55
Limassol’s slave market was open on all four sides, roofed in crumbling clay tiles, and supported on misshapen sandstone pillars. The steps to the selling plinth were worn and dipped from years of merchandise being led before buyers.
The platform could take five at a time. Outstanding offerings were sold individually. Brothers and sisters were usually sold in pairs. The rest in bundles of three or five. No one could remember a sale to sell a single slave before.
Certainly not a sale that started at midnight.
Maybe it was the strange hour, or the fact that only one slave was on offer, that drew a huge crowd to a district most patricians tried to avoid. Mind you, most patricians, including the king, tried to avoid Limassol altogether. Squalid by day, noisy by night, stinking of animals and slaves, it was fit only for merchants.
And maybe, Sir Richard Glanville thought, the rumours of an invasion had led to the party atmosphere. A reaction to everyone’s natural worry. Since returning from Venice and his time as the king’s envoy he’d found himself second in command of the White Crucifers. Sometimes a tricky place to be.
Sir Richard didn’t relish taking the slave to market.
The boy was filthy, dressed in a squalid doublet, with his hair braided, and swaying drunkenly as he stumbled and muttered, trying not to trip over his fetters. Sir Richard would have thought this task beneath him if the prior had not suggested it.
The price Sir Richard received was irrelevant.
What mattered was that the slave be sold within a day of arriving. And so, having been delivered last night to the Priory of the White Crucifers, the boy had been locked in a dungeon for the day, slopped down from a bucket at nightfall, and delivered to Limassol in an ox cart guarded by five men at arms.
Sir Richard would have felt better if the boy tried to escape.
“We’re here,” his sergeant said.
“I can see that.”
The man’s face tightened.
They should be preparing Cyprus against the Mamluks. Goat herds needed driving into the mountains, or slaughtering and salting against the coming siege. Swords required sharpening. Damn it, they needed making. Sir Richard commanded five hundred soldiers. What was he doing at midnight with some pretty boy slave who’d end up a merchant’s catamite?
Unless the king wanted him.
Sir Richard hadn’t considered that. King Janus’s tastes were complicated. There was a rumour, probably false, involving the Grand Prior when both were much younger. If Janus wanted this boy that changed things.
How subtle was Venice?
Subtle enough to send an assassin disguised as a pretty slave to attract the attention of the prince he intended to kill. Sir Richard wouldn’t put it past them. But why would Venice weaken Cyprus at a time like this? He took another look at the boy with the silver-grey hair.
“You,” he said.
The slave turned as Sir Richard punched.
A soldier swore, Sir Richard’s sergeant dropped his hand to his dagger, wondering what he’d missed, but Sir Richard’s attention was on the boy. Who blocked his blow without even thinking about it and settled into a rear-foot stance, readying but not throwing an answering blow.
Looking round, Sir Richard realised enough of the crowd had seen it for rumours to raise the boy’s price still further.
“No,” the boy said. “I’m not.”
Sir Richard’s blue eyes narrowed.
“I’m not here to kill anybody. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it? That I’m here to murder someone?” The boy’s voice was strained. His eyes sweeping the crowd as if looking for faces he recognised.
“Let’s get this over with,” Sir Richard said.
Leading the slave to the steps, he passed him to the slave master.
A fat Nubian with gold earrings, proudly protruding belly and a tatty gold waistcoat that barely covered his chest, Isak collected old manuscripts, carved ivory, read three languages and spoke five. His hooped gold earrings only came out on market day, like his waistcoat and oiled belly.
“It’s a good crowd,” Isak said.
“Given your advertising I’m not surprised.”
Proclamations had appeared on doors for those who could read. Everyone else had the words read to them or picked up the gossip in taverns. “A male slave of unsurpassing beauty, so rare his milk-white skin cannot stand sunlight, to be sold at midnight this coming Tuesday. The only sale of the day. No credit will be given.”
“You know he’s trained to kill?”
Isak grimaced. “Really? That’ll double his price with half tonight’s bidders and halve it with the rest. I need to decide what to say about that.”
In the event, Isak didn’t mention it.
He simply took the youth from Sir Richard, walked him to the top of the sandstone block and cut away the tatty doublet covering him. “You know what you’re buying,” he said. “Here he is.”
Turning the half-naked boy to face the crowd hemming in all four sides of the standing stone, Isak held a lamp close to the slave’s body, so they could see the whiteness of his skin, the fineness of his features, the strange silver-grey hair.
“The bidding starts at five hundred gold ducats.”
A stunned silence greeted the starting price, with some bidders mentally upping the level they’d set for their final bid, and others realising the auction was too rich for them but deciding to stay, anyway, to watch.
“Here,” a man said, raising his hand slightly.
Exactly who Isak expected to make the first bid. A silk merchant from Alexandria. He couldn’t afford the boy but was now known to have been in the bidding war. “Any advance on five hundred?”
A hand rose, a man nodded, a second hand twitched, and then a third and a fourth; someone scratched their nose near the back. When the frenzy stopped, the bidding stood at fifteen hundred gold ducats and the Alexandria merchant was shaking his head regretfully. Hangers-on were commiserating and telling him he was wise to stop there.
The man had money worries and trouble extending his line of credit. Having been seen to bid gold on a single slave he’d find credit easier. A man with money worries wouldn’t bid so highly, would he?
Isak smiled at the ways of the world.
“Any advance on fifteen hundred?”
