If you are Miranda, will you acknowledge me? Why should you, when I have only got my deservings? When I sold my sweetheart slave, it may be the deal was fair, but I drove away the little ghost who tried to come to me, and shut your love and beauty out of my heart. Except for that blindness and crassness, I would have guessed your destination and looked for you along the road. I would have asked a lavishness from the gods, so when I answered a cry in the night, I would have expected to find you. I have been a measly trader instead of a nobleman, or I would have put more faith in fate.
“Are you considering her as a gift for the Khan?” I asked, my voice holding well.
“If she’s as beautiful as I believe, she’d be a fitting gift.”
“She would have to be flawless as well. No doubt you know that even a small mark—an unsightly mole or scar anywhere on the body—bars a maiden from consideration for the Khan’s harem.” And my heart flung into my throat with reborn hope.
“Everyone knows that.”
“Why not look well? If there’s only a slight disfigurement, I’ll take her off your hands and you can buy something from Baram’s stock as a gift for the Khan. I’ll hold the lamp for you.”
“I don’t think it would give you much pleasure until she’s bathed and fattened. Anyway, she’s rather frail to expose to a room no warmer than this. Still, I can tell fairly well.” Nicolo turned to the Nubian girl and spoke in Turki-Persian. “Help the Lady Linda off with her coat and tell her to stand.”
Actually the room was quite warm. It was to my eyes that Nicolo was not willing to have the girl exposed. I wondered if he were surprised by or was even conscious of deeply submerged jealousy, seemingly so needless. It was proof to me that almost all intelligent men have a sixth sense, but often it does not explain its impartings.
“To hear is to obey!” the Nubian girl replied.
Then she addressed her mistress in a base Arabic, larded with Ethiopian words, which most Nubian slaves employed. By cutting corners and jumping over the jargon, I understood her well enough, and so did the white slave. This could come about in a few weeks in each other’s company. Miranda had known a few Arabic words when I first met her.
“Is he trying to sell me to the young loon, do you think?” Linda asked.
“Be careful. They may speak our tongue.”
“They are both Franks, to judge from the sound of their talk. But the older is richer and stronger and I hope he’ll keep me.”
Meanwhile she was slipping out of her padded coat.
“Did you catch what she said, Marco? It was a corrupt Arabic.”
“I got part of it, and I’ll tell you later.”
Clad in a shift of diaphanous silk, the white slave rose gracefully to her feet. Only her face that had been veiled from the sun and wind and lately cleaned and her throat, shoulders, and breast were of a luminous whiteness I thought I had seen before; the rest of her body was gray with dust. I thought she might attempt some sort of apology for this, but she did not—nor would Marian Redvers of England. The wasting of her flesh was more severe than I had at first perceived. Her ribs stood out, her hip bones were plainly outlined under the taut skin, and her gaunt legs looked unseemly long. I felt my throat tighten and almost fill.
“Why are you so frail?” Nicolo demanded in Turki-Persian. “You couldn’t have lost that much flesh in these few days.”
“I think it’s the wasting sickness,” she answered quite distinctly, “and I will soon die.”
“If she dies, I’ll wish he’d given me a Badakhshan mare instead,” Nicolo told me in Venetian.
“I’d take a chance on her recovery,” I replied. “What would you sell her for?”
“Why? Do you want to buy her?”
“I have a yellow jewel, but your jest of having one too doesn’t hold water. This girl’s white as a pearl except for her hair. Pearls are lucky for me, but Mustapha Sheik cast my horoscope and told me I must never wear a topaz or any yellow jewel. I can’t see any mark on her, but you are deceiving yourself if you think she’s worth giving to the Khan, and if you’d given the second-best balas ruby for her, you’d repent it. But I’ll make you an offer here and now, and if her back is striped or she has any other disfigurement disqualifying her for the Khan, I’ll stand by it.”
“What is your offer?”
“The yellow sapphire and two hundred dinars to boot.”
“That’s handsome enough. But since she’s a free gift and I have nothing to lose——”
“You’d better not refuse until you look at her back.”
“It’s true she might be striped. Many owners wouldn’t like her aloof ways.” Then in Turki-Persian: “Turn around, Linda.”
The slave girl turned impassively.
“No whip has been laid on her,” I said. “Of course if a Saracen wanted to teach her a lesson, he’d give her the kurbash on the soles of her feet—but I’ll risk that too.”
“You might be sorry if——” Nicolo turned again to his chattel. “Linda, lift each pretty little foot in turn and let me look at it.”
The girl did so, first the left, and as my heart stood still, the right. . . . In an instant more I would hear him speak and she would be mine. . . .
Then my head rocked with pain and my belly sickened and cold sweat bathed me from head to foot. On the sole of the girl’s foot black with dust there was no red crescent burned in with a branding iron.
“She’s without mark and her aloof ways are only a sign of high birth,” Nicolo was saying.
Although rallying now, I did not dare speak.
“I’ll set no price on her,” he went on, “and if I don’t present her to the Khan, I’ll keep her for my own.”
I nodded, and aware of his searching gaze, I turned as calmly as I could look at the Nubian girl.
“You puzzle me greatly, Marco,” Nicolo remarked.
“In what way, signor?” I asked, steadying my voice.
“You’re not your usual self, or else some very strong feelings have taken hold of you.”
“If you’ll pardon me, both are true. Chasing ghosts on the desert is an unnerving experience. Also I was taken enough with the white pearl to make an offer for her—and now you’ve refused it. I find myself tempted——”
“To a black one?”
“How did you know?”
“I saw your gaze wander.”
“She has delicate features and a beautiful form. Do you own her too?”
“No, although I intended to buy her to serve Linda. And I agree with you, she’s fine to look at. Baram said her Nubian name is unpronounceable, but he calls her Sheba. As a good Mohammedan, he’s as well acquainted with the story of Solomon as we Christians and I relished the pleasantry. I’d venture her rich brown skin is very like the famous queen’s.”
“You promised me first choice of his goods, and if I buy her, she could remain in attendance on Linda except at such times as I summon her to my pavilion.”
“That would be entirely satisfactory. If you’ll authorize me to offer one hundred and fifty dinars, I’m fairly certain Baram will accept.”
“You can go as high as two hundred. I could certainly get that for her in Cathay.” Then I fixed my gaze on a leather case in a corner of the tent. “If she can play a Persian lute—and many Nubian girls play well—I can get more.”
“The instrument belongs to Linda, I believe. Baram mentioned her as a good singer and musician.”
“I’d like to hear her if only to get the zither playing out of my ears.”
Nicolo opened the case. My eyes began to start, sure that they would see the Grecian lute I had given Miranda on the day of our parting; then they darkened in fear of Fate and the gods. The instrument was indeed a Persian lute, and I knew my lute was rift.