My temples throbbed and the scales fell from my eyes. No longer could I perceive Miranda as a chattel to sell and forget. She was a lovely maiden of great grace and quiet beauty, beauty that pertained to both mind and body, beauty that could touch the heart even as it enflamed the passions.
No more could I count these days with her as a pleasant wayside adventure as I made for my main goal. Unless I was as steadfast in my course as the eastern stars to guide me, I might never set sail.
3
On the opposite shoulder from the one hidden in flaxen hair there was a lovely highlight. Its delicate molding was thus revealed, and traced in shadow was the collarbone, such a beautiful feature in young girls, leading to the unprotected hollow of her throat. The profile of her head and body on the exposed side was sharp against the scarlet tapestry behind it, and the long line, sweeping inward at the waist, out and down the long, slender thigh, and curving over the knee to the tapered ankle, might recall the first beauty that Adam ever dreamed when he wakened from his slumbers on the sixth-day afternoon, and Eve sat waiting for him, her whiteness so empassioning and so perishable against the riotous flowers. Until then he had been a clod.
Her eyes widened a little as I rose and slowly came toward her.
“You can see me better at a distance, master,” she told me.
“That’s for me to judge.”
“If you’re satisfied, I’ll dress.”
“I’m not nearly satisfied. Now you may stand, Miranda of England.”
I said this last, it seemed, because of her whiteness, always associated in the Latin mind with the Angles and the Saxons. Its effect on her was as though I had touched her with a whip. She rose instantly, faced me squarely, and dropped her arms to her side.
“Come forward a little,” I ordered.
“I beg you to remember——”
“I want you to stand in better light.”
Now she stood in the full flood, yet she was not as exposed as a moment before, because the expression on her face served as a veil. Rather it was an absence of expression, a complete stillness, as though she were no longer a person, only a carnal form. It seemed as though she had drawn miles away.
I could not accept the defeat and came close to her. I touched her chin and drew my hand down the side of her throat and along her shoulder.
“It seems smooth enough to satisfy most buyers,” I said.
“You’re taking advantage of me, master,” she said, her low voice lending great dignity to the words. “It’s unknightly.”
“I’m not a knight. I’m a merchant. I hope to be a great traveler.” But saying this last weakened me for holding to my rights. It was as though I had spoken to an equal, not my slave, and it became harder to treat her as a slave. Perhaps I had invoked the best side of me.
“I too would like to be a great traveler,” she said quietly.
“Some of the merchants take their concubines with them on their long journeys. I hope such a one will buy you.”
“Hear me, my lord. I make you three prayers, and if one of them is answered I’ll bless you by Saint George, no small prince in Heaven. One of them is to keep me for your own. If that’s your wish, I stand here waiting your pleasure. One is to sell me to a buyer who’ll prize my virginity and let me aspire to such honor and happiness as a concubine may win. The last is to do with me as you will, then sell me not for a concubine, but for a dairymaid, as you yourself said, or a vineyard or field worker. Some honest farmer may buy me and I may live in the sun.”
“That last is fool’s talk. What would you be worth on a farm? You would break like glass——”
“In that you’re wrong. I am of slight build but I am not a weakling. There was no maiden in—no matter where—who could ride as long and as well. In one month I could earn my bread and in three I would match my day’s work against any wench of the homestead.”
The eagerness of her voice and face told me that she spoke truth—she would choose the rough, active life, in which slaves were the most free, over the bird-cage luxuries of concubinage in some Christian palace or Infidel harem. Before that, and for as long as I desired, I could have her for my own. As I stood in reverie, the warm glowings throughout my body leaped to flame. The sight of her grave, full lips caused mine to draw with an almost painful rigor; there was dull pain across my brows; my hands tingled and throbbed.
I had experienced only the sudden lusts of young manhood and their rude satisfyings. They had been like hunger for meat many times magnified. I had never realized the exquisite torment of desire, the word itself meaning an unearthly thing, something visited upon us from a star. I had not known that she was in the world.
She stood waiting, breathing slowly and deeply. Her eyes looked almost black between their long, dense lashes. She was white except for a flush on her cheekbones, and sweat beaded her white brow. Unconsciously her hands had opened, not inviting the clasp of mine, but ready for them, equal to them. There was a half-smile on her lips like some ancient enigma.
“I can’t keep you for my own,” I told her in a tone of voice heard in the market. “I must raise money for a long journey. Neither can I have you for a time and then sell you for what you’ll bring. It wouldn’t be enough for my needs. Instead I must dispose of you at once, before you are damaged, to some rich man who wants you for his concubine, and will pay well. Now you may put on your shift.”
I was watching her closely as she did so, but saw no admission of defeat.
“I’m already damaged, master,” she said quickly.
“I don’t believe you. You swore before your saints that you’re a virgin.”
“What is an oath to a slave?”
“By that test, you’re not a slave?”
“Remember what is written between the columns on the Rialto: Let the trade be fair. Didn’t you demand, in the Jew’s house, that I be free from mark or canker? A pearl without flaw?”
“Yes.”
“What if now you find that’s not true? Will you take me back there and ask for a pearl out of the sea? Or will you keep me for your own, as a lapidary might keep for his own wearing a jewel that he knows is flawed, and yet of great luster?”
“I don’t know until I see the fault.”
She returned to her seat, crossed her legs at the knee, and held up her right foot so that I could see its bottom. Full on the sole there was a dreadful mark. It was in the shape of a crescent, at least two inches in span, blood-red, and deep in the flesh. It had been burned there with a red-hot iron.
“No one will see it,” I said quickly.
“Likely not while I’m being offered for sale, and perhaps not the first time my lord takes me to his couch. But sooner or later, when he plays with me, or wakes me with tickling, won’t he discover the flaw? What bold paramour has not kissed the little feet he loves?”
“He’ll discover it, surely.”
“And see, it’s no common scar, but truly a brand. No Saracen trader would put it on me to mar my value—plainly it marks me as some jealous Saracen’s handmaiden. Won’t the haughty Christian lord who buys me curse you for a swindling knave?”
“What will I care? I’ll be far away.”
“The brand is a terrible one,” she went on after a little thought, “but it doesn’t lame me in the least.”