The flat of her palm cracked across his cheek. Then she grabbed her own hand, as if afraid it might betray her. "Then you're no son of mine," she whispered. "Perhaps you're a daughter. Is that you, Nessa, come home to Mother?" She turned her back on him. Tears burned her eyes, streaked her face. She knew her boy, knew that he was wavering, weighing the risks, knowing that she had opened the door and all but booted him out. She tried to hold her breath, but her body, weakened and frail, betrayed her, and she vented a wet, weak cough.
Aidan tugged at her arm, and she pulled away. "No!"
"Let me help you," he said, and she could not shake him off. Then, very quietly, he added, "So long as you live, I will not go."
Crying, softly cursing the God she had worshiped her entire life for failing her in her moment of greatest need, she sat heavily on the edge of her bed, her face in her hands, as Aidan began to sweep the floor.
Chapter Twenty
Ghost Town was wreathed in shadow as Brian slipped out into the night, rucksack on his back. He looked carefully in all directions, waited until the mounted patrols had passed, and then headed north, staying to the shadows.
Ten minutes later, he was in the grove.
The trees welcomed him, and Brian searched by starlight and moonlight until he found a date palm with his name carved into the trunk. He had planted that tree at the age of fourteen, and carved his name three years later. Brian bowed his head and prayed.
"Mother Mary, as a boy I prayed that I might be free before this tree grew tall. I failed. But no son of mine will rot here. If I stay, I'll wring every black throat these hands can reach, and my people will suffer for it. Give me strength tonight." He crossed himself and stood, breathing deeply. No turning back now. He shouldered his rucksack and trotted through the grove, heading toward the swamp. A bloody moon overhead provided just enough light for Brian to enfold himself in its embrace.
A solitary figure roamed Ghost Town's streets while the rest of the village slept.
He slipped into Brian's empty shack, probing and checking to be certain that crucial items were missing. Now certain that Brian had indeed left, and was not merely spending the night in another shack, the man slipped back out. Keeping to the shadows, he exited through the gate, and made his way stealthily toward the overseers' huts.
Before he reached his destination, he was stopped by Bari, on routine horseback patrol. Whispered conversation followed, and if anyone had been watching, they would have seen little save two dark twists of shadow joined in conspiracy. Then the shades separated.
Bari met quietly with the overseers. No immediate alarm was raised: the great house remained in slumber. One group of men mounted and doubled their patrols. A second group headed west of the house, out beyond the barn.
South of the barn on the edge of the lake stood a cluster of fences, and beyond the fences a small group of huts. The men who lived there rarely mixed with the other overseers; they worked with the animals, and if truth be told, they enjoyed the company of beasts more than that of human beings.
They were low-born Danakil, men who had performed these functions for over a thousand years at the behest.of the Egyptian Royal family. They were still awake: legend said that they never slept, but trained and worked with the horses and camels by day, and with their other, grimmer charges by night. In the darkness they sat circled around their cook fires, smoking, and hoping.
And waiting.
The wait was over.
Kai lay sprawled on his bed on Dar Kush's second story, asleep but not at rest. Some deep instinct worried at him even before his conscious mind registered a sound.
He tossed restlessly, the sticky web of dream ensnaring him so that his last shudder before awakening was a convulsive lunge that threw him into wakefulness, the way a fall from a boat tumbles one into the sea.
For a few moments he lay there in bed, unable to move, unable to think, knowing that something was out of place but not knowing what or why. Then, faintly, he heard a hideous gobbling sound, punctuated with sharp, vicious barks, and his skin felt clammy.
Wondering if he had merely traded one nightmare for another, Kai levered himself out of bed and walked to the window. The moon was wreathed in clouds and the stars seemed even more distant than usual.
The clouds slid by, revealing a swollen, bloody moon. The entire estate seemed heavy with mist. The sound rose once, like something not quite human speaking in the night. He knew what that was, knew what it meant, and he shivered, returning to his bed, searching for sleep that did not come for the rest of the night.
