was not allowed to cover myself. Cathcart and Montgomery made me kneel. I was to kneel a lot in the next weeks. They held me while VanRijn locked this collar on me. I think he had it made specially. While he was locking it on he was laughing and said something about , “if the Fricks only knew.” I didn’t understand that part. Then he took off my purity ribbon. He threw it in the fire. I watched it burn. Since then, he has made sure I can never wear my ribbon again. Sometimes he gave me to Cathcart, and once to Montgomery.”

She tried to cover her face at that, but Anders would not permit. He was gentle, but firm. He looked at me and said,

“I have learned some things about handling from my friend Scipio Metellus.”

Lena looked blank. “What?”

“Never mind, carry on with your story.”

“VanRijn made me be his servant; I think all his old servants had run away. I cooked, and cleaned, and at night he made me be his slut. He was very demanding. The guards did their own cooking and cleaning, but they looked down on me. I was naked you see, and they were not. Even the two- or three-woman guards would not help me. The collar made some kind of difference.”

Lena took a deep breathe.

“A couple of days ago, a helicopter came. Two men and a woman. One man was VanRijn’s lawyer, the woman was a lawyer too, but not VanRijn’s. The other man, I don’t know who he was, VanRijn wanted to talk to him about some Family called the Fricks. He was obsessed with them.

Last night, the helicopter came again. Just one passenger, a woman. I was not allowed to see her. But the other woman, the one who was a lawyer, she pitied me. She asked if I could have some clothes as my nudity upset her. They told her I would remain without clothes. She asked to leave, but they said no. Shortly after that, they took her away. VanRijn’s lawyer came back with her clothes. He said he would make her confess. I didn’t know what that was about. This morning when the second lady, the one I hadn’t seen, said she wanted to go out. I didn’t see her, but I heard her when I was preparing the breakfast trays. I heard her go out, and slipped out the open terrace door and ran away. Then those men caught me and you killed them.”

Anders said: “Good girl.”

He gently disengaged from her. He stood up. Lena was at his feet. He looked down at her.

“Kneel” he said.

She knelt.

“Good girl.”

“Stay.”

“Yes, Master.”

“Good girl.”

Anders and I walked a short distance away.  

“When these ones do not return, Cathcart will likely assume they got lost in the woods. We need to watch through the binoculars as someone puts the code into the pin pad. Then we can open the door ourselves and get inside. And better if we do it during daylight hours.”

“You mean at night,” I objected.

“No, daylight, someone approaching at night is suspect. Someone walking up during the day and pushing in the code looks like someone who has a right to be there. The trick to being seen but not observed is to do something expected and ordinary.”

Anders whispered a few words to Lena. She looked at him and shook her head. He spoke to her again and she nodded. We walked down the game trails, always working our way closer to the sinister house of VanRijn. I took a place a short distance away from a door in the service wing. I could see the pin pad from my place of concealment. Anders and Lena were a few paces down the trail. We waited.

An hour went by. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less. The sounds of the forest went on around us. The sun began to fall in the sky. It was around five o’clock by my watch when I heard singing. A man had come out of the forest into the meadow in front of the service wing of Dragonwyck II. He was in comfortable clothes for a day of hiking, but not in the uniform of the guards. I could not make out the words of the song he was singing; nor did I know the tune.

I looked down the trail on which we were hidden. A different trail than the one the singing man was on. I could see Anders whispering to Lena. She shook her head. He tied a piece of rope to her collar. He spoke quietly to her again. She nodded.

Anders began to whistle. It was the same tune as that of the singing man. The man stopped and listened, Four guards came out onto the meadow from the same direction the first man had come. Anders stepped into the meadow leading Lena. He kept whistling. The singing man joined Anders in whistling the tune.

Anders stepped up to the man. He held Lena’s rope in his hand.

“Have you misplaced something?”

They both laughed as Lena knelt. The guards came running up. After a lot of gesticulation, the all walked towards the door. I watched them use the pin pad. They went in, and I was left outside.