There was reason for it this year. He would begin with the prettiest, taking competing bids for the beauty, Amata from men who had longed for her-and what a struggle that would be! Yet the losers would also surely pay well, once Amata found a husband, to take home a bride who might not be as beautiful but would still be lovely enough to assuage their loss.
As tradition held, the prices won by the pretty girls would then be offered as dowries for those who were not so pretty. Hope could help an ugly girl shine; a handsome dowry could help her even more. The crier had more pretty girls this year than not, and among them was the beauty, Amata.
In all his years, the crier had never been left with a girl unable to fetch a husband until Beletsunu. She had remained standing, three years in a row, while the crowd dissipated and mocking jokes echoed through the marketplace at the end of the auction. But not this year.
He had reason to hope. So did Beletsunu.
* * *
“Do not speak,” said Milkilu as they entered her new home. He was a wealthy man. Tall. Fit. Handsome. It was the second time he had given her such instructions.
The crowd in the marketplace had not scattered once Beletsunu stood alone and unclaimed. They remained, out of curiosity and mirth, to see how great a dowry the crier would have to offer so that Beletsunu could finally find a husband.
No one expected Milkilu to step forward, though as the dowry grew quite high few could blame him. He’d barely lost out in the bid for Amata’s hand in what became a close and bitter contest. No one expected the kind smile on his face as he spoke out, though, or the way he effortlessly took Beletsunu’s hand and kissed it, right there in front of everyone. Beletsunu expected it least of all.
He offered his surety to follow through with the marriage. He spoke with her parents. Made arrangements. Gave her hope.
And then, leading her from the ceremony to their home, with its opulent gate and its spacious gardens and its servants, he said only three words: “Do not speak.”
She shuffled behind him, trying to keep up with his long strides. She naturally wanted to ask if she had done something wrong or offended him somehow, but did not want to disobey her husband on her first night as a wife.
The home was spacious. Opulent. Most families had only one room to their home; Milkilu had many. She passed a sitting room, and a kitchen, and a storage room with a pallet where one of the servants could sleep. Beletsunu followed her husband, awaiting instructions and hoping for a chance to make amends for whatever transgression she might have made.
She saw their bedroom then, with its lush cushions and soft blankets and comforts she had never known.
She saw the naked, painted whore who waited in the center of the bed.
“Wait here,” grunted Milkilu. He pointed to a space just outside the door and then walked inside. She saw him shed his tunic and leave it pooled at the entrance, and could not bring herself to watch as she heard the sounds from within.
Beletsunu stared at the corner. She stood close to it, close enough that she could see little to either side, because it meant that no one could see her ugly face. She had done so since childhood, and did so now, and then as now tried to control her tears. She put her hands over her ears to block out the grunts and moans and wet noises from her husband’s bedroom.
“Beletsunu!” she heard him call harshly. “Come!”
She wiped her eyes and shuffled in, trembling, knowing not what she could do but obey. She looked up at her naked, handsome husband, who stood by the bed glistening with sweat and with his manhood coaxed to readiness by the nameless woman’s touch.
“Ugh,” he groaned, looking away. “No. I cannot do this. Not even if I close my eyes and have a real woman to help me. If you are asked, we laid together on our wedding night and you took ill.” He shook his head, and then pointed out of the bedroom again. “There is a pallet in the storage room. That is where you will sleep. Try not to make noise. My servants will show you your chores in the morning. Go.”
Her mouth quivered. Her voice refused to come, but she managed in a whisper, “Husband…?”
Milkilu pushed his whore aside to step forward and slap Beletsunu across the face, driving her with a single blow to her knees. “Do not call me that,” he snarled. “Do not ever call me that. I married you for the dowry. Nothing more.”
Beletsunu looked up at him in horror. She should not have been shocked, and she knew it. There had always been the concern that he was only interested in her large dowry. It seemed so obvious. But there were his words, and his smiles, and his polite gestures toward her family. She had allowed herself some hope that he would, at the very least, be kind.
Instead, he slapped her again, harder this time. And then again. “Do not make me look at your vile face!” he roared. “Cover it up! Wear a cloak or a sack or something if you must show yourself, but get out of here now. Go.”
Beletsunu wanted to cry herself to sleep that night. The tears came, but sleep did not. She had always been an insightful girl. It occurred to her, as she sobbed and her husband grunted and his whore called out his name, that the man who’d taken the ugliest bride in all of Babylon had, in doing so, become a much wealthier man.
There was some chance that her family would look in on her. That they would see his kindness for the sham that it was, and that they would have the marriage annulled and force him to return both his bride and the dowry. There was some small chance that her family would care, but she did not allow herself to hope again.
She was an insightful girl.
* * *
“You must try not to anger him,” counseled Hunzuu. He wiped away the blood from Beletsunu’s nose with a rag. Of all the servants, Hunzuu was the kindest-or, rather, the least unkind. He at least paid attention to Beletsunu, and showed her what her husband expected in his house. He corrected her mistakes. He explained her husband’s wrath after the storm passed.
“I do everything he asks,” Beletsunu protested quietly. “I avoid him. I stay out of his way. I clean his bed and replenish the incense and leave out the water and the wine-“
“You mix in too little water with the wine,” Hunzuu said. He sat with her in the storage room. “I have shown you before. He beat me for the same, until I learned how he likes it. I will show you again.”
“He has beaten the other servants?” Beletsunu asked.
Hunzuu frowned. “The master, your husband, is a good man,” explained the older man. “But he has his ways, and when they are denied, he is angered. Yes. He has beaten the other servants. All masters do.”
Beletsunu watched Hunzuu with her good eye and listened closely to his tone. She heard what he did not say. That angry masters beat servants was not unheard of, or even considered shameful. Hunzuu had no need to cover for him, yet there was hesitation in his voice. “Has he killed?” she probed. “For what?”
“I must go,” Hunzuu replied. He kept the rag in his hand. “The master will send me to fetch a woman for his bed tonight. It is always this way when he has been angered.”