A Divided Inheritance (23 page)

‘Just another slave auction, by the looks of it,’ Gabriel said.

‘Do they not have auction blocks here, then?’

‘No, they parade them around the markets until they have enough followers, then they just stop and do it, before the crowd loses interest.’

‘Let’s go take a look.’

‘No, I think I’ll go on home. My landlady left some things drying outside and I want to check she’s brought them all in. If it’s not tied down, some cutpurse will have it
round here. Sevillians are all ruffians.’

Zachary laughed ruefully with him, though he knew himself to be one of those very cutpurses and cloak-snatchers of whom Gabriel was so wary. Zachary saluted him farewell and watched him wend his
way back through the square before he cast some coins on to the table and the waiter swooped on them like a hungry gull.

Outside the gate, he peered over the hats to see what was happening – over the usual dark felts with feathered plumes in shades of ochre and grey, and the more colourful onion-shaped
headdresses of the Turkish traders. The slaves were ranked in a row from the tallest to the shortest: two men, three women and a youth. The men were elderly Negroes with downcast eyes. In their
ragged and dusty livery they looked tired and well past their prime.

But like most men, his eyes were drawn by the women; of these two were white slaves, Moriscos, with the obligatory brand of an ‘s’ and a line or
clavo
standing for
esclavo
on one side of the face. As was the custom, the owner’s own initials were branded on the other cheek. He had been in Seville long enough to understand their brands a little,
both on horseflesh and men. The white women pressed together, as though to give each other comfort. They were both bone-thin and one of them had scabs on her arm from a recent graze. The owner was
with the auctioneer, showing off the Negro woman to the crowd.

‘Only twenty-two years old, look at the brawn on those arms,’ cried the auctioneer. ‘At least another twenty years good labour from this one, gents. Twenty-five, if you feed it
well.’

‘What work has she done before?’ a man from the crowd called.

‘Laundry, kitchen, she’ll turn her hand to anything.’ The owner, resplendent in a fully embroidered suit of russet and gold velvet, despite the evening’s heat, slapped
the girl on the shoulder. She remained still as stone, staring out at the crowd as if they did not exist. The other two girls flinched, cowered away from his hand.

‘Why are you selling, then?’

‘Going abroad. I’ll get new in the New World.’ He wiped his moustache, then gestured at them. ‘Not worth the cost of transport. I need slaves with the local
language.’

He turned his attention to the youth, another Morisco, by the shape of him. He was watching the white women in quick darting glances. A look passed between him and one of the women and Zachary
understood immediately she was his mother. They had the same features, the small sharp nose and high brow, as if pressed from the same mould. The lad hopped from foot to foot, impatient to know his
fate. A barely disguised look of fear flitted across his mother’s face.

Zachary crowded in closer. He had taken a fancy to this boy. Now he was rich he would need a runner to do errands and fetch and carry for him. A personal slave, not just a house slave like Ana.
He elbowed his way through the crowd until he was right next to the lad. Now he was next to him he could see that the boy was shorter than he thought, his legs thin as rails. Zachary wondered
whether he got called ‘Spindle-shanks’, the way he used to at his age.

Perhaps he was being a little hasty – it might be better to wait and find something a little stronger. At that moment the boy turned to look up at him, and even in the dusky light he could
see he had the most unusual blue eyes, blue the colour of the Spanish sky, not the commonplace brown or black. In that moment Zachary’s mind was made up.

He watched the bidding with impatience. The two old Negroes, nobody wanted. Eventually they sold for ten reales apiece. The two Morisco women went to the same gentleman when he bid one hundred
for the pair.

A dark Jew standing next to Zachary said, ‘You buying?’

‘I might.’

‘He paid over the odds. Moriscos are nothing but trouble. You can’t trust them. Slit your throat in the night, given half a chance. Always better with a darkie. They know their
place. Ah, here we go.’

