The woman grimaced. "Hold still. You're shaking your curls loose." She reached up to give Repentance's hair a tuck and a pat.
The door of the bathing room burst open. "Merry, are you in here talking?" A tall overlord woman strode in, her long satin skirts swishing along behind her. "I might have known. We wait on the docks for her." She landed a slap on the old slave's face with such force that the woman crumpled to the ground.
Repentance jerked as if she was the one who had been slapped. She reached to help, but the old woman, bowing before the overlord with her forehead to the ground, didn't see the hand Repentance offered.
"Oh, do get out of here before I kick you," the overlord woman said. "You tempt me so when you snivel like that."
The slave scrambled from the room.
The overlord woman turned to Repentance, taking in her outstretched hand, then looking into her eyes. "If you offer help to a slave being disciplined you will receive the same fate." Her glance slid from her face, down her neck, and kept on going. Repentance blushed.
"My name is Madam Cawrocc. I own you. You will obey me."
Repentance nodded. So this was the way Providence answered her prayers for a kind owner. She wasn't surprised.
"Yes, you'll do," the woman said. She moved close to Repentance. "You will not speak. You will drop your eyes out of respect for the buyers. You will hold your chin down. And that blush of yours will do nicely. It makes you look quite innocent and alluring."
She opened the top tie of Repentance's robe and retied it so more skin showed. Then she pushed her over to the counter on the reflecting wall and spritzed her neck and into the top of her robe with water laced with golden dust. After looking Repentance over one more time, she spit on her fingers and smoothed a stray curl into place.
Repentance trembled. There was still the market. Someone would buy her. Surely. She would be respectful to the buyers as Madam Cawrocc had instructed. She would find a woman with kind eyes who needed a nanny for a rosy-cheeked baby. Or maybe a rich old woman who needed a companion to go with her on trips to foreign lands.
"Overlords will line up to pay over their beads for a turn in your bed," Woeful had said. She looked into the reflecting glass and felt like retching. Please, Providence. A nice old woman in need of a traveling companion.
Squeeze his muscles, check his teeth,
lift her skirts and look beneath.
Try his ear, test her eye,
come on boys, we've a slave to buy!
~A slave dock ditty, from Mountain Lore and Folk Music
Chapter 7
Repentance stepped from the building. Thank Providence, the bodies were gone. The square was flooded with sunshine and overlords, but no dead slave boys. Several living overlord boys played skipball beneath the empty hanging frame.
Keeping her head down and her eyes half closed against the glare of the morning, she followed Madam Cawrocc onto a wide, covered porch. Several slaves were there ahead of her, standing with their backs against posts. Their hands were lashed to the posts, and packets of parchment hung on hooks above their heads.
Sober was there. His glossy curls combed back, away from his face. He was shirtless, but he had his button scarf wrapped around his neck.
Next to him, a girl was staked. She wasn't dressed in a velvet robe. She wore a gold shirt and brown britches with sturdy boots made of leather and sheepskin. There was nothing pretty about the girl. Nothing ugly, either. She was just a girl, unremarkable in every way. When Repentance saw her, a stab of fear ran through her. That girl was going to be her downfall. That girl wasn't meant for the refreshment of royalty. That plain girl would get the job as nanny for the tired mother, or companion for the rich old woman.
Repentance scanned the rest of the slaves. Seven boys, all younger than Sober from the looks of them, stood in long pants, chests bare in the chilly mountain air. Of the nine girls, only one other was richly robed, as Repentance was. The other eight wore working clothes and braids.
Madam Cawrocc handed Repentance over to the dockmaster. "Up front, with this one," she said to him. "Let the poor men wish and the rich men bid."
The dockmaster staked Repentance a couple of posts away from Sober, who was also in the front row. His swollen face had gone down a little, but he still had a purple bruise covering one cheekbone. Guilt flooded over her. For all her fancy dress and sweetly-lotioned skin, she felt as dirty as a pig on slaughtering day.
Sober caught her looking and he nodded as if to say, Yes, Repentance it is your fault. Take a good look at your handiwork.
The sun climbed slowly as buyers came and buyers went. The men buyers strode right up to poke and prod the other girls—to look at teeth and peek into clothing. The women buyers stood to the side and let their brothers or male cousins or servants check the merchandise over. But no one poked at Repentance. With her they were almost shy.
Finally, one man approached, bent close to look at her face. Then he studied her hair and lifted her chin so he could look into her eyes.
She looked back, into the pale overlord eyes, this particular pair, light green and full of lechery.
Her knees went squishy.
"My good, great dragon guano!" the man exclaimed. "I'll be hanged for a runner if your eyes aren't golden. I've never seen such a remarkable color." He
