CHAPTER XII
The market of El-Ammeh was situated in the centre of the city. It was surrounded by a huddle of whitewashed houses, of varying heights and shapes, leaning one against the other, with here and there, over some high wall, a glimpse of greenery—the feathery head of a palm, the shiny leaves of a camphor tree, a pomegranate, an orange or a fig tree. On the side overlooking the square the houses were practically without windows, and the few there were were small and iron-barred.
Under most of the buildings were dim, cave-like shops hung with rare silks and ostrich feathers, or littered with articles in beaten silver, copper, and iron. There was quaint leatherwork and coarse pottery and a good sprinkling of European goods.
Several narrow, passage-like streets led into the square, entering it, in some cases, under dark archways. Sometimes these ways were barred to the mere public—the poorer people who daily sold produce in the square—and only those with special permits were allowed to enter: men of wealth and substance.
Every month a sale of slaves was held in the market, generally of Arab and negro girls; but occasionally something very different figured there—perhaps some black-haired, black-eyed, creamy beauty brought right across the Sahara from the Barbary States, a thousand miles away; or some half-caste girl from the Soudan, even further afield.
When this happened there were always plenty of buyers. Men of wealth flocked in from hundreds of miles around, for any skin lighter than brown was a rarity.
Within the last few weeks word had gone round the district, blown hither and thither in the desert, that a girl even more beautiful than those creamy beauties from the Barbary States was to be on sale at the next auction—a girl hailing from, Allah alone knew, what far land—Paradise, if her description were a true one. A girl with a skin white as milk, hair golden as the sunshine, and eyes of a blue deep as desert night; a maid, moreover, not another man's discarded fancy.
For days before the sale, as flies are drawn towards a honey-pot, the caravans of wealthy merchants came trickling in from the desert.
When the day itself arrived they hurried with their retinues to the square; some to buy, if possible; others, less wealthy, to see if the maid were as beautiful as report said.
On one side of the market square was a raised platform. From the house behind a room opened on it, a big, shadowy room, whitewashed and stone-flagged, with a barred window high up near the ceiling.
Into that room Pansy was taken by her escort in a curtained litter.
During the journey to the market she had had the sensation of moving in some ghastly nightmare from which she could not wake herself, much as she tried.
It could not be possible that she, Pansy Langham, the fêted and much-courted heiress, was to be sold as one might sell a horse or a cow.
She had the horrible feeling of having lost her own identity and taken on someone else's, yet all the time remembering what had happened when she was Pansy Langham. She felt she must have slipped back hundreds of years to some previous existence, when girls were sold as slaves; for surely this appalling fate could not be happening to her in the twentieth century?
A riot of thought ran through the girl's head during the journey from the palace to the market; a riot of numb, sickly terror, the outstanding feature of which was an inability to credit the fate before her.
When Pansy reached the room she gave up all hope. She knew she was awake—painfully, horribly wide awake, with a future before her that made her shudder to contemplate.
There were a dozen or more girls in the room, but they were railed off from Pansy by a thick wooden trellis, like sheep in a pen; brown and black girls, the majority attired in nothing more than a cloth reaching from waist to knee. They had been chattering shrilly among themselves at her entry, apparently in no way appalled at the fate before them; but they broke off when she came in, and crowded to the lattice to get a closer view, gazing at the newcomer and giving vent to little exclamations of awe and envy and admiration.
Pansy's arrival brought a stout, bearded man in white burnoose in from the house behind.
His glance ran over the English girl, but he made no attempt to touch her. Then he looked at her escort, who had stationed themselves on either side of her.
"By Allah!" he exclaimed. "This is a houri straight from Paradise you have brought me. Never have I sold such loveliness. There will be high bidding in the market of El-Ammeh this morning."
"I, for one, can't understand why the Sultan has not kept this pearl for himself," the leader of the escort said.
The auctioneer smiled in a peculiar, knowing fashion.
"Our Sultan has been in lands where there are many such," he replied. "Now he gives his subjects a chance to revel in delights that have been his."
Other men appeared from behind, negroes.
At a word from their master they opened the door leading out on the platform. Then they stood on either side whilst he passed through.
Through the open door came a blaze of sunshine, the buzz of a multitude, and presently a long declamation in Arabic as the auctioneer enlarged upon the quality of his wares.
The girls behind the trellis craned their necks to see what was going on, chattering shrilly among themselves.
From where Pansy stood she could see nothing. She did not want to see anything. The horror would be upon her quite soon enough.
