She went down on her knees obediently.
But just before she entered the passage, she glanced back at the shadowy room and she saw the watcher standing in the corner. This time there was no screen to hide her. She wore violet silk, violet like her eyes, and her high gold-plated girdle was like a piece of armor encasing her narrow waist. And the rose-colored veil hovered about her as if it were a living thing, an aura.
“How do you open the girdle—take it off,” Beauty wondered. The woman’s head was a little to the side, as though she was trying to disguise her fascination with Beauty, and her breasts seemed to visibly swell beneath the tight bodice of embroidered cloth, that too somewhat like a piece of armor. The oval rings dangling from her ears appeared to shiver, as if they marked the secret excitement the woman felt, which she would not otherwise reveal to anyone.
Maybe it was the flattery of the light-Beauty couldn’t know-but this woman seemed infinitely more alluring than the others, like a great, purple tropical bloom set among tiger lilies.
The women were urging Beauty on, though they kissed her as they did so. She must go. She bowed her head and went into the passage, her flesh still tingling from their touch, and she came quickly to the other side, where the two male servants waited for her.
It was evening, and all the torches were lighted in the bath. And after Beauty had been oiled and perfumed and her hair brushed, she was led by three of the grooms to the broadest corridor that she had yet seen, a passage so splendidly decorated with bound slaves and mosaicwork that it gave the impression of tremendous importance.
Yet Beauty became more and more frightened. Where was Lexius? Where was she being taken? The grooms carried with them a casket. She feared she knew what was inside it.
At last, they came to a chamber with a pair of massive doors to the right, a sort of vestibule with the ceiling open to the sky. Beauty could see the stars, feel the warm air.
But when she saw the niche in the wall, the only niche in the chamber, placed directly opposite the doors, she became terrified. The grooms set down the casket and hurriedly removed from it a gold collar and a mass of silk wrapping.
They only smiled at her fear. They stood her in the niche, folded her arms behind her back, and quickly snapped the high, fur-lined gold collar round her neck, its broad rim cradling her jaw, tipping her chin up slightly. She couldn’t turn her head, look down. The collar was hooked to the wall behind her. Even if she lifted her feet off the floor, the thing would have held her.
But they were lifting her feet for her, winding each tightly with the long silk strips. They worked up her legs, leaving her sex bare, the wrapping getting tighter and tighter. In a moment, the wrappings were binding her stomach and her waist, sealing her arms to her back, and crisscrossing her breasts to leave them naked.
With each pull of the silk, she was bound more snugly. She had plenty of room to breathe, yet she was utterly rigid, utterly enclosed, and she felt hot and compact and weightless again. She seemed to float in the niche, a tight and helpless thing unable to shield her naked sex or breasts or the patch of naked flesh where her buttocks were pressed together.
Her feet were now positioned well apart, straps binding them to the floor. The high metal collar and its hook were given a last adjustment.
Beauty shivered all over, whimpered. The grooms paid scant attention. They hurried. They brushed her hair down over her shoulders, gave a final touch of wax to her lips. They combed her pubic hair, ignoring her moans. And then she was given a last round of kisses on the lips, a last round of admonitions to be utterly silent.
And off they went down the corridor, leaving her in this torchlit alcove, a mere fixture like a hundred others she had seen earlier in the passageways.
She stood still, her body seeming to grow under the wrappings, seeming to fill them, to push out at them over every inch of her snugly held body. The silence rang in her ears.
The torches flaring across from her on either side of the doors seemed like living things to her.
She tried to be still, quiet,