Enslaved by the Desert Trader

by Greta Gilbert

  ‘I refer not to what is beneath the bush, but what is balanced upon it.’ Tahar pointed to a single white hair, balancing on a branch near her head.

  She plucked it free and handed it to Tahar. Her touch was light, yet it seemed to leave a deep mark upon his skin.

  ‘The sign is new. The ewe is near,’ he said.

  ‘How do you know it is near?’

  Tahar considered whether to explain that the wild desert sheep travelled in the cool of morning, that in the afternoon the winds whipped the sands and left no bush unshaken. The sheep had to have passed that morning, because by the afternoon its hair would have been blown to the ground.

  ‘I know this because I have lived in the desert for most of my life,’ he told her coolly. ‘I know how to find water and I know how to find food. You must listen to me and follow my commands if you wish to survive.’

  A rush of air escaped through her nostrils, but she held her tongue.

  They discovered the sheep grazing on a stand of saltbush—a large female with its udder full. It lifted its horned head and stared at Tahar, its big eyes unblinking. Meanwhile, the woman slipped behind the bushes.

  ‘Bah!’ she shouted suddenly, rushing at the animal from behind.

  With a quick lunge, Tahar trapped the ewe in his arms.

  ‘Well done,’ Tahar said, keeping firm hold as the animal struggled to wrestle free of his grasp. ‘Get the water bag from my saddle,’ he explained. ‘I shall hold her steady while you milk.’

  The woman nodded, quickly returning with the empty water bag. Instead of kneeling to milk, however, she stared at the ewe’s bulging udder with alarm.

  ‘Get on with it,’ urged Tahar, but still she hesitated. Could it be that she had never milked an animal? Impossible. It was well known that in the land of Khemet there were more cows than Khemetians.

  Tentatively the woman bent to her work, and soon the ewe’s rich milk was spilling into the bag.

  ‘Ha!’ she exclaimed, flashing him a girlish grin.

  Her eyes were not completely brown, he noticed then. Flecks of gold dotted the inner rings. Where had they come from? he wondered. Those tiny slivers of sunlight? And what was this woman’s station that she had never before milked a beast?

  He had spotted the lie when she had told him about her kin, of course. It had been as if she were reading from a scroll of untruths as she’d described her destitute family in Abydos. She had mentioned a city. Had she dwelt in one? It seemed probable, since she had either been born very high or very low indeed. Which was it?

  When they arrived at the oasis they passed the bag between them, drinking long draughts of the sweet, creamy milk.

  ‘It was a good idea to pursue the sheep,’ she conceded, as a white moustache appeared just above her upper lip.

  Impulsively he smeared his thumb across the stain and then licked his digit clean. She stared at him curiously, her full cheeks glowing red.

  What an unusual woman. One moment she was doubting him, with her pompous Khemetian nose in the air. The next she was quiet—appreciative, even. And, he realised suddenly, quite lovely.

  ‘You were very skilled at the milking,’ he lied.

  ‘Well, I have been doing it all my life,’ she lied, smiling wide.

  And in that moment he wished for her to lie again, for he found himself adoring her.

  Careful Tahar.

  It had been many years since he had spent any time with a woman, but he remembered the day as if it was yesterday. It had been back when the drought was young, and traders like Tahar had still thrived along the routes. Tahar had just completed a large transfer of Garamantian natron to a merchant in Alexandria, and he had been rich with copper.

  As a reward for his success Tahar had taken himself to Alexandria’s renowned House of Women. He’d settled himself inside its cool tavern and made a gift of goodwill to the owner—five deben of grain. In gratitude, the owner had brought Tahar a beautiful woman who wore cymbals upon her fingers and bells upon her toes. Her eyes had been kohled in a luxurious spiral design, and when she’d walked her hips had swayed smartly, whispering their conceits.

  ‘She has seen a full eighteen summers now,’ the quick-eyed owner had explained, his lips twisting with mirth. ‘She is one of our best.’

