Chapter 24: The Square

Finally Charlotte was taken from the hated cage and put into an abaya. Quite a lot of the other women were also taken and they were all loaded on to a lorry and driven through the town. On arrival in the main square, Charlotte realised with horror that she was to be auctioned in public with the rest of the captives. It was over an hour in the hot sun that she waited and watched as woman after woman was rapidly sold. Then she was dragged to the rostrum herself, and stripped of her abaya.

"What am I bid for this fine specimen of a female slave, fresh from Tirfil, possibly a virgin, and a delight for any man's harem?" shouted the auctioneer.

It had been a hard day for him. There were so many captives to sell and the heat of the main public square was not pleasant. He much preferred selling in his own auction rooms, but so many people, some of them quite poor, had wanted to bid, and the prices were so low that most men had been able to acquire something. In any case he had kept what he considered all the best looking women, the plumpest and most docile of the younger ones, in the auction house and the cages were almost full. Even so, with the flood of war looted slaves on the market he would have to wait to get a decent price for them, and feeding them in the mean time would cost money.

Now they were getting to the better looking older women, though not yet to the best, and his hyperbole was necessary to interest the bored elements in the crowd. As to possible virginities, he would have bet his life that no female between the ages of twelve and sixty had escaped rape in the sacking of Tradagha.

The woman on the sale block at the moment was a sorry sight. She was weeping copiously, and the overseers had had to whip her before she would stand still with her hands at her sides so that the buyers could see her. With her abaya removed for the actual sale, she revealed pale but sagging breasts, and a small amount of straggly pubic hair which was a lighter brown than that on her head. It was difficult to tell under the dirt and bruises but she might have been Southern European rather than Arab. She had said nothing, but that was to be expected.

Just then a small group of armed men in spotless uniforms came into the square, walking with a single man in civilian garb. The auctioneer was quick to recognise the Emir, as were others in the audience, and the word went round quickly. Moving easily through the crowd, the Emir came up to the auction block and looked the woman over.

~Are you an Arab?~ he asked.

She stared blankly at him, so he tried English.

"Who are you? Where are you from?"

"Sir," the woman cried out, "Save me. I am not of Tirfil. I was caught there when the war started and now they are trying to sell me as a slave. Please take me to the British Embassy."

"What nationality are you?"

"British. I was married to an engineer working on the water supply in Tradagha and we lived on the edge of town. I don't know what happened to my husband but I was taken by some soldiers and I was ... I was..."

The woman collapsed in a heap crying. As the overseer raised his whip the Emir signalled to the auctioneer.

"What is this slave's indenture number?" he asked.

"Alas, Master, not all the slaves in Tirfil were marked with numbers," said the auctioneer, suddenly frightened by the Emir's interest in this woman.

"I think you will find that is not true," said the Emir affably, "Any captives with no numbers were ordered not to be sold before their identities were established. How many more do you have here?"

"Perhaps one or two," was the cautious reply.

Actually almost all the better looking women he had for sale, the ones he hoped to make the most money on, were without numbers, for they had been the wives and daughters of free men in Tirfil and were not indentured slaves. If they had been sold by their Masters, numbers would have been tattooed on them when they were sold, but family marriages did not usually involve such a practice.

"Send a lorry to collect them," the Emir instructed one of his bodyguards, "And get this one over to the Golden Palace and tell the Chief Eunuch that Princess Ayda is to find out who she is, and look after her."

Turning to the auctioneer, he said, "Do please carry on with the sale, but only of the numbered slaves."

The assistants soon had another woman on the stand, this one a real beauty, save for the fact that one eye had been blackened recently. Jescenia was, he claimed, a pleasure slave from the household of the Khan.

Actually she was a temple prostitute from one of the odder religious sects which flourished among the desert peoples. She had been born there, the daughter of another 'daughter of the temple'. At sixteen she had been ritually deflowered by the head priest; in the next year or so she had been taught every conceivable sexual activity by the other priests. Then she was put to what she assumed, unthinkingly, was her destiny; a series of worshippers pouring out their sins into her orifices according to the dogmas she, and the worshippers had been taught. It never occurred to her that membership of that particular sect was quite expensive, and so she only ever ministered to relatively respectable men.