Kitabı oku: «Leaves On The Wind», sayfa 2
“If you cannot sleep, at least you can be rested. Come. Lie you here. And my cloak, thus. There. I will stand guard over you. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Rannulf. My thanks,” Judith whispered, and settled down into the softness of his ermine-lined cloak.
The Normans had thrust a knife in her heart. They were twisting it. The pain was not to be borne.
Judith screamed and woke. She did not know where she was. Memory flooded back. She groaned aloud.
“Judith, Judith, hush.” Warm arms enfolded her, comforting arms. Childlike, she clung.
“Rannulf?” She gave a dry sob.
“You are not alone,” he said. “Cry. ’Tis better to grieve.” Rannulf stroked her hair from her face. The gesture was oddly reminiscent of her mother.
The dam broke. Tears flooded, and streamed scalding down her cheeks. Judith did not hear Rannulf’s murmured words, did not notice the hand that caressed her. She burrowed closer into his arms. She needed comfort and here was its source.
At length the sobbing eased. Rannulf’s arms fell away.
Judith lifted her head “Hold me tight. It hurts less when you hold me.”
“Judith.” Rannulf hesitated. “’Tis late. We should sleep now.”
“Aye.” Judith made to pull him down beside her. She could feel his body stiffen, resisting her. “What’s the matter? Rannulf?” She was annoyed that he should hold back from her. She needed the comfort he gave her.
“’Tis not seemly,” came his stiff rely.
“Not seemly?” Judith was astounded. “Not seemly? But you are far older than I!”
“I’m twenty-one—” amusement entered his voice “—is that such a great age? Those knights were older still, and that would not have saved you from them!” he pointed out, more soberly.
“But they are monsters,” Judith said. “Invaders. Normans. I wish a thousand plagues on them. You are not like that. You are no Norman.”
“Judith, I must tell you—”
“Just hold me. Please, Rannulf. I hurt so.”
Rannulf could not see Judith through the gloom, but his ears were those of a hunter. They were trained to be sensitive to the slightest of sounds. He heard the quaver in Judith’s voice and capitulated. “Very well,” he replied lightly. “If you’ll try to sleep. Give me some of that cloak; I’m freezing out here.”
Light glimmered faintly from the east. A bird high in a tree cried out a note or two of his morning song.
Judith surfaced slowly from a deep sleep. She was warm. Unconsciously, she shifted closer to the body next to hers, and hugged it to her.
Deep in the Chase a dog barked. Another bird joined in the song.
Judith lifted her head, and turned curious eyes on the reassuring presence in whose arms she lay. Rannulf was still asleep. One strong arm fitted neatly around her waist. She discovered she was holding his other hand. She had no desire to move.
A grey light seeped round the edges of the leather curtain, and Judith studied Rannulf’s features. His brown hair was wavy and tousled. He wore it shorter than either of her brothers, but longer than was favoured by the Normans. A shadow of overnight stubble marked jaw and chin. His nose was straight, lips well shaped, and slightly parted to reveal strong, white teeth. He had the tanned skin of one who had spent most of the summer out of doors. To Judith’s uncritical eyes, he looked as handsome as a prince in a harper’s tale.
Only the red mark disfigured him. Judith slipped her hand free of his. Curious, she ran her finger the length of the weal, from cheekbone to dark stubble on his chin. Though her touch had been as light as the kiss of a butterfly’s wing, his eyes opened. He smiled. Judith’s cheeks burned.
“You’ve managed to appropriate all of the cloak,” Rannulf grumbled drowsily.
His eyes were startling at close range. Fringed with long, charcoal lashes they were not pure green, but were flecked with tints of brown and gold. Judith’s stomach tightened.
“I’m sorry.” She fumbled at the heavy folds of the cloak.
“’Tis early yet,” Rannulf yawned, and reached for her. He pulled her back into his arms, as casually as though he woke every day of the week with a strange girl in his arms. “Sleep awhile longer,” he murmured lazily. “I’ll go and catch us something to eat later.”
Judith was jerked into full consciousness by a rough hand shaking her shoulder.
“Judith!” a familiar voice called. “Judith! My God, Eadwold, she’s alive!”
“Saewulf!”
Judith looked into the clean-shaven face of her nineteen-year-old brother, smiled at the relief she saw written in his blue eyes, and threw herself into his arms. The resemblance between them was very marked.
Another voice, rougher than Saewulf’s, bawled through the opening.
“Out you come, sister. Have you no greeting for your eldest brother?”
