Marketplace (28 page)

“I’m sorry, sir,” he dimly
heard Chris say.

“Yes, well, I’ll have to
talk with you later, boy,” Grendel said. “Take his clothes and get
inside.” Robert gasped and whimpered. Never had anyone spoken so
harshly to Chris in the presence of one of the slaves. He pulled
the shirt off with the jacket, leaving them entangled, and kicked
off the shoes, and dropped his pants. Chris calmly and mutely
gathered the pieces, and with another short bow, walked back toward
the side entrance to the house.

When Robert was naked,
Grendel pushed Sharon forward. “Sharon has something to offer you,”
he said.

Robert could only stand
there in confusion as Sharon shot him a glance that was pure anger
and snarling hatred, and then said, in a sweet voice, “Please
Robert, would you like me to suck your big, juicy cock?”

Robert’s mouth opened and
he gaped. Her pose, her voice, even the way she lightly licked at
her full lips (were they a little bit cut and bruised?) was so
pulsating, lusty and explosive, it was hard to believe that this
was the same woman who made catty remarks about him and called him
a sissy. Yet there she was, offering him this incredible service,
and in such a way!

“Very common,” Grendel
noted. “I want to hear more originality, missy.” She sighed.
Grendel looked at Robert and asked, impatiently, “Well? Do you want
it today? I understand she wasn’t very gracious this morning, and
she is very, very eager to make up for it, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” she answered.
Her tone was almost right, but that look crept back into her eyes.
Robert gulped.

“Oh, oh dear, no,” he
gasped. His voice had scaled up again, without him thinking about
it.

“Why not?” Grendel asked,
pushing Sharon down to her knees. She adopted a position that was
totally open and inviting, her knees spread wide and her shoulders
thrown back. “She’s apparently not too bad, according to two
accounts. And you do like to have your cock sucked, don’t
you?”

Robert blushed, and his
hands flew down to cover his nasty thing before he remembered that
he wasn’t supposed to do that any more. Grendel’s eyes narrowed in
anger.

“Get your ass inside, you
idiot,” he growled, pulling Sharon up and pushing her back to the
house. His voice was low, and his words came out in a slower,
metered pace, but fury burned in them. “How dare you try to cover
yourself in front of me? How dare you fall into that pattern
Alexandra has told you a hundred times not to act out?”

Robert fled ahead of the
master of the house, tears filling his eyes. Each angry word and
question forced them out, and he passed the door frame sobbing.
Grendel stepped in last and slammed the door behind him. “Chris!”
he called out, his deep voice echoing in the main hallway. “Get
over here! You,” he gestured toward Sharon, “are dismissed. Get
back to the stable and do some real work for a change.” She ran,
passing Chris in the same doorway. Grendel put his hand
out.

“Give me your strap,” he
said. And as Chris unhooked it and passed it over, Grendel’s eye
caught Claudia coming down the stairs. He looked over at Robert,
who was crying freely and shivering, and then back at Claudia,
standing shock still on the stairs.

“Claudia, front and
center,” he said quietly, pointing to a spot before him. Then, as
she approached, he gestured to Chris. “Hold him on the side, so he
has a good view.”

Chris pulled Robert by the
arm over to the side of the hallway, against the wall, and gestured
for him to kneel. As Robert did, Chris pulled his right arm up high
behind his back and grasped a handful of hair, keeping Robert’s
head up. Robert whined.

“Present,” Grendel said
softly. Claudia was positioned so that the dainty curves of her ass
were presented to Robert in their fullest glory. She braced herself
against a table on the opposite side of the hall. Grendel stepped
into position and brought Chris’s strap across her ass in a
perfectly straight line, bisecting them. The sound seemed
deafening. It echoed in a series of cracks, and Robert cried out an
inarticulate scream that was louder than Claudia’s.

Claudia heard her voice and
Robert’s mingle. Her confusion and fear were at their zenith. Why
was this happening? Had Rachel complained about something? What did
she do wrong? And why was Robert forced to watch her being punished
like this? And why was Grendel doing it? She wailed as the blows of
the strap built up. If Chris was accurate with his tool, Grendel
was deadly. And his blows were harder, each one pushing her
forward. Her arms trembled with every new crack. And she could hear
Robert’s sobbing and carrying on behind her between the kisses of
the strap.

