The Passion of Mary Magdalen. Elizabeth Cunningham
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someone shouted. “Let her say on! She’s only proving your point.”
His face had turned an unbecoming shade of puce, but pleasing the crowd came first. He lowered his fist, which I took as a signal to continue.
“Which explains your face,” I said. “Though it is hard to say which coupling resulted in your unfortunate conception. Take your pick of lineage. And as Bride is my witness, I do not intend to insult a worthy animal who gives wool or one that is of use in bearing burdens. It is not the sheep’s fault that you fart in your sleep or the donkey’s that your breath stinks of rancid meat and sour wine or that the fleas desert the rats in preference for your smelly hide—”
If he didn’t drop dead of a stroke—and I had some hope he might—or if I didn’t get sold to someone quickly, I might not live to enjoy another night among the fish guts. Oh well, death was more honorable than slavery, and now that I was on a roll I couldn’t stop to save my life. I might be speaking Latin, but I was a Celt. In other words: impossible to shut up as long as I was breathing.
“One thing is certain,” I went on, “you are a slave and the son of slaves. You are a coward and the son of cowards. When the sun rises in the morning it turns red with shame that it must shine on you—”
Then I felt the lash of the whip; I stopped for a moment to breathe. “And the moon hides its face and weeps,” I improvised wildly, anticipating the next stroke, knowing that watching a slave being beaten to death would be considered a mild entertainment for people who regularly watched men slaughter each other.
But the next stroke never fell. I turned and was rendered temporarily speechless by the sight of the tall, handsome woman who had mounted the block and grabbed Pug Face’s arm, knocking the whip out of his hand.
“Don’t mar your wares before I get a good look.” The woman’s voice was brisk.
More swiftly than I would have imagined possible, Pug Face recovered himself and shifted smoothly into his most obsequious gear.
“Delighted to see you, domina. Always a pleasure to do business with you. Delighted to be of service. Would you like me to remove her garment?”
“If you can call that sack a garment. Yes, strip her. And don’t even think about telling me she’s a virgin with that mouth on her. You’re lucky I didn’t go to the aedile about that last piece of baggage you passed off as pure. Next time you say you have a virgin for sale I’m inspecting her hymen right here. As for this one, there’s no need for me to get a crick in my neck. She’s already whelped at least once. See?” She pointed. “Stretch marks. What happened to the brat?” she addressed me. “Dead, exposed, or sold?”
Never mind that I was naked, far from any place I could call home or any people I could call mine in front of a leering Roman crowd. There are things you recover from—like being raped by a man who turned out to be my father, which is why being raped by my captor was a mere outrage. And there are things you never get over. Having a child stolen from your arms is one. I stared at the woman. I saw how hard her face was, hard as the street stones pounded into the innocent earth, smooth as the marble slabs the Romans like to pile into huge, ugly buildings. I stared till my eyes were dry and I could no longer see the brightness I’d once held against my breast. The woman made the mistake of staring back. Her face did not soften exactly, but something strained it for an instant.
“Never mind,” she said. “As far as I’m concerned, you have no past as long as it doesn’t interfere with present purposes. Mine. Now, open your mouth.”
“A fine set of choppers if I do say so myself.” Pug Face inanely took credit.
What could he or anyone in this world know of the source of my strong teeth and bones, the sixteen lactating breasts of my mothers and the magical orchard on Tir na mBan that blossomed and bore fruit the year round.
After she inspected my teeth, she searched my head for lice. “He’s gotten better about cleaning them up,” she spoke to herself. “Or maybe this one kept herself clean. Would have been a shame to shave this head. And as red below as above. That could be popular.”
“I’ll come around if you set her out,” said one man. “I like them picante.”
“I haven’t quite made up my mind. You there,” she said to Pug Face, “show us how clean you think she is. Wait, let me have a look at you first.”
To the crowd’s delight, she inspected his mouth as thoroughly as she had mine. Then she gestured for him to lift his tunic and with an apparently practiced eye she appraised his prick. Pug Face bore it all with an ingratiating grin. He wanted a sale. Badly.
“I just need to be sure, because I’ve no doubt you’ve sampled her. All right. Now put your mouth where your money is.” To me she said, “Bend over.”
I gave her another blank stare, but this time she wasn’t playing. She grabbed my hair and forced my head down. I lost my balance and ended up on all fours. Before I knew it, his snout was buried in me. Given my position, nose to the ground, ankles bound, there was only one path of resistance open to me. I took it.
It was long; it was loud, both redolent and resonant. The crowd applauded, and Pug Face surfaced sputtering, holding his nose with one hand while he felt around for his whip with the other.
“There are men in this town who will pay good money to be humiliated like that,” mused the woman. “O.K., I’ll take her.”
“An excellent choice, Domina.” Pug Face recovered instantly. “A girl with rare talents. Because you are such a good customer, I’ll let you have her for one hundred and fifty denarii.”
“One hundred and ten, take it or leave it.”
“Domina, you would not make a pauper of me, take food out of my children’s mouths. One hundred and forty.”
They went on with their obligatory haggling. The morning market was closing up. The entertainment was over. Men moved off towards the baths; women went home with their purchases. Ignored for a merciful moment, I tried to stand again, but I found I was too dizzy. If my stomach had not been empty, I would have vomited. The midday sun beat down and rose up from the stones, glared off the buildings. Nothing in my life had prepared me for this moment. Nothing. Not incest, not childbirth, not exile or shipwreck. Not even watching my beloved disappear in the mists on the other side of the Menai Straits. Esus. Esus. Would I ever see him again? I had never doubted until this moment.
“Red, a word to the wise. Unless you’re sailing on a ship or seasoning a broth, salt water is of no use whatsoever. Dry up. If there’s one thing men can’t stand, it’s a whore with leaky eyes. They get enough of that at home.”
I didn’t know the word whore, not in any of the five languages I spoke. Didn’t even have the concept. I was named for an infamous warrior queen who had thirty men a day, if she chose. If she chose.
“Stand up.” She put a strong hand under my arm and pulled me to my feet. Pug Face undid my shackles, then lifted the plaque from my neck. “And don’t you dare faint on me,” she added. “If there’s anything I hate more than weepers, it’s fainters.”
She put her arm around me as I stepped down from the block. Her touch was kinder than her face or voice. It confused me.
“Can you walk?” she demanded. “I’m open for business in three hours. You’ve got a lot to learn. Fast. Bone,” she called, and an enormous eunuch hove into view. “Take her other arm. Let’s go.”
“Good riddance to bad rubbish,” Pug Face muttered behind us. I heard him spit, and a blob landed next to my foot. Before I could even think of retaliating the woman grabbed my chin and locked my face into forward position.
“You’re going to have to get used to scum, Red,” my new captor told me.
“My name,” I began, but I couldn’t get it past