  In a bedroom, Tahar had showered the woman with copper coins. He’d scrubbed her back with lavender oil and fed her honey cakes and beer. But it had not been enough.

  After their joining, the woman had burst into tears. ‘You took my purity!’ she’d claimed.

  ‘Impossible,’ said Tahar. ‘You are skilled in the arts of the flesh and you are well of age.’

  ‘Nay, I have seen but fourteen summers.’

  Tahar had been shocked, and had soon felt a knot of shame twist inside his stomach. Had he known she was of such a tender age he would never have bedded her. Overcome with guilt, he’d given the girl almost all the copper he’d carried.

  ‘This will keep me fed for many months,’ she’d told him in gratitude, tears streaming down her face.

  He had taken her virginity, after all. Surely that was worth all Tahar had to give? He had fumbled for his belt. The only other thing of value that he’d owned had been his father’s precious old battle axe.

  ‘Trade this,’ Tahar had explained, handing her the copper-plated weapon, ‘and you will not have to lie with another man for several years.’

  ‘Thank you, kind trader,’ the girl had said, accepting the only possession that had remained of Tahar’s father besides his horse.

  Tahar had gathered his things and hurried to the nearby stables, paying the stable boy and guiding his beloved old beast hurriedly out of town. On his way, he’d passed by the House of Women once again. Impulsively he’d tied his horse outside the mud-brick building and brushed through its beaded entryway, intent on retrieving the grain he had gifted to the deceitful owner.

  As his eyes had adjusted to the tavern’s low light once again he’d beheld the woman. She’d been sitting on the lap of the owner, handing him the copper coins Tahar had gifted her just hours before. And the battle axe that had belonged to Tahar’s father and his grandfather before him had lain askew in a wooden box in a dusty back corner of the tavern, as if it had been thrown there as an afterthought.

  Tahar had made a motion towards the box and the woman had quickly stood. She’d held out a long knife. ‘You would steal back a freely given gift?’ she asked.

  Suddenly all her feigned innocence disappeared and the Blue Serpent—the shrewdest, most successful trader in all of the Red Land and the Black—knew that he had been taken for a fool.

  Tahar had turned on his heel, begging his father for forgiveness and vowing never to let a woman get the better of him again.

  But the drought had not relented, and soon there had been no more women, nor copper coins, nor even grain. The woman from Alexandria was the last woman he had known.

  Until now.

  Tahar watched his Khemetian captive take another draught of milk. He could not afford to be foolish again, he reminded himself. No matter how kind she appeared, she was like any other woman—a serpent in the soft grass. Tahar licked his thumb clean of the milk he had rubbed from her lip, but refused to take another sip.

  ‘The rest of the milk is for you,’ he stated. ‘You need it more than I.’

  ‘Thank you, kind trader,’ she said, and Tahar recalled that the treacherous woman had said the same.

  ‘I suppose this is the last time in your life you will ever have to milk a beast,’ Tahar added, assuring himself that he was still in control.

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘As the wife of a Nubian Chief, you will have servants to do the milking for you.’ He turned away from her then, for despite the bitterness and suspicion that had long occupied his soul he cou
ld not bear to watch the woman’s shy smile turn to dust.

  Chapter Thirteen

  When they set out upon the plateau at dusk, the woman was silent. She had been that way since their rest at the second oasis—over eight hours ago now—and Tahar had the vague notion that he was being punished. He should have known better than to provoke her as he had. She was a woman, after all, with a woman’s sensitivities, and he was quite clearly in control. There had been no need to remind her that soon she would be warming some rich man’s bed.

  It occurred to Tahar that the rich man would be a lucky man indeed. Tahar did not know him, and already he envied him.

  Tahar led the donkey onward into the twilight.

  The sun dipped below the horizon and cast its pink and yellow spell upon the sky. She observed the spectacle of colour with mutiny in her eyes. ‘How long until we reach Abu?’ she asked at last.

  ‘We’ve yet many days,’ said Tahar.

