The slave girl’s fate

The slave girl is lying on her pallet in the dark, curled up against the chill of the night. Her tunic is bunched up, and her right hand is thoughtlessly tracing raised welts on her bottom. She can feel each one, six in all. She remembers them falling. Mistress had said, this was only the beginning.

The girl keeps going through the events of the last few days, wondering how she could have acted differently. She hadn’t tried to attract the attention of Mistress’s son; she hadn’t thought he would ever have a reason to notice her. And yet, somehow, he did – maybe when she was going past with a platter of fruit, so focused on not dropping any that she didn’t notice him staring.

Notice her he did, and this very morning he caught her as she walked across the atrium, and pressed her to the wall to steal a kiss.

Perhaps, he biggest mistake was that she didn’t mind. She enjoyed it – he was a handsome young man, strong, smelling fresh with massage oil. She allowed herself to enjoy the kiss, to sink into it, and to respond with her own lips and tongue.

Perhaps, if she’d fought, Mistress wouldn’t have been so infuriated when she saw them. Mistress isn’t one of the women who think that dalliances with slave girls don’t matter: she insists that her son must stay faithful to his bride. She sent him away, promising a stern talking-to, and then turned to the girl.

“Come with me,” she said curtly. “I’ll teach you to flaunt yourself before men.”

It would have to be a painful lesson, and a long one. Mistress has decreed that the girl is to get six lashes every day for the next ten days, so that it sinks in properly. Mistress is going to do the punishing herself, just to make sure the lesson was properly delivered.

The girl lies in her hard bed, counting the weals with her fingertips. There are only six there so far. Only.

She wonders how she can steal another kiss.