Caravan To Xanadu

CHAPTER 6

TEMPTATION OF BEAUTY

When the morning broke I dressed in my best attire and called at the principal slave markets of the city. To the merchants, I advertised a virgin slave girl of great beauty, accomplished in music, dancing, and household arts, and priced at one thousand bezants. Although I was in no way bound to do so, myself having solved the easy puzzle, I did not reveal that she was an English girl, and gave out that she was a Germanic heathen from the great forest lands beyond the Oder River. My hearers were glad enough to let it go at that—too close inquiry into a slave’s origins often disclosed connections with Christianity embarrassing to buyer and seller alike. Actually, her secrecy troubled me more than I could justify to myself, as though it were of ominous cause.

Most of the traders threw up their hands at my price. Didn’t I know that this was their selling, not their buying, price for the most precious Circassians? So many blonde girls were being brought in from the mountains of Greater Armenia that the market was in danger of a glut! I would have thought this was mainly haggle if they had hastened to look at the property. As it was, no principal merchant and only half a dozen agents appeared in the course of the week.

During these inspections, Miranda’s behavior seemed above reproach. She stood with bowed head, answering the buyer’s questions in a low voice and with modest mien. It was their strange manner toward her that caused my anxiety. Every one took a cursory look at Miranda’s face, appeared cold to it, then kept glancing back. They appeared puzzled and quite strongly affected by it, with the one odd consequence of putting on their best manners. But they did not ask her to disrobe nor did they show any real eagerness to buy her.

A fine-looking Moor, buying for the Bey of Tripoli, heard of Miranda through some gossip, looked at her shyly, and offered six hundred bezants. I thought he could be persuaded to pay a good deal more, but for two reasons I did not now encourage him to do so. One of them was that I was no longer pressed for time. The rumor that a new Pope would be elected soon had caused the Polo brothers to delay their sailing at least an additional fortnight, by which time I hoped to see some competitive bidding. The other reason did no credit to a slave dealer with bounding ambition. If she were bought by a Moorish prince, she would certainly go into purdah—behind the harem curtain out of the world—and her least dream of freedom had better die to start with. The truth was that the English loved freedom with a passionate love.

There came to my mind a name Saul ben Simon had mentioned—Paulos Angelos. He had wanted to buy Miranda for a Thessalian duke, but she had balked. Inquiry revealed that he was a quiet-appearing Greek who supplied a few Saracens with fair-haired slaves, but whose main traffic was with the Christian noblemen and rich merchants in Eastern Europe. He was at present in Genoa, but I left word for him to call on me as soon as he returned.

About the twentieth night since Miranda’s arrival was a summer night. Although the month was still April, the soft breeze was the fag end of a hot wind off the Libyan desert, tired now from its journey across the Ionian Sea. I wakened sweating, and a flood of pale silver drew me to the window. The moon in the fullness of her reign was huge, gold-tinted, rising with great splendor over Homer’s wine-dark sea. The common run of stars dared not show themselves, but a few great lords of the host, of ancient right and glory, gleamed in their far-flung strongholds; and certain gods and goddesses who had lost their earth domains, such as fiery Mars, serene Venus, and august Jupiter, blazed their wandering way through the purple deeps.

How many mortal eyes looked up, wide with wonder, over this vast earth! On how many populous lands undreamed of in our geography did the stars look down!

Mustapha Sheik was a disciple of Ptolemy, the great Alexandrian of eleven hundred years before, who in turn had developed the theories of Eratosthenes, the ancient Greek who had proved, to Mustapha’s satisfaction, that the world was a sphere twenty thousand miles in circumference.^[7] Ptolemy’s great book almost forgotten in Europe and banned by the Church, had been translated into Arabic about the time of Harun al-Rashid; known as the Almagest, it ranked with the sacred Koran in the old man’s sight.

The way that ships went down and came up from the sea, and the shape of what must be the shadow of the world thrown sometimes on the moon, had convinced all thoughtful people that the world was spherical. Still, I was not able to grasp it—the idea of us humans walking about on the outside like a bee on a thrown ball even when the sphere was upside down addled my head. Although I had scoffed volubly at the vulgar view of the world’s being a disk, in the center of which lay the continent islands, surrounded by the Ocean Sea, truly it seemed the more reasonable of the two. Even so, I had come to realize a fact still barely glimpsed by many learned doctors of Padua—that the habitable world was many times as wide as exploration had shown.

