Part 10 (1/2)

'Are you pleased with them, Kokona?' he enquired of Zoe. 'My master is very anxious that you should be satisfied.'

'Indeed I am,' Zoe answered readily. 'They are very clever little maids.'

The two were almost crying with delight, and only a meaning movement of the negress's hand to her girdle checked them. They were not out of her power yet. Omobono eyed them, and really thought them cheap at twelve ducats each, as indeed they were. He was paying four hundred for Zoe, but Rustan did not mean her to see the gold, and had covered it with one of his loose sleeves as she entered. He now begged his wife take the three slaves to the palanquins while he finished counting and weighing, and wrote out his receipt for the money. He called the negress his pet mouse, his little bird, and the down-quilted waistcoat of his heart, and but for her terrific appearance, and the weapon she carried in her girdle, Omobono would have laughed outright.

Rustan wrote on a strip of parchment, in bad Greek:--

In the name of the Holy Trinity, Constantinople, the Sat.u.r.day before Pa.s.sion Sunday, the second year of Andronicus Augustus Caesar, and the fourteenth of the Indiction, I have received from the Most Magnificent Carlo Zeno, a Venetian, the sum of four hundred and forty gold ducats of Venice, for the following merchandise:--

For one Greek maid slave, slave-born, between seventeen and eighteen years old, answering to the name of Arethusa, without blemish, scar, or birthmark, having natural brown hair, brown eyes, twenty-eight teeth all sound, weighing two Attic talents and five minae more or less, and speaking Greek, Latin, and Italian Ducats 400

For two maid slaves, from Tanais, slave-born, of fourteen and fifteen, answering to the names of Lucilla and Yulia, sound, healthy, never having been tortured or branded, each having black hair, black eyes, and twenty-eight teeth, trained to wait on a lady, and speaking intelligible Greek, besides a barbarous dialect of their own, warranted docile, and not given to stealing; at 20 ducats each Ducats 40 ---------- In all Ducats 440 ==========

RUSTAN KARABOGHAZJI, the son of Daddirjan, _Merchant_.

(_Witness_)--SEBASTIAN OMOBONO, of Venice, _Clerk_.

Omobono observed that the receipt acknowledged forty ducats as the price of the two girls, instead of twenty-four.

'Rustan Karaboghazji, surnamed the Truth-speaker, does not sell slaves at twelve ducats,' answered the Bokharian with dignity. 'Moreover, your employer will see that he has paid forty, and you can justly keep the sixteen ducats for yourself.'

'That would not be honest,' protested Omobono, shaking his neat grey beard.

Rustan smiled, in a pitying way.

'You Venetians do not really understand business,' he said, tightening the strings of the canvas bag into which he had swept the gold, and knotting them as he rose.

A few minutes later Omobono was trudging along after the two palanquins, wondering much at certain things that had happened to him during the last twenty-four hours and less. For he was curious, as you know, and it irritated him to feel that something was going on in the world, all about him and near him, of which he could not even guess the nature, manifesting itself in such nonsensical phrases as 'four toes and five toes,' and 'over the water,' which nevertheless produced such truly astonis.h.i.+ng results. Since the previous afternoon he had met four persons who knew those absurd words,--the negress, her Bokharian husband, the sacristan to Saints Sergius and Bacchus, and a Greek slave-girl, whom he was far from recognising as the beautiful creature he had seen yesterday in the ruined house in the beggars'

quarter. She was so closely veiled to-day that he could not in the least guess what her face was like.

Since she not only knew the first pa.s.sword, but had whispered the second to him, he wondered why she had not used her knowledge to get her freedom. It was incredible that the people who knew the words should not be banded together in some secret brotherhood; but if they were brethren, how could they sell one another into slavery? Omobono was so much interested in these problems that he did not see where he was till the leading palanquin entered Zeno's gate.

Zeno himself was not to be seen. The servant at the door gave Omobono a slip of cotton paper on which the merchant had written an order. The secretary was to take his charges to what was now the women's apartment and leave them there. Zoe obeyed Omobono's directions in silence, still veiled, and the two maids tripped up the marble stairs after her, as happy as birds on a May morning, and taking in all they saw with wondering eyes; for they had never been in a fine house before.

'This is the Kokona's apartment,' Omobono said, standing aside to let Zoe pa.s.s. 'If the Kokona desires anything, she will please to send one of her maids to me. I am the master's secretary.'

He had been surprised when Zeno spoke of her as a 'lady,' but somehow, since she had whispered in his ear at the slave-dealer's house, and since he had seen her movement and carriage when she walked upstairs, he instinctively treated her and spoke to her as if she were his superior. She nodded her thanks now, but said nothing, and he went away. She looked after him and listened, but no key was turned after the door was closed, and she heard only his retreating steps on the marble stairs. Then she turned to the window, which was open, and she threw aside her veil and looked out upon the Golden Horn.

The two little maids at once began a minute examination of the rooms, which occupied more than half the upper story of the house, and were, if anything, too crowded with rich furniture, with divans, carved tables, hanging lamps, cus.h.i.+oned seats, and pillows of every size, shape, and colour. There were handsome wardrobes, too, full of the fine clothes Zoe was to wear. The girls touched everything and talked by signs, lest they should disturb Zoe's meditations. They told each other that the master of the house must be highly pleased with his slave, since he surrounded her with beautiful things; that these things were all new, which was a sign that there was no other woman in the house; and that they were very fortunate and happy to have been sold, after only a month of apprentices.h.i.+p under the negress's merciless training. They also explained to each other that they were hungry, for it was past noon. The idea of running away had probably never occurred to either of them, even in Rustan's house. Where should they go? And besides, the fate of runaway slaves was before their eyes.

Meanwhile Zeno sat in his balconied room alone. Omobono had delivered the receipt and had simply told him that sixteen ducats had been saved on the bargain, though Rustan did not wish it known. Thereupon Zeno gave the secretary a couple of ducats for himself, which Omobono saw no reason for not taking.

Zeno was preoccupied and chose to be alone, so he dismissed his secretary with injunctions to rest after the labour of installing the new arrival, which had not been light, and he walked up and down his room in deep thought. He had acted on an impulse altogether against his own judgment, and now he was faced by the unpleasant necessity of justifying his conduct in his own eyes.

One thing was quite clear; so long as he did not draw from the house of Corner the money which Marco Pesaro had sent to the banker for the commission, the merchandise was his property, since he had paid for it. But he must make up his mind whether he meant to call it his own, or not. If he decided to keep Arethusa, he must at once set about finding another slave for Marco Pesaro, or else write to say that he declined to execute the commission.

In that case, Arethusa remained his. The reason why he had so suddenly determined to buy her was that he fancied she was a girl of good family whom some great misfortune had brought into her present distress. But she had calmly declared that she was a slave, and expected nothing better than to be sold.

If this were true he had paid four hundred ducats for a foolish fancy.

She was perhaps the child of some beautiful slave, and had been carefully educated by her mother's owner; and the latter, needing money perhaps, had sent her to the market; or perhaps he had died and his heirs were selling his property.