The Damiano Series (79 page)

The hand, almost invisible now, rose to touch Gaspare's still unbristly chin. “I'll help you as I can, old friend. I haven't forgotten that you were a very good manager to me.”

Gaspare swallowed hard. He wanted to believe he felt the touch of that hand. “And I, sheep-… Damiano. I pray for your peace each night—when I think to pray, of course.”

“I know,” whispered Damiano, and then Gaspare's eyes could no longer see anything.

Saara rose to her feet, her trembling hand raised before her. “Farewell, love,” she called to the air.

“Love,” came back the reply, or else an echo.

The moon was gone.

“What did he mean?” demanded Gaspare, as the whites of his eyes glinted at Saara.

The Lapp woman subjected Gaspare to an uncomfortable scrutiny. “He meant,” she said at last, “that you can tell me how to find and enter Satan's stronghold.”

“He meant that?” Both Gaspare's hands clapped to the sides of his head. “I know Satan's stronghold?” His stiff fingers stood up like antlers. “If he knows I know that, then he knows a lot more about me than I do about myself!”

Saara yawned, glancing up at the starlit sky. “That is the first wise thing I have ever heard from your mouth, Gaspare.” She walked over to him, somewhat stiff from her hours on the chill earth. She laid her hand on his rather pointed red head and rumpled his hair. “Come now: It's time to sleep. In the morning we can worry at the spirit-puzzles.”

Chapter 4

The night was more confusing than the daytime. During some hours Raphael slept, forgetting pain, abandonment, and the unpleasant feeling of being cold. But these interludes were interrupted by wakefulness, which, like a prodding finger, reminded him he was lost. And toward morning he was visited by an experience as miserable as wakefulness but different: his first nightmare.

It was the sparrow again, gripping a bare twig with claws more brittle than the wood, its dusty feathers rutched against a light fall of snow.

It had no song. This vision brought with it a sense of desolation unalloyed by hope.

There was something here he was supposed to understand—he knew that much, at least—and with undemanding patience Raphael was prepared to let the dream unfold until he did understand. But with the first light the slave women began to stir in their chains, and very soon Perfecto (who had also spent a very bad night) was awake and kicking everybody else except Hakiim into rising. His kick to Raphael was perfunctory, for, truth to tell, Perfecto felt an inexplicable distrust of this gift almost amounting to terror.

The new slave did not respond to the urging, because he was not yet finished with his dream. But with the increasing noise and bustle of the camp, the dream finished with him; it flew off, offended.

Still Raphael did not move. He had an idea that if he kept his eyes closed long enough—if he denied the activity around him long enough—they would all pack up and go away. And that seemed very desirable this morning.

He listened to the chatter of the women and the bray of the mules. His throat tightened with unconscious imitation of the noises both made. Stop it, he told himself. Rest again. Make it go away.

Perfecto came back, and the kick he delivered was harder. “Get up, idiot!” the Spaniard snarled. “We're traveling today if we have to drag you by a mule's tail.”

The blow hurt, but it certainly didn't induce Raphael to obey. Instead he screwed his eyes tighter.

Make it go away.

And Perfecto did go away.

Raphael was immensely heartened. He curled into a more comfortable ball and waited for sleep to take him again. Hakiim, the Moor, was whispering to someone close by. It was easy to ignore the sound.

The pointy little foot caught him between the ribs and its big toe jabbed and wiggled. “Get up, Pinkie! You get up right now or I'll stuff dirt up your nose!”

It was not the threat but Djoura's tone of voice that smote him. Guilt and remorse splashed through Raphael, all the worse for the fact that he'd no experience with either feeling. He clambered up, tripped in his voluminous gown, rose again, and stood tottering beside her, looking down at the top of her jingling headdress.

The Berber possessed no veil to her headdress. Her excellent teeth shone whiter against a skin as opaque as lampblack as she gave Raphael a wolfish smile. “I knew you just needed encouragement,” she said.

Then she walked around him. He gave a yelp of pain as his dress was pulled free of the scabbing wounds on his back. Djoura patted him as one would a horse. “There, there. It's over now. Better quick, I always think.”

