If the months after I put on my veils did not actually stretch into eternity, it certainly seemed at the time that they might actually do so. It was not merely that I put on the veils. It was that the veils changed my life and my relationships with the people around me. For example, I was no longer allowed to play with slaves in the courtyard. And then, too, once I put on the veils I became “Young Mistress” to distinguish me from my grandmother, who was “Mistress”. I became invisible to my uncles, because, after all, I was a freewoman now, and a woman is fairly useless to a man aside from a few well-defined purposes. So, to my uncles I was now “milady” or “Lady Edana” and they became “Sir” or “My Lord” or “Lord So and So” to me. The exception to this of course was my grandfather, who remained Grandfather, to me. However, he was now so removed from my new social world that it was impossible even to imagine that he had ever sat me in his lap and kissed me on the cheek. He was, after all, the Lord of the Homestone now, and I was simply one of the women for whom he had responsibility. That is how my life changed when I began to wear veils.

In addition to the endless needlework, my grandmother began to assign me more chores. She now expected me to supervise slaves in the gardens, and to learn from them how plants grew. She expected me to keep inventory of the contents of the chillers. She was of course training me for my future role as mistress of a large household. I also began to go into the markets, always escorted, to learn what things cost, and how to buy. Eventually I was given a small amount of gold and taught to keep accounts. Apparently this training was to continue until my grandmother felt comfortable that I could rule a household without disgracing her name.

The new year festivities had, by now, been celebrated seventeen times since my birth.

Three seasons after this, another war came. My grandfather by now was retired, his practice largely taken over by his assistants – myself being one of them, of course. He was still treated with respect wherever he went, and his opinions were often sought in the most puzzling cases. My grandmother was still busy directing the affairs of the family, and I still was unable to learn why it was that the endless amounts of sewing and needlework that she did, never decreased.

The war was expected for months. Even so, nothing that anyone had suggested had prepared anyone for the total destruction of the city that the war brought. Men and animals lay dead in the streets, and slaves were led away on long chains, some of them from the only homes they had ever known, headed for places that no one had even heard of. Our house slaves also were lost, including the main cook and all but two of my grandfather’s personal attendants. Those two were left behind only because of their age.

Then one night, the warriors came pounding down the doors in the middle of the night. I was not yet retired for the evening, and was reading in the courtyard by oil lamp when they found me. There were three of them. One was short, and looked a little dirty. The other was tall with one eye missing. The third was handsome but spoke very harshly. The short one stepped towards me and with a swift gesture tore the veils from my face.

“Take this one”, said the one eyed man, “and let’s leave this damned city.”

I screamed as loud as I could but no one seemed to hear me. I had no way of knowing that these three had just murdered my grandparents. I screamed and screamed, and one of them picked up my veils from the ground and stuffed them into my mouth.

“Shut up or I will cut your tongue out”, he growled. “Women talk too much anyway.” Then he spit on the tile. Throwing me onto his shoulder, he stood still for a moment while his companions tied my legs and arms together as if I were an animal being trussed for slaughter. In this way, I was carried out of the only home I had ever known.

Hoisting me on to his shoulder, he spit on the tile, and waited while his companions tied my arms and legs together, as if I were an animal being trussed for slaughter. He carried me out of the only home I had ever known. I had a lot of time, while hanging over his shoulder, to notice that he smelled like leather and unwashed sweat. My breasts were uncomfortable bouncing against his back, and my long braids trailed between his legs. The ropes cut hard against my wrists, and my hands began to go a little numb. What I did not know was that others, remaining behind, were setting fire to my grandparents’ home. By the morning, everything I had ever known would be a pile of smoking ash and scorched stone.

Later in my life I wondered, when I thought of these events, why it was that I wasn’t stripped naked and inspected right then and there. I never understood that, because in most cases, that’s what would have happened. All they saw was my face. The rest, for them, would be a matter of luck, depending on what they wanted. The journey seemed to take a long time, and every step this man took jarred my bones. I sobbed through my gag, and more than once the man growled and grumbled. Once or twice he even offered to impale me if I didn’t quiet myself.

When I arrived at their camp, which was high in the hills outside what had been our City, I was dumped in a corner, added to a group of four or five other women. These women were naked. I was still clothed. The naked women glared at me with contempt.

After dumping me on the ground, the tall warrior stretched a little, saying: we’ll see to them later, when we’re in a better mood to enjoy them. The other two laughed when he said this, and then the three of them walked away. It was a warm night. I lay on the ground, tied up like an animal, and wept until morning.

The men did not return until the middle of the next day. They came, looking tired and unwashed. I saw that they were older than they had appeared during the night, and they did not seem as fit as warriors ought to be. Ignoring the other women, the short one bent over me, and with a hook knife, cut the ropes on my ankles and wrists. I had managed, in the course of the night to work the veils out of my mouth, and these piled in a disgusting heap next to me. Then he forced me to my feet and without another word cut the ribbons that bound my braids, so that my hair fell free.