Aidan awoke on his thin straw mattress, shivering despite the fact that he was not actually cold. Across the room, Deirdre snored lightly. He thanked God that she wasn't making the faint sobbing sound that had stolen her sleep during the first months of their captivity.
What had awakened him? Curious, he rolled out of bed. He wiped his forehead, looking at the sheen of thick cold salt water on his hand. Nightmares again. He cleaned it on his naked leg. Aidan tiptoed to the door and looked out. From the doorway, he could see between the rows of houses onto the grounds, which now were heavy with fog.
For an instant he thought that he saw something moving in the fog and backed up a step, primal horror chilling his blood. What in the world . . . ?
A sharp chorus of barks rang through the mist, and his breath caught in his throat. He remembered that sound from his days in the pen, when an. unseen force had raked a captive's arm. And had heard them also from the direction of the lake, out south of the pasture, where no slave was allowed to trespass. Whispers passed among the slaves, the words "Danakil," and "Gruagach." Mothers told tales of demons to keep recalcitrant children in their beds.
As a new shudder coursed through him, a gibbering howl wound up out of the gloom, and Aidan closed the door, knowing that death, and things worse than death, were in the night.
Chapter Twenty-one
Mist hugged the village streets as the first breath of morning began to dry the dew. A single aged woman walked the narrow rows.
Moira was Ghost Town's oldest inhabitant. She remembered eighty summers, which meant that she was perhaps eighty-two or -three. She had come to this new and awful land as a grown woman, sold to Abu Ali's father Abu Wakim after a raid by one village upon another. She had thought it her fate to be some Northman's wife, perhaps, or a slave to a Scot clan, but never had she dreamed she would endure the horror of the Big Water, or that the lush beauty she had once thought might bring her a highborn husband would be ravaged by black overseers, her dusky issue born into a lifetime of service and shame, and often sold away.
When Moira reached sixty or so Abu Ali's father died, and the Wakil declined to grind more work from her brittle bones. She was given a monthly stipend of meat and grain which she supplemented with homegrown vegetables. Additional creature comforts were gained in her capacity as priestess and midwife. She was mother to all, knew every leaf and mushroom, knew the songs and stories of a dozen Celtic peoples, and was the leader of the informal Elders Council that delegated work, resolved conflicts, and decided which slave complaints would be brought before the master. It kept her days as busy as she cared to have them, but still, in quiet moments, she wondered what had become of her children. Were they slave? Free? Alive? Dead? She had never been able to find out. Once, five years ago, a coach had drawn up to Abu Ali's estate. The reins were in the hands of a brown-skinned man with curly hair, and she thought she saw in his profile something of her own father. She could not go to him, could not ask him the question she longed to ask, and had never seen him again.
But she wondered.
She didn't sleep much anymore, and on this morning she was the first to awaken, carrying her slop pot out of her cabin toward the gate. The privies were kept far enough away that the smell wasn't offensive, and the truth was that they were better cared for than they had been in her own village in Eire.
She yawned and stretched, trying to straighten her back, but it was too tight, felt as if it had been
fused into an unyielding column. She was looking down, not really paying attention to her path until she reached the gate. There she fumbled with the latch. As it opened she looked up, seeing quite clearly what lay beyond the gate.
The slop pot dropped from her hands, spilling its vile contents onto the ground in stinking rivulets. She was too busy screaming to notice as the filth flowed over the toes of her sandals.
The village was waking now. The slaves poured into the streets, limping, yawning, but responding to Moira's cries. It took them mere moments to grasp what had happened, and their shocked, blanched faces revealed the depths of their distress.
Moira waited until there were four or five good strong men gazing up at the terrible sight before she unlatched the gate. "Come with me," she said, her voice very deliberately held as low and strong as possible.
The men followed her out of the village.
At some point in the night, the masters had quietly erected a stocks four cubits in height. Roped into the middle of it, sagging and unconscious, hung Brian MacCloud.
