The Slave and his Mistress Ch. 03

Life for Gyorg, since then, had grown significantly worse. Marked as a trouble-maker by the twin badges of his chained hands and the punishment ring new-placed in his raw and bleeding nose, he became an easy target for abuse. The overseers whipped him, beat and kicked him when he was in the traces; his fellow mill-slaves, while largely eschewing such overt methods suspected collusion with the overseers (why else otherwise, would Gyorg have been singled out for the intimate attentions of the new assistant?) and suddenly became forgetful of him, often neglecting to feed or water or otherwise succour Gyorg when he was tied in his place. Regularly left chained in position at the end of a shift, he often had no choice but to work several sessions on the wheel successively. Though secured in place primarily by the straps that ran from his harness to the spoke behind him, a narrow chain also connected Gyorg's collar to the spoke directly in front and so inevitably, when the exhausted slave slipped and lost his footing towards the end of one of the double, or triple shifts he was forced to work he would continued to be dragged onwards by the wheel's movement by the throat; luckily at a slow enough pace, or it would surely have strangled him. With no end in sight – no end left even thinkable – other than a lingering death from exhaustion eked out in days and inches under the wheel, this punishing regime soon brought the unfortunate Gyorg to the brink of physical, and mental, collapse.

It was from this miserable condition that Solande had retrieved him. A particular overseer in the mill, a fair-minded man who had received a favourable account of Gyorg from one of his former work-chiefs, had come upon him broken in the traces, trembling with exhaustion and parched from thirst, caked in his own filth and vomit and quite unrecognizable as the quiet, steady-eyed, stoic who had been brought to the mills not six months previously. Gyorg's pitiable state had roused even that hardened overseer's compassion. This man knew that the mistress, Lady Solande had recently sent a request to view a selection of heavy labourers at her pleasure and in recommending the mill-slave to be sent to her for interview, had, by giving Gyorg the narrowest of chances, done what little he could to try to assist him.

TBC