A note on Dalila: what if you had been sold into slavery by your parents? And what if you fell in love with your captor? This is the first chapter of a possible novel-length story in which the Egyptian slave girl Dalila, Galeo her love, Lord of the house Bestia Gratius, his Lady Imperiosa, farmer Crassus, and young boy Pullus all become entangled in a knot of love, lust, and sexual discovery. I will release it in draft installments and make these chapters available for comment from my readers. I love to read your feedback!
"Her heavy breasts heaved, and her long hair, dark with dirt though it was, managed to cascade right around the curve of them."
The journey was twelve days by caravan from Lisah on the outskirts of Cairo to Florentia, outside of Rome. Dalila’s body ached from the prolonged rocking motion of her rough-hewn cage. The sun glared through wide spaces between the wooden bars of the carriage. Spaces wide enough for a lithe young woman to slip through. Dalila looked resignedly down at the leather cuffs binding her wrists and ankles. There was no point in attempted escape. In Lisah, and she suspected in the rest of the wide world, when a parent sold their daughter into slavery it meant they preferred the money she could afford them to the company she could provide. No, there was nothing left in Lisah for her.
She leaned her back up against the boy’s. He was a man, but looked younger than she by much. He sleeps like a child, she thought. If only I could.
The robed guards that accompanied the caravan had started to chatter over the last hour. Dalila could see a lightness in their step where there was trudging before. They had ceased ogling and prodding her through the bars of the slave cage. Signs she took to mean that the caravan was nearing it’s destination. One of the slave traders called out in a language she didn’t understand. She elbowed the boy awake.
“I think we are here.” He stirred, shaking his long hair from his soft features. Dalila reached around with her bound hands to touch his shoulder reassuringly. They watched the scenery change as the other slaves stirred. Dry desert road became sparsely populated with pines. With a clunk the carriage ride became smooth. The slaves physically responded the relief of concrete paved road.
“Why couldn’t it be like this all the way,” the boy asked. Dalila smiled, in spite of her aching back, wrists, and ankles. She had helped the boy as he vomited from motion sickness repeatedly throughout the forced voyage. She had caught him as the rough trader threw his slim frame into the cage. Being the only other slave from Lisah, Dalila had taken care of him. He spoke little, but clung to her like a child to it’s mother. She did not know his name.
The sounds of a city reached the slave car. Soon the flat desert was replaced by small shacks growing to buildings. The caravan shuddered to a halt in what appeared to be a market square, though the stalls were far more luxuriant than those Dalila had left in Lisah. She was briefly transported to those dirty streets in her mind’s eye, running barefoot towards home, tears streaming into her long auburn hair, clutching a half-decent piece of lamb’s meat, feeling semi-sweet pain with every step; for a young girl sent to shop alone, market price is always too high.
The creaking sound of the cage door awoke her from the memory. She craned her neck to whisper to the boy, “stay close to me!” Rough hands grabbed her shoulders and pulled her, staggering, out of the cage. She and the other slaves crumpled to the ground as they were thrown from the cage, having sat in a crouched, uncomfortable position for twelve days.
One of the traders was yelling for them to get up, they were hustled and beat until all were standing somewhat erect. Dalila positioned herself near the boy as the slave line was formed. He seemed weak, but unhurt. Before long Dalila was marching along with the rest through a throng of market-goers. The sounds of bartering, calls advertising fresh produce and meat, and cacophony of languages melded into a droning buzz in Dalila’s mind. She jostled by a bump from one of the slave traders nearest to her. His other arm was attached to a tall, brightly painted woman in haggard red robes.
“Do you have a friend in Florentia my lord? I’ll be your friend,” and she moved her hand from his arm to his bulge. He shook her away uninterestedly. “Perhaps you’re unable?” she laughed in his face. Her eyes took in Dalila still marching. “And you, my lady? I’ll be your slave!” Dalila looked away and the woman melded with the crowd.
At the front of the market was a short platform. A crowd of apparent Florentians paid rapt attention to a single black man with gold rings around his neck. He was standing alone on the elevated stage.
“Five lirati!”
“Six!”
“I hear six lirati, do I hear seven for this magnificent beast from the east?” A stocky, bearded man standing on a box at the head of the crowd called out. “Seven?”
“Seven!”
“Eight!”
“Ten!”
“Ten literati—do I have eleven? No noble lord will pay eleven? Then it’s ten for the fine buck, to Gaius Callus. Please pay and collect with the corpsman.” The African man was led by his bonded wrists off of the stage.
“Alright,” one of the traders at the head of Dalila’s line was speaking to them. “Two lines, men and women. You! Get over there, head the women’s line, whore! You! Move your ass into line!” The guards began shoving the slaves into their appropriate lines. One grabbed the boy by the shoulders and turned him toward the head trader.
“Ay, boss, what about this one, eh? Boy or girl, ha?” The other traders laughed. Dalila saw the one holding the boy slip a finger under his tattered animal-hide clothing, between his buttocks. She was near enough to hear his harsh whisper, “you’re pretty enough for me, eh?” The boy cringed away, into the men’s line.
Dalila was near the front of the women’s line. One by one they were being hoisted up onto the stage. The women’s clothes were sometimes removed by the traders to up the bidding of the waiting crowd. Once the stocky man declared each slave sold they were led off to somewhere Dalila couldn’t see. Nervous fear gripped her chest. It was almost her turn. She turned to find the eyes of the boy among the other men. He was not there. Then she was being shoved onto the stage rough hands. “Your turn, pretty.”
Dalila stood about five foot seven on the stage. Her olive skin was made darker by the dust of travel. The clothes she had worn when they took her from her house in Lisah were by now torn and stained from dirt and some of the boy’s vomit. She had lost her undergarment on the fourth day of travel, when two of the slave traders had decided they needed a ‘friend.’ Her heavy breasts heaved, and her long hair, dark with dirt though it was, managed to cascade right around the curve of her breasts. Among the shouting faces of those Florentians bidding over this stunning exotic creature, Dalila searched for the boy. She paid no attention to the minor uproar of the bidders. She sought comfort with the gaze of her friend. She could not find him with her eyes. She put forth all of her focus on finding him, even as a trader grabbed her filthy blouse at the neck and ripped it, all the way down to her waist. Even as she felt the warm air on her bare breasts. Even when hands pushed her stumbling out of her skirt, and she stood naked to the crowd with only her brown leather bonds for modesty, did she seek out the boy.
Then she saw him. In the shadow of a nearby stall, she could see him from the height of the stage, with two traders. One held the young man’s arms against the side of the stall, pinning him, while the other prepared to take him. The boy was completely naked, yet even with the eyes of the market on her, Dalila felt more clothed than he. She suddenly leapt from the stage, screaming “No!” She pushed towards the surprised crowd of bidders. They backed away from the dirty, naked, ferocious beauty before them. Dalila had made it almost to the back edge of the crowd before a sharp blow blackened her consciousness.
The auctioneer hopped down from his box. “’Fraid you’ll have to buy that one, Master Galeo. You might have damaged her. Fifty lirati.”
Galeo stood, sheathing his short sword, the butt of which he had used to knock Dalila unconscious. “Make it seventy and throw in the one over there,” he indicated the boy, who had struggled free from the traders as they turned to face the commotion. “That’s fair, no? I’ll bring the carriage ‘round to collect the boy.” He knelt to undo Dalila’s bonds, then slipped his arms around and under her to lift her unconscious form. He covered most of her nakedness in the fold of his robes. “And tell the corpsman he must be unharmed,” he called to the auctioneer.
“My master may find use for him,” Galeo said to a nearby trader.
No comments:
Post a Comment