Brian was no longer pretty. Half of his face was crusted with blood, and one of his eyes was torn from its socket. Cuts and scratches scored his naked body. One of the men turned away and vomited. Moira saw a few of the children gawking up at the sight, and snapped at their parents: "Damn ye! This is no sight for such as them. Get those children' indoors, fools!" And the parents obeyed, probably glad to close their own eyes to the sight.
"Is he dead?" one of the men asked, trembling.
As if in answer to his question, Brian moaned. A bubble of blood slid from his mangled lips. His remaining eye opened. He looked out at them without recognition or focus.
"Sweet Mary . . ." one of them cried.
Again, almost in answer, a single gobbling bark rose up in the morning air, something from far out behind the barn, and the villagers trembled.
"Sidhe," Moira said heavily. "The ghoulies were out last night. And they've taken one of our best. By the Lady, take him down."
Brian was swiftly unfettered, and the wounded man collapsed into their arms, too weak to move. But he did manage to gasp a single word: "Thoths," he said. Then: "Gruagacb." Hairy goblins. Then his one good eye rolled up, and closed.
"Take him to my hut," Moira said. "His wounds need cleaning." She peered out in the direction of that last, terrible cry. The sun was brighter now, higher. The mist was burning away, leaving the sweet green grass. But by the faces of the villagers, it might as well have fallen for all time.
Despite the shock and horror of the morning's discovery, and the low cries of pain from Moira's shack, the routine of Dar Kush continued. The servants went about their tasks, displaying even less emotion than usual to the masters, as if life had been squeezed from their marrow.
In the fields, the barn, the kitchens, there was no laughter, little camaraderie or joy, but there was work in plenty. Oko, the overseers, and the masters of the house watched, each immersed in his own thoughts.
By afternoon Brian's screams had quieted, the pain eased away with the application and ingestion of herbs and plants picked carefully under Moira's supervision. He lay abed now, face swaddled in bandages. His left eye, the one remaining, peered out at the room, bloodshot and murderous. Crimson seeped through the bandages. The herbs coaxed him toward dreaming, but judging by his restless slumber, dreams were even more hellish than waking reality.
That night Topper and some of the other slaves grumbled of revolt and murder, of the terror that might descend upon them when the Wakil passed the torch to his son Ali. But no hand was lifted, and no murderous deeds were done: none would lead, and without leaders, there was no hope. And ultimately, the long day's fatigue beckoned their heavy limbs to bed, where a few troubled hours' sleep might prepare them for the rise of a new dawn.
In the barn, Aidan brushed down Kai's horse with one smooth, controlled stroke after another. The motions were peaceful, and he found in them a kind of soothing rhythm, a way to keep his emotions tightly leashed.
Kai appeared at the door, dressed in flowing Maghribi-style riding pants and a woven hemp tunic. Ready for the day's ride. He nodded approvingly at his horse's sheen. "Very nice," he said with little emotion. "Thank you. That will be all."
Aidan noted that Kai's voice was more formal than it had been just yesterday. Over a year of daily practice had given him a basic facility with Arabic, to the point where he was able to detect nuance. Kai was barely paying attention to him today, all focus directed at the great mare.
"Kai?" he asked.
Kai turned to him, a little warily. "Yes?"
"What happen to Brian?"
Kai's answer was as stiff as his spine. "He tried to run away."
Aidan bit back his anger and searched his mind for the right words. "But what was it? What tore him? Gruagach? Demon?"
Kai's face was like stone. "That is none of your concern, so long as you remember your station."
Frustration bubbled inside Aidan like acid. "He just want to be free."
Kai turned to Aidan, his bearing imperious. "Just as we have the obligation to take care of you—feed you, clothe you, house you—you have the obligation of obedience."
There was dismissal in his tone, but Aidan bore in. "He just want to be free."
