Voyager - Diana Gabaldon [405]
The planter bent and handed the old woman a coin. She turned and drew several short brass rods from the ground behind her, holding them up for the man’s inspection. He studied them for a moment, picked out two, and straightened up. He handed the branding irons to one of his servants, who thrust the ends into the old woman’s brazier.
The other servant stepped behind the girl and pinioned her arms. The first man then pulled the irons from the fire and planted both together on the upper slope of her right breast. She shrieked, a high steam-whistle sound loud enough to turn a few heads nearby. The irons pulled away, leaving the letters HB in raw pink flesh.
I had stopped dead at the sight of this. Not realizing that I was no longer with them, the others had gone on. I turned round and round, looking vainly for any trace of Lawrence or Fergus. I never had any difficulty finding Jamie in crowds; his bright head was always visible above everyone else’s. But Fergus was a small man, Murphy, no taller, and Lawrence, no more than middle height; even Marsali’s yellow parasol was lost among the many others in the square.
I turned away from the brazier with a shudder, hearing screams and whimpers behind me, but not wanting to look back. I hurried past several auction blocks, eyes averted, but then was slowed and finally stopped by a thickening of the crowd around me.
The men and women blocking my way were listening to an auctioneer who was touting the virtues of a one-armed slave who stood naked on the block for inspection. He was a short man, but broadly built, with massive thighs and a strong chest. The missing arm had been crudely amputated above the elbow; sweat dripped from the end of the stump.
“No good for field work, that’s true,” the auctioneer was admitting. “But a sound investment for breeding. Look at those legs!” He carried a long rattan cane, which he flicked against the slave’s calves, then grinned fatly at the crowd.
“Will you give a guarantee of virility?” the man standing behind me said, with a distinct tone of skepticism. “I had a buck three year past, big as a mule, and not a foal dropped on his account; couldn’t do a thing, the juba-girls said.”
The crowd tittered at that, and the auctioneer pretended to be offended.
“Guarantee?” he said. He wiped a hand theatrically over his jowls, gathering oily sweat on the palm. “See for yourselves, O ye of little faith!” Bending slightly, he grasped the slave’s penis and began to massage it vigorously.
The man grunted in surprise and tried to draw back, but was prevented by the auctioneer’s assistant, who clutched him firmly by his single arm. There was an outburst of laughter from the crowd, and a few scattered cheers as the soft black flesh hardened and began to swell.
Some small thing inside me suddenly snapped; I heard it, distinctly. Outraged by the market, the branding, the nakedness, the crude talk and casual indignity, outraged most of all by my own presence here, I could not even think what I was doing, but began to do it, all the same. I felt very oddly detached, as though I stood outside myself, watching.
“Stop it!” I said, very loudly, hardly recognizing my own voice. The auctioneer looked up, startled, and smiled ingratiatingly at me. He looked directly into my eyes, with a knowing leer.
“Sound breeding stock, ma’am,” he said. “Guaranteed, as you see.”
I folded my parasol, lowered it, and stabbed the pointed end of it as hard as I could into his fat stomach. He jerked back, eyes bulging in surprise. I yanked the parasol back and smashed it on his head, then dropped it and kicked him, hard.
Somewhere deep inside, I knew it would make no difference, would not help in any way, would do nothing but harm. And yet I could not stand here, consenting by silence. It was not for the branded girls, the man on the block, not for any of them that I did it; it was