Judith scrambled out of the hide, wondering where Rannulf had gone. He must be checking his snares—he’d said he’d go and find food. She hoped the Baron would not catch him poaching.
A dazzling shaft of morning sunlight pierced through the leafy canopy and fell on her face. She blinked up into the stern features of Eadwold. She made no effort to embrace him as she had her younger, best-loved brother.
“You’re unharmed, sister?” Eadwold demanded, hands on hips. “They didn’t…hurt you, did they?”
“Nay. They didn’t even see me. I was in the Chase. Have you seen Mother? Is she safe?”
“Safe enough. We took her to the Abbey.”
“Thank God,” Judith breathed, and the black misery that had her in its grip eased a little.
Eadwold’s face darkened.
Judith’s spirits plummeted again. Her giant of a brother was gazing past her, eyes narrowed in the way she recognised meant growing anger. She turned to see the cause of his wrath.
Saewulf emerged from the shelter, Rannulf’s cloak in hand. It was on this garment that Eadwold’s eyes were fixed.
Judith could see Eadwold assessing the worth of the cloak, hazarding a guess as to the identity of its owner. It did not look like the cloak of a Saxon…
Eadwold rounded on his sister. He was scratching his beard, face like thunder. Judith’s stomach began to churn—Eadwold was best avoided when he was in one of his rages.
“So…you were not harmed, sweet sister?” Eadwold ground out. His grey eyes chilled her to the marrow. “Found yourself a protector, did you?”
“Eadwold, I—”
“What fee did he claim, this protector of yours? What was the price of your safety?”
“Eadwold, Judith is but a child,” Saewulf protested, his face echoing the dawning horror on Judith’s.
“She’s old enough to shame our family,” Eadwold spat. “I am the head of our family now. I would rather see her dead with our father, than whore to save her skin!”
Judith felt as though a cloud had floated between her and the sun. “No! Eadwold, you do not understand.”
But Eadwold had seen her shiver. He stepped towards her and gripped her shoulder.
Something hard dug into Judith’s thigh. She glanced down. “You’re…you’re wearing father’s sword!” she stammered. “And Saewulf…he is armed too! Dear God, Eadwold, if the Baron’s men see you carrying weapons, there will be more trouble You know it’s against the law!”
“There’ll be trouble all right,” Eadwold growled. “Our days of meek submission are over. Yesterday saw to that. I have pledged myself to purge our land of these Norman parasites. My father will not die unavenged. I made an oath over his dead body. Those who block my path will die. I will destroy de Mandeville and all that’s his, or die trying.”
Eadwold’s towering form blotted out the trees. He was a man transformed. Judith scarcely recognised him. This was no ordinary rage. Eadwold had become a stranger, carried along by a surging tide of hatred, and she did not have the strength to swim against it.
Eadwold’s cold gaze dropped to Rannulf’s cloak.
Judith thought about Rannulf. She could see his extraordinary eyes crinkling at the corners, because he was smiling. She looked at her elder brother. The set of Eadwold’s jaw warned her not to confess that she had had a protector. He would never believe Rannulf had behaved honourably. Eadwold was out for revenge, and was like to wreak it on the first person who crossed his path. It was not going to be Rannulf.
Mentally, Judith compared Eadwold with Rannulf. Eadwold was big, over six feet tall—heavily built like a Viking warrior. He had long flaxen hair and a flowing beard in the old Saxon style. Rannulf was not so tall. Rannulf was no weakling, he had carried her easily enough, but he was not built in the same solid mould as Eadwold. She did not like to think of them fighting. She must get her brothers away. Before Rannulf came back with the food he had promised.
Judith cast her eyes around the fringes of the clearing. By the look of the light it was well past Matins. Rannulf could be back at any moment…
Eadwold saw her sidelong glance. His sword scraped clear of its scabbard. “Looking for your protector, sister mine?” Eadwold pressed the point against her breast. Their dead father’s ring gleamed on his finger.
“Eadwold, for the love of God!” Saewulf protested sharply.
The blade moved. Judith caught her breath and glanced down. A faint red mark began to blossom on the fabric of her gown. She forced her eyes to lift to meet her elder brother’s. His pupils were tiny black dots.
“I have no protector—” Judith declared in a voice that was as clear as a bell “—save perhaps my younger brother. Would you kill him, Eadwold, if he were to defend me?”
Eadwold glared into her eyes, and nodded as though satisfied with what he saw there. The sword withdrew.
Judith breathed again.
