Voyager - Diana Gabaldon [404]
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Lawrence, Fergus, Marsali, and I had gone to the slave market under the cranky chaperonage of Murphy, while Jamie called on the Masonic Master. The slave market was near the docks, down a dusty road lined with sellers of fruit and coffee, dried fish and coconuts, yams and red cochineal bugs, sold for dye in small, corked glass bottles.
Murphy, with his passion for order and propriety, had insisted that Marsali and I must each have a parasol, and had forced Fergus to buy two from a roadside vendor.
“All the white women in Bridgetown carry parasols,” he said firmly, trying to hand me one.
“I don’t need a parasol,” I said, impatient at talk of something so inconsequential as my complexion, when we might be near to finding Ian at last. “The sun isn’t that hot. Let’s go!”
Murphy glowered at me, scandalized.
“Ye don’t want folk to think ye ain’t respectable, that ye don’t care enough to keep yer skin fine!”
“I wasn’t planning to take up residence here,” I said tartly. “I don’t care what they think.” Not pausing to argue further, I began walking down the road, toward a distant murmur of noise that I took to be the slave market.
“Yer face will…get…red!” Murphy said, huffing indignantly alongside me, attempting to open the parasol as he stumped along.
“Oh, a fate worse than death, I’m sure!” I snapped. My nerves were strung tight, in anticipation of what we might find. “All right, then, give me the bloody thing!” I snatched it from him, snapped it open, and set it over my shoulder with an irritable twirl.
As it was, within minutes I was grateful for Murphy’s intransigence. While the road was shaded by tall palms and cecropia trees, the slave market itself was held in a large, stone-paved space without the grace of any shade, save that provided by ramshackle open booths roofed with sheets of tin or palm fronds, in which the slave-dealers and auctioneers sought occasional refuge from the sun. The slaves themselves were mostly held in large pens at the side of the square, open to the elements.
The sun was fierce in the open, and the light bouncing off the pale stones was blinding after the green shade of the road. I blinked, eyes watering, and hastily adjusted my parasol over my head.
So shaded, I could see a bewildering array of bodies, naked or nearly so, gleaming in every shade from pale café au lait to a deep blue-black. Bouquets of color blossomed in front of the auction blocks, where the plantation owners and their servants gathered to inspect the wares, vivid amid the stark blacks and whites.
The stink of the place was staggering, even to one accustomed to the stenches of Edinburgh and the reeking tween-decks of the Porpoise. Heaps of wet human excrement lay in the corners of the slave pens, buzzing with flies, and a thick oily reek floated on the air, but the major component of the smell was the unpleasantly intimate scent of acres of hot bare flesh, baking in the sun.
“Jesu,” Fergus muttered next to me. His dark eyes flicked right and left in shocked disapproval. “It’s worse than the slums in Montmartre.” Marsali didn’t say a word, but drew closer to his side, her nostrils pinched.
Lawrence was more matter-of-fact; I supposed he must have seen slave markets before during his explorations of the islands.
“The whites are at that end,” he said, gesturing toward the far side of the square. “Come; we’ll ask for news of any young men sold recently.” He placed a large square hand in the center of my back and urged me gently forward through the crowd.
Near the edge of the market, an old black woman squatted on the ground, feeding charcoal to a small brazier. As we drew near, a little group of people approached her: a planter, accompanied by two black men dressed in rough cotton shirts and trousers, evidently