-Slave hair is always unbound, he muttered. Then he grabbed my hair with his filthy hand and dragged me roughly to a tent on the other side of the camp. The other men I had seen the previous night were there, along with one other man I had never seen before. This new man was sitting in a chair. When I saw him together with the others, I realized suddenly that these men were not warriors: they were ordinary slavers.

The one-eyed man took me from the short man, and then pushed me down on my knees.

-What was your name? he asked harshly, -What were you called?

-I am Edana of Ko-ro-ba, I said, looking him directly in the eyes. –I am the granddaughter of the physician Aodhan of Ko-ro-ba.

-Granddaughter of whom? He looked mildly surprised.

-Aodhan the physician, I replied

-of Ko-ro-ba? he looked a little startled.

-Yes.

The man sitting in the chair eyed me carefully. He looked very tense. His back never touched the chair. His elbows rested on the arms of the chair and his hands met in front of his chest, fingers inter-laced, the index fingers tapping almost nervously. He wore a long robe that apparently at one point had been blue or green and was now fading to something near to brown. The embroidered details on the hems of this robe had apparently at some point been very beautifully worked, but now stitches were missing, and threads stuck out here and there at odd angles. No warrior would look twice at a robe like this, let alone wear it. The warriors of Ko-ro-ba were extremely proud men. Almost unapproachable at times, they were men of few words who accepted only the authority of their commanders. Their pride also extended to their appearance. The warriors of Ko-ro-ba were fit, hard-muscled men who wore clean linen and polished leather. Every detail of their appearance spoke of their pride in their responsibilities and duties. The man in front of me wearing this horrible robe was no more a warrior than was the tree outside the tent. I continued to look at him. His hair was sandy colored, a little gray at the temples, and it looked like it had been trimmed with a knife. He had a very large, slightly crooked nose, and a wide mouth. His eyes were small, and hooded, almost, by his eyelids. He held his mouth very tightly, which made his lips almost disappear.

-Granddaughter of Aodhan of Ko-ro-ba? he hissed, as if he’d not heard the conversation clearly.

There was silence in the tent.

He looked at the other three for a second.

-Idiots, he said, looking at no one in particular.

“Twistcharm, what are you saying?” asked the short slaver.

“Only that you have brought me the granddaughter of one of the most prominent physicians in Ko-ro-ba. The name of Aodhan is known in at least three cities. He defied the Priest-Kings by trying to continue the work of Flaminius. Oh excuse me. You have never heard of Flaminius, who tried to cure the Holy Disease. His cylinder was raided, his work destroyed. Aodhan continued that work, and what’s more, the Priest-Kings left him alone because of his skill as a surgeon repairing battle injuries. Now you expect me to sell a girl who is probably going to tell the first person who asks her where she’s from, that she is Aodhan’s granddaughter. Marvelous.

“We could cut her tongue out,” suggested the one-eyed man hopefully.

“No man wants to be pleasured by a woman without a tongue,” replied Twistcharm, who was now becoming both annoyed and impatient with his companions.

“Still, if we cut her tongue out, she could be a kitchen slave,” volunteered the one-eyed man.

Twistcharm lifted a brass goblet off the ground and heaved it at the one-eyed man. “Damn you, Dashsnare,” he screamed, “Cut her tongue out and we make no profit on the sale. Idiot.”

The odd names intrigued me. It was obvious that these were use-names, not real names. That these men had use-names told me that they were lower caste people, of First Knowledge, only. People of first knowledge have names that they use in order to protect their real names from being known. People of first knowledge believe that if a person knows another person’s real name, that this knowledge can be used for making charms, and spells, and such. People of Second Knowledge, like my family, know that this is not true.

The discussion about me, and my tongue, continued in the background. It was so horrifying that I tried not to pay attention to it.

“May Golden Beetles suck all the liquid from your body while you live for bringing this woman here” swore Twistcharm at Dashsnare. Then he turned and looked at me. Motioning to Dashsnare, he smiled then, and said, quietly, “Strip her.”

I did not realize what was about to happen to me. I had, at that time, no idea, that anything like this could happen to me, that is how sheltered I was at that moment in my life. Twistcharm and Dashsnare looked positively gleeful, or as near to gleeful as they were capable of looking, in any event. Twistcharm pulled a knife from his belt and handed it to Dashsnare. There was nothing particularly interesting about this knife. It was, in fact, completely forgettable. But the fact is that I never forgot that knife, and the memory of it chills my heart, to this day.

Dashsnare stepped up to me and began to cut my clothes off. Mind you, I did not stand there like a statue while he did it. I tried to get away from him, but the third man, whose name I still did not know, was standing behind me. He grabbed my arms. I was trapped between Dashsnare and the third man, and so there was nothing I could do to protect myself from this disgrace. Dashsnare cut, and ripped, and soon my clothes were a pile of rags on the floor. I have heard it said that sometimes, when a slave is stripped, her clothes will be burned in front of her, to impress on her exactly what her new condition of life has become. This, however, did not happen to me. I was still, however, naked in front of three men, and I had never been naked in front of anyone before except in the bath, and I felt deeply shamed to be naked in front of three strange men.