“No protector, eh?” Still Eadwold probed. “Then how came you to be safe here?”
Half the truth was better than none. “It was getting dark,” Judith told him. “I walked for some while before coming on this shelter.”
“’Tis a fine mantle for someone to leave behind so carelessly,” Saewulf commented.
“Aye,” Judith smiled, though she could have throttled Saewulf for harping on the damning garment. “But I was very grateful for its warmth this long night past. And now brothers, where are we going?” she asked brightly. “We cannot stay here.”
“That we can’t. We go on into the heart of the forest,” Eadwold declared.
“Into the forest?” Judith asked.
“Aye, we are outlaws now, Judith,” Saewulf pointed out.
“What?”
“Outlaws,” Eadwold repeated baldly. “You’re either for us, or against us.”
“But, Eadwold, think,” Judith objected. “There will be a price on your head—and anyone who helps you will be outlawed too.”
“With us, or against us,” Eadwold stressed. “You get the same choice, sister. But I tell you this, you side against us, and you are my sister no more. I will never speak to you again. You will be dead to me.”
“But…outlaws!” Judith rubbed her brow. “Eadwold, if you are caught, you will be hanged. Maybe tortured. That would kill Mother, as surely as if you’d stabbed her yourself. Is that what you want?” The light in Eadwold’s eyes told her he was beyond reason, but she had to try.
“Revenge is all I have left.” Eadwold sounded impatient. “Judith, those murderers have destroyed everything else. Now are you with us, or against us?”
Judith hesitated.
A rustling in the bushes brought three blond heads snapping round.
Judith could hardly bear to look, but it was not Rannulf, only a blackbird grubbing in the leaves. “W…with you, of course,” she replied hastily. “Aren’t you my family? Lead on, Eadwold. I will follow you.”
Eadwold scowled down, solid as a rock.
“Well?” She pulled at his huge hand. She must get Eadwold away. Sunlight dappled the ground, the dew had already evaporated…
“We will carry no maids in our band, Judith,” Eadwold said abruptly. “I’ll take you to Mother, for you cannot come with us. I am forming an army. An army of well-trained and disciplined men, dedicated to resisting Norman rule. His eyes gleamed. “’Twill be no common rabble. There will be no women to distract my men. No camp followers. Just warriors fighting together in the old Saxon tradition, fighting for justice for our people.”
“We cannot consign Judith to a nunnery, Eadwold!” Saewulf objected hotly.
Judith spread her hands in resignation. “I am a maid, Saewulf. What else is there for me?”
“Nay, Judith. You…a nun! “Tis unthinkable. Eadwold, we could disguise her. She could become a youth!”
Eadwold snorted.
“Aye. We could cut off her hair, short like a squire—” Saewulf warmed to his idea “—find her a boy’s tunic. Mother will not want her to waste away in a convent. I will teach her to throw a knife, use a bow—”
“She could never bend a bow!” Eadwold declared scornfully. “She lacks the muscle!”
“I will make her a smaller, more supple one. Judith…” Saewulf’s blue eyes pleaded.
Judith looked wildly at the shortening shadows cast by the sun rising inexorably towards its zenith. She was so desperate to leave the glade she would have agreed to face a pack of wolves single-handed. She did not want Rannulf’s blood on her conscience.
“I’ll do it,” she agreed. “Whatever you say. No one will know I’m a girl. I’ll heal your wounds; I’ll cook for you; I’ll even try to fight for you. I’ll put my hand to the wheel. If necessary I’ll die with you. Only please, let’s hurry.”
“Hurry?” Eadwold queried, a dangerous edge to his voice.
“Aye.” Judith tilted her chin. “I…I want to see Mother.”
Eadwold smiled for the first time that morning. “Good. I confess I did not want to lose my little sister. We’ll have to find a new name for you.” He slung his bundle over his broad shoulder, and stalked to the edge of the clearing.
“Why not Jude?” Saewulf suggested with a grin. “’Tis in part her real name.” He winked, and throwing Rannulf’s cloak at Judith, followed Eadwold into the thicket.
Judith stood irresolute. Now that her brothers were quitting the place, she acknowledged a reluctance to leave. Rannulf’s cloak weighed heavy in her hands. She smoothed the fur. She would have to take it with her, or Eadwold would suspect the worst.
She sighed. She did not want Rannulf to think her a thief. But better he think her a thief than die on her brother’s sword. Rannulf was no Norman. Had he not been kind to her? But it would not matter to Eadwold what race Rannulf belonged to. If Eadwold believed that Rannulf had dishonoured their family, that would be enough to condemn him.
