Hush: An Irish Princess' Tale (16 page)

Now Clay Man takes out his oil lamp and lights it. He holds the new clay weight in metal tongs above the small flame, turning it over and over, till it dries. Then he snuffs out the lamp and puts the new weight back in the pan. It’s exactly equal to the silver coin. Exactly. He knew that when it was dry, that clay weight would be the precise weight of that silver coin.

Clay Man grins at me in pride. Then he busies himself putting away his clay.

“A dirham,” whispers Maeve. “That’s the standard coin from here east and south, across the Arab empires. Everything is sold for dirhams.”

Such tiny coins. In Eire we measure prices in heifers, hogs, sheep—whatever we have. But here they use coins. They’re shiny and beautiful, yes. But flimsy. They weigh practically nothing—the weight of a pinch of clay. It would take two thousand of them at least to weigh as much as the Irish stone.

Clay Man checks to see if I’m still watching him. When he sees I am, he grins again.

And now I understand his odor—his defining odor. Clay Man smells of the clay he uses for his weights. I wonder if he knows that. I wonder if he realizes he is always a slave dealer. He can never be a confiding friend, a tender father, a passionate lover without that fact intruding. He reeks of his profession. And now I realize that the reason we are tied is not to keep us from escaping—no, no, there’s nowhere to escape to in this slave market. We are tied to keep us together so no one can steal any of us.

I knew this was coming. It’s all been leading here. I knew it.

An Arab walks up and talks with Clay Man. Wolf
Hound comes forward and helps in the negotiations; why, he speaks Arabic.

The Arab man is small and thin. His face is lined and leathery. And closed. From it I read nothing about the kind of man he is, the kind of master he will be.

A man and woman stand by the side and watch the exchange. They are dressed in tunics, not Arab garb. And their skin and hair reveal them as northerners. Christians. I interlace my fingers and press my hands together hard. Those Christians know better. Their priests must preach it to them, just as the priests in Eire do. They should protest—object that slavery is a blot on mankind. They should not just watch!

The Arab now gives a quick bob of the head and walks past Clay Man. He looks into the Irish children’s mouths and into their eyes, which have now become wild. He examines their feet. He pulls up their tunics and checks their bottoms.

I glare at him. Blood pumps in the sides of my neck.

Riley sobs. Kacey lets out a series of little yelps. More and Patrick-Nyle squirm and kick frantically. Maeve squeezes my arm so hard, it takes all my efforts not to scream.

Club Fist comes around and sits in front of Maeve, facing her. He is the brute. His very presence is a threat.
Maeve’s hand falls away from my arm. I sense her whole body sag.

The Arab pays for the children in silver dirhams and leads them away. The children don’t look back.

And it all happened with those good Christians looking on. My stomach turns. I am woozy.

Maeve turns her head away. Gormlaith puts her hands on Maeve’s shoulders and pulls her in, folding her arms around her. But Gormlaith doesn’t cry. Her eyes rage. The greater surprise is that Maeve now does, for the first time. I never heard any of the children call her mother. But they did other things. They were hers, of course—all but Riley.

The two Norse women and the Norse girl hold on to one another.

Markus and William huddle together.

All of us knew this was coming. But nothing could have prepared us. Maeve even said the children were next—she said those very words when we cooked the venison the night after the Slav children were sold. But even she wasn’t prepared. We look at Maeve and our hearts break for her.

Lord, I miss Brigid.

Clay Man goes about his business as though nothing of import has happened. He uses the weights to assure himself again of the proper value of the silver. Some of
the coins go safely in a pouch inside his shirt. Others he quickly slips into another pouch hanging from his belt.

He urges us to our feet and we follow him through the market, while he uses those coins to buy things. Wolf Hound and Mustache Man and Club Fist carry everything he buys.

We are like useless beasts. We do not even look at what Clay Man buys. We keep our eyes on the ground and do nothing but let ourselves be herded.

We eat in the market. Strange food that makes my stomach churn. We return to the ship to sleep. I lie in the open and look up at stars.

The Norse girl comes and lies beside me.
“Himni”
she says.
“Fóru lausar undir himni”

I don’t know what that means. But I know she’s talking about the sky.

I close my eyes. I don’t sleep.

In the morning we file out again. Eight of us. Our eyes shine. We jump at every touch. Inside my head is a continual scream. The day is long and painful. At night we return to the ship, only four left: Gormlaith, Maeve, the Norse girl, and me.

The Norse girl lies beside me on the deck again. And she talks of
himni
once more. And of
máni
and
stjörnur.
She points at the moon and the stars. She cried when the Norse women were sold, but I’m pretty sure that neither was her mother. They looked very little alike. She cries again now.

