The Blood Star (28 page)

“From whom did you purchase her?” I asked. It
did not matter, and I did not really care, but I needed time to
consider what must be done.

“From her mother and father, Majesty—who
could possibly have a better right? They were peasants from a
village near Amyclae, and I paid for her in silver. I have also had
the expense of feeding her this half month.”

The villain was practically inviting me to
buy her.

“From the look of her, you cannot have spent
much on that.”

This was the first time I had really noticed
her appearance, and it did little enough to recommend her. She
stank, for one thing—Master Strophios had been right on that point.
Her cheeks were dirty and scratched and her hair looked as if
nothing could ever untangle it. Her broken fingernails were
encrusted with black ship’s tar. And she was thin and ungainly,
with hands and feet too large for her body—but she was only a
child, and starved in the bargain, so no one had any right to
expect she would be a beauty.

I put my hand under her chin to have a look
at her face. The skin was as white as parchment from all those days
in the ship’s hold, but it was a strong face. She had a short,
slightly tilted nose and large intelligent blue eyes and they held
mine now with a certain defiance, as if she had decided that I was
no better than the rest of mankind and didn’t care if I knew
it.

“How much did you pay for her?” I asked.

“One hundred and fifty drachmas. . .”

“You liar!” she shouted, pulling violently on
my tunic to call my attention to such a gross untruth. “It is a
cheat, Lord—neither my mother nor my father could even count so
high as a hundred and fifty drachmas!”

“And then, Majesty,” he went on, just a shade
too quickly, “there has been the keeping of her, as I said, and a
reasonable profit. . .”

“You are lying.” I put my hand on the girl’s
shoulder, as if to establish my claim of ownership. “For one
hundred and fifty drachmas I could probably buy all the children in
Greece. I will give you no more than thirty silver shekels and call
you a thief at the price.”

The master must have thought me a great fool,
for he accepted at once, and I counted out the money into his open
palms.

As soon as he had left the girl took my hand
in her two and, before I could stop her, bowed down to kiss the
thumb in token of submission. Not wishing any repetition there on
the wharf, I made a sign to Enkidu, who caught her by the wrist and
dragged her along behind us as we threaded our way through the
narrow alleys that led to the Greek quarter. I did not even trouble
to turn around until I heard her stumble and cry out.

“My Lord, please. . .”

We stopped. She picked herself up and with
impressive fury kicked Enkidu in the shin, as hard as she could. If
he even noticed the attack he gave no sign, but kept hold of her
wrist as if she were a bag of onions.

She, however, immediately let out a howl and
fell down again to the paving bricks, where she sat cradling her
foot in her free arm. The tears, whether of rage or pain or both,
streamed down her face—I felt sorry for her but not so sorry that I
could keep from laughing, for she made a comical sight.

“It will be a good lesson for you,” I said
finally, when the fit had subsided a little. “Pick the targets of
your wrath with greater care, for my servant is not of a
disposition to be vexed by such as you. You might as well have
leveled your blow against a stone idol as Enkidu.”

With remarkable self-possession, she forced
herself to stop weeping. She glared at me for a moment, as if she
had never hated anyone so much, and then, quite suddenly, smiled as
sweet a smile as I have ever beheld.

“My Lord does well to reprove me,” she said
in a low voice. It was clear she already had title to a woman’s
cunning.

This time I did not laugh, although I was
tempted.

“And there is little enough need for such
wiles, child, since you are not fated to be my property any more
than that repulsive brute of a slave trader’s. Enkidu, release
her!”

She snatched her hand away from his grasp and
then stuck out her tongue at him—she was such a bold little savage
that I found myself beginning to like her exceedingly, enough
almost to make me regret parting from her. But, of course, there
was no place in my life for a slave who was still only a child.

I opened my purse and dropped twenty shekels
of silver into her lap.

“Here,” I said. “Now you are rich. You own
yourself, by report worth one hundred and fifty drachma, and now
you have nearly half that sum entirely at your disposal. Run along.
Enjoy your prosperity.”