Swinging Rannulf’s mantle round her shoulders, she frowned at the blood staining her gown. “If Eadwold had cut her, his sister, he would not hesitate to kill Rannulf if he thought he had cause.
Would Rannulf return and search for her? She wished she could tell him she was safe. But there was no way. Further contact would only put his life at risk.
Realising she was tarrying too long, Judith gathered up her skirts and followed her brothers into the heart of Mandeville Chase.
Chapter One
Summer, Four Years Later: The Island of Cyprus
Rannulf snatched off his helmet and ran his fingers through sweat-drenched hair, lifting it from his scalp in an effort to get cool. Waiting in the lee of the harbour wall, he was protected from the sea breezes, and that was the last thing he wanted protection from. He’d give half of his hard-won bezants for one refreshing blast of wind. The heat was almost unbearable.
He shaded his eyes with his hand and squinted at the ship unloading its human cargo on to the long wooden jetty that ran from ship to quayside. He was looking for passage home, but wanted nothing to do with slavers.
Perspiration trickled down Rannulf’s back. He eased his shoulders with a grimace and cursed the ship’s master who kept him waiting out here at noon, where there was no shade. He’d learnt that the sun could be as merciless a foe as any. He had taken to wearing a white robe over his coat of mail, and while this shielded him from the worst of the heat, he still felt as though he were being stewed alive inside a tin pot.
His eyes made another circuit of the harbour, and came to rest again on the bedraggled wretches who were emerging, blinking and filthy, from the hold of the slave ship.
If his man didn’t appear soon, he’d try and find another vessel. But that would not be easy. The seas of the eastern Mediterranean were reputed to be jostling with pirate ships this year—all on the prowl for the booty crusaders were bringing back home. There were few vessels with masters brave enough to risk the sun. And those that were were loaded themselves to bursting point to make it all worthwhile. Everyone, it seemed, wanted passage west.
Rannulf scowled into the heat haze, no longer seeing the glares. Where was the man? Beautiful though this island was, he did not want to watch the year out here. It was time to go home. He sighed. It was beginning to look as though the man he’d met in the tavern had been spinning a yarn. John Beaufour was not here. His scowl deepened, and he fingered the scar that stood out pale against the tanned skin of his face. He’d cause enough to dislike Beaufour; but his brother’s knight had trading links out here and, if meeting with Beaufour secured passage home for him and his comrades, he’d do it willingly.
The captives, roped together like beasts going to auction, were being driven along the quayside. A crowd of onlookers appeared out of nowhere. Despite himself, Rannulf found he was watching. Some of the poor devils were women. Their clothes were little more than rags, and barely covered pale limbs that had been incarcerated too long away from the sun. Rannulf frowned. He did not like to think where they would be going.
Slavers. Suddenly a memory stirred in Rannulf’s mind and his face lightened. He was back in the Chase at home and he saw again the bright blue eyes looking up at him, torn with indecision. Even after all these years he still thought of her. Judith. She’d said slavers had been seen in Mandeville Chase. She’d mistaken him for one. He had never forgotten the way she had looked at him that day, half afraid, half wanting to trust…
Some of the women being bullied along towards the harbour perimeter were blonde. They looked drugged, poor souls. He wondered if any of them had been snatched from home. A wooden platform had been constructed in the square at the end of the quay. The slaves were to be sold here, then. Rannulf folded his arms and leaned against the wall. He would have nothing to do with such traffickings.
The heat shimmered upwards from the stone flags in the square. The haze blurred his vision. He shook his head and blinked sweat from his eyes. It must be like a cauldron out there. His gaze sharpened. A fellow knight—the one he was looking for—detached himself from the crowd and joined the slave master on the rostrum. John Beaufour. Rannulf swore under his breath. His skin crawled despite the strength of the sun. Surely even as disreputable a man as Beaufour would not treat with slavers?
Judith’s words came back to haunt him. “Slavers have been seen in the Chase. Where’ve you been that you’ve not heard the warnings?” He’d always felt he’d failed her back there in the Chase. Perhaps, for her memory’s sake.
Tucking his helmet under his arm, Rannulf pushed himself away from the harbour wall and walked towards the block. He could not help the slaves, he was being sentimental—there was no denying that. Judith had been dead for nigh on four years.
Rannulf’s mouth twisted, but memory drove him on. Before he knew it, he had crossed the square and was standing, with the sun beating down on his bare head, at the steps of the auction block. Beaufour had vanished.