Again the Berber stood before him. “Well, sieve-head, how are we this cold morning?”

“We are unhappy,” he replied carefully in her own tongue. Djoura's eyes opened wide.

“Don't!” she hissed at him, peering left and right from under the folds of cloth. “If you want to keep your… don't seem too able, you see? Don't let them know!”

Raphael did not see. He had difficulty following elliptical statements. In fact, his confusion at this point was so great it did not allow him to ask questions.

Djoura, after ascertaining that no one in the little caravan was paying attention to them, continued. “You must hide two things, Pinkie, if you wish to come to a better situation. Your brain is the first, and your bollucks are the second. No one must see evidence of either one but your friend Djoura—do you understand?”

“No,” he answered readily, glad to have a question within his ability.

The Berber snorted and shifted from foot to foot. In this manner she resembled a tall, thin tent swaying in the breeze. “I will say it in different words.

“I say to you, Pinkie: Do not show anyone your manhood. And do not speak to anyone but Djoura, and then only when no one else can hear. She alone is your friend. Will you do that?”

“I will do that.”

Djoura heaved a great sigh and rolled her eyes to heaven, which she could not see for the row of copper coins which shaded her forehead. “Excellent.” Then she brushed her hands together, removing invisible dust.

Hakiim was passing near. Out of habit he put out a hand to slap the Berber woman on her hip. Habit germinated the gesture, but prudence and Djoura's warning stare aborted it. “Now, Pinkie.” She spoke in a loud voice. “Last night we practiced pissing. This morning I think we should do some work on eating, don't you think?”

Raphael considered this with furrowed brow. He remembered to wait until Hakiim had passed down the line (to another woman with a more approachable anatomy) before he replied, “I think I would like to practice pissing again.”

Watching the eunuch eat was a good joke; it almost served to quell Hakiim's new mistrust of his partner. First there was a problem getting the poor stick to open his mouth. After harsh words and some manual probing on the part of his nurse, Djoura, it was discovered that he had been sucking on a stone. When the black attempted to throw the pebble away, he clawed it from her and locked it in his right hand, from whence none of the woman's strength could release it.

After this he got his face stuffed with cereal.

The slave merchants sat beside their chain of human wares, eating their own breakfast. They had only bulgur in oil and vinegar, the same as everyone else; their condition elevated them by no more than the two squares of silk carpeting on which they rested. Except, of course, that one tended to feel much more elevated without chains upon the neck or wrist.

“Look at him!” cried the Moor in glee. “Such emotion—pathos and ecstasy! Our new boy wears his heart upon his sleeve!”

Hakiim hardly exaggerated, for Raphael's first taste of food brought tears to his large blue eyes. One taste and it was to him as though all the world's jangle and whine were being brought into harmony. Once Djoura put the cool, oily mass on his tongue his mouth took over and transferred custody to his throat, which effortlessly took it down, and after that he was not aware of the bulgur at all, except as a spreading contentment.

He took some in his own hand. (His left hand. Disgusting.) And he repeated the process.

Perfecto watched with an eye which was physically as well as morally jaundiced. “Hugghh! Perhaps the idiot will work out after all.”

Djoura's own eyes, very black and very white, flickered from the Spaniard to her charge. She leaned unobtrusively forward. The next time Raphael scooped from the red clay pot and filled his mouth, the little toe of his left foot was violently wrenched.

He choked. Cereal spattered from his mouth and nose. The Berber came forward with her bit of rag. “Hah! See what happens when you play the pig?” she said loudly. Then, in a whisper, she added, “Don't be so cursed independent.”

“I wouldn't get my hopes up,” replied Hakiim to Perfecto.

The mules of Andalusia were justly famous, being bred from the giant asses found in that country. Hakiim and Perfecto rode two sleek gray animals the size of large horses. Four other mules ambled behind, laden with gear. Beside the mule train, like an attendant serpent, paced the line of female slaves. As the morning was still cool, they were chattering among themselves.

