by T C Donivan
“Yes.”
He winked. “Try the slave market.”
“Thank you sir,” Spencer said.
The cretinous little man cocked his head at Annie. “Say, you’ve got a woman there. How much you want for her?”
“She’s not for sale,” I said.
He fixed his glassy eyes upon me. “Everything’s for sale friend. I’m a licensed Whoremaster. Let me try her at least. She looks like she has spunk.”
His sharp toothed companion laid her tongue across her gleaming teeth and red lips, smacking them with a horrible noise. My hand went instinctively to the butt of my pistol. Spencer spied my actions and stepped between us before mayhem could ensue.
“Perhaps some other time. We have business to attend to,” he said reassuringly.
“Be seeing you, I’m sure,” the little Whoremaster said.
Chapter 34 – The House Of Hermes
Tree Owl led us on, through labyrinthine passages and dark alleyways, but always emerging onto the main concourse which snaked through the city like a twisted copperhead. The deeper we went, the farther the old Spencer slipped away, replaced by the cold, hard exterior of the Prince who had lived so many centuries ago.
A newsboy stood hawking papers, “Ninth year of the siege! Achilles dead at the gates! Agamemnon swears revenge! Read all about it!”
A few people stopped to purchase his newsprint wares, but most passed him by without a glance. I heard one man grumble to another, “Wars and rumors of wars.”
Spencer stared at the boy. “You want a paper mister?” The boy asked.
“I have no money,” he said.
The boy handed him a news sheet. “Here take one.”
We gathered round him as Spencer scanned the copy reading the news of the Trojan War with keen interest. He turned it over. On the back was an advertisement for the slave auctions. He carefully folded the paper and put it in his coat pocket.
“I know where we’re going,” he said.
As we walked on I heard snatches of conversation.
“What is King Tantalus doing about this?”
“The losers will be crucified.”
“He gave us virgins last year. Why change the program?”
“Variety is the spice of life.”
Spencer stopped before a small house on a side street whose door had the likeness of a woman rendered on it. The face was familiar. I stared at in consternation, trying to remember where I had seen it until enlightenment came to me.
“Spencer, that’s the face you painted on the Birth Of Venus in that tavern in St. Louis,” I told him.
“I must find someone inside,” he said. He pointed to a gambling den adjacent to the house. “Go next door and wait for me.”
“We’ll come with you,” I said.
“No, I’ll come get you when I’m ready,” he insisted.
“Don’t leave us,” I begged; a terrible premonition overtaking me.
“Are you a child?” He asked.
I could feel the presence of death stalking us “Don’t go, there’s something evil in this place,” I said.
Spencer’s eyes softened and he touched my arm. “There is evil everywhere we turn. It lives within us. I won’t be long Clayton, I promise.”
He pushed open the door and slipped inside, closing it behind him. I felt the last bonds breaking between us, certain I would never see him again. Tree Owl, Annie and I stood in the street as drunken revelers and whoremongers pushed past us. Some were dressed as frontiersmen, others as lords and ladies, their finery reflecting the salons of Boston and the courts of ancient kings. Still others wore the attire of executioners and convicts. Many of the horrors we saw on those streets I cannot describe, nor would they be believed if I attempted to tell you. Others, I disguise in terms more palatable to the printed page. Cold feelings of mayhem filled my head. I could hear the scritch-scratch of mice clawing at the corners of my mind. I felt as if my soul was slipping away. I could easily have abandoned my friends and surrendered to the feral urges that tugged at my innards.
“Spencer, I’m scared. We must get away soon or there’ll be nothing left of us,” Annie whispered.
I nodded at the gambling house. “Let’s see what’s inside. It may distract us until Spencer returns.”
A legend in a foreign alphabet was lettered above its door in blood red paint.
“Spíti tou Ermí, the House of Hermes,” Tree Owl said.
“What language is that?” I asked.
He grinned at me. “Greek. I have had time to learn many tongues. The denizens of Heaven and Hell are legion. Dom Germesa, that would be the Russian.”
