by Norah Lofts
Sybilla gave a little shudder. ‘It sounds such a horrible… But I suppose you are right, Walter. Try to do it while Henry is asleep.’
Henry had actually fallen asleep at his post and Walter had carried him to his bed.
‘If he wakes while I’m gone, tell him the rogues ran off. And not to go near my place in case more roof should fall in.
Walter had made the barrow to his own pattern out of odds and ends and four wheels bought from the wheelwright’s; its main purpose, so far, had been the carting of manure from yard to field. He dragged it out and pushed it to the place where the two stiff corpses lay and was about to load it when a flash of colour caught his eye; colour and movement on the edge of the wood, near the blackened ruin of his house. People had come to stare at the scene of catastrophe. They hadn’t quite dared come along by the track that led around the house and stable, they’d slunk along the edge of the wood and stood there, staring; they’d stand all day and unchecked might even venture into the yard to get a better view. Sod the buggers! Unhurriedly Walter lifted and threw first one body and then the other into the pigsty. Unhurriedly he strolled across to the ruin and shouted, ‘Don’t come any nearer. It could blaze up again any minute.’ They stood there, hoping that it would.
Sybilla said, ‘Walter, in all the excitement and confusion I did not say what I should have said. I am so sorry about your little house. You had made it so snug and neat. I am indeed very sorry. But there is room in the house. John can move in with Henry and Margaret with me.’
She attributed his lack of enthusiasm about this plan to the fear of losing his independence.
‘It would be your room, absolutely, Walter. I know it would not be quite like the little house but I would see that nobody disturbed you.’
‘Well,’ he said, still with some reluctance, ‘if what happened last night is likely to happen again, it might be as well. For the time being.’
He did not mind sharing the kitchen fire with old Madge; the bedroom was comfortable enough and, when he started his next brew, Sybilla offered him the still-room. But it was not like his own place, all of a piece.
As soon as spring came, as it did very quickly after that bad spell, Walter said, ‘With your permission, my lady, I’ll sell the old sow and her litter. There’s another breed I’ve heard of, better doers. I could make a good deal.’
He was a hardy man but the idea of being a cannibal at one remove revolted him. At the end of that frost-bitten day there had been as little left in need of burial from the pigsty as from the burnt-out house.
There was a little plant called Periwinkle which, given half a chance, would climb and hold its bluish-mauvish open-eyed flowers to the sun; by mid-summer what had been Walter’s house was pretty. And time moved on.
FIFTEEN
One of the first things John Barnes had said was, ‘Don’t look at the women. Don’t even look, lad.’
‘What women?’
‘Whores for the use of the guards. Time they’re unserviceable they earn their keep picking over. And time th’art sound enough to carry a slab, thee’ll see them, in the far chamber. Don’t even look.’
This was, indeed, a highly organised community and it included a brothel. Years earlier Selim’s grandfather or great-grandfather had decided that unmarried men made better guards and that their needs should be provided for; on the spot. Their naturally hard characters and the inhuman occupation they plied did not detract from their maleness and the alternative to an integral brothel was to have them forever capering off down to Andara; or forming homosexual relationships very prejudicial to good discipline. The ideal arrangement would have been to employ eunuch guards; but eunuchs were themselves slaves and their state inclined them to become fat and lazy—suitable guards for women in harems but not for men in quarries. So Selim’s agent in Andara was always on the look-out for healthy, youngish female slaves; not necessarily the youngest or prettiest on offer, since their price was high.
On the whole, the young women led tolerable lives in a set of cave-like chambers, comfortably furnished with hangings on the limestone wall and carpets on the limestone floors. One large, communal chamber even had glazed windows, narrow apertures cut into the outer wall of rock. They fed well and were not stinted of perfumes and unguents and pretty clothes, for it was necessary to make them attractive enough to compete with the brothels of the port.
The post of Madam in this place was a covetable one and had, for many years, been the perquisite of some respectable, widowed relative of the owner. The present incumbent was an elephantine old woman named Soraya.
When the women were, as John Barnes decently expressed it, ‘unserviceable’—that was for roughly one week out of every four—they were employed in the ‘picking over’, the searching of the limestone incrustations which clung to every marble slab for the nodules in which garnets were encapsulated. Somebody in the past had discovered that female eyes were quicker, female fingers nimbler, at this work.
The women welcomed it, for there was a system of rewards. In a locked chest Soraya kept a mass of trinkets of no great value but all pretty and at the end of a picking-over session the woman who had, by industry or luck, done best in this treasure hunt was allowed to take her choice of trinkets.
So every morning one of the lamplit passages saw a procession, moving slowly at Soraya’s pace, well-guarded, to the place where the newly-ripped out slabs were sorted over. They carried a supply of delicacies, always more than even Soraya could consume in a session, the surplus of which they would enjoy. And wine also, for Soraya did not share her kinsman’s strict observance of the Prophet’s rules. She seated herself in a well-cushioned chair, exchanged pleasantries with the guards at the entrance, was pleased when one of the girls—to her they were all girls—found a garnet or one of the other nodules which, delicately attacked with chisel and hammer, yielded another, less valuable but still saleable stone, colourless, crystal clear—a diamond without a diamond’s fire and sparkle.