For it had been found impossible to keep seven women (most of whom must not be disfigured in any way) from talking, and the quietest, most orderly solution had been to attach them in linguistic groups. The Saqalibah spoke in a patois of their own Central European language and Arabic. The two Andalusians behind them spoke Spanish and ignored the poor mongrel creature at the tail of the line. They were young, these two Spanish women, and therefore valuable. They hissed slyly to one another without end and shaded their faces with tattered shawls.

On the other side of the mules, proudly isolated, strode Djoura the black Berber, with Raphael stumbling after.

She went fast: as fast as any mule desired to walk. Hakiim watched her without moving his head.

Now there was a valuable property. Perfecto didn't understand how valuable Djoura was, being blinded by the Spaniard's distaste for black skin. But the woman was young, straight, immensely strong, and had all her teeth. And pretty, too, if one could look past her scowl.

Still, she talked like a Berber.

Hakiim was not a Moor of Granada, but a Moor of Tunis, and he knew that in the far south there WERE blacks accepted as Berbers. A few.

I worry too much, he thought to himself. And immediately the eunuch bobbed into view, presenting himself to Hakiim's attention.

Djoura had been very industrious, and now the gangling creature wore not a shapeless gown but a pair of baggy women's pants. Where did she get them? His gaze darted back to the moving tent that was the black woman.

She must have been wearing them, all this time. Hakiim itched to know what Djoura WAS wearing. He had seen her naked, of course, in Tunis. He was too downy a fellow to purchase a woman on the strength of flashing black eyes and a white smile. (No. Snarl.) But he hadn't then paid attention to the dusky pile of cloth on the pavement beside her.

Hakiim itched to know Djoura in other ways, too, but his instincts told him not to scratch. The world was full of women, with most of whom one did not require a club.

That eunuch too. Had he been raised for pleasure? Filthy degeneracy. Hakiim spat sideways, causing his mule's ears—long as the leaf spears of a palm—to rotate toward him.

But that sort of thing was done, and it was none of a merchant's business to lecture the world. And the tall boy, with his pink, hairless skin and his head as yellow as a buttercup: He might still serve for any man who cared for idiots.

Analytically the Moor regarded the eunuch's scourged back. Not bad, really. Not as bad as it had seemed at first, all covered with dried blood and with the gown stuck to it. Pale skin showed scars least. He would have it covered with grease tonight.

If only they had a month instead of two days to reach Granada. Then the welts would have a chance to fade. Perhaps they should farm the creature out to sell later, or cheaper, keep him in a stable until the others were sold and he was ready to leave Granada.

But as Hakiim pondered and watched, the fair slave took a tumble, tripping over nothing at all. Without sense to grab onto his chain, he let it tighten around his neck. Djoura's wrist was whipped back by the force of Raphael's fall, and she rushed back to him, where he lay flat out on the earth, making little gagging sounds and clawing at his throat with his left hand. The right still clutched his pebble firmly.

No, whispered the Moor to himself. Nothing could be worth keeping him another month. Nothing.

Perfecto pulled his steed up beside Hakiim. The serpent of women jingled to a stop. The Spaniard's yellow eye swept over the creature he had purchased, growing more glazed as they stared.

Raphael tottered again to his feet. Djoura examined his knees for bruises and brushed him off. Once more the mule train ambled forward, with the serpent shuffling beside.

“Do you think,” Hakiim casually asked his partner, “that maybe our black lily has had children before? She certainly knows how to mother.”

Perfecto had an odd complexion, which the sun tended to darken toward orange. He turned his yellow eye upon the Moor. “If she had, she wouldn't be acting this way. She'd have got it out of her system.”

Dust deadened the color of what greenery grew beside the road; the berries of the juniper had lost their gloss. To the right of the road the land swept downward, and through the gaps in the stones glimpses of small, summer-blasted pools were visible. Those which were more water than mud scattered a sunflash so bright it hurt the observer's eye.

Dust clogged Hakiim's nostrils and stung his cracked lips. Perfecto must be suffering worse, the Moor thought, in his Spanish singlet and shirt which left the back of his neck and his few square inches of forehead exposed to the sun. Hakiim regarded his partner's squat form analytically.