by Jane Johnson
“Had enough of you already, has he?” shouted one man. She could not see his face in the darkness.
“He has his choice of whores, no doubt, the Turk.”
“Cat is no whore, Jack Fellowes. May you burn for your words!”
For a moment, Cat had thought it was her mother who defended her name, but her mother would never use the short form of her name. It was another who had spoken. The indignation in the voice tore something in Cat’s heart. Matty: dear, faithful, silly Matty, still defiantly alive and hale enough to care what was said about her friend.
Cat started to weep, for the first time since they had been taken, and now the voices came thick and fast, some trying to soothe and calm, others jeering and coarse. She sat crouched with her knees to her chest and her hands over her ears, rocking back and forth, trying to shut out the noise. Using every fiber of her will, she recalled the details of the fragrant courtyard and the cool quiet of the house. The rose petals on the water, the mosaic tiles in radiating patterns of blue and white and gold, the fruit glowing in the orange tree, the fretted trelliswork supporting the tumble of sweet-smelling flowers, and the little hopping birds; the carved cedarwood ceiling in the raïs’s chamber, the thick woven carpets and sculpted wooden furniture; the elaborate costume of the little black boy and the tight crimp of his hair; the rich fabric of the raïs’s robe, and the gleam of his eyes in the gloom … For a moment, a small voice in her head questioned her: Why do you not seek to recall the details of your life in Cornwall to comfort you? She answered it silently that she could no longer remember that life in sufficient detail for it to serve her purpose, but even as she thought it, she knew that to be a lie.
The next day two guards came with the patroona to the prison. For the first time the captives were sorted into male and female, the children standing with their mothers or nearest relative. They took the women and children first. Out they stumbled into the street, their eyes squinting in the merciless sunlight. The guards chained them expertly into a coffle, taking care not to touch their infidel skin except with the cold iron of the leg-rings, displaying as little reaction to the state of their piteous charges as they might a herd of hobbled goats being taken to market.
Cat stood in line behind little Nan Tippet. The widow was at the best of times a short woman, and now her head was bowed: Cat’s view of the city known as Old Salé was unimpeded. It was hard to believe she had been out in these streets the day before, for she recognized nothing of her surroundings, but in truth she had been first bewildered and hampered by the unaccustomed veil, then in a dismal daze, and she had taken nothing in. Now, though, it was as if the town demanded her attention, as if it shook its foreignness at her like a gypsy’s tambourine. The streets through which they passed were alive with people—men hauling bony donkeys whose backs were bowed beneath their burdens, ragged children who ran behind, hitting the beasts with sticks and shouting raucously; gaudy-hatted water-sellers with animal skins about their shoulders, men with long beards and prying eyes, blind beggars, cripples lurching along on uneven limbs; women robed from head to foot, balancing enormous baskets on their heads or backs, staring curiously through the eye-slits in their veils at these fair-haired, pale-skinned savages in their outlandish rags and tatters.
“Imshi! Move!”
One of the guards poked Cat with his stick. She had herself stopped to stare. On the corner of the street, a man played a flute to a swaying serpent in a pot; his partner held another snake in his hands, demonstrating to a small crowd of onlookers that it would not bite them, but no one took the writhing creature from him.
The air was filled with heat and flies and noise and dust and spices. Cries and music, the braying of an ass, the squawk of chickens, the smell of dung. She glimpsed goats skittering away down an alley between tall, windowless houses, pursued by a band of brown-skinned children. Cat stumbled on, her senses assaulted with every step.
At last they turned into one of the narrow side streets, where the patroona led them to an enormous, brass-studded door, which was opened by a slender woman wrapped in a robe of midnight blue, the selvages of which were embroidered with a series of bright geometric patterns. Cat fixed on the one thing in this alien world she could comprehend. Such a simple design—a child of seven could embroider it. Given such fine fabric and a choice of silks, she could make such a robe exquisite, for all its voluminous asexuality.