And then, as suddenly as it
had started, the beating ended. She sank to her knees, tears
streaming down her cheeks, and kissed the leather when it was
presented to her lips. Grendel carried the gesture further and
pressed it to her cheeks to gather the moisture before passing it
back to Chris.

“Give these worthless
people something to do,” he snapped, as Chris let go of Robert to
take his strap. “And then come see me. Obviously, you’ve been lax
in some basic training matters.” Without waiting for Chris to
acknowledge him he turned and strode up the stairs.

“Yes, sir,” Chris said
softly. Then, the majordomo turned back to the two slaves kneeling
in the hallway and he fixed the harshest, most intimidating glare
they had ever seen upon them.

“You,” he whispered, with
all the displeasure any human being could lodge in a single word,
“you... will report to Shaw, right now. Tell Mr. Shaw that I think
it’s time to turn the compost. Tell him that I think it will
benefit from being done with bare hands. And be grateful I didn’t
say with your teeth.”

Robert and Claudia fled as
though demons were on their heels. And if either one of them had
been familiar with the filthy, odorous job they had just been
assigned, they would have run just as fast.

Chris mounted the stairs
holding his strap on one hand. It glistened with Claudia’s
tears.

* * * *

Long, hot showers were the
order of the day when the four slaves wearily returned to the house
after their assorted afternoon chores. Claudia and Robert in
particular stank of rotten foliage and old garbage, and looked
about as dejected as two dainties could be when covered with slime
and muck. Brian, pungent with the richer smells of a stable, looked
as though he had accumulated the most damage in one day. His body
was a battlefield of marks, and his every move advertised an
assortment of aches. After they finished drying, they all noticed
that Sharon no longer had a comb or a brush in her bathing kit. She
struggled to pull the tangles out of her hair with her fingers, but
didn’t ask any of them for a loan. No one offered one,
either.

Claudia was serving dinner
in the main dining room, under the supervision of Cook and Chris,
so the other three ate without her. It was another gloomy meal,
with no chatting and no complaining, and very little eating. For
their own reasons, each of them had lost much of an appetite, even
though Brian and Sharon hadn’t eaten since breakfast. When Chris
came into the room with Claudia, they sat up with a combination of
relief and dread.

“Tonight,” the majordomo
said, “Robert starts his studies in the library. Brian and Sharon,
you are being punished for her ill manners and the failure to obey
orders that both of you demonstrated today, and you will go right
to bed. Claudia, you missed an opportunity for study this
afternoon, so I suggest that you join Robert in the library, or you
may also go to bed.” He handed Claudia a paperback book, with
erotic looking cover art. “You may find this work of particular
interest. Mistress Alexandra recommends that you read a little
every day. As soon as you are all finished eating, you may consider
yourselves dismissed.”

They looked at each other
in confusion when he left. No lectures? No nasty comments? No
sarcasm? Even the tone of his voice was much softer than usual,
barely edged with his usual cool. Robert wondered what happened
after he and Claudia scampered away to their afternoon of wallowing
in filth. What did Grendel say? What did he do?

“Who is he?” Robert gulped
when he realized that his thought had managed to sneak out of his
mouth.

“A fucking nasty bastard,”
Sharon said, toying with a piece of whole wheat bread.

“Oh, very perceptive,”
Brian shot back. “What do you mean, Rob?”

“I mean, well, who is he
around here?” Robert kept his voice really low. ”The first day I
was here, I thought he was a master. But he’s not,
really.”

“He’s the majordomo,”
Claudia said, putting some vegetables on her plate.”It’s like a
butler. It means house manager, or some thing like
that.”

“Hmph.” Sharon shrugged.
“More like overseer, if you ask me, OK? Like in the old south.
Yassuh, Mr. Big Shot, I’ll keep the slaves in line fo’
y’all!”