  Soon the stars began to sparkle above them and the heat of the day lifted mercifully. Still the woman seemed restless. She adjusted herself upon the saddle, apparently unable to find a comfortable position.

  ‘May I lead the horse for a time?’ she asked. ‘I wish to stretch my legs.’

  He did not answer her request immediately. ‘Hem,’ he said. ‘Let me think on it.’

  Of course he would let her lead the horse. What a welcome request.

  Yes, my lovely. Take the horse. Stretch your shapely legs and feel the crunch of dirt beneath your feet. Let me rest and contemplate your gait, the swish of your hips, the long muscles of your legs.

  After a long pause, Tahar gave his assent. ‘On one condition,’ he said. ‘You must admit that you do not come from a family of farmers in Abydos.’

  ‘Fine, I admit it.’

  She admitted it? No headstrong resistance? No fiery debate? Tahar felt strangely disheartened. So where do you come from? he wished to ask now. But that had not been part of the bargain.

  Obligingly, he helped her off the horse, and soon she was guiding it across the empty plain with him upon its back.

  ‘Your hair grows,’ he ventured. ‘It is as new shoots in an empty field.’

  She said nothing.

  ‘Your arm heals.’

  Nothing.

  ‘Your gait is strong. There is no memory of the snakebite in it.’

  Finally, she spoke. ‘You observe me as if I were a newborn calf or a recently grafted vine.’

  ‘What more can I do but observe if you will not converse?’

  ‘I do not converse because I do not have anything to say to one who keeps me as a slave.’

  ‘If you have not noticed, I feed you and protect you.’

  ‘Like a fine cow.’

  ‘I tend to your wounds. I prepare you not for slavery but for marriage.’

  ‘Marriage, slavery—they are the same.’

  ‘Isn’t marriage what every woman desires?’ Tahar asked, disbelieving. ‘To bear children? To enjoy the love and protection of a husband? To be provided for?’

  The woman turned and continued walking. ‘Not every woman.’

  ‘Indeed? Then what is it exactly that you desire?’

  The woman did not speak. Instead she shook her head and began walking more rapidly.

  ‘You cannot answer my question?’ Tahar pressed. ‘If you cannot express your desire, then you do not deserve to have it fulfilled.’

  The woman stopped in her tracks. She turned to look at Tahar, and even in the low light he could see the magical flicker of her dark eyes.

  ‘Desire? What do I desire? I don’t have the luxury of desire,’ she said, ‘unless you consider the desire for a belly full of food—enough to get me through the day. You pretend that you are offering me a better life, but you are not. You are using me to obtain a better life for yourself. What do I desire? I desire to be free of you, or anyone who would use me as a possession. I desire freedom. So, handsome trader from beyond the Big Green, will you fulfil my desire? Do I deserve it?’

  Before Tahar could respond the woman had turned her back to him and resumed her march across the empty plain. He was left sitting lamely upon the saddle, his head spinning. He had hoped for a trickle of conversation; instead he’d got a flood of words.

  If he had been attending to them closely he might have heard how thoroughly she mistrusted men. He might have discerned her desire for food—the kind of desire only felt by one who regularly went without it. If he had been truly observant, as he normally was, he might even have become discouraged, for her longing for freedom was as clear and certain as his own.

  But he did not ponder any of that, for all he could think about in that moment was a single word.

  Handsome. She thinks that I am handsome.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Never again. She would not speak to him ever again. She had finally expressed her true desire to him, had laid her heart bare, and he had said nothing in response. He was never going to set her free.

  Her greatest wish was beyond what he was willing to grant. He would praise her skills and feast upon her flesh with his eyes, but when presented with the right thing to do he recoiled like a stunned snake.

  They remained on their course to Nubia. To the land of deep mines and rich husbands, or so he had told her. She had been wrong about him, after all. He was not kind, not noble. He wished only for his own gain.