Gormlaith cried when Markus and William were sold. She couldn’t even speak with them, but she cried. Maybe because she felt they deserved it; everyone deserves to be cried for. I cannot hear if she’s crying now, though. She’s lying on the far side of Maeve, who has said nothing since the children left.

I stare at the heavens, my eyes so dry they burn. Gormlaith, Maeve, the Norse girl, and me. We are next.

I close my eyes. We are all the same now, the four of us. One future. No past.

Sleep comes instantly.

Someone jerks me awake, pulling on my elbow. I sit up. It’s Clay Man. He pulls me over to his lit lamp. On the deck he has spread out coins. He shows them to me, talking in a gruff whisper.

I don’t care to look. What does it matter?

Clay Man shakes his head. He goes over and wakes up Maeve. She stumbles to the lamp with him. Clay Man talks again. Then he pokes Maeve. And she talks.

She explains the coins to me. On one side are numbers: the year the coins were struck according to the Islamic calendar. On the other side are the places they were struck: Baghdad, Cairo, Damascus, Isfahan, Tashkent. Some coins have words—quotations from the Koran, the Islamic holy book.

Clay Man is animated. His hands fly. He pokes Maeve hard. She talks more. I don’t really think she’s translating, though. I don’t think she speaks his language. She just knows what the coins are all about. Maybe she tells me more than Clay Man even says. She’s smarter than him.

Finally she says to me, “Humor him or we will never sleep. Act impressed at how much he knows. Smile.”

I widen my eyes at Clay Man.

It’s enough. He puts out the lamp. We all sleep.

In the morning we assume our usual post in the market. A Russian man comes up and points to the stork feathers in Clay Man’s hair and talks excitedly. Clay Man steps
back, touching the feathers protectively. The man holds out a coin. Money for stork feathers? Clay Man looks at me and says,
“Aist.”
The Russian man stares at me. Clay Man adds,
“Charodeitsa.”

The Russian man immediately averts his eyes.
“Charodeitsa,”
he repeats in a hushed voice. He hurries away.

Maeve looks at me and raises an eyebrow. Does she know what that word means?

A fat Arab approaches gingerly. He touches Gormlaith on the shoulder. She shrinks away. He draws back timidly. He touches Maeve. She jerks her head around and glares at him. The Norse girl and I move together. But the fat Arab doesn’t look at us. He’s intent on Gormlaith. His mouth hangs opens, he’s so excited. He negotiates with Clay Man. Coins change hands. He leads Gormlaith away. My cheeks are so heavy, I think they will fall away from my skull.

Maeve’s arms circle me from behind. She rests on my back and whispers in my ear. “He can’t be any worse than what she’s had so far.”

Clay Man passes the rest of the day trading coins for reams of silk, boxes of pearls, satchels of spices. We eat and return to the ship.

In the night someone rolls against me as we lie sleeping. I open my eyes to see Maeve’s eyes shining at me in the moonlight. “He’s convinced you are an
aist—
a stork,
she whispers. “A stork who has the power to change form into a woman. He thinks you may be a
charodeitsa—
an enchantress, but unlike our Irish
piseogat,
he fears you could be evil. It’s only how clean and pretty you are that keeps him from quaking.”

I’m stunned, both because it’s clear she does know Russian, or at least some words of it, and because of what she has said.

Once I am gone …”

I open my mouth to protest and wish just this once that I could speak.

“…once I am gone, you must continue the ruse. You must never speak.”

I gulp down the searing fluid that has risen from my stomach and force myself to hold together and pay attention. This sounds like Gospel. I wait for more guidance, but Maeve seems to have lost energy. I reach for her hand and pull.

“He won’t sell you. And he dares not mistreat you.” Her voice catches. “Good-bye, dear Aist.” She rolls away again.

So many things make sense now. How he tried over and over to get me to speak. He tested me. And I passed, because of Maeve and a vow to Brigid to stay silent. Silent as a stork.

I want to sweep Maeve’s words away in helpless anger,
but they won’t go. I get drunk on them. I am far from helpless, actually. I have as much power as if I really were an enchantress.

Maybe that’s how magic works. Maybe all you need is for someone to believe in you.

Morning comes. We go to the market. And it happens as she said: Clay Man sells Maeve. It takes all I have not to collapse.

The Norse girl drapes her arms over me lightly, as though mimicking the way Maeve behaved the day before. She blows cooling air on my temples. She murmurs in my ear. She says words I heard the Norse women say to her. And I know she’s telling me that I can make it through this. Without understanding the words, I understand the message.