One of the negro assistants opened a gate in the trellis and motioned to a girl. As she appeared on the platform, from outside there came a sigh of disappointment, then guttural voices bidding.
Another and another of the girls passed out, all apparently indifferent to the ordeal before them.
Then the auctioneer appeared on the threshold.
On seeing him Pansy felt her turn had come, and the world started reeling around her.
She knew she passed from shadow into sunshine, that dead silence greeted her appearance on the dais—a silence that was followed by a din of wild, excited shouting.
It seemed to her that the world was nothing but eyes: the eyes of a surging crowd of dark-faced men, watching her with desire and admiration.
To Pansy, high-bred and fastidious, it was a vision of hell, this swarm of wild men looking at her with covetous desire. The Pit gaped at her feet, peopled with demons, any one of which might spring upon her.
Then the din died down to a subdued hum as men whispered one to another, their eyes still on the golden-haired girl on the dais. There was a horrible sort of despair on the faces of some as they thought of their more wealthy neighbours; lustful triumph on the faces of others as they thought of their own hoarded gold.
For sale as a common slave at the Taureg auction block.....
Then out from the crowd a voice made an offer.
The sum staggered the auctioneer. It equalled nearly five hundred pounds of English money. No girl, even the creamy Barbary beauties, had ever fetched that amount.
Wild commotion followed. But the price went up and up, doubling itself in ten minutes.
To escape for a moment from the sea of covetous eyes, Pansy raised her own.
There was someone watching her from a window, someone who looked as tortured as herself—another soul condemned to hell.
It was a moment before she recognised that drawn, haggard face as her fathers; it looked an old man's. He was there, the father she loved, condemned by his enemy to see her sold.
She tried to smile. It was a woeful effort. And when the blur of tears that seeing him brought to her eyes had passed he was gone.
It seemed to Pansy that for an eternity she stood on the edge of the Pit, waiting until one of the devils, more powerful than the rest, should drag her in.
The din died down as the sale proceeded, lost in tense excitement. Of the twenty or more who had started bidding for her, only three were left now. One of them, mad with lust and excitement, had forced his way up to the edge of the dais and was clinging to it with grimy hands—a lean man in turban and loin-cloth only, with long matted hair and beard, who, foaming at the mouth, was cursing his competitors, yet always bidding higher as he stared at Pansy with the glare of a maddened beast.
Pansy tried not to see him, but he was always there, horrible beyond comprehension, the worst of the demons in the hell surrounding her.
Presently, over the murmur of the crowd, came the thunder of a horse's hoofs; of someone riding at breakneck speed through one of the resounding arches leading into the market.
Pansy did not notice this. She realised nothing now but the half-naked, foaming horror at her feet.
Suddenly another cry rang through the market-place.
Fortunately for Le Breton's plans Pansy knew no Arabic or she would have recognised that cry as:
"The Sultan! The Sultan!"
For Casim Ammeh had had his vengeance, and now had come in pursuit of love.
The cry grew to such a roar of sound that it penetrated the world of dumb terror in which Pansy moved, and made her raise her eyes.
The crowd in the square had opened up, giving way to a khaki-clad man on a huge, prancing black stallion.
Across the market-place tortured blue eyes met fiery black ones.
Then it seemed to Pansy that she must be dreaming—a vision of heaven beyond this hell.
For Raoul Le Breton was there, a god among these demons. Some figment of her own creating that must vanish as she gazed.
But he did not vanish.
He came closer, straight towards her, the crowd receding like a wave before him. Raoul Le Breton, looking more handsome, more arrogant, more of a king than ever; sitting his black horse like a centaur.
Pansy's hands went to her heart, and the world started spinning around her.
Like a knight of old, he had come to her rescue.
How he could have got there she was in no condition to consider. It was enough that he was there, in time to save her from the Pit of Hell gaping at her feet.
He rode ride up to the dais, reining in at her side.
With outstretched arms, he went towards her.
"Come, Heart's Ease, my own brave little girl, there's nothing to fear now," he said.
Swaying slightly, Pansy looked at him again as if he were some vision.
Then, for the first time in her life, she fainted.
With a little laugh of tender triumph, he caught her and lifted her on his horse.
As he turned to go, grimy, covetous hands clutched Pansy's skirts—the hands of the miser feather merchant.
With a savage oath, the Sultan raised his heavy riding whip and felled the defiler.
Then he rode off with Pansy.
But before this happened Sir George Barclay had been taken from the room overlooking the slave market. He did not see the Sultan Casim Ammeh come in person to save the girl. He did not know that, in Pansy's case, at any rate, the auction had been but a pretence.