Don’t even look, John Barnes had told Sir Godfrey. An instruction easy to obey—at least so far as looking implied desiring. When he was sound enough to help carry a slab into what was called “the far chamber”, though in fact it advanced just as the quarry did, he could glance at the women waiting to ply their small implements, and at the fat old woman who supervised them, with no feeling at all.
He was again low-spirited; for what the Greek slave had said about the Pope and all Christendom driving all Moslems out of Europe had either not happened or had failed to affect Zagelah. The timeless time went out; the seasons’ relentless march observed every other week on the day of the bathing which was pleasant in warm weather and so unpleasant in cold that only the vigorous application of the canes could force shivering bodies into the water. Sir Godfrey lost count of the seasons as well as of the hours and the days.
He worked like a animal, a two-legged pack donkey. Because of the disablement of his hands he was judged to be unfit for the most skilled work of all—the loosening and prying away of the precious slabs—but he could carry them in a kind of wickerwork basket, held to his back by bands of coarse webbing which came over his shoulders, crossed one another on his chest and then buckled behind his waist. He carried the rough, lime-crusted slabs to the place where the women worked, then on to the place where the polishing was done and from there to the place where they were stored. Beyond that point no slave was allowed to go except on the fortnightly outings.
At first the rough wickerwork, weighted with marble, re-opened the wounds which the flogging had made on his back but they scabbed over and healed again. The webbing straps chafed his chest raw but, there again, the body’s defence took over and the skin became calloused and hardened.
When did John Barnes begin to cough and grow thin and spit blood? There was no means of knowing in this timeless place.
John Barnes said, after a bout of coughing, ‘Well, lad, it seems to have got me. I hoped to see the day of liberation but now I doubt it; thou
gh I’ve stuck it out longer than most.’
Even in this hopeless, subterranean, lamplit world there was a hierarchy of a kind and those who worked at the rock face regarded themselves, and were regarded by others, as superior.
‘I pray,’ Barnes said, ‘for a quick end; not to end where you began, lad, with a lot of half-dead men.’
He had his wish—or his answered prayer. He died with an abruptness which took even the guards by surprise. One minute—or so seemed, eye as skilled, hand as skilled… and then, his load already fixed, Sir Godfrey found himself on his knees with his best friend in this infernal place saying weakly, words making bubbles in the last haemorrhage, ‘God keep thee. Hope on. Trust… in… God.’
In a way Godfrey Talbot had been more fortunate than many of his fellows; the lack of religious exercises had not meant much deprivation to him. And his last contact with God had been in that narrow, balconied street… But John Barnes had been pious…
What did priests say? He should remember. Only a few words could be recalled; but leaning forward, so that the marble slab in his basket slid forward and hit the base of his skull, he said into the ear of the dying man, ‘Go forth, Christian soul.’ And then a Hail Mary. Past speech now, the dying man thanked him with his eyes.
Sir Godfrey would have doubted whether he could be more wretched but when John Barnes’ body was dragged out he felt the same sense of bereavement as had followed Lord Robert’s death; so why, a short time afterwards, he should bother about another person’s plight he could not and never would understand.
Stooped under his load and followed by his working companion, similarly loaded, he plodded into the picking-over chamber where he lifted out the other man’s slabs and was then unloaded by him. As usual two guards were on duty here. One of them said, ‘You, wait! There’s one about ready to turn over.’ That was normal custom and a not-unwelcome chance to snatch a moment’s rest and get back one’s breath.
Ordinarily in this chamber the strictest decorum prevailed. Soraya was feared, even by the guards. This morning she had absented herself for a while and the atmosphere was different. No strict Moslem would touch a woman in an unserviceable condition but half-joking, salacious talk was permissible at any time and the opportunity was being snatched. Only one girl stood silent and unsmiling. Sir Godfrey had time to observe her because serious work on the slab that needed soon to be turned over would not be resumed until Soraya returned.
The girl was very young. About fourteen.
And she was new, he thought, judging partly by the way she held the little pick and hammer and partly by the colour of her hair—dead black. Men liked prostitutes of exotic colouring and even in this lost place their tastes were catered for and bleached or hennaed hair was the rule.
Sir Godfrey had acquired, by this time, enough basic Arabic to enable him to obey orders and so avoid trouble. He knew the names of common articles and a few phrases of rather cringing civility which could on occasions ward off a blow; but he did not know enough of the language to know what one of the guards said to the girl or what she said in return. Whatever it was it seemed to anger him. He snarled out a term of abuse, recognisable and offensive, and she retorted with another—even worse. He lost his head and began to beat her with his cane.
She certainly was new. She fought back, trying to snatch the cane, failed and suffered heavier blows.
Sir Godfrey then lost his head. He sprang at the man, seized him by the collar, swung him round and dealt him a fist blow on the chin which sent him reeling back, straight into Soraya as she waddled in. She administered a push which righted him and into the deathly silence asked, ‘What happened here.’
Free men speak before slaves. The guard said that this man had attempted to meddle with the girl and he had gone to her aid.