The patroona embraced the other woman, kissed her four times on the cheek, and they chattered companionably. The prisoners had been marched here at speed by their guards, hit with sticks if they hesitated or stopped, and now it was as if there was no hurry in the world. The greetings finally over, they were ushered into a tall-ceilinged room, at one end of which sat a cowled woman at a desk with an inkwell before her and a quill in her hand. This she tapped impatiently up and down, and beneath the desk, her scarlet-shod foot tapped away at the same tempo.
Their leg irons were released and one by one they approached the desk and via the patroona gave their names, ages, and marital status, which the clerk took down in her own approximation of the strange foreign sounds. Shortly, they found themselves in two groups. On one side of the room Jane Tregenna stood with her sister-in-law Mary Coode, Maria Kellynch, Ann Fellowes, Alice Johns, Nell Chigwine, and Nan Tippet. On the other side, Cat, Matty, Anne Samuels, and the two children, James Johns, aged five, and little Henrietta Kellynch—known as Chicken—who, detached from her mother, clung to Matty as if she would never let go.
The patroona and the slender woman walked among them; then the latter tapped Alice Johns with her stick. “Take off robe!” the patroona barked at her. She plucked at Alice Johns’s filthy dress and gestured wildly.
Alice gawked. “Off! Take off!” The patroona took hold of the skirt and began to haul it off her. Alice clutched the dress to her and began to shriek. The slender woman hit her smartly across the back with a long, supple switch, making her shriek even louder. The switch was raised high and came down again with a thwack.
The captives exchanged horrified glances. “Off!” Under the barrage of blows and cries, Alice capitulated, standing as unresisting as a punished toddler as the dress was dragged over her head, leaving her standing in her stained cotton shift. At twenty-five and with only the one child to her name, Alice Johns was a handsome young woman, despite the ordure and grime that adhered to her skin. The patroona and the amina poked and prodded at her, chattering in their strange tongue, feeling the muscles in her arms, examining her hands, her feet, her teeth. From time to time, the clerk would consult a large manual on the desk and call out a question, which the patroona would roughly translate. When Alice failed to understand the patroona’s heavy accent and odd phrasing, she was hit again, this time across the hamstrings.
Now they were pulling at her shift. Alice began to weep. “No,” she pleaded. “No, no!” But there was no resisting them. Off came the shift, leaving Alice pale and naked to their eyes. Desperately, she covered herself with her hands, drawing herself inward as if she would disappear. The captives stared at the floor, feeling Alice’s shame as keenly as if it were their own, knowing their own time for this ritual humiliation would soon come. Cat felt the little bag in which she kept her book and pencil pressing against her skin beneath the robe she wore. If they were to strip her, she would surely lose it.
“Murtafa-at,” declared the slender woman, slapping Alice’s hands away from her breasts, and the patroona nodded vigorously. At the desk, the clerk scribbled away.
Alice was at last dismissed. Now the patroona took hold of Maria Kellynch. Seeing her mother move forward, Chicken detached herself from Matty, dashed across the distance between them, and fastened herself to Maria’s leg like a limpet. “Let go!” the patroona shouted, and tried to pry Chicken loose, but all the little girl would do was wail and grip tighter. At last the amina stepped between them. With surprising gentleness for someone who had but lately been lashing people with a switch, she ran a hand over the little girl’s h
air and spoke soothingly into her ear. So amazed was Henrietta by this that she stopped crying at once and gazed up at the Moroccan woman with huge eyes. “Eh-daa, a bentti. Shhh.” The veil fell away from the amina’s face and Cat saw with surprise that she was strikingly lovely, with great dark eyes and arching brows, a long, straight nose and skin of a luminous olive hue. Then, with a practiced flick, the veil was at once back in place, as if she felt the weight of the other’s regard.
Now Maria was subjected to the same scrutiny as poor Alice Johns, the patroona and the slender woman poking at a fold of loose skin at her belly, the slight sag of her breasts. The patroona shook her head and called a word to the clerk, who added it to a column on the other side of the page.
Next came Nell Chigwine. Head high, she stared the patroona in the eye. “I shall disrobe without being ashamed of the body the good Lord gave me. I shall take off my garments and place them under my feet and tread on them, as Jesus did, and then shall you see a good Christian who is not afraid of your heathen bullying.” She hauled off her ruined dress, shift, and drawers, flung them down on the ground, and stood there before them all, an awkward arrangement of angles and bones and tufts of pale hair.