Nicolo and Maffeo Polo’s journey had been up and down, around and about, yet they had dared estimate the crow-flight distance from Venice to Kublai Khan’s Court at six thousand miles. Great God, that was close to ten times the straight shoot to very England! To contemplate such a journey almost unjointed my backbone with ice-cold thrills.

My wild hopes and fears were interrupted by soft sounds in the anteroom to Mustapha’s chamber. Miranda had been wakened by the close warmth and was tiptoeing about, causing me to thrill with guilty excitement. Listening as sharply as a wolf and with wolfish wickedness, I perceived that she had gone to a narrow casement through which Mustapha often gazed to wonder and puzzle over that most constant of all the heavenly host, Polaris, the North Star.

Imagining her there, gazing toward England, redeemed me. My heart warmed, I made my stealthy way into the passage, where, by drawing a curtain, I had clear sight of her in the flooding moonlight. She was wearing a knee-length shift ghostly in the silver luminance. In all the windows of the moon’s gazing there was no other shape so lovely and so wistful. Of all the beautiful textures on which the bright beams fell, the silks and satins of night-frolicking lords and ladies, the plumage of birds, and the deep soft fur of sables in the cold forest, none was as beautiful as her flaxen hair.

I called her name softly, so as not to frighten her. She turned and looked at me and I had a sense almost of enchantment.

“Would you like to be steering by those stars on the northward course?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I’ve come too far and seen too much ever to go back.”

“Even in England can you find the North Star by the pointers in the Great Bear?”

“The Great Bear? Do you mean Charlemagne’s Wagon? We children used to call it the Big Dipper. Long ago.”

“It’s a clear and wonderful night, Miranda. Would you like to go boating?”

She hesitated, a faint and dreamy smile curling her lips.

“I would like to,” she answered at last, “and if it’s my fate, I will.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I’ll be like the Mussulmans from now on—the bravest of them. I’ll fight for what I want, but whether I win or lose, I’ll look my fate in the face.”

I had her put on a cloak over her bare arms and unstockinged legs in case we were seen by ramblers. Then we crept away to a light gondola belonging to a rich neighbor and free to our use. I at the long oar, she seated queenly in the cabin, we slid across the silver sheen of the lagoon.

If we were looking for privacy, it was everywhere. The curfew had rung long since, the watch kept to the alleys and the canals, and the ships slept at their anchor ropes like tethered camels on the desert. When I dropped my iron in five fathoms, we could expect a mermaid to come alongside sooner than a mortal and all sight of our boat was lost in shimmering moonlight. I came and sat beside my English girl.

“It was a short journey,” she remarked.

“That’s because you didn’t pull an oar.”

“It may save you from going on a much longer journey.”

“Is it your fate to say that?”

“I said it, so it must be. I wouldn’t think that Fate would bother about little things, but perhaps she must. I said it to be fair with you. The moonlight—and the silence—and you and I away from everyone might make you forget what’s best for you. Or what you think is best for you.”

“What do you think?”

“It would be best for you to take me and keep me.”

“How would I get to the Court of Kublai Khan?”

“We would get there somehow.”

“We? I can’t believe it. What’s the next best thing?”

“To take me, keep me a while, and then sell me for a dairymaid as I told you.”

“What’s the advantage of that? I couldn’t sell you for half what I need.”

“Perhaps your greatest need is for me. I feel in my bones that’s true. And if you sell me for a farm wench, you may be able to buy me back when you find out the truth. Maybe I’ll have had a stable-boy lover, or even the householder, but they won’t have hurt me any. If I disappear in a great house, you can never find me again. If you could, perhaps we would both be so ashamed——”

“I don’t understand you, Miranda.”

“Why should you, Marco?”

“Who ever heard of a slave calling her master by his Christian name?”

“You’ve made free with my lips and tongue. Mine can at least make free with your Christian name.”

“Why shouldn’t I understand you? Women are known to be of more shallow mind——”

She laughed loudly and heartily and had to wipe her eyes.

“Besides that,” I went on, “I’m not sure you’re not a downright liar”

“What lies have I told?”