Her knees snapped together like a trap,
capturing the shower of coins, but she was merely being practical.
She was not at all pleased with me.

“Then why, Lord, did you buy me in the first
place?”

“A whim,” I answered, lying even as I told
the truth, “and the fact that I had taken a dislike to your masters
and did not wish to appear a fool before them. It was an expensive
mistake, and you are the beneficiary. Now be off.”

Yet it was I who abandoned the scene to her,
for all at once I could not get away fast enough. I hurried down
the street with what I cannot deny was cowardly and indecent haste,
not even looking back.

The bazaar was crowded and the day hot. An
hour after noon I purchased bread and wine and two skewers of
cooked meat, and Enkidu and I took our midday meal under the awning
of a wineshop. I had by then almost erased the morning’s
unpleasantness from my mind, so quick are we to forgive our own
follies and weaknesses. It was not until I had finished eating that
Enkidu touched me on the arm and pointed toward an alleyway across
the square.

The little slave girl with the bronze-colored
hair was hiding in the shadow, watching us.

“Has she been following us all day?” I
asked.

Enkidu nodded. I did not inquire why he had
neglected to point this out to me before, since I would have
received no answer.

“She will tire of the game soon enough.”

Yet in this I was mistaken, for all that
afternoon I had only to turn my head to see her, stalking us like a
cat after barn mice. At last, thinking to be rid of her, I visited
a brothel and stayed to play at dice with the harlots even after my
seed was spent. For some reason it did not occur to me how
demeaning it was to hide thus from a child. I tarried until the
lamps were lit, until it was night outside and it was time to
return to the house of Prodikos.

I did not see her again on my way there, so I
pleased myself with the reflection that probably she really had
tired of the game, either that or had lost track of me in the
dark.

This, however, was a vain hope, for the next
morning, when I went outside, I almost tripped over her in the
doorway. She was asleep, having spent the night there.

“What do you want?” I shouted at her, once I
had shaken her awake. “What is it you want that you pursue me
thus?”

“Why will you not accept me into your
service?” She rubbed her eyes, frowning with resentment at the
morning sunlight. “I could make myself of use in the kitchen, and
in a year or so, when I have my growth, you can take me for a
concubine—if last night proves anything, you are of a lecherous
disposition.”

“How old are you, child?”

“I will finish my tenth year six days after
the next Festival of Maia.”

“And when is that?”

“What Greek does not know the Festival of
Maia?” she asked in astonishment at my stupidity.

“I am not a Greek.”

“Of course you are a Greek—what else would
you be except a Greek?”

“Then let me be a Greek, but one who does not
know the Festival of Maia.”

She shook her head, seemingly unable to grasp
that such a thing could be possible.

“Are you sure?” she asked finally, her eyes
narrowing with suspicion.

“When is the Festival of Maia, child? Require
me to ask again and you will regret it.”

“In the month of the last harvest before
winter.”

“So you are not even ten years old?”

“No, Lord,” she answered, lowering her eyes
as if it were a thing to be ashamed of.

“Then you are entirely too young to know
anything about the matter. ‘You can take me for a concubine’—I do
not rut on children, nor am I so anxious for the supply of harlots
that I will raise them up for my own use like pomegranates.”

“Then what am I to do?”

“That is for you to choose. You are free—no
man owns you—and I have given you silver. Leave me in peace.”

“It is very well for you, Lord, to say ‘leave
me in peace,’ but what of me?” She jumped to her feet, her blue
eyes flashing, ready, I fancied, to serve my shins as even she had
Enkidu’s. “How am I, a child as you call me, to live in this
strange country, where I know no one and do not even speak the
tongue? How long do you think it will be before I am caught by one
like my late master and sold into a brothel—who will know or care
then that you have said no man owns me? But perhaps that will not
happen. Perhaps some bold robber will cut my throat for the sake of
the silver you have given me, which, unprotected as I am, is little
better than a sentence of death!”

