As his pupils widened, he discerned the women. Perhaps a hundred altogether, they sat on stools, crowded along the walls to right and left. Their garb ranged from fine linen to ragged wool. Some slumped, some stared blankly, some made gestures of invitation as bold as the rules permitted, most looked timidly and wistfully at the men who strolled by them. Those visitors were few, at this hour of an ordinary day. Everard thought he identified three or four mariners on shore leave, a fat merchant, a couple of young bucks. Their deportment was reasonably polite; it was a church here.
His pulses pounded. Damnation, he thought, irritated, why am I making such a production in my head? I’ve been with enough women before.
Sadness touched him. Only two virgins, though.
He walked along, watching, wondering, avoiding glances. Pum sought him and tugged his sleeve. “Radiant master,” the youth hissed, “your servant may have found that which you require.”
“Huh?” Everard let his attendant drag him out to the center of the room, where they could murmur unheard.
“My lord understands that this child of poverty could never hitherto enter these precincts,” spilled from Pum. “Yet, as I said earlier, I do have acquaintanceship reaching into the royal palace itself. I know of a lady who has come each time her duties and the moon allow, to wait and wait, these past three years. She is Sarai, daughter of shepherd folk in the hills. Through an uncle in the guard, she got a post in the king’s household, at first only as a scullery maid, but now working closely with the chief steward. And she is here today. Since my master wishes to make contacts of that sort -”
Bemused, Everard followed his guide. When they halted, he gulped. The woman who, low-voiced, responded to Pum’s greeting, was squat, big-nosed – he decided to think of her as homely – and verging on spinsterhood. But the gaze she lifted to the Patrolman was bright and unafraid. “Would you like to release me?” she asked quietly. “I would pray for you for the rest of my life.”
Before he could change his mind, he pitched his token onto her skirt.
Pum had found himself a beauty, arrived this same day and engaged to the scion of a prominent family. She was dismayed when such a ragamuffin picked her. Well, that was her problem. And perhaps his too, though Everard doubted it.
The rooms in Hanno’s inn were tiny, equipped with straw mattresses and little else. Slit windows, giving on the inner court, admitted a trickle of evening light, also smoke, street and kitchen smells, chatter, plaintiveness of a bone flute. Everard drew the reed curtain that served as a door and turned to his companion.
She knelt before him as if huddling into her garments. “I do not know your name or your country, sir,” she said, low and not quite steadily. “Do you care to tell your handmaiden?”
“Why, sure.” He gave her his alias. “And you are Sarai from Rasil Ayin?”
“Did the beggar boy send my lord to me?” She bowed her head. “No, forgive me, I meant no insolence, I was thoughtless.”
He ventured to push back her scarf and stroke her hair. Though coarse, it was abundant, her best physical feature. “No offense taken. See here, shall we get to know each other a bit? What would you say to a cup or two of wine before – Well, what would you say?”
She gasped, astounded. He went out, found the landlord, made the provision.
Presently, as they sat side by side on the floor with his arm around her shoulders, she was talking freely. Phoenicians had scant concept of personal privacy. Also, while their women got more respect and independence than those of most societies, still, a little consideration on a man’s part went a long ways.
“- no, no betrothal yet for me, Eborix. I came to the city because my father is poor, with many other children to provide for, and it did not seem anybody in our tribe would ever ask my hand for his son. You wouldn’t possibly know of someone?” He himself, who would take her maidenhead, was debarred. In fact, her question bent the law that forbade prearrangement, as for example with a friend. “I have won standing in the palace, in truth if not in name. I wield some small power among servants, purveyors, entertainers. I have scraped together a dowry for myself, not large, but… but it may be the goddess will smile on me at last, after I have made this oblation -“