“No, no, it’s not like
that,” Robert insisted, his tone still soft. “He may seem like an
overseer, but overseers were free men. I think Chris is their
slave. Alexandra and Grendel’s, I mean.”

Claudia turned to look over
one shoulder, as if she expected the man to return. “I don’t know,
Robert,” she said in between chewing. “He doesn’t wear a collar; at
least I don‘t see one. But on the other hand, the way he answers
them is very deferential. And the way Master Grendel spoke to him
today was very frightening!”

“Oh yeah?” Brian asked.
“Tell me.”

Claudia and Robert shared
their story, with Sharon dropping in to add that indeed, Grendel
seemed more than a little pissed today. (She of course, pretended
to have no idea why. Brian exchanged glances with her and they both
kept mum about their early morning adventures.)

“So the little guy gets a
taste of what we live with every fucking day? Aww, too bad,” Sharon
finally remarked.

“So you think he’s a
slave?” Robert asked. “Do you think Grendel... punished him? The
way we are?”

They sat in thought for a
minute, considering what little they knew. Finally, Brian decided
that now was a good time to expose that delicious piece of gossip
he had been hoarding about the man, and he leaned forward to share
it. “I don’t exactly know what he is,” he began, his eyes dancing
suddenly in the joy of spreading a juicy bit of news, “but I do
know something special about the guy. The first day I was here,
Paul was telling Grendel what a good cocksucker I was? And then
Grendel told Chris to get into the office, and—”

The door opened suddenly,
and the four slaves, who had all leaned forward on their elbows to
hear what Brian was saying, jumped up in their seats. Plates and
mugs clattered against the table and chair legs squeaked across the
tiled floor.

Chris stood in the doorway,
and four hearts pounded faster than four hunted rabbits.

“I believe you’ve had
enough time to eat,” the majordomo said evenly. “Get
going!”

They fled. They didn’t
notice that no one was called to serve that night until they were
all in bed. Robert and Claudia returned at the usual lights out
time, and found Brian and Sharon dozing but not sleeping. They got
into their beds with the usual creaks and moans, and lay there,
staring at the faint shadows on the ceiling.

“All right,” Robert said,
breaking the silence first. “Who’s turn is it next?”

“Huh?” Sharon
asked.

“To tell their story. You
told yours, I told mine. How about you, Brian?”

Brian groaned. “Oh God, not
tonight. I can’t even think tonight. You wanna tell us all about
your life and loves, Claudia?”

Claudia sat up, clutching
her pillow. “Well,” she said, considering, “it’s not very
interesting, I’m afraid. What you see is what I’ve always
been.”

“Yeah, but there’s more,”
Robert said encouragingly. “How did you end up here? I mean, you’re
so good! Why would... oh!” He blushed suddenly. “I-I’m sorry,
Claudia. I’ll shut up now. You don’t have to say
anything.”

“Why not?” Sharon demanded.
“We did! We agreed that everyone was going to tell their story,
right? Well, I wanna know how you got here,
Goody-Two-Shoes.”

“Now wait...” Brian
began.

“No, Brian, it’s all
right,” Claudia said. “Sharon is right. We did agree. I’ll try to
make it short.”

Chapter Fourteen:
Claudia's Tale

I was nothing before I
realized what my true purpose in life was. I know that sounds odd,
but it’s true. I lived a dull, ordinary, nothing life. My father
was a big, scary man, who worked at building big office buildings,
and my mother was a nice lady who perhaps drank more than she
should have. I was a middle child. I wasn’t oldest, or youngest, or
a boy, so I lived like a little nothing.

It was very nice,
sometimes, being nothing. People never expected anything from me,
except that I stay out of the way and not make a lot of noise. And
I was a good child, I think. I tried not to bother
anyone.

When I was in school,
thinking about going to college, I had a boyfriend. He was kind to
me, and very gentle. We would take long walks together, and I wrote
poems to him. It was like one of those romances you read about in
those cheap books with the pretty covers, the ones that sell
millions of copies to secretaries and housewives. It was... sweet.
Yes, that’s it. Sweet. We were sweethearts.