  How easy it had been to forget her mother’s wisdom, to let her guard down. In her delusion she had imagined that Tahar might actually sympathise with her plight. She had thought him kind. She had thought him her friend. She had even thought—

  It didn’t matter what she thought now. She could not influence him—not with tears, not with lies, not even with the truth. He was committed to his plan: to sell her to the richest suitor he could find. And now she was rededicated to hers: to take back what was left of her stolen grain and escape his wicked grasp.

  The nights passed like colourless dreams. She had to be patient. She could do nothing until they were closer to the Great River. Even if she did recapture her grain, there was no sanctuary to which she could escape. The desert stretched vast and barren all around them. The secret wells that Tahar found with such proficiency were invisible to Kiya. Nor would she be able to find her own food. There were no street vendors or fishermen here—only quiet, lurking animals that did not wish to be seen.

  Though Tahar saw them.

  How he had sniffed out that swallow’s nest at the last oasis was a mystery to Kiya, but, oh—how tender had been the boiled eggs upon her tongue! He’d wielded his newly acquired bow with dexterity, piercing a very fast-moving hare and skewering it for their breakfast. He’d threaded its hide across the top of the addax-skin dress he had gifted her, explaining that the soft fur would help catch the dust. He had even discovered a band of grasshoppers clustering on the sunny side of a small dune. A Khemetian delicacy, the large green insects roasted were crispy and delicious. Seth’s bones, the man was almost as skilled as she at making something out of nothing.

  Now they rested in the shade of a lone sycamore tree that Tahar had discovered at a bend in the small wash in which they travelled. It was funny, she thought, here she was, in the desolate wastes of the Red Land, and yet she had never eaten so heartily, dressed so elegantly, nor rested so well.

  Kiya pretended not to watch Tahar, dozing contentedly, his heavy brows falling back from his closed eyes. Strange, aqua-blue eyes. She had never in her life seen such eyes. She had never even known such eyes could exist.

  Perhaps his mother or father had come from far away. The people of the desert sometimes intermarried with foreigners. As nomads, the Libu ranged widely, always searching for better grazing lands for their flocks of goats and sheep, always hunting for their paradise—a Khemet all their own�
�but never finding it.

  She was not unsympathetic to their plight. In many ways it was like her own—always searching, never finding. Always struggling to survive.

  Still, she needed to be careful not to mistake her captor’s generosity for caring. He intended to sell her for his own gain. She could not forget that simple fact. If she did, she risked the worst possible fate—the fate of her mother.

  Kiya recalled the vials that had littered the space beneath her mother’s bed. They’d been made of a beautiful blue glass and had smelled faintly of flowers. Every day her mother had tilted one of those vials to her lips and drunk the mysterious liquid inside.

  Afterwards, her mother’s eyes would grow cloudy and she would drift off to sleep—often in the middle of the day. When she awoke, many hours later, she would tell Kiya to fetch one of the harem’s servants and order food, and while they waited for their meal, she would tell Kiya a story. That had been Kiya’s favourite time with her mother.

  As she’d told her tales, her mother’s eyes would grow bright, lighting up the dark chamber. She would tell children’s tales—stories meant to teach Kiya about Khemetian history, its gods, and how things came to be. The tale she’d told most often was called How the Date Palm Got Its Dates. She’d come alive, pretending to be the monkey in the tale, and Kiya would laugh and clap as her mother jumped around their chamber, scratching her ribs and cackling wildly.

  But soon she would empty another vial and her gaze would grow cloudy once again.

  The day of the raid Kiya had had to clear those empty vials out of the way just to reach her hiding place under her mother’s bed. The vial that her mother had drunk from to take her own life had not been very different from the others, just bigger. It had been as if her mother had been saving the bottle for exactly such a moment—as if she had known the raiders were coming.

  As if, perhaps, she had wanted them to come.

  After the raid Kiya had pulled a blanket over her mother’s ashen face and vowed never to endure such an ugly fate. She might be the young child of a forgotten concubine of a dead king, but she was not dead yet.