“It was at least an evasion when you said your native island was somewhat larger than the Rialto.”

I could see no advantage, and perhaps some disadvantage, in thus prompting her to talk about her home and childhood, yet I could not resist doing so.

“It wasn’t as big an evasion as you think. My home was an island separated by a narrow strait from the English coast. It’s not as cold as most of England. It almost never snows there. Many birds stay all winter. The water is quite warm.”

“Are the people mostly fair—like you?”

“They were originally Jutes—a very blond people from what is now Denmark. But we’re all English now, even the dark Cornish.”

“In what kind of house did you live?”

“A small house—compared to my cousins’ by the brook. It’s a long way from here—and the years are long. The girl who lived there—the one you asked about—must have died and been buried at sea.”

“I take you in her stead—my slave girl Miranda. And since I took a great risk in obtaining you, it may be I’ll enjoy you as much as I can, short of marring your value.”

Except for a slight lowering of her head, she made no answer.

“I bid you lie across my lap, your breast against mine.”

The awkwardness of her arriving at the position, if it were not pretense, indicated that it was new to her. I remarked as much.

“It’s quite new, my lord,” she told me when she was settled.

“I would have thought the swains in England would have taught it to you.”

“They were great hobbledehoys smelling of beef and mutton, not subtle Venetians. Sometimes they caught me, but a little wriggling set me free. Sometimes we played kiss-in-the-ring and sometimes I gave one of them a kiss under the mistletoe. But my grandam kept watch of me when we went into the woods amaying.”

The trouble with me was, I could see her in those woods. She was thirteen or fourteen, her movements still a little childlike, her eyes busy with flowers, her hands quick to pick them, her basket already brimming. Before that, I could see her at grave play with a doll, or eating with her spoon, or in rosy sleep. She had a little bed, and a roof over her head against the rain. There were people around her, some of whom had loved her greatly, although there was one who loved gold more. It was one whom she trusted to protect her against all enemies. She did not know of his great passion or, more likely, some great need. Perhaps his dearest dream hung on the obtainance of five hundred pieces of gold.

Strange men came to the door. They looked at her and signs passed between them and her father. She was not afraid, only a little uneasy. Then there came a night that he took her with him out into the darkened harbor. They were making for a boat with lateen sails. . . .

I must stop these flights of fancy. I had the strange feeling that they were more dangerous to me than her perfumed body in my arms.

2

“There’s something I should tell you, before we kiss,” I said.

“Yes, lord.” Miranda leaned back a little, as though to give my words her full attention.

“A famed slave dealer who’s been out of the city is returning tomorrow. I think he’ll want to look at you on the following day.” She nodded her head slightly. “I think you’ve seen him at least once. He’s a Greek by the name of Paulos Angelos.”

“I did see him, and I was wondering when I’d see him again. I noticed that you marked his name when Saul mentioned it.”

“Saul said you managed to prevent his buying you.”

“I won’t again. If I’m to become a rich man’s plaything, I’d rather have him place me—that is the word used—than any other merchant. I think he takes more pains to satisfy his clients than any other. The more satisfied my owner is with me, the better I’ll be treated.”

“Under those conditions, perhaps we’d better not kiss at all.”

“It’s for you to say, my lord.”

“You know nothing of love-making, do you?”

“Only what I’ve heard—and what you’ve already shown me.”

“Do you think some slight knowledge might be an advantage to you, when you go on sale?”

“I don’t read your riddle.”

“Your great innocence, showing in your face, gives the impression of coldness. I think if you were once awakened to the ecstasies of love, that would not be true. There’s no doubt that such a wakening changes the expression on a maiden’s face. I’m sure the merchants would pay more for you—they have a sixth sense, you know—and you would be more responsive to young, virile buyers who come to look at you.”

“It’s a very good argument, Marco. But isn’t the wish father to the thought?”

“It may be. If so, why shouldn’t I act on the wish itself? I have a feeling you’ll soon be gone. I would like to have something to remember you by—and what could be as sweet as a night of love? Since I’ll be on guard against it, no harm will be done.”

“It’s in your charge, Marco my master.”

The use of both addresses thrilled me. They seemed to mean that tonight I could be both her lover and her lord. But since the moon, the tide, the gentle ripples, and all the rhythms of the night were unhurried, I could afford to stay still awhile, just to look at her. I had never known joy of exactly this kind and degree.