A matronly woman dressed in a flowing purple gown greeted us at the entrance. In a city filled with licentious women offering every imaginable pleasure, she appeared as plain and demure as your great-aunt Beatrice. She handed us each a single chip. We went inside. The room was dark and smoky. A red flag with stars and bars across its banner was tacked to one of the walls. On another was a black banner with a cross with broken spokes. Silver dollars were encrusted in the floor and diamond lighting fixtures hung from the ceiling. Naked women sat on chaise lounges while croupiers with long winding mustaches and garters on their sleeves worked the tables. The noise was monstrous, the sound of clanking machines and murmuring voices like an ocean beating on an iron beach.
“Let’s try a bit of cards. I was always good at 21 when I was in school,” I said.
I picked out a table and strode up to it with an air of forced confidence. I laid down my solitary chip. The other gamblers snorted with amusement. Among them was a man wearing a miner’s tin hat with a candle attached to its front, a Spanish horseman festooned in gaudy silver buckled regalia, a long faced man who wore a preacher’s collar and a woman wrapped in feather boas and nothing else, her face painted like a clown. The croupier dealt the cards.
I held a five and a nine. Logic told me to take a card. I did. A deuce fell upon the table. The Spaniard threw his cards in and walked away. I wagered Annie’s chip. When my turn came, I again asked for a card. A three of hearts. The miner pulled a ten and busted his hand. Tree Owl hand me his chip. I wagered it and held at 19. Only the woman and the Preacher were still in the game. She refused to match the wager as did the priest. They sat spectating. The dealer turned over his hand to make 20. I started to get up, but he waved me to sit.
“That all you got?” The dealer asked.
““Yes,” I said.
“When the chips are gone, we take only one wager. Put up your soul, all or nothing,” the man said in a silky voice.
“Don’t listen to him, listen to me,” the Preacher said.
“And what do I get in return?” I asked out of curiosity.
“Every time the cards fall your way, you earn a year’s respite from the Judgment. 21 on the deal and you live like a king for a hundred years. Break the bank and you can have Tantalus’s job,” he said.
“Does anyone ever win at this?” I wondered.
“Every day friend, every day,” the dealer cajoled.
The Preacher became agitated. He took hold of Annie’s sleeve. “There is no salvation in piety, nor pleasure in abstinence. You must give yourself up to sin before you can find deliverance. Only through the scourging of the flesh can the body be made whole. Prostrate yourself before temptation. Let it consume you and you shall know forgiveness. Make the wager pilgrim.”
“Clayton, I want to go with him,” Annie said in a weak voice.
I pulled his hand from her sleeve and tried staring down the devil, but he did not flinch, his crazy eyes unblinking. I looked at Annie. He had mesmerized her. Her face was supine, all the emotion drained from it.
“Let her go or I’ll kill you,” I warned him.
“Kill a dead man?” He asked.
“Never mind him,” the dealer said, “Lay it on the table. Make the lady proud.”
I pulled Annie away and nodded. “It’s all very tempting, but I think I shall pass. If you don’t mind, we’ll be go
ing.”
The croupier narrowed his eyes at me as if seeing us for the first time. “You either pay or you play in this town. No one passes free, no one has the choice.” His nose twitched like a bloodhound’s as if sniffing us out. “Who are you?” He asked.
“We’re only travelers, pay us no mind,” I said backing away from the table.
“Hey, no dogs allowed in here!” Someone yelled.
All eyes turned to us. Mordecai began to whimper. Annie struggled against me as the Preacher beckoned. We stood exposed in the smoky diamond light of the gambling house, captives of this ghastly Sodom and Gomorrah. I knew if we tried to run, we would have to abandon Tree Owl in his infirm state. I could not countenance the idea, but terror welled up inside me and the instinct to flee became so great it took all my willpower to keep hold of Annie’s hand and not leave her to the wolves as well. My fear had taken on the proportions of a goliath. It wrestled with me, subduing my faltering courage. I understood then Sebastian’s cowardice in the face of the Indians on the day he had abandoned me and regretted my condemnation of him for it. The instinct to survive, Mozart had called it. I cursed it.
“Let me go Clayton,” Annie said again.