Zachary stood on his tiptoes to wave his hand as the bidding started. The Negro woman, described as a devout and baptised Christian, aroused fierce shouts and hand-waving, but finally went for
one hundred and eighty, not to the man next to him but to a thick-set man with a nose bent out of joint to one side. He bid with a curt and barely perceptible nod, and was obviously a regular
customer. He did not even smile when the girl went to him, but he was slapped on the back by the young and rowdy men who were with him, until he turned and gave them a disapproving glare. They fell
back like a pack of dogs.

‘Now what are we bid for this one? Forty, shall I say? Good clean young lad, unbranded, ready for you to put your mark on. Worth forty of anybody’s money.’ The auctioneer
started his patter.

The man who bought the Negro woman strode over to inspect the boy – pulled his ears back to look behind them, made him open his mouth, lifted his shirt to reveal a bony ribcage. Zachary
did not much like the way he did this, nor the way the lad cowered away, flinching, as if he might be struck at any moment.

Tentatively, Zachary lifted his hand. ‘Forty,’ he said.

The bent-nosed man stopped his examination, cast him a frosty look and called, ‘Fifty.’

The four youths with him surrounded Zachary and the boy. He knew their type; they looked like bodyguards, they had the bound-up torsos of prize-fighters. ‘Sixty,’ he called out, in a
voice cool as he could muster.

‘Sixty-five.’ At the other man’s words a sharp shove came from behind so that Zachary lost balance and stumbled forward. He landed face first into the dirt. Instantly he leapt
to his feet, about to turn and protest, but then he realized – it was an old trick, to distract him from the bidding.

‘Seventy,’ Zachary shouted, brushing dirt from the grazes on his hands.

‘Seventy-five.’

A tingle ran up the back of Zachary’s neck; the men behind had muscled in, so that he was boxed in on all sides. He placed his hand surreptitiously on his sword. One of them hissed in his
ear, ‘
Vete!
Or we will break your back.’

He ignored them, fingered the paring knife in his sleeve. ‘Eighty!’

The crowd let out an ‘Ooh’, and people turned to stare. A tic moved in his opponent’s cheek. ‘Eighty-five.’

His men could do nothing now as they had the crowd’s full attention. The boy cringed away, sensing trouble. But Zachary pressed on. He would not be deterred. He would have let it go, but
the other man’s attitude had made him even more determined. Bully him, would he? Not if he could help it. ‘One hundred!’ It was his last bid. He had only that amount left in cash.
The crowd muttered that he was mad, had lost his senses.

‘And five,’ said the other calmly.

The boy’s eyes were on him. There was a hushed pause whilst the auctioneer waited, his clapper held up. It was no good, Zachary was out-bid, he could go no further. Reluctantly, he shook
his head.

The auctioneer rapped the clapper. ‘Sold!’

He saw the boy droop, and it gave him a sharp pain of recognition.

Zachary turned to walk away. He wished he had never begun. It was one thing to buy goods, but he had felt something for that boy, recognized something of himself.

He glanced over his shoulder to see his rival’s heavy shoulders push through the crowd, and the auctioneer hold up the deeds of purchase for the crook-nosed man to sign. The boy was still
staring at Zachary with an unfathomable gaze. He felt terrible then, that he could not have bought him.

He needed to get away. But he hadn’t gone ten paces before he felt hands fasten round his throat and a jerk to his neck. ‘Hey!’ he shouted, but nobody heard him. The four
youths bore him off into a shadowed back alley. Flies hung about the ground, telling him it was probably used as a piss-hole. Before he could say a word one of the men raised his fist and smashed
it into his nose. ‘My master could have had him for forty,’ he said.

The blow brought Zachary to his knees, where he felt the impact of a boot slam into the small of his back. The pain made him nauseous and he bent over to protect his face. There was no time to
pull a weapon, nor room. Punches rained down on his head. His hands got the brunt of it; when it eventually stopped, he could hardly bear the pain in them. He looked up to see a pair of soft
leather shoes and black hose. The burly man stood there, the Negro woman and the boy-slave at his side.