Her beauty was such strange beauty to us brunet dwellers on the Mediterranean shores. I had seen young girls from the Piemonte with slight bodies, spare, lovely molding of flesh over delicate bones, and with almost these same tints of hair, eyes, and skin—still, they had not looked like Miranda. Not to cool my head so much as to prolong this introduction to the feast, I tried to measure her uniqueness and guess at the explanation.

Her general type was no doubt more common in England than in the other Northern realms. Mustapha had told me that the blood of the English people had been richly mixed. The blond and dark strains of ancient Britain had been well stirred before the Romans came; later the golden Angles and Saxons and the red Jutes and Danes had been baked in the pie; and only two centuries ago came the Normans, who were none else than Northmen settled and interbred with the more ancient dwellers of Northern Gaul. But above and beyond all this was the reflection in her face and form of a unique self; and I dreamed that a strange fate had brought it to flower. It was a flower of different loveliness than any I had ever seen. Its seed had not fallen in the garden of its ancestral kind but had been blown upon rough ground. I thought of it as having the beauty of a lone star on a lonesome night.

Adoration of it caused me to remove her cloak and unlace the strings at her throat so that I could slip her shift down from her shoulders and expose her bosom. I made her help me pull off my shirt so that my chest was likewise bare. For a while I was entranced by the sight alone of her milk-white skin against mine more dark, the small steep hills barely touching my chest as I held her out a little for my wonder-struck viewing, the narrow shoulders almost straight from the slim base of her throat, their joining with her arms, and her small, luminous head with its beautiful face all revealed by the glimmering moon. If ever eyes were charmed, they were mine.

I drew her closer to me and held her in my arms. I could not compare my joy to the joy taken by a connoisseur in a wonderful jewel, because jewels were not warm. I had known my big chest as an abode of emotion—the place where the breath stopped at times, or was wildly drawn, and the heart fainted, swelled, ached, thumped—but not as a seat of sensation. Now her slightest movement against it thrilled it through and through. Her young breasts became taut and their slight yielding against hard bone and muscle gave me exquisite pleasure that only a clod would not perceive and love. Her nipples drew erect and firm as her breathing brushed them a little back and forth, and their slow, involuntary caressing of my chest became a sensation almost too exquisite to endure.

Her lips had parted a little in her happiness, and I bent and kissed them. She was quietly happy, it seemed; I was wildly so. But this difference between us became a cloud in my own high sky. It was of the thin but shadow-casting stuff that jealousy is made of; and there is no bliss so unstable as that of carnal love, which can change a man in one moment from his best to his most base.

“Did you take pleasure in my kiss?” I asked.

“Be still.”

I could not heed her. I owned her body and mind. I was jealous because I did not own her soul.

“I bid you tell me.”

Very slowly she drew back.

“Why not? Swains and maidens have taken pleasure in the like since time began, and older folk as well. Your lips are firm but not rough and you smell clean. What more can a slave girl ask?”

“Are you happy to be here, or do you wish to go back?”

“I’m happy to be here. Your caresses are sweet and I hope you’ll give me more, for what have I to lose? If I were a free girl and you an English swain whom I favored, I wouldn’t tell you so, at least in this free way. I’d say and do only enough to make you persist. So it would seem that slavery has freed my tongue at least—but it’s not true. The truth is, I’m not free to be silent. I must answer my master’s questions and tell the secrets that are a woman’s right and strength.”

“Tonight will you treat me as though you’re free? Give what you like, withhold as much as you please?”

“It’s impossible, and anyway you’ve no right to ask it. The people at home have a saying—a very old one—that fits the case. You can’t have your cates and eat them too.” Cates were sugared breads made in England.

“Do you mean that if I take your favors, you can’t give them?”

“A slave has none to give. They are already forfeit.”

Straightway I was delivered from an evil as though I had prayed, and my heart leaped in joy. I kissed her soft lips again with intense pleasure, but I did not ask her to reciprocate or to make any kind of an answer. Perhaps she took this for the kind of fairness that English people like, and wanted to reward it. At least the lingering tension went out of her body as it nestled against mine.