Now there was something cruel and distant in Kai's face, and for a moment Aidan felt he was dealing with a stranger. Or perhaps, more realistically, this was Kai's true face. "Learn from his lesson, Aidan. Life can be good for you, if you just accept your place."
Be silent! His common sense, his mother's pleas rang in his ears, but Aidan couldn't leave Kai's statement unchallenged, even if it cost him a beating. "And who decide where my place?"
Kai paused and then replied, his voice as flat as a sword. "I'd say Allah has already decided."
"I was free!" the words burst from Aidan's lips, unbidden. "I had father, and sister, and a mother who sing and danced . . ." Words failed him, and he was left empty-throated, hands trembling.
"And now," Kai replied, "you have a barn to clean. I suggest you get to it."
Without a backward glance, Kai mounted and rode out. Aidan watched him ride away, hand gripping a straw rake as if it were a weapon.
As he watched Kai ride, Aidan saw Babatunde's ghostly figure, almost ethereal in the morning light, standing near the barn door. No word passed between master and student, but Babatunde's face was set in disapproving lines. Had he heard? What was in his mind? Babatunde mouthed so many pious words, words of love and wisdom. It was even rumored that he had a pale grandmother, or a "pigbelly shadow" as some of the foremen whispered. Could it be true? And if so, could he have exchanged both his precious spirituality and his blood for a little privilege? Aidan longed to grab the little man, to shake answers from him, but finally, inevitably, merely returned to his grooming.
After a few days, emotions in Ghost Town were less raw, less volatile, and the Irish could perform their duties without constant remembrance of Brian's suffering. The routine of days stretched into weeks, and at last most things on the estate seemed to return to normal. Aidan generally accompanied Kai during his lessons with Malik and Babatunde. When he was not in his young master's company, Aidan worked around his shack, caring for Deirdre, who seemed to grow weaker and somehow more ethereal daily.
Aidan kept himself busy, striving to stave off the lethal depression that hovered over him, a grim sense of hopelessness that might prove crippling. As time went on, he saw the many ways the other slaves fought off despair. There was much coupling on the weekends and in the depths of night. The slaves were allowed to brew their own beer, and some smoked the rolled leaves of the hemp plants. Hemp seemed to make them quiet and jokey, while beer rendered them boisterous and quarrelsome.
And in one way or another, almost everyone in the village worshipped. Whether the scrolled teachings of Christ or Mary or the oral traditions of the forest Druids, prayer seemed to offer some kind of inner fortress.
Nearly a fifth of the s
laves, or about forty, had embraced Islam. Five times a day, morning to night, slave Muslims would cease their labor, unfold their rude blankets, and bow toward the east. Aidan suspected that they might have done it just to gain precious minutes of rest denied the Christians and pagans, who glared at them as they chopped and hoed in the hemp or bean fields. The white Muslims ignored the glares as best they could, performed their prayers, and then returned to work.
Aidan had to admit that the Muslims seemed fresher at the end of the day: they carried their loads more readily, suffered fewer apparent bouts with despair. And although the Wakil had instructed the guards to treat Christian and Muslim identically, clearly overseers leaned more lightly on the lash with fellow travelers on the Prophet's well-worn road.
And Aidan watched. Somewhere in all of this, in all of the comings and goings, the alliances, there was a way out for him, for his mother. They would find lost Nessa, they would find freedom. This was his worship, his preoccupation, marking his time each day.
The blacks were not demons, although demons danced at their command. There was the reminder of Brian's face. Brian would not speak of what had happened to him in the swamps, but dear God, his face. It was said that other slaves had attempted to "follow the Plough" and escape to
the north. Some had been brought back dead. Others had been recaptured and then sold north to mining concerns on the disputed edge of Vineland. A few had ghosted about the village for a few months, bearing terrible wounds, their will and pride and spirit utterly broken.
Six weeks after his return from the swamp, Brian removed the last of his bandages. His beautiful face was gone, but Aidan knew that deep within, Brian was still Brian. He bowed low when a master walked past, but his remaining eye flashed fire.
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