Someone tittered. The patroona exploded into a whirlwind of sound, shrieking and battering at Nell with her hands. At last in a fury she bent, grabbed up the clothing, and threw it at her. “I not tell you disrobe!” she barked. “You no murtafa-at, no use, thin stick woman!”
Ann Fellowes, Nan Tippet, and Cat’s aunt, Mary Coode, were variously examined, and at last Cat was called forward. The woman in midnight blue regarded the djellaba she wore with interest, plucking at the sleeve and running the fabric between her fingers. Then the amina turned to the older woman and jabbered animatedly. The patroona made an assessing face, then nodded and responded at length. Cat’s heart began to pound. The book, she thought, they must not take my book. This suddenly became vitally important, as if within its calfskin cover resided what little was left of her identity.
“Off!” The patroona glared at Cat. “Take off!”
How to hide her book from their prying eyes? Cat stared at them, trying to win precious time in which to think. Then she shrugged the robe off carefully, so that the bag came into her hand, and as she stepped out of the folds of fabric, she dropped the bag softly behind her.
The slender woman pounced on the robe and shook it in front of the patroona as if making a point.
“Where you get djellaba?” the patroona demanded of Cat on behalf of the other woman.
“I was given it,” Cat said, covering herself as best she could with her hands and her long red hair. She felt like Eve, in the Garden, for the first time in shame of her body. “By the raïs, Al-Andalusi.” She watched the two women exchange outraged glances, then the slender one dropped the robe and flew at Cat, raining blows down upon her. Fire burned her skin as the flexible switch found its mark. The other women looked on openmouthed, but no one dared come to her aid. Weakened by her confinement, Cat was slow to react; even so, she was taller and more sinewy than the Moroccan, and fueled by anger. Launching herself at her assailant, she managed to haul the woman’s veil from her and tangle hand and weapon in the fabric, but moments later the patroona and the clerk had her pinioned on the floor, adding bruises to the red weals on her pale, pale skin.
The midnight-robed woman adjusted her clothing, then spat accurately upon Cat’s exposed back, and to this insult added a barrage of invective.
What happened next would remain with Cat to her last day as a moment of supreme humiliation, for now the women forced her legs apart and minutely examined her private parts. Then they had what seemed a heated argument; at last the patroona turned Cat over on her back. “You virgin or no?” she demanded.
Eyes huge, Cat nodded, which started another storm of discussion. In the midst of this she pushed herself gingerly to her feet. There was the little pouch, lying on the stone floor. Some of the other women were staring at it as if expecting something monstrous to spring from it. Cat wished they wouldn’t: It was only a matter of time before they drew the amina’s attention. With a clever hand, she swept it up and turned to join her compatriots.
For a moment she thought she had got away with her deception, but the amina had sharp eyes. Cat heard the switch whistling through the air before the blow landed. Had she not turned, it would have fallen less harmfully on the back of her head, but as it was she caught the full force of the blow in the face, and in the shock of pain, she dropped the bag. In an instant, the amina had grabbed it up. She flourished the book at Cat. “What is?”
Tears were streaming down Cat’s face now, generated by a potent mixture of pain and rage and shame. She shook her head, unable to speak. The amina opened the covers and gazed inside. The patroona and the clerk joined her scrutiny. Together they puzzled over the strange diagrams, the pencil markings.
“It’s my prayer book,” Cat said at last, inspired.
The patroona frowned. “Prayer?”
Cat put the palms of her hands together. “Prayer.”
The three women conferred. “For your religion?” the patroona asked.
Cat nodded. Nell Chigwine made a choking sound, as if swallowing outraged denial. The amina flicked through the pages, stabbed her finger at one of the designs, and spoke urgently to the clerk, who nodded.
“Khadija say this blasphemy,” the patroona pronounced. “She not care it your religion, for your religion blasphemy, too. The robe you stole and the book will go to fire, as will your soul.”