“Never,” I told her, summoning the last of my courage.
A terrible howl went up from the inmates of the gambling house. Their flesh turned dark and began to peel away, revealing their naked bones. Eyeless sockets stared at us with skull faced grins. We started to back toward the door, but Tree Owl stood as if rooted to the spot. Suddenly, Spencer burst through the entrance. Beside him was an elfin women dressed in rags with a peaked cap on her head.
“Roll the bones anyone?” He asked in a cheerful voice. The skeletal crew clanked their gumless jaws together and made obeisance to him, bowing and scraping. “That’s more like it. Every nightmare should know its place,” he said. He turned to us. “Time to be going, we have an appointment in the Slave Market.”
The matron who had greeted us, saw us out, her purple gown hanging loosely on her boney shoulders. She laid a scarecrow’s hand on Spencer’s shoulder. “Arsinoe sends her love my son,” she said.
“You are no mother of mine and I am no woman’s son,” he hissed.
Spencer raised his fist and struck her, scattering her bones across the silver dollar encrusted floor. The other gamblers turned away as they went back to their business. The purple gown laid empty save for the clavicle and the long bone of the arm. I shuddered and led Annie and Tree Owl away from the terrible place. The Preacher stood outside the door in the street, arm outstretched, the flesh still attached to his bones.
“Alms for the poor?” He asked.
“You’re a man of God?” Spencer asked.
“For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother,” he replied.
“You have preached your last sermon,” Spencer said.
The odd girl who accompanied Spencer giggled and the Preacher’s eyes grew wide with fright. He tried to speak, but his voice was frozen. He clawed at his throat in terror then fell to ground and ran away on all fours into the night like a hound. Spencer turned to us, his cheerfulness returned.
“I can’t leave you alone for a minute can I, but you get yourselves into trouble,” he said.
“Spencer, why did you hire this girl?” I asked.
“It’s my secret,” he said.
The girl stared at us. She seemed fragile as crystal, her eyes opaque like glass marbles. When you looked into them, you could feel your brain begin to chatter. She smiled at me and I had to turn away. I heard her voice in my head, calling like the wind, its sound filling me with forgotten dreams.
“Aren’t you even going to ask her name?” Spencer wondered.
“What is her name?”
“Melinoe.”
“Should that mean something. “ I inquired.
“Everything has a name. We must hurry now, the auction will begin soon,” Spencer said.
He and his new friend set off ahead of us, hand in hand, whistling and singing. I felt weary as if the weight of a thousand years had descended upon me, the ordeal in the gambling house having used up what little reserve of strength I had left.
“Clayton, I’m sorry for what happened back there,” Annie said.
I squeezed her hand. “It’s all right. I’m just glad you came round.”
“I am so ashamed. I wanted to surrender to him. I wanted to give myself away.”
“I can’t admit the thoughts I’ve had since we came here. If I could kill myself and escape it, I would,” I told her.
I expected her to admonish me for my cowardice, but instead she agreed, “If there were a way out, we’d both take it. Better to fall into nothingness than suffer this torment for eternity.” Then she smiled, the old Annie who had fought for me and beside me through so many tight spots emerging again. She clutched my arm in hers. “But as long as we are together Clayton, we will survive. Hold close to me and don’t let go.”
Chapter 35 – The Slave Market
The boulevard spiraled downward into the center of the city until we were well below sea level. The heat and humidity rose accordingly until it seemed we were in a steam engine’s boiler room. We felt and looked wrung out, our clothes soaked with sweat. The hour was midnight, or appeared so at least, the witching hour seeming an appointment in time with eternity in Ezekiel’s City.
Spencer led us straight and true to the place of our desire, the city’s Slave Market. Large signs in every language known to man, and many incomprehensible in their symbols, pointed the way as we approached the arena in which it was staged. The structure was designed in faux Roman architecture, a miniature facsimile of the ancient Coliseum.
We queued at the gates where an army of men clad in white robes and hoods inspected the credentials of all who entered. I feared we would be found out, but when it came our turn, they passed us without a second look. Inside, flaming crosses lit the arena, their flickering light dancing mad shadows on the horde of lusting, depraved faces of the buyers who crowded the floor in front of the stage where the auction was to be held. They jostled and swore at one another for position. The stink of this mass of unwashed humanity was repellent beyond imagining.
