“They were great hobbledehoys smelling of beef and mutton, not subtle Venetians. Sometimes they caught me, but a little wriggling set me free. Sometimes we played kiss-in-the-ring and sometimes I gave one of them a kiss under the mistletoe. But my grandam kept watch of me when we went into the woods amaying.”
The trouble with me was, I could see her in those woods. She was thirteen or fourteen, her movements still a little childlike, her eyes busy with flowers, her hands quick to pick them, her basket already brimming. Before that, I could see her at grave play with a doll, or eating with her spoon, or in rosy sleep. She had a little bed, and a roof over her head against the rain. There were people around her, some of whom had loved her greatly, although there was one who loved gold more. It was one whom she trusted to protect her against all enemies. She did not know of his great passion or, more likely, some great need. Perhaps his dearest dream hung on the obtainance of five hundred pieces of gold.
Strange men came to the door. They looked at her and signs passed between them and her father. She was not afraid, only a little uneasy. Then there came a night that he took her with him out into the darkened harbor. They were making for a boat with lateen sails. . . .
I must stop these flights of fancy. I had the strange feeling that they were more dangerous to me than her perfumed body in my arms.
2
“There’s something I should tell you, before we kiss,” I said.
“Yes, lord.” Miranda leaned back a little, as though to give my words her full attention.
“A famed slave dealer who’s been out of the city is returning tomorrow. I think he’ll want to look at you on the following day.” She nodded her head slightly. “I think you’ve seen him at least once. He’s a Greek by the name of Paulos Angelos.”
“I did see him, and I was wondering when I’d see him again. I noticed that you marked his name when Saul mentioned it.”
“Saul said you managed to prevent his buying you.”
“I won’t again. If I’m to become a rich man’s plaything, I’d rather have him place me—that is the word used—than any other merchant. I think he takes more pains to satisfy his clients than any other. The more satisfied my owner is with me, the better I’ll be treated.”
“Under those conditions, perhaps we’d better not kiss at all.”
“It’s for you to say, my lord.”
“You know nothing of love-making, do you?”
“Only what I’ve heard—and what you’ve already shown me.”
“Do you think some slight knowledge might be an advantage to you, when you go on sale?”
“I don’t read your riddle.”
“Your great innocence, showing in your face, gives the impression of coldness. I think if you were once awakened to the ecstasies of love, that would not be true. There’s no doubt that such a wakening changes the expression on a maiden’s face. I’m sure the merchants would pay more for you—they have a sixth sense, you know—and you would be more responsive to young, virile buyers who come to look at you.”
“It’s a very good argument, Marco. But isn’t the wish father to the thought?”
“It may be. If so, why shouldn’t I act on the wish itself? I have a feeling you’ll soon be gone. I would like to have something to remember you by—and what could be as sweet as a night of love? Since I’ll be on guard against it, no harm will be done.”
“It’s in your charge, Marco my master.”
The use of both addresses thrilled me. They seemed to mean that tonight I could be both her lover and her lord. But since the moon, the tide, the gentle ripples, and all the rhythms of the night were unhurried, I could afford to stay still awhile, just to look at her. I had never known joy of exactly this kind and degree.
Her beauty was such strange beauty to us brunet dwellers on the Mediterranean shores. I had seen young girls from the Piemonte with slight bodies, spare, lovely molding of flesh over delicate bones, and with almost these same tints of hair, eyes, and skin—still, they had not looked like Miranda. Not to cool my head so much as to prolong this introduction to the feast, I tried to measure her uniqueness and guess at the explanation.
Her general type was no doubt more common in England than in the other Northern realms. Mustapha had told me that the blood of the English people had been richly mixed. The blond and dark strains of ancient Britain had been well stirred before the Romans came; later the golden Angles and Saxons and the red Jutes and Danes had been baked in the pie; and only two centuries ago came the Normans, who were none else than Northmen settled and interbred with the more ancient dwellers of Northern Gaul. But above and beyond all this was the reflection in her face and form of a unique self; and I dreamed that a strange fate had brought it to flower. It was a flower of different loveliness than any I had ever seen. Its seed had not fallen in the garden of its ancestral kind but had been blown upon rough ground. I thought of it as having the beauty of a lone star on a lonesome night.
Adoration of it caused me to remove her cloak and unlace the strings at her throat so that I could slip her shift down from her shoulders and expose her bosom. I made her help me pull off my shirt so that my chest was likewise bare. For a while I was entranced by the sight alone of her milk-white skin against mine more dark, the small steep hills barely touching my chest as I held her out a little for my wonder-struck viewing, the narrow shoulders almost straight from the slim base of her throat, their joining with her arms, and her small, luminous head with its beautiful face all revealed by the glimmering moon. If ever eyes were charmed, they were mine.
I drew her closer to me and held her in my arms. I could not compare my joy to the joy taken by a connoisseur in a wonderful jewel, because jewels were not warm. I had known my big chest as an abode of emotion—the place where the breath stopped at times, or was wildly drawn, and the heart fainted, swelled, ached, thumped—but not as a seat of sensation. Now her slightest movement against it thrilled it through and through. Her young breasts became taut and their slight yielding against hard bone and muscle gave me exquisite pleasure that only a clod would not perceive and love. Her nipples drew erect and firm as her breathing brushed them a little back and forth, and their slow, involuntary caressing of my chest became a sensation almost too exquisite to endure.
Her lips had parted a little in her happiness, and I bent and kissed them. She was quietly happy, it seemed; I was wildly so. But this difference between us became a cloud in my own high sky. It was of the thin but shadow-casting stuff that jealousy is made of; and there is no bliss so unstable as that of carnal love, which can change a man in one moment from his best to his most base.
“Did you take pleasure in my kiss?” I asked.
“Be still.”
I could not heed her. I owned her body and mind. I was jealous because I did not own her soul.
“I bid you tell me.”
Very slowly she drew back.
“Why not? Swains and maidens have taken pleasure in the like since time began, and older folk as well. Your lips are firm but not rough and you smell clean. What more can a slave girl ask?”
“Are you happy to be here, or do you wish to go back?”
“I’m happy to be here. Your caresses are sweet and I hope you’ll give me more, for what have I to lose? If I were a free girl and you an English swain whom I favored, I wouldn’t tell you so, at least in this free way. I’d say and do only enough to make you persist. So it would seem that slavery has freed my tongue at least—but it’s not true. The truth is, I’m not free to be silent. I must answer my master’s questions and tell the secrets that are a woman’s right and strength.”
“Tonight will you treat me as though you’re free? Give what you like, withhold as much as you please?”
“It’s impossible, and anyway you’ve no right to ask it. The people at home have a saying—a very old one—that fits the case. You can’t have your cates and eat them too.” Cates were sugared breads made in England.