After that, proceedings passed in a blur. What seemed an age later, after poor Matty Pengelly (but curiously not the aged spinster Anne Samuels) had also been subjected to the shameful inspection, they were all marched out of the room and herded by the patroona through a maze of cool, dark passages until they reached a door from which billowed forth great clouds of vapor.
Here, Jane Tregenna came to a halt. “Do they mean now to boil us alive?” she asked.
“Imshi—move, get in!” In comparison with the older woman, the patroona was enormous. Cat was struck all at once by the gauntness of her mother’s face. She had till now tried hard not to look beyond that point, but a single glance was all that was needed to take in the knife-edge collarbones, ribby chest, sunken belly, and fragile limbs. Her mother had always cut a fine figure with her sweeping farthingales and the neat curves shaped by her tightly laced corsets, but now she looked old and defeated, a woman with one foot hovering over her own grave. Of them all, Cat suspected herself to be the only one not broken by the cruel voyage, for she had eaten while they had starved, had slept in linen while they wallowed in their own filth, and the flesh was still on her, hale and full. No wonder they had all—her own, and the Moroccan women—thought she was the pirate chief’s whore.
There was no resisting the patroona—there was no point, and nowhere else to go. One by one, they trooped into the steamy gloom, whereupon they were set upon by a quartet of young girls wearing tightly wrapped white robes and caps, who scrubbed them till their skin was raw. Had she been able to, Cat would have scrubbed hers harder still, till the blood came, and even then it would not be enough.
“I will never wear your vile Turkish garb!” Nell Chigwine, her graying hair in rats’ tails and her white skin blotched with unsightly red, folded her arms and glared defiantly at the patroona. “Bring me decent Christian clothing, or nothing at all!”
The others stared at her, some with reluctant admiration, some in fear, as if she might bring down punishment upon them all.
The patroona had heard it all before, in a dozen different languages. Captives had passed through her hands from Spain, from the Canaries, from Malta and France and Portugal. She had dealt with them all just as she did those unfortunates traded in tribal disputes and local wars—the captured Berbers of the bled and the mountains, the black-skinned women brought by camel-train from the hot lands to the south. Her community depended on the money raised by the auction of these prisoners. I
t financed not only the holy war carried on by the corsairs like her master—whom some called the Djinn and others the man of Andalucia—but also the rebuilding of the qasba, their houses and souqs, the schooling of their children in the fine medersa, and the maintenance of their shrines. It paid alms to the poor, the widowed, and the crippled. It kept them all alive in the hand of Allah. It was sacred work, and she did it with a vengeance.
All of this was clear in her tone, if not her words, as she railed at Nell Chigwine, but Nell also had righteous anger coursing through her tough old bones, and she pushed the patroona against the door-jamb. The patroona had eaten well, not just today, when she had broken her fast with fresh bread and Meknes honey, with eggs and tomatoes and onion with cumin, but for all of her life. She had eaten well, and she had washed linen and hoisted baskets and pots and children till her forearms were as muscled as any man’s. When she pushed Nell Chigwine back, the older woman’s feet went out from under her instantly on the wet tiles so that she fell catastrophically, arms flailing for balance. She came down with a crash, her head striking the delicate zellije tiling on the wall to add a fifth color to the starry mosaic, an unwonted scarlet amidst the white and blues, and she lay there as still as stone.
UP ON THE auction platform that afternoon, Cat stared out at the throng who had gathered in the Souq el Ghezel. The market square was packed with would-be buyers, and with those curious to see the new slaves the Djinn had brought back from his latest foray into enemy territory. The majority were dressed in long robes, and many of them were bearded and turbaned, but through the crowd there strode others who reminded her of the Plymouth-born renegade who had turned Turk to become Ashab Ibrahim, lighter-skinned men in European dress who swaggered like lords at a feast, pushing their way to the front as if it were their due. Traitors, she thought bitterly. Men who had turned coat against their own, and all for money. Anger bubbled up inside her. How dare they come to mock and gloat over decent Christians treated so? Or worse, come to purchase a woman they would never have won honestly in their own country?