There is nothing that prepares a woman of my background for this kind of degradation. All my life I had been taught to be modest in dress and in manner, and now three men were leering at me, and laughing. They walked around me, my desperate efforts to cover myself with my hands and arms moving them to even higher amusement. They laughed and laughed. Then Dashsnare noticed the two thin gold bracelets on my left arm.

“What are those?” he asked – and I’m sure that he asked only to torment me because he must have known what these bracelets meant, because it was common knowledge in my City. In Ko-ro-ba, all women of a certain caste put three bracelets on at the age of 15. A bracelet was removed each time a woman bore a child. I wore three bracelets, so anyone would have known that I had, as yet, no children. The bracelets had a particular meaning for me, also, because since I was being trained as a physician, I would not be allowed to practice my art until I had borne these two children. I was not then, and still am not now, sure exactly how this rule came about, but our society is so old that I can only suppose that there is wisdom behind it. Perhaps it was only that my life should be well-ordered and stable before I take on concern for the troubles of other people. Now, of course, as the mother of three sons, and grandmother of perhaps 14 children (and as a former slave, my heart does count the children of my sons’ girls as grandchildren although I would never say that to anyone, because it is an unacceptable thing to say). Looking at my wrist, I remembered suddenly when my grandfather had tied the threads on that the bracelets later replaced.

But I digress -- please forgive me, my age affects my mind and makes it wander sometimes – from my story. I had stood there for what seemed to me a very long time, when Dashsnare spoke again, the clever boy.

“Let’s inspect her now!” he said, “so we know what we have!”

And so they began to touch me. “It would be good if we were able to certified her heat,” he said, nearly chirping with happiness at the idea. Twistcharm glared at him, and Dashsnare stopped talking. They continued touching me, first my hair and face, neck, shoulders. Then my face, and in fact my entire body began to burn with shame as the three of them in turn touched my breasts, pinched my nipples, and stroked my thighs. They then parted my thighs and the final indignity began. Pushing my legs apart, Dashsnare began to stroke my flower. They laughed yet more when, upon stroking me, they discovered that my flower was already wet and somewhat swollen.

How helpless a woman is, in this situation, betrayed by her body before men like these. These men were men that I would have ignored had I passed them in the street, men that my family would have considered less than beggars! My anger flared, and my eyes must have shown it, because Twistcharm slapped me hard, across the face.

“You are nothing, now, girl” he sneered, “less than nothing. You are now worth only what money I can get for you, so don’t let your ideas of who you might have been color the reality of who you are, now.”

I said nothing, and then, as if to emphasize his point, he thrust two fingers high up inside of me, straining, but not breaking, my maidenhead. Then he laughed at me. “You are whatever I tell you to be, until I sell you. Then you will be whatever your master tells you to be.” Those words appeared to amuse him a great deal. Smiling at his own cleverness, he put the two fingers he’d had inside me, covered with my own juices, in my mouth. No. Put is not the right word. He forced my lips apart, and pushed his fingers between my teeth. When he finished doing that, he stepped back and looked at me, again, this time pausing for a moment, as if something were wrong.

“Now, tell me,” he asked quietly, ” since when does a slave stand before a free?”

I refused to answer and I refused to kneel. Dashsnare and the third man brought their combined strength down on my shoulders, crumpling me to my knees.

“You are unwilling” smiled Twistcharm. He reflect a moment, then said, “and some would pay a greater price for the pleasure of breaking you.”

“I will not be broken,” I hissed at him. Twistcharm laughed.

“Take her outside,” he commanded, motioning towards the tent flap, apparently growing impatient with the whole business, “Take her outside, tie her to a wheel or a tree, or whatever you want, and then brand her -- oh – and shave the flower clean. It seems to be the style these days.”

“Which brand shall we use?” asked Dashsnare, apparently trying to be helpful. The whole idea struck me as completely beyond comprehension. Apparently they were going to brand me like a bosk, or some similar animal.

“That’s an excellent question,” replied Twistcharm thoughtfully, “Do we have anything that would interest a collector?”

“Well…”

“Oh please don’t tell me that you have something new and strange. Fads don’t work, you know. A certain brand might interest someone today, but then it might fall out of favor and we might lose money.”

“No, no, that’s not what I had in mind. Someone sold me a nice brand with a standard K on it, but the letter is worked in an interesting way. The blacksmith is considered an artist.”

“Good. Use that one -- and be sure you tie her up well. And gag her. If I hear screaming tonight, I’ll take it out of your hide.”

I was pushed to my feet, and although I struggled, kicked, and resisted with all my might, they were still stronger. They dragged me across the camp, and in the end, in spite of my struggling and biting, I was tied to a wagonwheel.