"Liar!" Besma shrieked, twisting like a python and redoubling her efforts to get out from Ishmael's grasp. "Filthy pig liar!"
"My son is a good boy," al Khalifa insisted. "He would never do such a thing. And I've seen the little slave wench wriggling her ass in front of the boys whenever she had the chance. It's obvious what happened; that he's telling the truth."
"You fucking cunt! You liar! You bitch-whore-slut-twat! You cocksucking, manipulative, vicious tramp!"
Abdul Mohsem's eyes widened in shock. He'd never imagined his dear Besma even knew such words.
"Father," Besma nearly wept, "she beats Petra all the time for no reason, beats her like an animal and for no reason. She put her stinking bastard of a son up to this; I know she did."
"Nonsense," al Khalifa insisted, her chin rising haughtily. "I maintain discipline in the household, as the hadiths insist I must."
"There must be a trial," Abdul Mohsem announced. In truth, he simply didn't want to get in the middle of a domestic dispute if he could dump the responsibility elsewhere. "Let the judges decide where the truth lies."
Besma wept alone, seated in the back of the courtroom. In the front, fully draped and in chains, Petra was even more alone. Even so, she did not weep. Tears were, for the nonce, beyond her.
"The law is very clear," the turbaned judge explained patiently, and even perhaps a little sadly. "We have one Nazrani female, not even a woman yet by their reckoning but still we will give her testimony the full weight of a woman, under ours, and even of a woman of the faithful. That is to say, we have one half of a story claiming rape without provocation.
"On the other hand, we have three males, all of whom agree that there was no rape, that the slave threw herself upon them. Each of these witnesses counts fully. Thus, by a weight of six to one, the testimony is that the rape, if it was a rape, is the fault of the slave girl. This is corroborated by the testimony of the woman, al Khalifa, that the slave girl did not even cry out until the supposed rape was over. Not even the slave's own words refute that."
The judge opened a heavy volume and began to read, verbatim: "If I came across a rape crime, I would discipline the man and order that the woman be jailed for life . . . because if she had not left the meat uncovered, the cat wouldn't have snatched it.
"If you get a kilo of meat, and you don't put it in the fridge or in the pot or in the kitchen but you leave it on a plate in the backyard, and then you have a fight with the neighbor because his cats eat the meat, you're crazy. Isn't this true?" The judge looked up for confirmation. All the men present nodded their heads with the wisdom.
Continuing, the judge said, "If you take uncovered meat and put it on the street, on the pavement, in a garden, in a park, or in the backyard, without a cover and the cats eat it, then whose fault will it be, the cats', or the uncovered meat's? The uncovered meat is the disaster. If the meat was covered the cats wouldn't roam around it. If the meat is inside the fridge, they won't get it."
The judge cleared his throat, then looked left and right for agreement from his two co-judges.
"It is the judgment of this court that the slave girl, Petra bint Minden, shall be taken from this court to the pens reserved for slaves for sale, that she be auctioned next Friday to the highest bidder. That the proceeds from that sale shall go first to the court's fees, then to her current owner, Abdul Mohsem. As for the boy, Fudail, who suffered injury in the attack by Abdul Mohsem's daughter Besma, we judge that no recompense is due him and further adjudge that he and his two friends, Hanif and Ghalid, shall each receive thirty lashes on the soles of their feet—"
At this patent injustice al Khalifa gasped with indignation.
The judge sneered. "And if you interrupt this court again, woman, you shall be next in line for lashes after your son and his friends."
"They won't even let me see her," Besma wailed to her father.
"I gave those orders," Abdul Mohsem said. "It would do neither of you any good to be together again."
The Moslem girl's eyes flashed with anger. "We will be together again, father. I love her like my own child and I will not be separated from her."
"You will never see her again."
"Let me tell you something, father," Besma said, her voice very firm and sure. "If you do not go and buy her back, bidding against yourself if necessary, you will never have a moment's peace out of me." Besma turned away, went to the bookshelf, and withdrew Abdul Mohsem's prized Koran. This she held flat in her left hand, placing her right above it. "This I swear, father. If Petra is not returned here and freed— Do you hear me? Freed!—I shall become the greatest whore in the province, a greater whore even than that vicious slut you wed. I will bring shame to our clan that will last until the final generation. There will be no cave deep enough to—"
Of its own accord Abdul Mohsem's hand lashed out, slapping his daughter across the mouth with a force hard enough to spin her to the floor. "I am your father and you will be silent."
Besma smiled through her pain. "You can silence me now, father. Do you not think my voice will carry when I writhe in heat under slaves and stable boys? Bring me back my friend!"
"It will not happen!"
Again, listening from around a corner, al Khalifa thought, Perfect.
There was really nothing in Islam to prevent a slave from owning a slave. Shamsuddin Iltutmish, for example, a sultan, had been the slave of a slave. Thus, Ishmael, armed with the money Besma and Petra had saved towards Petra's freedom, went to the slave barracks not far from the crooked tower.
"Please buy her, Ishmael," Besma had begged, pressing the coins into his hands. "Buy her so that we can free her. Don't let what is planned for her happen. She's too pretty. You know what they'll sell her to be."
He'd agreed, of course. He'd never really been able to deny Besma anything. And when she'd said, "I would give you my body for your enjoyment, if you thought you could make use of it," his heart had melted.
"I will try," he'd promised, then added, with a very sad smile, "I wish I could take you up on your offer."
At the slave barracks, Ishmael walked from cell to cell, looking for Petra. Though the cells were full of wretched, hungry, dirty and miserable slaves, and even though some of them were women, Petra was not among them. Ishmael looked for the barracks master or the chief slave dealer to ask about her.
"The reddish-blond Nazrani?" the slave dealer shrugged. "She's too choice to let rot down here. Or she will be, once her bruises and scratches heal. In any event, I'll get a much better price for her all dolled up and in proper clothing. Still, if you want to inspect her, she's upstairs." He pointed as a flight of stone steps. "Remember," the dealer cautioned, "look but don't touch."
Bowing his head and thanking the dealer, Ishmael made his way up the stone steps to a corridor. There were perhaps a half dozen doorways, each of them barred. He called out, "Petra?"
A pair of small, delicate hands appeared at one of the barred doors. "Ishmael, is that you?" a desperate voice called out.
He ran to it . . . and stopped dead once he saw. Suddenly, the purse at his belt seemed very light indeed. Clothes, hair, face . . . despite the bruises, Petra had been transformed from a skinny twelve-year-old into something—