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EPILOGUE
Elizabeth sat in her wheelchair in the garden. Still elegantly dressed, still sharp of mind, her body was beginning to fail her now. Fifty and more years had passed since she'd found this place, and now she could hardly remember living anywhere else. Of the two slaves she'd brought with her, Belle was long dead, and Eva was a crippled old woman like herself. They'd been good slaves, she recalled with a smile; but she'd replaced them easily enough. And to take her own place as Mistress she had her adopted daughter, Camille, who was running the business now. She smiled once more at the memory of her success in producing pedigree puppies from human surrogate mothers. What had been the original bitch's name, she wondered vaguely? Well, it didn't matter now; it had been a long time ago. Now the breeding business had three – or was it four? - surrogate mothers at any one time. They didn't seem to last as long these days, though; maybe Samantha had been right all those years ago; perhaps three – or sometimes, four – litters a year was too much for their abused bodies. But it brought in more money, and fresh bitches were easily to be got once they had decided that any healthy woman of child bearing age would do. A few more disappearances of lonely women in California was neither here nor there, and perfectly easy to achieve providing one did ones homework on the prospective victims. Once here, blind, deaf and dumb, crouched naked in the breeding cages they would never leave again, they were easy to handle. (Sometimes Elizabeth wondered what feelings their victims entertained when they woke for the first time in their new homes. Terror and horror, she supposed; but their was nothing they could do about it!) Five or six years of intensive breeding and they were quietly and humanely put down, and other bitchs would take their places.
The sight of a barefoot slave trotting along the path towards her brought Elizabeth out of her reverie.
''You!'' she commanded sharply. ''Slave! Come here! What is that you are carrying?''
The girl – for she was no older – dropped to her knees at Elizabeth's side.
''It's a collar, Mistress,'' she replied timorously.
''Where did you get it?'' Elizabeth asked sharply.
''I took it off the old hu-bitch in the stable yard, Mistress,'' the slave told her. ''She's dead.''
''Give it to me!''
Elizabeth turned the old collar in her gloved hands, squinting to make out the name engraved on the disc which swung from the tarnished 'D' ring. 'Princess' it read, and the name rang a faint bell in her memory. She wrinkled her nose at the collar's smell.
''Leave it with me!'' she snapped at the kneeling slave before dismissing her with a curt gesture.
She was still musing over the news the slave had brought when two silent, deft slaves arrived and placed a table by her side, and a comfortable chair for their younger Mistress, for it was Camille's custom to take iced lemonade and cookies with her adopted mother at this hour.
Her daughter arrived and greeted her with a dutiful kiss on the brow before taking her seat. A white-gloved slave stepped silently forward and filled their glasses.
''What's that, Mother?'' enquired Camille, carelessly indicating the collar lying in Elizabeth's lap.
''It was Princess's,'' she replied. ''She's dead.''
''Princess?'' Camille wrinkled her smooth brow.
''My first ever human bitch,'' Elizabeth told her.
''Oh!'' exclaimed Camille lazily. ''You mean the old hu-bitch that lived in one of the old kennels in the stable yard? Wow! She was chained up there when you first took me in – and that was twenty years ago!''
''She was a good bitch,'' Elizabeth told her, ransacking her memory. ''She gave birth to more than forty litters. And her last litter was the best – two greyhound pups with all the speed and strength of their sire and dam. I kept part-ownership of them, and made a lot of money racing them. Her last litter was – let me see – thirty years ago.''
''You didn't have her put down when she couldn't breed anymore?'' asked Camille vaguely.
Elizabeth laughed.
''We weren't as well organised then!'' she said with a smile. ''No, I just told one of the slaves to take her from her pen and find her a kennel somewhere. I never bothered to find out where she was being kept, and I never saw her again – nor even thought about her until today. Thirty years she was kept chained to that old kennel; and it had been twenty years before that when I buckled this very collar around her neck.''
''Well,' remarked Camille carelessly. ''Her old collar will do for another hu-bitch!''
When her adopted daughter had gone, Elizabeth sat for a long time among the scents of her garden, thinking about the past – and about Princess. She remembered the naive young woman – what had been her human name? - who had invited her here and given her the opportunity to build a very profitable business – with the unintended gift of her money and property. And of her body, of course!
And in the end, her very existence forgotten by her usurper, her unwilling benefactor had spent fifty years of her life as a dog, and the last thirty years chained to a kennel. Elizabeth shrugged; she'd only been an animal, after all.
But she'd been a good bitch.
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