As I fed with deepening hunger at her warming mouth, she was being instructed by another master. Her lips rounded out with the surge of her own blood, and the changes in her glowing eyes revealed the ebb and flow of her maiden passion. And I, a liberal Venetian, would teach her the arts of love.

“I didn’t know that wooers——” she began when she had held her breath a long time.

“Don’t English swains woo their sweethearts in that way?” I asked.

“No, they are too bashful. And it’s a good thing they don’t, because a peasant youth might prevail over a daughter of the manor.”

I had thought for a moment that she was jesting and this might change the scene. Truly she was not guilty even of a childish artifice. The magic grew apace. Soon I had lowered her shift until its top was around her waist, and the tapered slimness there caused it to hang loose in enthralling invitation.

“Wait, my lord,” she said, holding my hand.

“If you like.”

“Perhaps you can do all you desire, but I’ll not be the same.”

“I spoke of that, and allowed for it,” I said.

“Will you be the same? I ask the question in my need.”

“Do you mean that we may fall in love with each other?”

“If we did, what would happen?”

“I’d leave you your virginity—as it’s counted in the market place—and sell you for a thousand pieces of gold.”

She let go of my hand. “I suppose that’s all I need to know.”

“Didn’t you know it before? I thought I’d told you. If not in those same words——”

“You did tell me, but tonight I’d begun to doubt it. I thought it would not be easy for you to let me go. You seemed so happy in making me happy.”

“Since I’ve already given my heart, it must be the imitation of love. Still, I’ll act as though it were real as long as the game lasts. Let your robe fall.”

“Why not? I must do so for any buyer in the market. What may a slave expect but imitation love—imitation life?”

For the first time in my hearing her voice was slavelike, and so was the expression on her face. With downcast eyes and mechanical motions she slipped off the garment and hung it over the gunwale. To do this last she emerged from the partial shadow of the canopy into the moonlight.

Then a change came over her, arresting my attention. It was the effect of some swift revival of her spirit, but what had caused it I did not know. Perhaps the change was merely the sight of her body, pearllike in hue almost to the semblance of iridescence, slight, beautifully feminine, but intimating a kind of strength no man can attain or understand. She did not withdraw into the shadow: I thought she was too proud. Her head raised, her face lifted, her eyes seemed to be seeking some beacon in the sky.

“I told you I’m a good walker,” she said quietly. “I didn’t tell you I’m a good swimmer, too. I wouldn’t be here if I weren’t.” She turned to me, unashamed of either me or herself. “Follow me, Marco. Keep pace with me if you can. The imitation of love is only lust, and we’ll drown it in the sea.”

3

In Miranda’s manifold aspects of beauty, there was none more telling than these glimpses of her whiteness in the dark, moonlit sea. At her strokes its sheen broke into myriad gleamings. She swam as serenely as a heron flies.

I could not remember when I could not swim. My mates had played in and out of the canals as children in dry-land cities play in and out of the streets. Stronger of limb, I could easily overtake her present gait, but I wondered if I could keep pace with her in a long jaunt. I was a splasher and a thruster, while she appeared to insinuate herself through the heavy water with mermaid ease. For the moment I did not accept her challenge and kept to her silver wake. Her rhythmic movements delighted my eyes.

Gaining slowly, I drew within ten feet of her. Then I became aware of a little something wrong, a flaw in the perfection of the adventure, which I had not yet identified. It was a common experience with me to feel a fall of spirits before discovering its cause. Suddenly my gaze riveted on Miranda’s right foot. I saw clearly now what I had seen inattentively for several seconds—a black mark on the white sole. It was of crescent shape and in better light would be blood-red.

Stroking a little faster, I slowly gained until I came abreast of my companion. Thus she had ceased to be my slave in a single moment in this still dim world of moonlight and wide waters; and her half-glimpsed nakedness did not mean what it had meant before. I had thought to forget the dreadful mark, but instead it wrought upon me with greater force; it too had a different meaning for me, deeper and more portentous. It took the center of my mind. I began to perceive that it was the central fact of the present situation; because of it, this was not merely a moonlight adventure, but what I believed was a stroke of fate. The journey was not an aimless one—Miranda and I were bound for somewhere.