Judith blinked and tried to focus her eyes. The light was so bright it burned. They must be in the harbour, as she could hear the sea slapping the sides of the ship. Her head felt thick and muzzy. She shook it, and her shoulder-length hair rippled about her face, but still her head did not clear. She’d been all right till they’d told her to strip and wash. When she’d refused to obey, they’d forced that drink down her throat, and her limbs had suddenly felt as though they belonged to someone else. Then they’d scrubbed her themselves and they’d dressed her, unresisting, in a clean smock.
She wondered, dully, why she could not see straight. Her mouth was dry. Maybe it was the heat. The harbour wavered and swam before her eyes like a desert mirage in a Bible story.
She was conscious of a vague feeling that she should be angry. She should be frightened. But she could not dredge up any feeling at all. Later…later she would…With difficulty, Judith directed a scowl at the hard-faced goblin of a man who was dragging her along the path. Could he not see she was going as fast as she could?
The path was dusty, and flanked on both sides by row after row of people, all staring at her, all eyes. Judith giggled. So many eyes, they looked like silly, staring sheep. The slave-driver jerked on the rope, and her wrists burned. She tried to remember what all these people had come for, but her mind was no clearer than her vision.
The dust was the colour of amber. It swirled around in little eddies scuffed up by her bare feet. It scorched her soles, and this, rather than the proddings of the fiend at her side prompted her to greater speed. At the back of her mind fear was slowly crystallising. She tried to identify it and failed. Her head ached. It was much too difficult to think.
She forced her head up. The landscape was as alien as her strangely unresponsive mind and body. Thin spiky trees, unlike any she had ever seen, arched upwards. The sky was a rich, deep azure. Its perfect complexion was unmarred by even a single cloud. The pellucid waters around the bay echoed that pure, untainted colour. A donkey’s discordant braying threatened to split sea and sky and her head apart. She stifled a moan.
The sheep-eyed watchers wore clothes whiter than any fleece. The brightness dazzled Judith’s drug-dazed eyes. What were they all staring at, these dark-eyed, dark skinned men?
She licked her lips. The fear shifted uneasily in her mind. She was being shepherded towards a platform. She stared. Her mind emptied. There was a void where her innards should be.
She began to struggle, and tried to cry out, “No! No!” She only managed a mumble. That drink had robbed her of voice as well as will. Her breath came fast. She saw a wooden stage, the height of a man, and on it swayed some half-clad girls, roped together. She recognised them. They’d been with her in the hold. It was on these girls that the men’s eyes were fixed.
Judith stopped in her tracks, as a lamb will when it scents the stench of slaughter. She’d got in the wrong way round…the men with the eyes were not the sheep…the real victims were trussed up on the platform.
“Move, girl,” her captor snarled, and thumped her in the back with the butt of a spear.
Judith stumbled towards the dreadful platform. The fog in her mind had quite vanished, leaving it horribly, starkly clear. This was a slave market. And she was about to be sold, like a beast of burden. Wildly she looked about, eyes glazed not with the drug but with blind panic. These men were assessing her worth. And behind the calculating stares, Judith glimpsed something else. Lust. Her legs turned to jelly.
A hundred dark eyes impaled her with the same unwavering, evil desire—the desire to possess and dominate. Far better to be a simple beast of burden than suffer this. Would that she had been ugly, or a crookback…
“Sweet Mother, help me.” Her lips felt stiff, the words came out slurred and indistinct. She was at the bottom of the steps. She tossed her head, and her cropped hair caught the sunlight. An appreciative murmur ran through the onlookers. Judith baulked. The spear butt drove into the small of her back.
“No!” Her tongue was still disconnected from her will, and her shriek emerged as a husky, broken whisper.
Another crippling blow jarred her spine. Judith pitched forward into the dust.
She choked on sand. It filled her mouth and eyes. Someone touched her arm and Judith braced herself for another clout. But the pressure on her arm was gentle—not designed to cause pain. Someone raised her to her feet.
Judith blinked furiously and tried to see through the grit in her eyes.
Her heart began to pump. The drug had dissolved her brain. She was gazing into green eyes, eyes with gold and brown flecks in them, warm eyes, tender eyes. Eyes the colour of the Chase in high summer. The grip on her arms tightened. She heard a sharp intake of breath.
She blinked again, but the manifestation was still there. She must have been driven mad. “R…Rannulf?” She felt dizzy.