A merchant bid an enemy up to two thousand and then dropped out, leaving his enemy to drop out two hundred ducats later. A Crucifer knight twitched his hand, and at the rear a young woman raised her whole arm, ignoring rules that suggested bidding be discreet. She was newly arrived and newly bidding. Isak had memorised those who had bid already. And had identified a handful of those waiting for the auction to be reduced to serious bids only.
With her curling chestnut-dark hair, sweetly round face and ample bosom he would have remembered her anyway.
Glancing behind him, the previous bidder tried to discover who he was bidding against. But the woman now had her hand to her side. Obviously embarrassed to be the centre of attention of those around her.
“Your bid, my lord.”
The man was a simple knight, but Isak always found it helped inflate the bids if he inflated the bidder’s importance. This man, however, was not bidding for himself. No Crucifer, bound to chastity, poverty and charity, had that kind of money. Or, if they did, they were taking their vows laxly.
“Three thousand gold ducats.”
The crowd gasped in admiration at the way he’d cut straight from two thousand five hundred ducats to three without bothering to hit the hundreds between. You could fit out a galley for that money. Fit out a galley, or fill a brothel with the most beautiful slaves, even buy a small palace.
“Four thousand,” the young woman said.
The Crucifer knight turned to stare. She blushed, but didn’t take back her bid, although she looked at the ground, before raising her eyes to meet the scowling knight’s gaze, then blushed all over again.
“My lord, the bid is yours.”
Around the knight the crowd held its breath.
Why would anyone pay this for a single slave? Isak knew it stopped here. He could see that in the knight’s face. Either he’d reached the maximum he was ordered to bid; or he was buying for himself, which, given the fury in his eyes, seemed possible. If so, he’d reached what his forbidden purse would stand.
“Four thousand five hundred ducats.”
Isak wondered if the young woman pushing frantically through the crowd knew she was bidding against herself. He looked at the knight, who shook his head. The slave was doing the same. Staring at the young woman and shaking his head as she edged towards the sandstone block and her purchase.
Pushing past Isak, the woman grabbed a blanket from the dirt and wrapped it round the slave’s shoulders, covering his bare torso. The slave master noticed she was careful not to look at his body as she did so.
“My lady,” the boy said. “Does Lord Atilo know?”
The woman shook her head.
“Why are you even here?” he demanded. “Why aren’t you home?”
“Where’s home?” she said, tears in her eyes. “With my father, who won’t talk to me? Or at the Ca’ Ducale, my body and fortune at the Regent’s mercy, because staying alone at Ca’ il Mauros isn’t allowed?”
“And Pietro?” the boy asked.
The woman looked puzzled.
“The new apprentice?”
“Safe in Venice, with Iacopo and Amelia. They’re allowed to stay at Ca’ il Mauros, apparently.” Her complaint was loud enough to carry. Those who heard it would tell those who hadn’t. By morning, all Limassol would know. Although what they’d know would bear little resemblance to any truth. Isak had no idea who she was, but she worried him.
“My lady, you might want to have this conversation somewhere private. Let us settle, and you can take your purchase.” He scanned the crowd for her retinue. Looking for her major domo or whoever kept her purse.
“I’m alone,” she said.
Isak’s smile froze. His rules were money on the nail, no credit and no taking the goods without payment. The knight’s three thousand coins were better, paid now, than substantially more, paid sometime in the future, if at all…
“I’m Desdaio Bribanzo,” she said. “This is Tycho.”
The slave nodded ruefully.
Dragging a jewelled bracelet from her arm, she said. “Take this as payment. It cost five thousand ducats.”
Very fine indeed. Filigree gold inlaid with cameos, carnelians, pearls, emeralds and rubies. Its weight alone made Isak wonder she didn’t tire wearing the thing. “Venetian made?”
“Milanese. A present from the duke.”
“Of Milan?” Isak asked, keeping his face impassive.
“As opposed to Venice, you mean?”
Isak turned the gold bracelet over in his hand, and nodded. Yes, that was exactly what he meant. And it really was very beautiful indeed. He wondered what she would have to do to earn this.
“Marco wanted to marry me too. But Alexa wouldn’t let him. Well, I was told he wanted to marry me. I suspect it was Alonzo’s idea.”
That was the point Isak decided he needed to bring this conversation to a swift close. The bracelet had quality and was made for a duke. That would add value when it sold. All the same, the rules existed. If he broke them this time…
Mind you, with a Mamluk fleet approaching who knew what would happen? Mamluks needed slaves as much as the next lot. But they distrusted Nubians, and Isak had heard Byzantium was a fine place to sell slaves. Maybe even a fine place to retire. And her bracelet was portable. Useful should he need to leave in a hurry. In the time it took Isak to think this, Desdaio dragged free her earrings.
“Take these as well…”
And then she added a brooch to the collection. At first Isak thought the earrings were amethyst. Then he realised they were pale and flawless rubies. “Also from the Duke of Milan?”
Isak blinked.
He wanted to be away from this young woman with her impressive breasts and huge eyes, and seemingly inexhaustible supply of priceless jewellery. A woman who tossed around the names of admirals, and condottieri, and dukes and princes as if they were her closest neighbours.
“You should take your slave and flee.”
“Why?” Desdaio asked.
“The Mamluks will be here within the week.”
“Tomorrow, probably. Maybe the day after. But Cyprus is safe.”
“How can it be?” asked Isak, stunned by her certainty.
“Because my future husband, Lord Atilo il Mauros, leads the fleet against them.”