“Then perhaps it can be arranged to have you
sent home to your parents,” I said, sagging inwardly, conscious
that I was engaged in a hopeless struggle.

“My parents! Oh, that is wise, My Lord, wise
and merciful. My father and the man to whom he sold me are as alike
as a pair of hands, and my mother makes a third. What am I to hope
for from parents who would sell me to be a harlot—and for seventy
drachmas!”

She burst into hot, angry tears, and as she
stood there weeping I felt shame, for everything she had said was
perfectly true. She had won, although perhaps she did not know it
yet.

“What is your name, child?”

“Selana, Lord,” she answered, and smiled at
me through her tears. Yes, of course she knew she had won, for what
man is a match for any woman—or even any girl, though she would not
be ten years old until after the Festival of Maia?

X

Prodikos’ cook was firm that she would not
allow “that filthy child” into her kitchen, not even to eat
breakfast, so I purchased Selana a bowl of cooked lamb and millet
from a street peddler and she ate it greedily as we walked to the
public baths. I also bought her a pair of reed sandals—the first
she had ever owned, as it turned out—a comb and, most important, a
new tunic and loincloth, since by then even the rag merchants would
have disdained her tattered Greek homespun, unchanged and unwashed
during half a month in the hold of a slave ship.

I hired an elderly bath woman, charging her,
as this was a desperate case, to have no mercy.

“Aye, Your Worship, you can depend on it that
I shall scrub her down until she shines like a new copper pot,” she
answered, smiling toothlessly.

As I lay in the next room, drinking wine
while a harlot rubbed oil into my back, I could hear Selana’s howls
of protest. The results, however, justified my severity.

“That old crone held me down and rubbed me
all over with sand,” she said, crouching on the tiled floor in a
posture of extreme wretchedness. She was still naked and her flesh
gleamed a bright pink. “My hind parts are so sore it will be days
before I can even sit down again. I feel like a skinned
rabbit.”

“At least now no one will mistake you for a
water rat. That, at any rate, is an improvement.”

In her misery, which seemed to go beyond even
tears, absently she pushed her fingers through her bronze-colored
hair, still damp and shining now with oil so that it was quite
beautiful. She was too thin—her ribs showed and her hips and
shoulders seemed all bone—and her childish awkwardness had not left
her, but I could see why the brothel keepers, with their eyes to
the future, might have found her interesting. She had a pretty,
impudent face, and childhood is a disease that cures itself.

“You are not as ugly as I thought, Selana. In
a few years, when you are grown a little, perhaps you will find
some man who wants you.”

“Then you can make me your concubine.”

“It would be better if we found you a
husband—then at least I would be rid of you.”

“I do not want a husband,” she answered, her
gaze quite steady on my face. “My mother has a husband and is every
bit as miserable as she deserves to be. I would rather be your
concubine, since you seem less of a villain than most men.”

She could smile now, for she was as the
generality of her sex—a few words of praise, even such as mine,
repaid her for much discomfort. She knew she had found favor, and
for the moment that was enough.

Still, I wondered, what was I to do with her?
I could not decide.

But she was an intelligent child and managed
to make herself useful in the house of my friend Prodikos. She
served me at table and helped in the kitchen with so much
willingness that the cook forgave her all past sins. Gradually, and
with my hardly being conscious of it, Selana managed to install
herself in my life as a fact. It seemed there was nothing left for
me to decide, for she had decided it all herself.

Even Enkidu she finally won to her will.

At first she appeared frightened of him, as
if it were somehow my whim to keep by me a great gray wolf, a
creature that might turn savage at any moment. But Enkidu did not
seem to notice; he hardly even glanced at her. In fact, she might
have been the footstool in my sleeping chamber for all that he
seemed conscious of her existence. Perhaps it was this very
obliviousness she found so intimidating. Perhaps it amounted to no
more than her anxiety lest he might absent-mindedly crush her under
his heel.