One for Sorrow

Chapter Twenty-four

The sight of a raven feasting on a discarded fish head in the street delighted Berta.

“Look, Darius.” She tugged at the sleeve of the Persian’s tunic, pulling his attention away from the fish vendor’s stall. “Isn’t he wonderful? His wings are all shiny, just like a new coin. We had lots of ravens in the country when I was growing up. They used to call from the pines at sunrise.”

“You can’t get better fish than this!” interrupted the vendor. “Buy my freshly landed fish, and feast better than Justinian!”

“They look old to me,” Darius told him.

The raven took wing, apparently disturbed by a scrap of a woman who seemed to be scanning the ground for something lost. Berta watched as the bird rose above the crosses on the rooftops with a few beats of its powerful wings, fish head clutched securely in its talons.

Then she looked back at the vendor waving away the droning flies settling on his wares. “Fresh as country ladies, these fish are!” he protested. “Cheap at half the price.”

Shoppers near his stall had begun to move away.

“You, girl!” the vendor barked, addressing the thin, raggedly dressed woman. “How’d you like a free fish or two? You won’t find the likes of these fine wares laying about on the cobbles.”

“Sir?” The ragged woman sounded bewildered at her sudden good fortune. She was clutching some soiled crusts of bread.

“Yes, you,” the man said gruffly. “Being as there’s some think my fish is no good, I’d prefer to give it away to some poor soul who deserved it than offend their dainty nostrils. Here, take this.”

To the watching Berta’s amazement, the vendor handed the woman one of his larger fish, waving away her tearful gratitude. She was even more amazed when, seemingly impressed by the generous gesture, several hitherto reluctant customers suddenly decided to buy his wares, pressing coins into the kind vendor’s grasp.

Darius put his big hand on Berta’s shoulder, urging her to follow. As she started to turn away she heard the vendor’s low growling, “You!” He spoke to the ragged woman. The last satisfied customer had moved well away out of earshot. “I’ll have that back or the urban watch will hear about it!” the vendor threatened.

Berta looked on in distress as the woman surrendered the fish. Weeping as she walked away aimlessly, she bumped into Berta.

Berta directed language at the vendor which was as ripe as his fish.

The man laughed. “So now I should be taking advice from a little whore? You’ve no right to talk! I’ll come over tonight and see if you’ll accept some of these coins I’ve earned!”

“Don’t mind him, lady. How can there be such coarse people in a Christian city?” The woman’s voice shook. Her clothing made a stark contrast to Berta’s fine green tunic. “A lady like you shouldn’t be walking about in this part of the city, even if you have brought your servant.” She put her hands up to her face and began to sob.

Berta put her arm around the woman’s shoulder, feeling how thin she was. “You can’t let bastards like that see you weep. It just makes them all the happier. Why are you scavenging for food anyway? Don’t you have a friend, a lover?”

“I have a husband, lady.”

“But where is he? Doesn’t he work?”

“Of course he works! He works very hard, only a few days ago he was injured and now — well — I have prayed to our Lord day and night, yet they say my Sabas might not live.”

“Sabas? That is your husband’s name? And what’s yours?”

“Maera.”

“I am Berta. And so, Maera, you have no money and now you must beg? I can find you work.”

“Work? For you, lady?”

“Well, actually I am not exactly a lady,” Berta admitted, somewhat reluctantly, “At least not the sort you seem to mean. And this work, it would be the same sort that I do.”

“I am not afraid of any work the Lord might send, however hard it is.”

Berta giggled, her spirits restored by the prospect of helping the woman. “Oh, it isn’t really hard work at all. And you get to meet some really nice people, people from the palace even. Some of the tales they tell would make a monkey laugh.”

“This work you speak of, what exactly is it?”

Berta detected the note of caution in the woman’s voice. “It’s very respectable, despite what some people say. Nothing to be ashamed of. I’ve been assured as much by men who work for the emperor himself.”

Maera looked at her in sudden horror. “The man was telling the truth, wasn’t he? You work in one of those houses!”

“I work at Madam’s, yes, just as I have since I came to the city. And a good life it’s been, too.”

“But have you no family?”

Berta paused. Hadn’t she asked this poor woman the same question? “The girls I work with are my family,” she finally said. “I know that it seems unthinkable right now but I could introduce you to Madam, and perhaps she would offer you work.”

Maera shrugged off the comforting hand on her shoulder. “Never! I would as soon be dead!”

“We all say that but in the end we would rather live. It’s not so bad, really. An occasional rough visitor, of course, but we have nothing to worry about. There are guards, we are safe. It’s not like being on the street, at the mercy of any passerby. Why don’t you at least come along with me and meet Madam, see what you think when you have spoken to her? She’s a real lady. You’d be a pretty thing with a little makeup. You’d do well, I’m sure.”

Maera shook her head vehemently and stepped away.

“And what of your husband? My family was starving too, but my father was able to buy oxen with the money he got for me and-“

“Oxen? Your father sold his child for oxen?”

“Well, you can always make more children but you can’t make an ox, just like Madam says.”

Maera whirled around and began walking away.

Berta darted after her. “Think about it, my friend. We come to the market often, Darius and I. You can find us here most mornings if you change your mind. At least take these.” She pressed a few coins into a reluctant hand. “It will get you through a day or two.”

“No, I can’t.”

“You must, for Sabas’ sake.”

Maera trembled but her fingers closed over the coins.

***

Maera stood and watched Darius and Berta move off along the row of stalls. The coins clutched in her hand burned like glowing embers.

The fish vendor, who had been looking on with great interest, called over to her. “Buy my fish, lady? Good for your husband, especially if he is not well. Why, I’ll even toss in an extra couple of small ones, just as a thank you for your help.”

Maera glared at him. Though without words to express what she felt, her expression was eloquent enough. It seemed to sting the vendor more than Berta’s coarse diatribe.

“Yes, well, my fine lady, it won’t be too long before you’re serving yourself up at some house or other,” he jeered, “and then we’ll see how fine you stay. I’ll be looking for you, and then you’ll be singing a different sort of tune. Now take your miserable face away before you scare my customers off.”

Gathering her dignity about her, Maera walked slowly away past stalls offering vegetables, barrels of olives, piping hot loaves, poultry of all sorts. With the coins in her hand, on this one morning she could buy whatever she and Sabas wanted. Then she thought of how they had been earned. Were they a gift from the Lord, or a temptation sent by Satan?

“Oh, God,” she prayed as she picked her way across the refuse-strewn cobbles, “show us a way to get out of this terrible place, where nobody cares for anything but money and people have no shame about selling themselves to strangers.” She did not add, “and where whores have more charity than their betters,” although, when she thought it, she supposed God must have heard that part anyway.

She was still aware of the weight of the coins in her hand as she passed the last stall in the market and noticed a beggar sitting hunched over at the mouth of an alleyway. At least that was how she characterized the emaciated, ill-clothed man, though he was no thinner or more ragged than she was herself.

She stopped in front of him and his bony hand moved slightly, automatically opening in supplication.

“I could never accept these if I had got them the way they were earned,” Maera said, as much to herself as to the beggar, “but I came by them honestly and so do you.” She stooped slightly to place a coin or two into his leathery hand.

Without looking up, the man rasped something. It could have been thanks or a curse.

Maera walked away, lighter in spirit, thanking her inscrutable God for giving her the opportunity to help another unfortunate.