‘Good,’ he said.

He ignored Zachary and walked away, his entourage wiping their fists and swaggering behind. As they were about to round the corner, the boy slave turned back, seemed to fix him with his blue
eyes. It was not a look of blame, but one of understanding.

Triana, Seville

Luisa Ortega was waiting for her father to come out of the sword-master’s house, and as usual he was late. She passed the time by helping Daria scrub the vegetables. It
was a backbreaking task as they needed so many aubergines to feed all those men with their swashing swords and all the apprentices and servants. Luisa scooped a handful of cold water from the tiled
bowl and patted it on her face to cool it.

The water always refreshed her. Papa told her that after she was baptized they rushed her home and scrubbed her face and head with hot water. They did this to all their infants, Papa said, in
case the stink of Christianity should cling and turn them into infidels.

She howled so much they had to stop and take her instead to be doused in the Guadalquivir river. But it hadn’t made any difference, the Christianity had clung, much to Papa’s
disappointment.

She liked to think that’s what gave her an affinity with water. As a child she was drawn to the jade green of the river and would often submerge herself face down, just floating, her hair
drifting about her like weed. She’d lift her chin to breathe in the smell of wet and sand before dipping her head back in to watch the marbled depths for fish and eels. But now she was older
there was no time for that, she had to content herself with a few snatched handfuls of water rubbed over her sun-scorched skin.

‘
Oye soñadora
, wake up!’ Daria passed her another basket of onions, and Luisa began to flake off their papery skins.

‘Onions. Oh no. Better cover my eyes.’

Daria smiled at her as she pared the aubergines. Unlike Luisa, she wore the
manto
, the head-covering, so that her face appeared from it like a moon under a drape of cloud. Daria was
braver than she was, Luisa thought, because to wear the head-covering was to mark yourself out, and there were few of her age left clinging to that tradition. Mama and Papa approved of Daria, their
neighbour’s daughter. They said it was women like her who kept their faith alive. They always ‘tsk’ed at Luisa, though, at her reckless attitude, at her unconcern for history and
their disappearing Arabic tongue, at her devotion to the candle-lit cathedral and the Mass.

Luisa picked up the peelings and tossed them into the bucket for the pigs.

‘We’ll need more aubergines,’ Daria said, shaking her head. ‘The men eat enough for two with all their thrashing.’

‘There’s more in the basket,’ Luisa said. ‘Amar gave me a full load. Borage and chard too. Nearly broke my neck carrying it all the way from the field on my
head.’

Daria pattered over on bare feet and heaved the basket on to the table again, selecting three or four plump, purple fruits.

‘Still inside?’ Daria asked.

Luisa threw the onions into a bowl and peered through the window again. ‘Yes, poor souls. He’ll be making them go through the gematria again. Still, at least they are cool in the
library.’

After the aubergines were pared, they sliced them and stacked them in salt to draw the bitterness out. Señor Alvarez always had a good supply of salt, unlike at home. Moriscos were not
allowed to go down to the salt pans, so Luisa’s family never had any. Sometimes she dipped a damp finger into the white crystals when the block had been crushed in the pestle, and sucked her
finger to taste the sea, but her conscience pricked her when she did that. It was like stealing, though it was only a few grains.

She heard the murmur of voices outside and rubbed her hands on the sides of her skirts, which were already spattered with glazes from her day at the pottery. She went to the door and looked into
the courtyard. Papa was descending the stone steps, his hand feeling for the wall, deep in conversation with the fencing master, Señor Alvarez. Two of the other young men followed close
behind – she recognized them as Alexander Souter, the tall Dutch fellow with the pointed beard, and Etienne Galen the Frenchman.

Señor Alvarez took the two young men off to the corner of the yard where a pile of bucklers lay waiting. Papa glanced in at the doorway and screwed up one eye at her. A moment later he
was in the kitchen, lifting the heavy lid of the aubergine pot and bringing his head close to it to see. Papa’s vision was not so good.