“Shift yourself, wench!” her gaoler bawled, in English, placing his rank person belligerently between Judith and the green-eyed apparition. “Who do you think you are? Princess Salomé? We’re waiting for you. Aye, you. ’Tis your turn.”
The spear prodded. A hard knee jabbed, and Judith stumbled up the rostrum steps.
The auctioneer was a spindly man. She spared him no more than a glance. She twisted her head, soured the white-robed figures at the bottom of the steps, and tried willing the clouds out of her mind.
She must have been mistaken. How could it be Rannulf? He did not belong here.
She could feel sweat trickling down her back. It was hotter than a blacksmith’s forge. The auctioneer began his patter, but Judith could not understand a word. The rows of eyes were eager. The auctioneer’s gnarled hands moved behind her, pulling her robe tight round her body. The eyes flashed. Judith cursed her slender female form, and her Saxon colouring. She could see the latter was a rarity in these eastern parts. Who would buy her? She shivered. She clamped her teeth together, and thrust the thought aside. Where was the man who had helped her up? The one she’d thought was…
He stood unmoving at the base of the platform. His eyes, like all the others, were fixed on her, but they looked puzzled, not hot with greed and lust. Judith swayed. She felt faint. The sun shone directly into her eyes. She could not see him properly. He was bare-headed. Like Rannulf, he had brown, wavy hair. But his clothes were all wrong. He looked like a…
“Show us your teeth.”
A new tormentor had appeared at her side. He spoke in French, badly, but there was no doubting his meaning. Wrinkled hands caught hold of her chin and prised her jaws apart.
This unholy wretch was short. He wore the same flowing robes she had seen on others in the crowd. His face was dark, and sun-shrivelled like his hands. Judith caught a sickly sweet smell in her nostrils and shuddered.
The man saw the movement, and his examination of her mouth completed, bared his own discoloured teeth in a snarl. “You must learn to veil your distaste, my dear…” he hissed, snaking his hand down Judith’s arm. He pinched her cruelly. “Or you will suffer.”
Judith opened her mouth to frame an angry retort, but her eyes caught those of the figure by the steps. Rannulf’s twin shook his head. She snapped her mouth shut.
“Very good,” drawled her new tormentor. He turned to the auctioneer. “I like the look of this one, my friend. Hair the colour of gold, eyes like sapphires, and it would seem she can be taught. I like her. She will do my House proud.”
The auctioneer clapped his hands. He fingered her cropped locks, indicated her eyes, made much of her unusual colouring.
Someone made an opening bid.
Judith shut her eyes.
The withered runt bettered the offer.
She tried to shut her ears.
Another bid from another quarter. That hideous wretch again. Another bid. Another.
Judith caught the word “virgin”. Her eyes sprang open. Someone laughed. She found the brown hair of the man who resembled Rannulf, and locked her gaze on him. If she had to be sold, she would rather he bought her. She could see him watching her. Why did he not bid?
Please, she willed him, make a bid for me.
He did not budge. She could hear others bidding, but he made not a move. He simply stared. Green eyes, startling against sun-kissed skin, staring out of the crowd as though it were he and not she who had been drugged.
Please, please. You bid for me, she shrieked in her mind.
He shook his dark head sharply as if to break a trance. He glanced at the auctioneer. He frowned. He reached for his purse. He weighed it in his hand.
“Oh, please, please. You buy me. Please,” Judith whispered out loud.
The wizened man glared at her. Judith bit her lip. Someone tossed in another bid.
People began to mutter.
The runt held his hand aloft. Dangling from it was a bulging leather purse.
The muttering ceased.
Judith’s nostrils flared. That smell…
Coins rattled. Another bid from the stunted midget. Judith’s stomach cramped. The crowd sighed. The stick-man grinned like a wolf.
Judith staggered backwards. “No!” she got out.
“Yes.” The auctioneer smirked. “Balduk here has offered many gold bezants for you.”
“But…but there may be another bid,” Judith protested, eyes turning instinctively towards the dark stranger at the foot of the steps. He looked pale under his tan. He shook his head and spread his hands. She read his thoughts as easily as if she could see into his mind. His purse was not as fat as the one the auctioneer was clutching. He did not have enough money. Judith groaned.
“Ah, no! No one else would pay that much for you. Only Balduk is able to give so many bezants for a girl. You’d better not disappoint him.”
“I won’t go,” Judith declared, and noticed with surprise that she sounded drunk.
Balduk leaned towards her and fixed her with unblinking, snake’s eyes. “You will come quietly or you will suffer,” he said quietly. Death lay in those serpent’s eyes.