A surge of latecomers pushed in behind us, shoving us deep into the arena. I held Annie tightly in one hand and Tree Owl the other lest I lose them in the crowd. Spencer kept ahead of us, his eyes fixed on the stage with fatal purpose. We snaked our way through the mob until we stood at the lip of the stage.
A roar went up that shook the rafters as a hundred women of every race and color, naked and chained together, were herded up the steps and onto the platform by white robed men wielding whips. Every obscenity imaginable cascaded from the putrid lips of the villains who waited to purchase their flesh. The women stood with bowed heads on quaking legs, weeping in supplication to the heavens. Their humiliation was shattering. The hooded auctioneer shambled to the stage, a gaunt hulk of a man dressed in a red robe.
“Shibboleth, Shibboleth!” The crowd chanted in appreciation of their master of ceremonies.
He spread his hands like a priest presiding over a mass to quiet the mob. Presently, he began to speak, explaining the rules of the auction. His voice had a familiar tone. I wondered at the face beneath the hood. The audience listened with rapt attention.
“All devotion to the honor of the Great Lost Cause. We make obeisance.” He lowered his head and mumbled a prayer, the slavering beasts before him moaning in unison. The supplication met, he began in earnest, “Bidders may use company scrip, or gambling chits. IOUs are not accepted unless co-signed by the prefect. Souls may be bid, but the bidder must have proof he has the right to barter said souls as offered. Anyone attempting to welsh on a bid, or found in any way to have attempted to defraud the Slave Market of Ezekiel, will be promptly cast into irons and bound to Prometheus’s Rock where his entrails will be gnawed for eternity by the Predator Crow.”
The crowd roared in
approval and the women were arranged according to their place on the auction itinerary. I took in the scene, trying to make sense of it all. Spencer stood beside me, his face devoid of emotion.
“Are there no men to be auctioned?” I asked him.
He bit off his answer angrily, “No. The lords of the Great Lost Cause finally agreed it wasn’t race that should determine a slave, but gender.” He clapped a hand between his legs in a crude gesture. “No cock, no freedom. All women are whores except the mother and the wife and the wife condemns herself every time she gives into the husband. The mother must remain chaste after the conception, or she too will be cast into irons, so men are allowed forty wives. Their mythology condemns women to whores and paper doll cutouts. Weren’t you listening? Women have no place in the story that Tyrus told.” His logic was stunning.
“Those idiot tales are for little boys,” I argued.
“As Tyrus said, little boys become men.”
“Physically perhaps, but the myth stunts their intellect.”
“Tell it to the auctioneer. Tell it to these dogs,” he said pointing at the bidders.
The auctioneer tilted his head at us as if in recognition. “Are we all gathered? Good then, let the auction begin?”
“Who is he – I know that voice?” I said.
“Never mind him, keep a lookout, I don’t see Rachel among them,” Spencer said, concern in his voice.
“I know who she is,” Annie said.
“Who?” I asked.
She pointed at Spencer’s new companion, “She is Melinoe, a chthonic nymph from the Orphic Hymns, a bringer of nightmares and madness.”
I touched Spencer’s arm and he snarled at me, “Not now. I have to focus.”
“Annie figured out what she is. What do you want with her?” I asked him.
He only half turned, looking at me from the corner of his eye. “The only way out of this place is to have an ace up your sleeve. She is ours.”
The waspish women beside him stood as if frozen, her artic blue eyes fixed upon the stage. The first auction was complete and another woman was led forward. Unlike the other slaves, whose skin was unblemished, this one wore the mark of many injuries. I felt Annie’s fingers tighten about my arm and I gasped in recognition, Rachel. Her body still bore the cruel scars of her mistreatment at the hands of her murderers. Could not death at least be so kind as to restore her in that I silently lamented. The crowd parted and a bronze skinned man with a retinue of many servants and guards took up a position directly in front of us below Rachel.