My mind and heart open to mystery, no longer afraid to confess it, I caught the signal of Fate in the shriek of a sea gull. It was not a common sound at this late hour and I searched for the bird in the dim sky, wondering at its trouble. I did not find it, but I found a shadow on the water some fifty fathoms distant. Emerging from reverie, I recognized it as an islet, not more than two acres in extent, known to shipping by the unromantic name of Sea Pig’s Wallow. Sea pigs were of course porpoise; perhaps a dying porpoise had been stranded in a shoal here before the land rose. This could have happened a century ago; the silt from the rivers built slowly but surely, and the very Rialto was its handiwork. Sea Pig’s Wallow was a mile or so off the ship lanes, and since it appeared to be only a reed bank common along these shores, it was as forsaken by human kind as a barren reef in mid-ocean. But if gulls were nesting there—which I now believed—it must have solid ground.

“Let’s try to land,” I said.

She did not reply at once, only swam toward the islet. When the water shoaled to waist-deep she found firm footing on the weedy bottom and turned and faced me.

“Is that a command?” she asked.

“No. You can take it as a request.”

“We’re already hidden from the world, and there we can’t hide from each other.”

“I don’t want to any more.”

“Then what will we find there, Marco?”

“Maybe I’ll find truth. That’s what I want—and need. Until I do, I can’t set a course.”

“The truth of—what?”

“Who you are. Why you are a slave. What the brand is that you wear.”

“I told you those were my secrets——”

“I want to know them. I think it is for your good as well as mine.”

“There are no buyers here—and I am naked.”

“That will help me to find the truth. I can never find it by hiding from temptation. Are you afraid?”

“No. I once was brought onto a ship deck nearly naked. I was afraid then, and with full cause, and after that——”

She stopped because her throat filled, but she continued to look at me with tear-filled eyes.

“Do you want me to promise——?”

“No. I’ll ask for nothing that’s not my due as a slave. It was the agreement I made.”

I led the way to a beach of well-packed silt; then there was knee-high grass as soft as meadow clover. Gulls rose in pale flocks, shrieking their protests at our invasion. Miranda followed me, glimmering in the moonlight.

“Sit down, Miranda,” I instructed her.

She bowed her head and obeyed. I sat within a few feet of her. Almost at once the gulls began to settle. Their harsh complaints died away, and soft squeakings, as of many knives being whetted, made a continuous murmur all over the island.

“What island did you come from, Miranda?”

“Will you never tell anyone as long as I’m a slave? Otherwise I can’t remember.”

“I swear it by San Marco. I think I know the answer this far. The Isle of Wight.”

“I didn’t tell you, did I? I have such strange dreams——”

“What you said would give a clue to anyone who had studied geography. The people there were Jutes originally, it is warmer than most of England, snow is almost unknown, and birds stay all year. But the strait isn’t very narrow; in fact it’s broad enough for Wight to be a real island instead of part of the mainland cut off by a salt creek. Since you don’t look like a daughter of any Englishman I’ve seen, that helped me guess.”

“It’s the most beautiful island in the world, I truly believe. You should see the sea cliffs and the Four Needles—they are limestone towers—with the gales buffeting them.”

The moon showed me a slight change in her face. I thought that her eyes were glowing and her smile was wistful. Anyway, she was more beautiful than before—but that was always true.

“Why did you leave there, Miranda?”

“It would be very hard to tell you, Marco.”

“I want you to try. The guess I made may not be right.”

“Your other guess was right. Perhaps this one is.”

“I hope it isn’t. I thought that your father—perhaps your step-father or someone not so close to you—had sold you into slavery.”

“Then why should I keep secret my name and abode and all the rest?”

“Because you were ashamed.”

“You guessed wrong, master.”

“Will you tell me the truth of it? The whole truth?”

“I’ll try. No one in Christendom knows it, and until now no Christian has cared. I didn’t tell Simon or Saul because they would have wanted to act on it through the English Jews. They would have used persuasions hard for me to resist. I want to tell you, although it’s harder than you can believe, partly because I shut it away from myself—buried it in a grave. It’s quite true that when I was reminded of it, it seemed to have happened to someone else, not to me. But tonight something more has happened. I don’t fully know what it is—partly it was being in your arms in the boat—and now this, our coming out of the water onto this little island, with no thought of being ashamed. I think that the imitation of love has been drowned in the sea.”

“I think real love has taken its place,” I answered.