‘He was beating the girl,’ Sir Godfrey said.
To Soraya neither story had the ring of truth, both sounding so unlikely. Slaves knew that women were not for them; and a carefully calculated diet, constant hard work, carried to the point of exhaustion, emasculated them within a month or two. Guards knew that the women were not for them to beat; any correction the girls needed was meted out by Soraya herself. Momentarily puzzled, she turned to the five other women, now all ostentatiously busy. Five false witnesses. Four said that what the guard said was true; the fifth, with an air of smug virtue said she had been too busy to notice what was happening.
Another likely story!
It would have ended there, with another flogging for the man with the bad record, but for the girl.
‘They lie! All are liars! He is only telling the truth.’
She ripped at her clothing, baring her shoulders and the upper part of her arms. The red welts were already rising.
That was evidence.
Soraya said, ‘Back to work, all of you.’
In the evening Soraya sent for the new girl and gave her a little of the wine which Selim, in his folly, eschewed. Wine not only gladdened the heart, it loosened tongues.
‘How old are you?’
‘Fourteen.’
‘And where were you born?’
‘In the Maghreb. In the stronghold of my father.’
‘Free born?’
‘We were all free until we lost the battle.’
‘How many masters have you had? How many times have you changed hands? When was the battle? What happened after? Tell me. Tell me exactly what has happened to you since the battle.’
‘I cannot. I do not know. I fought beside my father on that day. And was wounded. You do not believe me? Look!’ She parted her cloud of black hair and showed, on the crown of her head, a puckered scar over which the new hair was growing. Then she flung back her head and the wound was hidden.
‘I was insensible for many days.’
‘And then?’
‘Then I was destined to be a present to the Grand Turk. In Constantinople. But the ship was taken; and I am here.’ A bitter little story told without tears.
Soraya framed her next question with cunning.
‘And who took your maidenhead?’
Imagine finding in a place like this a girl who could blush? A slave who could look so proud and offended.
‘It was never taken.’
‘Oh, come, come,’ Soraya protested. ‘You were taken prisoner—presumably by men. On a ship bound for Constantinople you were a slave, amongst sailors. Even in the slave market at Andara…’
‘My father’s enemy is a great rogue but he is not a fool. Nor a stranger; his tribe and mine have been at war for years. He knew my worth. A Nagulla of the purest blood. Do you imagine that he would himself tamper with, or allow any of his men to touch, the gift he intended for the Grand Turk? On the ship I was treated like a queen. And when the ship was taken by pirates, all they thought about was to sell us and get away as fast as possible… If it is customary to rape slaves before selling them in Andara, then I must consider myself fortunate. Or give thanks to haste again. We were sold within minutes of our arrival.’
Soraya thought—Well, virginity is a condition open to proof and if the girl’s story is true, what a present for Selim! Fourteen years old, beautiful and with spirit and with just that touch of something exotic likely to appeal to a somewhat jaded taste. Soraya had always been extremely grateful to her cousin Selim for appointing her to this sinecure, which was also a place of power. Now she could repay him.
Discipline must be maintained, however. For striking one of Soraya’s girls, a prerogative reserved for herself, the guard was demoted; for striking the guard Sir Godfrey was flogged. But either the hand wielding the dreaded khurbash was less powerful or his back had hardened. Or complete hopelessness brought its compensating insensibility.
The timeless time went on; and then one morning, bowed under his load, he was aware of something different. The fat old bawd, never before seen at the quarry face or any other working area, stood there, panting a little, beside a man who bore every mark of a minor official; sober, decent
clothes, serious, self-important demeanour.
Soraya raised and pointed a fat finger, ‘That is the man.’
So what now? Another flogging? If so, may it kill me! Death and the judgement of God would be preferable to this death-in-life with no hope.
In fact that pointing finger had indicated, if not freedom, a more tolerable life in captivity.
Over the years Sir Godfrey had acquired more Arabic than he realised. He had never set himself to learn it, repudiating it in his mind. He knew enough to get along with. But it was to his imperfect grasp of the language that he attributed the slight craziness of the conversation between Soraya, the official and the overseer of the quarry which, if taken literally, implied that one of the ladies in the King’s harem in Zagelah was discontented with that part of the gardens in which Selim’s wives and concubines took air and exercise; and somebody had said that the English were very good at gardening, therefore an English slave was required to make improvements.
Sir Godfrey’s sense of humour had always been simple and forthright, untinged by the sardonic or cynical—a kind that would have lasted longer in adversity. John Barnes’s had been of that variety and very occasionally one of his dry, sour yet comic comments had made Sir Godfrey laugh. He had not laughed since John Barnes had died. Yet inside him now, as he listened and was eventually convinced that he did understand aright, something very like laughter took him by the throat. The idea that a knowledge of English gardening—even if he had it—could do anything to improve a garden in Zagelah! That was almost comic. And all he knew of gardens was that they looked pretty in spring and summer and were pleasant places to walk in at the end of the day. He recognised a rose when he saw one…
However, he was now well-trained in the slave apathy, accustomed to standing by like a donkey and did so now while his future was being arranged. It meant release from the hateful quarry, work in the open, a sight of the sun.
