Feeding time was twice a day. In the morning it was bread and oranges. In the evening, thick lumpy porridge.
The sunlight burnt their eyes and they’d forgotten what a fresh breeze could feel like.
At night they lay shivering and the trustees would prod each prisoner to check for signs of life before dragging any dead to the side. And in the sandstorms, everyone was handed strips of cloth to cover their mouths and noses.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
They were lined up in an old barn with hay scattered on the floor, back in chains with only swimming trunks upon their exhausted bodies, but they had survived the crossing and only four prisoners had died on-route. Some of the men were still wounded from the shears that had ripped away their hair and beards, shorn for the slaughter by trustees. Most of the prisoners accepted they had arrived in hell and knew the sun was just one of many things that could kill them.
Their sorry faces were photographed, not for prisoner records as there were none, but for the church noticeboards across the land as a warning to others.
The taskmasters wore wide brimmed hats and sunglasses, the commissars white kepis and ivory shutter shades. The trustees wore caps and were permitted to tie loose strips of cloth around their necks which they often dipped into the prisoners’ drinking water to cool themselves down.
‘What’s your name?’ asked the MHCA examining Bastian’s teeth.
‘What’s happening here?’ replied Bastian.
‘This is a staging post for your final destination. You’re being sold. Name!’
‘Bastian.’
‘Never use it again. You’ll be given a number, forget the past.’
Bastian almost fainted, the bright sunlight was filtering through the roof, and his legs buckled from exhaustion and fear.
‘You’re next,’ shouted a trustee, and Bastian was marched onto a wooden platform by a taskmaster. It was no bigger than his old police desk, with three shaky steps to the top.
Immediately, some of the commissars put their thumbs down, a few trying to discourage competitors with others genuinely disinterested. A few leaned into their taskmasters seated beside for advice.
Bastian watched helplessly in chains as the trustee standing on stage beside him pointed into the crowd from one bidder to the next until only two remained.
Finally, with the bid at twenty points, a commissar threw his shutter shades on the floor, stamped on them and marched out the loser. Bastian was given his uniform and dragged to a wooden holding pen wearing grey shorts and a sleeveless shirt with uncomfortable wooden clogs to stop his feet from cooking on the ground.
‘Jambit!’ he gasped, pleased to find his friend, a reminder of much better times. ‘I’ve been sold.’
‘We all have,’ Jambit sighed, the mischievous twinkle in his eyes snuffed out like one of Malthus’s candles.
‘But why?’ asked Bastian.
No one asked who cost the most.
‘The commissars bid against each other for the fittest prisoners, ones that will toil the hardest and give them the greatest rewards, a post in London or Edinburgh.’
‘Who gets their bid?’ asked Bastian.
‘Your village. In our case, that means Nabulus. See that there poster?’
Bastian turned around to look on the wall above the guards’ dripping water fountain that permanently tormented the thirsty prisoners.
A Polite Reminder that only the following equal 10 units:
1 adult elephant tusk.
1 complete and undamaged stuffed gorilla.
1 live panda.
2 sacks of pink flamingo feathers.
2 racks of salted liger ribs.
3 mounted lion heads.
4 big cat pelts.
8 rhino horns.
15 large and polished turtle shells.
‘So that’s where Nabulus gets his ivory,’ sighed Bastian, before someone stole his attention.
There was a young man no older than sixteen crying in the corner and Bastian went to comfort him.
‘Leave him be,’ said a large man, standing up.
His neck was thick, chest broad.
‘What’s wrong with him?’ asked Bastian, wondering if he could help, make new friends.
‘He doesn’t want to be my wife,’ growled the man. ‘You got a problem with that?’
The brute’s fists were clenched and he held his chains aloft ready to strangle any of the other men kept in a clearing outside the auction house.
Bastian was too physically and emotionally drained to argue and sat down embarrassed for himself and the boy. The laughing man had already taken leave of his senses.
In the morning before the sun rose in the sky a visitor approached the holding pen.
‘The commissar will beat me if he finds out,’ said the trustee wearing yellow breeches with a wooden club by his stool.
‘And I will kill you right here if I don’t get to look,’ shouted the taskmaster. ‘Now go and fetch some food.’
The taskmaster licked his lips whilst looking at Bastian. It was the man who loved his hair and he moved closer.
‘You should have been mine, pretty boy,’ he hissed.
‘The sound of true love. So, what came between us, handsome?’
‘Your commissar outbid mine.’
‘And pray tell, where am I and my friends headed?’
The taskmaster signalled with a finger to the back, away from the other prisoners.
‘You’re going to the far side of this cursed earth, Angole, a work station in the forbidden rainforest, slaves of a consortium known as the Klan.’
He stood close and Bastian recognised his eyes, it was Holroyd’s Siberian art lover.
‘I persuaded my commissar to stop the bidding for you and your friend,’ he whispered. ‘If you ever see him again, tell Holroyd I kept my part of the bargain.’
* * *
Cold water was thrown over them and they were marched out of the pen whilst handed breakfast, a portion of bread per man with the biggest grabbing another’s share. Bastian and Jambit were glad of each other’s company, with most men willing to fight others over any perceived insult and prove their mettle. Unfortunately, this was not a practice the guards discouraged. They were overseen by a commissar on horseback, a white palomino and the first they had seen.
The prisoners were led to the covered waggons and sat silently inside on the benches under cover from the sun. Momentarily, they felt uplifted from the smell