“It will die too soon to be real. But for this hour it’s taken us out of the world and somehow away from evil. Yes, I can tell you, and I thank my saints, and forgive me if I cry.”

“Begin at the beginning.”

“My name is Marian Redvers. My father is Sir Hugh Redvers, and his grandfather was the younger son of Richard de Redvers, to whom the first Henry gave the island and great Castlebrook. Isabella de Fortibus, who holds it now, is my cousin and god-mother. But the manor that my father held in fief was not large, and when he bore arms against the King under Simon de Montfort’s banner it was revoked by royal command. Since he was attainted for fighting on after Evesham, the lands were not returned in the Baron’s Peace, and he had only enough gold to clothe his back and obtain for my brother Godfrey an esquireship to the Earl of Devon. So I had no dower, and I loved my father and my brother beyond all counting.”

That was simple enough, I was thinking; there was nothing amazing about it. Not very rich knights were continually losing their all in their liege lords’ quarrels; little maids commonly gave immeasurable love to their fathers and brothers. But my heart raced and I was breathless with suspense.

“My mother’s sister was married to a French merchant of Bayonne,” Miranda went on. “She invited me to come and live with her, promising I would make a good marriage. The ship was attacked by Saracen pirates in the Bay of Biscay, and was rammed and sunk. A few sailors were picked up, but no other passengers. I was saved because I could swim well and had thrown off almost all my clothes. I was taken to Malaga and sold to an Arab who owed money to Haran-din. And if you’re satisfied, we’ll swim back to the boat.”

“Don’t lose heart, Miranda, or faith.”

“You can sell me and forget me more easily——”

“That’s my part. Your part is to speak on.”

“When the pirates brought me aboard their boat, they looked at me and thought I was too skinny to bring very much in the slave market—they themselves liked plump girls. But one of their number believed I was of high birth, so they decided to hold me for ransom.”

She stopped and her throat worked. I saw it in the moonlight.

“Go on, Miranda,” I said.

“You can guess it now.”

“I want you to tell me. I guessed so wrong before.”

“There’s very little more. They asked me my father’s name and abode, and I wouldn’t tell them.”

“Why not?” But I knew too well. I only wanted to hear her way of telling me.

“My father was descended from Richard de Redvers, lord of the Isle of Wight, who had fought bravely for Henry I and won his love and favor. My brother was the last of the true de Redvers blood and should have been lord of Castlebrook and Wight—and he will be someday. And both were worthy of my love. Both would have beggared themselves to save my virginity from the Infidel.”

“Now that’s plain enough,” I said, looking at Miranda while she looked away across the glimmering waters. “But the Saracens wouldn’t take kindly to your closed lips.”

“No, they didn’t.”

“So they tried to open them with iron.”

“Not in my mouth. This iron would have burned it. If they couldn’t get ransom, they must get what they could for me in the slave market. They tried where the burn wouldn’t show when I stood on the block.”

“You were all alone on their ship?”

“The English sailors were in irons below the deck. They kept shouting ‘Saint George! Saint George!’ to encourage me. The whipper couldn’t stop them.”

“None of the sailors knew your name or where you came from?”

“Not one. I was so glad. I think the least of them would have died rather than tell if I’d asked it. The English are hard and cruel but they can hold a course.”

“Why did the Saracens stop?” I knew this, too.

“They believed that they would only disfigure me for nothing.”

“Were they right or wrong?”

“I can’t tell. My prayers were answered and I was spared. It’s been more than a year now. My father and brother have said Mass for my soul and never doubt that I was lost at sea.”

“How do you know?”

“I have dreamed it many a night and it came to me truly just tonight, when I heard the swans flying north. That was what wakened me and brought me to the window. They were going to England.”

Although I had been awake and at the window, I had not heard the swans. Perhaps Miranda had heard their wild, strange singing only in her dreams. That would not impugn its being a sign.

“You didn’t mention your mother.”

“I lost her, as you did yours, when I was little. She’ll weep in Heaven at my becoming a slave, but she’ll know——”

Miranda turned her face from me, but not in time to hide the tears flooding her eyes. As I came to her to kiss them away, she sprang up and ran down to the beach and into the still water. There came back to me her voice, low-pitched, lovely, and strange in the whist of the night.

“Forgive me for crying. This was a bridal night—and it’s over.”